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Acc june 16
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(ACC Mentioned) Tapping The Plastics-To-Fuel Potential
Jun 15, 2015 | Renewable Energy Magazine
By Michael Dungan
A recent study found that if all nonrecycled plastics in the U.S. were converted to energy at facilities that use modern plastics-to-fuel (PTF) technologies, these plastics could produce nearly 6 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to fuel nearly 9 million cars per year. Of course, it’s unlikely that all nonrecycled plastics ever will be converted to fuel. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Manufacturing Growth Building Demand For Industrial Real Estate
Jun 15, 2015 | JOC Events
By Bill Mongelluzzo
Developers of industrial real estate are expanding their portfolios beyond big-box distribution centers for supply-chain logistics to include manufacturing facilities and warehouses to serve manufacturers in the U.S. and Mexico. Several trends are driving the growing interest in manufacturing. The boom in U.S. oil and gas production... -
(ACC Mentioned) Facing Consumer Pressure, Companies Start to Seek Safe Alternatives to BPA
Jun 15, 2015 | The New York Times
By Rachel Abrams
For consumers, figuring out which canned foods and plastics contain the controversial chemical known as BPA can be nearly impossible. But determining whether newer alternatives are any safer may be even more difficult. Some food giants like General Mills and the Campbell Soup Company have shifted away from using bisphenol A... -
(ACC Mentioned) US Homebuilder Confidence Offsets Recent Declines
Jun 15, 2015 | ICIS News
By Joe Kamalick
Market confidence among US housing contractors rose sharply in June, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said on Monday, reaching its highest level since September last year and reversing some recent monthly declines. In its monthly housing market index (HMI), the association said its measure... -
California Proposes Proposition 65 Levels for Atrazine, Related Chemicals
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has proposed a maximum allowable dose level of 100 micrograms a day for oral exposure to atrazine and each of five related chemicals it identified earlier this year under Proposition 65 as causing reproductive toxicity. -
Ruling Centralizes Lumber Liquidators Wood Flooring Litigation in Virginia
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Federal lawsuits alleging Chinese-made laminate wood flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators Inc. had unsafe levels of formaldehyde will be centralized in the Eastern District of Virginia, the U.S. Judicial Panel of Multidistrict Litigation ruled June 12 (In re Lumber Liquidators Chinese-Manufactured Flooring Prods. Mktg., Sales Practices... -
EU Chemicals Agency Adds Two Potential Substances of Very High Concern to List
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency confirmed June 15 the addition of two chemicals to the so-called REACH candidate list of substances of very high concern, meaning they could be prioritized for phaseout from use in the European Union. The new entries to the substances of very high concern (SVHC) list are... -
D.C. Circuit Rejects Groups' Bid to Stop Cove Point LNG Terminal Construction
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeff Day
Dominion Resources may continue construction of a natural gas liquefaction and LNG export terminal in Maryland while litigation of an environmental group's challenge of key government approvals continues, a federal appeals court ruled (EarthReports Inc. v. FERC, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1127, motion denied, 6/12/15). -
Seattle Wades Into Fight Over Oil Drilling
Jun 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Jim Carlton
Law enforcement detained dozens of protesters Monday for trying to block a Royal Dutch Shell PLC oil rig from departing the Port of Seattle for drilling off Alaska—the latest development in a weekslong standoff in which environmental activists have been joined by an unusual ally: the city itself. -
Shell Lawsuit to Keep Greenpeace Away Allowed to Proceed by U.S. Court in Alaska
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A lawsuit by Royal Dutch Shell Plc against Greenpeace seeking protection from wrongful interference in Shell's Arctic drilling plans was allowed to go ahead June 12 when a court rejected a Greenpeace motion to dismiss the suit (Shell Offshore Inc. v. Greenpeace, D. Alaska, No. 3:15-cv-00054, 6/12/15). -
GOP Threatens Subpoena For Keystone Records
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House Republicans are threatening to subpoena the Obama administration for records regarding its ongoing consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are investigating the State Department’s process for deciding whether to recommend that President Obama approve the Canada-to-Texas oil... -
House Oversight Republicans Press Kerry On Keystone Secrecy
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today questioned the State Department’s secrecy claim covering interagency comments and other data related to its review of Keystone XL. Chairman Jason Chaffetz and subpanel chief Rep. Cynthia Lummis today pushed Secretary of State John Kerry... -
Supporting Arctic Exploration For American Leadership
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By USA Col. David Hun
Since the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a great deal has been accomplished to improve the safety and environmental performance of U.S. offshore energy activities. Through a combination of public-private sector collaboration, voluntary industry efforts, and what Interior Sec. Sally Jewell termed... -
Moniz Calls For Review Of Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the Strategic Petroleum Reserve needs to be re-evaluated to ensure the United States can more nimbly absorb price swings and supply shocks. Moniz said today at the 2015 U.S. Energy Information Administration conference that the government needs to review the types of threats facing domestic... -
Energy Industry Is Gassing Down
Jun 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Timothy Puko
U.S. energy companies are taking their foot off the natural-gas pedal, slowing down their production growth after years of furious pumping. In the past eight years, a combination of improvements in drilling techniques and high energy prices stoked natural-gas production to all-time highs. The boom quickly sent natural-gas prices ... -
Key Chairmen Press EPA About Clean Power Plan Impacts
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Corbin Hiar
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) today raised questions about how the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan to combat climate change could affect endangered species like the manatee. -
Report Says EPA's Clean Power Plan Presents Reliability Issues for New York
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan presents “potentially serious reliability implications” for New York because of New York City's heavy reliance on dual fuel oil-gas steam fired electric generating units, according to a June 15 report from the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). -
White House Warns House On Interior-EPA Spending Bill
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
The White House fired a warning shot Monday night at the House's 2016 Interior-EPA spending bill, complaining in a letter to lawmakers about the major cuts to EPA and the Interior Department. "These shortsighted funding cuts would undermine fiscal responsibility, national conservation and environmental priorities, and economic competitiveness,"... -
White House Outlines 'Serious Concerns' With House's Interior-EPA Bill
Jun 16, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Phil Taylor
A top White House official yesterday said the Obama administration has "serious concerns" with the House's fiscal 2016 spending bill for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA, warning that it is short on funding and long on "ideological riders." Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan detailed the administration's concerns... -
Shell Oil Rig Leaves Seattle Amid Protests
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Lawsuit Asks D.C. Circuit to Review Removal Of Affirmative Defense From Pollution Plans
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Southeastern Legal Foundation asked a federal appeals court to review the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to require states to alter their pollution control plans to remove language that shielded coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industrial sources of pollution from fines under the Clean Air Act ... -
Energy Agency: Climate Plans Won’t Prevent Temperature Increase
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The greenhouse gas cuts proposed by some of the world’s biggest economies won’t be enough to stop global temperatures from rising beyond the important 2-degree Celsius threshold, the International Energy Agency said Monday. Scientists have warned that temperature increases should be limited to 2 degrees... -
As Ozone Debate Heats Up, Get The Facts
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Karen Kerrigan
Over the past four decades, America has drastically reduced its emissions and dramatically improved its air quality. Since 1980, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants have fallen by more than 60 percent, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Meanwhile, the emissions that contribute... -
White House to Hold Energy Summit, Announce Actions to Encourage Investment
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Obama administration will announce “a series of new executive actions” to encourage private-sector investment at a Clean Energy Investment Summit being held by the White House June 16. The event, which will feature remarks by Vice President Joe Biden, will also include the announcement of “commitments” by major foundations... -
Private Investors Pony Up For Clean Energy
Jun 16, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A collection of investment firms, foundations, universities and other private institutions have pledged $4 billion to invest in new clean energy technology, the White House announced on Monday. The funding comes in response to an Obama administration call for more private sector research into low-carbon energy technology. -
White House Collects $4b In Private Fund Commitments To Scale Up Clean Energy
Jun 16, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Katherine Ling
Mission-driven investors have answered the White House's call to support a transition to a low-carbon economy by committing more than $4 billion in funding for early-stage clean energy technology -- doubling the original goal, the Obama administration announced today. The funding commitments are part of the clean energy investment... -
Coal Company Argues EPA Failed To Meet Legal Bar For CWA Mine Veto
Jun 15, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Mingo Logan Coal Company is arguing that EPA failed to meet an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) bar for justifying its veto of disposal sites underlying a final Clean Water Act (CWA) mining permit, urging an appellate court to overturn the veto due to the agency's failure to consider a host of criteria such as costs in its decision. -
House FY16 EPA Bill Report Language Details Proposal For WIFIA Funding
Jun 15, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
House lawmakers' just-released non-binding report language for EPA's fiscal year 2016 appropriations bill details a proposed plan for how the agency can fund water infrastructure loans through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) as soon as FY17, two years after the program was approved by Congress. -
Massachusetts Plan to Address Nitrogen In Cape Cod Waters Sent to EPA for Review
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Martha Kessler
A Massachusetts plan that examines Cape Cod's water quality and provides solutions the community could use to address excessive nitrogen pollution was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for review, state officials announced June 15. The plan, under Section 208 of the Clean Water Act, was developed by the Cape Cod Commission...
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(ACC Mentioned) Tapping The Plastics-To-Fuel Potential
Jun 15, 2015 | Renewable Energy Magazine
By Michael Dungan
A recent study found that if all nonrecycled plastics in the U.S. were converted to energy at facilities that use modern plastics-to-fuel (PTF) technologies, these plastics could produce nearly 6 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to fuel nearly 9 million cars per year.
Of course, it’s unlikely that all nonrecycled plastics ever will be converted to fuel. But significant advances in plastics-to-fuel technologies, coupled with growing investments, may soon help us stop wastefully burying nonrecycled plastics in landfills.
Unfortunately, a relic of the past stands in the way: outdated regulations that treat an energy-laden feedstock—used plastics—like waste, stymieing progress and the rapid acceptance of this technology. Fixing these outdated regulations would be relatively painless and could unleash the huge potential of plastics-to-fuel in communities around the nation.
A powerful source
The molecules that make up plastics are a powerful source of energy. For example, nonrecycled plastics on average supply more than 15,000 British thermal units (Btu) per pound in facilities that convert nonrecycled waste to energy. That’s more energy per pound than most types of coal. Scientists at Columbia University found that there is enough energy contained in the nonrecycled plastics we landfill each year to power 5.7 million homes annually.
To tap this inherent energy in a different way, companies are employing a technology called pyrolysis to transform nonrecycled plastics into fuels, chemical feedstocks and other petroleum products. The Plastics-to-Oil Technologies Alliance, part of the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), based in the District of Columbia, is working with related industries across the country to help jumpstart plastics-to-fuel technologies.
Just as the term sounds, PTF technologies convert nonrecycled plastics into oil, fuels or petroleum blendstocks for use in vehicles and other purposes. The process varies but usually involves these steps: first, plastics are collected and sorted for recycling (as recycling plastics is preferential to energy recovery), and then nonrecycled plastics are shipped to a PTF facility;these plastics are heated in an oxygen-free environment, where they melt into a liquid and then vaporize into gases;the gases are cooled and condensed into a wide variety of useful products, such as oils, fuels and petroleum products; andPTF companies sell the petroleum products and fuels to fuel blenders, manufacturers and industrial users to power vehicles, ships and industrial processes.
