Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 8/9/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Groups Outline TSCA Policy Priorities For EPA Meetings On Reformed Law
Aug 9, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Chemical industry and environmental groups are outlining their priorities for how EPA should implement the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as the agency launches two days of meetings seeking input on the law, including how to conduct risk evaluations... -
(ACC Mentioned) GOP EPA Chiefs Endorse Clinton
Aug 9, 2016 | Politico - Morning Energy
By Eric Wolff
...The EPA will hold a two-day meeting starting today to discuss which chemicals should be prioritized under the recently passed TSCA reforms. The American Chemistry Council outlined industry priorities in a statement ahead of the meeting... -
EPA Begins Investigation on Lautenberg Ace and Toxic Substances
Aug 9, 2016 | Mesothelioma
By Brian Turner
Starting today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding a two-day set of public meetings that are designed to gather input about how to develop the risk evaluation process for toxic substances. -
(ACC Mentioned) Canada Advances HFC Phase-Down
Aug 9, 2016 | REMI Network
By Barbara Carss
Impending environmental regulations will push the Canadian and American real estate industries toward cooling and insulation options with lower global warming potential (GWP). This effort to mitigate a climate threat will also require heightened vigilance as flammable... -
Researchers Find Unsafe Levels of Industrial Chemicals in Drinking Water of 6 Million Americans
Aug 9, 2016 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
Drinking water supplies serving more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked to potentially serious health problems, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers. -
US Extends Consultation on Food-Contact Phthalate Petition
Aug 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US FDA has extended the consultation on a petition requesting that the agency revoke regulations that allow the use of 30 ortho-phthalates in food contact materials (FCMs). -
City Council Gets Involved in PCB Problem
Aug 9, 2016 | Malibu Surfside News
By Eric Billingsley
...In response, SMMUSD enlisted experts from the EPA and California Department of Toxic Substances Control to analyze compliance with the Toxic Substances Control Act... -
Obama's Deluded and Illegitimate Battle Against Climate Change
Aug 9, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Hartnett White
Rarely and only superficially discussed among the current raging policy debates is the proliferation of federal measures “to battle climate change.” -
Paper: Domestic Gas Drilling Down 11% Without Tax Breaks to Industry
Aug 9, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
If Congress repealed three tax preferences for oil and natural gas producers, domestic gas drilling could decline by about 11%, depending on gas prices, and domestic gas prices could increase 7-10% by 2030, according to a paper published by the Council on Foreign Relations. -
Texas Railroad Commission to Consider Trimming Oil and Gas Rules
Aug 9, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
A Texas oil and gas commissioner is proposing a series of rule changes she says will help oil companies more easily navigate the state bureaucracy, potentially saving them money during the current downturn. -
In the Utah Desert, a Test of the President’s Climate Commitment
Aug 9, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
The remote high desert south of Bonanza, Utah (population: 1) is a long way from Paris, France in more than distance. -
Hackers See Opening in Growing 'Internet of Things'
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Fred Bret-Mounet admits he'll "take a screwdriver to anything," so late last year he decided to crack open the device controlling his new $20,000 rooftop solar array. -
Court Rules for DOE, Upholding Obama's Social Cost of Carbon
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A federal court yesterday ruled for the first time on the legality of the Obama administration's estimated social cost of carbon. -
Industry Groups Say Ruling Strengthens Case Against EPA Rule
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A federal appeals court's rejection of an industry challenge to U.S. EPA's boiler and solid waste incinerator standards is giving a similar set of plaintiffs hope in their case against the Clean Power Plan. -
Former EPA Administrators Who Served Republicans Support Clinton
Aug 9, 2016 | Roll Call
By CQ Staff
Two former Environmental Protection Agency administrators who served Republican presidents have endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Groups Outline TSCA Policy Priorities For EPA Meetings On Reformed Law
Aug 9, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Chemical industry and environmental groups are outlining their priorities for how EPA should implement the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as the agency launches two days of meetings seeking input on the law, including how to conduct risk evaluations for chemicals and the process for prioritizing chemicals for review.
The meetings, taking place Aug. 9 and 10 in Washington, D.C., follow the agency's recent release of its first-year plan for implementing the law. The revised statute, signed by President Obama June 22, gives the agency significant new powers to assess and regulate new and existing chemicals.
The Aug. 9 meeting seeks input to inform EPA's eventual proposed rule on conducting risk evaluations for high-priority chemicals under the new law, which the agency previously said it plans to propose in mid-December, with a final version slated for June. The second meeting on Aug. 10 will inform a rulemakings to establish a risk-based process for chemical prioritization, and the agency plans to finalize that rule in mid-June 2017.
Ahead of the meetings, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in an Aug. 9 statement detailed its priorities for the prioritization rulemaking, saying, “A draft prioritization rule must: clearly define the criteria for designating high and low priority chemicals based on hazard and exposure potential, conditions of use and other factors; provide timeframes for EPA to complete its work and for manufacturers to provide information to the Agency; outline a prioritization methodology that allows for the incorporation of new exposure tools and methods over time; and include ample opportunities for stakeholders to provide comments and information to the agency.”
Industry's Priorities
On the risk evaluation rule, ACC -- representing chemical producers -- says a credible risk review must include elements and best practices to ensure the “quality, transparency and clarity of evaluations,” given that the risk evaluations become the bases for regulatory decisions under section 6 of the new law.
The group says a draft risk evaluation rule should clearly outline EPA's intentions to use “best available science; integrate all available information on hazards and exposures in various conditions of use; define potentially exposed or susceptible populations who could be at greater risk based on exposures; focus on the highest quality scientific standards and demonstrate how Agency decisions will be based on the weight of scientific evidence; discuss the tools and databases the Agency plans to utilize for human health and ecological evaluations; and, explain how the Agency plans to partner with other U.S. and international agencies,” according to the statement.
ACC also says that both the prioritization rule and the risk evaluation rule must consider the requirements for scientific integrity under section 26 of the law. The section establishes a list of factors that the agency must weigh in determining whether to use a study, model, or methodology, including completeness of the data, uncertainties and the extent to which it has been independently peer reviewed.
Environmentalists' Goals
Meanwhile, an environmental attorney on behalf of the Environmental Working Group says the group will be closely watching the two rulemakings and EPA's meetings.
EWG is focused on ensuring the agency crafts the rules in a way that allows consideration of cumulative exposures from all routes of exposure and from various pollution sources, including those that EPA does not regulate, such as substances regulated by the Food & Drug Administration, the source says.
Additionally, the group would like to see EPA craft a rule that ensures the agency looks at “low-dose exposures;” uses the agency's newly expanded authority under TSCA section 4, which deals with testing, to compel health and safety testing from industry; and avoids completing risk evaluations unless all of the data gaps are identified and addressed, the source says.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/groups-outline-tsca-policy-priorities-epa-meetings-reformed-law
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(ACC Mentioned) GOP EPA Chiefs Endorse Clinton
Aug 9, 2016 | Politico - Morning Energy
By Eric Wolff
REPUBLICAN EPA CHIEFS ENDORSE CLINTON: Former Nixon and Reagan EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus and former George H.W. Bush EPA Administrator William Reilly both endorsed Hillary Clinton for president today, damning Donald Trump for his "profound ignorance of science." As Pro's Andrew Restuccia reports, the two men criticized Trump for failing to accept the warnings on climate change from scientists and threatening to "cancel" the Paris climate deal. "That Trump would call climate change a hoax — the singular health and environmental threat to the world today — flies in the face of overwhelming international science and the public conviction and commitment of almost 200 national governments" that joined the Paris deal, they said. "To back away now, as Trump wants to do, would set the world back decades — years we could never recover. The young people in this country deserve far better than that as our legacy."
