Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 10/6/16
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(ACC Mentioned) US Lawmakers to Investigate Funding of WHO Cancer Agency
Oct 6, 2016 | Reuters
By Kate Kelland
Officials from the U.S. government's health research agency are to be questioned by a congressional committee about why taxpayers are funding a World Health Organization cancer agency facing criticism over how it classifies carcinogens. -
Sen. Boxer Floats Bill to Force EPA TSCA Asbestos Ban
Oct 6, 2016 | Inside EPA
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has introduced a bill to force EPA to use authority under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to swiftly ban the known carcinogen asbestos, weeks after sending the agency a letter urging it to ensure that asbestos is one of the first 10 chemicals it reviews for possible restriction under TSCA. -
Toxic Substances Control Act: Landmark Federal Environmental Statute Reformed
Oct 6, 2016 | Lexology
By Carolyn R. Haslam and Jason S. Lichtstein
In June 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, a bill reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. -
(ACC Mentioned) California Amends Regulations for Prop 65 Private Litigation
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has adopted amendments to its regulations, governing private litigation brought pursuant to Proposition 65. These affect settlement terms, penalty amounts, and attorney's fees in civil actions filed by private persons. -
Reject Food-Contact Phthalate Petition, Says Industry Coalition
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
An industry coalition has called on the US FDA to deny an NGO request to revoke food-contact allowances for a class of ortho-phthalates. -
Asbestos, BPA Ban Bills Introduced in US Congress
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Bills have been introduced in the US House of Representatives and in the Senate looking to ban or restrict asbestos, and bisphenol A (BPA) from food containers. -
Echa Expert Group Begins Guidance for Identifying EDCs
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
Echa's endocrine disruptor expert group (Edeg) has begun to define the scope of guidance for identifying substances with endocrine disrupting properties. -
Echa Round-Up
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
Echa is consulting on a harmonised classification and labelling (CLH) proposal from Austria for ethylene oxide. -
NRDC's Doniger, Sidley Austin's Martella Debate Legal Future of Rule
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E TV
By OnPoint
What is the legal future of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, and how could the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's pending ruling on the regulation impact future Clean Air Act cases and rulemakings coming out of EPA? During today's OnPoint, David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Roger Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin, discuss the most contentious issues being considered by the D.C. Circuit following last week's oral arguments. They also debate the precedent that could be set by the outcome of the litigation. -
Lawmakers Urged to 'Look Before We Leap'
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
An attorney who represents the United Mine Workers of America pressed three lawmakers yesterday to request a federal report on the economic impact of the next phase of the Paris climate agreement. -
Skeptical Court Considers Scope of Tribal Consultation
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal judges were searching for a line in the sand yesterday as American Indian tribes argued that the Obama administration failed to fully consider the effects of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. -
Methane Leaks Declining Even as Natural Gas Production Grows
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By John Fialka
College students learn in Economics 101 that no one leaves $20 bills lying on the street. It is a rubric used to fortify the theory that big economic markets are sophisticated and that items of great value are prized and not often wasted. But when it comes to industries that leak natural gas — a powerful global warmer — into the atmosphere, the theory remains a matter that leads to scientific and political disputes. -
U.S. Trade Gap Grew Even as Oil Exports Rise
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
U.S. energy exports continue to rise, but the additional overseas business is doing nothing to bring the nation's trade into balance. -
Reliance Expects First US Ethane Cargo as Early as December
Oct 6, 2016 | Platts
By Andrea Salazar and Genevieve Soong
India's Reliance Holdings expects to receive its first shipment of US ethane as early as December, following Europe's Ineos and Borealis as US ethane buyers. -
States, EPA Vow to Develop Framework to Guide Joint Crisis Response
Oct 6, 2016 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
The joint state-EPA council leading the "E-Enterprise" initiative to align their environmental policies is beginning a new project to guide state and agency officials when they respond to multi-jurisdictional or cross-media incidents such as the 2015 Gold King Mine spill, though the scope of the new effort remains uncertain. -
Obama Calls Paris Entry a 'Turning Point' on Climate Change
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
President Obama yesterday declared the Paris Agreement on climate change a "turning point for our planet" as he hailed countries for reaching the threshold that will allow the accord to take force next month.
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(ACC Mentioned) US Lawmakers to Investigate Funding of WHO Cancer Agency
Oct 6, 2016 | Reuters
By Kate Kelland
Officials from the U.S. government's health research agency are to be questioned by a congressional committee about why taxpayers are funding a World Health Organization cancer agency facing criticism over how it classifies carcinogens.
An aide to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform told Reuters that National Institutes of Health officials have agreed to attend a hearing after questions were raised by lawmakers over its grants to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a semi-autonomous part of the WHO based in Lyon, France.
The hearing will be in private, with NIH officials answering questions from "committee investigators", the aide said. No date has been set, but the hearing is expected in the coming weeks.
"We're currently working with NIH to schedule the briefing soon," the aide told Reuters.
The hearing comes after the committee's chairman added his voice to growing concerns among some senior U.S. lawmakers about the way IARC reviews and classifies substances.
In recent years IARC has caused controversy over whether such things as coffee, mobile phones, processed meat and the weed killer glyphosate cause cancer.
In a Sept. 26 letter to NIH director Francis Collins, Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz describes IARC as having "a record of controversy, retractions, and inconsistencies" and asks why the NIH, which has a $33 billion annual budget, continues to fund it.
"IARC's standards and determinations for classifying substances as carcinogenic, and therefore cancer-causing, appear inconsistent with other scientific research, and have generated much controversy and alarm," Chaffetz wrote.
The NIH did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A WHO spokesperson referred Reuters to IARC for comment. A spokeswoman for IARC told Reuters that Chaffetz's letter contained "misconceptions" which IARC's director, Chris Wild, has sought to address in his own letter to the NIH director.
Wild's letter, dated Oct. 5 and copied via email to Reuters on Thursday, rejects Chaffetz's criticisms and says IARC's classifications, known as "monographs", are "widely respected for their scientific rigour, standardized and transparent process and ... freedom from conflicts of interest".
Wild also defends IARC's evaluation of coffee and disputed Chaffetz's description of it as a "retraction". IARC's previous assessment of coffee as "possibly carcinogenic" was updated in June this year, when IARC said it had found "no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect".
"The (coffee) report in 2016 was not a 'retraction' but a re-evaluation based on an additional 25 years of scientific evidence," Wild said.
FULL DISCLOSURE
Chaffetz, however, asks the NIH to detail its standards for awarding grants and the vetting and oversight of grantees. It also asks for full disclosure of NIH funds to IARC or money spent in relation to IARC's activities.
Questions over grants awarded by NIH to IARC could put a significant portion of IARC's funding at risk.
IARC's resources are relatively modest. Its 2014 revenue was about 30 million euros ($33 million).
In his letter, Chaffetz's cites the NIH's grant database as showing that it has given IARC more than $1.2 million so far this year. The database also shows that since 1992, NIH grants to IARC have totalled some $40 million.
The American Chemistry Council also joined those voicing concern, issuing a statement following Chaffetz's letter accusing IARC of "a long history of passing judgment on substances through a fundamentally-flawed process that yields questionable results".
"We welcome the interest of the House Committee ... and hope it will shed light on the close and somewhat opaque relationship between IARC and NIH, including the use of taxpayer dollars and resources to support IARC's activities," it said.
IARC is also in dispute with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and United Nations and United States regulators over glyphosate, an ingredient of widely-used weed killers.
IARC says glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic", while EFSA and several other regulators say it isn't.
This dispute prompted Robert Aderholt, chairman of the U.S. congressional Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, to write in June to NIH's Collins questioning funding of IARC.
In that letter, Aderholt says IARC's conclusions "appear to be the result of a significantly flawed process" and adds that "some in academia have raised questions about the quality of the science and the transparency of the process".
The glyphosate dispute also held up a decision on whether to relicense the product for use in Europe. ($1 = 0.8941 euros)
http://news.trust.org/item/20161006163130-qdh3x
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Sen. Boxer Floats Bill to Force EPA TSCA Asbestos Ban
Oct 6, 2016 | Inside EPA
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has introduced a bill to force EPA to use authority under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to swiftly ban the known carcinogen asbestos, weeks after sending the agency a letter urging it to ensure that asbestos is one of the first 10 chemicals it reviews for possible restriction under TSCA.
The legislation, S. 3427, introduced Sept. 29 would require EPA to publish within 90 days of enactment an identification and assessment of the known uses of, and exposures to, all forms of asbestos. EPA would have to no later than 18 months after enactment move to restrict use of the substance “necessary to achieve the maximum practicable reduction in human exposure.”
Within one year of EPA issuing a rule to limit the use of asbestos, the bill would bar anyone from manufacturing, processing, or distributing in commerce any form of asbestos or any mixture or article containing any form of asbestos for any use or under any condition other than a use or condition described in that rule.”
