Preview Newsletter
ACC AM Aug 17
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Mat-Su Field Hearing on Federal Land Management Practices and Mitigation Requirements
Aug 17, 2015 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Complex, 1001 South Mack Drive, Wasilla, Alaska/ 6:30 PM (2:30 PM Alaska Standard Time) -
(ACC Mentioned) Italian Manufacturer Bets On Lightweight Plastics Market With New Byron Center Plant
Aug 16, 2015 | MiBiz
By John Wiegand
An Italian manufacturer of plastic injection molding components expects to capitalize on the growing market for lightweight composite materials as it begins production at its new North American headquarters. INglass Group SpA chose West Michigan as the manufacturing site for its HRSflow brand of hot runner systems... -
US EPA Releases Initial Assessments For Flame Retardants
Aug 17, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has released initial assessments for three flame retardant chemical clusters, in a bid to identify “scenarios where further risk assessment may be necessary”. They have been conducted under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) chemicals work plan programme. -
NTP Analyzing Perfluorinated Chemicals' Immune Effects
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Information about recently completed or ongoing research that could offer insight as to whether two perfluorinated chemicals harm the immune system is being sought by the National Toxicology Program. The NTP's Office of Health Assessment and Translation (OHAT) also is seeking nominations of epidemiologists... -
Consent Order Didn't Trigger CERCLA Filing Clock
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A Superfund cost-recovery claim isn't time-barred where the cleanup is ongoing and the state only approved the plan four years ago, a federal court in California has ruled (Cal. River Watch v. Fluor Corp., 2015 BL 256495, N.D. Cal., No. 10-cv-05105, 8/7/15). The lawsuit is timely whether the cleanup is a long-term remedial ... -
Mine Spill Throws EPA On The Defensive
Aug 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under fire over the toxic mine waste spill it caused in Colorado. The spill of 3 million gallons of sludge filled with heavy metals into a river led to immediate scorn from Republicans and the EPA’s opponents. Critics accused the Obama administration of hypocrisy and said official... -
Fracking Ban Booted Off November Ballot in Ohio
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bebe Raupe
Ohio's secretary of state has stripped three anti-fracking county charter initiatives from the November ballot. Ruling in favor of protests to the proposals filed with his office, Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) said Aug. 13 that provisions in each initiative tied to oil and gas exploration represent “an attempt to circumvent state law in a manner... -
A Crude Victory
Aug 14, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
A cheer and a half for the Obama Administration for finally recognizing something the U.S. government has been denying since the 1970s: that the market for oil is global. The acknowledgment takes the form of a Commerce Department decision disclosed Friday to let U.S. companies export domestically produced crude oil to Mexico. -
Interior Pushes Decision On Shell's Drilling Permits To Next Week
Aug 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Interior Department is likely to wait until next week to decide on whether to grant Shell approval to drill into oil- and gas-bearing zones in the Arctic, a spokesman said today. The final word from Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had been expected as soon as today by the company, environmentalists, and others... -
U.S. Loosens Longtime Ban on Oil Exports
Aug 14, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christian Berthelsen, Lynn Cook and Laurence Iliff
Energy companies eager to export American crude oil scored a victory Friday when Washington agreed to allow them to trade oil with Mexico, in a further erosion of the four-decade ban on selling U.S. crude overseas. The U.S. Commerce Department told members of Congress it intends to approve an application by the national... -
Commerce Approves Oil Swap With Mexico, Denies Other Applications
Aug 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Commerce Department today approved limited U.S. crude exports to Mexico in exchange for similar quantities from that country, but it denied applications to export to several other countries. The first approval of U.S.-Mexican crude swaps since the 1990s may boost momentum to a push in Congress to repeal the ban on crude oil exports. -
Power Plan's Justice Actions Part of EPA Trend
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to protect vulnerable communities under its landmark Clean Power Plan rule have been hailed as unprecedented, with many Washington observers saying it is part of a trend at the agency to assess and address more thoroughly environmental justice in its rules. -
Congress Can’t Legislate Away Troubling Truths About Biomass Energy | Commentary
Aug 14, 2015 | Roll Call
By Kevin Bundy and Mary Booth
The science is clear: To head off climate change’s worst effects, we must rapidly shift from fossil fuels to clean, efficient, low-carbon alternatives. But not all alternative energy sources are created equal. Generating electricity by burning wood and other “biomass” could actually make our climate problems worse. -
EPA Amends Greenhouse Gas Permitting Regulations
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency is amending its greenhouse gas permitting regulations to remove language vacated by federal courts as part of a final rule released Aug. 14. The rule updates the Code of Federal Regulations sections pertaining to prevention of significant deterioration and Title V permitting so that only those industrial... -
EPA Proposes Methane Limits for Existing Landfills
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Aug. 14 to significantly reduce the threshold that would require existing municipal solid waste landfills to capture emissions of landfill gas. The proposal (RIN 2060-AS23) would lower the landfill gas control threshold from 50 metric tons of non-methane organic compounds per year currently... -
EPA Floats Tough New Methane Limits For Landfills, Sidestepping Industry
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Despite last-minute lobbying from industry groups, EPA is proposing tough new standards for methane emissions from new and existing municipal landfills, regulations that the agency estimates would cause more than 200 existing and modified facilities to install new equipment to control the potent greenhouse gas (GHG) by 2025. -
Obama Seeks New Air Pollution Limits For Landfills
Aug 14, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration on Friday said it wants to restrict allowable methane emissions from landfills by about a third. The mandate for new pollution-reduction systems for standard landfills would reduce methane emissions by 487,000 tons annually when they fully take effect in 2025... -
Greater Carbon Reductions Linked to Energy Efficiency
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
The nation's largest electric power grid, serving more than 61 million customers from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, is revising its demand forecasts after recognizing that use of more energy-efficient lighting and appliances has led to lower demand than projected. -
EPA Seeks To Consolidate Suits Over SSM 'SIP Call' Policy In D.C. Circuit
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA is seeking to consolidate lawsuits over its rule requiring states to scrap Clean Air Act exemptions for facility startup, shutdown and malfunction (SSM) emissions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, faulting a bid by Texas and industry in that state to hear litigation over the policy in the 5th Circuit. -
California Raises Prospects for Energy Storage
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The potential for grid-scale energy storage may expand soon, and if it does, California regulations most likely will be the driving force, in the view of one energy consultant. Over the next three years or so, electrical power companies and equipment suppliers should learn whether lithium ion batteries will be the key to a sudden upsurge in energy... -
EPA Wins Bid For Stay Of Court's Ruling On Generator Air Rule Exemption
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
A federal appeals court has granted EPA's request to delay until next year enforcement of its decision eliminating the agency's 100-hour exemption from emissions standards for “emergency” generators that participate in electricity demand-response programs, though the judges rejected industry's request for an indefinite stay. -
Congress to Look at Coal Funding Ban, Permitting in Fall
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate efforts to streamline environmental permitting for major energy and other projects and to overturn President Barack Obama's ban on funding overseas coal-fired power plants stalled just before Congress left for its August recess, but they are likely to get another look from the House and Senate this fall. -
Another View: Regional Market Should Support Clean Energy, Not Coal
Aug 15, 2015 | The Sacramento Bee
By Bill Corcoran
As the West’s clean energy economy continues to expand, it is timely to look at more efficient ways to manage our electricity grid. However we need to be sure that any new system – including a regional energy market – helps build up the region’s clean energy success and pushes coal into early retirement. -
Extreme Weather Puts World Food Production at Risk
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Morales
The risk of global food production shocks and price spikes is rising due to increasingly intense storms and more frequent flood and drought events associated with warmer temperatures, U.S. and British researchers said Aug. 14. By 2040, the danger of a 1-in-100-year food production crisis is likely to rise to a 1-in-30-year probability, the U.K.-U.S.
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Mat-Su Field Hearing on Federal Land Management Practices and Mitigation Requirements
Aug 17, 2015 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Complex, 1001 South Mack Drive, Wasilla, Alaska/ 6:30 PM (2:30 PM Alaska Standard Time)
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(ACC Mentioned) Italian Manufacturer Bets On Lightweight Plastics Market With New Byron Center Plant
Aug 16, 2015 | MiBiz
By John Wiegand
An Italian manufacturer of plastic injection molding components expects to capitalize on the growing market for lightweight composite materials as it begins production at its new North American headquarters.
INglass Group SpA chose West Michigan as the manufacturing site for its HRSflow brand of hot runner systems to tap into the region’s expanding automotive industry, said John Blundy, president of the company’s North American operations.
The supplier generates the majority of its business from the auto industry, but locating in West Michigan put the company in proximity to its appliance and medical device customers, Blundy said. INglass also sells its hot runner systems — a series of heated components that inject molten plastic into mold cavities — to the heavy truck, heavy equipment and electronics industries.
While INglass is still in the process of ramping up its West Michigan operations, Blundy remains confident the supplier will benefit from automakers’ push to take weight out of their vehicles, a process known as lightweighting.
“In my view, it will be a long way into the future before we reach a point where we’ve done everything that we can do (to take weight out of vehicles),” Blundy said. “I’d say that the development of plastic materials and the mechanical properties that these suppliers are trying to achieve are almost limitless. I don’t know where the end is.”
The market for lightweight plastic materials has been growing ever since they were introduced in the 1970s. Industry experts predict that new plastic composites will continue to pervade the industry as automakers move to meet the 54.5 miles per gallon Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards by 2025.
The average vehicle today includes approximately 350 pounds of plastic material, compared to the 85 pounds in the 1970s, said Matthew Marks, chair of the American Chemistry Council’s plastics division automotive team. Marks was among the presenters during this year’s annual Management Briefing Seminars hosted by the Center for Automotive Research.
