Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 2/10/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Petition to Ban Organohalogenated Flame Retardant Sparks Debate
Feb 10, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A petition, calling on the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban organohalogenated flame retardants in several consumer product categories, has raised concern from industry groups... -
(ACC Mentioned) How a Flawed Study May Have Helped a Cancer Cluster Disappear
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
An international health agency's reversal in 2008 of a previous finding that vinyl chloride causes cancer may have been based on flawed scientific research shaped by chemical companies. -
US EPA Seeks Greater Funding for Workplan Chemical Assessments
Feb 10, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Dinesh Kumar
The US EPA says it needs a 9% ($56m) increase in its fiscal year 2017 budget for chemical safety and pollution prevention programmes, if it is to complete all its assessments of workplan chemicals by late 2018. -
EPA Moves TRI Program to Toxics Office
Feb 10, 2016 | InsideEPA
EPA has moved its Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Program into its Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), an organizational change that will not affect reporting requirements... -
Mars Pledges To Drop Artificial Coloring
Feb 10, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Dawn Undurraga, Jose Aguayo, and Megan Boyle
Mars Inc., the multinational corporation that produces iconic candies such as M&Ms, Milky Way and Snickers, announced last week that it will phase out artificial colors from its products over the next five years. -
Obama Plays 'Catch-Up' with Aggressive Cybersecurity Plan
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak and Peter Behr
President Obama will pursue a raft of new cybersecurity initiatives during his final year in office, he announced yesterday, stressing the need to "play some catch-up" with an ever-expanding Internet. -
Flint Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Feb 10, 2016 | New Republic
By Emma Foehringer Merchant
The Aliso Canyon gas leak shows that environmental disasters are happening across the country. -
SCOTUS Halts Clean Power Plan, Stuns States Planning Carbon Cuts
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Emily Holden, Elizabeth Harball and Ellen M. Gilmer
A stunning U.S. Supreme Court decision to halt implementation of the Obama administration's signature regulation for cutting greenhouse gas emissions has left state agencies scrambling. -
White House: Court Ruling Won't Affect Paris Climate Deal
Feb 10, 2016 | Sarah Wheaton
By PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
The White House insisted on Wednesday the United States can still hold up its end of the Paris climate change agreement despite the Supreme Court ruling that blocked the EPA’s carbon regulation. -
Rule Foes Take Victory Lap
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender and Amanda Reilly
Critics of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan are gleeful in the wake of the Supreme Court's unexpected move yesterday to freeze the rule. -
Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord
Feb 10, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris... -
The Supreme Court Could Block Obama’s Climate Plans — But It Can’t Stop Clean Energy
Feb 10, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Tuesday night, even as votes were being tallied in New Hampshire, the Supreme Court shocked many — including the Obama administration — by putting on hold the president’s signature climate policy... -
SCOTUS Complicates Climate Rule as States Plead for Budget Help
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Elizabeth Harball
A Supreme Court decision last night to freeze federal climate change regulations has likely made a long-shot spending plan even harder. -
API Seeks Credit For VOC Reductions Under EPA Voluntary Methane Plan
Feb 10, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is urging EPA to grant the oil and gas sector credit for reducing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) under the agency's voluntary methane reduction program... -
Interior, Enviros Say Litigation Hindering Fracking Oversight
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
An ongoing legal battle is preventing federal regulators from ensuring safe hydraulic fracturing on public and tribal lands, the Obama administration told an appeals court this week.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
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Energy and Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Petition to Ban Organohalogenated Flame Retardant Sparks Debate
Feb 10, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A petition, calling on the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban organohalogenated flame retardants in several consumer product categories, has raised concern from industry groups over the approach of prohibiting a full class of chemicals.
A coalition of close to twenty industry trade groups – representing consumer products and suppliers to the industry – has called on the CPSC to deny the petition. This is on the grounds that it is “overly broad, unnecessary, and would impose unknown and unprecedented regulatory obligations on industry, with no defined benefits for consumers.”
The petition, submitted by several NGOs last year, requests that the CPSC promulgate a regulation under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA). This would name products, containing any non-polymeric, additive organohalogen flame retardant, as “banned hazardous substances” for the following product categories:
children's products, toys, and childcare articles (excluding child car seats);
upholstered residential furniture;
mattresses and mattress pads; and
electronics devices with external casings containing the substances.
The petition attracted more than 150 comments. Among these were dozens of submissions from non-petitioning NGOs, doctors, governmental bodies and private citizens, speaking out in support.
“Toxic flame retardants are associated with neurodevelopmental impacts, including reduced IQ, cancer, reproductive impairments, endocrine disruption and more,” said comments, submitted by non-petitioning NGO, the US Public Interest Research Group (Pirg). “Fire safety is critically important, but there are better ways to protect against injuries from fire than to expose consumers to toxic chemicals.”
But the industry coalition says that the petition seeks to eliminate chemicals “that are distinct from one another in their properties, uses and levels of risk, at particular exposure levels”, and that a ban of the full class of substances “is inappropriate and flies in the face of sound science”.
The coalition further cautions the CPSC that implementing a regulation, without an analysis of each of the chemicals covered by it, “would set an inappropriate and unsupported precedent for federal chemical regulation, especially one that will have a federal interagency impact”.
Several groups, representing specific consumer products named in the petition – including the Toy Industry Association (TIA), the American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) and the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) – said, in independent cover letters, that while the named substances are not typically used in their members' products, they oppose the petition.
“ISPA opposes, as a matter of policy, any administrative action that, in effect, would prohibit the use of entire families of chemicals in consumer products, as petitioners request."
“In general, the Commission’s regulatory mission is best served, through safety standards that contain performance-based safety criteria, as opposed to proscriptive component-based standards that require the use of specific components or ingredients, or that conversely prohibit the use of [such],” says the trade group.
The American Chemistry Council's North American Flame Retardant Alliance (Nafra) says that the petition's suggestion that additive organohalogen flame retardant chemicals are the same in physico-chemical properties and toxicity is “a broad, sweeping generalisation [that] is not supported by even the most cursory examination of the substances”.
They say the number of substances affected by the ban is unknown – by the petitioners' own admission – but numbers at least 83 substances.
Granting the petition would “[advance] an inappropriate and troubling application of the FHSA”, it adds.
The CPSC did not respond to a request for a comment by publication time.
Regulations governing petitions to the CPSC require it to grant or deny a petition, “within a reasonable time after it is filed”. Granting a petition initiates a formal rulemaking process, and “does not necessarily mean that the Commission will issue, amend, or revoke the rule as requested in the petition”.
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(ACC Mentioned) How a Flawed Study May Have Helped a Cancer Cluster Disappear
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
An international health agency's reversal in 2008 of a previous finding that vinyl chloride causes cancer may have been based on flawed scientific research shaped by chemical companies.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, said in 2008 it no longer believed vinyl chloride, used to make polyvinyl chloride plastic, causes cancer. The group cited a 2000 industry review of brain cancer deaths at vinyl chloride plants, like a former Union Carbide Corp. plant in Texas City, Texas, now owned by Dow Chemical Co. that saw 23 workers die of brain tumors.
The study, which was paid for by the American Chemistry Council, found the link between vinyl chloride and brain cancer "remains unclear."
But the study cited by IARC was structured in a way to exclude most brain cancer deaths. While the study purported to count all brain cancer deaths occuring in workers exposed to vinyl chloride, it left out all but one of the 23 deaths in Texas City.
