The Biden administration recently scored a win for the environment through a new "methane fee" targeting oil and gas companies, as the AP detailed.
For the first time, dirty energy companies will have to pay retroactive fees starting at $900 per ton in 2024 for excess methane pollution. Those fees rise all the way to $1,500 per ton by 2026. Whether the methane fee will stick, though, is up in the air due to the incoming Trump administration, per the AP. The rule officially goes into place in early 2025.
In the short term, the focus on the potent gas makes a lot of sense. While carbon dioxide pollution is talked about more, methane is actually up to 80 times stronger. It accounts for roughly one-third of the planet's warming, per the Biden administration.
Dirty energy companies are among the biggest offenders, along with livestock operations and "garbage lasagnas" in landfills. Efforts to track it include sophisticated satellites launched into space by environmental groups that can help spot pollution that regulators miss.
Any effort to reverse the worst consequences of the warming planet, like extreme weather events including record temperatures and devastating hurricanes, has to include reining in rampant methane pollution.
The fee, officially called the Waste Emissions Charge, will face fierce opposition from the oil and gas lobby, the AP noted. They've already claimed the Environmental Protection Agency is setting unrealistic standards and overstepping its power. The EPA denied those claims and pointed out that many oil and gas companies are already in compliance.
That being said, there is enough noncompliance that the EPA estimated the legislation will reduce methane pollution by over 1.3 million tons by 2035. That would translate to as much as $2 billion in climate benefits and clean the air to the equivalent of removing eight million gas-powered cars off the road in a year.
The AP reported that Donald Trump and his presumptive nominee for the EPA, Lee Zeldin, are expected to take on the methane fee and other environmental protections in a bid for deregulation of dirty energy.
For now, the EPA and climate advocates celebrated the new measure.
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"The oil and gas companies doing so much damage to our climate should have to pay for the methane leaks they've so outrageously failed to fix," said Maggie Coulter, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity.
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