The two-step regulatory dance between the old Trump administration and the current Biden administration continues with the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-February decision on the scientific basis for lowering mercury air emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The choreography is simple. Trump takes one step back from prior consensus regulation. Biden takes one step forward. The initial position remains the same. In the mercury case, neither the Trump nor the Biden part of the regulatory two-step had real-world consequences. The pas-de-deux over definitions never influenced the regulatory requirements of the EPA’s previously adopted and judicially blessed “Mercury and Air Toxics” (MATS) rule.
The New York Times put the latest moves in context: “The regulatory action announced Friday is one in a series of moves by the Biden administration to first restore and then strengthen the many environmental rules that were erased or weakened under President Donald J. Trump.” The article cited the 2021 step by Biden to restore auto pollution rules that EPA had gutted under Trump.
On Feb. 17, EPA announced that it “is reaffirming the scientific, economic, and legal underpinnings of the 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for power plants, which required significant reductions of mercury, acid gases, and other harmful pollutants. Controlling these emissions improves public health by reducing fatal heart attacks, reducing cancer risks, avoiding neurodevelopmental delays in children, and helping protect our environment.”
The Trump administration’s EPA in 2020, ending a rulemaking process it began in 2018, dismissed the scientific rationale for reducing mercury in coal-fired stack emissions. The Washington Post reported at the time, “In its controversial decision, the EPA declared that it is not ‘appropriate and necessary’ for the government to limit mercury and other harmful pollutants from power plants, even though every utility in America has complied with standards put in place in 2011 under President Barack Obama.”
When the Biden administration took its step last month, The Hill commented, “The Trump administration did not change the substance of the rule itself, but made it more open to court challenges from industry. It did so by rescinding the Obama-era determination that it is ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate the pollutants: The Trump administration spurred legal action from the coal company Westmoreland Mining that attempted to knock out the pollution limits. Mark DeLaquil, outside litigation counsel for Westmoreland, told The Hill on Friday that the case had already been halted.”
While the Trump administration asserted, without evidence, that the MATS rule was too expensive and not justified by the benefits, mercury control has been one of the successes of the EPA’s air pollution program. Uncontrolled flue gas from coal plants contains methylmercury, which can enter the human food chain by falling into water and bioconcentrating in edible fish and shellfish. It is a serious neurotoxin, particularly dangerous to children and unborn infants, according to EPA.
The electric utility industry praised the Biden EPA’s move to restore the scientific underpinning of its rules, shielding them from legal challenge. Tom Kuhn, the long-time head of the Edison Electric Institute, the Washington lobby for the investor-owned electric companies, said, “EEI’s member companies, and the electric power industry collectively, have invested more than $18 billion to install pollution control technologies to meet these standards. With the appropriate and necessary finding restored, electric companies can remain focused on getting the energy we provide as clean as we can as fast as we can, while maintaining the reliability and affordability that our customers value.”
Mercury and mercury compounds released in the air have been going down substantially in the years since the MATS rules went into effect, according to EPA figures. Stack emissions in 2011 of 87,000 tons fell to 30,000 tons in 2020. Reductions continued in 2021 and 2022. 
Coal state politicians were reflexively outraged by the restoration of the basis for the mercury rule. West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee complained that “the Biden administration’s end goal is to shut down American coal plants, fire American coal workers, and do everything in its power to make America less energy independent. We’ve seen this movie before.” Because the administration’s action changed nothing on the ground, nor did the Trump administration’s regulatory handwaving, Capito’s outrage seems contrived.
–Kennedy Maize
To subscribe to The Quad Report, click on the email above and type “subscribe” in the subject line. To unsubscribe, repeat the process and type “unsubscribe.”
To comment: