Exxon Mobil Corp. has parted ways with Keith McCoy, its lobbyist who divulged aspects of the company’s climate strategy in a secretly recorded video.

“Mr. McCoy no longer works for the company,” Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said in an email to E&E News yesterday afternoon.

It’s unclear when McCoy left the company or if the oil major is still providing him legal representation related to congressional investigations spawned from his recorded comments.

“This is a private personnel matter, and we will decline to comment further,” Norton said.

McCoy, whose LinkedIn profile last night still said he was a senior director for federal relations at Exxon, could not be reached for comment.

Experts predicted the move would increase congressional scrutiny of Exxon and its former lobbyist. The company disputed McCoy’s comments, which undermined Exxon’s public support for a carbon tax, and his description of lawmakers as fish who he could “reel” in (E&E Daily, July 1).

“This is definitely going to raise the level of interest on the Hill,” said Tim Stretton, the congressional oversight director at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.

“An underlying issue here is — with the contradiction between the official and unofficial statements — what’s the implications for shareholders? Did they have all the necessary and accurate information they needed to make investment decisions?” said Stretton, a former aide to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

If McCoy or Exxon were “making false statements, could that potentially open them up to some kind of legal culpability?” he asked.

McCoy’s comments contradicting his employer were made in May to a Greenpeace UK official. The climate activist was posing as a headhunter for a Middle East energy fund that he claimed was looking to invest in the United States (Climatewire, July 2).

After Greenpeace UK shared the secret video with the media, the House Oversight and Reform Committee asked McCoy to testify under oath about his work for Exxon as part of a broader probe into oil companies’ disinformation efforts (E&E Daily, July 27).

The committee didn’t respond to questions about whether or not he cooperated with that request.

“The Oversight Committee plans to get to the truth about how the fossil fuel industry has misled the public about climate change and obscured its own role in creating this global crisis,” Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the head of Environment Subcommittee, said in a statement. “Fossil fuel companies will not be able to hide the truth, regardless of whether the people who engaged in this conduct have left the company.”

McCoy is a longtime lobbyist who previously advocated for the HVAC company Johnson Controls and the National Association of Manufacturers.

He is still listed as a corporate adviser to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. But sometime between Aug. 14 and Sept. 8, the foundation changed his affiliation to “community advocate,” according to images of its website recorded by the nonprofit Internet Archive.

The foundation didn’t respond to questions yesterday about when and why it made that change.

The home page of FC&HE states:

The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA) represents the leading companies and organizations that are advancing innovative, clean, safe, and reliable energy technologies.  

FCHEA drives support and provides a consistent industry voice to regulators and policymakers. Our educational efforts promote the environmental and economic benefits of fuel cell and hydrogen energy technologies. 

To learn how your organization can join FCHEA and advance our industry, see our membership page. 

What are Fuel Cells?  Fuel cells are electrical generation devices that utilize a chemical reaction to unleash a fuel’s latent energy. They are clean, quiet, efficient, and scalable, allowing them versatility in nearly every power application. 

…

“My old man built a nuke. I love them. But it’s hard to pretend that shale hasn’t killed them.”

– Frank Kukielka, Boston Energy Trading and Marketing, May 6, 2021.

… the prospects for the expansion of nuclear energy remain decidedly dim in many parts of the world. The fundamental problem is cost. Other generation technologies have become cheaper in recent decades, while new nuclear plants have only become costlier. This disturbing trend undermines nuclear energy’s potential contribution and increases the cost of achieving deep decarbonization.” Jan de Lange, Consultant and project manager, May 6, 2021

These LinkedIn comments were in response to a National Geographic article, “The Controversial Future of Nuclear Power in the U.S.” Author Lois Parshley states:

The majority of American nuclear plants today are approaching the end of their design life, and only one has been built in the last 20 years. Nuclear proponents are now banking on next-generation designs, like small, modular versions of conventional light-water reactors, or advanced reactors designed to be safer, cheaper, and more flexible.

“We’ve innovated so little in the past half-century, there’s a lot of ground to gain,” says Ashley Finan, the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Yet an expansion of nuclear power faces some serious hurdles, and the perennial concerns about safety and long-lived radioactive waste may not be the biggest: Critics also say nuclear reactors are simply too expensive and take too long to build to be of much help with the climate crisis.

While environmental opposition may have been the primary force hindering nuclear development in the 1980s and 90s, now the biggest challenge may be costs. Few nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. recently because they are very expensive to build here, which makes the price of their energy high.

Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, led a group of scientists who recently completed a two-year study examining the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. and western Europe. They found that “without cost reductions, nuclear energy will not play a significant role” in decarbonizing the power sector.

“In the West, the nuclear industry has substantially lost its ability to build large plants,” Buongiorno says, pointing to Southern Company’s effort to add two new reactors to Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. They have been under construction since 2013, are now billions of dollars over budget—the cost has more than doubled—and years behind schedule. In France, ranked second after the U.S. in nuclear generation, a new reactor in Flamanville is a decade late and more than three times over budget.

Government subsidies are attempting to revitalized a not-so-infant industry:

In the U.S., a company called NuScale has recently received design certification approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its SMR, the first and only company to do so. Its reactor is a miniaturized version of a traditional reactor, in which pressurized water cools the core where nuclear fission is taking place. But in the NuScale design, the whole reactor is itself immersed in a pool of water designed to protect it from accidental meltdown.

NuScale hopes to build 12 of these reactors to produce 720 megawatts at the Idaho National Laboratory as a pilot project. It’s been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, which has approved up to $1.4 billion to help demonstrate the technology. NuScale plans to sell the plant to an energy consortium called Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems.

Last fall, the DOE awarded $80 million each to two companies working on advanced reactor designs intended in part to address this problem. The first, TerraPower, a startup founded by Bill Gates, is working on a sodium-cooled reactor that, instead of using its heat directly to drive a turbine and generate electricity, stores the heat in a tank of molten salt, where it can be tapped to generate electricity when needed.

The second grant went to a company called X-energy for a gas-cooled reactor that operates at very high temperatures, producing steam that would be suitable for industrial processes as well as generating electricity. That kind of “load-switching,” Finan and Buongiorno both say, can help nuclear reactors manage variable demand for electricity—while at the same time helping to decarbonize industry. Small reactors might even be sited right next to a factory that requires both heat and electricity. The high-level radioactive waste they produce, however, would need to be transported to a centralized location for management.

Nuclear power has been and is noncompetitive, government-dependent, and a false solution to Malthusian worries (from running out of fossil fuels to running out of climate. The history of nuclear generation reveals how government subsidized the technology from the beginning–and consumers paid dearly for nuclear capacity. Recent experience in the U.S. has been horrendous, yet their is the perennial hope that new designs and new generation technology is coming to the rescue. To which the critic can retort: why believe you now? Fossil-fueled power generation is improving too–and cheap natural gas has sidelined nuclear for an indefinite future. Fact is, nuclear generation is the most complicated, risky, and expensive way to boil water.

In a MasterResource post nine years ago, the comments section was dominated by a discussion of nuclear versus natural gas-fired combined-cycle plants. Rod Adams of Atomic Insights argued that nuclear was competitive against natural gas–I argued the opposite.

The natural gas extraction boom was underway but still young. (Today, Adams is well aware and respectful of the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal wells.) But note how a Malthusian view of resources was held by him back in 2011, a bogeyman that always pops up to support uneconomic technologies.

Rod Adams   •   December 4, 2011 at 3:50 am

@Robert – I do not assume that natural gas will remain at $4 per million BTU…. What will keep gas prices at $4 per million BTU as regulations are tightened as a result of the damage being caused by short-cuts in hydraulic fracturing? What will keep gas at $4 per million BTU if the economy recovers? What will keep gas at $4 per million BTU if the rate of consumption increases for power generation to replace shuttered coal plants being forced out of the market by Chesapeake funded “Coal is filthy” campaigns and nuclear plants like Indian Point, Oyster Creek, Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim that are all under significant pressure by natural gas funded opposition groups? I am sure that you are well versed in the law of supply and demand and can find the charts that show the history of natural gas price volatility. One more thing – in many of the places where coal plants are being forced out of the market, there is NO cheap natural gas available because no one ever built any gas pipelines to supply areas that had plenty of cheap coal. The American Public Power Association has computed that they would need about $700-800 billion in infrastructure investments for pipelines and new transmission lines to replace coal generation with natural gas. Quite a few of the owners of those facilities are interested in small modular reactors (<300 MWe/unit) that do not need an extensive fuel infrastructure in order to operate in the same place as the old coal plants. That kind of siting would allow the nuclear plants to make use of existing water resources and transmission corridors.

I replied to Adams:

$4/MMBtu natural gas is the result of a technological boom, and the gas industry is desperately trying to get transporation demand for natural gas (NAT GAS ACT) to increase prices. One can get long-term fixed gas prices to lock-in, say, $5-$6 gas to show the banks for financing. Yes, new infrastructure is needed to complete the drilling boom, but that is happening too.

