https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/epa-emissions-data-collection-halt.html
The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Friday to stop requiring thousands of polluting facilities to report the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases that they release into the air.
The E.P.A. proposal would end requirements for thousands of coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country. The government has been collecting this data since 2010 and it is a key tool to track carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that are driving climate change.
The Friday announcement comes as the Trump administration has systematically erased mentions of climate change from government websites while slashing federal funding for research on global warming.
βAlongside President Trump, E.P.A. continues to live up to the promise of unleashing energy dominance that powers the American dream,β Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a statement. βThe Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape.β
Mr. Zeldin said that ending the program would save American businesses up to $2.4 billion in compliance costs. The New York Times could not independently verify that claim; representatives for E.P.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Critics said the proposal could hobble federal efforts to fight climate change, since the government cannot reduce emissions if it cannot measure how much is generated and where it is produced.
βWith this move, theyβre taking away the practical and material capacity of the federal government to do the basic elements of climate policymaking,β said Joseph Goffman, who led the E.P.A.βs air office during the Biden administration.
For the past 15 years, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has collected data from about 8,000 of the countryβs largest industrial facilities. That data has helped guide numerous decisions on federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required developed countries to submit tallies of their emissions.
In addition, private companies often rely on the programβs data to demonstrate to investors that their efforts to cut emissions are working. And communities often use it to determine whether local facilities are releasing air pollution that threatens public health.
The E.P.A. proposal would not directly eliminate emissions reporting requirements for certain oil and gas facilities such as pipelines that transport natural gas. Thatβs because those reports were required by Congress as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Instead, the E.P.A. wants to allow those specific oil and gas facilities to postpone emissions reporting until 2034. Congressional Republicans already delayed a related requirement for the facilities to pay a fee on their methane emissions until 2034.
Representatives for oil and gas industry trade and lobbying groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The proposal follows a rapid-fire series of steps by the Trump administration to weaken or dismantle environmental protections.
In July, the E.P.A. moved to repeal the scientific finding that underpins the governmentβs legal authority to combat climate change. And in recent weeks, the White House has directed a half-dozen agencies to thwart the countryβs offshore wind industry, a key source of emissions-free electricity.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the United Nations has required all developed countries to provide data on their domestic emissions each year. But the United States missed an April deadline to submit its data, and Mr. Trump began the yearlong process of withdrawing from the Paris pact on his first day back in office.