Tennessee is Switching Emissions Inventory Reporting Platforms – Is Your Facility Ready for CAERS?

Emissions inventory reporting is due soon for facilities located in Tennessee, and this year there’s a big change – Inventories must be submitted through CAERS.

CAERS, or the Combined Air Emissions Reporting System, is an online platform hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and accessed through their Central Data Exchange (CDX). Submitting Inventories through CAERS is becoming increasingly popular, with several states (like Mississippi, Arizona, and Rhode Island) having recently switched from other reporting platforms.

Like with any transition to a new system, the initial year of reporting in CAERS can present a challenge to facilities. Learning the quirks of a new platform always takes effort, and it’s especially important to understand how the decisions made in setting up the facility in the system and entering data can affect reported emissions. For example, CAERS requires that particulate matter (PM) be speciated by size (e.g., 10 micron, 2.5 micron) and filterability [filterable, condensable, and primary (or total)]. For facilities that have historically reported just PM, this can result in a scramble to figure out how to translate that data into a format CAERS will accept, and that accurately represents the facility (e.g., assuming that PM = PM₁₀ = PM_2.5  is conservative but may have ramifications when it comes to permitting or air dispersion modeling in future projects).  Note also that Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) has specified that total actual emissions for all active processes at a facility must be reported, including activities that are insignificant or exempt from the Facility’s Title V operating permit, about which some facilities do not have robust information.

The switch to CAERS also comes with benefits to facilities. Once the facility is correctly configured within the system and the annual data accurately entered, CAERS can be used to get a jump start on Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting. Once the inventory has been certified by TDEC in CAERS, toxics data is available to be transferred into U.S. EPA’s TRI-Me web, where the TRI reporting can be completed. Additionally, inventory data from previous years can be used as a template within CAERS for each reporting year, meaning that once your facility is set up correctly, less effort is needed for subsequent years’ reporting, especially if a facility can properly utilize the bulk upload template (which ALL4 can help with).

Inventories for reporting year 2025 are due June 1st, and correctly setting up a new facility in CAERS can take a significant amount of time. So, don’t wait until April or May to start the process! ALL4 has assisted a variety of industries and clients navigate the transition into CAERS, including being heavily involved with the initial rollout of the platform in Georgia back in 2019. If you have any questions about CAERS, or emissions inventories in general, feel free to reach out to me at kblackmon@all4inc.com, or my colleague Robert at rbalaban@all4inc.com.