Environmental Protection Agency

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xAI spent $7M building wall that barely muffles annoying power plant noise

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“Temu sound wall” not enough to quell fury over xAI’s power plant.

For miles around xAI’s makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, neighbors have endured months of constant roaring, erupting pops, and bursts of high-pitched whining from 27 temporary gas turbines installed without consulting the community.

In a report on Thursday, NBC News interviewed residents fighting to shut down xAI’s turbines. They confirmed that xAI operates the turbines day and night, allegedly tormenting residents in order to power xAI founder Elon Musk’s unbridled AI ambitions.

Eventually, 41 permanent gas turbines—that supposedly won’t be as noisy—will be installed, if xAI can secure the permitting. In the meantime, xAI has erected a $7 million “sound barrier” that’s supposed to mitigate some of the noise.

However, residents told NBC News that the wall that xAI built does little to quiet the din.

Taylor Logsdon, who lives near the power plant, said that neighbors nearby jokingly call it the “Temu sound wall,” referencing the Chinese e-commerce site known for peddling cheap, rather than high-quality goods. For Logsdon, the wall has not helped to calm her dogs, which have been unsettled by sudden booms and squeals that videos show can frequently be heard amid the turbines’ continual jet engine-like hum. Some residents are just as unsettled as the dogs, describing the noises from the plant as “scary.”

A nonprofit environmental advocacy group, the Safe and Sound Coalition, has been collecting evidence, hoping to raise awareness in the community to block xAI from obtaining permits for its permanent turbines. The group’s website links to videos documenting the noise, noise analysis reports, and public records showing how challenging it’s been to track xAI’s communications with public officials.

Safe and Sound Coalition video documents constant roars after a “loud bang” signaled “something popped off.”

For example, public records requests to the city of Southaven seeking information on xAI exemptions to noise ordinances or communications about the sound wall turned up nothing. A director overseeing the city’s planning and development claimed that the office was not “involved with the noise barrier wall” and could provide no details. Similarly, a permit clerk for the city’s building department confirmed there were no documents to share.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the coalition told Ars that the “absence of documentation raises transparency concerns.”

“When decisions with community impact are made without accessible records, it creates an accountability gap and limits the public’s ability to understand how those decisions were evaluated or authorized,” the spokesperson said.

An IT worker who co-founded the coalition, Jason Haley, told NBC News that xAI’s wall showed that the city could have required the company to do more to prevent noise pollution before upsetting community members.

“If you knew the noise was going to be an issue, put in a sound wall first,” Haley said. “Do some other stuff first before you torture us. That’s not that hard of an ask.”

xAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment. According to NBC News, the company has yet to make public a noise analysis that it conducted.

xAI’s turbines spark other concerns

xAI has maintained that it follows the law when rushing at breakneck speeds to build infrastructure to support its AI innovations. In Southaven, xAI was approved to operate the temporary gas turbines at the power plant for 12 months, without any additional permitting required.

Now it’s seeking permits for the permanent turbines, which residents worry could be nearly as loud, while possibly introducing more smog into an area that’s mostly homes, churches, parks, and schools, the Safe and Sound Coalition’s website said.

Pollutants could increase risks of asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and cancer, a community flyer the coalition distributed warned, urging attendance at a public meeting where residents could finally air their complaints (a meeting which NBC News’ report thoroughly documented). The flyer also suggested that the city’s main drinking water supply could be affected and perhaps tainted if the power plant’s wastewater contains toxic chemicals, since there isn’t a graywater recycling plant nearby. For residents, it’s hard to tell if things will ever get better. One noise analysis the coalition shared found that the daily sound of the turbines was higher on an “annoyance scale” than when entire neighborhoods set off New Year’s Eve fireworks.

“Our water, air, power grid, utility bills, property values, and health are all at risk,” the Safe and Sound Coalition’s website said. “We’re already facing toxic pollution and relentless industrial noise. There is no clear oversight, no transparency, and no plan to protect the people living nearby.”

The coalition expects that if enough community members protest the plant, the permitting agency will deny xAI’s permits and order any potentially dangerous turbines to be shut down. But other groups are taking a different approach, considering suing xAI if it continues operating the unpermitted gas turbines in Southaven.

