E&E News, June 2025
EPA has a new generative artificial intelligence tool. And it believes climate change is dangerous. That puts it at odds with the Trump administration, which aims to sideline climate change research and data to make it easier to repeal regulations. Closer to home, the AI tool threatens to provide answers that contradict the agency’s leader, Administrator Lee Zeldin, who is preparing to release a draft finding in the near future that contends greenhouse gases pose no risk to the public, as he tries to revoke the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific declaration that underpins most EPA climate regulations.
The agency’s Office of Mission Support released the internal tool for staff May 22, saying in a memo obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News that it was intended to help “modernize the agency and gain new efficiencies.” The office also set some rules for use, including telling staff not to “use the tool as the sole performer of an inherently government function or as the decisionmaker in any EPA activities,” and to check its answers for “accuracy and bias.”
“Recognize that output from the tool may be convincing, but it may be wrong,” said OMS, the agency’s administrative office. The Trump administration has used AI heavily. But this particular tool was developed mostly under then-President Joe Biden, not President Donald Trump. EPA told E&E News that work on it began in the previous administration and a pilot tool was rolled out last autumn before it was made available to all staff last month.
