A foundational data source that shapes the work of sustainability professionals across multiple sectors will disappear if the Trump administration goes ahead with plans to scrap the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, critics of the move warn.

The program, run since 2009 by the Environmental Protection Agency, requires around 8,000 oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to submit annual emissions reports to the agency. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin proposed scrapping the program last month, describing it as “nothing more than bureaucratic red tape.”

Sustainability professionals see it differently. 

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program matters to everyone, not just the companies that report,” said Sean Hackett, senior manager for energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s the most comprehensive source of emissions data. It underpins investor confidence, regulatory oversight and supply chain accountability across the economy.”

“The corporate world has built sustainability and investment plans around all it does,” added John Milko, senior managing policy advisor at Carbon180, a carbon removal nonprofit.

Cascading impacts

Ending the program would trigger a cascade of negative impacts, they and others warn, because the program provides a standardized data set that feeds into work across the economy. This includes life-cycle assessments and product-carbon footprints, which rely on emissions data from facilities upstream in the value chain.

In construction, for example, companies building data centers and other facilities are increasingly demanding that low-carbon steel and concrete be used. “We want to move to a system that improves the calculations of that embodied carbon,” said Milko. “Shuttering the largest-scale program that is seeking to standardize that data is counterproductive to the sustainability goals of large corporations.”

The move also places billions of dollars of announced investments in carbon removal in jeopardy, including direct air capture projects and plans to capture and store emissions from industrial facilities. The economics of these projects rely on a tax credit known as 45Q, which was made more valuable in 2022. Projects totaling $77 billion in capital expenditures plan on making use of 45Q, but companies need to access data from the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program to claim the credit. 

“Canceling the greenhouse gas reporting program means you can’t get 45Q,” said Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, a carbon management firm. “Whether this is intentional or accidental, it’s very bad. It will chill investment, cost time and money and impair trad