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ACC PM 12/31/15
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What Lurks Beneath the Great Lakes? An Oil Pipeline That Couldn’t Get Built Today
Dec 31, 2015 | Washington Post
By Steve Friess
Until a few years ago, Chris Shepler saw only beauty when he gazed out his office windows at the picturesque pier and the famed, majestic Mackinac Bridge looming in the distance. The Shepler name has adorned ferry boats crisscrossing those waters since 1945, and he was born perhaps 30 miles from this quay, so he figured he knew just about everything important there was to know about the Straits of Mackinac. -
HEI President Eyes Ozone Study Update As 'Insurance' On Air Policy Focus
Dec 31, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Health Effects Institute (HEI) President Dan Greenbaum is suggesting that EPA ask the National Research Council (NRC) to update its landmark 1991 study on which gases contribute most to harmful ozone formation, as an "insurance policy" to verify that EPA is focusing its air policy on the pollution sources to blame for high ozone levels. -
Industry Urges EPA To Modify 'Low-Cost' Nutrient Case Studies Document
Dec 31, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Amanda Palleschi
Wastewater utilities are raising concerns that an EPA draft study on "low-cost techniques" for reducing nutrient discharges from wastewater treatment plants fails to provide the complete policy context and challenges to nutrient reduction issues by addressing economics without considering technical and other barriers to increased nutrient removal. -
On Energy Regs, Obama's Last Year Focuses on Courts
Dec 31, 2015 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillen
The final year of the President Barack Obama’s energy and environment agenda is set to play out in the courts rather than the Federal Register. -
Wind, Solar Power Soar in Spite of Bargain Prices for Fossil Fuels
Dec 31, 2015 | Washington Post
By Joby Warrick
In normal times, a months-long slide in energy prices would be enough to rattle a man who makes wind turbines for a living. Yet amid a worldwide glut of cheap fossil fuels, business is blowing strong for Vestas Wind Systems and its CEO, Anders Runevad.
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What Lurks Beneath the Great Lakes? An Oil Pipeline That Couldn’t Get Built Today
Dec 31, 2015 | Washington Post
By Steve Friess
Until a few years ago, Chris Shepler saw only beauty when he gazed out his office windows at the picturesque pier and the famed, majestic Mackinac Bridge looming in the distance. The Shepler name has adorned ferry boats crisscrossing those waters since 1945, and he was born perhaps 30 miles from this quay, so he figured he knew just about everything important there was to know about the Straits of Mackinac.
Now, though, it’s hard to look without imagining what, until 2011, he didn’t know lurked below: Two 62-year-old oil pipelines running parallel to the bridge for 4.5 miles across the Straits of Mackinac, the aquatic, turbulent seam where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. Each day, some 540,000 barrels of light crude oil and natural gas liquids roar through en route from the shale oil wells of Alberta to refineries in Detroit and Sarnia, Ontario.
The pipes, known as Line 5, are 20 inches in diameter, with one-inch-thick walls. On that line, they have never had a spill, a rupture or, to hear its Calgary, Alberta-based owner Enbridge tell it, even a repair. It also wasn’t a secret: The state of Michigan granted the underwater easement in 1953, and a few old-timers here even remember helping build and install it.
Nonetheless, Line 5’s existence was all but forgotten until another Enbridge pipe, Line 6B, burst open in July 2010 and over 18 hours spewed as much as 1.1 million gallons of heavy crude oil into the Kalamazoo River near the central Michigan town of Marshall. In the wake of that — the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history — and with the fight raging over TransCanada’s proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline across the Great Plains, environmentalists looked around to see where else Enbridge was moving oil in the Wolverine State. To the surprise of many, they realized that it operated a major line through one of the world’s most sensitive freshwater areas.
“I don’t know why it wasn’t an issue before, but I didn’t know about it,” said Shepler, 53, whose company runs more than 50 routes a day during the summer when thousands of tourists swarm the region to visit Mackinac Island and its environs. “But now, knowing that that pipe is there, it is a concern of businesses and people who live on the water and in the state. Not for one minute do I think that pipeline should stay in there. I mean it’s 62 years old, so what’s the contingency plan? I’m not an engineer, but things don’t last forever.”