Earlier this month, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) joined the NAACP in sending xAI a notice of intent to sue. In that letter, groups warned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently changed a rule that they argued now requires permits for the temporary turbines. They gave xAI 60 days to respond.

The same groups previously sent a legal threat to xAI, opposing alleged data center pollution in Memphis, Tenn. xAI eventually secured permits for some of the gas turbines sparking scrutiny there, which many locals found “devastating.” Further concerning, residents relying on drone imagery—with no other way to keep track of how many turbines xAI was running—warned that the permits only covered 15 of 24 turbines on site.

EPA shrugs off xAI permitting concerns

It’s unclear whether the SELC can win if it takes xAI to court, or whether the EPA would ever intervene if that action could be construed as delaying Trump’s order to rush permitting and build as many data centers as fast as possible to power AI.

The SELC declined Ars’ request to comment, but the EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, seemed to negate that argument in an interview with Fox Business in January. Asked directly about xAI’s gas turbines, Zeldin confirmed that the EPA was working closely on permitting with local officials in Southaven and Shelby County—where xAI built a massive data center sparking protests.

Rather than suggesting that the EPA might be preparing to review xAI’s unpermitted gas turbines, Zeldin emphasized that for Donald Trump, it “is about getting permits done faster.”

“EPA has the power to slow things down; EPA also has the power to speed things up, and that’s where the Trump EPA is,” Zeldin said.

Permitting for the Southaven project’s permanent gas turbines may be approved as soon as next month, NBC News reported.

Residents skeptical second sound barrier will be better

For Southaven, xAI’s power plant—along with a planned data center, which Musk has dubbed “MACROHARDRR” to mock Microsoft—represents a chance to surge the local economy. That prospect seemingly swayed government support for the projects, which has apparently not waned in the face of mounting protests.

When Musk bought the dormant power plant, “it was the largest private investment in state history,” Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, claimed. Additionally, xAI’s affiliated company that’s behind the projects, MZX Tech, donated $1.38 million to the city’s police department, NBC News reported. Both the plant and the data center “are expected to bring in millions of dollars and new jobs,” Reeves said.

For Southaven residents, the only hope they have that the noise may die down any time soon is that construction on another sound barrier will be finished in the next two months, NBC News reported. Supposedly, engineers were taking time to study “what type of sound barrier would be most effective” amid complaints about the current sound barrier.

A spokesperson for the Safe and Sound Coalition told Ars that the group remains “skeptical” that the new wall will be any better than the first sound barrier.

“To our understanding, sound barriers can reduce certain frequencies under controlled conditions, but turbine noise involves low-frequency sounds and tonal components that often reach beyond barriers,” the coalition’s spokesperson said. “The most effective method for reducing industrial noise exposure is typically distance from residential areas, which is not a mitigation option in this scenario given the facility’s proximity to homes.”

The coalition urged xAI to be transparent and to share data backing mitigation claims if it wants the community to believe that the second sound barrier will make any difference.

“Without transparent modeling, validated field measurements, and independent verification, it is difficult to assess whether the barrier will meaningfully address the ongoing nuisance experienced by nearby residents,” the coalition’s spokesperson said. “Mitigation claims are only meaningful if they are supported by transparent data.”

Mayor labels protestors Musk haters

At least one city official, Mayor Darren Musselwhite, has suggested that community backlash is “political.” Although he acknowledged that the noise was a “legitimate concern,” he also claimed on Facebook that some people protesting xAI’s facility were simply Elon Musk haters, NBC News reported.

“Southaven is now under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances,” Musselwhite wrote.

However, residents told NBC News that “their concerns have nothing to do with politics.” One person interviewed even praised Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency.

Instead, they’re worried that local officials seeing dollar signs have potentially let xAI exploit loopholes to pollute communities without any warning. The community flyer from the Safe and Sound Coalition criticized what they viewed as shady behavior from local officials:

“This project was started behind our backs, with zero community input. Local officials have repeatedly downplayed concerns, spun the facts, and misled residents about the true impacts and the deals made with xAI. Many people only found out after the turbines were up and running.”

