Trump EPA to roll back refrigerant rule for grocery stores, claims lower prices

The Trump administration is set to loosen a federal rule requiring grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment, a move officials say aims to lower grocery costs.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Biden-era rule imposes costly restrictions that limit the types of refrigerants U.S. businesses and families can use.

“This will allow businesses to choose the refrigeration systems that work best for them, saving them billions of dollars. This will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices,” Zeldin said in a statement released before a White House event Thursday where President Donald Trump is scheduled to announce the changes. Executives from Kroger, Piggly Wiggly and other grocery chains are expected to join him.

With voter concerns over the cost of living spiking before pivotal elections in November, the Republican administration is trying to address affordability issues. It is not clear how much or how quickly the loosening of the refrigerant rule might ease grocery prices.

Inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, amid price spikes caused by the Iran war and Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.

The administration’s action on refrigerants represents a reversal after Trump signed a law in his first term that aimed to reduce harmful, planet-warming pollutants emitted by refrigerators and air conditioners. That bipartisan measure brought environmentalists and major business groups into rare alignment on the contentious issue of the climate crisis and won praise across the political spectrum.

Reflecting a broad bipartisan consensus, the 2020 law called for a rapid phase-out of domestic use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, gases thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and considered a major driver of global warming.

The EPA action highlights the second Trump administration’s drive to roll back regulations perceived as climate friendly. The plan is among a series of sweeping environmental changes that Zeldin has said will put a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”

Environmentalists have criticized the administration’s plans, saying a proposed rule announced last year would exacerbate climate pollution while disrupting a yearslong industry transition to new coolants as an alternative to HFCs.