Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 4/4/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) The Role of Chemistry in the American Energy Revolution
Apr 4, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jack N. Gerard
Thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the U.S. is now the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas. In less than 10 years, crude oil production has increased 88% and natural gas production has... -
(ACC Mentioned) 2016 Chemical Outlook: Shaleconomics
Apr 4, 2016 | American Journal of Transportation
By George Lauriat
The increased supplies of natural gas from shale deposits is changing the landscape for the chemical trades. With abundant feeder stocks at historically low prices, the global chemical industry is in growth mode... -
(ACC Mentioned) Tennessee Chamber Named Bradley Jackson Interim President
Apr 4, 2016 | Bristol Herald Courier
By Tammy Childress
The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry, announced earlier this month that Bradley Jackson has been named Interim President of the organization. -
(ACC Mentioned) Gov. Inslee Signs Bill to Ban 5 Flame Retardants, Study 6 Others
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Washington state will restrict the use of flame retardant chemicals under a bill signed by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) last Friday. -
EPA Provides New CDR Guidance But Declines To Provide Chemical List
Apr 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has issued new guidance to companies that must report their use of chemicals at U.S. facilities under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, but the agency has yet to provide a list of chemicals subject to... -
Look for the Safer Choice
Apr 4, 2016 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Andy Igrejas
Last year EPA revamped their “Design for the Environment” program – a voluntary recognition program for formulated products that avoid hazardous chemicals. It is now called “Safer Choice” – a more apt description... -
Making "Safer" Accessible to All
Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Lindsay McCormick
I find purchasing shampoo and other common personal care products to be a surprisingly stressful experience – I pace the aisles at the drugstore for a good 10-15 minutes, read every product ingredient list... -
This EPA Label IDs
Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jennifer McPartland
Like millions of Americans, you might have wondered what chemicals are in those cleaning bottles under the kitchen sink. -
FDA-Approved Food Packaging Exposes Babies To Toxic Rocket Fuel Chemical
Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
Perchlorate, a toxic component of rocket fuel, may be harming your baby’s development – and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing it to happen, even in the face of clear health hazards. -
Toxic Teflon Chemical, C8, Found in Tap Water in Several States
Apr 4, 2016 | Earth Island Journal
By Sharon Kelly
New information emerged last month about toxic contamination from chemicals used to manufacture Teflon pots and pans and many other consumer, military, and industrial products. -
From Madeleine Albright to Candymaker, Rule Sees Broad Support
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A swarm of new Clean Power Plan backers arrived on the legal scene last week, with filings rolling in from big technology companies, government officials and a couple of oddballs. -
S&P Looking at Rule's Credit Impacts on Power Sector
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's is "in a position now where we have to analyze the credit impacts" of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan on investor-owned utilities and independent power producers... -
‘Fractivists’ Increase Pressure on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New York
Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Trip Gabriel and Coral Davenport
A nasty row that erupted between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders overoil and gas industry donors last week is catapulting the issue of climate change into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as it moves to New York... -
Meet the Man Who Showed Fracking Contaminates Water
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan
Former EPA scientist Dominic DiGiulio never gave up. Eight years ago, people in Pavillion, Wyo., living in the middle of a natural gas basin, complained of a bad taste and smell in their drinking water. -
A Renewable Energy Boom
Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
Some world leaders, especially in developing countries like India, have long said it’s hard to reduce the emissions that are warming the planet because they need to use relatively inexpensive — but highly carbon-intensive... -
Natural Gas Plants Running at a Fast Clip, EIA Says
Apr 4, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
The evidence of natural gas’s rise over coal as the fuel of choice on the nation’s power grid continues to pile up. -
Could There Be a Terrorist Fukushima?
Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Graham Allison and William H. Tobey
The attacks in Brussels last month were a stark reminder of the terrorists’ resolve, and of our continued vulnerabilities, including in an area of paramount concern: nuclear security. -
Fracking Attack Shows Breadth of Industrial Threats
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The hackers worked for a "state-affiliated actor in the Middle East -- a country that does a lot of oil sales," according to a lead investigator at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. -
FRA Announces $25 million for PTC Implementation
Apr 4, 2016 | Railway Age
By Carolina Worrell
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on April 4, 2016 announced that it is accepting applications for $25 million in competitive grant funding available to railroads... -
TransCanada Says Keystone Leaked Oil in South Dakota, Sees No Significant Damage
Apr 4, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
South Dakota state officials are confirming that oil leaked on Saturday from the Keystone pipeline, the predecessor of the now-defunct XL proposal to ship heavy oil through the Plains. -
Climate Change Expected to Raise Public Health Risks
Apr 4, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Climate change is expected to exacerbate a host of public health risks for Americans over the next century, the White House concluded in a report released Monday.
Industry and Association News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) The Role of Chemistry in the American Energy Revolution
Apr 4, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jack N. Gerard
Thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the U.S. is now the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas. In less than 10 years, crude oil production has increased 88% and natural gas production has jumped 48%. But the impact extends well beyond the energy industry. This production resurgence has created chemical manufacturing jobs and helped drive down energy imports. Perhaps more important, it has saved U.S. households an average of $1,200 per year, according to a study from consulting firm IHS. Drivers saved more than $500 in transportation fuel last year, home heating costs have declined, and electricity bills dropped on average by one-third nationwide.
With this turn of events, what can the energy and chemical industries expect to see going forward? What new opportunities are forthcoming for the chemists and chemical engineers who process our fossil-fuel resources?
When considered on an industrial scale, the benefits of reliable, affordable shale energy have given U.S. manufacturing a renewed competitive edge. Electricity prices for U.S. businesses are 30 to 50% lower than in other major export nations and wholesale natural gas prices average about one-third of those in most other industrial countries, according to a study by Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting Group. Manufacturing costs in the U.S. are now 10 to 20% lower than those in major European economies and just 5% higher than costs in China. By 2018, U.S. manufacturing costs will dip below China’s by 2 to 3%, the study projects.
For the U.S. petrochemicals industry, those advantages translate to investment growth and jobs. According to the American Chemistry Council, chemical production grew 3.6% in 2015—the greatest increase since 2007. Production is expected to grow 3% this year and continue to increase at least through 2020 as capacity from 266 announced projects and more than $164 billion of investment comes on-line.
As ACC President and Chief Executive Officer Cal Dooley has stated: “The U.S. has become a magnet for chemical industry investment, a testament to the favorable environment created byAmerica’s shale gas as well as a vote of confidence in a bright natural gas outlook for decades to come. What’s especially exciting is that half of the announced investments are from firms based outside the U.S., which means our country is poised to capture market share from the rest of the world.”
America’s shale energy advantage will add 462,000 jobs related to plastics manufacturing over the next decade, according to ACC projections. The findings are echoed by ExxonMobil’s 2016 energy outlook, which forecasts rising demand for plastics and other chemical products stemming from a burgeoning middle class and rising living standards in China, India, and other developing economies.
An American Petroleum Institute study commissioned from IHS also projects continued employment growth in the oil and natural gas and petrochemicals industries—including for underrepresented groups. IHS estimates 1.9 million new job opportunities will be available in these industries by 2035, with 707,000 positions, or 38%, projected to be held by African American and Hispanic workers, an improvement from 27% today. Female employment in the oil and gas and petrochemicals industries is projected to increase from 237,000 today to 290,000 through 2035. Meanwhile, 57% of new job opportunities will be in blue-collar professions—providing significant opportunities for those who opt to go to work after high school or community college rather than pursue a more advanced degree.
Despite the current global oil price downturn, the outlook for chemical and manufacturing industries remains strong. According to the Harvard-BCG study: “The U.S. has a 10- to 15-year head start in commercializing unconventional resources versus other countries. Though the recent decline in world oil prices has affected the short-term prospects of U.S. unconventionals, low prices are unlikely to significantly impact the fundamental U.S. competitive advantage over the next several decades.”
Maintaining that competitive edge—along with the economic growth and energy security gains made possible by shale energy—should be a top priority. Unfortunately, an avalanche of emissions-related regulatory proposals jeopardizes U.S. energy production. Policies that fail to acknowledge market-driven success in reducing emissions risk imposing duplicative and costly regulations that could stall the energy and manufacturing resurgences.
For example, although ozone levels have dropped 18% in the U.S. since 2000, contributing to improved air quality, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with plans to tighten the standard further, from 75 ppb to 70 ppb. This change will increase the number of counties facing nonattainment status from 217 to 958, threatening to restrict not only energy and chemicals production but virtually any economic activity. In the same vein, carbon emissions in the U.S. are near 20-year lows, largely the result of greater use of clean-burning natural gas. Yet, EPA is pushing forward with the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, which favors more costly and intermittent energy sources like wind and solar for power generation. While that plan is on hold after Supreme Court intervention, it’s just one of several proposals that substitute government mandates for technologically sound, market-driven solutions in a bid to transition away from oil and natural gas.
Energy demand projections indicate that approach is unrealistic. According to the Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels will still supply 80% of energy needs by 2040. And ExxonMobil’s outlook estimates energy demand in the chemical sector will rise by 50% over that period. America’s position as not only the leading oil and natural gas producer but also theworld leader in reducing emissions demonstrates that environmental progress and energy production are not mutually exclusive.
Through private-sector innovation, we can continue to produce the energy and chemical products Americans need. The challenge and opportunity for chemists and chemical engineers is to ramp up discovery of innovative new catalysts and more efficient manufacturing technologies to produce fuels and chemical products that will enable society to take full advantage of our abundant oil and natural gas resources.
Jack N. Gerardis president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the national trade association representing America’s oil and natural gas industry. Mr. Gerard previously spent close to a decade working as a staff member in the U.S. Senate and House and served as president and CEO of the National Mining Association and the American Chemistry Council before joining API.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i14/role-chemistry-American-energy-revolution.html
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(ACC Mentioned) 2016 Chemical Outlook: Shaleconomics
Apr 4, 2016 | American Journal of Transportation
By George Lauriat
The increased supplies of natural gas from shale deposits is changing the landscape for the chemical trades. With abundant feeder stocks at historically low prices, the global chemical industry is in growth mode while the performance in other industry sectors is slow or flat. But will demand match supply? Can low cost energy and cheap feedstock be enough to sustain growth in the U.S. chemical industry? Or will over capacity tilt the scales downward?
Shaleconomics
The increased supplies of natural gas from shale oil plays have been described as a “game changer” for the US chemical industry and in turn, the global chemical market.
Natural gas is a preferred feedstock for US chemical manufacturers. But up until recently, natural gas prices in the US have been high and supplies volatile, impacting the competitive position of US chemical manufacturers as well as investment.
But the shale-gas with its relatively low price gives US chemical manufacturers a feedstock advantage [natural gas-ethane] over many global competitors that rely on naphtha, a more costly, oil-based feedstock. For example, 74% of the crackers in Europe run on naphtha with only a small portion getting ethane from the North Sea petroleum assets.