“About 50 percent of the volume on a vehicle today is made up of plastics and composites (and) it’s only 10 percent of the vehicle mass,” Marks said during a panel discussion on lightweighting. “If we can address some of the challenges … then we’ll see even further penetration of those materials.”
Specifically, Marks laid out the need for developing new joining materials to better adhere composite plastics to aluminum, steel and carbon fiber in future multi-material vehicles. Marks also said that manufacturers of plastic components need to invest more in demonstrating new material capabilities to get those products in front of automotive engineers.LAUNCH PACE
Beyond the constant innovation in materials and the heightened use of lightweight composites, the pace of new vehicle launches will also provide INglass opportunities to supply new molds, Blundy said.
Industry forecasters estimate automakers will continue with an upward trajectory of new vehicle launches, peaking at 169 launches in 2018 before shrinking to 118 launches in 2020, according to data from IHS Automotive.
“The automobile companies continue to put out new models and designs (and) that means new molds,” Blundy said. “That’s good business for us. You know you’re going to have a certain amount to satisfy the design change.”
INglass Group generated more than $100 million in annual sales last year and employs more than 885 people across its operations in Italy, China and Byron Center, Blundy said.
The Byron Center facility employs 35 workers, and the company is actively searching for an additional six employees. The company plans to hire a total of 109 workers, according to a previous MiBiz report.
INglass initially invested $17.6 million to build and equip its new building. The company received a $300,000 performance-based grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. under the Michigan Business Development Program, in addition to a $4.52 million incentive package that included local tax abatements, according to a previous MiBiz report. Grand Rapids-based Owen-Ames-Kimball Co. provided design-build services on the project.MANAGING CYCLICALITY
While the global production outlook for light vehicles is forecasted to be strong through 2020, Blundy recognizes that the industry can be highly cyclical. To hedge against those fluctuations, INglass Group has set up each of its manufacturing facilities identically, down to the same equipment and design philosophies for its product segments.
“If you were to walk into the manufacturing facility in Italy or China or now in Byron Center, other than probably the color of the floor, you wouldn’t know where you were because it’s identical,” he said.
Having the identical plant layout allows the company to more efficiently scale down or shift its production resources to another facility or market if needed. Being diversified into other industrial segments also shields the company from automotive-related downturns, Blundy said.
“Assume one market is a little bit down. Well, we can supplement from one of our other manufacturing facilities,” Blundy said. “It also allows us some flexibility to rely on another facility or business for a while until we see the other one expanding.”
Since the company’s HRSflow brand of hot runner systems is new to the North American market, it plans to invest in business development and marketing to grow its customer base, said Blundy, who noted the company has not set a specific growth target for its initial year of production.
“We’re new, so we have nowhere to go but up,” Blundy said. “We certainly have the wherewithal and attitude to be one of the leaders.”
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US EPA Releases Initial Assessments For Flame Retardants
Aug 17, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has released initial assessments for three flame retardant chemical clusters, in a bid to identify “scenarios where further risk assessment may be necessary”.
They have been conducted under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) chemicals work plan programme.
The assessments address the likely exposure and hazard scenarios to workers and consumers, based on current production, use and exposure information, for the following flame retardant clusters: tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), also known as brominated bisphenol A, cluster. Chemicals covered: tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA); TBBPA-bis(dibromopropyl ether); TBBPA-bis(ally ether); and TBBPA-bis(methyl ether). Tetrabromobisphenol A is a compound commonly used in plastics/printed circuit boards for electronics and has been found in children’s and other consumer products;chlorinated phosphate esters. Chemicals covered: ethanol, 2-chloro-, phosphate (3:1) (TCEP); 2-propanol, 1-chloro-, 2,2’,2’’-phosphate (TCPP); and 2-propanol, 1,3-dichloro-, phosphate (3:1) (TDCPP). Chlorinated phosphate esters are high production volume chemicals that have been used in furniture foams, textiles, paints and coatings; andcyclic aliphatic bromides/hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) cluster. Chemicals covered: hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD); 1,2,5,6,9,10-hexabromocyclododecane; and 1,2,5,6-tetrabromocyclooctane. The flame retardants are used in extruded and expanded polystyrene foams (EPS/XPS), polystyrene (PS) products, textiles, paints and coatings.
As well as identifying if further risk analysis is needed, the agency says the publication of initial assessments, along with problem formulation documents, will increase “transparency about the EPA's thinking and analysis process”.
It will provide the public an opportunity to comment on the agency's approach.
The EPA has also issued a data needs assessment for brominated phthalates (TBB and TBPH) cluster of flame retardants that are used in in polyurethane foam products.
There are critical gaps in toxicity, exposure and commercial mixtures data, according to a notice to be published in the Federal Register. The effort is aimed at collecting additional data and information on the substances.
The deadline for comments on the initial assessments is 60 days, after the notice is published in the Federal Register. For the data needs assessments, the comment period is 120 days after publication.
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NTP Analyzing Perfluorinated Chemicals' Immune Effects
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Information about recently completed or ongoing research that could offer insight as to whether two perfluorinated chemicals harm the immune system is being sought by the National Toxicology Program.
The NTP's Office of Health Assessment and Translation (OHAT) also is seeking nominations of epidemiologists, immunotoxicologists and other scientists. Selected experts would peer-review the planned analysis of the potential of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) to harm the immune system, according to an Aug. 14 notice (80 Fed. Reg. 48,886).
Although the OHAT is not a regulatory agency, at least two Environmental Protection Agency regulatory offices are interested in the PFOA and PFOS analysis—the Office of Water and its Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.
Information about immune-related, exposure and other studies and nominations should be submitted by Sept. 20. The timeline would help OHAT, which aims to complete a draft analysis in early 2016.
Fewer Emissions in U.S
The use and emissions of both PFOA and PFOS have decreased dramatically over the past 15 years in the U.S. as companies, including 3M, the BASF Corp and DuPont, voluntarily phased out their production.
The PFOA decreases are documented in reports submitted by these and other companies annually to the EPA since 2007.
Makers of semiconductors, auto parts and other products, however, want continued access to certain long-chain perfluorinated chemicals, although the chemicals can degrade to both PFOA and PFOS.
In comments recently submitted on a proposed significant new use rule for 26 long-chain perfluorinated chemicals, a number of companies including the Ford Motor Co., Intel Corp. and High Speed Wax Co. and trade associations representing such industries told the EPA they still need the chemicals (130 DEN A-17, 7/8/15).
EPA Office of Water Interested
The EPA's Office of Water is interested in the analysis, because both PFOA and PFOS chemicals are listed on the agency's Third Contaminant Candidate List (CCL3) for possible regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Both chemicals also being monitored under the EPA's third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3), and scientific studies for both substances have suggested they may cause cancer in humans, according to a draft Office of Water analysis (41 DEN A-7, 3/3/14).
Other offices of the EPA, including its chemicals office, are interested in long-chain perfluoroalkyl carboxylates and perfluoroalkyl sulfonates, two families of chemicals that can break down into PFOA and PFOS, because:
• the chemicals persist in the environment, in humans and in wildlife;
• animal studies have found the chemicals harm a variety of bodily functions; and
• human studies have associated exposure to the chemicals with several illnesses, including cancers and children's weakened immune systems (15 DEN A-9, 1/25/12).
Occupational exposure to PFOA was associated with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, a second autoimmune disorder, according to a Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine study published online Jan. 19.
Two Case Studies in 2013
The planned analysis of PFOA, PFOS and immunotoxicity builds upon one of two case studies the OHAT undertook in 2013 to explore whether systematic review could be used to inform chemical assessments.
Based on those case studies, the OHAT concluded that systematic analytic procedures designed to eliminate biases and omissions in the selection of scientific studies combined with procedures to disclose rationales behind scientists' analytical choices can inform regulatory decisions (149 DEN A-2, 8/4/14).
The Office of Health Assessment and Translation plans to use systematic review procedures as it identifies scientific studies it may examine for the PFOA and PFOS analysis, as it selects studies with sufficient quality and relevant information to examine, and as it conducts the analysis.
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Consent Order Didn't Trigger CERCLA Filing Clock
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A Superfund cost-recovery claim isn't time-barred where the cleanup is ongoing and the state only approved the plan four years ago, a federal court in California has ruled (Cal. River Watch v. Fluor Corp., 2015 BL 256495, N.D. Cal., No. 10-cv-05105, 8/7/15).
The lawsuit is timely whether the cleanup is a long-term remedial action or a short-term removal action, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said in the Aug. 7 decision. As a result, the court said, it's unnecessary to determine the nature of the cleanup.
From the 1950s until the 1960s, Fluor Corp. owned and operated a wood-product manufacturing facility at a site in Windsor, a small town in Sonoma County in northern California.
Cleanup Agreement in 1989
In 1989, Fluor entered into an agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to address contamination on the site, which is ongoing
About 10 years later, the Shiloh Group purchased the property. Then in January 2015, Fluor filed a Superfund contribution action against Shiloh as the current owner of the site. In response, Shiloh moved to dismiss, arguing the suit is time-barred.
Shiloh contended that cleanup is a remedial action and is barred by the six-year statute of limitations because remediation began in 1989, when Fluor entered into the consent order. The court denied the motion.
The three-year statute for removal actions only begins running upon completion of the action, the court noted. And since the cleanup is ongoing, the statute of limitations hasn't begun.
If the cleanup is deemed to be remedial, the suit is also timely, the court said.
The six-year statute of limitations for remedial actions begins running upon “initiation of physical on-site construction of the remedial action.”
Here, the court said, the earliest the initiation of the remedial action could have occurred was in 2011, when the state Department of Toxic Substances Control approved Fluor's remedial action plan.
