Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 3/8/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) US Resin Distributors Happy with Mexican Investments
Mar 8, 2016 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
Two U.S.-based resin distributors are pleased with early results from their new Mexican operations, while another is expanding its presence in the country. -
New Seal Ensures Products are Made Without Known Toxic Chemicals
Mar 8, 2016 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Cassidy Randall
A new seal is launching this month that certifies that consumer products are made without chemicals known to harm human health. -
Lawmakers Probing for BPA Records at Health Agency
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Republican lawmakers are seeking more information on how a federal agency put together health studies that flagged problems with a popular chemical. -
Potentially Toxic Chemicals Plummet in Teens After Switching to Safer Cosmetics
Mar 8, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
The levels of potentially hormone-disrupting chemicals in the bodies of teenage girls plunged just three days after they stopped using certain cosmetic products, shampoos and soaps that contained the problematic substances... -
New Teflon Toxin Causes Cancer in Lab Animals
Mar 8, 2016 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
The chemical introduced by DuPont in 2009 to replace the surfactant PFOA causes many of the same health problems in lab tests that the original chemical did, including cancer and reproductive problems... -
(ACC Mentioned) Democratic Debate Shows Split over Shale Gas Fracking
Mar 8, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Ken Silverstein
Like parts of the nation, the Democratic presidential contenders are split over hydraulic fracturing, which is the technique used to withdraw shale gas from a mile beneath the earth’s surface. -
Court Pauses Proceedings on Challenges to Refinery Rules
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
At U.S. EPA's request, a federal appellate court has placed a four-month hold on proceedings in competing legal challenges to updated emissions standards for refineries. -
Clinton Against American Energy
Mar 8, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Editorial Board
Hillary Clinton keeps following Bernie Sanders further to the left, and on Sunday she all but declared herself opposed to America’s shale natural gas revolution. -
EPA Study Reviewers Still Debating Definition of 'Fracking'
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Six years into a massive U.S. EPA study of hydraulic fracturing, key players are still debating what the term "hydraulic fracturing" means. -
Oklahoma Puts Limits on Oil and Gas Wells to Fight Quakes
Mar 8, 2016 | New York Times
By Michael Wines
Facing a six-year barrage of increasingly large earthquakes, Oklahoma regulators are effectively ordering the state’s powerful oil-and-gas industry to substantially cut back the underground disposal of industry wastes... -
Clean Energy Rising
Mar 8, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. John K. Delaney (D-Md.)
Significant increases in clean energy investment are occurring and this is an incredibly positive trend for addressing climate change and growing the U.S. economy. Last year was a record year for clean energy development worldwide... -
How Will the Clean Power Plan Stay Affect the Utility Power Mix Transition?
Mar 8, 2016 | Utility Dive
By Herman K. Trabish
Has the market done for the utility power mix what Congress, the Obama administration, and the Supreme Court couldn’t? -
Obama, Trudeau to Discuss Ways to Cooperate
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
White House officials today said they expect the upcoming meeting between President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to touch on issues related to climate change and energy. -
Partisan Politics on Air Pollution are Helping to Make L.A. Smoggy Again
Mar 8, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Editorial Board
Last Friday was a bad day for clean air. First, the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District voted to fire its longtime executive officer. Then, it reconfirmed its support for a plan to let oil refiners...
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(ACC Mentioned) US Resin Distributors Happy with Mexican Investments
Mar 8, 2016 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
Two U.S.-based resin distributors are pleased with early results from their new Mexican operations, while another is expanding its presence in the country.
In May, M. Holland Co. of Northbrook, Ill., formed a partnership with resin and chemical supplier Grupo Solquim of Mexico City. That partnership now operates as M. Holland Latinoamérica.
Osterman & Co. Inc. of Cheshire, Conn., followed that move in July by forming a joint venture company with Industrial Mafra SA de CV, a distributor of polyethylene resin based in Morelos, Mexico. The JV will operate as Osterman Plastics de Mexico S de RL.
Chase Plastics of Clarkston, Mich., also plans to begin warehousing in Querétraro by the middle of this year. The firm also plans to hire a business development manager in Mexico to handle sales growth.
“We’re very happy with Mexico,” M. Holland president Ed Holland said in a recent phone interview. “We’ve got a lot to do to make it from where we are to where we’re going, but we’re excited about it.”
M. Holland Latinoamérica has almost 500 customers and an infrastructure that includes commercial reach throughout Mexico. It’s supported by warehousing, bagging lines, rail terminals, pulverizing equipment and a fleet of bulk and packaged delivery trucks.
Grupo Solquim’s primary supplier is state-owned Pemex Petroquímica SA de CV. Pemex resins now may be available to Holland customers in the United States as well. M. Holland Latinoamérica will allow a good portion of M. Holland’s portfolio of materials from more than 20 materials firms to be sold throughout Latin America.
M. Holland last month further added to its Latin American holdings by purchasing a pair of resin distribution firms in Puerto Rico. Those businesses were Able International Corp. and Tril Export Corp. Both firms are based in San Juan and are owned by their founders, the Coifman family.
Able and Tril combined distribute about 50 million pounds of resin per year, with Able selling to customers in Puerto Rico and Tril supplying customers throughout the Caribbean and in Central and South America. Both firms distribute a variety of commodity and engineering resins.
The Osterman deal is expected to help both firms grow their presence in the Mexican market. Industrial Mafra was founded in Morelos, Mexico, in 1991. The firm supplies high density, low density and linear low density PE for injection molding, blow molding and rotational molding uses.
“This is an exciting move for us, because we hadn’t done much in Mexico before,” Osterman executive vice president Jeff Elsen said in a recent phone interview. “We needed to have an entity focused on Mexico to get into Mexico. We needed a partner with market knowledge.”
The formation of the JV is Osterman’s third move into Latin America in the last six years. In 2009, the firm founded its Latin American Polymers unit, followed by its 2013 purchase of resin distributor Quimtec LP of San Jose, Costa Rica.
Chase’s warehousing effort will be its first in Mexico, although the firm has been selling into that market for 15 years, regional manager Bill Guenveur said in a recent phone interview.
“More and more of our customers and suppliers have been asking us to be there, so it’s the next logical step for us,” he added. “You really need to be located in Mexico to sell into the interior of the country.”
Both Ed Holland and Elsen are longtime resin industry veterans who say the Mexican plastics processing market has greatly improved in recent years.
“You couldn’t envision the Mexico of 15 or 20 years ago,” he said. “Today, manufacturers have the best new plants and new equipment and new technology. The industry has really grown up in the last 20 to 30 years.”
“There’s been a lot of capital expansions and a lot of spending on new equipment,” Elsen added.
The Mexican processing market seems to have more family-held, private businesses than the U.S., Ed Holland said, which requires a slightly different approach. “When you meet companies in Mexico, you’re creating relationships, not just selling material,” he explained.
Channels to market for Mexican processors are very diverse, according to Elsen, with a large percent of the market — as much as 40 to 50 percent — buying their resin from distributors, he said.
