Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 12/1/2015
-
(ACC Mentioned) Business Coalition Pushes for Customs Passage This Year
Dec 1, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Victoria Guida
A coalition of 19 business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers, is urging congressional leaders to hold a conference on the customs reauthorization bill and pass legislation before the end of the year. -
Advancing the Ball While Minding the Gaps: EDF’s Comments on EPA’s Risk Scoping Documents for Flame Retardant Chemicals
Dec 1, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Lindsay McCormick
Until June 2014, EPA had not completed a chemical risk assessment under its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority in 28 years -
California Issues DINP Safe Use Determination for PVC Roofing
Dec 1, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has issued a safe use determination (SUD) for the use of diisononyl phthalate (DINP) in certain roofing applications. -
House to Move to Block Emission Rules
Dec 1, 2015 | Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder
The Republican-controlled House plans to vote on Tuesday on a pair of measures blocking federal rules to cut power-plant emissions, a symbolic move aimed at sowing doubt about President Barack Obama’s climate agenda while world leaders gather in Paris to forge an accord on the problem. -
Congressional Republicans Amp up Anti-Paris Message
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
House and Senate Republicans escalated their assault today on President Obama's hopes of brokering a climate deal in Paris later this month. -
Obama: GOP President Won’t Stop Climate Pledges
Dec 1, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Obama expressed confidence Tuesday that the United States will meet the climate pledges he presented at an international conference in Paris, despite threats from Republicans. -
Obama: Climate Action Is America’s Duty
Dec 1, 2015 | National Journal
By Rebecca Nelson and Jason Plautz
Even as House Republicans gear up to vote against a key piece of his climate change agenda, President Obama sent a message to his critics from Paris: Look around. -
Clean Energy Research Money Has Bipartisan Following, but Not Paris Link
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
Conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are still deciding what to make of President Obama's pledge in Paris yesterday to join with other countries in doubling support for research and development for clean energy technologies. -
Congress’s Long History of Doing Nothing on Climate Change, in 6 Acts
Dec 1, 2015 | Washington Post
By Amber Phillips
Congress must act if the United States wants to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, say climate activists such as the Environmental Defense Fund. But right now, those activists have basically no realistic hope for any such action. -
Texas' Top Regulator Slams Clinton and 'Liberal Ideologues'
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Lee
Texas' top oil and gas regulator came to the defense of the world's biggest private oil company, lashing out at Hillary Clinton and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) for their comments on Exxon Mobil Corp. -
In Paris, Clean Energy Gathers Steam
Nov 30, 2015 | Washington Post
By Eugene Robinson
As the Paris climate talks begin, the die is already cast: The world is going to move toward cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. The question for U.S. policymakers is whether the world’s biggest economy gets left behind. -
The Green Tech Solution
Dec 1, 2015 | New York Times
By Davis Brooks
I’ve been confused about this Paris climate conference and how the world should move forward to ameliorate climate change, so I séanced up my hero Alexander Hamilton to see what he thought. -
Ozone NAAQS Critics Cite 'Background' Ozone Concerns
Dec 1, 2015 | InsideEPA
Coal producer Murray Energy and five states suing EPA over the agency's stricter ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) are arguing in new legal filings that the standard is unlawful under the Clean Air Act because it is set a level below naturally occurring... -
Refinery Emissions Rule Set to Take Effect Feb. 1
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Tighter regulations on oil refinery air emissions will take effect Feb. 1, U.S. EPA said today. -
Boon in Natural Gas May Stress FERC’s Pipeline Work
Dec 1, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
The proliferation of natural gas power plants may drag on FERC’s ability to keep up with the rising number of pipeline applications, an agency commissioner said this morning.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time
Energy and Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Business Coalition Pushes for Customs Passage This Year
Dec 1, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Victoria Guida
A coalition of 19 business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers, is urging congressional leaders to hold a conference on the customs reauthorization bill and pass legislation before the end of the year.
In a letter sent to the Hill today, the Business Residue Coalition says the customs bill "will help streamline trade and harmonize transportation of U.S. commerce across our allied Northern and Southern borders," including by codifying the way shipping containers containing trace amounts of residue — from bits of food to chemicals, depending on the shipment — are treated.
"Conference and passage of customs reauthorization will codify these longstanding commercial practices into law and prohibit the unnecessary production of a new manifest and the payment of duty for the re-entry of small amounts of U.S. goods with no commercial value," according to the letter.
Also among the members of the coalition are the American Association of Exporters & Importers, American Chemistry Council, Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters, National Grain and Feed Association and the United States Council of International Business.
-
Dec 1, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Lindsay McCormick
Until June 2014, EPA had not completed a chemical risk assessment under its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority in 28 years. Since then, EPA seems to have been somewhat picking up the pace: Over the past year and a half EPA has completed four additional risk assessments through the TSCA Work Plan Chemical Program, which is designed to assess the risks of priority chemicals currently on the market.
Recently, EPA initiated its assessment process for the next set of Work Plan chemicals, including three “clusters” of flame retardant chemicals. We fully support EPA’s current efforts to assess the risks of these flame retardants – with the end goal of managing identified risks – and have provided quite extensive comments on EPA’s initial scoping documents. In this post, I’ll highlight some of our comments and recommendations; see the links at the end to access the comments themselves.
This summer, EPA published initial scoping documents on three clusters of structurally similar flame retardant chemicals: Chlorinated Phosphate Esters (CPE), Cyclic Aliphatic Bromides (HBCD), and Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) and related chemicals.
As an earlier generation of flame retardants, the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), have been phased out of the market due to rising concerns over their health effects (such as their impact on brain development), other,less studied, flame retardants have swept in to take their place. Today, CPEs are widely used in paints, textiles, insulation, and polyurethane foam, HBCD in thermal insulation boards and other building materials, and TBBPA in electronic products such as computers and remote controls.
However, new research is increasingly linking these replacement flame retardants to health impacts as well – including cancer and reproductive effects. Some of these chemicals have been evaluated (and regulated) by other countries. For example, the use of Tris(2-chloroethyl)phosphate (TCEP), a CPE cluster chemical, has beenregulated in the EU under its REACH regulation.
