ExxonMobil and Pacific Gas & Electric are among the nine companies that have been fined by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) for violating the state’s mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule.
That rule requires facilities, including those covered by California’s cap-and-trade regulation, to report their GHGs annually.
The companies fined are:
California’s Mandatory Reporting Rule, adopted by ARB in 2007, requires facilities that emit more than 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually to report their emissions. About 600 facilities have been reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the Air Resources Board since 2008.
Industrial facilities must report each April, and utilities must do so each June. Those reports are then checked for accuracy and verified by ARB-trained independent third parties with oversight by ARB staff. The final reports are published on ARB’s website each fall.
The reporting compliance rate for 2012 was 97 percent. In addition to paying these fines, the nine violators must provide the Air Resources Board with plans for complete and accurate data collection and reporting in the future.
In late June, representatives from ExxonMobil, DuPont, Marathon Energy, Dow Chemical and Eastman Chemical met with the EPA to discuss their concerns that mandatory greenhouse gas reporting could force companies into giving away trade secrets.
The energy and chemical sectors already report GHG data, but EPA rules under development may require them to report information used to calculate GHG emissions, such as production volumes or amount of raw materials used, the Hill reports.