Among Mexican end markets, Ed Holland said that the automotive sector is showing growth, with many companies now building infrastructure in Mexico. Osterman is targeting markets such as food packaging and pipe, Elsen said, and also is seeing growth in flexible packaging and injection molded pails and crates.
For Chase, automotive has been its largest Mexican sales market, followed by consumer electronics and appliances, according to controller Rich Smith. “Automotive is the driver,” he said. “There are a lot of long-term programs quoting out to 2018 or 2020.”
Sales trends for polyethylene and polypropylene resin also favored Mexico in 2015. U.S./Canadian exports of those materials to Mexico surged during the year, according to the American Chemistry Council. Exports of high density PE to Mexico posted the highest growth rate last year, increasing more than 19 percent to 1.58 billion pounds.
Exports of linear low density PE from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico were up almost 9 percent to 778.4 million pounds in 2015. U.S./Canadian exports of low density PE to Mexico were up 13 percent to 448.4 million pounds in the same comparison.
In the PP market, 2015 Mexican sales — from U.S., Canadian and Mexican suppliers — jumped almost 12 percent to 11.7 billion pounds.
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New Seal Ensures Products are Made Without Known Toxic Chemicals
Mar 8, 2016 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Cassidy Randall
A new seal is launching this month that certifies that consumer products are made without chemicals known to harm human health. With the MADE SAFETM (Made With Safe Ingredients) seal, for the first time, people know at the point of purchase which products are made without known harmful chemicals for use on their bodies, for their babies, and in their homes.
MADE SAFE literally means made with safe ingredients that are not known to harm human health. The process screens ingredients against its Toxicant Database of known harmful chemicals, which is made up of over 6,000 chemicals found on scientifically authoritative lists from organizations and agencies from around the world—including all of the ingredients on Safer Chemicals Healthy Families’ Hazardous 100+list, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ Red List, Silent Springs’ List of Mammary Toxins, and several others.
This means that MADE SAFE certified products are made without known carcinogens, behavioral, reproductive, and neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, heavy metals, pesticides, insecticides, flame retardants, toxic solvents, and harmful VOCs.
With over 84,000 chemicals in use today MADE SAFE doesn’t just prohibit the chemicals on “red lists;” it goes beyond to scrutinize materials and ingredients using modeling, predictive analysis and available science to see if there is concern for bioaccumulation (builds up in our bodies), persistence (builds up in the environment), and for aquatic toxicity.
Brands working toward certification of (some if not all of) their products with the MADE SAFE seal include Naturepedic for baby, child, and adult mattresses; Alaffia, Annmarie Gianni Skin Care, Just So Natural Products, SW Basics and True Botanicals for personal care; Rejuva Minerals for cosmetics; Pura Stainless for baby, kids, and sport bottles; Good Clean Love and Sustain Naturals for sexual health; and healthy hoohoo for feminine care. There are a lot of certifications out there for consumer products, so what makes MADE SAFE different?
MADE SAFE is designed as a market tool to eliminate toxic chemicals in products altogether:
It makes it easy for people to find and buy products made without known toxic chemicals, gives companies a road map to making safer products, and makes it easy for retailers to select products that aren’t known to cause harm.
It applies to products across store aisles, from baby to personal care to household and beyond.
The primary goal of MADE SAFE is to ensure that products aren’t using ingredients known to cause human health harm.
MADE SAFE screens against our Toxicant Database with over 6,000 known harmful chemicals and ingredients.
It goes beyond “red lists,” looking at bioaccumulation, persistence, and aquatic toxicity.
It uses the Precautionary Principle: if there is considerable concern about an ingredient we don’t allow it in certified products.
MADE SAFE works with companies in research & development to help them avoid using ingredients known to cause human health harm.
This certification aims to change the way products are made in this country, so that one day our children will never have to worry that products they use every day might cause serious health problems like cancer, infertility, or other chronic diseases. Here’s to our healthy future!
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Lawmakers Probing for BPA Records at Health Agency
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Republican lawmakers are seeking more information on how a federal agency put together health studies that flagged problems with a popular chemical.
In a letter to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences released today, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who leads the panel's Subcommittee on Interior, asked the agency to produce a variety of documents relating to its review of bisphenol A, or BPA.
The popular plasticizer has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years from scientists and the public, and California has banned the chemical from baby bottles. More recently, California regulators listed BPA as harmful to reproduction under the state's Proposition 65 chemical warning label program (Greenwire, May 8, 2015).
The attention has brought pushback from the chemical industry, which maintains that studies finding health risks from BPA have methodological problems.
The industry has pointed to findings by the Food and Drug Administration, which has declined to restrict BPA in food products and has stated the chemical is safe for use.
In 2008, the National Toxicology Program, a branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, published a review of BPA finding "some concern for the effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures."
In their letter to NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum, the lawmakers said they wanted to understand why the agency's science did not reach the same conclusion as FDA.
"Widespread consumer exposure to BPA created the need for reliable research on whether exposure to BPA is safe," the lawmakers wrote, but findings by FDA, the European Food Safety Authority and other agencies that have declined to restrict the use of BPA "are incompatible with the NIEHS position that BPA may be causing adverse health effects for consumers who come into contact with the compound."
The lawmakers sought all communications between NIEHS employees and FDA since April 1, 2008; documents and communications about research projects that received or were denied NIEHS funding; communications between staff and research grantees concerning press statements; and information on policies for how researchers may share information from agency-funded studies.
The lawmakers gave NIEHS until next week to provide the information.In a letter to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences released today, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who leads the panel's Subcommittee on Interior, asked the agency to produce a variety of documents relating to its review of bisphenol A, or BPA.
The popular plasticizer has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years from scientists and the public, and California has banned the chemical from baby bottles. More recently, California regulators listed BPA as harmful to reproduction under the state's Proposition 65 chemical warning label program (Greenwire, May 8, 2015).
The attention has brought pushback from the chemical industry, which maintains that studies finding health risks from BPA have methodological problems.
The industry has pointed to findings by the Food and Drug Administration, which has declined to restrict BPA in food products and has stated the chemical is safe for use.
In 2008, the National Toxicology Program, a branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, published a review of BPA finding "some concern for the effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures."
In their letter to NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum, the lawmakers said they wanted to understand why the agency's science did not reach the same conclusion as FDA.
"Widespread consumer exposure to BPA created the need for reliable research on whether exposure to BPA is safe," the lawmakers wrote, but findings by FDA, the European Food Safety Authority and other agencies that have declined to restrict the use of BPA "are incompatible with the NIEHS position that BPA may be causing adverse health effects for consumers who come into contact with the compound."
The lawmakers sought all communications between NIEHS employees and FDA since April 1, 2008; documents and communications about research projects that received or were denied NIEHS funding; communications between staff and research grantees concerning press statements; and information on policies for how researchers may share information from agency-funded studies.
The lawmakers gave NIEHS until next week to provide the information.
