Preview Newsletter
ACC AM aug 14
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(ACC Blog) On the Road With #ACCaugust
Aug 13, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters
During the August recess, our state affairs and political mobilization teams will fan out across the country to create opportunities to further our industry’s advocacy goals in a grassroots initiative we’re calling #ACCaugust. Through plant tours, in-district meetings, and industry roundtable discussions, we will meet with... http://blog.americanchemistry.com/ -
(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Questions Proposed Ban On Phthalate In Toys
Aug 13, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Phthalates producer, ExxonMobil, has expressed legal concerns with the Consumer Products Safety Commission's proposal to ban five additional phthalates from toys (CW 12 January 2015). Four July meetings, between the chemical giant and the CPSC, focused on the commission's proposal to make permanent the interim ban... -
EPA Seeks Comment on Three Groups of Flame Retardants
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking comment on approaches it proposes to use to assess the risks of three groups of flame retardant chemicals, according to an advance Federal Register notice released online by the agency's chemicals office Aug. 13. -
US Panel Agrees Penta-BDE Flame Retardant Is Carcinogenic
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
A National Toxicology Program (NTP) review panel has approved a technical report, which shows clear evidence of carcinogenic activity of penta-BDE flame retardants. Penta-BDEs were widely used in upholstery foam. They were largely withdrawn in 2004, in the US and Europe, by the, then, Great Lakes Chemical Corporation [now Chemtura]... -
EPA Floats Early Data To Support Future Risk Review Of Flame Retardants
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA is floating preliminary documents identifying areas for additional risk assessment of flame retardant chemical groups as part its novel program that seeks to better regulate existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), an effort that has already prompted the agency to weigh restrictions on several substances. -
5 Questions You Should Ask Your Child’s School
Aug 13, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
When choosing the right school for their children, many parents ask about topics like class size, community, learning objectives and schedule. But what about everyday exposure to chemicals? Next to the home, children spend more time in school than anywhere else. -
US EPA Holds Webinars On Updated PMN System
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has organised a series of webinars on its updated premanufacture notice (PMN) submission system. The webinars will be held on: 26 August; 16 September; and 30 September. PMN submitters will have to use the new system from 19 January 2016. This involves using the EPA's central data exchange (CDX) to electronically ... -
(ACC Mentioned) Oil Company Lobbyists Forecast A US Job Bonanza If Only They Can Export Oil, But They Are Wrong
Aug 13, 2015 | Quartz
By Steve LeVine
A lobbying blitz is under way to persuade the US Congress to repeal a ban on crude-oil exports. It’s led by oil companies and their usual champions, with intellectual support from an extraordinary union of usually non-oily public commentators, think tanks and editorial boards. -
Obama's Quiet War On Oil
Aug 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
President Barack Obama’s enemies have long accused him of waging a “war on coal.” But a very different war on oil and gas is next. The next phase of Obama’s environmental agenda has the oil and natural gas industry in its crosshairs, with plans to curb greenhouse gas pollution from rigs and refineries, tighten oversight of drilling... -
Fracking On Federal Lands Should Be Encouraged, Not Banned
Aug 14, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Isaac Orr
In a recent article promoting his Protect Our Public Lands Act, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) argues the government should ban hydraulic fracturing on public lands. Pocan cites concerns about potential environmental and economic impacts of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” and raises concerns about fracking ... -
Importer Wins Tariff-Free Entry of Fracking Material
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Schlumberger Technology Corp.'s imports of bauxite proppants, a material used in hydraulic fracturing, should not be subject to import tariffs, the Court of International Trade ruled July 22, according to a partially redacted opinion released Aug. 12 (Schlumberger Tech. Corp. v. United States, 2015 BL 259441, Ct. Int'l Trade, No. 11-00266 -
Fifteen States Seek Stay of EPA Clean Power Plan
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Fifteen states led by West Virginia are asking a federal appellate court to stay implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan even though the final rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register (In re West Virginia, D.C. Cir., docket number unavailable, 8/13/15). -
31 States on Target to Comply With Clean Power Plan
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Thirty-one states are already on track to meet their 2022 carbon dioxide emissions targets under the Clean Power Plan with 21 expected to surpass the Environmental Protection Agency standards, the Union of Concerned Scientists said Aug. 13 in an updated analysis. Twenty states are already on target to meet their final carbon dioxide emissions... -
Obama to Visit Alaska as Part of Climate Campaign
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Justin Sink
President Barack Obama is taking his bully pulpit to the last American frontier. The president will tour the Alaskan Arctic and meet with Americans who he said are experiencing firsthand the impact of rapidly melting ice during a visit to the state later this month, as the White House looks to focus attention on environmental issues ahead ... -
States Seek Court Delay Of Obama's Climate Rule
Aug 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Fifteen conservative states asked a federal court Thursday to push back the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants while they sue the government to get the regulations overturned. The states, led by West Virginia, say that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ought ... -
2 New Campaigns Aim To Build Latino Support For Rule
Aug 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Jean Chemnick
The League of Conservation Voters and a coalition of Latino groups launched media campaigns today aimed at shoring up Latino support for U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan. The two efforts will focus on swing states with large numbers of Spanish-speaking voters: Arizona, Colorado and New ... -
Legal Battle Flares Over Obama’s Climate Legacy
Aug 13, 2015 | The National Journal
By Ben Geman
States opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's sweeping carbon-emissions rules for power plants say the ink is dry enough on the regulations to begin fighting in court. Fifteen state attorneys general asked a federal court to put the rules on hold because the clock has begun ticking on their compliance, even though the regulation unveiled ... -
White House Offers Strong Defense Of ESPS In Face Of New Legal Attacks
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
A top White House climate official is strongly defending EPA's newly finalized greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants in the face of legal attacks by industry lawyers, who charge that several of the changes the agency made in the final regulation may make the measure legally vulnerable. -
States Ask D.C. Circuit For Novel Stay Of ESPS Compliance Plan Deadlines
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
A coalition of 15 states led by West Virginia has submitted a novel petition for an appellate court to stay state compliance plan deadlines under EPA's final greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants, arguing that the court should step in to block the deadlines because it is not clear when the rule's opponents can make... -
Most RGGI States on Track to Meet Power Plan Targets
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Six of the nine states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) are on track to meet or come close to meeting by 2020 the federal Clean Power Plan's mass-based goals for 2030, according to an analysis by Bloomberg BNA. Only Maryland and Maine are not on schedule to meet the 2030 goal by 2020, when the current RGGI carbon dioxide... -
Studies Model The Effects Of Carbon Removal On Climate Change
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Michael Torrice
To combat climate change, engineers and scientists have proposed and started to develop methods that would pull carbon dioxide out of Earth’s atmosphere. But results from two climate modeling studies published recently suggest that without significant cuts to CO2 emissions from power plants and other sources... -
Ozone Advocates Reach Out to White House
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Industry and environmental groups wrote to the White House this week to raise their concerns about the Environmental Protection Agency's review of the national ozone standards, which is expected to be completed by Oct. 1. A coalition of 370 state-level industry associations, in an Aug. 13 letter to White House ... -
U.S. Cash Crunch May Rattle Global Climate Deal
Aug 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The global climate change agreement that President Barack Obama hopes to make a key part of his legacy may not materialize if the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world can’t cough up enough cash. And right now, money from Washington is in short supply. While Republicans in Congress are largely unable to stop EPA from implementing... -
370 Business Groups Protest EPA Ozone Proposal
Aug 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Peterka
Business and industry groups today told the White House they are "deeply concerned" about U.S. EPA's proposal to tighten the ozone standard. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the 370 groups warned of costly burdens on states and communities, as well as impediments to business expansion, should EPA finalize...
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Full Text of Stories Below
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(ACC Blog) On the Road With #ACCaugust
Aug 13, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters
During the August recess, our state affairs and political mobilization teams will fan out across the country to create opportunities to further our industry’s advocacy goals in a grassroots initiative we’re calling #ACCaugust. Through plant tours, in-district meetings, and industry roundtable discussions, we will meet with Members of Congress to raise awareness of the vital importance of our industry and showcase the economic benefits of the business of chemistry where it matters the most—in their districts.
Take the #ACCaugust tour with us! Zoom in and out and pan around to see where we’ve been and where we’re going (don’t forget Alaska!):
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(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Questions Proposed Ban On Phthalate In Toys
Aug 13, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Phthalates producer, ExxonMobil, has expressed legal concerns with the Consumer Products Safety Commission's proposal to ban five additional phthalates from toys (CW 12 January 2015).
Four July meetings, between the chemical giant and the CPSC, focused on the commission's proposal to make permanent the interim ban on diisononyl phthalate (DINP). The latter was based on the recommendations of the CPSC's Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel (CHAP) (CW 22 July 2014).
Legal issues raised by the proposed ban, says ExxonMobil, include: the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) does not require the CPSC to follow CHAP recommendations – in fact, the CHAP must be regarded as having a limited, advisory role;rigid adherence to the recommendations does not provide sufficient opportunity for public comment, as required by law;the CHAP's failure to consider relevant data could make a resulting CPSC regulation “arbitrary and capricious;” andthe Federal Hazardous Substance Act (FHSA) only permits the banning of a mixture of substances, not the banning of a single substance, based on its cumulative risk assessment.
As detailed in ExxonMobil's public comments, submitted earlier this year, the cumulative risk assessment, conducted by the CHAP, examined the effects of DINP together with four other phthalates, three of which – DEHP, DBP and BBP – are already banned in toys.
“It is arbitrary and capricious to ban a chemical that contributes a fraction of a fraction of an overall risk, indicated by a questionable methodology that uses a likely irrelevant endpoint and outdated data,” said ExxonMobil in its written comments.
“Without DEHP, DBP and BBP, the [hazard index] clearly is less than 1, so that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm from use of DINP in children’s products.”
“DINP has previously been proven safe for its intended use by the CPSC itself, as well as other US government bodies and those in Europe and Australia,” said a company spokesperson. “The science is clear.”
However, since 2005, DINP has been one of a group of phthalates, banned in the EU from toys and childcare articles that children can place in their mouth. Following a review, the European Commission decided to maintain the ban last year (5 February 2014).
If Denmark's proposal to set a mandatory EU classification for DINP, as a category 1B reprotoxicant, is approved by Echa's committees and the European Commission - a process that could take two or three years - DINP would be eligible for the REACH candidate list, and other uses might be restricted under the REACH authorisation process (24 February 2015).
The Exxonmobil spokesperson did not indicate whether it will be taking legal action against the CPSC.
The company's comments are part of wider criticism, by the US chemicals industry, of measures to restrict DINP and other phthalates.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), for example, is fighting California's Proposition 65 listing of DINP as a substance known to the state to cause cancer (5 June 2015).
On 23 June, the CPSC released, for public comment, a report on phthalate exposure of women of reproductive age. It included more recent data than the 2005/06 biomonitoring data that served as the basis for CHAP's recommendations (CW 25 June 2015).
The report says women's exposure to DINP is increasing.
The CPSC declined to comment on legal issues, raised during an ongoing rulemaking. It reported that it is working to have a final rule published by the end of September.
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EPA Seeks Comment on Three Groups of Flame Retardants
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking comment on approaches it proposes to use to assess the risks of three groups of flame retardant chemicals, according to an advance Federal Register notice released online by the agency's chemicals office Aug. 13.
The agency is releasing problem-formulation analyses for 10 flame retardants clustered into three groups: chlorinated phosphate esters, cyclic aliphatic bromides and tetrabromobisphenol A and related chemicals. It also is releasing one data-needs assessment for seven brominated phthalates, two of which are found in commercial flame retardant formulations.
The EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics released the “problem-formulation” analyses to share details with interested parties about the ways it proposes to assess the flame retardants' risks and point out issues it does not plan to assess due either to preliminary data that suggest there would be little risk or because data are inadequate to assess risks.
OPPT also is seeking public comment on its plans and data that could supplement or refine its assessments.
The office released the data-needs assessment for the brominated phthalates cluster to guide research that could fill those gaps.
Production Volumes, General Uses
Albemarle Corp., BASF Corp. and SABIC Innovative Plastics U.S. LLC were among the companies that produced tens of millions of pounds of the three groups of flame retardants in the U.S. or imported them into this country in 2011, the most recent year for which chemical manufacturers were required to submit production volume data to the EPA.
Each of the three groups of flame retardants has its own general uses:
• The chlorinated phosphate esters group tends to be used to slow flames in furniture foams, textiles, paints and coatings;
• The cyclic aliphatic bromides group has been used in extruded and expanded polystyrene foams, polystyrene products, textiles and paints and coatings.
• The tetrabromobisphenol A group of chemicals is commonly used in plastics and printed circuit boards for electronics.
All but two of these brominated phthalates are in commerce in volumes greater than 1 million pounds, according to the EPA data-needs assessment. Many of the companies making or importing them designated their names to be confidential business information, which the agency is not allowed to release.
The major use identified for the group of brominated phthalates is to slow flames in polyurethane foams (PUF) and products made from these foams, the EPA said.
Specific Chemicals in Each Group
The three specific chemicals in the chlorinated phosphate esters group are:
• tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP, or more commonly called tris, CAS No. 115-96-8);
• 2-propanol, 1-chloro-, phosphate (TCPP, CAS No. 13674-84-5); and
• 2-propanol, 1,3- dichloro-, phosphate (TDCPP, CAS No. 13674-87-8).
The three specific chemicals in the cyclic aliphatic bromides group are:
• hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD, CAS No. 25637-99-4);
• 1,2,5,6,9,10-hexabromocyclododecane (CAS No. 3194-55-6); and
• 1,2,5,6-tetrabromocyclooctane (CAS No. 3194-57-8)
.
The four specific chemicals in the cyclic aliphatic bromides group are:
• tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA, trade name SAYTEX® CP-2000, CAS No. 79-94-7);
• TBBPA-bis(dibromopropyl ether) (CAS No. 21850-44-2);
• TBBPA-bis(allyl ether) (CAS No. 25327-89-3); and
• TBBPA-bis(methyl ether) (CAS No. 37853-61-5).
The problem-formulation analyses will be subject to comment for 60 days once they are announced in the Federal Register.
The data-needs assessment will be open for comment for 120 days after the same Federal Register notice.
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US Panel Agrees Penta-BDE Flame Retardant Is Carcinogenic
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
A National Toxicology Program (NTP) review panel has approved a technical report, which shows clear evidence of carcinogenic activity of penta-BDE flame retardants.
Penta-BDEs were widely used in upholstery foam. They were largely withdrawn in 2004, in the US and Europe, by the, then, Great Lakes Chemical Corporation [now Chemtura] because of concerns about their environmental effects.
In the US, they have been covered by a significant new use rule since 2006. They were subject to one of the US EPA's first chemical action plans under the Toxic Substances Control Act (CW 5 January 2010).
Despite regulation, penta-BDEs remain in older products and are persistent in food, wildlife and the environment, including household dust.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that they are bioaccumulative pollutants that most people retain in their body tissues.
The report describes studies, which considered a technical grade of penta-BDEs, known as DE-7, that contains a mixture of penta-BDE isomers. Three-month toxicology studies were conducted in rats and mice. Two-year toxicology and carcinogenicity studies were also conducted in rats, where animals were fed the compounds during pregnancy and through birth to adulthood.
The studies showed the mixture was a carcinogen in both species, causing liver tumours and potentially precancerous lesions in the liver and thyroid.
The review panel considered the report on 25 June, and voted to accept its conclusions.
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EPA Floats Early Data To Support Future Risk Review Of Flame Retardants
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA is floating preliminary documents identifying areas for additional risk assessment of flame retardant chemical groups as part its novel program that seeks to better regulate existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), an effort that has already prompted the agency to weigh restrictions on several substances.
In a notice released by EPA Aug. 13 ahead of its publication in the Federal Register, the agency announced its release for public comment draft problem formulation and initial assessment documents for three clusters of flame retardant chemicals that identify areas for future reviews. EPA also released a data needs assessment for a fourth flame retardant cluster after finding it currently lacks adequate information to support a risk assessment.
EPA will take public comment on the problem formulation documents for 60 days following publication in the Register, and for 90 days on the data needs assessment following Register publication.
The three chemicals for which EPA released initial assessments are Chlorinated Phosphate Esters, used in furniture foams and textiles, Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), also known as Brominated Bisphenol A, used in plastics and certain electronics, and Cyclic Aliphatic Bromides/Hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), used in polystyrene foams and products.
The agency issued the data needs assessment for Brominated Phthalates, used in polyurethane foam products, after identifying gaps in toxicity and exposure data that limit the agency's ability to further assess the chemical cluster.
The documents may address criticism raised during peer review of the first handful of assessments EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics' (OPPT) conducted under its novel TSCA workplan assessment program. Reviewers said some of OPPT's initial draft risk assessments under the program, which the agency intends to use to assess dozens of existing chemicals, relied on unrealistic exposure scenarios and were inadequate for use to craft regulations.
The Obama EPA started the workplan assessment program as part of an ongoing effort to more strictly regulate using the law's current authorities chemicals that were already in commerce when TSCA was enacted in 1976. The law gives EPA less authority to review those “existing” chemicals than "new" chemicals, since they were essentially grandfathered into the regulatory regime.
In an Aug. 12 statement announcing the release of the problem formulation and initial assessments, as well as the analysis of data needs, EPA says the documents will improve public understanding of EPA's thinking and analysis under the novel program and increase opportunities for public input.
“Based on experience in conducting TSCA Work Plan Chemical assessments and public input, starting in 2015 EPA will publish a problem formulation and initial assessment, or a data needs assessment, for each TSCA Work Plan assessment as a stand-alone document to facilitate public input prior to conducting further risk analysis,” EPA says in the pre-publication Register notice.
Chemical Reviews
The agency first issued such a document for public comment in April for 1,4-dioxane, which showed the agency intends to further assess potential risks to workers and consumers from the ubiquitous substance.
In the pre-publication Register notice released Aug. 13, EPA says the problem formulation and initial assessments help the agency determine the feasibility of future assessments by reviewing published studies of hazard and exposure as well as prior assessments by EPA and other organizations. Based on those reviews, for the Chlorinated Phosphate Esters cluster of chemicals, EPA plans to assess risks to aquatic organisms and human health.
For the TBBPA cluster, EPA intends to assess environmental risks to aquatic as well sediment and soil-dwelling organisms near two manufacturing facilities that emitted the vast majority of the substance into the air between 2000 and 2012, according to the agency's Toxics Release Inventory. And the agency will also assess risks to workers, as well as consumers and the general population from the substance.
For HBCD, EPA intends to assess potential risks to workers, the general population and consumers, as well as of environmental exposures using existing data and methods.
The use of flame retardant chemicals in consumer products has faced criticism in recent years, including allegations that they are unnecessary, fail to deter fires and potentially pose health risks.
Last year, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) pushed a bill seeking to ban uses of 10 flame retardant chemicals and require assessment of potential restrictions on others. Schumer's S. 2811, would have banned the sale of any children's product or upholstered furniture containing any one of 10 specified flame retardant chemicals, and came after studies found children have drastically higher levels of flame retardants in their bodies than their mothers and are more likely to be exposed through consumer products.
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5 Questions You Should Ask Your Child’s School
Aug 13, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
When choosing the right school for their children, many parents ask about topics like class size, community, learning objectives and schedule.
But what about everyday exposure to chemicals?
Next to the home, children spend more time in school than anywhere else.
While parents make important choices to protect their children from toxic chemicals in their houses, at school, many of these factors are off a family’s radar.
So how can parents keep their kids safe? Start by learning more about their school environment.
Here are five questions to ask your child’s school: What year was the school built?
Old buildings may contain toxic construction materials such as lead or asbestos.
Prior to the lead paint ban in 1978, builders covered both building interiors and exteriors with it. This old paint remains in many places today, and crumbling or peeling surfaces continue to be a main source of toxic lead exposure for children.
