Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 3/9/2016
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House GOP Requests Documents on EPA Assessment Program
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans are pushing for more information on how U.S. EPA is administering a program that reviews the science on the safety of chemicals. -
Draft EPA Review Cites Risks From Solvent, Backing Calls For Oversight
Mar 9, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA in a new draft risk assessment has found certain uses of the solvent 1-Bromopropane (1-BP) poses risks to pregnant women and workers, potentially boosting calls from New York state and dustry competitors for agency oversight... -
US NGO Updates GreenScreen Guidance
Mar 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
US NGO Clean Production Action (CPA) has released an updated version of its guidance for using GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals. -
US Osha Extends Weight of Evidence Guidance Consultation
Mar 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) has extended the consultation on its draft guidance for applying the “weight of evidence” approach, when classifying substances under the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS). -
Procter & Gamble Rejects Some Ingredients Linked to Cancer
Mar 9, 2016 | Triple Pundit
By Sarah Lozanova
Although they may contain smells that imitate a mountain breeze or spring flowers, many personal care and household products contain chemicals with negative health effects, ranging from skin and throat irritation to carcinogenicity. -
Public Utilities Urged to Stay Engaged on Rule
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
If you want an example of the fine line separating policy and pragmatism regarding U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, look no further than the trade association for the nation's community-owned electric utilities. -
Roll-Back of Federal Regulations Isn’t Easy
Mar 9, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder and Colleen McCain Nelson
It’s a favorite applause line: Republican presidential contenders rail against President Barack Obama for overregulating and promise that when they take the White House they would roll back federal rules of the past eight years. -
Forget Fracking. Choking and Lifting are Latest Efforts to Stem U.S. Shale Bust
Mar 9, 2016 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Swetha Gopinath and Amrutha Gayathri
Something is awry in the beleaguered U.S. shale patch: older wells, which normally gush oil or natural gas in their first few months before rapidly depleting, are not petering out as quickly as they should. -
Seizing the Clean Energy Revolution
Mar 9, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.)
Our economy is undergoing a rapid transition, with decisive leaps in technology happening every day. -
State Senate Leader Will Introduce Measure to Counter Southern California Air Board's Industry-Friendlier Plans
Mar 9, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Tony Barboza
The leader of the state Senate said Tuesday that he will push to reverse efforts by the Southern California air quality board to adopt pollution rules friendlier to industry, saying swift action is needed to prevent a rollback of environmental gains. -
Superstorm Shows Need for Cyberattack Recovery Plan -- Report
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The U.S. electric power industry would be severely handicapped in trying to repulse and recover from a nation-state cyberattack, lacking the coordinated, rehearsed teamwork and outside support that restored service after... -
Enviros Challenge Delaware River Basin Project
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal regulators failed to consider the impacts of a natural gas pipeline project that crosses the Delaware River Basin, environmentalists told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday. -
Spurred by Paris, Shareholder Climate Resolutions Reach New High
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
Corporate shareholders this year filed more resolutions specific to climate change with U.S. companies than ever before, according to a new report on stockholder engagement. -
Pollution Tied to Premature Births, Especially in Women With Asthma
Mar 9, 2016 | New York Times
By Nicholas Bakalar
A new study suggests that women with asthma exposed to air pollution, even before conception, significantly increase their risk of delivering a premature baby. -
Five Reasons Your Tap Water Changed Color
Mar 9, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
Americans are watching their tap water more closely than ever these days following the lead crisis in Flint, Mich., and other incidents of water contamination around the country.
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House GOP Requests Documents on EPA Assessment Program
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans are pushing for more information on how U.S. EPA is administering a program that reviews the science on the safety of chemicals.
Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, who leads the Subcommittee on Interior, asked EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy for a range of documents on the status of EPA's Integrated Risk Information System program, also known as IRIS.
The lawmakers, in a letter, asked EPA to turn over documents showing recommendations from the National Academies related to the program and how the agency was handling them.
They want to know how EPA would finish procedural documents that establish how IRIS plans to conduct chemical assessments and run its peer review process.
Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Lummis (R-Wyo.) are also seeking records on how EPA decides to add chemicals for review under the program or re-evaluate substances that have already been reviewed.
The IRIS program has faced challenges as it tries to operate transparently to satisfy industry advocates while also avoiding procedural delays that can stall chemical reviews for years.
The lawmakers noted complaints by chemical industry leaders about scientific quality issues related to IRIS assessments.
Chaffetz and Lummis said EPA had failed to release a draft handbook explaining how the agency will develop the assessments and has provided "limited details on timeframes for completing chemical assessments and is unclear regarding whether the NAS recommendations will be fully implemented for substances currently under assessment."
In 2011, at the request of Congress, the National Research Council, part of the National Academies, released a report recommending procedural changes in how EPA prepares the scientific assessments.
Three years later, a follow-up report found EPA had made "substantial improvements" implementing the recommendations but still had work to do (Greenwire, May 6, 2014).
Environmental groups, though, say that by making so many procedural changes, EPA is only further increasing the amount of time the agency takes to review the safety of chemicals.
In recent years, the pace of reviews has indeed slowed. The program completed one assessment in 2014 and none last year. EPA is now working on some IRIS assessments that have been in limbo for decades.
In 2014, Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Oversight largely praised the IRIS program, while Democrats, like Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, warned changes could have "the effect of crippling IRIS, rather than putting EPA on a path to streamlined production of IRIS entries" (E&E Daily, July 17, 2014).
The new document request is the second one this week related to chemical industry priorities on programs the committee has not examined closely in the past.
Oversight Republicans pushed another agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, earlier this week for records on bisphenol A research and said the agency had been more critical of the chemical than some of its federal counterparts (Greenwire, March 8).
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Draft EPA Review Cites Risks From Solvent, Backing Calls For Oversight
Mar 9, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA in a new draft risk assessment has found certain uses of the solvent 1-Bromopropane (1-BP) poses risks to pregnant women and workers, potentially boosting calls from New York state and industry competitors for agency oversight of the substance as a hazardous air pollutant (HAP) under the Clean Air Act, among other ongoing efforts.
In a notice published in the Federal Register March 8, EPA seeks public comment on its draft risk assessment of "Spray Adhesives, Dry Cleaning, and Degreasing Uses" of 1-BP, also known as n-Propyl Bromide. The document finds risks from inhalation exposures to 1-BP, including developmental effects, neurotoxicity, and lung cancer.
EPA is taking public comment on the draft risk assessment for 60 days from publication in the Register. The agency also says its new Chemical Safety Advisory Committee (CSAC) will peer review the draft this spring, apparently the panel's first peer review.
EPA conducted the 1-BP assessment under its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) "workplan" program that is targeting certain uses of dozens of existing chemicals for review and possible regulation. The agency launched the workplan assessment program in 2012 to better regulate 'existing chemicals' that were already on the market when TSCA was enacted in 1976 and over which the agency has less authority than newer chemicals.
