Industrial facilities in New York waiting to learn whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will scrap its greenhouse gas reporting program are already nine months into a state reporting year that the federal decision cannot touch. Whatever EPA decides, New York expects its first reports in 2027.
EPA proposed in September 2025 to remove reporting obligations for 46 of the 47 source categories in its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), which collects data from more than 8,000 direct emitters and suppliers. Under the proposal, 2024 would have been the final reporting year for most of them, and only part of the petroleum and natural gas systems category would have survived.
A year later, the agency has not finalized it. In a mid-September alert, Gable Gotwals advised clients to treat existing obligations as fully enforceable until EPA takes final action, and 2025 reports remain due October 30, 2026 under a February rule that pushed back the deadline. Many New York facilities are therefore finishing a federal report for last year while collecting state data for this one.
Albany did not wait for Washington. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) adopted its mandatory reporting rule, known as Part 253, in December 2025. The rule reaches facilities emitting 10,000 metric tons or more of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, along with fuel suppliers, electric power entities, waste haulers and several agricultural and waste operations. Emissions count from January 1, 2026. Large sources at 25,000 metric tons or more need third-party verification from a DEC-accredited verifier.
As adopted, Part 253 converts emissions to carbon dioxide equivalent using 20-year global warming potentials, which weigh methane far more heavily than the 100-year factors EPA uses. Lawmakers have since changed the basis. Amendments to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) enacted May 26 moved state accounting to a 100-year time frame, and DEC has not yet revised Part 253 to match. The new basis lowers reported totals, and Trinity Consultants notes it could push some facilities below the 10,000-ton reporting threshold or the 25,000-ton verification line. Landfills, digesters and gas operations near those levels have good reason to watch DEC's next rulemaking closely.
The amendments reach past the conversion factor. Lawmakers removed upstream emissions from the extraction and transmission of imported fossil fuels from the statewide tally, and biogenic carbon dioxide must now be reported separately and kept outside the statewide limit. The 2030 interim milestone gave way to a 2040 target of 60% below 1990 levels, and DEC has until December 31, 2028 to issue the regulations that carry out the law. For operators that burn biomass or run anaerobic digesters, the biogenic change could matter as much as the switch in global warming potentials.
The state has also eased the first cycle. In a July 31 enforcement discretion letter, DEC said it will not enforce the June 1, 2027 due date for 2026 emissions reports before December 31, 2027, and it moved the 2027 report from June 1 to September 1, 2028. Verification statements for 2026, first due December 1, 2027, can arrive by April 1, 2028, and monitoring plans for large sources slide from December 31, 2026 to June 30, 2027. Waste facilities have until March 1, 2027 for their monitoring plans, and electric power entities registering anticipated import and export sources have until August 31, 2027. DEC cites the CLCPA amendments as the reason it expects to revise the rule.
The extra months help with paperwork, but they leave the data year alone. Fuel invoices, meter readings and continuous monitoring records for 2026 are being produced now, and a verifier will eventually test how they were kept. A plant that lets its federal reporting routine lapse in expectation of relief would still need those same records for the state. Teams that watched compliance exposure building inside reporting systems earlier this year, or that know what auditors tend to find in emissions data, will recognize the pattern. Carbon capture operators have a separate stake, since Section 45Q carbon capture credits have depended on federal Subpart RR reporting.
For most plants, the practical answer is a single monitoring system that can produce both reports. Activity data such as fuel use, process inputs and meter readings is collected the same way for either regulator, and much of the difference lies in how that data is converted and checked. A plant that stores raw records and applies conversion factors only at the reporting stage can file with EPA, report to New York on today's 20-year values and recalculate once DEC adopts the 100-year basis, without rebuilding its inventory each time.
The same setup hedges against a federal outcome nobody can predict yet. If EPA finalizes its repeal, the federal filing falls away and the state report continues. If the proposal stalls or a court sets it aside, the federal routine is still running. Either way, the verifier who reviews the 2026 data year will be testing records created this fall, so the time to settle record-keeping questions is before year-end rather than during the first verification.
Other states have built similar insulation. Washington, Colorado and Oregon adopt the federal Part 98 reporting rules as they existed on a specific date, shielding their programs from a federal rollback, and California continues its own mandatory reporting regulation. For multistate operators, reporting looks set to grow at the state level even if the federal program shrinks, and New York's switch in accounting shows how quickly state methods can drift. EPA's final action, and whether it arrives before October 30, is the next marker. For New York facilities, the more important date has already passed, because January 1 started the clock.
