by Nick Pope
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 7 rescinded a Trump-era EPA rule which required the agency to conduct benefit-cost analysis of any significant new air pollution rules.
While it was in effect, the rescinded benefit-cost analysis rule required the EPA to identify the specific problem a new air pollution regulation addresses, explain why market alternatives cannot solve that problem and distinguish between direct and indirect health benefits that an air pollution emission is expected to generate. The Biden EPA will be able to more freely pursue its regulatory agenda against fossil fuels using the Clean Air Act after issuing a final rescission of the benefit-cost rule.
The terminated benefit-cost rule also required the EPA to detail other regulatory approaches that it chose not to adopt and the reasons why the EPA opted against them, according to its text. The Biden EPA released an interim rule which temporarily rescinded the benefit-cost analysis rule in May 2021, but the EPA’s July issuance solidifies the benefit-cost rule’s rescission from the federal books.
“The EPA is rescinding the rule because the changes advanced by the rule were inadvisable, untethered to Clean Air Act and not necessary to effectuate the purposes of the act,” according to the final rule’s text. The Biden EPA determined the benefit-cost analysis rule “lacked a rational basis” and that the Trump administration’s EPA “lacked authority to issue it” in the first place in December 2020.
“Revoking this unnecessary and misguided rule is proof positive of this administration’s commitment to science,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan (pictured above) said in a May 2021 statement announcing the interim rule, according to the EPA website. “We will continue to fix the wrongs of the past and move forward aggressively to deliver on President Biden’s clear commitment to protecting public health and the environment.”
Using the Clean Air Act, the EPA has targeted power plant emissions and vehicle tailpipe emissions to facilitate Biden’s broader energy agenda. As a candidate for the presidency in 2019, Biden made a personal “guarantee” that his administration would “end fossil fuels.”
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Nick Pope is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