The coalition’s spokesperson told Ars that a health impact analysis published on behalf of the SELC provides “meaningful insight” into the biggest health risks. That concluded that using the EPA’s COBRA health impact model, emissions from running 41 permanent turbines at the Southaven plant “are estimated to result in $30–$44 million per year in health-related damages, including costs from premature deaths, hospital visits, and lost productivity. Over a typical 30-year operating life, these impacts would amount to approximately $588–$862 million in cumulative discounted public-health costs, borne largely by residents of Tennessee and Mississippi.”

Additionally, the largest amount of harmful pollutants increases are expected to be “concentrated in communities that are disproportionately Black, highly socially vulnerable, and have elevated baseline asthma prevalence,” the report said.

If the permits are issued, the Coalition’s spokesperson told Ars that the group expects to continue gathering reports of “firsthand experiences” from nearby residents, which will “continue to provide valuable information regarding ongoing impacts.” The group plans to continue engaging with officials and pushing for greater accountability and transparent monitoring, as well as documenting noise conditions, reviewing emissions reports, and collecting independent data where feasible.

“The Coalition’s focus is long-term community protection, which means tracking compliance, advocating for corrective action if standards are not met, and ensuring residents have access to accurate information about environmental and health impacts,” the spokesperson said. “Permit approval would not resolve community concerns; it would shift our focus toward ongoing oversight and enforcement.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths”

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EPA sued for abandoning its mission to protect public health.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency was accused of abandoning its mission to protect public health after repealing an “endangerment finding” that has served as the basis for federal climate change regulations for 17 years.

The lawsuit came from more than a dozen environmental and health groups, including the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Clean Air Council, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The groups have asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the EPA decision, which also eliminated requirements controlling greenhouse gas emissions in new cars and trucks. Urging a return to the status quo, the groups argued that the Trump administration is anti-science and illegally moving to benefit the fossil fuel industry, despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating the deadly consequences of unchecked pollution and climate change-induced floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes.

“Undercutting the ability of the federal government to tackle the largest source of climate pollution is deadly serious,” Meredith Hankins, legal director for federal climate at NRDC, said in an EDF roundup of statements from plaintiffs.

The science is overwhelmingly clear, the groups argued, despite the Trump EPA attempting to muddy the waters by forming a since-disbanded working group of climate contrarians.

Trump is a longtime climate denier, as evidenced by a Euro News tracker monitoring his most controversial comments. Most recently, during a cold snap affecting much of the US, he predictably trolled environmentalists, writing on Truth Social, “could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain—WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?”

The EPA’s final rule summary bragged that “this is the single largest deregulatory action in US history and will save Americans over $1.3 trillion” by 2055. Supposedly, carmakers will pass on any savings from no longer having to meet emissions requirements, giving Americans more access to affordable cars by shutting down expensive emissions and EV mandates “strangling” the auto industry. Sounding nothing like an agency created to monitor pollutants, a fact sheet on the final rule emphasized that Trump’s EPA “chooses consumer choice over climate change zealotry every time.”

Critics quickly slammed Trump’s claims that removing the endangerment finding would help the economy. Any savings from cheaper vehicles or reduced costs of charging infrastructure (as Americans ostensibly buy fewer EVs) would be offset by $1.4 trillion “in additional costs from increased fuel purchases, vehicle repair and maintenance, insurance, traffic congestion, and noise,” The Guardian reported. The EPA’s economic analysis also ignores public health costs, the groups suing alleged. David Pettit, an attorney at the CBD’s Climate Law Institute, slammed the EPA’s messaging as an attempt to sway consumers without explaining the true costs.

“Nobody but Big Oil profits from Trump trashing climate science and making cars and trucks guzzle and pollute more,” Pettit said. “Consumers will pay more to fill up, and our skies and oceans will fill up with more pollution.”

If the court sides with the EPA, “people everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, EDF’s associate vice president of clean air strategies, said.

EPA argued climate change evidence is “out of scope”

For environmentalists, the decision to sue the EPA was risky but necessary. By putting up a fight, they risk a court potentially reversing the 2009 Supreme Court ruling requiring the EPA to conduct the initial endangerment analysis and then regulate any pollution found from greenhouse gases.

Seemingly, that reversal is what the Trump administration has been angling for, hoping the case will reach the Supreme Court, which is more conservative today and perhaps less likely to read the Clean Air Act as broadly as the 2009 court.

It’s worth the risk, according to William Piermattei, the managing director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. He told The New York Times that environmentalists had no choice but to file the lawsuit and act on the public’s behalf.