Republicans lining up for Hillary: Ruckelshaus and Reilly are unusual in the GOP for their acceptance of and concern about climate change. But other Republican heavyweights have joined them in their preference for Clinton over Trump, including Brent Scowcroft, Meg Whitman, Richard Armitage, and Henry Paulson. Last night, Republican Sen. Susan Collins said in a Washington Post op-ed that she could not support Trump. Former George W. Bush EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman said Clinton was "more stable" than Trump, but hasn't endorsed in the race.
TONY CLARK: A PIECE OF FERC: Republican FERC Commissioner Tony Clark thinks a cap-and-trade system may be the least-bad way to regulate carbon because it would be less market-distorting than what some of that states are doing. Clark will step down sometime shortly after FERC's September meeting, and with a just a few weeks left on the clock he spoke with Pro's Darius Dixon about the tension between state energy policy and FERC markets in an age of carbon regulation. "I think it's a huge challenge that FERC is going to deal with probably over the next five years," he said. Clark cited New York's new zero-carbon energy policies, which include subsidies for nuclear power, along with attempts by Maryland and New Jersey to build energy programs around power markets, as things that make the markets, well, less market-y. "I think that there are definitely some threats to the proper functioning of markets, and a lot of that stems from the rub between how FERC has traditionally thought of markets, which is over a broader region, but having markets operated within the context of states being required on a state-by-state basis [to] plan for carbon emissions," he said.
FERC is no Superman for nuclear: FERC has been working on an initiative that could offer more support to nuclear plants struggling to stay afloat in some regions. But Clark doesn't think FERC is the best place to put your hopes and dreams of saving aging nukes. "You probably couldn't send enough money in that direction and still maintain the integrity of the markets to compensate for what the nuclear units are facing," he said.
NYT: BROWNER, DORGAN USE SCHOLAR ROLE TO PROMOTE CLIENTS' INTERESTS: The New York Times' second story in as many days on the influence of think tanks in national politics goes into depth on individuals who sometimes use their think tank affiliations to help their corporate clients, and not always with adequate disclosure. Carol Browner, a former EPA chief and an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton, is a paid by Nuclear Matters, a nuclear power advocacy group, and she has also been an unpaid scholar with the liberal Center for American Progress. Browner "has argued that any solution to climate change must include nuclear energy because it generates power without producing emissions that are blamed for global warming, even though, as an environmentalist, she was once a critic of nuclear power. She said that her change of heart on nuclear power had predated her engagement with Nuclear Matters, and was motivated by her desire to combat climate change, not by payment from the industry."
Meanwhile, former Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, from North Dakota, holds a high position at lobbying firm Arent Fox, which represents numerous energy clients, while also serving as a senior fellow, specializing in energy issues, at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dorgan's firm represents oil and gas interests and he has sent letters and testified before Congress for expanded oil and gas drilling, all under the aegis of the BPC. Chris Miller, a former policy adviser for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, has been a paid visiting fellow on energy and the environment for Third Way, while also a registered lobbyist for Covanta Energy, a waste-to-energy firm. "'I don’t think they see any downside,' Mr. Miller said of his corporate clients and the think tank."
DOE SCORES EFFICIENT VICTORY: Manufacturers critical of the Energy Department’s aggressive efficiency rulemaking posture under President Barack Obama suffered a big blow last night. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found that not one of the pointy ends of the industry’s multi-pronged legal attack on DOE’s 2014 regulation for commercial refrigerators broke skin. In fact, it gave DOE legal cover for considering environmental factors in its economic justifications for new efficiency rules, including a social cost of carbon, a dollar-figure estimate of damages associated with carbon emissions. “Petitioners challenge both the decisionmaking process and the substance of the final rules,” Circuit Judge Kenneth Ripple wrote in a detailed 68-page opinion for the three-judge panel. “Upon review of those challenges, we conclude that DOE acted in a manner worthy of our deference.”
The 7th Circuit defended DOE’s work on everything from procedural order to modeling. Not only do environmental costs need to be factored into cost-benefit analyses, the court said, “we have no doubt that Congress intended that DOE have the authority under the [efficiency law] to consider the reduction in [social cost of carbon].”
CLINTON SNAPS TEETH IN FLORIDA GATOR BITE: Hillary Clinton hammered Fla. Gov. Rick Scott for lack of climate change policies, at a Monday campaign stop in St. Petersburg, POLITICO Florida's Bruce Ritchie reports. "You have a governor who actually put out an edict — I mean, this is hard to believe, a governor who put out an edict directing state employees never to say or write the words 'climate change,'" Clinton said during the St. Petersburg rally before cheering supporters. "Now that sounds absurd, which of course it is, but it's also missing a great economic opportunity. Florida could be the center of solar energy in the entire country."
MASS AG TO EXXON: I WANT THE DOCS! Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed in Texas federal court Monday to rebut ExxonMobil's attempt to get an injunction against her office's request for documents for the company. As Pro's Andrew Restuccia reports, Healey also argued that the case rightfully belonged in her home state, not in Texas. Massachusetts, New York, and the Virgin Islands are investigating the oil giant for allegedly covering up its climate research and then misleading investors and the public.
WEST-WIDE GRID DELAYED: The dream of expanding the California grid into a multi-state operation must wait at least until next year as the players hash out concerns about emissions and governance. Gov. Jerry Brown had planned on working with the legislature to develop a bill that would expand the California Independent System Operator into Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Washington, and Idaho — states where the Warren Buffet-owned PacifiCorp operates. But California controls the Cal-ISO, and for it “to become a true kind of Western grid operator, that would have to be changed to reflect being a regional organization, and exactly how that was going to work has not been established yet,” PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said. “Taking more time to get that issue right we think makes a lot of sense.” Compounding matters, PacifiCorp owns and operates coal plants whose power would suddenly become available for purchase in the Golden State. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council both balked at the potential increase in greenhouse gases. Brown is now thinking he'll try to bring up the bill in January, he said Monday in letters to legislative leaders and the other Western governors.
MOODY'S: PENN. AND N.J. NEXT TO SUPPORT NUCLEAR? Moody's thinks New York State may be a trendsetter for using state money to prop up nuclear plants, and that Pennsylvania and New Jersey may be next in line. New York promised $1 billion over two years to keep four nuclear plants running while the state builds out its renewable capacity. New York's move "could have broader implications for the entire nuclear power industry," Toby Shea, a Moody's vice president, wrote in a comment Monday.
COLO. ANTI-FRACKERS THINK THEY HAVE THE SIGNATURES: Colorado opponents of fracking said they submitted at least 100,000 signatures to the state to ensure a pair of anti-fracking amendments got on the ballot. As Pro's Elana Schor reports, the state will check 5 percent of the signatures before certifying them as valid. The pair of measures much have 98,492 valid signatures. "This is a significant moment in the national movement to stem the tide of fracking and natural gas," Lauren Petrie, Rocky Mountain director of the green group Food and Water Watch, said in a statement.
