Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Energy

Proclamations

TLDR

This executive order exempts 66 coal plants from updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) based on contested claims about technology availability, grid reliability concerns, and national security. It contradicts EPA findings that compliance technologies already exist, overlooks coal’s market-driven decline, mischaracterizes US energy security needs, and raises legal questions about Clean Air Act compliance and emergency authority use.

This proclamation exempting 66 coal plants from updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) raises substantive concerns about its factual basis and policy implications.

  1. Claim: “Technology to implement the Rule is not available”

    • The proclamation asserts compliance requires “emissions-control technologies that do not yet exist in a commercially viable form.” This conflicts with:
      • The EPA’s 2024 MATS update, which explicitly states strengthened standards are achievable with existing technologies like activated carbon injection systems and fabric filters.
      • Industry compliance records: Over 99% of coal plants already meet 2012 MATS requirements, with many adopting the same technologies now mandated for stricter standards.
      • CATF analysis: Continuous emissions monitoring systems (required by the updated MATS) are commercially deployed and provide real-time compliance data.
    • The rule builds on proven, widely adopted technologies. No novel or undeveloped systems are required.

  2. Claim: Rule threatens grid reliability and jobs

    • The administration argues the compliance timeline risks “shutdown of many coal-fired power plants,” threatening jobs and energy security. However:
      • Coal’s declining role: Coal accounts for 16% of U.S. electricity generation (down from 50% in 2000), with market forces—not regulation—driving most retirements due to cheaper renewables and gas.
      • EPA projections: The 2024 MATS rule allows plants retiring by 2034 to avoid new requirements, minimizing disruptions. EPA also found minimal impact on electricity prices (0.3–0.7% increase).
      • Grid resilience: Multiple studies show renewable energy and storage enhance reliability more effectively than aging coal plants.
    • The rule includes flexibility mechanisms, and coal’s decline is primarily market-driven. Reliability risks are overstated.

  3. Claim: National security justification

    • The proclamation frames coal as critical to energy security, citing “electricity demand shortages” and “foreign energy dependence.” However:
      • U.S. energy exports: The U.S. is a net energy exporter, with oil/gas production at record highs.
      • Climate risks: The Department of Defense identifies climate change as a national security threat, exacerbated by coal emissions.
      • Health costs: MATS prevents $300M–$3.4B in annual health damages from mercury and particulate matter, which disproportionately harm low-income communities near coal plants.
    • Prioritizing coal contradicts broader security priorities, including climate resilience and public health.

Legal and Procedural Concerns:

  • Clean Air Act compliance: Section 112(i)(4) allows exemptions only if technology is unavailable. Courts have previously struck down similar attempts to bypass MATS, citing existing compliance capabilities.
  • Emergency authority misuse: Invoking national security to override environmental law sets a precedent for circumventing Congressional mandates.

The proclamation relies on outdated assumptions about coal’s necessity, ignores market realities, and misrepresents the feasibility of pollution controls. While providing temporary relief to specific plants, it undermines long-term public health protections and delays the energy transition already underway. The EPA’s updated MATS standards remain legally defensible and technologically achievable, with proven benefits for environmental justice and climate goals.

  1. Coal-fired electricity generation is essential to ensuring that our Nation’s grid is reliable and that electricity is affordable for the American people, and to promoting our Nation’s energy security. The Federal Government plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the Nation’s power supply remains secure and reliable. Forcing energy producers to comply with unattainable emissions controls jeopardizes this mission.

  2. On May 7, 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency published a final rule titled_National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Coal- and Oil-Fired Electric Utility Steam Generating Units Review of the Residual Risk and Technology Review_, 89 FR 38508 (Rule), which amended the preexisting Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule to make it more stringent. The Rule’s effective date was July 8, 2024. _Id._Its compliance date is July 8, 2027, 3 years after its effective date. _See_89 FR 38519.

  3. The Rule places severe burdens on coal-fired power plants and, through its indirect effects, on the viability of our Nation’s coal sector. Specifically, the Rule requires compliance with standards premised on the application of emissions-control technologies that do not yet exist in a commercially viable form. The current compliance timeline of the Rule therefore raises the unacceptable risk of the shutdown of many coal-fired power plants, eliminating thousands of jobs, placing our electrical grid at risk, and threatening broader, harmful economic and energy security effects. This in turn would undermine our national security, as these effects would leave America vulnerable to electricity demand shortages, increased dependence on foreign energy sources, and potential disruptions of our electricity and energy supplies, particularly in times of crisis.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 112(i)(4) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7412(i)(4), do hereby proclaim that certain stationary sources subject to the Rule, as identified in Annex I of this proclamation, are exempt from compliance with the Rule for a period of 2 years beyond the Rule’s compliance date —i.e., for the period beginning July 8, 2027, and concluding July 8, 2029 (Exemption). The effect of this Exemption is that, during this 2-year period, these stationary sources are subject to the compliance obligations that they are currently subject to under the MATS as the MATS existed prior to the Rule. In support of this Exemption, I hereby make the following determinations:

a. The technology to implement the Rule is not available. Such technology does not exist in a commercially viable form sufficient to allow implementation of and compliance with the Rule by its compliance date of July 8, 2027.

b. It is in the national security interests of the United States to issue this Exemption for the reasons stated in paragraph 3 of this proclamation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the UnitedStates ofAmerica the two hundred and forty-ninth.

DONALD J. TRUMP