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Industry and Association News

1. GOP Lawmaker Floats Trading TPP for Oil Exports

   Oct 7, 2015 | PoliticoPro (Afternoon Energy)

   By Jennifer Shutt
   
   
   Rep. Kevin Cramer, a House Energy and Commerce Committee member, today floated a new tactic to lift the decades-old ban on crude oil exports.
2. Hillary Clinton Faces a Tough Choice on Trade

   Oct 7, 2015 | The Washington Post

   By Ruth Marcus
   
   
   Hillary Clinton is facing one of the most fateful decisions of the presidential primary season: what to say about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and when to say it.
3. CPI Unveils Survey Data of Polyurethanes Industry at 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference

   Oct 7, 2015 | Coatings World

   The Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (CPI) announced the topline results of a two-year survey on the polyurethanes industry in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
4. Coal Mining’s Promise Falls Through for Remote Australian Town

   Nov 5, 2015 | The New York Times

   By Michelle Innis
   
   
   A flock of pink and gray galahs takes flight over the sports field, but Mark Gallagher does not see them.

Chemical Management News

5. (ACC Mentioned) Senate TSCA Bill Supporters Rally for Early Passage

   Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

   Senators, and others supporters of the Udall-Vitter bill, rallied outside the Capitol building on Tuesday to press for the passage of the measure that seeks to update the Toxic Substances Control Act.
6. (ACC Mentioned) EPA Rejects Novel Industry Bid To Remove Chemical From TRI Reporting

   Oct 7, 2015 | InsideEPA

   By Maria Hegstad
   
   
   EPA is rejecting the chemical industry's novel bid to remove the common cleaning agent ethylene glycol butyl ether (EGBE) from the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting program, saying the chemical continues to have the potential to cause “serious or irreversible health effects” and therefore does not meet the criteria for TRI removal.
7. Dems Urge LWCF Vote Separate from Chemicals Bill

   Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

   By Sam Pearson
   
   
   Top Democrats today urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to schedule floor time for a bipartisan bill to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
8. Advocates, Researchers Question Scope Of EPA Authority Over SynBio

   Oct 7, 2015 | InsideEPA

   By Maria Hegstad
   
   
   Environmentalists and researchers are questioning the breadth of authority that EPA has over chemicals and other products created using bioengineering, or synthetic biology (synbio), arguing that the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) creates loopholes that limit EPA's overview to the product created, which they worry leaves the process unregulated.
9. US EPA Denies Petition for Mercury Rulemaking

   Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

   The US EPA has denied a petition, urging the agency to promulgate a rule that requires those who manufacture or import mercury, mercury compounds or mercury added products, to keep records of, and submit information to the agency about such activity.
10. Industry Says California Lacks Evidence to List Furfuryl Alcohol

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    Comments submitted by industry groups to California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha), on its proposal to list furfuryl alcohol under Proposition 65, say that the agency lacks sufficient evidence to determine the substance's carcinogenicity (CW 23 July 2015).
11. California Seeks to 'Stem Abuse' of Prop 65 Litigation

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    California's Office of the Attorney General has initiated a proposed rulemaking to amend regulations, governing private lawsuits brought against Proposition 65 violators.
12. California Agency Releases Agenda for Lead Exposure Hearing

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has released a tentative agenda for its upcoming 14 October hearing, to consider revising the maximum allowable dose exposure level (MADL) for lead (CW 1 September 2015).

Chemical Security News

13. Companies Discharged Harmful Chemicals in Ala. River -- Lawsuit

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    An Alabama water authority and three local residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against three companies they accuse of polluting the Tennessee River.

Energy and Environment News

14. (ACC Mentioned) EPA's Announcement to Strengthen Ozone Standard Met with Opposition (Updated)

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Week

    US EPA’s plans to strengthen the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone to 70 parts per billion (ppb), from 75 ppb, has met with industry opposition.
15. Why Can the E.P.A. Regulate Smog, But Not Greenhouse Gases?

    Oct 7, 2015 | The New York Times

    By Gregg Easterbrook
    
    
    LAST week the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled stringent new regulations on smog, and it’s crystal clear the agency has legal authority to impose these rules.
16. Utility Group Bows to the Inevitable, Gets Wish on Ozone Rule

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Amanda Reilly
    
    
    In late September, the trade group representing investor-owned utilities attended two meetings with top White House and U.S. EPA officials. Its request: Set a new ozone standard at 70 parts per billion.
17. E.P.A. Strategist Is Appointed to Fine-Tune Global Warming Agenda

    Oct 7, 2015 | The New York TImes

    By Coral Davenport
    
    
    As President Obama doubles down on climate change as a legacy issue, the White House has appointed Thomas Reynolds, a top communications strategist at the Environmental Protection Agency and a seasoned political operative, to a new position dedicated solely to messaging Mr. Obama’s global warming agenda.
18. House GOP Predicts 'Strong Vote' on Crude Exports Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Daniel Bush and Geof Koss
    
    
    Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged House lawmakers today to support a bill lifting the decades-old ban on crude oil exports that's set for a Friday floor vote.
19. Heritage Blasts ‘Union Buyoff’ in Oil Export Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Timothy Cama
    
    
    A major conservative lobbying group is blasting House Republicans for inserting into a crude oil export bill a provision to increase payments to certain unionized maritime shipping companies.
20. EPA Confident Climate Rule Will Withstand Court Attacks, Political Transition

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

    By Debra Kahn
    
    
    U.S. EPA's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will be able to withstand political and legal challenges, the head of the agency's Southwest operations said yesterday.
21. Barton: Clean Air Act Not Meant to Create Cap and Trade

    Oct 7, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

    By Alex Guillen
    
    
    Rep. Joe Barton today said Congress did not intend for EPA to use cap and trade to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants when it amended the Clean Air Act in 1990.
22. McCabe Defends Against Charges of Stealth Cap-and-Trade Rule

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Jean Chemnick
    
    
    A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee returned today to U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, a rule that became final two months ago and that the panel has already voted twice to kill.
23. California Governor to Sign Aggressive Climate-Change Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | AP (In The Wall Street Journal)

    California is doubling down in its fight against global warming.
24. The Pending Paris Accord: Not Your Father's Climate Agreement

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

    By Lisa Friedman
    
    
    By the time Ambassador Karl Hood took the microphone on a warm South African evening in December 2011, many hours into a marathon overtime U.N. climate change negotiation, he had just about enough.

Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time

Industry and Association News

Industry and Association News

1. GOP Lawmaker Floats Trading TPP for Oil Exports

   Oct 7, 2015 | PoliticoPro (Afternoon Energy)

   By Jennifer Shutt

   GOP LAWMAKER FLOATS TRADING TPP FOR OIL EXPORTS: Rep. Kevin Cramer, a House Energy and Commerce Committee member, today floated a new tactic to lift the decades-old ban on crude oil exports. Republicans should make their support for President Barack Obama's landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership deal contingent on the White House easing its resistance to legislation ending the ban, Cramer said, although he acknowledged he had not yet consulted with his colleagues about the idea. "We have to be prepared to use our TPP vote, or at least I am," to help secure the White House's support for a quick end to the export ban, Cramer told POLITICO today, adding that he is "not crazy about" backing Obama on the trade deal, "especially if he's unwilling to give us oil exports."

   — Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz earlier in the day threw cold water on the export push, saying "it's hard to argue there's been a lot of production being hemmed in by" the decades-old export ban. U.S. oil production would have to rise past 12 million barrels per day — from about 9.3 million bpd now — before "there might be an impact" in terms of shut-in production tied to the export ban, Moniz told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

   SENATE SETS ENERGY APPROPRIATIONS VOTE FOR THURSDAY: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set a vote for Thursday to start debate on a $35.4 billion spending bill for the Energy Department next year. But the measure is almost certain to fall victim to the partisan budget impasse that is holding up Senate consideration of individual fiscal year 2016 spending bills. McConnell moved to file cloture today on taking up the FY16 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, setting up the Thursday vote. But it's likely to fall short of the needed 60 votes as Democrats press for a new budget deal that would remove the caps for all spending bills.

   — A Republican aide needled Democrats ahead of their expected filibuster, pointing to the bipartisan 26-4 vote that sent the energy and water bill out of committee. Democrats should explain “why they’re obstructing such a bipartisan measure” and “why their opposition justifies what’s in effect a move toward a shutdown,” the GOP aide said.

   Welcome to Afternoon Energy. I’m your host, Jennifer Shutt. Send your energy news and tips to jshutt@politico.com, mdaily@politico.com and njuliano@politico.com, and keep up with us on Twitter at @JenniferShutt, @dailym1, @nickjuliano, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.

   KEYSTONE FOE SAYS TRANSCANADA MOVE DELAYS EMINENT DOMAIN FIGHT:TransCanada may have abandoned its Keystone XL eminent domain proceedings against Nebraska landowners, but opponents of the pipeline are making new legal moves of their own by invoking a state law that they say prevents the pipeline company from restarting the condemnation process for two years. Landowners' lawyer and former U.S. Senate candidate David Domina wrote today that even though TransCanada has changed its plans and vowed to seek approval from the Nebraska Public Service Commission, the company "would have to wait out 24 months from the dates of its dismissals in County Court last week and this week before it could restart eminent domain proceedings against the landowners."

   FERC’S MOELLER LEAVING AT THE END OF OCTOBER: Outgoing FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller announced today that he intends to leave the agency at the end of the month, even though he previously said he expected to stay until a successor was confirmed. "FERC is an amazing agency, and I have been honored and privileged to have had the opportunity to serve our nation as a FERC commissioner. After leaving the Commission I plan to pursue other opportunities in the energy field," Moeller said in a statement. Moeller announced in May that he wouldn't be up for a third term at the agency.

   FORMER DOD CHIEF SAYS EPA ‘NOT FAIR’ ON PEBBLE MINE: EPA's moves to block the planned Pebble Mine in Alaska were "not fair," according to a report out today from former Defense Secretary and Sen. William Cohen. Cohen was commissioned by the mine's developers, though he avoids taking a position on whether the gold and copper mine should move forward. Click here for the executive summary and here for the full 346-page report. Last year, EPA issued a watershed report that found large-scale mining in the region would most likely threaten the environment. The mine's backers argue that EPA essentially vetoed their project pre-emptively, and they have filed a lawsuit over the assessment.