The bill is named the “Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act,” named after the former Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) president who died due to asbestos-caused mesothelioma.
His widow, current ADAO President Linda Reinstein, told Inside EPA recently that the known risks of asbestos justify its inclusion as one of the first 10 chemicals reviewed under the updated TSCA.
The law, signed by President Obama on June 22, requires EPA to decide by mid-December on a list of 10 chemicals that it will prioritize for review and determine whether to restrict or ban their use.
Boxer in an Aug. 26 letter to EPA said asbestos should be one of the substances due to its known adverse health impacts, and the agency's previous rule to ban asbestos that a federal appeals court scrapped in 1991.
Asbestos is a known human carcinogen and exposure to the substance can cause major health effects including lung cancer, mesothelioma, and the non-cancer disease asbestosis, EPA says on its website.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a 1991 ruling in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA struck down the agency's 1989 regulation banning asbestos -- issued under the original 1976 TSCA authority -- as unreasonable. The court said the agency had not met its burden of proof to establish the chemical's risk could not be reduced by any other regulatory means, and since then EPA has never proposed a similar limit on a chemical already in commerce.
The new law overhauls the old TSCA and takes many steps to address the legal hurdles that hindered EPA's asbestos ban, including removing language that required the agency to promulgate the "least burdensome" alternative and clarifying that EPA should not consider costs when determining whether a chemical is safe.
http://insideepa.com/the-inside-story
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Toxic Substances Control Act: Landmark Federal Environmental Statute Reformed
Oct 6, 2016 | Lexology
By Carolyn R. Haslam and Jason S. Lichtstein
In June 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, a bill reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. After forty years the landmark environmental law was regarded by many as outdated and ineffective, resulting in a failure to provide uniform national regulation of chemical substances, causing both environmental advocates and industry groups alike to propose reform. It took several years and the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle, but TSCA legislation was passed in 2016 with broad bipartisan support and touted by most stakeholders as both comprehensive and innovative. The bill revises the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) processes and requirements for evaluating and determining whether regulatory control of a chemical is warranted.
Major aspects of the TSCA legislation include the authority to regulate existing chemicals, strengthening transparency and quality of science required for EPA decision-making, evaluation of chemicals solely on the health risks posed, and increased regulatory options to address risk. The TSCA legislation outlines new and expanded EPA powers and detailed testing requirements, as well as rulemaking and administrative requirements. The TSCA bill preempts state law from establishing new restrictions on chemicals regulated by the EPA or assessing the hazards, exposures, risks, and uses of chemicals identified by EPA as subject to safety assessment and determination. The highlights of the bill are provided below.
New / expanded TSCA authorities:
Provide EPA express authority to regulate existing chemicals as well as regulate new chemicals and new significant uses of existing chemicals;
Pre-manufacture notice requirements for the production of new chemicals;
Ability to request safety data from manufacturers and processors and to review both new and existing chemicals or significant uses of chemicals;
Development of information through consent agreement or order, in addition to rulemaking; and
Authority to collect fees from manufacturers, importers, or processors, allowing for a consistent source of funding.
Revisions to TSCA testing requirements:
The EPA must conduct: (1) a safety assessment to determine the risk posed by a chemical under conditions of use and exposure information; and (2) a safety determination to determine whether the chemical meets the safety standard under the conditions of use;
Eliminated the requirement for a preliminary finding about risk before safety assessment testing can be required;
Prioritization of chemicals for assessment and determination, which must be based on persistence and bioaccumulation or human carcinogens that have high acute and chronic toxicity;
Chemical testing for safety assessment will be focused on risk-management alone; cost is no longer a factor;
Safety assessments must be conducted to provide protection from exposure to chemical substances for vulnerable groups, including children, pregnant women, elderly, and regarding worker's health, as well as consumers and the general public, and to ensure information is available to public health officials and first responders in case of emergency;
Testing procedures and deadlines for safety determinations must take relative cost, availability of facilities and personnel to perform testing, and applicable deadlines into consideration; and
Manufacturers may request chemical assessment and determination upon payment of a fee.
New rulemaking and administrative requirements for EPA:
An initial list identifying high and low priority chemicals must be issued within one-hundred eighty (180) days;
A risk-based screening process and criteria for identifying existing chemicals that are high or low priority for assessment and determination must be issued within one (1) year;
Development of policies, procedures, and guidance to carry out the bill's requirements must be issued within two (2) years;
Prioritization of existing chemicals for risk evaluation, with clear and enforceable deadlines;
A chemical testing schedule and resources for completion of assessment and determination must be made public after designating a chemical high priority;
An annual plan must be published which identifies the assessments and determinations to be completed that year and details the current status of the initiated assessments and determinations, with an opportunity for public comment; and
An Independent Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals must be established by EPA to provide expert advice and consultations regarding the scientific and technical aspects of interpreting the TSCA legislation.
The EPA is no longer required to restrict chemical substances in the least burdensome manner and is authorized to impose requirements necessary to eliminate risk to health or the environment, including banning substances.
Confidential Business Information. Chemical manufacturers, importers, and processors should be aware that testing information that is not confidential must be made publically available. Confidential business information (CBI) protection measures include the identification of categories of information presumed to be protected and those which are not protected, as well as provided an exception for public health or emergency information. The EPA must create a plan for reviewing all CBI claims. The TSCA legislation limits CBI protection to ten (10) years, with extensions of ten (10) years.
Companies that manufacture, import, or process chemicals in various industry segments may wish to evaluate whether to conduct an operations review to determine chemicals in use, those planned for future use, and to create a plan in preparation for the implementation of the TSCA legislation.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=83e994a8-69ae-490b-9872-d07eaf4ce469
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(ACC Mentioned) California Amends Regulations for Prop 65 Private Litigation
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has adopted amendments to its regulations, governing private litigation brought pursuant to Proposition 65. These affect settlement terms, penalty amounts, and attorney's fees in civil actions filed by private persons.
More specifically, the adopted amendments:
cap the value of additional settlement payments (ASPs) paid in lieu of civil penalties;
ensure that penalty payments are used for purposes relevant to furthering the goals of Prop 65; and
clarify and strengthen the standards for determining whether a “significant” public benefit has been conferred, which is the prerequisite for a plaintiff to be awarded attorney's fees.
The changes came in response to California governor Jerry Brown’s commitment to “ending frivolous 'shake-down' lawsuits” in recent years.
According to the OAG’s final statement of reason (FSOR), the rulemaking is intended to:
ensure California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) receives civil penalty funds so that it has adequate resources to implement Prop 65;
limit plaintiffs’ abilities to “divert the statutorily mandated penalty to themselves” through ASPs;
increase the transparency of private party settlements; and
reduce the financial incentive for private plaintiffs to bring Prop 65 cases that do not confer a substantial public benefit.
Questions raised
Speaking to Chemical Watch on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber), Anthony Samson, senior attorney and policy adviser at Arnold & Porter law firm, said that the business group supports the stated objectives of the reform.
But the chamber – which spearheaded a coalition of more than 200 industry groups during the regulations’ consultation – remains concerned that key aspects of the rules will fall short of these goals. And, it says that the approach may ultimately increase businesses’ costs in resolving private enforcement claims under Prop 65.
For example, capping ASPs “will likely cause plaintiff attorneys to seek additional attorneys’ fees to cover the shortfall or to simply increase the amount demanded for civil penalties”, said Mr Samson.
In response to the new regulations, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said that Prop 65 remains “fundamentally flawed”.
“Only a major overhaul will yield meaningful relief to businesses and meaningful information for consumers.”
Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) – an advocacy group and frequent Prop 65 plaintiff – told Chemical Watch that some parts of the regulations will be difficult for CEH. But, on the whole, the OAG “did their best to meet a lot of competing demands”.
Ms Cox noted that Prop 65 is one of a relatively small number of privately enforceable laws. “I think there's been a learning curve of how to regulate so that it works for the public benefit, and it will continue to evolve,” she said.
Comments addressed
In its final statement of reason (FSOR), the OAG laid out responses to substantive comments, submitted throughout the consultation.
It acknowledged ambiguities that were pointed out on how a “significant public benefit” is determined.
In response, it changed some portions of the final rule, to clarify its intent that “agreements to reformulate, change emissions, or make changes to a defendant’s practices confer a significant public benefit, only if the changes reduce or eliminate exposures to a listed chemical.”
Some commenters had proposed that ASPs be eliminated entirely. The OAG countered that “with proper safeguards, ASPs have the potential to fund activities that further the purposes of Proposition 65 and are directly connected to the litigation.” This could include programmes to monitor ongoing compliance with a settlement.
With regard to out-of-court settlements, it rejected a comment calling for it to ban all such deals. But it stated in its FSOR that these should not be used to circumvent the judicial review of private Prop 65 settlements.
And, it said it intended to “put private enforcers on notice of its view that ASPs are not proper in out-of-court settlements”.
The OAG also stated that recovery of civil penalties, including ASPs, shall not be traded for payment of attorney’s fees.
