Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report 05/07/16
-
‘Kind of a Miracle’ for Chemical Regulatory Reform
Jul 4, 2016 | Last Week Colorado
By Hannah Garcia
A new law that crossed the president’s desk last week gives a shot in the arm to federal regulators over toxic chemicals, a legislative update environmental groups have called four decades overdue. -
(ACC Mentioned) San Francisco Bans EPS Disposables / Most Comprehensive US Legislation / Medical Packaging Likely To Be Exempted / Step Toward City's Zero Waste To Landfill Plan
Jul 5, 2016 | Plast Europe
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has passed a law banning the use of disposable polystyrene foam products, which it claims is the most comprehensive in the US. -
US Study Links BPA Levels To Canned Foods
Jul 5, 2016 | Chemical Watch
US researchers have estimated levels of urinary BPA resulting from canned food consumption, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (Nhanes). -
EPA Rule Transforming Job of Regulators -- NARUC President
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Elizabeth Harball and Rod Kuckro
The leader of the nation's association for state utility regulators last week said U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan could forever alter his job description -- and he's not happy with the idea. -
House Preps For Interior-EPA Bill
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
The House this week will prepare to debate its fiscal 2017 spending bill for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA. -
5 Train Cars Derail in Texas, Spilling Chemical, Injuring 2
Jul 5, 2016 | AP (In The Boston Globe)
Five train cars overturned outside of San Antonio, spilling about 1,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide and prompting a temporary evacuation, officials said. -
The Scary Truth About "Bomb Trains" Moving Through Your Town
Jul 4, 2016 | National Observer
By Elizabeth McSheffrey
Mosier Fire Chief Jim Appleton vividly remembers the moment he first laid eyes on the blaze from 16 derailed train cars running right through the middle of his small Oregon town early last month. -
House Lawmakers Ready Fire Against Climate Spending
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
The House State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee will vote on a fiscal 2017 spending plan that would bar the United States from contributing any money to the Green Climate Fund.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News
Environment News
-
‘Kind of a Miracle’ for Chemical Regulatory Reform
Jul 4, 2016 | Last Week Colorado
By Hannah Garcia
A new law that crossed the president’s desk last week gives a shot in the arm to federal regulators over toxic chemicals, a legislative update environmental groups have called four decades overdue.
On June 22, President Barack Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which amends the Toxic Control Substances Act of 1976, after it passed Congress with the uncommon feat of bipartisan support earlier this month. The bill is the first time the TSCA’s main provisions have been amended since its original passage and gives the Environmental Protection agency expanded oversight and compliance measures over a litany of chemicals found in almost every U.S. home, from detergents to clothing to cars.
Among other changes, the Lautenberg bill bolsters the EPA’s ability to regulate new and existing chemicals on the market through mandated safety reviews, updates the safety standard from a cost-benefit analysis to a health-based assessment and limits companies’ ability to claim confidentiality in chemical information.
Referencing the political polarization that seems monumental compared to any other time in modern U.S. history, Obama said before signing the bill that “things can work” despite the current climate and predicted the ability to “make politics less toxic as well” in the future.
http://www.lawweekonline.com/2016/07/kind-of-a-miracle-for-chemical-regulatory-reform/
-
Jul 5, 2016 | Plast Europe
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has passed a law banning the use of disposable polystyrene foam products, which it claims is the most comprehensive in the US. Due to go into effect on 1 January 2017, it will apply to throwaway food containers and other EPS based products or packaging sold or handed out by retailers. The list includes packing peanuts, take-away containers, coffee cups, egg cartons, ice chests, foam dock floatings, mooring buoys, and pool toys. The legislation provides for other exemptions if deemed necessary, and the city has already signalled that insulation foam, in particular for medical packaging, will be exempted. An extension until mid-2017 will be granted for phasing out foam meat trays.
The board’s president, London Breed, said the legislation, which represents another step toward San Francisco’s goal of zero waste to landfill by 2020, strikes “the right balance between small business and protecting the environment.” California, and especially San Francisco, has traditionally led the US in environmental legislation. In 2007, the city banned the use of plastic carrier bags unless they were certified as biodegradable and recyclable, as well as containers for prepared food taken away from restaurants. The then-rules mandated that compostable or recyclable disposable food service ware or to-go containers be substituted in the absence of any suitable product priced within 15% of the cost of non-compostable or non-recyclable alternatives. The latest regulations extend the ban to food packaging used in retail outlets.