The court rejected Shiloh's contention that the entry of the consent decree triggered the statute of limitations for a remedial action.
Judge William H. Orrick issued the opinion.
Jones Day represents Fluor.
Carter Momsen & Knight represents Shiloh Group.
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Mine Spill Throws EPA On The Defensive
Aug 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under fire over the toxic mine waste spill it caused in Colorado.
The spill of 3 million gallons of sludge filled with heavy metals into a river led to immediate scorn from Republicans and the EPA’s opponents. Critics accused the Obama administration of hypocrisy and said officials are not holding themselves to the same standards as private companies that pollute.
The accident comes at a particularly sensitive time for the EPA and President Obama’s environmental record, putting officials on the back foot.The spill, caused by EPA contractors trying to evaluate the Gold King Mine abandoned decades ago for a potential clean-up, started on Aug 5., just two days after Obama unveiled his climate rule for power plants, his most ambitious effort yet to fight climate change.
The EPA took note. Administrator Gina McCarthy traveled to the river to meet with locals, coinciding with an increased public relations and transparency push from the agency.
Still, the images of a bright-orange river, combined with the impact of closing the river to communities downstream and the perception of EPA irresponsibility, have combined to make the disaster one of the EPA’s worst in recent years.
“It raises serious questions about competency,” said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, a conservative think tank.
“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, from EPA’s perspective, in terms of trying to push their agenda on many other items, including the Clean Power Plan."
Kish said the EPA is very sensitive of its perception as a pollution-fighting brand, and the spill into the Animas River puts a big dent on that reputation.
“The EPA has many people and groups that they fund that support them, and therefore the EPA is very, very concerned about brand loyalty,” he said.
Republicans jumped at the opportunity to side against pollution and paint the EPA as hypocritical, while coming to the defense of local leaders who thought the agency waited too long to respond to the incident.
“This EPA spill is very serious, as is the EPA’s slow response,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “The Obama administration must do everything in its power to protect the lives and livelihoods of the people in the affected states.”
It also quickly entered the 2016 presidential campaign, with GOP hopefuls Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) castigating the EPA.
Trump, in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, cited the spill to boost his proposal to give the EPA’s responsibilities to the states.
“We shouldn’t be doing it from Washington,” he said.
Trump predicted that the spill is “probably going to kill the fish, kill everything,” he said. “And it was totally their mistake.”
The EPA will face even more anger when Congress returns to Washington in September. Lawmakers with authority over the EPA acted quickly to hold the agency accountable.
“This has and will continue to lead to significant economic damage to local businesses, farmers, tribes, and residents,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Inhofe will hold a hearing on the incident and the EPA’s response when Congress returns, his spokeswoman Donelle Harder said.
The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is investigating, and requested that the EPA’s Inspector General launch a probe as well.
Jeffrey Lagda, a spokesman for EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins, said the office has launched an inquiry, though the scope and process have yet to be determined.
The EPA started response efforts within a day of the spill, including testing the Animas River, the San Juan River into which it flows, getting safe water for residents and businesses and other efforts.
But leaders complained that the EPA was not being transparent enough and not doing enough to help the area cope.
That led McCarthy to travel to the area on Aug. 12 to face local, state and tribal leaders, residents, journalists and others to assure them the EPA was taking its duties seriously.
She apologized repeatedly for the spill and said internal and external investigations would, hopefully, prevent future repeats.
“It is not a ‘trust me’ situation,” she said on her first days there. “People know that EPA had an incident occur, they want to have fresh eyes that are independent of EPA on it, and I want those fresh eyes as much as you do.”
The spill has cleared from the river near the site of the incident, and downstream communities are seeing pollutant levels dropping quickly, the EPA said.
The EPA, though, could face litigation those affected by the spill and its aftermath.
Justin Pidot, an environmental law professor at the University of Denver who used to work at the Justice Department, said that local communities, business and individuals would have a tough time suing the EPA. But he cautioned that the agency’s actions in the days following the spill are critical to its liability.
“If the government engages in a pretty robust effort to address the problems, compensates those who have been injured and restores the environment to the extent practical ... I don’t think a judge would be all that sympathetic” to a plaintiff, he said.
The public relations effort might be more difficult.
“This has been a political and media firestorm,” Pidot said. “Obviously, EPA is already under a ton of scrutiny, especially by conservative lawmakers, and this ramps up the pressure.”
Pidot is hopeful that this spill could bring attention to the thousands of abandoned mines in the West and the waste ponds accompanying them.
“There are seriously environmental time bombs waiting to go off,” he said.
While being careful not to understate the EPA’s responsibility for the spill, environmental groups have also used it as an opportunity to highlight the problems of abandoned mines and mining laws that they say go soft on companies.
“The antiquated nature of the law has allowed mining companies to create pollution and walk away, and the failure to reform it has left us without a steady stream of funding to clean up these old mine sites,” said Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks.
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Fracking Ban Booted Off November Ballot in Ohio
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bebe Raupe
Ohio's secretary of state has stripped three anti-fracking county charter initiatives from the November ballot.
Ruling in favor of protests to the proposals filed with his office, Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) said Aug. 13 that provisions in each initiative tied to oil and gas exploration represent “an attempt to circumvent state law in a manner the courts have already found to be in violation of the Ohio Constitution.”
This summer, residents of Medina, Fulton, and Athens counties collected enough signatures to place community rights initiatives on the November ballot.
Residents asked the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to help draft county charters establishing community rights to local self-government and clean air and water—banning fracking as a violation of those rights.
CELDF representative Tish O'Dell told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 14 that these counties face fracking wastewater injection wells, liquefied natural gas pipelines and other drilling infrastructure projects “that threaten to pollute clean air and pure water, regardless of community wishes.”
O'Dell said county activists intend to fight Husted's decision, which they believe was influenced by oil and gas interests.
Community Rights Verses State
In his ruling, sent by letter to the three county boards of elections, Husted said: “The issue of whether local communities can get around state laws on fracking has already been litigated.
“Allowing these proposals to proceed will only serve a false promise that wastes taxpayers' time and money and will eventually end in sending the charters to certain death in the courts.”
Earlier this year, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that state law supersedes “home rule” when it comes to oil and gas drilling ( State v. Beck Energy Corp., Ohio, No. 2013-0465, 2/17/15; (32 DEN A-15, 2/18/15)).
The court said Munroe Falls' local drilling and zoning ordinances blocking fracking could not be enforced because they conflict with the state law (R.C. 1509.02) regulating oil and gas well operations.
R.C. Chapter 1509 gives the Ohio Department of Natural Resources “sole and exclusive authority” to regulate the permitting, location and spacing of oil and gas wells in Ohio, the court said.
As the state's chief elections officer, the secretary of state determines the validity of ballot proposals and rules on whether an issue should qualify for the ballot.
Husted's decision also could kill a proposed anti-fracking charter amendment in Youngstown.
FrackFree Mahoning Valley, which spearheaded four previous but unsuccessful fracking-ban ballot issues, turned in signed petitions Aug. 3 to put the measure in front of city voters Nov. 3 for a fifth time.
Youngstown law director Martin Hume said in a statement issued Aug. 13 that said Husted's decision is “under review” with regard to the ballot proposal.
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Aug 14, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
A cheer and a half for the Obama Administration for finally recognizing something the U.S. government has been denying since the 1970s: that the market for oil is global.
The acknowledgment takes the form of a Commerce Department decision disclosed Friday to let U.S. companies export domestically produced crude oil to Mexico. Technically it’s a swap, meaning that we give Mexicans crude oil in the grade they need in exchange for Mexican oil that fits our needs. The swap will help to ease a refining mismatch on the Gulf Coast that has caused America’s light crude to pile up in storage areas that are almost full because they have no place to go.
While this is a good step, it leaves the real problem untouched: the ban itself. The ban dates to the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which Congress passed in response to that era’s oil crisis. The idea was that if we could keep oil produced within our borders for the domestic market, it would insulate Americans from price spikes.
This thinking never made sense even in the days when oil supplies were scarce and prices were rising. It makes even less sense today, when America is becoming one of the world’s leading oil and gas producers. Today the main effect of the ban is to discourage some American producers from drilling for more supply, while leading others to get around the ban by exporting their oil in the form of refined gasoline and diesel, which can be exported.
The good news is that there’s a growing move in Congress to kill the ban. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has introduced legislation that has moved out of committee, and Texas Republican Joe Barton has introduced similar legislation in the House. They argue correctly that eliminating the ban on exports would create jobs and add a boost to the American economy without raising gasoline prices.
There are also good strategic reasons for lifting the ban. It’s absurd to keep American oil producers from selling crude oil on global markets at a moment when the U.S. is about to lift the limits imposed by sanctions on the Iranians. Expanding the supply of U.S. oil would also provide allies in Eastern Europe with alternatives to their current oil dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The great irony is that President Obama, who has not been shy about asserting executive power, has the authority to allow American crude exports without Congress. But he’s made no move to do so, and the Administration has been mum about the Murkowski bill.
Let’s hope the Mexico swap isn’t merely a palliative to ease the refining bottleneck and reduce political pressure to lift the export ban. If Mr. Obama won’t lift the ban, Congress should mobilize a bipartisan coalition to force the issue.
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Interior Pushes Decision On Shell's Drilling Permits To Next Week
Aug 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Interior Department is likely to wait until next week to decide on whether to grant Shell approval to drill into oil- and gas-bearing zones in the Arctic, a spokesman said today.
The final word from Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had been expected as soon as today by the company, environmentalists, and others watching the decision. But it may yet slip past Monday as well, the BSEE spokesman said. That would give Shell less than six weeks to successfully reach the zones during a summer season set to end in late September.