The potential risks posed by these flame retardants certainly warrant EPA’s attention, given the breadth of their use and emerging scientific research findings. However, judging from the scoping documents, EPA intends to conduct narrowly focused risk assessments – excluding major uses, pathways and routes of exposure, potentially relevant health effects, and certain potentially highly exposed populations.
Limited scope and inadequate justifications
The assessments for all three clusters, for example, will focus entirely on oral exposures. This means that exposures to these chemicals from breathing in contaminated air (inhalation exposure) or from directly touching these chemicals or products made with them (dermal exposure) will not be factored into the analysis. For the CPE cluster chemicals, exposure to worker populations (which is expected to occur primarily through inhalation and dermal routes of exposure), will be excluded entirely from the assessment. Furthermore, many chemicals in the initially identified clusters are being dropped altogether. These omissions are largely due to the lack of sufficient information to support a quantitative risk assessment of the chemicals or pathways.
In our comments, we argue that the limited scopes proposed by EPA are bound to result in risk assessments that dramatically underestimate risks from these chemicals, and we urge EPA to make that clear. Our concerns are broader, however, and extend to the inadequacy, inconsistency and lack of clarity of the justifications EPA provides for these exclusions.
For example, in justifying why it has excluded specific exposure scenarios and/or cluster chemicals from further assessment, the Agency frequently conflates or fails to distinguish between its expectation of low risk potential versus the insufficiency of data needed to conduct a risk assessment. Clearly differentiating between these two explanations for any exclusions, we argue, is essential: Just because data are limited does not mean that no or low risk can be concluded. Blurring these lines may make it more difficult for EPA to justify revisiting excluded scenarios when it has better data in the future, by inadvertently providing unwarranted arguments to stakeholder groups seeking to limit further review and risk management of their chemicals.
EPA has generally excluded food as a route of exposure from these assessments. Its rationale – that it is the “purview of other federal agencies” – also leaves a lot to be desired. It is not only inconsistent with the Agency’s decision to include a quantitative assessment of exposures via fish consumption for all three flame retardant clusters, but also with the Agency’s history of addressing food as a route of exposure, as demonstrated in its science and policy statements (see, for example, EPA’s research on consumption of rice contaminated with arsenic, workshop on infant consumption of contaminated breast milk, and Exposure Assessment Tool Box (“Expobox”) description of lifecycle impacts of chemicals on the food supply).
Excluding food additives, which clearly fall under FDA’s jurisdiction, from the scope of the assessments is understandable. However, it is inappropriate for EPA to exclude food as a vector for exposure on the basis that it is the purview of other agencies, given that contamination of food may derive from uses of a chemical that fall under TSCA’s jurisdiction.
A balancing act
We also argue that EPA must thoughtfully balance the dual importance of using robust science and striving for comprehensive assessments on the one hand, and timely decision-making on the other. The limited scopes proposed by EPA are not surprising, given resource constraints, major data gaps regarding the toxicity of and exposure to some of these flame retardants, and EPA’s limited authority to address these data gaps in a timely manner.
In light of these realities, EDF encourages EPA to take a two-pronged approach, both with the present assessments and future Work Plan chemical assessments:Move forward swiftly with completing risk assessments in (relatively) data-rich areas and with taking regulatory actions to address identified risks.Fully acknowledge the limited scope of and exclusions from these assessments; actively take steps to fill data gaps in data-poor areas; and revisit and expand the scopes of the assessments as new data become available.
Moving forward where possible now, while acknowledging and taking steps to address data gaps to enable more complete assessments in the future, seems to us to be the right recipe.
-
California Issues DINP Safe Use Determination for PVC Roofing
Dec 1, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has issued a safe use determination (SUD) for the use of diisononyl phthalate (DINP) in certain roofing applications.
Based on its analysis, Oehha concluded that a Proposition 65 warning for the installation of single-ply polyvinyl chloride (PVC) roofing membranes is not required. It found that the reviewed exposure scenario to DINP, during installation, resulted in an excess cancer risk of less than one in 100,000, and an exposure to only 57 percent of the proposed No Significant Risk Level (NSRL) for the substance.
DINP is an intentionally added plasticiser that provides flexibility to single-ply PVC roofing membranes, and is present at concentrations of up to 15% of the product's total weight.
It was listed in December 2013 as a substance known to the state to cause cancer.
The SUD was developed at the request of the Chemical Fabrics & Film Association (CFFA) earlier this year.
-
House to Move to Block Emission Rules
Dec 1, 2015 | Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder
The Republican-controlled House plans to vote on Tuesday on a pair of measures blocking federal rules to cut power-plant emissions, a symbolic move aimed at sowing doubt about President Barack Obama’s climate agenda while world leaders gather in Paris to forge an accord on the problem.
The votes are part of a multifront attack congressional Republicans are mounting against Mr. Obama’s climate policies. In addition to Tuesday’s votes, GOP lawmakers are working to block federal dollars from supporting global climate efforts, and they are moving separate energy legislation this week that they say shows a stark contrast between their priorities and Mr. Obama’s.
In two votes set for Tuesday afternoon, the House is expected to pass measures nullifying recent Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon emissions from existing power plants and limiting emissions from new ones. The Senate passed similar measures in mid-November.
Mr. Obama has promised to veto the bills.READ MORE
Coalition of 18 States to Move to Defend Carbon-Emissions RulesSenate Challenges Obama Carbon RulesEPA Emissions Rule to Mandate Limits Beyond Proposed TargetsObama’s New Climate-Change Regulations to Alter, Challenge Industry
The EPA regulations represent the central commitment Mr. Obama is making to the United Nations conference that began on Monday in Paris and extends through Dec. 11. Mr. Obama wrapped up a two-day visit to the summit Tuesday afternoon.
“You have the president leaving Paris, and you’ll also have a contrast,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) told reporters on Capitol Hill. “[With] what the president’s proposing now—a regulatory cap-and-trade [program]—you’ll see disapproval, not just from the Senate, but in the House as well.”
Citing the regulations’ role in improving public health and fighting climate change, the White House says Mr. Obama would veto the measures should they reach his desk, an action that may coincide with the end of the Paris conference. Republicans likely lack the votes to override such a veto.