New York City temporarily banned polystyrene products in 2015, but the ban – which was vehemently opposed by the recycling industry and restaurant owners – was overturned by the state supreme court the same year in favour of a recycling scheme proposed by Dart Container (Mason, Michigan / USA; www.dartcontainer.com) and PS specialist Plastics Recycling Inc (PRI, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; www.plastic-recycling.net). Together, the companies pledged to recover 90% of the city’s foam waste estimated at 30,000 t/y – see Plasteurope.com of 28.09.2015 – and guaranteed the city sanitation department a price of USD 160/t. In overturning the legislation, Justice Margaret A. Chan said, “single-serve EPS is recyclable.” The city appealed the decision to the court’s appellate chamber but lost its case in December 2015. Officials must now draw up a new proposal for dealing with the waste that would include recycling.
Commenting on the new San Francisco rules, the American Chemistry Council (ACC, Washington DC;www.americanchemistry.com), which had opposed the move, said that due to its lighter weight polystyrene helps protect the environment by reducing carbon emissions during transportation. It urged the city to reconsider the requirement to substitute biodegradable packaging for EPS, saying that “all packaging leaves an environmental footprint.” In this context, Samantha Sommer, a project manager with advocacy group Clean Water Action California (Oakland; www.cleanwateraction.org/states/california) called for a ban on all single-trip packaging. “Compostables are not the silver bullet,” she said. “Even biodegradables come from resources; it takes resources to produce, it produces energy and water emissions throughout its life cycle, and then becomes difficult to manage.”https://www.plasteurope.com/news/PLASTICS_AND_ENVIRONMENT_t234459/
-
US Study Links BPA Levels To Canned Foods
Jul 5, 2016 | Chemical Watch
US researchers have estimated levels of urinary BPA resulting from canned food consumption, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (Nhanes).
Led by Jennifer Hartle from Stanford University School of Medicine, researchers evaluated data on over 7,000 Nhanes participants, linking urinary data to reported canned food consumption. Their analysis revealed that those who had eaten canned food in the 24 hours before providing a urine sample had higher levels of BPA.
For example, those consuming two or more canned food items had urinary BPA concentrations over 50% higher than those who had not eaten any.
The researchers then separated the data into different types of canned food. Soup appeared to give the highest urinary BPA levels, followed by canned pasta and fruit and vegetables.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48404/us-study-links-bpa-levels-to-canned-foods
-
EPA Rule Transforming Job of Regulators -- NARUC President
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Elizabeth Harball and Rod Kuckro
The leader of the nation's association for state utility regulators last week said U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan could forever alter his job description -- and he's not happy with the idea.
"Regardless of what you think about a regulation like that, [the Clean Power Plan] is the premier example of the convergence of environmental regulation and utility economic regulation, and it really threatens to completely alter the latter forever," said National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners President Travis Kavulla.
Public utility commissioners are increasingly required to weigh competing and sometimes contradictory interests when they make decisions, Kavulla argued. They are already tasked with being economic regulators for their state power sectors, he noted: "An extremely hard thing to do."
"It becomes even more complicated when economic regulators are called upon to be safety regulators ... [and] it becomes even more difficult when we are called upon to be environmental regulators," said Kavulla, speaking at a lunch hosted by the Natural Gas Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
"Even if you support the underlying premise of what EPA and other regulatory agencies have done regarding environmental regulations, it's a real dilemma when they start layering on responsibilities to economic regulators that are in tension with one another," said Kavulla, who has been a frequent critic of the Clean Power Plan since it was finalized last August.
"It's absolute chaos on a job description like mine because frankly there is no common ground," Kavulla said.
Kavulla also said he had issues with environmental agencies becoming more involved with determining how states generate electricity as they seek to curb carbon emissions, arguing that these agencies are "usually less independent from their political system than utility commissioners."
He said, "You can have a situation where an environmental regulator essentially puts together a carbon integrated resource plan, ordaining the construction of this or that resource, dressed up in the angle of EPA regulatory compliance."
However, Kavulla noted that public utility regulators in different states don't see eye to eye on how to approach this issue.
"We see more and more a divergence between the states in terms of what the identity of their utility commission ought to be," Kavulla said.
