Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 11/14/2016
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Hearing on Cyber Attacks
Nov 16, 2016 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade
Location: 10:00 AM, 2322 Rayburn -
(ACC Mentioned) 5 Ways To Make Recycling Easy
Nov 13, 2016 | Care2
By Emily Zak
When I first started dating my partner, he never recycled. He told me that recycling wasn’t worth it and didn’t even know which plastics and metal could be recycled. He habitually threw everything away in the trash can. -
Trump’s Climate Contrarian: Myron Ebell Takes On the E.P.A.
Nov 11, 2016 | The New York Times
By Henry Fountain
The mug-shot posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.” -
EPA Sends TSCA Risk Evaluation Rule For OMB Review
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
EPA has submitted for White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) pre-publication review its proposed rule to implement a mandate in the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to develop a risk evaluation process for assessing the safety of existing chemicals under section 6 of the updated toxics law. -
Bromine-Containing Dyes Dwarf Flame Retardants In House Dust
Nov 11, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
The health hazards of brominated flame retardants lurking in household dust have made the news for years because of the ease with which humans can be exposed to the endocrine-disrupting compounds. -
Trump's Victory May Deal A Blow To Reform Bill Talks
Nov 14, 2016 | E&E News Daily
By Geof Koss
Congressional aides say it's too early to determine whether President-elect Donald Trump's victory will scuttle conference committee negotiations to craft the first broad energy reform legislation in years. -
The One Energy Policy Republicans and Democrats Can Agree On
Nov 13, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Jason Bordoff
America’s energy policy is about to take a dramatic turn. While much remains uncertain, President-elect Trump has made it clear that he has little interest in addressing the issue of climate change. -
States Rethink Rule Planning After Trump's Win
Nov 14, 2016 | E&E News Daily
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
President-elect Donald Trump's plans to deconstruct U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan has some states that were still planning for the rule re-evaluating that choice. -
Trump's Win Upends Climate Fight
Nov 11, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén , Elana Schor ,Esther Whieldon and Eric Wolff
Supporters of President Barack Obama’s energy agenda are scrambling to adjust to the looming Donald Trump era — with climate activists girding for battle while some green industry groups hope to appeal to the president-elect’s love of commerce. -
The 'Most Effective' Way For Trump To Rollback Clean Power Plan
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
The American Bar Association's (ABA) latest environmental newsletter includes some advice for how President-elect Donald Trump could deliver on his campaign promise to roll back EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule – though prospects for rolling back the rule do not look easy short of a court ruling or congressional action. -
McConnell Urges Trump To Embrace Keystone, Fossil Fuels
Nov 11, 2016 | Politico
By Burgess Everett
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging President-elect Donald Trump to pivot sharply toward fossil fuels, telling Trump in a private meeting Thursday to swiftly approve the Keystone XL pipeline and end the "war on coal." -
Obama Administration: No Decision Yet On Dakota Access
Nov 11, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Obama administration said today that it has not yet reached a final decision on a disputed easement for the Dakota Access pipeline, tamping down expectations of a positive verdict on the pipeline as soon as Monday. -
Oil, Earthquakes and the Rush to Save Oklahoma
Nov 14, 2016 | Bloomberg
By David Wethe
Brian Kalt’s got a pretty funky plan to stop the surge in earthquakes in Oklahoma and save the state’s reeling oil industry. -
Fracking Did Not Harm Wyoming Water Wells, State Report Says
Nov 11, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
A state of Wyoming report released on Thursday has concluded that natural gas drilling activity, including hydraulic fracturing (fracking), did not contaminate water wells in the town of Pavillion, which five years ago was the subject of controversial U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests tying the gas operations to water problems. -
Virginia Revises Regulations to Expand Disclosure of Frack Chemicals
Nov 11, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently approved changes to the state's Gas and Oil Regulation that govern the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Old Dominion state. -
Trump Could Roll Back Obama Rules On Methane, A Potent Greenhouse Gas
Nov 14, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Across the globe, climate change activists are watching closely whether a Donald Trump administration would halt recent progress toward slowing the warming of the planet. The main focus thus far has been on the prospect that Trump would withdraw from the international Paris climate agreement and hobble the domestic Clean Power Plan. -
What’s Ahead For The Energy Railway Industry After Crude By Rail Went Bust?
Nov 11, 2016 | Platts
By Barbara Troner
“Maybe we’ll talk about shipping water by rail at the next Railway Age gathering in 2017,” is what several delegates said at the Energy by Rail conference in Arlington, Virginia in October. -
Bad Mix: Risky Cargo In Dense Areas
Nov 12, 2016 | Houston Chronicle
By Susan Carroll and Matt Dempsey
Steve McCan cruised along the Southwest Freeway in his new Grand Prix on a Tuesday morning in 1976, happy to be home from Vietnam and free from the confines of a Navy submarine. -
Has the TWIC Finally Arrived?
Nov 11, 2016 | Security Info Watch
By Don Erickson
On Aug. 23, the U.S. Coast Guard issued the final card access control reader rule for the Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) — achieving an important milestone in the history of this long-awaited, commonly criticized, frequently investigated, but essential program (Read more: www.securityinfowatch.com/12251006). -
Suit Over Texas' Ozone, NO2 Air Plans Tests 'Infrastructure' Requirements
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Sierra Club is suing EPA over the agency's approval of Texas' plans for reducing ozone and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air pollution, a case that will test whether “infrastructure” state implementation plans (SIPs) for improving air quality most include sweeping plans for attaining federal air standards and staying in attainment in the future. -
Consider Climate Change-Related Health Effects in Paris Agreement: WHO
Nov 11, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric J. Lyman
The World Health Organization Nov. 11 said those implementing the Paris Agreement should track the health impacts of global warming and set goals to mitigate human illnesses linked to rising temperatures.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News
Environment News
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Nov 16, 2016 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade
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(ACC Mentioned) 5 Ways To Make Recycling Easy
Nov 13, 2016 | Care2
By Emily Zak
When I first started dating my partner, he never recycled. He told me that recycling wasn’t worth it and didn’t even know which plastics and metal could be recycled. He habitually threw everything away in the trash can.
This frustrated the heck out of me. He worked in the liquor industry, and I’d indignantly fish out wine bottle after wine bottle out of the garbage to put in the recycling.
Three years later, he’s gotten better. I realized shaming him did very little, but what ultimately worked was going out of my way to make recycling convenient.
When only half of Americans say they recycle most recyclable products, according to Kelton Global, I’m sure I’m not alone in my annoyance. The Environmental Protection Agency puts the rates even lower, at 34 percent.
In honor of America Recycles Day, here are some ways we can make recycling easier for others in our homes and communities.
1. Make recycling convenient at home and work.
The top reason folks don’t recycle is that it isn’t convenient or accessible where they live, according to an Ipsos Public Affairs survey.
So, make recycling products just as easy as throwing them away. Put the recycling bin right beside the garbage can. Sign up for curbside recycling, and use it.
Check out IWantToBeRecycled.org to drop stuff off at the recycling center yourself.
Also, make sure everyone—partners, roommates, family, guests, co-workers—know what they can and cannot recycle in your area. Maybe post a sign by your bins.
As the American Chemistry Council notes, most people say they’d recycle more if they knew what they what they could recycle, especially plastics.
2. Share the benefits of recycling.
As Erin Schumaker notes in the Huffington Post, the benefits of recycling seem far off compared to real life. Cutting down on waste, resource consumption and greenhouse gases don’t register as immediate problems for many.
Psychology professor Suparna Rajaram tells the Post that people forget to recycle because they don’t see the action as ”a salient behavior that has any consequences.” Something as simple as letting folks know how high recycling rates improve their community helps.
3. Set an example.
Many of us claim we don’t care what other people do. But studies show otherwise, which can play a big role to normalize going green.
As Slate points out, social psychologists found that hotel guests are more likely to reuse their towels if they see a placard saying that 75 percent of others have done the same. Furthermore, folks recycle 20 percent more if they’re told that they’re neighbors are already recycling.
Therefore, shaming statements saying who’s not recycling can backfire.
As Per Espen Stoknes writes, “Within the statement ‘Look at all the people who are wasteful’ lurks the powerful and undercutting power” of imitation, states psychologist [Vlad] Griskevicius. Then the implicit social norms work in the wrong way: Since nobody else does it, why should I bother? Shaming messages backfire; positive messages reinforce positive social norms.
4. Advocate for recycling in your community.
Cheesy ad campaigns like above are just one way to encourage recycling in your community.
Beyond the Bin suggests cities add recycling bins in public spaces like bus stops and parks, target neighborhoods with empty recycling bins with advertising and social media campaigns, and organize convenient and accessible drop-off points for shredded paper and hazardous materials.
Charging for trash and making recycling free also incentivizes recycling.
5. Seek long-term, large-scale solutions.
According to the Economist, a quarter of cities don’t offer curbside recycling programs. More importantly, just short of 10,000 municipalities are running their own individual programs on different rules. Many haven’t been updated since the 1990s.
Use your power as a citizen to encourage local lawmakers to improve their infrastructure. Call for bans on tricky products like plastic bags and Styrofoam. Try to buy items with less packaging, and make reusing a habit.
Let’s make recycling the rule, rather than an exception.
https://www.care2.com/causes/5-ways-to-make-recycling-easy.html
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Trump’s Climate Contrarian: Myron Ebell Takes On the E.P.A.
Nov 11, 2016 | The New York Times
By Henry Fountain
The mug-shot posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.”
But in his customary mild-mannered way, Mr. Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, brushed it off.
“I’ve gotten used to this over the years,” he told an interviewer at the talks. “But I did go out and get my photo taken with my poster, just so I have it as a memento.”
In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell.
Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly.
Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a far-reaching set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many coal-burning power plants, among other effects.
Mr. Ebell has said that the plan, which has been tied up in the courts since it was finalized in 2015, is illegal. In the interview in Paris last year, he said he hoped whoever was elected president would “undo the E.P.A. power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy.”
As the person Mr. Trump has chosen to lead the transition at the E.P.A., Mr. Ebell, 63, will be in a position to begin to do just that.
Mr. Ebell, who did not respond to a request for an interview, grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture
“I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it.”
Mr. Ebell leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose-knit group that says it is “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” He has been one of the nation’s most visible climate contrarians, known for dispensing memorable sound bites on cable news shows and at events like the annual conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
Mr. Ebell has said that “a lot of third-, fourth- and fifth-rate scientists have gotten a long ways” by embracing climate change. He frequently mocks climate leaders like Al Gore, and has called the movement the “forces of darkness” because “they want to turn off the lights all over the world.”
No one, it seems, is immune to his criticism. He called Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, issued in mid-2015, “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.”
“It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added.
Mr. Ebell cut his teeth in Washington working for Frontiers of Freedom, a research group founded by former Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming Republican, to advocate for limited government. He also worked for a Republican congressman from Arizona, John Shadegg, on an effort to revamp the Endangered Species Act to make it more respectful of property rights.
