Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 11/29/2016
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Vermont Congressmen Seeks EPA Review of Three Flame Retardant Classes
Nov 29, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
A Vermont congressman, Democrat Peter Welch, sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency this month asking it to review three chemical clusters that affect firefighters and emergency personnel. -
(ACC Mentioned) Asbestos: Still a Global Menace
Nov 28, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Celia Arnaud
As a 7-year-old child in suburban Sydney, Australia, Serafina Salucci recalls playing with white wall sheeting material leftover from her dad’s renovation of the family’s garage. -
EPA Adds HBCD to TRI But Rejects Call for Lower Reporting Threshold
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has added the flame retardant chemical hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) to its list of chemicals for which companies must report releases under the agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) with a lower threshold than that for most chemicals... -
ALEC Members Survey New Energy Outlook
Nov 28, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden
Conservative state lawmakers who are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council meet this week in Washington to review what they see as a much more favorable landscape for energy policy under President-elect Donald Trump. -
McCarthy: EPA Fracking Assessment Expected Soon
Nov 29, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
The US EPA will release its final assessment on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on drinking water resources soon, according to agency administrator Gina McCarthy. -
Shale Fracking Rebound Starts With Costlier Grains of Sand
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
The oil field service companies that supply everything from sand to sophisticated robot rigs are seeking a new lease on life as America's fracking fortunes begin to turn. -
North Dakota Governor Orders Pipeline Protesters Out Immediately
Nov 28, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple today ordered protesters fighting construction of the Dakota Access pipeline to immediately evacuate U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land in Morton County where they have been camped out for months. -
Reid Calls on Trump to Reroute Pipeline
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Northey
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) appealed to President-elect Donald Trump yesterday to find an alternative path for the Dakota Access oil pipeline and end increasingly violent standoffs in North Dakota. -
FERC Denies New York AG's Rehearing Request on Constitution Pipeline
Nov 28, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
FERC on Tuesday denied a rehearing request by New York Attorney General (AG) Eric Schneiderman over allegations of unauthorized tree cutting and other activities along the right-of-way for the embattled Constitution natural gas pipeline. -
Event: NAS Plans Workshop to Review Fracking Sites' Long-Term Risks
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is holding a two-day workshop later this week to consider ways to address environmental and other risks posed by the rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional oil and gas production techniques. -
'Cures Act' Keeps Provision to Sell from Petroleum Reserve
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
The House is expected to vote this week on bipartisan legislation that aims to increase medical research spending in part by tapping the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve. -
House to Vote on Rail Safety Bill
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Gabriel Dunsmith
The House will take up a rail safety bill under suspension of the rules this week. -
Canada to Adopt Global Hazmat Standards, Align With U.S.
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is proposing updating its rules transporting dangerous goods to bring them in line with international standards and better align them with U.S. requirements. -
A Polluter-Funded Lobbyist as the Head of the EPA?
Nov 28, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jeremy Symons
As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his cabinet, he has an opportunity to continue the long, bipartisan tradition of appointing qualified leaders to the Environmental Protection Agency who will protect and defend the public health of all Americans. -
Texas Haze Settlement Talks Have Broken Down — Filing
Nov 28, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Settlement talks in the legal battle over U.S. EPA's regional haze plan for Texas have broken down, with the agency planning to withdraw the regulations at the center of the controversy, according to a filing today by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R)... -
Advocates Warn Trump May Find It Challenging to Scrap Carbon 'Cost' Tool
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Existing legal precedent and an ongoing National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review of the Obama administration's social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates could complicate efforts by the incoming Trump administration to scrap or scale back the SCC... -
Trump Rollback of Obama Climate Agenda May Prove Challenging
Nov 29, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Michael Biesecker
Once sworn into office, Donald Trump will be in a strong position to dismantle some of President Barack Obama’s efforts to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions. -
Trump’s Climate Policies May Work Out in the Planet’s Favor
Nov 29, 2016 | New York Times
By Eduardo Porter
Is the battle to contain global warming now lost? With the election of Donald Trump, it certainly looked that way to many of the shellshocked diplomats gathered in Morocco earlier this month at the first climate summit... -
Judges Ask Tough Questions of EPA, Critics in Suit Over CWA Rule Venue
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit raised tough questions for EPA and critics of the agency's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule at oral argument over which courts have authority to hear suits over the rule, with two of the judges hinting... -
Canada to Phase Out Bulk HFC Use, Differing From U.S. Plan
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is taking a different path than the U.S. for eliminating hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas, by planning to phase out bulk uses.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Vermont Congressmen Seeks EPA Review of Three Flame Retardant Classes
Nov 29, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
A Vermont congressman, Democrat Peter Welch, sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency this month asking it to review three chemical clusters that affect firefighters and emergency personnel. "Emergency response invariably involves a degree of risk, but we can help mitigate these inherent dangers by prioritizing chemicals that first responders disproportionately encounter," his letter said. "We commend EPA for its previous work assessing these chemical clusters and firmly believe they are strong candidates for further review."
He pointed out that EPA's review was authorized by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in June and requires the evaluation of potentially hazardous chemicals to determine whether they pose an unreasonable risk to human health and the environment. EPA must select the first 10 "Work Plan" chemicals for this risk assessment by the end of 2016, and it has planned to publish the list in mid-December.
The letter, signed by Welch and about two dozen colleagues, urges EPA to review chemicals contained in three classes of flame retardants – the Chlorinated Phosphate Esters cluster, the Cyclic Aliphatic Bromides cluster, and the Tetrabromobisphenol A cluster. "Americans are exposed to flame retardant chemicals in their daily lives," it said. "These chemicals are widely used in products such as household furniture, textiles, and electronic equipment, yet they can persist in the environment and potentially pose hazards to humans. First responders are often exposed to these fumes when responding to emergencies and are particularly concerned about the health effects posed by the continued use of these chemicals in consumer products."
Welch is a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the current Congress.
https://ohsonline.com/articles/2016/11/29/vermont-congressmen-seeks-epa-review.aspx?admgarea=news
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(ACC Mentioned) Asbestos: Still a Global Menace
Nov 28, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Celia Arnaud
As a 7-year-old child in suburban Sydney, Australia, Serafina Salucci recalls playing with white wall sheeting material leftover from her dad’s renovation of the family’s garage. She used it like chalk to draw on the driveway, and threw chunks of it back and forth with her brothers. Little did anyone know at the time that the sheeting contained carcinogenic asbestos fibers that would later be blamed for giving Salucci mesothelioma, an incurable cancer attacking the lining of her lungs.
Salucci was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2007, 30 years after her likely exposure to asbestos. She has outlived her doctor’s prognosis and now spends her time raising awareness about the disease and the threat of asbestos in older buildings like houses, hospitals, and schools. If asbestos fibers become airborne, there’s a risk of exposure, she says. “We must safely get rid of it.”
Salucci joined hundreds of other people seeking to eradicate asbestos exposure around the world at an Australian government conference earlier this month. Production and use of asbestos was banned in Australia in 2003, but approximately one-third of all homes in the country contain the substance. Australia had the highest per capita rate of asbestos use in the world from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Salucci, now 47, is one of hundreds of Australians diagnosed with mesothelioma every year. Like many other kids that grew up during the 1960s and 1970s, she never worked around asbestos nor did any home renovations herself. She was exposed to asbestos while playing as a child.
While Australia, like many other countries, faces huge challenges related to its former use of asbestos, more than 100 countries face even greater problems because they have yet to ban the fibrous material. The U.S., Canada, and many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, for instance, still allow some use of asbestos, despite the substance’s known adverse health effects.
That could all be about to change, however, as regulators face mounting calls from trade unions, patient advocacy groups, and environmental activists to cut off any further use of the material. Such groups are urging the liberal Canadian government, which took office last year, to keep its campaign promise and ban all uses of asbestos. In the U.S., recent changes to the law that governs commercial chemicals have prompted activists to intensify pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency to do the same.
The problem with asbestos
Asbestos is defined by regulators worldwide as a group of six naturally occurring fibrous silicate minerals—actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite, chrysotile, crocidolite, and tremolite (see page 30). More than 90% of all asbestos used historically and nearly all of it used today is chrysotile, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The substance was once mined and used extensively throughout the world in a wide range of construction materials and other consumer products, including thermal insulation, vinyl floor tiles, cement sheeting, brake pads, gaskets, and roofing materials. Although these products are now banned in many countries, they still remain as so-called legacy sources in homes and other buildings or lurk in hazardous waste sites.
Asbestos is known for its high tensile strength, flexibility, and resistance to heat and chemicals. But those same properties make it deadly when its fibers get lodged within the human lung. Inhalation of asbestos has been linked to the mesothelioma that Salucci battles, as well as lung cancer and asbestosis, which is a severe scarring of the lungs.
Worldwide, more than 100,000 people die each year from occupational exposure to asbestos, and hundreds more die each year from nonoccupational exposures, according to WHO.
