Within the Department of Energy, offices dedicated to clean energy research and implementation would be eliminated, and energy efficiency guidelines and requirements for appliances would be scrapped. The environmental oversight capabilities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be significantly reduced or eliminated entirely, preventing these agencies from tracking methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, or conducting climate change research.
In addition to these major reforms, Project 2025 advocates for the elimination of smaller, lesser-known federal programs and statutes that protect public health and environmental justice. It recommends eliminating the Endangerment Determination, the legal mechanism that requires the EPA to reduce emissions and air pollutants from vehicles and power plants, among other industries, under the Clean Air Act. It also recommends eliminating government efforts to assess the social cost of carbon, or the harm caused by each additional ton of carbon emitted. And it seeks to prevent agencies from evaluating the “co-benefits,” or positive health impacts, of their policies, such as improved air quality.
“When we think about who will be most affected by pollution — whether it’s conventional air, water and soil pollution or climate change — it’s very often low-income communities and communities of color,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization. “Weakening these kinds of protections will have a disproportionate impact on these same communities.”
Other proposals would wreak havoc on the country’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. Project 2025 suggests eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, which are housed within that agency, and replacing those organizations with private companies. The plan appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying that the data it collects should be “presented in a neutral manner, with no adjustments intended to support either side in the climate debate.” But the National Hurricane Center gets much of its data from the National Weather Service, as do most other private weather service companies, and eliminating public weather data could Devastating Americans’ access to accurate weather forecasts“It’s absurd,” said Rob Moore, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “This solution doesn’t solve any problem, it’s a solution that seeks to solve a problem.”