The economic opportunities for PTF technologies are significant. By tapping the potential of nonrecycled plastics, the U.S. could support up to 600 PTF facilities and generate nearly 39,000 jobs, resulting in up to $9 billion in economic output from PTF operations. And that doesn’t even include the $18 billion of economic output during the build-out phase.
These technologies complement ongoing recycling efforts by recovering clean energy from used plastics that cannot be economically recycled. Increased deployment of these technologies could help reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and generate products to power local economies.
PTF currently is the most efficient technology to recover the energy inherent in plastics. In addition, the carbon intensity of producing energy using PTF technologies is roughly one-third that of traditional crude extraction—and it’s roughly one-sixth that of certain new sources of crude oil, such as oil sands or shale oil. Plus, the production of PTF also displaces the need for equivalent amounts of crude oil extraction.
Out-of-date regulationsThe infrastructure and processes involved in PTF are the same as others in the manufacturing sector: a feedstock is processed into various products that are sold on the market. But regulations in most states treat the process as waste disposal, with unnecessary restrictions that are not relevant to manufacturing.
This makes little sense. Nonrecycled plastic feedstocks at a PTF facility are not “putrescible, mixed materials of all different types,” otherwise known as mixed solid waste. Existing solid waste codes were not written for the technologies of today. These outdated definitions create a significant barrier for new innovations, such as PTF technologies.
Laws and regulations should treat the facilities that manufacture fuels and petroleum products from nonrecycled plastics feedstock the same as any manufacturing facility, not as a waste disposal facility. PTF manufacturing processes should be recognized as complementary to recycling and as part of communities’ integrated solid waste management programs.
In many jurisdictions this will require updating existing laws and regulations. Following are some changes that may need to be made, depending on a jurisdiction’s existing laws and regulations, to help spur the growth of these technologies.
Ensure that plastics-to-fuel feedstocks (i.e., nonrecycled plastics) are not classified as “solid waste.” Sorted and graded materials of a similar type that meet the specifications of a manufacturer are feedstocks. Relevant definitions should treat the primary PTF input (nonrecycled material) as feedstocks or materials and not as solid waste. Solid waste definitions only should focus on materials that cannot be sorted and upgraded for reuse, and on the mixed materials that are contaminated and create risks and hazards.
Don’t regulate PTF facilities as “landfills” or “waste-to-energy” facilities. Some policymakers have suggested that a PTF facility should not be allowed to charge a “tipping fee” similar to landfills because these fees may induce haulers of solid waste to deliver waste to PTF facilities instead. However, a PTF facility can only use very controlled, sorted and graded materials and will not receive mixed materials beyond plastics. Accepting a tipping fee does not suddenly change the nature of the facility or turn these valuable plastics into waste.
Let recyclers determine whether there is a viable market for their plastics. Some policymakers have suggested banning plastics that can be recycled from PTF facilities, as a way to support recycling. But PTF facilities generally do not represent a more profitable market for plastics collected for recycling. Plastics recyclers have financial incentives to sell their material to the highest value use, which typically is recycling.
In addition, markets change often and recycling facilities can stockpile only limited amounts of plastics for recycling, so recyclers may be pressured to dispose of collected plastics. PTF facilities provide a better option for recyclers than landfilling recyclable plastics.
Allow storage of plastics on-site. Due to concerns over sham recycling operations that accept and store materials for a fee with no intent to recycle them, some policymakers suggest that PTF facilities should not be able to store any plastics on-site. But PTF facilities typically need a minimum supply of feedstock—between one to three weeks’ worth—to guard against supply disruption due to events outside their control, such as labor disruptions and severe weather.
Allow for disposal of off-spec feedstocks and byproducts. Some policymakers have suggested that conversion technologies at PTF facilities must be at least 80 percent efficient, meaning that all wastes from the facilities cannot exceed 20 percent of feedstocks. While the ultimate goal of each facility is a closed-loop system in which all materials are recycled perpetually with no waste, not every material delivered to a PTF facility can be used, primarily due to quality issues. Plus, byproducts of the PTF process may need to be disposed of. Mandating an arbitrary efficiency target could hamstring facilities and deter investments in these technologies. The efficiency of conversion technologies at PTF facilities that don’t get built is zero.
Do not require unnecessary financial guarantees that discourage investment. Since a PTF facility does not treat or store waste like a landfill, the facility should not be required to create a large fund (like landfills) to maintain itself after its future closure, as some policymakers have suggested. A PTF facility must pay to dispose of materials it cannot process, so it has a financial incentive to accept only materials it can process, not large amounts of waste. So it’s unlikely such a facility would create long-term waste disposal issues requiring long-term financial guarantees.
A fair shakeAs the preferred end-of-life option for valuable materials, plastic recycling is growing and is expected to continue to grow. For those plastics that cannot feasibly be recycled, PTF represents a tremendous opportunity to complement existing recycling efforts and divert even more useful plastics from wasting away in landfills.
These technologies are proven. Investors are ready. The end products are in high demand. All they need right now is a fair shake.
To learn more, ACC’s Plastics-to-oil Technologies Alliance has developed detailed guidelines to encourage innovation while meeting regulatory requirements for air, process water and storm water, and management of products and coproducts.
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(ACC Mentioned) US Manufacturing Growth Building Demand For Industrial Real Estate
Jun 15, 2015 | JOC Events
By Bill Mongelluzzo
Developers of industrial real estate are expanding their portfolios beyond big-box distribution centers for supply-chain logistics to include manufacturing facilities and warehouses to serve manufacturers in the U.S. and Mexico.
Several trends are driving the growing interest in manufacturing. The boom in U.S. oil and gas production provides cheap energy to fuel production facilities. The shale gas explosion has created a surge in the manufacture of chemicals and plastics, with much of the production being exported. Also, cheap energy in the U.S. coupled with increasing labor costs in China is encouraging a reshoring and nearshoring of manufacturing to the U.S. and Mexico.
“There is a shift from global manufacturing to regional manufacturing in the NAFTA countries,” said Luis Gutierrez, president of Prologis Latin America. “Energy is part of it, but it’s not the only driver,” Gutierrez told the I.CON industrial conference last week in Long Beach.
Steve Schellenberg, senior vice president, business development, at IMS Worldwide, said warehouses and distribution centers tied to retail logistics continue to be the main focus of most industrial real estate developers, but resource-intensive industries are creating new demand for logistics facilities tied to the production of plastics and chemicals. Much of that production is geared to the export market.
For example, pending development of manufacturing plants for polyethylene, polypropylene and other resource-based products will generate an additional 800,000 20-foot-equivalent units of export traffic, and this in turn will result in an additional need for 40 million square feet of warehouse space, he said.
Shale gas production in the Marcellus play in the Northeast and also in Texas has resulted in about 225 projects in the pipeline for manufacturing, said Owen Kean, senior director of the American Chemistry Council. “We are in the midst of unprecedented growth in natural gas production,” he said. “A lot of the chemistry investment comes from foreign direct investment and is export-oriented,” Kean said.
The cross-border economy between the U.S. and Mexico is growing on both the energy front and in traditional manufacturing, Gutierrez said. Now that Mexico is opening up its energy sector to outside investors, U.S. companies will invest in the production of natural gas, oil in shallow waters off of Mexico and eventually in deeper waters. These activities will present investment opportunities for developers of logistics facilities to serve energy producers, he said.
The North American Free Trade Agreement has lowered tariffs for goods and services in the U.S., Mexico and Canada during the past 20 years, and NAFTA has resulted in growing production in the auto, aerospace, electronics and medical devices industries, Gutierrez said. The result has been keen interest among industrial real estate developers to build logistics facilities tied to that production, he added.
Furthermore, increasing wages in China the past few years have made wage rates in Mexico more competitive. The surge in oil and natural gas production in North America has resulted in low-cost feedstock for energy-intensive chemicals and plastics, and highly competitive energy costs to power all types of manufacturing, said Thomas Tunstall, research director, Institute for Economic Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“Companies are relocating to the U.S. because lower natural gas prices more than offset higher wages,” he said.
This activity is generating strong interest in build-to-suit facilities for manufacturers, said Erik Foster, principal and practice leader of industrial capital markets at Avison Young. Because the cost of capital is favorable, and demand is strong, development of industrial properties for the manufacturing sector will continue to grow and will supplement opportunities for pure logistics operations.
“Industrial real estate is still a big-box world, but we are seeing a trend toward growing manufacturing investment,” Foster said.
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(ACC Mentioned) Facing Consumer Pressure, Companies Start to Seek Safe Alternatives to BPA
Jun 15, 2015 | The New York Times
By Rachel Abrams
For consumers, figuring out which canned foods and plastics contain the controversial chemical known as BPA can be nearly impossible. But determining whether newer alternatives are any safer may be even more difficult.
Some food giants like General Mills and the Campbell Soup Company have shifted away from using bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical commonly used in the coatings of canned goods to ward off botulism and spoilage. But in many instances, some health advocates say, companies do not disclose which products are now BPA-free.
More worrisome, these advocates and scientists say, is a lack of information about alternatives, and a growing body of evidence suggesting that some newer options may not be any safer.
“We do want to push companies away from it, because it is a known toxin,” said Renée Sharp, the director of research for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “At the same time, we are also definitely worried about the chemicals coming on the market and we don’t have a lot of good information about a number of them.”
Studies linking BPA to developmental and reproductive health problems go back decades, and researchers, health advocates and even the federal government have voiced concerns about the chemical for years. But an enormous body of conflicting evidence has slowed efforts to regulate BPA more tightly.
“There’s just a morass of claims and counterclaims,” said Richard Denison, the lead senior scientist with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s a battle over all kinds of fundamental parts of toxicology.”
The transition away from BPA has not been swift. Food, chemical and metal packaging players point to the Food and Drug Administration’s position that BPA is safe at the current levels in food, and grumble that unjustified fears have threatened sales and forced them to act.
“Although there are some companies that have moved to alternative coatings, to date I’m not aware of any of those companies that have done so on the basis of safety or concerns about BPA, but more on customer and consumer preference for alternative coatings,” said John M. Rost, the chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, a trade group.
General Mills has removed BPA from its Muir Glen line of organic canned tomato products, but not from its Green Giant, Old El Paso and Progresso brands, according to a report released by the Environmental Working Group earlier this month. Target, one of the country’s largest retailers, ranked among the Environmental Working Group’s list of worst offenders because its Market Pantry line continues to use BPA.
In a statement, Target said that product and food safety were a “top priority” and that the company complied with all safety standards.
Of 252 brands that the Environmental Working Group surveyed, 31 percent continued to use BPA exclusively, while 12 percent used only cans without it. Fourteen percent used BPA-free cans for at least one of their products, and the remaining 43 percent gave ambiguous or incomplete answers, or did not respond to the group’s questions, the report said.
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“The premise of the whole report is based on a misleading statement that BPA is toxic when that’s just not true,” Mr. Rost said.
The F.D.A. said its conclusions about BPA were based on a “thorough review” of more than 300 studies, which included both long-term and short-term exposure. Kathryn St. John, a spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry trade group, praised the research, calling it the most “in-depth” toxicology study conducted yet.
