Dive Brief:
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday proposed a rule to end the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires over 8,000 facilities and suppliers in the U.S. to report their greenhouse gas emissions annually.
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The EPA noted the program is not mandated by the Clean Air Act and not directly related to a potential regulation. Zeldin said in a statement that it “costs American businesses and manufacturing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of living, jeopardizing our nation’s prosperity and hurting American communities.”
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Climate Mayors Executive Director Kate Wright denounced the decision. “Requiring polluters to report their emissions is a critical way local governments can keep track of how industries in their cities are impacting people’s health,” she said.
Dive Insight:
Congress in 2008 authorized funding for the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires large greenhouse gas emission sources such as fuel and industrial gas suppliers to report those emissions. The EPA began collecting the data in 2010.
Refineries, power plants, wells and landfills have reported a combined 20% drop in emissions since the rule took effect, the Associated Press reported. This constitutes more than three-quarters of the decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 2010, according to AP.
In March, Zeldin announced the agency was reconsidering the program and proposed gutting several other emissions guidelines to comply with President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order. The order requires federal agency heads to review all existing regulations, guidance documents and other actions “that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources.”
In July, the EPA proposed rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding, which says that emissions of greenhouse gases endangers human health and welfare and underpins the federal government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants. Public comments on that proposal are due by Sept. 22.
The Environmental Defense Fund sued the Trump administration in March, challenging the EPA’s monthlong shutdown of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program’s reporting portal and its extension of the 2025 reporting deadline without public comment.
“Eliminating information about pollution will not make the problem of climate change go away, it will only make it more expensive and difficult to deal with,” Edwin LaMair, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Friday statement. “EDF will vigorously oppose the Trump EPA’s proposal to eliminate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.”
In announcing the proposal to rescind the program on Friday, Zeldin said it “is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality.”
Climate Mayors’ Wright said air pollution kills about 135,000 Americans each year. “Cities are working hard every day to lower that number,” she said.
Cities need access to the data provided by the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “to help them make the best decisions for their communities and ensure people across the country can breathe clean air free of toxic, cancer-causing chemicals,” Wright said.
“Members of the public, state and local policymakers, and even industries themselves have depended on this data for more than a decade,” David Doniger, senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a Friday statement. “This is a cynical effort to keep the American public in the dark, because if they don’t know who the polluters are, they can’t do anything to hold them responsible.”
