Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 7/21/16
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(ACC Mentioned) Major Plastics Recycler Entropex Forced to Close for Financial Reasons
Jul 21, 2016 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
Major plastic reclaimer Entropex closed on July 14 after its bank decided to call a loan. The company will be put up for sale by a court-appointed receiver. -
EPW Staff Predict Smooth EPA Implementation Of TSCA Reform Law
Jul 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee, whose members spearheaded efforts to pass legislation reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is anticipating implementation of the bill to be largely smooth given that EPA worked closely with lawmakers in developing the bill, according to an EPW majority aide. -
Landmark Overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act
Jul 21, 2016 | Lexology
By Bryan Cave
On June 22, 2016, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was signed into law. This law amends the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) and is the first major environmental legislation passed in the U.S. in decades. -
EWG Floats Top 10 Chemicals EPA Should Review In First TSCA Round
Jul 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is floating a list of the top 10 chemicals the group would like to see EPA include in its first round of chemicals targeted for safety assessments under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), saying the group also hopes to see the agency address concerns raised over data gaps in previous risk assessments. -
Green Group Releases Wish List for EPA Review
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
The Environmental Working Group today published a list of the 10 chemicals it wants U.S. EPA to review first under new provisions of the recently reformed Toxic Substances Control Act. -
Walmart Releases High Priority Chemical List
Jul 21, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
US giant retailer Walmart has revealed a list of eight “high priority chemicals (HPCs)” that it has been targeting to phase out from products on its shelves. -
Calif. Rulemaking Targets Flame Retardants in Foam Pads
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
California regulators have made the first of three rulemakings on dangerous chemicals. -
Dancet Seeks Cefic's Support to Promote Sector Use Maps
Jul 21, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has asked Cefic to “deepen” its collaboration with the agency to ensure that industry implements sector use maps as their “highest priority”. -
PHMSA Requires More Work, Tests For Full-Service on Tetco's Penn-Jersey System
Jul 21, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has issued Spectra Energy Corp. an amended corrective action order detailing a slate of work that must be completed before Texas Eastern Transmission's (Tetco) Penn-Jersey system can return to full-service after an April blast that damaged it. -
Utilities Look Back to the Future for Hands-On Cyberdefense
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr and Blake Sobczak
The aftermath of the cyberattack in Ukraine on Dec. 23, 2015, produced two unexpected lessons that U.S. grid operators have started to take to heart. -
EPA Chief: US, Negotiators Nearing New Emissions Deal
Jul 21, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
International officials, including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), say they’re nearing a deal to reduce the use of a refrigerant chemical and potent greenhouse gas.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Major Plastics Recycler Entropex Forced to Close for Financial Reasons
Jul 21, 2016 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
Dive Brief:
Major plastic reclaimer Entropex closed on July 14 after its bank decided to call a loan. The company will be put up for sale by a court-appointed receiver.
Entropex specializes in sorting and recycling non-bottle rigid resin plastics. It produced recycled resins and compounds to be used in various products.
The company employed 155 people at its 180,000-square-foot facility in Sarnia, Ontario and the majority of them have already been laid off.
Dive Insight:
According to the company's website, Entropex has operated since 1978 and was North America's eighth-largest post-consumer plastics recycling company. In 2013, the company won an Innovation in Plastics Recycling Award from the American Chemistry Council for its RigidReclaim process. At the time, ACC said that more than 70% of plastics handled in that process were not recyclable through standard methods.
In 2009, Entropex received $6.3 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada to create a demonstration facility for recovering mixed rigid plastics such as clam shells. Two years later, the company received an additional $4 million from the provincial government's Innovation Demonstration Fund to pilot another new recycling technology. It also ranked 13th among Plastics News' recent list of the largest North American plastics recyclers—processing 175 million pounds annually.
Yet the company said declining oil prices and tough competition made its financial situation untenable. This is a challenge faced by all sides of the waste industry which has hit some companies harder than others. President Keith Bechard told Plastics News that the receiver is considering buyers who could potentially restart the company, but as of now Entropex's fate is unknown.
http://www.wastedive.com/news/major-plastics-recycler-entropex-forced-to-close-for-financial-reasons/422986/
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EPW Staff Predict Smooth EPA Implementation Of TSCA Reform Law
Jul 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee, whose members spearheaded efforts to pass legislation reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is anticipating implementation of the bill to be largely smooth given that EPA worked closely with lawmakers in developing the bill, according to an EPW majority aide.
“Unlike in some areas of EPA's jurisdiction, we were able to work pretty well with them,” the aide says, adding that committee staff met recently with the agency to continue the dialogue on implementing the 66-page law, known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Democratic staff are also meeting with the agency to discuss implementation issues, the aide says.
The law, which took effect June 22, overhauls the 1976 chemical safety law, giving EPA new authority to regulate existing chemicals grandfathered under the previous TSCA, mandating the agency to issue affirmative safety findings for new chemicals before they come onto market, and expanding EPA's testing authority and other powers.
EPW's Republican members, including Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who co-authored with Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) the Senate bill that preceded the final law, will be closely watching many issues related to implementation. “We'll be as hands on as we can be with the steps they're taking,” the aide says. Those issues include how the agency implements the “unreasonable risk” safety standard, how the agency addresses “conditions of use” in risk evaluations and whether EPA sticks to the statutory 90-day time frame for evaluating new chemicals.
Under the law, EPA must develop several rulemakings within the first few years, including establishing processes for prioritization; risk evaluations; user fees; resetting the TSCA inventory; and establishing a science advisory committee on chemicals. At least six of the regulatory actions in the new law must be completed within the first year of implementation, or by mid-June 2017, and at least five actions must be completed within a few years of the law's effective date.
EPA in its June 29 first-year implementation plan lists time frames for both immediate actions, including for confidential business information (CBI), new chemicals, and rules to manage risks from chemicals under section 6, which addresses existing chemicals.
The plan also lists procedural rules to guide longer term actions, such as publishing its list of 10 chemicals from its 2014 TSCA Work Plan that will be the first substances assessed under the new law. EPA plans to publish the list and formally initiate risk evaluations by mid-December, and publish the scope of each review by mid-June 2017.
The rules EPA must complete within a year include an annual plan for risk evaluations; the scope of the first 10 assessments; additions to the mercury export ban; an inventory of the mercury supply; use and trade in the United States, revisions to the adequacy of definitions for identifying small business; and a report to Congress on the implementation efforts, including resource needs.
Safety Standard
EPA's assessments of the initial 10 chemicals under the new law will test it's safety standard that chemicals may present an “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment because of a potential hazard and a potential route of exposure under the conditions of use.” For the first time under TSCA, EPA will be mandated to assess the risks without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, though the agency would have to consider costs and benefits when determining how to mange risks from that chemical under section 6.
Unlike the previous TSCA, EPA would consider costs of restricting a chemical later in the process, when developing a risk management rule, instead of at the time it is determining whether a chemical poses an “unreasonable risk.” The changes are aimed at fixing what many said was a broken process that hindered EPA's efforts to ban asbestos, a known carcinogen. An appeals court struck down the ban in 1991 in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA.
“The way the original law was drafted, it just made no sense,” the aide says. “When you go to the doctor, he doesn't say, it's too expensive to treat so we're going to say you don't have it.”
The aide says that lawmakers will be watching as EPA develops its procedural rule for setting a process to review the risks of high priority chemicals, which EPA plans to propose in December and finalize next June, and subsequent risk evaluations. The committee will be looking closely at how the agency implements the language and “what kind of science they're using, making sure they have good solid justification for saying something doesn't meet the safety standard,” the source says.
In general, the GOP standpoint is that updating TSCA is important not solely from a public health perspective but also as a kind of regulatory reform, and section 26 of TSCA creates new transparency and scientific integrity requirements that will give lawmakers tools for ensuring agency rules are based on good scientific practices.
Conditions Of Use
On the initial list of 10 work plan chemicals EPA plans to assess, the source says, more important than what specific chemicals the agency lists, lawmakers will be looking closely at how EPA determines “conditions of use” for a chemical on the list.
The law defines “conditions of use” as the circumstances, under which a chemical substance is intended, known, or reasonably foreseen to be manufactured, processed, distributed in commerce, used, or disposed of, and used pervasively throughout the legislation.
And on EPA's plans to “reset the clock” for already submitted pre-manufacture notices (PMN) for new chemicals under section 5 of the law, restarting pending reviews for those PMNs, the aide says “I can't say we expected this kind of blanket 90-day reset but we know the agency has a lot of work to do.”
In a June 7 GOP statement of legislative intent, EPW Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) and Vitter write that the "amendments to this section were intended to conform closely with EPA's current practice and maintain the Agency's timely reviews that allow substances to market within the statutory deadlines.”
For example, the bill retains the current 90-day review period for EPA to complete a risk-based decision on a new chemicals, and Vitter said the bill is "very clear" that EPA should not slow or halt its review of new chemicals while it develops any needed new policies, procedures or guidance for implementing the changes to section 5.
But the majority aide says the reset is not particularly troubling given that EPA will be for the first time developing public safety affirmations for new chemicals, though the agency previously conducted such reviews internally. “It is a new process, having to state something publicly is a lot different than internal analysis” and EPA may just want to ensure they are conducting thorough analyses that can withstand scrutiny, the aide says, adding that “maintaining the 90-day clock is important for us” and lawmakers will watch to ensure EPA adheres to that pace going forward.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/epw-staff-predict-smooth-epa-implementation-tsca-reform-law
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Landmark Overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act
Jul 21, 2016 | Lexology
By Bryan Cave
EPA Issues First Year Implementation Plan
On June 22, 2016, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was signed into law. This law amends the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) and is the first major environmental legislation passed in the U.S. in decades. TSCA was originally passed in 1976 and is the primary source of authority for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulation of the manufacture, processing, import, and export of chemical substances. After forty years, this law has been updated and the changes are particularly important for chemical manufacturers, processors, importers, exporters, and users. EPA has already begun implementing the new requirements and has issued a First Year Implementation Plan as discussed further below.
Highlights of the new law:
For the first time, all chemicals will be subject to a risk-based safety review.
EPA will identify whether chemicals are “high” or “low” priority substances, and conduct thorough risk evaluations on all high priority chemicals.
Risk evaluations will be based solely on risks to human health and the environment, including risks to vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women.
No longer will costs be considered when determining a chemical’s risk, and gone is the requirement that EPA must adopt the least burdensome regulatory requirement.
There will be greater public access to chemical, and health and safety information.
Existing Chemicals. EPA is to establish a risk-based process to determine which chemicals it will prioritize for assessment, identifying them as either “high” or “low” priority substances. Chemicals are evaluated against a new risk-based safety standard to determine whether a chemical use poses an “unreasonable risk”. Risk evaluation excludes consideration of costs or non-risk factors, but must consider risks to susceptible populations (e.g. children, infants, pregnant women, elderly).
High priority chemical - A chemical that may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment due to potential hazard and route of exposure, including to susceptible subpopulations. Triggers a requirement and deadline for EPA to complete a risk evaluation to determine its safety.
Low priority chemical - A chemical that does not meet the standard for high priority. No further action will be required; however, a chemical can move to high-priority based on new information.
Actions to address unreasonable risks. When unreasonable risks are identified, EPA must take final risk management action within two years, or four years if an extension is needed. Costs and availability of alternatives are considered when determining appropriate action to address risks. Actions, including bans and phase-outs, must begin as quickly as possible, but no later than five years after the final regulation. Manufacturers can also request that EPA evaluate specific chemicals and pay the associated costs.
EPA’s Chemical Testing Authority. The new law expands EPA’s authority to obtain testing information. In addition to requiring testing through rulemaking, the new law allows EPA to expedite the process for prioritizing or conducting risk evaluations with new order and consent agreement authorities. The new law includes a heavy consideration for animal rights and encourages the use of alternative testing methods whenever possible. Entities engaging in animal testing are given two years to implement a strategy plan to develop alternative testing methods and strategies and must give a report on their progress in five years.
New Chemicals. Unlike under TSCA previously, the new law now requires that EPA make an affirmative finding on the safety of a new chemical or significant new use of an existing chemical before it is allowed into the marketplace. EPA can still take a range of actions to address potential concerns including bans, limitations, and additional testing on a chemical.
Confidential Business Information. The new law tries to balance the need for companies to protect their intellectual property, while also promoting transparency to the public. The new law requires confidentiality claims be substantiated upfront and limits claims of confidentiality to ten years, unless an extension is approved. There is a presumption that public interest in disclosure of the information outweighs the public interest in maintaining protection for the information. That presumption must be overcome to gain protection from disclosure. EPA is also required to review past confidentiality claims for chemicals already on the TSCA Inventory to determine if the claims are still warranted.
Increased Fees and Penalties. The new law allows EPA to collect up to $25 million annually in user fees from chemical manufacturers and processors when they submit test data for EPA review, submit a PMN. manufacture or process a chemical that is the subject of a risk evaluation, or request that EPA conduct a chemical risk evaluation. Civil penalties for a prohibited acts are increased to $37,000 while criminal penalties are increased to $50,000. Knowingly conducting a violation in which the violator knows they will place an individual in imminent danger or death or serious bodily injury holds a penalty of $250,000 and up to 15 years imprisonment. Organizations that participate in these intentional violations can be fined up to $1,000,000.
Preemption of State and Local Chemical Regulations. State preemption is another major topic in the new law and is arguably one of the more controversial as it tries to strike a balance between providing chemical manufacturers with a single chemical regulatory program for their products while yielding to State and local interests in providing protections for their citizens. States can continue to act on any chemical, or particular uses or risks from a chemical, that EPA has not yet addressed. Existing state requirements (prior to April 22, 2016) are grandfathered and existing and new state requirements under state laws in effect on August 31, 2003, are preserved (namely, California’s Prop 65). However, State action on a chemical is preempted when EPA finds (through a risk evaluation) that the chemical is safe, or EPA takes final action to address the chemical’s risks. State action on a chemical is temporarily “paused” when EPA’s risk evaluation on the chemical is underway, but lifted when EPA completes the risk evaluation, or misses the deadline to complete the risk evaluation. States can apply for waivers from both general and “pause” preemption.
Investigation of Cancer Clusters. The new law also includes a section known as “Trevor’s Law”, named after Idaho resident, Trevor Schaefer, who survived a diagnosis of brain cancer at age 13. This section creates authority for the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop criteria to monitor, track and investigate “cancer clusters”. It also provides authority for HHS, in consultation with (or at the request of) State and local health officials to investigate cancer clusters. This is a provision to be cognizant of if claims of cancer clusters are identified near chemical plants or hazardous waste disposal sites.
Timeline. The new law sets forth a number of deadlines. In addition, EPA’s First Year Implementation Plan sets forth how EPA plans to manage the requirements in the new law.
EPA has reset the 90-day clock on PMNs submitted before the law’s enactment, such that the 90 day review period begins again on June 22. This raises some legal questions as to whether EPA can retroactively reset the review period for a PMN filed before the law’s enactment.
Mid-July 2016 – EPA to develop an approach for review of CBI claims.
Within 180 days – EPA to identify and begin risk evaluations of the first 10 high priority chemicals.
Within 1 year – EPA to finalize a procedural rule to establish a process and criteria for identifying high priority chemicals for risk evaluation and low priority chemicals.
Within 1 year – Chemical manufacturers must report to EPA all chemicals they are currently producing. EPA is planning to publish a proposed rule by mid-December 2016, to be finalized June 2017.
Within 3.5 years – EPA must have 20 ongoing risk evaluations of high priority chemicals.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=dec2ebcc-76fc-478c-8d00-8b0b84099e86
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EWG Floats Top 10 Chemicals EPA Should Review In First TSCA Round
Jul 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is floating a list of the top 10 chemicals the group would like to see EPA include in its first round of chemicals targeted for safety assessments under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), saying the group also hopes to see the agency address concerns raised over data gaps in previous risk assessments.
EWG July 21 released its list of 10 chemicals the group says EPA should act on now, including asbestos, bisphenol-A (BPA), chlorinated and brominated flame retardants, 1-bromopropane, P-dichlorobenzene, phthalates, perchloroethylene, tetrabromobisphenol A, and bis(2-ethylhexyl) adipate.
The group also lists 10 additional chemicals it says EPA should target for early action, including lead, vinyl chloride, formaldehyde, bromoform, chromium-6, styrene, arsenic, ethylbenzene, cadmium, and 1,4-dioxane, though it does not specify when EPA should address those substances.
“With so many hazardous chemicals in use, any list of chemicals posing the greatest risks would be subjective and incomplete,” EWG says in a July 21 press release. “But the vast catalog of chemicals that have never been evaluated for safety make it urgent for the EPA move quickly to tackle the backlog.”
Many of the chemicals included on the lists are the subject of contentious or controversial risk assessment processes, and an EWG source says, “It is important to realize that EPA regulatory decisionmaking is only as good as the risk assessment.”
The source says EPA could use its expanded TSCA section 4 test authority to compel testing to fill some of the data gaps in assessments, such as an assessment for chlorinated flame retardants that the group says is flawed.
EWG reiterates its previous statements that while the law, which took effect June 22, is an important step toward fixing the decades-old broken chemical safety law, it “may not provide the EPA with the resources or clear legal authority it needs to quickly review and, if necessary, ban dangerous chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health problems.”