   WINTER IS COMING: The oversupply of crude oil is expected to get a bit of a reprieve this winter, according to the Energy Information Administration’s short-term energy outlook. Production, which dropped by approximately 120,000 barrels a day from August to September, is expected to continue declining through next fall, at which point EIA expects it to begin rising. The outlook also predicts that solar- and wind-power generation will increase by a margin in the double digits during 2016. Houses heated by natural gas are expected to see bills reduced by about 10 percent, those using heating oil are expected to spend about 25 percent less than last year and electricity bills should decline by about 30 percent this winter, according to the winter fuels outlook.

   OPEC CHIEF: OIL NEEDS $10 TRILLION BY 2040: The global oil market will remain oversupplied in 2016, but a dramatic fall in investment in new production this year could mean future price spikes, OPEC’s secretary-general said today. The oil producers’ cartel expects upstream investment to fall by 22.4 percent year-on-year in 2015, Abdalla Salem El-Badri said at the Oil & Money conference. That’s in line with a separate International Energy Agency forecast of a 20 percent drop. The global oil industry will need about $10 trillion worth of investment between now and 2040 if it wants to keep up with demand and avoid price spikes, he added. Sara Stefanini reports.

   IRAN OFFERING NEW CONTRACTS TO LURE INVESTORS: Iran plans to revamp its oil and gas contracts by making them more generous to foreign companies in a bid to lure investment needed to revive its energy industry, the chairman of the petroleum ministry’s oil contracts restructuring committee said today. The government plans to unveil a replacement for its more rigid buyback contract, in addition to opening more than 50 new exploration areas, in the coming months. Sara Stefanini reports.

   BLOOMBERG, STEYER TALK CLIMATE CHANGE: Former New York City Mayor and U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change Michael Bloomberg sat downwith climate change activist and fellow billionaire Tom Steyer today to talk about the issues associated with Earth’s changing climate. During the 30-minute exchange, Bloomberg advocated for reducing the subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. “It is true we spend something like half a trillion dollars on subsidies for fossil fuel industry. And a lot less on renewables. That has got to change,” Bloomberg said.

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2. Hillary Clinton Faces a Tough Choice on Trade

   Oct 7, 2015 | The Washington Post

   By Ruth Marcus

   Hillary Clinton is facing one of the most fateful decisions of the presidential primary season: what to say about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and when to say it.

   Politically, Clinton’s decision is a true “Sophie’s Choice.” Whatever she does is guaranteed to generate criticism and anger key constituencies. The best-case scenario for Clinton would have been to have negotiations blow up and therefore avoid having to take a position.Ruth Marcus is a columnist for The Post, specializing in American politics and domestic policy.View ArchiveFacebookRSS

   Now that failure is not an option, there are four possible permutations. Clinton could embrace the agreement swiftly, or she could embrace it eventually. Conversely, she could come out against it quickly, or come around to opposing it eventually.

   The first option — quick support — is my preferred one, substantively and even politically. The final option — eventual opposition — is the one that is both the most likely and, I would argue, the worst for her politically.

   Indeed, timing is as important as the substance. Whichever way Clinton goes on the trade deal, this would be a good moment to channel her inner Macbeth: “when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” Waiting would simply reinforce the perception of Clinton as a poll-tested, finger-in-the-wind politician with few core convictions other than that she should be president.The TPP, explained in 75 secondsPlay Video1:18The U.S. and 11 other nations have come up with a trade deal after years of negotiations. But what's in it, who hates it, and what happens next? (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

   Here’s my less-than-optimistic case for quick support. It’s not only the right outcome — it’s the one that I think Clinton believes in her heart is the right outcome. Yes, she has issues with the base — or, more accurately, the base has issues with her. Labor would go berserk if she were to support the deal. At this point, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) leading in the New Hampshire polls — and already having announced against the TPP — Clinton is not exactly operating from the position of dominance she once envisioned.

   And yet, Clinton has already taken steps to shore up her bona fides with the base. For environmentalists unhappy about the TPP, she came out, disappointingly in my view, against the Keystone XL pipeline. For labor, she came out, even more disappointingly, against the “Cadillac tax” on overly generous health-care plans.

   At some point, has Clinton not earned enough leeway and goodwill to break with the base? Supporting the TPP would cost her, certainly — but it would also demonstrate her independence and authenticity. “This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open, free, transparent, fair trade,” Clinton declared in November 2012.

   Sure, Clinton can argue that what was agreed to fell short of the glittering standard she once endorsed. But there is something to be said for not looking like a craven, desperate flip-flopper. Isn’t there?

   But Clinton’s instinct, her book title notwithstanding, is to evade hard choices. She poked fun at this tendency on “Saturday Night Live,” referring to her dithering on the Keystone pipeline and same-sex marriage. “Nothing wrong with taking your time,” Clinton as Val the bartender, told Kate McKinnon as Hillary. “What’s important is getting it right.” You have to wonder whether the impending trade deal was far from her mind.

   And Clinton’s campaign performance to date on trade has been less than encouraging. She wouldn’t take a position on whether Congress should approve fast-track negotiation authority for the president because that was an obscure, inside-the-Beltway legislative issue, her campaign fatuously insisted.

   Until, that is, she came out against it — kinda sorta, first saying that Obama should use the moment to negotiate a better deal, then adding that she would “probably” vote against it. At least if it failed to include aid for displaced workers, which did eventually pass. In other words, clear as mud.

   So will Clinton, facing Sanders in the Democratic debate Oct. 13, take a decisive position for or against the deal? Or will she duck, citing the need to study the as-yet-unreleased text (it won’t be public for more than a month) before reaching a final conclusion?

   History suggests she will duck. And also that, after much hemming and hawing on Clinton’s part; after pundits like me pouncing on her evasiveness and inconsistency; after incessant pounding from interest groups and activists, Clinton will end up opposing the deal.

   That would be the worst of all worlds — which is, all too often, exactly where Clinton finds herself.

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3. CPI Unveils Survey Data of Polyurethanes Industry at 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference

   Oct 7, 2015 | Coatings World

   The Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (CPI) announced the topline results of a two-year survey on the polyurethanes industry in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The 2014 End-Use Market Survey on the Polyurethanes Industry in the United States, Canada and Mexico shows that polyurethane production rose in all major product segments between 2012 and 2014, with the most significant increase taking place for rigid foam applications.

   Combined polyurethane production for the United States, Canada and Mexico increased from about 6.92 million pounds in 2012 to 7.65 million pounds by the end of 2014, with a significant polyurethane demand increase in the automotive sector.

   “CPI’s survey is one of the most significant sources of information on the industry, and it clearly demonstrates the organization’s role as the premier knowledge center for the North American polyurethanes industry,” said Lee Salamone, senior director of CPI. “These results showcase the historic trends and attest to what an exciting time it is for the dedicated and innovative professionals in the polyurethanes industry.”

   Electronic copies of the full survey are now available for pre-order. Orders may also be placed in-person at the 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference.

   The 2014 End-Use Market Survey on the Polyurethanes Industry in the United States, Canada and Mexico, produced biennially by independent third-party IAL Consultants, provides a breakdown of raw material consumption for polyurethane markets in the United States, Canada and Mexico by type and by major end-use market for each country over a two-year period, as well as historic trends, market drivers and key issues.

   The survey contains more than 300 pages of information and analysis as well as 150 data tables, plus charts and graphs. In addition to the increase in production, the survey’s high-level results demonstrate that a greater demand for new vehicles increased the market for foam, coatings, adhesives and other products used in vehicles such as molded flexible foam.

   The full results of the survey will be revealed in at the Closing Session of the 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.

   In addition to the unveiling of the full survey results, the 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference will offer 17 technical sessions and more than 75 technical presentations. These include new sessions focused on the automotive industry and a Regulatory Roundtable with industry leaders. 
   

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4. Coal Mining’s Promise Falls Through for Remote Australian Town

   Nov 5, 2015 | The New York Times

   By Michelle Innis

   A flock of pink and gray galahs takes flight over the sports field, but Mark Gallagher does not see them.

   Gazing out over the field, soft and verdant in the late afternoon sun, he sees last year’s rugby league team, the Dunedoo Swans, battling the Coonamble Bears for the district title, the Castlereagh Cup. It was a perfect spring afternoon and the Swans, which Mr. Gallagher managed, had their best team in years, the pride of this agricultural hamlet about 200 miles northwest of Sydney.

   Farm gates for miles around were festooned then with “Go Dunedoo” signs. Cars packed the grounds and spectators clambered on the beds of two truck trailers that served as makeshift grandstands to cheer on their team. The Swans triumphed, 32 to 12, taking the cup for the first time in 47 years.

   This year, Dunedoo does not even have enough players to field a team.

   “It is the saddest thing,” said Mr. Gallagher, 46. “After winning the grand final, they couldn’t run onto the field this year to contest the cup. We couldn’t find a coach, and we didn’t have the young men. They left.”PhotoThe White Rose Café in Dunedoo may benefit from the construction of a rest area along a nearby highway. Some residents, however, doubt the area will help revive the town.CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

   Even before its population declined, Dunedoo was never all that much: a speck of a red-dirt town with one main street, a single grocery store, a newsstand and a pub. Yellow daisies sprout like weeds through its grass verges, and towering old gums and weathered pepper trees line the center of its country roads.

   Dunedoo (pronounced DUN-ee-doo) is an Aboriginal word meaning black swan. A town landmark is the epic, misshapen rubber fowl mounted on the roof of Dunedoo’s single motel, The Swan. Known for its ranches of prizewinning merino sheep and stud cattle, Dunedoo seemed to its residents like the kind of place that would never change.

   In 2008, the New South Wales government announced plans to build a coal mine here, promising jobs and cheap power. The coal business was booming because of demand from China. The government bought up 177 square miles of land for the mine project, boarding up 114 farms and homes.