It said that if the CalChamber coalition’s concerns that capping ASPs results in increased attorney’s fees that are not otherwise justifiable, then it will consider additional amendments to protect against this.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50127/california-amends-regulations-for-prop-65-private-litigation
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Reject Food-Contact Phthalate Petition, Says Industry Coalition
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
An industry coalition has called on the US FDA to deny an NGO request to revoke food-contact allowances for a class of ortho-phthalates.
The industry’s position was laid out in comments that came in response to a petition, filed earlier this year by ten NGOs. This had called on the FDA to reconsider the safety of 30 ortho-phthalates, which are used as additives in food packaging and handling materials.
The Ortho-Phthalates Coalition said in its comments it strongly opposes the petition.
The petitioners, the coalition says, incorrectly grouped the ortho-phthalates into one chemically and pharmacologically related class of compounds, and, therefore, wrongly assert that dietary exposures to all of them should be considered cumulatively.
They have overestimated and incorrectly calculated and applied the Acceptable Daily Intake level, it says. And also actual exposures levels that were attributed to food-contact applications.
It requested the FDA deny the NGOs’ request to remove the existing regulatory clearances, referenced in the petition.
The coalition also noted that many of the ortho-phthalates cited are no longer manufactured and used in food-contact applications. Therefore it will request, in a separate petition, that the FDA delete these.
Thousands lend support
The FDA received some 428 separate comments from approximately 160,000 individuals. Overall, most comments supported the petition.
According to the petition, ortho-phthalates are a class of chemicals that have been linked by studies to a variety of reproductive and developmental problems. Some are known endocrine disruptors and have been slowly phased out in some consumer products.
The substances can be used as plasticisers, binders, coating agents, and in other food packaging materials. They are found in cellophane, paper, paperboard and plastics that come in contact with food, and can leach into the food, it says.
These substances are chemically- and pharmacologically-related substances with a common functional group and similar metabolic pathways, it states.
The petitioners urged the FDA to develop an Acceptable Daily Intake level for all ortho-phthalates, based on a method used for DEHP.
Endocrine Society weighs in
In its comments, the Endocrine Society said it did not want to comment on regulatory need. But the endocrinology professional organisation asserted that new evidence accumulated over the past five years strongly implicates phthalates in a range of human health impacts, and that these incur significant costs for society.
All of the ortho-phthalates share a common functional group and similar metabolic pathways, the society agreed, so they are likely to have similar endocrine effects.
All phthalates that have been examined for these and reproductive effects have been found to pose endocrine-related risks. And a large number of the ortho-phthalates included in the petition, the society says, have no published safety data, leading to concerns about possible endocrine effects of these compounds.
The FDA said that it is reviewing the comments submitted to the docket, together with additional material by the petition and gathered by its scientific reviewers.
It said it cannot estimate when it will complete evaluation of the petition.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50155/reject-food-contact-phthalate-petition-says-industry-coalition
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Asbestos, BPA Ban Bills Introduced in US Congress
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Bills have been introduced in the US House of Representatives and in the Senate looking to ban or restrict asbestos, and bisphenol A (BPA) from food containers.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D–California) introduced S 3427 – the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2016. It would amend TSCA to make the EPA act to eliminate human exposure to asbestos.
If passed into law, it would have the EPA impose prohibitions, restrictions and other necessary conditions to "permanently eliminate the possibility of exposure to asbestos" within 18 months of enactment.
And, within 90 days, the agency would have to carry out and publish an assessment of the current and reasonably anticipated importation, distribution, uses of and exposures to asbestos.
The bill includes a provision allowing the president to grant an exemption in uses necessary to protect national security. This would require that no reasonable alternative exist, and that the use would not result in an unreasonable risk to the health or the environment, irrespective of costs. Exemptions could be effective for a period not exceeding three years.
The measure has been referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
BPA bill
In the House, a separate measure seeks to ban the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in food containers.
HR 6269 - the Ban Poisonous Additives Act of 2016 – would ban food containers composed, in whole or in part, of BPA, or that can release BPA into food. It would apply to reusable food containers, as well as any food container packed with food and destined for interstate commerce.
As drafted, the bill calls for a waiver provision. This would allow the continued use of BPA upon demonstration that it is not technologically feasible to replace it, and with submission of a timeline for removing the substance. Such products would be subject to labelling requirements.
The measure also calls on the FDA to "promote, facilitate and incentivise the use of safer alternatives to replace BPA".
It would block the replacement of BPA with substances:
known or likely human to be carcinogens;
deemed by the EPA to be persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBTs);
that cause reproductive or developmental toxicity; or
are endocrine disruption chemicals.
The bill would also put in place a process by which the FDA selects food contact materials for future review. This includes remediation actions should the agency determine there is not reasonable certainty that no harm will result from aggregate exposure to a reviewed substance.
Both measures were introduced shortly before both chambers adjourned until after the November elections.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50166/asbestos-bpa-ban-bills-introduced-in-us-congress
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Echa Expert Group Begins Guidance for Identifying EDCs
Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
Echa's endocrine disruptor expert group (Edeg) has begun to define the scope of guidance for identifying substances with endocrine disrupting properties.
Echa is tasked with developing guidance under the biocidal products Regulation (BPR). Efsa will focus on the plant protection products Regulation (PPPR).
"We had a first brainstorm with the Edeg on what could potentially be the scope and structure of such guidance," says Conor Clenaghan, Edeg chair. Echa will work closely with Efsa, with direction from the Commission.
Echa will only be able to complete the guidance once the European Commission has finalised the criteria for identifying endocrine disruptors.
Nonetheless, it can make a good start, given that the criteria centre on the WHO definitions for endocrine disruptors and adverse effects, explains Dr Clenaghan.
The kick-off meeting followed that of the Edeg on 28-29 September. The Edeg discussed eight substance cases, five for substance evaluation. France presented its plans to propose bisphenol A (BPA) as a substance of very high concern (SVHC) on the grounds that it is an endocrine disruptor. It intends to submit the dossier addressing endocrine disruption in February 2017.
Meanwhile, the UK presented the case for listing branched, ethoxylated nonylphenol compounds as endocrine disruptors in their own right. Until now, the focus has been on ethoxylates degrading to form nonylphenol in the environment.
The Edeg also discussed plans to harmonise the use of weight of evidence (WoE) and uncertainty within Echa processes. "At the moment the aim of the work is to look at the terminology used in WoE assessments and to clarify it," says Dr Clenaghan. Next, the Edeg will focus on the use of WoE and uncertainty and identify areas for improvement.
The group will look at existing frameworks and approaches used by other organisations, including Efsa and the OECD.
Finally, the Edeg briefly covered a Belgian question over whether more dose levels could be added to the extended one generation reproductive toxicity test (Eogrts) to show potential low-dose effects.
Eogrts, as described in OECD TG 443, is not designed to show low-dose effects. The group agreed that the question could be explored further.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50148/echa-expert-group-begins-guidance-for-identifying-edcs
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Oct 6, 2016 | Chemical Watch
CLH consultation
Echa is consulting on a harmonised classification and labelling (CLH) proposal from Austria for ethylene oxide.
Hazard classes open for comment are acute toxicity, skin corrosion, serious eye damage, skin sensitisation, reproductive toxicity, specific target organ toxicity – repeated exposure.
The deadline for comment is 18 November.
Appeals
Echa's Board of Appeal (BoA) has announced the following appeals against the agency's decisions:
Cheminova A/S, Denmark is contesting Echa's request for further information in relation to its registration dossier for sodium o,o-diethyl dithiophosphate. The agency rejected a read-across proposal, and has asked for tests to be performed on the substance itself;
SI Group-UK Ltd and others are contesting a request for further information, following the evaluation of the substance phenol, 4-nonyl-, branched. This was carried out by the UK competent authority. It relates to PBT properties, environmental exposure assessment and environmental fate. The appellants are also asking for a revised deadline for its submission.
Tenth meeting of Enes
The agency has announced the tenth meeting of Exchange network on exposure scenarios (Enes) on 15 and 16 November. It is organising it with other members of the CSR/ES Roadmap-Enes Coordination Group.
Enes aims to identify good practices on preparing and implementing exposure scenarios, in particular, effective communication between supply chain actors.
Among the key topics will be:
supporting registrants through downstream sector use maps;
how improved information on uses can help registrants better demonstrate the control of risk to authorities (and how this relates to Iuclid 6);
key findings and recommendations from the evaluation of the CSR/ES Roadmap and Enes; and
how this work can contribute to make the use of chemicals safer in Europe, over the next five years.
The target audience is:
registrants or consortia – to understand what is available in terms of use maps, and how they can use them for 2018 registration and updates;
downstream user sector associations;
sector associations new to Enes; and
member states.
Interested participants must register online by 14 October.
The event's materials will be made available on the Echa website.