The group says how EPA addresses one of its first tasks mandated under the new law is a critical test. Under the new TSCA law, EPA's first 10 chemicals to undergo risk review must be drawn from the agency's 2014 TSCA work plan, as well as at least half of the 20 chemicals the agency must slate for assessment within three and a half years of enactment.
The law's section 6(b)(2)(D) also includes language directing the agency to give preferences in designating high-priority substances for review to Work Plan chemicals that have a persistence and bioaccumulation score of 3, and to chemical substances that are listed in the 2014 plan as "known human carcinogens and have high acute and chronic toxicity.” Advocates say this language ensures EPA will quickly be able to address the known carcinogen asbestos.
Test Cases
EPA says in a June 29 first-year implementation plan that it anticipates publishing the list of the initial chemicals and formally initiating risk evaluations by mid-December, and publishing the scope of each review by mid-June 2017.
EWG says that the list of chemicals will “signal how well the new law protects Americans from harmful chemicals in consumer products,” saying the agency should target “bad actor chemicals like asbestos and emerging threats such as BPA and other chemicals linked to endocrine disruption.”
One EWG source says that the agency could address more than 10 chemicals, especially given that some of the substances may be chemical families that include multiple substances, but that given EPA's slow pace of conducting risk assessments under previous authorities, they do not expect the number to be significantly more than 10 initially.
“These are test case chemicals,” the EWG source says, noting that the group has been critical of the language surrounding the law's unreasonable risk safety standard, and saying the early assessment will help demonstrate the “bounds of EPA's authority.”
Under the original 1976 TSCA, the agency in deciding to regulate a chemical had to weigh economic factors as well as pursue the "least burdensome" requirements. Those provisions were long considered a major obstacle in EPA's ability to regulate chemicals, following a 1991 U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruling in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA that struck down as unreasonable the agency's ban on asbestos, a known carcinogen.
The court held that EPA was required to consider both alternatives to a ban and the costs of any proposed actions and to "carry out this chapter in a reasonable and prudent manner [after considering] the environmental, economic, and social impact of any action."
The new safety language is generally seen as an improvement over the previous language in TSCA that hindered EPA's attempted ban on asbestos because the cost considerations would be kept distinctly separate from the agency's risk evaluation. Instead, cost considerations would occur later in the process, when EPA determines what type of restriction is adequate -- while still mandating that the chemical must be regulated to guard against unreasonable risk.
EWG has said previously that the safety standard could be tested by the courts, and it is unclear whether courts may consider an “unreasonable” risk one that includes a consideration of economic benefits, since the language has never been unhinged from the cost-effectiveness language.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/ewg-floats-top-10-chemicals-epa-should-review-first-tsca-round
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Green Group Releases Wish List for EPA Review
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
The Environmental Working Group today published a list of the 10 chemicals it wants U.S. EPA to review first under new provisions of the recently reformed Toxic Substances Control Act.
By December, the agency must identify 10 chemicals that will be subject to risk evaluations. EPA will then have three years to complete risk evaluations for each one.
"After decades of stagnation, the EPA can now ban or restrict the use of toxic chemicals, and order companies to conduct safety testing when more information is needed," EWG Senior Scientist David Andrews said in a statement. "It's important that the agency act promptly to eliminate or reduce Americans' exposure to industrial compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, hormone disruption and other health problems."
EWG's list is: asbestos; tetrachloroethylene, or perc; phthalates; bisphenol A, or BPA; chlorinated phosphate flame retardants; tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) and related chemicals; brominated phthalate flame retardants; 1-bromopropane; Bis(2-ethylhexyl) adipate, or DEHA; and p-dichlorobenzene.
The organization also suggested 10 more chemicals for early action: lead, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, bromoform, chromium-6, styrene, arsenic, ethylbenzene, cadmium and 1,4-dioxane.
Most of these 20 have already been listed by EPA as eligible chemicals for assessment on the 2014 update to the TSCA Work Plan.
Congress this summer approved an update to the 40-year-old chemical law, and EPA is now working to implement the reforms (Greenwire, July 1).
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/07/21/stories/1060040626
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Walmart Releases High Priority Chemical List
Jul 21, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
US giant retailer Walmart has revealed a list of eight “high priority chemicals (HPCs)” that it has been targeting to phase out from products on its shelves.
The announcement comes three months after Walmart reported that it had achieved a 95% by weight reduction of these HPCs, from certain products sold in US locations.
The HPCs were selected from Walmart's broader list of priority chemicals, and were identified by such criteria as listing status on authoritative hazard lists, high volume of use and exposure, and consideration of emerging regulations and stakeholder concern.
The HPCs, identified for suppliers to phase out, are:
toluene;
dibutyl phthalate (DBP);
diethyl phthalate (DEP);
nonylphenol exthoxylates (NPEs, encompassing nine individual Cas numbers);
formaldehyde;
butylparaben;
propylparaben; and
triclosan (except when present as an active ingredient providing therapeutic benefit, and approved by the FDA New Drug Application process).
In addition to revealing the eight chemicals, Walmart disclosed chemical volume reduction figures and details around ingredient transparency efforts.
Walmart launched its policy on sustainable chemistry in consumables in 2013. It seeks to reduce or eliminate the use of chemicals of concern from personal care, paper, cleaning, pet and baby products it sells, covering approximately 90,000 individual products from 700 suppliers.
Zach Freeze, Walmart director of sustainability, told Chemical Watch that the company initially elected to withhold the identity of the HPCs in order to give suppliers time to reformulate products. But he said that with suppliers having made “such significant progress”, the company decided to increase transparency to recognise those efforts.
The company is “very proud” of the progress its suppliers and products have made, he added.
Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Michelle Mauthe Harvey says: “Walmart is the one company in the world that could drive over 11,500 tons – 23m pounds – of chemicals out of so much product in less than 24 months.”
The NGO has worked closely with the company to develop and implement its chemicals management plan.
Work remains
The company's recently released data show that 15% of products, covered by its programme, still contain HPCs. And 39% of suppliers are still using substances from the list.
