The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a proposal to eliminate much of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program and suspend the remainder until 2034, describing the program’s high compliance costs of up to $2.4 billion annually for businesses with limited resultant regulatory value.

Today, the GHGRP requires more than 8000 facilities across 47 industrial categories to report greenhouse gas emission data. If finalized, this proposal would remove reporting obligations for all facilities except petroleum and natural gas, and those sectors would largely have their reporting deferred until 2034.

What the GHGRP Was

The GHGRP was born from an appropriations directive in which Congress funded the EPA’s development of a rule requiring mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions across the economy. That is, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 provided $3.5 million to the EPA specifically for the purpose of creating a mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule without any legislation creating the program.

Finalized in 2009, the new program relied on the Clean Air Act’s information gathering authority under Section 114. Beginning in 2011, more than 8,000 facilities across the country, including power plants, fuel suppliers, and most large industrial facilities, were required to submit detailed annual reports on their greenhouse gas emissions (.. at a cost of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per facility) if they emitted at least 25,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year.

Although the GHGRP was not itself an emissions reduction program, the vast dataset it generated was used in a range of contexts, having effects far greater than only the 8000 facilities, including the development of later climate policies, such as the methane reporting provisions tied to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

But what might have sounded like a good idea in 2009 does not comport with the statutory framework of the Clean Air Act or today’s public policy priorities. The EPA has concluded that the GHGRP exceeds its authority and imposes burdens that are no longer justified, particularly in light of other mandatory reporting and compliance obligations that already exist under federal law.

The Proposal

This significant development comes in response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders 14154, Unleashing American Energy, and 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation, and reflects the EPA’s continued effort to align environmental regulation with statutory authority and current policy.

Under the September 16, 2025, proposed rule:

• 46 of 47 source categories currently subject to the GHGRP would no longer be required to report greenhouse gas emissions.
• The petroleum and natural gas systems category (Subpart W) would largely be repealed as well, except for those segments that Congress explicitly required reporting under Clean Air Act Section 136.
• Even for those Section 136 segments, the EPA proposes suspending reporting until 2034, because the Waste Emissions Charge created by the Inflation Reduction Act has itself been postponed until that year.

It is suggested this is a textbook example of regulatory housekeeping: retain only what is required by statute, remove what is not authorized, and suspend obligations that are unnecessary for the foreseeable future.

The Legal Foundation

EPA’s proposal rests on two clear legal bases. First, Section 114 of the Clean Air Act was never intended as a vehicle for comprehensive, economy wide greenhouse gas data collection. Its purpose is targeted, information gathering to support rulemaking and enforcement under the Act. Second, even if the GHGRP were deemed legally permissible, the EPA Administrator has ample discretion to rescind programs that no longer serve statutory or policy needs.

State Level Action: A Complement, Not a Conflict

At least six states have some version of greenhouse gas emission reporting, California, Washington, and Maryland among them. New York is developing one of its own. If states believe data collection is important for their climate programs, they are free to pursue it, and some already are.

This balance, federal streamlining alongside state innovation, is precisely the kind of cooperative federalism the Clean Air Act was designed to promote. The EPA’s proposal respects state autonomy while relieving regulated entities of duplicative federal obligations.

A Deregulatory Action Worth Supporting

The EPA’s proposal to rescind most of the GHGRP and suspend the rest until 2034 is a significant deregulatory action.

You have the opportunity to weigh in during the public comment period, which closes on November 3, 2025.

Of course, the existing rule remains in effect until any change is finalized. It is also possible that environmental groups and local governments could challenge this rule. And this is the type of regulatory action our future president could seek to reimplement.

This proposal reflects not only the current Administration’s view of climate change regulation without express legislative authority but also broader regulatory reform efforts, respecting legal boundaries and cutting red tape. Even those who are not directly impacted by the existing greenhouse gas emission rule should consider the strategic implications of what is proposed and comment.

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