   Since then, coal prices have plummeted to their lowest level in years and the government has not been able to find a mining company willing to open a mine here. In 2013, the government abandoned its plans to develop the mine and last December appointed Goldman Sachs to sell the land.

   By then, the district had lost 95 families, about 10 percent of its population. A sense of loss pervades the town, and residents feel blindsided by forces beyond their control.

   “It is dreadful,” said Trish Booth, who owns the 5-Star Supermarket. “That mine took families off farms. They used to come in here to buy their groceries and small luxuries. Not anymore. I’m fighting tooth and nail to keep my business going.”

   Barry Evans, 85, a retired sheep farmer who now lives in town, said plans for the mine had divided the community. Some people wanted the jobs and revenue the mine would bring, but others feared coal dust in the air and an ugly open wound in the earth across the district’s pristine pastures.

   “But then it doesn’t come, well, that’s a big loss to the businesspeople here,” Mr. Evans said. “It is a poor state of standing for the town.”

   Like many residents, he remembers better times, like the night of wild dancing in his wool shed in 2001, an event that drew three-quarters of the town and raised around $5,600 to build housing for older Australians. “I got to bed at 3 a.m.,” he said with smile.

   “I love Dunedoo and all the things I’ve done here,” he said. But now he worries about its future.

   As the government closed farms, the local school lost 25 children and has switched to a smaller school bus. A third of Dunedoo’s population is over 60 years old.

   “None of my children live here,” Mr. Evans said. “They could see bigger things they could apply their education to outside the town.”

   Lou Armstrong, 62, a third-generation sheep breeder, said years of uncertainty over the mine had hobbled businesses. Some of the land for the mine has been leased back to farmers, but the short-term leases, he said, discourage investment.

   “Those pastures won’t be improved,” he said. “That’s a loss to the district.”PhotoA shuttered hotel in Dunedoo. By the time the government of New South Wales abandoned plans to develop a coal mine in 2013, the district had lost about 10 percent of its population. CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

   Two of Mr. Armstrong’s three children returned from city boarding schools to work on the farm, but they worry about the community.

   “The whole mining affair didn’t help Dunedoo,” Mr. Armstrong said. “It is very hard keeping the kids here. They love the lifestyle, but if there’s no profit there’s no lifestyle.”

   The town has been officially compensated for its loss. The New South Wales state government provided a $5.6 million transition fund to help rejuvenate the economy.

   Most of the money has been spent. Construction is about to start on a complex of retirement apartments costing $3.1 million. A skate park for the town’s children was built for $99,000. A public bathroom was constructed near a rest stop for truckers, $78,000, and the gravel road there paved with asphalt, $353,000. And there are new lighted courts near the sports field for netball, a game similar to basketball.

   Residents worry that the new amenities will do little to solve Dunedoo’s enduring problems.

   “None of what’s been done here is long term,” said Damien O’Leary, a farmer and vice president of Dunedoo’s agricultural show and fair committee. “The transition fund hasn’t created industry or jobs.”

   Mr. Gallagher, the manager of the Swans, who owns a small construction firm, said that the town’s committees all had a voice in asking for money but that no one came up with a “big-bang industry that could help revive Dunedoo.”PhotoUntended farmland that was to be part of the site of a coal mine near Dunedoo.CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

   “There’s no work at a skate park, no jobs in retirement living apartments,” he said. “They should have built something big out here, an industry. Now, it is too late.”

   One business that may benefit from the improvements to the truck stop is the White Rose Café, across the street from it..

   “We get the truckers and the gray nomads,” said Karleeta Ryan, 58, who bought the cafe in 2013 with her husband Gerry, 61. Open seven days, early until late, the restaurant, one of two in Dunedoo, serves pulled-pork rolls, lamb pies, beer-battered fish and a bacon, pineapple and banana melt.

   “When I found out the mine had stalled, I asked the council to put a shower into the truck stop across the road,” Ms. Ryan said. “It sounds silly, but it would have encouraged the truck drivers to stop for a little longer.”

   As the cafe’s tables filled, she rinsed coffee cups and wiped her wet hands on her apron. “Sometimes when one door shuts, another one opens,” she said. “We are waiting.”

   Among the young people who have not returned to Dunedoo is Tom Yeo, 27, the former captain and star of the victorious Dunedoo Swans. He moved to Dubbo, a bigger town, where he could find work as a plumber.

   He still thinks about that warm September day and how that one game on that one afternoon brought the entire town together.

   “This was the culmination of everything for the town,” he said. “It was crazy, to see so many people there. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Everyone got caught up in the passion. It peaked for us with that grand final.”

   Still, he said, Dunedoo is blessed.

   “Small towns are dying,” he said. “But there are good families in town who work hard.”

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Chemical Management News

5. (ACC Mentioned) Senate TSCA Bill Supporters Rally for Early Passage

   Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

   Senators, and others supporters of the Udall-Vitter bill, rallied outside the Capitol building on Tuesday to press for the passage of the measure that seeks to update the Toxic Substances Control Act.

   They included Senators Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana), co-authors of the bill, Environment and Public Works Committee chairman James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), American Chemistry Council president Cal Dooley, Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, and Sara Amundson, executive director of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

   “This bill (S 697) is the product of years of work, collaboration and positive input from lawmakers across the country, who understand that we need a national solution to our broken chemical safety law — one that will ensure Americans in New Mexico or Ohio or Massachusetts have the same protections as those in all 50 states,” Mr Udall told reporters.

   “With about 1,000 new chemicals coming on the market each year, 39 years is too long to go without protections for children and families,” he said.

   Meanwhile, Mr Udall and Mr Inhofe are pushing back against a proposal by two Republican senators to attach an unrelated amendment to the Udall-Vitter bill. Senators Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire) want to attach an amendment for reauthorisation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

   Mr Udall said he is working with Mr Burr to get a vote on LWCF, but wants S 697 to be taken up on the Senate floor as it is.

   If you open up the TSCA bill to one amendment, “then you have opened it up to 100 amendments.” That would be detrimental to to the bill's passage.

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6. (ACC Mentioned) EPA Rejects Novel Industry Bid To Remove Chemical From TRI Reporting

   Oct 7, 2015 | InsideEPA

   By Maria Hegstad

   EPA is rejecting the chemical industry's novel bid to remove the common cleaning agent ethylene glycol butyl ether (EGBE) from the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting program, saying the chemical continues to have the potential to cause “serious or irreversible health effects” and therefore does not meet the criteria for TRI removal.

   The American Chemistry Council (ACC) in January petitioned the agency to use its Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) authority for the rare step of taking a substance off the TRI list. ACC at the time argued that new data on EGBE showed that its health risks were low enough to warrant its removal. The group said other EPA actions, including removing EGBE from a list of Clean Air Act air toxics, helped boost its request.

   But EPA in its denial of the petition, slated for publication in the Oct. 8 Federal Register, says it will keep EGBE on the TRI because its “review of the petition and available information resulted in the conclusion that EGBE meets the listing criterion of EPCRA section 313(d)(2)(B) due to its potential to cause serious or irreversible chronic health effects in humans, specifically, liver toxicity and concerns for hematological effects.”

   TRI requires reporting of almost 700 chemicals. These data are available to the public in a Web-accessible database, and the agency also publishes an annual report analyzing trends in the most recent data.

   ACC's Ethylene Glycol Ethers Panel said EGBE no longer meets the TRI listing criterion as “available scientific data indicate that EGBE poses low potential hazards to human health and the environment, making an assessment of exposure appropriate under EPA's policy for making TRI listing decisions under EPCRA.”

   EPA in its response says that it evaluated EGBE's “human health and ecological effects data,” with its primary resource being the agency's 2010 Integrated Risk Information System assessment of EGBE. “This denial is based on EPA’s conclusion that EGBE can reasonably be anticipated to cause serious or irreversible chronic health effects in humans, specifically, liver toxicity and concerns for hematological effects,” EPA says.

   The agency acknowledges arguments in ACC's petition that there is evidence that lab rodents in toxicity studies are more sensitive than humans to “the hematological effects associated with acute or short-term exposure to EGBE, [and] little is known of the long-term or repeated exposure responses in humans to EGBE. Thus, some concern remains over the potential for hematological effects following a lifetime of exposure to EGBE.”

   Petition Response

   The response adds, “Unlike the hematological effects of EGBE, there is no evidence of humans’ decreased sensitivity to the reported liver effects relative to rodents. Therefore, EPA has concluded that EGBE meets the EPCRA section 313(d)(2)(B) listing criteria based on the available human health toxicity data.”

   EPA says that because of the agency's toxicity finding, “EPA does not believe that an exposure assessment is appropriate for determining whether EGBE meets the criteria of EPCRA section 313(d)(2)(B).”

   ACC argued in its removal petition that because of what it considered EGBE's limited toxicity, "EPA's interpretation of EPCRA Section 313(d)(2) calls for the consideration of exposure levels in determining whether to delete EGBE from the TRI reporting list." EPA, however, rejects this argument in its response.

   A TRI exemption would have provided strong benefits to companies that use EGBE and related chemicals in their products, ACC sources said in 2005. If removed from the list of TRI chemicals, EGBE would no longer carry the stigma associated with TRI-listed chemicals and manufacturers and users would no longer have to bear the associated paperwork costs, the source said. Such a decision could open the door to delisting the 40 other glycol ethers included in the group on the TRI list because they are weak ozone precursors, an ACC source said in 2005.

   In February, the ACC spokeswoman said the industry group has no plans to develop other petitions, in part because it took more than a decade to prepare the petition for EGBE.

   “We are disappointed in the agency’s decision to deny our petition to remove EGBE from the TRI reporting program,” the spokeswoman said Oct. 7. “We have not had a chance to review the details to understand their rationale for this outcome.”

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7. Dems Urge LWCF Vote Separate from Chemicals Bill

   Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

   By Sam Pearson

   Top Democrats today urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to schedule floor time for a bipartisan bill to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

   Doing so would smooth passage of legislation to update the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, since the LWCF fight has emerged as a roadblock to the bipartisan chemicals bill.

   Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) have said they will object to floor consideration of S. 697, the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act," absent an agreement to allow a vote on an amendment reauthorizing the LWCF. That program expired Sept. 30 after Congress failed to extend it.

   If Burr and Ayotte dropped their objections, chemical bill co-sponsors Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.) have said, the TSCA legislation could pass by a wide majority in a floor vote as soon as tomorrow. But it's not clear whether allowing the LWCF vote would provoke other senators like Mike Lee (R-Utah) to object on the grounds that the bill doesn't reform the conservation program.

   The letter to McConnell, which was signed by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said LWCF supports more than $646 billion in economic activity and over 6 million jobs across the country.

   The lawmakers said Republicans have wasted valuable floor time this year on "show votes that were destined to fail," allowing the clock to expire on LWCF reauthorization.

   The program "has gathered strong bipartisan support" in the past, the lawmakers noted.

   "Not only do we need to reauthorize the program permanently, but Congress must strive to provide full funding for the backlog of conservation projects across the country," the lawmakers wrote.

   Burr earlier this week said he wasn't concerned that his push for a vote on reauthorizing LWCF would threaten the TSCA bill. But Collin O'Mara, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, which supports both proposals, said the issue needed to be dealt with separately (Greenwire, Oct. 6).

   House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said senators who share his view that the LWCF needs to be reformed had reached out to him yesterday.

   "They put some kind of hold on there," Bishop said. He added, "I'm not encouraging them to do that."

   Bishop said he was comfortable with a short-term extension for the LWCF, "but if you're going to extend it permanently, there has to be the kinds of changes within the system, so it actually uses the money wisely. Sometimes the administration's vision for how to use that money is really narrow."

   Bishop said he still plans to introduce a long-planned reform bill "within a month." That bill originally had been slated for the spring (E&E Daily, June 24).

   Reporter Daniel Bush contributed.

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8. Advocates, Researchers Question Scope Of EPA Authority Over SynBio

   Oct 7, 2015 | InsideEPA

   By Maria Hegstad

   Environmentalists and researchers are questioning the breadth of authority that EPA has over chemicals and other products created using bioengineering, or synthetic biology (synbio), arguing that the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) creates loopholes that limit EPA's overview to the product created, which they worry leaves the process unregulated.

   "There is a tension of the regulatory process versus the product," said Dana Perls, with Friends of the Earth. Bioengineering is unique because the process matters as much as the product, and if the process "doesn't fall within the purview of TSCA, what other agency covers [it]? It seems there are a lot of loopholes and gaps," she said at a public event where EPA staff sought input to update a 1997 biotechnology guidance document.

   Jeff Morris, deputy director for programs in EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), replied that "TSCA gives the agency broad authority to assess a new substance. EPA's mandate is to look at the product, but that's pretty broad."

   The guidance under discussion at the Sept. 30 event explains to industry how to submit biotechnologies to EPA for review prior to commercial research or commercialization. The agency intends to focus its discussion on synbio algae technology, as it has been dealing with a growing number of such submissions in recent years.

   Todd Kuiken, a senior program associate with the Wilson Center Synthetic Biology Project, questioned agency staffers about how they will consider parts of synbio organisms, which may occur in multiple organisms. "How does EPA consider synbio parts? Are the parts themselves under review or is it the combination of those parts into a working system?"

   "It's not the parts that we're evaluating, its the final behavior and characteristics of the microorganism," repliedGwendolyn McClung, a microbiologist in OPPT's risk assessment division. "As far as the parts go . . . the whole thing would have to be identical in order for it not to be new."

   Industrial Biotechnology

   Industrial biotechnology, or synbio, "is evolving so rapidly that no widely accepted definitions exist," according to the Wilson Center Synthetic Biology Project's website. The site describes synbio as recent advances in science that allow researchers to create new organisms by engineering new DNA sequences. These new organisms can do things like "produce biofuels or excrete the precursors of medical drugs. To many people, this is the essence of synthetic biology," the website says.

   A recent committee from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) heralded biotechnology as a solution to fossil fuels demand, since petrochemicals are the feedstocks for many chemicals. In their stead, NAS argued in a report released last spring, these feedstocks could be replaced or augmented by synbio processes, reducing the demand for fossil fuels.

   Engineered algae originally centered around creating biofuels, but has since broadened to other products, many of which are chemicals and so fall under EPA authority, Kuiken told Inside EPA in a recent interview. He added that many of the chemicals are not new chemicals, but rather old ones produced through new methods.

   Whether a chemical is new is a key issue to EPA's oversight through TSCA, wherein new and existing chemicals are treated very differently. Existing chemicals, those on the market when TSCA was enacted in 1976, are largely grandfathered under the existing law. EPA has limited ability to gather data on these chemicals from manufacturers or to curtail their use, leading to strident calls from environmentalists and public health advocates for reform of the law.

   By contrast, any new chemical must be submitted to EPA for review before a company commercializes it, and the agency can limit or halt its proposal -- submitted to EPA review as a Microbial Commercial Activity Notice (MCAN) or TSCA Environmental Release Application (TERA) -- if it has concerns that the product presents an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.

   Product's 'Newness'

   During EPA's Sept. 30 algae workshop, Mark Segal, a microbiologist in the risk assessment division of OPPT, explained that it is a product's "newness" that determines whether EPA reviews it as part of this process.

   Microorganisms considered new and subject to TSCA Section 5 new chemical reviews are those that are "intergeneric," according to slides Segal presented at the workshop. These are "formed by the deliberate combination of genetic material from organisms classified in different taxonomic genera"; "constructed with synthetic genes that are not identical to DNA that would be derived from the same genus as the recipient" and not on the TSCA inventory.

   "When we define something as new and subject to our oversight, it doesn't mean that it's hazardous," Segal added. "All new substances undergo review [unless there's an exemption.] It's a matter of defining newness."

   But Kuiken said after the event that there are concerns that new processes for creating existing chemicals already on the TSCA inventory may not be reviewed by EPA, because these scenarios wouldn't meet EPA's newness test. Kuiken also questioned EPA staff at the event about his recent report, which concluded that EPA has no synbio research budget.

   Morris replied that OPPT coordinates closely with the agency's research office, but did not say if a research program is planned.

   An EPA Office of Research and Development official, Andy Gillespie, asked OPPT staff what are the "top two or three specific R&D advances that would most help you deal with the growing number of MCANs and TERAs?"

   McClung was unable to provide an immediate response, but asked to continue the conversation. Morris urged the continued advancement of highthroughput toxicity testing.

   Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the International Center for Technology Assessment, argued that EPA needs new authorities to regulate synbio. "I think you need new authorities, I think the law needs to be changed to require product developers not the EPA to demonstrate that there are no unreasonable adverse effects before it can go to market."

   Hansen added that he worries that the White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews EPA rules, may limit how EPA can use Significant New Use Rules -- one of its tools under TSCA -- to address synbio, which Hansen said has happened with EPA's nanotech rules.

   Synbio Moratorium

   Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth's Perls called for EPA to set a moratorium on all commercial synbio projects until agency staff perform full lifecycle assessments on all synbio projects proposed.

   "EPA should require a full lifecycle and holistic assessment of all organisms engineered via synthetic biology before, during and after the lab before any synthetic organisms are released into the environment or enter our consumer products," Perls said. "We need strong national regulatory oversight . . . Without these in place, Friends of the Earth encourages a firm moratorium on the environmental release and commercial use of synthetic biology organisms . . ."

   Perls explained some of her concerns with the technology, such as the possibility of engineered organisms escaping from a lab and entering the environment. "The impacts of release could include genetic contamination of wild species, disruption of natural ecosystems, facilitation of harmful algal blooms, and release of chemical and biological pollutants."

   McClung outlined some of the many things that agency staff want to know about engineered algae as they consider whether to grant permission for a commercial experiment of commercialization of a product created with biotech. These include algae's potential for horizontal gene transfer into the natural environment, potential for human health effects such as toxin production or allergenic effects, effects on food webs in the environment and the potential for algal bloom formation.

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9. US EPA Denies Petition for Mercury Rulemaking

   Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

   The US EPA has denied a petition, urging the agency to promulgate a rule that requires those who manufacture or import mercury, mercury compounds or mercury added products, to keep records of, and submit information to the agency about such activity.

   The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association submitted the petition, under section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act. The petitioners contended that there is “no mechanism in place to obtain such data”, which is underscored by the data gaps in the Interstate Mercury Reduction Clearinghouse and the limitations of agency resources, including the EPA strategy to address mercury-containing products.

   While the EPA agrees with many aspects of the petition, it believes that “continued implementation” of this strategy is a “faster, more efficient pathway toward achieving our shared goals, and is confident that actions contemplated under [it] are both sufficient to carry out TSCA and preferable to the requested rulemaking,” the agency said.

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10. Industry Says California Lacks Evidence to List Furfuryl Alcohol

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    Comments submitted by industry groups to California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha), on its proposal to list furfuryl alcohol under Proposition 65, say that the agency lacks sufficient evidence to determine the substance's carcinogenicity (CW 23 July 2015).

    The proposal to list furfuryl alcohol – which is used as a foundry binder and can be formed in food processes during the dehydration of sugars, among other uses – relies on a 2014 US EPA report that found the substance to be a likely carcinogen.

    However, a comment letter from the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association says that the US EPA has yet to “formally identify” the substance as causing cancer, and that the federal agency's assessment of the substance fails to meet California's “sufficient evidence” requirement.

    Comments from Illovo Sugar, a parent company to several North American industrial chemical manufacturers, say that the National Toxicology Program study, relied upon by the EPA, has been available since 1999 and that, since that time, they are “unaware of any other authoritative body that has reviewed the results and has come to the same conclusions as the review group within the EPA”.

    The California Metals Coalition said they believe the agency should review the Echa furfuryl alcohol dossier to determine whether it should be listed under Prop 65.