Consumer-facing website
Echa is inviting consumers to fill out a short questionnaire to help it develop a website that meets their needs. The aim is to provide information on chemicals that people come into contact with in their everyday lives, to facilitate safer and more informed choices.
Guidance
Echa has sent a draft update to its Guidance on data-sharing to the Competent Authorities for REACH and CLP (Caracal) for consultation.
https://chemicalwatch.com/49999/echa-round-up
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NRDC's Doniger, Sidley Austin's Martella Debate Legal Future of Rule
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E TV
By OnPoint
What is the legal future of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, and how could the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's pending ruling on the regulation impact future Clean Air Act cases and rulemakings coming out of EPA? During today's OnPoint, David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Roger Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin, discuss the most contentious issues being considered by the D.C. Circuit following last week's oral arguments. They also debate the precedent that could be set by the outcome of the litigation.
Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello, and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today are David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Roger Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin. David, Roger, thank you both for joining me today.
David Doniger: Thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: David, we're about a week in following the D.C. Circuit's marathon oral arguments on the Clean Power Plan. You've both had time to reflect on and digest all that happened on that day. How are you feeling about EPA's position as things head into the next phase of litigation and where do you believe the agency is most vulnerable?
David Doniger: Well, I come away feeling pretty good about last week. EPA had a good day in front of that court. They were extremely — just as extremely well-prepared and diving deeply into these questions, but I find it very hard to see how the opponents get six votes to overturn the rule on any of the issues that were argued. So, you know, you can't be sure. We're feeling cautiously optimistic for the rule being upheld.
Monica Trauzzi: Roger, there were many people last week, court watchers who said that EPA came out slightly ahead. What do you think?
Roger Martella: Yeah, I'm curious to hear that and comments like David's, who I respect very much, talking about six votes. I mean, unless you're a mind reader, it's pretty hard to come up to those conclusions. Two of the judges didn't even ask any questions, so I don't know how you interpret anything with judges who don't even ask questions, but it's kind of a truism for litigators that you never want to walk out of an argument interpreting judges' questions, the way they ask questions to give some indication of the way that they're leaning. Those of us have done that have all been burned before.
I think from our perspective, we feel very good about the way things went. We couldn't have asked for a more prepared group of judges. They were inquisitive of both sides. They came in with the notion that they had not made up their decisions, that they were being open-minded about, you know, the kinds of questions they were asking, and the sense that they were going to walk away and give this strong consideration. I think that's the most any litigator could hope for in an argument like that.
Monica Trauzzi: Where do you think, though, because they did ask many questions, where do you think they pressed the challengers the most?
Roger Martella: I think everyone was focused on the lead arguments of the morning. What is really EPA's statutory authority on the fence line? Both sides were challenged by almost all the judges to really understand what's going to be a precedent-setting nature of the decision. The judges were truly engaged and prepared for all the arguments, but I think there was a weight on those arguments that the court's aware of, you know, where do we draw the line on EPA's ultimate statutory authority, knowing it's going to have impacts not only potentially on the energy sector, but future roles down the road. So they seemed to take that as seriously as everyone kind of thought they would knowing that's one of the lead issues in the case.
Monica Trauzzi: So, David, on the question of whether the agency's regulating beyond the fence line, and if the power plan is, in fact, in line with the best system of emission reduction requirement, there was back and forth between the judges on that, what was most compelling there?
David Doniger: Well, I think that Judge David Tatel summed things up quite well, both on the question of the standard of review, where the other side is arguing for a heightened test well beyond the Chevron deference, and then on the merits. And Judge Tatel said, in effect, this is a regulation of power plants which have been regulated many, many times before using tools that have been used many times before, like the market-based approaches. The costs are in the same ballpark as regulations before. What is transformational, what is so different? He said the only thing really different is the regulation of CO2, but the Supreme Court has already crossed that bridge. So if a majority of the judges see it that way, then EPA's going to do fine, both on the standard of review and on the ultimate question because best system of emission reduction is reasonably interpreted in this way. At least that's our view.
Roger Martella: If I could respond to that, I think what David's hitting on is what I saw as one of the two themes from the questioning during the day. The questioning David's focused on is one of those themes, which is an argument EPA was presenting. This is relatively routine. It's nonconsequential. We're just doing what we've always done and so what's the big deal here. The other theme which we heard from the judges as well was that this is more a rule of policy than it is a rule of law, that it truly is precedent ... nothing like we've seen before. And what I found curious was the government was actually trying to have it both ways. They were saying, on the one hand, nonconsequential, happening anyway, not a big deal, we've done this before, but opened the argument by saying this is the most important policy issue they're dealing with for a generation, part of a White House swearing ceremony — or signing ceremony that was sold around the world. And so there's this inconsistency in that position that this is entirely routine, but at the same time, the most important thing the government's doing right now.
Monica Trauzzi: Do you see new trends developing on deference?
Roger Martella: I think the court's definitely going to be looking at the issue of deference. We've seen a line of decisions from the Supreme Court that seem to be speaking to the D.C. Circuit on how it expects the lower courts, the courts of appeals to be looking where deference should be given and when a clear statement is required to be given deference, and one of the judges, Judge Kavanaugh in particular, kind of spoke in an academic way saying he's surveyed all those cases. He's kind of reconciled them together, and he seemed to appear that this was going to be a case where the judges are going to want to set the record for how they're interpreting this line of Supreme Court decisions all the way to the recent ... decision on when agencies are entitled to deference or when they're addressing significant matters of political and economic importance, the deference becomes less important for the agency.
David Doniger: You're right that Judge Kavanaugh is testing out those ideas, but I didn't see him get much pickup from that. Even Judge Griffith, one of the other appointees of a Republican president, asked some very tough questions of both sides, but of the opponents, what's so transformative here, what's so different from what's come before, either in the form of what EPA's doing or in the — or the magnitude. And you know, I've been asked how do you reconcile the importance of this and the routineness of this? Well, one of the reasons that it's turning out as it is is that the marketplace is moving so fast underneath the Clean Power Plan, and last year, for example, Congress extended the tax credits for wind and solar, and these are really pushing the transition from coal to cleaner power generation fast at this point so that the Clean Power Plan doesn't look as ambitious as perhaps it might have merely a year ago or two years ago when it was proposed. But it is very important to get started on regulating carbon pollution from the power plants to go — the point of the Clean Air Act is to go beyond what the market will do by itself to curb the pollution that's dangerous and isn't — there's no incorporation of the danger into private decisions when you can dump this stuff in the atmosphere for free.
Monica Trauzzi: Do you want to respond to that?
Roger Martella: Yeah, this was another theme of the day, and I think also demonstrates the inconsistency in the defenders' position. On the one hand, they're arguing it's our position that eventually you're going to be shutting down at some point, in our view, so we want to tell you when to shut down and how to shut down. You know, this may be inevitable in our mind, but we want to have regulatory control over that because we would prefer to do it that way. I think David's hitting that exact inconsistency I've been referring to, the notion that this is so important we have to expand our Clean Air Act jurisdiction in a way that's totally detached and unrecognizable under the statute, but it's happening anyway at the same time and so why not us just come in and regulate even though it's relatively nonconsequential. It's these types of inconsistencies that I think put the respondents in a difficult position.
David Doniger: I don't think the storyline that this is transformative and different from what EPA has done before sold with the judges. That's the keystone of the challengers' argument, that this is something big and new and different that EPA's never done before. They always say under this section, but the power sector's been regulated many different times on these same themes under different parts of the Clean Air Act, and there's nothing about Section 111(d) that suggests you cannot use these same techniques to regulate the power sector. In fact, the power industry in many states asked for these very flexible mechanisms to be available to them. I was intrigued by an analogy that the Justice Department attorney drew. He said their position is like that of a golfer who wants his handicap set playing a round of 18 holes with a putter. Then he wants to play against his handicap using all the clubs in the bag. And I think Judge Srinivasan and others were struck by the inconsistency in the other side's position.
Roger Martella: I'm sorry, if I could briefly — I'll be brief, but David says this is routine. This is a regulation the first. It's the first time a standard has come out that nobody can meet, the first time a standard has come out that's harder for an existing source than for a new source, the first time a standard has come out that requires the owner of a facility to invest in companies who are in the business of putting that owner out of business. And even one of the judges that David, I think, is probably counting on in trying to read the tea leaves questioned the EPA and said, "Can you cite another case where you've engaged in a regulation that requires you to invest in companies trying to put you out of business?" So these are the types of complexities, I think, that come through the questions from all the judges who seemed relatively inquisitive and open-minded on the outcome.
David Doniger: And I think they were satisfied with the answer that these credit instruments being — opening up a cheaper way to achieve a result is a long-standing way of doing things that always involves a transfer of resources from somebody to somebody else in order to achieve a pollution reduction more cheaply. That's built into the way the Clean Air Act has worked, especially in the power sector, for 25, 30 years.
