On September 22, 2009, the United States Environmental Protection Agency signed the "Final Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Rule." This federal regulation requires mandatory greenhouse gas reporting from facilities that burn fuel, produce electricity, and supply oil and natural gas, as well as owners and operators of municipal landfills, large animal feeding operations and other large facilities that generate and/or emit more than 25,000 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gas emissions based on global warming potentials of methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride as well as less common gases including hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorochemicals and hyrofluorinated ethers). The scope of this proposed rule is extraordinarily broad and even impacts commercial facilities such as hospitals and hotels that operate boilers with an aggregate heat input capacity greater than 30 MMBtu/hr.
The monitoring and reporting requirements begin January 1, 2010. The first report to EPA must be filed on or before March 31, 2011, and would cover the 2010 calendar year. EPA has not delegated the implementation of this rule to individual states, but intends to enforce compliance with the monitoring, sampling, measuring, recordkeeping, reporting, record retention and verification requirements itself pursuant to the Clean Air Act enforcement procedures.