Boston, October 1st, 2026 – PRESS RELEASE – Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today joined a coalition of states, counties, and cities in taking legal action against the Trump Administration over its latest efforts to derail regulation of harmful greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, this time from the nation’s largest power plants.
In September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed safeguards that required certain existing power plants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, clearing the way for a significant increase in pollution that will worsen extreme heat, deadly storms, flooding, and wildfire smoke. Separately, EPA also issued a supplemental proposal to rescind its legal authority to regulate power plant emissions under the Federal Clean Air Act, claiming that power plant greenhouse gas emissions do not endanger public health and welfare and signaling the agency’s intent to abandon the field altogether.
In response to these dangerous rollbacks, the coalition is today notifying EPA of its intent to sue over the agency’s failure to regulate pollution from existing power plants, filing a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking the court to strike down the repeal and restore emission limits, and testifying in strong opposition to EPA’s supplemental proposal.
Power plants are among the largest drivers of the climate crisis, producing roughly one-quarter of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. Rather than hold those polluters accountable, in its September rollback, the federal administration erased federal pollution limits for most gas- and coal-fired power plants and introduced a proposal to eliminate power plant emission regulation entirely, claiming it lacks legal authority to regulate power plant greenhouse gas emissions.
Eliminating limits on these emissions threatens communities in Massachusetts and across the country. More climate pollution contributes to more frequent and more intense heat waves that put children, older adults, people with disabilities, and workers at risk. It also contributes to stronger storms and heavier flooding that damage homes, businesses, and transit systems, as well as more wildfire smoke that makes air dangerous to breathe. Increased pollution from fossil fuel power plants can worsen asthma, heart disease, and other serious respiratory illnesses, especially in low-income and other overburdened communities. These changes also increase the financial burden on local and state governments that must spend billions of dollars recovering from increasingly extreme weather.
Existing gas-fired power plants, including “peaker” plants that often operate during periods of high electricity demand, are frequently located in low-income communities and communities of color that already bear a disproportionate share of pollution. Despite issuing standards for new gas plants over a decade ago, EPA has never fulfilled its legal obligation to limit pollution from existing gas plants. The coalition today noticed its intent to sue EPA over this unreasonable delay.
In the lawsuit separately filed today challenging EPA’s rollback of the existing powerplant rule, the coalition argues that EPA unlawfully abandoned governing carbon pollution limits without properly considering alternatives or the enormous health and climate costs of leaving existing power plants wholly unregulated.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office also testified today in strong opposition to EPA’s supplemental proposal to rescind legal authority to ever regulate power plant greenhouse gas emissions. The supplemental proposal follows EPA’s rescission of the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles endanger public health and welfare—a rescission AG Campbell is fighting in court. As AG Campbell testified last summer in opposing that rescission, this month’s supplemental proposal also flouts the law and the science and, with it, EPA turns its back on communities already enduring the climate crisis.
