Center for Biological Diversity criticizes EPA's voluntary natural gas emissions reduction program

The Center for Biological Diversity issued a release on Thursday criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge Program, which is on a voluntary basis, arguing that agency should instead be employing regulations.

“Coddling the oil and gas industry with another voluntary program won’t curb the massive methane emissions cooking our climate,” Vera Pardee of the Center for Biological Diversity said. “The Obama administration must regulate this dangerous pollutant while we move to a clean-energy future. To fight global warming, we need real methane rules, along with real and rapid progress away from these dirty fossil fuels.”

According to the Center for Biodiversity’s release, less than one percent of oil and gas producers have joined the program, and it only reduced emissions by a carbon dioxide equivalent of 24 million in 2014, which does not represent a significant percentage of the industry’s 182 trillion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from that year.

“The oil and gas industry has a dismal track record of shrugging off voluntary methane-reduction efforts,” Pardee said. “The best way to prevent methane pollution is to keep dirty oil and gas in the ground by banning fracking and curtailing drilling. But we need ambitious federal methane rules to buy time to ward off catastrophic climate change.”