The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday repealed a 2024 rule regulating mercury and particulate matter emissions from power plants, eliminating a significant regulatory threat to electric cooperatives.
The Biden administration’s mercury and air rule would have required co-ops to shut down or add expensive emissions controls at many coal-fired units but offered no meaningful public health benefits, according to NRECA. It was part of a suite of EPA rules, including regulations for greenhouse gas emissions, designed to force the premature closure of coal-fired power plants.
The rule was among those that NRECA asked the EPA to review after President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.
“The reliability of the electric grid is in a better place because of the administration’s swift repeal of this rule,” NRECA CEO Jim Matheson said. “As crafted, the rule would have dealt a crippling blow to power plants that are essential to maintaining grid reliability.”
In June 2025, the Trump administration proposed to repeal key requirements of the Biden-era rule and revert to prior emissions standards for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants that the EPA adopted in 2012.
Overturning the 2024 rule will eliminate $670 million in regulatory costs over a decade starting in 2028, the EPA estimates.
NRECA filed comments supporting the proposed repeal. It said the 2024 rule was not cost-effective and posed major financial harm to co-op-owned coal plants that supply crucial, always-available power. The rule, if left on the books, would have led to power plant closures, lost jobs and higher electricity costs, compounding the strain on the power grid at a time of skyrocketing demand.
The Biden regulation was also technically and legally unsound, according to NRECA.
The 2024 rule “would have required co-ops to install exorbitantly expensive emission controls or prepare to shut down critical plants,” Matheson said. “Either choice would impose higher costs on consumers without any meaningful benefit.”
Molly Christian is a staff writer for NRECA.