Another building danger is asbestos. A recent story by the Washington Post revealed that exposure to this hazardous substance persists at schools across the United States. Although builders used asbestos mostly between the 1940s and the late 1970s, it is still legal today and in more places than you think.
Schools are required by law to track asbestos hazards and disclose their management plans to parents. So ask your school about its plan to manage asbestos and any upcoming renovations. What’s in your drinking water?
Children visit school water fountains throughout the day. But does this tap water contain harmful contaminants like lead, perchlorate or atrazine?
Possibly. Public drinking water utilities test water regularly for harmful contaminants, so ask your school about which utility serves the school and check its tests results. Many utilities post this information online. (If you live nearby, the results may be the same for your own household.)
Many schools are rightfully encouraging kids to bring water bottles instead of juice boxes or wasteful bottled water. Ask whether students have access to filtered water, and check your school’s classroom bottle policy if you want to send your child to school with filtered water from home. What products do the school cleaners use?
The janitorial service may bring countless chemicals into school every time it cleans, leaving chemical residues on the desktops, chairs and doorknobs your children touch regularly.
Even well-intentioned practices, like using or distributing disinfecting wipes, can lead to unnecessary chemical exposure. Ask your school about the products being used, by whom and how often, and check the ingredients using EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning.
Inquire about equipment as well: do the vacuums have a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter installed? (They should.)
If the answers may put your child at risk, talk to school administrators about safer options and what it takes to swap. There are good options on the market that limit chemical use and meet the needs of tight budgets. Where is the nearest cornfield?
The popularity of GMO corn and soybean crops has led to a sharp increase in the use of herbicides such as toxic glyphosate. A recent report by EWG shows that more than 3,000 elementary schools nationwide are located within 1,000 feet of a corn or soybean field. (And it’s not just schools. Nearly 12,000 churches are within this distance from glyphosate-sprayed fields, as well as more than 90 percent of playing fields and parks in a six-state sample.)
If your school is within a worrisome proximity of a corn field, other agricultural field or industrial facility, ask what school personnel are doing to help reduce student exposure to agricultural pesticides. Are janitors conducting more surface cleaning? Has the school set up hand-washing stations?
And join the movement to support GMO labeling. Urge your senator—and fellow parents—to oppose what we call the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act when it comes on the U.S. Senate floor. How sunny is your playground?
The best ways to protect your kids from harmful sun damage are to cover up, stay in the shade, and use a safe and effective sunscreen. But your child’s school may have policies such as prohibiting hats and sunglasses or treating sunscreen as a medicine.
Ask about these policies, if shade is available on the playground, and what times of day outdoor play is scheduled. When your school administrators know what’s important to your family and why, they are more likely to work with you on anything that goes against policy—or change it.
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US EPA Holds Webinars On Updated PMN System
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has organised a series of webinars on its updated premanufacture notice (PMN) submission system.
The webinars will be held on:
26 August;
16 September; and
30 September.
PMN submitters will have to use the new system from 19 January 2016. This involves using the EPA's central data exchange (CDX) to electronically submit TSCA section 5 Notices and supporting documents.
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Aug 13, 2015 | Quartz
By Steve LeVine
A lobbying blitz is under way to persuade the US Congress to repeal a ban on crude-oil exports. It’s led by oil companies and their usual champions, with intellectual support from an extraordinary union of usually non-oily public commentators, think tanks and editorial boards.
Surprising pro-repeal voices include the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, New York Times writer Tom Friedman, Democratic Party financier Steven Rattner and the Washington Post Editorial Board.
On grounds of pure fairness, the pro-repeal crowd may be right—Americans have long gone around the world proselytizing about free markets and opening oil spigots; they should follow their own advice.
But the debate ought to pivot on that argument alone—fair trade—and dispense with exaggerated claims that have crept in, such as the contention that US oil is disadvantaged by the ban (paywall), and that repealing it will lower US gasoline prices and add jobs.
We discussed this subject back in January, when the current oil price plunge began to take hold: Since the economic trauma of the OPEC oil embargoes in the 1970s, the US has banned most crude oil exports (there are exceptions for Alaskan and some California crudes, exports to Canada, and the shipment abroad of refined products like gasoline and diesel).
One of the core reasons is optics: it doesn’t look good to be shipping domestic oil abroad when OPEC has had a decidedly anti-market stranglehold on the global supply.
The pro-repeal crowd argues that those days are long gone, that OPEC no longer has fangs, the world is awash in crude oil, and the US itself is back at the forefront of production. By wallowing in long-ago fears, they say, the US is squandering the full value of its shale-oil fortune, allowing foreigners to get the upside.
It is true that shale oil and gas have had a potent impact since bursting onto the market in the late 2000s. By driving down prices, they have disrupted the lives of petro-dictators, and reduced car fueling bills. There has been at least a modest bump in US manufacturing, according to one report.
Yet, some of shale’s biggest promise has fallen short. Specifically, shale hasn’t produced a big net increase in US jobs, which was one of the primary benefits held out by shale boosters, who said millions of jobs would be created.
From the advent of the boom in 2007 through its peak last December, industry employment surged to 201,000 workers, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But US companies have cut more than 78,000 oil-related jobs in the first seven months of this year, appearing to make the job situation more or less a wash, according to Challenger Gray, a consulting firm. Employment is back down to 193,000, the BLS says. This chart shows how oil production has continued to surge, even as the number of jobs has plunged.
In addition, cold water has been poured on the renaissance story—plastics companies, which rely on natural gas, continue to hire, according to the American Chemical Council, but everywhere else is a bloodbath.
The main reason for the disconnect is that, in their breathtaking descriptions of the shale-driven future, none of the prognosticators seems to have calculated the potential impact on oil prices if their supply forecasts were right. That, if shale oil supplies rose as they projected, all things being equal, the world would turn out as it currently is—awash in crude oil, prices down by half, with no recovery perhaps for years to come.
Now, the same crowd is forecasting great things again, if only the export ban is repealed. IHS, a research firm that has released a torrent of industry-sponsored, pro-shale and pro-export studies over the past three years, said in a March report that US jobs will rise between 293,000 and 439,000 if the ban is repealed. Its rationale is that the companies will drill more, thus requiring more workers. In one scenario, IHS envisions the US producing 11.4 million barrels a day, about 2 million more than it does currently.
IHS declined to comment for this post. But the forecast is almost certainly wrong. As noted above, US oil production has remained at a level not seen since the 1970s despite the job cutbacks and a plunge in the number of rigs drilling, thanks to greater productivity and a 30% reduction in expenses. Given their success producing more for less, US companies, if they drill for and sell more oil, will drive prices down further, thus benefitting consumers with lower gasoline prices. But they won’t be rehiring tens of thousands of workers.
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Aug 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
President Barack Obama’s enemies have long accused him of waging a “war on coal.” But a very different war on oil and gas is next.
The next phase of Obama’s environmental agenda has the oil and natural gas industry in its crosshairs, with plans to curb greenhouse gas pollution from rigs and refineries, tighten oversight of drilling on public lands and impose a strict ozone limit that industry lobbyists slam as “the most expensive regulation ever.”
The administration still might hand some modest victories to the industry along the way — as early as Friday, for example, the Interior Department may give Shell Oil a final green light for expanded drilling off Alaska’s Arctic coast. And unlike the massive climate rule that the EPA issued for power plants last week, the administration’s actions on oil and gas will be quieter, more piecemeal and harder to track.
Still, the oil industry’s top lobbying group says it’s facing a “regulatory avalanche or a tidal wave” — one that some of Obama’s critics have been bracing for.
The administration has “ridden this horse as far as it wants to ride it,” GOP energy lobbyist and strategist Mike McKenna said in an interview, tying the oil and gas crackdown to Obama’s efforts to make wind and solar power more competitive. He said Obama and his team “have always been very clear-eyed about their strategy: they want to make affordable, dependable, traditional fuels like oil, gas and coal more expensive. … This is just the natural rush at the finish line.”
But greens say it’s past time for Obama to start reining in oil and gas as the next step in the climate legacy that he’s made such a priority for his second term. For these activists, the EPA’s power plant rules represented only a down payment.
“We’ve seen the administration willing to take on King Coal,” Jamie Henn, co-founder of the climate activist group 350.org, said in a recent interview. “They’ve got to go after bigger bad guys, like Big Oil and the Koch brothers.”
Environmentalists say the upcoming actions still won’t hit drillers and refiners as hard as EPA is hitting coal-burning power plants.
For example, the administration promised this year to slash oil- and gas-related emissions of methane — an especially potent greenhouse gas — by as much as 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. But that level of reduction is “not hard, nor is it particular costly” to achieve, Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Mark Brownstein said.
Unlike the tectonic realignment away from coal underway in the power sector, thanks in part to the EPA’s rules, “nothing would be required of the oil and gas industry that would cause it to have to fundamentally rethink how it does business,” he added.
Republicans in Congress may yet succeed in stopping or slowing down some of the multiple regulations that oil and gas hate the most during final negotiations on funding the government beyond next month. But GOP leaders have little to no appetite for risking a government shutdown to bury the regulations. And the refinery and ozone regulations are both tied to court-ordered deadlines this fall, making it harder for lawmakers to stop the train.
The limits on toxic air emissions from refineries that EPA proposed last year could cost more than $20 billion to implement, according to industry estimates, though the American Petroleum Institute said on Thursday that it hopes to see the final version significantly scaled back. EPA’s projected price tag was much smaller, at $239 million in total costs for the new emissions standards.
The National Association of Manufacturers has offered an even more gargantuan cost estimate for the ozone rule that EPA proposed in November, warning it could wipe out $3.4 trillion in economic output and 2.9 million jobs by 2040. The agency disagrees, saying the costs would amount to no more than $16.6 billion a decade from now, compared with as much as $42.1 billion in benefits such as reductions in deaths and illnesses.
The updated ozone rule “will be based on the law and an exhaustive, open and transparent review of a large body of science, along with advice from an independent panel of leading air quality and health experts,” EPA spokeswoman Laura Allen said Thursday. The rule, required to become final by Oct. 1, would set the standard at between 65 and 70 parts per billion, down from a George W. Bush-era standard of 75 parts per billion.
