The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the virtual elimination of a 15-year-old federal program that requires thousands of power plants, oil refineries, cement factories and other large industrial facilities to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions, according to two people briefed on the decision.
At an agency meeting last week, political appointees told staff members they planned to eliminate reporting requirements for all but one of the 41 categories that are currently ordered to submit data, according to the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal discussions.
Gutting the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program would effectively leave the federal government blind when it comes to identifying and measuring sources of pollution that are dangerously heating the planet. Without that data, it would be difficult to know which sector of the economy or particular facility was a heavy polluter or be able to track emissions over time.
The decision was first reported by ProPublica.
Currently, the E.P.A. requires about 8,000 of the country’s largest industrial plants to annually report their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, three of the most common and potent greenhouse gases. Under the planned changes, only certain oil and gas facilities would still be required to report their emissions.
“The public has a right to know how much climate pollution is being emitted,” said Vickie Patton, the general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization.
“Policymakers need to know and businesses have an imperative to know,” Ms. Patton added. “The attack on the data, the attack on the science, is irresponsible.”
Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., did not confirm that the Trump administration intended to eliminate most of the reporting program.
She pointed to a March 12 announcement in which Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said he was “reconsidering” the program because it was a burden to polluters. “It costs American businesses and manufacturing millions of dollars, hurting small businesses and the ability to achieve the American Dream,” Mr. Zeldin said at the time.
Executives at the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil and gas industry, and America’s Power, which lobbies for the coal industry, said they had not opposed the greenhouse gas reporting program.
Ms. Vaseliou said the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program was unlike other mandatory data collection at the E.P.A. because it is not required by law or a regulation.
After Mr. Zeldin’s remarks in March, agency staff members were told to study ways to scale back the reporting program, according to the two people. But at an April 4 meeting, Mr. Zeldin’s appointees said the new plan was to eliminate reporting requirements for virtually all of the industries. Staff were told they had one month to write a new regulation repealing most of the program.
Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said slashing the reporting program aligned with the Trump administration’s broader position that climate change should not be studied or discussed, let alone mitigated.
This week, the administration announced it is cutting nearly $4 million in federal funding for climate research at Princeton University, saying that the work promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats” and increased “climate anxiety” among young Americans. It also has cut funding and staffing at the program that produces the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the United States. That report is used by governments at all levels as well as private businesses to prepare for a warming planet.
“I do think they are pulling all the levers to not even name the problem of climate change,” Ms. Cleetus said.
The data reported by industries about their greenhouse gas emissions not only helps policymakers in the United States, it is collected by the United Nations. As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, all countries are required to measure and report their domestic emissions. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump started the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris pact, joining Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries out of nearly 200 on the planet that are not part of the agreement.
