Inside the E.P.A. Decision to Narrow Two Big Climate Rules

President Biden’s climate ambitions are colliding with political and legal realities, forcing his administration to recalibrate two of its main tools to cut the emissions that are heating the planet.

This week the Environmental Protection Agency said it would delay a regulation to require gas-burning power plants to cut their carbon dioxide emissions, likely until after the November election. The agency also is expected to slow the pace at which car makers must comply with a separate regulation designed to sharply limit tailpipe emissions.

Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said on Friday that changes to the two major regulations wouldn’t compromise the administration’s ability to meet its target of cutting United States emissions roughly in half by 2030. That goal is designed to keep America in line with a global pledge of averting the worst consequences of a warming planet.

“We are well on our way to meeting the president’s goals,” Mr. Regan said in a telephone interview from Texas. “I am very confident that the choices we are making are smart choices that will continue to rein in climate pollution.”

But experts said the Biden administration is making significant concessions in the face of industry opposition and unease in the American public about the pace of the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy, as well as the threat of legal challenges before conservative courts.

“There are two key factors: the Supreme Court, and the election,” said Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House official. “There are some adjustments needed for both,” she said. “You’ve got make sure these final rules are legally defensible, and you’ve got to make sure you’ve done enough for the stakeholders that you have support for the rules.”

Together, automobiles and electric power generate more than half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. That makes the rules designed to curb pollution from those sources some of the most important tools that the E.P.A. can wield to tackle climate change.

In May, the E.P.A. unveiled what would have been a landmark plan to curb emissions from power plants. It called for steep emissions cuts from plants that burn coal or gas, which together produce the bulk of electricity in the United States. To comply, large gas-burning plants would have to capture or eliminate at least 90 percent their greenhouse gas emissions before 2040. Coal plants would have to meet those requirements by 2030.

Almost immediately, the pushback on gas was fierce.

The utility industry argued that technology to suck carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere is expensive and logistically challenging, and that the E.P.A.’s timelines were unrealistic. Swing-state Democrats said they worried the plan would result in higher electric bills for constituents and cause blackouts.

Some environmental leaders said they were concerned that regulating large gas plants would increase pollution at smaller facilities known as “peaker plants,” which are heavily polluting and frequently located in poorer or minority communities.

On Thursday, the E.P.A. said the final version of the regulation would apply only to existing coal-burning plants and future gas-burning plants, not gas plants in current operation. The agency said it would write a separate regulation to slash emissions from gas plants that are currently running, a delay certain to stretch past the November election.

Mr. Regan on Friday said his decision was based solely on the concerns that the original rule could be harmful to marginalized communities. He said the message from those communities was “don’t pursue climate goals at our expense.”

“The way we view it, we’ve actually strengthened our climate approach to power plants,” Mr. Regan said. “We are definitely moving forward with one of the strongest regulations that existing coal and new natural gas will face.”

But several people familiar with the discussions inside the E.P.A. said the agency didn’t initially plan to regulate gas-burning power plants at all and agreed to do so under pressure from environmental groups and climate experts inside the White House. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Over the past several months, some inside the agency were concerned that a regulation governing existing gas plants could be successfully challenged in court, these people said. Officials worried they didn’t have enough evidence that power plants could effectively limit their pollution by using cleaner fuels or installing new technology that captures carbon dioxide before it leaves the smokestack.

Carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the world.

Some industry lobbyists described the shift as a case of the Biden administration’s ideals colliding with reality. “They over-propose to placate activists, but when they have to make the rules, reality pulls them back in,” said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at the law firm Bracewell, which represents energy-industry clients.

Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard University, said the Biden administration’s E.P.A. is focused on making sure rules are “as air tight as possible” because they are certain to face legal challenges that could be heard in unfriendly courts.

The change in strategy has divided activists. Frank Sturges, an attorney with Clean Air Task Force, said he was disappointed in E.P.A.’s decision, and noted gas plants produce more than 40 percent of electricity emissions. “We’re losing time in the fight against climate change by delaying the regulation of a significant chunk of power-sector emissions,” Mr. Sturges said.

David Doniger, a senior strategist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, defended the E.P.A., saying the agency would still make “unprecedented reductions in greenhouse gasses” with both the car and power plant rules that would ultimately be easier to defend in court.

“If you can get a rule that achieves 90 percent or more benefit of the proposal, and it has more supporters and fewer opponents, that is a pathway toward a more legally durable rule,” he said.