The Trump administration has repealed major parts of a 2024 rule regulating power plant greenhouse gas emissions and issued a separate proposal to eliminate all remaining GHG emissions standards for power plants, providing relief from requirements that NRECA has said are legally flawed, unachievable and a risk to electric reliability.
Although the partial repeal is a positive step, the Environmental Protection Agency must “finish the job” and quickly finalize rolling back the rest of the Biden-era rule, NRECA CEO Jim Matheson said, with new natural gas plants still facing severe limits on how often they can run at a time of surging demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and electrification.
At an event in Texas on Monday, the EPA finalized a rule to eliminate all Biden administration greenhouse gas standards for existing coal-fired units. The final rule also repeals carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) requirements for new natural gas plants. The actions follow extensive NRECA advocacy against the 2024 rule before the EPA, Congress and courts.
Electric co-ops have said the CCS mandates would force them to shut down needed capacity because the required carbon controls are costly and not commercially available. The necessary pipeline infrastructure would also not be available by the compliance deadline.
The now-defunct requirements would have made many existing coal plants and new gas plants capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032, effectively mandating CCS.
But other non-CCS-based greenhouse gas requirements remain on the books for new gas plants that would limit many units from running more than 40% of the time and others 20%. As part of its Monday announcement, the EPA released a new proposal that would overturn those mandates.
“We appreciate the administration’s action today to roll back key portions of the Biden-era power plant greenhouse gas rule, which is unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable,” Matheson said. Although the partial repeal is a “major step” to protecting power plants, “it is critical that EPA work quickly to finish the job and finalize the proposed rule released [Monday],” he added.
Electric co-ops have plans to invest nearly $29 billion to bring more than 20 gigawatts of new gas generation online, enough to power 17 million American homes. The remaining EPA greenhouse gas rules would restrict new gas plants’ operations, resulting in higher costs for co-ops and their members.
The agency will take comments for 45 days on the new proposal to roll back remaining emissions standards.
“NRECA will continue to advocate for EPA to quickly repeal the remaining parts of the 2024 rule so that cooperatives can build and run new state-of-the-art natural gas plants to meet unprecedented demand growth and ensure affordable, reliable power for their consumers,” said Dan Bosch, NRECA’s director of regulatory affairs.
Molly Christian is a staff writer for NRECA.