In a sweeping climate change policy rollback, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has cancelled an Obama-era scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, eliminating federal tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks.
Alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, U.S. President Donald Trump announced, “the single largest deregulatory action in American history: the full revocation of the disastrous Obama-era ‘Endangerment Finding’ and the consumer mandates that depended on it,” the White House said in a statement.
The White House argued that American families will save an average of over $2,400 on new cars, SUVs, and trucks. “Transportation and trucking costs will drop, helping bring down the price of everyday goods. Drivers will no longer be forced into unnecessary, unpopular features that limit choice and jack up costs. President Trump is proving once again that strong leadership delivers real results: lower prices, more freedom, and a stronger economy for every American,” the White House said.
Asked to comment on President Trump’s latest climate change policy rollback, a European Commission spokesperson told NE Global on February 16, “The EU’s climate policies are based on science and continue to be based on science.”
Tatiana Mitrova, research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy explained that the revocation of the 2009 endangerment finding would be symbolically significant, but its immediate global impact is likely to be limited. “Climate trajectories are increasingly driven by technology costs, capital allocation, and international policy frameworks rather than by a single regulatory decision in one country,” Mitrova told NE Global on February 16.
However, the EPA’s anti-climate move could have significant consequences for efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions, as well as regulate companies, especially in the United States.
Mitrova argued that in the U.S. the revocation of the 2009 endangerment finding could slow the regulatory push behind decarbonization, weaken federal oversight of emissions, and create greater policy uncertainty. “That uncertainty tends to delay investment decisions, particularly in capital-intensive sectors,” she said.
Impact on renewables and electrification
On renewables and electrification, the impact is more nuanced, Mitrova said. “Clean technologies are now competitive on cost in many segments, and electrification trends are supported by industrial strategy and energy security concerns as much as by climate policy. However, policy reversals can slow deployment speed and reduce investor confidence, especially in areas that depend on federal incentives or standards,” she said, adding, “So, revoking the endangerment finding may not reverse the energy transition, but it increases policy uncertainty. In energy markets, uncertainty does not stop change – it slows it and makes it more uneven.”
Norway-based Francesco Sassi, research fellow in energy geopolitics and markets at R.I.E.-Ricerche Industriali ed Energetiche in Bologna, Italy, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo (UiO), said the U.S. retreat from global commitments on climate has multiple direct consequences, starting with a mystification on the reasons why the transition must accelerate in all advanced economies. “This undercuts the rationale by which many stakeholders, have invested in renewables and low-carbon energy sectors and technologies, over the last decades,” Sassi told NE Global on February 17.
The EPA said in a press release that the final rule will save Americans over $1.3 trillion by removing the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify, and comply with federal Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions, and reporting obligations that exist solely to support the vehicle GHG regulatory regime.
President Trump has ENDED the “Green New Scam”. Today’s repeal of the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding eliminates what has been referred to by some as the “Holy Grail” that empowered the nation’s most extensive regulatory overreach. pic.twitter.com/hoOKuA3n7H
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) February 12, 2026
Ending credit for start-stop feature in cars
“The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin argued. “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated. The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American Dream,” he said, adding, “As EPA Administrator, I am proud to deliver the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers. As an added bonus, the off-cycle credit for the almost universally despised start-stop feature on vehicles has been removed.”
