In late February, Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate Voice on partisan lines To cancel the base of the Biden era, it will implement a federal tax on Methane pollution. President Donald Trump The law was made on Friday Setting climate targets in the country is far from hand. Since controlling the White House and both Congress rooms this year, the Republicans have begun about Decide by the developments of the Biden era systematically on climate changeRegardless of the size or economic impact or economic impact of politics, with varying degrees of success.
Methan is a strong but rapidly effective greenhouse gas-it packs a large punch in the short term and weakens over time. Studies indicate that methane is responsible for 20 to 30 percent From global warming since the industrial revolution. American oil and gas operations are collective for emission More than 6 million metric tons of methane Every year – the equivalent of 10 percent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions in the country, if you are looking for the first 20 years of greenhouse gases in the air. Methan is the main component of natural gas, which often leaks from drilling sites, pipelines and storage facilities.
When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he explained that he was intending to become the first president in American history to succeed in changing climate – the goal that necessarily included targeting methane emissions. In 2022, it is The law to reduce inflation occurredOr the Irish Republican Army – Legislation of hundreds of billions of dollars of incentives, loans, grants to families, facilities and industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Irish Republican Army has also amended the clean air law to include a ruling that directs the Environmental Protection Agency to create methane fees for the main oil and gas producers – mainly, imposing taxes on fossil fuel companies for each tons of greenhouse gases that are emitted on a specific threshold. The legislation included subsidies to help the producers who have emitted methane to the legal limit to install the gas besiege technology to reduce their emissions.
Al Qaeda Environmental Protection Agency It was completed in November last yearTechnically called waste emissions, would have been applied to facilities that produce quantities of methane that exceed 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The fees began at $ 900 per ton of methane in 2024, and it rose to $ 1,200 per ton in 2025 and 1600 dollars in 2026 and every year after that. Most large oil and gas companies already meet the standards in Biden’s fees, which means that they will not have to pay anything. The Environmental Protection Agency was supposed to start obtaining fees this year based on emissions data 2024, but the Republicans canceled it before the agency could start collecting sanctions.
The fees, if it were in effect, was the first federal tax ever imposed directly on greenhouse gases. It was possible to apply to nearly a third of methane emissions that come from oil and gas infrastructure in the United States and Converting 1.2 metric tons from methane until 2035 -It is equivalent to eating nearly 8 million gas cars operating in non -communication mode for a year.
Shell, BP, and other oil majors Support the initiative. But other parts of the oil and gas industry, and the Republicans in Congress, are their opponents.
Joe Ridel / Getty Embs
“No one wants to do commercial business when the federal government creates lists that will take them out of work, which is what this natural gas tax does,” He said Republican August, Flogir of San Angelo, Texas, a member of the Congress who wrote the measure that Trump signed on Friday. “In fact, this rule suffocates US energy production only, investing investment, and increasing energy prices throughout America.”
PFLUGER’s pessimistic viewpoint of US oil and gas industry is inconsistent with what official reports say. Bossable fuel producers in America are on a winning series of every scale. The United States is The largest source of natural gas in the worldAnd the production of crude oil and natural gas Strike standard levels in December. The oil and gas industry in Texas Breaking new production records on monday.
“It is difficult to imagine how countries that break the records of production in one way or another are restricted,” said John Goldstein, Vice President of the Energy Transition Program of the Environmental Defense Fund. “I don’t think this argument really carries water.”
However, the tax only treats a fragment of US methane emissions. The American agricultural sectors and waste produced nearly twice the number of methane, such as the production of fossil fuels between 2010 and 2019. But the installation of emissions from these sectors is a challenge. Methane emissions from agriculture come from sources, not a number of decentralization, such as cows and compost facilities, which makes it difficult to organize. The amount of methane that it produces in a large part depends on consumable eating habits, which is difficult for the government to control.
Despite its limited impact, methane fees were a step in the right direction. “There is an arrangement in which we need to carry out climate solutions,” said Daniel Jasper, director of politics in the withdrawal of the non -profit project of the climate. “Methan is something we call the emergency brakes, because we have to do this now.”
The fees are one of Seven climate and environment policies Republicans in Congress aim to use the Congress Review Law-a law that gives legislators the authority to reflect the recently passed regulations by a simple majority. But the Republicans only canceled the base of the Environmental Protection Agency, which determines methane fees – and not the rule of the Irish Republican army that allows the application of such fees in the first place. If this remains intact, a future presidential administration can capture the place where Biden stopped. However, Republicans in Congress have indicated that they intend to cancel the largest amount of the Irish Republican army in the coming months, Including parts Enabling the Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
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