The United States The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to retreat the emission standards for power plants, the second largest source of CO2 Broadcasts in the country on Wednesday, advertisement That the American energy sector does not “contribute significantly” to polluzion air.
“The main thing is that EPA is trying to withdraw from climate change activity,” said Ryan Maher, ATTney staff at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The annotation comes only a few days after the quietly of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released New record figures showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 In recorded history.
During a press conference on Tuesday, flanked by legislators of some of the best producing states of fossil fuels in the country, the administrator of EPA, Lee Zeldin, accused the Obama and Biden administrations of “seeking to stifle our economy in order to protect the environment”. Zeldin distinguished data centers as helping to stimulate unprecedented demand in the American colonist during the next decade. The EPA, he said, “takes measures to end the agency’s war against a large part of our supply of American national energy”.
The proposed EPA rollbacks target a series of rules on the power plant sector Set up last year By the Biden administration. These regulations demanded that power plants with coal and gas reduce their 90% emissions in the early 2030s, mainly using carbon capture and storage technology.
Among a band of justifications for the regulation of turning back, the new rule of the proposed EPA arises that, because emissions from the American energy sector only rushed for 3% of global emissions in 2022 – down 5.5% in 2005 – and because the use of coal from other countries continues to grow, the production of American electricity from combustible fossils ” significant at global Gesh Gesh concentrations in Atpathe “. However, the production of electrical energy Was responsible for 25% of American emissions in 2022According to EPA, which makes it the second after transportation among the dirty sectors of the economy. A Nyu analysis published Earlier this month Found that if the American electricity sector was its own separate country, it would be the sixth emmatter in the world.
“This action would be laughable if the issues were not so high,” said Meredith Hankins, Attney to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
EPA also targets the rule of mercury and air toxication standards (MATS), which requires that power plants maintain controls to reduce the amount of mercury and other toxic air pollution emitted by their plants. The Biden Administration in 2024 strengthened these standards, which date from 2011. Despite progress in reducing mercury emissions, because the rugs rule has been implemented, the coal electric power plants are still the The greatest source of mercury emissions in the United States.
The administration also clearly indicated that it intended to try to relaunch the coal industry, which was on a sharp decline since the rise of natural gas and inexpensive renewable energies in the years 2010. In a series of decrees published in April intended to stimulate industry, President Trump equaled the future of the domination of AI in the United States to the extension in the line of coal.