Add in the relatively low cost for electricity, in a kilowatt dependent industry, and the competitive advantage for North America is clear.
Thus far shaleconomics seems to be delivering.
Since the advent of lower cost shale-gas in the late 2000s, US chemical manufacturers have been out performing their overseas competitors – a position inconceivable in the 1990s when chemical plant investment was moving out of the US and into the Middle East and Asia.
In 2014 the US chemical industry grew by 2%, over 3% in 2015 and around the same is forecast for 2016. The US chemical industry annually accounts for US$800 billion in revenues and produces over 15% of the world’s chemicals. Despite a weakening global economy both tallies are likely to rise through the end of the decade.
According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the shale-gas boom has resulted in 246 new chemical projects representing $153 billion in investment. This is after a long decline in investment prior to shale-oil.
While this may not seem like a boom, the chemical industry growth average is consistently above the average growth rate for US manufacturing as a whole. The US chemical industry (non-pharmaceutical) annually accounts for US$800 billion in revenues and produces over 15% of the world’s chemicals. Despite a weak global economy both tallies are forecast to rise through the end of the decade.
https://www.ajot.com/premium/ajot-2016-chemical-outlook-shaleconomics
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(ACC Mentioned) Tennessee Chamber Named Bradley Jackson Interim President
Apr 4, 2016 | Bristol Herald Courier
By Tammy Childress
The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry, announced earlier this month that Bradley Jackson has been named Interim President of the organization. The Chamber is one of Tennessee’s oldest and largest business trade associations and serves as the Tennessee affiliate for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council and partners statewide with local chambers of commerce and economic development professionals.
Jackson, who has served as vice president of government affairs for the Chamber since 2007, is widely considered one of Tennessee’s strongest advocates for businesses and economic growth in the Tennessee Legislature. Corporate leaders and elected officials have relied on his policy advice and friendship for over a decade. Some of Jackson’s most important legislative successes on behalf of the business community include tort and workers’ compensation reform and business tax changes which many have cited as reasons for Tennessee’s improvement in business climate rankings. Prior to joining the Chamber, Jackson served in a variety of roles in the legislative and executive branches of government that include policy, budget and operational management.
“The Executive Board of the Tennessee Chamber is extremely grateful that Bradley has agreed to serve as our organization’s interim president,” Chairman Greg Martz said . “In times of economic uncertainty and political change, Bradley has been a steady hand that has earned the bipartisan respect of lawmakers and business leaders from all facets of industry. His acceptance of this position means that job creators from across the state can continue to expect the Tennessee Chamber to be their strongest voice for growth. The Executive Board has denoted his role as interim president through this transitional period, but we have full confidence in Bradley leading this organization for many years to come.”
Jackson succeeds Catherine Glover in this position, who after 25 years of service to business and industry in four states, will be retiring from government affairs and politics on April 4.
“I am honored that the Executive Board has entrusted me with this position,” said Jackson. “I believe the work of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry over the years has been vital in making this state one of the best places in the nation to operate a business. Having been a part of this team for so long, I commend the entire staff at the Chamber for making successes possible. I look forward to continuing that success and focusing on new and innovative ways to engage the business community in our legislative process.”
http://www.heraldcourier.com/workittricities/business_news/tennessee-chamber-named-bradley-jackson-interim-president/article_b59daa68-f837-11e5-85a4-1ff514060637.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Gov. Inslee Signs Bill to Ban 5 Flame Retardants, Study 6 Others
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Washington state will restrict the use of flame retardant chemicals under a bill signed by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) last Friday.
H.B. 2545, the "Toxic-Free Kids and Families Act," was spurred by studies showing the persistence of many flame-retardant chemicals that have been linked to health problems.
Beginning July 1, 2017, the law will ban five chemicals from home furniture and children's products at levels greater than 1,000 parts per million. These chemicals are TDCPP, or tris (1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate; TCEP, or tris (2-chloroethyl) phosphate; decabromodiphenyl ether; HBCD, or hexabromocyclododecane; and additive TBBPA, or tetrabromobisphenol A.
The bill passed the Washington House of Representatives by a vote of 76-21 and cleared the state Senate 48-0.
The law would also set up a process for the state to review six more flame-retardant chemicals -- IPTPP, or isopropylated triphenyl phosphate; TBB, or 2-ethylhexyl-2,3,4,5-tetrabromobenzoate; TBPH, or bis (2-ethylhexyl) 2,3,4,5-tetrabromophthalate; TCPP, or tris (1-chloro-2-propyl) phosphate; TPP, or triphenyl phosphate; and V6, or 2,2-bis (chloromethyl) propane-1,3-diyltetrakis (2-chloroethyl) bisphosphate.
Inslee's action showed that "brain damaging and cancer-causing toxic flame retardants have no place in our homes, bodies, food, or environment," Laurie Valeriano, executive director of the Washington Toxics Coalition, said in a statement.
Industry groups, including the North American Flame Retardant Alliance, a branch of the American Chemistry Council, have defended flame-retardant chemicals as safe and beneficial for consumers.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/04/04/stories/1060035036
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EPA Provides New CDR Guidance But Declines To Provide Chemical List
Apr 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has issued new guidance to companies that must report their use of chemicals at U.S. facilities under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, but the agency has yet to provide a list of chemicals subject to first-time reporting requirements under the rule and appears unwilling to do so, even as it has accepted a petition from the biochemical industry to exempt some chemicals from the rule.
Some trade groups have raised concerns in recent months about the lack of a detailed list, noting the reporting period for the 2016 CDR approaches June 1. And while some sources say the new EPA guidance that explains how to access the agency's Substance Registry Services (SRS) database is helpful in determining which chemicals are subject to the new requirements, they continue to consider a list to be the most useful.
The CDR, in place since 2012, is EPA's main source of exposure information for most industrial chemicals. The rule requires companies to submit information to EPA every four years on the amounts of chemicals greater than 25,000 pounds that they manufactured, imported or processed in certain categories.
For the first time in 2016, the rule also requires companies to submit this information for production, processing or importation of more than 2,500 pounds annually of certain other chemicals that may face regulatory action. The rule is authorized by section 8a of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and provides much of the exposure information EPA has for TSCA-controlled chemicals.
The EPA guidance, posted to the agency's website March 21, says the SRS database will be updated to explain to companies how various chemicals should be treated.
But the American Petroleum Institute and the North American Metals Council (NAMC) have both pressed the agency to provide a list of chemicals that must be reported to the CDR program.
EPA, however, continues to point to the SRS database as the source for any information industry may need to comply with the rule.
"I agree it is practical and efficient for EPA to provide lists of chemicals substances currently subject to any special reporting obligations (or that are specifically exempted from such obligations); such lists are currently available in SRS," EPA's Lynn Vendinello, deputy division director in the Office of Prevention Pesticides and Toxic Substances, wrote in a March 9 letter to NAMC recently obtained by Inside EPA. Vendinello attached the new guidance to the letter, indicating how to search SRS for chemicals' reporting status.
The letter responded to concerns from NAMC -- held by others as well -- that EPA has provided insufficient guidance to companies who may need to report to the agency their manufacture, processing or import of certain chemicals at U.S. facilities since the last CDR reporting period in 2012.
"The information provided by EPA is helpful, but we believe companies would have likely preferred a single list," says one industry source.
Reporting Challenges
Other industry representatives also indicated some skepticism, with Procter & Gamble Co.'s Mary Marrero listing the SRS database as one of the challenges of the 2016 reporting in her remarks at the GlobalChem chemical industry conference in Washington, D.C., March 22. "Will e-CDR [EPA's electronic CDR reporting system] successfully flag those [chemicals] with reduced threshold?"
But an agency source says that EPA does not intend to produce a list, in part because of a concern that errors or omissions in list-making might lead to multiple, dissimilar versions.
Part of the concern is the time line. Companies with CDR chemicals are required to submit their data between June 1 and Sept. 30, and EPA has selected June 1 as the cutoff point for regulator actions that trigger lower threshold reporting. Chemicals with rules completed or proposed by June 1 must be reported per the 2,500 pounds per year standard. Further, the SRS database will not be updated until May, leaving companies little time to prepare for submission.
"EPA will update the lists in SRS at the end of May; therefore, companies should confirm the status of their chemical substances no earlier than June 1," Vendinello writes.
Vendinello's letter responds to a March 2 request from NAMC, which argued that "[i]t would be more practical and efficient for EPA to post lists of the chemicals currently subject to the lower reporting threshold, the chemicals ineligible for certain full or partial exemptions from reporting, and the chemicals that are ineligible for the small business exemption, and for EPA to update those periodically as we approach the beginning of the CDR reporting cycle in June 2016."
As an alternative, NAMC proposed that EPA create more "flags" for use in its SRS database to indicate chemicals subject to the lower CDR reporting threshold, another to show which chemicals are ineligible for a small business reporting threshold and a third for flagging those chemicals that are ineligible for certain other reporting exemptions.
"This would allow companies to search individual chemical identities or to incorporate the data into their own data systems," NAMC's Executive Director Kathleen Roberts writes in the March 2 letter. "This information that EPA has readily accessible would be extremely important for impacted companies to respond appropriately, adequately, and comprehensively to this important reporting requirement. It is particularly critical for smaller businesses that lack in-house regulatory staff to manage these important reporting obligations."
BRAG's Petition
Meanwhile, the agency has granted a petition from the Biobased and Renewable Products Advocacy Group (BRAG), agreeing to exempt a half-dozen bio-based chemicals from CDR reporting, per the group's 2014 request. BRAG petitioned EPA to alter the CDR rule by partially exempting six biodiesel chemicals from the chemical processing and use reporting rule. At the same time, BRAG filed a separate petition under a different authority, requesting they be partially exempted from CDR reporting, by listing the six chemicals as having "low current interest" to EPA.
EPA accepted this argument in a Federal Register notice published March 29. The document indicates that EPA "is adding these chemical substances to the partially exempt chemical substances list because it has concluded that, based on the totality of information available, the CDR processing and use information for these chemical substances is of low current interest," the notice says.
"BRAG is pleased that EPA issued the final rulemaking prior to the start of the 2016 CDR reporting period," Roberts says of EPA's conclusion.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-provides-new-cdr-guidance-declines-provide-chemical-list
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Apr 4, 2016 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Andy Igrejas
Last year EPA revamped their “Design for the Environment” program – a voluntary recognition program for formulated products that avoid hazardous chemicals. It is now called “Safer Choice” – a more apt description – and it has a snazzier label, which we blogged about last year. The agency is doing a public education push about it this week.
The new label is much more coveted by companies for obvious reasons – who wouldn’t want the Safer Choice? But it also begs the question: Are these products safer? The short answer is yes. The label is not the be-all/end-all but it is a useful tool for consumers and the companies trying to woo them with safer products. The more the label catches on, the better it will be for public health and the environment.
