As RedState reported earlier on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has neutered the so-called "Endangerment Finding" which fueled the majority of climate change regulations and restrictions that have been foisted upon industry and the American consumer for the past 15 years.
As our editor Bob Hoge wrote:
The policy had given the EPA tremendous unchecked power to highly regulate energy production and other sectors in a bid to stop the planet from warming. Trump views it as an economic disaster, and he’s getting rid of it:
First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government’s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country’s contribution to the global crisis.
“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy “disastrous.”
Hoge added, "It’s a sharp contrast to the regimes of Obama and Biden, who both seem determined to neuter our energy production, drive up costs for virtually everything, and backtrack on progress."
The climate zealots and those who profit from it, which is essentially any Democrat, climate consultancy class, or left-wing environmental organization, are melting down, with panties in a wad and lawsuits being threatened. Like the swift pull of a Jenga block, removal of the endangerment finding is crashing the entire climate change boondoggle to the ground.
As EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pointed out, this regulation has been used to create arbitrary climate change diktats, and the automobile industry has been the test case for these forced rules that spiked costs and limited consumer freedom. Zeldin mentioned the egregious Start/Stop button on the majority of vehicles manufactured. This is just one of a host of features that automakers would receive off-cycle credits for. The more bells and whistles they could cram into a vehicle that supposedly helped to reduce emissions, the more the EPA would maybe leave them alone.
As part of today’s repeal of the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding, the Trump EPA is also ENDING all off-cycle credits, including…🥁🥁🥁...the almost universally HATED start-stop feature in vehicles.
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) February 12, 2026
Fixed it!! Promise Made. Promise Kept. https://t.co/OIJwlsmiq0
More via the EPA press release:
The 2009 Endangerment Finding was used to justify trillions of dollars in regulations, including the Obama and Biden Administrations’ illegal push towards Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates and compliance requirements, while simultaneously driving up the cost of vehicles for American families and small businesses— limiting economic mobility and the American Dream. The final rule will save Americans over $1.3 trillion by removing the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify, and comply with federal 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. Americans will have certainty, flexibility and regulatory relief, allowing companies to plan appropriately, and empowering American families.
In July of 2021, at the height of the Biden administration's EPA push to eliminate gas-powered vehicles and equipment, and get everyone into an electric vehicle, an organization called the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote a scathing paper basically saying that a majority of the automobile off-cycle credit features had no proven impact on actual emissions.
Because the lab tests used in vehicle efficiency tests date back to the 1970s, there are many technologies that are in use today that are not accurately captured on these tests, including stop-start systems that shut off your engine when the vehicle is stopped and active aerodynamic systems which reduce aerodynamic drag at highway speeds. In order to incentivize these technologies, EPA created a credit program for these “off-cycle” technologies, so called because they are not represented on the lab tests. However, this credit program is a bit of a Pandora’s box.
Off-cycle technologies generally require new measurement strategies, since the whole point of the credit program is that these benefits are not captured under the standard test procedures. But rather than having nearly 50 years of vehicle testing data like most engine and vehicle improvements, many of these novel technologies are coming to market with only limited evidence of ad-hoc lab tests suggesting emissions reduction potential.
This is our shocked face.
Further, this paper admitted that Obama's and Biden's EPA created the off-cycle menu based on the promise of technologies being deployed to mitigate climate change, and not any actual proof that they would actually produce that result. Credits were even granted retroactively, before these features like the Start/Stop button were even common in vehicles.
EPA created a special off-cycle credit menu based on technologies that were expected to be widely deployed. The regulators assigned credit values based on what little data they had, and capped the total maximum value of credits that an automaker could receive for its fleet, in the hopes that it could limit any potential lost benefits from these unproven technologies.
Has it?
Let the gaming begin
Sadly, while EPA capped the benefits from the menu, they did not consider the technologies already available on vehicles. For example, cars that had had the technologies for years were assumed to have no off-cycle technologies deployed when regulators were setting the rules, which allowed the status quo to accrue a tremendous volume of credits for doing absolutely nothing. And, while these menu credits were only initially supposed to be available in 2014, EPA began granting them retroactively (!!!)as early as the 2009 model year.
What makes this so funny is that while automakers received climate absolution, the so-called climate scientists felt as though the automakers were simply getting a pass with their "Wizard of Oz"-esque technology, when these scientists wanted empirical evidence that showed the planet was being saved by the use of these features.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Read More: Trump Kneecaps EPA With 'Largest Deregulatory Action in American History'
Trump Now Targeting Obama’s Greenhouse Gas Threat Declaration for Sweeping Regulatory Rollback
As Zeldin stated, the end-result of these bells and whistles was higher costs to Americans, along with personal frustration. So, in four years, we may be able to buy a car for $10,000-20,000 less than what was previously paid, and a person could tune it up or maintain themselves.
One can dream.
These type of energy credits spanned the gamut of the basic machinery and appliances that are supposed to make our lives easier. From the oven, to the refrigerator, to the washer and dryer. As the EPA rolls back these off-cycle credits from other industries, manufacturers can actually innovate and offer products built for improvement and longevity, rather than forced compliance and planned obsolescence.
As my colleague Ward Clark wrote in a piece linked above, "Energy is at the heart of everything we do. Energy costs are reflected in the price of everything we buy, every product, every commodity, every service, everything."
Now that less energy will be spent on useless climate improvements and draconian compliance, corporations can pour their money into creativity and staffing, and consumers can have expanded options and freedom of choice which results in more in the pocketbook.
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