If deaths were left out, said James Collins, the former director of epidemiology at Dow Chemical, "That wouldn't make very good science."
The omission "borders on criminal," said Richard Lemen, a former U.S. assistant surgeon general and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health deputy director.
In the United States, federal regulators have backed off what was once a fast pace of health and safety studies on vinyl chloride in the 1970s. Instead, more industry-funded studies have filled the void, altering the scientific consensus on the safety of vinyl chloride.
The American Chemistry Council said in a statement that the study "was based on inconsistent findings among the available studies, lack of an exposure-response relationship, and small numbers of reported cases in most of the studies" (David Heath, Center for Public Integrity, Feb. 10).
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US EPA Seeks Greater Funding for Workplan Chemical Assessments
Feb 10, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Dinesh Kumar
The US EPA says it needs a 9% ($56m) increase in its fiscal year 2017 budget for chemical safety and pollution prevention programmes, if it is to complete all its assessments of workplan chemicals by late 2018.
In total, the agency is seeking $697m for fiscal year 2017 (12 months to 30 September 2017). Of that, $67.2m would go to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) chemical risk review and reduction programme.
This, it says, would enable it to accelerate the pace of its TSCA workplan assessments and complete 21 risk assessments during those 12 months. This would be "building on the success of FY 2014 and FY 2015, when the first risk assessments under TSCA were completed for five chemicals; the first in 28 years".
It would also, it says, allow it to make greater progress towards its target to complete assessments of all 67 original TSCA workplan chemicals, by the end of fiscal year 2018.
The agency also wants to expand the role of regional offices in TSCA implementation and increase the number of staff in those offices, who work on TSCA, from three to 13. This, it said, in its budget submission to Congress, would close a "critical gap" as regional offices are "uniquely situated to increase stakeholder involvement to ensure that its risk management actions are effective and efficient”.
Another goal, it says, will be to "continue to expand and enhance the quantity, accessibility and usefulness of chemical safety information, thereby building the capacity of the EPA, other regulators, and the public to assess chemical hazards and potential exposures, identify potential risks to human health and the environment, and take appropriate risk reduction action."
In 2017, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening programme - an inter-agency initiative - will expand the use of alternative testing methodologies like high-throughput assays and computational tools. The increased use of such will increase the output of screening results with existing resources, the agency says.
The EPA also plans to promote the adoption by product makers of its Safer Choice label and increase demand for labelled products by retailers, industrial and commercial purchasers and the public. The programme will be extended to cover new product categories.
The Chemical Safety for Sustainability programme will get a $5.6m increase, which will help it incorporate computational chemistry and the use of high-throughput hazard and exposure information to evaluate cumulative risk of exposures.
In 2016, the agency sought $667.9m for its chemical safety and pollution prevention programmes but was allocated $623.2m.
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EPA Moves TRI Program to Toxics Office
Feb 10, 2016 | InsideEPA
EPA has moved its Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Program into its Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), an organizational change that will not affect reporting requirements and appears consistent with the agency's long-standing claims that reporting of TRI data gives companies an incentive to reduce their toxic releases.
The TRI is a mandatory program requiring companies to annually report their toxic releases of more than 650 listed chemicals, providing data the agency says informs waste reduction efforts and encourages industrial facilities to manage production-generated toxic waste through recycling or energy recovery rather than releasing it to the environment.
In a Feb. 10 statement, EPA says agency officials have moved the TRI program from the Office of Environmental Information to OCSPP, and that the move will not affect TRI's reporting requirements. EPA's website says OCSPP's mission is to protect people and the environment from potential risks from pesticides and toxic chemicals.
“The TRI Program, established in 1986 by Congress, is built around the principle that people have the right to know about the toxic chemicals being used in and released into our communities,” the statement says. Through online tools and an annual report, TRI provides data on how more than 20,000 industrial facilities release or recycle toxic chemicals.
The TRI program covers larger manufacturing facilities in a variety of sectors, including metal mining, electric power generation and chemical manufacturing, among others.
According to the EPA website, OCSPP seeks to reduce waste, save energy and preserve natural resources. The office already implements other laws that require reporting of information on pesticides and certain hazardous chemicals, including the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act.
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Mars Pledges To Drop Artificial Coloring
Feb 10, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Dawn Undurraga, Jose Aguayo, and Megan Boyle
Mars Inc., the multinational corporation that produces iconic candies such as M&Ms, Milky Way and Snickers, announced last week that it will phase out artificial colors from its products over the next five years.
Mars chief executive officer Grant F. Reid said the company made this market-changing decision in response to growing demand for natural ingredients in food, even though he insisted that artificial colors “pose no known risks to human health or safety.”
“Our consumers are the boss and we hear them,” Reid said. "If it’s the right thing to do for them, it’s the right thing to do for Mars."
We at EWG welcome Mars’ move. We question Reid’s assertion that artificial colors and dyes are harmless. Some research studies show that they may affect the behavior and attention spans of children. Though these studies are not conclusive, parents have seen enough to worry – and Mars has responded responsibly by taking parents’ concerns seriously. Learn more in our Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Additives.
The Mars move, which will involve 50 of the company’s food brands, follows the food industry’s “clean label” trend, in which industry leaders are abandoning artificial colors, dyes, flavors and preservatives. Other mega-companies, including Kraft Foods, Campbell’s Soup Co. and Nestle USA. have pledged to make similar changes.
The announcement by Mars, best known for its sweets, comes just shy of Valentine’s Day, when Americans are projected to spend more than $1 billion on chocolate.
Wildly popular for its taste, chocolate may also offer health benefits. Studies suggestthat a small amount of dark chocolate may contribute to heart health, cognitive health and improved mood, thanks to a class of antioxidants called flavanols also found in onions, curly kale, leeks, broccoli, blueberries, red wine and tea. Chocolate liquor and cocoa powder contain high concentrations of flavanols.
When it comes to a sweet treat, moderation is key. See how your favorite chocolates compare by searching EWG’s Food Scores.
Our top tips for choosing chocolates:
Eat:Very dark chocolate, 60 percent cocoa or higherLittle or no added sugar
Nuts or fruits, as you like
Don’t eat:White chocolate, which doesn’t contain heart-healthy flavanols
Chocolate whose label lists sugar as the first ingredientPartially hydrogenated oils
Artificial colors or flavors“Yogurt covered” candies, which are commonly made of sugar, partially hydrogenated or palm oils and artificial color – not yogurt
Try these:
Dark chocolate: Taza Chocolate, 95% Dark Stone Ground Wicked DarkScharffen Berger Dark ChocolateAlter Eco, Organic Chocolate Dark BlackoutGreen & Black's Organic, 85% Dark Cacao Bar
Dark chocolate with fruit or nuts: Wild Things, Skinny Dipped Almonds + Glazed Dark Chocolate CocoaMitica Chocohigos, Hand Dipped Dark Chocolate FigsChocolove, Cherries In Dark Chocolate Bar
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Obama Plays 'Catch-Up' with Aggressive Cybersecurity Plan
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak and Peter Behr
President Obama will pursue a raft of new cybersecurity initiatives during his final year in office, he announced yesterday, stressing the need to "play some catch-up" with an ever-expanding Internet.
The executive Cybersecurity National Action Plan aims to shore up critical infrastructure with a new interagency cyber "resilience" center where utilities can learn from simulated attacks on the grid. The plan calls on Congress to boost cybersecurity funding by 35 percent for fiscal 2017, in addition to setting up an expert commission to find long-term solutions to risks from hackers.
