Trump EPA Fast Tracks Deregulation With Air Emission Exemptions

The Environmental Protection Agency is handing out air emission compliance shields for industry in the agency’s latest move to accelerate President Donald Trump’s deregulation plan before Biden-era rules are fully reconsidered.

Last week, companies were given the opportunity to write to the president directly if they felt they couldn’t comply with certain national hazardous air pollutant emission standards, also called NESHAP. The EPA’s notice gave companies a template to follow that asks for justifications to support their request, and it set a deadline of March 31. If the “Presidential Exemption” is granted, certain facilities could avoid compliance for up to two years.

As the Trump administration works to overhaul the objectives of the EPA, the move joins other incremental actions the agency released in recent weeks that ease clean air requirements for pollution sources without the lengthy rulemaking that’s usually required.

“It is shocking, and it’s so offensive,” according to Georgetown professor Vicki Arroyo, who also served as EPA’s associate administrator for policy under former President Joe Biden.

Arroyo lambasted the presidential exemption announcement, which she says is legally vulnerable.

“The fact that it’s not going to be transparent is hopefully a fatal flaw,” she said. “Because I don’t really see that they’re going to have the legs to stand on both with regard to the lack of adherence to both [Administrative Procedure Act] and Clean Air Act requirements” for the rulemaking process.

In another move, the Biden administration’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that requires 8,000 fuel and gas facilities to self-report their GHG emissions annually is being altered by the EPA without initial formal rulemaking.

Administrator Lee Zeldin extended the reporting deadline without public comment prior to reconsidering the program entirely, prompting the Environmental Defense Fund to launch legal action.

These shortcuts are likely to have a negative impact on emission reduction, according to observers.

One Carnegie Mellon University study revealed a 7% reduction in GHG emissions from facilities subject to the reporting requirements, and it showed even greater reductions from publicly-traded companies.

“We had very clear evidence with very, very good data about how these programs were influencing firm behavior,” according to study author and Carnegie Mellon professor Nicholas Muller. “And to relax those or remove them or circumvent them with loopholes is, predictably, not terribly well thought out and will have serious consequences on emission levels.”

But the agency says the effort is needed as part of the administration’s push to prioritize US energy development.

An EPA spokesperson said the agency “can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time.”

“This is a very important change from the previous administration’s attempts to shut down American energy and make our citizens more reliant on foreign fossil fuels,” the spokesperson said.

“EPA is bound by laws established by Congress—not what some would like the law to say—as the Obama and Biden EPA saw when the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down their regulations due to major questions,” the spokesperson said.

Weakening Community Action

Private citizens can still file citizen lawsuits against excess emissions under the Clean Air Act, but the “hostility” of some US Supreme Court justices could chill those efforts, according to George Washington University law professor Robert Glicksman.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a critical dissent in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, which asked whether citizens can sue if companies were already complying with regulations at the time the suit was filed. Scalia said the decision granting standing to the citizen enforcement plaintiffs ultimately permits “law enforcement to be placed in the hands of private individuals.”

“He thought it’s the executive branch’s job to enforce federal laws, and any effort on the part of outsiders like citizen suit plaintiffs to do so might upset the priorities of the executive branch in ways that reflect a violation of separation of powers if the court endorses citizen enforcement,” according to Glicksman.

The impact of these emission shortcuts ultimately falls on the heads of environmental justice communities burdened with disproportionate pollution levels, such as Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” or Chicago’s Southeast side.

And these communities are already at a disadvantage with the federal government’s attempt to freeze billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act funds that would have bolstered local air pollution monitoring and climate mitigation efforts.

“I feel like what they’re doing is lawless, really trying to circumvent the plain meaning and the spirit of the Clean Air Act, which has provided tremendous health protections for decades,” Arroyo said.