El Paso strives to be an industry leader in developing analytical expertise regarding regulatory and policy issues surrounding climate change legislation or regulation, and the potential impact to our business operations. After careful consideration, our key tenets were developed to strike a balance between the need to sustain U.S. economic growth and respect for environmental interests. We continue to advocate these key principles at various state, regional, and federal forums.

Read El Paso’s key tenets on greenhouse gas emissions to learn more about our commitment.

El Paso supports a national regulatory framework to address GHG emissions which would include, for example establishment of a national climate registry for reporting annual GHG emissions. Regulatory uncertainty caused by multiple and disparate regional and state programs will result in less than optimal outcomes in all cases. Reporting emissions to numerous divergent state registries would also be duplicative and not the best use of resources. In contrast, a national registry would enable a review of current emission levels and would help identify a realistic reduction strategy and goals. El Paso has delayed establishing GHG emissions reduction targets until federal legislation is finalized.

El Paso also advocates a downstream design to GHG regulation that focuses on the source of emissions, as opposed to an upstream design, which focuses on carbon content of the fuel and throughput. Natural gas should be part of the solution in reducing GHG emissions. Therefore, we anticipate natural gas usage will increase in bridging the gap from coal to clean fuel technology, which could temporarily increase our GHG emissions.

The downstream design has proven to be successful in reducing emissions in the EPA acid rain and NOx reduction programs. For later phases of the regulation, we support a hybrid program that calls for a downstream design for all sectors – except transportation which could be best regulated by an upstream design.

Visit the Carbon Disclosure Project web site to review El Paso’s CDP V submission.