ARIZONA REGULATORS MAY DELAY NET METERING DECISION: The Arizona Corporation Commission is slated to vote as early as this afternoon on whether to delay a decision on net metering rates until the agency finishes a related review of the value of solar. If the ACC adopts the proposed order, it would not vote on request from tiny UNS Electric to reduce net metering payments and add new demand charges for customers that supply excess power to the grid until early next year — well after the November election of three members of the five-seat agency. Although UNS’ has a small footprint, the commission’s ruling in that case could set precedent for similar proposals by larger utilities, including Arizona Public Service.
WILL TSCA MEETING FEATURE TSCA-N PIZZA? The EPA will hold a two-day meeting starting today to discuss which chemicals should be prioritized under the recently passed TSCA reforms. The American Chemistry Council outlined industry priorities in a statement ahead of the meeting: "A draft prioritization rule must: clearly define the criteria for designating high and low priority chemicals based on hazard and exposure potential, conditions of use and other factors; provide timeframes for EPA to complete its work and for manufacturers to provide information to the Agency; outline a prioritization methodology that allows for the incorporation of new exposure tools and methods over time; and, include ample opportunities for stakeholders to provide comments and information to the agency," the group said.
With help from Esther Whieldon, Darius Dixon, and Anca Gurzu
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/08/gop-epa-chiefs-endorse-clinton-215782
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EPA Begins Investigation on Lautenberg Ace and Toxic Substances
Aug 9, 2016 | Mesothelioma
By Brian Turner
Starting today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding a two-day set of public meetings that are designed to gather input about how to develop the risk evaluation process for toxic substances. The risk evaluation process is part of a new set of powers that were granted to the EPA with the signing of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act back in July.
The meetings are open to all stakeholders who have an interest in the process of the risk evaluation and prioritization of chemicals as part of the new process. This includes chemical companies, general users, non-profit organizations, consumer product manufacturers, local and state government agencies, and members of the public, and anyone interested in the environmental and public health issues or the regulation of chemical substances.
While registration for the meetings is now closed, anyone can join remotely via the webinar. Webinar links are available at http://opptstakeholder.eventbrite.com.
http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/brian/epa-begins-investigation-on-lautenberg-ace-and-toxic-substances.htm
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(ACC Mentioned) Canada Advances HFC Phase-Down
Aug 9, 2016 | REMI Network
By Barbara Carss
Impending environmental regulations will push the Canadian and American real estate industries toward cooling and insulation options with lower global warming potential (GWP). This effort to mitigate a climate threat will also require heightened vigilance as flammable and/or more toxic replacements are introduced into buildings.
Proposed Canadian regulations now nearing the end of a two-year consultation process will impose a phased schedule for an 85 per cent reduction in the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) over the next 20 years. Proponents of enshrining a similar commitment in the Montreal Protocol calculate that up to 0.5° Celsius in rising global temperature could be offset if the 197 parties to the international treaty agree to restrict the availability of a range of HFC formulations commonly used in refrigerants, aerosols and foam products.
“Canada played a key role in helping the international community achieve the Montreal Protocol in 1987. An ambitious HFC amendment would greatly help fulfill the goals of the recent Paris Agreement and would put humanity one great step forward in the fight on climate change,” asserts Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Regulatory initiatives — recently reiterated in the North American Climate, Clean Energy and Environment Partnership — are not surprising given that Canada, the United States and Mexico first tabled a joint proposal for an HFC phase-down under the Montreal Protocol in 2009, and the European Union has already committed to reduction targets. Industry associations such as the U.S. based Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) have also been proactively focused on finding low-GWP alternatives.
“Our industry has made substantial progress toward transitioning,” concurs Justin Koscher, director of the Center for the Polyurethanes Industry, an offshoot of the American Chemistry Council.
Perhaps ironically, HFCs have gained market share due to the Montreal Protocol and the resulting ongoing global phase-out of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that total sales of bulk HFCs doubled in the years between 2008 and 2012, while annual consumption in the foams sector alone jumped more than fivefold, from 800 tonnes to 4,400 tonnes, during the same period.
In the hierarchy of environmental malfeasance, HFCs do not damage the ozone layer and are generally classified as short-lived climate pollutants, meaning their destructive force dissipates relatively quickly. Yet, while they are potent, they are significantly more detrimental than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the baseline measurement for GWP at 1. For example, HFC-134a, commonly used as a refrigerant in chillers and for foam blowing, has a GWP of 1,430 or 1,430 times greater than CO2; HFC-227ea used for cold storage and food refrigeration has a GWP of 3,220.
Compliance parameters
New Canadian regulations will set limits for allowable levels of GWP and deadlines for compliance. A somewhat different regulatory approach in the United States, to prohibit the manufacture, import and first-time sale of specific products, will largely follow the same schedule for a comparable outcome.
Manufacturers and suppliers/distributors of targeted products will bear the responsibility for complying, but there will be flow-through implications for some notable economic sectors that employ HFC-based technologies. Along with real estate, which uses refrigerants and foam-based insulation and sealants, food-related production and services are highly dependent on refrigeration and almost all vehicles coming off automotive production lines contain mobile air-conditioning units.
A new category of chemical formulations known as hydrofluoro-olefins (HFOs) and some longstanding options that have more recently fallen out of favour — propane, butane, isobutane and ammonia — are now emerging as plausible alternatives. Canadian industry advocates commend the government’s flexibility in establishing allowable limits rather than outright prescribing a course of action, but call for other regulatory amendments to make a low-GWP switchover truly feasible.
“They’ve left it open for market forces to meet the new requirements,” observes Warren Heeley, president of the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada (HRAI). “However, many of these refrigerants are slightly flammable so the building codes and the standards are going to have to come around to recognizing that slightly flammable is acceptable. Before these alternatives can be used, particularly in commercial and industrial applications, the codes will have to be changed, or they can’t be used at all.”
After two rounds of consultation, the regulation is expected to be posted in the Canada Gazette later this year or early in 2017. Based on the final draft, released for comment in the spring of 2016, producers of spray and rigid foam insulation will have until January 1, 2021 to deliver products with a GWP no greater than 150. The HVAC and refrigeration industry has a later deadline of January 1, 2025 for ensuring chillers (excluding absorption chillers) operate using refrigerants with a maximum GWP of 700.
Differing timelines and thresholds account for industry-specific factors such as viability of low-GWP alternatives, requirements for other complementary regulatory changes, the cost and lifespan of equipment that will need to be retrofitted or replaced and the degree of environmental risk. Accordingly, the seemingly more relaxed limit for chillers applies to a system that is designed to contain refrigerants, whereas HFCs are the expansion agent within foam insulation’s highly permeable cell structure.
“Foam products do give off a lot more HFCs. They off-gas pretty constantly,” says Manasi Koushik, manager, environmental health and safety compliance, with the environmental consulting firm, Pinchin Environmental.
That said, building owners/managers typically choose spray foam insulation with honourable intentions based on its proven energy performance. “Closed-cell foam can give the best R-value per inch of any insulation technology,” Koscher notes.
Risk management
Industry R&D is now mostly centred on HFOs, including some formulations with an ASHRAE 2L classification to denote low flammability with a maximum burning velocity of 10 centimetres per second. Hydrocarbon options with high flammability are not viable for foam insulation due to the risks of transporting it to and storing it in drums on a worksite and possible exposure to ignition triggers during installation.
“Flammable blowing agents are not appropriate for on-site installation, which is one of the reasons the industry has continued to use HFCs to the extent that it has,” Koscher says.
Similarly, hydrocarbon refrigerants such as butane or isobutane are currently allowed only in small systems like reach-in food/beverage coolers that have a charge no greater than 350 grams. For the broader sweep of products with low flammability, safety experts maintain elevated risks can be managed with standards, training and ongoing vigilance.
