“Ambitious action to reduce nitrous oxide emissions could move the world closer to meeting a wide range of global climate, ozone and other environmental and human health goals,” said the assessment, published by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition of over 180 governments, NGOs, and international organizations.

Nitrous oxide is the third most prevalent greenhouse gas and the worst ozone-depleting gas. Emissions, driven primarily by the agricultural use of synthetic fertilizers and manure, have increased globally by 40 per cent since 1980, and are on pace to rise 30 per cent over 2020 levels by 2050, the report said.

The Global Nitrous Oxide Assessment (N2O) report is similar to the 2021 Global Methane Assessment, which showed that human-caused methane emissions can be reduced by up to 45 per cent this decade and laid the groundwork for 150 countries to commit to the Global Methane Pledge to curb those emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

Taking global action to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) could avoid the equivalent of up to 235 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2100, it said.

A U.S. State Department official told Reuters earlier this year that slashing N2O emissions from production of fertilizers or the production of materials like nylon is cheap, costing as little as $10 per metric ton (C$13.90) through projects using the voluntary carbon offset market.

The U.S and China are the biggest emitters of the greenhouse gas.

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The focus on industrial gases follows U.S. measures to reduce methane emissions, which yielded an international campaign to get other countries to make big cuts as well as domestic reductions.

Like methane, nitrous oxide is short-lived but a potent source of global warming, so the U.S. hopes targeting it will yield rapid and inexpensive gains in the fight against climate change.

“Most of the discussion of climate change focuses on carbon dioxide, but super pollutants like methane and nitrous oxide cause half of the climate change we’re experiencing today,” said John Podesta, Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy.

The White House kicked off the effort with an event on Tuesday and announcements by industrial companies, including Ascend Performance Materials, that are taking voluntary actions to cut nitrous oxide emissions, officials said.

Nitrous oxide emissions come from a variety of sources including the production of some fertilizers and synthetic materials such as nylon.

A State Department official told Reuters that it can cost as little as $10 per metric ton to reduce nitrous oxide emissions through projects implemented through the voluntary carbon offset market.

Last year, the U.S. and China agreed to include a commitment to reduce all non-carbon greenhouse gases in their new national climate plans under the Paris climate agreement, which are due to be submitted to the United Nations next year.

Gabrielle Dreyfuss, chief scientist for the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, said she hoped the two biggest industrial emitters would cooperate on nitrous oxide.

“When the U.S. and China work together, big things can happen,” she said.

Podesta told another event hosted by IGSD, the Asia Society and think tank Climate Advisers that he will travel to China to meet with counterparts “later this year”.

Tuesday’s event also included a commitment of $300 million from philanthropies for the Global Methane Hub, which supports projects to cut methane emissions around the world.

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The Navigable Waters Protection Rule could win political points ahead of the November election for Republican President Donald Trump in the Farm Belt, a key constituency.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rule at a meeting of the National Association of Home Builders in Las Vegas. It narrows the definition of “waters of the United States” that are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act from pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and mining waste.

It reduces uncertainty and curtails the need for farmers, landowners and businesses “to hire teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” Wheeler told reporters in a teleconference.

The rule rolls back protections going back decades. Protections now exclude certain types of waterways like seasonal streams and wetlands.

Fourteen states, including New York and California, along with the District of Columbia said the EPA’s proposal would end federal protection for half of the nation’s wetlands and 15 per cent of streams across the country.

The EPA’s panel of scientific advisers, including several appointed by Trump, said last year in a draft report that it was “not fully consistent with established EPA recognized science” to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of U.S. waters.

An administration official on Wheeler’s call said: “science has informed the development of this rule.”

The rule, expected to take effect in days or weeks, will replace the Obama-era Clean Water Rule, which broadly defined the nation’s waters to include ephemeral streams and wetlands. It was rescinded by the EPA last year after industry groups said it was too onerous.

“That was a rule that basically took your property away from you. As long as I’m president, government will never micromanage America’s farmers,” Trump said Sunday in a speech at the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in Texas.

