A growing number of U.S. electric cooperatives are supporting a ruling on Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to repeal key portions of Biden-era power plant greenhouse gas emissions restrictions.

The electric co-ops represented under the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (NRECA) are now encouraging the administration to finish removing all remaining restrictions on new natural gas plants. NRECA CEO Jim Matheson issued a statement Monday in response to the EPA’s final decision.

“We appreciate the administration’s action today to roll back portions of the Biden-era power plant greenhouse gas rule, which is unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable,” Matheson said in support of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s finalization of the complete repeal. “The rule poses a serious threat to electric reliability and affordability.”

Matheson and members from nearly 900 local electric cooperatives viewed the Biden-era power plant rules as adding to the growing pressures on the U.S. electric grid. They argued that pressure from these rules imposed artificial restrictions on new natural gas plants, which they state have increased the likelihood of forcing critical existing power plants into early retirement.

In 2024, the rules were finalized under separate authorities, which included the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The objective was to drastically reduce climate, air, water and land pollution from the power sector, one of the Biden-Harris administration’s major commitments to confronting a "growing climate crisis.”

One of those rules was that all coal-fired plants that planned to run in the long term, and all new baseload gas-fired plants, must control 90% of their carbon pollution.

Some other rules highlighted were:

• Tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67% for coal-fired power plants and finalizing a 70% reduction in the mercury emissions standard for existing lignite-fired sources.
• Reducing pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year.
• Requiring the safe management of coal ash placed in areas previously unregulated at the federal level.

However, electric co-ops and the current Trump administration viewed these actions as creating excessive company expenditure to meet compliance. They argued it threatened infrastructure stability while striving to reach growing electrification loads driven by the rise of AI data centers.

NRECA previously sued the Obama administration in 2015 over its initial clean energy rules and challenged them in court.

“As demand for electricity skyrockets, America’s electric grid needs every available electron,” added Matheson. “While today’s action is a major step and allows electric co-ops to continue operating their existing power plants, Biden-era limits on new natural gas plants remain in place.”

Following the rollback, new natural gas plants will no longer face the Biden-era rules that would have restricted their operations to less than 40% of the time unless they installed (often expensive) carbon-capture technology. Instead, they must continue to abide by an older 2015 emissions and efficiency baseline requirement.

That 2015 requirement mandates that modern combined-cycle gas turbines limit emissions to 1,000 lbs of CO2 per MWh, regardless of how many operating hours. According to NRECA, electric cooperatives currently have plans to invest nearly $29 billion to bring more than 20 GW of new natural gas generation online.

But on the flip side of these recent EPA actions, critics now view this move as a direct threat to critical climate emissions targets. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an international environmental advocacy nonprofit, and its allies have reportedly formed plans to sue the Trump Administration to prevent the enforcement of this repeal. According to a release, NRDC experts view the EPA’s legal reasoning as “fatally flawed.”

“This cannot stand. Ignoring the immense harm to the public from this pollution is a clear violation of the Clean Air Act and of Supreme Court precedent. We will see them in court,” said NRDC’s president Manish Bapna in a statement.

Bapna argues that the Clean Air Act explicitly obligates the EPA to issue standards reducing emissions from sources such as power plants that significantly contribute to dangerous air pollution. Repealing these standards without a replacement, the NRDC claims, is an “abdication of EPA’s legal responsibility to protect public health.”

NRDC’s latest analysis claims that the Trump administration’s policies would reverse $700 billion in new power sector investments over the next decade, threatening to raise consumer bills by more than $30 billion a year by 2035. Environmental advocates point out that reversing the Biden-era rule will erase up to $370 billion in net climate and health benefits originally projected by the EPA, while slashing half of the power sector’s projected carbon reduction efforts during this timeframe.

“Whatever your thoughts are on climate change, this is the latest in short-sighted Trump administration energy policies that are likely to raise consumer bills by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade,” Bapna added.