The Environmental Protection Agency is cutting rules limiting climate pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gaas. Dr. Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, joins "The Daily Report."
Page B2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 15 September 2026
Court blocks Trump's bid to save one coal plant; EPA repeals pollution limits on every plant like it.
As it ran on the front
The federal limit on climate pollution from coal and gas-fired power plants died this week at the Environmental Protection Agency. It was five days old, as an orphan goes: the government had just lost, on September 11, the smaller version of the same argument.
That loss came in Michigan, where a federal appellate court blocked the Department of Energy from keeping a 64-year-old coal plant open past its scheduled retirement in May 2025. Energy Secretary Chris Wright had intervened by citing an emergency. The court did not buy the malarkey. Ted Kelly, a lead counsel for clean energy at the group that brought the challenge, put it plainly: the plant was "unreliable, aging" and "bleeding money" while it polluted the community around it. One outlet's headline already had the epitaph ready — old, expensive, and dirty — before the ink on the ruling dried.…
…(cont) Two days earlier, wildfires were burning across three southern provinces in Türkiye, the country set to host the next United Nations climate summit, COP31, in November. Efe Baysal, the Türkiye manager for the advocacy group 350.org, called for phasing out coal, gas, and oil before the delegates arrive to discuss phasing out coal, gas, and oil.
So the sequence, in order: a court tells the government it may not keep one old plant on life support by decree. Wildfires burn in the country hosting the next climate summit. And five days after the court ruling, the agency in charge of the actual air repeals the rule that limited climate pollution from every coal and gas plant in the country — not just the one the court had just refused to save.
The math was never complicated. An old plant that loses money for its owners and its neighbors alike is still just shit, dressed up as an emergency, whichever office signs the order. The courts caught that trick once, for one plant, this month. The rule that would have made them catch it again is the one that just died.
The pollution limit is survived by every coal and gas plant that no longer answers to it. It was preceded in death, by five days, by the fiction that one of them could be kept running by decree.
In lieu of flowers, find out which plant near you was scheduled to retire, and check whether it still is.
“They lost the retail version of the con — one old, dirty plant kept alive by executive order — so five days later they signed the wholesale one instead. That's the whole trick: get told no on the small case, then go get the big one signed by whoever runs the agency. Somebody's kid grows up next to a smokestack that was supposed to be closed by now, and "grid reliability" will be the excuse, again.”
“Look, the Michigan case was narrow — one emergency order, one plant, apples to oranges. This week's rule is about regulatory certainty for the whole sector, which, sure, happens to remove the exact limits a court just said couldn't be propped up for a single plant, but that's — okay, that's not nothing. Anyway, baseload power, grid reliability, you know the lines.”
The receipts
Climate defenders celebrated on Friday after a federal appellate court rejected the US Department of Energy's abuse of emergency powers to keep a Michigan coal plant open, part of President Donald Trump's broader push to boost the climate-wrecking industry. "The court rejected the Trump administration's nationwide push forcing…
· Federal court knocks down Trump’s order extending Michigan coal plant’s operations past retirement from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· With Türkiye to Host COP31, Wildfires Spark Demand for Fossil Fuel Phaseout from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.