In a March 3 statement announcing the draft risk review, EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Jim Jones says the draft will provide critical information for workers and consumers.
"EPA recommends the public carefully follow product label directions and take precautions that can reduce exposures, such as using the product outside or in an extremely well ventilated area and wearing appropriate protective equipment to reduce exposure, particularly inhalation," the statement says.
Additionally, EPA notes that the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry both recently conducted separate reviews of 1-BP's human health risks and reached similar conclusions as EPA's draft assessment. EPA's draft review conducted to support potential restrictions -- generally under EPA's TSCA authorities -- comes as the agency is weighing regulation of 1-BP through other statutes.
Last year, EPA sought comment to inform its review of separate petitions from the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, Inc. (HSIA) and New York calling for the agency to deem 1-BP an HAP, which would subject the substance to strict air toxics rules.
New York and HSIA, which represents producers of trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene, solvents for which 1-BP is an alternative for certain uses, both argued 1-BP is a carcinogen and poses neurological and reproductive risks.
Additionally, last April, EPA proposed for public comment a rule that would add 1-BP to the agency's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), triggering requirements for facilities managing the chemical to report annually how much was released to the environment or alternatively controlled, such as through recycling.
Draft Review
An industry source says the draft review of 1-BP could inform agency efforts on the chemical, including consideration of future oversight under statutes other than TSCA.
EPA's TSCA workplan assessment program has in the past considered whether risk findings in its assessments should lead to restrictions on certain uses of the chemicals under TSCA section 5 or, in a handful of instances, consideration of a TSCA Section 6 ban. EPA's risk findings in the workplan draft assessment could lead to TSCA restrictions as well as or instead of those already under consideration.
EPA is currently considering bans under its rarely used TSCA section 6 authority on certain uses of TCE and the paint-stripping chemicals n-methylpyrrolidone and methylene chloride, after similar reviews found risks to workers and consumers. The agency is scheduled to propose bans on uses of those chemicals for public comment this month.
The agency has not sought a ban on an existing industrial chemical under TSCA section 6 since its effort to ban asbestos using that authority was rebuffed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in 1991. The court ruled in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA that the agency had not met its burden of proof that risks from asbestos could not be reduced by other means.
EPA's draft risk assessment of 1-BP evaluated inhalation exposures to 1-BP in spray adhesives, dry-cleaning applications, including spot cleaning, and in degreasing. The review found acute exposures to 1-BP in aerosol spray adhesives, spot cleaners and degreasers pose developmental risks to consumers.
And EPA in a statement says workers face non-cancer and cancer health risks from repeated and chronic exposures, including neurotoxicity, kidney, liver, and reproductive toxicity, and lung cancer.
The review says workers face risks from acute and chronic exposures to 1-BP in spray adhesives, dry cleaning and degreasing, including neurological effects, kidney, liver and reproductive effects, as well as a cancer risk from chronic exposure.
CSAC Panel
Meanwhile, the industry source says EPA's plan for its new CSAC panel to review the draft 1-BP assessment raises concerns for the first few workplan reviews, which experts reviewed under the management of a federal contractor, a process generally considered the lowest level of peer review.
The formation of the CSAC, a new Federal Advisory Committee Act panel announced in June, appears to be part of EPA's effort to create a more formalized and rigorous process for evaluating the human health risks of chemicals and their applications through the work plan program.
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US NGO Updates GreenScreen Guidance
Mar 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
US NGO Clean Production Action (CPA) has released an updated version of its guidance for using GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals.
GreenScreen is a screening tool that can be used to evaluate hazards presented by substances.
According to CPA's GreenScreen programme manager, Michelle Turner: "As regulatory requirements and toxicology continue to evolve rapidly, and new hazard classifications, test data and science continue to emerge, GreenScreen helps users stay abreast of developments, make more informed decisions, reduce risk and promote innovation.”
A focus of the updated guidance, says the NGO, is the addition of information on the use of the GreenScreen List Translator. This tool can be used as a first step to “rapidly assess if products contain chemical hazards”.
The List Translator draws on information from more than 40 hazard lists, developed by government agencies and third-party organisations. Evaluating a substance with the tool will produce a List Translator score that can be used to “identify chemicals of highest concern to human health or the environment”.
While its methodology lacks the detail of a full GreenScreen assessment, the CPA says it can be used for such applications as:assisting in conducting an alternatives assessment;
prioritising substances to consider for phase-out;
informing supply chain communication, around materials goals and substance criteria; and
earning credit toward green programmes, such as the construction industry’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard.
An automated version has been made available online in the Healthy Building Network’s Pharos Project. The Pharos Chemical and Material Library (CML) hosts information on more than 30,000 substances for 25 health and environmental hazard endpoints.
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US Osha Extends Weight of Evidence Guidance Consultation
Mar 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) has extended the consultation on its draft guidance for applying the “weight of evidence” approach, when classifying substances under the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS).
Comments on the document, Guidance on data evaluation for weight of evidence determination: application to the 2012 Hazard Communication Standard, will be accepted until 2 May.
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Procter & Gamble Rejects Some Ingredients Linked to Cancer
Mar 9, 2016 | Triple Pundit
By Sarah Lozanova
Although they may contain smells that imitate a mountain breeze or spring flowers, many personal care and household products contain chemicals with negative health effects, ranging from skin and throat irritation to carcinogenicity.
U.S. product manufacturers are not required to list all ingredients on product packaging because they are considered trade secrets, so it is difficult for consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. For example, the term “fragrance” on the label can refer to a combination of several hundred chemicals, including some that are hazardous.
In a move driven by consumer demand and potential liability, and not regulatory policy, companies are voluntarily taking actions to disclose and sometimes limit the chemicals used in fragrances.
Procter & Gamble, a multinational manufacturer of family, personal care and household products, has taken steps toward greater transparency of the ingredients in its products by making public a list on its website of more than 140 chemicals it rejects in product fragrances. In 2012, Procter & Gamble also disclosed a list of ingredients in its fragrance palette.
Some of the chemicals the manufacturer excludes are linked to endocrine disruption, reproductive toxicity and even cancer. These chemicals, however, continue to be used by other companies in products on the market.
“I’m very encouraged and impressed by the Procter & Gamble announcement and optimistic that before long fragrance ingredients will be fully transparent in the global market,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), in a press release. “The trend toward full transparency — in food, personal care, cleaning products and many other categories — is not just undeniable; it’s accelerating and irreversible.”
The EWG “uses the power of information to protect public health and the environment.” As an organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment, it works towards greater transparency, research and education to drive consumer choice and civic action.
Such organizations can help educate the public about the importance of greater product transparency, especially when adequate governmental regulations are lacking. This in turn fuels consumer demand for safer products. The recent transparency initiatives by Procter & Gamble illustrate that consumer demand is shaping corporate actions.
SC Johnson has taken similar steps toward greater transparency by creating its WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com ingredient website. It has also revealed 100 percent of its fragrance ingredients to the component level for the new Glade Fresh Citrus Blossoms Collection. SC Johnson’s decision is monumental because it’s the first time a major company has agreed to fully disclose the composition of product fragrances.
