Twenty-five states and cities filed suit on October 1, 2026, in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to overturn the EPA's repeal of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal rule that required US power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capture technology. New York Attorney General Letitia James led the coalition, joined by attorneys general from California, Michigan, and other jurisdictions.

The complaint targets an EPA action that scrapped greenhouse gas limits on US electricity generators. Power plants rank as the second-largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions after motor vehicles and account for one-quarter of US carbon dioxide emissions, according to the coalition's filing.

"Dismantling these protections is a betrayal of American families, and the stakes are too high to allow this administration to once again put profits over people," James said.

What is the coalition asking the court to do?

The coalition filed a single petition seeking both judicial review of the carbon rule repeal and formal notice that it intends to sue over what it characterizes as the agency's "continued failure to fully regulate pollution from existing natural gas power plants."

The specific demands include:

• Strike down the EPA's repeal of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards
• Compel the agency to regulate emissions from existing natural gas power plants
• Find that EPA revoked the rule without considering "reasonable alternatives" or the health and climate costs of added atmospheric pollution

The plaintiffs argue that the agency abandoned procedural safeguards by revoking the regulation without weighing alternative compliance pathways or accounting for the public-health impact of added atmospheric pollution.

Why does the 2024 rule matter for the carbon capture supply chain?

The 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards set compliance pathways centered on carbon capture and sequestration at coal- and gas-fired generators. The rule provided the federal demand signal that engineering firms, capture technology vendors, and CO2 pipeline developers had begun scaling against since 2024.

Repeal removes that signal without offsetting state-level action. California and New York maintain their own greenhouse gas programs that overlap the federal rule, leaving generators in those markets to plan capture retrofits under a fragmented compliance picture. Operators in other coalition states face the prospect of running with no binding federal limit while neighboring states move ahead.

Coal-fired units remain the most exposed to capture retrofits under the 2024 framework, while combined-cycle gas plants would have faced longer compliance horizons. Existing natural gas plants, which had no federal limit under the repealed rule, form the second legal front opened by the coalition's notice of intent.

What is the DC Circuit timeline?

The DC Circuit will set a briefing schedule under the Clean Air Act's 60-day window for petitions seeking review of agency actions. Disposition typically runs 12 to 18 months absent expedited treatment.

Adverse rulings remand the repeal to EPA, which would then need to reconstruct the record before any successor rule could take effect. For utility procurement teams and capture technology suppliers, the regulatory uncertainty will stretch into 2027 at the earliest. Plants that had pre-purchased capture equipment or signed engineering contracts under the 2024 framework now face ambiguous federal standing for those investments.

How does the suit fit the broader litigation pattern?

The coalition's legal theory — that EPA acted arbitrarily by ignoring alternative compliance paths and external cost analysis — mirrors the procedural arguments used in successful challenges to earlier Trump-era air quality rollbacks. The same multi-state coalition structure has produced consent decrees forcing agency action across multiple administrations.

The DC Circuit's eventual ruling — whether it preserves, vacates, or remands the repeal — sets the boundary for federal carbon regulation through the end of the decade.