Iceland became the first country to ban the production and use of all types of asbestos in 1983. Since then, more than 50 countries have followed suit, according to the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, an advocacy group founded in 1999 that seeks to prohibit production and use of asbestos worldwide.
sbestos and U.S. law
The U.S. EPA banned most uses of asbestos in 1989 under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Industry sued, however, and in 1991, a federal appeals court overturned the regulation.
Now that TSCA has been revised, an action that was signed into law on June 22, EPA faces renewed pressure to use its new authority to ban all uses of asbestos in the U.S. Pushing the agency to do so are federal lawmakers, environmental and public health groups, and the motor equipment manufacturing industry. Many observers view asbestos as the poster child for why this year’s congressional overhaul of TSCA was needed.
“EPA spent more than a decade developing a rule to ban existing uses of asbestos,” recalls Richard Denison, a lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. In the 1980s, it sunk millions of dollars into the effort and compiled nearly 100,000 pages of documentation showing why the ban was needed. Nonetheless, the court ruled that EPA had not demonstrated what was legally required under TSCA to justify regulation. Denison says EPA is likely to have an easier time justifying a ban on asbestos under the revised TSCA.
That’s because under TSCA as it was originally passed in 1976, EPA had to show that the benefits of regulation outweigh the costs. The agency also had to show that restriction of each use was the least burdensome way to reduce the risk. The new law forbids EPA from considering costs when determining whether a chemical poses an “unreasonable risk.” It also strikes the “least burdensome” requirement, allowing EPA to restrict a chemical “to the extent necessary” to reduce the risk.
The chemical industry is anxiously waiting to see whether EPA will include asbestos in the first group of chemicals it reassesses under the revised TSCA. Under that new law, Congress gave EPA until Dec. 22 to choose 10 high-risk chemicals that are currently on the market for further risk evaluation. Those 10 must be taken from a list of about 90 chemicals that EPA has already designated as high-priority substances. Asbestos is one of those 90.
Chlor-alkali industry and asbestos
Although asbestos use in the U.S. has declined by 99% since the 1970s, when there was extensive litigation around its adverse health effects, the chlor-alkali industry still uses asbestos diaphragms to produce chlorine. The process involves passing an electric current through a NaCl solution in an electrolytic cell. The diaphragm separates the anode from the cathode, preventing OH– generated at the cathode from reacting with the chlorine gas generated at the anode.
The chlor-alkali industry is phasing out the use of asbestos-based diaphragms. Newer industrial plants have replaced them with ion-exchange membranes, which require less energy and have less environmental impact. But such technology is more expensive to replace than asbestos-based diaphragms, so much of the industry has been reluctant to switch.
About 60% of the U.S. chlor-alkali industry still uses asbestos diaphragms, according to the American Chemistry Council’s Chlorine Chemistry Division, which represents chlorine manufacturers.
Chemical companies were successful in getting EPA to make an exception for the chlor-alkali process in the agency’s now-defunct 1989 ban of asbestos. So too were they successful in getting an exemption when asbestos was banned in the European Union in 2005.
The chlor-alkali industry uses most of the asbestos sold in the U.S.—about 90%, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. USGS figures show approximately 360 metric tons of asbestos was imported and consumed in the U.S. in 2015.
Today, as EPA is under pressure to revisit the safety of asbestos under the revised TSCA, the U.S. chemical industry is once again urging regulators not to impose restrictions on chlor-alkali manufacturers.
“Because the use of asbestos in the chlor-alkali industry is confined in the production process, worker exposure risk is essentially eliminated,” ACC claimed in an August letter to EPA. In its 1989 rule, the agency concluded that “a ban on this product category would result in only minimal benefits because asbestos exposure is limited,” the lobbying group noted.
Anti-asbestos activists double down
Meanwhile, activists who want EPA to ban all uses of asbestos are ramping up their efforts to persuade the agency to include asbestos in the first group of chemicals it reassesses under the revised TSCA.
In a Nov. 9 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, international trade unions, patient advocacy groups, environmental activists, and others who want to rid society of asbestos urged EPA to act quickly to ban all uses of the substance. The groups, led by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), are concerned that President-Elect Donald Trump will eviscerate EPA and hamstring the agency’s efforts to ban dangerous chemicals.
Trump has “made clear, time and time again, his affinity for continuing the use of asbestos,” says Linda Reinstein, cofounder of ADAO. Reinstein began raising awareness about the dangers of asbestos after her husband, Alan, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2003. “Trump’s Administration could well usher in a resurgence in rampant use of this known human carcinogen by encouraging development and further deregulating industry,” she says.
Some U.S. lawmakers, including Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), are also pushing EPA to act swiftly to ban asbestos. “Now that the impediments in the original TSCA law are gone, completing the job started by EPA in 1989 would send a strong signal that the new law can be effective in addressing the most dangerous chemicals in commerce,” Boxer writes in an August letter to EPA. Boxer’s letter also raises concerns about asbestos-containing products being imported into the U.S. at various ports.
There have been reports of asbestos-containing brake pads and insulation tiles being imported into the U.S., Denison says. Because of these imports, at least two states, California and Washington, have banned asbestos-containing brake pads, he says.
Imports of asbestos-containing products are a growing problem worldwide, said several participants at the conference Salucci attended in Australia. During that meeting, trade unions representing workers across Australia posted on Twitter about the need for more action to stop illegal asbestos imports. “E-commerce and complex supply chains make testing for asbestos at our borders a nightmare,” tweeted Australia’s Electrical Trades Union, which represents electrical and communications workers.
To prevent more people from being exposed to asbestos, governments around the world need to stop the production of asbestos, Salucci warned during a panel discussion at the meeting. “We need to tackle the global problem,” she said.
In the past, most concern about asbestos was related to exposure on the job or from buildings that contain the fibrous material. But in some places, such as parts of the western U.S., asbestos and asbestos-like minerals in the environment can be just as worrying. These minerals, which are found in the rock and soil, can become airborne by construction-site digging or even wind.
As commercial development expands in areas where the soil geology permits the formation of asbestos, human exposure to this substance increases, says Christopher Weis, toxicology liaison at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Such development, he says, includes hydraulic fracturing operations in North Dakota and highway construction in the Las Vegas area.
Rodney Metcalf and Brenda J. Buck, geologists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are mapping the distribution of asbestiform minerals in that state, where such minerals are part of the bedrock. Through wind and water erosion, asbestos is distributed across the landscape in soil and dust.
“Out here, you don’t need a big bulldozer to disturb it. You just need a windy day,” Buck says. “Sand, silt, gravel, dust—it all has asbestos in it.”
In their mapping project, Metcalf and Buck have found areas with unexpectedly high levels of asbestiform minerals.
“The old models for geologic predictions about where we would find it wouldn’t have predicted this,” Metcalf says. Those models were designed to locate concentrations high enough to support mining. The levels researchers are now finding aren’t that concentrated, but they represent “a fairly sizable footprint of low-concentration asbestos.”
And some areas have the potential to affect people who might not otherwise be exposed to asbestos. “There’s a dry lake bed that’s a favorite place for driving off-road vehicles that has quite a bit of asbestos in it,” Buck says.
People can protect themselves by avoiding those areas. “If you’re an off-road driver, don’t drive on that lake bed. Go to a different one where asbestos hasn’t been found or isn’t predicted to occur.”
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i47/Still-global-menace.html
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EPA Adds HBCD to TRI But Rejects Call for Lower Reporting Threshold
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has added the flame retardant chemical hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) to its list of chemicals for which companies must report releases under the agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) with a lower threshold than that for most chemicals, but is rejecting advocates' request for an even stricter reporting trigger for the substance.
“EPA is adding a [HBCD] category to the list of toxic chemicals subject to reporting under section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and section 6607 of the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA),” EPA states in a Nov. 28 Federal Register notice.
The final rule is effective Nov. 30, and will apply for the reporting year beginning Jan. 1. Companies' reports for the 2017 reporting year will be due July 1, 2018, the notice says.
EPA says HBCD meets the criteria for listing because it “can reasonably be anticipated to cause developmental and reproductive effects in humans and is highly toxic to aquatic and terrestrial organisms. In addition, based on the available bioaccumulation and persistence data, EPA has determined that HBCD should be classified as a persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemical and assigned a 100-pound reporting threshold.”
TRI tracks the management of toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment, and typically sets a 10,000 pound per year threshold for companies to report their releases of the substance above that limit. EPA qualifies a release as an emission to the air or water, or placement in some type of land disposal.
HBCD is a flame retardant chemical used in multiple applications, including polystyrene insulation foams, electrical appliances, upholstered furniture, draperies and other textiles. EPA has long had concerns about the risks of the substance, pursuing assessments of the chemical in addition to the potential TRI listing.