In addition to consumer demand, companies can be held liable for the health impacts of their products. Johnson & Johnson was recently ordered to pay $72 million in damages to a woman’s family whose death from ovarian cancer was linked to her use of talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower over several decades. The company also faces several hundred other lawsuits related to its failure to warn customers about the cancer risk of its talc-based products.
The U.S. government has primarily taken a passive “innocent until proven guilty” approach to the use of chemicals in household products and commerce in general. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required testing on only a handful of the chemicals used in commerce today under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Only if a chemical is shown to present “unreasonable risk to human health or the environment” does the EPA actually regulate it.
It seems market forces, not government regulation, are shaping corporate action, with the recent transparency moves by Procter & Gamble and SC Johnson as prime examples. Brand value is seriously eroded when consumers fear bringing these products into their homes. Taking voluntary actions to protect human health seems like the best way to respond to emerging concerns over product safety.
Sarah Lozanova is a regular contributor to environmental and energy publications and websites, including Mother Earth Living, Triple Pundit, Home Power, and Green Builder.
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Public Utilities Urged to Stay Engaged on Rule
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
If you want an example of the fine line separating policy and pragmatism regarding U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, look no further than the trade association for the nation's community-owned electric utilities.
Executives from many of the nation's roughly 2,000 municipal utilities are in Washington this week for the American Public Power Association's annual lobbying push on Capitol Hill. And among the messages they were urged to deliver is that Congress -- not EPA -- should determine how to address climate change.
APPA has been a harsh critic of the federal rule to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, arguing that it "goes well beyond the scope of the agency's authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act" and will drive up electricity rates because of the high cost of compliance.
And the trade group hailed the Supreme Court's Feb. 9 stay of the rule, which it had sought along with a group of other utilities.
As a result of the stay, 18 states have suspended work on compliance with the EPA rule.
But yesterday, APPA President and CEO Sue Kelly said that "if there are states where discussions are still moving forward, we need to be in there. And we've made that very clear" to the group's members.
Reflecting on her earlier career as an appellate lawyer, Kelly emphasized that "just because [a rule] has been stayed does not mean that you're going to win."
"You need to pursue multiple paths, so I think it's prudent to continue considering what might happen if those regulations are affirmed," she said.
Joe Nipper, APPA's senior vice president, said the group is developing a modeling tool "to help members understand how they might be impacted and what their options are. Even if a state isn't doing anything, our members are continuing to assess what options could be if the plan is upheld."
A seasoned Washington attorney said, "There's multiple pressures on an organization like APPA because you have so many different members sitting in so many different places. The reality is that the CPP is not something that if you've got to comply with it, you can pull something off the shelf in a week. The reality is that the prudent thing to do is fight, fight, fight if you want to fight, but have a plan B if you lose."
A lot of municipal utilities "may hate the CPP, but they also realize it may end up being the permanent law of the land and they have to be able to adjust to it," he added.
"And if you've got a large coal investment, that's a big issue. But I defy you to find a prudent utility in this country with coal investment that hasn't been factoring [carbon] in its plans a long time ago. The change is already occurring," the attorney said.
He noted that with a locally owned utility, "there's a lot more direct accountability. And if members of that community want green, you go out and get green, and you get it as quickly as you can."
In a nod to that change underway, APPA in its statement welcoming the Supreme Court stay said that "in the interim, public power utilities will continue their substantial progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through greater use of renewable, nuclear, and other low- and non-emitting sources of electricity generation, and the implementation of energy efficiency and conservation programs."
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Roll-Back of Federal Regulations Isn’t Easy
Mar 9, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder and Colleen McCain Nelson
It’s a favorite applause line: Republican presidential contenders rail against President Barack Obama for overregulating and promise that when they take the White House they would roll back federal rules of the past eight years.
“We’re going to get rid of the regulations that are just destroying us,” businessman Donald Trump said at a recent Dallas rally. “You can’t breathe—you cannot breathe.”
Others are equally emphatic. “Together, we will repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS, pull back the EPA regulators that are killing small businesses, stop amnesty and secure the borders,” Sen. Ted Cruz said on March 1.
But repealing federal regulations is far easier promised than done. Few finalized regulations have ever been successfully undone by a succeeding administration, Republican or Democratic. And the few that did fall were far less politically charged than the Obama administration regulations under fire today, so while they had less fierce opposition, they also had less impassioned support.
Repealing Obama-era rules would require writing—and legally justifying—new regulations, a process that could take nearly two years and might not withstand legal scrutiny, given the body of legal and scientific work that typically goes into writing a rule in the first place, experts say. Other efforts to nullify rules, such as congressional or court action, face limitations of their own.ndidates vow to undo rules right away, but that can be a complicated processThe GOP is targeting regulations including an EPA limit on power-plant carbon emissions. Above, a coal-fired plant in Ghent, Ky. PHOTO:LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG NEWSBy AMY HARDER and COLLEEN MCCAIN NELSONUpdated March 8, 2016 7:44 p.m. ET31 COMMENTS
It’s a favorite applause line: Republican presidential contenders rail against President Barack Obama for overregulating and promise that when they take the White House they would roll back federal rules of the past eight years.
“We’re going to get rid of the regulations that are just destroying us,” businessman Donald Trump said at a recent Dallas rally. “You can’t breathe—you cannot breathe.”
Others are equally emphatic. “Together, we will repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS, pull back the EPA regulators that are killing small businesses, stop amnesty and secure the borders,” Sen. Ted Cruz said on March 1.
But repealing federal regulations is far easier promised than done. Few finalized regulations have ever been successfully undone by a succeeding administration, Republican or Democratic. And the few that did fall were far less politically charged than the Obama administration regulations under fire today, so while they had less fierce opposition, they also had less impassioned support.
Repealing Obama-era rules would require writing—and legally justifying—new regulations, a process that could take nearly two years and might not withstand legal scrutiny, given the body of legal and scientific work that typically goes into writing a rule in the first place, experts say. Other efforts to nullify rules, such as congressional or court action, face limitations of their own.
“You can’t just repeal regulations with a stroke of a pen like you can an executive order,” said Susan Dudley, who was a top official in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration.
A GOP president would also have to call on Congress to pass bills repealing contentious laws passed during Mr. Obama’s term that are carried out by his administration, most notably the Affordable Care Act and the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which Congress enacted in the wake of the financial crisis.
Among the biggest regulatory targets for Republicans are Mr. Obama’s environmental regulations, especially one limiting carbon emissions at power plants, as well as rules making it easier to approve unions and the “net neutrality” Internet regulation.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) told the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association last year he would quickly toss out the carbon rule. “As president, I will immediately stop this massive regulation,” he said.
The reality is more complicated. Nearly eight years ago, the incoming Obama team similarly pledged to review Bush-era rules, including a slew of “midnight regulations” pushed through as Mr. Bush was preparing to leave office.
