Fw: Breaking news: E.P.A. to stop collecting emissions data from polluters
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BREAKING NEWS
E.P.A. to Stop Collecting Emissions Data From PollutersThe proposal would lift requirements for thousands of coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country. More Top Stories
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E.P.A. To Stop Collecting Emissions Data From Polluters
The data, from thousands of coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities, is the country’s most comprehensive way to track greenhouse gases.
The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Friday to stop requiring thousands of polluting facilities to report the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases that they release into the air.
The E.P.A. proposal would end requirements for thousands of coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country. The government has been collecting this data since 2010 and it is a key tool to track carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that are driving climate change.
The Friday announcement followed months of efforts by the Trump administration to systematically erase mentions of climate change from government websites while slashing federal funding for research on global warming.
“Alongside President Trump, E.P.A. continues to live up to the promise of unleashing energy dominance that powers the American dream,” Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a statement. “The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape.” He added that ending the program could save American businesses up to $2.4 billion in compliance costs over the next decade.
Critics said the proposal could hobble federal efforts to fight climate change, since the government cannot reduce emissions if it cannot track where they are coming from.
“With this move, they’re taking away the practical and material capacity of the federal government to do the basic elements of climate policymaking,” said Joseph Goffman, who led the E.P.A.’s office of air and radiation during the Biden administration.
For the past 15 years, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has collected data from about 8,000 of the country’s largest industrial facilities. That information has helped guide numerous decisions on federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required developed countries to submit tallies of their emissions.
In addition, private companies often rely on the program’s data to demonstrate to investors that their efforts to cut emissions are working. And communities often use it to determine whether local facilities are releasing air pollution that threatens public health.
The E.P.A. proposal would not eliminate emissions reporting requirements for certain oil and gas facilities such as pipelines that transport natural gas. That’s because those reports were required by Congress as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Instead, the E.P.A. is proposing to allow those specific oil and gas facilities to postpone emissions reporting until 2034. Congressional Republicans already delayed a related requirement for the facilities to pay a fee on their methane emissions until 2034.
Carrie Jenks, executive director of the environmental and energy law program at the Harvard Law School, said the data had shown that many large oil and gas companies were reducing their emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the short term. “Not having the government verify this data is hard, but there could still be some voluntary efforts to collect it” by companies and states, Ms. Jenks said.
Dustin Meyer, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, said in a statement that “the oil and gas industry has a long track record of reporting greenhouse gas emissions to a variety of stakeholders, and we remain committed to doing so in a transparent and accurate way.”
The proposal follows a rapid-fire series of steps by the Trump administration to weaken or dismantle environmental protections.
In July, the E.P.A. moved to repeal the scientific finding that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change. And in recent weeks, the White House has directed a half-dozen agencies to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry, a key source of emissions-free electricity.
Under the 2015 Paris Accord, the agreement among nations to combat climate change, the United Nations has required that all developed countries provide data on their domestic emissions each year. But the United States missed an April deadline to submit this data, and Mr. Trump began the yearlong process of withdrawing from the Paris pact on his first day back in office.
After the E.P.A. proposal is published in the Federal Register, the E.P.A. will solicit public comments for 47 days. Then the agency will finalize the proposal, likely within the next year.
Karen
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