Trump EPA Replaces Clean Power Plan With Weaker Rule Its Own Analysis Says Could Kill Up To 1,400 Americans A Year, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Power Sector Was Bound By A Federal Climate Target

WASHINGTON. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized the Affordable Clean Energy rule, a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that imposes no national limit on carbon pollution from the electricity sector, resolving a long-standing concern that the country's power plants were operating under a federal target they might one day be asked to meet.

The new rule, signed by Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist, scraps the previous plan's goal of cutting power-sector emissions roughly a third below 2005 levels by 2030. In its place, the agency instructs states to pursue modest efficiency upgrades at individual coal plants, an approach so accommodating that experts noted it could, in certain cases, encourage the plants to run more often and emit more.

Buried in the EPA's own regulatory impact analysis was the agency's projection that, compared with the plan it was discarding, the new rule could result in as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths each year by 2030, a figure the administration presented not as a warning but as a line item. Officials emphasized that the Clean Power Plan had never actually taken effect, having been frozen by the Supreme Court in 2016, and therefore that no American could prove the rule would have saved them specifically.

"We are ending the war on beautiful, clean coal," the President had said of his broader energy agenda, a sentiment the rule was engineered to convert into federal policy. A senior administration official described the measure as returning authority to the states, where, the official noted, the coal plants are conveniently located.

Industry groups that had spent years requesting precisely this outcome praised the agency for its responsiveness, while public health organizations pointed out that particulate matter does not recognize state lines. The EPA, for its part, maintained that the rule struck a balance between environmental protection and the continued operation of the facilities producing the pollution.

At press time, the agency confirmed that the rule had fully achieved its central objective, which was to exist where the Clean Power Plan used to be.