In interviews and speeches, Mr. Ebell comes off as amiable and calm. But he is hardly shy about lobbing verbal grenades, sometimes directly at scientists and environmentalists.
He clashed with Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in an appearance on Fox News in 2009 after the unauthorized release of emails from a server at an English university set off a battle over the integrity of leading climate scientists.
Mr. Ebell called Dr. Trenberth “part of a gang” that had been “cooking the data” on climate for years, accusations that Dr. Trenberth strenuously denied.
During an August 2015 appearance on C-Span with Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Defense Fund, Mr. Ebell did not deny Mr. Symons’ assertion that the Competitive Enterprise Institute receives money from the Murray Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest coal producers. He countered that his group’s total budget, of about $6 million, was far smaller than that of Mr. Symons’ group.
“I would like to have more funding,” Mr. Ebell said, “so that I could combat the nonsense put out by the environmental movement.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/science/myron-ebell-trump-epa.html
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EPA Sends TSCA Risk Evaluation Rule For OMB Review
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
EPA has submitted for White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) pre-publication review its proposed rule to implement a mandate in the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to develop a risk evaluation process for assessing the safety of existing chemicals under section 6 of the updated toxics law.
OMB received EPA's draft “Procedures for Evaluating Existing Chemical Risks Under the Toxic Substance Control Act” on Nov. 10, according to its website. OMB review typically takes 90 days but can take more or less time, and EPA has said it has a goal of issuing the proposed rule by mid-December, with the final rule due mid-June of 2017.
Section 6 of the new TSCA law directs EPA to categorize existing chemicals -- those already on the market -- as high or low priority, and then perform risk evaluations of the high-priority chemicals.
Under the revised statute, EPA has until June to develop criteria and a final implementing rule outlining how agency staff will establish a process for evaluating the risk of existing chemical substances and determining whether they present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors, including an unreasonable risk to identified susceptible subpopulations under the conditions of use.
EPA's “Action Initiation List” of rules launched in July -- posted to the agency's website last month -- said the proposed prioritization rule would be released within “12 months or less,” and the OMB review suggests the agency will achieve that goal.
The proposed rule is separate from a draft rule OMB received Nov. 7 to develop a formal process for prioritization of chemicals for risk evaluation, also under section 6 of the overhauled TSCA, and a proposal to establish a fee structure for collecting fees from industry for certain TSCA activities.
EPA intends to issue all three proposals by mid-December, and final rules by June 2017, though it only has statutory deadlines for the prioritization and risk review rules.
http://insideepa.com/news-briefs/epa-sends-tsca-risk-evaluation-rule-omb-review
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Bromine-Containing Dyes Dwarf Flame Retardants In House Dust
Nov 11, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
The health hazards of brominated flame retardants lurking in household dust have made the news for years because of the ease with which humans can be exposed to the endocrine-disrupting compounds. Studies have hinted there are also large concentrations of unknown and potentially harmful brominated compounds in dust, but the number of compounds remained unclear and scientists didn’t have an efficient way to identify them, says Jianxian Sun, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
Now, Sun, John P. Giesy, and colleagues show that flame retardants in dust are dwarfed by another class of brominated compounds, azo dyes, that are known mutagens and commonly used to color clothing and furniture (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b03954). A novel method employed by the study can sift through the thousands of compounds in complex mixtures such as dust to identify and prioritize compounds for hazard assessment.
Brominated flame retardants have received scrutiny because they disrupt hormones and impair the central nervous system. “Since dust is one of the primary routes of exposure to brominated flame retardants, we wondered if there were other brominated compounds in dust that might be of concern,” Sun says.
The team decided to take advantage of a novel screening method developed by co-author Hui Peng. Based on ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry combined with statistical analysis, the method can pluck individual brominated compounds out of a mixture and provide a chemical formula for them.
The team vacuumed up 23 dust samples from eight homes in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and ran them through the screening method. The researchers singled out 549 unique brominated compounds in the house dust but could find matches for only 14% of the substances in the public database Chemspider. “This study demonstrated for the first time that hundreds of novel brominated compounds exist in house dust,” Sun says.
The scientists then focused on 140 of the most abundant ones. Out of those, the statistical analysis highlighted 24 as known brominated flame retardants. The analysis also uncovered a cluster of 78 unknown, nitrogen-rich brominated chemicals that accounted for about 85% of the mass of brominated compounds in the dust. Closer investigation showed that one of the more common motifs of the unknown molecules was 2-bromo-4,6-dinitroaniline (BNA), a raw material for the synthesis of brominated azo dyes. Based this finding and the compounds’ chemical formulas, Sun and her colleagues concluded that the unknown compounds were indeed these dyes.
To pinpoint a possible source of the dyes, the team snipped samples of shirts and pants, and ran extracts of the cloth through the screening method. Because the clothes contained high concentrations of BNA and other brominated dyes, and since the dust they collected also contained clothing fibers, the scientists suggest that brominated azo dyes from fabric may be the dominant source of brominated compounds in house dust.
Finally, the researchers used a standard, cell-based test to measure the mutagenic activity of house dust and pure BNA at a concentration of 1.25 µg/mL, comparable to levels of BNA in the dust. All samples showed significant mutagenicity.
Azo dyes, most of which are nonbrominated, represent 65% of the global dye market. They are relatively cheap compounds that impart bright yellow, orange, red, and blue colors to clothing, leather, toys, and plastics. Incorporating bromine in azo dyes could make the compounds more persistent and stable in the environment, Sun says. Some of the azo dyes, with and without bromine, are known to be carcinogenic or mutagenic.
“The results are surprising because few researchers have looked at brominated azo dyes and it raises questions about why they haven’t been discovered before,” says Miriam L. Diamond, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto. Yet the findings line up with growing recognition that textiles could be an important source of humanmade contaminants, she says. The study indicates that the research focus on flame retardants likely underestimates human exposure to brominated compounds, which are of special concern owing to their health impacts and ability to persist in the environment and bioaccumulate, Diamond concludes.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/web/2016/11/Bromine-containing-dyes-dwarf-flame.html
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Trump's Victory May Deal A Blow To Reform Bill Talks
Nov 14, 2016 | E&E News Daily
By Geof Koss
Congressional aides say it's too early to determine whether President-elect Donald Trump's victory will scuttle conference committee negotiations to craft the first broad energy reform legislation in years.
The day after Trump's win, a spokeswoman for Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was "evaluating next steps" for the effort. "She intends to do that in partnership with Alaskans and colleagues in Congress that she's worked with throughout this process," Nicole Daigle said in an email.
Similarly, an aide for House Energy and Commerce Republicans said Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) was considering "next steps" for energy bill discussions following Trump's victory.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not make mention of the energy bill when discussing the lame-duck agenda last week with reporters, citing only the appropriations process and a medical innovation bill as his priorities (E&ENews PM, Nov. 9)
While there may be reluctance on the part of congressional Republicans to make pronouncements on the lame-duck agenda without consulting their leaders and colleagues, observers following the energy conference process struck a decidedly pessimistic tone.
"Before the election, that wasn't a lot of hunger on the part of anyone to get this bill done," said Melinda Pierce, the Sierra Club's legislative director, during a post-election event sponsored by CQ Roll Call last week. Trump's win has "probably taken the wind out of any action in the lame duck," she said.
Speaking at the same event, ClearView Energy Partners LLC Managing Director Kevin Book said Trump's win may have shifted the calculation on the part of House Republicans, who were already facing pressure to acquiesce to the Senate on multiple issues.
"We think they're going to try to do an energy bill in the next Congress that is closer to what the House Republicans wanted, a much more aggressive energy bill," he said.
For instance, provisions in both the House and Senate bills that would impose Energy Department deadlines for issuing final decisions on natural gas exports may have lost some of their importance, Book noted, given that a Trump administration would have the authority to revise the process governing exports.
"There's no reason to fight for a bill that the House leaders didn't like that much in the first place," he said. Book put the odds of a lame-duck energy deal at 30 percent. Before the election, ClearView gave a deal a 60 percent chance.
"There's still room for folks who want to push the bill on the premise that there's going to be so much fighting that it might be nice to anchor one victory in the last few weeks of the year," Book said.Efficiency provisions
Energy efficiency advocates are hoping that sentiment carries the lame-duck session. "You get into a whole new ball of wax in the new Congress of different dynamics and politics," said Alliance to Save Energy spokesman Ben Evans on Thursday.
"And if you have something that has good bipartisan support, and certainly there are portions of this bill that have huge bipartisan support, then why not get it done and take it off the table so you can work on the new challenge in the new Congress?" Evans said.
The Alliance to Save Energy said Congress should seize the opportunity to finally pass the long-delayed efficiency legislation authored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), large parts of which are in the Senate energy reform package, S. 2012. The House bill is H.R. 8.
"Every year we wait to pass it builds unnecessary pollution and inefficiency into our economy," the group said. "And punting it to next year means, by definition, additional and unnecessary delays as the new Congress organizes, establishes priorities and begins the work of developing working relationships with a new administration."
The alliance added: "There is every good reason to get the energy efficiency provisions in place now and no good reason — political or other — to delay further. This is the kind of practical, common sense work that Americans expect from Congress, and we believe a lot of good will and credibility with the public will be built with the passage of these common sense and money-delivering energy efficiency provisions."
Still, efficiency provisions are among the sticking points between the two chambers' bills (E&ENews PM, Oct. 26). They, along with thorny natural resource provisions, may provide further incentive for House Republicans to punt.
"Anything they try to do before January has to go through Obama," said one House Democratic aide following the conference process. "I don't know why the Republicans would put themselves through that."Tax credits
Also unclear is the fate of expiring or already-lapsed tax allowances, including several key renewable energy credits. Champions for them have peppered Congress with letters in recent weeks pleading for action.
Democrats, environmentalists and affected sectors are angling to see a fix made to the investment tax credit, which lawmakers extended last year for five years for solar.
But because of what Democrats say was an error, last year's bipartisan deal omitted fuel cells, geothermal and other sources that otherwise would have qualified for the break.
McConnell has signaled interest in trying to fix the omission, but conservative groups are beating the drum against a tweak and other tax extensions. Freedom Partners last week called for GOP leaders to pass a "clean spending bill" and nothing else in the lame duck.
"Lawmakers should not allow Minority Leader Harry Reid [D-Nev.] and President Obama to pass pork-barrel projects and special interest handouts on their way out the door," Andy Koenig, Freedom Partners' policy vice president, said in a statement.
Nonetheless, lobbyists last week said the uphill fight to see a host of credits extended in the next Congress may prompt lawmakers to clear the decks of outstanding extenders in the coming weeks (E&E Daily, Nov. 10).
