The Trump administration will begin collecting greenhouse gas emissions data for 2018 early next month, as coal-fired power plants that are keeping the heaters humming during the deep freeze likely will mean an increase in this year's carbon dioxide output.

The Environmental Protection Agency houses the greenhouse gas reporting program, which collects data from power plants and all other major emitters of carbon dioxide.

The EPA finalized rules in 2009 that require the mandatory reporting of greenhouse gases from power plants, refineries, and other sources that emit 25,000 metric tons, or more, of carbon dioxide per year in the U.S.

However, it has not been clear if the pressure would be on this year to keep the data coming, especially with the administration seeking to repeal climate regulations and presidential and Republican budgets targeting the program for cuts.

Nevertheless, an EPA official confirmed the agency's plans to begin collecting the data beginning near the end of February, with a hard deadline for all data to be submitted by March 31.

That one-month turnaround appears to make the collection period appear abbreviated, as the data for 2016 was collected through August 2017 and released in the fall.

But the EPA representative said the schedule is consistent with previous years. An EPA fact sheet said reports are submitted annually and provide data collected during the previous calendar year. "Reports are due on March 31 for emissions in the previous calendar year," according to a previously released fact sheet from the Obama administration.

Ohio-based American Electric Power, one of the largest coal-fired utilities in the country, said it will continue reporting its emissions no matter what the EPA does with the program. AEP's coal plants have been providing electricity during the cold snap to the wholesale power market that supports the eastern part of the country.

"Beyond required reporting, we have been reporting our GHG emissions for many years as part of our Corporate Accounting Reporting and don’t see that changing given the continued interest from our investors and our customers in climate issues and actions we are taking to reduce our emissions," said Melissa McHenry, spokeswoman for the company.

The company has not taken a formal position on the EPA emissions reporting program, she said. However, nearly 90 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions are reported to the EPA using its own special emissions monitoring system, which the company has been using for more than 20 years. "So, even if this [EPA] requirement changed, we would still report CO2 emissions" through the company's own system, McHenry said.

The January 2014 cold snap, known as the "polar vortex," caused more coal plants to provide power, as it is doing this year during the cold snap. And with that higher use came more carbon dioxide emissions. But the EPA has shown that even with the spike in coal use driving up emissions by 1 percent between 2013 and 2014, the country was still on a 10-year trajectory toward record-low emissions.

The Energy Information Administration, the analysis arm of the Energy Department, showed that the increase in greenhouse gases in 2014 was followed by another year of higher carbon emissions compared to 2013, the year before the polar vortex. Emissions then crashed in 2016 from more than 5.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to 5.1 million metric tons, or a 1.7 percent drop below 2015 levels, which is consistent with the decade-long trend toward lower emissions, the agency said. Most climate scientists blame greenhouse gases from fossil fuels for driving man-made climate change.

Environmentalists say they are worried about the future of the EPA's greenhouse gas reporting program. They point out that even though the program still appears to be functional, the president's fiscal 2017 budget looked to pare it back significantly.

One environmental group source noted that Trump's budget called for an "audacious cut of over $80 million," while the House and Senate GOP pushed for somewhat lower cuts.

"In either case, it’s safe to say that this is a program that both the administration and congressional GOP are hostile towards," the source said.