“It’s a trade-off between the global warming concern and the risk associated with flammables. One is long-term and one is immediate. Any time you make a switch, you are going to have this balancing of risks,” reflects Susan Bershad, a senior chemical engineer with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). “There are standards in place to handle flammable materials and flammables can be handled safely because, of course, we use flammables all the time.”
The U.S. Department of Energy, AHRI and ASHRAE have recently launched a $5.2-million project to consider how flammable refrigerants can be addressed in updated versions of ANSI/ASHRAE standards, with a pledge from the U.S. International Code Council that revised standards will be fast-tracked into the building code. (Canada has its own, different model national code, but ASHRAE standards are referenced globally.) Meanwhile, on the toxicity grid of the safety risk chart, more building owners/managers may be prompted to consider ammonia, especially if they have on-site space to accommodate a secondary loop system.
“It’s not a bad refrigerant at all. You just have to have other controls in place if you have ammonia systems,” Koushik says.
Heeley also emphasizes the importance of clear communication about the existence of hazards and heightened monitoring and/or supervision where necessary.
“Prior to this, flammability and toxicity, for the main part, weren’t a concern with HFCs,” he says. “We have to ensure that technicians know what they’re dealing with and have the ability to do so safely.”
Lifecycle considerations
As with earlier launched phase-outs of CFCs and HCFCs, the first HFC compliance dates would apply only to the manufacture and import of new products. Consumers could still purchase chillers in a vendor’s existing unsold inventory that rely on high-GWP refrigerants and refrigerant will still be available to supply existing equipment, albeit that supply will diminish to 15 per cent of today’s quantity by 2036.
“Chillers are large investments with long life expectations — anywhere from 20 to 40 years — so older models aren’t going to be tossed aside lightly,” Heeley advises.
Nevertheless, based on the evidence of the CFC and HCFC phase-outs, it could be costly to be among the final holdouts. “The price of the refrigerants that are going to be prohibited is tripling and quadrupling. The business case for switching refrigerant types is definitely becoming a lot stronger,” Koushik says.
With insulation, the typical arguments for building to a higher environmental standard are now apparent in new construction. Among the advantages, the products align better with building owners/managers’ environmental certification goals.
“You need to look at the full lifecycle benefit of switching to the product,” Koscher maintains. “I think this is really going to be an advantage for the spray foam industry as more and more low-GWP products come into the marketplace.”
Barbara Carss is editor-in-chief of Canadian Property Management.
https://www.reminetwork.com/articles/canada-advances-hfc-phase-down/
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Researchers Find Unsafe Levels of Industrial Chemicals in Drinking Water of 6 Million Americans
Aug 9, 2016 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
Drinking water supplies serving more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked to potentially serious health problems, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers.
The chemicals — known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs — have been used for decades in a range of industrial and commercial products, including non-stick coatings on pans, food wrappers, water-repellent clothing and firefighting foam. Long-term exposure has been linked to increased risks of kidney cancer, thyroid problems, high cholesterol and hormone disruption, among other issues.
“Virtually all Americans are exposed to these compounds,” said Xindi Hu, the study’s lead author. “They never break down. Once they are released into the environment, they are there.”
As part of the study, which was published Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the researchers examined concentrations of six types of PFAS chemicals in drinking water supplies around the country. The data came from more than 36,000 samples collected by the Environmental Protection Agency between 2013 and 2015.
They also looked at sites where the chemicals are commonly found — industrial plants that use them in manufacturing, military bases and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam is used and wastewater treatment plants.
What they found: 194 of 4,864 water supplies across nearly three dozen states had detectable levels of the chemicals. Sixty-six of those water supplies, serving about six million people, had at least one sample that exceeded the EPA’s recommended safety limit of 70 parts per trillion for two types of chemicals — perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).
“It’s a big problem in a lot of communities,” said Richard Clapp, professor emeritus at Boston University’s school of public health. “It’s happening in a lot of places.”
From Decatur, Ala., to Merrimack, N.H., residents have been wrestling with high levels of the potentially harmful chemicals, and public officials have been scrambling to figure out how to prevent them from contaminating drinking water supplies.
The federal government does not currently regulate PFAS chemicals. But they are on the EPA’s list of “unregulated contaminants” that the agency monitors, with the goal of restricting those that most endanger public health. Partly because the rules that it must follow are complicated and contentious, officials have failed to successfully regulate any new contaminant in two decades.
Only once since the 1990s has the EPA come close to imposing a new standard — for perchlorate, a chemical that sometimes occurs naturally but also is found in explosives, road flares and rocket fuel. It has turned up in the drinking water of over 16 million people.
Joel Beauvais, who leads the EPA’s Office of Water, told the Post earlier this year that the system mandated by Congress demands the agency move deliberately. “It’s a rather intensive process to get one of these drinking-water regulations across the finish line,” he said.
There are reasons for that, Beauvais said at the time. A substance may occur in only a very small number of drinking-water systems or might occur only in extremely low levels. Before the EPA imposes new limitations on the nation’s water utilities, it has to prove that there is a meaningful opportunity to improve public health. “These are very consequential regulations,” Beauvais said. “They are consequential from a health perspective. They are consequential from an economic perspective.”
One of the agency’s approaches is to issue health advisories that can prompt state and local officials to take action or at least notify residents about contaminants. In May, it issued advisories for PFOS and PFOA, urging utilities around the country to follow more stringent guidelines than the EPA previously had recommended.
In the wake of that advisory, at least one Alabama community declared its tap water unfit to drink and told residents to avoid it until officials could install a temporary, high-powered filter for the water supply. Some communities in New Hampshire received bottled water while authorities considered ways to address high levels of the contaminants in nearby groundwater. A company in upstate New York agreed to install carbon filters in private homes where high levels of the chemicals had been detected.
Clapp said that as evidence has mounted about the potential health risks posed by PFAS compounds and how ubiquitous they are, few people would argue that they should remain unregulated.
“We’re definitely overdue,” he said. “It’s not a question of whether, but rather at what level should they be regulated.”
Separately on Tuesday, another Harvard-led study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, examined the effect of PFAS exposure in about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands off the coast of Denmark. Individuals exposed to the substances at a young age displayed lower-than-expected levels of antibodies to tetanus and diphtheria after being immunized, raising the prospect that the chemical exposure could be reducing the effectiveness of childhood vaccines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/09/researchers-find-unsafe-levels-of-industrial-chemicals-in-drinking-water-of-6-million-americans/?utm_term=.7e61377f82bc
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US Extends Consultation on Food-Contact Phthalate Petition
Aug 9, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US FDA has extended the consultation on a petition requesting that the agency revoke regulations that allow the use of 30 ortho-phthalates in food contact materials (FCMs).
The food additive petition was filed by ten NGOs in May. It stated that there is no longer reasonable certainty of no harm from the substances' food-contact uses.
Comments will be accepted until 19 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/49070/us-extends-consultation-on-food-contact-phthalate-petition
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City Council Gets Involved in PCB Problem
Aug 9, 2016 | Malibu Surfside News
By Eric Billingsley
The Malibu City Council didn’t want to butt into school district business, but citing public and children’s safety, members of the board felt compelled to intervene.
While the council decided Monday, Aug. 8, not to use its Malibu Municpal Code against the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, it took a first step toward by empowering staff, mainly City Attorney Christi Hogan, to work with the local Environmental Protection Agency on taking a harder look at four Malibu schools that many feel may contain high concentrations of polychiorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs.
