TRIRIGA Insights
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Lessons learned from initial year of California Mandatory GHG reporting rule
Beginning January 1, 2010, organizations will be required to track and report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from those facilities that fall within the EPA Mandatory GHG Reporting guidelines. As is often the case with federal environmental legislation, the EPA has followed California’s lead in developing the federal Mandatory GHG Reporting rule. California enacted its own Mandatory GHG Reporting Rule in 2008. Similar to the EPA Mandatory GHG Reporting rule, the California rule requires carbon intensive facilities to track and report annual GHG emissions.
June 2009 was the deadline for the more than 500 California facilities that fell within the rule to report on their 2008 emissions. The types of facilities represented in the California rule closely match the EPA rule. Similar to the EPA estimate of facilities covered, facilities with over 25,000 metric tons of emissions from stationary combustion sources accounted for 35 percent of the total reporting facilities. These facilities represented a range of industries and organizations including food processing, pharmaceutical, higher education, airports, and a wide variety of manufacturing sectors. Many of these facilities have cogeneration plants that directly exceed the 25,000 metric tons threshold. However, for the majority of facilities under the stationary combustion source category, emissions were from manufacturing equipment and other stationary combustion sources.
In total, California facilities reported almost 175.5 million metric tons of GHG emissions. Our analysis shows this equates to the same GHG emissions from driving 33.5 million passenger cars annually or sequestered by 4.5 billion tree seedlings grown for 10 years. Only 11% of the total emissions came from the 180 California facilities that exceed the stationary combustion threshold. This is due to the fact that, on average, the stationary combustion facilities are much less carbon intensive.
As discussed in previous TRIRIGA Insights, facilities that fall under the stationary combustion source category have an enormous opportunity to save energy costs, cut carbon emissions, and potentially remove the mandatory reporting. Organizations with large complex facilities require a system to help measure energy and carbon emissions and pinpoint the most cost effective opportunities for improvement.