EPA in its May proposal to add HBCD to the TRI suggested placing the chemical in a “special concern” category with a lower reporting threshold, because of its persistent, bioaccumulative -- meaning it accumulates in the body faster than it can be excreted or metabolized -- and toxic (PBT) properties. As a result, the agency proposed the now-finalized 100 pound per year threshold for reporting of annual releases to the TRI.
In comments on the proposal, a coalition of advocacy groups backed the HBCD listing and agreed on the chemical's PBT risks. But the advocates also urged EPA to pursue an even stricter reporting threshold of 10 pounds per year.
EPA responds to the request in the notice, explaining that it does not consider HBCD to meet the criteria for the strictest reporting threshold. “EPA agrees with the commenter that HBCD is highly bioaccumulative but does not agree that HBCD meets the established criteria for highly persistent,” the notice states.
The notice reiterates EPA's arguments outlined in its proposed rule, questioning the quality of the study that the environmentalists relied on for their argument, which indicates HBCD has a half-life of 190 days in abiotic sediment. EPA in the latest notice says that the study, known as Davis et al. and published in 2005, “had a number of problems.” EPA raises concerns about the possibility of sediment sample contamination and issues with chromotography/mass spectrometry analysis, among others. “EPA does not believe that it would be appropriate to set a lower reporting threshold based on one half-life value of 190 days from a study that had a number of identified problems,” the notice states.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-adds-hbcd-tri-rejects-call-lower-reporting-threshold
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ALEC Members Survey New Energy Outlook
Nov 28, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden
Conservative state lawmakers who are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council meet this week in Washington to review what they see as a much more favorable landscape for energy policy under President-elect Donald Trump.
"So much state policy has been indelibly tied to the Clean Power Plan, and states have been taking a wait-and-see approach with litigation," said John Eick, director of ALEC's energy, environment and agriculture task force. Most now assume U.S. EPA's climate standards for the power sector will be rescinded or overturned by the courts.
Legislators in particular will be re-examining the need for renewable portfolio standards to push zero-carbon power, Eick said. Without the specter of the Clean Power Plan, they may not feel the standards are necessary, he noted. Eick said it's likely red and blue states will diverge more on the issue of renewable energy standards under a Trump administration.
Members will also review a paper from the Consumer Energy Alliance looking at subsidies for rooftop solar power. They will hear a presentation on research into carbon capture from coal plants in Wyoming.
Lawmakers will vote on a resolution supporting a permanent nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, as Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic minority leader who has long opposed the plan, prepares to retire. Nuclear advocates have acknowledged other members may have concerns with the repository.
The ALEC meeting is closed to the press.
Next week, the National Conference of State Legislatures will hold its Capitol Forum meetingand Lobby Day on Capitol Hill.
In case you missed it
· Trump suggested he will keep an "open mind" about the Paris climate deal. What does that mean? (ClimateWire, Nov. 23).
· The president-elect reshaped his energy and environment transition team, putting American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle in charge (Greenwire, Nov. 21).
· A former top Justice Department environmental attorney who's involved in the litigation challenging the Clean Power Plan will also serve on the transition team (Greenwire, Nov. 22).
· Who is climate denier Myron Ebell, and what influence will he have on Trump's EPA (ClimateWire, Nov. 21)?
· For environmentalists, the fight against natural gas infrastructure becomes more urgent than ever (ClimateWire, Nov. 23).
· The nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative met but offered little insight into whether the cap-and-trade system will continue to look at how to comply with the Clean Power Plan. The group is under pressure to tighten carbon goals, but some states oppose that effort (ClimateWire, Nov. 22).
For more on the Trump transition, click here.
Check out E&E's updated guide to the legal challenges to the Clean Power Plan here.
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060046239
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McCarthy: EPA Fracking Assessment Expected Soon
Nov 29, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
The US EPA will release its final assessment on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on drinking water resources soon, according to agency administrator Gina McCarthy.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on 21 November, Ms McCarthy said she could not disclose what stance the final document would take. However, she said the agency is "certainly going to listen to the advice of the Science Advisory Board," as laid out in its final assessment of the EPA's June 2015 draft assessment.
Ms McCarthy said the SAB gave some clear indications that the agency needs to do a better job of explaining the science. "While I’ve been briefed on it, it is the scientists that will make the decisions," she added.
The most notable recommendation focuses on chemical toxicity and hazard. The SAB recommends the EPA compile toxicological information on substances such as chemicals, dissolved compounds and ions, and particulates employed in hydraulic fracturing in a more inclusive manner.
The SAB said this section should not limit the selection of hydraulic fracturing constituents of concern to only those that have non-cancer oral reference values (RfVs) and cancer oral slope factors (OSFs) that were peer reviewed by a governmental or intergovernmental source in earlier drafts.
Instead, it should also include a broad range of toxicity data. This should include information pertinent to subchronic exposures from sources cited by the SAB.
Other areas the Board named for improvement are:
· increased clarity of, and support for, major findings in the document's executive summary, namely in making nationwide conclusions based on insignificant data;
· a sharper focus on the local impacts of hydraulic fracturing, which "have the potential to be severe";
· including an explanation on why the EPA did not conduct various field studies and other research, as it had planned to do; and
· distinguishing between hydraulic fracturing substances injected into a hydraulic fracturing well compared to substances that come out of hydraulic fracturing wells in produced fluids.
Reporting rule
The EPA plans to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking for reporting obligations by June 2018. This will allow it to obtain data on hydraulic fracturing chemical substances and mixtures.
The agency says that the mechanism for getting data could be regulatory (under section 8 of TSCA), voluntary, or a combination of both. The proposed rule may include best management practices, third-party certification and collection, and incentives for disclosure of this information.
The agency issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to solicit input in May 2014. It received more than a quarter of a million comments in response.
https://chemicalwatch.com/51280/mccarthy-epa-fracking-assessment-expected-soon
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Shale Fracking Rebound Starts With Costlier Grains of Sand
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
The oil field service companies that supply everything from sand to sophisticated robot rigs are seeking a new lease on life as America's fracking fortunes begin to turn.
Shale drillers have added 158 rigs since May, according to Baker Hughes Inc. At the same time, companies such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. and EOG Resources Inc. have been increasing their efficiency by cramming more and more sand into individual wells, aiming to extend their reach miles further. That's boosted sand prices roughly 25 percent to about $24 a ton, according to IHS Inc.
It's an early sign that oil field services, hard hit by a two-year slump in oil prices, are seeing the first hints of a turnaround. With spending by drillers in the lower 48 states now forecast to be $1 billion higher than analysts expected in the final three months of 2016, pricing talks are heating up as servicers face off against explorers fearful of uncertain oil prices ahead.
“Sand certainly led the way here, and that's starting to make its way into other product lines,” said James West, an Evercore ISI analyst in New York, in a telephone interview. “It's going to be a much more rigorous pricing recovery as we go into 2017, given the very ambitious drilling programs and production forecasts from the North American E&P industry.”
Oil-services companies sell explorers everything from the sand, water and chemicals they pump into the ground to the diesel that powers their equipment. Their services can include mapping pockets of underground oil, cementing wells in place and even breathing new life into old reservoirs.
Reopening Conversations
With West Texas Intermediate crude prices now up by more than 70 percent from this year's low, the industry is starting to use higher sand prices and the added activity in oil fields ranging from Texas's Permian Basin to the Scoop and Stack plays of Oklahoma as an excuse to reopen conversations over how much they'll be paid, said Samir Nangia, an IHS analyst.
Already, leases for more-efficient rigs that can walk from well to well and drill out several miles sideways, are up by as much as $5,000 a day, a third more expensive since May, according to Evercore. Spending to drill and complete wells in the lower 48 states will be $13 billion, or about $1 billion more than previously forecast, for the final three months of the year, Jud Bailey, an analyst at Wells Fargo & Co., wrote in a Nov. 11 note to investors. He expects the strong year-end activity to carry over into next year.
IHS's Nangia said service companies may boost prices by almost 10 percent a year through 2021. “We're about 30 percent below full-cycle pricing, maybe even 10 percent below cash costs for a lot of the pumpers,” he said.
For months, the service companies have been saying that the prices they are able to charge aren't sustainable. It's a claim that's been largely supported as more than 100 contractors in North America have gone bankrupt over the past two years, according to the law firm Haynes & Boone LLP.
While stock indexes for both explorers and servicers remain down by almost half since the downturn began in mid-2014, explorers are recovering more quickly. Both groups touched bottom on Jan. 20. Since then, oil explorers in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are up 61 percent, compared with a 30 percent climb in the Philadelphia Oil Services Index.
Negotiations between the sides won't be easy, according to recent statements by Jeff Miller, president of Halliburton Co., the world's largest fracking service provider, and Bob Dudley, the chief executive officer of BP Plc, the London-based explorer.
In a conference call with analysts and investors last month, Miller referred to pricing talks with explorers as “a brawl.” Around the same time, Dudley said at the Oil & Money conference in London that he wants 75 percent of the cost reductions producers won during the market downturn to “stick,” even if crude prices continue to rise.