But BPA, also used in some plastics, is a tricky chemical to evaluate, Mr. Denison and others say, in part because it produces some effects at low doses but not at high doses.
The F.D.A. and other regulatory agencies have typically relied on studies examining high doses of BPA, which showed few adverse health effects except at the highest doses, according to Dr. John R. Bucher, the associate director of the National Toxicology Program, a part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
“Predicting long-term health effects from early life exposures to BPA has been difficult because until now studies capable of showing both subtle early changes and health effects later in life simply haven’t been done,” he said.
Jason Aungst, the co-chairman of the F.D.A. panel that is studying BPA, disputed criticism that the agency did not look at low-dose studies.
“I think it’s a false argument,” Mr. Aungst said. “It’s going back to trying to play on people’s fears that the government only uses industry-funded studies.”
He also said that because the chemical is difficult to study at very low levels, results could be difficult to replicate accurately.
The F.D.A. is also collaborating with the National Toxicology Program on a long-term rodent study that will most likely not produce definitive answers for at least two years. The Environmental Working Group has criticized the agency for declaring BPA safe before the completion of its study, and the F.D.A. has said it will “update its assessment if warranted.”
In its report, the Environmental Working Group also criticized companies like General Mills for not disclosing which chemicals, specifically, are being used as replacements. (In an email, General Mills said it used a “vinyl-based lining that has been safely used for decades.”)
Reformulating products to remove objectionable ingredients is often expensive and time-consuming. Muir Glen’s alternative lining didn’t work for other General Mills products, the company said, while Campbell’s has tested a “wide range of alternatives” as it tries to move away from using BPA in its canned foods, said Carla Burigatto, a company spokeswoman.
“As we’ve always maintained, the transition will occur over a long period of time, due to the complexity of the challenge,” Ms. Burigatto said.
BPA is also commonly used as a coating on receipts, where health advocates say it can easily rub off onto the skin and leach into the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency has added BPA to its “work plan” chemical list, which marks it for further study. But the agency will not get to it until 2018 or later, said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, the E.P.A.’s office director for pollution prevention and toxics.
In the meantime, however, scientists have raised concerns about some of the alternatives.
One such alternative, bisphenol S, or BPS, has attracted particular scrutiny. According to a study co-written by Hong-Sheng Wang, an associate professor in the pharmacology department at the University of Cincinnati’s medical school, BPS had effects similar to those of BPA.
“This is a good case study showing that the fact that something is BPA-free does not necessarily mean that it’s safer,” Mr. Wang said in an interview. “Those alternatives, their biological effect and the potential adverse effect need to be evaluated.”
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(ACC Mentioned) US Homebuilder Confidence Offsets Recent Declines
Jun 15, 2015 | ICIS News
By Joe Kamalick
Market confidence among US housing contractors rose sharply in June, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said on Monday, reaching its highest level since September last year and reversing some recent monthly declines.
In its monthly housing market index (HMI), the association said its measure of homebuilder confidence in the market for new single-family homes rose by five points in June to a reading of 59 from the May mark of 54.
Construction and sale of single-family homes is considered the core of the US housing industry.
The index has had a bumpy path for the first half of this year. It fell by a single point in January, dropped two points in both February and March, then gained four points in April before dipping anew in May by two percentage points.
NAHB chairman Tom Woods said that the June HMI reading reflects reports from member contractors who are seeing “more serious and committed buyers at their job sites”
The HMI is a compilation of three subsidiary measures in the market for single-family homes: builders’ current sales, the number of prospective buyers visiting model homes and contractors’ sales expectations over the next six months.
On the 1-100 HMI scale, a reading of 50 or above indicates that home builders are confident about their prospects over the next six months, while a score below that tipping point suggests a housing market in contraction.
Initiated by the NAHB in 1985, the index fell to its all-time low of 8 in January 2009 in the depths of the 2008-2009 Great Recession.
NAHB chief economist David Crowe said the June upturn in homebuilder confidence appears to be more than just another single-month move in the index.
The June gain, he said, indicates “a growing optimism among builders that housing will continue to strengthen in the months ahead”.
Crowe said that sentiment has been bolstered by recent improvements in US housing starts data and a gain in new home sales.
He also cited data showing a strong advance in what economists call “household formations”, referring to young people leaving the parental nest to go out on their own, perhaps to rent an apartment or even buy a home.
“More households mean more houses are needed,” Crowe said.
“Some of those may be rental apartments, but the increase [in household formations] still puts pressure on rents and the need for more housing,” he said.
The housing market is a key downstream consumer sector for the chemicals industry, driving demand for a wide variety of chemicals, resins and derivative products such as plastic pipe, insulation, paints and coatings, adhesives and synthetic fibres, among many others.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) estimates that each new single-family home built represents some $15,000 worth of chemicals and derivatives used in the structure or in production of component materials and equipment.
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California Proposes Proposition 65 Levels for Atrazine, Related Chemicals
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has proposed a maximum allowable dose level of 100 micrograms a day for oral exposure to atrazine and each of five related chemicals it identified earlier this year under Proposition 65 as causing reproductive toxicity.
The proposed regulatory levels would set the threshold for triggering the warnings required under Proposition 65, the state's landmark right-to-know law approved by voters in 1986 officially known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act.
OEHHA's listing of the six chemicals is effective Oct. 1, according to the June 12 regulatory notice.
The addition of atrazine (CAS No. 1912-24-09), propazine (CAS No. 139-40-2), simazine (CAS No. 122-34-9) and their chlorometabolites 2,3-diamino-6-chloro-s-triazine (DACT) (CAS No. 3397-62-4), des-ethyl atrazine (DEA) (CAS No. 6190-65-4) and desisopropyl atrazine (DIA) (CAS No. 1007-28-9) to the Proposition 65 list was based on the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that the triazine class of chemicals cause developmental and female reproductive toxicity, OEHHA said.
OEHHA said the proposed maximum allowable dose levels (MADLs) were based on data for atrazine, which is representative of all six of the chemicals.
The chemicals are pesticides used to control weeds on a variety of agricultural commodities, including corn, sorghum, sugar cane and citrus.
OEHHA is accepting public comments on the proposed maximum allowable dose levels through July 27. Requests for a public hearing on the proposal must be submitted by July 13, OEHHA said.
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Ruling Centralizes Lumber Liquidators Wood Flooring Litigation in Virginia
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Federal lawsuits alleging Chinese-made laminate wood flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators Inc. had unsafe levels of formaldehyde will be centralized in the Eastern District of Virginia, the U.S. Judicial Panel of Multidistrict Litigation ruled June 12 (In re Lumber Liquidators Chinese-Manufactured Flooring Prods. Mktg., Sales Practices & Prod. Liab. Litig., J.P.M.L., No. 2627, transfer order, 6/12/15).
The ruling transfers 113 pending suits from 29 states alleging the company misrepresented its wood flooring product as compliant with California formaldehyde regulations, therefore exposing consumers to unsafe levels of the known carcinogen (42 DEN A-11, 3/4/15).
The panel said the transfer to the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia would best serve the convenience of the parties and the administration of the litigation, and noted that Lumber Liquidators—based in Toano, Va.—requested that the cases be transferred there.
Pending Securities Action Also Cited
Centralization in the Eastern District of Virginia also will allow coordination with a proposed class action filed there in 2013, the court said. The complaint in that case alleges federal securities law violations stemming from Lumber Liquidators' illegal harvesting wood from protected Russian forests, as well as misrepresentation claims relating to the company's Chinese-made flooring (In re Lumber Liquidators Holdings, Inc. Sec. Litig., E.D. Va., 13-cv-00157).
Lumber Liquidators also faces state and federal probes into its laminated wood flooring product—which it removed from the market last May—as well questions about the accuracy of home-testing kits it sent to purchasers.
Judge Sarah S. Vance issued the order, joined by Judges Charles R. Breyer, Ellen Segal Huvelle, Catherine Perry, Lewis A. Kaplan and R. David Proctor.
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EU Chemicals Agency Adds Two Potential Substances of Very High Concern to List
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency confirmed June 15 the addition of two chemicals to the so-called REACH candidate list of substances of very high concern, meaning they could be prioritized for phaseout from use in the European Union.
The new entries to the substances of very high concern (SVHC) list are:
• 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, di-C6-10-alkyl esters; 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, mixed decyl and hexyl and octyl diesters with 0.3 percent of dihexyl phthalate, described by ECHA as a “series of mixed alkyl diesters” used as plasticizers and lubricants; and,
• 5-sec-butyl-2-(2,4-dimethylcyclohex-3-en-1-yl)-5-methyl-1,3-dioxane [1], 5-sec-butyl-2-(4,6-dimethylcyclohex-3-en-1-yl)-5-methyl-1,3-dioxane [2] [covering any of the individual isomers of [1] and [2] or any combination thereof], a fragrance ingredient with the trade name of karanal.
ECHA said the mixed alkyl diesters were listed as SVHCs because they are reprotoxic, while karanal is very persistent and very bioaccumulative.
The substances were proposed for SVHC status by, respectively, Sweden and the Netherlands. Their SVHC listing was the subject of a public consultation in March (43 DEN A-9, 3/5/15).
Listing as an SVHC triggers certain obligations for any company trading in the substances or products containing the substances. They must provide more information to purchasers of the substances and must notify ECHA of any product that contains any SVHC in a concentration above 0.1 percent by weight.
SVHC listing also can be a preliminary step to further studies and consultations, which can result in the most hazardous substances being included in Annex XIV of REACH, meaning their use is prohibited in the EU unless specific continued-use authorizations are granted.
The addition of the substances brings the number of SVHCs to 163, of which 31 have been listed in Annex XIV of REACH (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals).
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D.C. Circuit Rejects Groups' Bid to Stop Cove Point LNG Terminal Construction
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeff Day
Dominion Resources may continue construction of a natural gas liquefaction and LNG export terminal in Maryland while litigation of an environmental group's challenge of key government approvals continues, a federal appeals court ruled (EarthReports Inc. v. FERC, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1127, motion denied, 6/12/15).
In a one-page order June 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the emergency motion filed by environmental groups, saying the petition failed to satisfy the requirements for a stay pending court review.
The court also rejected the groups' petition for expedited briefing of the case, finding they failed to articulate “strongly compelling” reasons required by precedent.
Environmental groups June 1 filed an emergency motion to stop construction of the terminal pending resolution of their lawsuit challenging two 2014 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission orders that allowed Dominion to construct and operate the Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal (106 DEN A-15, 6/3/15).
The $3.8 billion LNG export terminal, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc., would send a relatively modest volume of 770 million cubic feet per day of U.S. natural gas to customers in Japan and India.
It would be the first LNG export terminal on the East Coast.
FERC Approval Challenge Continues
EarthReports Inc. (doing business as Patuxent Riverkeeper), the Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, represented by Earthjustice, filed the underlying lawsuit May 6 challenging legality of FERC's orders. The lawsuit was filed the day before the Energy Department announced that Dominion Resources was authorized to export LNG from Maryland to countries that do not have free trade agreements with the U.S. (89 DEN A-2, 5/8/15).
The environmental groups are alleging that FERC circumvented the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider how an LNG export terminal in Maryland would trigger expanded hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region. Expanded fracking would lead to significant new amounts of air, water and climate-disrupting pollution, the lawsuit says.