Monica Trauzzi: Let's broaden this out a bit. How does what happens here with the Clean Power Plan with subsequent legal challenges potentially set a new standard for environmental litigation and rulemaking coming out of EPA?
David Doniger: I would think when the decision comes down — this is total guesswork on my part — that if they uphold the plan, they are going to — the decision will, in essence, say that this is fairly ordinary, that there's no big stretches here. They're not going to find that there is something wildly out of the ordinary and at the same time uphold it. So I don't see this like breaking new ground. This is going to be like almost every other Clean Air Act decision. It's going to stand or fall on the reasonableness of an interpretation under Chevron and not make a lot of new law.
Monica Trauzzi: Roger, what do you think?
Roger Martella: I obviously think we're going to get a decision that's going to be talking about the precedent-setting nature of this rulemaking, how this is like nothing that we've seen from what EPA's done in the past, this exertion into regulating sources on standards that they cannot achieve and broad-based regulation of the energy sector. I have no doubt that, regardless of the outcome, that issue's going to weigh heavily in the court decision. And even under David's scenario, which I don't agree with and don't predict, it will be interesting to see the extent to which David thinks that this is going to be another routine Clean Air Act decision, or does the court focus a decision like that specifically on the unique nature of the electricity sector? There were several conversations during the day, including in the briefs, about how integrated the utility sector is, the energy production sector, and does that factor into a decision as well.
Monica Trauzzi: So on timing, what are the next steps and what are the different scenarios we could see playing out with the Supreme Court now only having eight, when does the ninth come in? What are the different scenarios?
David Doniger: You know, somebody remarked that the plot twists here are more than in "Game of Thrones." It surprises you every turn this takes. The case has been expedited. At the same time, it's in front of 10 judges, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to decide. It could be, I would think, as early as December or it might go off into the first quarter of next year. That would be my guess. I'm not sure. It's depending on what the court decides and how convince — you know, how compelling the opinion — what the vote is. I'm not sure, actually, the Supreme Court will take the case. Probably they will, but there's a significant chance that they won't. Most appeals to the Supreme Court on Clean Air Act issues from the D.C. Circuit are turned down.
Roger Martella: I would agree that one thing we can predict about this case is how unpredictable it's been, but beyond that, I'm probably a little more thinking the case will take longer. We have 10 judges. I think we would agree it's not going to be a 10-0 decision on all issues, so can only move as quickly as the slowest of the 10 judges. So I would predict more closer to the first half of 2017 for a decision, and as with litigators' commandment to not predict outcomes of oral arguments, I wouldn't predict likelihood of ... other than to say this is a very unique case with the Supreme Court in an unprecedented way already has expressed a lot of interest in it, and so we would think that this would be a more likely candidate for ... than the typical Clean Air Act case coming up from the Supreme Court given — coming up from the D.C. Circuit given the existence of the stay.
David Doniger: The thing that makes this a mystery is that the court that issued the stay is not the same court we have today, and the court we have today will probably have a new justice, you know, in the time it takes this case to get there. So the court we have today is not the same as the court we will have.
Roger Martella: I would like to remind folks it only takes four justices to grant ... so to some extent, despite the fact we have eight justices instead of nine right now, presumably four of the justices that supported ... could support ... again.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, so many moving pieces. Thank you both for coming on the show. I really enjoyed this. I appreciate you both coming on.
David Doniger: Thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
http://www.eenews.net/tv/videos/2171/transcript
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Lawmakers Urged to 'Look Before We Leap'
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
An attorney who represents the United Mine Workers of America pressed three lawmakers yesterday to request a federal report on the economic impact of the next phase of the Paris climate agreement.
"In short, we need to look before we leap," Eugene Trisko said during a Senate field hearing in Logan, W.Va., focused on the local impacts of U.S. EPA's carbon regulations.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, shared a makeshift dais in the local conference center with two other lawmakers from the state: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Rep. Evan Jenkins.
All three took aim at the controversial Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's carbon-cutting commitments under the Paris deal, which went into force this week (E&ENews PM, Oct. 5).
Manchin called the rule an example of EPA "legislating instead of regulating." Coal has survived past market waves of cheap natural gas, he said, and "we've just never had the federal government jump on our backs and try to drown us."
West Virginia's electricity providers and some state leaders want the flexibility to use carbon trading to comply with Clean Power Plan targets (ClimateWire, Jan. 21).
Trisko argued that "generation shifting" could be a costly option for companies and consumers. That argument, Trisko noted, is central to West Virginia GOP Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's challenge of the rule (Greenwire, Sept. 27).
Trisko told the lawmakers they should demand the federal government hire consultants to conduct an interagency study on U.S. commitments to international greenhouse gas reduction efforts.
Trisko referred the panel to a similar study of the economic impact of the Kyoto Protocol. He said it helped convince the federal government to back away from the deal.
President Clinton signed Kyoto, but the Senate failed to ratify it. His successor, President George W. Bush, pulled the United States out completely.
'Shoulder-fired rocket launcher'
Trisko also encouraged the lawmakers to find out more about EPA's calculations and what future impact the agency's rule will have on energy markets.
But an environmental law professor from West Virginia University countered attempts to cast regulators as the bad guys.
In a creative analogy, James Van Nostrand described the Clean Power Plan as the "shoulder-fired rocket launcher" in the White House's "war on coal."
Nostrand argued that the "really heavy fire" was coming from geology and economic trends. He described cheap natural gas as having the force of an "aircraft carrier."
Both Nostrand and Karan Ireland, a member of the Charleston, W.Va., City Council, called for the state to move forward with implementing the plan.
As head of West Virginia Solar United Neighborhoods, a nonprofit group working to help the state transition to clean power, Ireland suggested renewable energy brings job opportunities.
"Energy efficiency and renewable energy should be central to the plan for compliance so that West Virginia can enjoy economic gains and the sharp increase in clean energy jobs that we've seen across the country, as well as mitigate any negative consequences related to compliance," Ireland said.
'Nowhere else to go'
All three lawmakers agreed with diversifying the state's economy, but they vowed to also keep fighting EPA's agenda and protecting coal.
Jenkins, one of the most vocal coal backers on Capitol Hill, asked Ireland: "Should we be focused on trying to grow $20-an-hour jobs or $89,000-a-year jobs?"
To illustrate the earnings decline, Republicans invited an unemployed coal worker to testify. Jimmy "Bo" Copley choked back tears describing how his wife has been providing for the family's three children with her photo business since he lost his job in September 2015 as a mine maintenance planner and rescue team member.
Copley said that as federal regulations forced other mines to close, his site — a subsidiary of Arch Coal Inc. located in Holden, W.Va. — would see more and more state and federal mining inspectors.
"At one point, we had 12 inspectors on our property on the same day. They told us they were all there that day because they had nowhere else to go," Copley said.
For every coal mining job lost, he said there are countless more that are also affected. Examples include heavy-equipment suppliers, local school administrators and community businesses, like shops and restaurants.
"Our entire state feels the ramifications of a targeted industry," Copley said.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/10/06/stories/1060043946
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Skeptical Court Considers Scope of Tribal Consultation
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal judges were searching for a line in the sand yesterday as American Indian tribes argued that the Obama administration failed to fully consider the effects of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
At oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe argued that construction should remain off-limits along a contentious stretch of the pipeline's route in North Dakota. They say the Army Corps of Engineers approved water crossings for the project without adequately consulting with the tribes and considering indirect effects of the approval.
Though yesterday's court session was scheduled to last just 30 minutes, the judges spent one hour and 45 minutes listening to attorneys' arguments and wrestling with the question of how broad an agency's scope should be when consulting with tribes on indirect effects of permitting decisions.
"How far down the pipeline route do you look?" asked Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee (Greenwire, Oct. 5).
The question encapsulates much of the disagreement over the Army Corps' consultation process. While all sides acknowledge that some consultation efforts took place, they dispute whether the agency's scope of consultation was sufficient and whether it took tribal concerns seriously.
Justice Department attorney James Maysonett, representing the Army Corps, maintained that the agency "met and exceeded" National Historic Preservation Act obligations to work with tribes to identify areas of cultural interest.
Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, representing the Standing Rock Sioux, countered that the consultation process with the tribe was faulty because it looked only at the water crossings — not at other impacts along the 1,178-mile pipeline's route.
"I think we've made a clear case that the tribe never had an opportunity to consult on the pipeline itself," Hasselman said after oral arguments. "They were offered a chance to look at the hole in the ground."
That hole in the ground is Lake Oahe, a dammed section of the Missouri River where the pipeline would cross just a half-mile north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Thanks to an unexpected intervention by the Obama administration last month, Dakota Access is barred from construction beneath the lake while the Army Corps considers whether to grant an easement there (EnergyWire, Sept. 12). Yesterday's oral arguments centered on whether to extend an existing work freeze within 20 miles of that Army Corps zone.
Deference
The three-judge panel spent much of the oral arguments seeking an understanding of how the consultation process played out for the Sioux.