The talks are occurring as oilfield contractors are increasingly teaming up with equipment makers in an effort to cut their own costs and offer oil explorers more streamlined and comprehensive options for the services and gear needed to siphon crude out of the ground. Schlumberger Ltd., for instance, bought manufacturer Cameron International Corp. this year. That was followed by an announced tie-up between Baker Hughes and General Electric Co.’s oilfield business.
Vienna Effect
Much of what happens from here will probably depend on what happens halfway around the world in Vienna. In September, OPEC said it would discuss an agreement to cut production to a range of 32.5 million to 33 million barrels a day. Since then, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and Libya have sought exemptions. The 14-member group will meet in the Austrian capital on Nov. 30.
The oilfield price increases are “not a leap forward,” said Chase Mulvehill, an analyst at Wolfe Research. “This is a gradual shift upward in pricing, and that probably continues as we move into 2017, assuming that OPEC cooperates. If OPEC holds the line, or production continues to increase with OPEC, that puts a risk to the 2017 recovery story for U.S. onshore.”
In order for onshore explorers to make more longer-term budget decisions, many would trade the higher, volatile oil prices for more consistency, according to IHS's Nangia.
“Everybody feels that if we can be at $50 a barrel or higher, that would be helpful,” Nangia said. “Stability helps.“
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101069095&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101069095&jd=101069095
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North Dakota Governor Orders Pipeline Protesters Out Immediately
Nov 28, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple today ordered protesters fighting construction of the Dakota Access pipeline to immediately evacuate U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land in Morton County where they have been camped out for months.
The emergency evacuation order warns of threats to human life from harsh winter conditions and said the structures currently set up by protesters do not provide adequate sanitation. The order will be in place until further notice.
"Any action or inaction taken by any party which encourages persons to enter, reenter, or remain in the evacuation area will be subject to penalties as defined in law," the order states.
The governor's order warns, "The general public is hereby notified that emergency services probably will not be available under current winter conditions." Anyone who stays "does so at their own risk," it adds.
Cecily Fong, a spokeswoman for ND Department of Emergency Services, said law enforcement does not plan to go in and immediately remove protesters.
The Corps had said previously it would close its land to the protesters by Dec. 5, but said in a statement Sunday it was "seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location, and has no plans for forcible removal" of demonstrators.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Reid Calls on Trump to Reroute Pipeline
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Northey
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) appealed to President-elect Donald Trump yesterday to find an alternative path for the Dakota Access oil pipeline and end increasingly violent standoffs in North Dakota.
"I encourage the new administration and the Army Corps of Engineers to continue finding an alternative route. There's one out there," Reid said from the Senate floor. "This should not be that hard. There's no reason this cannot be remedied in a manner that's fair to all."
Reid, a frequent critic of fossil fuel companies, was less strident in his remarks than in other occasions. He said the federal government had disrespected tribes for decades and they were now clamoring for protection.
The former boxer also took a jab at Trump, who is reported to have recently dumped his holdings in Energy Transfer Partners LP, the company building the 1,172-mile pipeline, a conduit from North Dakota to refineries in Illinois.
Reid asked, "Can the people of America expect our newly elected president to intervene on their behalf against the big polluters? Can the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe depend on the man who was financially invested in the Dakota Access pipeline? Probably not."
Reid, noting that President Obama only has two months left in his term, said it was becoming clear the dispute over the project would probably remain unresolved until the new administration takes office.
The Nevada Democrat said relocating the pipeline to a more suitable area away from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation could be an "easy and historic step in the right direction" for Trump.
The tribe and its defenders have raised concerns about a potential oil leak or spill that could endanger drinking water resources. For weeks, they have mounted protests at the construction site, sometimes clashing with police.
"Private security guards have unleashed attack dogs on Indians, resulting in men, women and children being bitten, and some very severely," Reid said.
"Police have used rubber bullets, tear gas, grenades, compression grenades," he said, adding that "300 people have been treated for injuries as result of this violence against the protesters."
Energy Transfer leaders say most of the project is complete and have opposed a reroute. But critics say a Missouri River crossing, which the Obama administration has yet to authorize, is particularly concerning.
Pipeline opponents vowed in recent days to remain at a large encampment on land controlled by the corps despite agency calls for them to vacate and threats of prosecution (EnergyWire, Nov. 28).
Protesters and tribal members, citing the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, say the land belongs to the Sioux and the federal government has no right to evict people.
While Republicans have pushed for the administration to help local police and not delay construction, other Democrats have joined Reid in advocating for protesters.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking the Department of Justice to investigate "all credible reports of inappropriate police tactics" at Standing Rock and to send monitors to ensure protesters can assemble.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/11/29/stories/1060046306
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FERC Denies New York AG's Rehearing Request on Constitution Pipeline
Nov 28, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
FERC on Tuesday denied a rehearing request by New York Attorney General (AG) Eric Schneiderman over allegations of unauthorized tree cutting and other activities along the right-of-way for the embattled Constitution natural gas pipeline.
Last May, Schneiderman filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [CP13-499] and petitioned the agency to impose a stay on the certificates of public convenience and necessity it issued in December 2014 to Constitution Pipeline LLC. Two months later, FERC said the AG should have submitted a request for an investigation, but agreed to look into the matter.
But in an order Tuesday, FERC said Schneiderman "asserts, but provides no supporting evidence, that Constitution and the Commission were aware that 'extensive clear-cutting and other activities have occurred on the project right-of-way' over which the Commission has jurisdiction and Constitution has control, and that Constitution did not act to stop those activities."
The pipeline would transport Marcellus Shale gas to markets in New York and New England.
According to FERC, Schneiderman's argument for a rehearing rests on the Commission's regulations for so-called "blanket certificates," under which ground disturbance activities that are inconsistent with applicable law, including the federal Clean Water Act, are forbidden. But FERC countered that Constitution is not yet a blanket certificate holder, and won't be classified as a natural gas company until the pipeline project is completed and operations begin. Constitution currently holds a blanket certificate for "future" activities only, the Commission said.
FERC added that two of its regulations governing construction and restoration techniques -- specifically, the Upland Erosion Control Revegetation and Maintenance Plan and the Wetland and Waterbody Construction and Mitigation Procedures -- apply to a project's sponsors and their agents, but not to private landowners or third parties taking action in a project's right-of-way.
"Even if we were to accept the AG's alleged facts, it cites no authority making Constitution vicariously liable for the ground-disturbing activities of third parties in the project right-of-way, and so fails to explain how Constitution's inaction to stop third parties' ground-disturbing activities 'violates applicable statutory or regulatory requirements,' as required for a complaint by Rule 206 of our Rules of Practice and Procedure," FERC said. "Therefore we will reject the NY AG's argument."
Doug Cohen, a spokesman for Schneiderman, told NGI's Shale Daily on Wednesday that the AG's office is "reviewing the decision."
FERC also denied a separate rehearing request on Tuesday by Catskill Mountainkeeper. The environmental group and others had argued that the Commission “had no good cause” to issue an extension for the project last July, but FERC ultimately disagreed.
Constitution is owned by subsidiaries of Williams Partners LP, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., Piedmont Natural Gas Co. Inc. and WGL Holdings Inc. The 124-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline would transport Marcellus gas produced in northeast Pennsylvania to Schoharie County, NY, where it would connect with two existing interstate pipelines: Iroquois Gas Transmission and Tennessee Gas Pipeline. It would provide 650,000 Dth/d of takeaway capacity.
FERC gave Constitution permission to begin cutting trees for the Pennsylvania portion of the project at the end of January.
The Constitution Pipeline was first proposed in February 2012, and its backersbegan the pre-filing process with FERC two months later. A formal application to FERC was filed in June 2013 and approved in December 2014.
Three months after winning FERC approval to begin construction, a federal court ruled the pipeline could proceed. The company then resubmitted an application for a water quality permit from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in April 2015, but the DEC denied the permit one year later. Constitution subsequently filed an appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and oral arguments were scheduled for Nov. 16.
Construction of the pipeline has not been started. In FERC's order Tuesday, the Commission stipulated that Constitution may not proceed with construction until the matter over the DEC water quality permit is resolved.
Constitution said it anticipates that the pipeline could be entered into service in the second half of 2018, assuming it prevails in court. The project had an original in-service date of March 2015.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108547-ferc-denies-new-york-ags-rehearing-request-on-constitution-pipeline
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Event: NAS Plans Workshop to Review Fracking Sites' Long-Term Risks
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is holding a two-day workshop later this week to consider ways to address environmental and other risks posed by the rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional oil and gas production techniques.
The Dec. 1-2 workshop, Unconventional Hydrocarbon Development: Legacy issues, induced seismicity and innovations in managing risk, will explore “how to best manage long-term risks in areas with unconventional oil and gas development,” the academy says in a press release.