Allen said the agency’s regulations on methane pollution from oil and gas drilling, set for release before the summer’s end, will make room for both current industry practices and “emerging innovations” and will be aimed at cutting emissions while “oil and gas production and operations continue to grow.”
The political battle is complicated by the fact that the oil and gas rules are moving through EPA and the Interior Department with far less public fanfare than the Obama-touted plan to push down power plant pollution. And the president continues to praise the economic power of the domestic oil and gas boom while risking greens’ ire with moves to open up parts of the nation’s coasts to offshore drilling.
But fossil fuels’ friends in Washington are growing less patient with mere rhetorical support from the administration, especially as industry suffers from crude oil prices that have plummeted by more than half in the past year.
For Obama, Shell’s Alaskan drilling permit is “a completely free thing to be in favor of,” lamented the GOP lobbyist McKenna, because the company may yet abandon the project.
Although the oil and gas curbs set to unspool during the last months of the Obama era affect a far more diverse industry than power plants, the industry looks at their impact alongside the historic carbon dioxide standards that EPA unveiled last week and sees a president moving far left on the environment — abandoning the “all-of-the-above” energy brand he embraced during his reelection run.
“All of this is coming down on us very hard right now,” said Howard Feldman, API’s senior director of regulatory affairs. He quipped to reporters Thursday that API uses various dire metaphors to describe the impending oil and gas rules, “depending on our mood.”
API is running what Feldman described as a “significant” television ad campaign in seven states this month that urges the administration to leave the Bush-era ozone standard intact. It has also made a separate Washington ad purchase on the issue.
“Anybody who thought getting rid of coal was going to be the end of concern about climate regulations’ impact on the fossil fuel sector” now sees “that’s a questionable assumption,” said Salo Zelermyer, a top Energy Department official under George W. Bush who now advises industry clients at Bracewell & Giuliani.
In addition to EPA’s methane regulations, which are expected to affect existing emissions sources narrowly if at all, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management is preparing to open a White House budget office review as soon as this month on rules for drillers’ releases of the greenhouse gas on public lands. A separate BLM fracking regulation unveiled in March is stuck in legal limbo thanks to a challenge by two regional oil and gas groups but could go forward next month.
Beyond further legal challenges, critics of Obama’s oil and gas agenda have few options to stop it, even as the president prepares an Alaskan visit this month to plug the EPA power plant rules and his advisers look ahead to a global climate pact during United Nations talks in Paris later this year. But the industry continues to exhort the administration in hopes of winning concessions.
“At one point we went to [the White House Office of Management and Budget] three weeks in a row,” Feldman of API said. “I know my way around the conference rooms.”
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Fracking On Federal Lands Should Be Encouraged, Not Banned
Aug 14, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Isaac Orr
In a recent article promoting his Protect Our Public Lands Act, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) argues the government should ban hydraulic fracturing on public lands. Pocan cites concerns about potential environmental and economic impacts of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” and raises concerns about fracking in national parks. The article has critical shortcomings regarding the environmental and economic impacts of fracking, and it misrepresents oil and gas activity in national parks.
No serious discussion of the environmental impacts of fracking can omit the findings of the landmark study conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), widely considered to be the most complete scientific review of the potential impacts of fracking on water resources to date, yet that is exactly what Pocan has done. ADVERTISEMENTThe EPA report cites more than 950 scientific sources and finds no evidence hydraulic fracturing has led to widespread or systemic impacts on drinking water resources. Although surface spills or leaky well casings have occurred, those impacts are isolated and rare compared to the number of wells drilled. The absence of this information from Pocan’s article is at best a crippling oversight that seriously undermines its credibility.
Additionally, nearly all Americans – not just energy companies and their immediate suppliers – are reaping the benefits of increasing energy production. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates low gasoline prices will save the average household $675 this year. A study conducted by the Brookings Institution estimates low natural gas prices are saving $181 to $431 dollars per person.
In Wisconsin, families will save about $259 per person thanks to low natural gas prices. Although these savings may not be much to a congressman, they are an enormous benefit for a single mom with two children living in the Allied Drive neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin, who will save up to $1,452 because of low energy prices. Fracking made these savings possible.
Pocan’s article is also highly misleading regarding hydraulic fracturing in national parks. In rare circumstances, there are existing subsurface mineral rights that do not belong to the federal government because private individuals or companies owned these mineral rights before the parks were created and have the legal right to access them, meaning they are “grandfathered in.” This is the exception, not the rule, however, and any oil and gas development in the parks must meet strict federal environmental standards and National Park Service regulations to protect air, water, and wildlife.
There are 655 million acres of federal land in the United States, meaning the federal government owns 29 percent of all land in the country. Of this land, 262 million acres – almost equal to all the land in Texas and California combined – is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). BLM lands are supposed to be used for economic activities such as grazing cattle, forestry, mining, and oil and natural gas development, in addition to recreational opportunities.
We all want to preserve national parks and scenic treasures for future generations. I used to work in Yellowstone National Park, and I understand the importance of conservation. However, banning fracking on all federal land is irresponsible and bad policy. Oil and natural gas development has occurred safely on federal land for decades, while bureaucratic red tape has caused production of these resources to fall sharply since 2010, declining 10 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Instead of banning fracking on public lands, we should be encouraging it.
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Importer Wins Tariff-Free Entry of Fracking Material
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Schlumberger Technology Corp.'s imports of bauxite proppants, a material used in hydraulic fracturing, should not be subject to import tariffs, the Court of International Trade ruled July 22, according to a partially redacted opinion released Aug. 12 (Schlumberger Tech. Corp. v. United States, 2015 BL 259441, Ct. Int'l Trade, No. 11-00266 (Slip Op. 15-78), 7/22/15). Chief Judge Timothy C. Stanceu said that the bauxite proppants, which are used in fracturing fluid to keep fractures open to allow access to hydrocarbon reservoirs, were improperly classified by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as “ceramic wares for laboratory, chemical or other technical uses,” which carry a 4 percent import duty rate. Instead, the proppants should have been classified under a tariff provision for “aluminum ores and concentrates,” a duty-free provision, the court ruled.
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Fifteen States Seek Stay of EPA Clean Power Plan
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Fifteen states led by West Virginia are asking a federal appellate court to stay implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan even though the final rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register (In re West Virginia, D.C. Cir., docket number unavailable, 8/13/15).
In a petition filed Aug. 13 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the states argue that the court should issue an extraordinary writ to block implementation of the carbon dioxide emissions standards for power plants now because the rule imposes an immediate requirement on state regulators to begin work on a compliance plan.
“The States seek an emergency stay of the rule's already-applicable deadlines through this Petition under the All Writs Act, rather than waiting for the rule's publication in the Federal Register, because EPA has chosen to render the publication date irrelevant,” the states said. “The rule unusually imposes dates certain for the submission of state plans—September 6, 2016, and September 6, 2018—regardless of when the massive rule is published. With this firm deadline, the rule requires states to spend significant and irrecoverable sovereign resources now to begin preparing their state plans.”
The EPA final Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), issued Aug. 3, sets unique carbon dioxide emissions rates or alternatively mass-based targets for the power sector in each state. State regulators will be tasked with developing plans to meet the targets, which will be phased in through 2030.
The final rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register, which typically triggers the windows for opponents of the agency's Clean Air Act regulations to file lawsuits
The stay is being sought by Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Those same states already have vowed to take legal action to block the EPA's final rule (149 DEN B-8, 8/4/15).
‘Junk Lawsuit.'
The Sierra Club dismissed the stay petition as a “junk lawsuit” against the Clean Power Plan, citing the D.C. Circuit's prior dismissal of legal challenges to the rule as premature.
“Multiple federal courts have already rejected premature attacks on the Clean Power Plan and EPA's carbon standards for new power plants,” Joanne Spalding, chief climate counsel at the Sierra Club, said in an Aug. 13 statement. “These attorneys general are wasting taxpayer dollars on a junk lawsuit just to attack life-saving clean air safeguards.”
Most of the same states seeking the stay had joined early lawsuits to block the EPA rule before it was finalized; those lawsuits were dismissed by the D.C. Circuit. They have asked the court to rehear those challenges now that the rule is final (In re Murray Energy Corp., D.C. Cir., No. 14-1112, petition for rehearing 7/24/15).
West Virginia also is leading a coalition of 16 states that asked the EPA to administratively stay implementation of the Clean Power Plan pending resolution of upcoming legal challenges (151 DEN A-5, 8/6/15).
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31 States on Target to Comply With Clean Power Plan
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Thirty-one states are already on track to meet their 2022 carbon dioxide emissions targets under the Clean Power Plan with 21 expected to surpass the Environmental Protection Agency standards, the Union of Concerned Scientists said Aug. 13 in an updated analysis. Twenty states are already on target to meet their final carbon dioxide emissions targets for 2030, the analysis said. The EPA's Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), issued Aug. 3, sets a unique carbon dioxide emissions rate for the power sector in each state. State regulators are charged with developing plans to comply with the emissions standards. The analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists updates a previous report that found that 14 states were on track to exceed their initial emissions rates targets under the agency's proposal (107 DEN A-6, 6/4/15). The analysis is available at http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/reduce-emissions/clean-power-plan-states-of-progress#.Vcylmvn9ktg.
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Obama to Visit Alaska as Part of Climate Campaign
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Justin Sink
President Barack Obama is taking his bully pulpit to the last American frontier.
The president will tour the Alaskan Arctic and meet with Americans who he said are experiencing firsthand the impact of rapidly melting ice during a visit to the state later this month, as the White House looks to focus attention on environmental issues ahead of global climate talks in Paris at the end of the year.
Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Alaskan Arctic. In a multi-day tour of the state, he will meet with people directly experiencing the impact of climate change, the White House said.
On Aug. 31, the president also will address a State Department conference in Anchorage, where scientists and policy makers from the U.S., European Union and 19 other countries will be examining the effect of warming temperatures in the Arctic.