Additionally, more than two thirds of covered products contain priority chemicals, and some 80% of suppliers covered by the policy still use listed chemicals.
Ms Harvey acknowledges that more work remains to be done, but that Walmart deserves credit for its accomplishments.
“The business case can be thin to none,” says Ms Harvey. “When you talk about chemicals, people’s eyes glaze over – or they panic. Few-to-no marketing wins exist here.”
She tells Chemical Watch that to maintain its momentum, Walmart should “keep up the pressure to meet its current commitments, expand into more product categories, and take this effort global.” The NGO also hopes that the company will:
meet its commitments to expand products certified under Safer Choice;
offer “more meaningful” ingredient disclosure;
fully eliminate HPCs, through sharing supplier success stories and working across the supply chain to identify issues hindering their widespread elimination; and
strengthen monitoring to ensure hazardous ingredients are not replaced with “regrettable substitutions”.
“Publicising the journey is also important,” adds Ms Harvey. “We need Walmart’s leadership on chemicals to continue to resonate with the public and provide an incentive for other retailers to follow Walmart’s lead.”
The company says that it will continue to encourage and work with suppliers to disclose ingredients in all the markets, where they operate – beyond just the US—as we believe everyone should have access to information about their products,” it says.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48724/walmart-releases-high-priority-chemical-list
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Calif. Rulemaking Targets Flame Retardants in Foam Pads
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
California regulators have made the first of three rulemakings on dangerous chemicals.
The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) declared that children's nap mats containing certain flame retardants in foam padding have the potential to cause "widespread or significant adverse impacts," according to a report released Friday.
The two chemicals listed, TDCPP and TCEP, aren't officially recognized as carcinogens, but they have been linked to cancer. Their scientific names are tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl)phosphate and tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine.
Foam-padded sleeping products proposed at priority level include nap mats and cots, sleep positioners, travel beds, bassinet foam, portable crib mattresses, play pens and car bed pads.
Much like a proposed rule published in the Federal Register, the rulemaking by the department's Safer Consumer Products program will go through a public comment period and hearing. And once the regulation is enacted, it will require companies to take action.
But Josh Bloom, a regulatory specialist at the Meyers Nave law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, said companies might already be self-regulating.
In 2012, the Chicago Tribune published a six-part expose, "Playing with Fire," on flame retardants in everyday products and furniture pieces. A year later, HBO released adocumentary, "Toxic Hot Seat," on the same subject. These were two major factors that led to changes.
"There was a real shift in the industry as a result of that," Bloom said in an interview. "[DTSC] didn't think the economic impact would be that significant because the industry's already shifted away from this."
TDCPP and TCEP, he added, were "pretty low-hanging fruit" for the agency to identify as chemicals to address.
"It wasn't much of a stretch," he said. "They knew this was something they wanted to identify."
Environmentalists have been concerned generally about "regrettable substitution," which is when companies swap out a banned chemical for a new but very similar one.
This has happened with bisphenol A, or BPA. After public concern with the substitution chemical's possible link to cancer, companies began making BPA-free water bottles. But critics say a close relative of BPA -- BPS -- has been incorporated instead.
Bloom said this could turn out to be the case with children's nap mats in California. With TDCPP and TCEP soon to be banned, he said, the cousin TDBPP could find its way into foam.
"TDCPP and TCEP are harmful chemical flame retardants that are not necessary to the proper function or use of these products," the DTSC report says. "Furthermore, flame retardant-free foam is a widely available, cost effective alternative to foam made with flame retardants."
California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, often known by its original name of Proposition 65, is often seen as the strongest state chemicals law in the country. And in 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed the Green Chemistry Law, which created the Safer Consumer Products program.
Together, these have established a framework for the state to deal with chemicals regulation. Friday's announcement was the first step in identifying the chemicals and products, with the next one being companies figuring out how to follow new rules -- what's called an alternative analysis.
Although the just-passed overhaul of national chemicals laws, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, will pre-empt the states in their regulations during the federal review process, Friday's proposed rulemaking was not done in anticipation of this. The California agency held public workshops in early 2014 to solicit stakeholder input, long before final Lautenberg Act rules will go into effect (Greenwire, July 1).
In a blog post, the Bergeson & Campbell law firm called the proposed regulation a "major step" in the Safer Consumer Products regulations process.
The deadline for public comment on the proposal is Aug. 29, and a public hearing will be held at California EPA on that day, too. The foam bed regulations are expected to become law on Jan. 1, 2017.
There are two more rulemakings in the queue: one for spray foams used for building insulation and another for paint strippers. These can be expected relatively soon, as the initial proposed list of priority products was published two years ago.
"This is a significant milestone in our quest to ensure safer products for consumers in California," said DTSC Director Barbara Lee in a statement. "We encourage feedback from the public at every stage of this process."
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/07/21/stories/1060040595
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Dancet Seeks Cefic's Support to Promote Sector Use Maps
Jul 21, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has asked Cefic to “deepen” its collaboration with the agency to ensure that industry implements sector use maps as their “highest priority”.
The need for registration dossiers to contain more information on uses emerged as a key issue earlier this year, at the agency’s workshop on improving the implementation of REACH.
Writing last month to Cefic director general Marco Mensink, Echa executive director Geert Dancet thanked him for expressing Cefic’s commitment to implementing the chemical safety report/exposure scenarios roadmap at “their recent meeting”.
Downstream sectors, wrote Mr Dancet, “need clear signals that registrants intend to utilise this information for their registration dossiers and the corresponding safety data sheets. Such signals will help downstream sectors to continue investing their time to prepare use maps.
“In sum, registrants need to show commitment to utilise use maps for 2018 registration and for updating existing dossiers.”
Mr Dancet asked Mr Mensink to consider: “How to best show Cefic’s commitment to the practical implementation of the sector use maps approach and encourage leading individual chemical companies to publicly show their commitment.” He suggested that a joint “declaration” by Echa and Cefic could be made at the latter’s general assembly in October, with an “updated Roadmap Charter” launched early next year.