Environmentalists “must challenge this,” Piermattei said. If they didn’t, they’d be “agreeing that we should not regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act, full stop.” He suggested that “a majority of the public, does not agree with that statement at all.”

Since 2010, the EPA has found that the scientific basis for concluding that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future US generations is robust, voluminous, and compelling.” And since then, the evidence base has only grown, the groups suing said.

Trump used to seem intimidated by the “overwhelming” evidence, environmentalists have noted. During Trump’s prior term, he notably left the endangerment finding in place, perhaps expecting that the evidence was irrefutable. He’s now renewed that fight, arguing that the evidence should be set aside, so that courts can focus on whether Congress “must weigh in on ‘major questions’ that have significant political and economic implications” and serve as a check on the EPA.

In the EPA’s comments addressing public concerns about the agency ignoring evidence, the agency has already argued that evidence of climate change is “out of scope” since the EPA did not repeal the basis of the finding. Instead, the EPA claims it is merely challenging its own authority to continue to regulate the auto industry for harmful emissions, suggesting that only Congress has that authority.

The Clean Air Act “does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns,” the EPA said. “In the absence of such authority, the Endangerment Finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”

Whether courts will agree that evidence supporting climate change is “out of scope” could determine whether the Supreme Court’s prior decision that compelled the endangerment finding is ultimately overturned. If that happens, subsequent administrations may struggle to issue a new endangerment finding to undo any potential damage. All eyes would then turn to Congress to pass a law to uphold protections.

EPA accused of abandoning its mission

By ignoring science, the EPA risks eroding public trust, according to Hana Vizcarra, a senior lawyer at the nonprofit Earthjustice, which is representing several groups in the litigation.

“With this action, EPA flips its mission on its head,” Vizcarra said. “It abandons its core mandate to protect human health and the environment to boost polluting industries and attempts to rewrite the law in order to do so.”

Groups appear confident that the courts will consider the science. Joanne Spalding, director of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, noted that the early 2000s litigation from the Sierra Club brought about the original EPA protections. She vowed that the Sierra Club would continue fighting to keep them.

“People should not be forced to suffer for this administration’s blind allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters,” Spalding said. “This shortsighted rollback is blatantly unlawful and their efforts to force this upon the American people will fail.”

Ankush Bansal, board president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, warned that courts cannot afford to ignore the evidence. The EPA’s “devastating decision” goes “against the science and testimony of countless scientists, health care professionals, and public health practitioners,” Bansal said. If upheld, the long-term consequences could seemingly bury courts in future legal battles.

“It will result in direct harm to the health of Americans throughout the country, particularly children, older adults, those with chronic illnesses, and other vulnerable populations, rural to urban, red and blue, of all races and incomes,” Bansal said. “The increased exposure to harmful pollutants and other greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel production and consumption will make America sicker, not healthier, less prosperous, not more, for generations to come.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Under Trump, EPA’s enforcement of environmental laws collapses, report finds

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The Environmental Protection Agency has drastically pulled back on holding polluters accountable.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the US Department of Justice in cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than in the first year of the Biden administration.

Trump’s first administration filed 86 such cases in its first year, which was in turn a drop from the Obama administration’s 127 four years earlier.

“Our nation’s landmark environmental laws are meaningless when EPA does not enforce the rules,” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement.

The findings echo two recent analyses from the nonprofits Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Earthjustice, which both documented dwindling environmental enforcement under Trump.

From day one of Trump’s second term, the administration has pursued an aggressive deregulatory agenda, scaling back regulations and health safeguards across the federal government that protect water, air and other parts of the environment. This push to streamline industry activities has been particularly favorable for fossil fuel companies. Trump declared an “energy emergency” immediately after his inauguration.

At the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin launched in March what the administration called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history”: 31 separate efforts to roll back restrictions on air and water pollution; to hand over more authority to states, some of which have a long history of supporting lax enforcement; and to relinquish EPA’s mandate to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.

The new report suggests the agency is also relaxing enforcement of existing law. Neither the White House nor the EPA responded to a request for comment.