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Potentially Toxic Chemicals Plummet in Teens After Switching to Safer Cosmetics
Mar 8, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
The levels of potentially hormone-disrupting chemicals in the bodies of teenage girls plunged just three days after they stopped using certain cosmetic products, shampoos and soaps that contained the problematic substances, according to a new study by researchers with the University of California – Berkeley. The researchers selected safer products using EWG’s Skin Deep database.
The volunteers, 100 Latina girls between 14 and 18 years old, all from Salinas, Calif., pledged to refrain from using their regular personal care products for three days and instead to rely solely on products free of the suspected endocrine disruptors phthalates, parabens and triclosan.
After three days, the teens' urine tests showed these decreases in the concentrations of the cosmetics ingredients under study:
44 percent down in levels of methyl and propyl paraben. Parabens are preservatives widely used in cosmetics, shampoos and skin lotions.
35 percent down in triclosan, an antibacterial chemical common in liquid antibacterial hand soap, dishwashing detergent, toothpaste, face wash and deodorant. Triclosan has been linked to the disruption of thyroid and reproductive hormones.
27 percent down in mono-ethyl phthalates. Phthalates, common industrial plasticizers, show up in some nail polish and fragrances.
“Techniques available to consumers, such as choosing personal care products that are labeled to be free of phthalates, parabens, triclosan, and oxybenzone, can significantly reduce personal exposure to these potentially endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” the study authors wrote. “Our study did not test [products] for the presence of these chemicals, but simply used techniques available to the average consumer: reading labels and investigating product safety through web-based databases.”
That you can lower your body’s levels to worrisome chemicals is the good news.
The bad news is, the federal Food and Drug Administration has virtually no authority over the personal care products industry and nearly all chemical ingredients manufacturers use to make these items. Companies can use almost any chemical or combination of chemicals without first having to prove them safe for human health and the environment.
The personal care products industry’s behavior is perfectly legal and has been standard practice for decades. And that has exposed every American to innumerable potentially toxic chemicals by way of soaps, shampoos, makeup and countless other items, even those used on infants.
Legislation authored by U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) proposes to overhaul the lax regulations of this industry. The Feinstein-Collins Personal Care Products Safety Act would give the FDA tools for ensuring the safety of personal care products as strong as those that regulate food and drugs.
The bill would require the FDA to investigate the safety of five cosmetics ingredients and contaminants yearly. Cosmetics makers would be required to register their manufacturing facilities and disclose the ingredients they use to the FDA. They would be mandated to report incidents involving harm to health. The bill would give FDA authority to recall dangerous products. It would manufacturers to label their producgts with disclosures and warnings, in cases of ingredients that could pose problems for some consumers.
Major industry leaders are now on board with the effort to protect Americans from potentially risky chemicals in cosmetics products. Some of the corporations backing the Feinstein-Collins bill include Revlon, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, L’Oreal, California Baby and the industry trade organization, the Personal Care Products Council.
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New Teflon Toxin Causes Cancer in Lab Animals
Mar 8, 2016 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
The chemical introduced by DuPont in 2009 to replace the surfactant PFOA causes many of the same health problems in lab tests that the original chemical did, including cancer and reproductive problems, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. PFOA, also known as C8, was a key ingredient in Teflon.
C8 was originally manufactured by 3M, then by DuPont, and was phased out after a massive class-action lawsuit revealed evidence of its health hazards. The new chemical, sold under the name GenX, is used to make Teflon and many other products. While touting GenX as having a "more favorable toxicological profile" than C8, DuPont filed 16 reports of "substantial risk of injury to health or the environment" about its new chemical. The reports, discovered in the course of an investigation by The Intercept, were filed under Section 8 (e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and submitted to the EPA between April 2006 and January 2013. They cite numerous health effects in animals, including changes in the size and weight of animals' livers and kidneys, alterations to their immune responses and cholesterol levels, weight gain, reproductive problems, and cancer.
"It's the same constellation of effects you see with PFOA," said Deborah Rice, a retired toxicologist who served as a senior risk assessor in the National Center for Environmental Assessment at the EPA. "There's no way you can call this a safe substitute."
Cancerous Tumors, Kidney Disease and Uterine Polyps
In one experiment, rats given various amounts of GenX over two years developed cancerous tumors in the liver, pancreas, and testicles, according to a report DuPont submitted in January 2013. In addition to the cancers, some of the GenX-exposed rats in that experiment also developed benign tumors, as well as well as kidney disease, liver degeneration, and uterine polyps.
Satheesh Anand, a DuPont senior research toxicologist who signed the report, concluded that "these tumor findings are not considered relevant for human risk assessment." Anand dismissed the significance of the results in part by emphasizing that the mechanism associated with the tumor formation in rats might not be the same in humans. DuPont scientists have long made the very same claim about C8 (as in this study from 2004), which caused testicular tumors in DuPont experiments on lab animals before it was linked to testicular cancer in exposed people.
Alan Ducatman, a physician who studies the health effects of perfluorinated chemicals such as C8 and GenX, characterized Anand's claim as "a partial argument that could be interesting only to those who are not strongly following the literature." Ducatman, who teaches environmental health sciences at the West Virginia University School of Public Health, is one of several researchers familiar with the health effects of C8 who reviewed the documents for The Intercept. He summarized DuPont's interpretation of its own data as "cherry picking," highlighting "species differences only when arguing that a problematic study finding is not relevant."
DuPont's reporting on the hazards of GenX "all has an eerie echo," Ducatman wrote in an email to The Intercept. He noted that the reports show the chemical has the same trio of biological effects - on the liver, immunity, and the processing of fats - seen with similar chemicals, including C8. "This reminds me a lot of a path we have recently traveled. That journey is not ending well."
Despite the fact that Section 8(e) reports are required only when companies have evidence that their product presents a substantial risk, the summaries of the experiments written by DuPont employees downplay most of their findings.
"There's a lot of hand-waving sentences, 'Yeah, this happened, but we don't think it's relevant,'" said Rice, the former EPA toxicologist. In one study conducted on rats and mice, for instance, male rats given any dose of GenX had changes in their cholesterol levels, and some also had changes in levels of two blood proteins. But the report, which like many of the others was labeled "Company Sanitized," simply concluded that "these changes were of uncertain relationship to treatment and considered non-adverse." It's impossible for independent reviewers to evaluate these claims because the reports don't include the data on which they're based.
As The Intercept reported in August, DuPont scientists in the 1970s chose not to report abnormal liver test results in workers exposed to C8. In a 2004 deposition, the company's medical director said that the company had not reported the findings because the liver changes weren't proven to be problematic health effects related to the chemical. In its filings on GenX, DuPont scientists did report increases in the weights of kidneys and livers, and other changes in liver cells, in rats exposed to the chemical, but they again downplayed the results, saying that these changes were "not considered adverse," according to a July 2010 letter signed by A. Michael Kaplan, DuPont's former director of regulatory affairs.
Rice took issue with the judgment that such changes won't cause problems in humans. "These are well-nourished, homogenous animals," Rice said of the lab rats. "The human population isn't like that. When you push these things around, you're going to push some people into disease states."
