WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to repeal rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action that Administrator Lee Zeldin has said would remove billions of dollars in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy.
The rule change, proposed last year, could be announced as soon as Monday, according to two people familiar with the proposal, and represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and clean up industrial pollution, often in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities.
The rule, which is expected to face immediate legal challenges, also could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the people familiar with the proposal said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the final rule had not yet been made public.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are hosting a G20 ministerial meeting on “energy abundance” in Houston, where the rule change is set to be announced. The site is both a nod to the important role the oil-rich state plays in the energy industry and a potential snub of European and other international allies in attendance who have pursued environmentally friendly policies that the Trump administration has moved to undo.
Republican President Donald Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at a speech to the United Nations last year, and his administration withdrew the U.S. — for the second time — from the 2015 Paris climate accord that sets voluntary goals to curb planet-warming emissions.
Trump has boasted of U.S. energy abundance even as the Iran war continues to disrupt global fuel markets and gas prices top $4.31 a gallon, up more than a dollar from a year ago.
The plan to make the power plant rule final was first reported by the New York Times.
The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Trump’s repeated pledge to “ unleash American energy ” and make it easier for utilities to supply electricity for homes and businesses.
The power plant rule is among nearly three dozen environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in early 2025 when he announced what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”
Zeldin said in proposing the new rules last year that they were meant to end the Biden and Obama administrations’ “war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.”
Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court.
“Tearing down our national protections against climate pollution from power plants will have enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families across the country,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. “Americans everywhere are already suffering from record-breaking heat, more dangerous floods and storms, and skyrocketing insurance costs.”
The EPA has a legal responsibility to protect the public from harmful pollution, Patton said, adding that “clean, affordable and reliable technologies are widely available to power our homes and businesses.”
Coal, gas and oil-fired power plants are responsible for about one-quarter of the nation’s total climate pollution, second only to the transportation sector. Pollution from power plants is one of the largest sources of climate-changing pollution in the world.
The rules targeted by Trump’s EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination last year that included the agency’s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.
Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases, driving Earth’s warming to deadlier levels.
Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would have been forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued in 2024. Those rules are now being upended.
In its proposal last year, the Trump EPA argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants “are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,″ the EPA said.
Zeldin, a Republican and former New York congressman, said the Biden-era rules were designed to “suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,” with the intent to regulate the coal industry “out of existence” and make it “disappear.”
FILE - Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin listens as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, June 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Artificial-intelligence stocks are sliding worldwide Monday after leaders of the industry warned a slowdown is needed for safety. Another jump in oil prices, meanwhile, sent the bond market to its latest pressure-raising milestone as the yield on the 10-year Treasury hit 5% for the first time since 2023.
Despite all the downers, though, gains for many stocks outside AI helped limit Wall Street's losses. The S&P 500 fell 0.6%, and more stocks rose within the index than fell. The Nasdaq composite, which has many more tech stocks, dropped a market-leading 0.9%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 159 points, or 0.3%, as of 10:20 a.m. Eastern time.
AI stocks have been under pressure a while because of worries their prices shot too high in the frenzy around the technology. The concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after one of the industry’s leading voices, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for a deliberate and global slowdown in the development of AI.
He cited safety issues, including the risk that AI becomes capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
Nvidia, whose profits have soared because its chips are helping to train AI models, sank 3.5% and was the heaviest weight on the market because of its massive size.
SpaceX, which gets a chunk of its business from AI, fell 1.7% after Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agrees with Amodei. Softbank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor of OpenAI, lost 10.7% in Tokyo after OpenAI’s Sam Altman likewise supported the concept of a slowdown.
Altman also said in an interview with Fortune published on Saturday that OpenAI would likely wait until next year for a sale of its stock on Wall Street, potentially delaying a potential gusher of cash for Softbank and other early investors in OpenAI.
In South Korea, the Kospi index dropped 3.3% due to losses for its two most influential stocks, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
President Donald Trump played down the need for his administration to check the development of AI, saying he worried about ceding America’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.
He said on his social media network Monday that the only guardrail AI needs “is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”
Helping to limit Wall Street's losses on Monday were several software companies that tumbled earlier this year on worries that AI-powered competitors would undercut their businesses. Intuit, the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, rose 4.8%. Autodesk, whose software helps designers, climbed 4.4%, and Adobe added 2.8%.
Stocks in the oil industry also rose, including a 1.3% gain for ExxonMobil, following another jump in crude prices.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 4.2% to $109.05 as fighting in the Middle East keeps squeezing the global flow of oil.
An important Saudi oil pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks following an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press. The pipeline offered a way for Saudi Arabia to shift exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian attacks have stifled the movement of oil tankers.
Brent has jumped from less than $72 in early July as doubts rise that the United States and Iran can come to an agreement that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf through the strait again.
While the prospect of a de-escalation of war in Iran may have dimmed, ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a commentary on Monday that the situation is still fluid and “sizable” volumes of oil have still been moving through the strait.
So far, the jump in oil prices has helped send the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to nearly $4.32 from $4.08 a month ago and $3.18 a year ago, according to AAA.
Such upward pressure on inflation has much of Wall Street expecting the Federal Reserve will hike its main interest rate on Wednesday at the end of its next meeting.
That’s the traditional way the Fed tries to rein in high inflation. Such a move then filters out through the rest of the bond market, makes it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money, slows the overall economy and undercuts prices for investments. That hopefully would remove some of inflation’s fuel, though Trump has been lobbying for lower interest rates instead of higher.
Besides high inflation, worries about rising debt for the U.S. and other governments have helped send longer-term Treasury yields to their highest levels in years.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 5.00% from 4.96% late Friday and just 3.97% before the war with Iran began in February.
The jump has already made it more expensive for U.S. households and companies to borrow, including the highest average long-term mortgage rate in more than 14 months.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.
FILE - A general view shows the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Aug. 7, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
A monitor shows the Nikkei 225 stock index in Tokyo Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (Miyuki Saito/Kyodo News via AP)