A “compliance first” approach

Part of the decline in lawsuits against polluters could be due to the lack of staff to carry them out, experts say. According to an analysis from E&E News, at least a third of lawyers in the Justice Department’s environment division have left in the past year. Meanwhile, the EPA in 2025 laid off hundreds of employees who monitored pollution that could hurt human health.

Top agency officials are also directing staff to issue fewer violation notices and reduce other enforcement actions. In December, the EPA formalized a new “compliance first” enforcement policy that stresses working with suspected violators to correct problems before launching any formal action that could lead to fines or mandatory correction measures.

“Formal enforcement … is appropriate only when compliance assurance or informal enforcement is inapplicable or insufficient to achieve rapid compliance,” wrote Craig Pritzlaff, who is now a principal deputy assistant EPA administrator, in a Dec. 5 memo to all enforcement officials and regional offices.

Only in rare cases involving an immediate hazard should enforcers use traditional case tools, Pritzlaff said. “Immediate formal enforcement may be required in certain circumstances, such as when there is an emergency that presents significant harm to human health and the environment,” he wrote.

Federal agencies like the EPA, with staffs far outmatched in size compared to the vast sectors of the economy they oversee, typically have used enforcement actions not only to deal with violators but to deter other companies from breaking the law. Environmental advocates worry that without environmental cops visible on the beat, compliance will erode.

Pritzlaff joined the EPA last fall after five years heading up enforcement for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen noted that he was known as a “reluctant regulator.” Public Citizen and other advocacy groups criticized TCEQ under Pritzlaff’s leadership for its reticence to take decisive action against repeat violators.

One example: An INEOS chemical plant had racked up close to 100 violations over a decade before a 2023 explosion that sent one worker to the hospital, temporarily shut down the Houston Ship Channel and sparked a fire that burned for an hour. Public Citizen said it was told by TCEQ officials that the agency allowed violations to accumulate over the years, arguing it was more efficient to handle multiple issues in a single enforcement action.

“But that proved to be untrue, instead creating a complex backlog of cases that the agency is still struggling to resolve,” Public Citizen wrote last fall after Pritzlaff joined the EPA. “That’s not efficiency, it’s failure.”

Early last year, TCEQ fined INEOS $2.3 million for an extensive list of violations that occurred between 2016 and 2021.

“A slap on the wrist”

The EPA doesn’t always take entities to court when they violate environmental laws. At times, the agency can resolve these issues through less-formal administrative cases, which actually increased during the first eight months of Trump’s second term when compared to the same period in the Biden administration, according to the new report.

However, most of these administrative actions involved violations of requirements for risk management plans under the Clean Air Act or municipalities’ violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Trump administration did not increase administrative cases that involve pollution from industrial operations, Environmental Integrity Project spokesperson Tom Pelton said over email.

Another signal of declining enforcement: Through September of last year, the EPA issued $41 million in penalties—$8 million less than the same period in the first year of the Biden administration, after adjusting for inflation. This suggests “the Trump Administration may be letting more polluters get by with a slap on the wrist when the Administration does take enforcement action,” the report reads.

Combined, the lack of lawsuits, penalties, and other enforcement actions for environmental violations could impact communities across the country, said Erika Kranz, a senior staff attorney in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, who was not involved in the report.

“We’ve been seeing the administration deregulate by repealing rules and extending compliance deadlines, and this decline in enforcement action seems like yet another mechanism that the administration is using to de-emphasize environmental and public health protections,” Kranz said. “It all appears to be connected, and if you’re a person in the US who is worried about your health and the health of your neighbors generally, this certainly could have effects.”

The report notes that many court cases last longer than a year, so it will take time to get a clearer sense of how environmental enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. However, the early data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project and other nonprofits shows a clear and steep shift away from legal actions against polluters.

Historically, administrations have a “lot of leeway on making enforcement decisions,” Kranz said. But this stark of a drop could prompt lawsuits against the Trump administration, she added.

“Given these big changes and trends, you might see groups arguing that this is more than just an exercise of discretion or choosing priorities [and] this is more of an abdication of an agency’s core mission and its statutory duties,” Kranz said. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see if groups make those arguments, and if they do, how courts look at them.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Under Trump, EPA’s enforcement of environmental laws collapses, report finds Read More »

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EPA moves to stop considering economic benefits of cleaner air

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The move to exclude the estimated benefits relates specifically to fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (known as PM2.5) and ozone. This particulate matter, commonly produced by combustion, is small enough to make it through your respiratory system and into your bloodstream. For this reason, it is associated with a host of health impacts even beyond respiratory conditions. That has made research on those impacts the target of anti-regulation advocates who claim scientists exaggerate the harm.

