ASBN Statement: EPA Rollback of Power Plant Carbon Standards Threatens Market Stability

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision on Sept. 14 to repeal power plant carbon standards and its separate proposal to strip federal authority over power plant carbon pollution is a major step backward for American competitiveness, market stability, and public health. Responsible economic growth depends on regulatory predictability, technological innovation, and a modern energy grid, not policy rollbacks that lock in outdated, expensive infrastructure. The American Sustainable Business Network (ASBN) opposes this rollback. With our members and state affiliates, our network collectively represents 200,000+ businesses that depend on predictable energy costs and stable rules for long-term investment.

Using data  from an August 2026 analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), this decision from the EPA threatens business stability and the broader economy in four critical ways:

1. Soaring Energy and Operating Costs: Gutting carbon limits and clean energy incentives is projected to raise U.S. consumer electricity spending by up to $30 billion annually by 2035, with average household bills up $230 in that year alone. Customers in Texas, Oklahoma and the Great Plains face the steepest increases, and household electricity rates in parts of the country rise as much as 25%. Commercial and industrial customers in those markets face the same rate pressure. This decision places an unnecessary financial burden on businesses and consumers.
2. Chilled Investment and Lost Capacity: The U.S. power sector stands to forfeit $700 billion in new investment over the next decade, roughly 40% of all new power generation expected to come online. Blocking between 390 and 540 gigawatts of cost-effective wind, solar, and energy storage from entering the grid threatens energy reliability and cedes global leadership in clean technology manufacturing to foreign competitors.
3. Workforce Productivity and Health Impacts: Prolonging reliance on aging fossil fuel infrastructure will add up to $177 billion annually in economic and public health costs by 2035. For employers, those costs surface as absenteeism, lower productivity, and rising health plan expenditures. EPA’s own 2024 regulatory impact analysis projected up to $370 billion in net climate and public health benefits from these standards between 2024 and 2047, against industry compliance costs of $7.5 billion to $19 billion.
4. Regulatory Instability: Capital-intensive industries require long-term certainty to make multi-decade investments. Attempting to eliminate EPA’s legal authority to regulate power plant carbon conflicts with the Supreme Court’s holding in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and it creates an unstable regulatory landscape that discourages domestic capital deployment.

“Our members and the broader small business community are competing for electricity with data centers and new manufacturing, and the answer to that demand is more generation, faster,” said Mike Green, Senior Policy Advisor at ASBN. “Blocking up to 540 gigawatts of the cheapest, fastest capacity we can build is not a strategy. Businesses in areas like Texas, Oklahoma and the Great Plains will pay for that decision first.”

American businesses thrive on innovation, efficiency, and long-term planning. Replacing science-based pollution standards with regulatory uncertainty and market chaos threatens our economic resilience. We urge the administration to prioritize policy stability, support cost-reducing clean energy investments, and uphold the EPA’s core responsibility to protect public health and the environment.