EPA’s New Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule to Exempt Medium-, Heavy-Duty Fleets
This story appears in the Oct. 5 print edition of Transport Topics.
The first-ever federal rule for greenhouse gas emissions reporting will not require trucking companies operating medium- and heavy-duty fleets to record and report carbon emissions data.
Under a new Environmental Protection Agency rule that will go into effect in January, an estimated 10,000 large emitters of heat-trapping emissions — primarily stationary rather than moving sources — will be required to begin collecting greenhouse gas data under a new reporting system. “We’re not included in the covered facilities,” said Glen Kedzie, American Trucking Associations environmental affairs counsel. “That’s good news,” he added.
The new EPA rule puts to rest concerns in the trucking industry, Kedzie said, but climate change legislation expected to be introduced by Democrats in the Senate later this month could “change the rules.”
“I can’t predict what will happen with the climate change bill,” Kedzie said. “So far, the new rule is the only answer we have — the only answer that’s law.”
ATA has opposed reporting requirements for mobile sources.
“There is no need to impose any additional and onerous reporting requirements on medium- and heavy-duty fleets, given that trucking is by and large an industry comprised of small businesses and that there are already three reporting mechanisms in existence,” Kedzie wrote in comments to EPA in June.
Those three voluntary reporting programs include the SmartWay program, the EPA Climate Leaders program and the Federal Highway Administration’s annual statistics reporting requirements, Kedzie said.
The new EPA reporting rule applies to suppliers of fossil fuels or industrial greenhouse gases, manufacturers of vehicles and engines, and facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more per year of greenhouse gas emissions.
A climate change bill passed by the House in June does not call specifically for motor carriers to report their emissions data, but does instruct EPA to establish a greenhouse gas registry for large emitters, Kedzie told Transport Topics.
“For the first time, we begin collecting data from the largest facilities in this country, ones that account for approximately 85% of the total U.S. emissions,” Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, said in a Sept. 22 statement announcing the new rule. “The American public, and industry itself, will finally gain critically important knowledge, and with this information we can determine how best to reduce those emissions.”
The new EPA rule will take effect in 60 days, with the first reports due in 2011.
EPA said the new reporting system will provide a better understanding of where greenhouse gases are coming from and will guide development of the best possible policies and programs to reduce emissions.
The data also will allow businesses to track their own emissions, compare them to similar facilities, and provide assistance in identifying cost effective ways to reduce emissions in the future.