In fact, in perhaps the most damning moment in the controversy so far, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a conservative seen as a GOP front-runner for governor in 2018, seemed to condemn Line 5 in comments when he released a report in July from the Michigan Petroleum Pipeline Task Force he chairs.
“You wouldn’t site, and you wouldn’t build and construct pipelines underneath the Straits today,” Schuette said. “And so, if you wouldn’t do it today, how many more tomorrows will the pipelines be operational?”
Still, Enbridge has received a reprieve because Schuette has declined to order an immediate shutdown, as he could under the terms of the state’s agreement with Enbridge regarding the easement. Instead, he established a Pipeline Safety Advisory Board to study all of the state’s spaghetti tangle of pipelines and make recommendations as to what to do. That committee, which has met twice, is ordering up a comprehensive report on how Enbridge would transport the oil and gas in Line 5 to refineries if it could no longer pump it through the Straits.
The company itself already has an answer: It would be expensive, dirty and, ultimately, riskier to the environment than continuing to use, monitor and maintain Line 5. They’d need to send the petroleum via truck, train and perhaps tanker ship across the Great Lakes, all modes of transport that have much bleaker safety records than pipelines, Enbridge publicist Jason Manshum said.
The pipeline company transports an average of 2.2 million barrels a day — including more than half of all U.S.-bound Canadian production, or 15 percent of all U.S. crude imports — through 16,892 miles of pipelines across North America. Sometimes those pipelines leak. The Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration says that over the past decade a series of Enbridge pipeline leaks in the United States spilled 44,475 barrels, costing the company $928 million in clean up expenses.
Nonetheless, after Keystone XL’s rejection, Enbridge is working to expand existing pipelines, which would draw less attention and would not be subjected to the same permitting burdens. The company said it wants to spend $7 billion to double Line 3 capacity into Wisconsin.
“If you go back to look at why Line 5 was built in the first place, it was designed to keep crude oil off the Great Lakes,” Manshum said in an interview in a room filled with packed boxes the second day after the company opened an office in Michigan’s capital, Lansing. “Prior to 1953, the way crude oil got to refineries in the lower part of Michigan? It went on tankers across Lake Superior, down Huron to Detroit. This was to be the safer and more efficient mechanism to move crude oil.”
And, indeed, it operated without any public concern or even awareness until Enbridge’s Line 6B disaster. Mechanical failure — a six-foot pipe break — was compounded by human error as operatives in Enbridge’s Edmonton offices ignored alarms. Rather than immediately shut down the line, Michigan-based engineers increased the oil flow thinking that they could push through a pipe blockage. Instead, they created a 35-mile oil slick that required neighborhood evacuations and took more than four years to clean up. Enbridge spent nearly $1 billion on the cleanup and was fined $3.7 million by the Transportation Department for some two-dozen safety violations.
The Line 6B spill “was truly one of the most humbling and sobering experiences of our company’s history, without a doubt,” Manshum said. “We pride ourselves on our safety record and had a very good safety record in our industry. The Marshall, Michigan, incident impacted our company to the very core. We thought we were good, but clearly we need to do better.”
By most accounts, the company has made some strides on Line 5. A new system is in place that would shut and evacuate the pipes in the event of any alarm until a full manual inspection could take place. The company now regularly uses “pipeline inspection gadgets,” a.k.a. PIGs, to troll through the interior of the lines to look for dents, cracks and corrosion, and they have means of measuring the pipe’s wall thickness “down to the tenth or 100th of a millimeter,” Manshum said. “We will notice any amount of change over time. Our data indicates Line 5 is in as good a shape as it was in 1953.” (Pipeline companies are required by federal law to use PIGs for surveillance.)
Shepler and others say that even if they took Enbridge at their word, the risk is too severe given that 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water. Also, the currents in the Straits are unusually complex, with water at the surface often moving in a different direction than that down below — and both at speeds that rival that of water going over Niagara Falls, according to Eric Anderson, a physical scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Distribution models show any oil spill from Line 5 would spread at shocking speed throughout the lakes even if cleanup were as prompt and thorough as Enbridge says it would be.