The letter, which has only just been released by Echa, was copied to the heads of downstream users umbrella group Ducc, Eurometaux and petrochemicals trade body Concawe, plus European Commission officials.
Improve dossier quality
Speaking at Cefic’s REACH forum on 1 July, its REACH director, Erwin Annys, said the hope was that sector use maps, and all deliverables from the roadmap, “will be picked up and used in order to produce dossiers whose quality will hopefully be criticised less by member states”.
Currently, five downstream sector trade bodies (Aise, Feice, Cepe, EFCC and I&P), the catalyst manufacturers’ body ECMA and Fertilizers Europe are completing their sector use maps for registrants.
Responding to Mr Dancet’s letter, Eurometaux told Chemical Watch its members are “actively working” to collect and refine information on uses and exposure.
“We are convinced that roadmap participants should further work towards the coherence and completeness of safety data sheets, acknowledging their key role and potential in achieving sustainable chemicals management,” Violaine Verougstraete, Eurometaux’s EHS director said.
Concawe director general, John Cooper, said use maps are an “important step forward” in improving the assessment of substances registered under REACH.
“However, as petroleum Sief members are the primary manufacturers or importers of these specific substances, a thorough understanding of downstream emissions is limited. In this respect, we will use these sector use maps, trusting that downstream user associations have populated them with relevant and reliable data and appropriate risk mitigation measures.
“In an instance where a risk assessment, based on the use-map data, indicates that safe use of a petroleum substance cannot be warranted, Concawe will not support such use in the associated registration dossier and probably advise against this.”
https://chemicalwatch.com/48725/dancet-seeks-cefics-support-to-promote-sector-use-maps
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PHMSA Requires More Work, Tests For Full-Service on Tetco's Penn-Jersey System
Jul 21, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has issued Spectra Energy Corp. an amended corrective action order detailing a slate of work that must be completed before Texas Eastern Transmission's (Tetco) Penn-Jersey system can return to full-service after an April blast that damaged it.
A portion of the system, which runs from Delmont, PA, to Lambertville, NJ, exploded and caught fire in April in Westmoreland County, PA (see Shale Daily, April 29). The system consists of four parallel pipes, one of which, the 30-inch Line 27, ruptured in the blast. While another, Line 19, was returned to partial service in May, Lines 28 and 12 have been offline awaiting the green light from PHMSA to restart.
In the amended order issued to Spectra on Tuesday, PHMSA's Acting Associate Administrator for Pipeline Safety, Alan Mayberry, said Lines 19, 28 and 12 were likely affected by the blast and could not be returned to full service until the company fulfills the requirements included in the amended order and another issued in May.
"Continued operation of the affected segment...without corrective measures is or would be hazardous to life, property, or the environment," Mayberry wrote in the order. "In addition to the failed Line 27, subsequent investigation by respondent and PHMSA has demonstrated that lines 12, 19 and 28 could potentially have been damaged or adversely affected by the explosion and fire at the failure site and pose a serious risk to life, property or the environment if returned to normal operation unless respondent takes certain corrective actions in addition to those required under the original [corrective action order]."
The amended order contains new and changed preliminary findings that require Tetco take more action in the wake of the blast, which toppled trees, razed one house, damaged others and sent one resident to the hospital with severe burns that covered three-quarters of his body. The explosion also knocked out about 1 Bcf/d and cut flows east of the Delmont compressor station to zero for 10 days after the incident before partial capacity was restored.
In the amended order, PHMSA said the failure resulted in the release of 208.4 MMcf of natural gas, "which ignited, producing a crater approximately 30 feet wide, 50 feet in length and 12 feet deep." The explosion ejected 24.5 feet of 30-inch pipe from the site, the agency added.
In its first corrective action order, PHMSA said a preliminary investigation had shown evidence of corrosion along two of the affected pipe's circumferential welds (see Shale Daily, May 4). A failed tape coating on the pipe at the site has also been installed at hundreds of points along the system. PHMSA said in its latest order that the cause of the accident remains unknown and said an investigation is ongoing.
Line 27 was constructed in 1981. It was last inspected in 2012, at which time Spectra said there was nothing wrong with the pipe. PHMSA said a review of previous operating history and remediation records for a segment of Line 12 showed a pattern of external corrosion with "characteristics similar to the condition that caused the failure on Line 27."
Last month, Spectra said it would voluntarily conduct a "thorough and conservative assessment" along the Penn-Jersey system's entire 263-mile stretch, saying full-service might not be restored on the system until November (see Shale Daily, June 28).
PHMSA's amended order requires Tetco to submit assessment, remediation and restart plans. It also requires a testing and failure analysis. The order requires the restart of Line 27 to be done in increments, stipulating that pressure on the system be stepped-up from 25% to 50% and then to 80% before Tetco can request written approval to run at pre-failure pressure.
Among other things, the new order also requires a root cause failure analysis be completed within 90 days of the order's receipt; an emergency response plan and training review, and a public awareness program review.
Spectra said in a statement released Thursday that the order's requirements are "well-aligned with the work plan we developed as part of our thorough assessment of the entire Penn-Jersey system, including anomaly investigations, in-line inspections and hydrostatic testing." The company said it has already started or completed much of the work, adding that it expects to have the root cause analysis completed by late summer or early fall.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/107144-phmsa-requires-more-work-tests-for-full-service-on-tetcos-penn-jersey-system
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Utilities Look Back to the Future for Hands-On Cyberdefense
Jul 21, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr and Blake Sobczak
The aftermath of the cyberattack in Ukraine on Dec. 23, 2015, produced two unexpected lessons that U.S. grid operators have started to take to heart.
After cutting off power to nearly 250,000 homes and businesses in western Ukraine, the cyber terrorists delivered a final punch to the gut. The hackers wrecked some of the digital controls the operators needed to restart the system remotely. An aptly named cyber weapon called "KillDisk" hidden inside the Ukraine system erased parts of the operators' startup software.