Republicans nonetheless hope to send a message that Mr. Obama’s commitments on climate change could be undone by a new president or by legal challenges.
More than two dozen states, almost all headed by Republican governors, have sued to stop the EPA rules, which call for a 32% cut in carbon emissions from existing power plants.
Speaking to reporters before leaving Paris on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said his successor should appreciate how seriously most world leaders take climate change, a position most Republican presidential candidates don’t share.
“Not just 99.5% of scientists and experts, but 99% of world leaders think this is really important,” Mr. Obama said. “I think the president of the United States is going to need to think this is really important.”
The House is scheduled to begin debate later on Tuesday on a separate bill that includes various proposals Republicans say should be the focus of energy policy, rather than the climate-change policies Mr. Obama is pushing.
That measure, which the House is expected pass later this week, would expedite exports of natural gas, add new requirements to ensure the electricity grid remains operating, and streamline other aspects of energy policy in the wake of the country’s oil and natural-gas boom.
The White House threatened to veto the bill on Monday, saying in a statement that it undermines “already successful initiatives” the administration is pursuing.
-
Congressional Republicans Amp up Anti-Paris Message
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
House and Senate Republicans escalated their assault today on President Obama's hopes of brokering a climate deal in Paris later this month.
The House plays host to a hearing and a chamber vote today aimed at warning international delegates gathered in the French capital that lawmakers do not back Obama's engagement in the talks or his domestic policies. And a key Senate committee released a white paper aimed at poking holes in the administration's position.
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), is a climate doubter, heard from majority-invited witnesses who warned that a Paris emissions deal would be worthless environmentally and damaging economically.
"The president's pledge to the United Nations would increase electricity costs, ration energy and slow economic growth," Smith stated at the top of the hearing. He noted that the White House pledge to cut U.S. emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 rests on U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan and other policies that he said were faulty.
"The president should come back to Congress with any agreement that is made in Paris," he said. "He won't, because he knows the Senate would not ratify it."
Obama and his administration have said that while some elements of the deal reached in Paris should be legally binding -- like the obligation that countries submit fresh commitments at regular intervals, and provisions to ensure transparency of reporting -- others should have political force only. Treaties that are binding under international law must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate, a threshold that has proved insurmountable even for far less politically fraught agreements than the Paris climate deal will be. And while the White House says it has authorization to undertake procedural commitments on behalf of the United States, there is little doubt that any treaty that made emissions targets subject to international law would require Senate approval.
But the European Union and other frequent U.S. allies in these talks have refused to rule out the possibility of a legally binding treaty. They blasted Secretary of State John Kerry in the press last month when he appeared to take such a treaty off the table (ClimateWire, Nov. 13). And in his remarks yesterday in Paris, Obama affirmed that parts of an agreement should be legally binding, but only the procedural parts (Greenwire, Nov. 30).
But Andrew Grossman, an associate at the law firm Baker & Hostetler LLP, told the Science Committee that "as a legal matter, Paris is a farce."
Any agreement that would be binding on Americans must be approved by the Senate, he noted. So any agreement that lacks that level of formality would be worthless. But Obama could try to appease international negotiators and add to his own legacy by accepting binding emissions targets and then conveying to Congress that it now has the responsibility to enshrine them in domestic law, Grossman said.
"Assuming that this administration and its successors do not attempt to implement such an obligation administratively -- and they would be insane to try -- it is doubtful that any party would have standing to bring a court challenge," he said.
The administration's entire 26-to-28-percent commitment to the United Nations is built on policies it says it is already authorized to promulgate, and for which it says no additional congressional action will be needed.
Oren Cass of the conservative Manhattan Institute took aim at the administration's position -- underlined by Obama's meetings in Paris with the Chinese and Indian presidents -- that major developing countries are making strides to deliver reductions of their own.
Commitments like China's pledge to cap its emissions no later than 2030 and to draw 20 percent of its power by that time from non-fossil fuels are little more than "business as usual," said Cass, who advised 2012 Republican presidential contender and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
"If progress under this process is supposed to come from peer pressure and so-called naming and shaming, then countries failing to take substantial and costly action should be named, shamed and pressured," he said. Failure to do so in the cases of China and India "fatally undermines the entire enterprise for the sake of photo ops and political point-scoring."
But Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, which tracks these negotiations very closely, told the committee that U.S. action had prompted other countries to make commitments that collectively promise to cut post-industrial emissions by between 3 and 8 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2030. Far from being a meaningless gesture, as Smith and others contend, the sum total of the commitments will keep warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared with a more dangerous 4 C.
"The leadership role played by the United States has helped to catalyze not only broad-based action by other countries, but also the momentum toward an international agreement that achieves a key set of aims for the United States," he said.Vote on EPA rule imminent
The Science hearing came as the House is poised to follow the Senate today in approving a resolution that would kill the Clean Power Plan and prevent EPA from promulgating similar restrictions in the future without new congressional consent (E&E Daily, Dec. 1). The Senate approved the resolution by a narrow margin last month, but the White House has already promised to veto it.
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the chairman of a key Energy and Commerce subcommittee and the sponsor of the Congressional Review Act efforts in the House, said today in an op-ed in the conservative Washington Examiner that the power rules are "detrimental regulations" that "will drive up electricity prices for many families and businesses across the country."
"The last thing American people can afford right now are higher monthly power bills," wrote Whitfield, who will also lead a congressional delegation to Paris early next week in an effort to show the international community that Congress doesn't support the president.
The same message drove Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff to release a white paper this morning laying out Chairman James Inhofe's (R-Okla.) arguments against a Paris deal.
"Congress -- regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans have been in the majority -- has long opposed international agreements, legislation, and regulations targeting greenhouse gas emissions that would undermine the welfare of the American people and the U.S. economy," states the summary, written by committee staff.
It also states that the policies laid out in the U.S. submission to the United Nations do not add up to the White House's pledged reductions, signaling that new congressional action would be needed to reach those targets.
-
Obama: GOP President Won’t Stop Climate Pledges
Dec 1, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Obama expressed confidence Tuesday that the United States will meet the climate pledges he presented at an international conference in Paris, despite threats from Republicans.
Obama said it’s in the best interest of the next president to keep his promise to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025, even though the pledge is not binding under domestic or international law.
