EPA Announces Plans to Reconsider Dozens of Climate Change Regulations

On March 12, 2025, Administrator Zeldin announced that EPA will reconsider a huge set of the agency’s climate change regulations. In a statement accompanying the announcement, Zeldin added that “[w]e are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” This Backtracker will be updated as each of the agency’s planned moves is formalized into official deregulatory action.  

EPA announced that intends to reconsider: 

  • Emissions standards for new and existing for power plants
  • New source performance standards for methane and volatile organic compound emissions from the oil and natural gas industries
  • Mercury and air toxics standards
  • The mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program
  • Limitations, guidelines and standards for the steam electric power generating industry
  • Wastewater regulations for coal power plants
  • The Risk Management Program rule
  • Fuel economy standards for of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles
  • EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare (the 2009 Endangerment Finding)
  • Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards (PM 2.5 NAAQS)
  • Multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs) 

The announcement also describes a set of actions to reshape the way EPA will operate going forward: 

  • Restructuring the regional haze program
  • Overhaling the agency’s use of Social Cost of Carbon measurements
  • Refocusing EPA enforcement resources’ to align them with the agencies policy focus on costs for American consumers
  • Eliminating “Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency”
  • Ending the Good Neighbor Plan
  • Resolving the agency’s backlog of State Implementation Plans and Tribal Implementation Plans
  • Reconsidering EPA’s exceptional events rulemaking to prioritize allowing prescribed fires within State and Tribal Implementation Plans
  • Staffing EPA's Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (SAB/CASAC)
  • Expedite state coal ash permit reviews and updating coal ash regulations
  • Using EPA’s enforcement discretion to further North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene