Trump administration dismantles major climate rules, accelerates permitting
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last month it has finalized regulatory changes during fiscal year 2026 that will save American families and businesses more than $1.6 trillion, a savings the Trump administration says is the largest deregulatory effort in American history.
The savings exceeded those achieved across all federal agencies combined during all previous presidential administrations, the agency stated. It also launched a new webpage and video touting its Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.
In the October 23 announcement, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had rolled back major Obama- and Biden-era environmental regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions, power generation, motor vehicles, and other industries: “The Trump EPA is proving you can lower costs, restore consumer choice, and protect the environment at the same time.”
Environmental organizations weren’t so enthusiastic. They warned that eliminating pollution safeguards would impose substantial public health and environmental costs.
“Administrator Zeldin has completely eviscerated a suite of critical pollution standards and other EPA safeguards aimed at protecting people’s health and the environment, which will leave the nation sicker and our air, water and soil dangerously contaminated,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.
What Cleetus didn’t say is that environmental regulations impose costs of their own, raising energy prices, restricting consumer choices, and discouraging investment. Those standard-of-living burdens also threaten public health and the environment but are rarely acknowledged by environmental groups or the corporate media.
As the EPA has pointed out, a 2009 Endangerment Finding that six greenhouse gases threaten public health was used to justify trillions of dollars in regulations, including the Obama and Biden administrations’ push toward electric vehicle (EV) mandates and compliance requirements, while simultaneously driving up vehicle costs for American families and small businesses.
By their own estimates, administration officials and Zeldin faced a steep challenge to prune regulations significantly enough to move the needle on compliance burdens. By the end of the Biden administration, EPA regulations alone accounted for more than $1.3 trillion of approximately $1.8 trillion in cumulative federal regulatory costs.
Fortunately for Zeldin and company, there was low-hanging fruit. Much of the $1.3-trillion price tag came from greenhouse gas regulations affecting vehicles and power plants, climate-related requirements for oil and gas production, and additional rules for electricity, manufacturing, and consumer products. The EPA estimated the combined regulatory burden to be approximately $10,000 per household.
The EPA also cited hundreds of millions of additional hours of government-wide paperwork requirements and concerns that environmental regulations were contributing to premature retirements of traditional baseload power plants.
The why of it
The EPA’s savings are driven in large part by two major actions, the February 2026 rescission of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, with estimated savings of about $2,400 per new vehicle, and the September 2026 repeal of most power-plant greenhouse-gas requirements.
“The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin said. “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated. The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American Dream.”
The EPA’s repeal of the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas requirements for power plants produced an estimated $310 billion in savings. The agency also dismantled every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector, adding another $370 million in projected direct compliance savings. Administration officials contend that the changes will strengthen electric grid reliability and reduce energy prices by preserving traditional baseload generating capacity.
“For over 15 years, the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy,” Zeldin said. “The Trump Administration has come in to protect American energy and to make sure you can afford to keep the lights on. Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices, but this is just the beginning. We are working to go even further so that American energy can be fully unleashed. Realizing the full potential of American energy means more jobs, lower prices, and a more prosperous America.”
Congress also passed six Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions permanently nullifying prior EPA actions, all of which Trump signed. Among the most consequential was the congressional effort to block California’s vehicle emissions policies, which the administration characterized as a de facto nationwide electric vehicle mandate.
Zeldin argues that the congressional resolutions reinforced the EPA’s broader effort to restore consumer choice and prevent states from imposing costly requirements beyond their borders. They also limited federal regulatory authority over transportation and energy production, he said.
And because the Congressional Review Act restricts agencies from adopting substantially similar rules without new congressional authorization, the congressional actions will also block future administrations from reviving a CRA-disapproved rule without fresh statutory authority.
At the speed of a growing economy
The EPA is also seeking to reduce the time required to obtain federal environmental permits, arguing that lengthy reviews have delayed energy development, manufacturing, and infrastructure construction. As such, it has proposed new procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act intended to reduce the time required to complete a typical environmental impact statement from approximately four years to two. The agency estimates that the change could eliminate some 730 days from the federal environmental review process.
Other changes intended to speed up the process include adopting guidance allowing state public comment periods and EPA reviews of permitting to proceed simultaneously, rather than one after the other, and a broader use of categorical exclusions for projects considered unlikely to have significant environmental impacts.
As a result, the administration says some energy and mineral projects could move through certain reviews in weeks rather than years, with expedited emergency procedures potentially reducing review periods to fewer than 28 days. Those initiatives represent a broader effort to reduce procedural barriers to development, though several remain proposals rather than completed regulatory changes.
EPA is also celebrating smaller regulatory changes intended to demonstrate how federal environmental rules affect ordinary consumers, farmers, truckers, and businesses. In February, the EPA rescinded all off-cycle credits, including the federal start-stop feature incentive for manufacturers to make vehicles die at every red light and stop sign.
Other deregulatory wins keep piling up. The agency jettisoned diesel engine derating requirements that can leave truckers and farmers stranded when emissions-control systems trigger engine power reductions. It also provided greater flexibility in hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant regulations to reduce cooling and refrigeration costs and revised Residual Risk and Technology Review guidance to make industrial air-pollution compliance more predictable and less expensive.
In addition, the EPA made changes intended to restore more practical standards for portable gasoline containers, allowing them to be poured and vented more effectively.
Cheers and … cheers
Republican lawmakers and state officials have praised EPA’s actions as a major step toward lowering energy costs and putting an end to what they characterize as years of excessive federal regulation.
“The EPA’s deregulation actions to remove Biden-era rules will help lower energy costs and return the agency to its core mission,” Senate majority leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said. “I applaud administrator Zeldin for working to ensure we have an all-of-the-above energy approach that promotes grid resilience and unleashes American energy.”
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) argued that previous power plant regulations had undermined electric reliability.
“The action taken by the Trump EPA is exactly what needs to be done to secure American energy dominance and restore the communities who have been negatively impacted by regulations and overreach from the Biden administration,” Capito said. “I have long been vocal about the damaging effects of the Clean Power Plan 2.0 and the urgency in stopping this rule and others, like the so-called Good Neighbor Plan and the tailpipe rule. This action begins the process of rolling back the most harmful, anti-energy regulations … that have impaired our electric reliability.”
Moving forward, Capito said, the nation must continue to invest in baseload power generation through resources like coal and natural gas, while maintaining an all-of-the-above energy approach and pursuing important priorities like nuclear and carbon capture technology.
