Comment to the Environmental Protection Agency: Reconsideration of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program - American Enterprise Institute

The 2025 proposed rule — the proposed reconsideration and removal/delay of program greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reporting obligations finalized in the prior rule finalized by the EPA in 2009 — itself should be finalized. The 2009 final rule — an obvious bureaucratic effort to gather information needed to implement various climate policies to reduce U.S. GHG emissions — cannot satisfy any plausible benefit/cost test. Even a U.S. net-zero policy achieved by 2050 would reduce global temperatures in 2100 by amounts either trivial or undetectable; the maximum under extreme assumptions would be 0.173°C, applying the Environmental Protection Agency climate model, while an estimate far more realistic would be 0.104°C. The U.S. GHG emissions that would be subject to reporting requirements, and subsequent regulation, under the 2009 final rule would be much smaller.

The costs of the reporting requirements cited in the 2025 proposed rule, based upon earlier analyses, are preposterously low: on average, $38,000 per reporting entity, that is, the cost of one full-time worker earning $15 per hour plus benefits.

The 2009 final rule ignores the massive litigation that would be engendered by the 2009 final rule, driven both by the difficulties inherent in GHG emissions measurement and/or estimation — even if EPA protocols and directives are implemented strictly — and by the “attribution” methodologies now emerging, deeply dubious methodologically and deeply political. The ongoing climate litigation being pursued by various governments, and the newly-enacted and proposed climate “superfund” penalty laws reinforce this obvious
reality.

The 2009 final rule would be a public policy hugely destructive. Accordingly, the 2025 proposed rule should be finalized.