Nuclear is just not competitive to gas whatever way you slice it. Are you willing to eliminate the loan guarantees that Obama is pushing for nuclear (yes, the $18 billion is his deal now) and let the market decide? Anyone willing to build a ‘spec’ nuclear plant based on natural gas being expensive in the future?

Another part of the argument between us concerned the “true” cost of nuclear given all the safety regulations. Adams wrote:

The problem with your logic is that you ignore all of the things that “the market”, which is made up of numerous thinking human beings, has done to make nuclear power uneconomic. Nuclear energy’s competitors have helped to erect as many barriers as they can imagine to hinder nuclear energy development and raise its costs.

When you break it down into straightforward technical analysis, nuclear fission is simply a very reliable source of heat that can be substituted for the heat generated by hydrocarbon combustion in very similar thermodynamic “heat engines”. In fact, there have been several cases of power plants – like the Ft. St. Vrain reactor – that started their lives as nuclear heated plants that were later converted into power plants with a hydrocarbon heat source.

If that is the case, then a critical thinker might ask why nuclear energy systems would be all that much more expensive than hydrocarbon combustion systems. It is certainly not because they need a more extensive fuel transportation infrastructure, more emission control systems, or more extensive fire/explosion damage response teams.

No, the reason that nuclear energy systems are so darned expensive is that people have mistakenly been told that the very tiniest amount of radiation is dangerous enough to spend hundreds of millions in multiple layers of protection. It is because they have been mistakenly told that nuclear plants are somehow more vulnerable than all of the rest of our society’s infrastructure to potential attack by “terrorists” and need an average expenditure of $300 million or so in “security boundaries” and an annual expenditure of $30 million or so in security forces.

Even with all of those artificially raised barriers, nuclear fission is pretty darned competitive against hydrocarbon combustion when fuel prices are in the range of $7-10 per million BTU and beats it hands down at prices higher than that. The primary advantage is that fission fuel costs an average of 60 cents per million BTU, even when you add in ALL of the costs, including long term storage.

In markets where nuclear is an option, there is virtually no oil being burned to produce electricity because $100 per barrel is equivalent to about $17-20 per million BTU depending on the grade of oil. It is not lack of “free markets” that encourages countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia to be pushing hard to increase their supply of nuclear energy; it is simple market economics. They want to stop burning oil, a product that has a market value of $17-30 per million BTU, to produce electricity when there is an option that competes favorably with $7-10 per million BTU.

In countries where nuclear is an option and the people have not been hypnotized into believing that it is somehow more dangerous than highly combustible (and explosive) natural gas, logical businessmen will not avoid nuclear in favor of LNG that is currently selling for an average world price of $15-20 per million BTU. They will not avoid nuclear in markets where the price of pipeline gas is, by contract, linked to the price of oil. They might, however, reluctantly follow the edicts of governments full of politicians that have been purchased by Russian natural gas suppliers.

Your misunderstanding of history (or your political leanings) are also exposed by your characterization of the $18 billion loan guarantee program as “Obama’s”. That program and that original number was passed in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, more than three years before President Obama was elected.

“The market” does not make decisions. Individual human beings with assets, analysis, and vision do. I concur that, so far, the individual choices of the people who operate large utility companies in the US have been to shy away from nuclear in the years since June 2008 while natural gas prices here have been suppressed to a level that is about 1/3 of their level in most developed nations around the world.

However, there are individuals who have made a different choice and decided to invest in nuclear energy because of its natural advantages and its potential for future market success. If that was not true, I would not have the day job I have today as part of the team that is designing the B&W mPower(TM) reactor. (I speak only for myself and not for my employer.)

To which I argued:

I am not a big nuclear fan because it is wildly uneconomic versus $4/MMBTU natural gas, and banks will not support it in the free world. Not that nuclear has a very high up-front capital cost versus fossil-fuel-fired plants, and that debtors was certainty that those costs can be paid back, which means long-term fixed-priced contracts. Until voluntary purchasers sign such agreements (and they will not), then such projects are uneconomic.

Obama’s proposed $18 billion loan guarantee for new nuclear is another tell tale sign of nuclear’s plight in a competitive market.

I welcome nuclear power if and when it is economical in the markeptlace. May it improve and improve and improve until the market (not me and Mr. Adams) decides to build reactors. Until then, it is a backstop technology in the U.S. and many other areas of the world.

Libertarian Solution?