Ozone is also a familiar enough pollutant in smoggy areas to be mentioned in weather forecasts as a warning for people with conditions like asthma. Ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere results from reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds emitted by various anthropogenic sources.

The new EPA language claims that past analyses have failed to adequately represent the scientific uncertainty of the economic value of reducing these pollutants. The new economic impact analysis for stationary combustion turbines, for example, says this “leads the public to believe the Agency has a better understanding of the monetized impacts of exposure to PM2.5 and ozone than in reality.” It continues, “Therefore, to rectify this error, the EPA is no longer monetizing benefits from PM2.5 and ozone but will continue to quantify the emissions until the Agency is confident enough in the modeling to properly monetize those impacts.”

A 2024 regulatory impact analysis for stationary combustion turbines had estimated those benefits at $27–$92 million per year for a tightening of emissions limits.

This is not the first time that these numbers have become political targets. Between 2004 and 2008, the Bush administration reduced the EPA’s value of a statistical life by around 11 percent. But instead of moving numbers to the lower end of scientific estimates, the Trump administration is more aggressively weaponizing scientific uncertainty. Functionally, the logic is that since estimates of benefits vary from large to extremely large, the EPA will default to a value of zero. Only the costs will be calculated, and those numbers are sure to be highlighted as justification for loosening pollution limits.

Currently, documentation for how the EPA previously calculated pollution regulation benefits based on research—including transparent assessments of scientific uncertainties—is still available on the EPA website.

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Trump’s EPA sued for axing $7 billion solar energy program

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The Environmental Protection Agency was sued Wednesday over an allegedly politically motivated decision to end a program that Congress intended to help low-income and disadvantaged communities across the US save money on electricity bills through rooftop and community solar programs.

In their complaint, a group of plaintiffs who would have benefited from the EPA’s “Solar for All” program—including a labor union, several businesses, and a homeowner who cannot afford her electricity bills without it—accused the EPA of violating federal law and the Constitution by unlawfully terminating the program.

Solar for All was “expected to save an estimated $350 million annually on energy bills during and after the five-year program, providing energy bill relief for more than 900,000 low-income and disadvantaged households,” plaintiffs noted. Additionally, it was “expected to secure 4,000 megawatts of new solar energy over five years and generate 200,000 new jobs.”

According to plaintiffs, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin illegally squashed the program after Congress repealed a statute in July that had sparked the program’s creation. However, lawmakers were clear when repealing the statute that only “unobligated” funds could be rescinded, plaintiffs argued, citing lawmakers who “repeatedly” stated that the repeal would not impact funding that had already been awarded.

In 2024, Congress obligated the EPA to award $7 billion in grants to recipients behind projects that would have created “hundreds of thousands of good-paying, high-quality jobs” and spared the average low-income family “about $400 each year on their electricity bills,” plaintiffs argued.

Allegedly Zeldin “arbitrarily” decided to ignore the “plain language” of the statute, plaintiffs alleged, waiting a month after the statute’s repeal to terminate the Solar for All program in August.

Plaintiffs noted that because Zeldin was distributing funds for weeks after the statute’s repeal, this indicated he understood the funding had not been rescinded. They accused Donald Trump’s EPA of violating the separation of powers by interfering to block congressionally awarded funds due to Trump’s disdain for solar energy—pointing to a Zeldin social media post that claimed that the “EPA no longer has the authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”

Trump’s EPA sued for axing $7 billion solar energy program Read More »

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EPA accused of faking criminal investigation to claw back climate funds

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Citibank has until March 15 to provide more information on orders to freeze funding. More details on that front were shared today, however, in a court filing in a lawsuit raised by Climate United—one of eight NCIF awardees whose funding was suddenly frozen.

In a motion opposing a request for a temporary restraining order forcing Citibank to unfreeze the funds, Citibank argued that it plays only an administrative role in managing accounts.

According to Citibank, it cannot be liable for freezing the funds because it’s legally required to follow instructions from the EPA and the Department of Treasury, and those agencies ordered Citibank “to pause all further disbursements from GGRF accounts, including those held by Climate United, until further notice.”

