Stakes high for emissions-heavy WV as EPA plans axing legal basis for climate rules

It didn’t mention the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels emits air pollutants linked to premature death respiratory illnesses like asthma — or that West Virginia had the second-highest asthma prevalence rate nationwide in 2021, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

It didn’t mention projections from scientists at NASA and Duke and Columbia universities published in 2021 that reducing global emissions over the next 50 years to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius through the end of the century would prevent about 4.5 million premature deaths, 1.4 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits and 300 million lost workdays in the U.S.

It didn’t mention a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, that indicated the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that the EPA could not decline to exercise that authority for policy reasons.

“That EPA would prefer not to regulate greenhouse gases because of some residual uncertainty … is irrelevant,â€� then-Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the court’s opinion.Ìý

But the EPA claimed in its proposal released Tuesday to rescind its 2009 “endangerment finding� on greenhouse gases that “the balance of climate change as a whole appears to skew substantially more than previously recognized by the EPA in the direction of net benefits,� contradicting years of climate science.

The EPA repeatedly cites a U.S. Department of Energy Climate Working Group report submitted to DOE Secretary Chris Wright that asserts that carbon dioxide-induced warming “appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial.�

But scientists have said the DOE report relies on climate disinformation, cherry picking data to undermine climate science established through decades of peer-reviewed research.

The EPA's proposed rule cites the DOE report to claim that "extreme weather events have not demonstrably increased relative to historical highs."

But many studies have found extreme weather events have become more common.

The most recent congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, released in 2023 and removed from its original website under the Trump administration, found that risks from extreme weather events were increasing, causing direct economic losses through infrastructure damage, disruptions in labor and public services and losses in property values. The report noted a rise in heat-related illnesses and death, costlier storm damages, longer droughts that lower agricultural output and strain water systems, and more severe wildfires that threaten homes and degrade air quality.Ìý  

"In this report, the authors are firmly in lawyer mode," Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences and climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said in a X post. "They sift through the data to find the few examples that support their narrative while systematically ignoring the much larger body of evidence that contradicts it."

The EPA’s proposal released Tuesday also cites a 2020 paper in peer-reviewed journal Nature to claim that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios depicting worst-case climate assessments have been “criticized as misleading.�

But that paper’s lead author, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, said in a X post Tuesday the EPA’s point was “completely backwards,� noting his paper actually supports the EPA’s 2009 range of long-term warming projections.

Yet the EPA is pushing ahead with its proposal to wipe out the endangerment finding, which has provided the legal underpinning for its standards for greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA is proposing to remove all greenhouse gas standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and heavy-duty engines.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in the EPA’s news release the agency is “proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers.�

Zeldin claimed the agency “heard loud and clear� from “many stakeholders� concern that greenhouse gas emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide, was “the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods.�

But the EPA’s move, for which the agency will initiate a public comment period, has drawn the ire of environmental and community advocates who say the agency is defying science to give polluters a pass instead of living up to its name.

“Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis, and the Trump administration’s efforts to simply erase the truth is grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous,� Deanna Noël, climate campaigns director for Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, said in a statement. “Stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases is like throwing away the fire extinguisher while the house is already burning.�

W.Va. CO2 emissions rate has dwarfed that of neighbors

West Virginia’s disproportionately high greenhouse gas emissions raise the stakes for environmental protection — or lack thereof — from the EPA, driven by a clinging to coal that has kept those emissions from dropping as they have in neighboring states.

West Virginia’s average carbon dioxide emissions rate exceeded 2,000 pounds per megawatt-hour in 2024, just as it did in 2005, according to data from PJM Interconnection LLC, the regional grid operator that covers West Virginia and all or part of 12 other states.

But the average carbon dioxide emissions rate across all PJM territory plummeted from just under 1,300 pounds per megawatt-hour in 2005 to below 750 in 2024 — roughly a third of West Virginia’s rate.