On Sept. 29, 2014, FERC approved the environmental review for the Cove Point Project and authorized a construction permit with conditions (Docket No. CP13-113-000)(190 DEN A-20, 10/1/14).
Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle said June 12 that construction of the Cove Point LNG export terminal is on schedule.
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Seattle Wades Into Fight Over Oil Drilling
Jun 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Jim Carlton
Law enforcement detained dozens of protesters Monday for trying to block a Royal Dutch Shell PLC oil rig from departing the Port of Seattle for drilling off Alaska—the latest development in a weekslong standoff in which environmental activists have been joined by an unusual ally: the city itself.
Monday’s action took place after the Polar Pioneer and its support vessels attempted to leave the port about 6 a.m. to begin exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea and were intercepted by protesters in kayaks, Coast Guard officials said.
About two dozen people were detained, including Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien, as more activists prepared to try to block the 400-by-292-foot drilling vessel from reaching the open sea, said Coast Guard Lt. Dana Warr. Lt. Warr said the agency is enforcing a 500-yard safety zone around the vessel, and that violators face misdemeanor citations.
Shell officials said that while they respect the rights of drilling opponents to express their view, “we only ask that they do so safely and within the boundaries of the law.”
Mr. O’Brien, who wasn’t immediately available for comment, participated with at least one other city Council Member in an earlier floating demonstration against the rig when it docked in Seattle early last month under a controversial permit. Mayor Ed Murray and the council launched a challenge to the permit that allowed Shell’s equipment to be stored and serviced at the port before the planned drilling. The Democratic mayor is concerned the drilling will add to global warming.
“The expansion of what I think is an antiquated [energy] policy is bad,” said Mr. Murray in an interview. “I used the only leverage I had.”
The opposition from the mayor and a united City Council has drawn criticism from port officials and others who say rejection of Shell’s plans could cost the city jobs and harm its reputation with businesses.
Seattle is the latest jurisdiction in the U.S. to try to use its clout against Big Oil. Several have banned fracking, including Denton, Texas, and Mora County, N.M. In California, San Jose, Oxnard and Moorpark are among cities that have sent letters or passed resolutions against a proposed oil-train terminal in San Luis Obispo County, citing safety concerns among other factors.
Worries over oil safety were rekindled when as much as 100,000 gallons of crude spilled from a ruptured pipeline off the Santa Barbara County, Calif., coast on May 19.
In Washington state, the city of Vancouver, also pointing to environmental and safety concerns, passed a resolution last June opposing a planned oil-rail facility, putting it at odds with the Port of Vancouver, which backed it.
“The City of Vancouver does not believe that there are sufficient answers to the important questions regarding environment and physical safety to proceed with any type of development at this time,” the City Council said in its resolution.
Not every city in the region has taken sides on the issue. In nearby Everett, Wash., officials in the port city of 100,000 opted not to weigh in when another of Shell’s Arctic rigs docked there last month, said city spokesman Eric Hicks. Shell officials said that equipment, too, would be departing soon for Alaska.
Officials at the Port of Everett last month affirmed the port’s support for offshore exploration in Alaska, saying it can provide hundreds of jobs and generate millions in local sales and tax revenue.
And drilling has been embraced by many communities elsewhere—particularly in oil-producing states like Texas, where the legislature recently passed a law prohibiting local bans on fracking.
Industry officials say jurisdictions should be encouraging oil and gas growth for the economic benefits. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create millions of new jobs, generate trillions of dollars for the government, and strengthen our national security,” said Sabrina Fang, spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington.
Some of the local actions against oil amount to symbolic protests that in themselves don’t have meaningful impact. But they are triggering legal fights, and in some cases spurring legislation. Mora County’s 2013 fracking ban, for example, was struck down by a U.S. district-court judge this year as unconstitutional.
Seattle joined the fray after Shell early this year renewed its plans for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska. The oil giant had attempted the drilling in 2012, but failed amid bad weather and mechanical failures. In February, the Port of Seattle signed an agreement with Foss Maritime Co., leaseholder of a terminal there, to host Shell’s Arctic exploration fleet for two years.
But Seattle officials objected to Shell’s use of port facilities, saying the drilling would undermine a climate action plan the city adopted two years ago aimed at making Seattle carbon-neutral by 2025. Last month, the council unanimously passed a resolution urging the port to reconsider its lease with Shell.
While the drilling would take place some 2,000 miles away, the mayor and other opponents say it will add to global warming by leading to the burning of more fossil fuels. “It’s a big step in the wrong direction,” council member Mr. O’Brien said.
Seattle elections are officially nonpartisan, but the council members opposed to Shell’s drilling are mostly Democrats. That places them in political opposition to the Obama administration, which gave conditional approval for Shell to start drilling off Alaska last month.
Groups opposed to Arctic drilling, including the Sierra Club, filed a suit in March seeking to invalidate the Shell lease on grounds the port didn’t conduct an environmental analysis. Port officials argued one wasn’t necessary, and the case is pending in state district court.
The mayor and council, meanwhile, asked the Seattle Department of Planning and Development to look into the validity of the port’s permit to host Shell. In early May, the department found the terminal could host only cargo vessels and the port would have to apply for a new use permit. It gave the port, Foss and Shell until June 4 to comply, under penalty of fines that could reach $500 a day. Any penalties have been waived pending an appeal filed by Foss and the port have appealed the finding. A Shell spokesman said the company believes its contract with the port is valid, and that it hopes to begin the exploratory drilling in the Chukchi after July 15.
Port officials say breaking the rig agreement would cost hundreds of jobs, while they and Foss officials say it would give the facility an antibusiness reputation.
“Should we begin deciding if we want a vessel in our port based on what it will do afterward?” said Port Commissioner Bill Bryant. “This is a choice between middle-class jobs and symbolism.”
The presence of the ship on the Seattle waterfront has galvanized loud protests. Activists in kayaks—joined by council members Mr. O’Brien and Kshama Sawant—staged a demonstration on May 16. On May 18, activists and Ms. Sawant blocked a bridge leading to the terminal, shutting down work for the day. One activist later chained herself to a Shell support-vessel’s anchor chain. Ms. Sawant said she plans to continue trying to block Shell however she can.
“We absolutely cannot be taking a million steps backwards if we allow the Arctic to be drilled,” said Ms. Sawant. “This is a David versus Goliath fight.”
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Shell Lawsuit to Keep Greenpeace Away Allowed to Proceed by U.S. Court in Alaska
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A lawsuit by Royal Dutch Shell Plc against Greenpeace seeking protection from wrongful interference in Shell's Arctic drilling plans was allowed to go ahead June 12 when a court rejected a Greenpeace motion to dismiss the suit (Shell Offshore Inc. v. Greenpeace, D. Alaska, No. 3:15-cv-00054, 6/12/15).
Greenpeace had argued that the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska should dismiss the complaint because the court lacked jurisdiction over Shell's maritime tort claims made under federal common law.
The environmental advocacy group based its argument on several legs, including preemption tort claims by federal laws, preemption by Coast Guard regulatory action, inappropriate jurisdiction for the high seas and lack of ripeness given the forward-looking precautionary nature of the lawsuit.
The district court wasn't swayed. It found Shell had done an adequate job of arguing that Greenpeace threatened wrongful interference.
The safety zones established by the Coast Guard weren't wide enough to cover the range of threatened action, and the federal laws cited by Greenpeace didn't explicitly displace common law on the maritime court claims, the court said.
Greenpeace Must Stay Away
Shell, going to court through subsidiaries Shell Offshore Inc. and Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc., won a preliminary ruling in May that ordered Greenpeace to keep its distance from Shell's operations (91 DEN A-2, 5/12/15).
The injunction applied safety zones around Shell's vessels from their home port in Washington's Puget Sound to the drilling site in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska, and all along the route in between.
The past behavior of Greenpeace activists weighed against the group in court by providing support for Shell's argument that it faced a real threat of tortious interference with its activities.
Shell's complaint said Greenpeace tactics include blockading vessels, boarding vessels, placing swimmers in the water in front of vessels, attempting to foul propulsion systems and other activities.
“Shell's complaint alleges not only future harm but also contains multiple allegations of actions that Greenpeace USA and other Greenpeace entities have taken in the past, including the incident on the high seas that was ongoing when this case was filed,” the court said. “The court therefore finds this case ripe for adjudication.”
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GOP Threatens Subpoena For Keystone Records
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House Republicans are threatening to subpoena the Obama administration for records regarding its ongoing consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are investigating the State Department’s process for deciding whether to recommend that President Obama approve the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, including its formal consultations with eight other agencies to determine if Keystone is in the “national interest.”Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the panel’s chairman, said in a Monday letter that State has been unnecessarily secretive about the review and flat-out refused in March to provide communications, reports and other materials related to the process, including comments from the agencies.
Chaffetz threatened to compel State to send the documents, and asked for the agency to engage in “dynamic compromise” with the Oversight Committee to reach a deal about the request. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), chairwoman of the subcommittee with EPA responsibility, also signed the letter.
The letter is just the latest escalation in the six-year fight by Republicans in support of TransCanada Corp.’s project. The House has voted multiple times to go over Obama’s head and approve it, and the Senate passed a similar bill earlier this year, which Obama vetoed.
“The president has not asserted executive privilege with respect to the materials we requested, despite the department’s claim that those materials are related to ‘an ongoing deliberative process in support of the president’s discharge of his constitutional responsibilities,’ ” Chaffetz wrote, citing State’s March letter.
Chaffetz noted that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly posted some of the materials he requested, and urged State to reconsider its response.
“If the department remains unwilling to work with the committee on a voluntary basis, we are left with no alternative but to consider the use of compulsory process to obtain the materials,” he said.
The letter comes amid a wave of criticism regarding State’s transparency, including the emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server and State’s record responding to public record requests.
State did not respond to a request for comment.
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House Oversight Republicans Press Kerry On Keystone Secrecy
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today questioned the State Department’s secrecy claim covering interagency comments and other data related to its review of Keystone XL.
Chairman Jason Chaffetz and subpanel chief Rep. Cynthia Lummis today pushed Secretary of State John Kerry to explain the lack of response to their February request for information that State has received in its ongoing Keystone review, including comments from eight other agencies that are empowered to weigh in on the pipeline’s merits. The State Department has not asserted executive privilege.
Among those eight agencies, the Republicans said, only EPA stands out for placing some of its data relevant to the review online.
“Contrary to the [State] Department’s assertion that visibility in the permitting process ‘would raise separation of powers concerns,’ the EPA’s decision to place the documents online created a higher degree of transparency and allowed Congress, stakeholders and the public to better understand the permitting process,” the Republicans wrote, seeking a briefing on State’s reasons for withholding the information. -
Supporting Arctic Exploration For American Leadership
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By USA Col. David Hun
Since the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a great deal has been accomplished to improve the safety and environmental performance of U.S. offshore energy activities. Through a combination of public-private sector collaboration, voluntary industry efforts, and what Interior Sec. Sally Jewell termed “the most aggressive and comprehensive offshore oil and gas regulatory reforms in the nation’s history,” offshore energy activity in the U.S. is indeed safer than ever.
