EPA Preparing To Eliminate Required Reporting Of GHG Output By Major Polluters

The Trump administration intends to stop collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from more than 8,000 facilities across the United States — the data set that provides the most complete picture of the nation’s climate pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that the long-standing Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “has no material impact on improving human health and the environment.” The agency is issuing a proposed rule to rescind the program, which is now open for public comment.

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” The EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, said in the Friday press release. “Instead, it costs American businesses and manufacturing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of living, jeopardizing our nation’s prosperity and hurting American communities.”

The EPA has been collecting this data since 2010; it’s used to create a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and sinks, to inform the regulation of emissions and to ensure that the public has access to information on pollution. Some research indicates the data reporting has also had some downstream impacts. A 2021 National Bureau of Economics Research paper found that power plants forced to report under GHGRP reduced their carbon emissions by about 7%, with greater reductions for publicly owned plants.

“Cutting the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program blinds Americans to the facts about climate pollution. Without it, policymakers, businesses, and communities cannot make sound decisions about how to cut emissions and protect public health,” said Joseph Goffman, the former EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation.

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https://www.notus.org/climate-environment/trump-epa-greenhouse-gas-emissions-report-stop-rule