Companies that want the Safer Choice certification must submit their products to the agency for a thorough review that can take a couple of years. Getting the label is difficult, but more companies are trying and that’s a good thing.
The products must meet the Safer Choice Standard. Effectively that means it cannot contain chemical ingredients that are known to contribute to most human health and environmental problems. That means no carcinogens, reproductive toxins, or brain damaging chemicals, or chemicals that harm aquatic life, for example. EPA has looked at the function that different problematic chemicals perform in each product category and have identified low hazard alternatives. EPA has also compiled a list of Safer Chemical Ingredients that companies can choose from knowing they will definitely meet the standard.
omething I like about the program is that a company has to submit the full ingredients to EPA for vetting. Nothing can violate the standard, including the “inert” ingredients or fragrance components. EPA also helps companies identify safer alternatives to problematic ingredients, so there is a coaching component. Companies are audited to avoid a Volkswagen-type scenario.
EPA acknowledges that some of the “best in class” chemicals, mostly preservatives, are “lower” in hazard but still not exactly “low.” EPA designates these on its list with a yellow triangle. You can get certified with one of these chemicals the first time, but are supposed to innovate your way around it by the time you recertify. Also, some would argue no fragrances should be allowed in such a program. Instead, EPA allows fragrances as long as they meet the standard. The agency has created specific criteria for fragrances, which prohibit many highly hazardous chemicals in fragrance. But a company that is “fragrance-free” can get certified as such and consumers can look for that designation on top of the Safer Choice label. There are now dozens of products carrying this fragrance-free label.
So, could the program be tougher? Sure. Our friends at MADE SAFE have unveiled a label with strong criteria as has EWG. Some of our partners prefer Green Seal, which has a following particularly with institutional purchasers like schools. All have their merits.
Because it is backed by the EPA, Safer Choice is gaining traction with a broad group of companies. You can check out the list of over 2,000 certified products here. Many more companies are seeking the certification and have already reformulated. In fact, Walmart, Target, and Wegmans are requiring or incentivizing some of their suppliers to meet the Safer Choice standard. In a sure sign that the program is doing something positive in the world, the more retrograde members of the chemical industry have tried to cut the program’s funding in Congress. (So far they have failed.)
The bottom line is that EPA’s Safer Choice label is helping to transform the marketplace. It gives consumers an assurance that a product avoids many known hazardous chemicals and has been vetted by the government. It incentivizes major brands and retailers to reformulate their products with safer alternatives.
So to help yourself and the planet: look for the Safer Choice label and ask your favorite retailer where theSafer Choice products are located.
http://saferchemicals.org/2016/04/04/look-for-the-safer-choice/
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Making "Safer" Accessible to All
Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Lindsay McCormick
I find purchasing shampoo and other common personal care products to be a surprisingly stressful experience – I pace the aisles at the drugstore for a good 10-15 minutes, read every product ingredient list, contemplate the legitimacy of claims like “paraben-free” or “no artificial colors or fragrances,” and weigh the impact on my wallet. In the end, I usually choose a moderately priced product with some sort of ingredient safety claim brightly printed on the front label, and hope the extra $2 I spent will actually reduce my exposure to hazardous chemicals.
Many consumers are hungry for information and solutions that help reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals. As more research links exposures to common ingredients in personal care products and health impacts – like certain parabens to reduced fertility; certain phthalates to asthma, reproductive disorders, and neurological effects; and triclosan to obesity – many consumers want to feel empowered to take action. That’s why the results of a recent intervention study are so intriguing: researchers found that exposures to certain chemicals fell in a population of low-income Latina girls after using personal care products labeled as being free of such chemicals for three days.
The implications of this study raise several interesting questions that I’ll explore in this post. Specifically, are personal shopping choices an effective way to avoid chemical exposures? And, is this strategy equally available to everyone in our society?
The study
Researchers from UC Berkeley, the California Department of Public Health, and the Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas enlisted a group of Latina high school students in the Salinas Valley in California to conduct a youth-lead, community-based intervention study. The study was designed to test the effectiveness of a personal care product intervention in reducing specific chemical exposures to adolescent girls. Named the Health and Environmental Research on Makeup of Salinas Adolescents Study or “HERMOSA” (Spanish for beautiful), the study engaged its youth researchers in all stages of study design and implementation.
Professional and youth researchers identified and selected personal care products advertised as free of specific chemicals through techniques available to consumers, including reading ingredient lists and labels and searching consumer-facing product profiling websites (e.g., EWG’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database). The researchers specifically targeted phthalates, parabens, triclosan, and benzophenone-3, which have known or potential endocrine-disrupting (hormone disrupting) properties and are commonly found in personal care products. Because phthalates are often not listed on ingredient lists, the researchers selected products that either did not list fragrances among their ingredients or were labeled as “phthalate-free.” The participants, 100 primarily low-income Latina adolescents aged 14-18 from Salinas Valley, were asked to use the selected personal care products (including shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, soap, deodorant, make up, and toothpaste) exclusively for three days.
The researchers analyzed pre-intervention and post-intervention urine samples for the targeted chemical compounds. The results showed decreases in several of the compounds following the three-day intervention: methyl paraben decreased on average by 43.9%, propyl paraben by 45.4%; mono-ethyl phthalate by 27.4%; triclosan by 35.7%; and benzophenone-3 by 36.0%. Mono-ethyl phthalate is a metabolite (breakdown product formed in the body) of diethyl phthalate (DEP). In contrast, there were no significant reductions in mono-n-butyl phthalate (metabolite of di-n-butyl phthalate, DnBP) and mono-isobutyl phthalate (metabolite of di-isobutyl phthalate, DiBP) concentrations.
So can we shop our way out of the problem?
The authors found reductions in exposure to several toxic chemicals – but what do these findings mean for the average consumer, outside the context of an intervention study?
Most people in the U.S. are not aware of the pervasiveness of hazardous or potentially hazardous chemicals in consumer products and the general lack of adequate government oversight of products and their ingredients. Some companies capitalize on this through use of undefined or misleading labels and claims – such as “green” and “organic” that don’t necessarily reflect actual reduced toxic chemical use in personal care and other fragranced products. Consumers must be extremely well-versed in environmental health and available chemical and product evaluation tools to even attempt to navigate the Wild West of product ingredients.
For informed and engaged consumers, this study does show promise that labels and consumer-facing databases provide reliable information and have the potential to be used to modify personal exposures. However, it is worth noting that exposure was not eliminated (reductions of 25-45%), indicating that there are other sources of exposure to these chemicals, and that there are limits to how much personal care product choices can reduce an individual’s exposure to toxic chemicals. Indeed, the study’s authors suggest that the limited reductions observed for the phthalates may be due to their widespread use in other common products and exposure through ingestion of contaminated food.
Furthermore, it is often hard to know if products advertised with safer ingredient claims are actually safer, given that many chemicals have not been thoroughly studied and hazardous chemicals are often replaced with structurally similar or other untested alternatives. This isn’t of course to say that the marketplace shouldn’t be targeting for removal of chemicals of known concern (that’s a good thing!), but as those chemicals are removed, their replacements need to be demonstrably safer. While EPA’s voluntary Safer Choice program works to do just that – giving EPA’s seal of approval to household and industrial cleaning products that only use ingredients EPA has deemed safer based on specific criteria – the program does not currently review personal care products (though there is an interest in expanding into this space).
Despite all this, the notion that we, as consumers, can reduce (at least to some degree) our personal exposures to chemicals in personal care products with tools readily at our disposal is good news.
Unequal access
Even with these encouraging findings, it’s important to remember that not everyone in our society has equal access to safer personal care products. Environmental impacts, including exposure to toxic chemicals via consumer products, often disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities.
A recent article on public awareness and engagement on chemicals policy aptly describes the problem of unequal access to low-toxicity products:
As nonprofits continue to make more information available about safety concerns with consumer products, the market is responding with premium-priced organic or niche products that do not contain known or suspected hazardous chemicals. Consumers who are educated about the hazards and alternatives and have the financial means to pay a premium compared to less expensive mainstream or secondhand products can take advantage of these (possibly) safer products. However, issues of equity must be considered in chemicals policy reform, since researchers have found associations between lower socioeconomic status and higher levels of exposure to certain hazardous chemicals. (Charles Scruggs and Rachel Moore)
Unequal access to premium products formulated with safer chemicals may be contributing to disproportionate exposures. In fact, a 2013 analysis of the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) National Biomonitoring Surveydata identified 12 compounds (including parabens and phthalates) presenting environmental justice concerns, such as higher levels of exposure in low-income and/or minority populations. The most recent CDCbiomonitoring data also demonstrates higher exposures to phthalates and parabens among African Americans and Mexican Americans as compared to white Americans.
The HERMOSA study participants were primarily from low-income families. Thirty-eight percent lived in households with an annual income below the federal poverty line, and only one third reported that at least one parent had completed high school. Prior to the intervention, the participants had higher levels of parabens, certain phthalates, and benzophenone-3 than the national average for female adolescents, as identified through the CDC data.
These girls had a unique opportunity to participate in a youth empowerment intervention study, where they learned about chemicals in personal care products and were provided with products carefully selected in advance by researchers. But in reality, adolescents living in low-income communities across the U.S. – like so many others in our society – face barriers to using such products. Here are a few reasons why:
Financial barriers
Personal care products bearing low-toxicity claims can be quite expensive – a simple Google search demonstrates the high premium companies are able to charge. Paying the high price for these products is simply not an option for most people.
Access barriers
Access to personal care products formulated with safer chemicals is not equal in all communities. The authors note that, in their experience, personal care products advertised as being free of specific hazardous chemicals were difficult to find in low-income communities. Conversely, dollar stores – which tend to be disproportionately located in communities of color or low-income communities – have been found to consistently carry products with hazardous chemicals.
Language barriers
According to the 2011 Census, more than 60.5 million Americans speak a language other than English in the home, and nearly a quarter of those speak English either “not well” or “not at all.” In the HERSOMA study, 57% percent of the participants reported that they speak “mainly Spanish” in the home. The benefits of labels on personal care products are not equally realized, as many people living in the U.S. cannot easily read these labels.
Education level
Education level may impact people’s ability to read and interpret product labels. One study found that nearly half of patients with allergies to preservatives and fragrances experience major difficulties reading cosmetic ingredient labels, and this finding was strongly related to education level.
Leveling the playing field
Under the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA), premarket review and approval of ingredients added to personal care products (covered under the cosmetics provision) is generally not required. Given the limited government oversight, this niche market providing products claimed to be safer emerged to cater to concerned consumers.
But is this really the solution? Should individual consumers be expected to grapple with the potential toxicity of shampoo every time they go to the store – if they have the luxury to do so? Wouldn’t it work better and be fairer to make the systematic changes needed so that safer products are available to and affordable for everyone in our society?