President Barack Obama recently said that “nobody is more mindful of the risks involved and the dangers” of offshore drilling than he is, and that renewed Arctic exploration activity in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea would be contingent on meeting very high standards. That’s why the Department of the Interior (DOI) has given Shell conditional approval to drill in that region this summer because experts have concluded that the company has indeed met those very standards.
“I would rather us – with all the safeguards and standards that we have – be producing our oil and gas, rather than importing it, which is bad for our people, but is also potentially purchased from places that have much lower environmental standards than we do,” Obama said.
That’s why anti-development organizations and other opposition groups should vacate the Port of Seattle, where equipment used for Arctic energy exploration is staged and maintained. And why they should also stop with the frivolous lawsuits designed to do nothing more than delay the process.
It’s also why 18 members of the United States Senate, hailing from a variety of states, none of which include Alaska, should exercise better judgment than to push a “just say no to energy” approach by recently urging Interior Secretary Jewell to prohibit U.S. Arctic energy leasing and development. This is particularly the case when public polling shows overwhelming support for Arctic offshore drilling among Alaskans and Americans across the country from South Carolina to New Hampshire and Iowa.
Delaying development in the Arctic would also harm Americans in many other ways – namely, national security.
Because of a continued lack of infrastructure and funding commitments, America lags behind in activity in the Arctic frontier. We’re not only missing out on emerging fisheries, rare earth minerals, and enough resources to power the United States economy and American homes for decades to come, we’re also jeopardizing our energy security by sitting on the sidelines allowing rival nations to beat us to the punch.
Even though the U.S. has taken over the chairmanship of the eight-nation Arctic Council, the seven other members have, been far more effective at staking claim to the region’s previously untapped resources. Even non-Council members are in the mix. India and China are investing in new, high-tech icebreakers, all while America has been delayed with frivolous legal actions and regulatory obstacles.
Most concerning, perhaps, is Russia, which depends on oil revenue to fund more than half of its coffers and has intensified its militarization in the region to unprecedented levels.
Despite his country being in a recession, Russian President Vladimir Putin boosted his military spending by 33 percent this year. Russia then rehabilitated a Soviet-era base, increased the number of fighter jets and combat helicopters, and upped its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, state-of-the-art search-and-rescue ships, and icebreakers patrolling waters near the U.S. in the Arctic.
Do we really like having Russian forces that close to American soil equipped with that type of advanced weaponry? And do we really like that they’re taking advantage of access to Arctic resources, while anti-development groups have helped render Arctic resources inaccessible?
I don’t think so.
Exploring, developing and defending the Arctic is in fact just as much our challenge and calling as a nation as it is Alaska’s. If anti-development groups have their way again and delay work in this geopolitically sensitive region, countless jobs and billions in revenue will be lost – and enemy nations will again have the upper hand on us. That wouldn’t sit well with me. I doubt it would sit well with the rest of America either.
The United States finally has a path forward to be a trailblazer in the resources-rich Arctic. Let’s not stand in the way of that.
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Moniz Calls For Review Of Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the Strategic Petroleum Reserve needs to be re-evaluated to ensure the United States can more nimbly absorb price swings and supply shocks.
Moniz said today at the 2015 U.S. Energy Information Administration conference that the government needs to review the types of threats facing domestic oil supplies and whether the SPR and associated distribution systems can be used to soften the blow by releasing incremental barrels of oil into the market.
"That's where our analysis seems to point us, to getting oil on the water," Moniz said.
The SPR is a federal facility that consists of a network of 62 salt caverns and four storage sites in Louisiana and Texas and currently holds 691 million barrels of crude oil. The system is connected to three major networks that distribute the oil through pipelines and marine terminals to refineries on the Gulf Coast, inland, and on the East and West coasts.
The Energy Department in its Quadrennial Energy Review said the SPR is an important insurance policy for the United States in the event of serious oil supply disruptions and the associated price increases in domestic petroleum and petroleum products.
Moniz's concern stems from a test sale DOE conducted last year to demonstrate the ability of the SPR to draw down oil and distribute capacity in two locations served by the Texoma network. During that test sale, purchasers reported problems getting capacity on one major pipeline for preferred deliveries and had to make adjustments by shipping crude oil to a different terminal and placing the oil into temporary storage until pipeline capacity became available, according to the QER.
Moniz expressed frustration that the Obama administration failed to get millions needed to upgrade current SPR infrastructure in appropriations legislation moving through the House and Senate. The secretary said it could cost up to $2 billion to upgrade the SPR and make critical changes to thwart oil price shocks.
The secretary also rejected recent congressional proposals to use oil from the SPR to fund initiatives "completely unrelated" to energy security, calling it "a very slippery slope."
Going forward, Moniz said a federal review of the SPR must focus on potential disruptions that could jar the economy in the United States and abroad, and determine whether the government can use the SPR "in an anticipatory way" to head off such events instead of "let's see how it gets."
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Energy Industry Is Gassing Down
Jun 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Timothy Puko
U.S. energy companies are taking their foot off the natural-gas pedal, slowing down their production growth after years of furious pumping.
In the past eight years, a combination of improvements in drilling techniques and high energy prices stoked natural-gas production to all-time highs. The boom quickly sent natural-gas prices to historic lows, but output kept rising because high oil prices made it profitable for producers to keep tapping fields that yielded both oil and gas.
Now, the global collapse in oil prices has producers and analysts rethinking the gas boom, too. Both gas and oil prices are down about 40% in the past year, cutting the incentive to keep drilling. A flurry of recent forecasts from government and private-sector experts suggest monthly gas production will flatten and possibly even begin to decline in 2015.
Energy companies have shut down more than half of all their oil rigs and cut back on the number of gas rigs to their lowest level in the 28-year history of rig counts from Baker Hughes Inc.
The natural-gas market has started to respond to these forecasts. Last month, natural gas briefly went into a bull market, defined as a gain of 20% off a recent low. Prices fell from there, but another recent surge has kept futures up 16% from a three-year low hit on April 27, though prices remain unchanged year to date at $2.889 a million British thermal units. Higher prices are likely later in the year as production growth slows and heating demand kicks in, bullish investors say.
The gas boom accorded widespread benefits to the U.S. economy. U.S. families have paid less to heat their homes, steel and glass makers saved money running their furnaces and petrochemical producers have saved money on materials to make plastics.
Those benefits won’t fade quickly, even if gas output declines, because production is still likely to overwhelm demand for most of 2015, economists and analysts said.
Natural-gas producers have defied predictions of slowing output growth before, and they would probably get back to work quickly if either gas or oil prices embarked on a sustained rally.
But some analysts say the current downshift in natural-gas production is more widespread than in previous slumps.
“The big fat difference is that [drilling] activity is down in every corner, from every entity that you can think of,” said Jan Stuart, global energy economist at Credit Suisse.
Mr. Stuart’s estimates indicate that U.S. gas output hit an all-time peak in December and will decline throughout 2015. Department of Energy data released at the end of May showed natural-gas output growth in the first quarter at its slowest since the fourth quarter of 2013.
“If you believe that U.S. oil production is peaking, then you would see a similar knock-on impact to gas,” said Greg Sharenow, a portfolio manager at Pacific Investment Management Co., one of the firms to bet on rising prices later this year. “It’s the same companies and the same economics being challenged from both sides.” Pimco has about $20 billion invested in commodities. ENLARGE
The U.S. benchmark oil price is up 12% this year, in part on the prospect of slowing U.S. crude output due to reduced drilling activity.
Higher prices for oil and other liquid fuels including ethane and propane effectively subsidized gas drilling, Credit Suisse told investors in a presentation last month.
Range Resources Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas, and Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City, two companies that helped pioneer shale-gas drilling, cut their growth targets for this year, citing the broad collapse in energy prices, including for oil and other similar liquid fuels.
Production hit 73.6 billion cubic feet a day in the first three months of the year, a quarterly increase of 0.3%, the smallest since the end of 2013, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In its monthly short-term energy outlook, the EIA said gas production is likely to keep increasing and set a new monthly record by July, which differs from Credit Suisse’s estimates. In the same report, though, the EIA also said it cut its output forecast for every quarter through the end of 2016.
“At a minimum [production] will at least stabilize,” said Nick Koutsoftas, a co-portfolio manager at Cohen & Steers, which has $54.6 billion in assets under management. “You could see a market that’s balanced or at a slight deficit going into 2016, ’17 and even ’18.”
Mr. Koutsoftas has a bullish position in natural-gas futures for delivery later in 2015.
There are many factors that could keep output growing in addition to a recovery in energy prices. Producers are negotiating cheaper contracts with service providers to match lower prices, which could keep volumes buoyant.
“We’re not going to look back in two or three years and think 2015 is when the tide turned,” said James Smith, an economist at Southern Methodist University and president-elect of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics “There is a massive resource to be exploited.”
Still, production cutbacks under way have already been enough to turn stalwart bears into bulls. Analysts at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., a Houston investment bank, recently turned bullish on gas prices in March for the first time in six years.
“If you’re not getting oil, you’re not getting…gas,” said Dave Pursell, the bank’s managing director.
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Key Chairmen Press EPA About Clean Power Plan Impacts
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Corbin Hiar
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) today raised questions about how the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan to combat climate change could affect endangered species like the manatee.
The chairmen sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy asking about the likely effects its proposed restrictions on planet-warming carbon emissions from new and existing power plants could have on federally protected species. They also requested internal communications and documents related to the decision to not evaluate the projected impacts of the Clean Power Plan on imperiled plants and animals.
"We are astounded that EPA omitted any reference to the ESA or the section 7 consultation requirement in the proposed rule for new power plants," the lawmakers said. They were referring to a part of the Endangered Species Act that gives the Fish and Wildlife Service the authority to request that another agency consult with FWS officials about its requirements under the law.
The letter went on to note that, for the existing power plant rule, EPA did weigh the proposed regulation's potential effect on wildlife included on the lists of endangered or threatened species.
"It is unclear why EPA would consider the impacts of one rule on listed species and conclude there were 'positive' effects from [greenhouse gas] reductions, but decline to consider the effects of the companion rule, which will also reduce GHG emissions," Inhofe and Bishop wrote.
Separately, the Natural Resources chairman has been pressing FWS Director Dan Ashe to explain why EPA had not consulted with his agency even though Ashe suggested at a hearing that shutting down a Florida coal-fired power plant could pose a threat to manatees. Unable to survive for long in water below 68 degrees Fahrenheit, manatees often congregate around the warm water effluent from coal facilities during cold winter months.
"There's a very direct and obvious impact and relationship between that water discharge and those manatees," he told Bishop, who asked him to elaborate in a follow-up letter (E&ENews PM, April 8).
But Ashe sought to downplay that statement in a response sent to the chairman a couple of weeks later.
"Making a determination about a causal connection between an EPA action and any potential effects on listed species or designated critical habitat is not a hypothetical exercise," the FWS director wrote. "EPA's Clean Air Act expertise makes it best suited to determine whether a causal connection exists."
EPA's familiarity with the nuances of the air regulations is also the reason that FWS did not request that the agency conduct ESA review for its power plant carbon rules, Ashe added.
"EPA, as the expert agency on the Clean Air Act rules, is best positioned to understand if their rules will affect listed species or designated critical habitat," he wrote. "The Service does not have the technical expertise in the Clean Air Act to be able to independently do so."