Along with Rod Adams, another commentator wrote:

If libertarians were willing to get rid of nuclear regulation and place nuclear on a level regulatory playing field with fossil fuels, as well as guarantee the right of private property owners to operate their plants once built, then I am relatively certain the nuclear community would be willing to dump loan guarantees and Price Anderson.

To which I would say, no way. The economics of nuclear, never competitive, are super-noncompetitive with natural gas where long-term prices well below $4/MMBtu can be locked-in for the life of the plant.

Without monopoly ratebase incentives, what profit-driven private entity would build a nuclear plant over a gas-fired plant? What insurance company would insure it? Is there an example of a true nuclear merchant plant?

Conclusion

Where are we today with nuclear power? Certainly, the beyond dismal saga of the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant.

Ninety-eight done, forteen ongoing for a total of 112 “rollbacks.” How about right-sizing. And how many total regulations to get a percentage.

The New York Times article, last updated on January 20, 2021, follows for posterity.

Coral Davenport, “The Trump Administration Rolled Back More than 100 Environmental Rules, New York Times (January 22, 2021).

Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.

In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 100 environmental rules officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. More than a dozen other potential rollbacks remained in progress by the end but were not finalized by the end of the administration’s term.

“This is a very aggressive attempt to rewrite our laws and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections,” said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who has tracked the policy changes since 2018. “This administration is leaving a truly unprecedented legacy.”

Rule reversals Completed In progress Total Air pollution and emissions 28 2 30 Drilling and extraction 12 7 19 Infrastructure and planning 14 0 14 Animals 15 1 16 Water pollution 8 1 9 Toxic substances and safety 9 1 10 Other 12 2 14 All 98 14 112

The bulk of the rollbacks identified by the Times were carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, which weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; removed protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants.

At the same time, the Interior Department worked to open up more land for oil and gas leasing by limiting wildlife protections and weakening environmental requirements for projects. The Department of Energy loosened efficiency standards for a wide range of products.

In justifying many of the rollbacks, the agencies said that previous administrations had overstepped their legal authority, imposing unnecessary and burdensome regulations that hurt business.

“We have fulfilled President Trump’s promises to provide certainty for states, tribes, and local governments,” a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. said in a statement to The Times, adding that it was “delivering on President Trump’s commitment to return the agency to its core mission: Providing cleaner air, water and land to the American people.”

But environmental groups and legal analysts said the rollbacks have not served that mission.

All told, the Trump administration’s deregulatory actions were estimated to significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade and lead to thousands of extra deaths from poor air quality each year.

Many of the rollbacks have been challenged in court by states, environmental groups and others, and some have already been struck down. In the final days of Mr. Trump’s term, a federal appeals court overturned a plan to relax Obama-era restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from coal- and natural gas-burning power plants, arguing that the agency misinterpreted its obligation under the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution.

The Times identified nearly a dozen more rules that were initially reversed or suspended by the Trump administration but later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges. They are summarized at the bottom of this page, and are not counted in our overall tally.

President-elect Biden is expected to undo several of the rollbacks through executive orders soon after assuming office on Jan. 20, including cancelling the permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and rejoining the Paris climate change agreement. The Democrat-controlled House and Senate could help nullify several more Trump-era rules through a once-obscure law that grants Congress the power to review regulations recently adopted by federal agencies. But other rules will be more difficult to change, requiring months — or even years — of work to repeal and replace.

Below, we have summarized each rule that was targeted for reversal.

Are there rollbacks we missed? Email climateteam@nytimes.com or tweet @nytclimate.

Appendix

Air Pollution & Emissions

1. Weakened Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks. E.P.A. and Transportation Department | Read more »

2. Revoked California’s ability to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government. E.P.A. | Read more »

3. Withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants. E.P.A. | Read more »

4. Formally withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, an international plan to avert catastrophic climate change adopted by nearly 200 counties. Executive Order | Read more »

5. Changed the way cost-benefit analyses are conducted under the Clean Air Act, potentially making it harder to issue new public health and climate protections. E.P.A. | Read more »

6. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions. E.P.A. | Read more »

7. Revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions on public lands, including intentional venting and flaring from drilling operations. A federal court struck down the revision in July 2020, calling the Trump administration’s reasoning “wholly inadequate” and mandating enforcement of the original rule. However, the Obama-era rule was later partially struck down in a separate court case, during which the Trump administration declined to defend it. Interior Department | Read more »

8. Eliminated Obama-era methane emissions standards for oil and gas facilities and narrowed standards limiting the release of other polluting chemicals known as “volatile organic compounds” to only certain facilities. E.P.A. | Read more »

