WASHINGTON, DC — Roughly 10,000 carbon-intensive facilities in the U.S. must begin collecting data Jan. 1 on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they produce.

The first emissions reports are due in 2011, with data covering calendar year 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. Its finalized reporting and monitoring requirements cover roughly 85 percent of emissions produced in the U.S.

Facilities included in the new requirements each produce 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, such as petroleum refineries, cement kil, power plants, and certain manufacturers. Non-light duty vehicle and engine manufacturers must begin complying with the new rules for model year 2011.

“The American public, and industry itself, will finally gain critically important knowledge and with this information we can determine how best to reduce those emissions,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement Tuesday.

The new rules could lay the groundwork for federal emissions regulations should Congress fail to pass climate change legislation this year. Some in Congress are already seeking to dilute the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, such as a Department of Interior funding bill amendment that would prohibit the EPA from addressing stationary source emissions for one year, such as from power plants.

"Senator Murkowski's amendment would hinder EPA's ability to comply with the Supreme Court ruling that heat-trapping emissions are pollutants under the Clean Air Act," Liz Perera, a federal policy analyst with Union of Concerned Scientists' climate program, said in a statement Tuesday. "Other countries are watching what Congress is doing. Passing this amendment would send them the wrong message just when we want them to work with us on a new climate treaty."

The reporting threshold guarantees that the vast majority of small businesses would not need to comply with the reporting rules. The 25,000 metric ton threshold is about the same amount of emissions produced by 4,600 passenger vehicles every year.

_{Photo CC-licensed by Flickr user Nautical9.}