    The group also said that should Oehha move forward with listing the substance, a safe harbour level should be simultaneously issued so that users can “determine whether the warnings can be omitted for specific uses” within manufacturing.

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11. California Seeks to 'Stem Abuse' of Prop 65 Litigation

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    California's Office of the Attorney General has initiated a proposed rulemaking to amend regulations, governing private lawsuits brought against Proposition 65 violators.

    The proposed changes aim to protect public health, while “helping to stem abuse of the law’s mechanism to allow for enforcement by private parties”, says the OAG.

    Under California's chemical hazard warning scheme, private citizens and organisations may bring forth lawsuits against alleged Prop 65 violators. Proponents say that such authority ensures that the regulations are enforced, but opponents say its leads to abuse, as the plaintiffs stand to gain financially from settlements (GBB June 2014).

    The Attorney General's office says it believes its proposed amendments “will restore public confidence that Proposition 65 is used for its proper health-protective purposes and not abused for private gain”.

    The proposal's statement of reason says that “many public health benefits accrue from private party Proposition 65 litigation”, but that the OAG has “significant ongoing concerns” that it aims to address through amendments. These include changes to:cap the value of “additional settlement payments” that can be paid in lieu of civil penalties. This would ensure that a larger portion of penalty funds go to the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha), as statute requires that 75% of civil penalties go directly to the agency;ensure that penalty payments, awarded to private enforcers, “are used for purposes that are clearly defined, relevant to the violations which prompted the settlement, and beneficial to Californians”; anddiscourage “trivial” lawsuits by raising the standards for demonstrating that a settlement has conferred “significant” public benefit, which is a prerequisite for a plaintiff's being awarded payment of attorney's fees under the state's civil procedures.

    If adopted, the amendments would represent the first significant change to the Attorney General's Prop 65 Regulations, since 2003.

    California governor, Jerry Brown, has expressed his administration's commitment to “ending frivolous 'shake-down' lawsuits” in recent years (CW 20 August 2014).

    In 2014, settlements were reached in 663 Prop 65 cases, with a total cost to defendants of more than $29m, according to an OAG report. This figure was comprised of:over $21m in attorney fee payments;nearly $5m in civil penalties; andapproximately $3.5m payments made in lieu of civil penalties.

    Comments on the proposed amendments will be accepted until 9 November.

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12. California Agency Releases Agenda for Lead Exposure Hearing

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch

    California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has released a tentative agenda for its upcoming 14 October hearing, to consider revising the maximum allowable dose exposure level (MADL) for lead (CW 1 September 2015).

    Oehha has issued possible amendments that would replace the existing MADL, with limits that correspond to exposure frequency. They are in response to a petition that said the existing MADL of 0.5 µg/day is not protective of human health. 

    The agency will hear public comments at the hearing, and will accept written comments until 28 October.

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Chemical Security News

13. Companies Discharged Harmful Chemicals in Ala. River -- Lawsuit

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    An Alabama water authority and three local residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against three companies they accuse of polluting the Tennessee River.

    3M Co., Dyneon and Daikin America polluted the river with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), the suit by the residents and the West Morgan-East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority alleges.

    Manufacturing of the chemicals was halted in the 1990s amid U.S. EPA concerns over their safety.

    The suit alleges the companies discharged the chemicals despite knowing they were harmful to human health.

    William Brewer, an attorney for 3M, said the company's actions were legal at the time. 3M also disputes whether the chemicals cause health problems, Brewer said.

    "Although these types of lawsuits capture headlines, it is important to remember they are often based on groundless allegations," Brewer said (Jarrett/Lough, WAFF, Oct. 5). -- SP

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Energy and Environment News

14. (ACC Mentioned) EPA's Announcement to Strengthen Ozone Standard Met with Opposition (Updated)

    Oct 7, 2015 | Chemical Week

    US EPA’s plans to strengthen the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone to 70 parts per billion (ppb), from 75 ppb, has met with industry opposition. ACC says the American Chemistry Council says the new standard and lack of regulatory guidance may harm economic growth and industry’s US expansion plans. 
    
    “EPA’s action puts $10 billion in chemical industry investment at risk,” ACC says. “We are very concerned that some projects – new facilities, plant expansions and factory restarts – will remain in limbo until EPA explains how to obtain a permit under the new standards.”
    
    ACC notes that permitting requirements are binding on manufacturing facilities right away, but guidance on how to meet the requirements remains unclear. “There are going to be a number of counties that are deemed attainment with the current 75 ppb ozone NAAQS, but have ozone monitor readings above the new 70 ppb standard,” ACC says. Producers looking to build or expand in these areas “will be in a kind of limbo,” ACC says. “In order to build or expand a facility, they must obtain a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permit showing that the facility will not ‘cause or contribute to’ a violation of the new 70 ppb standard, but EPA has provided no clear rules as to how to do so.”
    
    EPA is required to provide the rules and guidance, but it has often taken years to do so. “For example, EPA finished the requirements for the 2008 ozone standards just this past March,” ACC says. 
    
    ACC says it has discussed the permitting “paradox” with EPA. “We hope that guidance for the new standards will be provided soon,” ACC says. “Before facilities can even apply for a permit, they need some degree of certainty about the process.”

    The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) is also opposed to the new rule, also claiming that lowering the ozone standard has a negative impact on the economic growth of the country, specifically the manufacturing sector. “This rule is just one of the administration’s many high-cost regulations that continue to place undue hardship on not only the fuel and petrochemical manufacturers, but on American workers, businesses, and communities,” AFPM president Chet Thompson said in a statement. 
    
    EPA says it examined nearly 2,300 studies in this review of the ozone standards including more than 1,000 new studies published since the last review of the standards in 2008.The revised standards will significantly improve public health protection, EPA says.  Depending on the severity of ozone problem, areas would have until between 2020 and 2037 to meet the standards. 

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15. Why Can the E.P.A. Regulate Smog, But Not Greenhouse Gases?

    Oct 7, 2015 | The New York Times

    By Gregg Easterbrook

    LAST week the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled stringent new regulations on smog, and it’s crystal clear the agency has legal authority to impose these rules. The E.P.A. also recently announced an initiative to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants, though its legal authority to regulate emissions that cause global warming is murky. Some states will sue to block the plan; years of litigation may be in the offing.

    Here’s the rub. Smog has been decreasing steadily, down 18 percent since 2000 and 33 percent since 1980. Greenhouse-gas accumulation in the atmosphere is increasing steadily. Yet perversely, the federal government has a well-defined authority to act on the environmental issue that’s getting better, but not on the one that’s getting worse.

    Our major environmental laws are a generation or more out of date — written for conditions of the past, not the present. The Clean Air Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, has not been amended since 1990, a quarter-century ago. The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, has not been updated since 1987. The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, was last amended in 1982. The National Environmental Policy Act, the law that mandates environmental impact statements, was passed in 1970 and last amended in 1982.

    Or take our myriad recycling programs. Many such initiatives were set in motion by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, passed in 1976 and not substantively amended since 1986. When Congress approved this legislation, it was believed the country was running out of primary materials, and of landfill space. Both assumptions turned out to be false, but the federal law, and its local derivatives, live on.

    Protection of nature and of public health are data-driven sciences — yet environmental laws are grounded in obsolete information. Like generals fighting the last battle, regulators and their opponents keep rehashing disputes of the 1960s and 1970s, the period when the enabling statutes of environmental protection were being debated by Congress.

    Urban air quality is one such dispute. Back in the day, smog was a national emergency: During the 1970s, Los Angeles averaged 125 Stage 1 smog alerts per year. By 2003, the city had gone five years without any Stage 1 alerts. Today the city averages about seven bad air-quality days per year — still a concern, but no longer an extreme threat to health. Nearly all other American cities show similar improvement.

    Written when smog was an emergency, the Clean Air Act allows the E.P.A. to require that states, businesses and individuals reduce smog-forming emissions regardless of the economic damage done. Some parts of the act forbid the E.P.A. even to consider cost or job losses. That sort of thinking was appropriate during the smog emergencies of the past. Now it’s counterproductive.

    Decades ago the E.P.A.’s target for urban smog levels was 120 parts per billion of air. The level has gone down in stages to 75 parts per billion today; last week the E.P.A. dropped the target to 70 parts per billion. But the smog-forming emissions that could be stopped in a cost-effective manner have for the most part already been stopped, while naturally occurring smog, a fair share of the problem, cannot be eradicated at any price. A point of diminishing returns may have been reached, where knocking out the next increment of smog would require substantial expenditures for slight gains in public health.

    Meanwhile the Clean Air Act is silent on greenhouse gases, because when the law was written, global warming was a fuzzy hypothesis. Today there is persuasive scientific proof of artificially triggered climate change.

    In an ideal world the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws based on conditions of the 1960s and 1970s would be amended to reflect circumstances of the new century. But the same poisoned dynamic that afflicts nearly everything on Capitol Hill prevents this common-sense step.

    The Republican Party’s right blames environmental protection for imagined ills, and wants to eviscerate antipollution legislation. The Democratic Party’s left blames industry for all it dislikes, and wants even outdated restrictions treated as sacrosanct.

    But there is a compromise the political world has missed: The Democratic presidential contenders endorse the Keystone pipeline, in return for the Republican presidential contenders’ backing the E.P.A.’s effort to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

    This is a classic compromise in which each side gives something and gets something. The pipeline would help ensure American petroleum security; activists of the left should drop the silly pretense that Keystone is some kind of doomsday device. Carbon restrictions on power plants absolutely must come, and are likely to be good for everyone; activists of the right should stop fighting the future.

    If the presidential contenders could shake hands on this compromise — even if any pair of two did so — the nation would benefit, and the stage might be set for constructive revisions of environmental laws following the 2016 election. Peace needs to break out on environmental protection. The presidential contenders can prove they are leaders by taking the first step.

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16. Utility Group Bows to the Inevitable, Gets Wish on Ozone Rule

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Amanda Reilly

    In late September, the trade group representing investor-owned utilities attended two meetings with top White House and U.S. EPA officials. Its request: Set a new ozone standard at 70 parts per billion.