9. Withdrew a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters, and later proposed codifying the looser standards. E.P.A. | Read more »

10. Revised a program designed to safeguard communities from increases in pollution from new power plants to make it easier for facilities to avoid emissions regulations. E.P.A. | Read more »

11. Amended rules that govern how refineries monitor pollution in surrounding communities. E.P.A. | Read more »

12. Overturned Obama-era guidance meant to reduce emissions during power plant start-ups, shutdowns and malfunctions. As part of the process, the E.P.A. also reversed a requirement that Texas follow emissions rules during certain malfunction events. E.P.A. | Read more »

13. Weakened an Obama-era rule meant to reduce air pollution in national parks and wilderness areas. E.P.A. | Read more »

14. Weakened oversight of some state plans for reducing air pollution in national parks. E.P.A. | Read more »

15. Established a minimum pollution threshold at which the E.P.A. can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources: 3 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. (Power plants meet this threshold, but oil and gas production facilities fall just below it.) E.P.A. | Read more »

16. Relaxed air pollution regulations for a handful of plants that burn waste coal for electricity. E.P.A. | Read more »

17. Repealed rules meant to reduce leaking and venting of powerful greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons from large refrigeration and air conditioning systems. E.P.A. | Read more »

18. Directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation of the social cost of carbon, which rulemakers used to estimate the long-term economic benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Executive Order | Read more »

19. Released new guidance that allows upwind states to contribute more ozone pollution to downwind states than during the Obama-era. (The E.P.A. under Mr. Trump also rejected petitions from a handful of states over failure to address upwind states’ pollution.) E.P.A. | Read more »

20. Withdrew guidance directing federal agencies to include greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews. But several district courts have ruled that emissions must be included in such reviews. Executive Order; Council on Environmental Quality | Read more »

21. Revoked an Obama executive order that set a goal of cutting the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over 10 years. Executive Order | Read more »

22. Repealed a requirement that state and regional authorities track tailpipe emissions from vehicles on federal highways. Transportation Department | Read more »

23. Lifted a summertime ban on the use of E15, a gasoline blend made of 15 percent ethanol. (Burning gasoline with a higher concentration of ethanol in hot conditions increases smog.) E.P.A. | Read more »

24. Changed rules to allow states and the E.P.A. to take longer to develop and approve plans aimed at cutting methane emissions from existing landfills. E.P.A. | Read more »

25. Withdrew a proposed rule aimed at reducing pollutants, including air pollution, at sewage treatment plants. E.P.A. | Read more »

26. Threw out most of a proposed policy that would have tightened pollution standards for offshore oil and gas operations and required them to use improved pollution controls. Interior | Read more »

27. Amended Obama-era emissions standards for clay ceramics manufacturers. E.P.A. | Read more »

28. Relaxed some Obama-era requirements for companies to monitor and repair leaks at oil and gas facilities, including exempting certain low-production wells – a significant source of methane emissions – from the requirements altogether. (Other leak regulations were eliminated.) E.P.A. | Read more »

In Progress

29. Proposed revisions to standards for carbon dioxide emissions from new, modified and reconstructed coal power plants, eliminating Obama-era restrictions that, in effect, required them to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions. E.P.A. | Read more »

30. Proposed a rule limiting the ability of individuals and communities to challenge E.P.A.-issued pollution permits before a panel of agency judges. E.P.A. | Read more »

Drilling and extraction

Completed

31. Made significant cuts to the borders of two national monuments in Utah and recommended border and resource-management changes to several more. Presidential Proclamation; Interior Department | Read more »

32. Lifted an Obama-era freeze on new coal leases on public lands. In April 2019, a judge ruled that the Interior Department could not begin selling new leases without completing an environmental review. In February 2020, the agency published an assessment that concluded restarting federal coal leasing would have little environmental impact. Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more »

33. Finalized a plan to allow oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a move that overturns six decades of protections for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States. The Trump administration held last-minute lease sales in December, but failed to attract major interest from fossil fuel companies. Congress; Interior Department | Read more »

34. Opened more than 18 million acres of land for drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a vast swath of public land on the Arctic Ocean. The Obama administration had designated about half of the reserve as a conservation area. Interior Department | Read more »

35. Lifted a Clinton-era ban on logging and road construction in Tongass National Forest, Alaska, one of the largest intact temperate rain forests in the world. (The Clinton-era rule applied to much of the national forest system.) Interior Department | Read more »

36. Approved construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The Obama administration had halted the project, with the Army Corps of Engineers saying it would explore alternative routes. In 2020, a federal court reversed the Trump administration’s decision to allow the pipeline to run along its current path, but it was allowed to continue operating. Executive Order; Army | Read more »