The future president, Obama said, will realize “that American leadership involves not just playing to American constituency back home, but you now are in fact at the center of what happens around the world.”
Obama also offered the prediction that he will be succeeded by a Democrat — something that would vastly increase the chances that his climate agenda will take hold.
“I’m confident in the wisdom of the American people on that front,” Obama said.
Obama said the next president will realize what it means to have the vast majority of world leaders endorse cutting greenhouse gases.
“The president of the United States is going to need to think this is really important,” he said. “And that’s why it’s important for us to not project what’s being said on a campaign trail but to do what's right and make the case.”
GOP presidential hopefuls have overwhelmingly rejected Obama’s climate agenda, joining nearly all Republicans in Congress in their wish to overturn his controversial regulations on power plant emissions and other big rules.
The power plant rule is the main pillar of Obama’s pledge to the United Nations. That pledge and others from nearly every country are expected to be rolled into an international agreement, though the emissions reductions are unlikely to be binding.
Overturning big rules would prevent the United States from meeting its pledge.
Obama also sought to reassure world leaders that the United States will be able to contribute $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund as he has promised. That fund is meant to help poor countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, but Republicans in Congress have threatened to block the funding.
“This is part of American leadership,” Obama said. “For some reason, too often in Washington, American leadership is defined by whether or not we’re sending troops somewhere. And that’s the sole definition of leadership.”
Republicans in both the Senate and House want to reject Obama’s $3 billion request, and some even want to prevent him from moving other foreign aid around to fulfill the pledge.
Earlier Tuesday, Obama met with the leaders of various small island nations, who stand to suffer the most from rising sea levels.
“Their populations are amongst the most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change,” Obama told reporters after the meeting. “Some of their nations could disappear entirely, and as weather patterns change, we might deal with tens of millions of climate refugees in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Obama left for the United States on Air Force One shortly after the news conference.
-
Obama: Climate Action Is America’s Duty
Dec 1, 2015 | National Journal
By Rebecca Nelson and Jason Plautz
Even as House Republicans gear up to vote against a key piece of his climate change agenda, President Obama sent a message to his critics from Paris: Look around.
At a press conference at the U.N. climate talks, Obama said that the sheer volume of world leaders at the event showed how seriously the rest of the world was tackling the problem. Centering on a theme of “leadership,” he said that America had a duty to act on the issue — and that the next president, regardless of party, would have to follow suit.
“Your credibility and America’s ability to influence events depends on taking seriously what other countries care about,” he said. “I think the next president of the United States is going to need to think this is really important.”
The Republican presidential candidates have roundly come out against climate change action, threatening to undo emissions regulations immediately upon taking office. But the climate agenda also faces a more immediate threat.
House Republicans are set to vote Tuesday on a pair of resolutions to overturn carbon emission rules on new and existing power plants, although the Senate-passed measures face a sure veto. Republicans have also been threatening to withhold U.S. contributions to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. program to help developing countries that are facing danger from climate change.
Republicans are also clamoring for a chance to vote down any climate deal reached in Paris and are hoping that such a deal is treated as a legally-binding treaty that requires the Senate’s consent. Obama said that parts of a deal should be “legally binding,” but that individual pledges should not, which would avert the need for Senate approval.
Obama also expressed confidence that the U.S. would be able to meet its climate commitments, including a $3 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund.
Obama said that money for climate assistance was already “embedded in many programs” (and contributions to U.N. climate funds have been going on since the George W. Bush administration) and assured reporters that international assistance would not dry up. Doing so, he said, was part of America’s role in the world.
“This is part of American leadership, this is part of the debate we have to have in the US more frequently,” Obama said. “Too often in Washington, American leadership is defined by whether or not we’re sending troops somewhere.”
Calling himself “optimistic” in the world’s ability to tackle not only climate change, but the threat from the Islamic State, Obama drew a link to another world crisis that had been averted just a year ago.
“We went, what, a month, month and a half where people were pretty sure Ebola was going to kill us all,” he said. “Nobody asks me about it anymore.”
“It’s not easy,” he continued. “It takes time, and when you’re in the midst of it, it’s frightening. But it’s solvable.”
Dealing with that crisis, he said, which last fall threw the country into a frenzy, prepared him for the challenges the world faces today—especially the dual threats of terrorism and climate change. The latter, he said, “is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now.”
And assuring Americans skeptical of the U.S. focus on climate change in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks, Obama was confident in the country’s ability to juggle multiple threats.
“Great nations can handle a lot at once.”
-
Clean Energy Research Money Has Bipartisan Following, but Not Paris Link
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
Conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are still deciding what to make of President Obama's pledge in Paris yesterday to join with other countries in doubling support for research and development for clean energy technologies.
The president pledged during the opening hours of the U.N. climate summit to join with 19 other countries and a group of business heavy hitters to help develop and deploy new technologies (Greenwire, Nov. 29). The new public-private partnership, led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, does not fit with the narrative on Democratic regulations around which the GOP has built its climate change field war.
Obama's promise to spend an additional $5 billion by 2020 on basic energy research was made without congressional buy-in, and Republicans have warned repeatedly that they feel no obligation to fulfill such pledges. But R&D -- unlike climate adaptation or other causes Obama has attempted to unilaterally fund -- is not traditionally divisive. It has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in the past as a way of improving U.S. competitiveness.
"And by taking this approach on a global scale -- with unprecedented investment in public research, an unprecedented pool of private capital -- Mission Innovation will help deliver affordable clean energy and new jobs and opportunities to people around the world for decades to come," the president said in his remarks in Paris. "This is how we're going to solve this challenge -- together."
This focus on encouraging new technology also plays to a new Republican talking point on climate change. GOP lawmakers and candidates for president in recent months have begun to call for a response to warming that embraces entrepreneurship rather than regulation, a shift from the old message of disputing climate science that polls show the public is starting to reject.
To wit, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican presidential contender Carly Fiorina told NBC in September that the answer to climate change is "innovation, and the only way to innovate is for this nation to have industry strong enough that they can innovate."
And House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a blog post last week that Obama should "embrace the hydraulic fracturing revolution produced largely by the free market."