West Virginia’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions per capita have increased 62.5% from 25.9 metric tons in 1960 to 42.1 in 2023 — the fourth-highest total nationwide below only Wyoming, North Dakota and Alaska, all states with populations less than half of West Virginia’s.

Meanwhile, the U.S. per capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rate fell from 16.1 metric tons in 1960 to 14.2 in 2023 — an 11.8% decrease over the same span as West Virginia’s 62.5% increase.

Last month, the EPA proposed finding that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants don’t contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.

“The science and law are simple and clear,� Shaun Goho, legal director at Clean Air Task Force, an global environmental group, said in a statement. “Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and the climate, and the Clean Air Act mandates that EPA regulates harmful air pollution. The administration blatantly disregards both by seeking to rescind the longstanding and firmly established endangerment finding.�

Study: Ohio River Valley would reap most clean air benefits 

Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation account for about 28% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of the nation’s emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector between 1990 and 2022, according to the EPA.

West Virginia’s greenhouse gas emissions have come largely from electric power generation rather than transportation, with the latter sector comprising just 11.7% of those emissions in 2021.

But there’s evidence that West Virginia stands to benefit from lowering greenhouse gas emissions no matter where they come from.

The analysis from researchers at NASA and Duke and Columbia universities published in 2021 projected the Ohio River Valley is one of the three areas in the U.S. that would reap the greatest benefits from reduced air pollution by 2070, along with California and the Northeast.

“For nearly 16 years, the endangerment finding has been a linchpin in the United States’ efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions and protect public health — and it has been successful,� Tom Cormons, executive director of Appalachian Voices, said in a statement. “This is the latest in a line of attacks on environmental regulations that hold polluters accountable for the damage they’ve caused for decades, in our region and globally.�

Global competitive disadvantage feared 

But West Virginia’s political leaders cheered the EPA’s move to undo its endangerment finding.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said in a statement the move “takes initiative to prevent regulations that limit affordability, energy security, and consumer choice across our country.�

“The ‘endangerment finding’ represents quintessential federal overreach and was never borne out by the law,� Gov. Patrick Morrisey said in a statement lauding the EPA’s plan. “President Trump and Administrator Zeldin are reining in this overreach so states such as West Virginia can unleash American energy and compete successfully against China.�

But China’s global energy dominance has come on the strength of a green energy buildout that has dwarfed that of the U.S.

An $890 billion investment from China in clean energy sectors in 2023 was almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply that year, constituting the largest driver of Chinese economic growth, according to Carbon Brief, a global climate news and analysis website.

China commissioned as much solar energy in 2023 as the entire world did in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

Critics say rescinding the endangerment finding will stifle job-creating U.S. clean energy manufacturing growth that has accelerated since the passage of energy tax credits and other incentives in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — many of which the Republican-led Congress curtailed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this month.

“Instead of focusing on protecting workers and communities from the impacts of climate change, the administration continues to rollback efforts to fight climate change and grow clean energy and clean manufacturing solutions that are better for our health, workers, and the American economy,� Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a national coalition of labor unions and environmental groups, said in a statement. “Trump and his sycophants continue to pursue a war against science that will harm workers, communities, and our shared future.�

The Trump administration’s backing of Inflation Reduction Act clean energy incentives and moves to undo the endangerment finding and withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement — a legally binding international climate change treaty — threaten the nation’s clean energy sector growth.

Businesses canceled, closed and scaled back more than $22 billion worth of new factories and clean energy projects in the first half of 2025 after cancelling another $6.7 billion last month alone, according to E2’s latest monthly analysis of clean energy projects tracked nationwide. E2 is a national, nonpartisan group of business leaders, investors and professionals that says it supports “policies that protect the environment while building economic prosperity.�

“It's clear that this is really an attempt to halt the ongoing job-creating push to expand affordable, clean energy across the nation,� Shannon Heyck-Williams, associate vice president of climate and energy at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a briefing on the EPA’s move Tuesday. “And that will put us at a competitive disadvantage globally.