"As we've seen in the past few years and just in the past few days, cyberthreats pose a danger not only to our national security but also our financial security and the privacy of millions of Americans," President Obama said yesterday from the White House.
Obama used his fiscal 2017 budget request as the launching pad for his late-term blitz on cybersecurity. The 182-page document sets aside more than $19 billion for cyber spending, but it has already met with skepticism from leading Republicans.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he is hopeful that cybersecurity could emerge as a bipartisan issue in 2016, citing Congress' passage of a major information sharing bill in December as reason for some optimism (EnergyWire, Dec. 18, 2015). He warned that if lawmakers don't help address cyber vulnerabilities, "the American people, rightfully, will have lots of questions about Republicans' commitment to confronting this issue that is critical to both our nation's economy and our national security."
But there were also questions about the effectiveness of the president's proposed measures (Greenwire, Feb. 9). The Cybersecurity National Action Plan adds to a long list of executive orders and bureaucratic initiatives to confront bad actors in cyberspace and organize recovery efforts after a major cyberattack.
"These proposals merit a mix of near-term action and longer-term consideration, and I am encouraged that the administration drew heavily on recommendations and best practices from private industry," said Ryan Gillis, vice president for cybersecurity strategy and global policy at Palo Alto Networks. "However, the ultimate significance of today's announcements depends heavily upon Congress and the next administration to implement."
Infrastructure threats
Much of the action plan, and Obama's fiscal 2017 budget, is devoted to sprucing up federal information technologies following a wave of embarrassing and far-ranging breaches of government data. Last year, hackers made off with millions of sensitive employee records stored in the Office of Personnel Management, while the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have suffered more recent attacks.
But the administration also homed in on the need to safeguard critical infrastructure owned by the private sector. Obama's plan would see updates to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's voluntary guidelines for protecting the computer systems at electric utilities, oil and gas firms and other industrial control system operators. Another initiative would establish a "National Center for Cybersecurity Resilience," to be run jointly through the Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department and the Department of Energy. The center would include a replica of the electric grid to "test the security of systems in a contained environment," according to a fact sheet.
The White House has warned that threats to the grid and other critical infrastructure "are growing in scope, sophistication, and persistence." It's a gloomy sentiment echoed by senior officials in the intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper placed cyberthreats at the top of his testimony to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday on worldwide threats.
He warned that Russia in particular "is assuming a more assertive cyber posture based on its willingness to target critical infrastructure systems and conduct espionage operations even when detected and under increased public scrutiny," Clapper said. A suspected cyberattack that disabled parts of the electric grid in Ukraine late last year is widely thought to have come from Russia, although U.S. government officials have not confirmed that link (EnergyWire, Jan. 6).
Regardless of their origins, cases of malware infecting critical control system environments appear to be on the rise in the United States, based on the latest DHS figures. The steady growth of the "Internet of Things" -- a catch-all category that includes everything from grid components to "smart" refrigerators -- has opened up new avenues of attack for hackers.
Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, said he has been in talks with "elements in the power and water" sectors about threats posed by the new array of distributed technologies. Questioned by lawmakers about the threat to the grid, Rogers suggested utilities should develop their ability to continue operating in the event that parts of the bulk power system go down. He said islandable microgrids could be "a foundational element" in part of a broader strategy to secure the nation's electricity network.
"Cyber remains so foundational to every aspect of our daily life, in a way that we haven't necessarily seen in the past," he said.
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Flint Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Feb 10, 2016 | New Republic
By Emma Foehringer Merchant
The Aliso Canyon gas leak shows that environmental disasters are happening across the country.
As fracking moves from remote mountainsides to the suburbs and cities of America,more and more Americans are living next door to oil drills and diesel trucks. But in Los Angeles, oil wells have been a ubiquitous part of the city’s landscape for nearly a century. Formerly the center of global oil production, today one in three Angelenos live within a mile of a drilling site. But what once was a landscape perforated with wells is now home to an industry landscaped into anonymity: One rig is camouflaged as an innocuous office building about a mile of the city’s famous Museum Row, another hides behind a massive wall at a shopping mall in West Hollywood.
That’s why the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak came as a shock to many residents. The leak—decried as the worst in California history—at a storage facility in Los Angeles County has spewed toxic chemicals into Southern California’s air for over 100 days, emitting 80,000 metric tons of methane and forcing thousands of residents in the affluent neighborhood of Porter Ranch to evacuate. It took over a month of pressure from politicians, media, and residents for the responsible utility company, Southern California Gas Company, to begin working to staunch the leak, and another month for Governor Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency.
As dire as the Porter Ranch emergency is, it’s hardly an isolated environmental disaster. Like the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Porter Ranch is the story of a government unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from basic infrastructure malfunctions, of regulatory bodies so fractured that no responsible party emerges. As these simultaneous disasters have shown, it’s a story that could happen all across America.
Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country, home toover 5,000 oil and gas wells, both active and storage, that account for over 100,000 jobs and $8 million annually of the county’s economy. Most of these wells are, unlike Porter Ranch, located in poor or minority communities who live with the health and environmental consequences on a daily basis, often times unknowingly. For these communities, Porter Ranch is a high-profile example of the problems they’ve struggled with for years in a city and county where ineffectual guidelines and a bureaucratic quagmire have derailed attempts at regulation.
In Los Angeles, 70 percent of wells are located within 1,500 feet of “sensitive” land uses like schools and hospitals. That proximity makes problems with L.A.’s vague regulation and lax implementation nearly inevitable. Current laws allows oil companies to convert wells built for storage into active sites, and vice versa, without considering the complex geological requirements needed for each. The leaking Aliso Canyon well, for instance, was originally built for oil production in the 1950s, but converted to storage in the ’70s without an update.
It wasn’t until after the Porter Ranch leak that the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) released its first round of draft rules as part of an apparent move to cover its bases retroactively. “There aren’t a whole lot of standards,” said Briana Mordick, a geologist specializing in oil and natural gas at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The rules are generic, and they’re also not very comprehensive. … What it boils down to at the end is a suggestion for how to do things but not a lot of really clear standards.”
There may not be many rules, but there’s certainly a lot of bureaucracy. Wells fall under the purview of eight different governmental organizations, creating a complicated web where agencies respond inconsistently, shirking responsibility and laying blame on their counterparts. What’s worse, the city has not had a petroleum administrator, the government official tasked with overseeing oil and gas, since the early 1990s—giving companies freer reign to interpret current rules and for violations to languish. City officials told the Los Angeles Times in January that they don’t have a proactive way to check whether oil and gas companies are sticking to the paltry regulations that do exist.
On October 8, two weeks before the Porter Ranch leak, DOGGR openly admitted its own ineffectiveness. In a report covering 2011 to 2014, the agency found “outdated regulations that in some cases do not address the modern oil and gas extraction environment.” It also concluded, vaguely, that “suboptimal regulatory performance” is the root cause of most problems. About a week before the leak, the agency issued orders to shut down 33 injection wells in Northern California that had not been permitted properly, the latest in a wave of such closings.
Regulatory agencies have come under serious scrutiny in the wake of the disaster, but even the substandard help Porter Ranch has received is the envy of other, less affluent and non-white communities, according to Gladys Limón, an attorney with the California-based environmental justice organization Communities for a Better Environment. “It raises questions as to the disparate responses and accountability of these same officials when it comes to communities of color and low-income communities that have been suffering from very similar health impacts and safety risks for years, and who have called for similar measures but to no avail,” she said.
