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The Trump administration’s rollback of federal greenhouse gas regulations is expected to slow the pace of U.S. emissions reductions by roughly a decade, reshaping the country’s energy outlook as electricity demand rises, Bloomberg reports.
The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized the repeal of most 2024 greenhouse gas requirements for fossil-fuel power plants and proposed eliminating the remaining federal greenhouse gas standards for the power sector. The EPA estimates the finalized power-plant repeal could result in an additional 533 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2040.
An Energy Innovation analysis of the administration’s broader energy-policy changes estimates that U.S. emissions could be roughly 1 gigaton higher in 2040 than they otherwise would have been, with emissions falling to levels that could have been reached about a decade earlier under previous policies.
The changes come as data centers and industrial growth drive rising electricity demand, potentially giving utilities greater incentive to keep existing coal and gas-fired plants operating longer. The administration’s February 2026 repeal of the federal greenhouse gas endangerment finding and related vehicle emissions standards has also removed another major set of federal climate requirements.
While coal consumption and plant retirements continue to face economic pressures from competing energy sources, removing emissions requirements could extend the operating life of some fossil-fuel facilities.