But Inhofe and Bishop are surprised "that EPA entirely neglected to assess the ground-level effects of its regulation" on the manatee and other protected species like the northern long-eared bat, which they suggested could be at greater risk of mortality from increased wind turbine installations. The agency "must analyze the effects of its action -- including the closure of power plants -- through the lens of the ESA," the lawmakers wrote.
Asked for comment, EPA press secretary Melissa Harrison said the agency just "received the letter this morning and will review and respond."
The chairmen have asked EPA to respond to their questions and provide the requested documents by June 22.
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Report Says EPA's Clean Power Plan Presents Reliability Issues for New York
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan presents “potentially serious reliability implications” for New York because of New York City's heavy reliance on dual fuel oil-gas steam fired electric generating units, according to a June 15 report from the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).
The report, “Power Trends 2015: Rightsizing the Grid,” said the Clean Power Plan assumes reliability can be maintained even if electricity output from dual fuel units in New York City is reduced by 99 percent.
“These units are critically important, both due to their location within the transmission constrained New York City area and because they possess dual-fuel capability that provides a needed measure of protection against disruptions in the natural gas supply system,” the report said, echoing comments that NYISO submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), expected to be finalized in August, would set carbon dioxide emissions rates for existing power plants in each state (106 DEN A-4, 6/3/15).
Report Calls for Safety Valve
The report calls for some kind of “reliability safety valve” that would allow power plants to operate if needed when system reliability is jeopardized. In addition, the report said the EPA plan should recognize the progress New York has already made to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Conor Bambrick, air and energy director for Environmental Advocates of New York, told Bloomberg BNA that New York City could address some of the reliability issues by increasing the diversity of its fuel mix to include more renewable energy. As for recognizing early actions by New York, Bambrick said “there's still so much more to be done.”
Matthew Schwall, a spokesman for the Independent Power Producers of New York, told Bloomberg BNA that “maintaining electric system reliability must be of paramount importance.”
“Any safety valve must be triggered only when the Plan results in unit retirements that would harm reliability and/or have other unacceptable impacts that outweigh the benefit of further emission reductions,” he said in an e-mail.
The NYISO report said new and proposed environmental regulations will affect an estimated 33,800 megawatts of generation, which is more than 80 percent of New York's generating capacity. The report cited regulations requiring control technology for nitrogen oxides (NOx), mercury from coal plants, interstate transportation of air emissions and other rules.
Other highlights in the report include:
• Energy efficiency programs and distributed energy resources like solar photovoltaics and “behind-the-meter” systems are expected to reduce the growth of peak demand by more than 2,700 megawatts from projected levels by 2025 and lower annual energy usage by 14,000 gigawatt-hours.
• 35,756 gigawatt hours of New York's electricity were produced by renewable resources in 2014.
• Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants declined by 39 percent from 2000 to 2014, while emissions of sulfur dioxide were reduced by 94 percent and NOx by 78 percent.
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White House Warns House On Interior-EPA Spending Bill
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
The White House fired a warning shot Monday night at the House's 2016 Interior-EPA spending bill, complaining in a letter to lawmakers about the major cuts to EPA and the Interior Department.
"These shortsighted funding cuts would undermine fiscal responsibility, national conservation and environmental priorities, and economic competitiveness," Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan wrote.
The House bill totals just over $30 billion, but cuts EPA's budget to $7.4 billion, a $718 million drop from 2015 levels.
Donovan also flagged "highly problematic ideological riders," including provisions that would block EPA's greenhouse gas rules for power plants and the Waters of the United States rule, as well as prevent Interior from proposing an Endangered Species Act listing for the greater sage-grouse or from issuing an updated coal mining regulation protecting streams.
Donovan’s letter is part of the White House’s new strategy of earlier outreach on appropriations bills. The House Appropriations Committee will mark up the Interior-EPA bill on Tuesday morning. -
White House Outlines 'Serious Concerns' With House's Interior-EPA Bill
Jun 16, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Phil Taylor
A top White House official yesterday said the Obama administration has "serious concerns" with the House's fiscal 2016 spending bill for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA, warning that it is short on funding and long on "ideological riders."
Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan detailed the administration's concerns in a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) a day before today's scheduled committee markup of the $30.17 billion measure funding Interior, EPA and the Forest Service.
As in previous letters to appropriators, Donovan said the president is unwilling to "lock in" sequestration spending levels, as the House's overall budget would do, "nor will he accept fixes to defense without also fixing non-defense."
The House's Interior-EPA spending bill is part of an overall Republican budget framework that is $74 billion below Obama's fiscal 2016 budget request.
Funding for the Interior-EPA bill is about $3 billion, or 9 percent, below the president's request for those agencies, Donovan wrote, citing estimates by the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies.
"These shortsighted funding cuts would undermine fiscal responsibility, national conservation and environmental priorities, and economic competitiveness," Donovan wrote. "They would prevent investments that reduce future costs to taxpayers by facilitating increased energy development and maintaining facilities and infrastructure in national parks, refuges, forests, public lands and Indian Country."
In particular, Donovan blasted EPA funding levels he argued would "significantly undermine implementation of the Clean Power Plan and the Clean Water Rule." He criticized appropriators for rejecting the president's request to reform wildfire budgeting and for funding payments in lieu of taxes (PILT) within the discretionary budget, which siphoned about $452 million from the funding pot for other agency programs.
Funding levels in the bill will harm conservation, climate change resilience and basic land management, he said.
"Highly problematic ideological riders" would prevent the administration from reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, prohibiting certain uses of "climate super-pollutants," clarifying the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act, protecting imperiled species including the greater sage grouse, combating the global ivory trade and updating 30-year-old stream protection regulations, Donovan wrote.
"We look forward to working with the Congress to reverse sequestration for defense and non-defense priorities, and offset the cost with commonsense spending and tax expenditure cuts, as members of Congress from both parties have urged," Donovan wrote.
The committee will debate amendments and vote on the bill this morning.
Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies will release a summary of its fiscal 2016 bill this afternoon and mark it up.
Senate subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has not said which riders will appear in her bill, though she told reporters last week that the House has historically been more "aggressive" in advancing policy goals in its spending bills. A top priority for Murkowski is crafting a bill that can be passed into law.
Riders aside, Murkowski's panel will have about $30.01 billion to spend on the agencies under its jurisdiction, which is about $160 million less than what was included in the House bill.
Administration officials, Democrats and conservation groups have already blasted those funding levels as too low.
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Shell Oil Rig Leaves Seattle Amid Protests
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Lawsuit Asks D.C. Circuit to Review Removal Of Affirmative Defense From Pollution Plans
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Southeastern Legal Foundation asked a federal appeals court to review the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to require states to alter their pollution control plans to remove language that shielded coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industrial sources of pollution from fines under the Clean Air Act (Se. Legal Found. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1166, 6/12/15).
The litigation challenged an EPA final rule that instructed 36 states to remove affirmative defense provisions, which prevented industry from being fined for regulatory violations triggered by unavoidable equipment malfunctions, from their state implementation plans. The rule (RIN 2060-AR68) gives those states until Nov. 22, 2016, to file revised plans (100 DEN A-3, 5/26/15).
The petition for review, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, does not include an explanation of the legal reasoning for the challenge. But Shannon Goessling, executive director and chief legal counsel at the Southeastern Legal Foundation, expressed concerns that the rule is the latest example of an environmental group driving agency priorities through litigation, a strategy opponents refer to as “sue and settle.”
The agency promulgated the rule in response to a 2011 petition from the Sierra Club and completed it under a settlement agreement with the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians.
“The pattern is really all too well established with the Obama administration,” Goessling told Bloomberg BNA. “As a public interest law firm, we have serious concern about anything done behind closed doors.”
The Southeastern Legal Foundation filed its lawsuit on June 12, the day the EPA rule was published in the Federal Register, an action that opened a 60-day period for requesting judicial review (80 Fed. Reg. 33,840).
Goessling said the issue is “absolutely” a priority for the law firm, which she said made a determination to become more active in litigation over EPA action. The Southeastern Legal Foundation advocates for limited government, individual economic freedom and the free enterprise system, according to its website.
EPA Interpretation Called ‘Overly Broad.'
The EPA originally proposed the startup, shutdown and malfunction rule in February 2013 and supplemented the proposal in September 2014 to require removal of the affirmative defense language.
That supplemental rule followed an April 2014 decision by the D.C. Circuit, which found the EPA did not have the authority to include a civil penalty shield in hazardous air emissions standards covering cement kilns (NRDC v. EPA, 749 F.3d 1055, 78 ERC 1369, 2014 BL 108218 (D.C. Cir. 2014); 76 DEN A-1, 4/21/14).
Since that decision, the EPA has taken action to remove affirmative defense language from air toxics rules covering other industries. But Goessling said the EPA decision to apply that D.C. Circuit ruling to state implementation plans is “overly broad.”
Additional Lawsuits Expected
Goessling said she expects there will be a “large number” of additional lawsuits filed over the EPA startup, shutdown and malfunction rule. The Southeastern Legal Foundation intends to work closely with other organizations that challenge the rule to develop the best strategy, she said.
The deadline for filing a lawsuit over the rule is Aug. 11.
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Energy Agency: Climate Plans Won’t Prevent Temperature Increase
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The greenhouse gas cuts proposed by some of the world’s biggest economies won’t be enough to stop global temperatures from rising beyond the important 2-degree Celsius threshold, the International Energy Agency said Monday.
Scientists have warned that temperature increases should be limited to 2 degrees over pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst of global warming, a goal the United Nations will pursue at a climate conference later this year. Under the UN plan, nations will propose greenhouse gas emission targets and strategies for reaching those goals.
But in a report released Monday, IEA said the plans introduced so far, taken together with climate policies in other countries, would result in a temperature increase of 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
“If stronger action is not forthcoming after 2030, the path … would be consistent with an average temperature increase of around 2.6 degrees by 2100 and 3.5 degrees after 2200,” the report said.
The United States has proposed cutting emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2030, relative to 2005 levels. The European Union has said it could reduce emissions by 40 percent over 1990 levels by then, and China says it could see its emissions peak by that year.
NEI suggested nations pursue a more aggressive strategy to reduce emissions including increasing energy efficiency, moving away from coal-fired power plants and investing in renewable energy instead of fossil fuel subsidies.
“For countries that have submitted their [emission plans], the proposed strategy identifies possible areas for over-achievement,” IEA wrote. “For those that have yet to make a submission, it sets out a pragmatic baseline for ambition.”
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As Ozone Debate Heats Up, Get The Facts
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Karen Kerrigan
Over the past four decades, America has drastically reduced its emissions and dramatically improved its air quality. Since 1980, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants have fallen by more than 60 percent, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Meanwhile, the emissions that contribute to ground-level ozone – the subject of an intensifying political debate in Washington and across the nation – have been cut in half. Under the existing requirements of the Clean Air Act, those ozone-forming emissions are expected to fall by another 36 percent over the next 10 years.
