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Donald Trump’s administration has watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal plants in its latest move to unpick US climate regulations and promote fossil fuels.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday rolled back strict controls imposed by former president Joe Biden’s administration on the volume of toxins that coal and oil-fired power plants can release into the atmosphere.
The Trump administration has argued the rules imposed an unnecessary burden on fossil fuel power generators and claimed that the rollback would slash costs by hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy,” said EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. “If implemented, these actions would have destroyed reliable American energy.”
Since returning to office, Trump has panned climate regulation as “the green new scam” and has sought to roll back a host of environmental rules he argues have driven up costs for industry and consumers.
Last week, the EPA scrapped a landmark scientific determination that had underpinned the US federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for almost two decades.
Friday’s move prompted uproar among environmental groups, who said it put the interests of the coal industry over public health.
“This repeal is an unprecedented, unlawful and unjustified reversal that flies in the face of congressionally mandated efforts to reduce hazardous air pollution from industrial facilities,” said Hayden Hashimoto, an attorney at the non-profit Clean Air Task Force.
But industry groups welcomed the move, which reverts the limits on pollution, known as Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, to 2012 levels imposed under president Barack Obama.
The National Mining Association, a lobby group, said the Biden-era revisions to the rules were “far too costly to justify the minimal emission reductions they would achieve” and would have led to further “massive premature retirements of coal power plants”.
Trump has made supporting the coal industry a significant objective of his second term, arguing that “beautiful, clean coal” is needed to meet booming electricity demand and shore up the grid in times of stress like extreme weather.
The administration has used emergency powers to keep open five coal plants that were scheduled for retirement, directed the defence department to buy coal-fired electricity and relaxed emissions and environmental standards which regulate coal ash disposal.
Coal consumption rose by 5 per cent in the third quarter of 2025 compared with the same period the year before.
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