On Capitol Hill yesterday, Republicans continued to pour cold water on Obama's overall hopes of helping to broker a U.N. deal on carbon emissions and climate aid. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used statements on the Senate floor and an op-ed in The Washington Post to warn those gathering in the French capital that U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan is "likely illegal" and will soon topple. And House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans noted that the House will follow the Senate as soon as today in approving a resolution to kill the existing power plant rule.
But the silence on the new funding pledge was deafening.
Yankee ingenuity rides again?
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) brushed questions away with a "we'll take it one bill at a time."
Only the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, helmed by Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who acknowledges climate change, responded to inquiries fromClimateWire.
"Congress is already on track to increase funding for energy R&D, and we welcome the news of greater private investment in this area," said committee spokesman Robert Dillon. "Innovation is widely supported in Congress, but it will be critical for President Obama and whomever follows him to avoid the traditional habit of picking winners and losers -- and to instead look at opportunities for innovation in a fuel- and technology-neutral manner."
Dillon noted that the committee has already produced legislation that would increase investment in energy R&D.
"The key is for the administration to not pick winners and losers in technology, but look at opportunities for innovation in a fuel- and technology-neutral manner," he said. This means not limiting it to technologies that are low-carbon, he said.
A House leadership aide applauded Gates. "America is home to the most innovative minds in the world, and whenever private citizens push the technological boundaries, it should be celebrated," he said.
Republicans have berated the Obama administration for separately promising $3 billion in adaptation and mitigation assistance to poor countries last year without consulting Congress, and have moved to use that pledge as leverage to demand that the administration submit any agreement that emerges from Paris for Senate review.
Environmentalists say the State Department might have the latitude to still provide the Green Climate Fund contribution unless Congress explicitly forbids it, and the same may be true of the Mission Innovation funding.
But while Republicans reviewed Obama's newest unilateral pledge, observers off Capitol Hill said the fund itself would have been relatively noncontroversial were it not attached to the political powder keg that is the Paris climate summit.
It's an even better response to climate change than the rest of the agreement is likely to be, said Frank Maisano, who represents industry clients for Bracewell & Giuliani.
"Focusing on this is a much better approach than trying to slap people's hands and telling them they need to reduce emissions or use less power or use something else," he said.Right stage, wrong backdrop
There is some possibility that Republicans might supply the funding envisioned in this proposal, said GOP political strategist Mike McKenna, if it goes to support research that is "legit" and not directed to a few industries. The proposed dollar amount is quite modest, he noted.
But the choice of Paris as a backdrop "just couldn't be worse," he said. "It would have been a hell of a lot better if they'd done it some other place, some other time."
Among the 27 other private investors who will join Gates on the initiative are billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and Democratic megadonor George Soros, a fact McKenna said lent a partisan sheen to the whole enterprise.
"The optics are terrible, just terrible," he said.
James Lucier, a political risk analyst with Capital Alpha Partners LLC, said the Paris rollout was a good way to inject life into the talks. The United States could put forward a small pot of money with the promise that it will be "magnified by the commercial savvy of Bill Gates" and by contributions from partner nations.
"It's a pretty interesting maneuver, but again it goes back to the basic problem," he said.
And that is Congress' frustration with an administration that keeps trying to skirt the Senate's advice and consent function while crafting foreign agreements.
"From a congressional perspective, the question is: 'What part of no do you not understand?'" he said. The White House may succeed in persuading Congress to increase the budget for basic research, but not if it comes together with an agreement the majority party already rejects, he said.
-
Congress’s Long History of Doing Nothing on Climate Change, in 6 Acts
Dec 1, 2015 | Washington Post
By Amber Phillips
Congress must act if the United States wants to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, say climate activists such as the Environmental Defense Fund. But right now, those activists have basically no realistic hope for any such action.
The make-up of Congress -- the fact that it's Republican-controlled and the GOP is more concerned about the adverse economic impact of trying to mitigate climate change -- would suggest why.
Republicans, who don't have a clear way to block any agreement President Obama signs in international climate talks in Paris, are instead putting up a series of roadblocks and voting to roll back his plans to curb emissions back home.
But there's a longer pattern of Congress opting not to address climate change that give climate activists reason to be pessimistic. Like, really pessimistic. In fact, Congress has never actually passed any substantial legislation out of both chambers to deal with climate change.
Here is a short history -- and we do mean short -- of Congress's attempts to combat climate change.1990: A cap and trade program for acid rain
As Americans gradually started becoming more aware of climate change in the 1980s and '90s, legislative attention focused on the most sinister of pollutants: acid rain, primarily caused by sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
The move to cap (put a limit on how much sulfur dioxide plants could emit) and trade (allow companies to buy and sell permits to emit sulfur dioxide) was conceived by a former lawyer in the Reagan White House and championed by President George H.W. Bush, as told in a 2009 article by Richard Conniff in Smithsonian Magazine.
An initially reluctant Democratic Congress came around to the market-based approach, and Congress approved the first cap and trade program in the Clean Air Act of 1990.
Even though the acid rain problem was not a specific response to curb greenhouse gases, Conniff called the program "one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of the green movement," suggesting it was an important blueprint for legislation to help curb global warming in the future.1992: Agree (but only in principle) to fight global warming
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush returned home from Rio de Janeiro with a signed copy of an international agreement to commit to stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the potential harms from global warming. The agreement was a first step ahead of 1997's international meeting on climate change in Kyoto, Japan.
Bush handed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change over to the Senate, which ratified it without too much trouble.
But the framework wasn't binding, and when it was time to put words to actions by 1997 negotiating the binding Kyoto Protocol, lawmakers back in Washington were reluctant to do so. They argued that an inordinate amount of the burden was placed on developed countries like the United States while developing countries could still pollute at much higher rates.
The Senate passed a resolution expressing its disapproval 95-0, and even though President Bill Clinton returned home with a signed copy of the Kyoto Protocol, he didn't even bother to ask Congress to bring it up for a vote.2003: Try to expand cap and trade to carbon emissions
More than a decade later, the acid rain cap and trade program had been working well; it was on track to cut sulfur dioxide emissions in half.