Reducing the use of hazardous chemicals in personal care products across the entire market will require a multipronged approach including updating the outdated law, ensuring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appropriately implements the current law, and driving the market towards safer chemicals through non-regulatory approaches.
EDF specifically pursues the third strategy by encouraging and facilitating market-based solutions. We’re working with Walmart to adopt and implement a safer chemicals policy for household and personal care products and are taking the lessons learned to other retailers and product manufacturers in our Behind the Labelinitiative. When leading retailers, like Walmart and Target, make commitments to safer chemicals, it sends a powerful signal across the supply chain to phase out hazardous chemicals—helping to bring safer and affordable products to the shelves. That’s not to say that “green” niche products don’t have a role to play: they demonstrate consumer demand for safer products and show larger companies that formulating safer products is possible.
In her keynote address at the National Conference on Environmental Justice in March, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy passionately stated that “poverty and pollution go hand in hand.” In order to start changing that, we need to make systematic changes that benefit all communities in our society. One part of that change is making sure that safer products are available and affordable to all.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2016/04/04/making-safer-accessible-to-all/#more-5066
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Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jennifer McPartland
Like millions of Americans, you might have wondered what chemicals are in those cleaning bottles under the kitchen sink.
Are they safe to use when time comes to mop floors, wipe counters and scrub a toilet? Are their strong vapors toxic, and can they hurt your skin?
Thanks to a federal labeling program, shoppers can now find products that meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard as a Safer Choice for families – and pets. The program won’t child-proof products, or necessarily make chemicals harmless, but it will help ensure that their ingredients are safer.2,500 products labeled so far
The voluntary Safer Choice program seeks to recognize and bring consumer awareness to products that are leading the way when it comes to safer ingredients.
For a product to carry the Safer Choice logo, all its ingredients must pass the program’s health and environment criteria. It must also meet requirements around packaging, performance and ingredient disclosure.
Today, there are shockingly few federal ingredient disclosure requirements for cleaning products. So Safer Choice makes a big step in the right direction here, but we’d like to see the program go even further when it comes to requiringdisclosure of fragrances.
Currently, shoppers can choose from more than 2,500 Safer Choice products, most of which are household and industrial cleaners.
Leading retailers such as Wegman’s, Safeway, Staples, Office Depot, and Costco have made significant strides toward offering Safer Choice products on their shelves. At the same time, Walmart is working on getting its private label products recognized by the program per its sustainable chemistry policy, and Target rewards points to products with Safer Choice certification through its sustainable product index.Kids need a Safer Choice
There is growing evidence that certain chemicals in common use can harm our health, and children whose bodies are still developing are especially at risk.
Children typically eat, drink and breathe more relative to their body weight. They are often on the floor where dirt and dust that contain toxic substances settle, and they love to put those little hands in their mouths.
The truth is, our current chemical safety law doesn’t do enough to keep children safe from chemicals in our homes. Even for a chemist like myself it can be hard to always know which product ingredients are cause for greater concern.
Safer Choice is a step in the right direction, but we also know that more needs to be done to keep toxic chemicals out of everyday household products.We know labels work
The Energy Star program showed the power of an EPA-backed label. For years, it’s helped consumers find more energy efficient appliances and encouraged companies to meet the demand for such products.
As shoppers now seek out the Safer Choice label and ask retailers to carry products carrying that label, more companies will participate by adding more certified products to the shelves. This will, in turn, spur innovation and development of safer chemicals and products for everyone.
So, next time you’re looking to restock those cleaners under your kitchen sink, be on the lookout for that label.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2016/04/04/epa-label-ids-safer-choice-cleaning-products
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FDA-Approved Food Packaging Exposes Babies To Toxic Rocket Fuel Chemical
Apr 4, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Megan Boyle
Perchlorate, a toxic component of rocket fuel, may be harming your baby’s development – and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing it to happen, even in the face of clear health hazards.
That’s why Environmental Working Group has joined the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental and public health organizations to sue the FDA for letting manufacturers use perchlorate as a food additive.
Perchlorate disrupts thyroid function and hormone production, both essential for healthy brain and organ development. At greatest risk of harm are fetuses, babies and young children.
Millions of Americans face unavoidable exposure to perchlorate in drinking water and contaminated produce and milk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and local water utilities, particularly in California, are making major efforts to identify, regulate and clean up perchlorate in drinking water.
Yet the FDA permits manufacturers to add perchlorate to plastic packaging for powdered baby formula and foods such as rice and beans. FDA argues that perchlorate is safe in food packaging, but that position is based on a deeply flawed analysis and also ignores new science underscoring the risk.
“Banning perchlorate should be a no-brainer when you consider its threat to human health, particularly to fetal development,” said Ken Cook, co-founder and president of the Environmental Working Group. “We hope this lawsuit spurs FDA to give a new look at the science, instead of relying on its original, flawed reasoning, and to move swiftly to protect consumers from exposure to this toxic chemical.”
The Breast Cancer Fund, Center for Food Safety, Center for Environmental Health and Center for Science in the Public Interest joined EWG and NRDC in the suit, filed March 31.
The groups previously petitioned FDA to ban the use of perchlorate in food packaging, but the agency failed to respond.
You can read the full petition here.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/04/fda-approved-food-packaging-exposes-babies-toxic-rocket-fuel-chemical
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Toxic Teflon Chemical, C8, Found in Tap Water in Several States
Apr 4, 2016 | Earth Island Journal
By Sharon Kelly
New information emerged last month about toxic contamination from chemicals used to manufacture Teflon pots and pans and many other consumer, military, and industrial products. Water tests in several states have revealed a growing number of sites where the groundwater is polluted by the most well studied of these chemicals — C8 or PFOA — prompting calls from a group of state governors for federal action.
Meanwhile there are new indications that another perfluorinated chemical (PFC), heavily promoted by chemical manufacturers as a safer substitute for C8, is also toxic and just as persistent in the environment as C8, raising questions about the adequacy of a voluntary C8 phase-out agreement promoted for the past decade by the Environmental Protection Agency.
First created in a lab in 1947, C8 has managed to spread extraordinarily far and wide. Built from one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry, the tie between carbon and fluorine atoms, the chemical that acts as a surfactant was, until recently, used not just in Teflon cookware, but in hundreds of other consumer products including fast food wrappers, waterproof clothing, electrical cables, and pizza boxes.
As with many other PFCs, C8 is impervious to breaking down or biodegrading. It can also accumulate in the human body over time and has been linked to at least six serious health conditions, including kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, and thyroid diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the chemical can now be found in trace amounts in the blood of roughly 98 percent of Americans.
Ongoing legal battles surrounding C8 contamination by a former DuPont plant in West Virginia have drawn renewed attention to the risks associated with the chemical. (Read “Teflon’s Toxic Legacy,” our in-depth report on how DuPont hid information that C8 was making people sick.) And now this toxic chemical is being found at potentially hazardous levels in places ranging from small New Hampshire towns to the lead-laced waters of Flint, Michigan.
In New York's Hoosick Falls, where in 2014 local authorities refused to conduct tests until one resident provided them with lab results from his own water showing high levels of C8, a Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant was recently declared a Superfund site. .
“Every time I think about it, I just feel like crying,” Virginia Barber of North Bennington, VT, where over 100 water wells have tested positive for C8 contamination, told The New York Times. Barber now relies on bottled water.
In 2012, EPA added C8 and five other PFCs to its list of unregulated contaminants that public water systems should test for under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Testing between 2013 and 2015 showed over seven million people in 27 states had trace amounts of C8 in their tap water, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis published last month.
So, is all of that water unsafe to drink? Depends on whom you ask.
The levels of C8 in municipal water supplies were all below 400 parts per trillion, concentrations that the EPA, in a 2009 provisional health advisory, suggests should be safe if you were drinking that water for just a few weeks. (The agency has yet to issue any binding regulations capping C8 levels in public water supplies). Officials in Vermont, however, say that tap water should contain less than20 parts per trillion of C8, a threshold that takes the impacts on infants and small children into account. The levels of C8 in the tap water were higher than that in every one of the places that tested positive for the chemical.
But even as authorities continue to realize how far C8 has spread, public health experts are calling attention to dozens of related, unregulated chemicals that may pose similar threats but about which the public knows very little.
nder a federally-backed agreement, American chemical manufacturers agreed to phase out their use of C8 and a handful of related chemicals by the end of 2015. But while the eight C8 manufacturers — some of the largest chemical makers in the US — that participated in the voluntary agreement say they stopped using C8 at the end of 2015, environmental groups warn that the substitutes they've adopted are under-studied and likely to be dangerous as well.
DuPont, for instance, introduced one such substitute, called GenX, in 2010, describing it as a chemical “technology” that “enables the company to make high-performance fluoropolymers without the use of PFOA."
But as with the case of C8, DuPont’s own research, starting 50 years ago, showed troubling indications that GenX may be little better for human health or the environment than C8, despite being heavily promoted as a safer substitute. According to research reported to the EPA between 2006 and 2013 and newly obtained by The Intercept via open records requests, DuPont had evidence as early as 1963 that GenX might pose a "substantial risk of injury to health or the environment since.
In 2005, the EPA had announced that DuPont agreed to pay the largest civil administrative penalty in the agency's history — over $16.25 million in penalties and research funding — because DuPont had concealed evidence of C8's toxic effects on people and animals. The GenX filings — required under the same provision of the Toxic Substances Control Act that DuPont stood accused of breaking — revealed troubling signs that animals exposed to GenX became ill, developing liver and kidney problems, cancer, reproductive problems, and impacted immune systems.
Despite this evidence, the EPA has yet to require DuPont or its spin off company, Chemours, to conduct further testing of GenX. In part, this is because the Toxic Substances Control Act provides little latitude for the EPA to ban or restrict chemicals even when health risks are discovered. It is not uncommon for reports like these to prompt no action by the EPA. The agency has only ever required companies to conduct further study of a couple hundred chemicals out of over 85,000 chemicals allowed on the market.
“A lot of them do just get filed away,” Vincent Cogliano, director of the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, told The Intercept, in reference to the studies that that the industry turns in to the agency.
DuPont’s findings on GenX were based on research on lab animals, not humans. But if the research proves relevant for humans, it could have profound the implications for the entire chemicals industry.
Here’s the thing: GenX is what’s called a “short-chain PFC,” unlike C8 which is a “long-chain PFC. As awareness of the risks associated with C8 rose, industry groups pushed successfully for regulators to approach short- and long-chain PFCs differently, arguing that because the short-chain versions exit the human body faster, they should be considered safer substitutes for the long-chain versions.
These short-chain PFCs are used in a variety of goods including water-repellant clothing and outdoor gear, in fire-fighting foam used by the military, and in fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags.