In fact, we have cleaned up the air so much that today’s ozone levels are no longer linked to asthma rates, historically one of the most important public health indicators for air quality. For more than a decade, as ozone levels continued to fall, asthma cases have steadily climbed. Yet, astonishingly, the Obama administration and its allies in the environmental movement are using the plight of asthma sufferers to tighten the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone and tighten the EPA’s grip over state and local economies all over the country. Demonstrating real health benefits is critical because today’s ozone standards are already stringent, and the cost of ratcheting them down any further is extremely expensive. The EPA wants to tighten the ozone NAAQS from today’s 75 parts per billion (ppb) into the 65-70 ppb range. According to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the cost of compliance would be roughly $140 billion a year, “making it the most expensive regulation ever issued by the U.S. government.” Groups aligned with the Obama administration, such as the American Lung Association (ALA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), are relentlessly campaigning to drive the standard even closer to natural background levels with a standard of 60 ppb – which would cost the U.S. economy $270 billion a year.
In their desperation to rationalize this economically destructive policy, the ALA and NRDC are ignoring what the recent data says about asthma and ozone, and claiming huge public health benefits will offset these costs. While campaigning in Colorado, the ALA even played up the asthma angle by falsely claiming that Denver ozone levels have gotten worse since the 1970s. This earned a rebuke from Colorado’s top air quality regulator, who said: “[I]t makes our jobs harder when positive trends are being spun the exact opposite way … There are so many things we have done as a state and as a country when it comes to improving air quality since the 1970s.”
But the EPA is playing along with the ALA and NRDC. Like these agenda-driven groups, the EPA is shrugging off the real-world data about today’s ozone levels and asthma cases, and justifying the rule with speculative claims of future health benefits. Even worse, the EPA has refused to make public the data used by the agency to support its predictions, prompting cries of “secret science” on Capitol Hill.
Based on what has been made public, public health officials in one state have slammed EPA’s data sources as “misleading,” “unrealistic,” “critically flawed,” and “implausible.” Michael Honeycutt, Ph.D., of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality further noted: “I don’t think the EPA can really back those claims up with science, if you really look at the data.” He also warned that a new ozone NAAQS of 65 ppb, which EPA is actively considering, would require “dramatic lifestyle changes” from the public to reduce tailpipe emissions from cars, including “no drive days, closing down drive-thru lanes and things like that.” Meanwhile, in Colorado, the state’s top air quality regulator has urged the EPA to acknowledge that “very high background levels” of ozone “make the issue particularly challenging in the West.”
When state-level environmental agencies start speaking publicly about their serious concerns, you know the EPA’s ozone ambitions have gone too far. These regulators are not alone. More than 20 states – with both Republican and Democrat administrations– have urged the EPA to keep the current 75 ppb standard in place. A letter from 11 governors warned “even some of our pristine national parks may not be able to satisfy” the tighter ozone NAAQS, which means almost all the country would be pushed into “nonattainment” with the new federal air quality benchmark. This would impose a “bureaucratic maze” on these areas and put them in “an economic penalty box so severe that needed economic growth is stunted,” the governors warn. All told, they fear 1.4 million jobs each year could be lost under the EPA’s unjustified ozone agenda.
Until now, the ozone debate has been overshadowed by other environmental controversies and numerous cases of regulatory overreach by the Obama administration. But with a growing number of state leaders speaking out, that is changing. To follow the debate and to get the latest facts, the Center for Regulatory Solutions, a project of the Small Business Entrepreneurship Council, is launching a new webpage dedicated to the Ozone issue, http://centerforregulatorysolutions.org/ozone. We encourage the public to go there to find the facts, and then demand an honest assessment from the EPA and its allies about the real cost of their political agenda on ozone.
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White House to Hold Energy Summit, Announce Actions to Encourage Investment
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Obama administration will announce “a series of new executive actions” to encourage private-sector investment at a Clean Energy Investment Summit being held by the White House June 16.
The event, which will feature remarks by Vice President Joe Biden, will also include the announcement of “commitments” by major foundations, institutional investors and others to fund climate change solutions and technologies to reduce carbon pollution, the White House said in a June 15 statement.
Other officials scheduled to make remarks include Peter B. Lyons, assistant secretary of energy for Nuclear Energy; Ellen Williams, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E); and Dennis McGinn, assistant secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment.
$2 Billion Sought
In February, the White House announced a goal of raising $2 billion from the private sector to fund clean energy projects, saying more funding is needed to fight climate change through “innovative technologies” (28 DEN A-4, 2/11/15).
“Further clean energy innovation to improve the cost, performance, and scalability of low-carbon energy technologies will be critical to taking action against climate change,” the White House said at the time. “Mission-driven investors—such as foundations, university endowments, and institutional investors—can play a catalytic role in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
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Private Investors Pony Up For Clean Energy
Jun 16, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A collection of investment firms, foundations, universities and other private institutions have pledged $4 billion to invest in new clean energy technology, the White House announced on Monday.
The funding comes in response to an Obama administration call for more private sector research into low-carbon energy technology. The government will also launch a new Department of Energy program to provide technical assistance for investors.Obama administration officials launched their “Clean Energy Investment Initiative” in February, hoping to secure $2 billion from the private sector to fund new energy research. The White House doubled that goal, receiving major pledges from the University of California system, Goldman Sachs and other investors.
“The response over only a couple of months has exceeded even our ambitious expectations,” Brian Deese, a senior adviser to President Obama, said in a call with reporters on Monday. “And our hope is that by highlighting these commitments … we’ll be able to build on that progress and be able to generate more commitments and more enthusiasm.”
The announcement comes ahead of a White House clean energy summit on Tuesday. Vice President Joe Biden, White House science adviser John Holdren and Deese will speak at the event.
“A growing number of mission-driven investors have committed to investing in clean energy innovation and solutions for our climate change challenges, and they do so in pursuit of both financial returns and mission-aligned impact,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Monday. “I think this is a tremendously important development.”
DOE’s new program, dubbed the "Clean Energy Impact Investment Center," will provide government information and technical assistance to those investing in new energy technology.
Moniz said investments in low-carbon energy sources will play a key role in U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a United Nations climate change deal that will be hashed out in Paris later this year.
“What we are emphasizing very, very strongly on the road to Paris is, in fact, the role of technology innovation, and associated cost reduction, as really key to meeting the global commitments that we need to reduce greenhouse gases,” he said.
Moniz didn’t any specifics Monday about the types of projects the DOE program would support, but he said he expects technology investors to begin coordinating with the department as soon as the effort formally launches.
“I view this, ultimately, as a kind of one-stop-shop, multi-dimensional information resource [for] investors who have obviously expressed their interest and their desire to get into this space,” he said.
“I can’t give you an example yet, but check back in a year and I certainly hope I’ll have a bunch.”
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White House Collects $4b In Private Fund Commitments To Scale Up Clean Energy
Jun 16, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Katherine Ling
Mission-driven investors have answered the White House's call to support a transition to a low-carbon economy by committing more than $4 billion in funding for early-stage clean energy technology -- doubling the original goal, the Obama administration announced today.
The funding commitments are part of the clean energy investment summit the White House is hosting today that will feature Vice President Joe Biden and highlight the "hundreds of organizations," including major foundations and institutional investors, that have made pledges in the past four months, such as Goldman Sachs, the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation and the John Merck Fund.
The White House unveiled the investment initiative in February, saying it would seek $2 billion in "mission-driven" funding to spur early-stage clean energy technology through the so-called valley of death -- the time when a technology is between the lab and market, when developers need funds to prove the technology can be scaled up to commercialization. The initiative received an initial $1 billion investment from the University of California board of regents endowment, as well as unspecified commitments from Wells Fargo, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Greenwire, Feb. 10).
The Energy Department is also launching a new Clean Energy Impact Investment Center to provide a "one-shop-stop, multidimensional information center" to help facilitate investments in innovative technology, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said on a media teleconference yesterday ahead of the announcement. DOE has been leading the mission-driven investment effort.
The new center will support investment by "leveraging world-class expertise, technology and programs to assist the need to drive innovation with a focus on matching up with the needs of the investment community," Moniz said. The center follows on DOE's significant experience in breakthrough technologies in its national laboratories, the loan guarantee programs and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Moniz said.
The center will be housed in the recently created Office of Technology Transitions, Moniz said, and will focus on sharing DOE and national laboratory research and analysis; identifying additional new technology analysis; and establishing a database of organizations already working with DOE and other federal energy and climate programs.
Moniz added that the role of financing technology and cost reduction will be the focus of an International Energy Agency meeting later this fall and "really key" to meeting global commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the run-up to the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris in November "and beyond."
The Treasury Department will publish guidance to clarify the ability for foundations to make "certain 'mission-related' investments in companies" and to finalize rules establishing new examples of permissible program-related investments (PRIs) by foundations, as part of the summit, according to the White House.
The Office of Management and Budget will also release a new overview of the $7.6 billion in President Obama's fiscal 2016 budget for clean energy research, development, demonstration and deployment, detailing for the first time specific technology areas. And the Small Business Administration will revamp its early-stage small business investment company program to better align with private investor needs, including licensing new funds on a continuously rolling basis, improved marketing and customer service, and extending this program past 2016, the administration said.
Brian Deese, a senior adviser to the president on climate and energy issues, said the White House "put out the call" for the investments, outlined how to structure the organizations to encourage investments, and pledged federal tools to facilitate institutional investment. But it is not clear, however, whether or how much of these first investments might have happened regardless of the administration's initiative -- with the federal tools still in development -- and further details were not provided on the call.
Specific commitments the White House detailed include: $1.2 billion collectively from the University of California's Office of the Chief Investment Officer, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the Alaska Permanent Fund, TIAA-CREF Financial Services and Tamarisc. They will invest in work with a new intermediary -- funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the ClimateWorks Foundation and others -- that will focus on "opportunities that would not fit into existing fund structures" through the valley of death. They have a goal of mobilizing $2.5 billion over five years. $1.5 billion from CREO Syndicate, a merger of the Cleantech, Renewable Energy and Environmental Opportunities (CREO) Network and Cleantech Syndicate, bringing together more than 100 family offices, advisers and other investors representing more than $50 billion of investable capital. $500 million from Goldman Sachs in financing and co-investment in advanced clean energy technologies, with a focus on smart grid infrastructure and advanced battery solutions. Up to $65 million from the John Merck Fund endowment for investments focused on climate solutions, clean energy generation and environmental health. $500 million combined from Drakes View, the McDougal Family Foundation, Mercy Investment Services, Treehouse Investments and the Unitarian Universalist Association. $10 million in privately raised seed capital from the Clean Energy Trust.
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Coal Company Argues EPA Failed To Meet Legal Bar For CWA Mine Veto
Jun 15, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Mingo Logan Coal Company is arguing that EPA failed to meet an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) bar for justifying its veto of disposal sites underlying a final Clean Water Act (CWA) mining permit, urging an appellate court to overturn the veto due to the agency's failure to consider a host of criteria such as costs in its decision.
EPA's decision to block the disposal sites -- which make up most of the substance of the permit for the West Virginia mine and therefore render it nearly unusable -- “has all the hallmarks of arbitrary and capricious action” under the APA that warrants scrapping the veto, the company argues in a June 12 opening brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Mingo Logan Coal Company v. EPA.