But trading for carbon pollution linked to global warming proved to be a different ballgame entirely. The first lawmakers to try to do that were Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (then a Democrat from Connecticut), who introduced a cap and trade bill the same year the Pentagon published a report recommending elevating the debate on climate change from a scientific inquiry into a national security concern.
"Too much attention has been focused on the uncertainties, and not enough on what is known in tackling the problem at hand," McCain said in a statement at the time.
The bill failed in the Senate, with just 43 votes in favor, but climate activists were optimistic that their first shot at finding a legislative solution to curb global warming had some bipartisan support.
Turns out their optimism was misplaced. McCain and Lieberman reintroduced versions of the bill in 2005 and 2007, but each time the proposals got less and less support, until the final one failed to even get out of committee.2007: The year of talk, but no action
In 2007, a brewing court battle about whether the Environmental Protection Agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases without congressional action bubbled up to the Supreme Court. The court decided in Massachusetts v. EPA that, yes, the EPA could tighten regulations on cars and trucks to limit their pollutants that cause global warming.
Philip Wallach, a fellow at Brookings Institution, writes that most climate observers expected Congress to act on the momentum from that Supreme Court decision. And there was some talk of doing just that. That year, the Senate held a rare, hours-long open forum where it seemed like there was bipartisan support for doing something.
From Washington Times coverage of that event:
Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican, said that even his conservative district recognizes “it is now time for Congress to take reasonable steps.”
In the House, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) formed a special committee to hold hearings across the country on climate change. And on the presidential trail in the 2008 general election, both McCain and Obama promised to make climate change legislation a priority in the White House.
But for all that talk, Congress "accomplished precisely nothing," Wallach wrote.2009: A cap and trade bill passes the House, crashes in the Senate
It wasn't for lack of trying, he said.
When Obama won the White House, climate change activists made a move in the Democratic-controlled Congress to finally pass that carbon cap and trade bill.
The sweeping proposal they came up with would have set a cap on nearly every fossil fuel power plant and manufacturer. It would have affected nearly all Americans in some form or another. The cap would grow tighter every year, making it more expensive to pollute, with the hope that the private sector would find ways to produce cleaner energy.
President Obama praised it as "a bold and necessary step."
And after a messy affair full of wheeling and dealing -- the New York Times reports then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former vice president Al Gore made personal visits to fence-sitting Democrats -- the House passed it by a razor thin margin, 219-212, with 44 Democrats voting against it.
It was the first time a chamber of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the gases, a victory of sorts.
All that effort was for naught in the Senate, though, where Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) failed to find a single Republican co-sponsor to bring up their version of cap and trade.The end (for now)
After the cap and trade bill debacle, Republicans predicted Democrats would pay a heavy price at the polls in midterm elections the next year. And they did: Republicans rather successfully used the cap and trade vote against Democrats -- along with Obamacare, of course, in districts where energy production was big. Democrats lost the House, and there's been no serious movement on legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions since.
-
Texas' Top Regulator Slams Clinton and 'Liberal Ideologues'
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Lee
Texas' top oil and gas regulator came to the defense of the world's biggest private oil company, lashing out at Hillary Clinton and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) for their comments on Exxon Mobil Corp.
Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called in October for an investigation of Exxon Mobil's internal climate change research. Schneiderman opened an inquiry in November, saying he wanted to see whether Exxon had misled investors.
David Porter, who chairs the Texas Railroad Commission, sent a letter yesterday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), asking him to "be wary" of any similar campaigns in Texas.
"The New York AG's effort is being portrayed as an attempt to hold the energy industry accountable for its impact on climate change," Porter wrote. "In reality, it's nothing more than an effort by liberal ideologues to punish entities that do not share their religious zealotry on the issue, and ultimately force the energy industry into a position in which its own resources are unjustly and unfairly used against itself in the war on fossil fuels."
Exxon's internal researchers determined as far back as the 1970s that pollution was contributing to global climate change. But the company spent much of the 1990s funding nonprofit groups that challenged the scientific validity of climate change.
Exxon, which is based in Irving, Texas, declined to comment. Vice President Ken Cohen said in November that Exxon never lied to its shareholders (ClimateWire, Nov. 6).
Schneiderman's office didn't return a phone message and email seeking comment.
The Railroad Commission's members are elected statewide and typically get about a third of their campaign funds from the oil and gas industry. Porter is up for re-election next year after serving his first term on the commission.
A former oil and gas accountant, Porter, a Republican, has garnered headlines before, writing to the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol about the potential for terrorists to infiltrate Texas along pipeline routes. In June, he called for state inspectors to use satellite phones and a buddy system to protect themselves while working near the Texas-Mexico border (EnergyWire, June 26).
-
In Paris, Clean Energy Gathers Steam
Nov 30, 2015 | Washington Post
By Eugene Robinson
As the Paris climate talks begin, the die is already cast: The world is going to move toward cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. The question for U.S. policymakers is whether the world’s biggest economy gets left behind.
President Obama is trying his best to ensure this doesn’t happen. He told the world leaders assembled in Paris that he saw the effects of global warming firsthand on a recent trip to Alaska. He wanted to make clear, he said, “that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers.
Obama has set a target of reducing U.S. carbon emissions, over the next decade, to a level at least 26 percent below what they were in 2005. Republicans in Congress — and on the presidential campaign trail — vow to do everything they can to sabotage this effort, claiming it will be bad for the economy. But if the naysayers succeed, they will guarantee only that the other great industrial powers, China and Europe, dominate the new energy landscape.
Of the nearly 200 nations gathered in Paris, 183 have already set targets for limiting heat-trapping carbon emissions. Whether or not the summit produces a comprehensive agreement, the clean-energy train has already left the station.
It is fitting that such a hopeful gathering takes place in a city that recently sawsuch tragedy. It is also fitting that it comes amid what is, with just a month to go, the warmest year since global record-keeping began.
China, which pumps far more carbon into the atmosphere than any other country, has announced a goal of limiting its emissions so that they peak “around” 2030. Cynics point out that this is roughly when they would peak anyway, given current trends. But that’s because China’s emissions, at present, are barely growing at all — at most a 1 percent increase in 2014 and probably less this year.