“As far as how bad things could be, you have an area that can disperse something very rapidly in multiple directions, making it very hard to not only respond but also predict exactly how that’s going to play out,” said Anderson, who would advise the Coast Guard in the event of a spill.
The Coast Guard, Enbridge and others have run a major cleanup drills in recent years, and the company has impressed Coast Guard incident management adviser Jerry Popiel. “They’ve done a lot of work on the preparedness side, they’re not the same company they were in 2010,” said Popiel, who oversees response for an eight-state Midwest region but listed Line 5 as his top concern. “They bring their A game. They hire excellent contractors who know what they’re doing. They’re writing plans to identify environmentally sensitive areas. In response mode, they’ve shown us they’ve gotten a lot better at this.”
Yet “response” implies a spill has occurred, and many stakeholders don’t want to allow for the chance of that. The National Wildlife Federation in October filed suit against the Transportation Department for not forcing Enbridge to halt oil movement, saying the government is not enforcing a law passed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill requiring “worst-case” disaster plans to be on file. Manshum said Enbridge, which is not a party in the suit, has disaster plans that it has provided to government agencies.
“If it’s a high risk, you have to look at worst-case scenario, not best-case scenario,” said Jim Olson, co-founder of For Love of Water, or FLOW, one of the northern Michigan groups battling Line 5. “You have to assume that the shutting-down system does not work, what does it look like, what is the response? There’s human error, there’s inadequacy of the design of the equipment to begin with, malfunctions under certain conditions like there was in the Santa Barbara spill last year. Enbridge’s position is that it’s safe and don’t worry about it. We can’t take those chances.”
The question has united an unlikely set of allies, from a myriad of national and local environmental groups to conservative Republicans such as Shepler to the region’s many Native American tribes. Over Labor Day weekend, when 40,000 people come north for the annual Mackinac Bridge Walk, dozens of protesters paddled in kayaks and canoes to either side of the span with signs urging Enbridge, Michigan or the federal government to shut down Line 5. Rather than be irked by the tourist-unfriendly demonstration, Shepler seemed appreciative. “I don’t think these were protests per se, but awareness activities they’ve done,” he said of various similar events. “It’s a huge concern right now for the citizens of northern Michigan.”
Shepler, who is on the 15-person Pipeline Safety Advisory Board along with Popiel, Schuette and an executive from Enbridge, is unimpressed by the company thus far in part because he was never contacted in advance of last summer’s oil-spill response drill. “We have boats everywhere,” he said. “No one called us. Have they really thought this through, or is this pomp and circumstance?”
Another skeptic is Rich Bergmann, owner of the Lake Charlevoix Brewing Co., which in November hosted a standing-room-only showing of “Oil and Water,” a 17-minute film by District-based documentarian Spencer Chumbley about the dangers of Line 5. Much of Enbridge’s actions, such as opening its lobbying office in Lansing and airing “lavish TV ads telling about what a great company they are” is deceptive or besides the point, Bergmann said.
“They’re spending a lot on PR and advertising, talking about how necessary pipelines are and how important they are to the strength of America, and I don’t disagree with any of those points,” said Bergmann, whose company, like the others in the booming microbrew region, relies on Great Lakes water. “But the point is, they make billions. They need to reroute this because they cannot prove to us they can continue to safely pump oil through this area.”
For their part, Enbridge seems poised to fight for Line 5 as if the company’s survival depends upon it. “It’s not good business to have release and rupture from cost perspective but also from a reputation perspective,” Manshum said. “Every day we’re out repairing pipelines and shutting down due to release, we’re not moving product. It’s in our interest as a pipeline company to keep it in the pipe.”
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HEI President Eyes Ozone Study Update As 'Insurance' On Air Policy Focus
Dec 31, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Health Effects Institute (HEI) President Dan Greenbaum is suggesting that EPA ask the National Research Council (NRC) to update its landmark 1991 study on which gases contribute most to harmful ozone formation, as an "insurance policy" to verify that EPA is focusing its air policy on the pollution sources to blame for high ozone levels.