The workshop will also examine the life-cycle development of these fields, including decommissioning and reclamation of wells and related surface and pipeline infrastructure, and fluid injection and its relationship to induced seismicity.
And the speakers will consider “approaches that have led to successful management of these kinds of operations throughout their life cycles and will identify technical and regulatory challenges and opportunities that could be the focus for future work.”
Speakers include a host of federal, state, industry and environmental officials. Among those slated to speak: David Glatt of the North Dakota Department of Health, will discuss the positive and negative legacies of unconventional drilling for the environment and communities; Leslie Savage of the Texas Railroad Commission will discuss regulatory approaches and challenges; Scott Anderson of Environmental Defense Fund will discuss “the interface of technology and regulation and David McBride of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation will discuss “technology development and strategic directions to avoid future legacy issues.”
http://insideepa.com/the-daily-feed
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'Cures Act' Keeps Provision to Sell from Petroleum Reserve
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
The House is expected to vote this week on bipartisan legislation that aims to increase medical research spending in part by tapping the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The "21st Century Cures Act," H.R. 34, has been a top priority of House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who will step aside from leading the powerful panel at the end of the year because of term limits.
The revised bill announced over the weekend by Upton and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) would steer $6.3 billion to the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to expedite research into new cures and treatments.
As an offset, the legislation would direct the Department of Energy to sell 25 million barrels of SPR crude over three years, beginning with 10 million barrels in the current fiscal year, according to a summary.
In a joint statement, Upton and Alexander called it "critical" to pass the Cures bill this year "to ensure some of this funding occurs immediately in fiscal 2017."
Revenues raised from SPR sales would go to the Department of the Treasury and could not be used to purchase new crude for the reserve. The revised bill also lowers the limit on SPR drawdowns from 500 million barrels to 450 million barrels.
An earlier version passed by Energy and Commerce last year would have authorized the sale of more than 80 million barrels of crude over eight years. At the time, the move would have raised an estimated $7 billion to pay for $9.3 billion in mandatory spending.
Defenders of the SPR, including Senate Energy Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have cautioned against making it a "piggy bank" for unrelated spending (E&ENews PM, July 7, 2015).
Lawmakers recently tapped the SPR to help pay for the Senate's transportation reauthorization and for the 2015 budget deal, which also created a $2 billion Energy Security and Infrastructure Modernization Fund to pay for upgrades to the reserve.
Upton earlier this year told reporters that negotiators were closing in on other pay-fors for the Cures Act (E&E Daily, July 14). A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on how much revenue he expected the latest bill to raise from SPR sales.
Passage of Cures would free Upton to focus on other priorities, potentially boosting efforts to complete energy policy reform talks.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/11/29/stories/1060046308
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House to Vote on Rail Safety Bill
Nov 29, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Gabriel Dunsmith
The House will take up a rail safety bill under suspension of the rules this week.
S. 546, passed by the Senate in May, would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create the Railroad Emergency Services Preparedness, Operational Needs and Safety Evaluation (RESPONSE) Subcommittee of the National Advisory Council (Greenwire, May 10).
The bill was sponsored by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and was taken up in the House by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.).
If established, the RESPONSE Subcommittee would review safety efforts along railways that transport hazardous materials. It would primarily assess the effectiveness of local emergency response efforts by examining training, funding and preparedness.
Proposed House amendments would reduce the life span of the subcommittee to two years with no extensions. The Senate version initially slated the body to last four years, with a possible one-year extension.
The House would also add a rail labor representative to the subcommittee and a second Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration representative from the Department of Transportation.
Bills taken up under suspension are largely uncontroversial and are allowed to bypass routine congressional procedure. However, they must net a supermajority of votes in order to pass.
A vote on the bill is expected this afternoon.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/11/29/stories/1060046307
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Canada to Adopt Global Hazmat Standards, Align With U.S.
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is proposing updating its rules transporting dangerous goods to bring them in line with international standards and better align them with U.S. requirements.
Proposed amendments to the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations are aimed primarily at adopting updates to the United Nations Model Regulations and international rules for different modes of transporting dangerous goods such as engines and machinery, fire extinguishers, batteries, as well as bio and medical waste and flammable liquids, the government said Nov. 26.
The amendments also would cover marine pollutants to the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code, new requirements for dangerous goods safety marks for fumigated cargo and transport of lithium batteries and new shipping names and requirements for engines and resin kits, it said.
Failure to have standards aligned has caused confusion for Canadian and foreign companies, as has adoption of the UN's latest recommendations for classification of polymerizing substances and viscous liquids, which has caused problems for companies that must classify dangerous goods before offering them for transport, according to the government.
The regulatory update also is intended to reduce regulatory barriers to cross-border trade with the U.S. by allowing the use in Canada of pressure receptacles, such as propane tanks, that meet U.S. Department of Transportation requirements and allowing one-time movement approvals issued in the U.S. to be used to move a dangerous goods container by rail to a location in Canada for cleaning, inspection, testing, repair, dismantling or unloading.
The proposed regulatory amendments also would provide a new exemption for hot air balloon propane cylinders to eliminate the current need for equivalency certificates to ship them by road, rail or vessel.
The amendments are open to comment through Jan. 25, 2017.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101069117&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101069117&jd=101069117
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A Polluter-Funded Lobbyist as the Head of the EPA?
Nov 28, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jeremy Symons
As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his cabinet, he has an opportunity to continue the long, bipartisan tradition of appointing qualified leaders to the Environmental Protection Agency who will protect and defend the public health of all Americans.
The outlook took a turn for the worse, however, when Trump met with Kathleen Hartnett White on Monday, Nov. 28, reportedly to discuss cabinet positions, including one as the head of the EPA.
Like Myron Ebell, who is leading Trump’s EPA transition team, White is a polluter-funded operative who has harshly attacked the agency.
America needs an EPA administrator who is guided by science, respects our environmental laws, and values protecting public health ahead of the lobbying agenda of special interests.
White, a registered lobbyist in Texas – where she works on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an advocacy group funded in large part by the energy industry – fails all three of these most fundamental qualifications.
She has undermined the work of health scientists on air pollution and climate change. She has taken positions at odds with the Supreme Court regarding the Clean Air Act.
And as a lobbyist for an organization funded by fossil fuel interests, she would most benefit her current patrons if Trump were to choose her as EPA administrator.
Guided by science? No.
A former chairwoman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, White has repeatedly pushed ideas that are flatly contradicted by decades of scientific evidenceand all major scientific organizations.
When Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Congress found time at the height of the Civil War to establish the National Academy of Sciences, they recognized that sound science is a cornerstone of good government. Unlike Lincoln, White has a skeptical view of the value of health and science studies.
“We’re not a democracy if science dictates what our rules are,” she recently told Rolling Stone.
In a 2012 report targeting EPA’s efforts to reduce the fine particle air pollution that exacerbates lung disease and asthma, she lamented that political appointees must weigh the views of what she called “mandarins brandishing their scientific credentials.” These are people others would call knowledgeable experts.
Two years later, in the publication The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, White attacked climate science as a biased indictment of carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
CO2 is “the gas that makes life possible on the earth and naturally fertilizes plant growth,” she wrote. “Whether emitted from the human use of fossil fuels or as a natural (and necessary) gas in the atmosphere surrounding the earth, carbon dioxide has none of the attributes of a pollutant.”
Of course it does, as a landmark 2016 report on the U.S. health impacts of carbon and climate change points out.
In the same publication, White argued that the planet had stopped warming. She was wrong again: 2014 and 2015 were the hottest years on record, and the top 10 hottest years have been since 2008. This year, meanwhile, is on track to be another record-breaking year.
If you want to understand the breadth of scientific voices who disagree with White and others who question climate change, NASA offers insights.
White wrote that that science is tarnished because “solar activity plays almost no role in current climate modeling” when it does. Bloomberg, for example, has an interactive display on the different drivers of global warming.
She also frequently derides cleaner energy sources, callingrenewables “a false hope that simply won’t work,” despite the fact that her home state of Texas is generating record-breaking amounts of wind power at low costs.
Respect for America’s environmental laws? No.
White has been a critic of the EPA’s efforts to reduce air pollution such as soot and toxic emissions of mercury. In a 2016 op-ed for The Hill newspaper she attacked the agency for pursuing standards to reduce air pollution from fossil fuels.
She also lobbied in favor of legislation that would ban the EPA from creating standards to reduce emissions of CO2, methane and other damaging greenhouse gases.
White has argued that greenhouse gas emissions are not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. What she overlooks is that the Supreme Court affirmed in 2007 that greenhouse gas emissions are in fact pollutants as governed by the law.
The EPA administrator has a responsibility to uphold and implement the law.
Puts public health ahead of special interest lobbyists? No.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation, the advocacy group where White works, is funded, among others, by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and “American Coalition for Clean Coal.” But White has also lobbied Congress to pass specific legislation aimed at hamstringing the EPA.