    Six days later, the Obama administration unveiled its final new national ambient air quality standard at that level. With most stakeholders panning the decision, the Edison Electric Institute is among the few offering any sort of support for the agency's choice of 70 ppb.

    "EEI advocated throughout the rulemaking process that, should a new ozone standard be set, it should be at the top end of the proposed range at 70 parts-per-billion (ppb)," EEI President Tom Kuhn said in a statement. "While compliance challenges remain with the new standard at 70 ppb, EPA has recognized the serious implementation concerns raised by stakeholders of setting the standard below 70 ppb."

    EPA last November had proposed to tighten the existing ozone standard of 75 ppb set in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration to between 65 and 70 ppb based on a review of public health science. The agency found that the 75 ppb limit was no longer adequate to protect the public as the Clean Air Act required.

    What followed was an intense lobbying campaign involving dozens of stakeholders. Green groups called on EPA to set a new standard no higher than 60 ppb, while powerful industry and business groups urged EPA to retain the existing standard.

    The Edison Electric Institute -- which represents all U.S. investor-owned electric utilities -- did not make anyone available for an interview. But in a review of publicly available documents and statements, the trade group appears to have accepted that a lower ozone standard was inevitable and so pushed for EPA to choose the upper end of its proposed range.

    The institute, for example, told EPA in a March public comment that it did not believe EPA should lower the ozone standard. But EEI noted that, if EPA felt it necessary to revise the 2008 limit, the agency should choose 70 ppb.

    "Any standard lower than 70 ppb would require significantly greater justification than EPA has provided in its proposal," the institute said.

    EEI asked for more "relief mechanisms" to address background levels of ozone, as well as more guidance on how to handle permitting under the tighter standard.

    Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co., an EEI member and the largest owner of rate-regulated renewable generation, made similar arguments in a comment to EPA.

    In contrast, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a voluntary group of electric generating companies, argued that the scientific evidence didn't at all justify a new standard and that EPA should retain the 75 ppb limit. Several other power companies individually raised concerns about a tighter standard.

    On Sept. 25, three representatives from EEI and two from San Juan Generating Station operator PNM Resources Inc. -- another EEI member -- met with the White House and EPA in back-to-back meetings, according to attendance records. Dan Utech, President Obama's top climate adviser, attended the White House meeting, while EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe attended the one with the agency.

    EEI and PNM representatives provided a handout at the EPA meeting titled "Reasons the agency should finalize an achievable level of 70 ppb," according to a document posted yesterday in the public docket.

    "The lower the agency sets a new standard, the more it will increase permitting costs and delays while also requiring further regulation of the interstate ozone precursors from all sources," the handout says.

    "A final ozone standard of no lower than 70 ppb -- the top end of its proposed range -- would both provide real environmental benefit," the memo continued, "and give states a reasonable path forward to implement the final standard."

    The group said a standard lower than 70 ppb would complicate efforts for states to comply with the final Clean Power Plan, EPA's plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. A lower standard would also make it difficult for high-elevation areas that experience high background ozone levels to comply, EEI said.

    EEI said EPA should take a cue from its experience putting in place the 2010 sulfur dioxide standard, suggesting that the agency has had difficulty finalizing its list of areas that are out of compliance because its limit was too low.

    EEI also argued that EPA had "ample support" for setting a 70 ppb standard because it was in the range that the agency's science advisers recommended in June 2014.

    Kuhn noted in his statement that the electric power sector has already made "great progress" reducing nitrogen oxides -- a key component of ozone -- as well as sulfur dioxide over the last two decades.

    "EEI will continue to work with our members, the states, and affected customers to determine how compliance with the new ozone standard will impact the implementation of other major EPA regulations," Kuhn said.

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17. E.P.A. Strategist Is Appointed to Fine-Tune Global Warming Agenda

    Oct 7, 2015 | The New York TImes

    By Coral Davenport

    As President Obama doubles down on climate change as a legacy issue, the White House has appointed Thomas Reynolds, a top communications strategist at the Environmental Protection Agency and a seasoned political operative, to a new position dedicated solely to messaging Mr. Obama’s global warming agenda.
    

    Mr. Reynolds has already spent the past two years at the E.P.A. running an aggressive public relations campaign to build support for Mr. Obama’s climate change push. That push is anchored in a set of ambitious new E.P.A. regulations on coal-fired power plants, which Republicans have attacked as a “war on coal.”

    In defending and promoting the E.P.A.’s climate rules, Mr. Reynolds injected the agency’s typically staid public affairs office with the brash sensibility of a political campaign, derived from his experience directing regional media operations for Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election.

    He arranged for the agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy, to speak about the rule in events around the country – from the Iowa State Fair to a major oil industry meeting, and flooded social media with Twitter messages, videos and Facebook shares about the impacts of climate change.

    But the stakes for the rules – and opposition against them – have been climbing.

    This fall in Paris, Mr. Obama hopes to be a broker in the forging of a new deal committing every nation on Earth to enacting climate change plans at home – those E.P.A. rules are key to the United States’ leverage in the deal.

    But the push against them is fierce: The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has urged governors not to comply with the rules, and has also told international climate negotiators that the United States’ plan may be repealed.

    While Mr. Reynolds’s public relations campaigns elevated the issue of climate change, they sometimes got him into hot water. In trying to build public support for a new clean water regulation, Mr. Reynolds created a Twitter campaign urging people to speak out in favor of the rule. But some legal experts have contended that campaign might have tested the limits of federal lobbying laws, which prohibit a government agency from engaging in grass-roots lobbying for proposed policies or legislation.

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18. House GOP Predicts 'Strong Vote' on Crude Exports Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Daniel Bush and Geof Koss

    Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged House lawmakers today to support a bill lifting the decades-old ban on crude oil exports that's set for a Friday floor vote.

    Boehner and his House GOP leadership team doubled down on Rep. Joe Barton's (R-Texas) H.R. 702, which would end the 1970s-era ban on exporting domestic crude, arguing that the change would spur economic growth and create up to 1 million new jobs.

    "America's energy boom has the potential to reset" the economy if the export ban is lifted, Boehner told reporters, reiterating comments he made earlier this year when he announced his support for Barton's bill (E&ENews PM, July 29). "I hope the House will work together in a bipartisan fashion" to approve the measure, Boehner added.

    While the bill should easily pass the GOP-controlled House, Republican leaders are hoping to secure enough Democratic votes to show the legislation has support on both sides of the aisle.

    Barton's bill has drawn more than 130 co-sponsors, including at least 16 Democrats. Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said there's growing support for the bill among Democrats, though he didn't give a whip count.

    Republican lawmakers have said privately that they hope to get 20 to 30 Democratic votes Friday. "I think you're going to see a strong vote coming out of the House," Scalise said.

    But the House GOP's effort to recruit Democrats suffered a setback yesterday when Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) surprised Barton and other Republicans by announcing he would vote against the legislation (E&E Daily, Oct. 7).

    Green, who was considering backing the measure, said he changed his mind after Barton rejected his amendments to the legislation. Green filed an amendment that would allow the president to impose licensing requirements on crude exports for up to a year following a national emergency (E&E Daily, Oct. 7).

    A second Green amendment would require the Commerce Department to license exports after conducting a "national interest" test.

    Other Democratic proposals, filed ahead of this afternoon's Rules Committee meeting on the bill, aim to delay the law's implementation date. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) has an amendment that would prevent the bill from taking effect until all rulemakings required by a 2011 pipeline safety law have been finalized.

    Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) is aiming to delay implementation until the president determines that crude exports won't lead to a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

    An amendment from Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) would simply postpone the effective date until one year after enactment.

    Other members have filed amendments that look to bring unrelated issues into the exports debate, including a proposal by Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) that would require a Government Accountability Office study on the renewable fuel standard.

    Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) has put forth a plan that would create an "Infrastructure and Opportunity Trust Fund" and "Unconditional War on Poverty" program within the Treasury Department, paid for by modifications of foreign tax credit rules that apply to major oil companies.

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19. Heritage Blasts ‘Union Buyoff’ in Oil Export Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Timothy Cama

    A major conservative lobbying group is blasting House Republicans for inserting into a crude oil export bill a provision to increase payments to certain unionized maritime shipping companies.

    Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, said the bill’s funding increase to the Maritime Security Program (MSP) “has entangled good policy in corporate welfare and a $500 million labor union buyoff.”

    The money would increase the maritime program’s funding dramatically, and the largest chunk of the funding would go to subsidiaries of Netherlands-based Maersk Group, Heritage wrote in a blog post.

    “If the 61.3 percent increase in MSP funding was truly a matter of national security, there is every reason to expect it would have been included in the defense bill that the Senate is expected to clear later this week,” Heritage wrote. “Instead, reminiscent of the earmarking days, taxpayer money is being used to literally buy votes.”

    The House is planning to vote Friday on the bill to overturn the 40-year-old restrictions on exporting crude oil from the United States.

    Heritage has not yet decided whether to designate the bill as a “key vote,” which would make it part of the group’s scorecard, a widely used measure of lawmakers’ conservatism.

    The maritime program regularly pays a fleet of privately owned, United States-flagged ships with union crews in exchange for a promise that the United States could use the ships if needed for military purposes.

    The new money was inserted into the bill sometime before the House Rules Committee posted it on Monday.

    It appears aimed at increasing Democratic support for the bill. Some Democrats have complained that opening the domestic oil market to the world would increase oil prices, hurting oil refiners and the shipping companies that bring crude to the refiners.

    But the move could backfire and cause conservative Republicans to drop support if enough lawmakers agree with Heritage.

    Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the export bill’s sponsor, defended the new provision, saying the House Armed Services Committee, which usually oversees the maritime program, approved of it.

    “I think it helps the bill. It helps our military posture, it’s paid for, it’s not mandatory,” Barton said. “I don’t see the negative. You’ve got to look pretty hard to find the negative.”

    Barton seemed surprised at Heritage’s position, saying that the benefits of oil exports, such as competing on the world stage and potentially hurting oil producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, should receive conservative support.