But of the more than 4,500 proposed or final regulatory actions cleared by the Bush White House, Mr. Obama repealed just 74 in his first nine months in office, when rules are most often revisited, according to a 2009 presentation by a former official of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Of those, only 34 were final rules.
William Galston, a policy adviser to Bill Clinton when he was president, said GOP candidates often don’t distinguish between regulations and executive orders—such as Mr. Obama’s move to shield some undocumented immigrants from deportation—that could indeed be reversed immediately.
The candidates’ statements risk unduly raising voter expectations, said Mr. Galston, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “To some considerable extent, they’ve made their own bed by overpromising,” he said.
That hasn’t stopped the candidates, who are reflecting a sentiment among many GOP voters that Mr. Obama has governed unilaterally rather than by reaching agreements with the Republican-controlled Congress. Mr. Obama’s supporters say the president had little choice after Republicans refused to compromise or work with him.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich has called for a one-year freeze on major new regulations and wants congressional approval for any regulation determined to cost the economy more than $100 million. Mr. Rubio has proposed a cap on federal regulations’ cost to the economy. Mr. Trump has decried regulation but hasn’t laid out a specific proposal.
Ari Fleischer, a press secretary in the George W. Bush White House, said that despite the complexity of repealing regulations, campaigning on such pledges is an effective strategy for Republicans.“In terms of the messaging, given the anti-Obama mood, it’s a smart thing to say,” Mr. Fleischer said, “even if full implementation takes some time.”
That time is required in part because rules can quickly become entrenched and hard to reverse. A new federal rule aimed at streamlining union-organizing elections, for example, has taken effect and sped up the process, as businesses feared it would. Labor groups and employees have filed hundreds of petitions to hold elections on forming unions since the rule kicked in last year. An Environmental Protection Agency rule cutting carbon emissions from power plants has also been finalized, and electric plants have begun adjusting to it. By the time a new president could begin the process of undoing it, the repeal could make little difference.
That’s one reason Mr. Obama’s opponents have challenged some regulations in court, winning some notable successes. The Supreme Court last month put a hold on the administration’s carbon rule, for example.
A new president could simply refuse to defend the Obama regulations facing these lawsuits. But that would only work for regulations facing strong legal challenges, and the judicial landscape has become more muddled on that front, as on many others, with the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
A Republican president could also try to repeal a rule by persuading Congress to eliminate it. But because Republicans are unlikely to have a big-enough Senate majority to overcome procedural hurdles, that approach would be difficult.
“There’s not going to be a single bullet that’s going to undo eight years of regulation,” said Sam Batkin, director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. “It’s not an easy thing to undo, so I would imagine they would not rely on a single approach to address it.”
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Forget Fracking. Choking and Lifting are Latest Efforts to Stem U.S. Shale Bust
Mar 9, 2016 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Swetha Gopinath and Amrutha Gayathri
Something is awry in the beleaguered U.S. shale patch: older wells, which normally gush oil or natural gas in their first few months before rapidly depleting, are not petering out as quickly as they should.
When oil prices began falling a year and a half ago in the deepest rout in a generation, many analysts expected U.S. crude production, especially from fracking in the new shale plays that contributed to a global supply glut, to follow quickly.
Producers, such as Continental Resources Inc (CLR.N) and Whiting Petroleum Corp (WLL.N), have slashed spending on almost everything, in some cases even leaving drilled wells unfinished to conserve cash and wait for a sustained turnaround in prices.
With oilfield activity suddenly contracting, production from a dwindling number of freshly fracked wells would be unable to compensate for the rapid depletion of older wells. Yet that long-anticipated turning point has only just begun to emerge - partly because producers had a couple more tricks in store.
Some drillers are spending a little bit more on measures that are subtly flattening the so-called "production curve" of shale wells, either by limiting the initial surge in output or by squeezing a few additional barrels out of older wells, according to industry executives and analysts.
The measures offer differing benefits.
Choking output at newly fracked wells curtails immediate supply and revenue in hopes that prices will be stronger later, whereas maximizing output at old wells with things like "artificial lift" is a relatively cheap way to increase volume and immediate revenues.
Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N), the third-largest services company in the U.S. shale patch, cited its artificial lift business as the "one notable exception" to a sector-wide slump in its latest quarter, growing by 4 percent even as other shale-related revenues fell 10 percent.
"Companies still want to grow production, they want to generate cash," said Wade Welborn, vice president of artificial lift at Baker Hughes. His business offers "a means to increase that cash flow."
For oil markets, they amount to the same thing: the long-anticipated fall-off in U.S. shale oil output is still proving slower and more tempered than anticipated, impeding the process of correcting the global glut that has walloped prices.
"Production optimization is going to be the next phase of the shale revolution," said Andrew Slaughter, director for the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions. "The low price environment will give companies and operators a chance to take stock of the techniques that work."
LATE PHASE LIFT
The volume of daily production from a new shale well typically declines by 70 percent in the first nine months, according to estimates provided by SunTrust Robinson-Humphrey analyst Neal Dingmann.
Yet, that sharp decline rate has been shockingly slow to translate into lower production across the United States.
While the number of oil rigs collapsed by some 75 percent since the end of 2014, U.S. production has only barely begun to ebb, a disconnect generally attributed to the increasing productivity of the hydraulic fracturing process, with each new well yielding more barrels than the one before.
But other measures are also in play by companies keen to maximize immediate revenues to cover interest and other payments, and avoid the cost and hassle of shutting in wells.
For instance, rather than forking out $3 million to $6 million to drill and frack a new well, a producer can spend just $250,000-$500,000 to reinvigorate an older well with artificial lift - which may involve injecting chemicals or gas into perforations, or using an electrically driven pumping system.
With lift, a well can begin to flow again at 50-75 percent of its initial production rate in most instances, said Evercore ISI analyst James West. That may help extend the life of a well that would otherwise be slated for abandonment.
"Demand is strong because it is not directly correlated to new wells and drilling," said Kyle Chapman, president of Weatherford International Plc (WFT.N) production and completion line.
Devon Energy Corp (DVN.N) says it is using workovers, refracking, artificial lift and other techniques to make its wells more productive, even as it cuts spending for the year by 75 percent. It expects 2016 output to fall about 10 percent.
Older wells, in production, help companies cover costs and it would cost more to shut them down, said Julius Walker, a senior consultant at JBC Energy in Vienna, noting this was contributing to "production resilience" and causing output to outperform the firm's forecasts based on historical models.
For example, in the Bakken - heart of the shale revolution - official data showed production in the fourth quarter was 60,000 bpd - or about 5 percent - higher than what JBC had estimated based on well data and historical decline rates.
CHOKING ON OIL
Other producers are taking a different, and cheaper, approach, by throttling back the initial production (IP) from newly fracked wells, pumping less now but more later and preserving pressure within the underground reservoir.
