EPA appears to have missed a deadline Tuesday to submit data on U.S. climate emissions to the United Nations.
If so, it would mark the first time in history the United States didn’t meet an annual April 15 deadline for all developed countries to provide inventories of their climate-warming pollution. For nearly three decades, the United States has honored its obligation to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, including during the four years of President Donald Trump’s first term.
But this year something changed. And it’s just not clear yet what that is.
EPA didn’t respond to inquiries from POLITICO’s E&E News about whether the inventory might just be late. But EPA also never fully published the draft inventory — which covers economywide carbon, methane and other emissions from 2023 — despite the outgoing Biden administration completing that work and publishing a Federal Register notice promising it would be available for public view.
The agency normally releases the draft in January or February and solicits public comment before finalizing the inventory.
Missing the U.N. deadline raises questions about whether the administration might be preparing to exit the broader UNFCCC. Trump already has set wheels in motion for a second Paris Agreement withdrawal, and has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make recommendations soon about more global agreements that he views as not serving U.S. interests.
Regardless, the U.S. appears to be no longer complying with the UNFCCC. The agency didn’t release the inventory publicly Tuesday and it doesn’t appear on the U.N. body’s website.
“We’re rapidly approaching a situation where the operative question is, how could you tell the difference?” said Joe Goffman, who served as EPA air chief in the Biden administration. “How could you tell the difference between taking a formal step to withdraw from the UNFCCC or simply not abide by its terms?”
The ratification documents then-President George H.W. Bush submitted to the U.N. in 1992 after the Senate’s vote to approve the treaty stated that the U.S. would comply via EPA’s Clean Air Act authorities, among other tools. The U.S. began reporting emissions to the UN in 1997.
Section 114 of the Clean Air Act allows EPA to require companies to report emissions, though up to that point it had been used to require companies to cooperate with EPA investigations or to furnish data to help EPA write rules.
In 2008, Congress included language in its annual appropriations bill instructing EPA to use its Clean Air Act authority to collect greenhouse gas emissions annually from a broad set of stationary emissions sources in key sectors like oil and gas, power generation, and landfills. That data feeds into the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventories, which are then submitted to the UNFCCC.
“They were able to develop and submit inventories before the reporting program existed, but it has made the inventory a lot more rigorous and scientific and accurate,” said Edwin LaMair, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund.
“It was created by a mandatory congressional statute,” said Goffman. “So essentially, the administration is flouting both a statutory obligation and a treaty obligation.”
The news organization ProPublica reported last week that EPA is planning to gut the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, exempting facilities in all but one of the 41 sectors that are now required to disclose emissions if they produce more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in a given year.
EPA already has pushed back the March 31 deadline by which those companies must report 2024 emissions. The agency extended that deadline to May because it said the reporting portal hadn’t been working, but EDF filed suit claiming the delay was unlawful.
Energy industry lobbyists said they haven’t been briefed on widespread changes to the program, but assume that the one sector that would still report emissions would be oil and gas. Congress included language in its 2022 climate spending law, the Inflation Reduction Act, that required EPA to improve oil and gas methane reporting to facilitate a new charge on excess emissions.
Congress recently voted to nix a Biden-era rule for that charge. And Republicans are expected to include language rolling it back — and the Inflation Reduction Act reporting language along with it — as part of a budget reconciliation package this year.
Petroleum industry groups have raised concerns about a new Biden administration rule for oil and gas methane reporting, but they haven’t asked EPA to halt greenhouse gas reporting altogether.
Meanwhile, a U.S. retreat from emissions reporting could affect transatlantic trade.
Beginning in 2027, gas imported to the EU will need to meet tight methane intensity standards based on a strong monitoring, reporting and verification framework and methane-abatement policies. The EPA reporting rule increases the chances that the European Commission might classify U.S. product as coming from a country with environmental standards that equal the EU’s, said Ben Cahill, an energy analyst at the University of Texas at Austin.
“If you roll back the regulatory regime in the U.S., it really harms that case to Europe that U.S. gas should qualify for that equivalence determination,” he said.
Jeff Holmstead, who served as EPA air chief under former President George W. Bush, told E&E News that if the Trump EPA moves to revoke the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, it would probably rely on last summer’s blockbuster Supreme Court decision limiting agency deference.
The reporting program was created through language in appropriations bills in 2008 and 2009, with the exception of the Inflation Reduction Act language on oil and gas reporting. Those policy riders usually end when the federal funding bill expires.
Holmstead said the Clean Air Act provision the appropriations language referred to had previously been cited by EPA to require facilities to cooperate with investigations or provide a limited amount of emissions data to help EPA write rules.
But Holmstead said if the Trump administration does away with greenhouse gas reporting, that won’t hamper future administrations’ ability to regulate climate emissions from a growing number of industrial sectors.
“EPA already has plenty of information about greenhouse gas emissions from all types of industrial sources,” he said. “The problem will be the lack of technology to control GHG emissions — not the lack of emissions data.”
Correction: A previous version incorrectly quoted Jeff Holmstead to say that Clean Air Act Section 114 had been used to require facilities to report release of toxic chemicals.