The rise of GenX and other short-chain PFCs highlights how, under current chemical laws, steps to protect the public against one harmful chemical may inadvertently promote the proliferation of dozens of others that prove to be similarly or even potentially more dangerous.
"The painfully slow process of reducing the public’s exposures to PFCs reflects one of the biggest flaws of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act – that the EPA assesses health hazards chemical by chemical, rather than as a family," Environmental Working Group wrote last year.
Current federal laws allow chemicals like GenX to spread even when there are signs that they might be toxic and dangerous. "With decades of experience, not just with C8, that chemicals have these negative health effects, our law still says you can introduce these new chemicals into the marketplace without testing," Bill Walker, an investigator with EWG, told Earth Island Journal.
And GenX may be only the tip of the iceberg. EWG’s review of similar research filings to the EPA by chemical companies on more than 100 PFCs found several reports of worrisome animal testing results.
But the publicly available information on these substitutes often lacks crucial information. "We found that roughly 85 percent did not even tell you the name that a chemical was marketed under," Walker said. "Something like 55 percent didn't even disclose the name of the company in the public record that was available."
Concern about the continued unregulated expansion of fluorinated chemicals like GenX prompted more than 200 scientists to sign a warning called The Madrid Statement last year.
"While some shorter-chain fluorinated alternatives seem to be less bioaccumulative, they are still as environmentally persistent as long-chain substances or have persistent degradation products," the group of scientists wrote in a piece published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "In addition, because some of the shorter-chain [PFCs] are less effective, larger quantities may be needed to provide the same performance."
Meanwhile, state officials are turning to the federal government, calling for guidance on how to understand the hazards of PFCs and how best to respond when water pollution is discovered.
"It is clear that [C8] contamination is not a state problem or a regional problem," the governors of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire wrote in a March letter addressed to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, "it's a national problem that requires federal guidelines and a consistent, science-based approach."
Sharon Kelly is a Philadelphia-based lawyer and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Legal Intelligencer.
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/toxic_teflon_chemical_c8_found_in_tap_water_in_several_states/
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From Madeleine Albright to Candymaker, Rule Sees Broad Support
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A swarm of new Clean Power Plan backers arrived on the legal scene last week, with filings rolling in from big technology companies, government officials and a couple of oddballs.
Dominion Resources Inc. was perhaps the most unexpected party to side with U.S. EPA in the massive litigation over the agency's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.
While utilities across the country have helped lead the fight against the climate rule, Dominion -- which owns several coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants -- says the plan's focus on power from gas and renewables is consistent with industry trends.
"The Rule provides a flexible, accommodating compliance framework that means the Rule can be implemented by states and EPA in a way that is challenging but ultimately manageable for regulated power plants," the Virginia-based utility, which also operates nuclear plants, said in its "friend of the court" filing Friday.
Arguments against the rule's market-based measures could result in costlier regulations down the road, the company added.
A handful of other utilities, including Southern California Edison Co. and Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., have intervened in the case on EPA's side, but most in the power sector are seeking to block the rule.
Dominion's move was part of a flurry of briefs filed Friday to meet the deadline for friends of the court supporting the rule at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.Tech giants and a candymaker
Other business interests joining the defense of the Clean Power Plan ranged from the predictable -- sustainable business associations -- to the unusual -- Ikea and the maker of Mars bars.
Tech giants Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. wrote in a brief Friday that they were committed to supporting the Clean Power Plan as a tool to promote clean energy.
As some of the "most significant consumers of electricity," the companies noted in their brief, "Tech Amici are deeply committed to consuming power in an environmentally responsible way and doing their part to see that the nation's electrical supply is produced in a more sustainable fashion."
Other companies shared that sentiment, touting their desire to promote sustainable growth and energy use.
"The scale of the sustainability challenges in the world require bold commitments and bold action," Ikea North America Services LLC Chief Financial Officer Rob Olson said in a statement. Ikea was joined by Mars Inc., Adobe Systems Inc., and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts Inc. in its filing.
Consumer advocates and grid experts also weighed in, seeking to dispel arguments that the Clean Power Plan would raise electricity rates and threaten power reliability.
"Contrary to petitioners' and their amici's predictions of exorbitant costs and 'economic disaster,' the EPA's carefully calibrated plan promises to drive electricity costs down for consumers and ratepayers while accomplishing substantial cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions," the Citizens Utility Board, Consumers Union and Public Citizen argued in their brief, citing various EPA and independent projections.Government and science
Local governments and former state energy officials also joined the fray Friday, focusing on everyday impacts of climate change and arguing that the Clean Power Plan offers ample flexibility for states to comply and cut emissions.
Their message was bolstered by climate scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Twenty prominent climate researchers used their amicus brief to highlight evidence of ocean acidification, rising temperatures, worsening droughts and other research "necessary to understand the context behind the Clean Power Plan at issue in this case."
Other defenses of the climate rule came from members of Congress, Senate staffers who shepherded Clean Air Act amendments and prominent former government officials -- including former EPA Administrators William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Albright was joined by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former Deputy Secretary of State and Ambassador to Russia Bill Burns in an amicus brief that argued EPA's rule is crucial to combating climate change not only as an environmental problem but as a threat to national security.
"In short, global warming makes the world more volatile and less safe -- which provides another reason why concerted, persistent action by the United States is of paramount importance," they wrote.
Rounding out last week's filings were the Service Employees International Union, religious groups, the Institute for Policy Integrity and national health organizations.
The Environmental Defense Fund, an intervenor in the case, praised the slew of briefs as a demonstration of "unstoppable momentum for climate action."
"These rigorous and compelling briefs are a vivid reminder that Americans are embracing the clean energy future and recognizing the importance of securing a safe climate for our health, economy, and generations to come," EDF President Fred Krupp said in a statement. "It makes me optimistic about the court battle ahead of us."
Opponents of the rule will respond to the various briefs by April 15, and oral arguments are set for June 2.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/04/04/stories/1060034994
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S&P Looking at Rule's Credit Impacts on Power Sector
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's is "in a position now where we have to analyze the credit impacts" of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan on investor-owned utilities and independent power producers, according to Michael Ferguson, a director with S&P's U.S. Energy Infrastructure Group.
The possible credit impact on a particular company is "something that's inherently long term, where the exact outcome is more or less unknown," he said.
To arrive at a meaningful rating, S&P is trying "to get a feel about how receptive a particular state is to any kind of more progressive environmental policy. We're trying to assess which states are more supportive" of the EPA rule's goals and willing to allow utilities "to build some of these assets [needed to comply] into their rate base selectively," Ferguson said.
"Also, we're looking at how management teams are reacting" to the rule, even as it has been stayed by the Supreme Court pending a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later this year.
S&P is paying closer attention to the management reactions at independent power producers that have been heavily focused on coal.
"The writing has been on the wall for some time. A lot of them have kind of dragged their heels," Ferguson said, adding, "But I think you could say that about utilities as well."
Ferguson views the Clean Power Plan as trying "to impose some level of discipline on states who wouldn't do this by themselves."
If the EPA rule "gets killed entirely or even if it gets delayed, carbon reduction is happening," he said. This week
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality canceled a meeting of Clean Power Plan stakeholders slated for tomorrow due to the Feb. 9 stay issued by the Supreme Court.
Eric Massey, director of the state's air quality division, said in an email that "ADEQ has decided to slow, but not stop, work on the Clean Power Plan" and that the agency will transition to a quarterly meeting schedule. The next meeting will be June 14. Subsequent meetings will be on Sept. 6 and Dec. 6 to discuss the anticipated decision of the D.C. Circuit Appeals Court, he said.
On Thursday, EPA will host an all-day workshop in Washington, D.C., on the role biomass can play in state strategies to address carbon pollution. States with expertise in the area of beneficial forestry and land management practices will share their experiences. Greenwire's Amanda Reilly will be reporting. In case you missed it
· Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. filed a "friend of the court" brief with the D.C. Circuit Appeals Court, asking judges to uphold the Clean Power Plan (Greenwire, April 1).
· Environmental groups want Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to develop a compliance regime for the Clean Power Plan that goes well beyond what is demanded of the state in the rule (EnergyWire, April 1).
· An army of EPA allies stood behind the Clean Power Plan, fending off arguments from industry and states trying to trounce it in their briefs to the D.C. Circuit (EnergyWire, March 30).
· Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) vetoed a bill that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to hold sway over the state's Clean Power Plan compliance strategy (ClimateWire, March 29).
· The Obama administration laid out a detailed defense of the Clean Power Plan, arguing that opponents of the landmark climate rule are simply opposed to any restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and are using "hyperbolic mischaracterizations" to get their way (EnergyWire, March 29).
· With the Clean Power Plan in legal limbo, Nevada is taking a "step back" from compliance preparations to focus more broadly on clean energy planning, a state planning leader said (ClimateWire, March 28).
For more news and analysis about the Clean Power Plan, visit E&E's Power Plan Hub.
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060035000
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‘Fractivists’ Increase Pressure on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New York
Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Trip Gabriel and Coral Davenport
A nasty row that erupted between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders overoil and gas industry donors last week is catapulting the issue of climate change into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as it moves to New York, where an army of activists upstate is driven by opposition to drilling.
Mrs. Clinton has moved steadily left on the issue, under pressure from Mr. Sanders and his progressive allies, but she continues to come under assault, posing new challenges for her as the race moves to more liberal Northeastern states.
Last week, her mask of composure slipped when she angrily replied to a Greenpeace activist in Purchase, N.Y., “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.”
Climate change is a powerful issue for voters in the Democratic base almost everywhere. But it has especially inspired grass-roots progressives in upstate New York, who fought — and won — a yearslong battle against fracking for natural gas.
Even after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned fracking statewide in 2014, many activists — who call themselves fractivists — remain on the front lines of climate fights, and many are skeptical about Mrs. Clinton because of views she held in the Obama administration and earlier, as a New York senator from 2001 to 2008.
Concerned about her prospects upstate, she plans a heavy schedule of campaigning in the region before the April 19 primary, realizing she can no longer count on voters there as confidently as when she earned their support in her two Senate races, when she focused largely on economic issues.
“We now have literally thousands of fractivists who are battle-tested, who understand the politics of these issues,” said Walter Hang, an activist in Ithaca, N.Y. “And they have zero inclination to give away their vote without firm commitments.”
Both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns are said to have studied the progressive Democratic primary challenge to Mr. Cuomo two years ago by Zephyr Teachout, an unknown law professor who won a surprising 33 percent by challenging Mr. Cuomo from the left, partly by highlighting her staunch opposition to fracking.
Ms. Teachout carried counties on the Pennsylvania border and in the Finger Lakes region, where grass-roots anti-fracking groups mobilized voters.
The fracking battle is over, but the activism remains. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are frustrated that climate activists are skeptical after she rolled out an ambitious renewable energy plan last year, more aggressive than Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton defended her record on climate issues in Congress and as secretary of state, and said the Sanders campaign’s claims had been debunked. “I feel sorry sometimes for the young people who, you know, believe this,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t do their own research.”
