Repeal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 60</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124; FRL-12674-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AW55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Repeal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. The EPA is proposing that the Clean Air Act (CAA) requires it to make a finding that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution, as a predicate to regulating GHG emissions from those plants. The EPA is further proposing to make a finding that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution. The EPA is also proposing, as an alternative, to repeal a narrower set of requirements that includes the emission guidelines for existing fossil fuel-fired steam generating units, the carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS)-based standards for coal-fired steam generating units undertaking a large modification, and the CCS-based standards for new base load stationary combustion turbines. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments.</E> Comments must be received on or before August 7, 2025. <E T="03">Public Hearing.</E> The EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on July 8, 2025. Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for information on registering for the public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124 in the subject line of the message. • Fax: (202) 566-9744. Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand/Courier Delivery:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operation are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For questions about this proposed action, contact Ms. Lisa Thompson, Sector Policies and Programs Division (D243-02), Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27711; telephone number: (919) 541-5158; and email address: <E T="03">thompson.lisa@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Participation in virtual public hearing.</E> The public hearing will be held via virtual platform on July 8, 2025. The hearing will convene at 11 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) and conclude at 7 p.m. ET. The EPA may close a session 15 minutes after the last pre-registered speaker has testified if there are no additional speakers. The EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hearing no later than 1 business day following the publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/greenhouse-gas-standards-and-guidelines-fossil-fuel-fired-power</E> or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be June 29, 2025. Prior to the hearing, the EPA will post a general agenda that will list pre-registered speakers in approximate order at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/greenhouse-gas-standards-and-guidelines-fossil-fuel-fired-power.</E> The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearings to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have 4 minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to submit a copy of their oral testimony as written comments electronically to the rulemaking docket. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral testimony and supporting information presented at the public hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/greenhouse-gas-standards-and-guidelines-fossil-fuel-fired-power.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as described in this section, please monitor our website or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require a special accommodation such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing with the public hearing team and describe your needs by June 24, 2025. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advanced notice. <E T="03">Docket.</E> The EPA has established a docket for these rulemakings under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124. All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> index. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy. <E T="03">Written Comments.</E> Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to the EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. This type of information should be submitted as discussed in the <E T="03">Submitting CBI</E> section of this document. The EPA is soliciting comment on numerous aspects of the proposed rule. The EPA has indexed each comment solicitation with a unique identifier ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> “C-1”, “C-2”, “C-3” . . .) to provide a consistent framework for effective and efficient provision of comments. Accordingly, we ask that commenters include the corresponding identifier when providing comments relevant to that comment solicitation. We ask that commenters include the identifier either in a heading or within the text of each comment, to make clear which comment solicitation is being addressed. We emphasize that we are not limiting comment to these identified areas and encourage provision of any other comments relevant to this proposed action. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, <E T="03">etc.</E> ) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the Web, cloud, or other file sharing system). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website allows you to submit your comment anonymously, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any digital storage media you submit. If the EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, the EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should not include special characters or any form of encryption and shoul ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 243k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━