GHGRP

October 15, 2024

EPA Releases 2023 Data Collected Under Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program

Today, Oct. 15, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released 2023 greenhouse gas data collected under the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. In 2023, reported direct emissions of greenhouse gases from large stationary sources, representing approximately 50% of total U.S. emissions, were down by approximately 4% from 2022. From 2011 to 2023, total reported GHG emissions from large facilities decreased by approximately 22%, driven by a decrease in power plant emissions. This decline occurred even though, after 2016, the program began tracking additional sources.

As directed by Congress, EPA collects annual, facility-level emissions data from major industrial sources, including power plants, oil and gas production, iron and steel mills, and landfills. GHGRP also collects activity data from upstream fossil fuel and industrial gas suppliers. More than 8,100 direct emitters and suppliers report GHG data to GHGRP. Data reported from both direct emitters and upstream suppliers combined cover 85% to 90% of total U.S. GHG emissions. A complete accounting of total U.S. GHG emissions across all sectors of the economy using national-level data is available through a separate EPA report, the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.

The data show that in 2023:

• Power plants remain the largest stationary source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with 1,320 facilities emitting approximately 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Reported power plant emissions decreased by 7.2% between 2022 and 2023. There has been a 33.8% decrease in emissions since 2011, reflecting the long-term shifts in the power sector fuel stock from coal to natural gas.
• Petroleum and natural gas systems were the second largest stationary source of reported emissions, reporting 322 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Reported emissions for 2023 were 1.4% higher than in 2022 and 16.4% higher than in 2016. (2016 is the earliest year of comparable data for this sector, as new industry segments began reporting that year.)
• Direct emissions from other large sources in the industrial and waste sectors were reported as a combined 785 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, down 1.1% from 2022 and 10.3% since 2011. These are other direct emission sources reporting to the GHGRP other than power plants and petroleum and natural gas facilities which were not under any thresholds, making the decrease impressive.

The reporting year 2023 Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program Data still needs to reflect the impact of several rules EPA issued in 2024 to tackle methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and improve data quality. According to EPA these actions include standards to reduce methane and other harmful air pollution from new and existing oil and natural gas operations; a final rule under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program to strengthen, expand, and update methane emissions reporting requirements for oil and gas operations to help close the perceived gap between observed and reported emissions; and other amendments to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data.

Resources for Greenhouse Gas Reporting:

• GHG Accounting, Validation, Verification
• Planning for Climate Change Adaptation, Sustainability, and Circularity
• Contact the National GHG, Climate Change, and Sustainability Solution Experts here

December 20, 2017

By keeping open lines of communication between industry stakeholders and the U.S. EPA at a federal level, both parties have been able to improve the quality of GHG emissions data reported under the GHGRP while reducing the monitoring burden.

Read this SCS Engineer’s abstract that discusses the cooperation between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and solid waste industry stakeholders in developing, revising, and implementing the landfill reporting requirements as part of the federal GHG Reporting Program (GHGRP) (40 CFR Part 98). The paper covers:

• Outreach in early stages of the GHGRP development through recent decisions to utilize GHG emissions data from the GHGRP in the EPA’s current draft Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2015 (GHG Inventory).
• The initial implicit assumptions made by both the EPA and Stakeholders, using the reporting of “back-up devices” and the calculation of the fraction of time a destruction device was operating as an example of the assumptions made and an illustration of how those assumptions were implemented implicitly in the GHGRP.
• How stakeholders have reached out to the EPA to address incorrect or misleading assumptions.
• A summary of how stakeholders work to provide the EPA with additional data necessary to justify changes to the regulation, including revisiting oxidation factors that were rejected in the initial GHGRP and reducing methane measurement frequency at landfills.
• How changes have improved landfill reporting under the GHGRP to make it more representative of actual emissions and more reflective of the sites that are reporting.
• The unintended consequences of stakeholder outreach and revisions to the GHGRP for landfills.

Click here to read the paper.

December 15, 2016

Our latest SCS Technical Bulletin summarizes the EPA federal mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting program (GHGRP) into two pages of the most vital information. The new reporting requirements for Subparts HH and A discussed in our bulletin are effective January 1, 2017.

2016 GHG emissions reports due on March 31, 2017, must be completed in accordance with the updated Rule.

Remaining updates will be phased in from 2017 to 2019. These updates include, but are not limited to, revisions to the reporting regulation for all reporters including Subpart A Administrative Requirements, Subpart C Stationary Combustion Sources, and Subpart HH Municipal Solid Waste Landfills the three most common reporting sectors for MSW landfills. SCS Engineers will continue to post timely information, resources, and presentations to keep you well informed.

Use our resources for guidance or to answer questions.

• Ray Huff,  Vice President and National Expert on Greenhouse Gas
• Patrick Sullivan, Senior Vice President and National Expert on the Landfill Clean Air Act and the New Source Performance Standard (NSPS). or your SCS Project Manager in the SCS office
• Find an SCS Professional near you, or contact SCS at .
• Follow SCS’s blog, LinkedIn or Facebook to stay informed about newly published information and upcoming presentations in the future.

Share, read, or print the Technical Bulletin

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