WASHINGTON — President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the rollback of two Biden administration refrigerant rules designed to fight global warming, which the administration says will save consumers $2.4 billion.

An estimated $900 million in savings — mostly for grocery stores, whose executives joined the Oval Office announcement — are achieved by setting aside the post-2023 phase-out of industrial fridges that use Global Warming Potential (GWP) hydrofluorocarbons.

Another $1.5 billion is projected to be saved by granting mass exemptions to roadway refrigeration units covered by a 2024 regulation intended to prevent hydrofluorocarbon leaks. 

“Many Americans were expressing a lot of frustration and anger over this rushed, frantic, reckless sprint by the Biden administration to phase out reliable equipment for grocery stores, for restaurants, and for homes,” Zeldin said.

“Americans who wanted to be able to fix their equipment were instead being required to buy far more costly new equipment, and that just doesn’t make any sense. Refrigeration trucks were being handed impossible restrictions to meet.”

Kroger CEO Greg Foran, whose company owns 2,700 grocery stores, thanked the administration, saying “an orderly transition of equipment reduces both capital costs and operating costs.”

“At the end of the day, that’s good for consumers, because we’re able to take that and put that into lowering prices, which is the key objective that we have in our business,” he said.

“Obviously, these things have a lifespan, but an orderly transition allows us to move through that in a way which keeps the price of groceries down.”

Kevin McDaniel, who operates 250 Piggly Wiggly supermarkets in the Southeast, told the president that the pending rule would have caused financial ruin.

“People don’t realize is it’s just not a refrigerant change, it was an equipment change,” he said.

“Our stores run from 25-50,000 square feet, you could look for $800,000 to $1.5 million per store to do a change out.”

McDaniel said it “was thrown together too fast. The technology’s not there yet.”

“You would have had independents out of business, and you would have seen grocery prices soar,” he said.

Jonathan Gay, owner of the grocery store Foodfresh in Claxton, Ga., said “I’m the only store in a county of 10,000” and called the axed mandate “unbelievably cost-prohibitive.”

“Once I go away, you’ve created a food desert, so it’s very beneficial that this happened today,” he said. “It’s much more complicated than anyone thinks, and to try to rush this through was just the wrong way to go.”

The EPA estimates the pivot will directly save grocery stores $800 million.

The details of the deregulation were first reported by USA Today and are part of a broader Trump administration rollback of rules intended to curb climate change, which the president has described as an overhyped threat. 

“Thanks to today’s reforms, the American people have lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, and lower cost of air conditioning — at no detriment at all to our country, zero, including environmental detriment,” Trump said.