"The window is now," said the Sierra Club's Pierce.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/11/14/stories/1060045647
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The One Energy Policy Republicans and Democrats Can Agree On
Nov 13, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Jason Bordoff
Jason Bordoff (@JasonBordoff), a former energy adviser to President Obama, is a professor of professional practice in international and public affairs and founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
America’s energy policy is about to take a dramatic turn. While much remains uncertain, President-elect Trump has made it clear that he has little interest in addressing the issue of climate change. He has said he will not fulfill our commitments in the Paris climate agreement, will scrap the Clean Power Plan, roll back many EPA regulations, and open new federal lands to oil and gas drilling. While the outlook for bipartisan cooperation on energy may seem bleak, it will be important for both sides of the aisle to look for potential areas of common ground after a deeply divisive campaign.
Investment in energy research and development may provide such an opportunity, having long enjoyed broad support in both parties as a way to boost American competitiveness.
While many Republicans loudly opposed the 2015 Paris climate agreement, that criticism did not always extend to the announcement of the Mission Innovation initiative committing the U.S. and 20 other nations to double energy R&D spending over the next five years. Republicans have often focused on entrepreneurship to address climate concerns, as seen in recent legislation proposed by the Senate Energy Committee, helmed by Republican Lisa Murkowski. Even President-elect Trump has emphasized the need to encourage innovation and investment in R&D (although he has elsewhere suggested cutting clean energy R&D).
Yet the federal government invests far less in energy R&D than in other areas, such as biomedical research or military R&D. Economics literature finds that private firms underinvest in R&D because they cannot capture the full social benefits of innovations, a problem that may be exacerbated in the clean-energy context. As a result, private firms tend to focus on applied research with payoffs tied directly to their bottom line, while the government can fund basic research seeking broad-ranging scientific inquiry that can yield innovations like GPS or the internet with broad benefits. This market failure justifies government investment in R&D.
A recent research paper also suggests that clean tech ventures in particular are not well-suited for venture capital financing in their early stages of development, and that clean tech may not fit the risk, return or time profiles of traditional venture-capital investors.
This sort of energy innovation will be key to solving the climate challenge. While clean-energy technologies like solar and wind are becoming increasingly cost competitive with fossil fuels and can scale up quickly, more is needed if we are to limit the average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. We will still need government support to invest in developing new technologies.
Many potential technologies are on the horizon. Solar paint on windows and buildings could soak up the energy of the sun. And new grid-scale energy-storage technologiescould enable intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar to take a greater share in the power generation mix by delivering their electricity to the grid even when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
Advanced nuclear technologies have the potential to generate zero-carbon electricity at lower cost and with fewer waste, nonproliferation and safety concerns than conventional nuclear power.
Innovations in carbon capture, storage and utilization technologies or in air capture of CO2 may allow the use of fossil fuels even in a decarbonized world. My colleagues at Columbia have recently turned CO2 into solid rock, found ways to use and reuse CO2 in products and fuels, and will soon release a global road map on carbon dioxide utilization.
We must also find ways to replace oil in the transportation sector—whether through hydrogen fuel cells, more energy-dense batteries, or advanced biofuels that do not use food crops or cause indirect emissions through changes in land use.
We don’t know if these or other technologies will emerge on the path to deep decarbonization. What is clear is that these technologies will not be realized without large R&D investments.
Turning the resulting innovations into breakthrough products then requires significant private capital. The Mission Innovation announcement was coupled, for example, by a pledge from Bill Gates and several other wealthy individuals to deploy at least $2 billion in “patient capital” into clean energy over the next five years. Better coordination of R&D spending between countries and between the public and private sectors is also needed, as my colleague David Sandalow recently argued.
Government has an important role to play in commercializing basic research as well, given barriers to private finance like the capital intensity of energy products, long project lifespans, and market and policy risks. Federal research funding should build links between basic research and applied research programs. Demonstration projects and prize grants are also ways to target federal investments to bring breakthrough technologies to market.
While there seems little prospect for bipartisan cooperation on climate policy that, for example, puts a price on carbon, building on longstanding support for R&D can help American industries and workers lead in the rapidly growing global clean energy sector. Moreover, there is broad political support for government research; polls show that public support for a carbon tax is highest when the revenue is used to fund clean-energy R&D.
If Republicans want to find some potential areas to bridge the sharp partisan divide on energy, funding the U.S. commitment through Mission Innovation to double clean energy R&D is a good place to start.
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/11/13/the-one-energy-policy-republicans-and-democrats-can-agree-on/
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States Rethink Rule Planning After Trump's Win
Nov 14, 2016 | E&E News Daily
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
President-elect Donald Trump's plans to deconstruct U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan has some states that were still planning for the rule re-evaluating that choice.
Arizona's Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday postponed its quarterly December meeting, "in light of the uncertainty regarding the future of the Clean Power Plan created by the election results," according to an email from principal environmental scientist Steve Burr.
Arizona is one of 27 states challenging the rule in court but was still holding talks in case the Clean Power Plan moved forward.
Trump's election means that even if he does not succeed in rolling back the rule, he will appoint the Supreme Court justice who would likely break a tie between judges who would decide the rule's fate.
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison sent a statement the agency has used since before Trump's win that notes "many states have asked EPA to move forward with our outreach and to continue providing support and developing tools related to the Clean Power Plan." She said EPA's work is consistent with a Supreme Court freeze on implementing the rule and noted the agency will issue final model carbon trading rules once an interagency review is complete. EPA sent those rules to the White House on Nov. 3 (ClimateWire, Nov. 4).
Asked if nothing has changed since the election, Harrison said "that's correct." Trump's transition team could land in agencies as soon as this week (Greenwire, Nov. 10).
Meanwhile, supportive states will be mulling their options following Trump's win.
Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency is rescheduling a meeting set for tomorrow.
"We need a bit more time to plan the agenda to make most effective use of everyone's time," said a stakeholder email from Melissa Kuskie, who was recently promoted from CPP coordinator to supervisor of the Agency Rules Unit.
In a message to E&E News, Kuskie said the change "isn't code for an indefinite postponement."
"The team will be aiming for a meeting in the next month or two, but just haven't identified a date or anything yet," Kuskie said.
Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has continued to think through the rule, at the direction of Gov. Tom Wolf (D). DEP spokesman Neil Shader said the agency "is still awaiting the resolution of the Supreme Court stay on the Clean Power Plan; any future actions will be addressed at that time."
He noted that in any case, "Pennsylvania's carbon footprint has been shrinking rapidly due to market-based decisions being made in the state's electric generating sector, particularly rapid switching toward natural gas. It is likely that this trend will continue."
Shader said his agency will continue to seek ways to address climate change.
As Trump's administration aims to rescind or weaken environmental rules, climate-friendly state leaders may focus more on carbon reductions outside the lens of the Clean Power Plan.
Coal states run by Republicans, however, welcomed Trump's energy plans. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) said he wants Trump to gut EPA. Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesman John Mura noted the cabinet must uphold the laws, and the laws haven't changed yet.
"As a regulator, the cabinet's mission is not only to protect the health of everyone in the commonwealth but to work with those we regulate to ensure that Kentucky retains its ability to provide the low-cost and reliable electricity that makes the state competitive," Mura said, according to a blog in the Courier-Journal.
Looking outside the Clean Power Plan
Days before Election Day, the National Governors Association issued a pair of white papers for its members on strategies to comply with the regulation.
One focuses exclusively on different options for carbon trading under the rule, but the other looks at opportunities for states to use energy efficiency to reduce carbon-cutting costs and achieve other benefits.
Sue Gander, environment, energy and transportation division director at the National Governors Association, said the second paper focuses on "'no-regrets' actions."
"It's really about what are things [that] makes sense to do to enhance energy efficiency regardless of how you view the Clean Power Plan or the courts end up viewing it or in this case of how the new president views the Clean Power Plan," Gander said.
For states that are already pursuing energy efficiency programs or are considering such programs, "you've got some ideas here that can help them," she said.
State electricity regulators meet this week in La Quinta, Calif. They will review a recently finalized manual on distributed power and options for designing customer rates and deciding how much utilities charge for rooftop solar generators to use the grid. The guide comes in light of fights around the country on state net-metering policies.
The meeting agenda includes a discussion on nuclear power's role in limiting carbon emissions and a general talk on the Clean Power Plan by Doug Scott, a former Illinois regulator who now consults with states as vice president of strategic initiatives for the Great Plains Institute.
E&E News reporter Debra Kahn will attend.
Next Monday, Nov. 21, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks at the National Press Club. Tickets are still on sale and a live video stream will be available.
In case you missed it
· Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, discusses the landscape for the Clean Power Plan on the heels of Trump's stunning election win (E&ETV's OnPoint, Nov. 10).
· Tuesday's victory for Trump could bring a significant shift away from climate action at U.S. EPA — and perhaps a wider restructuring of the agency (ClimateWire, Nov. 10).
· The Obama administration's carbon rules for power plants are in dire straits after Trump's election as president. But how, exactly, Trump could go about eliminating the Clean Power Plan is still very much linked to litigation that is pending in federal court (Greenwire, Nov. 9). To read more about that litigation, click here.
· Legal scholars say rescinding rules is harder than it looks (Greenwire, Nov. 11).
· With Trump's stunning election victory, the states — not Washington, D.C. — are likely to become the prime engines of energy and climate policy (EnergyWire, Nov. 9).
· The specifics of what Trump will do to gut climate change work are unclear. But he has promised to eviscerate as many Obama executive orders and regulations as he can as soon as possible. That includes the Clean Power Plan (ClimateWire, Nov. 9).
· Environmental groups will have to rethink their strategy for reaching U.S. international climate commitments, and the outlook is not good (ClimateWire, Nov. 10).
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060045650
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Trump's Win Upends Climate Fight
Nov 11, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén , Elana Schor ,Esther Whieldon and Eric Wolff
Supporters of President Barack Obama’s energy agenda are scrambling to adjust to the looming Donald Trump era — with climate activists girding for battle while some green industry groups hope to appeal to the president-elect’s love of commerce.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel producers are facing the best of all possible worlds, with expectations high that Trump will loosen restrictions on coal, rip up Obama’s climate regulations, walk away from last year’s Paris global warming accord and name oil and gas executives to his Cabinet. Even the Keystone XL oil pipeline appears set for a resurrection, an unexpected turnaround for a project that Obama killed to environmentalists’ cheers a year ago last Sunday.
Both sides confront a much different world than they had expected to face under Hillary Clinton, who promised to build on Obama’s agenda with tightened limits on fracking and the installation of 500 million solar panels. Wind and solar have boomed under Obama, with sun-generated electricity expanding 30-fold since 2009.
Now, for some environmentalists, the road ahead looks bleak.
“I don't immediately see the path forward,” said Bill McKibben, a leading climate activist who helped lead the fight against Keystone, and who noted scientists’ warnings that the world needs to quickly slash its carbon output to have any chance of preventing catastrophe. “We have such a short window to deal with climate change, and it feels to me like it got significantly narrower.”