In the meeting packet, it stated that Hogan and staff were tasked with investigating if the council could declare a possible high-level of PCBs in public schools a “nuisance” under the Malibu Municipal Code.
Doing so may have made the issue actionable for the council, which then could possibly require SMMUSD to conduct additional tests for the presence of PCBs and abate such nuisance conditions on its properties within the city.
Instead, however, the City decided to first try working with the Environmental Protection Agency, which council members contended was “dragging its feet” on getting involved, to participate and even regulate more testing in other Malibu schools.
While council members discussed the issue, some didn’t mince words when it came to how the situation has been handled by the combined school district.
Mayor Lou La Monte told a representative of the district that this is just one example of why Malibu is fighting to separate and become its own school district.
“We would have never handled it the way you guys have,” he said.
The district represenative failed to answer council members’ questions about further testing at other schools, which only furthered the council’s desire to get involved and push for more testing.
The contentious issue dates back to 2009 and 2010, when testing of air and soil samples at Malibu High School and Juan Cabrillo Elementary School revealed PCB concentrations in excess of those permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the meeting report.
In response, SMMUSD enlisted experts from the EPA and California Department of Toxic Substances Control to analyze compliance with the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The EPA has classified PCBs as probable human carcinogens; the long-term effects of PCB exposure include harm to the nervous and reproductive systems, immune system suppression, hormone disruption, and skin and eye irritation.
Experts concluded PCB levels were either non-detectible or within the health-based EPA safety threshold. On that basis, SMMUSD re-opened its MHS and JCES campuses.
In fall 2014, the City Council adopted a resolution urging SMMUSD to take immediate action to conduct source testing for PCBs at all Malibu school campuses and remove source PCBs in compliance with the TSCA.
Subsequent testing by activist Jennifer deNicola, who spoke at Monday’s meeting, in 2015 revealed levels of PCBs in excess of the threshold set by federal law.
While SMMUSD consulted with the EPA and agreed to remove PCB-containing materials from certain areas within the schools, the meeting report states, it has refused or has been slow to test additional areas within MHS and JCES that are likely to contain building materials with levels of PCBs in excess of those allowed by the EPA.
For this reason, America Unites for Kids and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility commenced a lawsuit against SMMUSD on March 23, 2015, alleging violations of the TSCA. The trial was held on May 17, 2016, and the court has not yet ruled on the issue.
http://www.malibusurfsidenews.com/police/city-council-gets-involved-pcb-problem
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Obama's Deluded and Illegitimate Battle Against Climate Change
Aug 9, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Hartnett White
Rarely and only superficially discussed among the current raging policy debates is the proliferation of federal measures “to battle climate change.”
Without much scrutiny, this Administration keeps ratcheting up the scope and stringency of executive “climate action” now institutionalized across the federal government. Step-by-step, these “climate actions” are dismantling the energy systems on which modern economic growth and improving human welfare is utterly dependent.
The rubric “climate change” is so vague and the culprit—carbon dioxide—so ubiquitous that government actions to “tackle climate change” are limitless. For example, a single action with huge ramifications, EPA in July declared that the entire aviation sector will be now subject to carbon cuts.
After the failure of the massive cap and trade bill to pass the Senate in 2013, the President noted “there is more than one way to skin a cat,” and has proceeded to execute almost every item in the White House’s Climate Action Plan. He is now accelerating radical actions to the expanding climate edifice.
To name a few items that have already engaged the United States in the mad decarbonizing project, consider the following executive actions: EPA’s seizure of the authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the tight-fisted Clean Air Act; rejection of the Keystone Pipeline; regulatory initiatives to kill coal, leading to closure of over 244 coal plants and bankruptcies of the major coal companies; a mandatory plan to re-engineer the national electric system known as the Clean Power Plan (CPP); a crackdown on methane—the primary component of natural gas; the first global Paris agreement to decarbonize; and an overlooked but extremely broad trilateral effort known as the Three Amigos (U.S., Canada and Mexico), a climate plan to include a perplexing “gender responsive approach” to climate action.
Some of the more radical climate policies currently being discussed mirror the Three Amigos’ agreement, including generation of fifty percent of electricity from renewables within ten years; meeting one-hundred percent of residential energy needs with clean sources by 2030 and installation of 500 million solar panels within four years.
Data from the Energy Information Administration would enrich the public’s understanding of the futility of those policies. After receiving subsidies since 1992, wind power generated only 4.7 percent of total U.S. electricity in 2015. Solar power accounted for only 0.6 percent. Globally, wind produced only 2.6 percent of generation. Wind and solar hardware may be rapidly growing on the ground, but as a share of total power, actual generation increases at a snail’s pace. The installed generating capacity of wind and solar is only 88.6 gigawatts (GW) of total U.S. capacity (1065 GW). If actual generation is calculated according to EIA’s average capacity factor, wind only contributed 26 GW of actual generation.
Installing 500 million solar panels within a few years with a goal to meet all residential demand with zero-carbon energy by 2030 is an exorbitant pipe dream. The cost of fabricating and installing that many solar panels could approach one trillion dollars. How many voters would support such a public investment with a national debt of almost $18 trillion, declining middle-class incomes, and the weakest economic recovery since 1949?
The global goal of the grand climate plan is to displace eighty percent of fossil fuels with zero-carbon energy sources by 2050. The main tactic is massive, subsidized deployment of wind, solar and biomass. Unless modern societies will accept a regression to the level of energy consumption in the early 18th century with a much smaller food supply, a much larger population and far more centralized government, the decarbonizing project is simply not feasible.
These wildly brief time frames are issued by would-be planetary managers who refuse to acknowledge the economic damage following the rush to renewables in Germany, Britain and Spain. The day after Britain’s new Prime Minister Theresa May assumed office, the Department of Energy and Climate Change was dissolved. Within the same week, Germany announced an end to major renewable subsidies and put a cap on renewables to avoid a meltdown of the grid.
Without an “energy miracle,” as Bill Gates and Google concluded, current renewable technology simply cannot replace fossil fuels at the scale envisioned. Yet, the U.S. accelerates the climate crusade.
Unlike European countries, the U.S. never enacted new laws to authorize a sweeping energy revolution. Yet, the Administration is handily implementing a comparable plan on the basis of strategy and tactics formulated without input from Congress. The “fight against climate change” will not merely increase electric bills by a modest amount as EPA contends. This is an epochal issue that demands far more substantial discussion in the public square.
The cautious right is typically reticent about the climate issue and when questioned often switches the topic to more low-risk issues like job creation. The left, meanwhile, spews bombastic propaganda about saving “the one planet that we’ve got.” Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent statement that “air-conditioning is a greater threat to civilization than ISIS” may have backfired. Such absurd, climate hype at the highest levels of government is offensive to a wide swath of the electorate.
The basic data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration deserve the light of day to ensure Americans are well informed on how these policies will affect them. Crucial are the voices of the engineers who make energy work. Michael Kelly, Prince Philip Professor of Engineering and Technology at the University of Cambridge, offers sound advice: ‘‘the scale and the different engineering challenges of the decarbonization project are without precedent in human history.… An altogether more sophisticated public debate is urgently needed on appropriate actions that consider the threats to humanity and weigh more carefully both the upsides and downsides of taking any action [on climate] and of not taking any action.”
