Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
EPA revokes the power plant carbon rule its 2024 estimate credited with $370 billion in savings
The agency's own 2024 projections for the withdrawn standards, 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and about 1,200 deaths in 2035, are the only public measure of what the revocation gives up. Those figures are models built before the rule took effect.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Scientific American's weekly news roundup reported that the EPA revoked a Biden-era rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from gas, oil and coal-fired power plants.
- When the carbon pollution standards were announced in 2024, the agency estimated they would prevent roughly 1,200 deaths and 1,900 new asthma cases in the single year 2035.
- The EPA also put health and climate cost savings from the standards at $370 billion across the years 2024 to 2047.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint The only quantified account of what the revocation costs is the agency's own 2024 modelling, so critics of the rollback are quoting the EPA back at the EPA.
- exposure The mortality estimate exists for one year, 2035. Anyone who wants a cumulative human cost for the full 2028 to 2047 window has to model it themselves, and will be arguing about assumptions rather than published figures.
- precedent The projected tonnage was scheduled to begin accruing in 2028. A long phase-in leaves a rule open to withdrawal before any of its benefits are banked.
The three figures cover three different spans of time, and that needs sorting out before any of them are compared. The 1.38 billion metric tons of avoided carbon dioxide runs from 2028 to 2047 [4], twenty years, so the average is about 69 million tons a year [1]. The $370 billion in health and climate savings runs from 2024 to 2047 [5], twenty-four years, or about $15.4 billion a year [2]. Divide the dollars by the tons and the quotient is roughly $268 per ton [3], dirty for two reasons: the dollar window is four years longer than the emissions window, and the dollars include health savings while the tons count only carbon dioxide.
The 1,200 avoided deaths and 1,900 avoided asthma cases are for 2035 alone [3], one year pulled out of a two-decade projection. Numbers of that kind come from comparing two modelled futures, one with the standards in force and one without. They move with the assumptions about what the power sector would have built anyway.
Rachel Feltman, presenting Scientific American's weekly news roundup, said the EPA has lately seemed determined to do less environmental protection [6]. The commentary is hers. The 1,200 deaths, the 1.38 billion tons and the $370 billion are the agency's own numbers, published when the standards were announced in 2024 [2][3][4][5].
The roundup gives no reason for the revocation. It puts no compliance cost against the savings, and it does not say what utilities spent or planned while the rule stood. So the comparison available is between a 2024 projection and a power sector under no federal limit on carbon dioxide from gas, oil and coal plants [1]. The emissions side of that projection does not begin until 2028 [4], four years after the standards were announced [4].
What to watch
- A published EPA justification for the revocation, and whether it disputes the 2024 benefit estimates or only their method.
- Year-by-year mortality modelling from any party, which would replace the single 2035 snapshot with a cumulative figure.
- State carbon limits or litigation that restore a compliance deadline before 2028, the start of the old rule's emissions window.