The Dallas Morning News had this to say about her:
“She has been an apologist for polluters, consistently siding with business interests instead of protecting public health. Ms. White worked to set a low bar as she lobbied for lax ozone standards and pushed through an inadequate anti-pollution plan.”
That is not the kind of leader we need in charge of protecting and defending the air we breathe, the water we drink and the planet we will leave future generations.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2016/11/28/polluter-funded-lobbyist-head-epa
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Texas Haze Settlement Talks Have Broken Down — Filing
Nov 28, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Settlement talks in the legal battle over U.S. EPA's regional haze plan for Texas have broken down, with the agency planning to withdraw the regulations at the center of the controversy, according to a filing today by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and other plaintiffs in the high-stakes litigation.
EPA intends to file a motion asking the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for approval to "vacate and remand for further agency proceedings" the federal implementation plan published in January, Paxton and utility attorneys said in their filing.
The federal plan, designed in part to improve visibility at two national parks, requires seven coal-fired power plants to install or upgrade sulfur dioxide pollution controls at a projected cost of about $2 billion.
A three-judge panel froze the plan in July on the grounds that Texas and power companies had a strong likelihood of prevailing on the merits in their appeal. In August, all sides agreed to a 90-day stay to pursue a settlement, setting today as the deadline to report back to the court. Had talks been proceeding fruitfully, they could have asked the court to extend the stay.
In his status report, Paxton said no "global resolution" of the case has been reached and that his side is not seeking more time.
As of publication time this afternoon, EPA had not filed a motion, according to the federal courts' online record system. An EPA spokeswoman could not immediately confirm the agency's plans.
The regional haze program, dating back to 1999 in its current form, is geared to restoring visibility in 156 large national parks and wildlife refuges to natural conditions by 2064.
The EPA plan is intended to reduce pollution-related haze in the Big Bend National Park and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas and the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma. The plan would not affect any Oklahoma plants.
In their filing, Paxton and the utilities said they want to review EPA's motion and then possibly seek a different form of relief. Four of the plants in questions are owned by Luminant Generation Co. LLC, the largest power producer in Texas and a branch of Energy Future Holdings Corp., and the remainder by NRG Energy Inc., San Miguel Electric Cooperative Inc., Xcel Energy Inc. and the French firm Engie SA.
While EPA regulators have previously argued that the required pollution controls are affordable and widely available, the utilities counter that the projected cost is out of line with the expected benefits. Texas' independent system operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, has also raised questions about the plan's potential impact on grid reliability (Greenwire, Aug. 18).
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/11/28/stories/1060046288
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Advocates Warn Trump May Find It Challenging to Scrap Carbon 'Cost' Tool
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Existing legal precedent and an ongoing National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review of the Obama administration's social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates could complicate efforts by the incoming Trump administration to scrap or scale back the SCC despite long-standing opposition to the tool from conservatives and Republicans.
The appraisal that the SCC could remain viable under President Trump -- floated by supporters of the measure for estimating the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in regulations and other actions -- resembles other assessments that Trump will face an array of challenges to any efforts to repeal GHG rules.
But several observers have pointed to the SCC as an example of climate-related executive action that could be scuttled more easily than regulations that have been promulgated under Obama.
“The easiest target is executive orders,” Foley Hoag lawyer Seth Jaffe wrote in a Nov. 11 blog post on the impact of Trump's win, playing up the ease with which the Trump administration could hobble EPA and other Obama climate initiatives, particularly the SCC.
“The social cost of carbon? Toast. Guidance on incorporating climate change into [the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)]? Toast,” Jaffe wrote.
At issue is the fate of federal per-ton estimates of the economic damages from carbon dioxide and other GHGs, now used by multiple agencies to weigh the economic benefits or implications of GHG controls, efficiency standards and federally authorized energy and other projects.
The estimates have been in use since 2010, with several revisions, with industry and conservative critics largely failing to block them, including in a recent appellate court ruling that upheld the use of the SCC in rulemaking for the first time.
Also, administration officials recently added two potent GHGs, methane and nitrous oxides, to the SCC estimates, allowing regulators to calculate the benefits of rules and other actions that curb those emissions.
Trump's victory, however, has provided a fresh opening for SCC critics, who have historically advanced several arguments against the SCC, including allegations that it improperly takes into account global rather than domestic climate damages; exaggerates costs of climate change by failing to significantly discount damages that occur in the future; and overstates the sensitivity of the climate to a given amount of GHG emissions.
One conservative SCC critic says it is too early to know how the Trump administration will proceed against the SCC, but suggests that “at the very least” it should utilize a 7 percent discount rate for climate damages, pursuant to language in existing White House Office of Management & Budget guidance that calls for such aggressive discounting scenarios in regulatory analyses.
The effect of this would be to estimate sharply lower climate damages from a given quantity of emissions. The Obama administration and SCC backers have to date argued that reliance on that rate is inappropriate for climate damages that affect future generations. Instead, the official values include discount rates of 2.5, 3 and 5 percent.
The conservative source says there are also broader questions on “how much we can trust the SCC,” given disputes over the sensitivity of climate change to a given level of emissions.
'Important Factors'
SCC backers, however, say they will fight hard against moves to weaken the SCC, and are calling suggestions of its demise overblown.
“A bedrock legal standard for rulemaking is the arbitrary and capricious standard,” says one SCC advocate. “Part of that is not ignoring important factors in decisionmaking,” the source adds, disputing the idea the Trump administration could scuttle use of the SCC without legal consequences for decisions based on that outcome.
The source also cites the pending NAS report on the SCC as another potential complication for Trump attacks, citing in part NAS's January 2016 issuance of an interim report on the SCC that downplayed the need for any short-term changes to address critics' climate sensitivity arguments. That report essentially paved the way for the Obama administration to continue using the SCC for the remainder of its White House tenure.
Observers on both sides of the issue suggest that a second phase of the NAS report, due in January, may provide a fresh talking point for calls to strengthen or defend the SCC, to the extent that report discusses ways to improve current “damage functions” for estimating the cost of GHG emissions.
Specifically, a second SCC backer says a plausible outcome is that NAS does not explicitly “put its thumb on the scale” by calling for higher SCC values, but may issue recommendations that point to the need to raise the SCC by implicitly or explicitly referencing the omission of some climate damages in current climate modeling efforts.
The conservative SCC critic surmises a similar scenario, speculating that NAS will focus at least in part on recommendations that point to adding categories of climate damages into the SCC.
With respect to legal issues confronting the Trump White House, the first SCC backer cites a number of specific legal precedents that could make it difficult to entirely scuttle the SCC. They include a 2007 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Center for Biological Diversity v. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), that said NHTSA could not assume zero CO2 benefits from fuel economy rules. The source notes that ruling boosted pressure on federal agencies to quantify carbon damages in the first place.
Also, a unanimous Aug. 8 ruling by a 7th Circuit panel -- upholding the Department of Energy's use of the SCC to justify an efficiency standard for commercial refrigerators -- cited the SCC estimates as “reasonable.”
And a federal district court in Colorado in a historic 2014 ruling, High Country Conservation Advocates v. U.S. Forest Service, criticized failure of a federal agency to use the SCC in environmental reviews under NEPA. The court did not mandate use of the SCC in all instances but found a lack of a credible rationale for excluding its use in the NEPA review for a proposed coal extraction project.
In addition to such legal precedents, the first SCC supporter cites as another wild card for any Trump administration assault on the SCC the presence of career staff in multiple federal agencies that developed the SCC, and who are likely to oppose efforts to simply undo it.
Advocates, however, suggest they will closely watch what tactic the Trump administration adopts, including whether it tries to avoid full cost-benefit analysis for deregulatory actions -- an approach the first SCC backer notes was a frequent tactic during the George W. Bush administration when agencies would argue that a deregulatory proposal was “non-significant.”
That source says such strategies likely would not shield agencies from legal challenges for actions that fail the arbitrary and capricious standard.
The source also cites as another potential flashpoint for the Trump administration the upcoming ruling by the D.C. Circuit on EPA's greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants. One of numerous issues in that case is whether EPA acted appropriately in using the global SCC to justify the regulation.
Proponents of the power plant rule have said they are optimistic that the court will broadly rule in EPA's favor.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/advocates-warn-trump-may-find-it-challenging-scrap-carbon-cost-tool
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Trump Rollback of Obama Climate Agenda May Prove Challenging
Nov 29, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Michael Biesecker
Once sworn into office, Donald Trump will be in a strong position to dismantle some of President Barack Obama’s efforts to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions. But experts say delivering on campaign pledges to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and bring back tens of thousands of long-gone coal mining jobs will likely prove far more difficult for the new president.
Internal documents from the Trump transition team reviewed by The Associated Press show the new administration plans to stop defending the Clean Power Plan and other recent Obama-era environmental regulations that have been the subject of long-running legal challenges filed by Republican-led states and the fossil fuel industry.