At a recent meeting of EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee (CAAAC) in Arlington, VA, Greenbaum noted that the study -- analyzing the contribution of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to ozone formation -- helped shift EPA's thinking on ozone reduction away from a focus largely on VOC reduction to a greater emphasis on NOx. But scientific developments might warrant a reassessment of that study, he said.
Greenbaum said at the Nov. 18 meeting that an update to the 1991 study "may be a useful insurance policy" that would help to ensure EPA is on the right track in its approach to both NOx and VOCs.
In response, acting agency air chief Janet McCabe said, "We will certainly take that back and think about it." An EPA spokesman said Dec. 14 that the agency "has no update to what was said at the meeting."
Any update to the study could be significant for states and industries facing compliance requirements for EPA's 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion (ppb) and its rulemaking from October tightening the ozone limit down to 70 ppb. States that must craft air pollution reduction plans to comply are weighing how best to drive down NOx and VOC emissions to help reduce ozone levels.
Revising the 1991 study, "Rethinking the Ozone Problem in Urban and Regional Air Pollution," could potentially change how EPA prioritizes efforts to cut NOx and VOCs, depending on the findings. The study was mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, and EPA in 1989 commissioned the NRC to undertake it.
One knowledgeable source says that a new examination of the relative roles of NOx and VOCs in ozone formation could help to bolster EPA in the event that the agency does move forward with further mandates to cut NOx and faces industry opposition, in the form of studies that question the value of further NOx reductions.
Truck Emissions
Greenbaum's call for a fresh scientific review comes as pressure is mounting on EPA to introduce new NOx controls for heavy-duty trucks. The agency has proposed a rule to further restrict greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for trucks, but the rule would not tighten NOx emissions standards for trucks. Environmentalists and some states looking for further NOx cuts to help meet the 70 ppb ozone NAAQS say stricter truck NOx limits could help.
California is currently developing a new state-level NOx regulation for heavy-duty trucks, supported by an ongoing research effort sponsored by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
The push has triggered calls for EPA to take similar steps from various groups including the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA), representing 40 states and also local air regulators, and the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC), representing air regulators from 12 Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states.
These groups argue that EPA's June 19 proposed revised heavy duty truck GHG standards missed an opportunity to also mandate new NOx cuts. At the CAAAC meeting, NACAA official Nancy Kruger said, "We have very immediate needs" to reduce NOx, citing an opportunity to reduce NOx emissions from heavy-duty trucks, as this is one sector of the economy that is still increasing its emissions while most other sectors are decreasing theirs.
Engine industry groups will push back on any stricter NOx rule, sources say. CARB has indicated its desire to limit NOx from heavy-duty engines to 0.02 grams per brake horsepower-hour (0.02 g/bhp-hr), and this is likely to produce resistance from engine manufacturers who do not wish to see such a standard set nationally, sources say.
Regulatory 'Trade-Off'
A related issue that will weigh into EPA's and CARB's thinking on NOx cuts from mobile sources is the "trade-off" between some NOx-reduction technologies and worsened fuel economy.
Most dramatically illustrated by the recent admission by Volkswagen that the company cheated on EPA emissions tests for NOx in order to achieve greater fuel economy, the trade-off is, however, a lesser issue for heavy-duty trucks, sources agree, because of aftertreatment technologies such as selective catalytic reduction trucks can use to reduce NOx.
However, in Oct. 1 comments on EPA's proposed heavy-duty truck GHG rule, officials from several integrated truck and engine manufacturers, including Caterpillar, Daimler, Navistar and Volvo, said the rule "must recognize trade-off of NOx and [carbon dioxide (CO2)] reduction targets" and urged the agency to limit the ambition of any NOx target.
In a more general sense, the trade-off is also decreasingly evident with new, advanced engines using modestly-priced aftertreatment, some advocates of advanced engine technology argue. CARB is now working on the basis of an additional cost of $500 per engine for aftertreatment, sources note.
For example, the Advanced Engine Systems Institute in a Nov. 6 meeting with McCabe shared information "which shows that the tradeoff between CO2 and NOx appears to be increasingly less true" for the trend in certified engines over time, one source says. This is relevant for NOx standards and meeting the new ozone NAAQS, the source says.