But substations across the Ukraine utilities' grid networks still had Soviet-era manual controls, so crews were able to restore power by hand within six hours.
"It was the folks who got in trucks and knew where to go and drove out and found the breakers that had been tripped through the remote access tools," said Suzanne Spaulding, undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate, in a blog interview.
Now, some leading U.S. grid officials, members of Congress and security experts are warning that old-fashioned protection might be needed for the more advanced U.S. power grid. Fail-safe cyberdefenses cannot be assumed in the age of the smart grid.
"We had this rush to automation over the last 15 years or so, on some level almost blind to security risks we are creating," said Scott Aaronson, executive director for security and business continuity at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents large, investor-owned utilities.
"It is good we have automation, which gives us better situational awareness. But it also increases the attack surfaces," he added, referring to the proliferation of sensors and controls that rely on software and connect to the virus-infected internet.
"Automation is driving incredible benefits," said Michael Assante, a director of the SANS Institute, a leading cybersecurity training firm. "We've consolidated and centralized a lot. You just need to keep in mind it also lets the bad guys do the same thing."
The brutal KillDisk finale in Ukraine demonstrated how attackers could conceal destructive malware that could re-emerge unless operators effectively cleansed their control systems. The Ukraine operators failed this test, experts agree.
Joint attack
The Ukraine attackers unleashed a second weapon that has jarred U.S. cyber strategists and corporate executives: the hacker's ability to take down the utilities' electric power distribution system and also attack at least one of the utility's telephone call centers. The denial-of-service attack flooded the call center with counterfeit phone calls, preventing customers from getting through to report the loss of power, sowing more confusion and alarm among the grid operators.
"The attack in Ukraine gave us a taste of the threat to come," said Paul Stockton, managing director of Sonecon LLC and a former U.S. assistant secretary of homeland defense for the Defense Department. "That is just a small hint of the kinds of cross-sector attacks that may confront the United States."
The danger of such a one-two punch is a top-level conclusion in a new report to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson by a cyber subcommittee of the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council of corporate, academic and military and local government leaders.
Johnson ordered the subcommittee to address a major gap in federal cyberdefenses by finishing the DHS National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP). An interim draft of the plan was issued in 2011 but has never been completed. The lack of a final plan left key questions unsettled about how the federal government would respond to a major cyberattack on critical infrastructure, including how DHS and DOD duties would be divided, said Robert Dix Jr., a vice president for policy at Juniper Networks Inc., a Virginia-based network security firm.
The subcommittee released proposals last month calling for closer coordination of recovery plans by the communications, electricity and financial sectors. And it called on governors to work closely with federal agencies in the wake of a large-scale cyberattack.
"What we focused on was the wake-up call that the Ukraine attack should provide to the United States, in that it reflected a simultaneous attack on the communications and energy sectors," said Stockton, a co-chairman of the DHS advisory council subcommittee.
"It is the kind of attack that will require very intense cross-sector collaboration, of the sort that the new NCIRP needs to help be able to provide," Stockton said.
The case for simplicity
The assault in Ukraine dramatizes a crucial difference between the fallout after a natural disaster damages parts of the grid and the debilitating impact of cyberattacks that leave undetected but active malware hidden inside power systems.
"That is one of the big things about the Ukraine incident," Assante noted: If other utilities are attacked, how would they know that other malware isn't still lurking after the initial attack ends?
"If they were hiding in other places, they could still be there," Assante said. "If we didn't trust our electric substations and devices anymore, how do we deal with that? How would we bring it back? Those contingencies need to be considered."
Assante and two colleagues are among the experts arguing for a return to older control methods to safeguard the most important grid operations.
"The old analog relays and circuit protection devices were as reliable as the day was long," Assante, Tim Roxey and Andy Bochman wrote last year in a paper titled "The Case for Simplicity in Energy Infrastructure," published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Roxey is a vice president of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and head of its cyberthreat-sharing program. Bochman is senior cyber and energy security strategist at the Idaho National Laboratory.
"For every major piece of grid equipment, hundreds of digital devices have evolved to support it," the authors wrote. "Remote terminal units, intelligent electronic devices, programmable logic controllers, distributed control systems, field programmable gate arrays: these are specialized computers with circuit boards, memory chips, and communications circuits, the parts sourced from innumerable suppliers, and animated via instructions coded in software. And while the hardware brings loads of complexity, it's in software that complexity truly runs wild."
One fallback position is to put more humans and nonprogrammable backup controls into systems on the most vital parts of the power grid, they said.
A generation ago, one of the authors recalled, utility systems were run by people like "Fred," he said, "who used to sleep at the substation with his dog. Give him an instruction to change a setting, and Fred would do it."
To defeat skilled cyberattackers, the most important grid components may need to rehire some "Freds" or create the equivalent with controls that are totally isolated from outside entryways, the authors argue.
Tom Fanning, chairman and CEO of Southern Co. and co-chairman of the Electric Industry Subsector Coordinating Council, the industry's CEO-level security committee, has also been looking back to the future for security.
"What are the fallback positions? The electric power industry could be run manually," Fanning said at a recent conference. "We used to do it."
Not a cure-all
A revival of older controls is not a cure-all for every situation, said Marty Edwards, director of DHS's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT).
"Every entity has to evaluate that for itself," Edwards told EnergyWire. "It's easier to maintain some semblance of manual control when you have human resources to deploy in one small region. But if you're scattered across multiple states, that's going to be tougher. So you have to make the determination where that's important or critical."
However, the need for secure backup ways to restore power becomes vital once it's accepted that attackers may get through the best defenses, said EEI's Aaronson.
"It would be professional malpractice if we were putting all of our emphasis on 'protect, protect, protect' and not acknowledging that protection -- while incredibly important -- can't be effective 100 percent of the time," Aaronson said.
