Another Big Step In The Removal Of Destructive “Climate” Regulations

From THE MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

I will never understand how large numbers of seemingly intelligent people got the idea that they were going to save the world by forcing the closure of all the functional parts of the energy system of the U.S. Nor will I ever understand how enough of those people got themselves into positions of sufficient political power to put their wacko energy ideas into effect. And yet, by the time President Joe Biden and his minions had left office in early 2025, such people, operating deep in the administrative state (and with the apparent blessing of a demented President), had managed to impose regulations that, by some time in the 2030s would have, among other things, forced the end of the manufacture and sale of all vehicles except electric vehicles, and forced the closure of all power plants using fossil fuels.

Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump and his people have been actively working to rescind and eliminate this insanity. I have previously reported on many of these actions, for example here and here. Today the EPA took another big step in removing these destructive regulations by finalizing a Rule titled “Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units.” The final Rule was published today in the Federal Register at 91 F.R. 58,954; it takes effect 60 days from today, that is, November 16, 2026.

Today’s action is ludicrously complex in its efforts to clear away some of the convoluted regulatory thicket erected by the previous administration. (It was 195 pages long in the standard double-spaced typed format issued a few days ago, in advance of the official Federal Register publication.). The complexity of the rescission is a function of the complexity of the prior actions that it seeks to unwind. Today I’ll try to provide a comprehensible summary of the background, and how the latest action fits into the mix.

It was way back in December 2009, during Barack Obama’s first year as President, that EPA adopted what is known as the Endangerment Finding, purporting to determine that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. In the same December 2009 regulatory action, EPA also claimed to find that emissions of these gases from “from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.” That finding then formed the basis for the subsequent regulations that initially imposed fuel economy standards on vehicles, and then further imposed emissions mandates that would ratchet down over time until only fully-electric vehicles could be manufactured and sold.

After the December 2009 action, it remained for further regulations to extend the Endangerment Finding to other emissions sources like industry, aircraft, and power plants. As to power plants, the major initiative of the Obama administration was a regulation informally known as the Clean Power Plan, finally imposed in October 2015, during the second half of Obama’s second term. (The official name of the CPP was “Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units.”). The basic structure of the CPP was to set limits on the amounts of CO2 and other GHGs that a power plant could emit, with those limits ratcheting down over the years until, by some point in the late 2030s, it would be impossible for any power plant using fossil fuels to comply. At that point, all fossil fuel power plants would be forced to close.

During President Trump’s first term, EPA attempted to do away with the CPP and replace it with another regulation called the Affordable Clean Energy rule; but that effort got struck down by the D.C. Circuit, thereby seemingly re-instating the CPP pending Supreme Court review. The litigation reached the Supreme Court in 2022, during the Biden presidency, in a case called West Virginia v. EPA. The Supreme Court struck down the CPP as being beyond the authority conferred on EPA by Congress in the Clean Air Act.

But the zealots in the Biden EPA were not going to be deterred by the Supreme Court’s striking down of the CPP, and they looked for another avenue to force the end of electricity generation by fossil fuels. In May 2024 the Biden EPA went final with a Rule with a ridiculously long title but generally referred to as the “Carbon Pollution Standards” for power plants. To avoid the Supreme Court’s West Virginia decision, this regulation took a new approach, which was to declare that the “best system of emissions reduction” (BSER) for a power plant would be to adopt a system of carbon capture and sequestration or storage (CCS), supposedly to capture 90% of the emissions of the power plant.

The problem with CCS is that it is enormously costly and uses up a large fraction of the energy produced by the plant in the effort to capture the emitted CO2. In the limiting case, you can use up all the energy produced by the plant, and still not capture the last bits of the emitted CO2. (I have previously referred to CCS as “a war against the second law of thermodynamics.”)

When the Biden EPA proposed the Carbon Pollution Standards, numerous commenters — including major states like Ohio and West Virginia — pointed out why the standards were technically infeasible. I summarized those comments in this post from August 2023. But EPA went ahead anyway.

EPA’s action today rescinds the Carbon Pollution Standards for existing power plants. In support of its action, EPA basically adopts the infeasibility arguments made in the cited comments of Ohio and West Virginia. Here are some excerpts from the Executive Summary:

The EPA is finalizing the repeal of the emission guidelines for existing fossil fuel-fired steam generating units in their entirety. Specifically, the EPA is finalizing the determination that 90 percent CCS is not the BSER for existing long-term coal-fired steam generating units because 90 percent CCS has not been adequately demonstrated, the costs of 90 percent CCS are not reasonable, and the associated degree of emission limitation is not achievable. In a change from the 2024 CPS, the EPA concludes that previous projects that failed to achieve 90 percent CCS were not a sufficient basis to conclude the technology has been adequately demonstrated. Additionally, the carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, pipeline, and sequestration infrastructure necessary to implement 90 percent CCS for the fleet of existing coal-fired steam generating units does not currently exist and would need to be broadly deployed. Because it is significantly unlikely that the necessary infrastructure for CCS can be deployed by the January 1, 2032 compliance date, the EPA is finalizing the determination that the degree of emission limitation in the 2024 CPS for long-term coal-fired steam generating units is not achievable.

Note that, as with the previous rescission in February 2026 of the Endangerment Finding as to motor vehicle emissions, EPA did not attempt in this rule-making to take on the scientific basis for the claim that human GHG emissions are leading us to some kind of global warming apocalypse. I regard that omission as a lost opportunity. EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding rested on a very shaky foundation, most notably claiming to find ongoing warming in a surface temperature record that lacked almost all data for 40% of the earth’s surface (the Southern Hemisphere oceans). It would be great to point out how comically weak were the bases on which this power-hungry agency purported to imposed trillions of dollars in cost on the American people.

Like the February rescission of the EF, this action will undoubtedly quickly proceed to litigation in the D.C. Circuit. Although I would have liked EPA to base its actions on additional arguments besides the ones it has used, I still think its position is strong. Indeed, I can’t even think of what the environmental groups are going to say to the arguments about infeasibility of CCS. There really is no functional economic demonstration of this technology at scale, even today, and there likely never will be. So have at it!