Current renewable technologies cannot replace the goods and services now delivered by the concentrated, abundant, cheap, reliable, versatile, and controllable energy in fossil fuels without major damage to economies, major reduction of the global food supply, major decline in basic human welfare and major disruption of global geopolitics. The climate crusade is no longer a peripheral, aspirational matter. Executive action without popular consent has enlisted our country in this mad “battle against climate change.” It’s time to be upfront and engage in a battle against deluded energy policies.
Hartnett White is Distinguished Senior Fellow-in- Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former Chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/290840-barack-obamas-deluded-and-illegitimate-battle-against
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Paper: Domestic Gas Drilling Down 11% Without Tax Breaks to Industry
Aug 9, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
If Congress repealed three tax preferences for oil and natural gas producers, domestic gas drilling could decline by about 11%, depending on gas prices, and domestic gas prices could increase 7-10% by 2030, according to a paper published by the Council on Foreign Relations.
In a 41-page discussion paper -- "The Impact of Removing Tax Preferences for U.S. Oil and Gas Production" -- Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts University, said modeling shows domestic oil drilling activity could decline by about 9% if the tax breaks are repealed. The decline in oil and gas drilling would lead to a long-run decline in domestic oil and gas production.
Metcalf said that could lead to a 1% increase in global oil prices and a 5% drop in domestic production by 2030. Also by that year, global consumption could decline by less than 1% while domestic production and consumption of natural gas could decline 3-4%.
At issue are three tax preferences that account for more than 90% of the fiscal cost of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry.
The first, percentage depletion, allows oil and gas companies to deduct a fixed percentage of the revenue from each site as a depletion expense. First enacted in 1926, percentage depletion currently allows a deduction of 15% of revenue covering up to 1,000 bbl of oil or 6 Bcf of natural gas.
Congress enacted the second tax preference, for intangible drilling costs (IDCs), in 1916. The provision allows oil and gas producers to immediately write off the entire value of IDCs as an expense to offset taxable income in the year that the costs are incurred. A third preference, a domestic production manufacturing deduction, was enacted in 2004. It allows oil and gas companies to reduce their taxable income by up to 6%, limited to 50% of what the company pays its employees.
According to figures from the Treasury Department, the percentage depletion tax break costs the federal government $1.7 billion annually, while the IDC provision costs $3.2 billion and the manufacturing deduction costs $1.1 billion.
Metcalf introduces a term, "equivalent price impact" (EPI), which he said is the percentage drop in the price of oil or natural gas that would reduce the profitability of drilling a well as much as tax reform would. He calculated that the EPI from repealing all three tax preferences would range from minus 9% to minus 24%.
Specifically, Metcalf forecast that EPI would decline 14% for independent producers of onshore oil wells, and 24% for offshore oil wells, if all three tax breaks were repealed. For integrated producers, onshore and offshore oil wells would see EPI declines of 9% and 18%, respectively. Meanwhile, for independent producers of onshore natural gas wells eligible for the depletion tax break, EPI would decline 18%; ineligible producers would see EPI fall 14%. Metcalf forecast that integrated producers for onshore natural gas wells would see EPI decline 9%.
Metcalf projects that if all three tax breaks were repealed, drilling rates would decline 5-17%. For independent producers of onshore wells, there would be an 8% decline in oil drilling and an 11% decline in gas drilling, while offshore oil drilling would fall 17%. Meanwhile, for integrated producers, onshore oil drilling would decline 5%, onshore gas drilling would fall 7%, and offshore oil drilling would decline 11%.
The author said that repealing the tax breaks could help the U.S. meet its climate change goals. It could also encourage other developing nations with their own subsidies to fossil fuel producers to follow suit.
"In light of this, Congress should repeal all three tax preferences," Metcalf said. "When Congress is ready to take up fundamental tax reform, it will have to grapple with many challenging issues as it attempts to lower overall income tax rates. Having a clear sense of the costs and benefits of proposals to raise revenue from the oil and gas sector will be essential to those discussions."
The issue of tax breaks for the oil and gas industry has been a hot button issue for years. Republicans and their industry allies argue that repealing the tax breaks would cause layoffs and lead to declines in domestic production. On the other side, Democrats want to see the tax breaks end as part of a bigger strategy to move away from fossil fuels and embrace renewable sources of energy.
Three years ago, the Independent Petroleum Association of America called on House lawmakers to continue the tax breaks for fiscal year 2014, after the Obama administration unveiled a budget that proposed their repeal (see Daily GPI, April 16, 2013; April 11, 2013). More recently, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), during his unsuccessful bid for the White House, called for eliminating the tax breaks.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/107345-paper-domestic-gas-drilling-down-11-without-tax-breaks-to-industry
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Texas Railroad Commission to Consider Trimming Oil and Gas Rules
Aug 9, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
A Texas oil and gas commissioner is proposing a series of rule changes she says will help oil companies more easily navigate the state bureaucracy, potentially saving them money during the current downturn.
Texas Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick is calling her proposal “common sense practices” aiming to reduce paperwork, eliminate unnecessary rules and improve efficiency for state energy regulators. She said the commission has re-evaluated methods and rules and overhauled information technology programs that could save tens of millions of dollars for oil and gas operators.
She will introduce specifics at the three-member commission’s meeting on Tuesday in Austin. Commissioners could vote at that meeting on one rule change, amending statewide requirements on gas well reporting. Other suggested rule changes will be taken up by the board before year’s end, Craddick’s staff said.
The full package of changes, which she is calling the Texas Oilfield Relief Initiative, includes reducing gas well status filings, modifying gas well deliverability reporting, changing some pressure calculations, amending production definitions, prioritizing rig inspections in sensitive areas like cities or wetlands, creating area-wide surface casing requirements in counties with constant water depth, simplifying permit reissuance applications and reviewing all Railroad Commission forms to determine if the data is used.
The initiative already has support from several industry association leaders.
Craddick said the streamlining tries to avoid weakening public and environmental protection.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/08/09/texas-railroad-commission-to-consider-trimming-oil-and-gas-rules/
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In the Utah Desert, a Test of the President’s Climate Commitment
Aug 9, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
The remote high desert south of Bonanza, Utah (population: 1) is a long way from Paris, France in more than distance.
But the two places are linked. How the Obama administration responds to a precedent-setting proposal in Utah poses a key test for the President’s climate commitments ratified in Paris last year.
Under the soil near Bonanza lie deposits of oil shale, a pre-petroleum material that, if baked at high temperatures for long enough, can be turned into a liquid synthetic crude oil. “Can” being the operative word. Because while it’s technically possible to turn shale into oil, it’s an expensive, dirty process.
And despite a century of trying, no one has been able to produce crude from shale in commercial quantities in the U.S. Enefit, a corporation owned by the Estonian government, wants to change that.
Enefit’s proposal is both ambitious and highly damaging. The company plans to produce more than 500 million barrels of liquid fossil fuel at a facility near Bonanza over the next 30 years. Doing so will require strip-mining thousands of acres, and could produce up to 750 million tons of potentially toxic waste rock.
Turning shale into oil is also a thirsty process. Enefit proposes to use up to 100 billion gallons of water from the already overtaxed Upper Colorado River basin, an arid region that likely will only get hotter and drier due to climate change.
The half-square-mile processing plant Enefit hopes to construct will also spew air pollutants in a region that already suffers worse smog than Los Angeles on some winter days due to weather inversions and emissions from conventional oil and gas drilling.
But most destructive of all may be the climate pollution. Enefit’s own analysis shows that the amount of carbon emitted from production and burning of oil shale is up to 35 percent greater than that of conventional oil per unit of energy, and greater even than notoriously carbon-intensive oil sands.