Global warming is among the most divisive issues in American politics, with many Republicans arguing that the administration's climate initiatives are both unnecessary and detrimental to the economy. The issue has edged into the 2016 presidential campaign, as Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, has proposed to dramatically increase the use of renewable energy sources.
White House Video
“Alaskans are on the front lines of one of the greatest challenges we face this century: climate change,” Obama said in a video posted on the White House website Aug. 13. “Climate change once seemed like a problem for future generations. But for most Americans, it's already a reality.”
Warming global temperatures are leading to deeper droughts, longer wildfire seasons and flooding in coastal cities at high tide, he said in the video. Glaciers and permafrost in Alaska are melting, he said, and hunting and fishing grounds are threatened.
“The state's God-given natural treasures are at risk,” Obama said. “The alarm bells are ringing. And as long as I'm president, America will lead the world to meet this threat – before it's too late.”
Republican Resistance
Republicans in Congress and those vying for the party's presidential nomination say Obama's proposals to discourage the use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels will drive up energy bills and threaten jobs. They also argue that a United Nations climate agreement would put U.S. companies at a disadvantage.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged states to resist the power-plant regulations that the administration announced earlier this month. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is one of the Republican presidential contenders and who has acknowledged climate change is occurring, said the administration's rules would result in “slowly hollowing out our economy.”
Obama's trip has prompted concern among Alaska politicians that he may announce new executive actions on climate change while in the state. Republicans there say declining oil prices have already taken a toll on the local economy.
“The president of the United States doesn't go to anybody's state and stay three days and not do something,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said Aug. 6 at a breakfast with Bloomberg editors and reporters in Washington.
“So this is the talk about town. ‘Oh my gosh, what's he gonna do? Is he going to lock up ANWR?’” she said, using an acronym for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “’Is he going to put the Bering Sea canyons in as a marine protected sanctuary?’ We don't have any idea.”
Before traveling to Alaska, the president will speak at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on Aug. 24.
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States Seek Court Delay Of Obama's Climate Rule
Aug 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Fifteen conservative states asked a federal court Thursday to push back the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants while they sue the government to get the regulations overturned.
The states, led by West Virginia, say that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ought to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing its carbon limits in order to protect states from spending to comply with a rule that could be invalidated in court.“This rule is the most far-reaching energy regulation in the nation’s history, and the EPA simply does not have the legal authority to carry it out,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement.
“With this rule, the EPA is attempting to transform itself from an environmental regulator to a central planning agency for states’ energy economies,” he said. “The Clean Air Act was never intended to be used to create this type of regulatory regime, and it flies in the face of the powers granted to states under the U.S. Constitution.”
EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia said the regulation will pass muster in court.
“The Clean Power Plan is based on a sound legal and technical foundation, and it was shaped by extensive input from states, industry, energy regulators, health and environmental groups, and individual members of the public,” she said in a statement.
Litigants usually cannot request a stay until they file a lawsuit, which the states have not done because the climate rule has not been formally published in the Federal Register.
But the states argue that the rule will immediately obligate them to start working to comply, so the courts should act sooner.
Later Thursday, 15 liberal states and two cities, led by New York, said they would formally fight any effort from West Virginia and the conservative states to overturn the climate rule. But the petition those states filed Thursday to delay the rule is premature, the liberal states said.
The request comes 10 days after President Obama unveiled the rule, which seeks a 32 percent cut in the power sector’s carbon dioxide output.
The same conservative states asked the EPA to delay the rule last week, but the agency has yet to decide on the request.
The states also challenged the rule before it was made final, but they lost in the D.C. court.
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2 New Campaigns Aim To Build Latino Support For Rule
Aug 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Jean Chemnick
The League of Conservation Voters and a coalition of Latino groups launched media campaigns today aimed at shoring up Latino support for U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan.
The two efforts will focus on swing states with large numbers of Spanish-speaking voters: Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. They will target Latina mothers and millennials with print ads, billboards, radio spots and social media.
Polls show Latino voters are more supportive of efforts to combat climate change and protect the environment than other demographics.
"We know that people of color are disproportionately impacted by pollution, and the Clean Power Plan is essential to capping the unlimited carbon pollution that threatens the health and future of our communities," Jennifer Allen, national director of LCV's Latino Outreach Program, said in a statement today.
Today's two media campaigns are aimed at showing the governors of states that will choose how to implement the EPA rule that Latinos support compliance and look forward to the benefits it will bring, she said on a call with reporters.
"We are hit by the problems, and we are among those who are strongest in wanting to see solutions," she said.
In a recent interview, Allen said Latinos are particularly concerned about the environment both because many live in lower-income areas near sources of pollution covered by EPA's rule and because they have ties to Latin America, which is expected to be affected by warming. They also are more likely to have outdoor occupations in fields like construction and agriculture, she said.
"Latinos are there on those issues," she said. "There isn't a lot of convincing or persuasion that has to happen."
Green groups have intensified their focus on Latino voters as part of an effort to boost grass-roots support for policies like the power plant rule, and as a way of diversifying an environmental movement that has historically been dominated by Caucasians, she said.
LCV plans to launch a scorecard to track the environmental votes of Latino policymakers, and Allen spends much of her time doing outreach and training for communities that sometimes lack an environmental advocacy background, she said.
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Legal Battle Flares Over Obama’s Climate Legacy
Aug 13, 2015 | The National Journal
By Ben Geman
States opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's sweeping carbon-emissions rules for power plants say the ink is dry enough on the regulations to begin fighting in court.
Fifteen state attorneys general asked a federal court to put the rules on hold because the clock has begun ticking on their compliance, even though the regulation unveiled in early August has not been formally published in the Federal Register.
A petition filed Thursday led by West Virginia notes that preliminary state deadlines to submit compliance plans loom in September 2016. The lawsuit argues that absent a stay, states will be "irreparably harmed" because they must spend resources and begin reordering their energy sector.
"With this firm deadline, the Rule requires States to spend significant and irrecoverable sovereign resources now to begin preparing their State plans," the AGs write in a petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
But the states also want to upend the entire rule, so they are asking the court to put all the measure's deadlines on hold until the court fight over the rule's overall legality is completed.
The rule, a central pillar of President Obama's climate-change agenda, aims to cut emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, largely through speeding the shift away from coal-fired power with greater use of renewable energy sources and natural gas, and increased conservation.
It's expected to eventually land before the Supreme Court.
The new petition seeking a stay also makes a series of arguments against the legality of the underlying regulation, arguing, for instance, that EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act section governing the rule—111(d)—goes far beyond what Congress authorized.
"The Clean Air Act was never intended to be used to create this type of regulatory regime, and it flies in the face of the powers granted to states under the U.S. Constitution," West Virginia AG Patrick Morrisey said.
The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming joined the petition, part of what's expected to be a heavy legal assault on the rule by fossil-fuel-industry and business groups.
Environmentalists criticized the lawsuit, noting previous attempts to thwart the rule have failed.
"Multiple federal courts have already rejected premature attacks on the Clean Power Plan and EPA's carbon standards for new power plants. These attorneys general are wasting taxpayer dollars on a junk lawsuit just to attack life-saving clean-air safeguards," said Joanne Spalding, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club.
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White House Offers Strong Defense Of ESPS In Face Of New Legal Attacks
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
A top White House climate official is strongly defending EPA's newly finalized greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants in the face of legal attacks by industry lawyers, who charge that several of the changes the agency made in the final regulation may make the measure legally vulnerable.
Megan Ceronsky, a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Energy & Climate Change, told an Aug. 11 forum hosted by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) that EPA went out of its way to provide maximum compliance flexibility at the lowest costs in order to shore up the legal basis for the existing source performance standards (ESPS).
Ceronsky -- who left Environmental Defense Fund in January to help the administration finalize the rule -- said the biggest change to bolster the rule's legal foundation was the agency's decision to drop demand-side efficiency from the standard-setting formula because the regulated utilities have no control over end-use energy demand.
But she also suggested that many of the changes the administration made to the final formula for determining the best system of emissions reduction (BSER) were intended to comply with a Clean Air Act definition that mandates “the degree of emission limitation achievable through the application of the best system of emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any nonair quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements) the Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated."
For example, she said the agency did a thorough assessment of potential compliance costs and discussed the issue at great length in the rule's preamble, including how costs were used to ease the assumed phase in for dispatching existing natural gas capacity, as well to determine renewable energy growth potentials. The renewable assessment showed that the high cost of offshore wind precluded it from being included as a component of setting targets in the final rule, she said.
Ceronsky also said EPA included a host of flexibilities in the final ESPS, including allowing for a reliability safety valve, offering states multiple plan structures to choose for compliance, including a “state measures framework” with a federal backstop as the only enforcement requirement, rather than the proposed portfolio approach.
The federal backstop addressed states' opposition to having their renewable and efficiency programs become federally enforceable, she said.
In each consideration, EPA finalized potential but not maximum reductions to achieve a goal that ensures all states and facilities can meet the requirements, according to Ceronsky. “We are feeling really good about” the final ESPS “and are excited to talk to others about what they are thinking,” she said.
While such changes are intended to fend off criticisms aimed at the proposed version of the rule, they have also opened the door to new legal charges from industry groups.
New Legal Attacks
For example, industry attorneys have already detailed a host of issues they are likely to challenge, including the new “uniform emission rates” EPA used for coal and gas plants, binding state emission targets, a grid-wide target-setting approach, agency discretion and more.
At the ELI event, industry attorney William Bumpers, who represents 40 power companies with varying views on the final rule, outlined a host of additional potential legal problems with the ESPS, including the agency's decision to preclude existing renewable and nuclear power from the final rule's baseline, changes the agency made to the rule's trading provisions to prevent “leakage” to new gas plants, and the overlap between the section 111(d) rule for existing plants and a related rule under section 111(b) governing new gas.
Bumpers also reiterated a set of additional concerns, including the agency's use of different definitions of BSER in each of its three rules for existing, new and modified sources, its failure to credit early action renewable generation and its preemption of state authority to set source-specific standards.
