News

Stories about land use and planning from local and national sources. Ideas and events that affect livable urban and rural communities.

Archived News

Keeping tabs on greenhouse gas

Environment - At least 600 Oregon companies would come under the purview of a proposed mandatory reporting rule

April 04, 2008
The Oregonian

Oregon plans to require more than 600 industries and utilities, from Portland General Electric and Intel to plywood and paper mills, to begin reporting greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposed mandatory reporting rule, which would take effect next year, is an early step in the state's effort to cut carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming. Those gases haven't been regulated before.

If adopted as proposed, the rule would exempt some big chunks of the economy, including transportation and agriculture. Washington's reporting plan requires large fleets of trucks or cars to report emissions. Oregon's doesn't.

But Oregon's rule is tighter on industries that burn fossil fuels. Unlike California and Washington, Oregon includes no minimum threshold for industries that use fossil fuel-fired boilers to drive operations -- a tight standard that could take some small manufacturers by surprise.

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality officials said they wanted to cast a broad net initially to help eliminate the guesswork for emissions calculations.

State officials have calculated about how much greenhouse gas, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are released statewide. The number is gradually rising. But they don't know how much comes from individual plants and facilities.

"Part of the point of having the reporting in the first place is so we can get a better understanding of what portion of the emissions come from where," said Brandy Albertson, a DEQ analyst.

The reporting rules will help lay the groundwork for an interstate program in the works by Oregon and other Western states to cap and gradually cut back the amount of greenhouse gases that businesses can emit.

The program, the Western Climate Initiative, also is developing reporting rules. And federal officials are working on national reporting requirements. The various requirements are all supposed to dovetail in coming years.

Oregon's mandates will apply to big fossil-fuel burners, including utilities, wood-products plants, and pulp and paper mills. High-tech manufacturers, which release relatively small amounts of potent greenhouse gases, also will have to report. By 2010, larger landfills and wastewater treatment plants, big emitters of methane, will be required to document emissions.

Most of the entities included in the requirements already report other types of pollutants under federal air quality standards, DEQ officials said.

The 2008 Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have allowed DEQ to require utilities to report emissions of out-of-state plants that supply Oregon with electricity, such as PacifiCorp's many coal plants outside Oregon.

Those emissions aren't included in the draft rule, though Gov. Ted Kulongoski probably will ask the 2009 Legislature for authorization.

The biggest omission is transportation, which at last count emitted 34 percent of Oregon's greenhouse gases, the largest share of any category.

Preliminary recommendations from the Western Climate Initiative also omitted transportation from its cap-and-trade scheme. Officials argued that cars and trucks will be covered by mileage standards and other measures.

But the omission is controversial with environmentalists, and with utilities and industry, which fear they could be saddled with tighter carbon limits if all sectors of the economy aren't included.

Reporting carbon emissions shouldn't be hard for most businesses, as long as they can estimate emissions based on fuel used or other measures, said John Ledger, a vice president and lobbyist for Associated Oregon Industries. "It's a reasonable first proposal. You have to start somewhere."

Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com

Link to the article

TAKE ACTION

Get Involved with 1000 Friends of Oregon.

Support

Action Items

Volunteer