Citibank told the US district court that orders came to freeze the funding after “the government informed Citibank that the GGRF program was subject to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Supposedly, the FBI received “credible information” that Climate United’s Citibank account was “involved in possible criminal violations,” allegedly including conspiracy to defraud the United States and wire fraud, Citibank’s filing said. In a footnote, Citibank said that it also “learned” that the EPA was “deeply” concerned about “matters of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures.”

So, freezing the funds was viewed as necessary, the filing alleged, to prevent “misuse of funds.” And Citibank claimed it had no authority to dispute “lawful” orders.

“Citibank is not vested with discretion to second-guess the government’s concerns regarding the ‘misconduct, waste, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud’ that the government has stated is occurring,” Citibank’s filing said.

Climate United, which describes itself as “a public-private investment fund that removes financial barriers to clean technologies,” said in a press release that freezing the funds had already harmed “hard-working Americans who are struggling to pay for groceries and keep the lights on.”

“Small businesses and developers are unable to draw committed funds for project expenses, critical programs are delayed or paused, and Climate United’s reputation as a lender is impacted,” Climate United said, rounding up stories from stakeholders already struggling through the freeze and urging, “this isn’t about politics; it’s about economics.”

EPA accused of faking criminal investigation to claw back climate funds Read More »

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EPA expands “high priority” probe into AT&T, Verizon lead-contaminated cables

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EPA expands “high priority” probe into AT&T, Verizon lead-contaminated cables

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expanding its investigation into potential risks posed by lead-covered cables installed nationwide by major telecommunications companies, The Wall Street Journal revealed in an exclusive report Thursday.

After finding “more than 100 readings with elevated lead near cables,” the EPA sent letters to AT&T and Verizon in December, requesting a meeting later this month, the Journal revealed. On the agenda, the EPA expects the companies to share internal data on their own testing of the cables, as well as details from any “technical reports related to the companies’ testing and sampling,” the WSJ reported.

The EPA’s investigation was prompted by a WSJ report published last July, alleging that AT&T, Verizon, and other companies were aware that thousands of miles of cables could be contaminating soils throughout the US, “where Americans live, work and play,” but did nothing to intervene despite the many public health risks associated with lead exposure.

In that report, tests showed that the telecom cables were likely the source of lead contaminated soils because “the amount measured in the soil was highest directly under or next to the cables and dropped within a few feet.” WSJ also spoke to residents and former telecom employees in areas tested who had contracted illnesses commonly linked to lead exposure.

Immediately, WSJ’s report spurred lawmakers to demand a response from USTelecom—a telecommunications trade association representing companies accused—with Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) suggesting that telecom giants were seemingly committing “corporate irresponsibility of the worst kind.”

Since then, the EPA has followed up and developed “its own testing data” in West Orange, New Jersey, southwest Pennsylvania, and Louisiana—the same locations flagged by the WSJ. In all locations, the EPA found lead contamination exceeding the “current recommendation for levels of lead it believes are generally safe in soil where children play,” 400-parts-per-million, the WSJ reported. In West Orange, two testing sites found lead “at 3,300 parts per million or higher.”

According to the EPA, initial testing by a national working group led to a conclusion that none of these sites poses an immediate health risk or requires an emergency response, but that finding hasn’t stopped the probe. The EPA told the WSJ that it still needs to address unanswered questions to decide “whether further actions may be required to address risks from the lead-containing cables.”

“While some locations sampled show concentrations above screening levels for long term exposures, existing data is not sufficient to determine whether lead from the cables poses a threat, or a potential threat, to human health or the environment,” the EPA said in a Reuters report.

Companies maintain that evidence from their own testing has shown lead cables do not pose public health risks requiring remediation.

USTelecom, speaking on behalf of Verizon and other telecom companies, told the WSJ that “our industry has been engaging with the EPA and our companies look forward to meeting with the EPA to discuss agency and industry testing results. We will continue to follow the science, which has not identified that lead-sheathed telecom cables are a leading cause of lead exposure or the cause of a public health issue.”

