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sierra club
'Direct Attack on the Health of Americans': Trump EPA Greenlights More Mercury Pollution
Sierra Club said the rollback "puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children.”
Feb 20, 2026
The Trump administration on Friday finalized its rollback of clean air regulations limiting mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants, sparking condemnation from public health and environmental advocates who warned that the move will increase the risk of death or serious illness for millions of people in the United States.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is repealing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were implemented during the Biden administration in order to protect people from mercury and other toxic air pollutants—including arsenic, lead, and chromium—from fossil fuel power plants.
The Trump administration contends that rescinding MATS will lower financial costs for utilities running older coal-fired plants during a period of rapidly rising demand from consumer and data centers powering artificial intelligence systems.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Friday at the Mills Creek Power Plant, a coal-fired facility in Louisville, Kentucky. "The Trump EPA knows that we can grow the economy, enhance baseload power, and protect human health and the environment all at the same time."
However, the Sierra Club said Friday that "rolling back the new and more protective [MATS] will allow coal- and oil-fired power plants to emit more damaging pollution that puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children."
"According to the Sierra Club’s Trump Coal Pollution Dashboard, reversing the 2024 improvements and reverting to the 2012 standards will allow the dirtiest coal-fired power plants to emit 50% more mercury pollution," the group added. "In May 2025, the Trump administration exempted 68 power plants—including some of the biggest polluters in the nation—from MATS after soliciting exemption requests from big polluters over email."
Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign director Laurie Williams called the MATS rollback "a direct attack on the health of Americans."
Last June, Sierra Club was a key part of a coalition of environmental and community groups that sued the Trump administration over the exemptions.
“These protections from mercury and other toxic pollution existed to protect communities from reckless polluters," Sierra Club campaign organizing strategist Bonnie Swinford said Friday. "By repealing these protections, the Trump administration is giving handouts to the coal industry elites—and waging war on the public’s ability to hold polluters accountable."
The Environmental Protect Network also decried the MATS repeal, saying it "will allow hundreds of facilities across 45 states to avoid meeting critical safety standards—jeopardizing public health, degrading ecosystems, and disproportionately harming children, pregnant people, and communities already overburdened by pollution."
"This is no way to make America healthy again."
Moms Clean Air Force co-founder and director Dominique Browning focused on the harms to children the rollback will inflict.
"The science is clear, and profoundly alarming. No amount of mercury is safe for babies’ developing brains," she said. "Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that damages the architecture of babies’ and children’s developing brains."
“The mercury rules were working," Browning argued. "Toxic emissions from US coal plants were dropping, and water bodies were getting cleaner. But now EPA Administrator Zeldin’s rollback... will allow coal plants to emit more toxic heavy metals like mercury, chromium, and lead—pollutants that contaminate our air, fall into our lakes and waterways, and poison our food supply."
"This is no way to make America healthy again," she added, referring to one of President Donald Trump's campaign slogans.
Julie McNamara, associate policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement Friday: “Once again, the Trump administration is abandoning science and abandoning statute to give polluters a free pass. And once again, the Trump administration is doing so at the expense of people’s health."
National Resources Defense Council senior attorney John Walke asserted that "the coal industry is in decline, and dismantling clean air protections won’t bring it back."
“It will only lead to more asthma attacks, more heart problems, and more premature deaths, especially in communities living in the shadow of coal plants," Walke added. "We have a right to breathe clean air, and we will fight for that right even if Trump’s EPA refuses to.”
The EPA’s newest decision will allow power plants to emit more brain-damaging mercury and dangerous soot pollution, putting frontline communities at especially greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and premature death.
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— NRDC (@nrdc.org) February 20, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Friday's EPA announcement followed the agency's repeal earlier this month of the endangerment finding, the Obama-era rule empowering climate regulation over the past 15 years that treated six greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels as a single air pollutant for regulatory purposes.
Speaking at a Friday press conference in Washington, DC organized by Moms Clean Air Force, Talia, a local fourth grade student, said that “climate disasters are becoming more common, and they’re hurting our planet, our health, and the future of kids like me."
“Adults in the government are supposed to protect kids from climate change and not ignore it," she said, adding in a message to Trump officials that "we are taught to listen to scientists and doctors and moms—why don’t you listen to them?”
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Coalition Sues Trump Admin Over 'Unlawful' Approval of LNG Export Project
A lawyer for the plaintiffs argues that the Department of Energy "is using an untested loophole to avoid considering the impacts of this project on Americans’ health and on the environment."
Feb 17, 2026
A coalition of green groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday contesting the Trump administration's approval of what would be one of the world's largest liquefied natural gas facilities—permission granted despite the project's threats to frontline communities, the environment, and climate.
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Earthjustice are representing the Sierra Club, which is suing the US Department of Energy (DOE) for approving Venture Global’s application to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, terminal, which is now under construction in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.
“We’re suing over DOE’s unlawful approval of this facility that will increase climate-warming pollution and do nothing to lower energy costs for Americans,” NRDC senior attorney Caroline Reiser said. “DOE is using an untested loophole to avoid considering the impacts of this project on Americans’ health and on the environment. The agency also failed to consider how LNG exports could increase US energy prices.”
As Earthjustice explained:
CP2’s pollution, traffic, sprawl, and visual impact would add to the harms the nine overburdened local Gulf Coast communities located near the facility already experience from nearby existing LNG terminals. These communities already bear the burden of other heavy industry and are on the frontlines of the bigger hurricanes and storms fueled by the worsening climate crisis. Approving CP2’s exports will add to environmental injustice, fuel additional climate change, and increase prices for domestic consumers.
