EPA to revoke finding underpinning all climate regulations

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday will revoke a critical scientific finding that undergirds the U.S. government’s climate regulations and ability to regulate greenhouse gases, the White House said.

“On Thursday, President Trump will be joined by Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the EPA’s leader. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”

The EPA took a key step to axe the 2009 “endangerment finding” over the weekend by submitting the proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget, the EPA press office told CNBC earlier in the day. The agency initially proposed rescinding it in July last year.

The revocation of the endangerment finding will represent the Trump administration’s biggest broadside yet against efforts to combat climate change and would be a boon for the fossil fuel industry that has fought against climate regulations for years. The endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases pose a risk to public health and welfare, giving EPA the authority to regulate them.

Effectively, the EPA’s move will immediately wipe away regulations on emissions from the country’s highest polluting sector in transportation.

Rescinding the endangerment finding, which was signed during the Obama administration and serves as the basis for troves of U.S. climate policy enacted since, will cause EPA to “lack statutory authority under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to prescribe standards for certain motor vehicle emissions,” the agency said.

Since the ruling, the EPA has regulated emissions from automobiles and other vehicles and power plants. Its revocation would open the door to challenging those regulations.

Rescinding the endangerment finding would almost certainly face legal challenges from environmental groups, and it could be legally tenuous. The endangerment finding has been upheld in court. In 2007, a Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, cleared the way for the finding to be made. The high court declined to hear an appeal challenging the endangerment finding as recently as 2023.

The planned revocation met swift backlash on Capitol Hill from Democrats.

“Let’s be very clear what this announcement represents: it is a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The blast radius of this reckless decision will span from San Diego to Portland, Maine and from Seattle to Miami.”

The status quo has supporters in industry as well.

Elon Musk‘s electric vehicle company Tesla urged the administration to uphold the endangerment finding in a September letter to the EPA.

“The Endangerment Finding – and the vehicle emissions standards which flow from it – have provided a stable regulatory platform for Tesla’s extensive investments in product development and production,” Tesla wrote. “Reversing the Endangerment Finding would also deprive consumers of choice and extensive economic benefits, have negative effects on human health, and further impact the integrated North American automotive sector.”

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.