Reproductive Effects
GenX also affected reproduction in lab animals, according to the reports. Rats exposed to higher amounts of the chemical were more likely to give birth early and have babies that weighed less. Another study showed that female rats exposed to GenX reached puberty later than the unexposed animals.
While the company also dismissed the significance of many of these effects in the summaries of its experiments, the findings are "suggestive of a reproductive effect," said Laura Vandenberg, a reproductive biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Vandenberg said that the tests described in the reports can't fully show the extent of the chemical's reproductive activity because they only look at the effects of very high doses of GenX.
"That might make sense if what we were worried about was whether this chemical maims or kills you outright," said Vandenberg. "But that's not what we're seeing. People don't cook on Teflon and drop dead. These are chemicals that interfere with normal biological functions at low doses and contribute to disease." Because hormones act at low doses, "you have to study them at low doses."
The DuPont studies estimated the lethal dose of GenX in rats as 7500 mg/kg. At such doses or higher, the animals "died within approximately 3 hours of dosing and exhibited discomfort, gasping and/or tonic convulsions prior to death," according to one report submitted in 2006.
While all the scientists The Intercept asked to review the reports agreed that the issues they raised demanded multiple additional investigations, the EPA did not require any further testing of GenX.
Some of the reports reference a consent order for GenX, a document the EPA issued in 2009, which The Intercept obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. That document lays out the agency's many concerns about DuPont's C8 replacement, including evidence that the chemical and its salt are toxic to lab animals and cause mutations in mammalian and human cells. The document also lays out concerns that the molecules "will persist in the environment, could bioaccumulate, and be toxic to people, wild mammals, and birds"; that "there is high concern for possible environmental effects over the long-term"; and that "EPA has human health concerns."
Such orders are issued when the EPA requires more information in order to evaluate a new chemical's safety. Although the DuPont studies show many significant findings and clearly raise questions about the health and developmental effects of GenX, the lack of a strong regulatory response to them isn't unusual, according to one EPA official.
"A lot of them do just get filed away," Vincent Cogliano, director of the Integrated Risk Information System at the EPA, acknowledged of studies industry submits to the agency.
The EPA has a number of options once it has evidence that a chemical is hazardous. The agency could use its statutory authority to regulate the chemical, setting limits on its use or even banning it and requiring companies to clean up contaminated areas. While the EPA has yet to take any of those actions on C8, which has been shown to be hazardous over the past decade, it has added that chemical to the list of substances regularly monitored in drinking water.
The EPA could also add GenX to that list, but such efforts are often met with resistance from industry. "Companies fight them," Cogliano said, "and bring in other scientists who debunk the studies that show there are health hazards."
For now, GenX is neither regulated nor tracked, even as Chemours (the chemical company spun off by DuPont in July 2015) produces the chemical and releases it into the environment in undisclosed amounts. Chemours declined to reveal production quantities for GenX, but said that emissions are 1 percent or less of the quantities used. Yet according to one of the hazard reports DuPont sent the EPA in March 2010, "The biodegradation of the test substance was 0%." So GenX, like C8, is likely to be with us forever.
In response to inquiries from The Intercept, DuPont declined to comment, noting that GenX is now a product of Chemours.
Chemours responded with the following statement:
Chemours was created in July 2015 through the spin-off of the DuPont Performance Chemicals unit, which included the fluoropolymers business. Before this, in 2013, DuPont stopped making or using PFOA, replacing it with a new polymerization aid for use in the manufacture of fluoropolymers.
Extensive health safety testing was conducted on the new polymerization aid, and the data has been shared with regulatory agencies around the world as well as published in peer-reviewed scientific publications. The full body of testing data indicates that the polymerization aid can be used safely in the manufacture of fluoropolymers. It is rapidly eliminated from the body with low bioaccumulation potential. It has low acute toxicity in mammalian and aquatic testing, low repeated-dose toxicity in mammalian testing, and is not a skin sensitizer. Data suggests that it is not a developmental, reproductive, or genetic toxicant, or a human carcinogen. In addition, the new chemistry is used in conjunction with environmental exposure control technologies that reduce potential for environmental release and exposure.
Studies to evaluate chemical safety are designed to find health effects through the use of very high doses, in order to establish acceptable exposure limits with appropriate margins of safety. Therefore, finding such effects is important in effectively managing chemical safety. The level of potential worker or public exposure to this chemical is orders of magnitude below the levels at which any effects have been seen in our testing.
Regulatory authorities in the U.S., Europe, China, Japan and Taiwan have reviewed the testing data on our new polymerization aid and have given permission for its manufacture and use.
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(ACC Mentioned) Democratic Debate Shows Split over Shale Gas Fracking
Mar 8, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Ken Silverstein
Like parts of the nation, the Democratic presidential contenders are split over hydraulic fracturing, which is the technique used to withdraw shale gas from a mile beneath the earth’s surface.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont told viewers that under no circumstance would such “fracking be allowed to continue on his watch while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that it could continue — under certain conditions. Clinton, who is tied closely to President Obama, is walking a fine line; the Obama administration has relied on natural gas to replace coal used for electric generation, which has resulted in steep cuts to carbon dioxide levels.
“By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” Clinton said. “First, we’ve got to regulate everything that is currently underway, and we’ve got to have a system in place that prevents further fracking unless conditions like the ones I have mentioned are met.”
To be clear, natural gas is regulated mostly at the state level, whose regulators are said to be closer to the industry and to the people’s affected by drilling. But the Obama administration feels that state regulators may be too close to industry with regard to certain things and it wants drillers to disclose the chemicals they are using to frack.
Communities, in fact, have expressed real concerns about what may be invading their drinking water supplies — a point underscored at Sunday’s debate, which was held in Flint, Mich. where the water has been poisoned by lead.
And, the president wants drillers to capture their methane releases, which could be costly, although they could re-sell the natural gas byproduct to manufacturers and chemical producers. A similar regulation would also require that the drilling fluids be re-cycled or re-injected back underground. Methane is a heat-trapping emission far more potent than carbon dioxide but which has a shorter lifespan.
As for Sanders, he said that the scientists with whom he is speaking are saying that the dangers of fracking are just too great. Instead, the emphasis needs to be on maximizing renewable energy sources and energy efficient technologies.
“I talk to scientists who tell me fracking is doing terrible things to water systems all over this country,” said Sanders. “We’ve got to transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We have to do it yesterday.”
For the record, many credible studies show that fracking is safe, including those from Stanford University and the Environmental Protection Agency. The wells that are unsafe are those that are too shallow. Other studies by Harvard University have added that a middle ground must be found.
According the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas has risen from about 18 percent of the electric generation market in 2005 to about 32 percent today while coal has fallen from half of that market to about 34 percent now.
Natural Gas is replacing coal and helping the administration meet its goal of a 32 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030. The implication of the evolution is that heat-trapping emissions have fallen by 10 percent since 2005.
The Obama administration is not about to relent on this issue, although it has requested greater monitoring of shale gas drillers. Moreover, the natural gas boom here has been a job creator during a period of economic uncertainty. When other industries struggled, oil and gas drilling stepped up.