The company last month won approval to begin exploration in Alaska's Chukchi Sea but was required to stop short of oil- and gas-bearing areas until a damaged icebreaker that contained safety equipment was repaired. That vessel has been repaired and is now on site in Alaska. -
U.S. Loosens Longtime Ban on Oil Exports
Aug 14, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christian Berthelsen, Lynn Cook and Laurence Iliff
Energy companies eager to export American crude oil scored a victory Friday when Washington agreed to allow them to trade oil with Mexico, in a further erosion of the four-decade ban on selling U.S. crude overseas.
The U.S. Commerce Department told members of Congress it intends to approve an application by the national oil company of Mexico to exchange heavy oil pumped there for light crude pumped in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal, which will give American drillers a new market for their product, is a significant step toward lifting the export ban that dates to the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, when the U.S. suffered though gasoline shortages. Since then, the U.S. has allowed few overseas shipments of oil, with a current exemption for Canadian refineries, which send a lot of gas and diesel back to the U.S.
The laws barring overseas sales have come under pressure in the past year as American drillers pumped surging amounts of crude from shale formations, helping to create a global glut that has brought down oil prices by half in the last 14 months. Congress is slated to take up the matter later this year, and several top lawmakers back unfettered domestic oil exports.
U.S.-traded oil closed at just over $42 a barrel Friday, down from over $100 barrel in June 2014. Global oil prices remain more than $6 above the price of U.S. crude, and that difference has been as high as $20.
The swap deal with Mexico doesn’t need congressional approval. Such oil trades—which aren’t considered true exports because the U.S. is getting oil in return—were contemplated under the original ban legislation, but haven’t taken place before.
The deal illustrates how Washington is trying to catch up to a dramatic new energy abundance in the U.S., said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Inc., an energy consultancy. “It’s pretty clear, directionally, where things are headed,” he said. “This ban becomes more and more awkward and ill-fitting. It doesn’t fit reality.”
Mexico, which used to produce large quantities of light oil, now pumps mostly heavy crude. It plans to blend U.S. light, sweet crude with its extra-heavy oil, which will help its refineries make more gasoline and run more efficiently.
The exact volume of U.S. oil that can go to Mexico wasn’t immediately clear Friday. A Mexican official confirmed the Obama administration has approved Pemex’s request, but said the country is still waiting for details about how much oil it can trade.
Petróleos Mexicanos SA, known as Pemex, has asked Washington for permission to start by bringing in as much as 100,000 barrels of U.S. oil a day. Though that is a fraction of the 9.5 million barrels the U.S. is pumping daily, it amounts to more than 36 million barrels a year.
Mexico first asked for oil swaps with the U.S. eight months ago.
The Commerce Department is rejecting applications from other countries that sought permission for similar swaps, according to a person briefed on the matter, adding that American oil sent to Mexico must be refined within that country and not re-exported to any other nation.
The U.S. already imports almost 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Mexico, mostly to big refining centers such as the Port of Houston.
The head of Pemex’s commercial arm, José Manuel Carrera, said the decision is a big step in the direction of creating a North American energy bloc. “Once both countries have this experience and see the benefits, it will create a deeper understanding of the merits and people will feel more comfortable with them,” he said. “This is a small step, but it’s also very significant.”
The agreement to approve oil trade with Mexico comes little more than a year after the U.S. allowed companies to begin exporting an ultralight oil called processed condensate to foreign buyers. Since then up to 3.5 million barrels a month of ultralight oil has flowed overseas, mostly to Asia and Europe.
U.S. Sen Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), chairwoman of the Senate Energy Committee, led colleagues in a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in February advocating approval of the Mexico oil swap, and two Texas congressmen followed suit in May.
The congressmen, Will Hurd (R., Texas) and Henry Cuellar (D., Texas), in a statement Friday praised the Commerce Department decision. “The American energy renaissance that has flourished in Texas due to Eagle Ford, Permian Basin and Barnett shale exploration will continue to strengthen because of this decision,” Mr. Hurd said.
Some in Congress have argued that allowing American oil to flow out of the country would push up prices and reduce available supplies of fuel.
And Jay Hauck, executive director of Consumers & Refiners United for Domestic Energy, which represents several large fuel-making plants in the U.S., said allowing U.S. oil exports will cause the price of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude contract to rise, perhaps putting it on parity with the Brent world oil price. That means U.S. refiners will have to spend more money to buy crude oil, and those higher prices will get passed along to consumers, he said.
“Some of the arguments others are making don’t take into account some of the complicated nuances at work,” he said. “This is an incredibly complex market.”
But many energy economists, as well as the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Energy Department, contend that exporting U.S. crude will ultimately help lower global oil prices by adding supplies to the world-wide market.
Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have been pumping surging volumes of crude oil, and Iran may add to the glut if it can export oil by agreeing to an international deal limiting its nuclear program.
Countries from Japan and South Korea to Poland have expressed interest in buying American oil, in part so they don’t have to rely as heavily on big oil-pumping countries such as Iran and Russia, said George Baker, executive director of Producers for American Crude Oil Exports.
“Other countries quite clearly want to get in on the benefits—geopolitical and economic,” he said. “They want in on this American oil renaissance for good reasons.”
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Commerce Approves Oil Swap With Mexico, Denies Other Applications
Aug 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Commerce Department today approved limited U.S. crude exports to Mexico in exchange for similar quantities from that country, but it denied applications to export to several other countries.
The first approval of U.S.-Mexican crude swaps since the 1990s may boost momentum to a push in Congress to repeal the ban on crude oil exports.
A senior administration official said in a statement that Commerce would be “denying a number of applications” while acting favorably towards Mexico: “Also, consistent with provisions that allow for the exchange of U.S. crude oil under certain circumstances and that support exchanges with Mexico, BIS is acting favorably on license applications for the exchange of U.S. crude oil for similar quantities of Mexican crude oil."
While the scope of the approved swap requests — which are permitted under existing exemptions in the export ban — was not revealed by the Obama administration, Mexico’s state-run oil company sought permission for a 100,000-barrel exchange earlier this year.
Despite Mexico’s significant new opportunity to access crude from a U.S. industry bracing for production slowdowns due to depressed oil prices, the Commerce move did not go far enough for some on Capitol Hill. House Republicans are planning a vote next month on outright repeal of the crude export ban.
Swapping with Mexico is “a step in the right direction,” Rep. Michael McCaul said in a statement, but “it is still a highly regulated and inefficient way of doing business with our neighbor and third largest trading partner.” -
Power Plan's Justice Actions Part of EPA Trend
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to protect vulnerable communities under its landmark Clean Power Plan rule have been hailed as unprecedented, with many Washington observers saying it is part of a trend at the agency to assess and address more thoroughly environmental justice in its rules.
The impacts of the increase in outreach and analyses found in EPA rules is—to date—“modest.” However, the institutionalizing of processes for addressing environmental justice could improve prospects moving forward, some policy observers and activists said.
It isn't clear how much of this increase is attributable to the Obama administration versus the overall maturation of the environmental justice field, former White House and EPA staff, academics, justice advocates and others told Bloomberg BNA. There is also more room for the agency to address existing disparities for communities that go beyond identifying the disparities that exist, they said.
“The agency has only begun to follow through on the opportunities that it and others have identified as available [to address environmental justice in rulemaking],” Patrice Simms, former deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, told Bloomberg BNA.
“Now, beginning is something. It's not insignificant,” Simms, also a former EPA staff attorney, said.
Considering environmental justice in federal rulemakings is just one path to mitigate the disproportionate pollution impacts that fall on low-income and minority populations. But it plays a crucial role, alongside state and local efforts and health and unemployment actions, in ensuring communities are fairly treated and to ensure rights as basic as the right to breathe clean air.
Clean Power Plan on EJ
The Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), which aims to reduce carbon pollution from the nation's power sector, included extensive outreach with environmental justice groups and a proximity analysis to show who would be most affected by changes in power plant emissions.
The agency quantified through its proximity analysis that there is a higher percentage of minority and low-income communities residing within three miles of power plants than the national average.
While the impacts of the emission changes will affect more than these populations, the rule said that these characteristics provide “a starting point in understanding how changes in the plant's air emissions may affect the air quality experienced by some of those already experiencing environmental burdens.”
Noting these factors, the agency included in its rule what many advocates called “unprecedented” safeguards for vulnerable populations that are widely considered the least resilient to climate change.
It required that states show meaningful engagement with vulnerable communities both to receive a two-year extension in determining how they will meet state-specific emission rates and to receive approval of their final state plan. It also incentivized investing in energy-efficiency efforts in these communities (154 DEN A-3, 8/11/15).
Lisa Garcia, the EPA's former senior adviser to the administrator for environmental justice, told Bloomberg BNA that some advocates are frustrated the EPA didn't go further, requiring states to conduct an environmental justice analysis for their plans, for example.
However, Nancy Sutley, the former chairwoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told Bloomberg BNA these steps were “an important signal.”
“The EPA doesn't do as high-profile and as far-reaching rules as the Clean Power Plan every day,” Sutley, now the chief sustainability and economic development officer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told Bloomberg BNA.
“It does demonstrate to [vulnerable] communities that the EPA takes environmental justice seriously,” Sutley said.
Broader Agency Trend
The agency has boosted its consideration of environmental justice across the board as well, although Simms said that the agency has been slowest to address environmental justice concerns within the rulemaking context.
While there was discussion about this prior to the Obama administration, Garcia said that when former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson joined the agency, environmental justice efforts became a priority.
For example, the agency boosted outreach in 2009 and 2010 through periodic conference calls with environmental justice communities on what rules are being worked on, said Garcia, now Earthjustice vice president of litigation for healthy communities.
