Trump exempts Zug Island’s EES Coke Battery from new pollution rules for 2 years

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Christmas came early on Zug Island this year, and there’s a lump of coal under the tree.

DTE Energy-owned EES Coke Battery is exempt from coke oven pollution rules enacted during the Biden administration for two years, according to a proclamation signed Friday by President Donald Trump.

The exemption delays federal rules designed to detect and limit hazardous air emissions at a site long scrutinized by regulators and nearby communities. It also comes as EES Coke Battery faces a federal lawsuit over sulfur dioxide pollution.

In May, Planet Detroit reported that EES Coke Battery was among the facilities offered two-year exemptions by the Trump administration from deadlines to comply with air pollution standards. EES Coke Battery applied for an exemption, the company’s vice president said at the time.

The Zug Island facility’s exemption applies to new regulations on fenceline monitoring for benzene; leaks from coke oven battery doors, lids, and offtakes; and pollution control standards.

New EPA rules for coke ovens follow zigzag path

Without the exemption from Trump, EES Coke Battery would have had to meet new pollution control standards by Jan. 5, 2026 for acid gases; dioxins and furans; hydrogen cyanide; mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; particulate matter; nonmercury hazardous air pollutants like lead and arsenic; and volatile organic hazardous air pollutants, according to the EPA rule.

The fenceline monitoring and leak regulations were effective July 7 of this year. One day later, the EPA issued an interim final rule that extended the compliance deadlines to July 5, 2027. After the agency received public comments and held a hearing on the deadline extension, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin signed a notice Oct. 2 that withdrew it.

Environmental groups filed suit against the EPA in August over the deadline extension.

The EPA estimated the coke oven rules would cost coke producers with byproduct chemical recovery, like EES Coke Battery, an average of $250,000 per year.

EES Coke Battery is one of 11 facilities affected by Trump’s proclamation.

The coke producers were already expected to have hazardous air pollutant emissions below the final limits, according to the EPA rule, meaning no environmental benefits were expected.

The new requirements make it more likely that coke ovens would detect excess hazardous air pollutant emissions, leading to earlier corrective action and preventing pollution increases, according to the EPA.

EES Coke Battery emitted significantly more sulfur dioxide than its 2014 Clean Air Act permit allowed, according to an Aug. 25 ruling by U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain in a lawsuit filed by the EPA against the Zug Island facility.

Clean Air Act allows presidential exemptions

EES Coke Battery produces coke, a raw material in the steelmaking process produced by heating coal in an oxygen-free environment.

In the Nov. 21 presidental proclamation, Trump states that about 70% of all steel is made of metallurgical coke. “A strong coke industry is therefore vital to building and maintaining critical infrastructure and military readiness,” the exemption said.

The coke oven rule requires compliance with standards based on emission control technologies that “do not yet exist in a commercially demonstrated or cost-effective form,” according to the Trump administration.

A section of the Clean Air Act allows the president to exempt stationary sources from compliance for not more than two years if the president determines the technology to enact the standard is not available, and it is in the national security interests of the U.S. to do so.

A presidential exemption can be extended for one or more additional periods, according to the Clean Air Act.

EPA, DTE Energy in court over Zug Island pollution

At the same time Trump’s proclamation exempts EES Coke Battery from some EPA rules, the EPA is seeking a $140 million civil penalty against the DTE Energy-owned facility in a federal lawsuit over sulfur dioxide emissions.

EES Coke Battery proposed a $5 million penalty and said the fine requested by the EPA amounts to a shutdown order. The Zug Island facility’s attorney said it’s willing to install pollution controls that would cut sulfur dioxide emissions by at least 33%.

A bench trial in the case wrapped Sept. 29. The final filings and verdict were delayed by the subsequent federal government shutdown, as the U.S. attorneys representing the EPA were furloughed.

Drain set a Dec. 5 deadline for the post-trial submissions in the lawsuit.

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