That means the synthetic crude Enefit wants to produce would have far worse climate impacts than the conventional crude Enefit’s fuel would supplant.
From a climate perspective, this would be a giant step in the wrong direction. The Paris Agreement mandates that the U.S. reduce its climate emissions by 26 to 28 percent over the next nine years. This will be a tall order; a recent study concludednumerous efforts above and beyond the president’s Clean Power Plan may not get us all the way there.
Which makes it puzzling that the Obama administration is considering aiding and abetting Enefit’s plan. The company’s project area is surrounded by federal land, and so it is seeking rights-of-way to build electrical transmission lines, pipelines to transport natural gas and water to the site, and a pipeline to move the synthetic crude to market.
The rights-of-way are critical to the strip mine and refinery’s feasibility. Without them, Enefit would likely have to build a power plant on site and transport water in and fuel out by truck, driving up the already high costs of its carbon-intensive product, and making its construction less likely.
If the Paris Agreement is to mean something, at the very least the U.S. government should not knowingly make it much harder to achieve the nation’s climate commitments. But that’s exactly what Enefit’s project would do by developing a transportation fuel source more carbon-polluting than conventional oil.
The administration must make a decision soon on subsidizing Enefit’s operation with rights-of-way. What it does in Bonanza will reveal a lot about whether it was serious in Paris.
Ted Zukoski is a staff attorney in the Denver office of Earthjustice, where he works on public lands and climate change issues.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/290761-in-the-utah-desert-a-test-of-the-presidents-climate
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Hackers See Opening in Growing 'Internet of Things'
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Fred Bret-Mounet admits he'll "take a screwdriver to anything," so late last year he decided to crack open the device controlling his new $20,000 rooftop solar array.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and the information security professional had managed to hack his way to the doorstep of a a broader network linking solar panels like his.
Bret-Mounet quickly notified the vulnerable company but says he "could have had the aggregate effect of [taking] a small coal generation facility" offline, had he been so inclined.
"But it would be distributed throughout the world, so it would have no meaning," he said on the sidelines of the DEF CON cybersecurity conference here on Saturday.
There may have been a touch of hacker bravado behind Bret-Mounet's findings. He acknowledged that his research applied only to a Tigo Energy development system that had been shipped to him and several other customers in error — not to the company's solar management systems writ large.
Bret-Mounet lives in California, which generated a record 8,030 megawatts of solar power at one point last month, enough to support about 6 million homes (Greenwire, July 15). "We're clearly starting to reach critical mass" with renewable energy sources, he said, meaning vulnerabilities like those he found in Tigo's draft device could hint at a darker future. "Ten years from now, yeah, it might have real meaning, taking off an entire neighborhood."
Tigo CEO Zvi Alon said his company was "thankful" to Bret-Mounet for uncovering gaps and sent him an Amazon.com gift card for his trouble. He said Tigo has tightened its security posture in the wake of the disclosures, but noted that the number of potentially vulnerable systems was in the tens. "We shipped him a new development system, and he tried very hard to break into it, and failed," Alon said.
Still, Bret-Mounet's initial findings reflect all-too-common security trends in the ever-growing "internet of things," a category that encompasses everything from solar control panels to web-connected refrigerators.
Researchers made mincemeat out of these devices at the back-to-back Black Hat and DEF CON cybersecurity conferences in Las Vegas last week. At first glance, hacking into electronic kids toys or "smart" water filters would seem to be of little consequence. But as researchers like Bret-Mounet showed, the onslaught of networked "things" has already shrunk the gap between the critical and the mundane.
"The skills and tools and everything that we use on 'junk' hacking are the exact same tools we use on critical infrastructure," said Joe FitzPatrick, a researcher at Hardware Security Resources LLC, who demonstrated attacks on industrial control system components at Black Hat. "You're going to find similar chips and a same type of board layout."
Tinkerers like FitzPatrick and Bret-Mounet could put their hardware-hacking skills to the test at DEF CON's IoT "Village," now in its second year. The Village — really a conference room tucked away in Bally's Casino — featured a competition to find the most software bugs in wireless toy drones, Wi-Fi routers and dozens of other digital specimens that have wormed their way into modern life.
"Back in the day, a kettle that made your tea was a kettle that made your tea. Now we're seeing the ability to control your kettle remotely," said security consultant Ken Munro, who showed hackers in the IoT village how to hijack a "smart" thermostat and demand its owner pay a ransom to regain control of the temperature. "We're seeing the same sort of challenges coming from the other way with industrial control. ... We want to be able to manage it remotely."
That remote access opens doors for attackers, whether they're targeting entire power distribution networks or individual thermostats. "We're starting to see a convergence ... where these consumer devices are actually meeting up with these industrial control system devices, and they've both got broadly similar problems," Munro said.
That's not to say the equipment is identical. Control system devices are often built to run continuously for years and may include safety features and dust and weather resistance all lacking in their consumer-grade counterparts.
Ted Harrington, executive partner at Independent Security Evaluators and one of the chief organizers of the IoT Village at DEF CON, said the devices also differ in the threats they face.
"Many of the devices are similar at least in terms of the basics — how they function," he said. But those "who would be interested in [hacking] critical infrastructure are going to be the most sophisticated, well-resourced adversaries on the planet."
"A nation state is more interested in compromising the American power grid than they are in compromising an individual person's home," Harrington said.
Feds take note
Agencies from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to the Federal Trade Commission have struggled to get a handle on a buzzword — internet of things — that seems to include nearly everything with a chip in it.
"Everybody's making it up as they go, so I started to look into it," said Jeff Voas, a computer scientist at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology. "It was just a bunch of media buzz — that this was going to have trillions of dollars of impact — so all I ever got was the spin. And you can't really do research if all you have is spin."
Voas set out to build a model to help researchers make sense of IoT and its security challenges. His report late last month defined the five core parts in a "network of things": sensors, aggregators, communications channels, software or "eUtilities" for processing data, and decision triggers that direct the "thing" in question to carry out a certain action.
Regulators have similarly tried to break IoT down into more manageable categories. The Department of Energy takes the lead on grid devices. The Federal Aviation Administration covers drone security. FAA's parent agency, the Department of Transportation, keeps tabs on increasingly common, internet-connected vehicles and "smart city" transportation systems. The Food and Drug Administration tackles wireless medical devices, and the FTC is expected to work with all of them to protect consumers' privacy and data.
"Some of these older agencies are confronting these issues for, really, the first time," said FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny, who joined a small public delegation of "feds" at DEF CON. (Many U.S. government workers prefer to skip the conference or else keep a low profile, given DEF CON's history of contests to "spot the fed" in exchange for prizes.) "IoT is relatively new, and we have a much longer history of dealing with websites and that kind of thing," McSweeny added.
She said her agency is planning to take a harder look at connected devices in the near future and will raise the issue at a series of technology talks scheduled for the fall. "Right now, [IoT] is very, very opaque to consumers — they have almost no way of knowing how good the security is for a connected product," she said.
Bret-Mounet, who hacked into his own solar array to prove a point, said even security professionals like him had a hard time meeting the challenge of IoT. "There is no way that even we can handle it," he said. "There is no way customers can be expected to actually protect themselves from those devices. That is a very sad state."
Nevertheless, he wrapped up his talk at DEF CON with a thanks to all IoT devices "for so much entertainment."