The EPA also released in July 2010 interim guidance regarding how and when to consider environmental justice in agency rulemaking. That guidance was finalized in June 2015, nearly four years after the agency had initially indicated it planned to finalize it, and an accompanying draft technical guidance is still in the draft phase (105 DEN A-13, 6/2/15).
In 2013, the agency touted an EPA assessment that found the agency conducted on average 20 environmental justice analyses, including demographic analyses, each year between 2010 and 2012, increased from an average of less than two analyses per year between 1995 and 2009.
The agency told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 14 it hasn't conducted another assessment since.
“Although we are not constantly tracking the number of EJ analyses conducted throughout all of our many rulemakings, EPA has made significant progress in how we are considering environmental justice, especially for rules that have a significant relationship to environmental justice issues,” the agency told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail, highlighting also its efforts to institutionalize these processes through its June guidance and draft technical guidance.
Observers pointed to efforts under Jackson and the now-administrator Gina McCarthy by the agency to identify what environmental justice holes exist, how they should be addressed and the agency's ability to do so, and overall to create a clear path forward for environmental justice. One plan is titled Plan EJ 2014, and McCarthy's draft of plan is titled the EJ 2020 Action Agenda (73 DEN A-18, 4/16/15).
Analysis to Be Replicated
Several academics, former administration staff and others pointed to the environmental justice analysis for the Definition of Solid Waste final rule (RIN 2050-AG62) that was released in December as a rule where the agency thoroughly considered environmental justice (238 DEN A-13, 12/11/14).
The analysis, which was peer reviewed, looked at the potential for negative impacts and at who would be affected, is a prime example of what justice advocates would like to see completed for more rules.
David Konisky, an associate professor at Indiana University, highlighted the agency's 2010 national ambient air quality standards for nitrogen dioxide as an example of the EPA's efforts. The agency required another 40 nitrogen dioxide monitors to be placed in vulnerable communities, which didn't change the rule but offered more protection for those population, he said.
“The impact [of the overall EPA shift] has been modest to date,” Konisky, who recently edited and co-authored a book on the federal government's environmental justice efforts titled “Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice,” told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail. “But the fact that the Agency has established procedures for evaluation EJ concerns in rulemakings should result in more sensitivity to impacts on vulnerable populations.”
While observers said that the agency has clearly made environmental justice a priority and that has clearly helped progress the issue, it isn't clear how much of the shift to more in-depth analysis and addressing justice in rules is due to the administration's efforts.
Simms, who is now an assistant professor at Howard University's School of Law, said progress on addressing environmental justice in rulemaking has happened “almost entirely” under the Obama administration.
Evolution of EJ
However, Sutley pointed to other factors that likely contributed such as the overall evolution of technology since then-President Bill Clinton signed in February 1994 Executive Order 12898, which required among other things for the federal agencies to identify and address potential human health and environmental burdens resulting from their actions.
Technology has grown in capabilities, boosting the agency's ability to identify and understand burdens placed on communities and how they are affected, Sutley said. Garcia also pointed to communities’ own efforts to collaborate with the agency as central to the evolution, too.
States have separately seen environmental justice field advancements, making consideration of vulnerable communities “customary,” Alexandra Dunn, executive director of Environmental Council of the States, said. That has come as the amount of information available to the public and new media sources have evolved, she said.
“I can't tie that [state] advancement to any administration,” Dunn said. “I'd tie it to an increased sense of what it means to involve environmental justice communities in state decision-making.”
Still, Jalonne White-Newsome, a federal policy analyst for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told Bloomberg BNA that “champions” within the agency fighting for vulnerable communities have been and are crucial to achieve advancements on incorporating environmental justice into rules.
Looking Forward
There is still more for the agency champions to fight for and more that is achievable within its current authorities, these individuals said.
The agency has a number of statutes that it can interpret and regulate more strongly to protect disadvantaged communities, Simms and Sutley said. One example of this is Section 112 of the Clean Air Act that deals with carcinogens and other hazardous air pollutant regulation, Simms said.
“They've chosen in many instances to adopt interpretations that are much less stringent than they can, and in my view, ought to be,” Simms said, pointing to both agency and external reports that have highlighted opportunities in this area.
The agency should also conduct more thorough environmental justice analyses in more rules, and have those analyses result in more stringent requirements in rules, several individuals said. Alejandra Nunez, a staff attorney for the Sierra Club, said these analyses could be treated similar to the analyses under Executive Order 12866 to improve planning and coordination for new and existing regulations, which is integral rulemakings.
But Garcia pointed to some language in existing EPA rules that some advocates would like to nix—language that essentially says these rules improve the environment and protections for everyone, so it won't disproportionately harm these communities. That doesn't mean there isn't already a gap in the state of the environment and health for these communities as opposed to the general public, she said.
“You should be regulating to the most impacted person not to the general population,” Garcia said.
Also on the wish list, according to Leslie Fields, director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships Program: some sort of cumulative impact standard that would take into account all sources of pollution in a given area.
But on a more immediate note, environmental justice advocates told Bloomberg BNA they are simply hoping that the agency will conduct more analyses and actions like the Clean Power Plan and the Definition of Solid Waste rule.
“The EPA has opened the door to a more robust analysis of potential impacts and consideration of benefits,” Nunez said. “This is just the beginning.”
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Congress Can’t Legislate Away Troubling Truths About Biomass Energy | Commentary
Aug 14, 2015 | Roll Call
By Kevin Bundy and Mary Booth
The science is clear: To head off climate change’s worst effects, we must rapidly shift from fossil fuels to clean, efficient, low-carbon alternatives.
But not all alternative energy sources are created equal. Generating electricity by burning wood and other “biomass” could actually make our climate problems worse. President Barack Obama’s new Clean Power Plan, released on August 3, acknowledges the potential for a biomass pollution problem.
Unfortunately, some members of Congress think they can legislate away the scientific facts altogether. Senate and House appropriators have advanced bill language that would force the EPA to ignore carbon pollution from burning trees, regardless of what the science says.
That’s a bit like trying to prevent plane crashes by abolishing the law of gravity. It looks downright silly, and it won’t work. The climate obeys the laws of physics, not the whims of Congress.
Biomass power plants emit three to four times as much climate-warming carbon dioxide at the smokestack as natural gas power plants and one-and-a-half times as much as coal plants, per megawatt of electricity produced. That means replacing fossil fuels with biomass will increase, rather than decrease, power sector smokestack emissions.
Some claim this pollution can be ignored based on the theory that it will be offset by new tree growth, or that burning “waste” wood for energy emits no more carbon dioxide than letting those materials decompose.
The science shows it takes from decades to more than a century for forest growth or avoided decomposition to offset the immediate emissions from burning wood for energy. We don’t have that kind of time: Our climate is sliding into chaos now.
Ignoring biomass carbon pollution threatens forests, too. In Europe, where they don’t count the carbon from biomass, massive power plants burn processed wood pellets imported from all over the world, including the U.S. And despite industry claims, those pellets aren’t made only of so-called “waste.” Corporations have been caught clearcutting mature hardwood forests in the Southeast to make pellets for British burners.
Burning wood is also just plain dirty. Most biomass boilers emit pollutants that aggravate asthma and other respiratory diseases at about the same levels as coal plants. Plants that burn contaminated fuels, like pressure-treated lumber and old railroad ties, can have significant emissions of air toxics. Like other incinerators, biomass plants are often built in low-income and minority communities already overburdened with pollution. Compared to truly clean energy from the wind and sun, biomass will always be the dirtiest “renewable” option.
The biomass industry, however, has powerful friends on Capitol Hill who are determined to ignore those troubling truths. The House even approved an appropriations rider from Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin that would hamstring the EPA’s ability to enforce regulations that limit the amount of lead, mercury and dioxins that biomass plants emit.
The Obama administration has rightly opposed Congress’s anti-science effort to ignore biomass carbon pollution. Nonetheless, the EPA still intends to let states count biomass power as a “renewable” option in complying with the Clean Power Plan.
Generating more electricity with wood can only undermine the president’s efforts on climate. The Clean Power Plan clearly requires reductions in carbon pollution. But building more biomass power plants will increase carbon pollution – most likely for many decades beyond the Clean Power Plan’s 15-year timeline.
The EPA, perhaps looking for a political compromise, suggested in the final Clean Power Plan that it might treat wood from “sustainably managed” forests as safe for the climate. Forest sustainability standards, however, typically don’t count carbon emissions. And even if a forest is currently growing, accelerated logging for biomass fuel still increases atmospheric carbon dioxide – a bad deal for both forests and the climate.
At least the Clean Power Plan recognizes the basic scientific fact that burning trees for energy might affect the climate. Now Congress needs to drop the silly idea that it can pass laws telling the atmosphere how to behave.
We need to get off fossil fuels, including natural gas, as fast as we can. But the biomass cure – which threatens not only the climate, but also the nation’s forests and the health of our communities – could be worse than the disease.
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EPA Amends Greenhouse Gas Permitting Regulations
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency is amending its greenhouse gas permitting regulations to remove language vacated by federal courts as part of a final rule released Aug. 14.
The rule updates the Code of Federal Regulations sections pertaining to prevention of significant deterioration and Title V permitting so that only those industrial sources that are already required to obtain the permits for emissions of conventional pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter will be required to permit their greenhouse gas emissions as well.
That move comes in response to a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the application of the permitting program (Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, 2014 BL 172973, 78 ERC 1585, 134 S. Ct. 2427 (U.S. 2014) ).
Following that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated those provisions that required sources that did not already require prevention of significant deterioration or Title V permits to permit their greenhouse gases and remanded the remainder of the permitting program to the EPA for correction (Coal. for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 09-1322, 4/10/15).
The EPA has already moved to address other aspects of the court's decision. Previously, the EPA issued a direct final rule detailing the steps states can take to rescind some greenhouse gas permits that are no longer required (84 DEN A-3, 5/1/15).