He added, "States seem more different than ever in what they ask their utility commissions to do, and I think we have a lot of thinking to do about what it is that utility commissioners should be asked to be responsible for."
Tomorrow in Washington, D.C., Kavulla and EPA air chief Janet McCabe testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee for a hearing to review the agency's energy and industry regulations.
The heads of the North Dakota Industrial Commission and Texas Railroad Commission will appear, as well as the director of Rice University's Energy and Environment Initiative and the president of Public Citizen.In case you missed itU.S. EPA opened a 60-day comment period on its proposed voluntary program to give states and tribes credit for taking early action under the Clean Power Plan (Greenwire, June 29).Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) issued an executive order to form a working group to study how to rein in emissions from power plants (ClimateWire, June 29).The United States, Mexico and Canada made a joint pledge to draw half of North America's power from non-carbon-emitting sources by 2025 (ClimateWire, June 28).The Southeast runs the risk of increasing carbon emissions while trying to comply with the Clean Power Plan if states add natural gas generation to meet demand without offsetting it with renewables and energy efficiency, according to a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology (EnergyWire, June 28).
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060039777
-
House Preps For Interior-EPA Bill
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
The House this week will prepare to debate its fiscal 2017 spending bill for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA.
Lawmakers will have until Thursday midmorning to submit amendments to the $32.1 billion funding measure, Rules Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) announced Friday. Floor votes on amendments and final passage will likely occur next week.
EPA would receive $7.98 billion in fiscal 2017, about $164 million less than the agency's current funding level and well below President Obama's request of $8.26 billion. Other agencies funded under the bill would see generally modest cuts or small increases.
The legislation contains dozens of policy riders aimed at curtailing the administration's regulatory agenda. Among the EPA policies it targets are carbon dioxide regulations for power plants, the agency's new ozone standard and the Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule.
The bill also has riders attacking proposals on conservation and lands management, including a proposed rule to curb the escape of natural gas from drilling operations on federal lands in the West.
The House Appropriations Committee approved the legislation on a party-line vote last month after rejecting attempts by Democrats to remove what they called "poison pill" policy riders.
The committee also added amendments affecting Interior efforts to protect the greater sage grouse, improve the management of public lands and regulate air pollution from offshore oil and natural gas operations (E&ENews PM, June 15).
Sessions said the Rules Committee planned to meet next week to take up a rule for debating the spending plan. The committee plans to grant a rule that provides for a structured amendment process for floor consideration.
The structured process is meant to avoid the scenario that occurred last year. The Interior-EPA spending plan made it to the floor, but House leaders pulled it after a fight over banning Confederate flags at certain federal sites.
Instead of allowing any member to offer an amendment to the bill, a process Republicans implemented when they took over the House, the Rules Committee will decide which amendments get votes.
"I am committed to a structured process that allows for ample debate," Sessions said, "while ensuring we can deliver to the American people the legislative solutions they deserve."
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/07/05/stories/1060039767
-
5 Train Cars Derail in Texas, Spilling Chemical, Injuring 2
Jul 5, 2016 | AP (In The Boston Globe)
Five train cars overturned outside of San Antonio, spilling about 1,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide and prompting a temporary evacuation, officials said.
Monica Ramos, Bexar County sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said the derailment happened around 4 p.m. Sunday in an industrial area southwest of the city.
Ramos said the sodium hydroxide didn’t cause fumes or residue. Two men inside a tug car that overturned suffered minor injuries and were treated on scene before being released. A nearby flea market was also temporarily evacuated.
Cleanup is underway of soil and vegetation contaminated by the chemical.
The rail line is privately owned by the oilfield services company Schlumberger. Ramos said the company is expected to pay for cleanup.
The company did not return a phone message Monday.
In a separate development, environmentalists in Vermont are planning a vigil this week to mark the third anniversary of the wreck of an oil train in Quebec that killed 47 people.
The group, 350-Vermont, said the July 6, 2013, accident in southeastern Quebec highlighted the dangers of the growing use of trains to ship crude oil.
The group will hold the event from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Burlington’s Battery Park, from which it says you can see across Lake Champlain to tracks on the New York side where oil trains travel regularly.
