Trump EPA eliminates Obama-era GHG endangerment finding, federal GHG-emission standards for all vehicles
- Ron Kotrba
- 24 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Alongside President Donald Trump in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, U.S. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Feb. 12 what the agency described as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
In this final rule, EPA is eliminating both the Obama-era 2009 greenhouse-gas (GHG) endangerment finding and all subsequent federal GHG-emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012 to 2027 and beyond.
“This is a big one, if you’re into environment—this is about as big as it gets, they tell me,” Trump said. “We are officially terminating the so-called ‘endangerment finding,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”
The action also eliminates all off-cycle credits, including for what EPA called “the almost universally hated” start-stop feature.
“EPA’s historic move restores consumer choice, makes more affordable vehicles available for American families, and decreases the cost of living on all products by lowering the cost of trucks,” the agency stated.
This major deregulatory process included substantial public input and, according to EPA, robust analysis of the law following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and West Virginia v. EPA.
“The endangerment finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin said. “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate-change religion,’ the endangerment finding is now eliminated. The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American dream. As EPA administrator, I am proud to deliver the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers. As an added bonus, the off-cycle credit for the almost universally despised start-stop feature on vehicles has been removed.”
The 2009 endangerment finding, according to Trump’s EPA, was used to justify trillions of dollars in regulations, including what the agency said is “the Obama and Biden administrations’ illegal push” towards electric-vehicle (EV) mandates and compliance requirements.
“This determination had no basis in fact, none whatsoever,” Trump said during the Feb. 12 press conference. “And it had no basis in law.”
The final rule will save Americans over $1.3 trillion, the agency stated, by removing the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal GHG-emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations that exist solely to support what EPA called “the vehicle GHG regulatory regime.”
EPA said the regulatory relief will allow companies to plan appropriately and empower American families.
At the press conference, when the president was asked by a reporter what he would say to Americans who are concerned that the $1.3 trillion in savings comes at a cost of endangering public health and the environment, Trump said, “I would tell them don’t worry about it because it has nothing to do with public health. This is all a scam—a giant scam. This was a rip off of the country by Obama and Biden.”
In finalizing this rule, EPA said it carefully considered and reevaluated the legal foundation of the 2009 endangerment finding and the text of the Clean Air Act in light of subsequent legal developments and court decisions.
The agency concluded that Section 202(a) of the CAA does not provide statutory authority for EPA to prescribe motor-vehicle and engine-emission standards in the manner previously utilized, including for the purpose of addressing global climate change, and therefore has no legal basis for the endangerment finding and resulting regulations.
“EPA firmly believes the 2009 endangerment finding made by the Obama administration exceeded the agency’s authority to combat ‘air pollution’ that harms public health and welfare, and that a policy decision of this magnitude, which carries sweeping economic and policy consequences, lies solely with Congress,” the agency stated. “Unlike our predecessors, the Trump EPA is committed to following the law exactly as it is written and as Congress intended—not as others might wish it to be.”
The endangerment finding, EPA noted, was the legal prerequisite used by the Obama and Biden administrations to regulate GHG emissions.
According to EPA, in the 16 years since the finding, many of the predictions and assumptions used to justify the rule “did not materialize.”
Using the same types of models utilized by the previous administrations and what the agency called “climate-change zealots,” EPA said it now finds that even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global-climate indicators through 2100.
“Therefore,” EPA stated, “maintaining GHG emission standards is not necessary for EPA to fulfill its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, but regardless, is not within the authority Congress entrusted to EPA.”
The Feb. 12 action is only related to GHG emissions and does not affect regulations that combat criteria pollutants and air toxics.
Biofuels, heavy-duty trucks
The linchpin to U.S. biofuels policy is the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 20-year-old policy that requires eligible biofuels to reduce GHG emissions by certain percentages in order to generate various types of renewable identification number (RIN) credits—D4 RINs for biobased diesel, for instance, necessitating a 50 percent minimum reduction in GHG emissions.
In addition, the value of the new clean fuel production credit known as section 45Z, which replaced the biodiesel blenders tax credit Jan. 1, 2025, is also based on GHG reductions.
Given these two important biofuels policies are inextricably intertwined with GHG reductions, Biobased Diesel Daily® reached out to Clean Fuels Alliance America’s director of public affairs and federal communications, Paul Winters, about EPA’s Feb. 12 action and Clean Fuels’ position on the ruling.
While Winters said Clean Fuels is not issuing a statement on the endangerment-finding repeal, he did note that both RFS and 45Z were enacted by Congress, specifically giving EPA and the treasury department, respectively, the authority to implement them.
“They are not dependent on or tied to EPA’s endangerment finding,” Winters said.
Then there is the matter of the Phase 3 GHG standards for heavy-duty trucks, which the Biden administration finalized in 2024.
The rule was widely viewed as a means to incentivize electric trucks.