Since the start of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton has moved strikingly to the left on climate issues, including opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, offshore drilling and, indeed, most forms of fracking, a drilling technique also known as hydraulic fracturing.
In a debate last month in Flint, Mich., she said she would severely regulate fracking.
“By the time we get through all of my conditions,” she said, “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”
But Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, had a snappy retort: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”
The absolutism of Mr. Sanders’s position on this and other climate issues — as well as the fact that Mrs. Clinton arrived at her views under pressure from the left — has made many activists mistrustful of her and supportive of Mr. Sanders.
Alarmed by reports of potentially catastrophic polar ice melting and other disruptions, many environmentalists believe only a rapid transition to renewable energy is acceptable.
“We’re in the middle of a climate emergency, and have to keep all the fossil fuels in the ground,” said Sandra Steingraber, a scholar in residence at Ithaca College and an activist who supports Mr. Sanders. “Hillary Clinton has definitely shifted her positions. Whether she shifts them again should she become the Democratic candidate in a general election and softens them, that’s the question I hear people wondering about.”
As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton pioneered a program to promote fracking around the world, as a way to encourage the use of cleaner-burning natural gas and to reduce Russia’s political leverage from its huge gas resources.
Fracking involves pumping water and chemicals deep in the ground under high pressure to blast rock and release gas or oil. The technology unleashed a United States energy boom beginning a decade ago, including the conversion of many coal-fired power plants to cheaper — and cleaner — gas.
Natural gas provides 33 percent of the nation’s electricity, up from 18 percent in 2005, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
Mr. Obama has championed natural gas as crucial to his Clean Power Plan, seeking to cut by a third greenhouse emissions used to generate electricity by 2030.
Many energy analysts say that an outright ban on fracking, before wind and solar power are feasible at scale, will drive the country back to coal.
“Why not use a relatively clean fuel that’s low cost until it’s not needed,” said Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.
He said Mr. Sanders’s call for an outright fracking ban, and Mrs. Clinton’s support for regulations so tough drilling would largely cease, were both unrealistic because most fracking is regulated by states, not Washington.
Mrs. Clinton’s step back from fracking is just one of several reversals on energy and environmental issues she has made since coming under pressure from progressives. Her decision to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline came in September, after she had avoided the issue repeatedly over the summer.
Her position on offshore drilling has also evolved. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was asked to comment on an Interior Department proposal to expand offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean and in the Gulf of Mexico. In a January 2012 letter, provided to The New York Times by the Republican National Committee, she wrote to the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, that the State Department had no comments to offer on the plan.
Now, as a presidential candidate, she has been a vocal opponent of offshore drilling. Last year, after the Obama administration moved forward with plans on new drilling in the Arctic and off the southeastern Atlantic coast, Mrs. Clinton came out against the plans, a move that was seen as an effort to court the progressive wing of her party.
The spat between the two campaigns over donations from the oil and gas industry, which quickly overheated last week, came as polls have tightened in New York, which Mrs. Clinton once led by a large margin.
On Friday, Mr. Sanders demanded that Mrs. Clinton apologize for accusing his campaign of lying by saying she took large sums from fossil fuel donors.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Clinton campaign has received about $308,000 from individuals who work for oil and gas companies, less than 1 percent of her total donations.
The Sanders campaign points to a Greenpeace analysis claiming that in addition, oil and gas lobbyists directed more than $4.5 million to her campaign and to a “super PAC” supporting her.
But the lobbyists represent numerous industries, not just oil and gas, and the suggestion of a quid pro quo is shaky: Mrs. Clinton has pledged to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to pay for her ambitious climate plan.
Although fracking and other climate issues may sway primary voters in New York, they seem less likely to in the next delegate-rich state to vote, Pennsylvania, which has a large fracking industry developed under former Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat. Last month in Ohio, which has also benefited from the energy boom, Mrs. Clinton easily defeated Mr. Sanders
Republican candidates have promised to make Democrats’ tough stands against fossil fuels an issue in November. Donald J. Trump has said he can win New York as the Republican nominee because of the economic cost of the fracking ban, which he opposes. Last month he said that thanks to fracking, people across the border in Pennsylvania drove around in Cadillacs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-climate-change.html
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Meet the Man Who Showed Fracking Contaminates Water
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan
Former EPA scientist Dominic DiGiulio never gave up.
Eight years ago, people in Pavillion, Wyo., living in the middle of a natural gas basin, complained of a bad taste and smell in their drinking water. U.S. EPA launched an inquiry, helmed by DiGiulio, and preliminary testing suggested that the groundwater contained toxic chemicals.
Then, in 2013, the agency suddenly transferred the investigation to state regulators without publishing a final report.
Now, DiGiulio has done it for them.
He published a comprehensive, peer-reviewed study last week in Environmental Science and Technology that suggests that people's water wells in Pavillion were contaminated with fracking wastes that are typically stored in unlined pits dug into the ground.
The study also suggests that the entire groundwater resource in the Wind River Basin is contaminated with chemicals linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
This production technique, which involves cracking shale rock deep underground to extract oil and gas, is popular in the United States. It's also controversial. There are thousands of wells across the American West and in California that are vulnerable to the kind of threat documented in the study, DiGiulio said. He is now a research scholar at Stanford University.
"We showed that groundwater contamination occurred as a result of hydraulic fracturing," DiGiulio said in an interview. "It contaminated the Wind River formation."
The findings underscore the tension at the heart of the Obama administration's climate change policy, which is based on replacing many coal-fired power plants with facilities that burn cleaner natural gas.
That reliance on natural gas has sometimes blinded agencies to local pollution and health impacts associated with the resource, said Rob Jackson, an earth scientist at Stanford and co-author of the study. In 2015, EPA said in a controversial draft study that hydraulic fracturing has not had "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States" (Greenwire, June 4, 2015).
"The national office of EPA has tended to downplay concerns of their own investigators, in part because the Obama administration has promoted natural gas," Jackson said. "Natural gas is here to stay. It behooves us to make it as safe and environmentally friendly as possible."
EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said the agency hasn't yet finalized its assessment that natural gas has no "widespread, systemic impacts." As part of that process, the agency will evaluate all recent research, including DiGiulio's study, she said.
Encana Corp., the company that operated in the Pavillion basin, said repeated testing has shown people's water wells are safe for consumption.
"After numerous rounds of testing by both the state of Wyoming and EPA, there is no evidence that the water quality in domestic wells in the Pavillion Field has changed as a result of oil and gas operations; no oil and gas constituents were found to exceed drinking water standards in any samples taken," said Doug Hock, an Encana spokesman.
Labs can't see fracking chemicals
Water testing began in 2009 when the local EPA office responded to complaints from residents. EPA headquarters, and DiGiulio, got involved in January 2010.
"Conducting a groundwater investigation related to fracking is extremely complicated," DiGiulio said. "It is difficult because a lot of the compounds used for hydraulic fracturing are not commonly analyzed for in commercial labs."
These labs were originally set up for the Superfund program, under which EPA cleans up the most contaminated sites in the nation. They are great at detecting chemicals found at Superfund sites but not as good at detecting chemicals used in fracking, DiGiulio said.
"You have some of these very water-soluble exotic compounds in hydraulic fracturing, which were not amenable to routine lab-type analysis," he said.
One such chemical was methanol. The simplest alcohol, it can trigger permanent nerve damage and blindness in humans when consumed in sufficient quantities. It was used in fracking in Pavillion as workers pumped thousands of gallons of water and chemicals at high pressure into the wells they were drilling. About 10 percent of the mixture contained methanol, DiGiulio said.
So the presence of methanol in the Pavillion aquifer would indicate that fracking fluid may have contaminated it. But methanol degrades rapidly and is reduced within days to trace amounts. Commercial labs did not have the protocol to detect such small traces, so DiGiulio and his colleagues devised new procedures, using high-performance liquid chromatography, to detect it. They devised techniques for detecting other chemicals, as well.
By then, Pavillion was roiling in controversy as EPA and residents collided with industry. EPA had drilled two monitoring wells, MW01 and MW02, in 2011, and its testing had found benzene, diesel and other toxic chemicals. But these results were contested by oil and gas industry representatives, who criticized EPA's sampling techniques (EnergyWire, Oct. 12, 2012). They pointed to a technical disagreement between EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey on the best methods to cast doubt on EPA's overall findings.
EPA realized it needed a consensus on its water testing methodology. In February 2012, it assembled a technical team from the USGS, Wyoming state regulators and tribal representatives from the Wind River Indian Reservation. They retested the monitoring wells in April 2012.
This time, they also tested for methanol. But EPA never released those results to the public. In 2013, the agency backed out of its investigation in Pavillion, handing it over to state regulators, who moved forward using a $1.5 million grant from Encana (EnergyWire, June 21, 2013). DiGiulio said the decision had come from EPA's senior management.
Methanol, diesel and salt
Industry representatives repeatedly pointed out that EPA had not published a peer-reviewed study on its findings.
"If the EPA had any confidence in its draft report, which has been intensely criticized by state regulators and other federal agencies, it would proceed with the peer review process," Steve Everley, a spokesman for Energy in Depth, an industry group, said at the time. "But it's not, which says pretty clearly that the agency is finally acknowledging the severity of those flaws and leaning once again on the expertise of state regulators."
In December 2015, state regulators published a draft of their findings. It stated that fracking had not contributed to pollution in Pavillion, according to the Casper Star Tribune. The report said the groundwater is generally suitable for people to use.
When DiGiulio retired from EPA in 2014, he trained his sights on Pavillion. He felt he had to finish his work.
"EPA had basically handed the case over and a peer-reviewed document was never finalized," he said. "If it is not in the peer-reviewed literature, then it presents a problem with credibility in terms of findings. It is important that the work be seen by other scientists and enter the peer review realm so that other scientists will have access to virtually everything."
Since 2012, a trove of new data had accumulated from USGS, EPA and state regulators. He obtained EPA's methanol testing results through a Freedom of Information Act request and downloaded the rest of the information from the Wyoming oil and gas regulator's website. All of it was publicly available, waiting for the right person to spend a year crunching the information.
The end result: a peer-reviewed study that reaffirms EPA's findings that there was something suspicious going on in Pavillion. More research is needed.
The sampling wells contained methanol. They also contained high levels of diesel compounds, suggesting they may have been contaminated by open pits where operators had stored chemicals, DiGiulio said.
The deep groundwater in the region contained high levels of salt and anomalous ions that are found in fracking fluid, DiGiulio said. The chemical composition suggests that fracking fluids may have migrated directly into the aquifer through fractures, he said.
Encana had drilled shallow wells at Pavillion, at depths of less than 2,000 feet and within reach of the aquifer zone, said Jackson of Stanford University.
"The shallow hydraulic fracturing is a potential problem because you don't need a problem with well integrity to have chemicals migrate into drinking water," he said.
The study also shows that there is a strong upward flow of groundwater in the basin, which means contamination that is deep underground could migrate closer to the surface over time.
"Right now, we are saying the data suggests impacts, which is a different statement than a definitive impact," DiGiulio said. "We are saying the dots need to be connected here, monitoring wells need to be installed."
Shallow wells are prevalent
EPA came to the same conclusion in a blistering response last week to Wyoming's draft findings.
"Many of our recommendations suggest that important information gaps be filled to better support conclusions drawn in the report, and that uncertainties and data gaps be discussed in the report," said Valentine, the EPA spokeswoman.
The state had tested people's water wells and detected 19 concerning chemicals. But regulators had concluded that only two chemicals exceeded safe limits and the water could be used for domestic purposes. EPA disagreed. Nearly half the 19 chemicals are unstudied, and scientists do not know the safe level of exposure, EPA stated.
Keith Guille, spokesman for Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality, declined to comment on DiGiulio's study and on EPA's response to the state's draft report. The state is finalizing its findings and has its eyes set on the future, he said.
"We are not done yet," Guille said.
Energy in Depth, the industry group that had earlier criticized EPA for not publishing a peer-reviewed study, said that DiGiulio's study is "a rehash of EPA's old, discredited data by the very researcher who wrote EPA's original report."
Jackson stressed that the contamination seen at Pavillion could occur in other states where, according to a study published last year in Environmental Science & Technology on which he was the lead author, fracking sometimes occurs at shallow depths. That includes the Rocky Mountain region, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana and California. At present, no state has restrictions on how shallowly a company can frack, he said.
"Shallow hydraulic fracturing is surprisingly common, especially in the western U.S.," Jackson said. "Here in California, half of the wells are fracked shallower than about 2,000 feet."
Given the threat, fracking deserves much greater scrutiny than it has so far received from the Obama administration, said Hugh MacMillan, a scientist with the environmental group Food and Water Watch.
"Communities have never argued that every well goes bad; they've argued that when you drill and [are] fracking thousands, too many go bad," he said. "For those living on groundwater, it becomes a matter of luck, and that's not right, because over years, more and more people's luck runs out."
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/04/04/stories/1060035010
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Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
Some world leaders, especially in developing countries like India, have long said it’s hard to reduce the emissions that are warming the planet because they need to use relatively inexpensive — but highly carbon-intensive — fuels like coal to keep energy affordable. That argument is losing its salience as the cost of renewable energy sources like wind and solar continue to fall.
Last year, for the first time, renewables accounted for a majority of new electricity-generating capacity added around the world, according to a recent United Nations report. More than half the $286 billion invested in wind, solar and other renewables occurred in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil — also for the first time. Excluding large hydroelectric plants, 10.3 percent of all electricity generated globally in 2015 came from renewables, roughly double the amount in 2007, according to the report.
The average global cost of generating electricity from solar panels fell 61 percent between 2009 and 2015 and 14 percent for land-based wind turbines. In sunny parts of the world like India and Dubai, developers of solar farms have recently offered to sell electricity for less than half the global average price. In November, the accounting firm KPMG predicted that by 2020 solar energy in India could be 10 percent cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.
These are all hopeful signs. They suggest that reductions in carbon emissions can be achieved more quickly and more cheaply than widely believed. And they provide hope that nations will be able to achieve the ambitious goals they set for themselves at last December’s climate summit meeting in Paris — to keep warming below the threshold beyond which the world will be locked into a future of devastating consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages and more destructive storms.
Replacing coal-fired plants or avoiding new ones will have major health benefits as well, especially in heavily polluted cities in China and India where ground-level pollutants like soot and smog make the simple act of breathing a major undertaking. Those benefits will be even greater as gasoline-powered cars are replaced with electric vehicles that draw power from wind and solar farms.
Formidable obstacles to the cleaner energy future envisioned in Paris remain. One is technological: Batteries capable of storing energy for use when the sun is not shining and the wind isn’t blowing are still quite expensive, though their costs are falling. Another is financial: Despite increased private investment in renewables, the United States and other industrialized countries have not lived upto their pledge at the Copenhagen conference in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year to underwrite climate projects in poorer countries. Negotiators in Paris gave themselves until 2025 to come up with a new financing goal.
A third obstacle is political. It’s clear that imposing a price on fossil fuels would encourage investment in cleaner fuels. A carbon tax has cut emissions in British Columbia; India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasproposed doubling a tax on coal; China has promised a national emissions trading system. But carbon taxes remain a nonstarter in the United States.
The falling cost of renewables is a clear plus. The prospect of keeping energy affordable while saving the planet should inspire leaders to bolder action.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/opinion/a-renewable-energy-boom.html
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Natural Gas Plants Running at a Fast Clip, EIA Says
Apr 4, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
The evidence of natural gas’s rise over coal as the fuel of choice on the nation’s power grid continues to pile up.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Monday that for the first time on record last year the capacity factor of natural gas plants – the percentage of a plant’s total potential electrical output that is actually generated and put onto the grid – beat out that of coal plants. U.S. natural gas plants ran at a capacity factor of 56 percent, compared to 55 percent that of coal.
The numbers illuminate a dramatic shift away from coal in recent years, as gas and renewable energy sources like solar and wind take an increasingly larger share of the grid.
In 2005 coal plants ran at capacity factors of close to 70 percent, while gas plants were running at less than 40 percent on average, according to EIA.
But the huge surge in natural gas production across Texas, Pennsylvania and other states has flooded the market, forcing down prices and making gas a more attractive option for power companies. Not only is gas plant construction surging, coal plants are retiring at a fast clip – 80 percent of all plant retirements last year were coal.
At the same time, EIA said, utilities are shifting to combined-cycle gas plants that uses both gas and steam to generate electricity, producing up to 50 percent more electricity from the same amount of fuel.
Those have been running longer hours than traditional gas plants, pushing out coal plants that have traditionally served as what electrical engineers like to call base-load demand – the steady flow of electricity needed late and night and early in the morning when human activity is at its lowest.
“When natural gas prices exceeded coal prices by a large margin, as was typically the case over the 2005-08 period, electricity systems where both natural gas-fired combined-cycle and coal-fired power plants were available to serve load would typically run combined-cycle units only after making maximum use of available coal-fired generation,” the EIA report reads. “As natural gas prices have declined, power plant operators have found it more economical to run combined-cycle units at higher levels.”
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/04/04/natural-gas-plants-running-at-a-fast-clip-eia-says/
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Could There Be a Terrorist Fukushima?
Apr 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Graham Allison and William H. Tobey
The attacks in Brussels last month were a stark reminder of the terrorists’ resolve, and of our continued vulnerabilities, including in an area of paramount concern: nuclear security.
The attackers struck an airport and the subway, but some Belgian investigators believe they seemed to have fallen back on those targets because they felt the authorities closing in on them, and that their original plan may have been to strike a nuclear plant. A few months ago, during a raid in the apartment of a suspect linked to the November attacks in Paris, investigators found surveillance footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official. Belgian police are said to have connected two of the Brussels terrorists to that footage.
Security at Belgium’s nuclear sites is notoriously poor. In August 2014, someone — as yet unidentified — drained 65,000 liters of lubricant from the turbine used to produce electricity at the country’s Doel 4 nuclear power plant. No penetration was detected, leading investigators to suspect an inside job.
In 2012, two workers at the same plant reportedly left Belgium to fight in Syria, eventually joining the Islamic State. One of them is believed to have died in Syria; the other was convicted of terrorism-related crimes after returning to Belgium.
Yet still too little is being done to secure nuclear plants. That goes not only for Belgium: Nuclear facilities throughout the world remain vulnerable.
During the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last week, more than 50 leaders announced that significant amounts of highly enriched uranium had been moved from various countries to secure storage sites and that a key nuclear-security treaty would be strengthened. But the improved version of that treaty is inadequate: It doesn’t even call for arming the guards who look after bomb-grade nuclear material.
Discussions about nuclear terrorism also tend to focus on the risk of terrorists stealing weapons-grade material or making a dirty bomb. But they often overlook the danger of terrorists attacking a nuclear plant in order to set off a Chernobyl- or Fukushima-like disaster.
That risk is real, however, and has been known for a while. The master planner of the 9/11 attacks had considered crashing a jumbo jet into a nuclear facility near New York City. A Qaeda training manual lists nuclear plants as among the best targets for spreading fear in the United States.
Striking a nuclear plant or the cooling ponds in which nuclear waste is stored wouldn’t set off a mushroom cloud or kill hundreds of thousands of people. But it would spew large amounts of radiation, spark a mass panic and render vast swaths of land uninhabitable. And it could cause thousands of early deaths from cancer.
More than one in three Americans lives within 50 miles of the 99 nuclear reactors operating in the United States today. There are more than 300 other nuclear reactors producing electricity in 30 other countries.
Nuclear plants have built-in safety mechanisms, typically multiple systems that are unlikely to fail simultaneously: If one of them malfunctions, there’s always a backup, the theory goes. But redundancy is effective protection only against accidents, not against terrorists who set out to cause simultaneous system failures. For example, by targeting power and water supplies at the same time, attackers could cause a reactor to melt down or a cooling pond to ignite.
After the catastrophe at Fukushima, safety measures were bolstered at nuclear plants worldwide: More emergency equipment was put on standby, and measures for venting explosive hydrogen gas were improved. But conspicuous gaps remain in security, even in countries like Japan, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, which have major nuclear facilities and also have suffered serious acts of terrorism in the past. President Vladimir V. Putin didn’t even attend last week’s summit.
The first measure must be to combat complacency. Incredibly, it took the November attacks in Paris for Belgium to finally arm guards at its nuclear power plants. Even more incredibly, it took the Brussels attack last month for Belgian authorities to review the personnel records of employees at nuclear sites — and determine that about a dozen workers should have had their credentials revoked on security grounds.
At a minimum, armed guards should be required at all sites that hold weapons-grade material or enough low-enriched fuel to cause a major release of radioactivity. And all employees at nuclear plants should be thoroughly vetted before they are employed.
The United States can leverage its leadership in the international commerce of nuclear material and technology to improve security at nuclear plants in other countries. United States law already requires that nuclear material originating in that country be adequately protected when it is exported and while it is abroad.
Washington could also require a credible assessment of local terrorist threats, protective measures like arming guards at host facilities, regular exercises simulating armed attacks to test the plants’ security systems, and independent oversight.
Current United States laws and regulations prohibit American intelligence and policy officials from sharing classified assessments of terrorists’ intentions and capabilities with many governments. Even Japan, one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear power and a close United States ally, cannot access this information. That must change.
And the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, a voluntary network of 86 states and five international organizations, can help build capacity in this area by encouraging its members to share intelligence and best security practices.
