Trump spares power plants from mercury emissions clampdown

eenews.net · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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The Trump administration is reopening a loophole to allow more mercury emissions from some coal-fired power plants, provoking swift denunciations from public health advocates who said the rollback will leave children at further risk of exposure to the brain-damaging element. As part of a repeal of Biden-era regulations unveiled Friday, EPA will continue to allow plants that burn lignite, a low-grade type of coal, to release mercury at a rate more than three times that of other coal-fueled generating operations. The reversal is part of President Donald Trump’s push to save the long-struggling coal industry, in part by peeling back regulatory pollution limits and propping up aging coal-fired power plants. It benefits about 10 lignite-burning plants mainly concentrated in North Dakota and Texas. Among those lobbying for repeal had been groups like the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which deemed the stricter mercury limit “technically unachievable.” The rollback decision, formally announced by EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi at a Louisville, Kentucky, power plant, is almost certain to be challenged in court. It could thus furnish a legal test case for the Trump administration’s expansive plans to unravel similarly strengthened air toxics regulations for other industries. Beside reviving the carve-out for lignite-burning plants, the agency is now scrapping related measures that would have cut the broader coal-fired power industry’s emissions of soot and other hazardous metals by hundreds of tons annually and required all plants to install continuous emissions monitoring — in place of periodic smokestack tests — to better ensure compliance. Trump had already granted almost 70 plants two-year compliance extensions. Under Administrator Lee Zeldin, EPA released a draft version of the industrywide rollback rule last June. The final version appears to be little changed. In an accompanying summary, the agency predicts that Americans will see about $670 million in savings for utilities, transportation and other expenses. “The Trump EPA’s action follows the rule of law and will reduce the cost of generating baseload power, lowering costs and improving reliability for consumers,” Fotouhi said in a news release. Hailing the about-face was Jim Matheson, CEO of the rural cooperative association, who said in a statement that “the reliability of the electric grid is in a better place.” The 2024 regulations issued during President Joe Biden’s tenure “would have required co-ops to install exorbitantly expensive emission controls or prepare to shut down critical plants,” Matheson added. Likewise welcoming it were Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and other lawmakers from coal-producing states. Environmental and public health advocates assailed the repeal as a harmful handout to fossil fuel interests. “Repealing these protections will allow coal plants to pour more mercury and toxic pollution into our air, which will then get into our water, food and ultimately our children’s bodies,” said Surbhi Sarang, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s a needless cruelty when modern pollution controls can provide greater safety.” Joining the backlash was Gina McCarthy, who headed EPA under President Barack Obama and took a pointed jab at the Trump administration’s campaign to “Make America Healthy Again.” “By weakening pollution limits and monitoring for brain-damaging mercury and other pollutants, they are actively spiking any attempt to make America — and our children — healthy,” McCarthy said. ‘Not a pollutant that we want to be messing around with’ The Biden-era regulations marked the first major update to the landmark 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for the coal- and oil-fired electricity sector. Those original standards were credited with spurring huge emission reductions; the accompanying compliance costs were also blamed by coal industry advocates for forcing the closure of some plants. The projected impact of the 2024 update was modest by comparison. Ending the mercury emissions loophole for lignite-burning plants, for example, was expected to cut yearly releases by about 1,000 pounds, a fraction of the approximately 25 tons in reduced annual mercury releases that followed the original 2012 standards. Still, mercury is “not a pollutant that we want to be messing around with,” Michelle Solomon, electricity program manager with Energy Innovation, a clean energy policy research organization, said in an interview. The metal is particularly pernicious in its organic form known as methylmercury, which bioaccumulates in fish and shellfish and then moves up the food chain when humans eat them. The damage can begin even before birth. “Children exposed to methylmercury while they are in the womb can have impacts to their cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, fine motor skills, and visual spatial skills,” according to an EPA webpage. More broadly, exposure can lead to speech impairment, muscle weakness and loss of peripheral vision, the agency says. The Biden-era regulations followed a legally required review to determine whether any tightening of the original 2012 standards was warranted in part because of advances in pollution control technology. They also reversed an earlier finding during Trump’s first term that no major changes were needed. After initially allowing the loophole for lignite-burning plants, for example, EPA two years ago found that there were “cost-effective control technologies and improved methods of operation” to help them meet the tighter standard already in place for the rest of the industry. Overall, the tightened regulations, which were generally supposed to take effect in 2027, “would result in relatively minor impacts on the power sector,” the agency predicted at the time. Critics, however, noted that the update carried a 10-year compliance price tag of $860 million, or twice the expected health and climate gains of $430 million that EPA was able to capture in dollar terms. They also argued that electric grid reliability was at risk from the cumulative cost of new regulations on wastewater discharges and other pollutants besides air toxics. “In combination with other EPA rules, the 2024 MATS rule would have helped accelerate coal plant retirements, ignoring the critical role these facilities play in providing dependable, baseload power,” Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal industry advocacy group, said Friday. EPA meanwhile stressed that the original 2012 standards will remain in effect; Fotouhi called them “fully protective of human health risks.” The mercury emissions standard for most coal-fired power plants is 1.2 pounds per trillion British thermal units (lb/TBtu). For lignite-fueled plants, the limit will now revert to 4 lb/TBtu. Reach this reporter on Signal at SeanReilly.70.