On Friday, the Trump administration proposed ending a program that required coal-fired power plants, industrial factories, and oil refineries to report their climate-warming pollution to the federal government.
Since 2010, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has required more than 8,000 facilities and suppliers in the United States to report their climate pollution on an annual basis, and the data is used to help shape rules to reduce air pollution.
The action taken on Friday goes beyond instructions to some regulators to reduce rule enforcement against the oil and gas industry, which CNN previously reported.
Lee Zeldin, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, framed the new steps as an effort to eliminate burdensome regulations.
“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” Zeldin told reporters. “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.”
Environmentalists blasted the proposal as yet another example of the Trump administration giving polluters a free pass.
“Big polluters may want to keep their climate pollution secret, but more than 15 years ago Congress ordered the EPA to collect and publish this data each year,” David Doniger, a senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “This proposal gives polluters the secrecy they want in violation of the law.”
In a news release, the EPA stated that after conducting a review, it determined that it was not required by law to require fossil fuel producers and major industrial businesses to report their emissions under the Clean Air Act. Only certain oil and gas facilities, including natural gas pipelines, will be required to report emissions of gases such as methane, but these emissions can be delayed until 2034.
Local communities use the data to track harmful air pollution emitted by nearly all industries, as does the United Nations as part of the US’s obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