Griffith noted that the Army Corps sent a February 2015 letter seeking to consult with the Standing Rock Sioux on the scope of its review, followed by a July letter settling on an arguably narrow scope.
Ultimately, the agency reviewed specific proposed work areas at Lake Oahe, plus a 1-mile radius from those sites. Protesting the narrow scope, the tribe declined to participate.
"I don't think [the corps] can be faulted for failure to engage," Griffith said.
Hasselman responded that the tribe formally opposed the narrow scope, as did the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. He said the Sioux did not sue at the time because the agency's action was not final.
Judge Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, then asked whether the Army Corps is entitled to deference on its decision to focus on the 1-mile impact zone.
"When we have two agencies that are fundamentally at odds, which one do we defer to?" Hasselman responded, answering his own question by saying the ACHP's position should prevail because it is the expert agency on cultural sites.
"This is a legal question about cultural sites, not an engineering question," he said.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP attorney Miguel Estrada, representing Dakota Access, argued that given the disputed "he said, she said" facts in the case, the court should defer to the expert permitting agency: the Army Corps.
At an Energy Bar Association event yesterday, ACHP's Office of Native American Affairs director, Valerie Hauser, confirmed that when her agency is at odds with a permitting agency like the corps, the permitting agency always wins.
"That's why it's called the 'advisory' council," she said.
Pipeline outlook
If the D.C. Circuit grants the tribe's emergency injunction request, the work freeze within 20 miles of Lake Oahe will remain in effect while the court reviews a broader action by a district court to deny an injunction along the length of the pipeline.
Griffith also raised the possibility that a smaller section of the route — 2 miles west of Lake Oahe — could be put off-limits.
If the court refuses to extend the existing work freeze, construction appears likely to move forward quickly — despite a request by the Obama administration to voluntarily hold off on activity in the area.
Asked by Griffith why Dakota Access is so eager to spend to build when the Army Corps easement remains pending, Estrada argued that the company is confident the corps will ultimately approve the easement. The company wants to complete as much construction as possible now, so it can go into service more rapidly once the easement is issued, he said.
The timeline for the final easement decision remains murky. While corps lawyers have said the decision would be made in "weeks, not months," Maysonett yesterday noted that if the Army Corps decides the easement did not undergo adequate review under the National Environmental Policy Act or the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which involved the Sioux, it will initiate a new review process, likely adding months to the timeline.
ClearView Energy Partners analyst Christi Tezak said the easement delay is more likely to hold up the pipeline than any injunction.
"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers left the door wide open to potential incremental review," she wrote in a memo yesterday. "We think an additional/incremental review before the easement is issued is more probable than possible given the unknowns associated with [treaty review] and/or the potential that the National Environmental Policy Act review may need to be supplemented."
Pipeline supporters from the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now, or MAIN Coalition, said they hoped the D.C. Circuit would echo the opinion of the lower court, which found that the corps exceeded its National Historic Preservation Act obligations.
"The MAIN Coalition continues to believe that as long as the ultimate decision on the Dakota Access Pipeline is based on the facts, science, engineering, and the rule of law it will be allowed to be completed and become operational without delay," spokesman Craig Stevens said in a statement.
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the legal system.
"What I learned about the judicial system is that it becomes ambiguous," he told reporters after oral arguments yesterday. "They have a lot of lawyers that interpret what law means, and we have to argue with this ambiguity, when in reality, law is very simple. For me, I see a wrong that has taken place."
The D.C. Circuit did not signal a timeline for its decision, but it could come as soon as today.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/10/06/stories/1060043918
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Methane Leaks Declining Even as Natural Gas Production Grows
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By John Fialka
College students learn in Economics 101 that no one leaves $20 bills lying on the street. It is a rubric used to fortify the theory that big economic markets are sophisticated and that items of great value are prized and not often wasted. But when it comes to industries that leak natural gas — a powerful global warmer — into the atmosphere, the theory remains a matter that leads to scientific and political disputes.
A new scientific study, a summary of which appeared in the journal Nature yesterday, used ancient and new atmospheric samples and gives a boost to the gas industry's side of the argument. Its data show that while gas production has soared in recent years, the industry's rate of leakage appears to have declined.
Questions about the impacts of natural gas leaks first surfaced in Washington, D.C., in 2004. U.S. EPA had been concerned for years because the largest component of natural gas is methane, a potent greenhouse gas often released into the atmosphere as the result of human activities. It appears to be artificially warming the Earth.
That issue did not resonate deeply within Congress or the George W. Bush administration, but in 2004, the Government Accountability Office found a related matter that did: Oil and gas production on U.S. public lands generates about $9 billion annually, making it one of the largest non-tax sources of federal funds. The resource is overseen by the Interior Department, which is legally required to collect royalty payments and to make sure the public's resources are not being wasted.
Yet there was evidence from EPA and some elements of the industry that in the explosion of hydraulic fracturing and other drilling techniques, government revenue was being lost — either by venting gas into the air, which releases methane, or by flaring it, burning it in the field, a practice that yields carbon dioxide, another major global warmer.
GAO recommended that the Interior Department try to measure and reduce the waste issue, and when there appeared to be little progress, two ranking House congressmen sent GAO researchers back to probe the Interior Department some more. In 2010, GAO reported that it had learned from EPA and industry sources that drilling on federal land was "releasing substantially more gas than previously thought possible."
The report notes that officials of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees land-based oil and gas leases, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which watches offshore production, had little motivation to use new technologies, such as infrared cameras that can see major plumes of escaping gas. The result, GAO said, was that real leakage rates were running as much as 30 times higher than the Interior Department estimates.
The causes included faulty equipment, leaky storage tanks, "thousands" of valves set to vent too much gas, poorly prepared wells and an "institutional inertia" that led BLM officials to assume that if the gas leaks from flaring or venting were economically important, then the oil and gas companies operating the wells would do something about them.
Some companies did reduce leaks, the report noted, and there is a certain amount of "operational venting" that is required to run a gas or oil field, particularly in remote parts. But GAO found that a lot of the vented gas might have been saved, but that "often" smaller oil and gas producers didn't have the time or expertise to do the analysis. The rules on preventing such waste that BLM followed were written in 1980, long before the warming hazards of methane were appreciated. The resulting policy was uneven. Both BLM officials and the operators of the leases interviewed by GAO frequently disagreed on which venting cases should be reported.
The result, according to the GAO report, was way, way more expensive than the proverbial $20 bill left in the street.
The United States had lost $58 million in federal royalty payments in 2008. With proper management, 40 percent of the lost gas might have been recovered and sold. The fugitive emissions of methane and CO2 were comparable to the emissions of 8 million passenger cars or 10 average-sized coal-fired power plants.
The Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based environmental group, later commissioned its own testing of emissions from federally managed oil and gas fields and concluded that $330 million a year in natural gas resources were being wasted.
"This is a positive story," said Steven Hamburg, the chief scientist at EDF. "The data show that fixing this will be cost-effective for a relatively modest investment."
New federal, state regulations on the horizon
Unlike some environmental groups, which blame hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for the leaks, EDF says that fracking itself is not the issue.
"The good news is that it's clear there is technical expertise that can control these emissions. You can have the infrastructure and the knowledge to do this with very low emissions. The question is figuring out why the emissions of some producers are much higher than others," Hamburg said.
This question may be about to be answered. On May 12, EPA adopted three new rules that will, for the first time, curb emissions of methane, along with smog-producing chemicals called volatile organic compounds and toxic pollutants such as benzene, a carcinogen, that are often released with methane in natural gas leaks. The rules, which for the first time require owners and operators to find and repair leaks, mandate fixed inspection schedules and urge the use of special infrared cameras and organic vapor analyzers, called "sniffers," to spot leaks.
EPA estimates the rules will cost producers $530 million and create climate benefits worth $690 million along with unspecified but valuable health benefits by removing sources from the air that cause asthma and other pollution-imposed health hazards. They will help the Obama administration reach its target of cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025, according to the agency.
The rules will apply to hydraulically fractured wells, sources that were not covered by an earlier EPA move in 2012. But they will not happen without a fight. The American Petroleum Institute, which published a booklet in 2014 saying, "Federal statutes regulate every step of the hydraulic fracturing process," is up in arms.
"The development and use of natural gas from shale has helped the U.S. lead the world in cutting power-sector carbon emissions, which are near 20-year lows," said Kyle Isakower, API's vice president of regulatory affairs. "The last thing we need is more duplicative and costly regulation that could discourage natural gas production, disrupt our progress reducing emissions and increase the cost of energy for American consumers."
Oil and gas groups plus 16 states have filed court challenges against the new rules. Meanwhile, environmental groups plus nine states and the city of Chicago have filed motions to defend EPA's actions (EnergyWire, Aug. 17).