Most, if not all, recently drilled wells include a choke, a piece of steel placed in the flow path of oil coming out of a producing well, and more companies are now using them to curb early production in ways that can boost overall output from a well by as much as 10 percent, experts say.
"It's like if you take a coke bottle and shake it up and all the drink fizzles up. But if you don't shake it up, you end up getting more to drink - choking has the same effect," said Mike Breard, an analyst at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas.
Continental Resources - an industry pioneer that essentially stopped finishing new wells in North Dakota's Bakken shale field - is also applying chokes to manage production from three news wells in Oklahoma's STACK play.
For example, its Compton oil well, which has been producing for 51 days, pumped 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent in its first 41 days online, but has since been restricted to flow at 1,670 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
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Seizing the Clean Energy Revolution
Mar 9, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.)
Our economy is undergoing a rapid transition, with decisive leaps in technology happening every day. Front and center in the changing economy of this decade is a fundamental shift in the way we power our world. The transition to a clean energy economy is happening right now. To seize the opportunity to provide a cleaner, better environment and create the jobs of the future, my colleagues and I have put forward a bold goal for America: get at least half of our energy from carbon-free sources by the year 2030.
The old approach to energy has not worked. It has given us dirty air, dirty water, and a planet thatjust had its hottest year on record. It has given us a methane leak that spewed the equivalent of more than a half a million cars’ annual emissions into the southern California atmosphere. For too long we have heard that we have to choose between a prosperous economy and a clean environment; implying that we can’t have both. That is a false choice we cannot afford.
The path to reducing emissions and spurring economic growth has always been innovation. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement embraced this principle. Solar energy has reached cost parity with coal and gas in many regions of the country. It is projected to be cheaper than fossil fuels in most places by 2017. This means new high-quality jobs and lower energy bills for hardworking families. It will also bring cleaner air and a chance to mitigate climate change. The only choice we have to make is whether our country will follow the lead of states like California and entrepreneurs in the private sector who are welcoming the clean energy revolution.
Our military leaders, driven by a desire to boost combat effectiveness, have also made significant investments in alternative energy technologies. They want safer, less expensive sources of power that are not subject to shifts in the oil market and dependent on foreign sources. They also want to save on the resources it takes to transport large amounts of fuel across the battlefield, which is costly and dangerous.
In August, I joined Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus at Naval Base Coronado to announce the largest ever purchase of renewable energy by a federal entity. The U.S. Navy purchased enough solar power from Sempra Energy to supply half of its installations on the West Coast, including all seven in my home district in San Diego. Much like the military’s early investment in the internet, advances in renewable energy by our military can lead to significant progress upon which the private sector can build.
To support our military’s mission of diversifying their fuel supply, I put forward the Department of Defense Energy Security Act, which would centralize DOD energy research and invest in energy security. However, with the exception of extending renewable energy tax credits, Congress has been idle or tried to set us back in the race towards a clean energy future; Many members of Congress still flat out deny the science of climate change, while others are beholden to special interests. The good news is more and more of my colleagues now realize climate change is not partisan. Investing in renewable energy is a smart approach.
To get Congress back in the game, my colleagues and I have introduced a resolution calling for more than 50 percent clean electricity in the U.S. by 2030. To meet this goal, we would triple renewable energy capacity and get a portion from carbon-free sources like advanced nuclear energy. “50 by 30” is a necessary and pragmatic goal for our entire nation. We must seize the clean energy revolution for the unprecedented economic opportunity it is. The U.S. Navy and California set the same objective. Just last year the city of San Diego set a goal twice as high, aiming for 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.
California’s leadership on this isn’t just because of our year-round sunshine; it is the result of investing in innovation and following the market. States with lower renewable targets, like Utah, and ones with less sunshine, like New York, are generating increasing amounts of their energy from solar. The clean energy revolution is here, and every day more and more people are joining. A national objective of 50 by 30 will take full advantage of the opportunity in front of us and give our children a better chance at a future with cleaner air, cleaner water and economic prosperity.
Peters has represented California’s s 52nd Congressional District since 2013. He sits on the Armed Services and the Judiciary committees, and he is chair of the House Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition’s Climate Task Force.
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Mar 9, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Tony Barboza
The leader of the state Senate said Tuesday that he will push to reverse efforts by the Southern California air quality board to adopt pollution rules friendlier to industry, saying swift action is needed to prevent a rollback of environmental gains.
State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said he will introduce legislation to add three new members to the South Coast Air Quality Management District board — one public health expert and two environmental justice members — to represent communities suffering from pollution.
The move comes days after the South Coast air board's new Republican majority voted to fire longtime executive officer Barry Wallerstein and to reaffirm the panel's recent adoption of oil industry-backed emissions rules on refineries and other major pollution sources.
De León's proposal probably would mean more aggressive steps to curb pollution and would give the state legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown greater influence over the agency charged with protecting the health of 17 million people in the nation's smoggiest region.
"This has been a wholesale takeover, to the detriment of children and families who breathe these harmful contaminants into their lungs every single day," De León said. "We have progressed on our policies, we cannot go backward."
Under de Leon's plan, two of the additional appointees would be selected by state legislative leaders. The public health member would be appointed by the governor, increasing the panel from 13 to 16 members.
Recent appointees to the air board, including Highland Mayor Larry McCallon and Lake Forest Councilman Dwight Robinson, have said they want the agency to give more emphasis to the economic burden posed by tougher emissions regulations. Republicans gained a seven-member majority with the swearing in of Robinson last month following a campaign by GOP leaders to gain control of the regulatory agency.
Currently, 10 members of the board are city council members, mayors and county supervisors who are chosen by other local elected officials in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Three members are appointed by the state Assembly speaker, Senate leadership and the governor.
All members serve four-year terms. De León's proposal would eliminate terms, with board members instead serving at the will of the officials who appoint them.
Air quality board Chairman William A. Burke, a Democrat, said he supports De León's proposal and "anything that would bring balance back to the board."
Debra Mendelsohn, air quality deputy for Republican L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, countered that "bigger is not better. Increasing the AQMD board will not result in any reduced emissions and will only result in increased bureaucracy."
David Englin, executive vice president for the Los Angeles County Business Federation, said his group did not have a position on the proposal but hoped any new appointees would "understand that clean air and good-paying jobs are both vital for public health."
Before firing Wallerstein, the AQMD board Friday voted 8 to 5 not to reconsider its December decision to adopt a regulation backed by the Western States Petroleum Assn. and other industry groups.
The board rejected a proposal by air district staff to overhaul the agency's decades-old cap-and-trade program for curtailing smog-forming emissions from oil refineries, power plants, factories and other large facilities.
Wallerstein and his staff proposed reducing the cap on nitrogen oxide pollution by 14 tons per day over the next seven years. The board adopted a plan to cut 12 tons per day, with the steepest cuts delayed until later in the seven-year period.
The move is expected to delay installation of emissions controls at the region's major oil refineries and slow progress in reducing ozone, a lung-damaging component of smog that is linked to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. Ozone exists at the nation's highest concentrations in the inland valleys and mountains of Southern California.