“Our concern with the Phase 3 heavy-duty truck rule is that EPA did not consider biodiesel and renewable diesel as tools to mitigate tailpipe emissions,” Winters told Biobased Diesel Daily®.
Therefore, Winters added, the fate of the Phase 3 rule as a result of EPA’s Feb. 12 action to terminate the GHG endangerment finding will have no negative effects on the biodiesel and renewable diesel markets.
Costs, dismantling justification for EV push
The Trump EPA’s final rule does, however, “dismantle the tactics and legal fictions used by the Obama and Biden administrations to backdoor their ideological agendas on the American people,” the agency stated.
According to Trump’s EPA, the endangerment finding led to vehicle and engine regulations with an aggregate cost of more than $1 trillion and played a significant role in EPA’s justification of regulations of other sources beyond cars and trucks, resulting in additional costly burdens on American families and businesses.
“The costs imposed by these climate policies have placed new cars out of reach for many American families and harmed Americans’ ability to climb out of poverty or reach essential services,” the agency stated. “The Trump EPA is expected to deliver Americans over $1.3 trillion in cost savings, which includes reduced costs for new vehicles and avoided costs of purchasing equipment related to EVs.”
This action, according to EPA, will result in an average cost savings of over $2,400 per vehicle.
“By lowering vehicle and regulatory-compliance costs, EPA is improving affordability and expanding consumer choice and ultimately advancing the American dream by making it easier to reach jobs, grow small businesses and participate fully in the transportation and logistics systems that power the U.S. economy,” the agency stated.
EPA continued, stating, “The endangerment finding enabled the Obama and Biden administrations’ illegal push toward EV mandates. These mandates pressure the vehicle industry to phase down production of various models of traditional gasoline and diesel trucks and to reengineer their fleets towards uneconomic and infeasible electric technologies. The Obama and Biden administrations also used the endangerment finding to support off-cycle credits to forcibly incentivize automakers into adopting unpopular systems, undermining consumer choice. An off-cycle credit is a government-created concept that let auto manufacturers meet federal GHG standards on paper, by adding features like the almost universally hated start-stop feature, resulting in questionable emission reductions. Automakers should not be forced to adopt or rewarded for technologies that are merely a climate participation trophy with no material benefit. The Trump EPA chooses consumer choice over posturing to climate-change zealots every time. Today’s announcement ends all off-cycle credits, eliminates EPA incentives for the start-stop button, and restores consumer choice. Americans will be able to buy the car they want, including newer, more affordable cars with the most up-to-date safety standards and that emit fewer criteria and hazardous air pollutants.”
Understanding the importance of this action, EPA said it conducted a transparent and inclusive rulemaking process.
The agency held an extended 52-day public-comment period, which included four days of virtual public hearings where more than 600 individuals testified.
EPA said it received 572,000 public comments on the proposed rule and made substantial updates to the final rule in response to comments.
Background
Congress tasked EPA under Section 202(a)(1) of the CAA with prescribing emission standards for new motor vehicles and engines when the administrator determines that emissions from a class or classes of new motor vehicles and engines cause or contribute to air pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
“In an unprecedented move, the Obama EPA found that carbon-dioxide emissions emitted from automobiles—in combination with five other gases, some of which vehicles don’t even emit—contribute an unknown amount to greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere that, in turn, play a role through varied causal chains that may endanger human health and welfare,” the Trump EPA stated. “These mental leaps were admittedly novel, as EPA had for decades understood that the ‘air pollution’ targeted by the statute means pollution that harms health or the environment through local and regional exposure. However, this creative interpretation of the law was the only way the Obama-Biden administration determined they could potentially access EPA’s authority to regulate under Section 202(a)(1). This flawed legal theory took the agency outside the scope of its statutory authority in multiple respects.”
Additionally, EPA pointed to major Supreme Court decisions in the intervening years, including Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, West Virginia v. EPA, Michigan v. EPA, and Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, which the agency noted have significantly clarified the scope of EPA’s authority under the CAA and “made clear that the interpretive moves the endangerment finding used to launch an unprecedented course of regulation were unlawful,” the agency stated.
The decisions, according to EPA, emphasized that:
Statutes have a single, best meaning fixed at the time of enactment.
Major policy determinations must be made by Congress, not by administrative agencies.
Agencies cannot “bury their heads in the sand” as to the consequences of their actions when considering regulations that impose immense costs.
Trump tasked EPA with submitting recommendations on the legality and continuing applicability of the 2009 endangerment finding in his executive order on unleashing American energy.
On March 12, 2025, Zeldin announced that the agency was kicking off a formal reconsideration of the 2009 endangerment finding and resulting regulations in collaboration with the Office of Management and Budget and other relevant agencies.
Zeldin formally announced the agency’s proposal to reconsider these actions on July 29, 2025, at a truck dealership in Indiana.