“Overall, I think the rule is vulnerable on a number of fronts,” he said, adding that “very good legal challenges could undermine this rule and put us in a negative position in three or four years, rather than moving the ball forward. We are talking about a very narrow” Clean Air Act section, section 111(d) where EPA developed the rule, expanding the section “to one of the most important provisions in the entire” statute, he said.
Bumpers said EPA's decision to exclude existing nuclear and renewable generation from states' baselines when calculating their targets is legally vulnerable because states rely on this type of energy to achieve their baseline rates that they are now obligated to reduce. Ignoring those energy sources “makes the rule susceptible to” an argument that it is arbitrary and capricious, he said.
But Ceronsky defended the agency's decision, arguing that precluding the generation meant that EPA recognized it could not obligate utilities to influence generation they did not hold the rights to, so the agency looked only at fossil energy in setting the baseline. But Bumpers argued that states are still obligated to replace the megawatts from that existing generation if it were to shut down, and would not be able to replace the power from an existing nuclear unit, for example, and still meet its ESPS number.
States are “on the hook” for that energy whether it is in the baseline or not, Bumpers said, adding from a legal standpoint that makes the rule vulnerable.
But Ceronsky said existing nuclear and renewables were removed from the baseline explicitly to address legal vulnerabilities -- an argument made by many states in their comments. “If it is in the baseline and it has to retire, we are on the hook for replacing all of that zero-emitting generation,” she said they argued.
She also noted that states could replace a retired nuclear plant with a new gas plant.
Bumpers replied that new gas can come online regardless, and that is it not clear what a state could do in the meantime while waiting for a new gas plant to be built, if a nuclear plant unexpectedly shut down. “If you are ramping up” use of an existing coal plant, “that makes compliance difficult and costly. . . . Excluding significant portions of the generation creates arbitrary and capricious arguments.”
Trading Provisions
Bumpers also flagged concerns over changes EPA made to the rule's trading provisions, especially its decision to limit “leakage” if states comply with their requirements by adding “new” gas generation that is regulated by the agency's related new source performance standard (NSPS).
Because these facilities cannot be subject to simultaneous requirements from each of the rules, EPA set state targets in the ESPS that sought to account for the potential for new gas, though the agency also gave states the option of developing their own approaches.
But Bumpers said this and other changes are also “not a logical outgrowth of the proposed rule,” and will be ripe for a court to decide, he said.
Bumpers called the trading provisions that EPA added to the rule -- under both a mass and rate-based approach -- “important” for compliance. But he called provisions to address new gas leakage “misguided and probably illegal."
Further, he said while the final rule is better than the proposed version, in particular for being equitable to all states, the final rule also does not credit early actors on renewables as it could have.
Bumpers also raised concerns that EPA used different definitions of BSER in the ESPS, the companion NSPS and final rule for modified/reconstructed sources.
“For the NSPS it is one definition,” based on plant-level efficiency, he said. In the modified rule, BSER is defined by “looking at the source.” And in the ESPS, BSER -- which is defined as including measures from throughout the electricity system --“knows no bounds,” Bumpers said.
The BSER will be the “rubric” of the legal challenges, Bumpers predicted.
He also raised concerns that EPA had set tougher standards for existing sources than for new sources. “Existing source standards, by EPA's own accounting, are not achievable” because EPA set NSPS standards 30 to 40 percent higher, meaning existing sources must depend on trading to attain the standard. “And I think that is going to be a focal point of litigation and a risk for the rule,” he said.
He said that reverses a Clean Air Act requirement that section 111(d) for existing sources is secondary to, and triggered by 111(b) for new sources, “and I think that is going to be a problem.”
Stringency Levels
But EPA in the preamble to the ESPS defends the stringency levels in both rules saying that because of differences in how they were developed it is “not possible” to compare them and conclude that the 111(d) requirements are more stringent than the 111(b) requirements because the two sets of rules “become applicable at different points in time and have significantly different compliance periods."
For example, the NSPS becomes applicable immediately upon construction. “In contrast, the [ESPS requirements] do not become applicable to existing affected [electric generating units (EGUs)] until seven years after the promulgation of the rule."
This “accommodates a requirement that, on average, those sources have a lower nominal emission limit than the standards for new or modified sources, which those latter sources must comply with immediately,” EPA argues.
Further, EPA says the ESPS requirements are “applied more flexibly and includes more flexible means of compliance” for any individual source, while the NSPS entails an emission rate that each affected EGU must meet on a 12-month rolling basis.
Another element opponents will argue is that EPA's final approach usurps state authority under 111(d) to take into account a unit's remaining useful life. Because EPA is setting state-based targets, that takes away states' “source-by-source authority that Congress expressly granted,” Bumpers said.
And Bumpers also reiterated charges that EPA lacks threshold authority to issue the ESPS under section 111(d) because it is already regulating power plants' toxic emissions under section 112.
The issue, which is already subject to litigation, is complicated because Congress adopted potentially conflicting House and Senate language when it amended the law in 1990 -- though EPA in the final rule adopted a new interpretation of how to resolve the conflicting language, and determined that both versions allow it to issue the rule because section 111 is a gap-filling measure intended to be used for non-criteria and non-toxic emissions. Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, told the ELI event that EPA's new interpretation “may survive.” He said that opponents views would “completely eviscerate” EPA's interpretation, and that it appears to be at odds with statutory goals authorizing regulation.
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States Ask D.C. Circuit For Novel Stay Of ESPS Compliance Plan Deadlines
Aug 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
A coalition of 15 states led by West Virginia has submitted a novel petition for an appellate court to stay state compliance plan deadlines under EPA's final greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants, arguing that the court should step in to block the deadlines because it is not clear when the rule's opponents can make a more routine stay request.
In an Aug. 13 petition, the states justify their novel request to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the District of Columbia Circuit because “the agency has unusually chosen to immediately start the clock on the submission of State Plans even though it could be months before the States are permitted by statute to challenge the rule.”
Under the final existing source performance standards (ESPS), signed Aug. 3, states have until Sept. 6, 2016, to submit initial state compliance plans. The states argue that is a departure from most regulations, which peg compliance deadlines to the date the rule is published in the Federal Register.
And because critics must wait until Register publication to challenge the rule -- as affirmed by earlier failed lawsuits over the proposed rule from the states and industry -- the coalition says the rule “would impose irreparable harms upon the States for an indeterminate period.”
The filing adds that the “normal course” of Register publication for more routine rules can be as long as three or four months, which could mean any ruling on a state motion for a stay would not come until “halfway through the States' period for preparing the” initial plans.
EPA in the final ESPS says the date-certain deadline would “assure that states begin to address the urgent needs for [carbon dioxide] reductions quickly.”
The states filing the petition are West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Those states had earlier petitioned EPA for an administrative stay of the rule shortly after it was signed. EPA has said it is considering the request, but has not yet acted on it -- even though it is almost certain to reject it.
The states ask the D.C. Circuit to issue a writ under the All Writs Act staying all deadlines in the final rule “until litigation of the Rule's legality is complete.” It asks the court to issue such a writ by Sept. 8, roughly one year before the initial plan submission deadline.
In a press release announcing the petition, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) says, “We want to ensure that no more taxpayer money or resources are wastefully spent in an attempt to comply with this unlawful rule that we believe will ultimately be thrown out in court.”
He adds that the states “sincerely hope that the Obama administration stops its gamesmanship and publishes the rule before the September 8 deadline [requested for the writ] so the states can challenge the rule on the merits.”
In the petition, the states reiterate claims made by ESPS critics that the agency lacks underlying authority to issue the rule under the Clean Air Act, and that the agency's approach to setting targets is too broad, saying those arguments show the states are “clearly and indisputably entitled to relief.”
EPA was not immediately available to comment on the petition by press time.
However, environmentalists panned the request, with Sierra Club in an Aug. 13 release calling the petition “frivolous” and a “junk lawsuit.” The petition “makes it clear just how desperate these polluter-backed politicians are to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry rather than serve the families in their states,” the group says, adding that multiple federal courts have rejected “premature attacks” on the proposed ESPS.
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Most RGGI States on Track to Meet Power Plan Targets
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Six of the nine states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) are on track to meet or come close to meeting by 2020 the federal Clean Power Plan's mass-based goals for 2030, according to an analysis by Bloomberg BNA.
Only Maryland and Maine are not on schedule to meet the 2030 goal by 2020, when the current RGGI carbon dioxide emissions trading program is set to expire for the nine participating Northeastern states, according to the analysis.
In addition, every RGGI state except Maine will meet or come close to meeting by 2020 the Clean Power Plan's two-year targets for 2022-24, under the current RGGI schedule of CO2 emissions reductions. There is no mass-based target for Vermont because the state doesn't have any power plants that qualify as electricity generating units under the federal plan.
Similarly, most of the RGGI states will meet the Clean Power Plan's slightly higher 2030 mass-based targets that include existing units and the new source complement.
Goal of EPA's Power Plan
The goal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), released as a final rule Aug. 3 by the Environmental Protection Agency, is to reduce overall CO2 emissions from the power sector by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The reductions will be phased in between 2022 and 2030 (149 DEN B-1, 8/4/15).
The RGGI trading program, which has been operating since 2008, sells allowances in quarterly auctions that allow the holder of one allowance to emit one ton of CO2. The proceeds are largely used by the states to fund energy efficiency, renewable energy and direct-bill assistance. Under the EPA's proposed mass-based trading plan, allowances would initially be distributed based on historical generation.
The nine RGGI states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont—already have reduced CO2 emissions from the power sector by 35 percent below 2008 levels and by more than 40 percent below 2005 levels.
Under the RGGI plan currently in place, emissions in the nine states are currently scheduled to decline by 2.5 percent per year until 2020.
While the EPA's Clean Power Plan treats the RGGI states favorably, the exact details of what those states will need to do to comply are still being analyzed by RGGI, electricity generators and others.
Katie Dykes, the RGGI chairwoman and deputy commissioner for energy at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, told Bloomberg BNA that RGGI is still analyzing the Clean Power Plan's emissions targets and other provisions.