Mingo is appealing U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson's Sept. 30 decision that found the agency has the authority under the CWA to “veto” mining disposal sites already authorized in Army Corps of Engineers permits. The judge also rejected the mining industry's argument that the agency can only veto such permits in situations where it finds “substantial new information” to support the decision.
Jackson's ruling followed her earlier decision that initially vacated EPA's rejection of the disposal sites saying EPA lacked authority under the CWA for the veto, but did not address the merits of the case. The D.C. Circuit then reversed that decision on appeal by finding that the agency did have authority for the veto and remanded the case to the lower court, leading to the September ruling that said the veto was valid on the merits.
But Mingo in the new brief argues that Jackson in the remand “swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction by (mis)reading this Court's remand order as a direction to rubber stamp EPA's revocation decision under” the APA when she reviewed the 2009 CWA section 404(c) veto. The veto was controversial because the agency blocked disposal sites approved in a permit that the Army Corps of Engineers finalized in 2007.
The company is urging the D.C. Circuit to reverse Jackson's decision due to what it says is the agency's inadequate justification for the veto. “In reality, bedrock APA principles require far more before EPA can simply nullify a validly-issued permit, reverse the prior decisions of both EPA and the Corps which led to the issuance of the permit, and eviscerate the reliance interests engendered by the permit,” the brief says.
The appeal follows the 2013 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversing Jackson's first ruling, in which the court held that EPA has the authority to block such projects “whenever” it finds unacceptable adverse effects would occur as a result of the disposal. That decision -- which the Supreme Court declined to review -- did not touch on whether EPA's use of its so-called veto power in that case was justified, an issue the lower court took up on remand.
In the Sept. 30 ruling now the subject of the appeal, federal district judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected the mining company's claim that a CWA veto issued after a permit has been finalized must be based on "new" information that harm would occur from allowing disposal. “Although the agency's decision to exercise its veto authority in 2011 after it declined to do so in 2007 can be viewed as a change in position that fairly requires some explanation, it is not so drastic a change as to require a heightened standard of scrutiny,” Jackson said.
Comparable Factors
But Mingo's attorneys argue in their brief that under the APA, any regulatory decision that has the same effect as a permit modification or revocation by the Corps should, to avoid an arbitrary and capricious finding, be required to considerable comparable factors.
While the Corps issues "dredge-and-fill permits" under section 404, EPA has the ability under section 404(c) to "prohibit the specification (including the withdrawal of specification) of any defined area as a disposal site . . . whenever [EPA] determines, after notice and opportunity for public hearings, that the discharge of such materials into such area will have an unacceptable adverse effect on water supply, aquatic life, wildlife or recreational areas," the brief says.
The CWA provides EPA with authority to withdraw disposal sites associated with the permits, but the action usually has the effect of stopping development since permits provide authority to dispose of dredge-and-fill material only in specified disposal sites. For that reason, industry attorneys say that EPA should have to consider similar criteria to what the Corps considers in order to revoke a final permit.
Those factors that include the extent of compliance with the terms and conditions in the final permit, whether or not circumstances have changed since the permit was issued, significant objections to the authorized activity that were not previously considered and others.
“Not so here,” the brief says. “EPA gave literally no consideration to the millions of dollars that Mingo Logan has invested in legitimate reliance on its permit -- investments that have now been rendered essentially worthless -- or to the company’s history of faithfully and fully complying with the strict conditions in its permit.”
Given that the agency in 2007 said it would not object to the final permit being issued, industry argues that it was “obliged to offer a reasoned explanation for abandoning its decision, just four years earlier, to allow the Corps to issue Mingo Logan’s permit -- especially since an agency has a heightened duty to justify an about-face when, as here, its prior decision induced detrimental reliance or when, again as here, its new position is based on contradictory factual findings.”
The brief bases its argument on a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. which says that an “about face” on agency policy demands a “more detailed justification, especially when the prior position “engendered serious reliance interests.”
“Yet EPA made no effort to provide the more detailed justification mandated by Fox, nor did the District Court subject the agency’s 180-degree pivot to anything but the most cursory judicial scrutiny -- and certainly not the nondeferential review that Fox entails,” the brief says. “The fact that EPA’s earlier actions were subsumed within a permit issued by a different agency (i.e., the Corps) makes the statutory scheme unusual, but it cannot possibly free EPA from the obligation to acknowledge and explain deviations in its position.”
Additionally, attorneys say that EPA's consideration of adverse effects, improperly considered downstream water quality, which would typically be regulated by states through their delegated CWA National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting authority and water quality standards. “Not only does EPA’s creation of its own ad hoc standards flout Congress’ express instructions, it also raises serious federalism concerns by invading West Virginia’s prerogatives,” the brief says.
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House FY16 EPA Bill Report Language Details Proposal For WIFIA Funding
Jun 15, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
House lawmakers' just-released non-binding report language for EPA's fiscal year 2016 appropriations bill details a proposed plan for how the agency can fund water infrastructure loans through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) as soon as FY17, two years after the program was approved by Congress.
The report language, posted on the House Appropriations Committee's website on June 15 -- one day ahead of the bill's scheduled full House Appropriations Committee markup -- directs EPA to use $4.4 million of appropriated funds over two years to establish a WIFIA office. The language promises that if hiring for the office proceeds quickly, then the committee will approve spending to operate the program next year.
“The Committee believes this offers EPA the flexibility to identify and aggressively hire mission critical talent areas at any point during the next two years. The Committee expects that EPA will be well positioned to propose and implement the fully authorized level for WIFIA loans in fiscal year 2017,” the report says.
WIFIA, which Congress approved as part of the 2014 Army Corps of Engineers project authorization bill, authorized a total of $350 million over a five-year period, with $20 million authorized for FY15.
But Congress has declined to appropriate loan funding for the program, instead ordering EPA in FY15 to prepare a detailed report on how it plans to operate WIFIA. The FY16 report language is the first public indication that appropriators expect the program to be ready for full funding in the near future.
When established, WIFIA will allow municipalities to bypass EPA's clean water and drinking water state revolving fund (SRF) infrastructure revolving loan programs, and instead seek direct low-interest loans for water infrastructure projects costing at least $20 million.
But state groups have long been concerned that the program would undermine the SRFs and limit their authority, despite assurances to the contrary from both EPA and from Congress.
Funding Cuts
The report language also presents an argument for the House's proposal to cut spending on the clean water SRF by $430 million, down to $1.02 billion from the current $1.45 billion funding, and to reduce the drinking water SRF by $149 million, down to $757 million from the existing $909 million funding. The committee says that the continued existence of a major “gap” between federal funding and the need for infrastructure repair justifies diverting funding to new financing mechanisms.
“The Committee has appropriated nearly $25 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure assistance since 2009 . . . Nevertheless, little progress has been made to reduce the known water infrastructure gap. . . . the Committee continues to encourage EPA and water infrastructure stakeholders to promote alternate financing mechanisms for water infrastructure at local, State and Federal levels,” the report says.
The report touts WIFIA as one of those alternate financing mechanisms, as well as public-private partnerships, “greater access to financing from private activity bonds, and improved asset management.”
But such proposals will likely run into opposition from Democrats, since environmental and labor groups have long opposed the use of public-private partnerships as well as private activity bonds to finance projects. Critics argue that allowing the bonds to be distributed to private entities constitutes a subsidy and increase the cost of infrastructure construction.
Financial Assurance
The report language also lays out legislators' reasoning for blocking EPA's development of a long-delayed proposed Superfund rule to establish financial responsibility requirements for hardrock mining facilities, intended to ensure companies can pay for any subsequent cleanups.
The agency is under significant pressure from a federal appellate court to expedite the financial assurance rule for the hardrock mining industry, after Congress more than 30 years ago required the agency to identify classes of facilities needing such rules.
But the House FY16 funding bill would block the process by barring EPA from using any of its fiscal year 2016 appropriations to develop new financial assurance policies.
In its report, the House panel says EPA should study the capacity of the financial market to support new assurance mechanisms -- such as surety bonds, self-insurance measures, insurance policies and letters of credit -- before crafting a rule that would require companies to seek them.
“The Committee directs the Administrator to complete a thorough analysis of the capacity of the financial and credit markets to provide the necessary instruments (surety bonds, letters of credit, insurance, and trusts) for meeting any new financial responsibility requirements,” and will block new rules “until the Administrator demonstrates that such an analysis has been completed,” it says.
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Massachusetts Plan to Address Nitrogen In Cape Cod Waters Sent to EPA for Review
Jun 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Martha Kessler
A Massachusetts plan that examines Cape Cod's water quality and provides solutions the community could use to address excessive nitrogen pollution was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for review, state officials announced June 15.
The plan, under Section 208 of the Clean Water Act, was developed by the Cape Cod Commission and is aimed both at tackling water quality issues on the Cape and restoring those waters to levels at which they are able to meet state water quality standards.
In addition to looking at the causes of water quality issues, the solutions offered by the plan include analysis and planning tools, discussions of enhanced septic technologies and the use of natural solutions near the water's edge, such as wetlands.
A key component of the plan calls for the implementation of a water quality monitoring initiative.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) submitted a letter with the accompanying plan to the EPA on June 10.
Plan Will Help State Meet Standards
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), which is charged with administering the statewide water quality management planning process, said in a statement June 15 that its extensive review of the 208 plan found that it will help waterways meet state water quality standards.
In order to support the plan, the MassDEP said the governor has directed it to develop a watershed-based permitting program to provide communities flexibility in their efforts to address water quality issues in their watersheds.
“MassDEP is committed to a Cape Cod watershed permit that will foster local flexibility, support adaptive management when deciding on a solution and choosing appropriate timelines for an undertaking of this size and complexity, and we will continue to work closely with the Commission, the communities and all interested citizens to implement these solutions,” MassDEP Commissioner Martin Suuberg said in that statement.
Settlement Agreement
The plan is part of a settlement agreement between the EPA and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed in federal court last fall that would resolve a pair of lawsuits brought by the environmental organization seeking to hold the EPA accountable for reducing nitrogen pollution in waterways of Cape Cod (222 DEN A-16, 11/18/14).
In filing its suits in 2011 and 2013, the foundation argued the EPA sidestepped its legal obligations under the law by approving inadequate total maximum daily load determinations for the discharge of nitrogen into waterways on Cape Cod and by failing to update a required areawide wastewater management plan as required under Section 208 (Conservation Law Found. v. McCarthy, D. Mass., No. 11-cv-11657, 11/17/14; Conservation Law Found. v. EPA, D. Mass., No. 13-cv-12704, 11/17/14).
Under the terms of a settlement agreement filed Nov. 17 in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, both sides agreed to stay the two actions until Sept. 15, 2015, so the EPA could proceed with the necessary plan under Section 208.
Christopher Kilian, CLF clean water program director, told Bloomberg BNA June 15 that while the plan has been submitted to the EPA on a timely basis, the CLF has not yet had a chance to fully digest it.
“The devil will be in the details,” Kilian said. “We are going to need to see commitments consistent with the Clean Water Act before we sign off on it.”
Kilian said while the CLF had given its input both orally and in public statements to the state and the EPA regarding its specific expectations as to what the plan would include, the organization intentionally took an arm's-length position with respect to the development of the plan. Once the CLF has had a chance to fully review the plan, it will give its input to the EPA, he said.
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