Additionally, the EPA has said it plans to propose a de minimis threshold—below which permits would be not required—for its greenhouse gas permitting program in June 2016 (154 DEN A-1, 8/11/15).
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EPA Proposes Methane Limits for Existing Landfills
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Aug. 14 to significantly reduce the threshold that would require existing municipal solid waste landfills to capture emissions of landfill gas.
The proposal (RIN 2060-AS23) would lower the landfill gas control threshold from 50 metric tons of non-methane organic compounds per year currently to 34 metric tons for active landfills, the same threshold it proposed for new landfills in a separate supplemental proposed rule (RIN 2060-AM08) also released Aug. 14.
Setting a single emissions threshold for both new and existing landfills makes sense, because there is little difference in their operations, Anne Germain, director of waste and recycling technology at the National Waste & Recycling Association, told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 14.
Though setting a single threshold is desirable, waste management groups including the National Waste & Recycling Association had reservations about the availability of controls to achieve the 40 tons per year threshold the EPA had originally proposed for new facilities in 2014.
“The thresholds are a little lower than we had hoped for or requested,” Germain said.
Environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth and Center for Biological Diversity had pressed the EPA to set more stringent methane standards for landfills.
Landfill gas contains methane, a potent but short-lived greenhouse gas. The Obama administration has made methane reductions a key component of its greenhouse gas reduction strategy with performance standards for methane emissions from oil and natural gas wells expected this month as well.
The EPA said that 574 of the 989 open and closed landfills are currently required to collect and control their emissions. Under the agency's proposal, an additional 106 open landfills would be required to capture their emissions while another 105 would be required to report but not collect their emissions. Closed landfills that exceed the current 50 metric ton annual emissions threshold would be required to capture landfill gas well. Existing landfills would be required to begin operating the gas controls 30 months after triggering the emissions threshold.
The EPA projects its proposal would reduce methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills by 436,000 metric tons per year beginning in 2025.
Alternate Compliance Option Proposed
The EPA proposed an alternate, site-specific compliance method for landfills. Rather than installing landfill gas control systems, landfills could demonstrate compliance using surface emissions monitoring. If facilities can show their emissions are below 500 parts per million for four consecutive quarters they would be exempted from the control requirements.
New Landfill Threshold Revised
The EPA also issued a supplemental proposed rule Aug. 14 covering new landfills that would also set the emissions threshold for installing landfill gas controls at 34 tons per year.
The agency proposed new source performance standards for new landfills in 2014 with an annual threshold of 40 metric tons per year (127 DEN A-1, 7/2/14).
The EPA said it has decided to set a more stringent threshold for new landfills based on additional data that indicated further methane reductions could be achieved at a reasonable cost.
The agency estimates that under a 34 metric ton threshold that 127 new or modified landfills would have to install control systems by 2025, based on projected emissions.
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EPA Floats Tough New Methane Limits For Landfills, Sidestepping Industry
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Despite last-minute lobbying from industry groups, EPA is proposing tough new standards for methane emissions from new and existing municipal landfills, regulations that the agency estimates would cause more than 200 existing and modified facilities to install new equipment to control the potent greenhouse gas (GHG) by 2025.
The Aug. 14 proposals would further lower an earlier proposed threshold at which modified landfills would have to begin capturing emissions, likely exacerbating waste industry concerns that the rules would cause many older landfills to become subject to the regulations.
Overall, the agency says the proposed rules would curb methane emissions by 487,000 metric tons annually, starting in 2025, which is equivalent to 12.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) because methane is a more potent GHG over the short term.
The bulk of the emission reductions would come from the proposed emission guidelines (EG) for existing landfills, EPA says.
Both the proposed EG and a newly proposed supplement to a 2014 proposed new source performance standards (NSPS) would set an emissions threshold of 34 metric tons of methane, a level at which landfills would be required to begin capturing emissions of landfill gas, which contains methane and other pollutants.
The figure is significantly lower than a 40-ton threshold EPA floated in its 2014 proposed NSPS.
EPA says in a fact sheet that it is proposing the lower figure “in response to public comments and based on additional data and analysis that show that additional, cost-effective methane reductions are available, and that more landfill modifications are projected to occur than the agency estimated in 2014.”
The current NSPS for landfills requires collection after reaching a 50-ton threshold.
During a last-minute lobbying meeting with White House officials, industry groups had criticized the 40-ton threshold as too strict, warning it would not provide sufficient flexibility for older landfills that would become subject to new source standards due to modifications. Few new landfills are being constructed, industry says, so modifications are more likely to trigger the NSPS.
The 40-ton threshold would “significantly affect existing, particularly older and closed landfills that struggle to operate” gas collection and control systems at the current threshold, a factor that EPA did not consider in its cost-benefit analysis, the groups argued.
But instead of weakening the limit as industry called for, EPA proposes to strengthen it in both the NSPS and the standards for existing landfills.
Industry had also criticized EPA's earlier proposal to eliminate a provision allowing exemption for start up, shutdown and malfunction events, a move that groups said would be “asking the impossible -- that a gas collection system will never go offline or need repair.”
EPA appears to have rejected the request to include that exemption, as well.
Proposing new limits for new and existing landfills at the same time signals that EPA is on track to simultaneously finalize the two rules, though it is almost certain to miss an Aug. 20 settlement deadline to finalize the NSPS.
That deadline, which was extended three times, was set in the suit, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) v. Gina McCarthy in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In a statement, EDF praised the “long-overdue” proposals, but added that the final rules should be further strengthened to include requirements for deploying capture technology as soon as a landfill is built, “rigorous surface monitoring,” and adopting best management practices related to landfill cover.
Affected Sources
According to a separate fact sheet, the agency says the EG, which would update 1996 standards for existing landfills, would require an additional 106 open landfills to begin capturing emissions by 2025. Another 105 landfills would have to report their emissions but would not have to capture them.
EPA says 574 of the 989 open and closed landfills currently must control their emissions. The proposal retains a current requirement that a facility begin collecting emissions within 30 months of reaching the emission threshold.
The EG would reduce annual methane emissions by 436,000 metric tons in 2025, which is the equivalent of 10.9 million million metric tons of CO2.
The newly proposed NSPS would cover 140 new and modified landfills over time, including 127 that would have to begin controlling their emissions and 13 that would have to report emissions.
EPA says the supplemental proposal to the NSPS only changes the proposed emissions threshold.
The new proposal, EPA says, would reduce 54,000 metric tons of methane emissions annually in 2025, which is equivalent to 1.3 million metric tons of CO2. Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, they would each be subject to a 60-day public comment period
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Obama Seeks New Air Pollution Limits For Landfills
Aug 14, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration on Friday said it wants to restrict allowable methane emissions from landfills by about a third.
The mandate for new pollution-reduction systems for standard landfills would reduce methane emissions by 487,000 tons annually when they fully take effect in 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said.Friday’s action is the latest move by the Obama administration to cut methane, a greenhouse gas about 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming potential.
Obama set out last year to restrict methane through new rules or voluntary measures from the oil and gas sector, agriculture and other industries.
“Children, older adults, people with heart or lung disease and people living in poverty may be most at risk from the health impacts of climate change,” the EPA said in a statement. “In addition to methane, landfills also emit other pollutants, including the air toxics benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and vinyl chloride.”
The announcement includes separate proposals for new and modified landfills and for existing ones. The emissions-reduction technology would also capture other pollutants.
The rules would update regulations last written in 1996 for landfill pollution.
The methane reductions under the proposal are the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by 1.1 million homes, valued at $750 million a year — about 14 times the cost of compliance.
The Environmental Defense Fund applauded the proposal and said that it was long overdue.
“Common-sense, highly-cost effective opportunities are available to reduce landfill methane emissions and protect public health,” Peter Zalzal, a senior attorney with the group, said in a statement. “Landfills are a major source of potent methane emissions and proven best practices can readily be deployed to reduce these harmful emissions.”
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Greater Carbon Reductions Linked to Energy Efficiency
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
The nation's largest electric power grid, serving more than 61 million customers from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, is revising its demand forecasts after recognizing that use of more energy-efficient lighting and appliances has led to lower demand than projected.
Noting the reduced demand, utility and power grid managers in the U.S. say they are learning that making lighting and appliances more efficient has so far been more effective in curbing carbon emissions than moving to renewable energy sources.
Swapping all incandescent light bulbs with lamps containing light emitting diodes (LEDs) would save enough electricity to power 20 million American homes, according to the Energy Department. Americans’ energy-conservation efforts, from switching bulbs to upgrading washing machines and air conditioners, have done more to reduce carbon emissions than the increased use of solar, wind and natural gas, according to consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd.
The more energy-efficient lighting and appliances can help meet half of the emissions cuts sought under President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy said.
“It's a total bulb revolution,” Prajit Ghosh, director of power and renewables research at Wood Mackenzie in Houston, said Aug. 10. “The decline in load growth from both macroeconomic factors and energy-efficiency gains is by far the biggest reason carbon emissions fell. At least for the last five years, a majority of these savings came from lighting.”
Impact on PJM Interconnection
PJM Interconnection LLC, which manages the largest U.S. grid, will for the first time include the effect of more-efficient light bulbs and appliances in its long-term demand outlook, Tom Falin, manager of resource adequacy planning, said at the grid operator's headquarters in Valley Forge, Pa.
The forecast for peak demand, a reflection of supplies needed on the hottest day of the year, will decline in 2016 from this year's level using a new model, he said. Forecasts will be cut by about 4 percent each year through 2031 in the 15-year outlook.
“Within the last three or four years, our performance model has not been performing as well as it had been,” Falin said. Electricity demand no longer has the same responsiveness to economic growth that it had, he said.
