The EPA Is Letting Companies Apply for Emissions Exemptions by Email

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THE TOP FIVE

1. EPA tells companies to email the president for pollution exemptions

The Environmental Protection Agency has set up an email address that power plants and other industrial facilities can use to request a temporary exemption from President Trump on EPA air pollution rules. Firms can write to “airaction@epa.gov” and make a case for why their facilities should not have to abide by some nine Clean Air Act emissions rules, and for how long they’d like to be exempt. The president — yes, the president himself — will review the request and “make a decision on the merits.” The EPA argues that the Clean Air Act contains a section that allows the president to exempt industrial facilities from new rules for up to two years “if the technology to implement the standard is not available and it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so.”

The environmental protection community is not happy. “The new Trump EPA website invites hundreds of industrial sources of cancer-causing pollution and other toxics to evade science-based clean air standards that are designed to keep our families safe — all with a single email,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund. “This puts the health of all Americans on the line.”

2. Arctic winter sea ice is at a record low

Sea ice in the Arctic is at its lowest winter level ever recorded. March is usually when the ice is at its peak, but this year’s ice cover of 5.53 million square miles is about 30,000 square miles smaller than the previous lowest March peak recorded in 2017. “Warming temperatures are what’s causing the ice to decline,” ice data scientist Walt Meier told The Associated Press. The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the rest of the world, and less winter sea ice means more melt in the summer. Researchers warn that current warming trends mean the Arctic could see its first completely ice-free summer months as soon as 2035. “We’re going to come into this next summer season with less ice to begin with,” said Linette Boisvert, an ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”

3. Empire Wind is in the crosshairs

Activists from the anti-wind movement are circling Empire Wind and asking President Donald Trump to rescind the EPA air permit to the Equinor offshore project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. Two prominent anti-offshore wind organizations — Save the East Coast and Protect our Coast-Long Island — announced this week in a press release posted to Facebook that they were petitioning the EPA to take the permit away, just like it did earlier this month with the Atlantic Shores project off the coast of New Jersey. Activists have also asked EPA to get rid of air permits for New England Wind and Vineyard Wind.

4. Corporate America has stopped talking about climate change

Earnings call mentions of “climate change” and other terms related to environmental issues and clean energy have plummeted by 76% over the past three years, according to a new Bloomberg analysis. “Green chatter” on S&P 500 companies’ quarterly calls peaked in 2022, just before the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and has been falling ever since. Anti-climate sentiment in the Trump administration has hastened the so-called greenhushing. At the same time, most corporate finance bosses say they aim to increase their green investments, and more companies are making climate commitments. So some progress is still being made, even if nobody wants to make a big deal out of it.

5. The IRS is taking mercy on EV buyers

The Internal Revenue Service this week reopened the online portal for car dealerships to retroactively register electric vehicle sales to the tax agency, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported. The change will make it easier for buyers to claim the EV tax credit on their returns after a major change to the EV tax credit program last year left many in the lurch. Before the change, all dealers had to do was give the buyer a “time of sale” report that they could submit to the IRS come tax season. But as of 2024, dealerships were expected to register every EV sale that was eligible for the tax credit through this new online portal. Not only that, they had to do so within three days of the sale. The portal would not allow entries dated more than three days post-sale. Many dealerships were unaware of the new requirements, and customers trying to claim the credit on their taxes have been getting error messages saying that their EVs were not registered with the IRS. In a notice to dealerships this week, first reported by NPR, the trade group said the IRS planned to roll out an update to the portal on Wednesday to allow for sales made in 2024 to be submitted.

“If any of this has made you nervous about getting an EV this year, remember that you have another, safer option for claiming the tax credit,” Pontecorvo explains. “Instead of claiming it on your taxes in 2026, you can transfer it to your dealer, who can take it off the sale price of the car on the spot. Just make sure they know about the online portal!”

THE KICKER

“Perfectly executed, Mr. Trump! … You have pulled off the rare rope-a-dope: Your political action groups raised more than $75 million from the oil industry to help get you elected. But now that you’re in office, you’re shutting them in. And the best part is that voters have no idea: Americans continue to think that you support U.S. oil and gas drilling — and they like it.”

–Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer in an open letter to President Trump, aka Degrowth Donald