Now we get into the nitty gritty: the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed including additional sectors in the greenhouse gas reporting rule that it issued last fall. That rule covered approximately 10,000 individual facilities in 31 source categories. Together these account for about 85% of all greenhouse gases generated in the U.S. but left out some important sources. The new proposal targets methane and fluorinated gases, two potent greenhouse gases. It covers several industry categories including petroleum and natural gas systems, processes involving fluorinated gases, and facilities that inject or store carbon dioxide underground.
The goal of all this the record-keeping is to get a more precise accounting of where greenhouse gas emissions are coming from, which in turn will help lead to more effective programs for reducing them. Think that’ll work? The downward spiral of water consumption per capita in the U.S. provides some interesting clues.