Others activists are vowing to fight, and to use even rowdier tactics than they had deployed under Obama. "The next four years will not be easy, but we have fought hostile administrations before," Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Kate Colwell said in a statement.
But some clean-energy supporters are trying to develop arguments that would appeal to Trump’s business sense, in hopes of preserving crucial tax credits and mandates for the solar, wind and energy efficiency industries.
Trump "is a businessman first and foremost," said Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, which promotes energy efficiency as an engine of economic growth. "And if you look at what businesses ... are doing with respect to advancing energy efficiency and showing a bottom line benefit from that, he'll want to follow suit.”
“We're going to take that into Trump's administration and play that card hard," she said.
Trump has made it clear that he’s no fan of wind and solar. He fought to stop offshore wind turbines near one of his golf resorts in Scotland, calling the turbines ugly and blaming them for killing birds. He has also insisted that climate change is a hoax promoted by China, and he promises to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement while undoing the Environmental Protection Agency's carbon regulations on power plants — all central to Obama’s legacy on global warming.
What Trump does support is an overhaul of the tax code, sparking fears among wind and solar supporters that the industry’s tax credits could make way for other kinds of giveaways, such as Trump’s calls for reducing the corporate tax rate and the top income tax bracket. Congress agreed last year to extend the wind and solar credits for five years — while phasing them down — but Trump may upend that arrangement.
One Trump supporter who opposes the tax breaks thinks they may be safe for now, however, at least because of support from Republicans in windy and sunny states.
"I don't know that the Congress has changed so dramatically that they're going to take a run at unwinding those,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a group with ties to the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. “But what it has done is taken away any opportunity for the wind guys to try and take another run at that."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that he hopes Trump pursues a sharp pivot toward fossil fuels, including approving Keystone and ending the "war on coal." Though Obama rejected Keystone a year ago, in a hard-fought win for the green movement, developer TransCanada said Wednesday that it wants to work with Trump to revive the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline project.
Fossil fuel advocates expect to have a prominent place at the table in Trump’s administration, even though many oil and gas lobbyist held back from contributing to his unorthodox presidential campaign.
Harold Hamm, the billionaire CEO of the oil and gas company Continental Resources, is on the shortlist for potential Energy secretary, while oil industry executive Forrest Lucas may get the nod for Interior secretary. Trump’s transition adviser on EPA is Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, who has fought for years against “alarmism” over human-caused global warming.
Trump himself has vowed to revive the coal industry, telling miners in West Virginia last spring that “you're going to be working your asses off."
Besides walking away from the Paris agreement, which commits the U.S. and more than 190 other nations to take action to fight climate change, Trump has promised to scrap EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a regulation limiting greenhouse gases from power plants. Both steps would be a gift to the coal industry, which has suffered from the Obama administration’s environmental regulations, declining demand and competition with inexpensive natural gas.
“It’s virtually certain the Clean Power Plan will be revoked,” Jeff Holmstead, a George W. Bush-era EPA air chief who now works at the law firm Bracewell, said after the election. “I’m quite confident based on everything I’m hearing from people close to the campaign or transition that they’ll make good on that promise.”
As Trump’s win began to sink in this week, green groups that had coalesced behind Clinton — some more slowly than others — began to cast themselves in the role of scrappy fighters.
“Above all, we’re ready to protect the significant climate progress of recent years,” Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp tweeted Wednesday. “Defense is our middle name.”
David Goldston, government affairs director for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, noted that Republicans won’t have a filibuster-proof majority that would let them easily undo major environmental rules. “The president doesn’t get to rule by fiat,” Goldston said. “It’s not simple to undo regulations.”
Still, Senate Democrats may not be in a strong position to put up a fight. They face a tough electoral map in 2018, when they will be defending seats in at least 10 states Trump won on Tuesday, including major fossil fuel producers like West Virginia and North Dakota.
Moreover, Hillary Clinton’s collapse in Rust Belt states that Obama had previously won points to their party’s lingering difficulty connecting with blue-collar voters. That could empower the building trade unions that had unsuccessfully urged Democrats to support fossil fuel projects such as Keystone.
Green groups also will face new questions from Democrats about their efforts to sell a climate-friendly message to voters who seemingly rejected it.
Tuesday’s GOP sweep puts Republicans in charge of both Congress and the White House for the first time since a landmark 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said EPA must regulate greenhouse gases if it deems them to pose a threat. Environmentalists expressed hope that the ruling could provide some check on Trump’s ability to stop all action on climate change.
But past Republican EPA administrators have warned that Trump’s environmental agenda could have drastic consequences, possibly even bringing mass resignations among employees who don’t want to carry out Trump’s agenda.
Jamie Henn, the strategy director at the climate activist group 350.org, proposed that green groups focus on strengthening the grassroots protest energy that prodded Obama to kill Keystone.
"No matter how this plays out, we're going to need a massive movement to defend the progress we've made and look for openings where we can,” Henn said by email. “We've shown the ability to hold up fossil fuel projects on the ground.”
Trump's precise blueprint to reverse Obama’s actions on climate change is unclear. But legal experts have some idea of what could happen.
First, he would probably pull back the Obama-era regulations still working their way through the courts — most notably the EPA power plant rule. The Supreme Court stayed that rule earlier this year, and it is pending review before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Legal experts from both sides agree that the Trump administration could ask the D.C. Circuit to send the climate rule back to EPA for reconsideration, assuming judges have not yet ruled by Jan. 20. It’s unclear whether the court would approve such a request, and environmentalists and other groups supporting the rule would fight it fiercely.
To reverse any Obama rules already in place, Trump would have to direct his administration to go through a whole new notice-and-comment rulemaking process explaining how the new version fixes flaws in the old, and environmentalists would be able to challenge any of those new rules in court.
Trump has also vowed to review EPA’s scientific conclusion in 2009 that greenhouse gases threaten public health, the underlying basis of all its Obama-era climate rules. Even if Trump leaves that finding in place, it could in theory be satisfied with rules that require relatively minimal efforts to reduce emissions from coal plants by boosting efficiency.
A resurgence of inexpensive coal would threaten to undercut wind and solar power, jeopardizing the gains they’ve seen during the Obama era. But some supporters of green power say they still see a bright future for their industry, thanks to the cost reductions that they’ve achieved in the past eight years.
"If you tell me Mr. Trump is going to tear up the CPP and get out of the Paris climate [deal], we weren't using that in the industry to push us forward anyways,” said John Berger, CEO of Sunnova Energy Corp. He added: “At the end of the day it wasn't fundamentally driving this industry. The horse is out of the gate.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/11/trumps-win-upends-climate-fight-137734
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The 'Most Effective' Way For Trump To Rollback Clean Power Plan
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
The American Bar Association's (ABA) latest environmental newsletter includes some advice for how President-elect Donald Trump could deliver on his campaign promise to roll back EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule – though prospects for rolling back the rule do not look easy short of a court ruling or congressional action.
“The most effective way a new administration could revoke or revise the Clean Power Plan is through a new rulemaking, although that is a lengthy and resource-intensive process,” Tom Lorenzon of Crowell & Moring and Sharie Armstrong of Thomas Combs & Spann write in the November/December issue of Trends, the ABA environment, energy and resource section's bimonthly newsletter.
While the Obama administration's landmark power plant GHG rule has been stayed by the Supreme Court pending judicial review, Trump has promised to roll it back. By contrast, Hillary Clinton has promised to vigorously defend it.
In their ABA piece, Lorenzen and Armstrong run through several litigation options available to Trump should he win the White House and seek to roll the rule back.
He could seek to vacate the rule by executive action, an approach the Obama administration tried unsuccessfully with a Bush-era rule, but that is unlikely to succeed. Moreover, it is not clear there is a vehicle for a similar litigation motion before federal courts reviewing the rule, they say, noting that “environmental and state intervenors in support of the rule also would undoubtedly oppose such a tactic, making that strategy unlikely to succeed.”
Alternatively, a Trump administration could decline to enforce the rule, as the Obama administration did with the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred gay marriage.
“Such an action would inform the reviewing court of the new administration’s policy position but may not have much practical effect as states and other groups supporting the Clean Power Plan could continue to defend the rule. In short, the rule could be upheld by the courts, notwithstanding the executive branch’s decision not to defend it,” they say.
Alternatively, a new president could also encourage EPA to exercise its enforcement discretion and refuse to enforce the state plan deadlines and other requirements imposed by the power plant rule.
But neither of those approaches is likely to succeed as the rule would still remain in effect and supporters could bring a citizen suit under section 304(a) against EPA or alleged violators to enforce the rule’s provisions, they say.
Which brings them to the idea of a new rulemaking – though even that would not be easy, requiring an extensive notice-and-comment process, as well as relevant scientific, economic and other evidence. And EPA would still face a high legal bar in defending the regulation from certain legal challenge.
“All told, the rulemaking could easily take two years to complete and maybe more,” Lorenzen and Armstrong write. “During the pendency of a rulemaking, the Clean Power Plan would remain in effect and be enforceable by EPA or through citizens’ suits. And, like the Clean Power Plan, any new rule would be subject to legal challenge. To prevail, EPA would have to establish that revocation of the rule is not contrary to the Clean Air Act, revocation was reasonable, and revocation would not endanger public health or welfare,” they say.
http://insideepa.com/news-briefs/most-effective-way-trump-rollback-clean-power-plan
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McConnell Urges Trump To Embrace Keystone, Fossil Fuels
Nov 11, 2016 | Politico
By Burgess Everett
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging President-elect Donald Trump to pivot sharply toward fossil fuels, telling Trump in a private meeting Thursday to swiftly approve the Keystone XL pipeline and end the "war on coal."
The Kentucky Republican said he and his Senate Republican Conference will be urging Trump to use his executive office powers to quickly rewrite President Barack Obama's policy portfolio.
"One thing I do hope he'll do that I recommended yesterday that won't surprise any of you ... is approve the Keystone pipeline," McConnell toldreporters in Louisville. "That's the kind of thing that I hope he'll be looking at and we're helping him look at: Things that he can do quickly on his own because much of what President Obama did that slowed our economy he did on his own."
The GOP leader said that his one-on-one meeting with Trump, which notably did not include staff, centered on reforming U.S. health care policy as well as putting a conservative in the vacant Supreme Court seat, which McConnell said he will act on "expeditiously."
So while congressional priorities did come up, McConnell is also urging Trump to make quick work of Obama's executive orders and regulatory regimes. McConnell has repeatedly attacked Obama's coal policies, using what he deems an Obama-inspired "depression" in Eastern Kentucky as a key talking point in his 2014 reelection run.
"One of the ways to get this economy growing again I think it is to deal with regulatory changes," McConnell said.
Separately, McConnell said he hopes to pursue a comprehensive tax reform bill next year as well and splashed some cold water on a big spending package aimed at rejuvenating the economy.