'Tipping Point'
Meanwhile, East Coast regulators recently considered research at the OTC's Nov. 5 meeting in Baltimore that shows that the effectiveness of NOx reduction is also cutting ozone is actually increasing in certain locations.
Maryland air director Tad Aburn and Professor Russell Dickerson of the University of Maryland presented findings showing that the atmospheric chemistry of ozone production has reached a "tipping point" in the southern OTC area.
Dickerson explained that reductions in NOx are now reducing ozone at a higher rate in Maryland than previously, and this trend should accelerate, bringing further ozone cuts. Other areas, such as Connecticut, may not yet have made it over this "hump," and therefore face elevated ozone levels for longer, Dickerson said.
One Northeastern air policy expert agrees. "NOx reductions are becoming more effective as NOx gets lower," the source says. Experts have for years debated the relative benefits of cutting VOCs more than NOx in urban cores, where NOx levels are relatively high and atmospheric chemistry functions differently than elsewhere, the expert says, but this does not change the general trend toward NOx cuts becoming more, not less-efficient at cutting ozone.
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Industry Urges EPA To Modify 'Low-Cost' Nutrient Case Studies Document
Dec 31, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Amanda Palleschi
Wastewater utilities are raising concerns that an EPA draft study on "low-cost techniques" for reducing nutrient discharges from wastewater treatment plants fails to provide the complete policy context and challenges to nutrient reduction issues by addressing economics without considering technical and other barriers to increased nutrient removal.
EPA has touted the study as evidence that plants have significant room to improve both waste discharges and energy efficiency, while calling for utilities to publish information on their own efforts to broaden the universe of available data.
"We really believe that there are circumstances where you can make incremental improvements in nutrient removals in order to make progress in de-listing impaired waters. . . . We also want to explore how to better align this work with efforts to improve energy efficiency at treatment plants," Ellen Gilinsky, the water office's senior policy advisor, said during an October webinar discussing the study.
The draft study, "Case Studies on Implementing Low-Cost Modifications to Improve Nutrient Reduction at Wastewater Treatment Plants," highlights several small utilities throughout the country and discussed how they used activated sludge for treatment. The paper argues that evidence shows changes in their waste flows, discharge setups and other aspects have the potential for substantial reductions of nutrient levels in the plants' effluent.
But the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), which represents municipal wastewater utilities, says in Dec. 15 comments on the draft that the case studies outlined in the document often obscure the "significant technical and hidden, unaccounted for financial consequences for the treatment plant and the community it serves, which should be highlighted clearly in the document."
NACWA says that although the executive summary mentions that the "economic implication of regulating nutrients is often perceived as an impediment to progress," the agency fails to mention technical and other policy barriers to better regulating nutrients.
For example, the document does not discuss the loss of treatment capacity that results from the low-cost plant modifications it describes, such as aerating sludge, water quality trading and nitrification. NACWA argues that excess treatment capacity is necessary for many communities.
"For many communities, excess treatment capacity has been planned and installed to ensure the community can continue to grow and remain economically healthy," NACWA writes. "In other words, that excess capacity has already been paid for by the community and to use that capacity without appropriately accounting for the lost investment, or at least flagging this as a major issue in the document, is a significant omission."
NACWA's Criticisms
NACWA also criticizes EPA's "expansion" of the definition of activated sludge, which in the document now includes anaerobic and anoxic processes.
"Although activated sludge is conventionally defined to include only aerobic processes, the term can be used to describe systems that include anaerobic and anoxic processes in addition to aerobic ones," EPA writes in the draft.
NACWA in its comments asks EPA provide more support for this change, and explain whether the new definition is now generally accepted by engineers. "NACWA's members are concerned that such an expansion of the definition for activated sludge could open the door to include nutrients as a part of secondary treatment contrary to EPA's previous decision not to do so," the comments say.
The group is also concerned that the draft's lengthy discussion of secondary treatment could bring back to light an old debate between EPA, the water industry and environmentalists.