Against that potential opposition, environmental groups are gearing up to defend Obama’s environmental legacy in court.
“We anticipate challenging every single attempt to roll back regulations on air, water and climate,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who added that his group is already hiring additional lawyers. Fundraising for environmental causes also has spiked since Trump’s victory.
Though Republicans have for years blamed environmental regulations for the decline of coal, data from the U.S. Department of Energy shows the primary cause is the emergence of cheaper, more abundant natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. Another factor is the plummeting cost of solar panels and wind turbines, which now can produce emissions-free electricity cheaper than burning coal.
Leading Trump’s transition team on the EPA is Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that gets financial support from the fossil fuel industry and that opposes “global-warming alarmism.”
Ebell, whose academic credentials are in philosophy and political theory, has for years made his mark publicly denying the reams of scientific data that show the planet is warming and that burning fossil fuels is primarily to blame. Earlier this year, Ebell wrote of the Paris agreement to make global reductions in carbon emissions, “We want to have the whole thing collapse and be found by future generations in the dustbin of history.”
Trump said during the campaign he would “cancel” the Paris accord, which Obama signed in December. The agreement was not a treaty and was not approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, and legal experts agree that as president Trump would have the authority to walk away. Even without a formal withdrawal, Trump could simply order EPA not to take any action toward meeting the U.S. commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels within the next 10 years.
Trump appeared to soften his position in a recent interview with The New York Times, saying he now has an “open mind” about the Paris agreement. He also shifted away from his year-long insistence that climate change is a “hoax,” conceding there may be “some connectivity” between human activity and the warming of the planet.
Still, Trump’s advisers have suggested he will eliminate NASA’s world-class climate research program, which tracks the warming of the planet, melting Arctic sea ice and rising oceans using an array of purpose-built satellites orbiting the globe.
However, NASA’s study of earth science is currently mandated by federal law, which means voiding the program would require congressional action. Even assuming unanimous Republican support, Senate Democrats could block such an effort through a filibuster.
As a legal matter, Trump also can’t simply get rid of the EPA. Though established in 1970 by President Richard Nixon through an executive order, eliminating a federal Cabinet agency would require congressional approval and face a likely filibuster.
Even without a wholesale elimination, Trump and the GOP-led Congress could gut the agency’s budget — defunding core enforcement efforts enshrined under the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. During the campaign, Trump proposed slashing the EPA’s $8 billion budget as a way to offset some of the cost of his planned tax cuts.
Environmentalists and former EPA officials say decades of gains made under both Democratic and Republican administrations would potentially be lost if Trump weakens the agency. Christie Todd Whitman, a Republican who served as EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, worries EPA is likely to suffer a brain drain as key regulatory staff retire or resign rather than serve under Trump.
“It would behoove Republicans to remember EPA was signed into law by a Republican president working with a Democratic Congress because the public wanted to protect the environment,” Whitman said. “They wanted clean air to breathe, they were tired of seeing rivers spontaneously combust and the land turned into a garbage dump.”
Internal transition documents show Trump’s primary targets are Clean Power Plan limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and a recent EPA rule expanding the definition of “waters of the United States” protected under the Clean Water Act to include smaller creeks and wetlands. Other items include EPA’s recently issued standards for reducing smog caused by coal-fired power plants and limits on harmful emissions and chemical-laden waste water from oil and gas operations.
Dismantling EPA regulations is difficult, especially if the rules have already been finalized and implemented.
“The agency has already built up a very strong record to support those rules,” said Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School. “It can be very hard to do an about-face.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-rollback-of-obama-climate-agenda-may-prove-challenging/2016/11/29/586550a8-b614-11e6-939c-91749443c5e5_story.html
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Trump’s Climate Policies May Work Out in the Planet’s Favor
Nov 29, 2016 | New York Times
By Eduardo Porter
Is the battle to contain global warming now lost?
With the election of Donald Trump, it certainly looked that way to many of the shellshocked diplomats gathered in Morocco earlier this month at the first climate summit following the breakthrough agreement in Paris last year to contain greenhouse gas emissions.
During the campaign, the president-elect of the world’s second largest polluter claimed that climate change is a hoax, threatened to drop the Paris accord, committed to kill the Clean Power Plan at the center of President Obama’s emissions reduction strategy, and promised a new dawn for the fossil fuel industry.
Don’t give up just yet. True, international diplomacy will become more difficult as China and India weigh their own energy policy commitments in the light of the possibility that the United States will walk away from its promises. But President Trump’s climate policy — or his lack of one — could work out in surprising ways.
Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering, in a report published on Tuesday by the Breakthrough Institute, pointed out that real progress on reducing carbon in the atmosphere has been driven so far by specific domestic energy, industrial and innovation policies, “not emissions targets and timetables or international agreements intended to legally constrain national emissions."
It’s certainly possible that a Trump administration will drop the Clean Power Plan and renege on the Paris accord. But as long as it keeps the nation’s nuclear power plants online, continues tax incentives for wind and solar energy and stays out of the way of the shale energy revolution, Ms. Lovering and Mr. Nordhaus write, “the U.S. might outperform the commitments that the Obama administration made in Paris.”
For all his promises to bring back coal jobs in Appalachia, Mr. Trump might be drawn in a different direction by his own objectives of promoting natural gas and achieving energy independence. If he gives those goals high priority, he could well end up pursuing policies that would ultimately lower carbon emissions.
Striking a meaningful deal on climate has proved an elusive goal. The first try, in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, committed advanced nations to reduce emissions between 1990 and 2010. But they actually achieved more in terms of reducing dependency on fossil fuels in the decade before the agreement than in the decade after.
If the Kyoto target survived, it was only because of other forces: First, the collapse of the Soviet bloc wiped out a lot of European carbon emissions along with the decrepit Eastern European industrial base; then the global downturn that started in 2008 reduced carbon emissions along with economic growth.
Even the most aggressive proposals by the Obama administration probably packed less punch than supporters believe. President Obama’s original cap-and-trade bill, which was blocked in the Senate in 2009, proposed emissions limits that were higher than what emissions have turned out to be. The steep decline was driven not just by the recession and slow recovery, but also by the wholesale move by the power sector over the last decade from coal to less polluting natural gas.
As Robert Stavins of Harvard University put it, “The most important factor in terms of carbon emissions in the United States is the price of natural gas.”
And for all the hand-wringing over the future of the Clean Power Plan, its demise might not even make that much of a difference. The shift from coal to gas will continue to happen anyway.
A study commissioned last December by the Environmental Defense Fund concluded that most states could comply “by relying exclusively on existing generation, investments already planned within each state and implementation of respective existing state policies.”
Of course, President Trump could do much more than simply stopping the Clean Power Plan, especially if he had eight years to work with. But why would he do that?
Production tax credits for renewables have already been extended by a Republican-controlled Congress until 2021. Mr. Trump supports nuclear energy, and could well be persuaded to extend federal subsidies to keep the nation’s teetering string of nuclear plants in operation.
Most importantly, climate objectives could mesh with Mr. Trump’s goal of energy independence. According to the 2016 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, the United States could pretty much become energy independent by 2040 — reducing its annual oilimports to 1 million barrels a day from 6 million in 2014 — as long as Washington sticks to current policies.
Part of this has to do with rising shale oil and gas production. But the main driver would be efficiency. The Trump administration only has to maintain the Obama administration’s CAFE standards, which require the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks to rise to 49-to-50 miles per gallon by 2025, from 34 today.
This is not to say that the world could survive forever an American administration that doesn’t believe in climate change and does nothing to contain it.
A recent analysis by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyconcluded that the promises made in Paris would reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at the end of the century to 710 parts per million from 750. That is still far from the 450 p.p.m. ceiling needed to tip the odds in favor of staying under the temperature threshold scientists consider safe.
According to the International Energy Agency, the commitments made in Paris will cap the growth of greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2040 to 13 percent. The 450 p.p.m. target requires them to fall by 43 percent. Getting there will require rich countries like the United States to help finance much of the transition for poor countries. The role of global diplomacy will rise.
“It will be a big deal that will affect economic growth and jobs,” said David Victor of the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. “We need a strategy to assure countries that their economic competitors are undertaking similar types of policies.”
For this to work, the United States, as the dominant economic player, must play ball. Simply pursuing energy independence will not go far enough.
In four years, the United States might have an administration that is less hostile to the concept of climate change. In any case, the rationale for policies to support low- and no-carbon energy sources will be even stronger then than it is today.
“If a Trump administration lasts only four years, the process could maybe absorb that,” said Oliver Geden, head of research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
The bomb is ticking, but the world still has some time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/economy/trumps-climate-policies-may-work-out-in-the-planets-favor.html
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Judges Ask Tough Questions of EPA, Critics in Suit Over CWA Rule Venue
Nov 28, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit raised tough questions for EPA and critics of the agency's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule at oral argument over which courts have authority to hear suits over the rule, with two of the judges hinting they could stay the case pending resolution of a similar 6th Circuit suit.
