U.S. EPA Announces Sweeping Deregulation Measures

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on March 12 announced 31 actions to reconsider Biden-era environmental regulations and implement President Trump’s agenda. President Trump has issued a series of executive actions including requiring a review of all agency actions that potentially burden the development of domestic energy resources.

Regulations that the agency will reconsider include the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, vehicle emissions standards, Social Cost of Carbon Regulatory Impact Analysis, and Clean Power Plan 2.0 for power plants.

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program requires more than 8,000 businesses to produce annual estimates of their greenhouse gas emissions. In justifying the reconsideration of this measure, the EPA administrator stated that this practice was tedious and incurs unnecessary costs for businesses.

The agency also claimed that the Clean Power Plan 2.0, which was introduced in 2024, presents unnecessary hurdles for power plant operators in generating affordable electricity. The regulation was first proposed during the Obama administration and was later dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2022.

In the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, the president directed the EPA to reconsider or eliminate the “social cost of carbon” calculation from federal permitting or regulatory processes. Created in 2008, the climate metric quantifies the long-term economic damage that results from one metric ton increase in carbon dioxide in a year. The order stated that the regulation delays regulatory decisions and has no real legal or scientific basis.