"And thank you to Tigo for not suing me," he added.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/08/09/stories/1060041348
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Court Rules for DOE, Upholding Obama's Social Cost of Carbon
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A federal court yesterday ruled for the first time on the legality of the Obama administration's estimated social cost of carbon.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Department of Energy's use of the metric in its analysis of standards for commercial refrigeration equipment. The court upheld DOE's rules in their entirety against industry challenges.
"We conclude that DOE acted in a manner worthy of our deference," Senior Judge Kenneth Ripple, who was appointed by President Reagan, wrote in the opinion.
Judges William Bauer, a Democratic appointee, and Ilana Rovner, a Republican appointee, were the other members of the three-judge panel that heard the case. The Chicago-based appeals court serves Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
DOE issued the two rules in question in 2014. One of the rules set energy efficiency standards for 49 classes of commercial refrigeration equipment, while the other stipulated test procedures for the standards.
The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute; the North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers; and small business Zero Zone Inc. filed lawsuits that raised concerns about both the rules themselves and DOE's rulemaking process.
Among their challenges, the industry entities questioned DOE's use of the social cost of carbon, a metric that represents the long-term economic damage to society, in U.S. dollars, from each incremental ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.
Federal agencies formed a working group in 2009 to create the social cost of carbon. The group last revised the estimate in 2015 to $36 per metric ton of CO2. That cost will rise to $50 a metric ton in 2030 and $69 a metric ton in 2050.
Industry had questioned DOE's statutory authority to use the estimates to quantify benefits of the efficiency rule. AHRI and Zero Zone also told the court that DOE had failed to respond to a comment letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that raised concerns that the social cost of carbon estimates were arbitrary, shaped behind closed doors and based on inputs that were not peer-reviewed.
Republican foes of the social cost of carbon have raised similar arguments for years, particularly in reference to how EPA has used the metric to assess rule costs and benefits.
DOE can consider the social cost of carbon under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, the 7th Circuit ruled. The department was reasonable in considering global climate benefits when it calculated national regulatory costs, Ripple said.
Ripple also wrote that although DOE didn't respond to the specific points in the chamber's letter, the department did address general concerns with the social cost of carbon "and made clear that, despite those concerns, the calculation of SCC could be used."
The decision highlighted a friend-of-the-court brief filed by New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, which defended the Obama administration's process for deriving the social cost of carbon.
DOE's use of the metric, Ripple wrote, "was neither arbitrary nor capricious."
In 2008, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faulted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to explicitly monetize climate benefits. But until yesterday, federal courts had yet to rule on the interagency working group's official social cost of carbon estimates.
A prior industry lawsuit in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over DOE's walk-in freezer and cooler rule challenged the department's use of the social cost of carbon, but DOE and manufacturers settled the case.
Denise Grab, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity who filed the amicus brief in the refrigeration case, said that yesterday's decision provides "major support" for federal agencies to use the social cost of carbon as a policy tool.
"It is significant that the court resoundingly dismissed these challenges and found that the agency's approach was reasonable," Grab said. "This ruling will make it harder for opponents of climate action to justify spurious attacks against the social cost of carbon."
Industry had also challenged DOE's engineering analysis, its overall economic analysis and regulatory flexibility analysis, as well as DOE's assessment of the cumulative impacts of rules for refrigeration manufacturers.
The 7th Circuit rejected all of industry's arguments.
"This is not a close call," Ripple wrote of the challenges to DOE's technical work. "We are convinced that DOE's engineering analysis, including its use of an analytical model, was neither arbitrary nor capricious."
DOE's economic analysis, which assumed that the new standards would not result in significant changes in purchases behavior, was "certainly more balanced and careful than petitioners suggest," Ripple also wrote.
Along with upholding the content of the rules, the court found that DOE properly provided an adequate opportunity for stakeholders to comment on the rules.
"Petitioners were provided with a sufficient opportunity to see and comment upon technical data," Ripple wrote. "There is no basis here for our disturbing the agency's decision."
Click here to read the court's decision.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/08/09/stories/1060041382
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Industry Groups Say Ruling Strengthens Case Against EPA Rule
Aug 9, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A federal appeals court's rejection of an industry challenge to U.S. EPA's boiler and solid waste incinerator standards is giving a similar set of plaintiffs hope in their case against the Clean Power Plan.
In a lengthy opinion on the boiler and incinerator rules last month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected arguments by companies and business groups that EPA should have allowed facilities to average hazardous air pollutant emissions from different units for compliance purposes (Greenwire, July 29).
Now, in a letter filed yesterday, a similar set of interests told the D.C. Circuit that its ruling supported their concerns about EPA's definition of a regulated entity in the Clean Power Plan.
The firm Sidley Austin LLP submitted the letter on behalf of groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Federation of Independent Business.
EPA's Clean Power Plan requires states to develop plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The rule is currently on hold by the Supreme Court pending the resolution of litigation.
One of industry's many arguments in the massive litigation is that no individual source of carbon dioxide could install pollution controls to meet EPA's standards.
Instead, the rule is based on assumptions on what a source category — power plants — can achieve as a whole on a regional basis.
Clean Power Plan foes argue that EPA's interpretation means shutting down some coal-fired power plants and limiting the use of others, and shifting generation to alternative power sources, like renewables.
"Sources can meet these standards only by averaging their emission rates with those of lower- or zero-emitting facilities," said the letter.
If EPA can't use averaging under Section 129 of the Clean Air Act, which is the basis for the incinerator standards, then it can't use averaging under Section 111, on which the Clean Power Plan is based, rule foes told the D.C. Circuit.
The sections define regulated entities slightly differently, but in both cases, the law specifies that a performance standard is "applicable to" individual sources, industry groups argued.
"EPA cannot command a standard based on averaging the regulated source's emissions with those of other sources or non-sources," the letter said.
EPA had maintained that it did not have legal authority to allow emissions averaging in the solid waste incinerator standards.
In the Clean Power Plan litigation, on the other hand, EPA has argued that power plants operate within an interconnected grid of linked facilities and that its interpretation falls under the agency's broad authority from Congress.
Environmental groups defending EPA in the litigation have made similar arguments. They say the unique nature of the power industry, in which companies routinely shift generation among facilities, supports the rule's structure.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/08/09/stories/1060041381
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Former EPA Administrators Who Served Republicans Support Clinton
Aug 9, 2016 | Roll Call
By CQ Staff
Two former Environmental Protection Agency administrators who served Republican presidents have endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The Clinton campaign made public the endorsements by William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly in a statement early Tuesday.
Ruckelshaus was the EPA’s first administrator under President Richard Nixon and he held the same job under President Ronald Reagan. Reilly served as President George H.W. Bush’s EPA administrator.
“Republicans have a long history of support for the environment dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Donald Trump threatens to destroy that legacy of respect for the environment and protection of public health,” the joint statement reads.
The statement goes on to say that "Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the public health issues embodied in our environmental laws.”
The statement describes environmental achievements by the presidents they served. Nixon is credited for creating the EPA and supporting the Clean Air Act. It notes that Reagan ratified the Montreal Protocol that sought to reverse damage to the ozone layer. And that Bush advocated for Clean Air Act amendments to combat acid rain and air pollution.
Ruckelshaus and Reilly also warned against backing away from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
“We Republicans should be shocked, outraged even, at the prospect that all this progress, this legacy will be repudiated and rolled back by Donald Trump,” they wrote.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/former-epa-administrators-republicans-support-hillary-clinton-trump
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