EPA stands up for consumers and repeals power plant emissions standards

And listen to me about the costs of wind and solar.

Welcome to another Montalbano Monday. The nation is shocked by the assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the attempt on the life of Senator John Hoffman and his wife. My thoughts are with the families grieving their loved ones. My colleague at American Experiment, Public Safety fellow David Zimmer, has covered the shootings here and here.

I had a great conversation on the

Michael Dukes

Show this morning about my forthcoming report on the environmental costs of wind and solar power, which you can listen to here. Keep an eye out for it, coming soon (I promise!).

Editor’s Note on the below piece: The analysis I refer to below predates my time at American Experiment, so credit where credit is due to Isaac Orr and

Mitch Rolling

of the Energy Bad Boys for showing the Biden EPA how its rulemaking erred. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” and all that!

EPA stands up for consumers and repeals power plant emissions standards

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday [June 11] announced it would propose to repeal burdensome greenhouse gas emissions standards for the power sector.

The press release states:

Ensuring affordable and reliable energy supplies drives down the costs of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing while boosting our national security. Coal and natural gas power plants are essential sources of baseload power that are needed to fuel manufacturing and turn the United States into the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world. The proposed repeals would remove regulatory barriers that limit access to our Nation’s energy resources and unleash America’s true potential…

The first Clean Power Plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022. Many have voiced concerns that the last administration’s replacement for that rule is similarly overreaching and an attempt to shut down affordable and reliable electricity generation in the United States, raising prices for American families, and increasing the country’s reliance on foreign-made energy.

In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the major questions doctrine barred EPA from misusing the Clean Air Act to manipulate Americans’ energy choices and shift the balance of the nation’s electrical fuel mix. The Biden Administration issued its own rule in 2024, which many critics say is just another attempt to achieve the unlawful fuel-shifting goals of the Clean Power Plan.

The Clean Power Plan 2.0 would have devastated grid reliability across MISO and other regional grids due to coal-fired generator shutdowns. American Experiment submitted a 35-page comment on the Biden administration’s original draft of the rule in 2023, which would have also required existing natural gas plants to capture emissions as well.

American Experiment’s reliability analysis showed that the EPA’s modeled MISO grid would “result in large capacity shortfalls that will cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars” and that shoring up those shortfalls would cost an additional $246 billion. Those costs would have outweighed the estimated net benefits that the EPA found for the entire country.

The EPA estimates its proposal to repeal power plant emissions rules would save $19 billion over 20 years in compliance costs. However, to avert blackouts and maintain reliability, hundreds of billions of dollars would have been spent replacing retiring coal plants with intermittent wind and solar.

Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, there will be a public comment period of 45 days.

This piece was originally published at Center of the American Experiment on June 12, 2025.