Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave this country’s nearly 200 remaining coal-fired power plants until 2027 to install or improve air quality monitoring devices on smokestacks to meet federal guidelines to cut hazardous pollutants including mercury, arsenic, lead and particulate matter.
But through executive action, President Donald Trump last month granted a two-year reprieve to some of those plants from the strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which required continuous monitoring of air pollutants.
It is part of Trump’s continuing efforts to boost fossil fuel use and undermine President Joe Biden’s push to reduce threats from climate change and improve the health of people living in communities plagued by industrial pollution. The exemption applies to roughly one-third of all U.S. coal plants.
These toxic and hazardous emissions have been tied to cancer, neurological damage and developmental disorders, “even at extremely low levels of exposure,” said Margie Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, calling the two-year pause “a free pass to pollute.”
“We’re looking at a two-year extension as (a) step … to get rid of these mercury and particulate matter standards and get rid of the continuous emissions monitoring requirement altogether,” said Joseph Goffman, a former assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under Biden.
The extension, which was among the list of deregulatory actions announced by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, has drawn strong criticism from environmental groups, including those in Louisiana where three coal-powered plants still operate. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
The state’s largest electric provider, which owns one coal plant and shares ownership of a second — has said it already complies with the existing standards and plans to retire its coal-powered generation in the next five years. But advocates worry the shift in the country’s regulatory landscape will worsen health risks for fenceline communities — and that promises to shutter coal plants could be reversed — as projected electrical demand continues to sharply rise.
“I think that it would be a mistake for us to rely on a corporation to do the right thing just because they want to,” said Emory Hopkins, organizer for the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign in Louisiana.
“I think something that might be worth noting is that we’re looking at a lot of load growth in the coming years, which is a lot more electric demand, energy demand,” primarily from data centers, Hopkins said.
President: Rules are ‘unattainable’
In his executive order, Trump said granting the two-year extension would safeguard the nation’s power supply by not forcing electric companies to comply with “unattainable” emissions standards. The EPA under Trump now says the enhanced MATS rule would cause “regulatory uncertainty” for many U.S. coal plants.
After Trump’s action, the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal utility that generates power to seven states, announced it plans to walk back commitments to retire coal-powered plants by 2035.
By the EPA’s current estimates, the strengthened MATS rule would cost energy companies more than $790 million over 10 years. Trump’s order stated that many coal-fired power plants were at risk of shutting down to meet the compliance standards, which would have led to significant job losses and weakened the country’s electrical grid.
In reality, coal-powered plants were already on the decline due to cheaper sources for electric power generation including natural gas, wind and solar — the latter two being the preferred option for greenhouse gas reduction.
Goffman said the MATS rule changes were projected to reduce mercury emissions by 1,000 pounds. The World Health Organization has said even in small doses, mercury can cause serious health complications to a person’s nervous, digestive and immune systems.
Goffman added that the changes passed by the Biden administration last year incorporated advances in filtering out particulates, which were not available when the mercury rules were first enacted in 2012. The enhanced MATS rule would have reduced particulate matter by 770 tons, and carbon dioxide — a potent greenhouse gas — by 65,000 tons by 2028, resulting in millions of dollars in benefits to human health and the climate, he said.
“If there’s one pollutant that you would worry about more than any other, when it comes to making people sick and killing them, it’s fine particles,” he said. “So within reason, the more you can cut fine particles, the better off everyone’s health is going to be.”
Biden’s EPA also projected there would be little cost to electricity customers. The agency under Biden also said no coal-fired plants would be forced to shut down, and there would have been no major disruptions to energy production.
“I want to emphasize that these rules were not intended to prompt coal plants to shut down,” Goffman said. “The Clean Air Act doesn’t authorize EPA’s regulations to do that, and the EPA certainly performed its analysis of the MATS requirements on the assumption that these plants would, and in many cases might need to, keep operating.”
‘Kick in the teeth’ to polluted communities
The Sierra Club, a nationwide grassroots environmental organization, noted in a 2020 report that coal-fired power plants in Louisiana accounted for just 8% of the state’s electric power but were to blame for an estimated 51 deaths and 349 asthma attacks annually.
The Roy S. Nelson, a coal-fired plant mostly owned by Entergy Louisiana in Lake Charles, has the largest number of people in the state living within a 12-mile radius — a population of about 153,000.
Michael Tritico, a local environmental advocate who grew up in Lake Charles, said people there rarely oppose Entergy Louisiana, or any of the industrial facilities, despite the impacts to their health.
“The company always gets what it wants, and the neighbors never stand up,” he said. “They figure industry is their bread and butter, so they let it go.”
Brandon Scardigli, spokesman for Entergy Louisiana, said the company remains committed to ending its coal-generated power by the end of 2030. And as for its Nelson plant, he said it will continue to operate under the current MATS standards until then.
“This exemption does not change the applicable EPA standard for mercury emissions control, and Nelson 6 will continue to operate in compliance with this standard,” he said. “We have continued to maintain and operate Nelson 6 in compliance with existing environmental regulations.”
Joshua Smith, a senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, said it will be important to press the company to keep those promises to an area already facing increased pollution.
“That Lake Charles area is already facing a pretty big buildout of liquified natural gas facilities and other types of industry,” Smith said. “In general with these kinds of facilities, if they’re given flexibility and latitude, they’ll take it.”
Smith added that the Sierra Club is exploring legal actions it can take to push back against the exemption, which could be extended beyond two years if Trump wants.
“I think it's a pretty destructive use of executive privilege,” he said. “What's happening here is the (Trump administration) is allowing these facilities to pollute more at the very tail end of their life … (and) damaging the community that has already been bearing the brunt of the pollution for the better part of 40 or 50 years.
“It's just like one more kick in the teeth on the way out the door.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.