Not only is the fuel used to feed electric generators. But it is also used in the chemical and manufacturing processes: Natural gas liquids – ethane, propane, butane, and others – are split off and used as valuable feedstocks to create products for everyday use before getting exported all around the world.
There’s at least 2,515 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, amounting to a century’s worth, according to thePotential Gas Committee. Prices are now $2.35 per million Btus – much less than what the Europeans or Asians are paying.
The American manufacturing and chemical industries are thriving as a result, while their foreign counterparts are investing billions here as well. Witness the rebirth of petrochemical plants all over this country — the equivalent of $258 billion in new manufacturing output by 2020 and $328 billion by 2025, says the American Chemistry Council.
“The world is awash in natural gas,” adds Robert Bryce, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Power Hungry, in an earlier talk with this writer. “The US is leading the world. We have the rigs and the pipes. We own the minerals beneath our feet. Other nations are a decade or two behind.”
To some, though, natural gas is no panacea. The Sierra Club, for example, is intent on getting past coal but it does not see natural gas as a solution to the carbon problem.
Pointing to the International Energy Agency’s studies, it says that such a strategy will still result in temperature rises of 3.5 degrees Celsius by century’s end — far more than the 1.5 degrees-2 degrees Celsius limit set by the COP21 climate accord in Paris in December.
Despite strong feelings on both sides, it’s a near certainty that natural gas will retain its status as the primary fuel used to power electric generation while its byproducts are used to bolster manufacturing. Therefore, the emphasis ought to be on better regulations of fracking, not trying to prohibit it altogether.
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Court Pauses Proceedings on Challenges to Refinery Rules
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
At U.S. EPA's request, a federal appellate court has placed a four-month hold on proceedings in competing legal challenges to updated emissions standards for refineries.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit approved EPA's motionyesterday to hold the case "in abeyance" until July 8 while agency employees consider administrative petitions from both the oil industry and environmental groups to reconsider various aspects of the standards, published three months ago in the Federal Register.
EPA in January proposed some changes to those regulations in response to an initial petition filed by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers; it expects to make a a decision by June 3 on granting reconsideration of other issues raised by the two industry trade organizations, as well as Air Alliance Houston and a long lineup of environmental groups, according to the motion.
Extending the pause into July would give the two sides time "to consider the relevant administrative actions EPA may have taken and to confer" before making fresh legal moves, the motion said. Neither industry nor environmentalists oppose the hold, according to the agency.
API and the fuel and petrochemical manufacturers had opened the formal legal challenge to the refinery standards in late January, with the environmental groups filing their own lawsuit three days later (Greenwire, Feb. 4). The suits have been consolidated.
The updated refinery regulations followed from a legally required review exploring whether any residual risk to public health remained from the previous standards.
When fully in place by 2018, the new rules will cut releases of toxic air pollutants by a total of 5,200 tons annually, coupled with reductions in emissions of volatile organic compounds of 50,000 tons per year, according to an agency forecast last year. In a change particularly welcomed by environmentalists and community activists, refineries will also have to monitor emissions around their fence lines.
But environmentalists now want EPA to get rid of exemptions for hazardous emissions stemming from equipment breakdowns. In the changes proposed in January in response to the industry's petition, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote that they would give refineries another 18 months to comply with "a small subset" of the new standards that apply during startup, shutdown and maintenance periods.
In the proposal, McCarthy said the extra compliance time would have "an insignificant effect on emission reductions and costs, as many refiners already have measures in place due to state and other federal requirements to minimize emissions during these periods."
The proposed changes, which were then published in the Federal Register on Feb. 9, carry a public comment period ending on March 25.
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Clinton Against American Energy
Mar 8, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Editorial Board
Hillary Clinton keeps following Bernie Sanders further to the left, and on Sunday she all but declared herself opposed to America’s shale natural gas revolution. Even President Obama has tried to take credit for the domestic energy boom that has driven down the price of gas, home heating and more for Americans, but not Mrs. Clinton.
At Sunday’s debate in Flint, Michigan, a college student asked the candidates if they “support fracking?” Mrs. Clinton’s answer is worth running at length:
“You know, I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, number one. I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t support it—number three—unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using.
“So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place. And I think that’s the best approach, because right now, there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated.”
But the states regulate fracking so well that even the EPA hasn’t been able to find evidence of more than minor groundwater contamination. CNN’s Anderson Cooper then turned to Mr. Sanders, who replied: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”
This is amazing. The average price of natural gas plummeted some 60% between 2008 and 2012 thanks to the fracking boom, and families saved $32 billion in 2012 through lower energy bills, according to Mercator Energy. The poor benefit most, as low-income families must spend more of their earnings on energy bills. Yet Democrats who profess to care for the poor want to disavow lower-cost energy.
This is a new look for Mrs. Clinton, who promoted fracking around the world as Secretary of State. In 2010 she popped into Krakow to announce a global shale initiative, and in 2012 she dropped by Bulgaria to encourage the parliament to end a fracking moratorium. But now that she wants to be President she would regulate out of existence the livelihoods of tens of thousands in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arkansas, and across the U.S.A.
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EPA Study Reviewers Still Debating Definition of 'Fracking'
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Six years into a massive U.S. EPA study of hydraulic fracturing, key players are still debating what the term "hydraulic fracturing" means.
In a conference call yesterday, a panel of science advisers reviewing the agency's draft study differed on what they and the agency meant when they talked about fracking.
"We probably need to agree on what that means," said panelist Joe DeGeorge, "or have them [EPA] explain."
Walt Hufford, an industry representative drafting a dissent from the review panel's findings, said he was referring to the two- to three-week "frack job," not the decadelong life of the oil or gas well.
"It's not related to the drilling of the well," said Hufford, director of government and regulatory affairs for Talisman Energy USA Inc. His dissent notes that problems caused by poor well construction or surface spills should not be attributed to hydraulic fracturing.
But DeGeorge, global head of safety assessment and laboratory animal resources at Merck Research Laboratories, said it was his understanding that EPA "was referring to the whole process."
Panelist Dean Malouta, an industry consultant from Houston, said he thought EPA had adopted a useful term -- "hydraulic fracturing water cycle" or "HFWC."
"We're really talking about everything that has to do with hydraulic fracturing," he said.
Definitions have been a key sticking point for the scientists reviewing the study. Panel members yesterday complained that EPA's use of the term "impacts" was inconsistent. And the top-line conclusion of the study is under fire from those who say it is poorly defined.
The request to study hydraulic fracturing and its effects on drinking water came from Congress, which passed legislation calling for it in October 2009 (E&E Daily, Oct. 30, 2009).
The term "hydraulic fracturing" refers to a specific state of the production process, in which crews use high-pressure water to crack open rock formations. But many people, especially critics, use the term as a catch-all description of the whole drilling process.
EPA released a draft study in June 2015 finding that the agency had found no "widespread, systemic" problems with drinking water from hydraulic fracturing.
The panel of science advisers has criticized that finding, saying it is too vague and not supported by the body of the study.
