Climatewire | The EPA is getting rid of the two offices that are mainly an answer to regulate climatic and air pollution.
The measure to eliminate the Office of Atmospheric Protection (OAP) and the Office of Planning and Air Quality Standards (OAQP) at the end of the fiscal year indicates an ending probably for much of the agency’s climate work. The appointed politicians of the EPA announced the reorganization plan during a Friday City Council with employees of the air and radiation office, which houses both OAP and OAQPS.
The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, will probably move programs to stop the Smog, Hollin and toxic emissions to other offices. But most of the OAP work seems destined for the bin of dust, including a program that requires the largest contaminators in the country to denounce their greenhouse gas emissions.
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On the other hand, the EPA will create two offices within OAR called Clean Air Programs and Office of State Air Associations. The clean air office “will align the legal obligations and essential functions of the mission,” according to a press release from the agency.
“With these organizational improvements, we recommend complying with all our legal obligations and exceptionally deliver the central mission of the EPA to protect human health and the environment,” Zeldin said in the statement.
The reorganization plan announced on Friday also includes eliminating the Office of Research and Development, a centralized arm for research and science that use some 1,500 people. While Congress could block reorganization, former EPA officials of Democratic and Republican administrations said it was unlikely; The plan only requires the general approval of the allocations committees, no and the legislation acts.
The EPA did not respond to consultations on changes in rowing. But the 2025 project, which has proven to be influential in the second mandate of President Donald Trump, demands that the OAR move away from the greenhouse gases regulations and instead focuses on “limiting and minimizing the criteria and dangerous air pollutants in association with the states.”
The EPA will still need to keep a staff to work in climatic regulations. But he is working to eliminate greenhouse gases from his list of regulated pollutants by reconsidering a 2009 scientific finding that supports all climatic regulations of the clean air law.
On Friday, the EPA also sent the proposals of the Office of Administration and Budget of the White House to repeal the rules of the Biden era for carbon and mercury of the energy plant, without replacing them.
It was a movement that has a long expected time, and it is the first. Trump’s first administration replaced climatic rules with Waker’s.
Joe Goffman, EPA Air Chief, under former President Joe Biden, said he was surprised that the Trump administration opt for the most aggressive tactics of not regulating the second level emitting sector for carbon pollution.
“When they have the option between using a scalpel or a laser on the one hand, or a sled hammer and a meat knife on the other, they will choose the sled hammer and the meat knife,” Goffman said.
End or contamination reports?
Rarin frequently speaks of the need to limit the regulatory and analytical activities of the EPA to those necessary to comply with the “legal obligations.” He has said that the agency will only retain the personnel who work in these programs.
The clean air law requires that the EPA updates in line standards with strict and frequently lost corners for a variety or contaminants of non -greenal gases such as particles and sulfur dioxide. It is likely that many of those programs, which are now administered by OAQPS, be absorbed by the new clean air office.
Some OAP programs can also move there. The Office on Rain and Ozone Programs of the EPA, for example, as well as the phase-dembocadura of refrigerants that catch heat called Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC). There are at least some continuous “legal obligations” for all these programs under the Law of Clean Air and the American Innovation and Manufacturing Law.
The law of the letter, which approved Congress in 2020 with strong bipartisan support and was signed by Trump, phases to climatic pollutants in favor of the alternatives for which US companies have patents.
“Large companies like Honeywell have made large investments in HFC substitutes,” said Goffman. “I think they are going to search the EPA to continue addressing those substitutions, so that they can market them.”
All these programs will be transferred to the new OAP clean air office, said the current staff and conforms to OAR, thought that Trump’s officials offered few details.
But relatively few or OAP programs are likely to survive reorganization.
The EPA greenhouse gas reports program is probably in the cutting block, although oil and gas operations may still have to inform their emissions at the moment. The Congress ordered to inform, and create a methane management program, in Climate Law 2022. Republican legislators could withdraw that language at the end of this year in a budget reconciliation package.
The annual Inventory of EPA greenhouse gases can also be eliminated, because it is an obligation of the treaty but not required by the statute. So are a large number of other national and international programs and associations designed to measure, track or reduce emissions that fork the climate, which grew mainly through a series of executive and agencies. They can include Energy Star, a high -efficiency product labeling program administered by OAP.
Rachel Cleetus, director of Senior Policy of the Union of Scientists in question, said that the loss of reliable federal data on greenhouse gas emissions would undermine climate action by states, local governments and the private sector.
“This type of information is vital for us to understand where heat capture emissions come from and how it is changing over time,” he said. “There is no reason to get rid of him, except to try to bury the evidence.”
The Trump Administration delivered a “Skinny Budget” on Friday for fiscal year 2026 that asked the Congress to outside the so -called atmospheric protection program, a general name for climate reports and inventory programs of the EPA that has not been used.
He called the programs a “overreach of government authority that imposes unnecessary and radical regulations of climate change over companies and suffocates economic growth.”
Reprint of E&E news With permission from politician, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
