Biden-Harris EPA rules save $253 billion annually, 202,000 lives; Project 2025 seeks to phase out

The new Biden-Harris air quality rules, set to take effect from 2021 to 2024, would save Americans $253 billion annually, save 202,000 lives, and prevent 107 million asthma attacks by 2050, according to a new analysis from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN).

The analysis focused on 16 of the most significant air pollution rule updates that EPA has implemented over the past four years, summarizing their cumulative impact on the environment and economy.

The combined benefits between these policies are staggering. EPN estimates that the 202,632 lives saved by these standards by 2050 would be enough to fill a convoy of buses on the Philadelphia-to-New York expressway. And the 107 million asthma attacks avoided would mean fewer absences from work and school, as well as fewer crowded emergency rooms and doctor’s offices.

In terms of costs, the $253 billion in savings also includes regulatory costs. Regulatory costs amount to about $50 billion per year, while benefits amount to $303 billion for a yearThe 6:1 benefit-to-cost ratio is quite high and can be viewed as an investment in the health of Americans as a population and in the workforce, said Rob Wolcott, EPN board chairman and former EPA senior adviser in the Office of Research and Development.

Indeed, the total benefits of this “investment,” calculated through 2050, are in the trillions of dollars. And thanks to the administration’s Justice40 initiative, many of those benefits will reach underserved communities.

EPN says the numbers found in its analysis are likely understated because it focused solely on the health and climate benefits of improved air quality, ignoring other EPA work on “toxic chemicals, clean water, and other environmental hazards.” This analysis only looks at air pollution standards, such as pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) often misses certain health benefits that are difficult to measure, meaning that if they were included, the benefit-to-cost ratio could be even better.

We have previously reported on many of the regulations included in this analysis, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s light-duty vehicle emissions rules, which alone would save Americans $100 billion per year despite being slightly watered down from the original proposal, and the toughest truck pollution rules ever.

EPN points out that these rules are popular, with broad support from the public, environmental groups, health organizations, labor unions, and even business organizations. Most of the EPA’s biggest policies, such as those on power plants, soot, and tailpipe pollution, have bipartisan support levels of 70 to 80 percent in polls.

These gains have been achieved despite sustained attacks from an ideologically minded U.S. Supreme Court that has shown little interest in upholding the law. Not only has the court told the EPA that it cannot regulate harmful pollutants from coal-fired power plants because the Clean Air Act does not mandate it (even though the Clean Air Act does order the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate harmful pollutants), and to replace the opinions of untrained judges who have been through various venues with the opinions of professional scientists in an incredibly stupid way Loper Light opinion that would overturn the Chevron Doctrine.

The progress is also remarkable considering the damage done to the EPA between 2017 and 2020. During that period, some 700 scientists left the EPA after their work was sidelined in favor of ideologically driven opinions from political appointees rather than well-established scientific methodologies.

And there is ample reason to believe this type of damage could be done again under a potential future Republican administration.

Climate and health savings under fire by Project 2025

EPN points out that these positive regulations are being attacked by industry groups (e.g. trucking and oil companies who are trying to sue people to stop truck pollution regulations, even though they bring huge benefits) and by political initiatives such as Project 2025.

Project 2025 is the latest in a four-year set of recommendations being prepared for Republican presidential candidates by the far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation. Among other dystopian goals, it aims to completely strip the EPA of its ability to do work like the one above and reverse the benefits of the regulations.

Three-time Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump endorsed Project 2025 in 2022, and many of his former staffers worked on the plan — the EPA section was written by his EPA chief of staff. And in 2018, The Heritage Foundation boasted that most of their recommendations had been acted on. So we can expect a Republican administration to push for action on many of the recommended rollbacks.

Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at EPN, said Project 2025 “poses a huge risk to the progress we’ve made to attract the best minds to EPA,” amid previous staffing challenges following an exodus of scientists the last time a Republican was in the White House.

EPN presented the EPA with a bipartisan set of recommendations in 2020 outlining how the agency can “reset its course,” though progress still needs to be made to repair the damage that has been done.

EPN’s Rob Wolcott praised EPA’s efforts to rebuild the agency but noted that “building an agency takes a lot more time, effort, and money than rapidly degrading it.”

Electrek’s Opinion

Look, we are here in Electric we cover EV, renewables and other environmental news every day. We see the headlines, we follow all the events, we track who is promoting what. We have been doing this for over a decade.

And it was rigid difference in the kind of reporting we’ve had to do over the last 8 years. While there are a lot of stupid decisions that cut across the divide, the kind of progress we’ve seen over the last 4 years is a hell of a lot better than the attempted destruction over the previous 4 years.

And because our work here in Electric (and as living beings on planet Earth) we are to focus on cleaner means of transport and promote a cleaner environment, therefore it behooves us to provide you with this information in an understandable way.

We do not hide here our bias towards cleaner air and water and towards more efficient networks and transportation systems. However, these biases are not really biases when they are or should be shared by all living beings on this planet.

Clean air is an objective good – and it is the most important problem in our lives, considering that nothing else matters if we don’t have the basic necessities of life (air, water, shelter, etc.). This is the basis Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for the entire planet and its protection should be seen as a patriotic duty.

We hope that by outlining the progress that has been made over the past four years, as well as the economic and environmental damage done over the previous four years (at the request of the coal and oil industry backers who did so in order to protect the polluting industries that bought them), you will better understand the significance of the decision that the American people will make in November.

There are too many people who think there is little difference between the administrations on environmental issues, or who think it is absurd for either party to oppose clean air and water. But there is clear evidence showing that the current and recent history of Republicans has imposed more pollution and higher costs. And the analysis above shows that the difference is clear.

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