EPA in late 2012 rejected a 2007 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petition to modify its definition of "secondary treatment" to include nutrient reduction. The agency said such technology was not intended for nutrient removal, and that a set of national standards for technology-based nutrient limits would impose an unnecessary higher cost burden on publicly-owned treatment works.
Though EPA's draft document does not change this position, NACWA says portions of its 2012 comments "remain relevant today in the context of" the draft document.
NACWA argued then that "process modifications and retrofits are increasingly being used and are helping to achieve reductions in nutrient levels . . . But such retrofits have their limitations. In addition to the technical limitations and considerations described above, a more highly-trained staff is required for biological nutrient removal facilities and more laboratory testing is also required. In addition, if a treatment plant uses excess plant capacity for nitrogen removal, then that excess is not available for future growth within the community and additional costs would be incurred to expand the facilities' capacity."
NACWA also says EPA should look beyond the small plants studied in the document, as well as expand its survey nationwide, "so the document should more accurately state that these opportunities for nutrient removal optimization exist, not that they 'are common,' as stated in the Executive Summary."
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On Energy Regs, Obama's Last Year Focuses on Courts
Dec 31, 2015 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillen
The final year of the President Barack Obama’s energy and environment agenda is set to play out in the courts rather than the Federal Register.
The administration is still working on regulations governing the fuel economy of trucks, pipeline safety, coal mining, and oil and gas drilling.
But the biggest of the Obama administration’s energy rules — on climate change, mercury, ozone, fracking, water, coal ash and efficiency — are already finished, and the future for most of them is being decided in federal courts across the country.
That means that much of the president's legacy on energy and the environment may wind up in the hands of the next president — and if Obama is succeeded by a Republican, his landmark environmental rules could be in trouble.
“I’m worried about a Republican administration,” said Carol Browner, a Clinton-era EPA administrator and climate adviser to Obama in his first term. “I’m worried that they won’t enforce the regulations and the laws on the books, and I think that’s really not just bad for public health but I think it’s unfair to companies that do comply."
During her tenure atop the agency, Browner learned how to try to protect regulations at the end of an administration, and she transmitted that experience — particularly advice that was it was crucial to plan ahead — to Obama early in his presidency.
“You have to start planning at the beginning, you have to really think through a regulatory agenda from the get-go,” she said.
Clearly the top target for a Republican president would be EPA’s power plant carbon rules, a milestone regulation finalized in August that Obama touted on the world stage as a sign of the U.S. commitment to fighting climate change.
It’s not clear how a Republican president would go about disarming the Clean Power Plan, which requires states to start trimming their carbon emissions by 2022. A potential GOP administration cannot completely reverse the rule, but if a court were to strike it down, a president could simply decline to appeal a ruling and allow the CPP to die.
That has Obama’s allies hoping his EPA has bullet-proofed the CPP to survive any courtroom challenges, and helped enable green groups to take up the cause if a Republican administration doesn't.
“You have to make the assumption that the courts play it straight, and so you dot your i’s, you cross your t’s very, very carefully,” said Browner. “So even if a subsequent administration were to say, ‘We’re not defending the rule,’ nonprofits might step in, other groups can step in to defend the rule.”
Another complication: A combination of Supreme Court rulings and EPA’s 2009 finding that carbon pollution presents a danger mean that the agency, even under a Republican president, is obligated to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants in some manner. Any president who sought to avoid regulating carbon dioxide completely would have to revoke the endangerment finding, something all sides acknowledge would be difficult because of its scientific grounding.
Still, a GOP Congress, with the backing of a Republican president, may also be able to defund enforcement of the rule, or pass some other kind of bill blocking it.
Heather Zichal, a former energy and climate adviser to Obama, said that a Republican administration would face pressure to provide regulatory certainty from some utilities and states that support the rule.
“Even if a Republican were to win the presidential race in 2016, there’s going to be a lot of momentum at the state level to move these policies forward,” said Zichal, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Other major regulations issued in 2015 face similar uncertainties about their future.
