The Trump administration has eliminated the scientific foundation for federal policies that cut fossil fuel emissions.
In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding stated that greenhouse gas emissions were a threat to human health and welfare. That meant the EPA, under the Clean Air Act, could introduce rules to limit pollution from sources that produce those gases, such as gasoline vehicles, coal power plants and the oil and gas industry. The finding followed a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Air Act, and it has been upheld in several courts since.
Now, the federal government is reversing course and undoing more than 16 years of environmental policy aimed at cleaning the air and fighting climate change.
“I think it's devastating,” said Lexi Tuddenham, who directs the advocacy group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. “We are seeing extreme weather, fire, flooding, wildfire smoke — and in a place where we already deal with a lot of air quality concerns. I think that this puts us on the wrong trajectory.”
Others in Utah cheered the federal about-face. Utah Rep. Colin Jack of St. George felt the U.S. had been moving the wrong way on emissions policies and that Biden administration rules risked making Utah electricity more expensive and less reliable.
“That made it exceptionally hard, even here in Utah, to keep the lights on,” he said. “Undoing that endangerment finding allows us to maybe catch our breath.”
Jack, who also works as the chief operating officer at St. George utility Dixie Power, said Utah’s grid isn’t ready to abandon its existing fossil fuel plants because alternative energy sources aren’t prepared to take on the state’s growing load yet.
Nuclear and geothermal power show promise, he said. Both sources are key parts of Gov. Spencer Cox’s Operation Gigawatt plan to ramp up Utah’s power generation. But Jack cautions that it’ll likely take many years to ramp up the workforce and infrastructure those industries would need to play a bigger role.
“It looks like that will be part of our future, but that takes us back to, ‘What do we do now between here and there?’” he said. “I'm not going to tear down this bridge until I have the new one built.”
President Donald Trump called the repeal of the 2009 finding the “single largest deregulatory action in American history” and claimed the Obama-era policy “had no basis in fact.”
Most scientists strongly disagree. They say there’s increasing evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are driving changes in the Earth’s climate, which have made extreme heat waves and droughts more intense and more frequent.
Utah has already felt the effects of a warming planet. Communities statewide have broken summer temperature records during extreme heat events, which now kill more Americans than all other extreme weather events combined. Warmer temperatures across other seasons have also set records in recent months and driven the poor snowpack that now threatens Utah’s water supply and wildfire risk.
“Utah is really a state that is on the frontlines of facing impacts from a changing climate,” Tuddenham said. “These are not theoretical impacts. They are happening now.”
Organizations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association to The Nature Conservancy warn that the federal reversal could have disastrous consequences for the health of people and the planet in the future.
The move could produce up to 18 tons of additional pollution and cause up to 58,000 premature deaths nationwide over the next three decades, according to analysis from the Environmental Defense Fund. The same analysis estimates that the repeal of vehicle emissions standards will also cost Utahns an extra $17 billion on fuel and nearly $4 billion for health harms caused by more pollution.
While the endangerment finding focused on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane rather than particulates, Tuddenham said those gases are not emitted in isolation.
Gas-powered vehicles are a primary contributor to the pollution that fouls the air during inversions that often plague the Wasatch Front and other parts of Utah in the winter. Air pollution already shortens the average Utahn’s life expectancy by around two years, according to research from Brigham Young University.
“We have an opportunity now to take action and to limit the damage and to limit the worst effects of climate change so that we can have a future for our children,” Tuddenham said. “And I think that we're at a bit of a dark moment here, where all of a sudden we're moving backwards to an era where environmental externalities are being ignored.”
Without federal rules, many regulations will be left up to individual states. Having Utah take on more responsibility for its own rules is a good thing, Rep. Jack said.
“That gives us more control and better flexibility to put in the right size of solution, instead of the big sledgehammer solution,” he said.
“We're trying to stand up state agencies where we can and where the administration is willing to give primacy to the state agencies,” Jack continued. “So absolutely, we're excited about that.”
He points to the state division that monitors Utah’s air for ozone, particulates and other pollutants to maintain compliance with various EPA regulations.
Other examples of state action, Jack said, include Utah’s recent purchase of the U.S. Magnesium facility near the Great Salt Lake, which was a major source of air pollution in the Wasatch Front, and a bill in the legislature that would swap out some gas-powered equipment for electric equipment to landscape state properties.
This moment presents Utah a big opportunity to step up and protect residents, Tuddenham said, but she’s skeptical state leaders will do enough.
“They could show a way forward for a conservative state to lead on climate, to lead on having cleaner air,” she said. “We're not quite there yet, and I think there's a lot that's concerning right now.”
She points to another bill that would keep Utah from creating state pollution regulations more strict than federal rules.
Utah leaders have long pushed back against federal emissions regulations.
State leaders sued the EPA in 2023 over the Good Neighbor Rule that targets ozone pollution emitted across state lines, arguing it could close power plants and increase energy costs. In 2024, Gov. Spencer Cox described the EPA’s ozone rules as “so stringent” that it would be “impossible” for Utah to comply. Later that year, the Legislature passed a law intended to allow the state to say no to any federal regulations it doesn’t agree with.
The state of California and environmental lawyers nationwide have pledged to sue the federal government over the endangerment finding repeal, so it’s likely to end up in court.
Even if the repeal opens the door to looser regulations during Trump’s term, Jack doesn’t expect Utah to add new coal plants anytime soon.
“If I'm the power company and I'm going to spend several billion dollars to build the next big generator for the next 70 years, I cannot invest that money based on a four-year yo-yo cycle,” he said. “The next three years will give me comfort to keep the power plants running, but won't give me comfort to run out and build a new one.”
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