The Quebec accident occurred when an unattended freight train with 74 cars rolled down a grade from Nantes and derailed in the town of Lac-Mégantic. Several tank cars carrying Bakken Formation crude oil exploded.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/07/04/train-cars-derail-texas-spilling-chemical-injuring/dDHAEELQDiUd2Iw6RIAAuO/story.html
-
The Scary Truth About "Bomb Trains" Moving Through Your Town
Jul 4, 2016 | National Observer
By Elizabeth McSheffrey
Mosier Fire Chief Jim Appleton vividly remembers the moment he first laid eyes on the blaze from 16 derailed train cars running right through the middle of his small Oregon town early last month.
His first thought was “surreal,” and his second thought was the disaster at Lac-Mégantic, Que. in July 2013, which killed nearly 50 people.
Less than a kilometre east, the fire could have burned beneath Mosier’s modular homes, and in another 1.5 kilometres, it could have sent leaking oil tank cars to the bank of the Columbia River during the peak of the spring chinook salmon migration.
About 100 people were evacuated as the accident came within 230 metres of the Mosier Community School, and spilled tens of thousands of litres of crude into the ground and city sewer system.
It burned out of control for at least 18 hours.
“The terror that people felt was watching the upwind side of this line of cars burning,” Appleton recalled. “Just by sitting in their houses, without doing anything, they were being traumatized."
It’s a miracle no one was hurt, say experts, who today chalk the derailment's quick containment up to “luck.” But the Mosier incident and others like it have left many communities alarmed that North American regulators still haven't done enough to protect the public, three years after the Lac-Mégantic disaster. The people of Mosier are "canaries in the coal mine," Appleton explained, as thousands of trains carrying flammable oil rattle dangerously through American communities each and every day. The critics say it means that nearly 25 million Americans are in a bomb train zone with an oil-by-rail disaster in the making.
“Unit trains of oil are an unacceptable risk," Appleton said firmly. "That volume of hazard in one place is just insane."Oil train traffic "flirting with disaster"
Shortly after the incident, Oregon became the first state to call on federal regulators for a ban on oil trains within its state limits. An investigation into the derailment found that inspections and tests performed prior to the accident — measures in place to prevent such disaster — failed to detect the system failure that caused the railway to break apart.
It's proof that no matter how much risk is reduced, no method of transportation can ever be made “100 per cent safe," according to the nearby City of Portland. Its council recently passed resolutionsopposing the increase of crude oil-carrying trains in and around the city, and the expansion of any infrastructure whose primary purpose is transporting or storing fossil fuels in or or through Portland.
“We are flirting with disaster if we allow this to continue,” said Zach Klonoski, an environment and sustainability policy advisor to Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.
“You don’t have a solar spill when there’s an accident with solar power, and we’ve shown here in Portland that transitioning into clean renewable energy is the way to go. We believe that being in the business of continuing to invest in a fossil fuel economy is a loser long-term."
In short, as the three-year anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic disaster approaches on July 6 — all while oil by rail reaches record volumes in the U.S. — many American activists and communities are calling on elected officials to endorse a ban on oil trains across the country.Learning from Lac-Mégantic
The lessons began north of the border, on a night no one in the eastern Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic would ever forget. It was a warm, breezy evening at the Musi-Cafe, a popular local watering hole for friends, family, and couples.
But around 1 a.m. as patron Raymond Lafontaine tells it, the ground started shaking, the power went out, and the sky turned a violent shade of orange.
"It was my daughter’s birthday. They went to celebrate at Musi-Cafe," Lafontaine told the French-language newspaper, La Presse at the time of the devastating derailment. "That’s where the death train came down. A train filled with oil painted in black. It’s the death train.”
As the locomotive sped towards them, Lafontaine ran out of the bar. He was separated from his family in all the commotion.
"The reflex of my wife was to hide. Mine was to get out and it was the best decision of my life," he said.
Lafontaine and his wife survived, but he lost his son Gaétan, two daughters in law and an employee that night, in a historic derailment that killed 47 people, left 27 children orphaned, and poisoned the land and water with six million litres of spilled crude oil. More than 30 buildings were destroyed and despite the combined effort of 1,000 firefighters, the fire burned for two days.
It was a clarion call for international action to improve rail safety.