Two important things have happened in China. First, the nation’s leaders have come to realize that the noxious, choking, particulate-laden smog that periodically blankets major cities — as is happening this week in Beijing — poses a real threat to the Communist Party’s legitimacy. Having ushered hundreds of millions into the urban middle class, the leadership is obliged to provide a reasonably safe environment for these people to raise their children. Eliminating the smog means cutting back on burning coal, which is relatively “dirty” not just in spewing particulates but also in the amount of carbon dioxide it produces.
The other big development in China is that its leadership — rather than deny climate science, as most Republicans do — is making a huge bet on clean energy. In the third quarter of this year, China saw $26.7 billion invested in solar, wind and other clean-energy technologies, compared with $13.4 billion in the United States, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
About 17 percent of the world’s solar power capacity is in China, according to Bloomberg, as are about a third of the world’s wind turbines and a third of all the nuclear power reactors under construction. A new clean-energy economy is already taking shape; the only question is whether the United States sits by and lets others reap the coming benefits.
The Paris summit could yet fail; India, the third-biggest carbon emitter, balks at limits that would curb its economic growth and wants rich countries to help it bear the cost of leapfrogging the “dirty” stage of development. Even if the meeting reaches an agreement, it will not be a legally binding treaty. And scientists warn that the limits pledged thus far will not achieve the best-case goal of keeping warming to less than 3.6 degrees by the end of the century.
But clean energy, once a pipe dream, now has both mass and momentum. This gathering of world leaders in the City of Light is a stunning rebuke to those who would prefer to curse the darkness.
-
Dec 1, 2015 | New York Times
By Davis Brooks
I’ve been confused about this Paris climate conference and how the world should move forward to ameliorate climate change, so I séanced up my hero Alexander Hamilton to see what he thought. I was sad to be reminded that he doesn’t actually talk in hip-hop, but he still had some interesting things to say.
First, he was struck by the fact that on this issue the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.
This week’s Paris conference, I observed, seems like a giant Weight Watchers meeting. A bunch of national leaders get together and make some resolutions to cut their carbon emissions over the next few decades. You hope some sort of peer pressure will kick in and they will actually follow through.
I’m afraid Hamilton snorted.Paris Climate Change Conference 2015Complete coverage of the United Nations meeting in Paris, where officials will gather Nov. 30-Dec. 11 to try to reach an emissions deal.Obama Defends Presence at Climate Change Talks While Syria War RagesDEC 1Amid Smog Wave, an Artist Molds a Potent Symbol of Beijing’s PollutionDEC 1Cartoon: Chappatte on the Paris Climate ConferenceDEC 1The Dubious Carbon BudgetDEC 1A Path for Climate Change, Beyond ParisDEC 1
See More »
The co-author of the Federalist papers is the opposite of naïve about human nature. He said the conference is nothing like a Weight Watchers meeting. Unlike weight loss, the pain in reducing carbon emissions is individual but the good is only achieved collectively.
You’re asking people to impose costs on themselves today for some future benefit they will never see. You’re asking developing countries to forswear growth now to compensate for a legacy of pollution from richer countries that they didn’t benefit from. You’re asking richer countries that are facing severe economic strain to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in “reparations” to India and such places that can go on and burn mountains of coal and take away American jobs. And you’re asking for all this top-down coercion to last a century, without any enforcement mechanism. Are the Chinese really going to police a local coal plant efficiently?
This is perfectly designed to ensure cheating. Already, the Chinese government made a grandiose climate change announcement but then was forced to admit that its country was burning 17 percent more coal than it had previously disclosed. The cheating will create a cycle of resentment that will dissolve any sense of common purpose.
I countered by pointing out that policy makers have come up with some clever ways to make carbon reductions more efficient, like cap and trade, permit trading and carbon taxing.
The former Treasury secretary pointed out that these ideas are good in theory but haven’t worked in reality. Cap and trade has not worked out so well in Europe. Over all, the Europeans have spent $280 billion on climate change with very little measurable impact on global temperatures. And as for carbon taxes, even if the U.S. imposed one on itself, it would have virtually no effect on the global climate.
Hamilton steered me to an article by James Manzi and Peter Wehner in his favorite magazine, National Affairs. The authors point out that according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the expected economic costs of unaddressed global warming over the next century are likely to be about 3 percent of world gross domestic product. This is a big, gradual problem, but not the sort of cataclysmic immediate threat that’s likely to lead people to suspend their immediate self-interest.
AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
Well, I ventured, if you’re skeptical about our own policies, Mr. Founding Father, what would you do?Continue reading the main storyRECENT COMMENTSjames z 3 minutes ago
As long as apocalyptic dead-enders stalk the halls of Congress and economic 'free'-traders skulk through the forests, valleys, and mesas of...Bill Camarda 3 minutes ago
You, last I looked, still choose to be registered in a party that has a one-word answer for all of your noble (and accurate) sentiments...KJ 3 minutes ago
"Over all, the Europeans have spent $280 billion on climate change with very little measurable impact on global temperatures." Would not the...SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
Look at what you’re already doing, he countered. The U.S. has the fastest rate of reduction of CO2 emissions of any major nation on earth, back to pre-1996 levels.
That’s in part because of fracking. Natural gas is replacing coal, and natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide.
The larger lesson is that innovation is the key. Green energy will beat dirty energy only when it makes technical and economic sense.
CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY289COMMENTS
Hamilton reminded me that he often used government money to stoke innovation. Manzi and Wehner suggest that one of our great national science labs could work on geoengineering problems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Another could investigate cogeneration and small-scale energy reduction systems. We could increase funding on battery and smart-grid research. If we move to mainly solar power, we’ll need much more efficient national transmission methods. Maybe there’s a partial answer in increased vegetation.
Hamilton pointed out that when America was just a bunch of scraggly colonies, he was already envisioning it as a great world power. He used government to incite, arouse, energize and stir up great enterprise. The global warming problem can be addressed, ineffectively, by global communiqués. Or, with the right government boost, it presents an opportunity to arouse and incite entrepreneurs, innovators and investors and foment a new technological revolution.
Sometimes like your country you got to be young, scrappy and hungry and not throw away your shot.