Terrorists have their eyes on nuclear plants. So must we.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/opinion/could-there-be-a-terrorist-fukushima.html
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Fracking Attack Shows Breadth of Industrial Threats
Apr 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The hackers worked for a "state-affiliated actor in the Middle East -- a country that does a lot of oil sales," according to a lead investigator at Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
Their target? Factory-floor computers that doled out ingredients for chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, which pumps millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to break apart rock and release trapped fossil fuels, has unlocked millions of barrels of new crude production across North America in recent years.
The attackers weren't out to steal secret information about the technique, such as the victim chemical provider's recipe for fracking fluid. Instead, they "changed the ratios inside the production systems for those chemicals that were going to the oil fields for fracking," said Dave Ostertag, a lead investigator at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, which provides cybersecurity services for many Fortune 500 companies.
"More and more, we're seeing these types of systems being targeted -- most of the time through activist groups or state-affiliated groups," Ostertag said. "It's probably happening more than a lot of people realize."
Verizon documented a similar case in its latest data breach digest, in which hackers tweaked chemical levels at a water utility. The pseudonymous Kemuri Water Co.'s control systems were connected to the Internet, allowing hackers to "interface with the water district's valve and flow control application," according to Verizon.
The digital assailants tried to change the concentration of chemicals that made water in the area safe to drink, without success. "The threat actors modified application settings with little apparent knowledge of how the flow control system worked," Verizon noted in the report. "KWC was able to quickly identify and reverse the chemical and flow changes, largely minimizing the impact on customers."
Ostertag said the "Kemuri Water Co." incident was really a compilation of several control system cases that his company worked on last year. He said the investigations were stitched together to help preserve the victim companies' anonymity. He also declined to elaborate on the attack on the fracking chemical producer for fear of revealing the Verizon customer's identity but stressed that "they're all real-life situations."
Verizon's cases fit into a recent pattern of online attacks against the industrial control systems that manage everything from water utilities to the power grid. The Department of Homeland Security has reported an uptick in the percentage of cyberattacks that make it all the way into the operational networks of critical infrastructure companies, even as the total number of reported incidents fell between 2014 and 2015.
Late last month, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against an alleged Iranian hacker accused of breaking into the control network of a small dam near Rye, N.Y. While nothing was actually harmed during the attack, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a news conference last month that "the threat to our infrastructure, as demonstrated by this attempted attack on the Bowman Dam, is of great concern to us."
Lynch added that the administration would "remain vigilant" for attacks "against not just dams, but all of our infrastructure."Water and power
The Verizon and Bowman Dam cases offer important real-world examples of what has up until now been a largely theoretical threat, according to Michael Arceneaux, managing director of the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The nonprofit WaterISAC oversees a secure portal for disseminating the latest online threats and vulnerabilities for the U.S. water and wastewater sectors.
"What Verizon described is somewhat of a perfect storm, but certainly the things that they reported on are plausible," Arceneaux said, calling the data breach digest "a wakeup call."
Still, he emphasized that the case study summarized problems uncovered during several investigations. "I've never heard of such a poorly defended water system," he said.
Arceneaux pointed out that water utilities have some "built-in resiliency" to cyberattacks due to their ability to run the system manually in an emergency.
Electric utility executives have also said their industry would be able to fall back on old-fashioned operational techniques to keep the lights on during a cyberattack. The similarities with water control systems don't end there, either, according to Arceneaux.
"Water utilities may be a less interesting target because the effects may not be as dramatic as a power outage," he said. "But otherwise we have to worry about the same types of equipment, both on the enterprise side and the control system side."
Barak Perelman, CEO and co-founder of Israeli industrial control system cybersecurity startup Indegy, works with both types of utilities. He welcomed the U.S. government's decision to bring charges against Iranian hackers, even if there's little chance they'll be apprehended.
"The fact that [the Justice Department] chose to bring this public does a great deal to help everyone understand that this is a real issue that needs to be taken care of yesterday," he said.
Perelman hopes the steady trickle of documented attacks on control networks will help turn heads in American boardrooms.
"Many times we are asked to give examples of incidents that happened in the U.S., because that's what will justify the budget for [industrial control systems] security products -- and there are not many published events like that," he said, adding that "U.S. facilities tend to disregard events outside the U.S."
Late last year, a first-of-its-kind cyberattack that knocked out power to 250,000 people in Ukraine drew a collective shrug from the U.S. bulk electricity industry. While several grid authorities traveled to Eastern Europe in the wake of the attack to learn about what happened, leaders at both the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council have said there is no evidence the hackers who hit Ukraine pose a major threat to U.S. infrastructure.
The lack of loud alarm bells isn't so unreasonable, according to Ostertag of Verizon. "There's an increased number of [attacks], but it's not like we're seeing an avalanche of these types of incidents" in control systems, he said. "I want people to understand that this is not something you need to stay awake at night in fear of. ... It's just another part of living in today's connected world."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/04/04/stories/1060035002
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FRA Announces $25 million for PTC Implementation
Apr 4, 2016 | Railway Age
By Carolina Worrell
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on April 4, 2016 announced that it is accepting applications for $25 million in competitive grant funding available to railroads, suppliers, and state and local governments for Positive Train Control (PTC) implementation. The funding is part of the 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act that funds the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Applications will be accepted until May 19, 2016, and FRA will give preference to projects that would provide the greatest level of public safety benefits. As part of the President’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget proposal, FRA requested $1.25 billion to assist commuter and short line railroads with implementing PTC.
PTC prevents certain train-to-train collisions, over-speed derailments, incursions into established work zone limits, and trains going to the wrong tracks because a switch was left in the wrong position. In 2008, Congress mandated PTC implementation on certain railroad main lines where railroads transport poisonous-by-inhalation hazardous (PIH) or toxic-by-inhalation hazardous (TIH) materials, or any line where a railroad provides regularly scheduled passenger service. Last October, Congress extended the original deadline from Dec. 31, 2015 to at least Dec. 31, 2018.
“Any Congressional funding and investment to make Positive Train Control active on our nation’s railroad network is a worthwhile investment,” said FRA Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg. “But it will take even more significant funding to achieve this important, life-saving goal. We look forward to working with Congress to find these resources and encourage railroads to submit strong applications.”
Since 2008, FRA has provided significant assistance to support railroads’ PTC implementation. Those efforts include:
• Providing more than $650 million in grant funds to passenger railroads, including nearly $400 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding;
• Issuing a nearly $1 billion loan to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority to implement PTC on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad;
• Building a PTC tested at the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado;
• Working directly with the Federal Communications Commission and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to resolve issues related to spectrum use and improve the approval process for PTC communication towers; and
• Dedicating staff to work on PTC implementation, including establishing a PTC task force.
“Positive train control is a long overdue technology that prevents accidents and saves lives,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “These funds will help us get closer to implementing PTC, and I encourage applications that can make these limited dollars go as far as possible.”
Click HERE to view a list of when railroads predict that they will achieve full PTC implementation.
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/ptc/fra-announces-dol25-million-for-ptc-implementation.html
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TransCanada Says Keystone Leaked Oil in South Dakota, Sees No Significant Damage
Apr 4, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
South Dakota state officials are confirming that oil leaked on Saturday from the Keystone pipeline, the predecessor of the now-defunct XL proposal to ship heavy oil through the Plains.
"The pipeline was immediately shut down by that point, obviously," South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Chairman Chris Nelson told South Dakota radio station WNAX.
Kim Smith, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources, confirmed that responders were called to the scene but could not offer an estimate on the volume of oil that was spilled.
TransCanada, the pipeline's operator, said in a statement that it "is in the process of removing the oil and investigating the source. No significant impact to the environment has been observed and our investigation continues. Landowners and local agencies in the area have been notified and we continue to work cooperatively with all parties."
Activists who worked to win President Barack Obama's November rejection of Keystone XL expressed immediate concern about the delay in notification of the incident.
"It's more than a little concerning that the spill happened two days ago, and the public is only now finding out," Sabrina King, an anti-pipeline organizer with Dakota Rural Action, said by email.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Climate Change Expected to Raise Public Health Risks
Apr 4, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Climate change is expected to exacerbate a host of public health risks for Americans over the next century, the White House concluded in a report released Monday.
The study found that, as the Earth warms, it will lead to an increase in air pollution and allergens, which will worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases. Hotter temperatures will lead to more premature deaths during the summer, earlier annual onset of Lyme disease in the eastern U.S. and threaten the safety of food from pathogens and toxins.
Vulnerable populations — low-income people, communities of color, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities, etc. — are more likely to be at risk, the report said.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Monday called the study the most thorough scientific breakdown of climate change’s impact on public health. Officials said it should raise the stakes for combating climate change.
“This document shows that the public health case for climate action is really compelling beyond words,” McCarthy said.
“This isn’t just about glaciers and polar bears. This is about the health of our families and our kids. To protect ourselves and future generations, we need to understand the health impacts of climate change that are already happening and those that we expect to see down the road.”
The study comes after three years of research from a host of Obama administration agencies, led by the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. It was mandated by President Obama’s climate action plan from 2013.
The report builds in carbon reduction measures that would achieve a 50 percent decrease in emissions by 2100 over current growth scenarios. Reaching even that mark, though, will require longer-term policy than those enshrined in either Obama’s climate agenda or the international emissions agreement reached in Paris in December.
“We will need a big encore under 2030 [when that agreement expires] in terms of further, deep cuts in order to avoid the bulk of the worst impacts described in this report,” said John Holdren, President Obama’s senior adviser on science and technology.
The study projects “hundreds to thousands” of new premature deaths, hospital admissions and acute respiratory illness cases every year due to new air pollution, as well as up to 11,000 premature deaths by 2030 because of high heat in the summer.
Warm weather — along with extreme precipitation events — will lead to more water-related illnesses and cause higher occurrences of pathogens in agriculture, the study found. People with underlying medical conditions are likely to see those become worse due to climate change.
“The science has told us that climate change poses a serious risk to human health and that is really the most important takeaway from this report,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said. “If we want to safeguard the health of future generations, we have to address climate change.”
The report will yield only a handful of minor policy changes immediately. A presidential task force on children health risks will now focus on the impacts of climate change, and officials will look to develop new education materials focusing on climate change and children’s health. The White House is also launching a program to help tribes prepare for the health impacts of climate change.
But, officials emphasized, the report is designed more as a scientific document than as the basis for new policy proposals. They said the study builds on previous health assessments of climate change released over the course of the Obama administration.
“When you think about what we need to do to safeguard the health of current and future generations, climate change needs to be on that list as a high priority,” Murthy said.
“Because if we do not act today to address climate change, my concern is that we are going to be seeing more illness, we’re going to be seeing more climate related deaths, and that’s not a future we need to or should accept.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/275079-climate-change-expected-to-make-raise-public-health-risks
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