"A government spending program is not likely to solve the fundamental problem of growth," McConnell said.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/mitch-mcconnell-trump-fossil-fuels-231252
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Obama Administration: No Decision Yet On Dakota Access
Nov 11, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Obama administration said today that it has not yet reached a final decision on a disputed easement for the Dakota Access pipeline, tamping down expectations of a positive verdict on the pipeline as soon as Monday.
"The process is ongoing and no decisions have been made," an administration official said this afternoon.
Sources familiar with the process told POLITICO earlier today that a go-ahead for the $3.7 billion project was expected as soon as Monday, raising concerns about nationwide protests planned against the project on Tuesday.
An Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman said late Thursday that "an announcement will come in the next few days" on the project, which the administration first put on hold in September following protests by tribal and green groups. It remains unclear whether the announcement would technically clear the way for completion of Dakota Access ahead of a pro-pipeline Trump administration.
The pipeline company says construction of Dakota Access is largely complete in North Dakota, aside from the Missouri River easement disputed by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its supporters. The company has offered to temporarily pause construction of the project so long as "a date certain" for finishing work can be set.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Oil, Earthquakes and the Rush to Save Oklahoma
Nov 14, 2016 | Bloomberg
By David Wethe
Rush is on to find new way to dump water and stop quake surge‘
Everybody thinks they’re going to get rich,’ a Tulsa man says
Brian Kalt’s got a pretty funky plan to stop the surge in earthquakes in Oklahoma and save the state’s reeling oil industry.
The key is to come up with an alternative to dumping drillers’ waste water right back into the ground, so Kalt’s little company will extract the salt particles, release the purified water into rivers and, then, to defray costs and make the scheme economically viable, sell the salt for use on snowy roads and in industrial machinery. (With a little more scrubbing, it could even be served on kitchen tables.) Kalt says he’s already signed tentative deals with salt companies and is, naturally, excited about his innovation.
“This is the silver bullet,” he says.
There are very few spots across America’s vast oil patch right now that have a buzz to them, a sense that their business is hot or about to take off. The niche market for dirty-water disposal in Oklahoma -- measured at about $3 billion -- is definitely one of them.
Kalt forms part of a crush of entrepreneurs who are cooking up ways to fix Oklahoma’s quake problem. There’s an MIT grad who concocted a system that turns the salt slurry into a thick, and easier to dispose, brine; and an Oklahoma native who devised a process that allows drillers to put the water to use in other parts of their operations; even General Electric Co. is tinkering with an idea or two (though it wasn’t willing to reveal much about what they might look like).
It’s not clear that any of these solutions will work, and if they do, it’s not clear that there’s much money to be made in the business, but that’s not stunting the enthusiasm any. The whole thing has a certain gold rush feel to it, said Bill Hermann, marketing director of Tulsa-based Produced Water Technologies LLC.
“Everybody thinks they’re going to get rich and they’re scheming up grand ideas on how to address the problem,” Hermann said. He and his colleagues have ginned up yet another alternative: a system that would essentially trap the heat produced by oilfield equipment and use it to evaporate the water.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for Oklahoma. Oil is king here. The industry is the state’s largest source of tax revenue and employs one out of every seven workers. Daily outputhas doubled over the past five years to 421,000 barrels a day, placing the state fifth in national rankings.518 Quakes
All of that could be at risk if Oklahomans don’t get their earthquakes under control. The increase that’s accompanied the jump in oil drilling is staggering. So far this year alone, there have been 518 quakes that registered 3.0 or higher in magnitude. From 2004 to 2008, right before the oil boom hit, there were a total of nine.
For years, industry executives contended there wasn’t enough evidence to definitively determine the cause of the quakes. Only recently has that stance started shifting toward one of acknowledgment of their role. Among casual observers outside the industry, there’s a common perception that it’s the growth in hydraulic fracturing -- the process of blasting water, sand and chemicals in the ground to release trapped hydrocarbons -- that’s causing the quakes. The problem is actually the water that’s already in the ground and gushes out of wells along with the oil and gas.
In some parts of Oklahoma, the flow is enormous, with as many as 20 barrels of water accompanying each barrel of oil. (Seven-per-one would be a more typical ratio in other parts of the country.) It’s dirty and it’s loaded with salt, making safe disposal above ground expensive. So drillers have typically just funneled it down a mile-long tube into a vast open cavern in the Earth named the Arbuckle Formation. Some 2.1 billion barrels of water are being poured in this year, more than double the amount four years ago, Houston-based consulting firm CAP Resources estimates.
But here, again, Oklahoma’s geological peculiarities cause trouble. The Arbuckle happens to sit just above a series of fault lines. The more water that’s pumped in, experts say, the more these fault lines are stressed, triggering the seismic activity.
“I don’t think I need to take disposal in the Arbuckle all the way to zero,” said Michael Teague, Oklahoma’s secretary of energy and environment. “I just can’t keep it at the volumes it’s at right now."$1.50-a-Barrel
After initially just urging drillers to voluntarily enact disposal-well reductions, Teague’s regulators got congressional approval to make them obligatory in August. The intensity of the quakes has, if anything, picked up, though. In September, the worst one yet -- a 5.8-magnitude tremor -- shook homes and buildings across the state for almost a minute. And then a 5.0-magnitude quake hit last week just outside Cushing, home to the biggest oil storage hub in North America, prompting pledges to further tighten restrictions.
All of which is making some in the alternative-technology crowd increasingly confident that they’ll start seeing real demand for their new-fangled disposal systems. Conversations with scores of regulators and executives indicated that so far only a single company, Bosque Systems, is up and running in the state. Founded by local entrepreneur Clane LaCrosse, Bosque cleans up the waste water and then turns it back over to drillers to use when fracking wells.
“I’d like to see Bosque displace disposal wells,” LaCrosse said. “If we can innovate correctly, then the option becomes pretty simple.”
For others, the cost part of the equation still isn’t quite right, though. Most didn’t want to talk specifics but would acknowledge that they were struggling to match the typical disposal-well price of about $1.50 for each barrel of water. “It’s not cheap,” Kalt said of the system that his company, Fairmont Brine Processing LLC, wants to implement.
If oil prices were still around the $100-per-barrel of two years ago, maybe oil companies would be up for shelling out the additional money. At $45 a barrel, not so much.
It’s part of the reason why Hermann, the executive with Produced Water Technologies, wondered if this will really turn into the bonanza that his rivals are counting on. “We’re not going to get real rich on it,” he said. Maybe not, but if they manage to help stop the earthquakes, keep the oil industry in business and make a few bucks for themselves in the process, the people of Oklahoma would be just fine with that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/rare-oil-patch-hot-spot-emerges-in-america-s-earthquake-capital
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Fracking Did Not Harm Wyoming Water Wells, State Report Says
Nov 11, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
A state of Wyoming report released on Thursday has concluded that natural gas drilling activity, including hydraulic fracturing (fracking), did not contaminate water wells in the town of Pavillion, which five years ago was the subject of controversial U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests tying the gas operations to water problems.
"Evidence does not indicate that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallow depths utilized by water-supply wells," according to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) report. "Also, based on an evaluation of fracking history and methods used in the Pavillion gas field, it is unlikely that hydraulic fracturing has caused any impacts to the water-supply wells."
The report makes a series of recommendations for additional work, and it sets a public meeting for residents in Riverton, WY, on a still-to-be-determined day in early December. In addition, the DEQ plans to issue a "scope of work" to have supplemental groundwater investigations, including sampling/analysis of water-supply wells within the Pavillion gas field.
DEQ evaluated the data, conclusions and recommendations of an earlier report by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (WOGCC) on wellbore integrity for oil/gas exploration and production wells within 1,320 feet of 14 domestic water wells previously identified for investigation.
WOGCC and DEQ retained third-party independent experts to assist their staff with the reviews, investigations, analyses and preparation of the reports, said a spokesperson for Gov. Matt Mead, who released the DEQ work.
Mead described the final report as "unbiased and scientifically supportable.”
Given the controversy surrounding the Pavillion gas field, it was important that baseline water quality be determined, along with proper water quality information and education, the governor's spokesperson said. In 2013, WOGCC started groundwater baseline sampling, analysis and monitoring requirements, including requiring oil/gas operators to test existing water sources before and after drilling.
In concluding that mostly naturally occurring seepage is taking place in the gas field, as opposed to leaking wells, the report said it is "undefined and difficult to quantify" the relative contributions of well leaks and naturally migrating gas supplies.
"Limited baseline water quality data predating development of the Pavillion gas field hinders reaching firm conclusions on causes and effects of reported water quality changes," the report said.
Nevertheless, residents and environmental groups that have been critical of the state's handling of the issue expressed skepticism to local news media.
"The data indicates that domestic water wells have been impacted by oil and gas extraction activities in the Pavillion field, and it's past time for both the state of Wyoming and Encana to publicly acknowledge the public health consequences and do something to make us whole," said John Fenton, chairman of Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens.
Mead's office said the state has spent $929,268 for the design, construction and installation of residential cistern systems and a water-loading station in Pavillion. To date, 31 cisterns for 28 landowners have been installed. For 11 landowners not participating in the cistern program, bottled water delivery has been extended through March 31.
Taste and odor complaints from residents in Pavillion began at least five years ago, prompting EPA involvement, to the consternation of Encana Corp.'s USA unit, the main gas field operator (see Shale Daily, Dec. 13, 2011). Eventually, through Mead's initiative, the state supplanted the federal agency in mid-2013, taking the lead in the investigation of the potential impact of natural gas production activities on drinking water in Pavillion (see Daily GPI, June 24, 2013).
Among the recommendations, DEQ and WOGCC are asked to continue discussions on evaluating potential groundwater contamination at pits and to evaluate consistent criteria for the closure of pits affecting groundwater. DEQ also recommends that U.S. EPA plug and abandon its two monitoring wells constructed in 2010 to eliminate any potential hazard to groundwater supplies and physical safety in the general area.
In characterizing the Pavillion field as a conventional, vertically drilled reservoir with unique characteristics, DEQ's report said evidence suggests that "upward gas seepage (or gas charging of shallow sands)" was happening naturally before gas well development. Further, "it is unlikely that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallower depths intercepted by water-supply wells."
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108427-fracking-did-not-harm-wyoming-water-wells-state-report-says
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Virginia Revises Regulations to Expand Disclosure of Frack Chemicals
Nov 11, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently approved changes to the state's Gas and Oil Regulation that govern the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Old Dominion state.
The regulations were authored by Virginia's Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) to expand disclosure of ingredients used in well stimulation, and to ensure that the regulations reflect current industry best practices. DMME adopted the changes to the Virginia Gas and Oil Regulation in September, based on input from an advisory panel that included representatives from industry, environmental groups, other state agencies and local governments.
"The final regulation requires disclosure of the ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing operations to the public while also protecting industry trade secrets except in case of emergency," according to DMME. "These requirement strike the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic development as required by the Virginia Gas and Oil Act." The regulation requires well operators to use the FracFocus registry to disclose chemicals used in fracking operations.
