President Trump and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today the repeal of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, the landmark 2009 finding underlying the U.S. government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from carbon-intensive industries including the automotive and energy sectors.
In a social media post teasing the announcement, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the move the “Single. Largest. Deregulatory. Action. EVER.”
The 2009 Endangerment Finding by the Obama-era EPA found that GHG emissions endangered public health and welfare through impacts including global warming, by contributing to extreme weather events, heat-related mortality, and by reducing air quality.
The finding underpinned the ability of the EPA to issue a series of regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sectors, with the agency issuing its first GHG standard for light-duty vehicles in 2010, followed by standards for medium and heavy-duty vehicles in 2011. The Agency has also issued GHG standards for sectors such as power generation and the oil and gas sector which could be impacted by the new move.
In July 2025, however, the EPA announced that it would consider rescinding the finding, citing “serious concerns that many of the scientific underpinnings of the Endangerment Finding are materially weaker than previously believed,” and arguing that the global warming projections underlying the Endangerment Finding “appear unduly pessimistic.”
The agency has already warned that repealing the finding would leave the agency without the statutory authority to prescribe standards for GHG emissions, and would remove all GHG standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and heavy-duty engines.
According to the EPA, the repeal of the finding will result in savings of more than $1.3 trillion, through the removal of regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify, and comply with federal GHG emission standards for motor vehicles.
Zeldin said:
“The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans. Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated.”
The move marks the latest in a growing series of moves to undo U.S. climate regulation by President Trump, who recently referred to climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” in a speech to the UN. Trump has worked actively in his second term to undo the climate-focused actions of the prior administration, starting with an Executive Order on his first day in office to once again withdraw from the Paris Agreement, in addition cancelling billions in federal clean energy awards, and attempting to halt activity on all major U.S. offshore wind projects.
Sustainability-focused groups sharply criticized the administration’s move, with Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp saying that the “unlawful, year-long effort by the political leadership at EPA rejects the overwhelming evidence that climate pollution threatens everyone’s health and safety,” and promising to challenge the decision in court.