In a largely black and Latino community in south L.A., for instance, residents have complained about monitoring and regulations for over a year. While the gas company recently suspended a request to drill more wells, the community hasn’t received further action from the city. At the AllenCo gas site near Long Beach—which was finally shut down in November after years of complaints—residents made over 200 phone calls to their air quality board, which regulates emissions, before inspectors visited the site, only to be sickened themselves. In November, Communities for a Better Environment sued the city over alleged illegal and discriminatory well permitting and inadequate environmental protections in communities of color.
The Porter Ranch leak should soon be sealed, according to SoCal Gas, but it will take much longer to change the system in L.A., if at all. Scientists have encouraged following the lead of states like Colorado and North Dakota, which have instituted buffer zones around sites, to protect residents against more leaks. But the government’s sluggish movement thus far offers little confidence that such recommendations will be heeded.
If nothing else, Porter Ranch should spread understanding among residents that they’re living amongst oilrigs. “I hope that Porter Ranch will build enough momentum for folks to see that these facilities operating so close to a neighborhood is dangerous,” said Bhavna Shamasunder, a professor at Occidental College who studies environmental justice issues related to oil and gas, “that there is a real and omnipresent danger.”
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SCOTUS Halts Clean Power Plan, Stuns States Planning Carbon Cuts
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Emily Holden, Elizabeth Harball and Ellen M. Gilmer
A stunning U.S. Supreme Court decision to halt implementation of the Obama administration's signature regulation for cutting greenhouse gas emissions has left state agencies scrambling.
The 5-4 ruling freezes U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan while the rule is under review at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The high court's ruling late yesterday throws open the door to a prolonged legal battle that could delay early decisions by states around how to meet federal emissions targets.
The ruling is also a major setback for President Obama, who during his second term has made the EPA rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants the centerpiece of a broader policy to combat climate change. Obama touted his executive authority to regulate carbon dioxide at home and pressed for similar commitments from China and India ahead of a global climate agreement in Paris last December.
In a White House statement and during a press call with administration officials, the president's top advisers defended the EPA rule, which aims to cut carbon emissions from power plants 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, saying it has a "strong legal and technical foundation."
The administration also sought to rapidly shore up efforts to keep states engaged in the early stages of implementation.
"We remain confident that we will prevail on the merits," said the White House statement. "Even while the litigation proceeds, EPA has indicated it will work with states that choose to continue plan development and will prepare the tools those states will need."
A panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit are the next step in what has become the most aggressively litigated environmental regulation in U.S. history. More than two dozen states, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, coal companies and some electric utilities have said EPA overreached in its use of the Clean Air Act to force states and utilities to shift away from old coal-fired power generation and use lower-carbon or carbon-free sources of electricity, including wind, solar, natural gas and energy efficiency.
Eighteen states, environmental groups and a range of power industry interests have filed supporting briefs, saying the rule should be kept in place. A stay, they argue, would "only deepen uncertainty" and "cause harm to the power companies and others who are investing in clean generation technology."
With hotly contested presidential primaries underway and Republicans campaigning on platforms hostile to federal climate action, the speed and timing of litigation have become an issue.
If the lower court upholds the regulation, then it's expected to land on the doorstep of the Supreme Court again. All the while, the court's stay of the rule will remain in place, likely making 2017 the earliest time the rule could take effect, well after Obama leaves office.
'Can't stay climate change'
On hearing of the Supreme Court stay, opponents of the power-sector carbon rule rejoiced, while EPA press secretary Melissa Harrison said in a statement that the agency is disappointed that the rule has been stayed, but "you can't stay climate change and you can't stay climate action."
"Millions of people are demanding we confront the risks posed by climate change. And we will do just that," she said. "We believe strongly in this rule and we will continue working with our partners to address carbon pollution."
Republicans on Capitol Hill lauded the decision. Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that it is a "major blow to President Obama's legacy on climate change" and a "sign the court recognizes that the Obama administration has overreached its authority."
"These challenges highlight the enforceability problems, encroachment on state authority, skyrocketing electricity prices, and job losses during an already anemic economy that these regulations will cause," Inhofe said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) touted it as proof that states should have followed his advice last year to "just say no." McConnell, whose state of Kentucky is a big coal producer and consumer, called on governors to put off submitting to EPA their plans for cutting emissions until a federal court ruled. "Today's Supreme Court order to halt those regulations -- regulations that attack the middle class and won't even have a meaningful impact on global carbon emissions -- is just the latest sign they may not be [legal]," he said.
The decision to stay the EPA rule is a highly unusual step for the Supreme Court. Lawyers interviewed by E&E, both supporting and opposing the rule, said they couldn't recall the justices ever halting a rule before a lower court weighed in on whether it was legal.
Scrambling state plans
The decision threw yearslong state planning processes into limbo, as agencies considered whether they would still need to adhere to a Sept. 6 deadline to submit an initial carbon-cutting draft and request a two year-extension.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) immediately announced that the first meeting of the state's Interim Clean Power Plan Advisory Council, scheduled for later this month, will be canceled.
Montana faces some of the steepest carbon reduction requirements in the nation under the Clean Power Plan. Bullock was disappointed by the rule's targets for his state, but his office had been working on a compliance strategy.
"I have been clear that I think these rules were unfair to Montana. Given the court's ruling today, I am putting the work of the Clean Power Plan Council on hold," Bullock said in a statement. "What we cannot put on hold, however, is the need to address climate change and embrace Montana's energy future, and I am committed to ensuring we do so on our own terms."
Electric Reliability Coordinating Council Director Scott Segal said he doubts states that are suing but planning for the rule will continue in that direction. "I'm sure every state in the union is obviously rethinking that, because the rule's been stayed," Segal said.
But other states opposed to the rule, while shocked and pleased by the decision, said they might have an obligation to keep working.
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality had a Clean Power Plan meeting scheduled for this morning, and Air Quality Division Director Eric Massey said the "decision is late-breaking and requires our careful and thoughtful analysis to ensure that Arizona pursues the most prudent path."
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, whose governor supports the rule, has a similar meeting planned for Friday. Air Division Director Michael Dowd said he would need to "read the order, chat with our lawyers, commissioner and team."
Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh and Arkansas Public Service Commission Chairman Ted Thomas in a joint statement said they were pleased with the decision but would "strive to balance our obligation to be wise stewards of taxpayer money with our obligation to be fully prepared should the Supreme Court ultimately uphold the plan."
Oklahoma, whose governor issued an executive order forbidding compliance with the rule, fell somewhere in between. "Oklahoma continues to engage with the Southwest Power Pool and stakeholders on the impacts of the Clean Power Plan," Michael Teague, Oklahoma's secretary of energy and environment, said in a statement. "Since the Supreme Court has stayed implementation, Oklahoma no longer faces a September compliance date and can focus on assisting the attorney general on overturning this rule."
A senior White House official, however, said "there are powerful drivers outside of the scope of the Clean Power Plan that are going to continue to mean a shift to cleaner energy sources in the power sector [and] additional investment in clean energy."
National Association of Clean Air Agencies Executive Director Bill Becker said he expects much of the work states are doing to prepare for carbon regulations to continue. "Reducing greenhouse gases is a smart public policy because it's meant to do things more efficiently -- this is the moral of what states and localities have learned over the past couple of years," Becker said.
Becker acknowledged that the Supreme Court's move could also complicate things for the parties most affected by the ruling -- power companies.
"At some point, there is a distinct possibility that utilities will rue the day that the Supreme Court has stayed this rule, because if states continue to adopt their own individual programs, it will create a multi-headed hydra of greenhouse gas programs around the country," Becker said.