Talisman's Hufford is drafting a dissent to that criticism offering wholehearted support for EPA's "widespread, systemic" finding (EnergyWire, Feb. 24).
"I think EPA's conclusions were right," Hufford said.
At least three other members of the panel with industry backgrounds indicated yesterday that they support Hufford's defense of EPA.
One of those was Shari Dunn-Norman, a professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, who said she had been involved in fracking wells going back to the 1970s.
"We didn't see many problems," Dunn-Norman said.
The panel's teleconference is to continue Thursday.
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Oklahoma Puts Limits on Oil and Gas Wells to Fight Quakes
Mar 8, 2016 | New York Times
By Michael Wines
Facing a six-year barrage of increasingly large earthquakes, Oklahoma regulators are effectively ordering the state’s powerful oil-and-gas industry to substantially cut back the underground disposal of industry wastes that have caused the tremors across the state.
On Monday, the state Corporation Commission asked well operators in a Connecticut-size patch of central Oklahoma to reduce by 40 percent the amount of oil and gas wastes they are injecting deep into the earth. The directive covers 411 injection wells in a rough circle that includes Oklahoma City and points northeast.
It follows a February request that imposed a 40 percent cutback on injection wells in a similar-size region of northwest Oklahoma.
The actions significantly increase the effort to rein in the quakes, which the commission has long tried to reduce one well or a handful of wells at a time.
But they are an equally notable challenge to the industry, which will most likely be able to make the cutbacks only by reducing oil and gas production. The liquid wastes are a byproduct of pumping oil and gas, and the more that is drawn from the ground, the more wastes must be disposed of.
The directives were phrased as requests, because the Corporation Commission’s legal authority to order cutbacks over such broad areas is unclear. The commission has come close to legal battles over the issue twice this year, and a third challenge would not be a surprise. The commission has pledged to take to court any operator that refuses to carry out the reductions.
The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, the industry’s main trade group, did not return calls seeking comment. Most of the industry has cooperated with the commission’s earthquake reduction efforts in the past. But a handful have complied only under pressure.
The new orders come after three of the largest quakes in the state’s history, 4.7, 4.8 and 5.1-magnitude shocks that rocked a major oil field this year.
In 2010, when the tremors began, Oklahoma recorded three earthquakes at or above a magnitude of 3. Last year, it had 907. So far in 2016, it has had nearly 160.
Although critics contend that earthquakes have caused millions of dollars of damage, Oklahoma’s political leaders have long been reluctant to impose restrictions on an industry that dominates the state’s economy. Until last spring, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, maintained that the cause of the tremors was unclear, and the state Legislature refused to consider legislation addressing the issue.
Ms. Fallin abandoned her position as the number of quakes rapidly increased. But the political leadership was not jolted into action until January, after a series of small earthquakes damaged homes and interrupted power in Edmond, an Oklahoma City suburb home to many in the state’s political and financial elite.
Seismologists have long warned that the rise in the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma could presage a temblor that could cause extensive damage.
“You really can’t rule out the possibility of a larger earthquake,” Justin L. Rubenstein, the deputy chief of a program on man-made earthquakes at the United States Geological Survey, said on Monday.
Reducing or stopping waste disposal often leads to a reduction in tremors, he said, but because Oklahoma has so many injection wells, “the problem is very complicated.”
The 40 percent cutbacks are based on the amount of waste injected into the wells in 2014, a peak year. Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the state Corporation Commission, said the latest directive was a proactive measure, based on a new and more detailed analysis of the quakes.
The directives come at a difficult time for industry companies, which Mr. Skinner said were generally pumping oil and gas at high rates to eke out a profit during a collapse in oil prices. Well operators can decide how to meet the 40 percent reduction target, he said, but “it is certainly possible that operators will decide to cut production.”
Some operators dispose of waste by trucking it elsewhere, but that is probably unprofitable when oil prices are so low.
A week after the last of the Edmond quakes, Governor Fallin allotted $1.4 million in state funds to the state geological survey and to the Corporation Commission, both of which had been chronically short of money. Among other improvements, the money has allowed the state to beef up its earthquake monitoring network, hire a geophysicist and other staff members, and better monitor quakes.
The Legislature is considering a bill introduced by an Edmond legislator and others that would allow the state insurance commissioner to create an earthquake reinsurance program. Residents of quake-prone areas have complained for years that private insurance was either impossible to get or that it included such high deductibles for damage that it was not worth buying.
Some critics incorrectly blame the earthquakes on hydrofracturing, or fracking, which frees hard-to-reach deposits by pumping liquids into the surrounding rock. Still, the rise in quakes tracks the increase in oil and gas wastes produced since a wave of fracking wells began operating in the middle of the last decade.
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Mar 8, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. John K. Delaney (D-Md.)
Significant increases in clean energy investment are occurring and this is an incredibly positive trend for addressing climate change and growing the U.S. economy. Last year was a record year for clean energy development worldwide, with $329 billion of global investment in clean energy technology projects and projections are pointing to even greater investments in 2016.
Maryland’s solar energy industry is a perfect example of the job growth potential in clean energy. According to industry sources, in September 2015, Maryland had 177 solar energy companies that employed about 3,000 people. Six months later, Maryland is home to 182 solar energy companies, employing more than 4,300 people.It is now high time for Congress to act to better align U.S. energy policy with the actual direction of the private sector. A good place to start is for Congress to acknowledge the urgent demand for clean energy in the U.S. and encourage the goal of generating more than 50 percent of our electricity from clean and carbon-free sources by 2030.
We have introduced “50x30” resolutions in the House and Senate to set this goal. Based on current technologies and our current energy trajectory, this goal is completely reasonable and should be central to our domestic policy agenda. Importantly, setting a clearly defined goal will encourage greater private sector investment, lead to more innovation and secure U.S. leadership in advanced energy technology, flattening the climate change curve. The benefits will be enormous for public health, national security and our economy.
Pollution from fossil fuel combustion causes respiratory problems, neurological damage and cancer. These costs are estimated to be somewhere between $361 billion and $887 billion each year. Currently, air pollution from fossil fuel power plants is estimated to cause more than 5 million missed workdays a year and has made asthma the leading cause of absenteeism from school.
Rising temperatures are increasing the range of disease-spreading insects to new parts of the globe. A warming global climate raises serious concerns about the likelihood that an outbreak of a major mosquito borne illness, like the Zika virus, could likely occur in the United States. A 2015 study found that climate change was already contributing to increased salmonellosis in Maryland.
Our military and national security advisors consider climate change a “threat multiplier” that could severely strain our military capabilities. Economic instability breeds political instability, which puts Americans at risk.
Rising sea levels will displace tens of millions of people around the globe, potentially creating a refugee crisis much larger in magnitude than the tragedy we are currently witnessing in Syria. In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions live in coastal regions that are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. By 2040, it is estimated that there will be twice as many refugees displaced in Bangladesh as in Syria. Closer to home, the Chesapeake Bay communities of Smith Island and Tangier Island could be two of the first U.S. communities displaced by the effects of climate change.
