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EPA Unveils Interactive Map Of America’s Carbon Polluters

In a major advance for concerned citizens, the Obama administration has unveiled an interactive website that displays the thousands of major greenhouse gas polluters across the United States. The new site, at ghgdata.epa.gov, features a Google map and charts driven by the greenhouse gas reporting database of facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse pollution. The EPA established the rule requiring this reporting in 2009, in response to a law passed under George W. Bush at the end of 2007.

This comprehensive and well-designed site, developed by the government contractor SAIC, makes it easy to find out facts like:

The top carbon polluter in America is the Scherer mega-coal plant in Juliette, Georgia.

The ten most polluting coal plants produce a combined 188 million tons of greenhouse pollution a year.

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Kansas has 103 reporting greenhouse polluters.

There are only two major emitters of highly dangerous HFC pollution in the United States, a Dupont plant in Louisville and a Honeywell plant in Baton Rouge.

People can also download the underlying data set for their own analysis.

The site does not display greenhouse pollution from the transportation or agribusiness sectors. The omission of the pollution from the millions of cars across America makes sense, but the exclusion of industrial agriculture pollution is a loophole inserted by Congress to protect the dangerous business model of Big Ag.