PJM isn't alone in recognizing the new efficiency. The grid operator for Texas revised demand forecasts as growth lagged behind the economic rebound, easing concern about blackouts in the country's biggest energy-consuming state.
Better Light Bulb
A switch from the incandescent lamps, which were introduced in the 19th century, was prompted by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which required lighting to become 25 percent to 30 percent more efficient by 2014 from 2008 levels.
Lighting accounts for about 5 percent of a home's energy budget, and switching to more efficient bulbs is one of the fastest ways to cut those costs, according to the Energy Department. LEDs use 75 percent to 80 percent less energy than incandescents and last 25 times longer.
LEDs will account for 83 percent of the lighting market share by 2020 and almost all of it 10 years later, the Energy Department said. The cost of the bulbs has fallen by more than 85 percent in six years, according to ACEEE, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that promotes energy conservation. Bulbs are now available for less than $5.
Use of the new bulbs is catching on. In February, the Super Bowl became the first National Football League championship played under LEDs. Ikea Group, the worldwide furniture retailer, said Aug. 10 it will carry only LEDs starting next month and that they would be sold at the lowest price on the market.
Utilities Report Lower Emissions
Duke Energy Corp. and American Electric Power Co. say energy efficiency helped them reduce carbon emissions. Exelon Corp. said higher demand from the improving economy in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington is being partially offset as consumers become more efficient. DTE Energy Inc. sees flat growth during the next few years compared with earlier projections of a 0.5 percent increase.
U.S. power demand reached a record 10.66 billion kilowatt-hours a day in 2007, a level not matched eight years later, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Carbon dioxide emissions from electricity producers declined by 15 percent to 2.17 billion metric tons in 2013 from 2005, the agency said.
Lower demand forecasts mean providers need less power-generating capacity and that can result in lower costs for consumers.
“Power demand growth that was expected to be reached in 2017 won't be achieved before 2030,’’ said Ghosh of Wood Mackenzie.
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EPA Seeks To Consolidate Suits Over SSM 'SIP Call' Policy In D.C. Circuit
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA is seeking to consolidate lawsuits over its rule requiring states to scrap Clean Air Act exemptions for facility startup, shutdown and malfunction (SSM) emissions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, faulting a bid by Texas and industry in that state to hear litigation over the policy in the 5th Circuit.
Texas-based opponents of the rule to force removal of the SSM provisions from state implementation plans (SIPs), which are blueprints for states' air law compliance, argue that the regulation is only locally applicable because their suits only target the part of the rule affecting Texas and therefore should be heard in the 5th Circuit.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on EPA's behalf counters that the regulation has nationwide scope or effect, which is typically the standard that must be met for the D.C. Circuit to hear challenges to a national rule.
The eventual decision on which appellate court hears the challenges to the “SIP Call” rulemaking could have major ramifications for the outcome of the suit. If the D.C. Circuit hears the case then its ruling on either legal standing to sue over the rule or the merits of the challenges will set a precedent affecting every state.
However, if the 5th Circuit decides it can hear Texas' challenges to the provisions of the rule affecting that state, it could potentially push other states to also ask that the circuit court to which they belong hear their suits.
That might result in a patchwork of rulings either upholding or rejecting EPA's rule on a state-by-state basis -- even as the agency works to craft a rule that would revise its years-old “regional consistency” policy mandating uniform application of Clean Air Act requirements across all its regions. That rulemaking would preclude adverse appellate court rulings that address local or regionally applicable regulations from having to apply nationally.
EPA's rule sets deadlines for the 36 affected states to remove language from their agency-approved SIPs allowing exemptions from emissions limits for spikes in air pollution associated with facility SSM. EPA says the rule is necessary after a D.C. Circuit ruling scrapping the SSM exemption as an unlawful waiving of air law requirements, and a later ruling that scrapped an alternative “affirmative defense” EPA tried to offer in lieu of SSM exemptions.
States suing EPA over the rule argue that their federally approved SIPs remain legally valid, while industry groups claim that SSM pollution spikes are unavoidable and the waivers are vital.
A coalition of 17 states filed suit in the D.C. Circuit, as did a host of industry challengers including the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the SSM Litigation Group of trade organizations, individual power companies, and the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project manufacturing coalition.
But litigation over EPA's rulemaking has also been filed in the 5th Circuit by power companies Luminant, Oak Grove Management Company, Big Brown Power Company, Sandow Power Company, the state of Texas, the BCCA Appeals Group industry coalition and the Texas Oil and Gas Association. It was unclear at press time whether states or industry groups had filed other lawsuits over the SSM rule in other circuit courts.
'Nationwide Scope'
DOJ in an Aug. 10 filing with the 5th Circuit insists the SIP Call is a rule with “nationwide scope or effect” and hence belongs in the D.C. Circuit which typically hears challenges to major EPA rules.
These petitioners are wrong to suggest that they can challenge the SIP Call only as it applies to Texas, and hence claim the rule has “local” effect and therefore should be litigated in the 5th Circuit, DOJ says.
“Agency actions that have nationwide scope and effect are routed to the D.C. Circuit in part to minimize the potentially inconsistent results that could arise from review of the same legal and policy basis for decisions in multiple courts, and this reasoning applies to the SSM Action,” according to the filing.
“The fact that EPA’s national action may apply to individual states, or individual petitioners within those states, differently based upon state specific circumstances is not determinative. An entity’s local or parochial interests in challenging national actions do not alter the fundamentally national scope of the action,” DOJ says.
The government asks that the 5th Circuit SSM rule litigation be dismissed, or in the alternative, transferred to the D.C. Circuit, where the slew of other litigants have already filed suit.
An industry legal source warns, however, that it is the court's prerogative to decide whether it will hear the case. Utility Luminant says in legal filings that the same SSM provisions at issue in Texas's EPA-approved SIP were upheld by the court in its 2012 opinion in Luminant v. EPA, subsequently reissued by the court in largely unchanged form in 2013. Luminant says EPA's rule therefore directly contravenes the court's holding.
The legal source says it is possible for the 5th Circuit to decide it will hear the case but only with respect to the SIP Call's effect on Texas, creating potential parallel litigation to the D.C. Circuit action.
Consolidation Request
While EPA tries to end the pending 5th Circuit suits over the SSM rule, it is also asking the D.C. Circuit to consolidate the lawsuits filed in that court over the policy.
In an Aug. 13 motion filed with the D.C. Circuit, EPA asks the court to consolidate numerous challenges brought in that court under Southeastern Legal Foundation Inc. and Walter Inc. v. EPA, a suit filed by free-market group Southeastern Legal Foundation claiming that the rule infringes states' rights under the Clean Air Act's system of co-operative federalism.
In an Aug. 13 statement of issues, the group builds on earlier comments submitted on EPA's proposed version of the rule, criticizing the rule on constitutional and states' rights grounds. The group again charges that EPA erroneously interprets air law emissions limits as applicable “continuously.”
New criticisms raised by the group include that EPA found SIPs “substantially inadequate,” but failed to provide any demonstration that the SIPs have resulted in NAAQS non-attainment or “even materially eroded air quality”; that “EPA holds SIP emission limitations to a higher standard than it holds emission limitations in its own” air rules; that the agency allowed insufficient opportunity for public comment on its proposal; EPA failed to assess the economic burden of the SIP Call; and EPA violated the Constitution because the SIP Call “would make unavoidable conduct punishable.”
Other groups that have filed suit in the D.C. Circuit include: Environmental Committee of the Florida Electric Power Coordinating Group; Southern Company Services; Ameren Missouri and Georgia Coalition for Sound Environmental Policy; Georgia Industry Environmental Coalition; and the state of Tennessee. EPA asks that briefing schedules for the various cases already filed be reset, with a new deadline of Sept. 15 for parties to file motions on how to proceed.
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California Raises Prospects for Energy Storage
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The potential for grid-scale energy storage may expand soon, and if it does, California regulations most likely will be the driving force, in the view of one energy consultant.
Over the next three years or so, electrical power companies and equipment suppliers should learn whether lithium ion batteries will be the key to a sudden upsurge in energy storage, consultant Jason Makansi told an audience Aug. 13 at the offices of the U.S. Energy Association.
The big-three investor-owned utilities in California issued their requests for offers of storage capacity in late 2014 and are required to file their results with the California Public Utilities Commission by Dec. 1, 2015.
That obligation, stemming originally from 2010 state law AB 2514, puts Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric at the cutting edge for potential new grid-scale storage technologies, whether they want to be there or not.
“So is this a game changer?” Makansi said of the ferment for energy storage, including but not limited to the California regulatory experiment. “It absolutely is.”
Various Storage Options Seen
It remains to be seen whether the three utilities will get offers including banks of lithium ion batteries, but Makansi, president of Pearl Street Inc. consultancy, made it clear he considered lithium ion batteries the hot prospect.
The energy storage regulations in California obligate the three investor-owned utilities to try to obtain, overall, 1,325 megawatts of storage capacity by 2020 with installation no later than the end of 2024.
Other types of batteries also are possibilities, as are flywheels, compressed air storage and pumped storage.
Only pumped storage is a proven and well-established energy storage system at grid scale—the pumping of water uphill into a reservoir at night when hourly electricity rates and demand are lower, then the release of the water down through turbines during peak daytime demand and peak rates.
Lithium ion batteries are being evaluated in installations of more than 100 megawatts, Makansi said.
Utilities Advise Against Mandates
California asked other utilities about the advisability of regulatory mandates for storage, and about 30 utilities, mostly municipal utilities, evaluated storage technologies and told state officials that such systems should not be mandated, Makansi said.
Part of the problem is that the economic models for evaluating storage systems do not exist, Makansi said.