Grid operators have to think about security holistically, he said: "Not just 'protect, detect and defend', but 'respond and recover'; 'security, not just protection.'"
"Are there things we can do today to be able to operate manually in the event of an incident: Go to a degraded state simply to keep the power running?" Aaronson added, speaking at a recent cybersecurity conference. "Those are the kinds of big decisions that we are taking as a sector and in partnership with the government, to begin to do the planning for those incidents that could have an impact for a longer term on the grid," he added.
"How do we make sure the inevitable bad day doesn't become catastrophic?" he asked.
U.S. utilities -- whose cyberdefenses vary widely in sophistication and strength -- also have significantly different capabilities to recover from a major cyberattack, according to a top-level review issued in January.
A joint report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp., said a review of nine selected U.S. utilities showed that all had detailed plans for responding to and recovering from a widespread blackout. The nine utilities cooperating in the review were not named.
But the report went on to give 102 pages of ways in which the recovery plans should be bolstered, including increasing emergency startup and battery backup capacity to bring up systems after blackouts. It also called for upgrading restoration plans to account for a major change on the grid, including power plant closings. The idea is to test that recovery strategies can work in practice and confirm that spare systems and equipment will be available.
Lawmakers weigh in
The need for a fallback "manual control" has caught the attention of lawmakers in Congress.
The "Securing Energy Infrastructure Act," co-sponsored by Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy, would task the Department of Energy's national laboratories with testing "analog and nondigital" control systems' ability to withstand remote cyberattacks. The legislation would free up $11.5 million to study the issue and report back in two years.
Not everyone is convinced that the modern grid needs a hands-on makeover.
Cris Thomas, a strategist at Tenable Network Security who also goes by the hacker name "Space Rogue," called efforts to pursue a manual mode at the expense of cyberdefenses "a step backward."
"It just seems like we're spinning our wheels looking at this old stuff when we should be looking at the new," he said. Companies can apply better patches and use secure coding for state-of-the-art technologies.
Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens USA, a major developer of grid components, said at a recent cybersecurity event that much of the American grid "is old and needs to be modernized."
"A smarter grid will help prevent blackouts," he said. "But reliance on software and the Internet of Things means it gives more points of entry for people who want to harm us."
Russia's 'patriotic hacking'
The extent to which such a "smarter," more automated grid presents a risk to the United States also hinges on a candid assessment of the hackers who are capable of threatening it.
"There aren't a lot of people globally that are capable of doing what happened in Ukraine," said Thomas, noting that most in that exclusive club are U.S. allies. "In the U.S., I think that you're not going to see a similar attack against the power grid unless there are other factors involved, as well."
In Ukraine's case, the attackers were widely believed to be based in Russia, and the sophistication of the attack pointed toward state sponsorship, according to multiple experts.
Jason Healey, director of the Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative, agrees that accusing fingers point directly at Moscow. "I have almost no doubt in my mind, and that comes from a couple of lines of evidence, starting with people I trust who are savvy and not easily fooled," he said.
Some cybersecurity experts have cautiously labeled the Ukraine grid hackers a "Russian nexus," allowing for the possibility that they are advanced and organized attackers that nevertheless lack direct links to the Kremlin.
Healey suggested that such groups, if they were responsible for the power outages, still effectively work as proxies for the Russian state. "Russian 'patriotic hacking' goes back at least 10 years," he said. "If Vladimir Putin is sitting back and allowing these to happen, they don't get a pass for that."
The question then becomes whether Russia would launch an attack on U.S. utility systems, given the response that would provoke.
Representatives from the United States and Russia carried out high-level talks on cybersecurity in Geneva, Switzerland, in April, according to a senior Obama administration official. Both sides brought up the possibility of expanding information-sharing between the two countries to reduce cyber risks to networks.
It's not clear the Ukraine case was ever mentioned.
While the United States has publicly chastised and unsealed criminal indictments against hackers from rivals North Korea, Iran and even China, the administration has been quieter when it comes to Russia's role as a global hacker.
"There isn't the same level of signaling to the Russians, and I'm not sure why that is," said James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president and program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former foreign service officer who has worked on a range of cybersecurity and military issues.
Whether that silence will encourage Russia or other nations to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior in cyberspace remains to be seen. In the meantime, Lewis said, "we shouldn't rest on our laurels" when it comes to grid cyberdefense.
"Does anyone feel confident in saying that if the Russians wanted to do this to us, that they would be unable to do so?" Lewis asked. "I'm not."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/07/21/stories/1060040590
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EPA Chief: US, Negotiators Nearing New Emissions Deal
Jul 21, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
International officials, including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), say they’re nearing a deal to reduce the use of a refrigerant chemical and potent greenhouse gas.
During a round of meetings in Vienna on Thursday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said negotiators are closing in on an international agreement to reduce the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
HFCs, used in air conditioning and refrigeration, have climate change potential far greater than carbon dioxide. Officials say an agreement to reduce the use of HFCs — something McCarthy said Thursday is “a huge loophole right now, frankly, in the international effort to address climate change” — would help prevent 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming around the globe by 2100.
“We are seeing all countries coming into this meeting with an incredibly positive and collaborative energy level,” McCarthy said at a press conference Thursday morning. “There is no country that appears to be standing on the sideline in this discussion.”
Officials are meeting in Vienna to craft an HFC amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to protect the ozone layer.
McCarthy and her counterparts from Canada and Mexico said they at the point in negotiations were they’re writing the actual text of the HFC amendment right now. Negotiators still need to determine the “ambition” of the HFC goals, McCarthy said, as well as issues like funding and support for smaller nations involved in the agreement.
Reaching an HFC deal is one of McCarthy's major outstanding goals at the EPA before President Obama leaves office next January. She said Thursday a final agreement could come as soon as this weekend.
“We have every intention of wrapping it up in 2016, whether it’s here in Vienna or later on in Kigali,” Rwanda in October, she said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/288641-epa-chief-us-negotiators-nearing-new-emissions-deal
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