United States abolishes greenhouse gas reporting

(Patria) - The United States on Friday took steps to abolish a "burdensome" federal program that tracks greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. economy, the latest move by President Donald Trump's administration to scale back efforts against climate change.

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), launched in 2010, covers more than 8,000 facilities - including power plants, fuel suppliers and factories - that together account for 85-90 percent of the planet-warming pollution, AFP reported.

Trump, who has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry during his 2024 election campaign, has strongly promoted new oil, gas and coal extraction while seeking to suppress competition from solar and wind power.

"With President Trump, the EPA continues to fulfill its promise to unleash the energy
dominance that powers the American dream," said Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, announcing the decision, which will go through a period of public consultation before being finalized.

"The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality."

Although the program was established by an act of Congress, the EPA claimed it was not legally required to continue collecting data, with the sole exception of methane emissions.

The Climate Act passed in 2022 under Democratic President Joe Biden
established a methane fee on oil and gas operations, but the recently passed Republican "Big Beautiful Law" requires such reporting only from 2034. Accordingly, the EPA under Zeldin says it will suspend all data collection until then.

"This administration is trying to hide data again and again to cover up the damage," said Julie McNamara of the Union of Concerned Scientists to AFP.

"If we can't tell what a facility is doing, we can't hold the facility accountable," she added, warning that the lack of verifiable emissions data would undermine action at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Democrats had anticipated this move after obtaining documents in the spring that indicated a planned change.

"Over the past fifteen years, the GHGRP has collected facility-level emissions data from over 8,000 facilities, providing vital information to policymakers, scientists, investors, and the public," said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in May.

"This data informs our national greenhouse gas inventory, supports international emissions reporting obligations, and serves as a de facto standard for many companies' climate data disclosures in the absence of industry-wide methodologies."

He added that the data has enabled American industry to market itself as cleaner than foreign competitors, and that ending the program would give China an advantage.