Energy

EXCLUSIVE: Trump EPA Targets Key Regulatory Lever Driving Democrats’ Climate Agenda

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The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is revisiting the “social cost of carbon” metric used by the Biden administration to foist costly regulations on the American economy, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The “social cost of carbon” is the government-determined economic cost to society per unit of carbon dioxide emissions, and it is considered a powerful regulatory tool because of its immense impact on cost-benefit analyses that underpin emissions rules and regulations. The Biden administration estimated that the “social cost of carbon” is approximately $190 per ton, but new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says that the agency will be reevaluating the metric and its use in line with President Donald Trump’s day-one “Unleashing American Energy” executive order.

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s so-called ‘social cost of carbon’ measurement was used to advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs. To Power the Great American Comeback, we are fully committed to removing regulations holding back the U.S.,” Zeldin said in a statement obtained by the DCNF.

Trump’s executive order specifically instructed the EPA to evaluate the possibility of scrapping the “social cost of carbon” metric from the regulatory space altogether within 60 days. Zeldin and the EPA are now officially revisiting the matter, with Zeldin’s statement implying that the agency may look to eliminate it altogether, though it is currently unclear what the overhaul may ultimately look like if implemented.

In a Wednesday post to X teasing the announcement, Zeldin wrote that “today is going to be the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.”

The “Unleashing American Energy” executive order characterized the metric as “marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.” The Obama administration was the first to incorporate the “social cost of carbon” into the regulatory state, according to Stanford Report.

The first Trump administration estimated that the “social cost of carbon” was somewhere between $1 and $6 per ton of carbon dioxide, a far cry from the $51 estimate put forth by the Obama administration, according to Columbia University’s Global Center for Energy Policy.

Zeldin and the Trump EPA have been keeping themselves busy as they roll back the Biden EPA’s regulations and grant programs, including a Tuesday evening announcement that the agency is terminating grant agreements for $20 billion in grants that the Biden EPA doled out to pass-through green groups laden with Democrat insiders and donors.