August 2, 2002—The Secretary of Energy, joined by the Secretaries of Commerce and Agriculture and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, submitted recommendations to President Bush that provide a blueprint to improve and expand a voluntary reporting system that encourages greenhouse gas emission reductions and creates a new, transferable credit system for those reductions.
President Bush’s national goal is to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the American economy by 18 percent by 2012.
The recommendations highlight the need to create standardized, widely accepted, transparent accounting methods, support independent verification of registry reports, and provide credits for a broad range of actions. Improving the registry and providing transferable credits for reductions would help motivate firms to undertake cost-effective voluntary reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
The current Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases, created by the 1992 Energy Policy Act and managed by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), has been operational since 1994. EIA’s Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases 2000 contains reports from 222 corporations, associations, and individuals.
An interagency working group has undertaken outreach efforts to the general public and to industry, environmental, agricultural, and forestry groups, the financial community, public policy organizations and the states to solicit views on how to improve the greenhouse gas registry, consistent with the goals of the National Energy Policy. A formal 30-day public comment period ended June 5.
The interagency working group—both internally and in consultation with various stakeholders—identified recommendations that will guide the process over the coming months to improve the greenhouse gas-reporting program.
Based on a report from Environ.com