37. Rescinded water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands. Interior Department | Read more »

38. Withdrew a requirement that Gulf oil rig owners prove they can cover the costs of removing rigs once they stop producing. Interior Department | Read more »

39. Moved the permitting process for certain projects that cross international borders, such as oil pipelines, to the office of the president from the State Department, exempting them from environmental review. Executive Order | Read more »

40. Changed how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission considers the indirect effects of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews of pipelines. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | Read more »

41. Revoked an Obama-era executive order designed to preserve ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters in favor of a policy focused on energy production and economic growth. Executive Order | Read more »

42. Loosened offshore drilling safety regulations implemented by the Obama after following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, including reduced testing requirements for blowout prevention systems. Interior Department | Read more »

In progress

43. Proposed opening most of America’s coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, but delayed the plan after a federal judge in 2019 ruled that reversing a ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans was unlawful. Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump announced he would exempt from drilling coastal areas around Florida, a crucial battleground state, Georgia and South Carolina. Interior Department | Read more »

44. Approved the Keystone XL pipeline rejected by President Barack Obama, but a federal judge blocked the project from going forward without an adequate environmental review process. The Supreme Court in July 2020 upheld that ruling, further delaying construction of the pipeline. Executive Order; State Department | Read more »

45. Withdrew proposed restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska, despite concerns over environmental impacts on salmon habitat, including a prominent fishery. In late 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for one proposed project, known as the Pebble Mine, noting it would “result in significant degradation of the aquatic ecosystem.” E.P.A.; Army | Read more »

46. Proposed easing safety regulations for exploratory offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic that were developed after a 2013 accident. Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more »

47. Proposed weakening a rule that increased royalty payments for oil and gas leases on public lands, bringing them in line with market value. The Obama-era policy updated a 1980s rule that critics said allowed companies to underpay the federal government. An earlier attempt by the Trump administration to reverse the Obama rule was struck down in court, but a separate court ruling exempted the coal industry from the updated pricing policy. Interior Department | Read more »

48. Proposed easing the approval process for oil and gas drilling in national forests by curbing the power of the Forest Service to review and approve leases, among other changes. Agriculture Department; Interior Department | Read more »

49. Approved the use of seismic air guns for gas and oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. The Obama administration had denied permits for such surveys, which can kill marine life and disrupt fisheries. However, the Trump administration’s permits to allow seismic surveys expired following a protracted lawsuit, ending the possibility of seismic air gun surveys in the Atlantic in the near term. Companies would need to restart the months-long permitting process. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »

Infrastructure and planning

Completed

50. Weakened the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the country’s most significant environmental laws, in order to expedite the approval of public infrastructure projects, such as roads, pipelines and telecommunications networks. The new rules shorten the time frame for completing environmental studies, limit the types of projects subject to review, and no longer require federal agencies to account for a project’s cumulative effects on the environment, such as climate change. Council on Environmental Quality | Read more »

51. Revoked Obama-era flood standards for federal infrastructure projects that required the government to account for sea level rise and other climate change effects. Executive Order | Read more »

52. Relaxed the environmental review process for federal infrastructure projects. Executive Order | Read more »

53. Overturned an Obama-era guidance that ended U.S. government financing for new coal plants overseas except in rare circumstances. Executive Order; Treasury Department | Read more »

54. Revoked a directive for federal agencies to minimize impacts on water, wildlife, land and other natural resources when approving development projects. Executive Order | Read more »

55. Revoked an Obama executive order promoting climate resilience in the northern Bering Sea region of Alaska, which withdrew local waters from oil and gas leasing and established a tribal advisory council to consult on local environmental issues. Executive Order | Read more »

56. Reversed an update to the Bureau of Land Management’s public land-use planning process. Congress | Read more »

57. Withdrew an Obama-era order to consider climate change in the management of natural resources in national parks. National Park Service | Read more »

58. Restricted most Interior Department environmental studies to one year in length and a maximum of 150 pages, citing a need to reduce paperwork. Interior Department | Read more »

59. Withdrew a number of Obama-era Interior Department climate change and conservation policies that the agency said could “burden the development or utilization of domestically produced energy resources.” Interior Department | Read more »

60. Eliminated the use of an Obama-era planning system designed to minimize harm from oil and gas activity on sensitive landscapes, such as national parks. Interior Department | Read more »

61. Withdrew Obama-era policies designed to maintain or, ideally, improve natural resources affected by federal projects. Interior Department | Read more »

