Short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are greenhouse gases that remain in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time than carbon dioxide, yet their potential to warm the atmosphere can be many times greater. Although SLCP emissions can be regulated separately from other air pollution control methods, they are often integrated into a larger air quality management program, since certain SLCPs are also dangerous air pollutants that have harmful effects for people and ecosystems. Two prominent SLCPs to limit through policy are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and methane.

HFC Regulations

HFCs are entirely man-made and mainly utilized in refrigeration, air-conditioning, insulating foams and aerosol propellants. Most HFCs are emitted from equipment as a result of wear, poor maintenance, or leakage at the end of a product’s lifetime. HFCs can be controlled through regulating their production and consumption. However, the best technique to reduce HFCs is by substituting different chemicals in their place.

Methane Regulations

Methane constitutes 10% of U.S. emissions and 20% of global emissions. It is released in a variety of ways, including drilling for oil and gas, mining for coal, agriculture, and waste treatment. Thus, proper methane regulations vary by the nature of the source, but commonly fall under the categories of oil and gas regulation, landfill management, agricultural management, or methane reduction plans.

Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) Regulations

Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) is a synthetic compound that is the most potent greenhouse gas known-to-date, and it has an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years — meaning even a relatively small amount of SF6 can have a significant impact on climate change. Approximately 70% of all SF6 emissions in the U.S. comes from electricity transmission and distribution; other sources include manufacturing of electronics and semiconductors and the production of magnesium. SF6 emissions can be managed through leak detection and repair, equipment upgrades and replacement, proper decommissioning of equipment at the end of life, or recycling of the gas. Additionally, new technologies can be used as alternatives to traditional SF6 electrical breakers.

Key Resources

• Sabin Center for Climate Change Law — EPA’s SNAP regulation and State implementation
• North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council — HFC Policy Tracker
  
• Energy Policy Solutions — Industrial Process Emission
• U.S. Climate Alliance — ​​A Roadmap for Reducing Short-Lived Climate Pollutants to Meet the Goals of the Paris Agreement
• U.S. EPA — SF6 Mitigation Opportunities

State Examples

• California’s Sulfur Hexafluoride Regulations — Applies to all retailers and users of SF6 except for those using it for electric utility or semiconductor manufacture.
• California’s Refrigerant Management Program — Requires any owner-operator of a facility with stationary, nonresidential refrigeration systems using more than 50 pounds of high global warming potential refrigerants to utilize best practices to reduce leakage and emissions.
• Colorado HB 21-1266 (2021) – Requires a 60% reduction in emissions from oil and gas methane by 2030, relative to 2005 levels, and a 20% reduction by 2030 in industrial and manufacturing emissions, including SF6 emissions, relative to 2015 levels.
• New York Methane Reduction Plan — Focuses on regulations and policies to capture and reduce methane emissions from oil and gas, landfills, and agriculture.
• California Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Strategy — Comprehensive strategy to reduce SLCPs, including methane and fluorinated gases. CARB’s strategy calls for significant decreases in emissions from dairy manure management.

Energy efficiency standards establish a limit to energy use, or a minimum efficiency, that equipment must achieve. Due to the variety of equipment used within industry, such standards may be complex. As a result, standards should be created to be technology neutral and based on performance features of the type of equipment being monitored, as opposed to the prescriptive design features of the equipment. They can also be used to determine early retirement of facilities, which aims to reduce inefficient, polluting plants with modern ones. 

This policy would incentivize upgrades by financing rewards and/or penalties. However, for this policy to be effective it must be coupled with frequent reporting and monitoring of energy use to ensure that rewards are only given when efficiency targets are reached.

Key Resources

• Energy Policy Solutions – Industrial Energy Efficiency
• U.S. Climate Alliance and ACEEE — Enabling Industrial Decarbonization: A Policy Guidebook for U.S. States
• RMI — Decarbonizing Industry Resource Tool (DIRT)

Key Resources

• Colorado’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Management for Manufacturers (GEMM) — The GEMM rule requires facilities that show through an audit process they are using GHG Best Available Control Technologies and Energy Best Management Practices to achieve an additional 5 percent reduction in their GHG emissions.

From the Carbon Leadership Forum:

Embodied carbon refers to the carbon emissions released during the extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction, and end-of-life phases of buildings. Embodied carbon emissions come from emissions from the extraction, manufacturing, and transportation of construction materials, and from the construction of a building.

Buy Clean Standards, also known as Embodied Carbon Standards, is a procurement policy approach that aims to fill a current gap in climate policy by incorporating low-carbon construction purchasing requirements that address the greenhouse gas emissions from construction materials into government purchasing.

Buy Clean policies use a combination of disclosure, incentives, and standards to leverage the significant purchasing power of public agencies to encourage a shift toward low-carbon options in the broader construction materials market. Buy Clean is an approach that can be applied at the federal, state, or local level and can also be used by private building owners. 

