The Woeful Economics of a Misguided Rollback

The costs of Trump’s rollback of key climate rules far outweigh any benefits.

The Trump Administration’s proposed rollback of Biden’s standards for fossil fuel generators will cost American dearly.  A new analysis by researchers at Resources for the Future, a highly respected economic think tank, minces no words. The researchers modeled the effects of repealing the   Biden regulation (which they call the CPS for Carbon Pollution Standards), using updated energy demand projection and taking into account the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). According to the researchers, “the repeal of the CPS would fail a traditional cost-benefit test—even without factoring in the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Some of the more detailed findings are revealing:

*Repeal of the CPS would slightly reduce consumers’ power bills, but that would be outweighed by price increases due to the OBBB. (Modeling by the Rhodium Group found similar price increases due to the OBBB).

*Coal generation will increase by a factor of five to nine by 2040.

*Cumulative carbon emissions will increase by 1.2 to 5.8 billion tons by 2050.

*Health damages far exceed savings from lower compliance costs. Just considering health impacts, the net cost of the rollback will be $129 billion through 2050.

*Climate damages add another $148 billion in costs.

Surprisingly, EPA didn’t factor in the effects of increased electricity demand due to AI and data centers, although that’s something that obsesses the Trump Administration in other settings.

I’m old enough to remember a time when conservatives thought that cost-benefit analysis was the key to making regulatory decisions.  I guess those days are long gone.

Biden power plant rule, Clean Air Act, Cost Benefit Analysis, energy economics, environmental economics, power plants, regulatory rollbacks, Trump Administration