"The one thing utilities have advocated for is efficiencies," he added. "The irony [is that] this decision could be slamming utilities who are welcoming a very reasonable and efficient way of reducing greenhouse gases."
Alexandra Dunn, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, which represents state environmental commissioners, agreed that the regulation has already built up a head of steam in state capitols. State environmental and utility regulators have been collaborating, far more than usual.
"Even without the Clean Power Plan, the need for the energy and environmental sectors of our economies to interact was extremely overdue," Dunn said. "I predict that the conversations happening may continue, but perhaps not around the exact structure of the Clean Power Plan."
South Carolina has been in carbon-cutting talks for more than two years, said Hamilton Davis, energy program director for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and a participant in the state's planning process. "I don't anticipate that the Supreme Court hitting the pause button is going to derail the work that we've been doing," Davis said.
State officials noted that initial plans due in September under the EPA rule aren't a heavy lift. "There's still a pretty big window of time" before final plans are due in 2018, one official noted.
Inside the court's decision
The justices' leanings in the decision broke down on familiar lines. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined in the decision. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would not have granted the stay.
In weighing stay requests, the justices must consider certain criteria, including whether the court would likely agree to review the merits of the case, whether the petitioners would face irreparable harm without a stay, and whether the court would likely overturn a lower court's decision on the merits of the case.
In the Clean Power Plan litigation, however, there is no lower court decision on the merits. While the D.C. Circuit considered the arguments for and against a stay, it has not yet been fully briefed on the broader merits of the case or issued a decision on the rule's legality. The Supreme Court's decision to stay the rule before any lower court has reviewed it is considered highly unusual.
"The court has kind of inserted itself in a way that it hasn't done before and in a way that doesn't bode well for EPA," Dorsey & Whitney attorney James Rubin said. "It hasn't really stayed a rulemaking challenge. That usually goes to the D.C. Circuit and works its way up."
The administration hammered that point in a brief to the court last week, warning against the "danger of premature intervention." States and industry challenging the rule countered that the unprecedented reach of the Clean Power Plan necessitated extraordinary legal action (EnergyWire, Feb. 5).
Bracewell LLP attorney Jeff Holmstead, who is representing industry clients against the rule, said the court's decision shows the justices' confidence that the challengers ultimately are likely to succeed in the litigation.
Rubin said it's likely the justices were also swayed in part by a fourth factor in the court's criteria for stay applications: the level of harm to each side -- or "balance of equities" -- and the public interest.
"What probably was on some of the judges' minds was the MATS case," Rubin said, referring to an EPA mercury rule that was partially invalidated by the high court, but not before many power plants began complying. "That's an equities issue. They looked at the rule and said, 'Well, we could stay it and keep the status quo, or we could let it pass and by the time we get to it, a lot of things could have happened.'"
Rubin added that the decision may have broader impacts, emboldening other challengers to pursue stays for various federal regulations.
"There's no reason for people not to try it, because if they lose in the D.C. Circuit, they can just go to the Supreme Court," he said, adding that Roberts, who handles applications from D.C. Circuit cases, may find himself busier than usual.
But Holmstead said a rush of stay requests is unlikely because the Clean Power Plan is uniquely far-reaching. "The circumstances here really were extraordinary, and all of us who were involved were able to show the court that it was highly unusual," he said. "So maybe the Supreme Court's decision wasn't such a big surprise."
Supporters of the regulation, meanwhile, are taking comfort in the preliminary nature of the Supreme Court's decision.
"It's possible that the court is saying, 'Well, let's just hold this in place until the lower court gets a closer look, and we get a look,'" Natural Resources Defense Council attorney David Doniger said. "This is a preliminary decision."
Senior administration officials reiterated that sentiment on a press call last night, repeatedly calling the decision a "temporary procedural determination."
Reporters Edward Klump, Rod Kuckro and Joel Kirkland contributed.
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White House: Court Ruling Won't Affect Paris Climate Deal
Feb 10, 2016 | Sarah Wheaton
By PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
The White House insisted on Wednesday the United States can still hold up its end of the Paris climate change agreement despite the Supreme Court ruling that blocked the EPA’s carbon regulation.
Calling the ruling a “temporary procedural determination,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said, “The schedule for this litigation looks like it will be concluded well in time for the U.S. to make its commitments in the Paris agreement.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Schultz said that other measures beyond the Clean Power Plan can help the U.S. meet its commitments, including new fuel standards for cars and airplanes.
Schultz also pointed to a long-term extension of a renewable energy tax credit in the budget deal signed late last year. “It is our estimation that the inclusion of those tax credits is going to have more impact over the short term than the Clean Power Plan," he said.
He brushed off questions that the high court’s move was spooking the other parties to the Paris deal, saying, “Our international partners are well aware the policy-making process in the United States is a complicated process, there's often litigation.”
Schultz dismissed a questions about whether the administration has a “Plan B” if the courts ultimately reject the carbon rule.
"I'm familiar with Plan B questions because they were often asked to us in the context of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act,” Schultz said, reiterating the administration’s confidence of a similar legal victory.
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Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender and Amanda Reilly
Critics of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan are gleeful in the wake of the Supreme Court's unexpected move yesterday to freeze the rule.
West Virginia's Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), who led a coalition of more than two dozen states challenging the rule, held a news conference today where he called the high court's stay "historic" and a "monumental victory for West Virginia, the country and the rule of law."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) told reporters, "Thanks to the court's action, we can all rest a little more securely today." Texas was among the 27 states that asked the justices to intervene. The court, Paxton said, "agreed that rushing through policy like this was a bad idea."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the regulation's most vocal opponent on Capitol Hill, today patted himself on the back for telling governors to take a wait-and-see approach to complying with the Obama administration's signature climate rule.
In a floor speech this morning, the majority leader said last night's Supreme Court stay showed there were big questions concerning the rule's legality. McConnell said the just-say-no approach he's been pushing was the right one for states.
McConnell last year wrote letters to governors urging them to hold off on complying with the Clean Power Plan.
"We thought governors should know that the economic jeopardy they would place their states in by moving ahead without a clearer understanding first of what might be legally required," McConnell said today. "We thought governors should not feel bullied by the heavy hand of this administration."
He added, "That cautious approach was the most responsible one, in my view. Yesterday's decision shows it was a prudent one, as well."
The Supreme Court last night issued a short order agreeing to halt U.S. EPA's rule to cut power plants' greenhouse gas emissions while litigation over the regulation plays out in a lower court. The court's conservative wing backed the court's 5-4 decision.
Observers widely considered the court's move to block the rule a surprise. Even many of those who pushed the high court to intervene weren't confident they would succeed.
"When we were looking for precedent, we just couldn't find anything. We felt all along that our legal arguments were very strong," said Jeff Holmstead, an attorney at Bracewell LLP representing challengers in the rule.
Still, Holmstead added, "I think even the people who asked for this thought it was kind of a long shot just because it had never happened before.
"'Put down your pencils'
In addition to being buoyed by the stay, opponents of the rule are hopeful that it signals they'll ultimately prevail in persuading the Supreme Court to reject the regulation.
"This stay is a strong signal that the Supreme Court has serious concerns about the legality of the power plan," Morrisey said today. "To grant a stay, the Supreme Court has to conclude that the challengers are likely to succeed."
The Obama administration and backers of the rule say they remain confident about the rule's legality, and they're hopeful they'll ultimately prevail once the Supreme Court digs into the merits of the case.