The California Air Resources Board has taken the unusual step of criticizing the board's decision, saying it violates state law and will harm public health. The Senate Environmental Quality Committee has asked the board to reconsider.
The air quality panel's refusal to do so has put it on a collision course with state regulators and California's Democratic legislative leadership, which draws heavily from the Los Angeles region and has made air pollution and environmental justice a top priority.
"They're basically picking a fight with the largest delegation in the California legislature that has the most votes," said Dean Florez, a former state legislator who was recently appointed to the California Air Resources Board.
Brown signed legislation last year that added two new legislature-appointed members to the state air board.
In the near-term, the shift on the South Coast board is likely to stir debate over a new air quality plan due this year that will determine how emissions must be cut to meet federal health standards for ozone and fine particle pollution.
The change also cast uncertainty over a variety of proposals targeting industries across the L.A. basin that have resisted tighter restrictions on their operations. Air district staff has been preparing rules to reduce toxic emissions and cancer risk from refineries, metal factories and other manufacturing operations as well as measures to hold the nation's largest port complex accountable for its pollution-reduction targets.
Also planned are regulations to cut emissions from urban oil drilling sites, to sell more pollution credits for the operation of gas plants and to reduce foul odors from animal rendering plants and smoke from charbroiling restaurants.
"Our health is impacted every day by the decisions this board makes," said Angela Johnson Meszaros, an attorney with the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice who predicted its recent decisions "will galvanize people and organizations to take actions to defeat this power grab."
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Superstorm Shows Need for Cyberattack Recovery Plan -- Report
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The U.S. electric power industry would be severely handicapped in trying to repulse and recover from a nation-state cyberattack, lacking the coordinated, rehearsed teamwork and outside support that restored service after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the former crisis manager of the Defense Department says in new paper.
Paul Stockton, who was assistant DOD secretary for homeland defense and the department's top civilian adviser during Sandy, cites instances of effective federal support and close teamwork among utilities after the massive storm.
But Stockton concluded, "The key underlying factors that made power restoration so effective after Sandy are absent in the cyber realm." His paper, "Superstorm Sandy: Implications for Designing a Post-Cyber Attack Power Restoration System," was published by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where Stockton is a senior fellow. Stockton, managing director of Sonecon LLC, an economic and security advisory firm, wrote that the views in the paper are solely his.
The United States needs a top-to-bottom master plan for rebuilding grid segments knocked out by a potential cyberattack, Stockton wrote. Such a plan must focus and prioritize scattered or uncompleted defensive actions by federal and state governments and the private sector, he wrote. The issues range from understanding how vulnerable to cyberattack the grid really is to how the costs of protection and recovery will be paid for, he wrote.
Following Sandy, the utility industry drew on decades of cooperative storm recovery experience to send tens of thousands of linemen, engineers and other personnel from 80 utilities into the devastated area, Stockton wrote. It was "by far the largest deployment of mutual assistance capabilities in U.S. history," he wrote. Additionally, the federal-state Emergency Management Assistance Compact permitted 37 states outside of Sandy's impact zone to send in thousands of National Guard soldiers to support the recovery.
These responses drew on the Department of Homeland Security's long-established National Response Framework for dealing with natural disasters.
"The equivalent document for the cyber realm -- the interim National Cyber Incident Response Plan -- would almost surely prove inadequate just when the United States needed it most," Stockton said.
The interim plan, issued in 2010, is now being updated by DHS's Homeland Security Advisory Council, of which Stockton is a member (EnergyWire, Nov. 16, 2015).
"An especially critical shortfall of the interim plan: it provides state governors with only a minimal role in guiding cyber response efforts, even though state National Guard organizations will likely play an increasingly significant role in supporting power restoration and other response operations," Stockton wrote.
Fundamental differences exist between a natural disaster like Sandy and a methodical, wide-ranging cyberattack on the grid, and the differences make the latter so much harder to plan for and recover from, he wrote. Utilities from distant states could send crews to help the East Coast states rebuild power lines, knowing that Sandy would not hit them, Stockton noted. But at the start of a massive cyberattack of unknown dimensions, how could utilities know they wouldn't need their tech defenders themselves?
Once the storm had passed, repair crews could tackle the cleanup and recovery. Following a cyberattack on the grid, however, utilities could face a hard choice between immediately finding and destroying malware in order to restore power quickly and delaying action so that the infecting code could be located and analyzed to learn the source of the attack. Some utilities would be relying on expert consultants to help only to find out that other utilities had done the same, he noted.
Gaps in government responses
Stockton lists a number of high-level government responses to the cyberthreat that remain incomplete or underfunded. The DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) "is staffed at such a low level that it can only deploy a handful of small fly-away teams simultaneously" to assist utilities in a cyberattack, he wrote (EnergyWire, Jan. 14).
After years of debate, Congress last year enacted legislation clarifying which agency would lead the federal government's response to a major cyberattack on the grid, giving that mantle to the Department of Energy. DOE is still developing how it will carry out that role, a spokesperson wrote.
DOE's task won't be easy, Stockton indicated. "The power industry could face significant issues in terms of whether to segment the grid and intentionally create power islands in a large-scale outage. Traditional imperatives to quickly restore power might also conflict with requirements to take grid components off-line to limit the spread and reduce the consequences of an attack," he wrote.
The Defense Department's Cyber Strategy is a foundation for defining how the military could come to the aid of utilities in an attack. But it is "very much a work in progress," Stockton wrote. "The document does not ... specifically address whether and how DOD might help utilities scrub malware from their networks or conduct other power restoration operations."
The U.S. Cyber Command is creating a cyber national mission force that could bring expert cyber defenders to the aid of utilities in an attack, he noted. But the team's core priority is protecting and restoring defense systems, and the question of diverting resources to the civilian grid is "a continuing policy challenge."
Patchwork of efforts underway
Stockton's paper noted effective strategies that are underway by some utilities, but not all, raising a question of how highly interconnected electric power networks can hold up if there are weak links vulnerable to attack.
For example, "a growing number of State Guard organizations and Department of Defense (DOD) contractors are partnering with their local utilities to train personnel to support post-cyber attack power restoration," he wrote. But other states have not done the same.
"A number of utilities are developing a tiered approach to sustaining service during an attack and restoring service once disruptions occur," Stockton wrote. These strategies include hardening control centers and backup centers; protecting "gold" copies of operating software; developing "spare-tire" control mechanisms that can sustain limited vital operations, and maintaining fallback mechanical controls not exposed to cyber infection, he wrote. Operators of the high voltage interstate power grid are under uniform federal cyber regulations, but distribution utilities that deliver power to customers are regulated in varying degrees by state utility commissions.
"The Cybersecurity Risk Information Sharing Program is already helping twenty operating companies (representing 65 percent of U.S. customers) and their government partners accelerate the sharing of unclassified and classified threat information from multiple sources and develop situational awareness tools," he wrote.