    “I don’t see how you can be against that from a conservative standpoint,” he said.

    Barton said he does not plan to remove the provision, and he does not believe it’ll hurt the bill’s chances of passing.

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20. EPA Confident Climate Rule Will Withstand Court Attacks, Political Transition

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

    By Debra Kahn

    U.S. EPA's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will be able to withstand political and legal challenges, the head of the agency's Southwest operations said yesterday.

    Speaking at a carbon markets conference yesterday put on by Argus Media, EPA Region 9 Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said the Clean Power Plan to control utilities' emissions under the Clean Air Act would be able to weather changes in the executive branch.

    "When you look at what it would take to fundamentally change the Clean Air Act, I don't think the political landscape, as fractured as it is now, would lead to a change to the Clean Air Act in the near future," Blumenfeld said in response to a question from a Tesoro Corp. representative about how the program might fare under a Republican president.

    Blumenfeld pointed out that the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, which set up trading programs to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants, among other measures, were signed by President George H.W. Bush.

    Bush's legal counsel at the time, C. Boyden Gray, now advises the former president's son, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Gray said earlier this week that Bush would be able to undo the CPP through the regulatory process by early 2018, if elected (ClimateWire, Oct. 5).

    But Blumenfeld said it would be hard to dislodge the CPP. "These rules are pretty much self-implementing in many cases," he said. "They have timelines, they have requirements, they have thresholds, and so they move forward. I am stunned by just the amount of forward motion and momentum that exists within the regulatory framework, particularly in the Clean Air Act."

    As for court action, which is already being undertaken by 15 states and being contemplated by others including Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, Blumenfeld said the rule was written specifically to survive the legal system (EnergyWire, Aug. 15).A tough act to tamper with

    The final version of the rule, released in August, doesn't include energy efficiency as one of four explicit policies that states can use to comply with the targets; opponents argued that it was too far-reaching to require electric utilities to figure out how to reduce demand for their product (Greenwire, Aug. 1).

    "I think there will obviously be legal and other challenges," Blumenfeld said. "We took a very conservative legal approach to make sure that this stands up in court. That was one of the reasons that energy efficiency, frankly, was taken out of the building blocks; we thought there was a legal vulnerability. Even though it remains a compliance tool, we didn't have that as one of the building blocks. So I think this will stand the legal test of time, and I think it will also stand the political test of time."

    An industry lawyer said a crucial point would be whether the inevitable lawsuit receives a stay to delay implementation of the rule.

    "It's a key question," said JP Brisson, a partner at Latham & Watkins who represents emitters in the utility and petroleum sectors. If a lawsuit "takes five, six, seven years to resolve and the rule is effective during the challenges, what does it say to states? The lawsuit is kind of meaningless."

    Brisson said EPA increased its defense against a stay by adjusting the final rule to give states two more years to submit their implementation plans and by delaying the start of the program an additional two years, until 2022.

    "Those are factors that would essentially support the agency's position that a stay should not be granted," he said.

    A California regulator and former Sierra Club litigator agreed. "It's very hard to show irreparable harm in this context," said Craig Segall, senior staff counsel with the California Air Resources Board, the agency in charge of achieving the state's emissions goals under the CPP and the state's own climate regulations. "There's really one sensible regulatory response, which is to continue planning."

    Efforts to reverse the rule within EPA itself would also be cumbersome, he said. "The machinery of the act is such that once these regulations are in place, states have to keep planning for them," he said. "You're talking about essentially as massive a rulemaking effort to replace this as there was to put it in place in the first place."

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21. Barton: Clean Air Act Not Meant to Create Cap and Trade

    Oct 7, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

    By Alex Guillen

    Rep. Joe Barton today said Congress did not intend for EPA to use cap and trade to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants when it amended the Clean Air Act in 1990.

    The Texas Republican, a former Energy and Commerce Committee chairman who voted for the 1990 amendments, said lawmakers spent a great deal of time crafting the bill’s acid rain provisions but spent “no time” on Section 111(d), the section EPA used for its Clean Power Plan.

    “Now your agency is using section 111(d) to give EPA basically total authority to create in a regulatory fashion a cap and trade program for carbon dioxide, which there was no intent of Congress in the early ’90s,” Barton said. “I think that’s just wrong.”

    Janet McCabe, EPA’s acting air chief, replied that the rule doesn’t require states to use trading systems to meet their reduction goals, though it is an option.

    “I was here in 1990, I voted for the Clean Air Act amendments,” Barton replied. “Your agency is trying to do something with it that it was never intended to.”

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22. McCabe Defends Against Charges of Stealth Cap-and-Trade Rule

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

    By Jean Chemnick

    A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee returned today to U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, a rule that became final two months ago and that the panel has already voted twice to kill.

    This morning's Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing with acting EPA air chief Janet McCabe was Energy and Commerce's sixth hearing on the rule since the start of 2014, but its first held since EPA finalized the rule -- together with others for new and modified units -- on Aug. 3.

    "It certainly to me feels like déjà vu all over again," said Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee.

    Many of the shots fired on either side were also familiar or, as Rush put it, made "for the exceedingly umpteenth time."

    Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), in extemporaneous remarks at the top of the hearing, said again that by promulgating the rule for existing power plants under the Clean Air Act, EPA was "running roughshod" over Congress and other state and federal decisionmakers.

    "Many people view you as nothing but a political arm of the White House today," he told McCabe, referring to President Obama's high-profile 2013 speech at Georgetown University, which he has argued was a political address that set the stage for the Clean Power Plan. "You've actually become a legislative arm."

    He also pointed to the Supreme Court's June decision that the agency should have considered the price tag of its 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards before moving ahead with that rule (Greenwire, June 30).

    EPA's response to the decision was that utilities had already complied with it, but Whitfield said that only demonstrates how important it is for Congress to head off other economically onerous rules before the damage is done.

    "In this committee, we're going to continue to do everything we can do to stop you," Whitfield told McCabe. Whitfield has said he plans to float a Congressional Review Act resolution to kill the rule as soon as it is published in the Federal Register, which McCabe said would happen in the second half of this month. Whitfield has already sponsored two bills that have cleared the House that would scuttle the rule.

    EPA is working "expeditiously" with the Federal Register to publish as soon as possible, she said. Publication is also expected to trigger lawsuits by states.

    Other panel Republicans joined Whitfield in accusing EPA of seeking to circumvent Congress to set up the carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program the administration sought unsuccessfully during Obama's first term.

    Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) read from the transcripts of hearings reaching back three and four years in which EPA pledged that it had no plans to use the Clean Air Act to implement cap and trade.

    But Griffith pointed out that EPA's model federal implementation plan -- proposed at the same time the rules became final -- is designed to facilitate the trading of emissions allowances.

    Griffith attributed his own election in 2010 to the fact his opponent, former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), actively negotiated for and supported the cap-and-trade bill that cleared the House in 2009.

    By introducing a similar program, he said, "you're not only showing disrespect to the Congress, disrespect to what the Supreme Court told you in the mercury rule, you're also showing disrespect to the voters of this country who turned out an awful lot of folks on the 'cap and trade is not a policy this United States should follow,'" he said.

    Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) noted that he was one of the few members of the committee who were in Congress at the time the Clean Air Act was amended in 1990. He supported the amendments. Section 111 was not contemplated as a provision authorizing cap and trade, he said.

    "Your agency is trying to do with it something it was never intended to do," he said. "We would have put it in, I guarantee."

    "The Clean Power Plan does not set in place a cap-and-trade program," McCabe responded.

    But in her prepared remarks for the hearing, McCabe mentioned the option of emissions trading five times, including as a feature of the proposed federal implementation plan. She notes that systems operators and utilities have asked for that option as a means of easing compliance. And McCabe and other top agency staff routinely refer to trading as one way to allow states to implement the rule while reducing costs and safeguarding grid reliability.

    While the bulk of the hearing was devoted to the Clean Power Plan, Whitfield, who will retire at the close of this Congress, also pointed to EPA's basis for its new power plant carbon rule. He noted that the proposal referred to four potential carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, all of which have since run into problems.

    The agency's final rule, which limits coal plant emissions to 1,400 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour, would leave utilities with few options other than CCS if they planned to build a new facility. Whitfield noted that the most efficient coal plant currently in operation in the United States exceeds that standard by 400 pounds per MWh.

    "There's not any practical way for anyone using reasonable cost figures to comply with this rule," he said.

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23. California Governor to Sign Aggressive Climate-Change Bill

    Oct 7, 2015 | AP (In The Wall Street Journal)

    California is doubling down in its fight against global warming.

    On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign an ambitious climate change measure to increase California’s renewable electricity use to 50% and double energy efficiency in existing buildings by 2030.

    “We have the technological means, and now we have the legal mandate to reduce carbon pollution,” Mr. Brown said in a statement after the Legislature approved the bill, SB350, last month.

    The Democratic governor began the year with a proposal for the state to set the most aggressive greenhouse-gas emissions benchmark in North America. He discussed global-warming concerns with the pope at the Vatican in July and met with other leaders around the world on the issue.

    After previous environmental efforts, California is already on target to generate at least a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

    The governor and Democratic legislative leaders wanted to include a provision in the current bill to cut petroleum use by half, but they met fierce opposition from the oil lobby.

    ‘We have the technological means, and now we have the legal mandate to reduce carbon pollution.’—Gov. Jerry Brown

    “I’d say oil has won the skirmish, but they’ve lost the bigger battle,” Mr. Brown said when he announced that lawmakers were scaling back their initial goals.

    Democratic leaders blamed the defeat on a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign by oil companies. Many moderate Democrats also expressed concern that the petroleum-reduction mandate would hurt California’s working-class residents.

    The state will continue to cut oil use through regulatory action, Mr. Brown said.

    The final bill Mr. Brown is considering Wednesday defers to state regulators to implement the programs to increase renewable electricity use and double energy efficiency in existing buildings.

    Some Republicans expressed disappointment that the bill won’t count homeowners who have installed rooftop solar panels toward the 50% renewable goal. “We should not be excluding the 200,000 Californians who are doing their part to make clean energy a reality,” said Assemblyman Brian Jones (R., Santee).