"Don't let the administration or other people try to spin you on this point," Morrisey said today. "We doubt that the U.S. Supreme Court would have taken such an unprecedented action if they didn't have serious legal concerns about the power plan."
By halting the plan, Morrisey said, "the Supreme Court has sent a message to all of the states: 'Put down your pencils because the EPA has no authority to issue and force this illegal rule down your throats.'"
McConnell today vowed to keep fighting the rule in Congress. He boasted that he assigned himself to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee responsible for EPA's budget for the specific reason of challenging the agency's agenda.
"We'll see what the Supreme Court ultimately decides," he said, "but we're going to keep fighting against these regressive regulations, regardless."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledged to defend the rule in a Senate floor speech this morning. He called the stay by the Supreme Court an "unfortunate setback."
"Climate-denying Republicans in the House and Senate might applaud this decision," Reid said, "but their refusal to protect Americans from the impacts of climate change is a real loss for our country."
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Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord
Feb 10, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris less than two months ago, climate diplomats said.
The Paris Agreement, the first accord to commit every country to combating climate change, had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would carry out strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions. Over history, the United States is the largest greenhouse gas polluter, although its annual emissions have been overtaken by China’s.
But in the capitals of India and China, two of the world’s largest polluters, climate change policy experts said the Supreme Court decision threw the American commitment into question, and possibly New Delhi’s and Beijing’s, too.
“If the U.S. Supreme Court actually declares the coal power plant rules stillborn, the chances of nurturing trust between countries would all but vanish,” said Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “This could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel. The Paris agreement was a fragile and hard-fought consensus.”
The court’s verdict does not block the climate change rule permanently but halts its enactment until legal challenges against it have been decided, a process that could take a year or more. Legal experts said the justices’ unprecedented decision to stop work on the rule before any court had decided against it appears to signal that the regulation could ultimately be overturned.
“If the American clean energy plan is overturned, we’ll need to reassess whether the United States can meet its commitments,” said Zou Ji, the deputy director of the National Center for Climate Strategy and International Cooperation, a government policy think tank in Beijing.
“It had seemed that with the American commitments, it was possible to get on the right emissions path globally,” said Mr. Zou, who was an adviser to the Chinese delegation at the Paris negotiations, by telephone. “But without those commitments, that could be a blow to confidence in low-carbon development. In China domestically there is also resistance to low-carbon policies, and they would be able to say, ‘Look, the United States doesn’t keep its word. Why make so many demands on us?’”
Inaction by the United States has long been the chief obstacle to meaningful global climate change agreements. India and China in particular resisted action absent a climate change policy in the United States.Paris Climate Change Conference 2015Complete coverage of the United Nations meeting in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, and efforts to reach an emissions deal.
Mr. Obama sought to change that by putting in place a set of aggressive but politically controversial Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. On the basis of those rules, Mr. Obama won agreements from China and India to enact their own pollution reduction plans, and helped push other countries into signing on to the Paris measure. Visiting Beijing in 2014, Mr. Obama made a joint announcement that both countries would enact concrete domestic policies to cut emissions.
Over the past year, Mr. Obama worked closely with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to bring India to the table for the Paris deal. Mr. Modi and many within India were resistant; the prime minister’s top priority is to make cheap electricity available to the 300 million Indians who live without power. If the United States reneges on its commitments, “it really would strengthen the hand of those who say Paris was ineffective and a bad deal for India,” Mr. Dubash said.
American policy experts agreed that the Supreme Court decision might be the first of many fractures in the deal. “The honeymoon for Paris is now definitely over,” said John Sterman, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who attended the Paris talks.
“This pushback is not something that’s unique to the United States,” he added. “It’s happening all over the developed world.”
In the European Union, Poland and some other coal-reliant countries have resisted signing on to the bloc’s commitment under the agreement to more stringently reducing emissions across member states.
While the Paris deal was completed in December, it has not yet been signed. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to a signing ceremony in New York on April 22, Earth Day. Those who do not attend the gathering will have several months to add their signatures to the formal document.
Already, some people deeply familiar with the climate negotiations worry that the events in the United States could lead to a repeat of what happened after the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major climate change treaty. Vice President Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, negotiated the treaty with other world leaders. But in Washington, the Senate voted against ratifying it. Then George W. Bush pulled the United States out entirely.
The Supreme Court’s decision — particularly if it ultimately strikes down the rule — will put United States climate policy, and its participation in the Paris agreement, largely in the hands of the next president. While the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have pledged to continue and strengthen Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda, the Republican contenders, including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, have questioned or denied the science of human-caused climate change and have sharply criticized the Paris Agreement.
“Who can we negotiate with if the White House can’t be sure if it can keep its promises?” Mr. Zou asked. “Not the Congress. Not the court. The division of powers creates a very complicated situation.
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The Supreme Court Could Block Obama’s Climate Plans — But It Can’t Stop Clean Energy
Feb 10, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Tuesday night, even as votes were being tallied in New Hampshire, the Supreme Court shocked many — including the Obama administration — by putting on hold the president’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan, pending resolution of a lawsuit against it by a number of states, utilities and coal companies.
Everybody knew the Clean Power Plan would face major legal challenges, but few thought they’d significantly derail it so early on. One legal expert, the Sierra Club’s Bruce Nilles, told the Post it was “unprecedented for the Supreme Court to stay a rule at this point in litigation. They do this in death-penalty cases.”
Given litigation timelines, the move suggests that the fate of the plan now may not even be decided until after Obama has left office, in 2017. Moreover, the stay also suggests the Supreme Court’s conservative majority looks askance at the plan and sees the challenges against it as serious. This means the next president could now be a major player in setting — or un-making — the nation’s climate policy.
All of this has generated an uproar, and there will be much talk of how it embarrasses Obama on the world stage and undermines the U.S.’s position in the Paris climate negotiations, where the Clean Power Plan was key to demonstrating that as the world’s second largest emitter, we’re doing our part.
However, there’s another side of the story. The fact of the matter is that the Clean Power Plan wasn’t set to fully kick in until 2022 — and in the interim, the U.S. has been going through something that looks a lot like the kind of transition it is meant to prompt even without the plan in place.
Namely: The nation has been slowly decarbonizing its electricity system, through the growth of renewables and the switching from burning coal to burning natural gas.
The same day the Supreme Court stalled the Clean Power Plan, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released its monthly short term energy outlook. Here are some of the punchlines: Electricity from renewables is expected to grow 9.5 percent in 2016. “EIA expects utility-scale solar capacity will increase by about 80% (10 GW) between the end of 2015 and the end of 2017, with 4.1 GW of new capacity being built in California,” the agency adds (GW stands for gigawatt).
Meanwhile, total greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning actually declined in 2015, by 2.2 percent, the agency estimates. One key reason for this is that coal use declined 12 percent in the electricity sector, with much more burning of natural gas instead. EIA expects that natural gas in 2016 will, as in 2015, give coal a run for its money in supplying electricity, thanks to quite low prices.
“EIA expects that the share of total generation fueled by natural gas in 2016 will average 32.3%, while coal supplies 33.3% of generation, which is similar to their shares in 2015,” the agency states.
All of these numbers reinforce a set of findings from Bloomberg New Energy Finance released last week suggesting the U.S. electricity system went through a “transformative” year in 2015.
It’s a picture of an electricity system in which long-dominant coal is being steadily undermined by other contenders. And yes — there are problems with methane emissions to the atmosphere from natural gas production (witnessAliso Canyon). But in the long term, carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that scientists really worry about, because of its long residence time in the atmosphere.