Economically, the number of manufacturing, construction, maintenance and other related clean energy jobs will greatly outpace those of fossil fuels, providing demand in the labor market for years to come. With amazing advances in technology, American scientists and engineers are making clean energy cost-competitive with fossil fuels. According to a 2015 report from the Global Green Growth Institute and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the cost of wind power dropped 61 percent over the past six years, while the cost for solar dropped by 82 percent. Costs will keep falling and soon clean energy will be cheaper across-the-board.
With the right goal in place and strong demand from the private sector for investment and solutions, Congress can craft public policy solutions to create the proper incentives. A good first step was the renewal and extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar energy, which provides near-term certainty and incentives for renewable energy development. But there is more to be done. Democrats have put forward proposals to increase clean energy investment and production, price carbon, improve energy efficiency, fund federal research in clean energy innovation, and improve the regulatory landscape. There is bipartisan support for many of the concepts and policies.
The bottom line is that if we don’t address climate change now, the cost to our country will be enormous. If we do address climate change by investing in clean energy, we will reap huge benefits. Passing our resolution would put Congress on record supporting the production of more than 50 percent clean and carbon-free electricity by 2030 and prioritizing the achievement of this incredible opportunity to protect our country improve our health, grow our economy, and lower energy costs for American households.
Cardin is Maryland’s junior senator, serving since 2007. He sits on the Environment and Public Works; the Finance; the Foreign Relations; and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees. Delaney has represented Maryland’s 6th Congressional District since 2013. He sits on the Financial Services Committee.
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How Will the Clean Power Plan Stay Affect the Utility Power Mix Transition?
Mar 8, 2016 | Utility Dive
By Herman K. Trabish
Has the market done for the utility power mix what Congress, the Obama administration, and the Supreme Court couldn’t?
Despite the recent legal roadblock from the nation’s top court to the Obama administration plan to regulate climate change-inducing pollution, executives from one end of the utility industry to the other say they don’t see their plans changing much.
In fact, a new survey of more than 500 utility executives conducted by Utility Dive showed that a large majority support the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which aims to cut U.S. carbon emissions 32% by 2030, and a significant portion want to see it strengthened.
Add that to a recent report from the Rhodium Group showing that the extension of key tax credits for renewable energy in 2015 will fuel strong growth for wind and solar despite the plan's judicial difficulties, and it appears the U.S. power mix will continue getting cleaner, whether or not the regulatory package survives its court battles. But while the general trajectory of the power sector appears set, analysts say the Clean Power Plan saga will still have a significant impact on how the transition unfolds. A brief history of the Clean Power Plan
President Obama has long been dedicated to cutting U.S. emissions by driving a transition to cleaner utility power mix with more emphasis on renewables, natural gas and other low-carbon tehnologies.
His administration spent its first two years trying to pass an energy bill with a cap and trade plan. Behind that effort was the implicit threat that his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would use the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act if Congress didn’t move.
But the energy bill was blocked in Congress, so the EPA acted, issuing the draft proposal for the Clean Power Plan (CPP) in June 2014. After it was finalized in August of 2015, state regulators and utilities across the nation began outlining state plans for compliance, the first of which were due in September of this year.
But CPP opponents sued the EPA, claiming the plan overstepped limits set by the Clean Air Act. In February, the Supreme Court surprised the power sector by issuing a judicial stay on the plan, ruling that no compliance actions could take place until legal challenges to the plan are exhausted. At a conference soon after, the lawyer for the nation's association of state utility regulators told the audience that they judicial stay would likely set the Clean Power Plan deadlines back by about two years.
Yet utility industry plans have not changed significantly.
“You can’t simply put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to major strategic investments that the captains of industry are making," Edison Electric Institute Environment VP Quin Shea recently told the Washington Post. This was echoed in statements by the American Public Power Association and the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives about the SCOTUS-imposed delay.
Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp, which serves customers across six states in the Upper Plains and Pacific Northwest, and Xcel Energy, which serves eight Plains and Midwestern states, say they will continue to move away from coal, toward natural gas and renewables, and to cut emissions.
A host of other utilities, including Public Service Enterprise Group, DTE Energy, American Electric Power, Southern California Edison, Ameren, Entergy, Exelon, PNM Resources, and Pacific Gas and Electric, have similar plans, according to E&E News.
A power mix shift
Industry executives have been planning for this power mix shift for some time, according to Utility Dive’s State of the Electric Utility 2016 survey. Collectively, 72% see natural gas moderately or significantly increasing in their power mixes over the next 20 years, 77% see wind doing so, and 91% see utility-scale solar doing so.
At the other end of the spectrum, 82% see coal staying the same or moderately or significantly decreasing in their power mixes over the next 20 years, 90% see that happening with nuclear power, and 98% see that happening with oil. Those findings fall in line with the results of the 2015 survey, which revealed similar sentiments toward the power mix.
But those opinions were registered before SCOTUS imposed the CPP delay. If the CPP was designed to drive a power mix that would cut GHGs and it has been delayed, why have utilities have not changed their expectations?
John Larsen, director at the research firm Rhodium Group, says there are three main factors.
First, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) continues to project very low natural gas prices through the early 2020s, thanks to supplies being slowly drained from the nation’s shale reserves.
Second, Congress provided five year extensions and phase outs for both wind’s $0.023/kWh production tax credit (PTC) and solar’s 30% investment tax credit (ITC).
Third, the price for renewables is dropping steadily. The installed cost for utility-scale wind has dropped 66% since 2009, according to the American Wind Energy Association. And the installed cost for utility-scale solar has dropped over 50% since 2007, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projects the installed cost for solar to drop 43% and the installed cost for wind to drop 24% by 2020, according to Larsen.
Those factors explain why it is likely there will be even more renewable generation and/or natural gas in the U.S. resource mix by the 2020s than had previously been predicted, even if the CPP is not just delayed but rejected, according to the Rhodium Group’s just-released report, "What Happens to Renewable Energy Without the Clean Power Plan?"
Low natural gas prices have driven a shift away from coal that was not supposed to happen before 2025 and installed costs for renewables are unprecedentedly low, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Norman Bay recently told a NARUC audience. As a result, the move to natural gas and more affordable renewables is “not going away, in spite of the current stay.”
With and without the CPP
Based on natural gas prices and installed cost projections for wind and solar from the EIA, the tax credit extensions give renewables “a big boost under the CPP,” Rhodium reports. Without the extensions, the “the least-cost CPP compliance pathway is a shift in power generation from coal to natural gas combined cycle (NGCC).”
With the extensions, however, wind and utility-scale solar become the least-cost compliance pathway and, in 2022, provide some 300 TWh more to the U.S. power mix than previously projected by the EIA.
“It is not a low number, but it is not as big as with the CPP,” Larsen said.
If the Clean Power Plan is thrown out, the ITC and PTC extensions provide only about half that boost in generation capacity, Rhodium’s research note projects.
“Without the carbon constraint of the CPP to shift dispatch, renewables largely displace NGCC generation rather than coal,” the note explains.
