Executive Summary
The boundaries of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV) enterprise are not well defined, including activities and their interdependencies, and the people, programs, and organizations that drive the work. At a time when demand for credible information about GHGs is growing rapidly across many sectors, this gap makes it difficult to know how changes within the enterprise affect the downstream users that rely on GHG data. The first State of the GHG MMRV Enterprise report draws on the GHG Enterprise Catalog ("the Catalog"), an effort to close that gap and help build an authoritative, living account of the assets, programs, and actors that make up the GHG MMRV enterprise. The Catalog is maintained by the Data Foundation's Center for Climate and Environmental Data (CCED) and currently tracks 114 data assets and activities operated by 66 programs, players, and groups across the federal government, universities, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and state governments.
Key findings:
- The federal government has historically operated the core measurement, monitoring, modeling, and standards infrastructure that forms the foundation of the enterprise. Non-federal actors, including state governments, universities, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector, depend on that foundation, often augmenting or building on it. Changes in federal programs can ripple across the broader, decentralized GHG MMRV network.
- Federal agencies central to the U.S. GHG MMRV enterprise, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), carry out work that spans atmospheric and space science, remote sensing, regulation and reporting, agricultural and natural resource management, energy, transportation, fundamental research, and funding for non-federal activities. These agencies have experienced changes in priorities, program structure, reorganizations, and staffing since the Administration change in January 2025, and CCED tracks how these changes affect specific assets, activities, programs, and players across the system.
- The FY 2027 President's Budget Request proposes topline and program funding reductions across several GHG MMRVrelevant agencies. For FY 2026, funds appropriated by Congress were above what had been proposed in the FY 2026 President Budget Request, which include similar proposed topline and program funding reductions as FY 2027. The Catalog will help monitor how appropriated funding is implemented.
- Several historically federally-run programs or activities have recently been discontinued or scaled back in a short time frame. Non-federal actors are starting or expanding activities to fill gaps left by the cessation of federal activity, generally at a reduced scale. Some of these activities have never existed in a similar capacity outside the federal government before.
- Non-federal actors hold independent authority in parts of the enterprise, and in some areas are the primary drivers of activity. Their sphere of influence is broad and includes state regulatory programs, voluntary standards or markets, commercially and philanthropically funded satellites, and research funding.
- International GHG regulation and GHG MMRV partnerships continue to advance independent of U.S. federal policy changes. U.S. companies remain subject to these requirements, continue to participate in international discussions, and have a vested interest in standardizing GHG reporting and monitoring requirements to reduce reporting burden.