62. Revised the environmental review process for Forest Service projects to automatically exempt certain categories of projects, including those under 2,800 acres. Agriculture Department | Read more » 63. Ended environmental impact reviews of natural gas export projects at the Department of Energy. Department of Energy | Read more »

In progress

79. Opened nine million acres of Western land to oil and gas drilling by weakening habitat protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled bird. A federal judge in Idaho temporarily blocked the measure, arguing the Bureau of Land Management failed to carry out an adequate environmental review for the proposal. A Montana court nullified 440 oil and gas leases in greater sage-grouse habitat, but later put the ruling on hold pending appeal. In a push to finalize the rollback before Mr. Trump leaves office, the Bureau published revised environmental impact statements in late 2020 and requested that lease sales be upheld by the Montana court. Interior Department | Read more »

Water pollution

Completed

80. Scaled back pollution protections for certain tributaries and wetlands that were regulated under the Clean Water Act by the Obama administration. (A federal judge in Colorado halted implementation of the rule within the state, but it is in effect elsewhere.) E.P.A.; Army | Read more » 81. Revoked a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into local streams. Congress | Read more »

82. Weakened a rule that aimed to limit toxic discharge from power plants into public waterways. E.P.A. | Read more »

83. Doubled the time allowed for utilities to remove lead pipes from water systems with high levels of lead. E.P.A. | Read more »

84. Weakened a portion of the Clean Water Act to make it easier for federal agencies to issue permits for federal projects over state objections if the projects don’t meet local water quality standards, including for pipelines and other fossil fuel facilities. Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more »

85. Extended the lifespan of unlined holding ponds for coal ash waste from power plants, which can spill their contents because they lack a protective underlay. E.P.A. | Read more »

86. Allowed certain unlined coal ash holding areas to continue operating, though they were previously deemed unsafe. E.P.A. | Read more »

87. Withdrew a proposed rule requiring groundwater protections for certain uranium mines. Recently, the administration’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group proposed opening up 1,500 acres outside the Grand Canyon to nuclear production. E.P.A. | Read more »

In progress

88. Proposed a regulation limiting the scope of an Obama-era rule under which companies had to prove that large deposits of recycled coal ash would not harm the environment. E.P.A. | Read more »

Toxic substances and safety

Completed

89. Rejected a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to developmental disabilities in children. In 2020, the E.P.A. also rejected its own earlier finding that the pesticide can cause serious health problems, though it later recommended some label changes and usage restrictions. (Several states have banned use of the pesticide and its main manufacturer said it would stop producing the product because of shrinking demand.) E.P.A. | Read more »

90. Declined to require that certain industries — including electric power, petroleum, coal products manufacturing and chemical manufacturing — have enough funds to cover major spills and accidents. (The Obama administration was planning to develop such requirements.) E.P.A. | Read more »

91. Declined to issue a proposed rule that required the hardrock mining industry to prove it could pay to clean up future pollution. E.P.A. | Read more »

92. Narrowed the scope of a 2016 law mandating safety assessments for potentially toxic chemicals like dry-cleaning solvents. The updated rules allowed the E.P.A. to exclude some chemical uses and types of exposure in the review process. In November 2019, a court of appeals ruled the agency must widen its scope to consider full exposure risks, but watchdog groups say it did not do so in some assessments. E.P.A. | Read more »

93. Reversed an Obama-era rule that required braking system upgrades for “high hazard” trains hauling flammable liquids like oil and ethanol. Transportation Department | Read more »

94. Changed safety rules to allow for rail transport of highly flammable liquefied natural gas. Transportation Department | Read more »

95. Rolled back most of the requirements of a 2017 rule aimed at improving safety at sites that use hazardous chemicals that was instituted after a chemical plant exploded in Texas. E.P.A. | Read more »

96. Narrowed pesticide application buffer zones that are intended to protect farmworkers and bystanders from accidental exposure. E.P.A. | Read more » 97. Removed copper filter cake, an electronics manufacturing byproduct comprised of heavy metals, from the “hazardous waste” list. E.P.A. | Read more »

In progress

98. Announced a review of an Obama-era rule lowering coal dust limits in mines. The head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration said there were no immediate plans to change the dust limit but extended a public comment period until 2022. Labor Department | Read more »

Other

Completed

99. Limited the scientific and medical research the E.P.A. can use to determine public health regulations, de-emphasizing studies that do not make their underlying data publicly available. (Scientists widely criticized the proposal, saying it would effectively block the agency from considering landmark research that relies on confidential health data.) E.P.A. | Read more »