EPA’s recent decision to tighten the ozone standard could be rolled back by the next president. Plus, the agency’s Waters of the United States rule and Interior’s regulation governing fracking on public lands have already been blocked by judges while lawsuits against them move forward. And EPA faces legal challenges from all sides on its latest Renewable Fuel Standard mandates, particularly over its novel use of a waiver authority to curb ethanol volume requirements.
For the remaining energy rules, the administration hopes to finalize those in the summer. In part, that's an acknowledgment that if the administration waits too long to finish a rule, it could be easily killed via the Congressional Review Act.
The CRA, which allows Congress to invalidate a rule with a simple majority vote, was designed for late-term regulations and requires Congress to take action within 60 legislative days of the rule’s submission, a time period that could stretch six months or longer given Congress’s lengthy recesses in an election year.
Congress recently passed CRA resolutions to overturn EPA’s power plant carbon rules. The Senate also approved a CRA resolution targeting the Waters of the U.S. rule, though it was never taken up in the House, and lawmakers are eyeing another CRA vote on the new ozone standard. None of those have enough backing to override the veto that Obama would wield to protect the rules, though a Republican president in 2017 would alter that equation for regulations coming in 2016.
Howard Shelanski, administrator of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, began planning nearly a year ago to try to avoid putting new regulations at risk. Starting in early 2015, Shelanski instructed agencies to "get their ducks in a row" to avoid a regulatory pile-up at the end of 2016, he told lawmakers last summer.
Despite planning ahead, the administration hasn’t been able to check off everything on its energy list before its final year. One major coal mining rule being developed by Interior’s Office of Surface Mining may not cross the finish line before Obama's term ends.
The rule — which would create a buffer zone to protect streams from excess soil that comes from surface coal mining, particularly in Appalachia — is the Obama administration’s update of a midnight regulation submitted under President George W. Bush. Environmentalists blocked the Bush version from taking effect, and it was ultimately tossed out by a federal judge in 2014.
But the Obama administration took nearly five years to issue its own proposal, and it became a top target for Republicans who argue it is another salvo in an Obama “war on coal.” The administration’s latest regulatory agenda says Interior aims to finalize the rule by August, though those targets frequently slip, and any delay would put the rule in jeopardy of being overturned by a CRA vote if the White House switches parties.
Other rules still in development are more likely — though not guaranteed — to cross the finish line during Obama’s term.
EPA, which tightened fuel economy standards for cars early in Obama's first term, will issue a new rule covering heavy-duty trucks, which emit an outsize portion of transportation-sector emissions. And the agency is laying the groundwork to eventually curb carbon dioxide from aircraft, a rule with major international implications.
Meanwhile, Interior is moving forward with its regulation governing Arctic drilling, though there is less urgency since Shell announced in September it had abandoned its effort to explore for oil in the region, and the crash in energy prices has prompted most oil companies pare back expansion plans.
Major rules on methane are moving through the Bureau of Land Management, which is targeting venting and flaring of the potent greenhouse gas from drilling sites on public lands, and EPA, which is developing a suite of rules and guidance on emissions from oil and gas pipeline and processing operations and is updating a decades-old regulation on methane emissions from landfills.
And the Energy Department is working on dozens of new or updated efficiency standards. Rules in the works cover computers, gas furnaces, dishwashers, pool heaters, air conditioners, walk-in coolers and freezers, vending machines, ceiling fans, fluorescent lamp ballast, boilers, ovens and hearths.
The efficiency measures don't typically generate much attention, but they offer direct-to-consumer savings. Plus — along with already completed rules on ice makers, industrial lamps, electric motors and other products — they are expected to generate roughly half of the carbon emissions cuts the Obama administration pledged to deliver before the Paris climate talks.
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Wind, Solar Power Soar in Spite of Bargain Prices for Fossil Fuels
Dec 31, 2015 | Washington Post
By Joby Warrick
In normal times, a months-long slide in energy prices would be enough to rattle a man who makes wind turbines for a living. Yet amid a worldwide glut of cheap fossil fuels, business is blowing strong for Vestas Wind Systems and its CEO, Anders Runevad.
The company posted record gains in 2015 and inked major deals to build wind farms in the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia. That boom in turbine sales was part of a global surge for wind and solar energy, which occurred despite oil, coal and natural gas selling at bargain rates.
