The Biden-Harris EPA’s new air quality rules introduced from 2021-2024 will save Americans $253 billion annually, and save 202,632 lives and avoid 100 million asthma attacks by 2050, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Network (EPN).
The analysis focused on sixteen major air pollution rule updates that EPA implemented over the last four years, summing up their total environmental and economic effects.
Between these rules, the sum total of benefits are staggering. EPN points out that the 202,632 lives saved by these standards by 2050 would be enough to fill up a convoy of buses on the highway all the way from Philadelphia to New York City. And that the 107 million avoided asthma attacks means fewer missed work and school says and less-crowded emergency rooms and doctors’ offices.
In terms of costs, the $253 billion saved also includes regulatory costs. Regulatory costs run on the order of $50 billion per year, and benefits of $303 billion per year. The 6:1 ratio of benefits to costs is quite high, and can be thought of as an investment into the health of Americans as a population and a labor force, said Rob Wolcott, EPN board chair and former EPA senior counsel to the Office of Research and Development.
Indeed, total benefits of this “investment,” calculated through 2050, run in the trillions of dollars. And due to the administration’s Justice40 initiative, many of these benefits will be seen by underserved communities.
EPN says the numbers found in its analysis are likely understated, because it focused solely on the health and climate benefits of better air quality, ignoring other work the EPA has done on “toxic chemicals, clean water and other environmental threats.” This analysis is purely for air pollution standards like smokestack and tailpipe pollution.
EPA often leaves out certain health benefits that are hard to quantify, which means the benefit-cost ratio could be improved even further if those were accounted for.
We’ve reported on many of the rules covered by this analysis before, like EPA’s light-duty vehicle exhaust rule, which will save Americans $100 billion per year on its own despite it being slightly softened from the original proposal, and its strongest-ever truck pollution rule.
EPN points out that these regulations have been popular, with broad support from the public, environmental groups, health organizations, labor unions, and even business organizations. Most of EPA’s biggest policy moves, like those on power plant, soot and tailpipe pollution, attain bipartisan public support of 70-80% when polled.
These benefits were achieved despite constant attacks by an ideologically-driven US “Supreme” Court which has shown little interest in following the law. Not only did the court tell the EPA that it can’t regulate harmful pollutants from coal plants because the Clean Air Act doesn’t tell it to (despite that the Clean Air Act does tell the EPA to regulate harmful pollutants), it also substituted the opinions of untrained, venue-shopped judges ahead of those of professional scientists in the incredibly stupid Loper Bright opinion that would overturn the Chevron doctrine.
The progress is also remarkable given the damage done to the EPA from 2017-2020. In that period, around 700 scientists had left the EPA, after having their work sidelined in favor of the ideologically-driven opinions of political appointees rather than well-established scientific metholodogies.
And there’s plenty reason to believe that this sort of damage could be done again under a potential future republican administration.
Climate and health savings under attack by Project 2025
EPN points out that these positive rules are under attack by industry groups (like trucking and oil companies that are trying to sue to stop truck pollution rules, despite their outsized benefits), and by political efforts like Project 2025.
Project 2025 is the latest edition of a quadrennial set of recommendations prepared for republican presidential candidates by the far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation. Among other dystopian goals, it seeks to completely gut the EPA’s ability to do work like the above, and to reverse the benefits from the above regulations.
Three-time republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, endorsed Project 2025 back in 2022, and the plan was worked on by many of his former staff – the EPA section was written by the chief of staff at his EPA. And in 2018, The Heritage Foundation bragged that action was made on most of their recommendations. So we can expect that a republican administration would seek action on many of the recommended rollbacks.
Jeremy Symons, EPN Senior Advisor said that Project 2025 “creates a huge risk in the progress that’s been made to attract the best minds to EPA,” in the wake of previous staffing challenges after the exodus of scientists the last time a republican was in the White House.
EPN had offered a bipartisan set of recommendations to the EPA in 2020 describing how the agency could “reset its course,” though there is still progress to be made to repair the agency from the damage that was done.
Rob Wolcott of the EPN praised EPA’s efforts to rebuild the agency but pointed out that “it takes a great deal more time and effort and money to build an agency than to rapidly degrade it.”
Electrek’s Take
Look, we here at Electrek cover EVs, renewables and other environmental news every day. We see the headlines, we follow all the developments, we keep track of who’s pushing what. We’ve been doing it for over a decade now.
And there has been a stark difference in the type of reporting we’ve had to do across the course of the last 8 years. While there are plenty of dumb decisions that reach across the aisle, the type of progress we’ve seen in these last 4 years is night-and-day better than the attempts at destruction of the previous 4 years.
And since our work here at Electrek (and, indeed, as living beings on the planet Earth) is to focus on and advocate for cleaner transportation options, and a cleaner environment, it behooves us to bring that information to you in a clear way.
We do not hide our bias here towards cleaner air and water, and towards a more efficient grid and transportation system. However, these biases aren’t really biases when they are or should be shared by all living beings on this planet.
Clean air is an objective good – and is the most important issue in our lives as well, given that nothing else really matters if we don’t have the basic things required for life (air, water, shelter and so on). It’s the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for the entire planet, and should be considered a patriotic duty to preserve.
So, in describing the progress made in these last 4 years, and the economic and environmental damage done in the previous 4 years (at the behest of coal and oil stooges who were doing so to protect the polluting industry that bought them), we hope that this brings into focus the meaning of the decision that Americans will make come November.
There are far too many people who believe that there is little difference between administrations on issues of environmental protection, or who feel that it’s absurd that any party would oppose clean air and water. But there is clear evidence showing the republicans’ current and recent history imposing more pollution and higher costs. And the analysis above shows that the difference is clear.
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