-
Ozone NAAQS Critics Cite 'Background' Ozone Concerns
Dec 1, 2015 | InsideEPA
Coal producer Murray Energy and five states suing EPA over the agency's stricter ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) are arguing in new legal filings that the standard is unlawful under the Clean Air Act because it is set a level below naturally occurring, uncontrollable “background” ozone levels and is therefore impossible to attain.
The argument is detailed in separate statements of issues filed Nov. 30 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, outlining the claims the petitioners plan to raise in their litigation.
Environmentalists have moved to intervene on EPA's behalf in the lawsuit, seeking to defend the agency's Oct. 1 decision to tighten its ozone NAAQS from the 2008 limit of 75 parts per billion (ppb) down to 70 ppb. Advocates say the rule should be even stricter but at least want to ensure the stricter limit is implemented.
Industry groups, Republican lawmakers and some states at the time of the rule's announcement, however, warned the stricter standard was not justified based on scientific data on ozone's health impacts. They also warned that setting the level at or below background ozone levels for some states would make compliance impossible. Failure to attain a NAAQS can ultimately allow EPA to threaten to withhold highway funding from such areas.
In its statement of issues filed with the D.C. Circuit, Murray Energy says, “EPA may not lawfully regulate at and below background, as the new ozone NAAQS does, because the agency is limited to regulating 'emissions' resulting from 'multiple or diverse stationary sources,' a jurisdictional grant which does not include international transport, stratospheric ozone, ozone derived from wildfires, or other non-anthropogenic sources. Furthermore, the new standard is neither achievable nor maintainable” within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.
Murray further rejects EPA's assertions that regulatory exceptions available for “exceptional events” such as wildfires and dust storms will mitigate any problems that states may encounter in meeting the NAAQS. “Because background cannot be accurately measured or reliably modeled at or near levels of exceedance, EPA’s proposal to address background through modification of the exceptional events rule, or through other discretionary waiver programs, is practically unadministrable and therefore arbitrary and capricious,” the company says.
Murray also faults EPA's interpretation of the word “appropriate,” in a possible effort to evoke the Supreme Court's interpretation of that term in separate litigation this year over EPA's air toxics standards for power plants. The high court in Michigan v. EPA found it was “appropriate” for EPA to consider implementation costs when deciding whether to regulate power plants' toxics emissions, in contrast to EPA which declined to consider costs when making that decision.
Section 108 of the air law empowers the EPA administrator to make such revisions to the NAAQS “as may be appropriate.” Murray says, EPA construes the term “to have no meaning apart from the 'requisite to protect the public health' and 'allowing an adequate margin of safety' language of [the air law], thereby failing to give effect to all statutory language.” The company says EPA failed to fully consider issues of administrability, attainability, maintainability, and limits on agency authority to regulate at zero risk, all constituting errors of law.”
Five states including Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma in their statement of issuesraise similar points about background ozone, saying they intend to raise the question of, “[w]hether EPA’s authority to set the bar for compliance at a level at or below background levels such that attainment may not be achieved through practicable controls can be justified by illusory promises of future waivers under the exceptional event, international transport, or rural transport programs.”
Also, the states say they will challenge EPA's procedure in setting the NAAQS, because they say the agency failed to solicit advice from its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee on “the relative contribution of natural sources and anthropogenic activity and (b) any potential adverse public health, social, or economic impacts from attainment strategies prior to issuing the Ozone NAAQS.”
-
Refinery Emissions Rule Set to Take Effect Feb. 1
Dec 1, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Tighter regulations on oil refinery air emissions will take effect Feb. 1, U.S. EPA said today.
The agency published its final rule in today's Federal Register.
The new regulations, which encompass New Source Performance Standards and maximum achievable control technology, will require refineries to reduce toxic air pollution and strengthen monitoring (Greenwire, Sept. 29). While EPA officials had released the new regulations in late September, today's publication opens a 60-day window for the filing of any legal challenges.
The tougher rule stems from a consent decree reached last year in a 2012 lawsuit filed against EPA by Air Alliance Houston, the Environmental Integrity Project and other groups over the agency's failure to meet an eight-year deadline to review and revise the new source standards. According to EPA, there are 142 petroleum refiners considered major polluters under the Clean Air Act.
The new regulations appear to have won grudging acceptance from the industry. In a statement after they were released in September, the American Petroleum Institute said EPA had made substantial improvements to the final rule in comparison to its original draft. While refinery emissions are already safe, collaboration with EPA "led to final regulations that are more cost-effective than the proposal," Bob Greco, the institute's downstream group director, said in the statement.
According to EPA, the final rule will result in $283 million in capital expenses and $63 million in annual costs. It is expected to cut releases of toxic air pollutants by 5,200 tons per year, as well as eliminate 50,000 tons of volatile organic compounds annually.
In a separate notice in today's Register, EPA set a Jan. 15 deadline for public comments on its proposed supplemental finding on its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants. The finding, released late last month in response to a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, concluded that consideration of compliance costs made no difference to the agency's initial decision to impose curbs on airborne releases of the toxic metal and other hazardous substances (Greenwire, Nov. 23).
-
Boon in Natural Gas May Stress FERC’s Pipeline Work
Dec 1, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
The proliferation of natural gas power plants may drag on FERC’s ability to keep up with the rising number of pipeline applications, an agency commissioner said this morning.
“If you look at the number of pending applications that we have compared to the historic trend, we are truly seeing the impact of low-cost natural gas and the environmental regulations, which are shutting down coal and really requiring utilities to have some combination of natural gas and renewables,” FERC Commissioner Tony Clark told lawmakers on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
FERC approves the siting of interstate natural gas pipelines. Clark noted that pending pipeline applications rose steeply between August 2014 and November 2015, from 24 billion cubic feet per day and about 1,000 miles of pipe to 50 Bcf/day and 4,600 miles of pipe.
Clark said the commission has processed 92 percent pipeline applications within a year. But, he added, “I think it’s going to be very difficult to maintain that high average when you have this volume of pipeline.”
There’s a “tremendous” need for gas and electric infrastructure to meet regulations, such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and the changing power generation fleet, Clark said. “But all of this is being done at a time when we have heightened opposition to that very infrastructure itself.”
FERC Chairman Norman Bay similarly noted the anti-fracking protests the agency has seen for nearly two years and infrastructure opposition elsewhere in the country.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time
Energy and Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested