Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 12/9/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Grapples with Crafting Proposal to Create TSCA Industry Fee System
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
EPA is grappling with how to craft its planned proposed rule to create a first-time structure for assessing industry fees to supplement the costs of operating core aspects of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), including what actions should trigger the fee requirements... -
EPA Proposes Restrictions on TCE, Toxic Solvent, Under TSCA
Dec 8, 2016 | National Resources Defense Council
By Jennifer Sass
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is steadily chugging toward the finish line with its proposed ban of the highly toxic solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE. -
Transition: Former EPW Counsel Backed as Possible Toxics Chief
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
Now that Scott Pruitt has been tapped to lead EPA, who will the Trump administration nominate to lead the agency's toxics office? -
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Society Study Questions BPA, Endocrine Chemicals in Baby Teethers
Dec 8, 2016 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
A new study released by the American Chemical Society is raising questions about endocrine disrupting chemicals leaching at low levels from baby teethers, saying, for example, that it found bisphenol-A migrating from all 59 teethers studied even though many claimed to be BPA-free or non-toxic. -
Real Reform Needed for Outdated Cosmetics Laws
Dec 8, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
Every day, people apply cosmetics and other personal care products to their skin and hair. The average American woman uses 12 personal care products a day, exposing herself to 168 different chemicals. The average man uses six products a day, containing 85 unique chemical ingredients. -
Washington State Suing Agrochemical Giant over PCB Pollution
Dec 9, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Gene Johnson
Washington has become the first U.S. state to sue the agrochemical giant Monsanto over pervasive pollution from PCBs, the toxic industrial chemicals that have accumulated in plants, fish and people around the globe for decades. The company said the case “lacks merit.” -
EPA Expects to Issue Seven Chemical, Pesticide Rulemakings
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency expects to soon publish seven proposed and final rules for chemicals and pesticides, a senior agency official told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 8. -
House Departure Seals Fate of Failed Energy Negotiations
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The House departure from Capitol Hill dealt the final blow to hopes for a large energy policy overhaul in the 114th Congress, exacting a fate that most lawmakers and advocates predicted for weeks—if not longer. -
US Oil Production Unlikely to Rise Much Through All of 2017: Hamm
Dec 8, 2016 | Platts
By Dave Ernsberger
US production of crude oil will take around 18 months to recover to the multi-decade highs seen in 2015, and total US production is unlikely to change much throughout 2017 from the current rate of around 8.6 million b/d, Harold Hamm, chairman and CEO of energy group Continental Resources... -
Clean Energy ‘Moving Forward’ Despite Trump’s E.P.A. Pick, Experts Say
Dec 8, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice of a fossil-fuel advocate and climate-change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency comes at a moment when the American energy market has already shifted away from the most polluting fossil fuels... -
An Opportunity to Return Balance to Energy Policy
Dec 8, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Craig Richardson
America needs to develop its natural resources within a framework of policies that protect the Earth through wise stewardship of the land. While the past eight years have yielded a windfall of policies, there has been little wisdom attached to them. -
Pennsylvania DEP Appeals Court Ruling to Stay Some New Shale Regs
Dec 8, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has appealed the state Commonwealth Court's decision last month to temporarily stay parts of the agency's regulatory overhaul for shale producers so it may consider a lawsuit filed by the industry. -
Not So Risky Climate Business
Dec 8, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Editorial Board
Among the many doomsday scenarios floated by the climate-change lobby is a theory that asks: What if an abrupt change in policy strands fossil-fuel resources in the ground, which in turn crashes oil companies and then the global economy? IHS consulting recently released a rebuttal... -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Officials Pressing Congress, Trump To Roll Back EPA's RMP Rule
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Industry officials are urging lawmakers and representatives of President-elect Donald Trump to block EPA's pending rule strengthening its industrial facility safety regulation, using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) or other means, arguing that the agency has failed... -
GOP Team Looks for Ways to Deploy Congressional Review Act
Dec 8, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who will lead the Environment and Public Works Committee next year, said today that Republicans are assembling a team to figure out how to use the Congressional Review Act to roll back federal regulations. -
Obama's Mighty EPA Falls into Pruitt's Hands
Dec 8, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia and Alex Guillen
President Barack Obama leaned hard on the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out his climate agenda, bypassing a Congress that had refused to act. -
Pruitt, Trump’s EPA Pick, Has Both Sides of Climate Divide Girding for a Major Fight
Dec 8, 2016 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
Two years ago, at an event convened by the conservative Federalist Society, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt joked about a competition of sorts he had going with the Texas attorney general over the Environmental Protection Agency. -
EPA Scrambles to Set Deadlines for Dozens of Overdue State Air Plans
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA intends to set a series of deadlines by January 19 for the agency to act on dozens of overdue or unapproved Clean Air Act state implementation plans (SIPs) for addressing ozone, as the agency scrambles before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump... -
Companies on Climate: Trump or No, Still Cutting Emissions
Dec 9, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Bradley Olson and Cassandra Sweet
Many big corporations continue to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions, vowing to stay the course despite the election of Donald Trump, who has promised to dismantle the Obama administration’s climate agenda and this week chose a global-warming skeptic... -
EPA Agrees to Act on Missing Ozone Plans Before Obama Leaves
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
One of the last actions of President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency could be taking action against states that have failed to submit required plans to address ozone pollution. -
Fertilizer Plant Compliance Extension Floated by EPA
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizer plants would get more time to comply with portions of national air pollution standards under an Environmental Protection Agency proposal.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Grapples with Crafting Proposal to Create TSCA Industry Fee System
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
EPA is grappling with how to craft its planned proposed rule to create a first-time structure for assessing industry fees to supplement the costs of operating core aspects of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), including what actions should trigger the fee requirements and how to “weight” costs for various activities.
The agency initially hoped to issue the proposed fee rule in mid-December, alongside two TSCA section 6 proposed rules on how to conduct chemical risk evaluations as well as designating chemicals as high- or low-priority under the revised TSCA. However, although the law mandates proposed risk evaluation and prioritization rules by mid-December and final rules by mid-June of next year, it does not include any deadline for the fee rule.
EPA officials have said they would like to complete the rule early in the process of implementing the law, but at press time the agency has not sent any fee proposal to the White House for mandatory review.
That is in contrast to the risk evaluation proposal it submitted to the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) for review on Nov. 10 and the prioritization proposal sent to OMB on Nov. 7.
One chemical industry source says EPA appears to be on pace to release the fee rule before President Barack Obama leaves office, they acknowledge it might not be released until some time in January. While EPA views the fee rule as necessary for successful implementation of the reform law, the two section 6 risk review rules have been a key focal point as they are “so central to the operation of the program,” the source says.
A second industry source says EPA officials have publicly said they are “still working through a couple of things” in crafting the proposed rule, including “how much to charge for different things,” a crucial question EPA posed to stakeholders during meetings with the chemical sector held in August and September in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, EPA sought comment on how funding will be divvied up among the TSCA section 4 chemical test actions, pre-manufacture notices and significant new use notices for new chemicals and uses reviewed under section 5, section 6 existing chemical risk evaluations, and section 14 confidential business information claims.
While the agency is “anxious” to at least issue a proposed rule before the close of the administration, the second source says, it is also seeking to reach “as big a consensus as it can” on how the fee system should be structured to ensure industry is amenable to the fee structure and avoid a “big dispute” that could stymie a final rule.
The first industry source points out that under the previous TSCA, EPA only assessed user fees for some new chemical reviews, and that the agency is “struggling to figure out the correct amount” or percentage to assign to each type of TSCA action, and “what are the attachment points” that would trigger the fee requirements.
An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Review Costs
Under the TSCA reform law, which took effect June 22, EPA can for the first time establish a fee structure to defray the costs of reviewing new chemicals and a range of actions on existing chemicals by collecting user fees from chemical manufacturers and processors. EPA can collect up to 25 percent of the costs of implementing several key programs under the chemical safety law, or up to $25 million, whichever number is lower.
Industry is required to pay 100 percent of the costs for the risk reviews it requests from EPA, unless the chemical is already on the agency’s 2014 TSCA work plan, in which case the company making the request must pay 50 percent. The work plan was EPA’s attempt to review chemicals using its limited authority under the original 1976 TSCA, but the limitations of that law led to the revised TSCA that expanded the agency’s oversight on chemicals.
During the stakeholder meetings, agency presentations estimated that section 6 existing chemical risk evaluations would incur the highest costs under the new law at approximately $56.6 million, with the next highest being new chemical reviews under section 5 at an estimated $36.1 million.
The slides indicated that EPA assesses the costs of administering section 4 test requirements at roughly $8.7 million and of reviewing CBI claims under section 14 at roughly $8.9 million.
EPA was also weighing an approach that would “treat CBI as overheard versus per claim,” following comments from industry on the rulemaking, and whether certain types of submissions or actions identified in the law for fee collection should either not be included or assessed at a nominal rate.
But industry groups have cautioned that the agency must be careful in how it “weights” certain activities in assessing fees under the new TSCA. For example, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in Aug. 25 comments said EPA should avoid setting fee mandates that would stymie innovation, and that although the new law grants the agency authority to assess individual fees for activities under sections 4, 5 and 6 of TSCA, “not all of that authority must be exercised.”
ACC said EPA should not assess fees for submission of data under section 4, as is the current practice under TSCA, and “fees for submissions and Agency actions under sections 5 and 6 should reflect the level of effort required of EPA,” according to the comments.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-grapples-crafting-proposal-create-tsca-industry-fee-system
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EPA Proposes Restrictions on TCE, Toxic Solvent, Under TSCA
Dec 8, 2016 | National Resources Defense Council
By Jennifer Sass
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is steadily chugging toward the finish line with its proposed ban of the highly toxic solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE. This is great news! The proposal will force a mandatory ban on two dangerous and unnecessary uses of TCE – as a solvent in aerosol degreasers and in dry cleaning spot removal products.
In fact, many companies have already replaced TCE with less toxic or non-toxic alternatives. EPA isn’t leading the pack on protecting workers and consumers, but it is doing something very important by proposing to put a full and enforceable no-nonsense stop to the last remaining holdover companies and manufacturers that won’t move voluntarily to safer products.
How bad is TCE?
EPA’s rule, when finalized and enforced, will save lives. How bad is TCE? EPA says it best in the proposed rule: “…. these uses result in significant non-cancer risks (acute and chronic exposure scenarios) and cancer risks. These adverse health effects include developmental toxicity (e.g., cardiac malformations, developmental immunotoxicity, developmental neurotoxicity, fetal death), toxicity to the kidney (kidney damage and kidney cancer), immunotoxicity (such as systemic autoimmune diseases, e.g., scleroderma, and severe hypersensitivity skin disorder), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, reproductive and endocrine effects (e.g., decreased libido and potency), neurotoxicity (e.g., trigeminal neuralgia), and toxicity to the liver (impaired functioning and liver cancer). TCE may cause fetal cardiac malformations that begin in utero. In addition, fetal death, possibly resulting from cardiac malformation, can be caused by exposure to TCE. Cardiac malformations can be irreversible and impact a person’s health for a lifetime.” (Trichloroethylene (TCE); Regulation of Certain Uses under TSCA Section 6(a) (RIN 2070-AK03) Proposed Rule, December 6, 2016. Page 11-12. Docket No. EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0163)
Because of such terrible health risks, several years ago the California Air Resources Board banned dry cleaning uses of TCE-containing spot removers in California (effective at the end of 2012). Safer substitutes to TCE-based spot removers are already available, and include water-based cleaners, soy-based cleaners and acetone-based cleaners. A cost analysis prepared for Cal EPA indicates that the alternatives are less costly than the TCE spotting agents.
Industry opposition
No one could reasonably oppose a rule that would ban unsafe exposures to a chemical this bad, right? Unfortunately, reason often plays second fiddle to profits. Although there is big money to be made in the safer replacement products, nonetheless the TCE manufacturers continue a decades-long battle to defeat any restrictions on TCE. The Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, Inc. (HSIA) - a trade group representing manufacturers of solvents, including TCE, continues to defend TCE against regulatory actions. And, TCE has friends in Congress as well. Soon-to-be former Senator David Vitter (R-La.), , along with Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) are all on record challenging EPA’s TCE assessment (for example, see Chemical Watch July 2014 and Senator’s letter June 2014).
Next steps
The proposed regulation of TCE [and two other proposals that are currently under review by the White House: one for TCE uses as a vapor degreaser; and, one combined rule for methylene chloride (MC) and n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) for painting and coating removal] provides an early test of the strength and effectiveness of the recently-revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as well as the incoming Trump Administration’s intentions to protect the public from dangerous toxic chemicals. Whether the proposal is ultimately finalized, or is weakened or shelved will tell us a lot about what we can expect over the next four years as far as chemicals policy from the next Administration.
Assuming that EPA finalizes the proposal, whether it survives the inevitable legal challenge from the chemical industry, or gets overturned as happened with asbestos in 1991 (EPA’s last attempt to regulate a known human carcinogen under TSCA Section 6) these rules will be the first indicators of how successful the revised TSCA may ultimately be in protecting public health and the environment.
In the meantime, in addition to moving forward on the proposed restrictions on TCE, MC, and NMP, EPA must now also proceed with its risk evaluation of 10 substances, including additional uses of TCE that are outside the scope of the proposed rule announced today and the rule still under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The process for evaluating and potentially regulating some or all uses of those substances is where much of the fate of the revised TSCA is likely to be determined.
Ideally, this proposal to ban specific uses of TCE will be finalized and will successfully set a winning precedent for the EPA efforts to follow. But this proposal and the other steps that are coming, are likely to face strong challenges from the chemical manufactures and their allies.
We hope the White House will quickly complete its review of EPA’s proposed regulation of TCE in vapor degreasing, as well as EPA’s proposed regulation of specific uses of methylene chloride and NMP. All of these proposed rules address high risk uses of highly toxic chemicals. Actually crossing the finish line will protect the health of many Americans.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-sass/epa-proposes-restrictions-tce-toxic-solvent-under-tsca
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Transition: Former EPW Counsel Backed as Possible Toxics Chief
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
Now that Scott Pruitt has been tapped to lead EPA, who will the Trump administration nominate to lead the agency's toxics office?
According to one industry source, there is a “strong consensus” between industry and environmental groups who favor Dimitri Karakitsos, the Senate environment committee staffer who helped write the law overhauling the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The former senior Republican counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and principal drafter of the Senate bill that later became the foundation of the bipartisan chemical safety reform law passed earlier this year is being discussed as one possibility to head EPA's Office of Chemical Safety & Pollution Prevention under the Trump administration, the industry source says.
Karakitsos would be a “perfect candidate in many respects,” given his work in drafting and negotiating the TSCA reform law, which took effect June 22 and which EPA is currently working to implement, the source adds. But the source says that Karakitsos is “one candidate” under consideration.
Given his familiarity with the TSCA revisions, his selection may address concerns that the incoming administration may not be willing to write rules to implement the new law.
Karakitsos served on the Republican side of the Senate environment committee since 2009, and as senior counsel since 2013, according to an Oct. 17 press release from Holland & Knight, the law firm where he is now a partner in the Public Policy & Regulation Practice Group. He does not appear to be a registered lobbyist, a designation that could keep him from serving in a Trump administration.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/transition-former-epw-counsel-backed-possible-toxics-chief
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Society Study Questions BPA, Endocrine Chemicals in Baby Teethers
Dec 8, 2016 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
A new study released by the American Chemical Society is raising questions about endocrine disrupting chemicals leaching at low levels from baby teethers, saying, for example, that it found bisphenol-A migrating from all 59 teethers studied even though many claimed to be BPA-free or non-toxic.
In response, the American Chemistry Council said the study provides little useful information, saying that the “extremely low” levels measured are well below government safety standards, and it questioned whether the BPA could come from contamination rather than the teethers themselves. (http://factsaboutbpa.org/bpa-baby-teething-products-cause-concern)
“We are not aware of any use for BPA or materials made from BPA being used in teethers,” the Washington-based ACC said.
The Dec. 7 study, published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology said that while baby bottles and drinking cups have been studied, little research has been done specifically on teethers and endocrine disrupting chemicals.
“Very few if any studies have investigated whether the compounds are used to make teethers and if the compounds leach out of these products, which are designed to soothe babies’ gums when their teeth come in,” the study said.
The study examined 59 solid, gel-filled or water-filled teethers purchased online in the United States, looking for 26 potential endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
The ACS study noted that it found that exposure to BPA and other regulated endocrine chemicals from the teethers would be lower than the European standards for a 1-year-old baby.
But it said that current government regulations don’t look at the cumulative impacts of exposure to multiple endocrine chemicals, and it said that some chemicals measured in its study are not regulated.
“The researchers say the findings could be used to develop appropriate policies to protect infants from exposure to potentially toxic chemicals found in teethers,” according to ACS, which is based in Washington.
The ACC, on the other hand, questioned the study.
“This study provides very little useful information for the parents of young children, as it focuses on the mere presence of chemicals, which parents should be reassured does not equate with harm,” ACC said. “All the chemicals studied here are shown to be at extremely low exposure levels and well-below government set safe levels.”
It said the maximum level of BPA found in the study is 100 to 1,000 times below limits set by the European Food Safety Authority.
ACC said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently published the results of a large-scale government-funded study demonstrating that low-dose exposure to BPA did not result in adverse health effects.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20161208/NEWS/161209866/chemical-society-study-questions-bpa-endocrine-chemicals-in-baby
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Real Reform Needed for Outdated Cosmetics Laws
Dec 8, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
Every day, people apply cosmetics and other personal care products to their skin and hair. The average American woman uses 12 personal care products a day, exposing herself to 168 different chemicals. The average man uses six products a day, containing 85 unique chemical ingredients.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has little authority to review the safetyof chemicals in cosmetics. Though some companies make products that are less hazardous, others choose to use troubling ingredients like coal tar and formaldehyde, both human carcinogens, and lead acetate, a developmental toxicant.
EWG created the Skin DeepⓇ cosmetics database to help shoppers identify the chemicals they are being exposed to through personal care products, and find healthier alternatives. We then took our research one step further, verifying cosmetics that meet our highest standards. When you see our EWG VERIFIED™ mark on personal care products, you know that these products are free of ingredients of concern, fully disclose their ingredients and use good manufacturing practices.
Until Congress updates the nation's severely outdated cosmetics laws, Americans will continue to be exposed to toxic and potentially harmful chemicals through their personal care products. Fortunately, bipartisan bills in the House and Senate would finally give the FDA the power to review risky chemicals in our personal care products.
In particular, legislation proposed by Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Leonard Lance, R-N.J., and by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, would require the FDA to start safety reviews of five cosmetics chemicals every year. Among the first five are chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive problems.
The bills would also require cosmetics companies to alert the FDA when their products harm consumers, and would give the FDA the power to stop production and order recalls if a company turns out to be a bad actor. These common-sense rules already apply to other FDA-regulated products like drugs, food and medical devices, as do rules giving the FDA access to company safety records and product ingredient information.
Most cosmetics companies support the bills, including Revlon, L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. But some Washington lobbyists who claim to represent small businesses are fighting real reform.
Instead, these lobbyists are pushing legislation that would actually make cosmetics less safe. Their proposal would not require cosmetics companies to ensure the safety of products and would even weaken FDA oversight of some personal care products that are now regulated as over-the-counter drugs.
But the Feinstein-Collins and Pallone-Lance bills both take steps to protect small businesses.
For example, cosmetics companies with less than $100,000 in annual sales would be largely exempt from the new law, and companies with less than $500,000 in annual sales would not pay fees to help finance expanded FDA oversight. What’s more, the bill provides small businesses with more time to comply with new safety rules.
No wonder growing companies like Juice Beauty and California Baby support the Feinstein-Collins and Pallone-Lance bills.
When Congress returns, members have a rare opportunity to finally update the badly outdated cosmetics safety laws. Most cosmetics companies – and the vast majority of consumers – say now is the time to act. We couldn’t agree more.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/12/real-reform-needed-outdated-cosmetics-laws
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Washington State Suing Agrochemical Giant over PCB Pollution
Dec 9, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Gene Johnson
Washington has become the first U.S. state to sue the agrochemical giant Monsanto over pervasive pollution from PCBs, the toxic industrial chemicals that have accumulated in plants, fish and people around the globe for decades. The company said the case “lacks merit.”
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in downtown Seattle Thursday, saying they expect to win hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars from the company.
“It is time to hold the sole U.S. manufacturer of PCBs accountable for the significant harm they have caused to our state,” Ferguson said, noting that the chemicals continue to imperil the health of protected salmon and orcas despite the tens of millions of dollars Washington has spent to clean up the pollution. “Monsanto produced PCBs for decades while hiding what they knew about the toxic chemicals’ harm to human health and the environment.”
PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used in many industrial and commercial applications, including in paint, coolants, sealants and hydraulic fluids. Monsanto, based in St. Louis, produced them from 1935 until Congress banned them in 1979.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, PCBs have been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer in animals as well as effects on the immune, nervous and reproductive systems.
Monsanto spokesman Scott S. Partridge said in a statement that the “case is experimental because it seeks to target a product manufacturer for selling a lawful and useful chemical four to eight decades ago that was applied by the U.S. government, Washington State, local cities, and industries into many products to make them safer. PCBs have not been produced in the U.S. for four decades, and Washington is now pursuing a case on a contingency fee basis that departs from settled law both in Washington and across the country. Most of the prior cases filed by the same contingency fee lawyers have been dismissed, and Monsanto believes this case similarly lacks merit.”
In response to a similar lawsuit filed last year by the city of Spokane, Washington, Monsanto said a previous incarnation of the company produced the PCBs, which it said “served an important fire protection and safety purpose.”
“PCBs sold at the time were a lawful and useful product that was then incorporated by third parties into other useful products,” Charla Lord, a company spokeswoman, wrote. “If improper disposal or other improper uses created the necessity for clean-up costs, then these other third parties would bear responsibility for these costs.”
Several other cities — including Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego, California — have also sued Monsanto over PCB pollution, the Attorney General’s Office said. Those cases are ongoing.
Ferguson, a Democrat, pointed to internal Monsanto documents that show the company long knew about the danger the chemicals posed. In 1937, an internal memo said testing on animals showed “systemic toxic effects” from prolonged exposure by inhaling PCB fumes or ingestion. In 1969, a company committee on PCBs noted, “There is too much customer/market need and selfishly too much Monsanto profit to go out.”
“There is little probability that any action that can be taken will prevent the growing incrimination of specific polychlorinated biphenyls ... as nearly global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish eating birds,” a committee memo said.
Nevertheless, Monsanto told officials around the country the contrary. In a letter to New Jersey’s Department of Conservation that year, Monsanto wrote, “Based on available data, manufacturing and use experience, we do not believe PCBs to be seriously toxic.”
Ferguson said that infuriated him. He noted that his great-grandparents settled along Washington’s Skagit River in the late 19th century. The Skagit was one of more than 100 water bodies in the state listed in the lawsuit as being polluted with PCBs.
“That river, the Skagit River, which my family depended on to a great degree in the 19th century as they homesteaded here, is now contaminated by PCBs, as are the fish,” he said. “That makes me mad.”
Ferguson said his office had been in touch with counterparts in other states, but it remained unclear if other states would follow Washington’s lead in suing the company.
Washington’s lawsuit seeks damages on several grounds, including product liability for what it described as Monsanto’s failure to warn about the danger of PCBs; negligence; and even trespass, for injuring the state’s natural resources.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/washington-state-suing-agrochemical-giant-over-pcb-pollution/2016/12/08/3fc40d5c-bda6-11e6-ae79-bec72d34f8c9_story.html?utm_term=.1f25fe852b93
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EPA Expects to Issue Seven Chemical, Pesticide Rulemakings
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency expects to soon publish seven proposed and final rules for chemicals and pesticides, a senior agency official told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 8.
“We are planning to wrap them all up by the end of this administration,” said Jim Jones, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention.
Jones said he expected the Office of Management and Budget, which is reviewing all seven proposed and final regulations, to clear them for release.
A regulation designed to tighten state licensing standards for pesticide applicators will be released any day, Jones said. He referred to a final rule (RIN:2070-AJ20) that would update the agency's 1974 certification requirements.
The pesticide applicators rule is not economically significant meaning Congress could not overturn it under the Congressional Review Act, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis.
No OMB Review
The OMB determined it didn't need to review an eighth rulemaking, Jones said.
That rule, required under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act, would propose a process chemical manufacturers would use to identify chemicals they have made during the last 10 years.
The EPA would use that information to update the TSCA inventory into two sections: a list of chemicals actively in commerce and a list of chemicals that previously were made or used in the U.S. Only chemicals listed on the active inventory could be made in or imported into the U.S.
As described in the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Pub. L. No. 114-182), which amended chemicals law, the EPA will propose to use a straightforward, simple process to update the chemical inventory, Jones said.
The agency expects to propose in January the inventory update and two other regulations required to implement the amended TSCA, Jones said.
The first of those two other rules (RIN:2070-AK23) would propose procedures the EPA would use to determine which chemicals are a high priority for risk evaluation and which are a low priority. The second (RIN: 2070-AK20) would propose the agency's risk evaluation procedures.
The other four rules Jones said he expects to release by mid-January:
• final rule (RIN:2070-AJ54) on reporting and recordkeeping requirements for nanoscale chemicals;
• proposed rule (RIN:2070-AK12) to reassess the authorized uses of polychlorinated biphenyls in aging school light fixtures;
• proposed rule (RIN:2070-AK11) to manage the health risks trichloroethylene poses when used for vapor degreasing; and
• proposed rule (RIN:2070-AK07) to manage health risks two solvents, n-methylpyrrolidone and methylene chloride, pose when used in paint and other coating strippers.
The final nanoscale chemicals rule isn't a major regulation, meaning it also wouldn't be subject to revocation by Congress through the Congressional Review Act.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101540298&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101540298&jd=101540298
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House Departure Seals Fate of Failed Energy Negotiations
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The House departure from Capitol Hill dealt the final blow to hopes for a large energy policy overhaul in the 114th Congress, exacting a fate that most lawmakers and advocates predicted for weeks—if not longer.
House members passed a critical water resources bill Dec. 8 and a continuing resolution to extend federal government spending into April, paving the way for that departure. The night before a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the chamber wouldn't act on energy this Congress.
Both Republicans and Democrats, along with an industry supporter, waxed upbeat, however, on the prospects of resuming the negotiations and passing an energy package early next Congress.
“I would definitely be supportive of doing a major energy initiative,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) told Bloomberg BNA following the House votes. “From the very beginning, I wanted to have an energy bill that had some significant funding to upgrade the electricity grid and also to upgrade improvements for pipelines.”
Pallone, a central player during recent negotiations to strike a last-minute deal, said the overhaul will likely align with President-elect Donald Trump's calls for major infrastructure boosts. The energy legislation (S. 2012) could have put in place a range of efficiency initiatives, including school, home and commercial building retrofitting as well as cybersecurity improvements.
Gas Export Priority
Provisions to expedite the Energy Department approval process for natural gas exports played a central role in the energy negotiation process, and that will likely continue to play a similar role next Congress, the current highest-ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Energy and Power Subcommittee, Pete Olson (R-Texas), told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 8.
“You got Trump in the White House man, got the Senate still, got the House. That's the best opportunity. Just get through these next couple weeks, come back in there, get going and fix our country,” he said. “That should just be right off the bat. I mean, that's American jobs, it's clean energy.”
Christopher Guith, senior vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, told Bloomberg BNA that language, which would mandate that the department approve or deny an application in a short window, will be valuable moving forward, albeit potentially less critical under a Trump Administration.
“It's probably still good to have it codified, and from an industry standpoint, that's a really big ticket item,” he told Bloomberg BNA. Trump and his surrogates have long prioritized regulatory ease, particularly regarding energy. The president-elect has yet to name a nominee to head the Energy Department.
Guith said a potential Obama Administration veto-threat forced Republicans to hedge their interest in an overhaul effort this Congress, arguing next year Republicans will pursue a more “aggressive” strategy supported by an energy-friendly White House.
“I have very, very high hopes that we see a much more robust comprehensive bill next congress,” Guith said. “The White House stymied a lot of what both the House and Senate wanted. That was limiting and demoralizing.”
Skepticism and Bitterness
A potential Senate conflict over continuing resolution concerns unrelated to energy are still threatening a government shutdown, leading some observers to believe the House will be coerced back to Capitol Hill in the coming days to find common ground on the funding measure.
Despite that ambiguity, more time on Capitol Hill will not open a window for energy negotiations, Athan Manuel, Sierra Club director of Lands Protection, told Bloomberg BNA. Manuel followed the bill closely in light of the inclusion of Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthoriztion.
Manuel said the environment next Congress may prove more difficult. “Democrats will play hardball next year considering they have no administration ally as a backstop,” he said. “This was the only window for the next two to four years.”
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) blasted House members on the Senate floor late Dec. 8. “It is really irresponsible for our House colleagues to drop the ball without considering these solutions,” she said. Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) the day before said only two unresolved issues remain.
“There is a clear path forward where [natural gas provisions] can be included in a final package alongside a breakthrough agreement on wildfire budgeting, timber management reforms, sportsmen's provisions, a west-wide water package, a robust public lands title, the National Parks Centennial, and important nuclear, cybersecurity, hydroelectric, and innovation policies,” she said Dec. 7 in a statement.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101540305&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101540305&jd=101540305
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US Oil Production Unlikely to Rise Much Through All of 2017: Hamm
Dec 8, 2016 | Platts
By Dave Ernsberger
US production of crude oil will take around 18 months to recover to the multi-decade highs seen in 2015, and total US production is unlikely to change much throughout 2017 from the current rate of around 8.6 million b/d, Harold Hamm, chairman and CEO of energy group Continental Resources, said Thursday.
Speaking at the S&P Global Platts Global Energy Outlook Forum in New York, Hamm said OPEC appeared to be targeting a crude oil price of between $50/b and $65/b, as part of its broad agreement to curtail production from 2017, and noted that WTI and Brent crude futures had been trading at around $55/b in recent days.
"At those prices it's going to be slow. You need about 18 months before you see some recovery [in US crude production] at $50-$55 oil," said Hamm. "I don't see it changing meaningfully from this year," he added, when asked where US production was likely to be at the end of 2017.US crude production fell dramatically after peaking at nearly 9.5 million b/d in early 2015, as US producers responded to sharply lower oil prices after OPEC decided in October 2014 not to restrain production from its members -- a decision that was reversed at a meeting in Algiers earlier this year.
The US Energy Information Administration forecast Tuesday that US crude production would average 8.86 million b/d in 2016, up 20,000 b/d from last month's forecast, and 8.78 million b/d in 2017, up 50,000 b/d from last month's prediction and 740,000 b/d higher than the Energy Information Administration's US supply forecast from April.http://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/newyork/us-oil-production-unlikely-to-rise-much-through-21288487
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Clean Energy ‘Moving Forward’ Despite Trump’s E.P.A. Pick, Experts Say
Dec 8, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice of a fossil-fuel advocate and climate-change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency comes at a moment when the American energy market has already shifted away from the most polluting fossil fuels, driven more by investors and economics than by federal regulations.
Those market forces could make Mr. Trump’s promise to create at least half a million energy jobs a year in the nation’s coal mines and oil shale fields all but impossible.
But if Mr. Trump’s promised jobs are unlikely to materialize, the impact on the planet from his policies would be significant. Without additional government policies, energy and environmental experts say, the shift from coal, oil and natural gas will not be rapid or substantial enough to stave off the worst impacts of a warming atmosphere, including rising sea levels, more powerful storms, more devastating droughts and food and water shortages.
“The good news is that on its own, the U.S. economy has become less carbon intensive, and that trend will continue overall,” said Robert N. Stavins, the director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. The bad news, he said, is that markets alone will not lower emissions enough to offset the worst impacts of global warming.
President Obama’s Clean Power Plan was already criticized for not doing enough. Even if the plan was implemented, it would not reach the targets set under last year’s Paris climate change accord, which committed nearly every country to take action to curb global warming. The targets “will be unachievable,” Mr. Stavins said.
Mr. Trump formally tapped Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, to head his E.P.A. on Thursday, with an announcement on Facebook that emphasized job creation and energy production over environmental protection.
“Mr. Pruitt will be deeply involved in the implementation of President-elect Trump’s energy plan, which will move America toward energy independence, create millions of new jobs and protect clean air and water,” the statement said. “Mr. Pruitt will ensure that we conserve our natural habitats, reserves and resources, while unleashing an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.”
That rebalancing of priorities, the president-elect said, will create “at least a half million jobs each year” and “$30 billion in higher wages.”
The irony of Mr. Pruitt’s zeal to target President Obama’s climate change and environmental rules, which focus on reducing carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, is that many of the nation’s largest electric utilities — the entities that would be regulated under the plan — have already begun plans to shutter coal plants and build new wind and solar farms.
Even the chief executives of coal companies agree that Mr. Pruitt can only do so much to restore the industry.
Mr. Pruitt “is going to do what needs to be done at the E.P.A. — to cut the numbers of bureaucrats there who have done nothing but write regulations daily, and send them back to the radical environmentalists who wrote them,” said Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of the Ohio-based Murray Energy Corporation.
However, he added, “Coal can’t come back to where it was.”
The plummeting cost of wind and solar energy, helped along by federal tax incentives, has led to a boom in the use of such “no-carbon” power sources. And the nation’s largest electric utilities, many of which have joined Mr. Pruitt in his lawsuit against the climate regulations, have at the same time realigned their long-term investment strategies.
Nicholas Akins, chief executive officer of American Electric Power, an Ohio-based electric utility that generates power in 11 states, said in an interview shortly after Election Day that his company is making investments in energy generation aimed at 20, 30 and 40 years from now. Whether or not Mr. Trump dismantles the Clean Power Plan, he said he assumes that in the long run, carbon pollution will eventually be regulated.
“Clean Power Plan or not, there will be something in the future on carbon control. So there’s no question that the industry is moving forward with cleaner energy,” he said. “We will not be building large coal facilities. We’re not stopping what we’re doing based on the new administration. We need to make long-term capital decisions. I don’t think the course will change.”
But company-driven shifts alone will still not be enough to create the steep drop-off in carbon pollution that scientists say is necessary. The use of wind power grew by more than 100 percent between 2010 and the end of 2015, while the use of large-scale solar grew by more than 20 times in that same period, according to the Energy Information Administration. But renewable sources, excluding hydroelectric power, still only represent a small fraction of the American energy economy, providing just a little more than 7 percent of the country’s electricity.
Carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007 at six billion metric tons, declining slightly to 5.4 billion metric tons by 2014. But they would need to decline to about 4.8 billion metric tons annually by 2025 and 1.2 billion metric tons annually by 2050 if the United States is to meet its pledges under the Paris accord.
“To get there would require reducing emissions about 5 percent per year over the next decade. In order to reduce that fast, we would need to be avoiding new fossil fuel infrastructure and actively shutting down old fossil fuel infrastructure before the end of its natural life,” said Andrew Jones, the director of Climate Interactive, a research firm. “That’s not possible without aggressive federal policy.”
At the same time, analysts are skeptical that Mr. Trump’s efforts to roll back the climate change rules would bring back the tens of thousands of mining jobs that have been lost in the market shift away from coal, let alone create large numbers of new jobs. Electric utilities like American Electric Power turned away from investing in coal largely because of the glut of cheap natural gas, thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
“The market defines the opportunities for coal,” said Kevin Book, an analyst with ClearView Energy Partners, a nonpartisan research firm. “Electric utilities that have shut down coal plants are not going to reopen them. Mines that have been mothballed because they are not economic are not going to be taken out of mothballs.”
He said coal could at least remain a part of America’s energy mix if Mr. Pruitt made headway in removing cumbersome regulations — and if he could successfully strip away subsidies for renewables. Last year, the federal government paid out $2.2 billion in tax incentives to the industry and $1 billion to the solar industry. The wind incentive is set to start declining in value next year until it ends in 2020, while the investment credit for solar is to phase out between 2019 and 2022.
“We’re paying taxes to manufacture windmills. You give me billions of dollars, and I’ll create jobs,” Mr. Murray, the coal company executive, said.
But despite the opposition of the coal industry and incoming administration to climate change policy, the tax incentives, which have been enacted by Congress in both Democratic and Republican majorities for over a decade, are unlikely to disappear. Among their greatest beneficiaries are the windswept, sun-soaked districts in Republican strongholds like Kansas, Texas and Arizona, and Rust Belt districts that manufacture wind turbinesand solar panels.
“I don’t see those renewable tax incentives going away anytime soon,” Mr. Book said. “Voters in many of these Trump districts are benefiting from them.”
Hiroko Tabuchi, Diane Cardwell and Clifford Krauss contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/trump-climate-epa-coal-jobs.html?action=click&contentCollection=World&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
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An Opportunity to Return Balance to Energy Policy
Dec 8, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Craig Richardson
America needs to develop its natural resources within a framework of policies that protect the Earth through wise stewardship of the land. While the past eight years have yielded a windfall of policies, there has been little wisdom attached to them.
Take for example the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plant (CPP) rule. Enacted by executive authority alone and now awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling as to its validity, it is purported to address climate change. The CPP would cost the energy industry between $41 billion and $73 billion per year, according to economic consulting firm NERA. Ultimately, it is consumers who would bear the compliance costs in the form of higher electricity rates, which would include double-digit price hikes in 41 states, with 28 states potentially facing peak year electricity price increases of at least 20 percent.
Despite the costs, the Obama administration’s own EPA projects that by the year 2100 – a full 83 years away – the rule will have prevented just 0.019 degrees Celsius of additional warming. That calculated temperature difference is so tiny that there’s not even a way to actually measure it. In other words, it wouldn’t save a single life, let alone save the planet.
Coercive government policies that are effectively forcing energy companies to generate a greater share of electricity from more expensive “renewable sources” are causing more Americans to spend 10 percent or more of their income on household utilities – a situation known as “green energy poverty.”
In California, where disastrous renewable energy mandates were championed by billionaire Tom Steyer, an estimated one million householdsnow live in green energy poverty, with minorities the most severely impacted. Golden State electricity prices are about 40 percent higher than the national average, and the overall poverty rate tops the nation and is now 50 percent higher than Mississippi. If California has one saving grace, it is that generally moderate temperatures protect its residents from even greater suffering. But in Europe, which is years farther down the road with renewable energy mandates, 40,000 people died from winter weather in 2014 because millions of people were no longer able to pay their electricity bill.
Since the election, the outgoing administration blocked new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and denied an easement necessary for the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue (after previously approving it) and is unleashing a torrent of “midnight” regulations. A new set of rules on natural gas flaring is another case in point. With a $1.4 billion price tag, the regulation makes extracting natural gas more expensive, which does nothing to help consumers and even the EPA found emissions from shale gas drilling fell 81 percent from 2012 to 2014. According to the Bureau of Land Management, the rules would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a statistically insignificant 0.0092 percent.
As EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told her employees, the agency is “running—not walking–through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency.” Yet, there is considerable reason for optimism. Even if it survives the legal challenge, CPP and many of the most onerous Obama regulations may be reversed by means of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) over the next few months.
With the incoming Congress and Donald Trump naming Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, there is an opportunity to harness the power of the market combined with safe technologies to develop natural resources and lift the American economy, including families left behind during the slow economic recovery of the previous administration and return that authority to state and local officials where it belongs.
A more balanced policy approach would take advantage of America’s energy abundance to create jobs, restore the balance of trade and rebuild the economy. At the same time, policies could provide innovative solutions that create incentives to reduce pollution and protect the environment concretely rather than symbolically. Time will tell whether we can achieve meaningful and lasting regulatory reform, but at least America now has the opportunity to rebalance its energy policies in ways that actually make sense for a change.
Craig Richardson is the president of The Energy & Environment Legal Institute.
http://www.thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/309495-an-opportunity-to-return-balance-to-energy-policy
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Pennsylvania DEP Appeals Court Ruling to Stay Some New Shale Regs
Dec 8, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has appealed the state Commonwealth Court's decision last month to temporarily stay parts of the agency's regulatory overhaul for shale producers so it may consider a lawsuit filed by the industry.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) filed its lawsuit in October, seeking declaratory judgment that sections of the regulatory package are unlawful. It also filed an application for summary relief and expedited review, asking the court to stay sections it is challenging until the legality of the provisions are decided. In an order granting preliminary injunctive relief last month, Judge P. Kevin Brobson enjoined the DEP from implementing some of the regulations, finding that they could cause irreparable harm to MSC members and may exceed the agency's authority.
"These regulations establish basic protections for areas that could be impacted by unconventional drilling -- places like schools, playgrounds and other public resources," said Acting DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell on Tuesday after the appeal was filed. "These commonsense regulations were the result of five years of public participation, including dozens of meetings with natural gas industry leaders and trade groups, as well as nearly 25,000 Pennsylvanians who made their voices heard by providing public comments."
In its appeal, the DEP questioned whether the court erred in issuing the stay because some of the legal standards for it might not have been met. During a hearing in October on its request to stay the sections, the MSC argued against them but did not call any witnesses. The organization has argued that the rules being challenged are unlawful, burdensome and costly.
DEP began drafting the regulations about five years ago and were supposed to take effect Oct. 8. However, less than a week after they were to take effect, the MSC filed its lawsuit. The new rules are designed to reduce impacts on public resources, such as schools and parks, help prevent spills, strengthen waste management and require stronger well site restoration.
The court, which has not scheduled when it will hear the merits of the lawsuit, stayed a section of the rules in its entirety that would require more stringent well site restoration standards. It also stayed one to require existing impoundments be closed or upgraded within 12 months.
Also enjoined is part of the public resources protection provision that would require operators to conduct a review of the impacts drilling would have on parks, forests, rivers, national landmarks, schools and drinking water protection areas. The court stayed those regulations for schools, playgrounds and species of special concern. It also enjoined rules that would require operators to monitor and remediate damage to wells owned by other companies or those without an owner.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108665-pennsylvania-dep-appeals-court-ruling-to-stay-some-new-shale-regs
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Dec 8, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Editorial Board
Among the many doomsday scenarios floated by the climate-change lobby is a theory that asks: What if an abrupt change in policy strands fossil-fuel resources in the ground, which in turn crashes oil companies and then the global economy? IHS consulting recently released a rebuttal to this “carbon bubble” babble, and the dismantling deserves more attention.
Daniel Yergin and Elena Pravettoni of IHS looked at whether oil and gas assets pose a “systemic risk” to the world financial system, a danger floated by more than a few regulators. No less than Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned in 2015 that limits on carbon could crater asset valuations and “potentially destabilize markets,” as the damage rippled through insurers and banks with portfolios in oil.
Not so much, says IHS. Oil-and-gas companies are not going belly up in an event similar to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. One reason is that about 80% of the value of most publicly traded oil companies is derived from “proved reserves,” which are projects that will happen within a decade or so. In other words, companies aren’t assuming as assets every drop of oil in the ground that they may or may not be able to develop.
Regardless of forced carbon reductions or temperature spikes, the switch to alternative fuels will take decades. For some perspective, the authors note that the oil industry started up in 1859 but did not overtake coal as the world’s largest energy source for about a century. Barring some technological breakthrough, no one expects oil to be a minority source of energy before 2050. Financial markets and insurance contracts can manage risks as they evolve year-to-year or even day-to-day.
Perhaps the strongest evidence that oil companies won’t blow up the world economy is that they’ve been stress-tested by the recent crash in commodity prices. Some 82 global oil companies burned off 42% of their value between June 2014 and December 2015, or about $1.4 trillion in market capitalization. Yet the report notes that since oil dipped below $100 a barrel in 2014, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 6%.
The panic over climate risk is really a pretext for more regulation. Mr. Carney chairs the Financial Stability Board, an international outfit that exists to flag financial risks and offer itself as the answer. An FSB task force later this month will deliver “guidelines for voluntary disclosure” that could cover assets and risk practices for oil companies as well as their investors. The report will likely be submitted to major country financial ministers for approval.
Mr. Carney and the FSB are playing to climate activists, who want to use such disclosure as ammunition to pound pension and other investment funds to divest from fossil-fuel companies. Mr. Carney has also highlighted the climate-change free-speech probe led by New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which is based on flimsier evidence than even Mr. Carney’s conjectures.
The real financial risks are from Mr. Carney’s attempt to turn certain kinds of legal investments into political targets. The political allocation of capital into housing was one of the root causes of the 2008 panic. Let’s not politicize energy investing in the same way.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/not-so-risky-climate-business-1481243362
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Officials Pressing Congress, Trump To Roll Back EPA's RMP Rule
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Industry officials are urging lawmakers and representatives of President-elect Donald Trump to block EPA's pending rule strengthening its industrial facility safety regulation, using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) or other means, arguing that the agency has failed to justify the proposed rule's costly and unnecessary new requirements.
One source says that industry officials reached out to Trump's representatives last week, urging the incoming administration to halt implementation of the final Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule. Potential means of rolling back the controversial regulation could include a resolution of disapproval under the CRA or postponing the implementation dates, the source says.
“Our view is that the existing RMP is very robust and protective” of communities, the source says. “To us, EPA has not made the case as to why these changes are necessary.”
White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials are currently reviewing a draft version of EPA's final rule overhauling the agency's RMP facility accident prevention regulation, which is expected to add new auditing and hazard analysis requirements for certain facilities, among other changes.
The rule stems from President Obama's 2013 executive order on improving facility safety issued after an explosion at a fertilizer facility that year killed 15 people including first responders. Industry officials and safety advocates last month raised competing concerns with OMB, with advocates seeking a strong rule, and industry faulting the proposal.
Industry sources say they are raising concerns about the rule in meetings on Capitol Hill, as well as with the incoming Trump administration, arguing that EPA's proposed rule would increase costs without significantly improving safety.
“We've already raised some concerns, trying to get Congress to overturn it through the Congressional Review Act,” an agricultural industry source says. “We're all for making sure there's common sense regulations, but the current RMP program has worked well, and is not in need of overhaul.”
The source acknowledged that the CRA is seldom successfully used, but said there is a friendlier environment for such an effort, given Trump's election and Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Under the CRA, Congress can approve -- and the president must sign -- disapproval resolutions on simple majority votes in the House and Senate to reverse discretionary rules promulgated within 60 legislative days of their actions. But the resolutions generally overturn the instant action and bar the executive branch from issuing similar measures, meaning they can have far-ranging consequences.
Currently, the RMP program authorized under section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act requires companies to craft a plan to submit to the agency that outlines how they will reduce risks from releases. EPA's proposed rule would require certain facilities to consider safer chemicals or processes, conduct third party audits after a reportable release, and increase data sharing between facilities and communities, among other changes.
Despite the threat of CRA reversal, environmental, labor and environmental justice representatives met with OMB last month and pressed for a strong rule. Advocates have also said that rolling back a regulation that undermines facility safety may be an unattractive prospect for the new administration, given Republicans' claims they are strong on security.
The agricultural industry source says there has been bipartisan pushback to the RMP rule from agricultural states.
Industry Pushback
Both industry sources say the objections raised to lawmakers and Trump officials mirror long-standing industry pushback against the proposed rule. In a Nov. 29 letter to Howard Shelanski, administrator of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), more than two dozen industry groups argued that EPA has failed to adequately assess the costs and benefits of the rule, and that it should be remanded to the agency for reconsideration.
The letter from groups, including the American Chemistry Council, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that EPA is rushing to complete the rule, paying short shrift to required analysis of the rule's costs and benefits, and potentially to critical industry comments.
Additionally, the groups argued that EPA disregarded small business concerns included in a federal Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act review conducted prior to the March proposal, and urged OIRA to scrutinize EPA’s Regulatory Impact Analysis and its evaluation of the rule's projected benefits.
Given those actions, the agricultural industry source says it is unlikely that OMB and EPA will sufficiently revise the proposed rule prior to release of the final version, so the industry push to block the measure is likely to continue.
“If you follow the path of what they have already done,” the source says, “I doubt there will be significant revisions to the final rule.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/industry-officials-pressing-congress-trump-roll-back-epas-rmp-rule
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GOP Team Looks for Ways to Deploy Congressional Review Act
Dec 8, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who will lead the Environment and Public Works Committee next year, said today that Republicans are assembling a team to figure out how to use the Congressional Review Act to roll back federal regulations.
The CRA is a 20-year-old legislative tool that has seldom been used. It allows Congress to quickly review and nix new federal agency regulations. Once a rule is proposed, Congress has 60 days to disapprove it. The resolution must also be signed by the president.
Outgoing Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) confirmed last week that GOP lawmakers intend to use the CRA to kill a slate of environmental regulations finalized at the end of President Obama's term, including standards limiting methane emissions from the natural gas industry (Climatewire, Nov. 30).
Barrasso said the GOP team will also look at ways to address Obama administration executive orders, along with other regulatory vehicles.
"President Obama said he had a pen and a phone, so there are a lot of executive actions that could be reversed by the next president, the new president," Barrasso told E&E News.
"So there's a whole team putting together, what do you do with the Congressional Review Act? What do you do with executive actions? And what do you do with regulations that have gone through the process, but the new administration just interprets differently?" he said.
Barrasso pointed out that with a Republican-controlled Congress and White House, certain laws can be interpreted differently.
"So there may be new regulations coming out with a Republican view of what the law actually means as opposed to how the Obama administration [interpreted it]. And then you can actually change the law by writing new laws," he said.
Because there is a time limit on using the CRA, Barrasso said lawmakers are looking into which regulations are subject to it.
"We want to see what's completely in — also, we want to see what else comes out," he said.
Last week, 22 senators, including Barrasso, sent a letter to Obama asking him to stop all non-emergency rules and regulations in the final weeks of his term (Greenwire, Dec. 5).
The lawmakers mentioned the Waters of the U.S. rule, which they said unfairly burdens farmers and ranchers. They also pointed to rules affecting the coal industry, which they said are eliminating thousands of jobs and driving up energy costs for households.
Republicans have vowed to make rolling back federal regulations a high priority in the next Congress.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/12/08/stories/1060046906
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Obama's Mighty EPA Falls into Pruitt's Hands
Dec 8, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia and Alex Guillen
President Barack Obama leaned hard on the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out his climate agenda, bypassing a Congress that had refused to act.
As a result, President-elect Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt will have sweeping power to turn back the clock.
Pruitt, Trump's choice for EPA administrator, is expected to begin attacking Obama’s environmental legacy using courtroom drama, foot-dragging and an upending of how EPA treats the scientific consensus on climate change. But one key to his success will be the same heavy reliance on executive action that Obama employed so aggressively in his second term.
Republicans have long contended that Obama overstepped his powers, accusing him of misusing obscure provisions of laws such as the Clean Air Act to claim authority over wide swaths of the U.S. economy. But in effect, Obama has offered a perfect blueprint for Trump and Pruitt, who would have a much harder time undoing his legacy if the Democratic Congress had passed global warming legislation in 2009 or 2010.
Pruitt is expected to take especially quick aim at Obama’s signature climate regulation, known as the Clean Power Plan, a suite of limits on power plants' greenhouse gas pollution that is awaiting a crucial ruling from a federal appellate court. Pruitt has been one of the leading challengers against that and other EPA regulations in his role as Oklahoma's attorney general.
“It’s the end of the EPA’s climate agenda,” conceded David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club’s former chief climate counsel. “The Clean Power Plan is dead. Let’s just forget it.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said EPA’s critics should expect Pruitt to be an aggressive champion for their cause.
“As attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt has spent years being ignored and pushed around by Washington,” Lee told a gathering Thursday at the Heritage Foundation. “He knows the kind of dangerous bureaucratic mindset he’s up against.”
While the entirety of Pruitt’s agenda is unclear, he could also chip away at the agency’s efforts to slash carbon pollution from oil and gas operations, airplanes, cars and trucks.
Current and former Obama administration officials are still reeling over Trump’s selection of Pruitt, worrying that years of work could be undone. “All the things that I’ve done in my life that I feel most professionally proud of are going to be blown up in one shape or form,” one former senior administration official said.
Still, administration officials express few regrets over Obama’s executive-action approach, even if it made his accomplishments more vulnerable to Trump’s attacks. They said the Republican-controlled Congress could have killed a climate bill as well.
“Even if we passed climate legislation, it could go the same way that [Obama’s health care law] is going,” said Heather Zichal, Obama’s former top energy and climate adviser. “Nothing is sacred when you have these kinds of people running the agencies.”
Environmentalists promise to fight in court against any backsliding from Obama’s agenda — but they also point to scientists’ warnings that time is running short to forestall the most catastrophic damage from global warming. They said the harm from Pruitt’s actions would be compounded if Trump pulls the U.S. out of last year’s Paris climate agreement, giving other countries cover to follow suit.
“What you lose is the most precious quantity you have in the battle against climate change, which is time,” said David Doniger, director of the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We’re deep into overtime already.”
Pruitt would come to the job with a track record as one of the leading litigators against the agency in recent years. He has at least seven ongoing lawsuits against the agency, including cases involving its rules on power plants, smog-creating ozone and Clean Water Act protections for wetlands and waterways.
His stock in Trump World rose after several conversations with investor Carl Icahn, who played a central role in vetting Trump's EPA contenders. Icahn came away from the conversations believing that Pruitt is open to changing an obscure part of EPA's ethanol rule that the oil refinery-owning investor had been railing against for months.
Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who led the agency during President George W. Bush’s first term, expressed deep skepticism about Pruitt's coming reign.
“I haven’t seen a whole lot from him that indicates a real belief in the mission of the agency, since he’s sued it on just about everything,” she said. She added: “He seems to be skeptical of science, period.”
Indeed, one target that has environmentalists worried is EPA’s treatment of climate change science itself.
EPA issued a scientific conclusion in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, providing a necessary precursor for the agency’s subsequent rules targeting carbon dioxide. But Trump has promised to review that so-called endangerment finding.
Both Trump and Pruitt have questioned the science on man-made climate change, which Trump famously said on Twitter had been “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Pruitt maintains that significant disagreement exists among scientists over the cause and consequences of global warming, even though the vast majority of climate researchers say the consensus is overwhelming.
It’s not clear that reversing EPA’s scientific judgment would hold up in court, and even Republicans privately question whether challenging it is a wise political strategy. But litigation over the matter could take years, putting EPA climate action on the back-burner for some time.
Other ripe targets include regulations that are embroiled in court challenges, including the Clean Power Plan, which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals could rule on at any time. Regulations in earlier stages of their legal battles include greenhouse gas limits for new power plants, a “Waters of the United States” rule facing fierce attacks from the farming, oil and development industries, and a new standard for smog.
Pruitt could ask the courts to send those rules back to the agency for reworking. Obama used that strategy when he took office, opting not to defend several Bush administration environmental rules that were tied up in the courts and then working to undo them.
“I wouldn’t be surprise if we saw something similar here,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former Bush EPA official whom Trump’s transition team had considered to lead the agency.
Pruitt would have an even easier time revising the regulations if the courts strike them down first. Then he could either change the agency’s course or decide against regulating altogether.
Any changes to the regulations would require EPA to spend years wending through the typical rulemaking process, and most likely would face new lawsuits from supporters of the Obama versions — for example, from environmental groups or states like California or New York.
Pruitt would also play a major role in what happens to big-ticket regulations that are now in the works. Those include a review of car emissions standards for the 2022-25 model years, which EPA set four years ago with a final average target of 54.5 miles per gallon. The agency proposed keeping those goals unchanged last month, despite pleas from automakers to loosen them, but it has until April 2018 to make a final decision.
Other upcoming EPA actions include limits on carbon emissions from aircraft, rules to ensure that hard-rock miners and other industries can pay for environmental cleanups, and regularly scheduled reviews of key national air quality standards.
Some important Obama-era regulations are well beyond Pruitt’s ability to roll back easily, however. Those include a first-term rule targeting pollution that drifts across state lines, an update to the standards for acid-rain-creating sulfur dioxide and a rule limiting cars’ and trucks’ air pollution through 2021. While Pruitt and other state attorneys general are still in court with EPA over a rule limiting mercury emissions from power plants, that rule has already taken total effect, forcing shutdowns of some of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest coal plants.
More broadly, experts believe that the United States’ emissions trajectory won’t dramatically change in the short term, even if Pruitt abandons the Clean Power Plan. Market conditions are causing widespread switching in the power sector from carbon-heavy coal to natural gas — and federal tax credits paired with state-level policies will continue to encourage development of wind and solar energy.
Still, climate advocates can’t help imagining an alternative universe in which a President Hillary Clinton had gotten to follow through on her pledges to build on Obama’s climate agenda. Environmentalists had planned to press her to crack down on methane pollution from existing oil and gas operations, and perhaps on greenhouse gases from refineries and agriculture.
“There will be no further progress,” Bookbinder said. “I think the real difference will not be between Obama and Trump, but between Trump and what Hillary Clinton would have done.”
Eric Wolff contributed to this report.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/12/obamas-mighty-epa-falls-into-pruitts-hands-139930
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Pruitt, Trump’s EPA Pick, Has Both Sides of Climate Divide Girding for a Major Fight
Dec 8, 2016 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
Two years ago, at an event convened by the conservative Federalist Society, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt joked about a competition of sorts he had going with the Texas attorney general over the Environmental Protection Agency.
“When I came into office, I think he had roughly 13 lawsuits against the EPA,” Pruitt told the audience. “I’m trying to catch up — we only have, I think, six or seven.”
Pruitt indeed spent much of his tenure as state attorney general attacking the federal agency he now is nominated to head, going so far as to describe himself as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Along the way, he spearheaded a coalition of state attorneys general in their legal challenge to EPA’s Clean Power Plan, Obama’s key policy aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He also sued over the EPA’s attempts to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector.
But should the 48-year-old lawyer end up at the helm of the EPA, he is likely to find himself on the receiving end of a cascade of litigation from environmental and public health groups intent on protecting Obama-era antipollution measures and ensuring that the agency lives up to its mission of safeguarding the air Americans breathe and the water they drink.
“We definitely plan to fight any rollback or any attacks on our bedrock environmental laws. We think that the courts will be the last line of defense if advocacy doesn’t work,” said Lisa Garcia, vice president of litigation for Earthjustice, which employs more than 100 lawyers across the country.
Though President-elect Donald Trump and Pruitt are intent on pulling back the EPA’s authority and putting more power in the hands of states, Garcia noted that key environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed with bipartisan support and require the agency to enforce violations that put Americans at risk.
“We’re ready to make sure these laws are adhered to and that the EPA follows its obligations and its mission,” she said. “We’re ready for that fight.”
ruitt himself seems prepared for just such a fight.
“The greatest opportunity that we have heading into this new administration…is to provide certainty to business industries across this country,” he said in an interview last month with radio host John Catsimatidis. “When you look at the EPA, and the role that it’s played over the last several years, there’s going to be substantial change in that agency. There’s going to be a regulatory rollback.”
When it comes to reversing the Obama administration’s environmental policies and substantially altering the EPA’s reach, Pruitt “can do a fair amount,” said Tom McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on environmental and regulatory law. “He will be moving against institutional inertia, no question about that, but the civil servants in EPA are going to try to do what the boss tells them to do.”
A key factor will be whether Pruitt appoints high-level staff who know the agency well and are able to get his mandates carried out. But, McGarity added, he will be less successful if he fails to change the institution from within and merely attacks it — as he has done during his tenure in Oklahoma. A case in point: Ronald Reagan’s controversial EPA administrator during his first term.
“The last time we had somebody who really came in with a mandate to turn things around was . . . Anne Gorsuch, and she really wasn’t able to do it because she was fairly arrogant about it,” McGarity said. “She made some very bad appointments and, ultimately, wound up in a lot of scandal.”
David Doniger, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that while Pruitt’s appointment puts the environmental community very much on the defensive, the detailed nature of the process that the EPA must follow to create new regulations, or reverse existing ones, makes it difficult to roll back much of what the Obama administration has done. It also provides opportunities for green groups to resist in the courts.
“We are going to be vigilant about making sure that every step in the administrative process is respected, and if they try to shortcut things — by suspending regulations, suspending public health safeguards without due process — we will take them to court right away,” Doniger said.
Before Pruitt can set about the work of scaling back both the EPA and Obama environmental regulations that he has called harmful to U.S. businesses, he first has to get through the Senate confirmation process. While the Republican majority probably will assure his confirmation, he’s certain to face criticism and harsh questioning from Democratic lawmakers, who have denounced him as a mouthpiece of the fossil fuel industry and yet another potential Trump Cabinet member who has questioned the scientific consensus around climate change.
“This is a full-fledged environmental emergency,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said on a call with reporters Thursday. Schatz pledged a pitched confirmation fight and promised that colleagues who support Pruitt will have to explain themselves when it comes to the science of climate change. “This is going to be a litmus test for every member of the Senate who claims not to be a denier.”
Of course, those who share Pruitt’s long-held views about federal government overreach have welcomed his appointment.
Sen. James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has long cast doubt on climate-change science, wrote on Facebook that Pruitt “has demonstrated that he is an expert on environmental laws and a champion of states’ roles in implementing those laws.” Greg Abbott, former Texas attorney general and now the governor, tweeted that “Pruitt is excellent choice for EPA. He & I teamed up on many lawsuits against the EPA. He’ll bring needed change.”
On that spring day in 2014, Pruitt himself made no secret of his disdain for the EPA’s approach to regulation.
“This dictatorial attitude, that says so long as you agree with us then everything is kosher and everything is okay, is exactly the opposite of what Congress has said repeatedly [is] the role of the states,” he said. “The states have a meaningful role. It’s not an administrative role. The states are not a vessel to carry out the desires of EPA. The states are actually there to make important decisions, balancing factors between industry and consumers and meeting the obligations of air and water quality in their respective states.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/08/pruitt-trumps-epa-pick-has-both-sides-of-climate-divide-girding-for-a-major-fight/?utm_term=.8124dd9f26ef
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EPA Scrambles to Set Deadlines for Dozens of Overdue State Air Plans
Dec 8, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA intends to set a series of deadlines by January 19 for the agency to act on dozens of overdue or unapproved Clean Air Act state implementation plans (SIPs) for addressing ozone, as the agency scrambles before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit brought by environmentalists over the plans.
In a Federal Register notice slated for publication Dec. 9, EPA announces a 30-day public comment period on its proposed consent decree on the SIPs. The decree, once final, will require EPA to set a series of deadlines for agency action on SIPs, and settle litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), et al. v. EPA.
The agreement may be one of the last such settlements under the Obama EPA to resolve environmentalists' lawsuits brought over delayed agency action on SIPs.
Industry groups and Republican officials, including Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who Trump plans to nominate to lead EPA, have complained that industry has been excluded from such lawsuits under “sue-and-settle” tactics adopted by environmental groups, which can set deadlines for the agency to issue substantive national rules.
For example, Pruitt told Inside EPA in 2013 that he was not seeking to bar environmentalists from bringing such suits but was concerned that EPA and environmentalists were using the practice in an “abusive fashion” to approve regulations outside of the traditional process.
“The best antidote is to make sure it's not what we fear it is, the equivalent of the friendly lawsuit,” Pruitt said. “That's something that, if it is occurring, it definitely needs to be addressed,” he said at the time.
Environmentalists respond, however, that “sue-and-settle” is a meaningless term intended to disparage their legitimate attempts to enforce the existing law under the Clean Air Act's citizen suit provisions.
SIP Deadlines
The action will also provide an early test for Pruitt, who has challenged a host of EPA measures that imposed emissions limits and other requirements on states. Pruitt and the incoming Trump administration is also widely expected to afford states more discretion in their SIP planning, and its approach to deadline suits over late SIP submittals or responses is therefore in question.
In this case, EPA will be setting deadlines for the agency to impose federal requirements on states have failed to take steps to comply with federal ozone standards.
A finding by EPA that states have failed to submit SIPs by applicable air law deadlines, or EPA disapproval of SIPs as inadequate, triggers a two-year clock for EPA to instead impose a federal implementation plan (FIP) containing the required measures. States can also face losing federal highway funding if they do not take the steps prescribed by the air law to meet federal air standards.
The proposed decree sets a Jan. 19 deadline for EPA to issue “findings of failure to submit” SIPs or SIP components for attainment of the 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion (ppb) for multiple states, and also the older ozone NAAQS expressed as 84 ppb that dates from 1997. EPA has since issued a tougher ozone NAAQS of 70 ppb, which has yet to be implemented, and also proposed to revoke the 1997 NAAQS.
Areas affected are located in California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
Further, EPA under the decree agrees to remedy by a series of different deadlines in 2017 and 2018 its failure to take final action to approve or disapprove SIPs that states did submit. States with areas in this situation include California, Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-scrambles-set-deadlines-dozens-overdue-state-air-plans
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Companies on Climate: Trump or No, Still Cutting Emissions
Dec 9, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Bradley Olson and Cassandra Sweet
Many big corporations continue to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions, vowing to stay the course despite the election of Donald Trump, who has promised to dismantle the Obama administration’s climate agenda and this week chose a global-warming skeptic to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
From Houston to Silicon Valley, executives in the oil, power, retail, transportation and technology industries said their companies were locked into a lower-emissions trajectory driven in part by market forces, such as cheaper prices for natural gas and wind power.
Expectations from investors, activists and customers are also factors, along with pressure from regulators in states and other countries, they added.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump called climate change a “hoax” and promised to abandon an international pact reached last year in Paris to reduce carbon emissions. He also pledged to repeal the Clean Power Plan, an Obama administration rule which aims to cut carbon emissions from power plants 32% by 2030.
On Wednesday, the president-elect selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, an ardent critic of Obama administration regulations, as his EPA head.
Mr. Trump had promised in an interview since his election to “keep an open mind” on the climate issue and met Monday in New York with former Vice President Al Gore, a leading climate activist.
While many companies shared their positions with The Wall Street Journal on climate regulations before Mr. Pruitt’s selection, several reached again afterward, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc., said their stance remained unchanged.
“Part of our plan to invest in renewables is to diversify our generation portfolio,” saidMelissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for utility American Electric Power Co. “All of those investments don’t change with a change in administration, it’s a long-term strategy.”
While the question of how and whether to respond to warming global temperatures continues to be debated in politics, especially among Republicans, many big corporations appear to see the transition to less carbon-intensive energy as a foregone conclusion—and ultimately good for business. Companies world-wide committed a record $285 billion to clean energy projects in 2015, according to a study by the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.
Days after the Nov. 8 U.S. election, Exxon MobilCorp. signaled its continued support for the Paris climate deal. Suzanne McCarron, Exxon’s vice president of public and government affairs, said on Twitter that the agreement was “an important step forward by governments in addressing the serious risks of #ClimateChange.”
Exxon this year lobbied other energy companies to support a carbon tax and to avoid a posture of opposing all regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. Large European oil companies have also pushed for a global price on carbon.
Big utilities that burn coal such as AEP say they will continue their transition to cleaner energy sources, even if Mr. Trump makes good on his pledge to reverse the Clean Power Plan.
“With Donald Trump being elected, I think you’ll continue with that movement” regardless of whether the clean-power regulation takes effect, said AEP Chief ExecutiveNick Akins. He cited cheap natural gas and falling prices for wind and solar power as factors also driving the utility’s decisions.
Wal-Mart, General Motors Co., Google and Gap Inc. also said their goals for renewable-energy use or emissions reductions remained intact.
GM set a goal last September to get all its power from renewable sources world-wide by 2050. It estimates it is now saving about $5 million a year as a result of that shift and conservation measures. Wal-Mart plans by 2025 to power half its operations with renewable energy and cut its greenhouse gases 18%.
Google said Tuesday it would reach its goal of buying enough renewable energy to match 100% of the amount of power that it uses, about 2.6 gigawatts, in 2017, earlier than it initially expected. It attributed that in part to cheap wind power in Oklahoma, where Google operates a data center.
“We do believe climate change is real and that businesses should do what they can to address it, but we’re doing this because it’s good for business,” said Gary Demasi, Google’s director of global infrastructure.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, more than 350 companies, including Intel Corp., DuPont Co.and Monsanto Co. signed a pledge expressing support for the Paris climate agreement and U.S. efforts to cut carbon emissions. That sentiment extends to international companies based outside the U.S.
Andrew Mackenzie, chief executive of BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest miner by market value, told shareholders last month that he hoped Mr. Trump would stand by the U.S. commitment to the Paris accord.
“More needs to be done” to achieve the agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, said BHP sustainability and climate change vice president Fiona Wild.
If Mr. Trump makes good on earlier promises to cancel regulations limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, it would benefit a number of smaller energy companies, who are more supportive of such actions.
Smaller refinery companies, for example, have also been pushing hard for an overhaul of the renewable fuel standard, a federal mandate enforced by the EPA that requires refineries to blend an increasingly large amount of ethanol into U.S. gasoline.
Big oil companies including Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and BP PLC have been reaping millions by selling renewable fuel credits associated with the ethanol program, while smaller refiners have been forced to spend hundreds of millions to buy the credits to comply with the rules.
But environmental rules established by the Obama administration that have already taken effect can’t be canceled as easily as some industry executives expect, said Larry Nettles, the head of the environmental and natural resources practice at law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP.
That would require new legislation or a lengthy executive branch process that could be challenged in court by environmentalists, he said.
“The concept that there’s going to be a significant change in environmental regulatory policy and enforcement is a little naive,” Mr. Nettles said.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-trump-knocks-obama-on-climate-firms-recommit-to-carbon-reduction-1481218505
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EPA Agrees to Act on Missing Ozone Plans Before Obama Leaves
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
One of the last actions of President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency could be taking action against states that have failed to submit required plans to address ozone pollution.
The agency, in a notice scheduled for publication Dec. 9, announced a proposed settlement with environmental advocates that would set new deadlines for the EPA to act on more than a dozen states that missed statutory deadlines to submit plans concerning implementation of national ozone standards. The proposed agreement, filed in late November with a federal district court in California, would require the EPA to act on missing plans for 13 states and the District of Columbia by Jan. 19, 2017, the last day before President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated (Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. McCarthy, N.D. Cal., No. 4:16-cv-4092, proposed consent decree filed 11/29/16).
The Center for Biological Diversity and other advocacy organizations sued the EPA over an alleged failure to complete a mandatory duty under the Clean Air Act after several states missed a deadline to submit plans detailing various ways they will go about implementing the 2008 ozone standards of 75 parts per billion. The Clean Air Act gives the EPA six months after a missed deadline to issue a regulatory determination known as a finding of failure to submit, which would trigger an obligation that the EPA issue its own plans for those areas within two years.
Under the proposed consent decree, which the agency will accept comment on, the agency agreed to various deadlines later in 2017 and into 2018 for either approving or disapproving of various state plans that have already been submitted to the agency.
Public comments on the settlement, which will be accepted until Jan. 9, can be filed at http://www.regulations.gov under Docket No. EPA-HQ-OGC-2016-0693.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101540284&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101540284&jd=101540284
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Fertilizer Plant Compliance Extension Floated by EPA
Dec 9, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizer plants would get more time to comply with portions of national air pollution standards under an Environmental Protection Agency proposal.
The agency, in a proposal set for publication Dec. 9, moved to extend certain compliance dates included in a 2015 regulation that revised hazardous air pollution standards covering phosphoric acid manufacturing facilities and phosphate fertilizer plants to establish new limits on mercury emissions and alter other regulatory requirements.
Under the proposal (RIN:2060-AT14), plants would have until August 2017 to meet a monitoring requirement for low-energy absorbers and an August 2018 deadline to include emissions from oxidation reactors in calculating compliance with total fluoride emissions limits. The compliance dates originally included in the rule for those provisions have already passed.
Most of the phosphoric acid produced in the U.S. is used to produce fertilizer, according to the EPA. The additional compliance time for factoring in oxidation reactor emissions in compliance determinations is expected to have an “insignificant effect” on overall phosphoric acid plant emissions, the EPA said in its proposal.
The proposal is a result of reconsideration petitions filed by The Fertilizer Institute and the Phosphate Corporation of Saskatchewan, which operates several phosphate facilities in the U.S. The Fertilizer Institute, which advocates on regulation and legislation representing the industry, is challenging the 2015 revised emissions standards in court.
That lawsuit, which is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is being held in abeyance pending completion of the EPA's administrative reconsideration process.
The EPA will accept comments on its proposal until Jan. 23. Comments can be filed at http://www.regulations.gov under Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2012-0522.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101540274&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101540274&jd=101540274
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