There are more fights to come. Colorado became the first state to impose regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas operations in 2014. After that, state inspectors found leakage at 152 well pads. According to letters to the companies from the state's Air Pollution Control Division, the leaks were so large that inspectors could smell the gases and hear the hiss of escape. Doug Flanders, a spokesman for the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, said the letters came as a shock.
"This [rule] is the first of its kind. We are the only state that actually regulates methane — sometimes to be able to get to that spot where you need to be within those regulations, it can just take a while," he said (ClimateWire, June 22).
Now California is preparing to enact statewide methane rules in the wake of a massive methane leak at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, the worst in U.S. history. Officials in Pennsylvania are discussing a similar move, and Wyoming has imposed rules on fields in one part of the state.
Leakage declining despite production increase
Finally, scientists who have the ambitious and difficult task of trying to search the atmosphere for methane emissions that reveal whether they were generated by human activity are involved in their own private brawl over whether we really understand how big and widespread the causes of rising methane levels really are.
In March, a study published by Petra Hausmann of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany said that there are two main sources of increasing methane emissions on the planet, one from wetlands in the tropics and another from fossil fuel exploitation. "The relative contribution of these two drivers remains highly uncertain," her paper says.
In April, a second study published by Hinrich Schaefer, an atmospheric scientist in New Zealand, concluded that the main causes of the continuing, ominous rise in methane emissions come from wetlands in the tropics and agricultural operations, such as rice growing, and that they are much larger than oil and gas emissions (ClimateWire, March 11).
Yesterday, a study led by Stefan Schwietzke, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said that a detailed study of atmospheric samples, some taken from ancient ice cores and others taken recently, shows that the leakage rate from natural gas production has declined in recent decades, despite a sharp increase in natural gas production and distribution.
While accountants and engineers in the oil and gas industry may take some comfort in the finding, the net effect is that the atmosphere still sustained damage, according to the author of the study.
"All the efficiency gains have been almost 100 percent counterbalanced by increased production," Schwietzke explained in an interview, referring to recent company efforts to find and minimize leaks.
The study used carbon isotopes, a kind of chemical fingerprint, to identify sources of methane leaks and found that fossil fuel industry emissions plus natural geological methane seepage have not increased over time. However, it also concluded that measurements used by previous studies appear to have underestimated the size of these emissions. They are "60 to 110% greater than current estimates," the study said.
The Schwietzke study took its findings from an expanded array of atmospheric samples and agrees with the earlier study that natural methane sources such as bacteria-produced methane from wetlands and some forms of agriculture, such as rice production, may still have a more detrimental impact on the atmosphere.
Schwietzke notes that his study conflicts with others that use ethane emissions as a kind of tracer to estimate methane emissions from natural gas, but he pointed out that such conflicts are part of the scientific process that eventually resolves disputes. The study does not pinpoint regions of higher emissions.
"We're getting closer to finding the true global averages. If satellites get better in the future with higher spatial resolution, I think they might be able to answer some of these questions," he said.
Eric Kort, a climate and space scientist at the University of Michigan who has used ethane emissions to identify high sources of methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas fields, says he doesn't see a downside from the conflict. "If there are a small number of emitters responsible for a large fraction of emissions, that's providing very useful information," he said.
Tomorrow: Getting rid of a super-warmer.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/10/06/stories/1060043917
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U.S. Trade Gap Grew Even as Oil Exports Rise
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
U.S. energy exports continue to rise, but the additional overseas business is doing nothing to bring the nation's trade into balance.
That's partly because the United States is increasing its energy imports, even as exports gain. But the offset to the trade deficit that was expected from rising crude oil and natural gas exports is, in reality, weak to nonexistent. And government data show the chief reason is the huge gap in trade in manufactured goods.
Trade figures released yesterday underscore the tension between the government and the public over official U.S. trade policy, a subject that's become a key driver in this year's presidential election.
Tired of decades of persistent and increasingly massive trade deficits — and the deficits' contribution to the national debt, rising inequality and income insecurity — the broader electorate has forced both major political parties to undertake a 180-degree shift in their voiced trade positions during the 2016 election cycle.
The Obama administration and Washington, D.C., establishment are pressing back just as hard, lobbying for two of the largest trade deals ever that critics say show no sign of wavering from the current approach, which resulted in a $535 billion annual trade deficit last year.
Observers were caught slightly off-guard yesterday when the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis reported an uptick to the monthly trade deficit for August 2016. Expectations were that the deficit would narrow, but it instead expanded by $1.2 billion over July's revised figure, to $40.7 billion.
Compared with August 2015, the deficit fell by around $900 million.
Data published by the census bureau show that the value of U.S. energy exports continued to climb, particularly for crude oil exports. Export income from overseas crude sales plunged in June but recovered over the summer, with August values exceeding May's by 8.5 percent.
The United States exported $944.8 million worth of crude oil in August, the data show, compared with $870.7 million in May and $519.6 million in June.
The $425.2 million increase in the value of U.S. crude oil exports from May to August was swamped by the rising value of oil imports, which grew by $2.5 billion over the same period. Imports of natural gas also increased, census data show, up in value by about $248 million.
Drowning in manufacturing loss
Though still a net oil importer, the United States' overall trade position in energy has been transformed by the boom in domestic shale oil and natural gas production.
Crude oil imports fell by more than 60 percent from 2012 to 2015 as domestic shale oil production rose. This major shift in worldwide oil supplies at a time of weak global demand growth is the prime reason why oil prices started to collapse in the summer of 2014. But the price drop also somewhat distorts the picture of U.S. oil trade value fluctuations.
Nevertheless, the 60 percent cut to the nation's oil import bill has done very little to improve the U.S. balance of trade with the world or the nation's status as the world's largest debtor, with net liabilities exceeding assets by over $8 trillion.
Ralph Gomory, a former IBM research head and a research professor at New York University, expressed no surprise that rising energy exports are not improving the nation's balance of payments.
"The whole petroleum net import is much smaller than the manufacturing deficit," he said. "The sole scale of trade in manufacturing drowns the scale of our imports in petroleum. It's five or six times bigger."
The U.S. goods trade deficit has grown so massive, Gomory explained, due in large part to orthodox-thinking economists and policymakers' refusal to acknowledge the existence of mercantilist trade practices by other nations, particularly in East Asia. He said this willful blindness extends to leaders of the International Monetary Fund and other global economic institutions.
Northeast Asian governments in particular have fueled their development through an export-driven industrial model. The approach saw governments protecting domestic industries from foreign competition while directing investment into exporting sectors that sold products at less than the cost of manufacture in order to capture market share. And it left these companies free to later raise prices after foreign competitors were forced out. Other tactics perfected by Japan, South Korea and now China include mandatory technology transfer agreements on foreign investors and measures taken to undervalue national currencies relative to the U.S. dollar.
The result is lost U.S. manufacturing prowess in a host of industries — including, increasingly, in advanced technologies, Gomory and others argue.
Census data on the recent trends in the trade of U.S. solar power products highlight the problem.
China's strategic targeting of the solar photovoltaic panels manufacturing industry has laid waste to U.S. exports of assembled solar products. From about $485.3 million worth of PV assembled products exported in 2012, census records show just $99.5 million in overseas sales in 2015. Imports of these products have risen by $1 billion throughout the same period, during which China is believed to have acquired about 90 percent of global solar PV manufacturing capacity.
The IMF this week raised alarm over stalling global trade, now expanding at less than the rate of global economic growth. It also raised concern over record indebtedness by governments and the private sector. Nevertheless, economists there are advocating for a continuation of the current approach toward trade, arguing that governments can help lessen the impact on displaced workers and their families through increasing public expenditures on education, retraining and worker relocations.
Gomory believes sentiments such as those expressed by the IMF and the Obama administration this week demonstrate the establishment's determination to "deny the obvious" in spite of the rise of populist politicians.
"I don't believe it has translated into the conviction within that small world, but that's just an opinion," he said. "Economists seem very fond of a somewhat idealized notion of free trade, giving them intellectual cover."
Other D.C.-based organizations, including the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute, the Economic Strategy Institute, and Public Citizen, have expressed alarm at a widening gap in advanced technologies trade, with all but ITIF pressing for changes in attitudes on trade policy at the federal level.
The pattern seen in lost PV manufacturing capacity and other industries is now repeating itself in other advanced sectors, argues ESI President Clyde Prestowitz in an op-ed penned for USA Today.
"China, like many other countries, aggressively promotes production in China, especially of high tech, high productivity items," Prestowitz wrote. "As Intel's former CEO Paul Otellini has noted, because of Chinese tax breaks, infrastructure and land contributions, Intel saves about $100 million a year in China vs. having the same facility in the U.S.," despite the fact that microprocessor manufacturing doesn't hinge on a cheap labor advantage, he added.
Undeterred, President Obama and his advisers continue to aggressively press for ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, two expansive trade and investment protection treaties negotiated during his time in office. This time around, however, new trade agreements lack near-universal U.S. corporate support.
