The Environmental Protection Agency rolled out strict new emission regulations on Friday for controlling methane from landfills, in the latest move to implement the president’s climate change agenda.
“Under today’s proposals, new, modified and existing landfills would begin collecting and controlling landfill gas at emission levels nearly a third lower than current requirements,” the EPA said in a statement.
The EPA explained that the new regulations are part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan and methane reduction strategy, which contains several regulations and executive actions to mitigate the threat of global warming.
EPA and the White House are particularly concerned about methane emissions, and today’s action is just the tip of the iceberg in addressing methane, according to industry. “Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide,” which is a principal cause of climate change “threatens the health and welfare of current and future generations,” says EPA.
The oil industry says other rules are expected in the coming weeks and months targeting methane from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to extract oil and gas from shale rock formations. The American Petroleum Institute expects to see rules for the oil industry being rolled out as soon as September.
Howard Feldman, the oil group’s head of regulatory affairs, told reporters Thursday that the industry has done a lot to reduce methane on its own in recent years without regulations. The industry has been meeting with EPA officials to discuss other options to the regulations they are planning, including making emission reductions voluntary.
Friday’s regulations would strengthen previous measures enacted by the agency for new landfills in 2014, while updating a near 20-year old rule for existing landfills. The two new proposed rules would target landfills used to hold “municipal solid waste,” or MSW, which produces methane gas as a result of decomposition.
“MSW landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S., accounting for 18 percent of methane emissions in 2013 — the equivalent of approximately 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution,” says EPA.
The new rules are expected to reduce methane emissions by 487,000 tons a year beginning in 2025, which EPA says is “equivalent to reducing 12.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the carbon pollution emissions from more than 1.1 million homes.”
The agency estimates the benefits in fighting climate change to be valued at nearly $750 million by 2025, “or nearly $14 for every dollar spent to comply.” It says the costs of complying with the regulations are estimated at $55 million in 2025.