‘All-out assault’

Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, an industry group of independent energy drillers, praised the administration for giving “regulatory certainty to expand and responsibly develop our vast natural resources” in an “environmentally protective way.”

“This new rule gives the flexibility and clarity needed to implement stewardship practices without the threat of government action,” Iowa corn and cow-calf producer Kevin Ross, president of the U.S. National Corn Growers Association, said in a statement.

Farmers, he said, “are committed to protecting the environment and implementing on-farm soil health practices like planting cover crops, reducing tillage and more carefully managing crop residue” and the new rule “will protect our nation’s water and be implemented without confusion.”

Environmental groups took issue with the EPA’s insistence that the ephemeral and other waterways will be adequately protected by state and local regulations and by farmers and landowners.

“This all-out assault on basic safeguards will send our country back to the days when corporate polluters could dump whatever sludge or slime they wished into the streams and wetlands that often connect to the water we drink,” said Janette Brimmer, an attorney with Earthjustice.

— Reporting for Reuters by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The move is the clearest sign yet that, if elected, Clinton would seek to adjust the regulation, called the Renewable Fuel Standard, possibly hurting her chances in corn-growing states like Iowa where she faces a tough battle against Republican rival Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election.

The Renewable Fuel Standard, created by Congress in 2005, mandates that transportation fuel sold in the U.S. contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels.

It was intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions and expand the U.S. renewable fuels sector while lowering reliance on imported oil. It is opposed by the oil industry and environmentalists and has been criticized as a mere subsidy to corn producers.

Clinton advisers have contacted the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to discuss whether a policy like California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a market-based system rather than a mandate, could be applied at a national level to replace or augment the Renewable Fuel Standard, and other issues, CARB officials said.

Mary Nichols, head of the CARB, said she discussed the state’s regulations with Clinton advisers.

While a backer of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Nichols said she told Clinton’s advisers they could avoid political backlash by focusing on other carbon-reduction strategies instead, such as expanding electric vehicle sales and cleaning up emissions from coal-fired electricity.

Nichols did not provide further details on the discussions.

A Clinton campaign official, who asked not to be named, confirmed the discussions with CARB but gave no further details.

A campaign spokesman, Tyrone Gayle, said the campaign has been seeking advice from “a diverse set of stakeholders.” He added that the Clinton campaign “does not support replacing the RFS with a national low-carbon fuel standard” but did not elaborate.

Former Obama administration climate and energy adviser Heather Zichal said on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week that the Renewable Fuel Standard was broken, but that a Clinton administration could make “modifications” to fix it.

“Mandates aren’t necessarily a perfect way to regulate,” Zichal said at the event.

The U.S. corn lobby hopes to convince both Clinton and Trump to uphold the regulation, which requires a doubling of U.S. biofuels use to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022, when congressionally mandated volume targets are set to expire. The program is designed to last indefinitely after that.

Environmentalists, anti-hunger activists and the oil sector have called for the rule to be repealed or changed because they say it raises food and fuel costs without delivering the emissions reductions that it was intended to achieve.

Market-based system

The California regulation, a key part of the state’s effort to combat climate change, requires a 10 percent reduction in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 2020, but leaves it up to companies to decide how to reach that target.

California enacted the Low Carbon Fuel Standard in 2007 targeting oil refiners and distributors that sell in the state’s market. It angered Midwestern ethanol interests because the regulation counts the carbon dioxide footprint of transporting biofuels into the state for blending, effectively blocking many of those imports. Oil companies have complained that the regulation is costly.

Clinton in May expressed support for the federal Renewable Fuel Standard in an opinion piece published in an Iowa newspaper, but said it could be improved.

Clinton’s openness to overhauling the Renewable Fuel Standard appears to contrast with Trump’s position. During the state-by-state battle for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump said he supported the biofuel mandates set out in the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Corn and ethanol industry lobbyists said they have been talking with both the Clinton and Trump campaigns to argue in favor of the Renewable Fuel Standard.

— Reporting for Reuters by Valerie Volcovici in Washington, D.C. and Rory Carroll in San Francisco. Additional reporting for Reuters by Joe White in Detroit and Chris Prentice in New York.

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