So the fact is that the country is decarbonizing anyway, and this trend is not likely to stop, no matter what happens with the Clean Power Plan.
Which is not to downplay the significance of regulatory restrictions on carbon dioxide, as opposed to market forces. There’s no guarantee without them that the emissions cuts will happen or that targets are reachable — especially pledges on the international stage.
Still, the point is that the arrow still does point in the same direction, and that’s not something the Supreme Court can change.
And there’s something else to consider. While the White House says it’s still confident the Clean Power Plan will prevail in court, imagine instead that it doesn’t — that this stay is a preview for an ultimate negative outcome at the Supreme Court. What would happen then?
A little over a year ago, I wrote a long article about why the EPA regulatory approach to tackling carbon dioxide was, ultimately, deeply polarizing. Obama opted for regulation, rather than legislation, to fix climate change, which is understandable in light of the failure of cap and trade and the composition of Congress. But it was never an approach likely to generate long-term political consensus.
So instead, I argued that there is really only one policy that both sides can accept in the long run — a carbon tax that is “revenue neutral,” meaning that it returns all the revenue to U.S. citizens in the form of tax breaks or dividends, rather than using it for spending on new government programs. Many conservative economists support taxing carbon — so, indeed, do many fossil fuel companies. And returning the revenue to the public, rather than adding to government coffers, is a supremely conservative approach.
As I concluded then:
…..atmospheric physics ultimately forces all hands. The climate problem is real, and it just worsens over time. The science won’t go away, the issue won’t go away, the world’s sense of urgency won’t go away — and the politics seem to be shifting in such a way as to make attacking the science of climate change harder to get away with.
So a time may come when the logic of this article makes sense — even if not today. But soon.
That time is still not today. Today, we watch and wait as clean energy slowly advances and litigation over the Clean Power Plan proceeds. And that itself will be a long process.
But in the long run, because the climate issue won’t go away, and because of how conservatives feel about EPA regulatory solutions, a carbon tax remains on the table. It may even be the most likely final resting place for climate policy.
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SCOTUS Complicates Climate Rule as States Plead for Budget Help
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Elizabeth Harball
A Supreme Court decision last night to freeze federal climate change regulations has likely made a long-shot spending plan even harder.
U.S. EPA wants to spend $50.5 million implementing the Clean Power Plan in fiscal 2017, including $25 million assisting states in writing carbon-cutting plans for the power sector.
The court's decision to grant a stay request from more than two dozen states and industry groups to block the rule introduces significant new hurdles to that plan, which a Republican-controlled Congress was already unlikely to approve.
Meanwhile, state agencies that have been staffing up and spending more to prepare for the rule said that wouldn't be enough money, even in the unlikely chance that a Republican-controlled Congress would approve the spending.
"If one does the math, that's slightly more than half a million dollars per state," said Alexandra Dunn, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, which represents state environmental commissioners. "For a major presidential initiative that is the centerpiece of much of the administration's climate implementation agenda, it seems to not be the level of commitment that one would expect to be requested."
Dunn said that is probably because the Obama administration knows Congress won't allow the spending.
States are tasked with writing their own blueprints for reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants by ramping up renewable energy use, switching to more natural gas or using carbon trading. State agencies say the work is complex, time-consuming and expensive.
Last night's ruling, meanwhile, threw the entire state planning process into limbo as states scrambled to understand if they still must meet a Sept. 6 deadline to submit early carbon-cutting plans and ask for extensions.
The most recent omnibus spending measure does not devote additional money to state Clean Power Plan implementation. GOP lawmakers have railed against the rule and sought every opportunity to overturn it, but they have been stymied by presidential vetoes.
Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who leads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a statement yesterday quickly dismissed the Clean Power Plan funding request.
He said President Obama uses his budget proposals to "create a legacy of destroying fossil fuels" and added that the most recent blueprint is "already being disregarded in Congress as neither the Senate or House Budget Committees will be inviting the [Office of Management and Budget] Director to testify."
Inhofe late yesterday declared the Supreme Court decision "a major blow" to Obama's climate legacy.
States grapple with a 'huge gap'
Before the court news came out, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the $25 million increase for state Clean Power Plan assistance would be "a critical step to translate the historic progress made last year into real, concrete action on the ground."
Of that pot, $17.5 million would go toward modeling, technical analysis and training, acting EPA air chief Janet McCabe noted. The other $7.5 million would be available directly to states.
Overall, EPA proposes $3.3 billion for state and tribal grants to implement various programs, including for air, surface and drinking water, pesticides and wetlands. That's a decrease from the current spending level of $3.5 billion, but the White House highlighted a plan to shift about $77 million to state categorical grants.
McCarthy said in a press call that the $3.3 billion accounts for 40 percent of the agency's budget, "to tackle our environmental challenges on the ground, where it really counts the most."
Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents states and local agencies that implement the Clean Air Act, said $268.2 million of that would go toward air programs.
Becker said, "States are facing a huge gap in what they're getting from Congress and what they need." He estimates they need about $500 million more per year just to implement air rules. The president's request is a "modest" step toward that, he said.
Will Allison, air pollution control division director for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the funds EPA is proposing are needed to weigh "approaches to evaluating and measuring plans for energy savings, holding public outreach meetings [and] modeling different scenarios of compliance pathways," as well as preparing the initial and final state plans.
"It's all hands on deck, to be honest," in terms of his office's staffing on the CPP, he said. There is no single person dedicated to it, as "multiple folks are working on several issues at the same time."
McConnell: Congress won't fund 'likely illegal' rule
Since EPA rolled out the final Clean Power Plan in August, even many of the 27 states that are challenging the rule in court have been working to understand the rule and start sketching out an initial plan so they can request a two-year extension in September.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) led the charge last year for states to "just say no" and refuse to comply with the Clean Power Plan. But Matt Bevin, the GOP governor of McConnell's home state of Kentucky, announced last month that his administration would submit an initial draft and ask for two more years to work on a plan (EnergyWire, Jan. 25).
McConnell's spokesman, Robert Steurer, said in an email that despite the work states are doing, "Leader McConnell doesn't support spending taxpayer dollars to boost compliance with an Obama administration regulation that is likely illegal and extremely detrimental to the economy."
The majority leader also praised the court's ruling yesterday as proof that he has been on the right track in asking governors not to comply with the rule.
Allison said that if Congress does not agree to the new funding level, he thinks it "highly unlikely" that Colorado's Legislature would step in with more money. Many lawmakers in red states are already facing budget gaps and are loath to allocate money to implement a rule they see as federal overreach.
Jeff Morris -- a Democratic lawmaker in Washington state who co-chairs the Task Force on Energy Supply for the National Conference of State Legislatures -- noted that only states that are engaged in working on the Clean Power Plan would apply for EPA grants. He said he worries that states that are "sticking their heads in the sand" instead of planning might end up burdening taxpayers with higher compliance costs.
Some state legislators want to take a "wait and see" approach in the hope that a GOP president will be elected or lawsuits will prevail, Morris said.
"I don't think they understand it takes as long to unwind a rule by a federal agency as it took to wind it," Morris said.
From consultants to new employees, states face 'huge undertaking'
While many state agencies have been reassigning staff to work on the Clean Power Plan, Morris believes some have added at least two full-time employees to hash out the rule. That equates to about $300,000 for salaries and benefits, depending on the state, he said. Public utility commissions have also needed to staff up "just to interface" with air quality regulators, with whom they rarely crossed paths previously.