100. Limited funding of environmental and community development projects through corporate settlements of federal lawsuits. Justice Department | Read more »

101. Repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have nearly doubled the number of light bulbs subject to energy-efficiency standards starting in January 2020. The Energy Department also blocked the next phase of efficiency standards for general-purpose bulbs already subject to regulation. Energy Department | Read more »

102. Weakened dishwasher energy efficiency standards by exempting fast-cleaning machines from decades-old rules. Energy Department | Read more »

103. Loosened water and efficiency standards for showerheads and washers and dryers. Energy Department | Read more »

104. Changed the process for how the government sets energy efficiency standards for appliances and other equipment. The new rules set an “energy savings threshold” for regulations (which environmental groups say is too high) and allow industries to set their own test procedures. Energy Department | Read more »

105. Withdrew proposed Obama-era efficiency standards for residential furnaces and commercial water heaters that were designed to reduce energy use. Energy Department | Read more » 106. Made it easier for appliance manufacturers to get a temporary exemption from federal energy efficiency test procedure requirements. Energy Department | Read more » 107. Finalized a rule that limits 401(k) retirement plans from investing in funds that focus on the environment. The Obama administration had issued guidance to encourage investing in environmentally- and socially-focused funds as long as they were competitive investments. Labor Department | Read more »

108. Changed a 25-year-old policy to allow coastal replenishment projects to use sand from protected ecosystems. Interior Department | Read more »

109. Stopped payments to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program to help poorer countries reduce carbon emissions. Executive Order | Read more »

110. Reversed restrictions on the sale of plastic water bottles in national parks designed to cut down on litter, despite a Park Service report that the effort worked. Interior Department | Read more »

In progress

111. Froze civil penalties for companies that violate fuel efficiency standards at $5.50 for every 10th of a mile per gallon over the standards. (They were slated to increase to $14 for every 10th of a mile per gallon in model year 2019.) A federal court reinstated the higher penalty, but the Trump administration continued to delay its implementation. Transportation Department | Read more »

112. Initially withdrew, and then delayed, a proposed rule that would inform car owners about fuel-efficient replacement tires. Transportation Department | Read more » https://ift.tt/2LZ7eCJ

Some rules were rolled back, then reinstated

These rules were initially reversed by the Trump administration but were later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges.

1. Repealed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have set strict limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, and replaced it with a new version that would let states set their own rules. In the final days of Mr. Trump’s term, a federal appeals court struck down the repeal and replacement plan, arguing that the agency “fundamentally” misinterpreted its own legal obligations to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act. The court directed the E.P.A. to start over with a new approach. Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more

2. Delayed issuing rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, which would have echoed standards adopted by the international airline industry four years ago. The delay was challenged by environmental groups, and the rule — which critics say is far too weak today — was put forward in December 2020. E.P.A. | Read more

3. Stopped enforcing a 2015 rule that prohibited the use of hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases, in air-conditioners and refrigerators. A court later partially restored the prohibition and Congress agreed to phase down production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons in a 2020 year-end budget bill. E.P.A. | Read more

4. Ended an Occupational Safety and Health Administration program to reduce risks of workers developing the lung disease silicosis by making it easier to conduct proactive workplace inspections. The administration delayed issuing a revised program for two and a half years, until February 2020. Labor Department | Read more

5. Sought to repeal emissions standards for “glider” trucks — vehicles retrofitted with older, often dirtier engines — but reversed course after Andrew Wheeler took over from Scott Pruitt as head of the E.P.A. E.P.A. | Read more

6. Delayed a compliance deadline for new national ozone pollution standards by one year, but later reversed course. E.P.A. | Read more

7. Delayed implementation of a rule regulating the certification and training of pesticide applicators, but a judge ruled that the E.P.A. had done so illegally and declared the rule still in effect. E.P.A. | Read more

8. Initially delayed publishing efficiency standards for household appliances, but later published them after multiple states and environmental groups sued. Energy Department | Read more

9. Removed the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the Endangered Species List, but the protections were later reinstated by a federal judge. (The Trump administration appealed the ruling in May 2019.) Interior Department | Read more

10. Reissued a rule limiting the discharge of mercury by dental offices into municipal sewers after a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. E.P.A. | Read more

11. Delayed federal building efficiency standards until Sept. 30, 2017, at which time the rules went into effect. Energy Department | Read more 12. Ordered a review of water efficiency standards in bathroom fixtures, including toilets. E.P.A. determined existing standards were sufficient. E.P.A. | Read more