“The RGGI states are reviewing and doing their calculations to understand the targets,” she said. “It would be premature to discuss what we're taking away from our calculations.”
‘Great Position' to Comply
She said, however, that the RGGI states are in “a great position in terms of complying” with the EPA plan because “we already have an effective carbon reduction program in place.”
RGGI will begin preparations this fall for a previously scheduled program review that will encompass compliance with the Clean Power Plan and any possible changes in the structure of the program. RGGI's first program review in 2012 led to significant changes in the CO2 emissions cap (27 DEN A-11, 2/8/13).
Susan Tierney, a senior adviser at the Boston-based Analysis Group and a former secretary for environmental affairs in Massachusetts, said RGGI states also will have to look at the long-term trajectory of emissions reductions to meet out-year goals for 2030, 2040 and 2050.
“There are some big questions in these markets with regard to several nuclear plants that are financially shaky,” Tierney said in an e-mail. “On the one hand, there's some room in the RGGI numbers for some nuclear retirements, but, if there were a lot of retirements, then those states' and those regions' systems would have a harder time meeting their caps.”
“On the other side,” she said, “the states are discussing new Canadian hydro, which would offset some of the in-region fossil generation if such were to occur by 2022.”
‘Ahead of the Curve.'
Gavin Donohue, president of the Independent Power Producers of New York, told Bloomberg BNA that RGGI states “are ahead of the curve, compared to those that are not” in RGGI.
He said New York state is in a particularly good position to meet the Clean Power Plan's targets because of the state's diverse fuel mix and existing air pollution programs to control mercury and sulfur dioxide emissions.
The EPA's mass-based target for New York is 31.2 million tons of CO2 by 2030, with a 2012 baseline of 34.6 million tons. Under RGGI, the state's emissions will be reduced by 2.5 percent per year in each year up to 2020. That means New York would meet the EPA target sometime in 2019, and by the end of the current RGGI program, New York's emissions would be 30.2 million tons.
Maryland, the RGGI state with the second largest CO2 emissions budget, has a mass-based target of 14.3 million tons by 2030, with a baseline of 20.1 million tons in 2012. Under RGGI, Maryland's emissions will be reduced to 17.5 million tons by 2020.
Massachusetts, the RGGI state with the third-largest CO2 budget, has a mass-based EPA target of 12.1 million tons in 2030, with a 2012 baseline of 13.1 million tons. Under RGGI, Massachusetts's emissions will be reduced to 12.4 million by 2020.
Tierney of the Analysis Group told Bloomberg BNA that the Clean Power Plan “really positions RGGI states very well.”
“They've already done a lot to clean up their power sector,” she said. “This helps give them a comparative advantage.”
Jordan Stutt, a policy analyst for the New England-based Acadia Center, agreed. “The RGGI states are well-positioned to comply with the Clean Power Plan, as EPA has designed the final rule in such a way that encourages the use of RGGI's multi-state, mass-based trading model,” he told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail.
“Even EPA's federal implementation plan, which will be applied to states who choose not submit their own plans, is likely to closely resemble the RGGI approach,” he said.
Going Beyond Targets
Stutt said he expects the RGGI states to go “above and beyond” the plan's emissions targets, unlike some other states which will use the targets as the basis for their compliance plans.
He said most of the RGGI states also have economy-wide greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2050. “Continuing to 2050 with the current RGGI cap reduction trajectory is unlikely to deliver the emissions reductions necessary to meet those long-term targets,” he said.
Tierney said the Clean Power Plan is “incredibly helpful in showing states a pathway for interstate trading” or possibly intrastate trading. She said, however, it was unlikely that the plan would cause other states to join RGGI.
Tierney said RGGI was “the one real living example” of a multi-state trading program before the final Clean Power Plan was released, but now they have the EPA option.
The EPA is considering two options for states that don't submit an adequate compliance plan–a rate-based trading program (measured in pounds per megawatt hour) and a mass-base trading program (measured in short tons of carbon dioxide)(149 DEN B-4, 8/4/15).
Tierney also said there is a political bias in so-called red states against joining RGGI or California's greenhouse gases emissions trading program.
Uncertainty About Expanding RGGI
Kathryn Zyla, deputy director of the Georgetown Climate Center, said it was uncertain whether the Clean Power Plan would lead other states to join RGGI.
“It's an option that may be appealing to states,” she told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail. “But it's also not the only way that states could choose to support interstate trading.”
“The rule allows states to develop ‘trading-ready’ plans that include interstate trading without having to join a formal multi-state process, and provides models in the proposed federal plan for both rate-based and mass-based plans that could do this,” she said.
“Now that the rule is final, states will be looking at the goals, looking at the compliance, and evaluating what will work best in their individual circumstances.”
Jessica Wentz, associate director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told Bloomberg BNA that “states will be interested in joining RGGI to implement their Clean Power Plan obligations—the cap and trade infrastructure is already there, even if the targets need to be adjusted slightly to correspond with the Clean Power Plan targets.”
“That said, I can think of two key reasons that states might not want to join RGGI,” she said in an e-mail. “They would prefer to stick with a rate-based target to accommodate economic growth (or) they want to give away allowances rather than auctioning them.”
Wentz, citing a recent report from the Acadia Center, said RGGI will need to extend its emissions cap from 2020 to 2030, adjust the scheduled year-to-year cap reductions, and amend its cost containment reserve mechanism (93 DEN A-12, 5/14/15).
Gregory E. Sopkin, a partner in the Denver law firm Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer LLP, said RGGI states probably will need to pass new legislation to comply with the Clean Power Plan by making the RGGI plan fully “enforceable.”
“The CPP allows state trading for a state to meet its individual emission limits, but does not contemplate pooled emissions absent a regional enforceable interstate agreement,” he told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail. “The CPP does not yet set forth the definitions and compliance protocols for state trading,” according to Sopkin. “Under the CPP, the state legislation cannot allow for voluntary withdrawal of emission limit enforcement, such as occurred with a former RGGI state, New Jersey.”
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Studies Model The Effects Of Carbon Removal On Climate Change
Aug 14, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Michael Torrice
To combat climate change, engineers and scientists have proposed and started to develop methods that would pull carbon dioxide out of Earth’s atmosphere.
But results from two climate modeling studies published recently suggest that without significant cuts to CO2 emissions from power plants and other sources, these extraction technologies probably won’t do much to mitigate the gas’s effects on Earth’s climate or oceans.
To keep global warming at reasonable levels—less than a 2 ºC increase in global average temperature by the end of the century, according to modeling studies—climate scientists think CO2 levels in the atmosphere can’t rise much past 420 ppm. Earlier this year, CO2 levels passed 400 ppm.
One tool to help reach this goal could be so-called negative emission strategies to remove CO2: capturing the gas from power plant emissions or establishing new forests to pull down more CO2, for example.
But how much help could these carbon-removal methods provide? To find out, Thomas Gasser of the Climate & Environmental Sciences Laboratory, in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, and colleagues compared different combinations of emissions cuts and amounts of carbon removal over the next century. For each level of emissions being cut, they determined the amount of carbon extraction needed to keep CO2 levels on track to stay below 420 ppm by 2100.
The lowest estimate of required removal was about 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 per year (Nat. Comm. 2015, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8958). Currently planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects worldwide have a combined capacity of only40 million metric tons per year, according to the Global CCS Institute, an international organization that promotes the technology. Other carbon removal efforts, which are still being developed, aren’t counted in this estimate.
Besides warming the planet, increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere affect the oceans. As more of the gas dissolves, it acidifies Earth’s oceans, which can harm many organisms at the base of marine food webs.
Sabine Mathesius of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, and colleagues wanted to determine how much carbon removal could mitigate these effects on the oceans. From their models, they estimated that if current emissions trends continue and carbon removal technologies extract 18.3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, average ocean pH would improve just 0.1 units by 2500, compared to conditions without carbon removal. Even using an extreme extraction rate of 91.7 billion metric tons of CO2 per year in their models, ocean pH didn’t return to preindustrial levels (Nat. Clim. Change 2015, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2729).
Both Gasser and Mathesius point out that their findings don’t suggest that carbon removal technology won’t be a useful tool for addressing rising CO2 levels. “It just won’t be strong enough to counteract a business-as-usual [emissions] scenario,” Mathesius says. Instead, both say, carbon extraction could be combined with cuts in fossil fuel use to lower net CO2 emissions to safer levels.
Some climate scientists hope that international talks in Paris this December will lead to pledges from nations to make such cuts (see page 46).
For both studies, “The simple message is that starting to attack the [emissions] problem sooner rather than later is important,” says Richard Matear, a climate researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization, in Australia, who wrote an accompanying commentary of the ocean study in Nature Climate Change. “Reducing emissions now is a good idea, rather than thinking we’re going to solve the problem through technology in 20 or 50 years.”
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Ozone Advocates Reach Out to White House
Aug 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Industry and environmental groups wrote to the White House this week to raise their concerns about the Environmental Protection Agency's review of the national ozone standards, which is expected to be completed by Oct. 1.
A coalition of 370 state-level industry associations, in an Aug. 13 letter to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, urged the administration to retain the current ozone standard of 75 parts per billion. The letter, released to reporters by the American Petroleum Institute, cited concerns that tighter ozone standards could limit business expansion in many areas of the country and harm the economy so severely that unintended public health consequences could occur.
The American Lung Association and 11 other national public health organizations sent an Aug. 11 letter to President Barack Obama calling on the administration to set “truly protective” ozone standards. Those groups have repeatedly urged the EPA to set the ozone standards at 60 ppb, which is more stringent than the range proposed by the EPA in November 2014.
The EPA is under a court-ordered deadline of Oct. 1 to issue a final decision (RIN 2060-AP38) on whether to revise or retain the 75 ppb standards, set in 2008 under President George W. Bush.
Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at API, told reporters Aug. 13 that the final ozone rule may be sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget for interagency review within the next week.