“What about if we just abstain as did the 11th Circuit, calling it a colossal waste of time” to have duplicative litigation playing out in multiple appellate circuits, one judge asked during the recent argument in the 10th Circuit case Chamber of Commerce, et al., v. EPA, et al. The case contests a lower court's ruling that rejected a suit over the jurisdiction rule by deferring to a split 6th Circuit ruling giving that court power to hear such suits.
The judge was referring to the 11th Circuit's Aug. 16 decision in State of Georgia, et al. v. EPA, et al., to stay that suit over the CWA rule pending a final merits decision by the 6th Circuit.
In response, Michael Park, arguing on behalf of the industry groups challenging the rule, said that staying the litigation would “cause further delay” and that the 6th's Circuit's finding of jurisdiction was a “foundation of sand” and should be not be cited as the basis of a stay.
Judge Nancy Moritz said during the argument, “Wouldn't it make sense to stay [the suit] at a minimum until we know what the Supreme Court is going to accept review” given a pending petition for a writ of certiorari filed by National Association of Manufacturers Sept. 2 asking the justices to review the dispute over the proper venue for legal challenges to the CWA rule.
Inside EPA on Nov. 28 received a recording of the Nov. 16 oral argument from the 10th Circuit after filing a formal motion for the court to release the audio.
The 6th Circuit on Feb. 22 issued its ruling giving it power to hear suits over EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers' joint rule, relying in part on prior 6th Circuit precedent on CWA cases.
The 6th Circuit is now hearing merits briefing on the rule challenges from dozens of stakeholders, with the Justice Department's response brief due on Jan. 18.
The 10th Circuit litigation consolidates challenges filed by Oklahoma and a separate suit by the Chamber and other business groups, both seeking to reverse a U.S. District Court for the District of Oklahoma ruling that said cases over the CWA rule must be heard in appellate courts, that cited the 6th Circuit decision.
Judges' Questions
But a three judge panel comprised of Moritz, Gregory Phillips and Carlos Lucero raised a number of questions during oral arguments that suggested they might consider that the lower court erred in deferring to the 6th Circuit.
“It was a 1-1-1 decision, it's not particularly overwhelmingly persuasive,” Moritz said of the Feb. 22 ruling by the 6th Circuit.
In the lead opinion for the 6th Circuit's Murray Energy decision, Judge David McKeague said that although the water law is unclear on where suits over the rule should start, the 6th Circuit has jurisdiction under a “functional” reading of CWA section 509(e) and section 509(f) -- which he said is required under the 6th Circuit's unanimous 2009 ruling in National Cotton Council of America v. EPA.
In National Cotton, the 6th Circuit said appeals courts can also review regulations governing when permits are needed, rather than only approval or denial of specific permits. In a separate opinion backing McKeague's reliance on the National Cotton precedent, Judge Richard Allen Griffin agreed with the 6th Circuit taking up the Murray Energy case -- but added that he believes the 2009 ruling was incorrect.
One judge during the Nov. 16 oral arguments before the 10th Circuit panel said, “Isn't is somewhat idiosyncratic to have the 6th Circuit speak almost like a national Supreme Court and then say I'm bound by the decision of this very provincial ruling -- that struck me as bizarre.”
Another judge asked, “If we disagree and say [the rule] is not covered by section [509], where does that leave us?”
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) John Gunter responded that the court does not need to reach the statutory question of whether judicial review is specified under the CWA because it was addressed by the 6th Circuit. All the district court had to determine was that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requirement that a venue for hearing challenges must be provided was met, Gunter argued.
One judge also raised questions about the Aug. 27, 2015 order by the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota Southeastern Division enjoining the agencies from implementing the rule and finding jurisdiction to issue the injunction. “The North Dakota decision -- why is that wrong?” the judge asked.
Gunter responded that the district court misapprehended the law and the case is “simply an outlier in the great body of case law” indicating that under section 509(e) an “other limitation” is a limit on the untrammeled discretion of industry.
Litigation Venue
But Moritz suggested that even if the 10th Circuit panel finds that the CWA statutory language does not support the 6th Circuit's finding or DOJ's argument, the ruling might still be binding because it was the venue selected for hearing petitions for review filed in all appeals court by a panel for multi-circuit litigation.
“The 6th Circuit decides the case, just like it if remained here, we could have and probably would have decided the case, and had we done so, you would not be able to stand up here and argue we should decide it again, right?” Moritz asked Park.
Park argued that the industry and state petitioners filed “protective” petitions for review in the 10th Circuit, along with their Oklahoma district court suit.
“That doesn't really matter, now does it,” Moritz said. “You can call it protective, but it acts just like a regular petition.”
Moritz asked Park to cite any cases in which an appeals court decided litigation under the provision applying to mutli-circuit litigation, and that decision was not considered precedential.
Park did not list any cases, but said that section 2112 of federal law does not apply to proceedings to review or enforce orders of administrative agencies which are by law reviewable by the district courts.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/judges-ask-tough-questions-epa-critics-suit-over-cwa-rule-venue
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Canada to Phase Out Bulk HFC Use, Differing From U.S. Plan
Nov 29, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is taking a different path than the U.S. for eliminating hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas, by planning to phase out bulk uses.
In addition, the government said it will regulate the use of HFCs in specific products such as refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, foams and aerosols.
The U.S., meanwhile, has adopted product-specific controls but has not yet proposed a phase-down of bulk uses. Canada's proposed regulation of individual products also differs from the U.S. approach.
Proposed amendments to Canada's Ozone-Depleting Substances and Halocarbon Alternatives Regulations would give current importers of hydrofluorocarbons the right to continue importing them based on their share of total Canadian consumption in 2014 and 2015, the government said Nov. 26.
The import allowances would be based on a share of baseline consumption levels in 2011-2013, and would then be cut 10 percent from baseline levels by 2019, 35 percent by 2024, 70 percent by 2030 and 85 percent by 2036, it said. At the same time, the use of HFCs in specific products would be regulated, it said.
“Both the regulatory controls on HFC-containing products and the reduced supply of HFCs would encourage manufacturers to choose HFC alternatives with lower global warming potentials,” it said.
The bulk phase-out would not apply to hydrofluorocarbons in imported, pre-charged equipment such as vehicles, air conditioning systems, refrigeration systems or domestic appliances, which would instead be subject to product-specific controls. The amendments would prohibit import or manufacture of products or equipment containing HFCs with a global warming potential above a designated limit.
That approach differs from the U.S. use of the Significant New Alternatives Policy Program to prohibit the use of specific HFCs in certain end-use equipment and products. Canada proposes not prescribing specific substances prohibited or allowed alternatives, instead using global warming potential limits to allow industry to choose how best to comply, the government said.
Alignment With U.S
However, the timing of Canadian controls on specific products would either be aligned with U.S. timing or shortly after, it said. The differences between the Canadian and U.S. approaches are based on consultation with industry on availability of alternatives and challenges of implementing the controls, it said.
Some stakeholders argued, during consultations in 2015 and 2016, for full alignment with U.S. regulations to avoid potential market disruption and trade restrictions, but the government said that would not give industry the flexibility to eliminate HFCs on the most cost-effective basis.
Canada plans to provide exceptions to the proposed product-specific controls for technical products, such as cleaning products for electronics, and medical aerosols such as metered-dose inhalers, for which alternatives do not exist.
The amendments would also empower the government to approve applications for individual exceptions for products that are considered necessary for health and safety or critical to the public good. This also would include situations where technically and economically feasible alternatives are not available.
Changes to Reduce GHGs Emissions
The regulatory changes are expected to offset a projected increase in hydrofluorocarbons emissions to 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030 from the 6 million metric tons in 2013. That increase resulted from the use of HFCs to to replace hydrochlorofluorocarbons, which are being phased out under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the government said.
The changes are expected to cut Canada's 2018-2040 greenhouse gas emissions by about 176 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, creating benefits totaling about C$6.2 billion ($4.6 billion) over that period, it said. Projected compliance costs for industry totaling C$700 million ($518 million) would be largely offset by savings of almost C$600 million ($444 million), it said.
The amendments would allow Canada to meet its commitment to phase out HFC under the Montreal Protocol, as well as implement a March 2016 agreement with the U.S. to cooperate on commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change, it said.
Hydrofluorocarbons do not deplete the ozone layer, but like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are short-lived, potent greenhouse gases with global warming potentials hundreds to thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide.
They are used in stand-alone refrigeration systems, centralized refrigeration systems such as in supermarkets, chillers used in large commercial buildings, mobile and industrial refrigeration systems, domestic air conditioners and refrigerators and extruded polystyrene and rigid polyurethane foams. In addition, they are used in motor vehicle air conditioning systems and as aerosol propellants in personal care, household and cleaning products.
The proposed changes are open to comment through Feb. 9, 2017.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101069105&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101069105&jd=101069105
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