The EPA Continues to Tinker with GHG Reporting Requirements

Monitoring greenhouse gases (GHG) has already begun and the first reports are due in a few short months, but for the third time this year the EPA is proposing amendments to the GHG reporting requirements. The EPA predicts that a final rule will be published by the end of 2010, which is good news considering the first reporting deadline is March 2011 and somewhere around 10,000 facilities will be impacted.

The basic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule requires annual reporting to the EPA of greenhouse gas emissions from large sources and suppliers in the United States. Reports are required of fossil fuel suppliers and industrial gas suppliers, manufacturers of vehicles and engines outside of the light-duty sector, and certain downstream facilities that emit greenhouse gases (primarily large facilities emitting 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or more of GHG emissions per year). The GHG’s included in the report are the anthropogenic GHG emissions covered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorochemicals (PFC), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), as well as other fluorinated gases (e.g., nitrogen trifluoride and hydrofluorinated ethers).

The EPA’s second round of regulations, which require monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from magnesium production, underground coal mines, industrial wastewater treatment, and industrial waste landfills. If emissions meet the reporting threshold, that source must begin monitoring GHG emissions on January 1, 2011, and must submit a first annual report to the EPA by March 31, 2012.

On April 12, 2010, EPA issued four new proposed rules that amend the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule. These proposals would require reporting of emissions data from the oil and natural gas, industries that emit fluorinated greenhouse gases, and from facilities that inject and store carbon dioxide (CO2) underground for the purposes of geologic sequestration or enhanced oil and gas recovery. In addition, EPA has proposed to add three new reporting requirements to the General Provisions (subpart A). The proposed rules will also become effective in 2011. 

On May 27, 2010, the EPA proposed a rule that includes technical corrections, clarifying and other amendments to Part 98 of the basic rule. The proposed updates are designed to improve clarity and ensure consistency across the calculation, monitoring and data reporting requirements.

On July 20, 2010, the EPA proposed an additional rule to provide technical corrections and clarifying amendments.

Each of these adopted and proposed rules alters reporting requirements for data that is being collected now. With rules changing from month to month, facilities that expect to report next year must be on their toes. As a response to the changing rules, the EPA has drafted guidance for complying with the rules that are effective this year.

These GHG reporting rules are generally the first steps toward implementing GHG emissions limits and related climate change regulations.

(This post was authored by Hamilton Consulting Group's intern, Emily Kelchen, a third year law student at the University of Wisconsin Law School.)