EPA Aviation Director Aaron Szabo, who oversaw drastic rollbacks of climate change regulations, is leaving the agency.
Szabo plans to leave the EPA, the agency’s press office confirmed Tuesday. Just a year ago, he was confirmed by the Senate to the powerful post leading the Office of Atmospheric Radiation.
“We are grateful for Aaron Szabo’s tireless efforts to power America’s great recovery,” EPA spokeswoman Bridget Hirsch said in a statement. He noted that under Szabo’s leadership, the Aviation Administration revoked its 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment certification, calling it “the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
“His team is responsible for saving Americans trillions of dollars by cutting unnecessary red tape and has shown that it is possible to protect clean air while growing the economy,” Hirsch said. “We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”
The EPA’s statement did not address questions about when Szabo’s last day at the agency would be or who would serve as acting deputy administrator for the agency after he retires. Szabo did not respond to questions about his resignation.
During Mr. Szabo’s tenure as head of the aviation agency, the EPA moved to repeal many of its climate change regulations, going even further than during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Mr. Szabo helped draft a rule that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of much of its authority to combat climate change in exchange for rewriting a looser version of greenhouse gas regulations for power plants and automobiles, the nation’s main sources of climate pollution. This includes withdrawing endangered status status.
A final rule eliminating greenhouse gas limits for coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants, a rule repealing long-standing federal greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements, and a rewrite of the oil and gas sector’s methane rules are still on the horizon, among many other regulatory reliefs to traditional air pollutant rules.
“Our predecessors believed they could push the climate crisis onto Americans and take away consumer choice,” Szabo wrote in a December op-ed. “The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a different approach to implementing President Trump’s policies.”
Szabo, who was thanked in the EPA chapter of the conservative Project 2025 plan, kept a relatively low profile during his time at the agency. “I’ve always been very conscious of air quality,” he said during his confirmation hearing, discussing his diagnosis with cystic fibrosis, a lung disease.
Nevertheless, he was a key Trump appointee in the pushback against stricter air pollution regulations, including soot exposure limits, set by the Biden administration.
Much of that agenda still needs to be completed or defended in court. But if his deregulatory actions survive judicial scrutiny, Mr. Szabo will have played a key role in reshaping, and in many ways limiting, the EPA’s regulatory authority, especially when it comes to climate change.
Before joining the EPA as a senior advisor to Administrator Lee Zeldin at the beginning of the Trump administration, Mr. Szabo was an attorney at Faegre, Drinker, Biddle & Reese, reporting on lobbying efforts for the Advanced Medical Technology Association.
Prior to that, he spent four years as a partner at CGCN Group, where his lobbying clients included the American Petroleum Institute, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Interstate Natural Gas Association, American Chemistry Council, Exelon, Duke Energy, and TransCanada.
He spent 10 years in public service, including a stint at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mr. Szabo also served as a policy analyst in the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and as a senior advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality during President Trump’s first term.
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