The Trump administration has reversed course again on a new air pollution rule for coke ovens. The White House is granting two-year waivers to coke oven plants for the rule issued under the Biden administration.
Coke, a key component of the steelmaking process, is made by heating coal to high temperatures. The process creates hazardous air pollution.
The Biden-era rule, finalized in 2024, was designed to lower the amount of this pollution. It would have required plants such as U.S. Steel’s Clairton Plant – the largest coke plant in North America – to monitor for cancer-causing emissions at the fence line.
“Exempting these coke ovens from the 2024 coke oven rule, as the president appears to have done, [will] put people who live near Clairton coke works in harm’s way,” said Haley Lewis, an attorney with Environmental Integrity Project.
The decision is the latest in a flurry of regulatory and administrative moves by the Trump administration on the rule.
The 2024 coke oven rule was set to take effect in July. But that month, the Trump administration released its own rule, delaying the rule’s requirements by two years.
Then in October, the Trump administration reversed course. It withdrew its own rule, allowing the Biden-era rule to stand.
But now, the administration is allowing companies to simply not comply by granting them two-year exemptions from the rule.
The so-called “presidential exemption” is allowed under special circumstances under the Clean Air Act. The law allows the president to grant two-year exemptions “if the President determines that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so.”
In its statement announcing the exemptions, the White House claimed both to be true.
“The Coke Oven Rule places severe burdens on the coke production industry and, through its indirect effects, on the viability of our Nation’s critical infrastructure, defense, and national security,” the statement said.
The original rule established tighter limits on equipment leaks and set limits on different types of hazardous air pollutants, like the neurotoxin mercury.
It also required coke plants to set up fenceline monitoring for benzene, a known carcinogen. If the monitors recorded pollution levels above a pre-set threshold of 7 micrograms per cubic meter, the plants would have to make plans to clean up their emissions.
The EPA under the Trump administration found the rule would cost the industry only about $4 million a year to implement. But the industry claimed the real number was in the billions.
U.S. Steel said in a statement that it sought out the presidential exemption and applauded the Trump administration’s decision to grant it.
“The decision to grant this exception is a positive step toward preserving American jobs and domestic steel production,” the statement said. “Industries like ours must be able to rely on and play by rules that are well-grounded in science and law, which is why we challenged the [rule] legally and sought the presidential exemption.”
Environmental groups push back
But environmental groups say the rule was both achievable and necessary to preserve public health.
The Clairton plant, where an explosion killed two workers in August, is the largest single source of several types of air pollutants in the Pittsburgh region.
“Coke ovens really needed these common-sense rules that were proposed by EPA in 2024 to protect the health and safety of workers and the people who live downwind from these plants,” Lewis said.
The plant emits 232 tons of hazardous air pollution into the surrounding community each year, including pollutants such as cyanides and carcinogens such as benzene and chromium, according to Allegheny County data.
“Coke ovens are dirty; they’re not well controlled. They routinely violate their existing limits in their permits, and this will allow that to continue,” said Tosh Sagar, an attorney with Earthjustice.
Since 2022, the Allegheny County Health Department has fined the plant $56 million for air quality violations.
Sagar said the monitoring requirements from the 2024 rule would have given the plant better data to detect problems that could lead to pollution escaping into the community.
“Instead of quickly discovering when there are leaks or other events causing spikes in emissions through monitoring, those emissions increases are going to go undetected,” Sagar said.
Other facilities have received presidential exemptions from clean air rules under Trump, including 68 coal-fired power plants from the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.
Under the Clean Air Act, the exemptions may be extended for one “or more additional periods” of up to two years.