CP2 is one of the key projects in what climate campaigners called a "staggering" LNG expansion under former President Joe Biden. In January 2024, his administration announced a temporary pause on DOE approvals of pending and future LNG export applications to nations with which the US did not have free trade agreements. A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump later ruled the pause illegal.
The United States is the world’s leading natural gas producer and LNG exporter. While the fossil fuel industry often calls LNG a “bridge fuel”—a cleaner alternative to coal that will ease the transition to sustainable energy sources—critics have warned that the fossil gas actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Trump's DOE—headed by former fracking CEO Chris Wright—granted preliminary approval to CP2 last March, with the final green light coming in October. If built as planned, it would export around 20 million metric tons per year of LNG.
"The estimated lifecycle greenhouse gas from this methane gas would be more than the annual emissions of 47 million gas-powered cars, or 54 coal-fired power plants," said NRDC.
CP2 construction has already harmed local communities in Cameron Parish—especially local fishers. Last summer, dredging despoiled hundreds of acres of marshland, burying crab traps and oyster beds, and killing wildlife including the crabs, fish, and shrimp upon which fishers depend for their livelihood.
“We’re routinely seeing less and less catch. LNG has polluted our waters and disrupted the wildlife," one local fisher and dock manager said last year. "The shrimp just do not want to come in because of the LNG projects.”
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A Massive Buildout of Data Centers Powered by Gas Is the Opposite of Affordability
When our utility companies fail to build enough low-cost clean electricity and instead increase their reliance on expensive fossil fuel power plants—as many are doing in response to data center demand—electricity prices rise.
Feb 11, 2026
This past year, our communities were hit with skyrocketing power bills as electricity prices increased at double the rate of inflation. A new Sierra Club tool shows that, to make matters worse, utility companies in the US are planning a massive gas buildout, and it’s going to cost everyday American families even more.
The Sierra Club’s new gas plant tracker shows that utilities are planning to build 271 gigawatts of new gas power plant capacity at over 480 more expensive, polluting gas plants. This is over 40% more than all the coal capacity that is still online. This level of buildout would increase currently online gas power plant capacity by nearly 50% nationwide.
These companies have drastically increased their plans for new gas in the last few years, more than doubling planned gas power plants since the start of 2020.
This is a massive proposed buildout of new fossil fuel infrastructure that stretches across the country; new gas power plants are currently planned in 42 states. Texas has the most planned gas power plant capacity of any state followed by Georgia, Indiana, Virginia, Missouri, and Arizona.
Data center developers and utilities can stop this onslaught of plans for new gas power plants and rely on affordable, available clean energy options instead.
What do these states, spanning across the country, have in common? Data centers. All of these states face major data center proposals.
Gas power plants already provide more electricity for data center use than any other fuel, and that portion is predicted to grow without more renewable buildout. In 2024 in the US, new data center demand rivaled the amount of clean energy brought online. Data center demand is set to far exceed clean energy additions in 2025 through 2028.
Data center demand projections are still highly uncertain, meaning this level of demand may not materialize. Instead of carefully assessing this uncertainty, utilities have been too quick to propose ever more gas power plants, leaving customers on the hook to foot the bill.
Southern Company, which operates electric utilities primarily in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, has the most planned gas power plant capacity of any parent company—over 20 gigawatts. This planned gas buildout is directly tied to data center proposals; for example, in Georgia, Southern subsidiary Georgia Power is planning a historic buildout of new resources specifically to serve growing demand, which is driven by data centers. What does Georgia Power want to make up the majority of that buildout? New gas power plants.
If you’ve recently looked at your utility bill and wondered why your energy costs have skyrocketed, you’re not alone. In 2025, households on average paid nearly 10% more on their utility bills than in 2024, outpacing wage growth and overall inflation. These plans to add even more gas power plants will continue to drive up our bills.
When a utility company decides to build a new gas power plant, the money it takes to build and maintain it does not come from the utility’s CEO or the Big Tech companies who want more electricity; we pay for the gas power plant in our utility bills every month. The cost of building and maintaining gas power plants has significantly and persistently increased in the US, contributing to increased prices for customers across the country. In contrast, the cost of renewables continues to fall.
When our utility companies fail to build enough low-cost clean electricity and instead increase their reliance on expensive fossil fuel power plants—as many are doing in response to data center demand—electricity prices rise.
In Virginia, for example, Dominion Energy is planning to build a massive new gas power plant that will cost Virginians at least $8 billion by the utility’s own estimates over the lifetime of the plant; the gas power plant is part of a buildout that Dominion says is necessary due to data center growth. Dominion projects that residential electric bills will more than double over the next 15 years, primarily due to data centers’ growing energy needs.
In Missouri, Ameren wants to build multiple new gas power plants to serve data centers. A single one of those gas power plants is expected to cost $900 million up front, before taking into account the volatile cost of fuel and maintenance needed throughout the plant’s lifetime. The same story is playing out across the country.
We deserve better. Data center developers and utilities can stop this onslaught of plans for new gas power plants and rely on affordable, available clean energy options instead. With proper planning, both data center developers and utilities can be part of the solution. In the meantime, we’ll continue to track utilities’ plans for new gas power plants, and you can join us to push utilities and data center developers to make better, cheaper, healthier decisions.Keep ReadingShow Less
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