    State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D., Los Angeles) was the author of SB350.

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24. The Pending Paris Accord: Not Your Father's Climate Agreement

    Oct 7, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

    By Lisa Friedman

    By the time Ambassador Karl Hood took the microphone on a warm South African evening in December 2011, many hours into a marathon overtime U.N. climate change negotiation, he had just about enough.

    For days, major emerging economies led by India had pushed back against efforts to launch a new deal that included all nations, insisting they should not be forced to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Wealthy countries have not done enough to fight climate change, they argued, and poorer nations must have the right to develop with unrestricted fossil fuel use.

    Those representing the most vulnerable countries -- like Hood's tiny island of Grenada -- disagreed, but were reluctant to rupture the united front developing nations presented to the world. The role of battling China, India and other advancing powers was usually left up to the United States and Europe. Hood decided something had to change.SPECIAL SERIES

    Greater Expectations: The New Geopolitics of Climate Change exposes the on-the-ground reality of developing countries challenged by a world that will require every nation to cut carbon emissions.

    "I was listening [and] thinking, 'If only a country could pollute their own atmosphere, that's fine. But if we're all going to pay the price of it, somebody needs to be responsible here.' I didn't feel that I should keep my mouth shut. I felt somebody had to stand up," Hood said from Beijing, where he now serves as Grenada's ambassador to China.

    Stand up he did, arguing that night that all countries have a responsibility to keep global temperatures at safe levels, and no one -- even historically low emitters -- should have a right to unchecked development. "While they develop, we die. And why should we accept this?" he asked a packed plenary hall of surprised diplomats.

    Hood's intervention was the climax of a long-standing fight over whether developing nations should play a stronger hand in abating the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. As it set in motion a new international accord that could be completed in Paris in December, it also underscored a rupture that has only deepened within the Group of 77 and China, nominally representing the interests of all developing nations.

    When leaders from 194 countries meet in Paris, they will find a starkly different landscape than the one under which the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was crafted, or even the messy and incomplete Copenhagen Accord of 2009.

    In interviews with dozens of ministers, negotiators and longtime U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) observers over the past year, most agreed that the once neatly divided world of rich and poor countries is gone.'It's everybody together'

    In its place is a more complicated and dynamic system in which countries of all levels of wealth and development are figuring out not whether to shoulder responsibility but at what level and how to finance the transition to clean power.

    "Yes, there used to be the poor guys and the rich guys, the polluters and the guys that are feeling the impact. That kind of division of blame and labor," said Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum.

    But, he said, "It's not us and the big guys anymore. It's everybody together."

    So far, 138 countries, including the members of the European Union, have come forward with plans to cut or ratchet down their emissions, and there will likely be a few more that will be wrapped into a final document to be signed in Paris.

    That, de Brum and others said, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The list includes not just big players like the United States and China, but also war-torn countries like Rwanda, tiny islands like Tuvalu and poverty-stricken nations like Bangladesh.

    "This framing that it's rich versus poor makes it sound like it's only the rich countries who have to act, who have to pay, or who are acting and paying. It's a much more complex picture than that," said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the World Resources Institute's climate program.

    Under the radar are the countries in the middle -- those who are not yet making an emissions splash, but whose rapid economic and carbon growth guarantees they will be among the major climate players of the future.Most move toward 'mutual dependency'

    They include countries like Turkey, which is putting coal-fired power plants online just as fast as neighboring Europe can shut them down; Mexico, where an ambitious plan to peak emissions may be hampered by a newly liberalized energy market; and Singapore, which boasts the world's third-largest per-capita gross domestic product but remains reluctant to put its wealth at jeopardy in order to tackle domestic emissions.

    By 2030, developing countries’ emissions will exceed those of industrialized countries by 77 percent. Here’s what that growth will look like in six key countries. Data courtesy of the Climate Action Tracker.

    It's countries like Chile, which is seeking a major expansion of its renewable energy capacity even as it struggles with an aging and inefficient transmission infrastructure. Or Ethiopia, which has grand designs to be a middle-income country by 2025 while remaining carbon neutral but is still grappling with more than 25 million people in poverty.

    Whether those countries as well as major players like India -- still wed to coal despite renewable energy ambitions -- can meet their targets and continue decarbonizing will be the real determinant of whether Paris is a success.

    Over the next seven days, ClimateWire will examine the very different positions those countries have taken in the U.N. climate negotiations and how their international strategies have affected their domestic efforts on climate change. We will also look beyond Paris to the on-the-ground realities of the political and structural challenges they face.

    "The UNFCCC process has been a proxy for a difficult discussion of trying to move countries away from the old North-South paradigm and into a paradigm of mutual dependency," said Connie Hedegaard, the former European commissioner for climate change who helped lead the charge for a new global agreement in Paris.

    "If you look at it through a human development lens, you will see the world is not organized along old categories. It's much more complex," she said.The realities that upset the old order

    The shifts in alliances in the U.N. negotiations came slowly at first, and then seemingly all at once.

    The Kyoto Protocol divided the world into categories, or annexes. Annex I, 15 rich nations and European Union, would be charged with mandatory obligations to cut emissions. Hundreds of others, non-Annex I countries, could act voluntarily but were not obligated. Developing countries were allied in their insistence that wealthy countries, which had spewed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for a century, should clean up the global mess they alone made.

    By Copenhagen, that architecture was already straining at the seams. The United States never ratified Kyoto because of it, and while environmental groups pilloried the Bush administration for that decision, when President Obama came into office they were no more willing than their predecessors to get into another deal that treated America differently from China.

    But longtime observers said it wasn't just the relentless assault on the system from the United States, Japan and Europe that caused its fissures. Emissions from developing countries zoomed -- with China's alone growing 80 percent between 1990 and 2007, according to the International Energy Agency, displacing America as the world's largest climate polluter.

    Meanwhile, the impacts on vulnerable nations were becoming real. Island leaders, who had for years been pressing quietly within their caucus for more action from everyone, started to get publicly vocal.

    "The differences have become starker," said Jake Schmidt, international program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There is a clear sense among many developing countries that the 'just say no' position doesn't serve their interests anymore. That it was fine 15 years ago to say the West has to act on this problem because it's all their fault, but the math doesn't work that way anymore. These lines have been blurred without anybody admitting it."

    Others said the shifts also happened because developing countries were forced to face the reality that industrialized countries were no longer willing to move forward alone.... And caused old alliances to crumble

    "It's becoming less and less a confrontation between rich and poor and that I think is partly for a disappointing reason," said Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' former climate chief and now head of the Global Green Growth Institute in South Korea.

    "Developing countries are beginning to realize that this process is highly unlikely to provide them what they need to green their economies and cope with the impacts of climate change," he said. "They're realizing they are on their own."

    De Boer noted that the G-77, led by China, has been instrumental in keeping developing countries unified and bolstering their influence in U.N. arenas. But, he acknowledged, when it comes to climate negotiations, keeping together an alliance with countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, "for whom every drop of oil not sold has an impact on the economy," to Kiribati, where every ton of emissions into the atmosphere is a death knell, hasn't been easy.

    While India’s emissions have spiked most dramatically since 1997, other major developing countries have also seen major increases in their climate output in the last two decades. Data courtesy of the Climate Action Tracker.

    "Finding a compromise in such a large group is very, very difficult. For a long time, it was worth it because the G-77 were not only standing shoulder to shoulder in the climate debate, but in every other U.N. forum, as well," he said.

    "If you stick with the group on the negotiations of fried eggs, they will stand with you on the negotiations over boiled eggs."

    But by the time a 2009 summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, dissolved into chaos with a group of hard-line nations led by Bolivia, Venezuela and Sudan blocking the formal adoption of a deal, some countries understood there must be change.

    Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Switzerland and more than two dozen other countries that saw themselves as "constructive" players formed a coalition called the Cartagena Dialogue. Out of that, a group of Latin American nations that also included Chile, Peru and Colombia started making the case within the G-77 that developing countries should take mandatory cuts. The major emerging nations of Brazil, India, South Africa and China strengthened their alliance, and oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela joined forces with China and India to beat back progressive efforts.

    Each formed new formal blocs within the G-77, pulling the body in multiple directions at once.

    "This is a really interesting process in which the former bloc in which the economies used to be organized, now in the climate debate is completely different," said Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.Will the resulting strategies be ambitious enough?

    "For those of us who work in the real world, it's not about ideological point-scoring. It's about getting the politics right and the pricing right," said Malini Mehra, chief executive of the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment.

    "The bloc system has been broken asunder. That's where the new story is. It's very multi-polar, and that's why it's so exciting," she said.

    The new alliances are having real-world implications. When countries meet in Paris, the discussion of how to divide responsibility for fighting climate change will still be simmering, but it will be starkly different from the one diplomats had in 1997.

    Poor countries say they must see finance, including a promised $100 billion annually by 2020, to help their efforts. But only a few are still tying those dollars to the idea of reparations for the rich world's historical emissions.

    India is perhaps the most powerful country still in that camp. "Historical responsibility cannot be wished away by any new parameters. It will always remain," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar toldClimateWire recently.

    And yet in a world where China is putting up $3.1 billion for climate change assistance -- comparable to the United States -- and even Mongolia is putting money toward the Green Climate Fund, the tables have already turned. The question now, activists say, is whether the Paris deal will be ambitious enough to avert dangerous levels of climate change.

    Leaders have acknowledged that in their quest to get all countries on board to cutting carbon, the Paris architecture has a built-in downside: Commitments are voluntary and based not on science but on what countries feel they can reasonably offer. The collective targets won't keep temperatures below the 2-degree-Celsius "guardrail," but diplomats say they hope the deal will create a strong system that encourages a routine ratcheting up of ambition.

    Hood, who is no longer part of the negotiations but is watching from afar, said he worries it's not enough.

    "If you have cancer and you know this cancer is going to kill you, you don't want to do a little chemotherapy once a month. You want surgery or radical chemo," he said. "I don't think there's a feeling of urgency."

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