The letters are the latest example of advocates turning up the pressure on the administration in advance of the rule being sent to OMB. In addition to letters to EPA and White House officials, organizations also are engaged in advertising campaigns and plan to meet with OMB officials during the interagency review process (148 DEN A-4, 8/3/15).
Industry Groups Make Economic Argument
The industry coalition primarily made an economic argument against tightening the ozone standards, a move that they said could cause “significant damage” to the economy by setting unachievable emissions reductions requirements.
“If finalized, EPA's proposed stringent ozone standards could limit business expansion in nearly every populated region of the United States and risk the ability of U.S. companies to create new jobs,” the industry groups said.
The ozone standards could be so damaging to the economy that the rule could have “severe unintended consequences” on public health, according to the industry groups. The letter mentioned the existence of studies that linked the increased cost of goods and services, and associated declines in disposable income and socioeconomic status, with contributions to poor health and premature deaths.
The EPA is prohibited from considering cost when setting national ambient air quality standards under a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'ns, 531 U.S. 457, 51 ERC 2089 (U.S. 2001)).
Feldman of the API told reporters that while the Supreme Court has “clearly ruled” on cost, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is permitted to look at all of the health effects of tightening the ozone standard. There are comments in the record on the ozone rulemaking that reflect that there are adverse health effects that should be considered by the EPA as it looks at setting more stringent standards, Feldman said.
Obama Remarks Cited
The letter from the public health groups cited remarks made by Obama during the Aug. 3 announcement of the Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33) as evidence that more protective standards are needed.
In his speech announcing the first-ever carbon dioxide standards for power plants, Obama cited statistics that African-American children are twice as likely to be hospitalized due to asthma and a Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma. The public health groups said that in addition to those groups, ozone pollution has a disproportionate effect on people who live in low-income communities, people with chronic diseases and other vulnerable populations.
“We especially appreciate your recognition that not all communities are impacted equally when it comes to the health burdens of air pollution,” the public health groups said. “Truly, these communities will not breathe easier until the national ozone pollution limit adequately protects them.”
The public health groups said that under current ozone standards, air quality alerts don't give people the right information about when ozone levels exist that could harm health because the alerts are based on outdated standards.
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U.S. Cash Crunch May Rattle Global Climate Deal
Aug 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The global climate change agreement that President Barack Obama hopes to make a key part of his legacy may not materialize if the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world can’t cough up enough cash.
And right now, money from Washington is in short supply.
While Republicans in Congress are largely unable to stop EPA from implementing its aggressive plans to cut U.S. emissions, they have so far been able to block the international climate funding that would help secure a deal in Paris later this year.
From Brazil to Malaysia, developing nations are depending on the United States and other wealthy countries to fork over billions to help them adapt to a warming planet. International negotiators and climate activists say they understand the limitations of the U.S. political system, but their patience is beginning to wane.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” said Meena Raman of the Malaysia-based Third World Network, an international nonprofit focused on the challenges facing developing countries. “The United States claims to be a world leader, but it certainly doesn’t show enough leadership.”
The international talks could easily be derailed if the United States and other developed countries don’t come to Paris with a serious plan for climate finance, said Ana Toni, the head of the Climate and Society Institute in Rio de Janeiro.
“There is clearly new leadership coming from the United States, which we obviously welcome and support,” she added. “We all have internal differences politically and nationally, but this is an international negotiation. I just really hope that internal politics will not undermine the political muscle of the United States internationally.”
With the fate of the climate talks on the line, rich countries are scrambling to come up with a litany of climate finance measures that will satisfy developing countries, while taking into account resistance at home. The Obama administration last month touted commitments from some of the largest companies in the U.S. that could send billions to the developing world over the next decade, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough.
“The worst-case scenario we see is the talks collapsing over finance,” said Nick Mabey, chief executive of the European-based environmental analysis group E3G. “I don’t think anybody wants to take this thing to the brink, so our estimate is this will be sorted out.”
At 2009 climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed countries set a goal of “mobilizing” $100 billion a year in climate finance from public and private sources by 2020. Some of that money will come from the so-called Green Climate Fund, a United Nations bank charged with using wealthy nations’ money to help poor countries adapt to climate change.
But so far, rich nations haven’t agreed on a clear roadmap for reaching the $100 billion goal — and while nearly three dozen countries have made pledges to the fund totaling more than $10 billion, only about half have been set in stone.
Estimates of the amount of climate finance flowing from developed to developing countries vary wildly, in large part because nations haven’t agreed on exactly how to define what counts toward the $100 billion goal. A 2014 U.N. report estimated, for example, that climate finance to developing countries from 2010 to 2012 ranged from $40 billion to $175 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Climate Policy Initiative estimated that $34 billion went from developed to developing countries in 2013.
Obama, for his part, has pledged $3 billion in public money to the GCF over several years. But many Republicans in Congress have balked at the administration’s request to contribute $500 million to the fund next year.
Because the appropriations process is one of the only ways Republicans can exert influence over the international climate talks, it’s looking unlikely that GOP lawmakers will reverse course when budget negotiations pick up in the fall.
Administration officials say they have not given up hope that they can convince Republicans to appropriate the money, though they’re are quick to note that there will be other opportunities to contribute to in the future because it is a multiyear pledge.
In the meantime, the United States and other countries are focused on leveraging private climate finance to meet the $100 billion goal. The White House, for example, last month announced that 13 large companies had agreed to cut their emissions and boost low-carbon investments in the U.S. and abroad as part of its American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Among other commitments, Bank of America said it would increase its global environmental business initiative from $50 billion to $125 billion by 2025; Goldman Sachs said by next year it would hit a goal of investing $40 billion in global clean energy and committed to making larger investments by 2025.
But the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. government’s commitment to the GCF is raising eyebrows in developing countries.
“I wouldn’t say they’re doubting the administration’s seriousness because of reluctance in Congress, but they’re watching with interest,” said Lutz Weischer, team leader for international climate policy at Germanwatch. “It’s certainly going to be a challenge in Paris if the U.S. can’t say much about its GCF commitment.”
Still, there are signs that diplomats around the world accept the complexities facing the Obama administration as it works to take on climate change.
“I think there’s a fair amount of frustration, but I’d say it’s also tempered by realism,” said Steve Herz, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club’s International Climate Program. “You find when you talk to people at climate conferences that people understand the U.S. political situation to a surprising degree.”
Meanwhile, top officials at the U.N. and in other developed nations are increasing their efforts to forge a climate finance agreement. In late June, U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres called the issue the “most crucial” unresolved component of an international global warming deal.
European officials are hoping to build momentum on climate finance ahead of Paris. In late July, Luxembourg, currently holding the rotating presidency of the European Council, called for an “international climate finance toolbox” that would shed light on the various public and private options for helping poor countries deal with climate change. The country called climate finance “one of the crucial elements for the success” of the climate negotiations.
Activists also took comfort from a June G-7 communique that reaffirmed the countries “strong commitment” to the $100 billion goal and declared, “we stand ready to engage proactively in the negotiations of the finance provisions of the Paris outcome.”
But exactly what kind of agreement countries can reach on climate finance remains unclear. At the very least, developing countries want a clear road map detailing how countries plan to ramp up their climate finance over the next few years to meet the $100 billion goal — whether that’s through direct contributions from governments, from a tax on carbon emissions, through multilateral development banks or other means.
And they’re also hoping that developed nations will outline a plan for scaling up climate finance after 2020. That could face opposition from some developed countries, who are wary about making those kind of long-term commitments.
But many NGOs say the scope of the climate problem demands a massive increase in financing. Janet Redman — director of the climate policy program at the Institute for Policy Studies, a U.S.-based progressive think tank — said the $100 billion per year by 2020 goal is “an order of magnitude off of what we’ll need in order to transition to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the consequences of already-locked-in climate change.”
Not only is climate finance important for helping poor countries adapt to climate change, it is also likely essential for mending the distrust that has developed between rich and poor nations over decades of failed climate talks.
Without stronger commitments, Redman said, “it’s hard to see why the developing countries would trust us at all.”
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370 Business Groups Protest EPA Ozone Proposal
Aug 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Peterka
Business and industry groups today told the White House they are "deeply concerned" about U.S. EPA's proposal to tighten the ozone standard.
In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the 370 groups warned of costly burdens on states and communities, as well as impediments to business expansion, should EPA finalize its proposal.
EPA in November proposed to tighten the national ambient air quality standard for ground-level ozone from 75 parts per billion, which was last set in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration, to between 65 and 70 ppb. The agency says the science indicates the 75 ppb limit is no longer adequate to protect public health as the Clean Air Act requires.
"If finalized, EPA's proposed stringent ozone standards could limit business expansion in nearly every populated region of the United States," the letter says, "and risk the ability of U.S. companies to create new jobs."
The groups also argued that the ozone proposal may have "unintended" negative effects on public health if it ends up harming the economy.
"We believe these scientific uncertainties should be better explored in order to best allocate resources in a manner that strengthens both the economy and the environment," they wrote.
The groups called on EPA to retain the 75 ppb standard.
Under the Clean Air Act and affirmed by the Supreme Court, EPA is required to consider only public health when setting a new national ambient air quality standard. Industry representatives have previously raised the potential negative health effects tied to economic loss as a reason for EPA to not lower the standard.
Public health advocates, on the other hand, say the science shows that EPA must set a new limit no higher than 60 ppb. Earlier this week, a dozen of the nation's largest public health groups wrote a letter to President Obama calling on him to set a standard that's protective of health.
EPA is poised to finalize a new ozone standard by an Oct. 1 court-ordered deadline. The agency is expected to send its final standard to the White House Office of Management and Budget shortly.
Several of the groups signing on to the letter today were state petroleum organizations affiliated with the national American Petroleum Institute. API today said it was organizing an aggressive ad campaign against EPA's proposal in several states throughout August.
API will air television ads in Colorado, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Minnesota and Missouri, according to Howard Feldman, the group's director of regulatory and scientific affairs. Feldman said those states were targeted because they are home to "robust" debates over energy.
The group is spending a "significant" amount on the ad buy, Feldman said, but he didn't give an exact total for the campaign.
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