"Fusion" centers run by state and local governments can be vital resources for pooling cyberthreat information and coordinating government and law enforcement actions, he wrote. "However, fusion centers vary widely in their capacity to support post-cyber attack power restoration," he added, and unless help "can be integrated and provided in an efficient way, utilities could face an unmanageable number of "touchpoints" to get the assistance they need."
In calling for a comprehensive cyber recovery blueprint for the grid, Stockton wrote, "it will take years to establish such a system, develop the governance mechanisms it requires, and train and exercise [cybersecurity] teams" to carry it out, but the task cannot wait, he added.
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Enviros Challenge Delaware River Basin Project
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal regulators failed to consider the impacts of a natural gas pipeline project that crosses the Delaware River Basin, environmentalists told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and its leader, Maya van Rossum, argue that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission illegally approved a pipeline expansion before Pennsylvania gave its approval under the Clean Water Act and used "segmentation" to approve smaller pieces of the expansion rather than considering the full scope of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act.
"What FERC is doing is blatantly illegal, both under NEPA and the Clean Water Act," Rossum said in a statement. "These are not paper violations of law -- they are resulting in inappropriate and premature approvals of pipelines that are robbing states and communities of the information and legal opportunity to say no."
At issue is the Leidy Southeast Expansion Project, which aims to increase capacity of the existing Transco interstate pipeline system, which stretches from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. The Leidy expansion would run through part of the Delaware River Basin watershed in Pennsylvania.
The group is hoping the court looks to a 2014 D.C. Circuit decision that upheld environmentalists' challenge to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC's Northeast upgrade project, finding that FERC "impermissibly segmented the environmental review in violation of NEPA" (Greenwire, June 6, 2014).
The latest lawsuit comes less than a week after Delaware Riverkeeper filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, making broader allegations about FERC's pipeline approval process.
"Because FERC gets its funding from the big companies it is supposed to be monitoring, it has become, perhaps inevitably, a corrupt, rogue agency," Rossum said last week (Greenwire, March 3).
FERC doesn't comment on ongoing litigation. A spokesman for Williams Cos. Inc., which is backing the expansion, said the company is reviewing the lawsuit.
Click here to see the lawsuit.
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Spurred by Paris, Shareholder Climate Resolutions Reach New High
Mar 9, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
Corporate shareholders this year filed more resolutions specific to climate change with U.S. companies than ever before, according to a new report on stockholder engagement.
The study by a coalition of investment analysts found that 94 such proposals -- covering issues from urging greenhouse gas emissions mitigation efforts to demanding the use of more renewable energy -- accounted for about 40 percent of all active resolutions related to the environment or social issues.
"Climate change is the issue," said Heidi Welsh, one of the authors and the executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute, a research group that studies proxy statements.
She noted that the U.N. climate summit in Paris last December and the international agreement that emerged are in part responsible for the surge. "Companies are being challenged with how they will stay in business," she said.
Investors had submitted 370 resolutions focused on environmental or social issues to public U.S. companies as of mid-February. Of those, 33 percent were related to environmental matters and 7 percent were related to sustainability, according to the report.
Stockholders submitted a record number of proposals about climate change last year, too, including a measure that BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Statoil ASA all supported that called for more transparency about the firms' climate change positions and improved carbon emissions disclosure (ClimateWire, Feb. 19, 2015).
Public companies are required to hold annual shareholder meetings, which typically take place between April and June. Company officials update investors there on plans and business strategies, and shareholders vote on resolutions, which may affect company practices and policies.
If shareholders meet basic requirements and prove with documentation that they own shares in a particular company, investors with a few thousand dollars in holdings can typically submit a resolution to the firm. Fellow stockholders will then have to vote on that proposal.
Companies almost always oppose outside suggestions and, occasionally, petition the Securities and Exchange Commission to block a resolution. That, in turn, prevents shareholders from ever voting on that proposal.
Targeting oil and gas companies
Mary Beth Gallagher, associate director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment in Montclair, N.J., has worked to file three separate resolutions this year at Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Southern Co., the utility. Each involved climate change.
"There's so much momentum coming from Paris," Gallagher said. "Now we just really want to know what companies are doing."
The resolution at Exxon urges the oil major to acknowledge the "the moral imperative to limit warming to 2°C," the threshold at which scientists project crippling climate change will take hold. Exxon is working to block a vote on that policy. The company petitioned the SEC (ClimateWire, Feb. 3).
Gallagher's measure facing Southern Co. follows the theme of the Paris accord, in which delegates of 195 nations agreed to peak carbon emissions "as soon as possible," then scale back emissions sharply to hold global temperatures "well below 2°C above pre-industrial" levels.
"They're taking a lot of steps to diversify their energy mix," Gallagher said of Southern. But, she added, it's important for investors to know the long-term plans of fossil fuel extraction and power companies. "We want to understand their business strategy to remain competitive in a 2-degree world," she said.
Shareholders have presented Chevron Corp., Devon Energy Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Noble Energy Inc. and AES Corp., a multinational electric utility, with similar proposals.
Several pending resolutions ask company officials to explain how their firms would address the concept of "stranded assets" -- the idea that climate regulations, competing energy options or a combination will render coal, oil and gas reserves obsolete and financially foolish for companies to extract and market.
Some major funds rejecting fossil fuels
nvestors have filed such measures with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Hess Corp. Six proposals specify "stranded asset" or "carbon bubble" risks, said Michael Passoff, CEO of Proxy Impact, the group that published the report, and one of its authors.
Other resolutions ask for information about links between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes in the United States, links between sustainability and executive compensation, board diversity, and the connections between corporate spending and lobbying against climate regulations.
"The proxies affect the major issues of our time," said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, an environmental advocacy group.
About 25 percent of the proposals request that companies become more open about political spending -- including corporate lobbying, involvement with trade associations and firms' funding of political campaigns. Many of the authors behind those requests want to know how their stock investments are being used for political causes, often to lobby against climate regulations.
A few managers of some of the world's richest pension funds have grown wary of fossil fuel holdings, too.
The $900 billion sovereign wealth fund of Norway, a national pension, divested of coal last summer, citing financial risks. The California State Teachers' Retirement System, the second-largest pension fund in the United States, with $186 billion in assets, divested stocks of U.S. coal companies and pledged to "initiate engagement" with coal miners abroad to become more eco-friendly (ClimateWire, Feb. 4).
In December, Thomas DiNapoli, the comptroller for the state of New York and the trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, one of the biggest pension funds worldwide with roughly $180 billion in assets, filed a proposal with Exxon, calling for an explanation by 2017 of how the energy giant would exist in a low-carbon world.
"We need to know that companies like Exxon are prepared to meet this challenge and are taking steps to protect the long-term value of our investments," DiNapoli said in a statement Monday.
Will the proxy crusade catch on?
Scott Stringer, New York City's comptroller and custodian of $160 billion in city pension assets, has taken a more nuanced approach to addressing corporate climate policies: going after seats in the boardroom.