The final regulation also establishes a groundwater sampling, analysis and monitoring program, and adds language strengthening case and pressure testing requirements for well casings used in conventional and coalbed methane gas wells.
While the language in the regulations requiring disclosure of fracking chemicals is welcomed by environmental groups, it could be undermined by a bill due for consideration by the next Virginia General Assembly, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). The proposal would create a trade secrets exemption from public disclosure under the state's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), SELC attorney Kristen Davis said.
"A FOIA exemption would allow oil and gas companies to keep this information secret at the expense of public health. As the new regulations confirm, information about these chemicals is especially important to communities and emergency responders charged with protecting public health and the environment," Davis said. "The General Assembly should not roll back this essential new protection."
There were 8,113 wells producing natural gas in Virginia last year, and 6,896 (85%) of them were fracked wells, a DMMR spokesperson told NGI.
Two years ago, officials in Washington County, VA, approved a change to local zoning laws to open the county to natural gas development, which could include the use of fracking to extract natural gas locked in limestone, sandstone and some deeper shale formations (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12, 2014). At the time, no applications to drill had been submitted to the southwestern Virginia county, which shares a border with Tennessee. DMME geologists believe Washington County is prospective to the Little Valley and Price formations, which are limestone and sandstone formations, respectively, and there are indications of some deeper shale formations.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108425-virginia-revises-regulations-to-expand-disclosure-of-frack-chemicals
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Trump Could Roll Back Obama Rules On Methane, A Potent Greenhouse Gas
Nov 14, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Across the globe, climate change activists are watching closely whether a Donald Trump administration would halt recent progress toward slowing the warming of the planet. The main focus thus far has been on the prospect that Trump would withdraw from the international Paris climate agreement and hobble the domestic Clean Power Plan.
Yet Trump is also expected to seek to reverse or undermine another set of Obama policies meant to curb climate change that focus not on carbon dioxide, the most notorious greenhouse gas, but rather methane — the second most important one. It’s the main component of natural gas, and actually causes a much larger amount of global warming than carbon dioxide does, at least over short time periods, although it does not last nearly as long in the atmosphere.
One key concern has been that considerable volumes of methane have been leaking into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations, which have seen a boom in the United States in recent years. Precisely how much methane is being released, and why, remains controversial. But this has triggered a contentious move towards regulation that Trump could now try to reverse.
“Methane is a top priority and we’ll be pursuing that aggressively,” said Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, on a conference call with reporters Thursday. Gerard said recent Obama administration methane regulations have added “unnecessary cost and confusion and it seems to demonstrate no benefit for all the associated cost,” arguing the rules often overlap with regulations that states already have in place.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently revised upwards its estimates of methane emissions coming from the oil and gas industry, rendering it the largest source of U.S. methane emissions (other sources include wetlands, landfills, and most importantly, ruminant animals like cattle). However, the American Petroleum Institute has contested that revision.
More generally, it must be acknowledged that our understanding of the sources of methane in the atmosphere is less advanced than is our understanding of the sources of carbon dioxide. This is an area where there remains much science to be done in order to figure out more precisely what is happening. For instance, one recent study suggested the recent growth of atmospheric methane levels is attributable not to the oil and gas sector, but rather, might be due to global agriculture.
But in the meantime, the Obama administration has launched a multi-pronged regulatory approach that has garnered considerable industry ire.
Last year, Obama pledged to reduce U.S. oil and gas methane emissions by 40 to 45 percent below their 2012 levels by the year 2025, a move that would rely on a number of distinct policies. First, the EPA under Obama enacted new regulations earlier this year aimed at leaks from new and modified oil and gas equipment, a set of rules the agency says will avoid the emission of “510,000 short tons of methane in 2025, the equivalent of reducing 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.”
But that’s just the beginning: The agency is next planning to target existing rigs and wells, and has already sent out a request to the industry for information to guide regulation. However, the EPA isn’t expected to finish that work before leaving office.
Meanwhile, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management has also been proceeding on regulations to require methane emissions if companies want to drill on U.S. public lands. That regulation, it estimates, would prevent another 164,000 to 169,000 tons of emissions of methane annually. Converting that to carbon dioxide, the agency says would be the equivalent of 4.1 to 4.2 million metric tons.
It would appear that Trump would want to reverse as much of this as he can. Trump energy adviser Kevin Cramer, a U.S. representative from North Dakota, the center of the domestic oil and gas boom, recently told the trade service Platts that the oil and gas industry is feeling “tremendous renewed optimism, I can tell you that. The commitment to rolling back regulations and returning more oversight back to states, things like the fracking rule, methane emissions rules, for example. There’s just a renewed optimism that [US producers] are going to be unshackled from over-regulation.”
A statement on energy policy put up on the Trump transition website does not explicitly mention the issue of methane regulations, but says that “We will lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities. It’s all upside: more jobs, more revenues, more wealth, higher wages, and lower energy prices.”
This language is almost exactly the same as what Trump said in September when speaking in Pittsburgh at a shale industry conference in Pittsburgh. “If you ask yourself what he’s talking about, what are the restrictions, the methane rules are the highest cost factor of rules that were under consideration for shale oil and gas development,” said Scott Segal, a partner at Bracewell LLP who works on energy regulatory issues.
But what could Trump actually achieve? It turns out that each of the Obama policies in question need to be treated rather distinctly.
First, the current EPA rules, which only apply to new and modified oil and gas equipment, are already final, said Mark Brownstein, vice president of climate and energy at the Environmental Defense Fund.
“It would be no easy thing for the incoming administration to revisit the new source rule, as it is now an adopted regulation,” he said. “So it would require rule-making, and the same standards of administrative procedure that led to the adoption of the rule would apply to any effort to modify it our repeal it. In other words, you can’t simply propose changes in an arbitrary and capricious way.” So this regulation might be the hardest to reverse.
The Interior Department regulation covering public lands, however, is only proposed, not finalized. It could come out soon, before the change of administrations.
That itself would be contentious: Segal suggests that from the Trump administration’s perspective it would be desirable to have a hold or moratorium on new regulations at the close of the Obama years. “It’s not unusual for there to be a moratorium on major rules, and Democratic and Republican administrations have done that,” he said. “I would go so far as to say that it’s standard operating procedure to freeze major rules.”
So it remains to be seen whether this rule is finalized before the end of the Obama administration — and if so, what kind of fight that triggers.
Finally, Brownstein says, in order to get to the Obama goal of reducing all oil and gas methane emissions by 45 percent, there would have to be an additional regulation on existing oil and gas sources of methane, which the agency is contemplating, but no one expects to be finalized under Obama.
As far as these last and most sweeping regulations go, “I won’t sit here and pretend that that task has gotten easier in the last 48 hours,” Brownstein said. But he added, “I think we can make a pretty good case that there’s a lot of benefit to U.S. energy economy from moving forward with this.”
This regulation is, potentially, the big one – and it’s the least likely to happen now. “A rule that addressed all well pad and infrastructure would be much more important than rules focusing just on federal lands and new well pad construction. That’s an enormous contrast,” said Rob Jackson, a researcher at Stanford University who studies emissions from the natural gas sector.
Thus, it does seem clear that the Trump administration can significantly curtail at least some of Obama’s existing or intended methane regulations. The question then becomes what would happen by doing so — environmentalists clearly think more of the gas would pour forth, but industry counters that there is a strong built-in incentive to capture methane (it is, after all, valuable fuel). This has been their argument against the regulations all along — they aren’t needed.
Still, Obama’s 45 percent reduction target for methane emissions by 2025 now appears unlikely to happen, says Stanford’s Jackson — who noted that if all countries were to adopt a goal so ambitious it would reduce 10 percent of global methane from human activities.
“I’m convinced that we’ll continue to see improvements based on the economics, and on companies’ desire to improve things,” said Jackson. “I’m skeptical that we’ll see anything nearly that ambitious though.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/11/this-is-the-other-way-that-trump-could-worsen-global-warming/
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What’s Ahead For The Energy Railway Industry After Crude By Rail Went Bust?
Nov 11, 2016 | Platts
By Barbara Troner
“Maybe we’ll talk about shipping water by rail at the next Railway Age gathering in 2017,” is what several delegates said at the Energy by Rail conference in Arlington, Virginia in October.
The crude by rail landscape must be in a dire state when delegates from the railway industry are toying with the idea of hauling water to draught-prone regions or shale production sites in order to repurpose the currently 113,000 rail tank cars — 28% of the entire 400,000 strong fleet — sitting idle on offline tracks or in storage amid declining CBR volumes.
Lease rates for the 287,000 tank cars that are still moving have declined to $300-375/month from a high of over $2,400/month during the CBR boom in 2013-2014 and $700-800/month a year ago.
The one faction that didn’t mind the downturn in the CBR landscape were the rail car service companies that are cleaning the tank cars, in order to prevent corrosion during storage.
BNSF’s executive chairman Matthew Rose opened the conference, held October 27-28, by pointing to the structural decline in both the oil and coal business and that natural gas liquids could well be the next commodity for the railroads. Shortline companies, such as Omnitrax, were optimistic about railing frack sand to shale producing fields, as the increased use of sand below ground resulted in higher yields above ground. In other words, alternatives to crude by rail was on the forefront of delegates’ minds, in order to circumvent the current bust cycle of the crude by rail landscape.
According to the Energy Information Administration, total CBR shipments, not including Canada, have more than halved in the past two years from a peak of 1 million b/d in late 2014 to 348 MBD in August 2016. 85% of that volume is sourced in PADD 2 railing Bakken crude to those US refinieries where there is no pipeline capacity.
And access to pipelines is what is at the heart of the boom-and-bust cycle of CBR, as rail cars take crude where pipelines do not. The US CBR boom started in 2010 as a means of transporting then stranded shale crude production to refining centers on the US coasts. As soon as pipeline carrying capacity was built and expanded, CBR volumes decreased in favor of cheaper pipeline transport.
Total US CBR receipts declined 13% in 2015 in response to the expansion of pipeline networks and narrower crude spreads. In order for CBR to make economic sense vis a vis West African imports on the US Atlantic Coast, WTI needs to trade at a minimum $3-4/b discount to Brent, according to industry sources. In 2011 and 2012, when shale crude volumes were building and by far exceeding pipeline carrying capacity, the Brent/WTI spread blew out to over $10/b for most of the period and peaked at $24.13/b in September 2011. The chart below shows that CBR volumes were building in tandem with a widening Brent/WTI spread and contracting once that spread started to narrow.
So CBR does not appear to be the Walmart Movement to the World, except for where pipelines cannot go and that is across the Rocky Mountains to the US West Coast. Only environmental concerns are currently delaying and ultimately may halt the expansion of rail receiving terminals in California.
But beyond repurposing tank cars to haul water across the continent to distant sites, some energy railers felt that LNG was ready to go on the rails as an alternative transport mode to pipelines during peak heating demand on the USAC and the Midwest during the winter season.
“There are shippers out there that would like to transport it. Natural gas production is booming in the US. Inquiries have come from Marcellus gas to liquefy and take to New England. [This] would compete with imported LNG from Trinidad. Despite its good and very extensive pipeline network, the US is developed and there are loads of places for the rail roads to move LNG,” Scott Nason, product manager at Chart Inc. said at the conference. “Large LNG satellite stations can be used to provide backup gas supply to gas fired power plants during pipeline shortages or outages.”
Nason further explained that LNG is a safe commodity to transport by rail in pressurized tanks, as LNG by itself does not explode, but instead the vapors will only ignite if mixed with 5-15% of air. LNG vapor has a spark ignition temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Canada has allowed the transport of LNG by rail since July 2014 and in Europe the transport of LNG is considered safe in ISO containers. In Alaska, the Federal Railroad Administration granted approval to transport LNG in tank cars since October 2015, but the permit is to expire in December 2017. Liquid ethylene, a cryogenic liquid similar to LNG, has been shipped in DOT-113 cars in the US from 1961 to the present.
So in the end, next year’s rail gathering may not just be about hauling water.
http://blogs.platts.com/2016/11/11/energy-railway-crude-rail-went-bust/
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Bad Mix: Risky Cargo In Dense Areas
Nov 12, 2016 | Houston Chronicle
By Susan Carroll and Matt Dempsey
Steve McCan cruised along the Southwest Freeway in his new Grand Prix on a Tuesday morning in 1976, happy to be home from Vietnam and free from the confines of a Navy submarine.
McCan, 27, glanced at a green Volvo and noticed the driver, a young woman with a baby. She's pretty, he thought, as he drove past and into the shadow of the 610 overpass.
Above McCan, in the right lane of Interstate 610, a tractor-trailer struck the bridge rail. McCan watched in his rearview mirror as the truck rolled over the edge and fell about 15 feet onto the freeway. The tractor separated from the trailer, and its tank exploded, spewing 7,509 gallons of anhydrous ammonia. The toxic fog killed six people and injured 178.
Afterward, the National Transportation Safety Board praised the city of Houston for having designated the 610 Loop as the official route for hazardous materials, keeping trucks from more populous areas.
Forty years later, that route snakes through a city that has doubled in size, leaving Houston vulnerable to a catastrophic accident.
About 400 trucks a day loaded with tons of hazardous chemicals, such as chlorine, butadiene and formaldehyde, inch along 610 in bumper-to-bumper traffic and pass within a mile of NRG Stadium, Memorial Park and the Galleria shopping center.
Nearby cities and towns have even more dangerous routes, designating their main thoroughfares for transporting hazardous chemicals, including Mont Belvieu and Conroe. The last time a route was updated anywhere in the Houston area was more than 20 years ago, according to data from the state Department of Transportation.
Other Texas cities, including Austin, have no designated routes at all.
Old or nonexistent routes aren't the only safety issue. The U.S. government does not systematically track what's coming and going on the highways and rails, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found. It has the authority to demand manifests but largely relies on companies to operate safely.
Hazardous chemicals roll on tracks past Saturday morning soccer games at the YMCA in Garden Oaks and through congested Highland Village at rush hour. Union Pacific tracks also cross Lake Houston, a major water storage reservoir.
Since 2000, Texas leads the nation in fatalities, injuries and evacuations related to moving hazardous chemicals on roads or rails, according to an analysis of incident data from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
The 19 fatal accidents in Texas included a two-train collision in Bexar County involving a tank car carrying chlorine. That accident in 2004 killed three and injured 66.
In February 2014, a state trooper driving near the 610 East ramp and Interstate 45 saw a diesel truck explosion. The trooper found the truck driver lying on the grass by the road. He was on fire.
Last spring, a semi-truck carrying propane collided with another truck. The explosion killed one, injured two and forced 120 people to evacuate.
State and local officials seem confused about who has the power to designate a hazardous materials route.
State law requires all cities with populations greater than 850,000 to have such routes, and the Texas Department of Transportation is responsible for putting up signs. Austin is the only one of that size without a route. The capital city exceeded that population level in 2012, according to U.S. Census estimates, but is still in the process of choosing a route, according to City Council minutes.
A spokesman for the state Department of Transportation said it is up to municipalities to designate hazardous materials routes. Houston officials insisted, however, that the state also has the power, outlined in Texas Administrative Code, Title 43, Chapter 25, Section 104.
Houston's Office of Emergency Management doesn't know why the city's designated route hasn't been updated in decades. The department said Houston Fire is responsible for oversight of hazardous materials, including transportation.
Spokespersons for the fire department did not reply to requests for comment.
City Council member Larry Green, chair of the Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee, said in response to questions from the Chronicle that he plans to review the 610 Loop's designation and that dangerous cargo should be routed through less-populous parts of Houston.
One government-funded study of hazardous materials required Texas A&M University researchers to stand at rail and road crossings in Houston for more than 300 hours to count signs on cargo because there was no better method available.
The study, done five years ago, found that an average of 468 trucks carrying hazardous materials use Interstate 45 each day, though it is not a designated route. Another 249 per day, on average, use U.S. 59. Trucks are allowed to make deliveries or pickups outside of designated routes.
David Bierling, the study's author, said trucking is essential to the chemical industry in Houston, but he encouraged city officials in 2011 to use the study as a starting point to improve safety.
When the Chronicle asked for the report, city officials said to ask the Greater Houston local emergency planning committee. The committee initially couldn't locate the study, then found it in a storage unit.
Federal regulations say that even without a designated hazardous material route, trucks are supposed to avoid heavily populated areas, tunnels, narrow streets or places where crowds assemble.
The rules are not often enforced.
Only specifically trained officers can issue tickets for hazardous materials violations. About 600 Department of Public Safety employees have that training, as do another 175 from local police forces across the state.
From 2013 to June 2015, DPS officers handed out three tickets.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also enforces hazardous material transportation rules. It has not issued any fines in Texas since 2010. Nationwide, in the last six years, it handed out 10 fines to trucking companies, for a total of $192,880. Most violations were for not having a written route plan.
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The Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads both have large switching yards in Houston and rail lines that run through densely populated neighborhoods, according to the city's emergency management plan.
Railroads carry hazardous materials along with regular cargo, the plan states.
Neither railroad responded to the Chronicle's request to comment on safety precautions.
Tiffany Lindemann, a spokeswoman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said if a train carrying hazardous materials has more than one route option, the railroad must conduct a comprehensive analysis to determine the safest path. Twenty-seven factors, including population and proximity to "iconic targets," should be taken into account as part of assessing risk, according to the FRA. Lindemann said the agency audits the railroads' analyses annually but declined to provide the Chronicle with copies for Union Pacific or Burlington Northern.
Rail carrier regulations also are enforced by the FRA. It issued $24.1 million in penalties for hazardous material violations since 2010. A breakdown for Texas was not available.
The American Association of Railroads made an agreement to provide annual data on hazardous material transportation to any local emergency planning committee that asks for it, but the companies are under no obligation to give that information to anyone else.
When the Chronicle asked the Greater Houston committee for the analysis of hazardous material moved by rail, it was directed to get written permission from the federal secretary of transportation.
On that May day in 1976, after the ammonia tank exploded, a piece of metal hit McCan's car, and he pulled over. Two men who drove up beside him fell over onto the payment as fumes poured out of their car.
McCan looked for the woman in the Volvo, but the car had disappeared in a white cloud. He glanced across the highway and saw a businessman step out of a Lincoln town car. They locked eyes for a moment.
The man ran one way; McCan ran the other.
McCan, now a Peterbuilt truck salesman and grandfather of eight, remembers holding his breath that day and trying to outrun the vapor cloud. He remembers jumping into the car of a good Samaritan, who drove him out of danger.
He remembers hearing that afternoon that a car crushed under the ammonia tank held a woman and her baby.
He'd always assumed it was the young mom in the Volvo. But the forensic investigator's reports, stored in the old county archive, show that the woman whose car was crushed was driving an Oldsmobile. The baby in the car, a 5-month-old boy, survived.
He remembers learning that the man that he had locked eyes with had died in a field on the other side of the highway. He had run the wrong way.
Kenneth MacKenzie, Houston's former air pollution control chief, said even in the '70s, the ammonia tanker explosion was a "nightmare" scenario.
He dispatched teams to monitor the air quality and was thankful that the wind had not shifted, or the death toll could have been far worse. Anhydrous ammonia kills by sucking the moisture from vital organs.
"It could have wiped out the Galleria," he said.
MacKenzie, who is now 75, cringes at headlines about chemical accidents.
Some are scarier than others, like the train derailment in 2012 that sent a toxic fog of vinyl chloride over the small town of Paulsboro, N.J. Or the 193-car pileup near Battle Creek, Mich., in 2015 that spilled formic acid and detonated thousands of pounds of fireworks. Or the train derailment this summer along the Washington-Oregon border that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil and burned for hours.
"You have every kind of chemical in the world coming through Houston," he said. "We've been very fortunate with the amount of problems we've had."
MacKenzie testified at an NTSB hearing on July 22, 1976.
The 610 loop "was probably reasonable routing at one time, but Houston has grown rapidly," he said then. "Routes for these types of trucks must be put farther away, even if it costs you something extra."
Forty years, three months and 22 days later, nothing has changed.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/chemical-breakdown/7/?%3f%3f
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Nov 11, 2016 | Security Info Watch
By Don Erickson
On Aug. 23, the U.S. Coast Guard issued the final card access control reader rule for the Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) — achieving an important milestone in the history of this long-awaited, commonly criticized, frequently investigated, but essential program (Read more: www.securityinfowatch.com/12251006).
Despite the misgivings of some government officials and budget and privacy “watchdogs” over the years about the costs associated with the TWIC program and its use of biometrics, the issuance of the TWIC Final Rule presents the promise of future opportunities for security industry suppliers serving the maritime transportation market.
That being said, Congress cannot help but once again exert its “oversight” responsibilities over TWIC rules, and legislative proposals threaten to modify the program when this credential is poised to become fully operational beyond its current “flash-pass” functionality. For some integrators eager to embrace TWIC, business opportunities may be unnecessarily delayed.
TWIC: A Brief History
It has been more than 15 years since a series of laws of various scope were enacted to increase federal attention toward hardening multiple modes of public transportation security, including the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), the Maritime Transportation and Security Act of 2002 (MTSA), and the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot Act).
As directed by the requirements of MTSA, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) established the TWIC program — and security access control manufacturers and integrators instantly became technical advocates for this biometric credential intended to identify transportation workers requiring unescorted access to secure areas of maritime facilities or vessels.
From the Congressional authorization of the TWIC program in 2002, and the launch of the card electronic reader regulatory proceedings in March 2009, the Security Industry Association (SIA) supported the goals of the TWIC program and frequently provided comments to TSA and the Coast Guard as these agencies developed the rules to ensure electronic verification of this essential identity credential.