Key Resources

• Carbon Leadership Forum – What is a Buy Clean Policy?
• BlueGreen Alliance — Buy Clean in States
• ACEEE – Knowledge Infrastructure: The Critical Path to Advance Embodied Carbon Building Codes
  
• Carbon Leadership Forum — Embodied Carbon Policy Toolkit
• Carbon Leadership Forum — Steps to Develop a Buy Clean Policy
• U.S. Climate Alliance and ACEEE — Enabling Industrial Decarbonization: A Policy Guidebook for U.S. States
• ACEEE — State Industrial Decarbonization Policy Handbook for Utilities

State Examples

• California’s Buy Clean California Act (2017) — Suppliers’ emissions performance is taken into account when an agency is contracting to buy steel, flat glass, and mineral wool insulation for state infrastructure projects.
• Colorado HB21-1303: Global Warming Potential for Public Project Materials (2021) — Starting in January 2024, public construction projects will have to meet clear environmental criteria based on emissions intensity for the use of seven common construction materials, such as cement, glass, and steel.
• New York A 2591A (2021) — Establishes guidelines for the procurement of low embodied carbon concrete and requires the state to set an emissions standard for concrete used in public works.
• California SB 596 (2021) — Requires CARB to develop a comprehensive strategy for the state’s cement sector to achieve a 40 percent reduction below 2019 emissions intensity by 2036 and net-zero emissions by 2045.
• Colorado SB 22-051 (2022) – Establishes a sales and use tax exemption for low-emission building materials, including green concrete, recycled steel and composite wood products

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique in which large quantities of water, chemicals, and sand are used with high pressure to crack impermeable rock formations to release trapped gas and oil. Although fracking fluid mostly consists of water, it also contains chemicals, some of which are known or possible carcinogens regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act or listed as hazardous air pollutants. Common hazardous chemicals include methanol, ethylene glycol, and propargyl alcohol. Additionally, the full risk of these chemicals remains largely unknown to scientists, suggesting that fracking could be more harmful to human health than we know.

Banning fracking stops water supply depletion, prevents chemical contamination in drinking water, reduces air pollution and hazardous waste, and preserves healthy forests that are at risk of being turned into industrial zones. It should also be noted that some states do not have any oil and gas reserves and therefore cannot practice fracking.

Key Resources

• Fractracker Alliance — Fracking on the State Level
• NRDC — Fracking 101

State Examples

• Delaware River Watershed (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York) sub-state fracking ban — Permanently bans natural gas drilling and fracking within the four-state watershed.
• Maryland Fracking Ban — In 2017, Maryland became the first state with proven gas reserves to pass a law banning fracking.
• Washington Fracking Ban — Washington became the fourth state to ban fracking with the passage of SB 5145 (2019).
• New York Fracking and Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling Bans — New York banned fracking in 2014, and offshore oil and gas drilling in 2019.
• California phase-out of oil extraction — Governor Newsom directed the Department of Conservation to initiate regulatory action to end the issuance of new permits for fracking by January 2024, and California Air Resources Board (CARB) to analyze pathways to phase out oil extraction across the state by no later than 2045.

The majority of industrial greenhouse gas emissions production stems from industries which manufacture materials used in other products. Thus, industrial emissions can be reduced with policies that reduce consumer demand for newly produced materials, while still maintaining a high quality for the consumer. This can be done through a variety of ways, such as increasing material efficiency, requiring product longevity, and providing recycling services/requirements. 

Material efficiency entails designing products in ways which require less material. Product longevity requires that products are designed and engineered to last longer before they are replaced. Recycling reduces the use of new materials by deconstructing products for parts that can be used to repair or create similar products. Utilizing existing material as much as possible lessens the need to manufacture new products. Industry can further the ability to fix, deconstruct, and recycle the materials in products through design and manufacturing.

Common materials/products for state policy to focus on include:

• Plastic products such as bags, bottles, and packaging
• Raw construction materials
• Appliances and electronics

Key Resources

• Energy Innovation — Material Efficiency, Longevity, and Re-Use

State Examples

• Maine LD 1431 (2019) — Resolves to create a policy that would support and improve Maine’s municipal recycling programs by ensuring that companies that produce consumer packaging share in waste management costs.
• New Jersey A2065 (2022) — Prohibits retail establishments and “food service businesses” from providing or selling single-use plastic and paper bags, and provides the Department of Environmental Protection with $600,000 to fund the distribution of reusable bags to food banks.

From the Energy Policy Solutions: Waste reduction policy decreases demand for waste management through methods such as water conservation, combined heat-and-power, and landfill monitoring. It is also concerned with reducing methane emissions from waste by increasing the capture of methane that is currently being released into the atmosphere. Methane, roughly 50 percent of landfill gas, stems from the decomposition of organic material under anaerobic conditions. To counteract this, landfill gas can be captured and used to generate electricity or to replace another fuel, such as gas or coal. 

Also known as combined-heat-and-power (CHP), cogeneration is a way in which heat and energy are generated at the same time. Using a fuel to jointly produce heat and electricity is more efficient and cost-effective than producing heat and electricity separately. It also greatly reduces emissions such as carbon and methane. Most wastewater is treated in aerobic conditions, so little methane is generated. However, biosolids that remain after treatment can produce methane, but have been used beneficially in reclamation efforts at industrial sites such as mining. Captured biogas through anaerobic digesters can also be used to generate electricity and heat, such as in cogeneration.

Key Resources

• U.S. Climate Alliance and ACEEE — Enabling Industrial Decarbonization: A Policy Guidebook for U.S. States