Modest, but arguably deficient safety measures have been put in place in Canada since then, but as the recently-failed inspections at the Mosier, Ore. derailment proved on June 3, no mode of transportation can ever be made "100 per cent safe." Oil trains are an issue primarily in Canada and the U.S., where developers are extracting oil in areas not served by pipelines.
It's a pressing issue particularly in U.S., where according to Stand, an environmental advocacy group, around 25 million Americans live in the blast zone of an accident with Lac-Mégantic-potential — a radius that includes nearly 750 schools in Washington and Oregon
“The grim reality is that we’re one tragic accident away from it being a major political issue,” said Stand campaigns director Ross Hammond. “What’s so frustrating for us is trying to get the attention of politicians in the absence of a catastrophic accident.”Not gaining enough national traction
Since 2008, oil train traffic in the U.S. has increased by more than 5,000 per cent — from 9,500 carloads of crude in 2008 to nearly half a million in 2014. Since 2013, at least 21 oil train derailmentsand accidents have spilled an estimated 7.1 million litres on American soil.
It’s a massive domestic security threat, said Hammond, yet for some reason, very few people beyond the Pacific Northwest are talking about it — at least on the level of national politics.
In Seattle last Friday, President Barack Obama gave a cryptic response to oil train protesters whointerrupted his speech with demands for a ban: "I gotcha, I heard ya. You made your point, but can I go on now?" he said, before adding, "I've still got six months. Give me a little time. We're going to use those six months."
Presumptive presidential Democratic and Republican candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have also kept relatively quiet on the issue so far. Clinton’s platform promises to make oil train companies more accountable for their actions and to phase out old cars and repair track defects. But it doesn't address the future of the dangerous risky method. On the other hand, Trump’s campaignappears to have said nothing about the topic at all.
Neither campaign returned calls for comment on this story, nor did their leaders issue a statement on the massive oil train derailment in Mosier, Ore. on June 3 (not even a tweet to thank first responders). It could have been an “unimaginable tragedy,” said Hammond, who called out presidents and presidential hopeful for failing to address a “major, major public safety hazard.”Backlash for bravery?
But it’s not surprising that leaders have been cautious, according to Ben Stuckart, city council president for Spokane, Wash., which has called for tighter state and federal regulations on oil by rail.
Oil trains are a ‘third rail’ political issue (an unfortunate pun) feared across the party lines, he explained, and to come out guns blazing against them is to appear anti-oil, anti-labour, anti-free trade, and anti-agriculture (an industry that relies on the same rail system). Yet to ignore them, he said, is to ignore the “bomb train” cries of communities within the blast zone.
“Some of the candidates’ topics have alienated a lot of people already so I don’t think they’re worried about it… I personally would call it cowardly.”
The City of Spokane is a funnel for North Dakota’s particularly flammable Bakken crude oil, and has joined dozens of Pacific Northwest communities demanding a range of action from further study on hazardous materials to a moratorium on oil trains. Oil terminal proposals (like the Tesoro Savage energy terminal in Vancouver, Wash.) threaten to increase train traffic in these communities, and according to a survey of major American cities in their path, many are already preparing for the worst with extra training for firefighters and hazmat teams.
Rather than address their concerns however, Carolyn Kissane, academic director, clinical associate professor, and director of Environment and Energy Concentration at the New York University Center for Global Affairs, postulated that national political leaders fear the same kind of public backlash that came from speaking for or against the Keystone XL pipeline.
“I think it’s the fact that if it’s not by rail, how is that oil going to moved?” she told National Observer. “The last thing I think a politician, especially one on the national stage, wants to say… is that we’re going to lock in production and basically eliminate transit routes.”
But just as the public has demanded information on the dangers of the contents in their food, it is now demanding more transparency and accountability from leaders about the dangers of transporting oil by rail. Given these concerns, she said, the topic should be addressed by candidates before the election in November.
Kari Cutting however, vice-president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, believes it’s only a matter of time before they do. She said Trump and Clinton are most likely waiting for the results of a joint U.S. Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration study on the flammability of domestic crude oil before issuing any firm statements.
“I think politicians are aware that major federal agencies don’t have the answer and are conducting studies to better look at it,” she explained. “I think it certainly would be a smart thing to say, ‘I'm not the expert in the field.’”
And despite bomb train rhetoric coming from its opponents, oil by rail can be done safely, she said.Oil trains can be made safe
Since 2012, the DOT has initiated nearly 30 actions aimed at strengthening safe transportation of flammable liquids by rail. Its final rule was announced in May last year, in conjunction with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and Canada’s federal Transport Department.
