U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on March 12, 2025, that the agency will take 31 deregulatory actions aimed at advancing President Donald Trump’s executive orders and economic agenda. These actions are intended to reduce regulatory burdens, promote domestic energy production and shift decision-making authority back to state governments.
According to EPA, these measures will reduce regulatory costs by trillions of dollars and lower the cost of living on American households, making it more affordable to purchase vehicles, heat homes and operate businesses.
EPA’s deregulatory effort, which Zeldin described as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” is designed to accomplish three goals Trump set: (1) unleashing American energy; (2) lowering the cost of living for American families; and (3) advancing cooperative federalism. EPA will take 31 actions, including reassessing numerous regulations promulgated during the Obama and Biden administrations that Zeldin claims significantly impacted multiple sectors of the economy.
As part of the “Unleashing American Energy” initiative, EPA will reconsider the following regulations:
- Greenhouse gas emission limits on power plants (which EPA refers to as Clean Power Plan 2.0)
- Emission limits for methane and volatile organic compounds for sources in the oil and gas industry (known as Subparts OOOOb and OOOOc)
- Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants (MATS)
- The mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP)
- Effluent limitations, guidelines and standards for the Steam Electric Power Generating Industry (the ELG rules)
- Wastewater treatment standards for coal-fired power plants
- The Risk Management Program (RMP) rule for oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities
As part of the “Lowering the Cost of Living for American Families” initiative, EPA will reconsider the following regulations:
- Greenhouse gas emission standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (which EPA refers to as the Car GHG Rules)
- EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and harm the environment, as well as the regulations and actions that rely on that finding (commonly called the Endangerment Finding)
- The Technology Transition Rule that restricts the use of certain substances in consumer products and in semiconductor manufacturing
- National ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5 NAAQS)
- Multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs) — this action encompasses recent risk and technology review (RTR) and “gap-filling” rulemakings, including NESHAPs for the following industries and equipment
- integrated iron and steel manufacturing
- rubber tire manufacturing
- synthetic organic chemical manufacturing (the HON Rule)
- commercial sterilizers (including ethylene oxide) for medical devices and spices
- lime manufacturing
- coke ovens
- copper smelting
- taconite ore processing
As part of the ”Lowering the Cost of Living” initiative, EPA will take the following actions:
- Restructuring the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Program
- Re-examining and changing the “Social Cost of Carbon” metric used by agencies to evaluate the costs and benefits of regulations affecting greenhouse gases
- Exercising EPA’s enforcement discretion to return the focus of environmental enforcement back to EPA’s “core mission”
- Terminating EPA’s Environmental Justice and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives
Finally, Zeldin announced that EPA would undertake the following actions to support Congress’ determination in numerous environmental statutes that in many cases the states — and not EPA — should be the primary environmental regulator, which EPA calls its “Advancing Cooperative Federalism” initiative:
- Withdrawing the “Good Neighbor Plan,” which rejected the interstate ozone State Implementation Plans of 23 states and which the Supreme Court stayed pending review by the courts
- Working with states and tribes to resolve what EPA says is a “massive backlog” of State Implementation Plans (SIPs) and Tribal Implementation Plans (TIPs) that states and tribes put together to regulate air emissions within their borders
- Reconsideration of EPA’s Exceptional Events Rule to work with states to prioritize the allowance of prescribed fires within SIPs and TIPs
- Reconstituting EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)
- Expediting state permit reviews under the coal ash program and updating EPA’s coal ash regulations, often called the CCR Rules
- Utilizing EPA’s enforcement discretion to assist North Carolina in its recovery from Hurricane Helene
EPA’s announcement in and of itself will not make these regulations disappear. The environmental rules and regulations targeted in the announcement remain the law of the land unless and until they are repealed or revised, and they remain in effect unless stayed by a court. Repeal or revision of final EPA rules, and certainly deregulatory action of this sweeping scope, will need to comply with the underlying environmental statutes but also with administrative law procedural and substantive requirements. States and NGOs likely will challenge this deregulatory effort in court, and it will be imperative for EPA to make sure it follows the applicable legal requirements and that the rulemaking records for these actions support the decisions EPA makes for these actions to survive judicial review. For that to occur, the regulated community will need to participate in the rulemaking process, provide evidence to support EPA’s deregulatory actions and bolster the record for the litigation to come.
This is the first of several alerts by McGuireWoods about the programs affected in this latest EPA deregulatory effort. Attorneys in McGuireWoods’ Environmental Enforcement & Regulatory Counseling practice group have decades of experience in all facets of the environmental regulatory process and can assist in the rulemaking phase of this effort and in the litigation that ensues, while advising clients on compliance in this uncertain regulatory climate.