Some states are also paying for private-sector consultants. The costs to work on the rule could reach $1 million, Morris estimated. States are already starting to gauge those costs. Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality recently asked state lawmakers for $350,000 to prepare for the rule.
Bruce Andersen, co-chairman of the NACAA Program Funding Committee and air quality director for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County in Kansas City, Kan., said the proposal is a "good start," but funding needs will only grow.
"Once we get further into it and adopt something and begin to implement it, obviously [state air regulators are] going to need more resources," he said. "This is going to be a huge undertaking.
"We're going to have to work hand in hand with the energy commissions in the state and be doing types of programs that air agencies have not done before when they're looking at ways to reduce carbon emissions from utilities," he added.
If the rule is ultimately upheld, "expensive collaboration and a lot of technical support" are going to be needed to do the work well, Dunn of the Environmental Council of the States concluded.
Reporter Rod Kuckro contributed.
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API Seeks Credit For VOC Reductions Under EPA Voluntary Methane Plan
Feb 10, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is urging EPA to grant the oil and gas sector credit for reducing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) under the agency's voluntary methane reduction program, saying that the credit should apply toward industry's compliance with pending agency guidelines on reducing emissions from existing drilling.
EPA last month released final details of its voluntary "Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge Program Best Management Practice Commitment Framework," which aims to expand upon the methane reductions achieved by its voluntary Natural Gas STAR program. The program aims to encourage companies to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas methane in addition to EPA's proposed first-time rules to force methane cuts from new sources.
The agency has also floated draft control techniques guidelines (CTGs) to cut VOCs from existing drilling sites, which can have a co-benefit of cutting methane. The CTGs are designed for areas not attaining EPA's ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), and recommendation options for states on cutting pollution.
The package of policies seeks to help achieve President Obama's goal of reducing 40-45 percent of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 2025. But API is warning the agency to carefully consider the link between the various policies, in particular the CTGs and the expanded voluntary methane program. The organization says that EPA needs to award credit for the CTGs for steps companies might take under the Methane Challenge.
"A critical consideration" for the voluntary program will be whether participating companies receive emissions reductions credits (ERCs) under the Clean Air Act for VOC cuts achieved as a co-benefit of controlling methane, API said in comments on an earlier draft of the Methane Challenge which EPA released last month.
The comments warn that incentives for companies to participate in the voluntary methane program "could be significantly undercut" by the proposed CTGs because the guidelines would require states to regulate VOC emissions from existing oil and gas sources in nonattainment areas and the Ozone Transport Region. The Clean Air Act requires that the reductions from ERCs must not otherwise be required by some other air program or regulation.
If the VOC reductions achieved as a "co-benefit" of the methane controls implemented through the voluntary program are considered mandatory once required by states in response to the CTGs, they would not be available to use as ERCs for meeting Clean Air Act requirements in ozone nonattainment areas, the comments say.
"This would eliminate an important benefit that industry could obtain from voluntary reductions under the ENGS and thereby create a major disincentive for participation in the voluntary program," API warns.
Methane Cuts
API urges EPA should establish in the final CTGs a federal framework that encourages voluntary methane cuts from existing oil and natural gas sources by narrowing its definition of sources subject to the CTGs. The narrower definition should exclude sources that have already implemented best management practices under the voluntary program and thus reduced their VOCs to low levels that would meet or exceed the minimum pollution control levels, API says.
Such a scope would mean that states would have no legal obligation to establish standards imposing reasonably available control technology (RACT) to cut pollution from those sources, meaning the VOC emission reductions achieved by these sources would be eligible to ERCs because they were not mandatory, API adds.
The CTGs as proposed by the agency would not directly impose binding regulations for VOC sources, instead providing recommendations for states to consider in determining RACT to cut VOC emissions from certain existing sources. States may use different technologies or approaches than are outlined in the CTGs, but RACT is subject to EPA approval and a state must show its approach will achieve the required pollution cuts.
Under section 182(b)(2) of the air law, states would have to submit revisions to their state implementation plans for complying with the NAAQS to EPA for approval within two years of the agency finalizing the CTGs.
The draft CTG for the oil and gas industry would apply in areas out of attainment with the NAAQS and throughout the 12-state Ozone Transport Region in the Northeast that have struggled with high ozone levels. The region includes Washington, D.C., portions of Northern Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.
API in previous comments on the CTGs raised several concerns, including the modeling on which EPA bases its RACT recommendations, faulting the agency's use of economic studies that are based on average facilities that do not account for the full range of sources, and saying that the notification, monitoring, testing and reporting measures are significantly more burdensome for smaller facilities than are justified.
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Interior, Enviros Say Litigation Hindering Fracking Oversight
Feb 10, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
An ongoing legal battle is preventing federal regulators from ensuring safe hydraulic fracturing on public and tribal lands, the Obama administration told an appeals court this week.
Lawyers for the Department of the Interior and a coalition of environmental groups told the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday that the court should move quickly to resolve litigation over the Bureau of Land Management's fracking rule. The rule, finalized almost a year ago, has been mired in lawsuits from the oil and gas industry and several Western states, which see it as an overreach that exaggerates the risks of fracking and encroaches on state regulatory authority.
A federal district court largely agreed with the opponents last year, granting their request for a preliminary injunction that prevents BLM from implementing the rule until the court rules on broader questions of the rule's legality. In an appeal to the 10th Circuit, Interior and environmental allies say the injunction is stalling adequate oversight. The regulation was originally scheduled to take effect last June.
"BLM aimed to address a number of resource risks posed by hydraulic-fracturing operations on federal and Indian lands, including potential groundwater contamination, interference with other wells, leakage of fracturing chemicals, and surface spills of recovered fluids," government and environmental lawyers wrote in a joint motion to the court. "The district court's nationwide injunction of the rule has entirely deprived BLM of the tools that it deemed necessary to manage those risks."
The filing also emphasized that the fracking rule -- which sets new requirements for well construction, wastewater management and chemical disclosure for fracking on public and tribal lands -- was subject to years of research, public meetings and technical development. Supporters are asking the 10th Circuit to schedule oral arguments in May "or otherwise expedite oral argument and consideration of the merits of this appeal."
"Due to the injunction, BLM has not been able to effectuate any of the rule's provisions, which seek to mitigate risks to other resources posed by hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands," the brief said. "BLM and the public have a strong interest in prompt resolution of this appeal."
The request also hints at heated debate to come, with government lawyers noting that their opening briefs in the appeal will show that the district court "committed legal errors and otherwise abused its discretion" in enjoining the fracking rule.
The stakes for the appeal are high, as the district court's order granting the preliminary injunction came with harsh criticism of BLM's decision to craft the fracking rule and questioned whether the agency has authority over fracking on public lands at all (EnergyWire, Oct. 1, 2015).
Industry litigants oppose Interior and environmentalists' request to fast-track the case, noting that the agency never raised any urgency claims before -- even when the rule was temporarily halted last summer. Plus, said BakerHostetler attorney Mark Barron, the proposed schedule for oral arguments would still have the 10th Circuit considering the appeal of the preliminary injunction in May, after briefing in the district court case is complete in mid-April.
"At no point in the approximately eight months that have passed since the district court first blocked BLM from implementing the agency's final hydraulic fracturing rule have any of the Appellants taken any action to suggest that the case requires anything but ordinary treatment," Barron, who represents the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said in an email. "Special treatment for the appeal of a preliminary injunction is, in fact, less appropriate now than it might have been at any previous point in this case."
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