SIA’s Personal Identification Verification (PIV) Working Group, extended participation throughout the implementation of the TWIC Reader Pilot Program and subsequent evaluation of the pilot results. For access control stakeholders, the recent announcement by the Coast Guard is a significant market driver that provides federal government validation of the biometric card readers in the maritime environment debated since the conception of TWIC.
Impact of the New Reader Rule
Whether suppliers are new to this domain or have been following TWIC implementation for years, integrators and their manufacturer partners will have ample time to review and understand the provisions of the TWIC reader requirements rule, which is effective Aug. 23, 2018.
Some of the key requirements of interest to suppliers include the following provisions:A total of 525 “high risk” facilities found within “Risk Group A” would be covered under the new rule. That is only 16 percent of the approximately 3,270 facilities and 56 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) facilities regulated by the Maritime Transportation and Security Act.Allows port operators and owners to fully integrate electronic TWIC inspection and biometric matching into a new or existing PACS. Owners and operators will not be required to use a TWIC reader on the TSA Qualified Technology List (QTL).Increases the exemption from TWIC inspection requirements to vessels with 20 or fewer TWIC-holding crew members. TWIC inspection applies to the process whereby the card is authenticated (checked against the Card Holder Unique Identifier or CHUID), validated (checked against the list of cancelled TWIC cards), and the individual’s biometrics are checked against his or her biometric stored on the TWIC.
Integrators can better prepare for potential opportunities within this market by developing expertise toward the unique elements of long-standing security plans required of vessels by the Coast Guard including information pertaining to security systems and equipment maintenance and security measures for access control, restricted areas, monitoring and handling cargo.
Legislative Changes on the Horizon
It is widely expected that Congressional oversight of various aspects of the TWIC program will continue beyond the effective date of the reader rule. Over the past several years, the DHS Inspector General and the General Accountability Office (GAO) have issued a number of stinging reports about the effectiveness of the TWIC program that have consistently drawn the attention of key legislators in Congress.
For example, the majority leadership of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee has endorsed H.R. 3856, the “Border and Maritime Coordination Improvement Act.” This proposal by Congresswoman Candice Miller (R-MI) contains limited reform of the credential by preventing unauthorized immigrants from being able to acquire a TWIC, and it automatically terminates a TWIC on the same date that an individual holder’s visa will expire.
In the U.S. Senate, a far more sweeping legislative proposal impacting the TWIC program is under consideration after being unanimously passed by the House of Representatives. In April, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed H.R. 710, the “Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Program,” which will mandate a comprehensive review of the TWIC program, thus creating more uncertainty for the program.
The Senate version of the proposed Essential TWIC program will prohibit DHS from issuing any additional TWIC rules until the DHS Inspector General affirms to Congress that its recommendations for improving the TWIC program were adopted.
If the bill is enacted into law, DHS will be required to issue an updated list of TWIC readers that will work with existing credentials. There is the possibility that H.R. 710 was introduced to indirectly delay the issuance of the card reader rule, force corrective action to address delays in TWIC enrollment centers expressed by thousands of transportation workers, and ensure harmonization of transportation security identification credentials issued by the government.
Now that the card reader rule has been issued, it will take further legislative action to block its implementation prior to the scheduled effective date or a different approach altogether such as has been suggested by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune.
In September, Chairman Thune and several of his Senate colleagues introduced the “Surface Transportation and Maritime Security Act” — a bi-partisan proposal for a broad review of TSA’s efforts to secure all modes of public transportation and thereby subject the TWIC program to more potential modifications. Among its provisions, this measure will require a third-party assessment of the TWIC program including calling for the potential of adopting a non-biometric credential as an alternative to the current program.
If enacted, the Thune legislation could turn the TWIC program on his head and effectively delay ROI for access control manufacturers who have invested considerable R&D resources dedicated to supporting the maritime sector with biometric card readers.
Impact on Integrators
All of this government activity and political posturing over TWIC may muddle the waters for security integrators; however, the good news is that absent any further legislative activity, implementation of TWIC card access control readers will move forward.
But keeping with the spirit of this highly unusual political season, cunning members of Congress will see to push through a myriad of legislative proposals after the elections before the “lame-duck” Congress comprised of many retiring and defeated office holders adjourn for the year. The aforementioned TWIC legislative proposals could receive action during this special legislative session before a new administration presents its new priorities next year.
Regardless of this legislative uncertainty, savvy integrators should study the card reader rule and enhance their offerings and outreach to “Risk Group A” maritime facilities with an eye toward new opportunities regardless of which candidate wins the upcoming presidential election.
http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/12270618/has-the-twic-finally-arrived
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Suit Over Texas' Ozone, NO2 Air Plans Tests 'Infrastructure' Requirements
Nov 11, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Sierra Club is suing EPA over the agency's approval of Texas' plans for reducing ozone and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air pollution, a case that will test whether “infrastructure” state implementation plans (SIPs) for improving air quality most include sweeping plans for attaining federal air standards and staying in attainment in the future.
In the suit filed Nov. 9 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Sierra Club urges the court to scrap EPA's Sept. 9 rule approving a Texas SIP designed to help the state attain the 2008 national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for ozone, set at 75 parts per billion (ppb). The SIP also covers the 2010 NAAQS for NO2, set at 100 ppb over one hour. NO2 is harmful in its own right, but is also an ozone precursor.
The infrastructure SIPs, or I-SIPs, contain general provisions of Texas' clean air program designed to meet the NAAQS in question. I-SIPs typically do not contain very detailed, specific conditions to meet standards, as these would normally be included in “nonattainment” SIPs crafted once an area is designated nonattainment for a NAAQS.
But I-SIPs do include measures to meet the Clean Air Act's “good neighbor” provision, which requires that states mitigate emissions from upwind areas that make a “significant contribution” to NAAQS nonattainment in other states downwind. EPA defines “significant” as one percent of the applicable NAAQS.
In its March 9 comments on the Feb. 8 proposed version of the agency's approval of the SIP, Sierra Club argued that the I-SIP fails to contain the measures necessary to mitigate emissions from East Texas power plants that contribute to ozone pollution in the Dallas- Fort Worth (DFW) area.
Sierra Club said that five coal-fired power plants in East Texas -- Martin Lake, Monticello, Big Brown, Limestone, and Welsh -- “significantly contribute to DFW’s ozone nonattainment problem, and the Texas I-SIP fails to address those emissions, as required by the Clean Air Act. Consequently, EPA must disapprove the Texas I-SIP and require Texas to include emission limits which will reduce the five East Texas coal-fired power plants’ contribution to DFW to below the significance threshold,” according to the comments.
Sierra Club based this view on a 2003 ruling by the 5th Circuit in Sierra Club v. EPA, arguing that the court in that case set a “binding precedent” that the air law contains a provision, section 110(a)(2)(A), that holds “an upwind area be prohibited from contributing significantly to nonattainment in a downwind area within the same state,” similar to the good neighbor provision in section 110(a)(2)(D).
Final Approval
EPA, however, rejected Sierra Club's concerns in the final rule approving the SIP. “We disagree with the commenters that infrastructure SIPs must include detailed attainment and maintenance plans for all areas of the state and must be disapproved if air quality data and modeling show current and future nonattainment,” it said.
“EPA does not believe that section 110(a)(2)(A) requires detailed planning SIPs demonstrating either attainment or maintenance for specific geographic areas of the state. The infrastructure SIP is triggered by promulgation of the NAAQS, not designation. Moreover, infrastructure SIPs are due three years following promulgation of the NAAQS. Thus, during a significant portion of the period that a state has available for developing the infrastructure SIP, it does not know what the designation will be for individual areas of the state,” the agency said.
Further, “our long-standing position regarding infrastructure SIPs is that they are general planning SIPs to ensure that the state has adequate resources and authority to implement a NAAQS in general throughout the state and not detailed attainment and maintenance plans for each individual area of the state.”
The 5th Circuit ruling in Sierra Club does not contradict this view, EPA argued. “The court in no way ruled that infrastructure SIPs must contain provisions prohibiting upwind intrastate areas from 'significantly contributing' to nonattainment in downwind intrastate areas, or that EPA must apply the same technical analysis to intrastate emissions as it does for interstate emissions under a different subsection.” The court in that case was simply citing as background prior EPA policy that the agency has long since reversed, EPA argues.
Meanwhile, new recommendations by states for which areas should be considered nonattainment for EPA's tougher 2015 ozone NAAQS of 70 ppb show that the Dallas area will again be in nonattainment for the 2015 ozone standard.
In a Sept. 30 letter listing counties in the state that Texas believes should be designated nonattainment for the new standard, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) says, however, that, “The ozone rule should be vacated because it is unlawful as both a constitutional and statutory matter,” noting that the state is challenging the legality of the NAAQS in the D.C. Circuit case Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/suit-over-texas-ozone-no2-air-plans-tests-infrastructure-requirements
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Consider Climate Change-Related Health Effects in Paris Agreement: WHO
Nov 11, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric J. Lyman
The World Health Organization Nov. 11 said those implementing the Paris Agreement should track the health impacts of global warming and set goals to mitigate human illnesses linked to rising temperatures.
Nearly a quarter of all diseases globally, enough to account for 12.6 million deaths each year, are related to a changing climate in some way, WHO officials said at a briefing outside United Nations climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco.
“Health outcomes are an integral part of the kind of future the Paris Agreement is seeking to guarantee,” said Maria Neira, the director of WHO’s Department of Public Heath, Environment, and Social Determinants of Health.
Climate change exacerbates infectious diseases that thrive in hot, humid conditions like malaria, said WHO, which is a specialized agency of the UN and the world body’s public health arm.
WHO also has linked rising global temperatures to food-borne problems, health damaging pollution and food scarcity.
Adding Health Goals
The Paris Agreement on climate change has goals that focus on limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and aspiring for a lower maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It also will include yet-to-be finalized goals on transparency, finance and monitoring.
WHO officials said goals related to helping to curb climate-related disease should likewise be written into the Paris Agreement implementation rulebook, which negotiators are working on in Marrakech.
While the world’s first global agreement to fight climate change entered into force this month, most of the steps needed to implement the pact have yet to be finalized.
The UN’s Marrakech summit, the follow-up global talks to last year’s historic Paris meetings, last through Nov. 18.
Hakima El Haite, minister of environment for host Morocco, said minister-level delegates will hold a special meeting next week on health, environment and climate change.
It is not yet clear where goals on health outcomes would fit in the Paris Agreement implementation rulebook, or what the goals would be.
WHO officials said those determinations would be made in negotiations between now and 2018, when the rulebook is set to be completed.
http://news.bna.com/deln/lpages/lpages.adp?pg=breaking_news&bn_product=deln#urn:bna:000001585543de8aaddd7feb2eac0000
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