WASHINGTON— President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency today finalized a rule revoking 2024 greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. It also proposed a supplemental rule giving up its authority to regulate power plant climate pollution in the future, claiming that such pollution poses no harm to public health.

The combined moves would eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate all climate pollution from the power sector — the country’s largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions.

“From perverting the law to undermining science, Trump’s rollback of power plant pollution rules is a complete sham,” said Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Denying the existence of a quarter of the country’s climate pollution is utterly reckless. It will lead to more lost lives and suffering from intense heatwaves, drastic storms and destructive wildfires, just like those we’ve seen this summer. This is a transparent giveaway to fossil fuel polluters and the courts should see it that way.”

In justifying the rollback of the 2024 standards, the EPA found fault with the Biden administration’s efforts to set the “best systems of emissions reduction.” The agency said that either the methods adopted were foreclosed by the Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA or otherwise unfeasible. The administration’s extremely narrow reading of its authority, combined with its repeal of the power plant pollution endangerment finding, would revoke all greenhouse gas pollution standards for fossil-fueled power plants.

In its proposed supplemental rule today, the EPA said that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants don’t cause or contribute to air pollution or endanger public health. This follows the agency’s repeal of tailpipe emissions standards and the 2009 endangerment finding — the landmark scientific finding that planet-heating pollution harms public health and welfare.

Power plants are the nation’s second largest contributor to air and climate pollution behind transportation. Both findings contradict overwhelming scientific evidence.

“The Clean Air Act’s primary purpose is to prevent pollution, including climate-heating greenhouse gases,” said Coulter. “There’s no credible argument that climate pollution from power plants doesn’t endanger public health. Trump’s EPA is blatantly dodging its public health responsibilities to give fossil fuel companies carte blanche to pollute.”

Eliminating all federal regulations for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants also undercuts arguments the Trump Justice Department submitted to the Supreme Court in Suncor Energy v. Boulder. In that case, the administration said state action on climate pollution is preempted by federal regulation.

That case is set for oral argument Oct. 5, with a decision expected in the first half of 2027.