For trains containing a continuous block of 20 or more tank cars loaded with a flammable liquid, it included enhanced standards for new and existing tank cars, better braking to mitigate damage in derailments, reduced operating speeds, and more robust risk assessment procedures among other measures.
“There is always a safe way that hazardous materials can be transported,” explained Cutting, whose own state of North Dakota requires extracted crude be run through machines that remove the volatile gases linked to oil train disasters.
“I don’t think there should be a ban on oil trains. The federal agencies... have come up with regulations over the decades to move all kinds of things that are more hazardous than crude oil safely, and all hazardous materials move safely to their destination 99.997 per cent of the time.”
Despite at least 20 oil train derailments in the U.S. over the last three years, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the overall train accident rate has fallen 45 per cent since 2000 and 80 percent since 1980. The decrease corresponds with AAR’s investments in maintenance and upgrades to the country’s privately-owned freight rail network and equipment.
“For our industry, there is no greater priority than the safety of our network,” said AAR director of media relations Ed Greenberg. “We do recognize the concern that has been expressed over some high profile incidents that have overshadowed the fact that thousands of trains safely move across the U.S. every day without any problems."
Less than one per cent of all derailments involve crude oil, he added, but the AAR will work continuously to improve safety to achieve “zero incidents.”
And while those on the front lines appreciate such efforts, many feel as though “zero incidents” is impossible. As long as highly-flammable oil is rattling along through communities in puncturable cars, lives, water and land are at stake.
But choosing "the lesser of two evils" between oil trains and pipelines is also a false dichotomy according to Hammond of Stand, who said industry and politicians would like constituents to believe there is no alternative between the two, particularly not renewable energy.
"The sad reality right now is that people don’t pay attention to it until something bad happens," he reiterated. "We need to just stop moving oil by rail. There’s no safe way to do it because of where the rail lines go — and this isn’t anyone’s fault — through major populated areas, and major waterways which are sources of drinking water and irrigation."
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/07/04/news/flirting-disaster-scary-truth-about-bomb-trains-moving-through-your-town
-
House Lawmakers Ready Fire Against Climate Spending
Jul 5, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
The fight over federal climate spending will shift from the Senate to the House this week.
The House State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee will vote on a fiscal 2017 spending plan that would bar the United States from contributing any money to the Green Climate Fund. The Obama administration requested $750 million for the fund.
The House GOP's draft spending plan would also not provide any money for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Greenwire, June 22).
Republican critics of the Obama administration's climate change agenda have tried many times to prevent federal dollars from going to international efforts to address global warming.
The Green Climate Fund, however, has some bipartisan support in the Senate. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to strike a provision in its international operations spending plan that would have zeroed out money for the fund.
President Obama has promised the international community that the United States would provide $3 billion over four years.
Earlier this year, the administration made a $500 million down payment on that amount over objections by congressional Republicans that Congress had not agreed to the spending.
The amendment added to the Senate spending bill would provide an additional $500 million for the GCF in fiscal 2017 and allocate $10 million to the UNFCCC. Senate appropriators approved the bipartisan amendment by voice vote (E&ENews PM, June 29).Financial services bill
The House this week may also debate climate spending in the context of the fiscal 2017 spending bill for financial services and general government operations.
The House had been scheduled to take up the bill last month, but leaders had to pull it amid Democratic protests over gun control legislation.
A provision in the legislation would bar any funding for a presidential energy and climate change assistant or "any substantially similar position."
Another policy rider would weaken a 2013 Treasury Department guidance to limit American support for multilateral development banks' funding for overseas coal projects.
Republican members have also offered amendments to further chip away at the Obama administration's climate agenda and other regulatory efforts.
When it takes up the bill, the full House will consider dozens of amendments, including a Republican measure to bar the administration from implementing any rule with more than a $100 million economic impact without first receiving congressional approval. It mirrors the GOP's "Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act."
Other amendments scheduled for consideration would prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from putting in place guidance on disclosing risks tied to climate change or enforce its rule on conflict minerals.
Schedule: The markup is Wednesday, July 6, at 10:30 a.m. in H-140 Capitol.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/07/05/stories/1060039763
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested