Black neighborhoods will feel the brunt of the Trump administration’s recent move to end federal limits on carbon pollution from America’s power plants, residents and environmental advocates said.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this month that it will repeal rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.
The decision would leave the country’s second-largest source of planet-warming emissions unchecked. It would place the heaviest burden on Black communities, which are often in close proximity to power plants. The rollback also gives a lifeline to coal-fired power plants, which are the worst energy facilities for the climate.
“Power plants continue to harm our health every single day and worsen the climate crisis, with the heaviest burdens falling on low-income and communities of color that last for generations,” said Anastasia Gordon, the director of federal policy at the Harlem-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “Trump EPA’s unprecedented attacks on clean air and climate protections continue to put polluter profits over our lives.”
The Biden-era rules now being dismantled were expected to prevent thousands of premature deaths each year by reducing the power-plant emissions that fuel climate change and help create smog and fine-particle pollution linked to heart disease, asthma, respiratory illness, and other serious health harms. Their repeal could mean more pollution, more climate risk, and more preventable deaths in communities that have long borne the costs of the nation’s fossil-fuel economy.
Nationwide, Black Americans are most likely to live near power plants and die at the highest rate from their pollution. At the same time, Black residents are disproportionately exposed to climate-fueled dangers such as extreme heat and flooding, risks made worse by these same emissions and decades of segregation, unequal infrastructure investment, and fewer resources to recover after disasters.
In practical terms, the rollback would compound both the immediate and long-term harms Black communities already face. Continued pollution from nearby coal and gas facilities can worsen respiratory and cardiovascular illness. Also additional carbon emissions intensify the heat, flooding, and other climate threats that strain housing, public health systems, household finances, and disaster-recovery networks. The administration is not only repealing the 2024 standards, but it is also arguing that the EPA lacks authority to regulate power-plant greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The proposal could make it harder for future administrations to reinstate protections.
“These are not isolated decisions. This is a coordinated campaign to dismantle every protection that stands between polluters and the communities we have spent decades fighting to defend,” said Beverly Wright, executive director of the New Orleans-based Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
For Black communities, environmental advocates say the power plant rollback is one of many recent moves that would guarantee lower life expectancies in Black communities.
The power plant rollback is part of a wider effort to dismantle the regulatory framework that has allowed the federal government to limit industrial pollution. The Trump administration has also targeted the EPA’s foundational finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, a legal basis for federal climate rules, while moving to weaken mercury, toxic air pollution, and drinking water safeguards.
“These rulemakings are riddled with logical and factual inconsistencies, among the worst of which is the patently false argument that we have to choose between our health and our prosperity,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And despite its cynical claims to the contrary, this administration is actively exacerbating people’s energy affordability challenges at every turn.”
In a statement, the EPA said repealing the Biden standards would save $310 billion for Americans and American electricity companies over roughly the next 20 years by making it cheaper to produce energy without having to spend money on new, cleaner technology.
“Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in the statement.
Since Trump took office, residential electricity rates have risen by roughly 20%, which is three times faster than the rate of inflation.
Environmental groups are expected to challenge the repeal in court.
“Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to decades of environmental and public health progress in order to tip the scales in favor of dirty, expensive fossil fuels,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the environmental group Sierra Club.
“Sierra Club’s analysis found that Black and Indigenous Americans already face the heaviest energy burdens and are disproportionately harmed by fossil fuel-fired power plants, and this rollback will only make issues worse for underrepresented communities,” he added. “Repealing lifesaving carbon pollution emission standards will make Americans sicker, drive up healthcare bills, and threaten our collective futures.”
Read More: Air Pollution and its Impact on Black Communities, Explained