Ford Motor Co. has formally come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fearful that it gives an advantage to Japanese manufacturers. Ford also announced that it would be withdrawing from Japan this year, having grown tired of Japanese government hostility to U.S. auto sales there and the U.S. government's unwillingness to do anything about it.
Public opposition to the deals is strong. Both treaties may actually favor greater U.S. energy exports. But critics of the deals fear further erosion in U.S. manufacturing and economic competitiveness that could result should the deals pass Congress.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/10/06/stories/1060043916
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Reliance Expects First US Ethane Cargo as Early as December
Oct 6, 2016 | Platts
By Andrea Salazar and Genevieve Soong
India's Reliance Holdings expects to receive its first shipment of US ethane as early as December, following Europe's Ineos and Borealis as US ethane buyers.
The company's 1.6 million-barrel ethane receipt tank is expected to come online soon with six ethane carriers able to load about 800,000 barrels delivered over the next two quarters, Peter Kaestner, vice president of feedstocks for Reliance Holdings, said Wednesday during the S&P Global Platts NGLs Conference in Houston.
Ineos loaded the first US waterborne ethane shipment from Sunoco's Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, facility in March and followed up with the first US Gulf Coast ethane cargo from Enterprise's Morgan's Point, Texas, terminal in August. Both shipments made the voyage to Europe aboard the same vessel -- the JS Ineos Intrepid.
During his presentation in front of about 150 attendees, Kaestner discussed the resilience of various ethane projects in the US despite rising spot ethane prices at the Mont Belvieu, Texas, hub due to declining ethane supply outside of North America and robust supply, infrastructure and logistics in the US.Petrochemical Alert gives you everything you need to stay informed and react to changing market conditions, including minute-to-minute updates on news and pricing for all your petrochemical needs. From news flashes to long-range analysis, and real-time deal reporting to end-of-day price assessments, Petrochemical Alert is consistently first to deliver breaking news that moves the world's petrochemicals markets. It's an indispensable tool for those making crucial decisions.
"Ethane is no longer the slam dunk that it was earlier," Kaestner said, noting the price spike in recent months to as high as 24.875 cents/gal in June from a low of 12.625 cents/gal in December.
Still, eight steam crackers are under construction on the Gulf Coast and are expected to increase domestic ethane demand by 535,000 b/d by 2019 or 2020, according to Platts Analytics.
While Reliance, Ineos, Sabic, Borealis and Braskem have contracts with US terminals and are expected to import US ethane in the coming years, Kaestner said the current price environment could delay or cancel some ethane fuel projects, the second wave of US crackers and new ethane crackers in Asia.http://www.platts.com/latest-news/petrochemicals/houston/reliance-expects-first-us-ethane-cargo-as-early-27682237
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States, EPA Vow to Develop Framework to Guide Joint Crisis Response
Oct 6, 2016 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
The joint state-EPA council leading the "E-Enterprise" initiative to align their environmental policies is beginning a new project to guide state and agency officials when they respond to multi-jurisdictional or cross-media incidents such as the 2015 Gold King Mine spill, though the scope of the new effort remains uncertain.
New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Tom Burack announced the project at a Sept. 27 panel during the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) fall meeting here.
Burack, who co-chairs the E-Enterprise leadership council with Acting Deputy EPA Administrator Stan Meiburg, said the group hopes to develop a "voluntary joint response protocol" that will set out policies and procedures for authorities to work together on major environmental incidents, such as the Colorado mine spill of millions of gallons of wastewater, or the lead in drinking water crisis in Flint, MI.
"You can imagine anything from a Flint situation, a Gold King Mine, to anything else that we would all scramble to address" where a prescribed framework for joint response would be useful, Burack told the Sept. 27 panel. "What might be missing here is how in the environmental context we stitch all these pieces together."
Speaking to Inside EPA following the discussion, he said the goal is to set up "a more or less standardized or regimented process or set of expectations" for agencies dealing with environmental crises.
EPA and state regulators have grappled with how to respond to Flint and the spill from the former Gold King Minenear Silverton, CO -- struggles which in both cases hampered authorities' efforts to quickly prevent health risks and environmental damage.
In Flint, officials with EPA, Michigan and the local government all failed to directly enforce Safe Drinking Water Act mandates for corrosion control that could have prevented the city's ongoing lead crisis, spurring competing accusations by EPA defenders and critics over whether federal or state authorities bear primary responsibility for the situation.
During the interview with Inside EPA after the panel discussion, Burack said the Gold King spill -- which was triggered by an EPA-led cleanup effort and where the agency delayed warning downstream states of the release -- also shows the need to plan for future emergencies. EPA is now facing lawsuits by New Mexico and the Navajo Nation over its conduct at the mine.
Disaster Response
Gold King "would be a really good example of how, if we had done something like this prior to that time, it might have gone very differently," he said.
The E-Enterprise effort that ECOS and EPA are looking at for a possible model on the crisis planning effort generally focuses on developing and implementing rules to aid information sharing between federal and state authorities, such as through electronic reporting (e-reporting) rules -- most prominently the Clean Water Act e-reporting rule for discharge permits that the agency finalized in 2015.
Developing a disaster response framework would be a new step for the program, and Burack told Inside EPAofficials will approach the project carefully to make sure they are addressing situations where there is little or no guidance on how states and EPA should respond in concert.
"This will start as a sort of scoping exercise, a scoping team, and then looking at that big picture to decide what the greatest opportunities are and prioritize those opportunities," he said.
Burack noted that "EPA already has a lot of frameworks in place," such as the 2013 executive order on chemical facility safety issued after a facility explosion in West, TX, and that it will be important for the E-Enterprise council not to produce duplicative policies, since that would add uncertainty to disaster responses rather than remedying it.
"We're looking to build upon all the work that's been done in terms of EPA and [the Federal Emergency Management Authority]," he said.
There is no target for issuing a proposed or final framework, but Burack told Inside EPA that even if it becomes a lengthy project it could still end up saving regulators time and expense in the long run.
"If we can work together at the front end, we'll probably collectively spend more time on the front end of the process, but once we've developed something that we all agree is most likely to succeed, we are going to have a smoother implementation process and more efficiencies in the long term."
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/states-epa-vow-develop-framework-guide-joint-crisis-response
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Obama Calls Paris Entry a 'Turning Point' on Climate Change
Oct 6, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
President Obama yesterday declared the Paris Agreement on climate change a "turning point for our planet" as he hailed countries for reaching the threshold that will allow the accord to take force next month.
In a Rose Garden speech after the European Union signed the formal ratification documents to join the Paris Agreement, Obama said the speed with which nations embraced the landmark accord made him "a little more confident" that the world can meet the challenge of combating runaway climate change.
"Today, the world meets the moment," Obama said. "And if we follow through on the commitments that this agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet."
The European Union's submission yesterday foisted the agreement above a threshold of 55 countries totaling 55 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, allowing it to take force on Nov. 4. To date, 70 countries totaling just under 57 percent of the world's emissions have joined after seven E.U. members submitted their ratification documents. Canada, Nepal and Bolivia also joined yesterday.
It also helped secure Obama's international climate legacy. Saying "one of the reasons I ran for this office" was to ensure American climate leadership, Obama claimed credit for his White House staff, including climate adviser Brian Deese, and noted that collaborations between the United States and China before and after the Paris climate conference helped pave the way for an agreement and usher it into force after only 11 months.
He also took the opportunity to promote the last pieces of his international climate agenda, including an international mechanism to curb emissions from the commercial aviation sector and an amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer to limit heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons. Both could be in place by the end of the month (see related story).
"Much is left to do, but if we keep our collective focus on steady progress, this month could shape up to be one of the most consequential in history for climate action," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.
Other international leaders also cheered the moment. "Done I can't believe it!! In less than 10 months. Celebration and back to work. Now the serious stuff begin #ParisAgreement," tweeted French Ambassador for Climate Change Laurence Tubiana.
Republicans, meanwhile, panned the agreement. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned that it would be "disastrous for the American economy."
"It carelessly throws away the great gains that the United States has made over the past decade in energy development," Ryan said. "The abundant, low-cost energy that we have unlocked will now be shut in the ground, eliminating the economic growth and jobs that come with development."
He also said Obama had acted "unlawfully" by joining the United States to the deal as an executive order without submitting it for the Senate's approval. Two advisers to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump have counseled him to submit the accord to the Senate should he be elected, even though the United States is already a party. The Senate would be unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.
Hedge fund billionaire and Democratic donor Tom Steyer said the Paris deal should figure in this autumn's race for the White House.
"The stark contrast between presidential candidates has never been greater, and it is crucial that we continue this progress by voting for climate champions on November 8th," he said.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said in a statement that the United States will deliver on its Paris pledges.
"I am firmly committed to realizing the United States' commitment to the Paris Agreement, to advancing our cooperation with our global partners, and achieving a bright, safe, healthy and clean energy future for Maryland, the United States and the world over," he said.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/10/06/stories/1060043925
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