“They're all working on some much better cost modeling for storage,” he said of utilities. “That's what we need.”
Also missing from the picture for energy storage are codes and standards, Makansi said. Large-scale batteries are potential sources of fire or explosions, making it unlikely that they would be allowed under typical local ordinances or utility rules, he said.
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EPA Wins Bid For Stay Of Court's Ruling On Generator Air Rule Exemption
Aug 14, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
A federal appeals court has granted EPA's request to delay until next year enforcement of its decision eliminating the agency's 100-hour exemption from emissions standards for “emergency” generators that participate in electricity demand-response programs, though the judges rejected industry's request for an indefinite stay.
In an Aug. 14 per curiam order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit grants without comment EPA's request to maintain the exemption until May, accepting the Department of Justice's (DOJ) arguments on the agency's behalf that terminating the program sooner would pose a threat to grid reliability.
The court's newest order in Delaware Department of Natural Resources (DNREC), et al. v. EPA, et al., allows the agency to continue its policy of exempting emergency generators from having to comply with its reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE) air rule for up to 100 hours despite the court's unanimous May 1 holding that the policy was “arbitrary and capricious” on at least three separate grounds.
That ruling said the 100-hour exemption from emissions control requirements for RICE was improper because the agency in developing it had failed to respond to utilities' concerns; because it based the rule on “faulty evidence”; and because it failed to consider alternate plans suggested in comments on the proposed rule.
However, it otherwise left in place EPA's 2013 rules setting air toxics limits and new source performance standards (NSPS) for other pollutants from RICE.
DOJ said in its filings seeking a stay of the mandate enforcing the ruling that immediately vacating the demand-response exemption “could threaten electric grid reliability” by forcing RICE out of existing commitments for demand-response programs without giving utilities enough time to find replacements.
A May 2016 compliance deadline would give operators time to install controls rather than drop out of the programs, DOJ said. It added that EPA could use a stay to “evaluate the propriety of a rulemaking to reinstate an allowance for [demand-response] operation, and, if warranted, to promulgate such a rule through the notice-and-comment process.”
However, the court rejected a separate request by EPA's industry allies in the case seeking an indefinite stay that would have lasted until EPA “considers what action to take on remand.”
Those industry groups claimed legal uncertainty would result from the decision unless EPA was given time to develop and finalize a new demand-response rule, regardless of how long that process might take.
The three-judge panel also rejected arguments by some petitioners in the suit, including industry groups and the environmentalist Conservation Law Foundation, who claimed there was no need for a stay of any length.
In their briefs, the petitioners claimed RICE operators “have already had several months to plan and begin to act” based on the ruling, and thus had no need for a longer stay. They also argued that the court should discount EPA's warnings on grid reliability because they were not backed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees the electric grid. “This Court has already admonished EPA for 'simultaneously rely[ing] on reliability concerns,' without the expertise of FERC -- 'the federal entity responsible for the reliability of the electric grid.' It should ignore EPA’s current unsubstantiated claims -- once again not supported by FERC -- that reliability may suffer if the mandate issues before May 1, 2016,” the groups argued in a joint July 28 brief.
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Congress to Look at Coal Funding Ban, Permitting in Fall
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate efforts to streamline environmental permitting for major energy and other projects and to overturn President Barack Obama's ban on funding overseas coal-fired power plants stalled just before Congress left for its August recess, but they are likely to get another look from the House and Senate this fall.
Both the permitting and coal-fired power plant funding provisions now rest in the Senate's six-year highway funding bill (H.R. 22), which the Senate approved July 30 but then quickly shelved so that it could move a short-term funding bill extension (H.R. 3236) to keep the highway trust fund running through Oct. 29.
But House-Senate negotiations are to resume this fall on a long-term highway bill, which means supporters of both the streamlined permitting proposal and reversal of Obama's ban on funding for overseas coal-fired power plants are better positioned going into those negotiations (145 DEN A-19, 7/29/15).
Proponents of streamlining federal environmental permitting, led by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), are claiming at least a partial victory. Portman, for example, has for years come up empty-handed in his efforts to revamp the National Environmental Policy Act to address complaints of projects being mired in permit reviews, sometimes from multiple agencies. The 1970 law determines how permitting and environmental reviews are conducted for projects requiring environmental assessments.
Permitting Title Has ‘Good Shot.’
But the latest Portman-McCaskill bill, the Federal Permitting Improvement Act (S. 280), easily passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee May 6 with unanimous Democratic support. That prompted Portman to eye several routes to a floor vote, including attaching the proposal to other legislation headed to the floor (88 DEN A-9, 5/7/15).
A Portman spokeswoman said that while the Ohio Republican is optimistic, the fate of the permitting section, now resting in a expedited permitting title in the Senate highway bill, will depend on it surviving House and Senate negotiations over competing long-term highway bills in the months ahead.
“We will try to keep it in the transportation package and think it has a good shot because of its bipartisan support,” she told Bloomberg BNA of the permitting title. It is aimed at reducing delays that have stalled major infrastructure and energy projects and would give a new presidential appointee the authority to coordinate federal permitting now overseen by multiple agencies and departments, including the Environmental Protection Agency.
It also would limit the amount of time opponents to a project have to challenge a permit action in court.
Overturning Funding Ban More Difficult?
Efforts to reverse Obama's ban on U.S. funding of overseas coal-fired power plants face a more significant challenge, because the reversal—a provision barring the U.S. Ex-Import Bank from “discriminating” against projects that rely on fossil fuels—was contained in a 23-page amendment largely concerned with reviving the bank. The Senate adopted the amendment, offered by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), on July 27, to its long-term highway funding bill by a vote of 64-29, a clear demonstration of the Senate's support for keeping the credit export agency alive.
The coal-related language in Kirk's amendment would nullify Obama administration guidance barring the bank from providing funding for new coal-fired power plants in developing nations unless they capture and store their carbon dioxide. Obama first pledged to withhold U.S. funding of any fossil-fuel power plants in 2013 under his climate action plan, a basket of regulatory and other policies targeting greenhouse gas emissions using executive branch authority.
That international climate policy has since been implemented through policy guidance issued by the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Treasury Department (240 DEN A-3, 12/13/13).
But complicating the outlook for the coal plant funding language is deep animosity to the bank's revival in the House. Many Republicans there have vowed to kill the bank, which they view as a form of corporate welfare benefiting some U.S. corporations over others.
There are several options House Republicans could take, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The House could reject the Senate language to revive the Export-Import Bank and still support language to overturn Obama's ban on funding for overseas coal-fired power plants. The House also could seek to overturn's Obama's climate policy in separate legislation or amendments apart from negotiations over long-term highway funding, he told reporters July 27 .
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Another View: Regional Market Should Support Clean Energy, Not Coal
Aug 15, 2015 | The Sacramento Bee
By Bill Corcoran
As the West’s clean energy economy continues to expand, it is timely to look at more efficient ways to manage our electricity grid. However we need to be sure that any new system – including a regional energy market – helps build up the region’s clean energy success and pushes coal into early retirement.
Retiring the use of coal helps protect public health from air pollution and addresses the main driver of carbon pollution in the country.
Recently, a writer argued that a regional energy market in the West could remove inefficiencies and further the growth of our region’s abundant clean resources (“Regional energy market could help meet climate goals”; Viewpoints, Aug. 2). That’s true. But will such a market allow coal plants to persist in the region, reintroduce coal power into California markets and open the door to polluting natural gas generation?
Elsewhere in the country, the details of how regional markets are designed and managed typically aren’t transparent to the public. Such markets are hard for all but a handful of people to understand and engage.
A western market needs to be different. It should be guided by key principles and values that reflect California’s responsible climate policies. It needs to be designed to ensure that the power from dirty coal plants is not just shuffled around the region.
The agency that would be responsible for participating in a regional market, the California Independent System Operator, needs clear direction from the Legislature to make sure the new market’s design is right.
Several years ago, legislation helped cut the cord between California customers and dirty coal. This has led to coal plant retirements in Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and has helped spur a huge growth in clean energy. Continuing our progress to meet the climate challenge requires continuing the prompt retirement of coal plants. Replacing that coal power with clean, renewable energy – and not polluting energy like natural gas – is essential to address climate change.
We vigorously support the governor’s call to expand the state’s clean energy goals to 50 percent by 2030. Let’s
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Extreme Weather Puts World Food Production at Risk
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Morales
The risk of global food production shocks and price spikes is rising due to increasingly intense storms and more frequent flood and drought events associated with warmer temperatures, U.S. and British researchers said Aug. 14.
By 2040, the danger of a 1-in-100-year food production crisis is likely to rise to a 1-in-30-year probability, the U.K.-U.S. Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience said in a report for the British government. Concentration of production of maize, soybean, rice and wheat in a few major producers may amplify the shocks, showing the need to boost resilience of the world's food system, they said.
“It is likely that the effects of climate change will be felt most strongly through the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves and floods and their impact on the production and distribution of food—something we almost take for granted,” said Tim Benton, a professor of ecology at the University of Leeds in northern England.
United Nations scientists warned last year that the world is ill-prepared for the effects of climate change and that global wheat and maize production are already adversely affected by warming temperatures (166 DEN A-14, 8/27/14). Wheat yields have declined by about 2 percent per decade and maize by 1 percent, with soy and rice largely unchanged, they said.
With demand for food projected to increase by 60 percent from now to 2050, there is a growing need to reverse the yield declines while increasing production and reducing the environmental impacts of crop production, the researchers said. They recommended countries work to make markets more transparent, build up strategic crop storages and understand better the risks they face.
“Action is urgently needed to understand risks better, improve the resilience of the global food system to weather-related shocks and to mitigate their impact on people,” Benton said.
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