Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 11/16/15
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(ACC Mentioned) You Just Missed America Recycles Day
Nov 16, 2015 | Treehugger
By Lloyd Alter
November 15 was America Recycles Day, a trashy holiday sponsored by the American Chemistry Council and the Keep America Beautiful people, in turn sponsored by, among others, Anheuser-Busch, Pepsico, cigarette companies Altria and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco company, all of whom are devoted to producing plastic, putting stuff into disposable bottles and filling our gutters with butts. -
REACH Annex Proposals Unlikely to Be in Time to Influence Nano Guidance
Nov 16, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Geraint Roberts
Echa will issue revised guidance for REACH registrants on the provision of information for nanoforms of substances before its guidance moratorium takes effect in mid-2016. -
Utility 'War Games' Players to Face an Apocalypse Scenario
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
On Wednesday, power grid operators and managers around the country will become actors in their worst nightmare. -
Enviros Slam Rail 'Myth' of Keystone XL Rejection
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Environmental groups are pushing back against claims that their successful campaign against TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline may have been a Pyrrhic victory for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. -
Obama's Clean Power Plan is a Bad Deal for America
Nov 16, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)
In 2009, President Obama turned his attention from his campaign victory to a carefully crafted legislative wish list, handed to him by liberal lobbyists and the radical base of the Democratic Party. Among their top priorities were extreme carbon-trading schemes and a war on fossil fuel. -
House Democrats to Hold Climate Forum Ahead of Paris
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Geof Koss
House Democrats on Thursday will host foreign dignitaries for a forum on international climate cooperation ahead of the key U.N. conference that starts in Paris at the end of the month. -
Climate Regs Squeeze Mont. Gov. Bullock, other Dems
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is arguably the Democratic governor in the toughest spot as he tries to comply with the Clean Power Plan without harming his state's economy. -
Utilities Push Dialogue on Carbon Trading Options
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden
Large investor-owned electric utilities that operate in multiple states agree that the cheapest way to cut carbon emissions under the Clean Power Plan is to create the biggest interstate trading system possible. -
IETA's Forrister Outlines Challenges Facing Negotiators on Emissions Trading
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E TV
With many countries placing conditions in their intended nationally determined contributions that emissions reduction targets are contingent on having access to international climate markets, how will emissions trading discussions shape next month's climate negotiations in Paris? During today's OnPoint, Dirk Forrister, president and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association, discusses the framework that he believes needs to be established in the Paris agreement to facilitate trading systems and linking. -
Deese Visits Canada to Talk Climate, Energy Ahead of Paris
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
President Obama's top climate adviser is in Ottawa, Canada, today to meet with leaders from new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, the White House announced today. -
Does Burning Garbage for Electricity Make Sense?
Nov 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Nickolas J. Themelis and Jeffrey Morris
The amount of garbage produced by the world’s urban dwellers is growing at an astonishing clip. The World Bank has estimated that countries are generating 1.4 billion tons of municipal solid waste each year and forecasts that this number will double by 2025.
Industry and Association News
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Energy and Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) You Just Missed America Recycles Day
Nov 16, 2015 | Treehugger
By Lloyd Alter
November 15 was America Recycles Day, a trashy holiday sponsored by the American Chemistry Council and the Keep America Beautiful people, in turn sponsored by, among others, Anheuser-Busch, Pepsico, cigarette companies Altria and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco company, all of whom are devoted to producing plastic, putting stuff into disposable bottles and filling our gutters with butts. A day devoted to convincing Americans pick up what is essentially corporate waste, the byproduct of a culture of disposability.
This is the day they make tear-jerking videos about how a bottle really wants to be a bench, overlooking the ocean somewhere.
We have been covering America Recycles Day for many years; here is a roundup of some of our posts on the subject.Today is America Recycles Day, the annual greenwashing homage to a culture of disposability
I want to be recycled/Screen capture
The sponsors of this grand event have a new campaign, "I want to be recycled" in which a plastic bottle cries out "I want to be a bench." It's an interesting bit of anthropomorphism, kind of like a human considering reincarnation and saying "I want to be a slug", for as William McDonough and Michael Braungart pointed out in Cradle to Cradle, there's not much else that bottle can aspire to, and to be a bench it has to be mixed with fungicides, stabilizers, chemical and mineral additives and more. Not to disparage slugs, but it really is a lower form of life. More in TreeHuggerIt's America Recycles Day, but don't forget the other 7 Rs (Video)
Rethinking Recycling from Margaret Badore on Vimeo.
TreeHugger proudly premiered this video about recycling, made by our own Margaret Badore, and provided our own list of the 7 Rs that beat recycling:
Reduce: Just use less.Return: Producers should take back what they sell.Reuse: Almost boring, but we throw too much stuff out too soon.Repair: Fix and mend things rather than replacing them.Refill: In Ontario Canada, 88% of beer bottles are returned to the beer store, washed and refilled; just south of the border in the USA, the number drops to under 5%.Rot: Compost what is left over, turning it into valuable nutrients.Refuse: Simply refuse to accept this crap from the manufacturers any more.
