US EPA’s decision to stop supporting the research that hundreds of companies use to calculate their GHG emissions as “a major setback for corporate climate action and reporting”

Harry Stevens writes on the New York Times website about one of the most effective and popular databases would stop to be updated. The database helps companies calculate their GHG emissions. Its creator left the EPA after being investigated for criticizing the Trump administration.

 

Popular E.P.A. Database Is in Limbo Amid Science Cuts

The Environmental Protection Agency said it would stop updating research that hundreds of companies use to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions after the agency suspended the database’s creator because he had signed a letter criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to scientific research.

The researcher, Wesley Ingwersen, is leaving the E.P.A. to pursue his work at Stanford University. He was one of 139 E.P.A. employees suspended and investigated by the agency after signing the June letter, which charged that Mr. Trump’s policies “undermine the E.P.A. mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

Dr. Ingwersen led work on a statistical model that combines environmental and economic data to calculate the carbon footprints — what experts refer to as emissions factors — of a range of goods and services, from making steel to flying planes to growing apples. The open-source data sets help companies understand the greenhouse gases generated by each step in their supply chains.

The database is the third most viewed of more than 281,000 federal data sets on Data.gov, the government’s public data repository. An earlier version of the database is among the top 10 most viewed. The data sets will remain publicly available but will not be updated to reflect the current state of the economy, rendering them less useful over time.

Dr. Ingwersen will move his work to Stanford through a consortium with two private companies, which has pledged to continue updating the information and making it free to the public.

Damien Lieber, a senior manager at ENGIE Impact, an environmental consulting firm, described the E.P.A.’s decision to stop supporting the research as “a major setback for corporate climate action and reporting.” He called it “one of the most important data sets available — if not the most important — for estimating value chain emissions.”

Many companies account for their supply chain emissions to comply with regulations in the European Union and in California, which is set to begin requiring companies to report supply chain emissions in 2027. Other companies use the data to identify and cut back on the parts of their operations that cause the most pollution.

Dr. Ingwersen’s model, known as U.S. Environmentally-Extended Input-Output, or USEEIO, is popular because it integrates with spending data that companies already have, said Kristine Parisi, a senior economic consultant who manages carbon accounting at FTI Consulting. A furniture company, for instance, can tally how much it spent on wood, textiles, metal, shipping and office supplies and use Dr. Ingwersen’s model to quickly estimate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with those activities.

“It’s a very great, very granular, very highly reviewed data set,” Ms. Parisi said.

In a July 24 email sent by the E.P.A. to users of the database and obtained by The New York Times, the agency announced it would stop supporting Dr. Ingwersen’s research. “E.P.A. has decided to end future development of USEEIO by the close of Fiscal Year 2025 (September 30),” the email said, adding, “We wish to thank Dr. Ingwersen for his dedication and determination through the years in bringing the concept of USEEIO as a freely available tool to life and wish him success in his future endeavors as he leaves the Agency.”

Asked on Thursday about the cancellation of the program, Brigit Hirsch, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, initially denied that the E.P.A. was discontinuing work on the database.

Later, she wrote that the email announcing the program’s end, which was signed by the USEEIO team, was “not discussed with E.P.A. leadership.” She added that “E.P.A. leadership is discussing the further development needs and ability to continue to support USEEIO.”

In early July, the E.P.A. suspended Dr. Ingwersen, who had spent 15 years at the agency, after he signed an open letter organized by Stand Up for Science, a group that planned a March rally in Washington to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to federally funded scientific research.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats using their agency position and title to unlawfully undermine, sabotage, and undercut the will of the American public that was clearly expressed at the ballot box last November,” Ms. Hirsch wrote in reference to Dr. Ingwersen.

Dr. Ingwersen worked at the Office of Research and Development, the E.P.A.’s scientific research arm, which the agency has said it will eliminate. That division employs hundreds of scientists who research toxic chemicals, wildfire smoke, pollutants in drinking water and climate change, among other topics.

Dr. Ingwersen accepted a buyout offered as part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to shrink the federal work force. He will remain on the E.P.A. payroll until Sept. 30 but received permission to start work as a research engineer at the Sustainable Solutions Lab in Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability.

Steven J. Davis, a professor who runs the lab, said he was excited to collaborate with Dr. Ingwersen and to “have him do that work under the banner of Stanford.”

Dr. Ingwersen’s work will continue under a consortium called Cornerstone that includes Stanford and two private companies, Watershed and ERG.

Michael Steffen, the head of climate analytics at Watershed, an environmental analytics company, said the consortium shows how public research projects can continue after losing government support.

“There will be many instances where private actors, research universities, companies want to step in and maintain continuity on similar types of research,” Mr. Steffen said. “They have done so with prior changes in government support. This is a great example of that.”

But Paul Anastas, who served as the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for research and development from 2009 to 2012, cautioned that shifting government research to the private sector could undermine its credibility.

“Throughout our history, the most reliable data has come from the public sector, whether it is on food safety, health, economics or the environment,” Dr. Anastas said. “Moving data to the private sector with private motivations such as profit, power, market share or competitive advantage makes the data less trustworthy and therefore less valuable.”

Other E.P.A. research projects could struggle to find private backing, either because they rely on confidential data, are too costly or have no immediate commercial application.

Ms. Hirsch, the E.P.A. spokeswoman, said the agency “has the resources needed to accomplish the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, fulfill all statutory obligations and make the best-informed decisions based on the gold standard of science.”

Cornerstone has pledged to keep Dr. Ingwersen’s model and the data sets of emissions factors free and publicly available. The consortium also plans to improve the model by merging it with Watershed’s Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive.

That work will also address a shortcoming of the data set: the assumption that companies’ supply chains are entirely contained within the United States. In reality, many goods are sourced from other countries where economic activity often produces far more emissions, research has found.

External link