US energy sector faces uncertainty after EPA upends landmark climate rule in Oil & Companies News 20/02/2026 The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US government’s ability under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles will also affect power companies and the oil and gas industry, but legal experts disagree on how. The 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding issued for mobile sources also provides the legally required finding that the US Environmental Protection Agency has relied on to regulate GHG emissions from other industrial sources, including the power sector and, for methane emissions, the oil and natural gas sector, according to David Hayes, professor at Stanford University’s School of Sustainability. Hayes served as a special climate policy assistant to former President Joe Biden. The EPA on Feb. 12 issued a final rule repealing that 2009 finding. Among immediate concerns for the oil and gas sector in particular are state climate lawsuits. Given the EPA’s repeal, the so-called preemption under the Clean Air Act can no longer be invoked to halt state and local climate lawsuits, David Amerikaner, a partner with Duane Morris, said. “With EPA withdrawing from its role as the regulator of greenhouse gas emissions, there’s no preemption anymore that shielded energy and industry players from climate tort lawsuits,” Amerikaner said in an interview. “It’s now ceding that ground and I think we should expect a wave of litigation in many states.” The EPA’s move will bring additional risks to industry, according to Anna Mosby and Matt Williams, global and regional climate policy analysts with S&P Global Energy. The US Supreme Court had previously ruled in American Electric Power v. Connecticut in 2011 that “federal statute — namely the EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions under the [Clean Air Act] — displaced federal common law, shielding regulated industries from litigation,” Mosby and Williams wrote in a Feb. 13 brief. “The EPA argues in the final rule that federal preemption of state emissions standards and federal common-law claims stands, but this position is very likely to face its own legal challenges,” the analysts said. The EPA’s decision to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding for vehicles could bolster the Trump administration’s argument for undercutting a Biden-era power plant rule, but experts differed over the impacts for methane regulation. Continued uncertainty for power sector The Trump administration used some of the same arguments in its proposal to repeal Biden-era standards for power plants as it did to eliminate GHG reductions for cars and trucks. The power plant rule is still in the proposal stage and has yet to be forwarded to the White House for final review. But the power plant rule did not outright repeal the endangerment finding for that sector, and the administration would have to update its proposal with a supplemental filing were it to do so, Hana Vizcarra, senior attorney with Earthjustice focused on national climate cases, said. “They’re in sort of a bind here trying to figure out where they’re going,” Vizcarra said in an interview. “Are they going to take this very extreme ideological stance that is contrary to existing law and precedent and try to push that through across the board? We don’t yet know how they’re going to transfer [the Feb. 12 rule] into the stationary source world.” Much will depend on how the litigation goes, Vizcarra and other attorneys said