AT&T told the WSJ that it “will continue to work collaboratively with the EPA as it undertakes its review of lead-clad telecommunications cables. We look forward to the opportunity to meet with the EPA to discuss recent testing and other evidence that contradicts the Wall Street Journal’s assertions.”

An EPA spokesperson, Nick Conger, told Bloomberg that there is no date set for the meeting yet.

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EVs and hybrids had a noticeable effect on US fuel consumption, says EPA

Cars, corporate average fuel efficiency, Environmental Protection Agency, US Environmental Protection Agency / /

still want more small cars —

Model-year 2022 cars, crossovers, and yes, even SUVs are the most-efficient, ever.

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Fuel gauge's red needle indicating full gas tank on black background. Horizontal composition with copy space.

Getty Images

I like the idea of drawing the year to a close with some good news for a change, and I think maybe the US Environmental Protection Agency does as well. On Wednesday, the EPA published its Automotive Trends Report, which now included data for model-year 2022 vehicles.

And the data is good: record-low carbon emissions and record-high fuel economy, and the biggest improvement year on year for almost a decade.

For MY2022, the EPA says that the average real-world CO2 emissions for all new vehicles fell by 10 g/mile to 337 g/mile, the lowest average it has ever measured. Similarly, real-world fuel economy increased by 0.6 mpg for MY2022, to 26 mpg—this, too, is a record high and the single-largest year-on-year improvement for both CO2 and mpg for nine years.

And it’s not a one-off. Despite the occasional off year, the EPA’s data shows that since 2004, US passenger fleet emissions have decreased by 27 percent, or 123 g/mile. And over the same time, average fuel economy has increased by 35 percent, or 6.7 mpg. Even better, the EPA says its preliminary data shows even greater declines in carbon emissions and greater increases in fuel efficiency for MY2023.

The report splits light passenger vehicles into five buckets: sedan/wagon, car SUV (aka a crossover), truck SUV, pickup truck, and minivan/van. (The difference between a car SUV and truck SUV is a regulatory definition that includes weight thresholds and things like “does it have all-wheel drive?”.)

Even more good news here: in MY2022, four of the five categories are now the most efficient they have been since the EPA started keeping tabs on this sort of thing. Sedans and wagons saw their emissions decrease 11 g/mile for MY2022. Car SUVs decreased their emissions by 27 g/mile for the same model year. Pickup trucks recorded an 18 g/mile decrease, and truck SUVs improved by 4 g/mile.

Bad news for minivans, however. Not only are there barely any left for sale—accounting for just 3 percent of new vehicles produced for MY2022—this category also saw its average emissions increase by 17 g/mile.

But I’m also not thrilled that 63 percent of all new vehicles built in MY2022 were truck SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans/vans, which are subject to less stringent corporate average fuel economy standards, as opposed to the more stringent light-duty regulations. The EPA says this is the highest percentage of trucks since 1975, and it’s only going to get worse for model-year 2023.

All you readers who rush to post that “Not Just Bikes” video, cue that up now. Because despite the best real-world fuel efficiency on record, model year 2022 vehicles are larger and heavier than they’ve ever been.

Some of the increase in size and weight is due to improved passive and active safety systems—crumple zones, side-impact protection, better rollover protection, and in some cases almost a dozen airbags throughout the cabin. But some of the growth in size, and much of the increase in power, is down to what the EPA calls “market trends”—it’s what US customers want from their new vehicles, like it or not. And the bad news is that the EPA doesn’t see those trends changing for model-year 2023.

Who did best, who did worst?

The EPA report also calculates trends for each OEM over the past few years, so we can see who’s getting better and who’s getting worse.

I’m often effusive about the engineering and quality of new Korean vehicles, and there’s yet another data point in their favor: They lead the way in fleet average efficiency (29.1 mpg) and carbon emissions (302 g/mile), although obviously brands like Tesla and Rivian that don’t sell any combustion engines have fleet emissions of 0 g/mile.

Kia also showed big gains from 2017-2022, coming in third place after Honda, which actually got dirtier and less efficient over the same timeframe.

Toyota showed the greatest improvement over time, reducing carbon emissions by 32 g/mile and increasing fuel efficiency from 25.3 mpg to 27.8 mpg. Meanwhile Mazda went the other way. It’s now selling many more big SUVs than it used to, and went from 29 mpg for MY2017 to 27 mpg for MY2022.

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