“We’re seeing very good momentum across the board globally,” said Runevad, a soft-spoken Swede whose firm is now the world’s biggest producer of wind turbines. “We’re seeing growth in every region.”
Vestas’s performance is emblematic of the changing fortunes for renewable energy, an industry that achieved a number of milestones this year.Massive new projects are under construction from China and India to Texas, which now far outpaces California as the nation’s leading wind-power state. Just this month, the United States crossed the 70-gigawatt threshold in wind-generated electricity, with 50,000 spinning turbines producing enough power to light up 19 million homes.
Energy analysts say the boom is being spurred in part by improved technology, which has made wind and solar more competitive with fossil fuels in many regions. But equally important, experts say, are new government policies here and abroad that favor investment in renewables, as well as a growing willingness by Wall Street to pour billions of dollars into projects once considered financially risky.
“Renewables have turned a corner in a fundamental way,” said Dan Reicher, a former Energy Department assistant secretary who is now executive director of Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.
While solar and wind power have been expanding for years because of steadily falling costs, recent regulatory and financial decisions have set the stage for continued growth for years to come, according to Reicher and other energy experts.
In the United States, these include the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which requires states to reduce emissions from power plants, and the latest congressional budget compromise, which extended tax credits for wind and solar energy. Also key was this month’sclimate accord in Paris, where more than 190 countries approved a plan to reduce pollution from fossil-fuel burning worldwide.
“The policy base for renewables has strengthened, both on the incentives side and through mandates,” Reicher said. “At the same time, the financing of renewable-energy projects has become a mainstream business for Wall Street. The early-stage investments from Silicon Valley for clean energy were small potatoes compared to the massive investments Wall Street is making. It truly is a global business.”
Signs of the industry’s momentum appear in surprising places.
In China, the world’s leader in both coal consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, demand for coal is down for the second straight year, while investment in solar and wind is soaring, according to figures released this month by the International Energy Agency. China is expected to double its wind-power capacity to nearly 350 gigawatts over the next decade, more than any other country. Officials also intend to generate 200 gigawatts of solar by 2020.
India recently unveiled plans to install 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022, and African nations have committed themselves to adding 300 gigawatts of clean-energy capacity by 2030.
A gigawatt—literally a billion watts—is roughly the amount of energy needed to power 700,000 typical American households. By comparison, the current capacity of the entire U.S. electric grid is just under 1,100 gigawatts.
Still, the industry is experiencing rapid growth across the country. Solar installations were on track to hit a new yearly high in 2015, with 7 gigawatts installed and more in the construction phase. Nationwide, wind power now accounts for nearly a third of all new electric-power capacity.
“We are experiencing a clean energy revolution in the United States,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in November. “We have the tools for a cleaner and more secure energy future.”
Energy experts caution that renewables still have far to go. Wind and solar together account for only about 6 percent of current U.S. electricity generation, compared to about 39 percent for coal. And wind and solar companies have yet to conquer the biggest challenge for renewables: How to cheaply store energy so it is reliably available on cloudy or calm days.
Analysts also warn that renewables could suffer if prices for natural gas remain at such historically low levels for many months or years. For now, however, industry officials say cheap fossil fuels are having little impact on purchase orders.
At Vestas Wind Systems, which is based in Denmark, Runevad said the recent drop in prices for traditional fuels has prompted some of his customers to actually increase their spending on wind farms, especially in countries that are heavy importers of petroleum.
“Some countries are having a budget surplus now because of low oil prices, and they’re using that money to invest in new infrastructure,” he said. “For importing countries, it’s a net-positive. Because of the uncertainty with gas prices, we haven’t seen any of our wind customers say, ‘Let’s build a gas-fired plant instead.’”
Runevad, who recently signed major deals to sell turbines to China and India, is confident that developing economies will ultimately choose renewables over cheap coal. India and China both suffer from high levels of air pollution—mostly because of their heavy use of coal—that contribute to thousands of premature deaths annually.
“These countries need additional electricity,” he said, “but they’re also seeing a good opportunity with wind to skip over a generation of technology.”
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