Happy Zero Waste Day, The Event Formerly Known as America Recycles Day
Well, we tried to change it. We proposed a different kind of holiday, a Zero Waste day:
Support a restaurant that has real mugs and china.Support companies that practice corporate responsibility and take their products back at end of life.Buy only fresh food that comes without packaging.Don't buy anything disposable for just one day.
and the one that started it all:
Recycling is Bulls**t; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America Recycles Day
Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America.... Enough. Throwing stuff away isn't green, even if it goes into a blue or green bin. It is still throwing stuff away.
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REACH Annex Proposals Unlikely to Be in Time to Influence Nano Guidance
Nov 16, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Geraint Roberts
Echa will issue revised guidance for REACH registrants on the provision of information for nanoforms of substances before its guidance moratorium takes effect in mid-2016.
This means it will probably appear – as Echa’s current planning assumes – before the European Commission issues its proposal for changing the REACH Regulation’s information provision annexes to take account of nanoforms.
The agency believes it is important for it to revise the guidance and tools before its moratorium. That way companies can use them in preparing dossiers for the 2018 registration deadline.
According to an update of Echa’s nanomaterials work plan – presented to September’s Management Board meeting – the agency thinks working to this timetable would also “reward the efforts of the diligent registrant, with the opposite effect to those who choose not to specifically demonstrate the safety of their substances marketed in nanoform”.
Issues that may be covered by the consultation, says the work plan, include:clarification on how to use read-across between nanoforms;how to distinguish one nanoform from another;how to address nanomaterials under the existing information requirements; andhow to cover exposure estimation and worker protection.
The work plan says the legal uncertainty created by the Commission’s delay in issuing a proposal to amend the REACH annexes has led to an increase in appeals to Echa’s Board of Appeal (BoA) on compliance check and substance evaluation decisions related to nanomaterials.
Apart from one, all types of evaluation decisions addressing nanomaterials issued so far have been appealed to the BoA. This has caused further delays and demands for additional resources from industry and Echa.
Last month Echa executive director Geert Dancet urged the Commission to issue its proposal for amending the annexes as soon as possible in order “to reduce the legal uncertainties” (CW 15 October 2014).
But this is unlikely to be in time for Echa to take it into account when it revises its guidance. Speaking atChemical Watch’s regulatory summit in Brussels a week after Mr Dancet made his comments, DG GROW’s Helene Kanellopoulos said it hoped the proposal would be issued “in the first months of 2016”.
Another complicating factor is that there is still no guidance on the EU Recommendation for a definition of nanomaterials. To make matters more uncertain, the definition is being reviewed by the Commission. Its decision on whether, or how, the definition should be changed is expected around the same time that Echa’s guidance moratorium takes effect (CW 14 July 2015).
Meanwhile, the agency wants to be involved in any “transparency measures”, such as a nanomaterials “observatory” – a website presenting existing information on nanomaterials on the EU market.
Its work plan says it is in its “strategic interest as a leader in the dissemination of information around the risk and safe use of chemicals” to be part of these discussions. It adds that it is “well placed to build on existing tools and knowledge, and to provide synergies through contributions to the implementation of any new initiatives.”
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Utility 'War Games' Players to Face an Apocalypse Scenario
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
On Wednesday, power grid operators and managers around the country will become actors in their worst nightmare.
The GridEx III "war games" exercise will confront 4,000 participants with simulated assaults on key electric utility and transmission facilities by heavily armed terrorists, coupled with cyberattacks that raise havoc with grid controls. At the conclusion, some hard-hit parts of the United States will face long delays in getting power restored, participants and planners said.
In the previous exercise, GridEx II in 2013, 30 million Americans were still without power 30 days after the nationwide "attack." This version is expected to be that bad -- or worse -- for players from 350 utilities, agencies and other organizations that will participate from their offices over secured Internet channels.
"It's eight hours of drinking out of a fire hose," said GridEx director Bill Lawrence, describing the stream of crises that will hit the participants. Lawrence, a senior manager of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), which runs the GridEx training, briefed industry members in Philadelphia last month.
"There is not going to be a happy ending, where the system gets tied up with a big bow at the end. We will be looking at a new normal, where there are still areas of the country that are blacked out," said Brian Harrell, a director of Navigant Consulting's energy practice, and a former NERC grid cybersecurity official who led GridEx II.
On Thursday, GridEx III's second day, utility industry chief executives and federal agency officials will meet in a central location to face the aftermath. Their "tabletop" exercise will try to pool industry and federal resources to move massive spare high-voltage transformers and other vital equipment to heavily damaged nodes on the grid to restore power.
The chief executives will be members of the Electricity Sub-sector Coordinating Council (ESCC), a group of industry leaders that meets regularly with top federal intelligence and law enforcement officials to receive classified threat information and coordinate defenses against real cyber probes and attacks.
"The executive tabletop and the ESCC are absolutely the right place for these conversations to occur and for utility executives to work with federal partners now to develop a strategy that works if it is ever needed," said Tim Conway, technical director of the SANS Institute, one of the GridEx III architects.Life, health, safety
"In an extraordinary situation, you want the government decisions influenced by the operational needs of the industry, and industry decisions influenced by the government and its focus on the life, health and safety of Americans," said Scott Aaronson, managing director for national security policy of the Edison Electric Institute and secretary of the ESCC.
"Creating a venue where those discussions can happen, and creating the relationships between senior executives on both the industry and government side before the incident occurs, is exactly the purpose of the ESCC," he added.
This hands-on immersion of power industry and government officials in a national emergency scenario comes as the Department of Homeland Security seeks to complete development of a comprehensive plan to restore critical infrastructure services and functions after a catastrophe.
In a true crisis, the government's response would be led by DHS's Federal Emergency Management Agency, supported by the Department of Defense, which has adopted a Complex Catastrophe Initiative to advance "all-hazards" emergency response plans by the military.
DHS's role following a large-scale cyberattack on the grid was addressed in an interim National Cyber Incident Response Plan issued in 2010, and DHS used it for several national training exercises, a spokesman said. But the plan has been stuck in limbo, informed sources said.
"We do have a national cyber incident plan that is a working document," DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told a Council on Foreign Relations audience Nov. 4. "It hasn't been finalized yet, and potential attacks on the power grid are part of that plan," he said. "But there's more we can do there, but this is something that we have [been] partnering with the private sector with, with critical infrastructure, been thinking about actively."
In August, Johnson assigned a subcommittee of the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is headed by former CIA Director William Webster, to recommend strategies for rapidly restoring critical infrastructure functions after a major cyber event, completing the cyber response plan. A DHS spokesman turned down requests for information on the process.Crisis 'tweets'
While GridEx challenges top-level decisionmakers, on the other end of the communications spectrum, it will also call on utilities to use social media and their Web pages to tell a panicked population what is happening, planners said.
Doug Flood, with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., told the NERC conference in Philadelphia about a simulated blogging platform where utilities can address public rumors, videos of blackouts and other crisis events.
"There will be a channel that looks like YouTube and something that looks like Twitter," Harrell said, delivering both factual and erroneous information to the participants. "A major part of the crisis in any sector is to push out timely and accurate info and be honest with the public," he said. "Organizations will need to respond to that."
That will be the task, for example, for Robbie Searcy, communications manager for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and her team at the Texas high-voltage grid operator. "What this does is put you in scenarios in which multiple issues occur at one time, and tests your readiness," she said.
The vulnerability of the nation's power networks to a widespread attack or natural disasters has been debated by experts, particularly following the still-unsolved armed assault on the Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Metcalf substation in 2013.
Conway said in an interview that event planners have strived to challenge the participants without creating a totally unreal science fiction scenario. The message is, "you are short-staffed and the cavalry is not coming. In addition you are operating with an impacted system -- now maintain reliability and work focused restoration efforts throughout the remainder of the scenario."
"We have managed to create a scenario at a very large scale that is believable, and allowed for local customization to achieve specific organization objectives," he said.Creating an adversary
"We haven't had an adversary that has come into our territory with the function of cyber, physical, and causing a North American-wide event, where they're going to affect hundreds of utilities," Lawrence said. "That has not happened. So we selected an adversary that could operate across the sector." The adversary is not identified as one of the foreign governments that cyberdefenders worry about, planners said.
NERC wants to create realistic if dramatic scenarios, said Michael O'Grady, standards manager for Pepco Holdings Inc. and the utility's leader planner for GridEx III, "not some far-fetched thing where the entire world is burning."
"In order to run a compact, two-day exercise that meets the objectives of over 3,000 players, we are pushing the 'believe' button on timing, scale and adversary selection slightly, but even those items are under the control of the playing organizations, meaning they can choose to play as many or as few injects as they feel they need to in order to meet their learning objectives," Conway added.
"In your organization, you may have a very specific thing you want to test," Lawrence told the Philadelphia audience. "If you decide you want to blow up a natural gas pipeline feeding one of your plants, that is not going to be known to all the other players."
"The purpose of an exercise of this magnitude is to really strain the system," Aaronson said. "That's where you find out where you have gaps that need to be addressed. In the midst of a true crisis, you need to make sure the senior executives can coordinate with each other to make extraordinary decisions."
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Enviros Slam Rail 'Myth' of Keystone XL Rejection
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Environmental groups are pushing back against claims that their successful campaign against TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline may have been a Pyrrhic victory for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Analyses from the Canadian oil industry and the U.S. State Department project a significant increase in crude-by-rail traffic resulting from President Obama's decision to reject the 830,000-barrel-per-day pipeline earlier this month.
But the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Oil Change International, Bold Nebraska, Wica Agli and the Center for Biological Diversity distributed a memo to reporters Friday countering that claim, arguing that rail is "too expensive, too logistically challenging and too risky" to be a viable KXL alternative for Canada's oil sands industry.
The existence of the rail alternative "has been a tool for [KXL] proponents to claim that the carbon impacts of the pipeline don't matter -- because tar sands is going to be developed anyway," said Anthony Swift, Canada project director for NRDC. "The storyline has really focused on this idea that it's just a symbolic victory."
In the memo, the green groups seized on past quotes and actions from major oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC. In late October, Shell halted construction on its 80,000-barrel-per-day Carmon Creek Project in Alberta, citing "the lack of infrastructure to move Canadian crude oil to global commodity markets."
Keystone XL's rejection comes at an precarious time for the North American crude-by-rail industry. Tank car lease rates have plummeted from 2014 levels, and in recent months, shipments of crude have seen a slight year-over-year decrease along both U.S. and Canadian railways. Last week was marked by three separate oil or ethanol train accidents from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, although there were no reports of fires or injuries (Greenwire, Nov. 9). An oil train conference Friday in Pittsburgh harked back to the 2013 derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people and spurred new safety regulations for major railroads and crude shippers.
The memo Friday walked a fine line by betting against the prospect of oil sands production getting out by rail, while trying not to play down safety concerns or ongoing environmentalist campaigns against new oil-by-rail infrastructure.
"Critics are absolutely right that crude by rail is a serious threat to communities, but arguing that we face a choice between rail and pipelines is misleading because rail is simply not a viable substitute for pipeline infrastructure for the tar sands industry," the groups noted.
Swift noted in a separate interview that "there is some complexity in this space."
"The reality is that there is an issue with unsafe crude-by-rail in the United States, but the vast majority of it is coming from North Dakota," he said. One of the groups' main points in sending out the memo, he later added, was to show that "rail isn't this flash-in-the-pan risk that can be taken away by building more pipelines."
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Obama's Clean Power Plan is a Bad Deal for America
Nov 16, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)
In 2009, President Obama turned his attention from his campaign victory to a carefully crafted legislative wish list, handed to him by liberal lobbyists and the radical base of the Democratic Party. Among their top priorities were extreme carbon-trading schemes and a war on fossil fuel. Despite the president’s personal popularity, his policy initiatives were met with strong opposition, forcing him to enlist the help of then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Democrats enjoyed sizeable majorities in the House and Senate, and the president was certain he could impose European-style cap-and-tax in America. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill, was the cap-and-tax legislation Obama believed would secure him international accolades and a lasting legacy. But the deeply unpopular bill did not make it through the Democrat-controlled Congress, and he went to Copenhagen empty-handed.
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Six years later, as he faces the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, Obama is again seeking legislation to tout internationally. But rather than going through a collaborative process with the states and Congress, he has enlisted the help of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ram through his new cap-and-tax initiative, the Clean Power Plan (CPP.)
Under CPP, the EPA feigns flexibility with rate-based and mass-based plans. If states can completely overhaul their energy policies and submit their compliance plans to the EPA by September 6, 2016, they will receive a rate-based plan. But that leaves states with less than one year to make major changes, and if they are unable to meet deadline, the EPA will implement its unnecessary mass-based cap-and-tax plan, which will be an economic disaster for the United States.
Energy prices are guaranteed to increase under the CPP, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that the initiative will cost American taxpayers $51 billion. Taking into account our crippling $18 trillion national debt, hardworking taxpayers simply cannot afford to pay for another of Obama’s liberal pet projects.
Further, CPP will diminish America’s natural gas industry through its Clean Energy Incentive Program. The program awards early action allowances for investments in wind and solar projects, and is a deceptive way to eliminate natural gas development, even though it is abundant in the United States, produces up to 45 percent less carbon dioxide than coal, and could provide millions of jobs and cleaner energy.
The United States is already a world leader on alternative energy, reduced carbon emissions, and global social responsibility. Despite the fact that the European Union implemented a cap-and-tax plan similar to Obama’s CPP in 2005, the United States reduced emissions more rapidly between 2005 and 2012. Congress rejected cap-and-tax because it is bad policy, and the president shouldn’t implement it through executive fiat.
The president is intent on reaching strict emissions agreements in Paris, and any agreement has to include equal commitments from other countries. Considering his appalling track record on international negotiations, I’m concerned that any deal reached will punish the American economy and will not hold other countries accountable.
Obama’s agreement with China is a template for how he’s going to negotiate in Paris. Under his terrible agreement, China agreed to continue increasing their emissions in 2030, while the U.S. cuts emissions. It is clear that he is going to punish the American economy and let China off the hook.
The CPP is a bad deal for America, and the president’s dogged pursuit of this weak policy is nothing more than a tireless pursuit to secure his liberal legacy through executive decision making. In these final months of his presidency, Obama should set aside his selfish ambitions and finally do what’s best for America’s future.
Sensenbrenner represents Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District and has served in the House since 1979. He sits on the Science, Space and Technology and the Judiciary committees.
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House Democrats to Hold Climate Forum Ahead of Paris
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Geof Koss
House Democrats on Thursday will host foreign dignitaries for a forum on international climate cooperation ahead of the key U.N. conference that starts in Paris at the end of the month.
The "Global Solutions to Climate Change" forum, announced today by Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), is intended to highlight the emissions-reduction plans submitted by more than 150 nations, as well as dozens of American companies.
"Despite this overwhelming support from the international and business communities, Congressional Republicans continue to bury their heads in the sand by refusing to hold even one hearing on climate change or commonsense policy proposals ahead of this historic summit," an advisory for the event states.
Members attending include Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats, who for years have pressed their GOP colleagues on the risks of climate inaction, as well as the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, which includes more than 50 House Democrats.
Panelists include Rwandan Ambassador to the United States Mathilde Mukantabana; Ronald Jumeau, the roving ambassador for climate change and small island developing state issues of the Republic of Seychelles; Kitty van der Heijden, the ambassador for sustainable development of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, testifying on behalf of the pro-clean energy Solutions Project; and Bruno Fulda, counselor for ecology, sustainable development, energy and transportation at the Embassy of France.
Thursday's event will serve as a counterpoint to a week of pushback by congressional critics of the Obama administration's climate agenda, including the Energy and Commerce Committee's markup of a pair of disapproval resolutions (H.J. Res. 71 and H.J. Res. 72) that target U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan -- the centerpiece of the president's plan. Additionally, the Senate Environment and Public Works and House Science, Technology and Space committees on Wednesday will hold hearings focused on the Paris climate talks.
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Climate Regs Squeeze Mont. Gov. Bullock, other Dems
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is arguably the Democratic governor in the toughest spot as he tries to comply with the Clean Power Plan without harming his state's economy.
Bullock's state faces significant emissions reductions under the plan. Other states also face strong targets but are controlled by Republicans who may have opposed the plan anyway.
Bullock has said the plan is unfair to Montana but is still necessary at the national level.
The governor has tried to tread a middle ground on the issue. Unlike Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), Bullock has said a court challenge to the Clean Power Plan could clarify some aspects of the rule.
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox (R) has joined a 27-state lawsuit challenging the regulation.
"Even though I do not believe that the final EPA rules are fair for our state, I do believe that there are many choices that Montanans may make to keep our state's energy destiny in our own hands," Bullock said.
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Utilities Push Dialogue on Carbon Trading Options
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden
Large investor-owned electric utilities that operate in multiple states agree that the cheapest way to cut carbon emissions under the Clean Power Plan is to create the biggest interstate trading system possible.
But when it comes to the specifics, they diverge.
U.S. EPA has laid out a number of plan formats from which states can choose, and only states with similar plans will be able to trade with one another.
Utilities are starting to reveal their preferences, including to state officials who will write carbon emissions reduction plans. Whether they gravitate toward the same types of plans could have a big impact on their profits, costs to customers and how difficult the nation as a whole finds it to comply with the landmark regulation.
"Different states have different sorts of advantages one way or another," noted Larry Monroe, chief environmental officer for Southern Co. "We would encourage states, our own and others, to look at the options and not pick them ahead of time."
At a conference of state electric regulators in Austin, Texas, last week, Exelon Corp.'s vice president of federal regulatory affairs and policy, Kathleen Barron, said her company wants the states in its service area to write plans to cap emissions from existing and new sources of power, which EPA would call a "mass-based standard with a new source complement."
Exelon, a nuclear-heavy power company headquartered in Chicago, would likely be on the winning side of the scales in such a trading system.
John McManus, vice president of environmental strategy and planning for American Electric Power Co. Inc. -- a more fossil-fuel-dependent company that services portions of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee -- said a mass-based plan makes sense. That, in part, is because it is easier to administer than a rate-based plan, in which power plants would have to achieve a specific rate of emissions per pounds of carbon produced, he said.
Monroe of Southern Co., which operates in the Southeast in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, agreed that the mass-based route is attractive for its simplicity. But a rate-based standard might be more beneficial for Southern's states.
Georgia, for example, has new nuclear reactors under construction that would produce large amounts of carbon-free power and likely leave Southern Co. with credits to sell to other utilities that fall short of the goals EPA has assigned in their states. In a rate-based system, that power would be more valuable, because it would help bring down the average emissions. In a mass-based system, it might offset some needed fossil-fuel electricity, but it wouldn't have near the same dollar value.
Where the utilities agree is that the biggest trading program would be best.
"To really optimize it, it has to be as broad as possible," said McManus. "So what one state does is going to affect the state next to it and is going to affect the next state, as well."'A little bit of poker'
As states start hearing from businesses, advocates and consumers, most are keeping their cards close about which path they might pick.
Kelly Speakes-Backman, a senior vice president at the Alliance to Save Energy who was formerly a Maryland regulator and chairwoman of the board of directors for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, said states will get a better idea of which way their neighbors are leaning in 2016. That is when initial status reports are due to EPA for states seeking two-year extensions.
"I think there's going to be a recalibration point between 2016 and 2018," Speakes-Backman said. "You can see then ... whether everybody around you is doing mass-based and you've decided to do rate-based; well, you've just increased your cost of compliance considerably, so you may think about going mass-based. I think it's a little bit of poker."
What route states choose could depend on what the governor's office wants, what electric regulators think is feasible and what might boost economic development.
In a change in the final rule, EPA required that states writing mass-based plans prove that they weren't just going to shut down existing plants and open new ones that would continue to emit -- a phenomenon referred to by many as "carbon leakage." They can do that by incentivizing existing natural gas plants and new renewable energy or by capping emissions from all sources of power -- old or new.
States that are expecting to need to produce more power in the future aren't so happy with that idea. They worry that the new source complement numbers EPA has assigned won't leave enough room for growth (ClimateWire, Nov. 9).
"Certainly the leakage issue makes the mass-based approach a little troublesome for us," Monroe said. "All of us are interested in economic growth, and so how do you take into account that for a far-reaching regulation?"State politics at play
Some blame the lack of consensus among utilities on politics.
In electric regulator Jim Gardner's home state of Kentucky, that influence on the planning process is evident.
Republican Matt Bevin won the governor's race earlier this month by a huge margin. And he doesn't want to write a compliance blueprint. But Gardner implied that doesn't relieve him of his planning responsibilities.
"In Kentucky right now, there's just so much uncertainty. There's so much political uncertainty. All we can do is just sort of put our heads down and try to figure out which of those works," Gardner said.
Exelon's Barron said that even before the 2016 initial submission deadline, she expects that "you'll start to hear companies start to talk about what they want because states will ask them, and they'll have to weigh in."
"They're trying to make a case to the court that they deserve a stay and that the regulation is impermissible on a number of grounds, so it's kind of hard for them to speak out of both sides of their mouth and say, 'This is how we think this regulation should be,'" she said.
Barron said she thinks public comments don't necessarily represent what's happening inside companies -- many of which are talking about finding the best compliance pathways while simultaneously challenging the rule in court.
The utilities for now seem focused on wrangling the states in their service footprints into group conversations.
Monroe said Southern is working among its states to come to common ground but sees it as a "huge challenge."
"When we talk about different states with different plans, we see that as a significant problem with the Clean Power Plan. We operate our generating fleet, and we have for over 50 years across our multiple states, as one fleet, so that we can dispatch economically," he said.
"The Clean Power Plan, frankly, challenges that," he said, adding, "Getting states to work together is difficult at best. It threatens to sort of Balkanize the electric grid into separate state organizations."
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IETA's Forrister Outlines Challenges Facing Negotiators on Emissions Trading
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E TV
With many countries placing conditions in their intended nationally determined contributions that emissions reduction targets are contingent on having access to international climate markets, how will emissions trading discussions shape next month's climate negotiations in Paris? During today's OnPoint, Dirk Forrister, president and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association, discusses the framework that he believes needs to be established in the Paris agreement to facilitate trading systems and linking.
Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello, and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is Dirk Forrister, president and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association. Dirk, great to have you back on the show.
Dirk Forrister: Thank you, Monica. Good to be here.
Monica Trauzzi: Very good time to have you on. Dirk, as we hit that final stretch before the negotiations in Paris for this year's international climate discussions. There's a lot of work happening behind the scenes, and also quite a bit of prejudging about what we might actually see as the outcome of the conference. How substantive are you expecting the actual agreement to be and how much will it accomplish?
Dirk Forrister: I think the actual agreement is likely to be quite short, and it'll kind of be headline items. It'll be very principled, but it'll probably be something like, you know, 10 or 15 pages long, something you can read in one sitting and understand. And all the detail will be picked up in decisions that are taken by the negotiators. Some of those decisions will happen in Paris, but there are a good number of them that will likely be put on a work plan to be produced in following years. So we would almost think about it like the difference in legislation and regulation. So you'll get the basic ideas in the agreement and the rest of it in decisions.
Monica Trauzzi: And has a lot of the real work or the hard work happened already through the INDC process?
Dirk Forrister: I think so. I mean, in a sense, that's where the real action is. That's not the only action, but that's where you're understanding what the level of activity is going to be in key places, every place around the globe, and that's very different this time around because I think it's 154 countries have submitted their plans of what they intend to do, but the real magic of Paris is going to be not in just what everybody did in their individual plans, but what they decide to do together, which is where climate finance, markets, technology, capacity building all come in because those things need to produce a bigger result than what people can do by themselves. If it was just INDCs, we wouldn't need to go. You emailed those in. It's already done.
Monica Trauzzi: Yeah. Do you think there's an opportunity for any element of the agreement to be binding?
Dirk Forrister: Well, I think there will be some element, like it's binding to submit an INDC or something like that, but I think for purposes of compliance, it's really going to be binding at home. Now, this is still a fight. Europe wants it to be binding, but I think many other key parties, including the U.S. have a different view of it, so maybe some elements have a binding nature to how you report or sort of what the formatting is and things like that, but I think the real action part of it will be binding at home but not internationally.
Monica Trauzzi: Many countries have indicated and placed a condition in their INDCs that the targets are contingent on having access to international climate markets. They want that written into the agreement. So how does that directly influence the dynamic of the discussion that we'll see in Paris?
Dirk Forrister: Well, I think it's a very different dynamic from my days as a negotiator, back in the other century, and that is that the calls for markets are coming from many more voices. It's a number of countries in Africa and Latin America. Brazil is taking a real leadership role in trying to insert it in the agreement itself. Places like New Zealand and Norway and Australia and Canada are all voicing support -- Switzerland -- for having good accounting principles so that you know where imports and exports of units are. So markets have many, many more friends this time around than in times past, and you raise a really important point that some of those are tied to their level of ambition. So if you care about ambition and you care about achieving as best we can those levels of reduction that would correspond to a 2-degree level of protection, markets are part of the key to getting there.
Monica Trauzzi: And does that also mean that we could see some countries changing their commitments based on whether there is that written into the agreement?
Dirk Forrister: I think this is one of the things that we'll learn more about too is how do you firm up your INDC into an NDC going forward, how do you firm that. I almost think about it, like in the commercial world, it's a letter of intent versus the actual agreement. So we'll see how those things firm up, but you're exactly right. I think some of them could strive for more. Mexico, I think, was the first one, first country that put in an INDC of that nature from the sort of the traditional developing country side, although they're more OECD now. But same with Switzerland, put it in very early. That made it clear that their ability to achieve the best level of reduction was tied up to the idea of markets.
Monica Trauzzi: So what do the Paris discussions need to accomplish in order to set up an appropriate framework that allows for and facilitates trading schemes?
Dirk Forrister: Well, I think there are three things that we look for, and two of them might could be combined, but one is the sort of simple authority, just a reference to forms of cooperation across borders. We did a project last year with Rob Stavins and a team from Harvard to give us ideas about what might go into the agreement, and that was one of the basic ideas that came from that. The second is around accounting principles. People in markets care about that. We care about actually the transparency of knowing where the import-export levels are in particular jurisdictions, so having that appear in national reports, we think, would be important and would build more confidence for market-based approaches. And then the third thing is a mechanism for creating credits, and there I'm talking about project-based credits. A number of the INDCs talk about that, and these are people that got a little bit of experience with the CDM. They may have programs that are going to cover part of their economies, but still have portions of their economies that could produce project-based credits through a mechanism like that if it was available. So there's been a long and tortured negotiation on CDM reform and on reform of the joint implementation mechanism, both of which are in the Kyoto protocol, but also a discussion about just putting those to bed and creating a new market mechanism. So one of the topics is might you merge those things into a central mechanism, and that's something Brazil has put on the table, and we're very interested in that.
Monica Trauzzi: Are you concerned that the conversation on markets could be sticky?
Dirk Forrister: Well, it has been sticky already. It's been sort of a stepchild at times in the process, but starting last year when you had many, many countries and leaders and corporate officials stepping forward and calling for carbon pricing signals, and approaches that support carbon pricing, that sort of put markets back in the mainframe, and I think it will survive, but it was a difficult thing to get market provisions sort of added back in the last negotiations and bond so that they're sort of a part of the discussion in a more central way.
Monica Trauzzi: Right. And South Korea this year launched an emissions trading system.
Dirk Forrister: Right.
Monica Trauzzi: So you think that that kind of launches the ball forward when countries are having these discussions individually.
Dirk Forrister: I do. I mean, South Korea has the first national program in Asia, but the other really important one, obviously announced here in town, was China stepping forward with plans for a national emissions trading market. So guess where I'll be spending time next year, right. It's China putting together a national plan, and I think it's going to be very interesting to see sort of an Asian flavor to emissions trading begin to emerge.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, Dirk. Very interesting. Thank you for coming on the show.
Dirk Forrister: Thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
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Deese Visits Canada to Talk Climate, Energy Ahead of Paris
Nov 16, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
President Obama's top climate adviser is in Ottawa, Canada, today to meet with leaders from new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, the White House announced today.
The meeting comes as officials from around the globe are set to travel to Paris at the end of the month for international climate change negotiations. It also comes just days after Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline's crossing from Alberta into the United States, a project the Trudeau government supports.
Brian Deese and Canadian officials will "discuss opportunities for cooperation and collaboration between the United States and Canada, particularly on issues of energy and climate change in the weeks leading to the Paris Climate Conference and beyond," the White House said in a statement.
The French government has decided to press on with the U.N. conference in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks that occurred Friday (ClimateWire, Nov. 16).
Ahead of the talks, the United States has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Negotiators will largely rely on the Clean Power Plan, EPA's regulation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to meeting that pledge.
Canada has pledged to reduce economywide greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Deese tweeted this morning upon landing in Ottawa that he was "looking forward to good discussions" today between the two governments.
A visit by such a high-ranking and visible administration official as Deese could signal improving relations between the United States and Canada despite KXL.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's strong lobbying for KXL and Obama's delay in making up his mind helped fray relations. Both men were also ideologically distinct.
Trudeau, however, campaigned on focusing less on the pipeline when weighing the value of U.S. relations with Canada and promised closer cooperation.
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Does Burning Garbage for Electricity Make Sense?
Nov 15, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Nickolas J. Themelis and Jeffrey Morris
The amount of garbage produced by the world’s urban dwellers is growing at an astonishing clip. The World Bank has estimated that countries are generating 1.4 billion tons of municipal solid waste each year and forecasts that this number will double by 2025.
What is to be done with all of that stuff?
Governments and businesses have been working to change product packaging and consumer behavior to reduce the materials we throw away. In combination with recycling and composting efforts, these changes have helped significantly reduce garbage being buried in landfills.
One option for dealing with the remaining trash—burning waste to generate electricity—has been adopted in several countries but has encountered stiff opposition in the U.S., where about 12% of municipal solid waste is burned for energy.
Supporters of waste-to-energy plants say such facilities reduce the need for land for dumps, lower the cost of moving trash around the country and provide an alternative source of power.
But for opponents, burning waste to produce energy is the least desirable way to deal with garbage. Such plants pollute the air, and their high capital costs can divert resources from waste-reduction and recycling efforts, the critics say.
Nickolas J. Themelis, director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University, says burning waste for energy makes sense. Jeffrey Morris, an economist and president of Sound Resource Management Group in Olympia, Wash., counters that waste-to-energy is the worst of the possible options.
YES: It’s Better Than Landfills
By Nickolas J. Themelis
Waste dumps are an age-old means of disposing of municipal solid waste that in developed nations in the past few decades have evolved into sanitary landfills. However, as cities run out of space for landfills, they have to transport their garbage to faraway sites—or find ways to produce less waste.
Many communities—in nearly 40 countries—have concluded that it makes sense to burn such waste, not only to reduce landfill space needs, but as a means of producing energy economically and with less harm to the environment than consigning garbage to landfills or burning fossil fuels.
Here are some of the reasons Germany and other nations in Europe and Asia have concluded that it makes sense to burn municipal solid waste instead of using landfills:
Land conservation: A waste-to-energy plant of one million tons capacity can be built on 20 acres and over a lifetime of 40 years or more help avoid conversion of 1,000 acres to landfills.
Preservation of nonrenewable resources: To generate 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity, the average waste-to-energy plant in the U.S. burns one ton of waste, while a coal-burning power plant must burn one-third of a ton of coal. The carbon emitted is roughly equal, but only a third of the carbon in the waste is fossil-based, so fewer nonrenewable resources are used. No one is arguing, by the way, that waste-to-energy plants should replace coal- or natural-gas-fired plants. But as power producers, they do offer benefits that landfills lack. Methane that sanitary landfills capture for energy produces a theoretical 120 kilowatt-hours per ton. The average production of electricity from all U.S. landfills is only 50 kilowatt-hours per ton of solids landfilled.
Effect on recycling: Burning waste for energy doesn’t discourage recycling, as some critics have claimed. Several studies have shown that states and countries that recycle are also big users of waste-to-energy. Also, 90% of postrecycling waste in the U.S. is currently landfilled, presenting a good fuel supply.
Environmental quality: A recent Columbia University study showed that total dioxin emissions of U.S. waste-to-energy plants in 2012 were 0.09% of all dioxin emissions in the U.S. Spontaneous landfill fires in the U.S. in 2012 produced more than 400 times as much dioxins. It is true that waste-burning plants require sophisticated air-pollution controls, but landfills have no such controls on the gases they emit in the atmosphere.
Mitigation of climate change: Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and academia have shown that diverting one ton of municipal solid waste from sanitary landfills to waste-burning plants reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by at least half a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of waste.
Fiscal advantage: Waste-to-energy plants require a large upfront capital investment. But most of the hundreds of U.S. municipalities that built them two and three decades ago have benefited financially. Such plants earn higher gate fees than landfills do, and they produce electricity.
Prof. Themelis is director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University. Email him at reports@wsj.com.
NO: The Costs Are Too High
By Jeffrey Morris
Burning garbage to produce electricity is a terrible idea, for both economic and environmental reasons—including the harm it can do to a community’s efforts to recycle and compost.
Here are the main reasons why we shouldn’t burn garbage for power:
It is inefficient: Incineration converts less than 25% of material energy in garbage into marketed electricity, compared with about 35% for coal and as much as 45% for some natural-gas systems. Even landfill methane burns with about 35% efficiency. Better still, recycling discarded items—reducing the need for manufacturing and packaging—saves three to five times as much energy as incinerating them generates.
It harms the environment: Burning garbage emits 1.5 times as much carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour generated as coal and three times as much as natural gas. Waste-to-energy plants require costly air-pollution controls to reduce emissions of hazardous metals and chemicals. Even with such controls, garbage burning is more harmful to humans and the ecosystem than fossil fuels. Claims that waste-burning emissions contain only a small fraction of dioxins released by landfill fires are based on tests and data that are biased. Plant operators are warned well in advance of testing dates. And landfill-fire data include open, unlined dumps and landfills that do not capture explosive emissions, neither of which are representative of modern landfills.
It releases carbon, while landfills store it: Incineration spews virtually all of the carbon in burnable garbage materials into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Landfills store all of the carbon found in nonbiodegradable materials like plastics and glass, and some of the carbon in materials that break down over time: Amounts of carbon stored for biodegradable materials range from more than 80% for wood and newsprint to less than 20% for food scraps; leaves, other paper types, cardboard and grass are somewhere in between.
Modern landfills have smaller climate footprints: Studies which claim that waste-to-energy plants reduce greenhouse-gas emissions more than landfills typically don’t count all of the carbon-dioxide such plants emit. They also base their comparisons, in part, on landfills that either do not attempt to capture methane or do a poor job of it. Newer landfills, which grab and burn methane for electricity, release less carbon than incinerating the solid waste that generates it. Thus, communities that combine modern landfills with composting organics and recycling do less environmental harm than plants that burn solid waste for electricity.
It is more expensive than land-filling: Disposal costs for waste-to-energy plants—net of revenue from generated energy—are 35% to 50% higher than disposal costs for land-filling. Such facilities typically commit a community to throwing away a set amount of garbage each year to meet plant production requirements, thus inhibiting recycling and composting efforts.
Dr. Morris is an economist and president of Sound Resource Management Group. Email him at reports@wsj.com.
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