In 2014, Stringer filed 75 "proxy proposals," which are designed to give shareholders the right to nominate candidates for corporate boards. He unveiled the effort, known as the Boardroom Accountability Project, to address three issues: board diversity, "excessive" CEO pay and climate change, each of which Stringer said he sees as long-term investment hazards.
Most boards of public firms hire the CEO to lead their company. Some investors have criticized this system, calling it insular, leveling charges of boys'-club favoritism and noting that CEOs often handpick their boards, creating conflicts of interest and rudderless leadership.
"As long-term shareowners, it is essential that we have climate-competent directors at fossil fuel companies -- especially in light of the Paris Agreement reached last December," Stringer said by email.
"Proxy access gives investors a real tool to engage boards more effectively, and hold them accountable if they are unwilling or ill-equipped to oversee the company's transition to a low-carbon economy," Stringer said. "With more than 180 companies enacting proxy access over the past 16 months -- including most of the largest U.S. energy firms -- investors are now in a position to begin these critical conversations."
Stringer's office is targeting 20 fossil fuel companies with its proxy access method this year and executed a comparable strategy last year. Still, while large pension funds have more financial clout and can use their holdings to barter with firms to make changes, most companies oppose these proposals.
That reality makes Suncor Energy Inc., the integrated Canadian oil sands firm, an outlier this year. It supports a shareholder resolution to provide year-to-year reporting for investors about climate risks and how it will operate in a low-carbon economy.
"The conversation of this resolution started a year ago," said Jamie Bonham, manager of the extractive research and engagement unit at NEI Investments, a Canadian mutual fund company that manages about $4.5 billion in assets.
Suncor has openly understood and acknowledged climate science and publicly endorsed a price on carbon emissions, so it isn't too surprising that Suncor is backing NEI's recommendation, Bonham said.
"Since hydrocarbons are finite resources with an environmental impact, it will be critical to use them wisely as the world transitions to lower carbon sources of energy," Suncor said in a response to NEI. "Suncor believes our energy system in an era of change."
A vote against the resolution, Bonham said, would signal that investors don't view climate change as a financial risk, "which, to me, would be a giant red flag if they're managing my money."
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Pollution Tied to Premature Births, Especially in Women With Asthma
Mar 9, 2016 | New York Times
By Nicholas Bakalar
A new study suggests that women with asthma exposed to air pollution, even before conception, significantly increase their risk of delivering a premature baby.
Researchers studied 223,502 pregnancies among 204,175 women in 19 hospitals across the United States, gathering data on air quality in each region.
The study, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology,found that all women with asthma were more likely than those without to deliver preterm. But there were significant increases in preterm birth in asthmatic women exposed to air pollution, including traffic-related pollutants.
Air pollution also appeared to take a toll even before conception. Asthmatic women exposed to pollutants in the three months before conception were at a 28 percent higher risk for preterm birth than women without asthma exposed at the same time in the same conditions.
“That’s a window that hasn’t been studied before,” said the lead author, Pauline Mendola, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health. “We saw the increase for both groups, but it was much higher for women with asthma.”
Air pollution may be unavoidable, but Dr. Mendola said that pregnant women should avoid outdoor activity when pollution levels rise.
The Environmental Protection Agency “issues air pollution advisories when conditions are bad,” she said. ”They’re not specifically for pregnant women, but pregnant women with asthma should be particularly aware of them.”
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Five Reasons Your Tap Water Changed Color
Mar 9, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
Americans are watching their tap water more closely than ever these days following the lead crisis in Flint, Mich., and other incidents of water contamination around the country.
It’s impossible for the human eye, nose or tongue to detect some changes in tap water. But others are hard to miss.
We reviewed public information provided by major American water utilities to identify the major causes of discolored drinking water. While the factors can vary across regions, seasons and water sources, water systems encounter many common issues.
If your tap water has turned brown, murky, cloudy or otherwise discolored, here are five likely reasons why – and what you should do about it:
New Water Source
A new water source, such as a reservoir or river, is one of the most common causes of changes in water quality. In fact, experts say a change in source triggered both the current lead crisis in Flint and a similar debacle in Washington, D.C. in the early 2000s. The switch can give the water different qualities or disrupt the way it flows, both of which can affect the look, taste, odor or healthfulness of your water.
Organic Material
Dirt and other naturally occurring sediments settle at the bottom of water supply lines. If something causes the water passing through the pipes to speed up – such as a water main break, high service demand or even firefighting – the faster flow can stir up the sediment and cause your water to appear yellow or brown.
Pipe Material
When cast iron and lead pipes corrode over time, rust and other pipe materials flake off into the water. Iron and manganese produce an orange-to-brown color, while lead may make the water darker and include tiny particles. Rubber plumbing materials, such as gaskets or O-rings, can break down into visible black particles in water. As with organic material, more pipe materials dislodge when water flows more quickly through service lines.
Air
Extra air trapped in or moving through water can give it a milky white or cloudy appearance.
Upstream pollution
Rainwater can wash chemicals – such as pesticides in agricultural communities, residue from fracking operations or motor oil on highways – into the surface water or groundwater that feeds your tap.
What you should do:
Discoloration doesn’t necessarily mean your water has become unhealthful. Many sources of tap water discoloration are listed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “secondary standards,” which recommend maximum levels for 15 contaminants that may affect color, odor or taste – but won’t hurt your health.
Still, you should always investigate changes in your water’s color, smell and taste, or if you notice stains on your clothes after washing.
If your water is milky or opaque, let it sit in a glass until bubbles rise. If the cloudiness disappears, it was caused by air and is not a health concern. If your water is discolored, run cold water from the tap to see if it clears. (It may take a while.) Check with your neighbors to see if they have similar problems.
Then visit your local utility’s website. Try the FAQ section or look for recent announcements. Utilities may issue notifications about upcoming work to a main line or potential changes to the water supply. They may even advise using boiled or bottled water.
Call for additional information. Ask your utility if it monitors for secondary contaminants – a step that the EPA does not require – and find out if your water meets the EPA’s “secondary maximum containment level” guidelines (SMCLs). Inquire about any short-term disturbances to your water supply that might be due to maintenance or other temporary issues. You can also call EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline at (800) 426-4791 for assistance.
Once you’ve identified what’s causing the discoloration, choose an appropriate water filter. Check EWG’s Updated Water Filter Buying Guide to find one that’s right for your needs and budget, and choose a model that is certified to reduce the specific contaminants in your tap water.
If you cannot pinpoint a cause, we suggest using an activated carbon filter (pitcher-style or faucet-mounted). These tend to be inexpensive and effective at removing or reducing many common contaminants. They are also good at improving the clarity and taste of temporarily discolored water.
If you drink water from a well, contact a state-certified commercial laboratory to get it tested. EPA recommends testing for sulfate, chloride, iron, manganese, hardness and corrosion every three years or if your water changes in color, taste or smell. Bacterial contamination can discolor well water as well, so contact your county health department. Here’s more information about testing your water.
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