Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published an interim final rule to extend the deadline for companies to report their 2025 emissions under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP). The goal isn’t to help companies comply. It’s to buy time to dismantle a program that taxpayers depend on.
For more than 15 years, the GHGRP has served as America’s industrial carbon ledger. Created in 2009 under the Clean Air Act, it requires annual emissions reports from thousands of facilities across nearly every sector of the economy—steel mills, refineries, chemical plants, landfills, power stations, and oil and gas producers. Approximately 8,200 facilities report under the GHGRP, producing one of the most comprehensive public datasets on greenhouse-gas emissions in the world. Federal, state, and local governments rely on this data to implement programs and track initiatives, including several federal energy tax credits.
In September 2025, EPA proposed to shut the program down. The proposed rule would remove reporting requirements for all industries except certain oil and gas operators subject to the methane “waste emissions charge,” for which reporting has already been suspended until 2034.
In the same proposal, EPA called for no industries to submit annual GHG reports for calendar year 2025. The September 2025 proposed rule would have extended the deadline from March 31, 2026, to June 10, 2026. In February, the agency instead extended it to October 30, 2026. Today’s interim final rule will extend it to March 10, 2027 — almost one full year from the original deadlines.
The proposed rule is not subtle. It clearly states that the goal of delaying 2025 reporting requirements is to “allow EPA additional time to consider comments on the GHGRP Reconsideration Proposal and to take any final action on that proposal.” This rule is not intended to give operators more time to collect and submit their data; it is to buy time until EPA can officially eliminate the program.
Ending the GHGRP is part of a broader movement to weaken transparency and accountability by dismantling public access to data. EPA claims that delaying reporting requirements “serves the public benefit by reducing risk of harm to regulated entities from inadvertently or hastily reporting erroneous or unnecessary information that could later be made public.” That is serving industry, not the public.
Information is power. GHGRP plays a critical role in helping taxpayers, communities, and policymakers understand what drives our emissions and where reductions are possible. Without it, taxpayers are left to shoulder the financial burden created by emission-intensive industries.
Ending the GHGRP would also severely impact the implementation of federal and non-federal policies and programs. The 45Q and 45V tax credits, for example, rely on GHGRP data to determine eligibility. TCS already has longstanding concerns about the taxpayer costs and lack of oversight with these and other energy tax credits. Repealing the GHGRP would worsen those risks — leaving the IRS with little to no means to verify reported data, essentially rubber stamping any number of projects. And establishing a replacement for the GHGRP would be a major financial and administrative challenge.
The cost to industry of complying with a patchwork of federal, state, and international systems could exceed the current costs of GHGRP compliance. Repeal would also create regulatory uncertainty that discourages long-term planning and investment, penalizing companies that acted in good faith and have already invested in the systems and personnel needed to meet GHGRP reporting requirements.
Eliminating GHGRP would create additional costs for taxpayers, communities, and industry. It is the only comprehensive, facility-level dataset of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and an essential tool for transparency, accountability, and sound fiscal governance. This latest rule to delay reporting requirements is just another step towards its end.