With the CPP but not the extensions, the U.S. would add 60 GW of new wind and solar to its power mix from 2016 to 2025, Rhodium forecasts. With the extensions but not the CPP, cost-competitiveness alone will grow 92 GW of new wind and solar. With the CPP, that would become 142 GW.
All told, that means that a decision to throw out the Clean Power Plan could cost the reneawble energy sector and U.S. economy 50 GW of new capacity that Rhodium expects would be added if the plan was upheld.
Forecasting uncertainty
Much of the accuracy of these forecasts will depend on the price of natural gas and renewable energy techologies. While the preceding forecasts were based on EIA numbers, Rhodium also modeled other estimates.
If wind and solar installed costs fall at the rate projected by the NREL Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) and/or natural gas prices remain at their current low level longer than EIA projected, “the outcome could be considerably different,” Rhodium reports.
NREL’s lower installed cost projections for renewables would result in a 250% increase renewable generation by 2022, Rhodium reports. “Cumulative renewable capacity additions between 2016 and 2025 are nearly three times higher.”
In addition, Rhodium expects the natural gas price to be significantly lower going forward than projected by EIA. “Henry Hub gas prices in 2015 were 30% lower than EIA projected at the start of the year and a similar differential is expected for at least the next two years,” Rhodium says.
Taking into account lower-priced natural gas and renewables and the tax extenders, but excluding the CPP, “both NGCC and wind and solar generation get a boost,” Rhodium expects. New wind and solar generation is 2.5 times higher by 2022 than with the EIA numbers.
Renewables would grow to 163 GW, almost twice Rhodium’s reference case and about what they would be with the tax extensions and the CPP, the report concludes. “The biggest loser in this low gas and renewable price environment is coal, with generation nearly 400 TWh below current levels by 2022, even without the influence of the CPP.”
“Economic forces make it a one-two punch against coal,” Larsen said. "First, it is low natural gas prices over the long term. That puts big downward pressure on coal. Low cost, tax credit-supported renewables is the second punch.”
Renewables push coal out of the market until the tax credits phase down in the early 2020s, he added. In the absence of the CPP, renewables growth would then flatten and surviving coal plants would run a little more to meet rising electricity demand.
The wild cards
There are two wild cards in the Rhodium forecast, Larsen said. The first is the at least 15 states that have announced they will continue working on CPP compliance. Those efforts will impact renewables growth and could add to the impact of the tax credit extensions.
The biggest wild card, however, is battery energy storage, Larsen said. The increasing penetration of variable renewables will increase the need for fast-ramping natural gas generation to balance it. “But that comes with costs and technical requirements,” he said
The very different profile of battery energy storage makes it potentially transformational but its cost and performance capabilities remain “anyone’s guess,” Larsen said. “Storage coupled with renewables at the utility scale is essentially a dispatchable base load generation solution. All of a sudden capacity factor is not a factor anymore.”
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Obama, Trudeau to Discuss Ways to Cooperate
Mar 8, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
White House officials today said they expect the upcoming meeting between President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to touch on issues related to climate change and energy.
In a call with reporters previewing the meeting, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said there were three climate-related issues where the Obama administration saw the opportunity to cooperate with Canada in the coming years.
Those areas are addressing the oil and gas sector's greenhouse gas impact, phasing out a potent short-living warming pollutant and achieving an international market-based measure to address emissions from the aviation sector.
"The commitment of both leaders to addressing this global challenge is clear," Stern said, "and I expect under their leadership, North America will make significant progress this year and next."
On Thursday, Trudeau will make the first official visit by a Canadian prime minister to the United States in 19 years. The day will begin with an arrival ceremony around 9 a.m. and then move to a bilateral meeting and news conference before the Obamas host Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau for a state dinner, officials said today.
Environmentalists have a lengthy wish list for the meeting and have called on the leaders to commit to banning oil and gas drilling in the Arctic as well as better addressing the climate impacts of energy infrastructure projects.
Stern today would not comment on what kind of announcement could come out of the meeting in the area of climate change and energy. But he applauded Canadian efforts at the December U.N. talks in Paris to secure a global climate change agreement and said the subject would be a key part of the meeting.
Elected late last year, Trudeau has already shown "serious, concrete commitment" to addressing climate change, Stern said.
The White House sees "a number of areas of cooperation" in addressing the oil and gas sector's greenhouse gas footprint, including working together to meet the Obama administration's goal of reducing methane emissions between 40 and 45 percent by 2025 compared to 2012 levels, according to Stern.
While he did not give specifics, Stern said flaring could be an area where the two countries can come together.
The administrations have had "good initial conversations" about the sector, he said.
The two governments are also cooperating to achieve an amendment to the Montreal Protocol this year that would phase down hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, and lead to a reduction of as much as 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.
The nations will also work to adopt a global market-based measure to address aviation emissions through the International Civil Aviation Organization, Stern said.
White House officials today called the relationship between the United States and Canada "unique" and downplayed any reverberations from the Obama administration's rejection last year of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline was of key importance to the administration of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The relationship between the two nations would survive any single issue such as KXL, said Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of State in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
"There obviously has been a transition from one government to another. This was obviously a very important subject for the previous government," Jacobson said. "It as an important subject within the U.S. government. But the relationship between the U.S. and Canada [has] survived any one individual issue."
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Partisan Politics on Air Pollution are Helping to Make L.A. Smoggy Again
Mar 8, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Editorial Board
Last Friday was a bad day for clean air. First, the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District voted to fire its longtime executive officer. Then, it reconfirmed its support for a plan to let oil refiners, power plants and other major polluters keep spewing emissions.
The two votes weren't exactly a surprise. The AQMD, which regulates air quality for 17 million people here in the nation's smoggiest region, is governed by a 13-member board comprised of elected officials and appointees from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. New appointees to the board — whose arrival in February gave Republicans a majority on the panel — had pledged to reduce environmental regulations. And the executive officer, Barry Wallerstein, had pushed for strong pollution controls against the wishes of the oil industry and other business groups.
But the decisions mark a troubling turn for an agency that has been a national leader for its innovative and aggressive programs to cut air pollution.
While Southern California's air quality has improved in recent decades, the region still has repeatedly failed to meet federal air quality standards. Too many residents breathe unhealthy levels of pollution that can permanently damage children's lungs and raise adults' risk of heart attacks and strokes. The AQMD's mission is to protect public health and to ensure that Southern California meets federal air quality standards. How can that happen if the board kowtows to industry lobbying?
An upheaval at the AQMD is especially troubling because Southern California could — with smart, committed environmental leadership — make tremendous improvements in air quality in the coming years. The agency is in the process of writing an air quality management plan, laying out new pollution rules and policies that will help the region meet federal public health standards for smog and soot. Critics say the AQMD's regulations over the years have hurt business and cut jobs. But those rules have also spurred innovation and helped attract companies that are developing low-emission and zero-emission engines for cars, trucks and buses. The AQMD has helped create momentum for cleaner technologies, and that shouldn't be jeopardized by short-term thinking.
Southern California voters need to choose elected officials who are committed to clean air. The region doesn't have to choose between healthy air and good jobs. It can have both.
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