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ACC AM 12/15/16

Industry and Association News

(ACC Blog) Need A Helping Hand This Holiday Season? Plastics Have Your Back
Dec 14, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters
By Steve Russell

It’s no secret the holidays can be hectic. Whether you’re hosting a large gathering, or transporting Grandma’s (in)famous fruitcake across cold and busy roads, the time is ripe for potential mishaps.
(ACC Mentioned) U.S.’s Outlook Is Sunnier Than Europe’s
Dec 14, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch

The forecast for the U.S. chemical industry next year is brighter than it is for the business in Europe and Germany, reflecting in part the advantaged raw material position of the U.S.
(ACC Mentioned) Global Plastics Associations’ Marine Litter Initiative Welcomes Seven New Signatories
Dec 14, 2016 | Plastics Today
By Karen Laird

When in 2011, representatives of 47 world plastics organizations from 29 countries collectively signed the newly drawn up Declaration of the Global Plastics Associations for Solutions on Marine Litter, it was the first time the global plastics industry committed to help create solutions to what was, after all, a global problem.
Lobbying Heats Up Over Pruitt Confirmation Fight
Dec 14, 2016 | Inside EPA

Supporters and opponents of Scott Pruitt -- President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA -- are stepping up their lobbying ahead of the Senate's confirmation process, with environmentalists preparing to run ads urging several Republican senators to oppose the nomination while at least one coal-state Democrat is facing home-state pressure to publicly support Pruitt.
Democrats Stake Pruitt Fight On Climate Change Denial
Dec 14, 2016 | Politico
By Elana Schor

Senate Democrats are laying the groundwork to make the vote on Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency into a referendum on whether Republicans believe humans are causing global warming.

LCSA News

(ACC Mentioned) Industry Nostalgic For Old Law As Enviros Laud EPA
Dec 14, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Gabriel Dunsmith

Industry groups and environmental organizations tussled today over the speed at which U.S. EPA tests new chemicals before approving or denying them for market.
EPA Seeking to Redefine Small Business Under Chemicals Law
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker and Pat Rizzuto

Chemical company reporting requirements may change as the Environmental Protection Agency considers revising the size standards for small chemical manufacturers under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act.
US EPA Round-Up
Dec 15, 2016 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA has issued section 5(a)(3)(C) determinations for four substances that were the subject of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs).
DuPont Concerned By EPA New Chemicals Program That Others Back
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto

Chemical innovation is being harmed due to the Environmental Protection Agency's hardline interpretation of amendments Congress made to the Toxic Substances Control Act, chemical manufacturers and their representatives told the agency Dec. 14.
TSCA Reform Crossed The Finish Line
Dec 14, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson

It was an epic year for chemical regulation in the U.S. For the first time in nearly 40 years, both chambers of Congress agreed to update the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the law that governs chemicals used in household items and industrial products.

Chemical Management News

EPA Punts Concerns Over Pesticide Workers' Production Risks To OSHA
Dec 14, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds

EPA science advisors reviewing the agency's analysis of whether the commonly used herbicide glyphosate causes cancer are faulting data gaps in the review including on potential risks to production workers, though EPA officials say such risks are the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) responsibility and outside the scope of the analysis.
Does Glyphosate Cause Cancer? EPA Panel Meets to Find Out
Dec 14, 2016 | Eco Watch
By Stefanie Spear

From Dec. 13 - 16, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to evaluate "the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate," the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup.

Energy News

Perry in His Own Words: How Trump's Energy Pick Views His World
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jim Polson

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is President-elect Donald Trump's choice to become Secretary of Energy. Here are some comments Perry, 66, has made in recent years on oil production, renewable energy, the role of government, climate change and other environmental issues:
Oil Men Take Washington, Signal Dawn of New U.S. Energy Era
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Traywick and David Wethe

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court broke up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil in 1911, the energy industry has been at loggerheads with the federal government. Now it is the government—or may be if Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is confirmed as President Donald Trump's secretary of state.
U.S. Oil Industry Cheers Trump Energy Pick, Seeks Gas Export Boost
Dec 15, 2016 | Reuters
By Susan Heavey and Steve Holland

The U.S. oil and gas industry on Wednesday welcomed President-elect Donald Trump's choice of former Texas Governor Rick Perry to head the U.S. Department of Energy, and wasted no time making its first specific request of him: to support increased exports of America's natural gas overseas.
As Trump Vows to Boost Drilling, Fracking Foes Turn to Courts
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Nussbaum

Janet McIntyre has heard President-elect Donald Trump praise fracking and the jobs it's created. She's living the other side of the story.
In Reversal, EPA Confirms That Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water
Dec 14, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Tasha Stoiber

The Environmental Protection Agency has just confirmed what communities near many oil and gas production fields have known for years: fracking – the injection of a chemical slurry into drilling sites to free up underground deposits – can pollute drinking water.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation News

Railroad Industry Is Split On Worth, Effects Of New Mandated Safety System
Dec 14, 2016 | Omaha World-Herald
By Russell Hubbard

The new safety system that can automatically stop and slow the nation’s freight trains comes with the promise of fewer crashes — along with the prospect of reducing train crew sizes and adding another layer of scrutiny to their job performance.

Environment News

Trump Team Steps Back From Questionnaire, But Dems Still Wary
Dec 14, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey

Efforts by President-elect Donald Trump's advisers today to disavow the transition team's search for Energy Department employees who work on climate change haven't eased Democrats' concerns.
How Climate Rules Might Fade Away
Dec 15, 2016 | Bloomberg Businnesweek
By Matthew Philips , Mark Drajem , and Jennifer A Dlouhy

In February 2009, a month after Barack Obama took office, two academics sat across from each other in the White House mess hall. Over a club sandwich, Michael Greenstone, a White House economist, and Cass Sunstein, Obama’s top regulatory officer, decided that the executive branch needed to figure out how to estimate the economic damage from climate change.
The Obscure Climate Deal That Businesses Hope Trump Doesn’t Ax
Dec 15, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff

President-elect Donald Trump will soon have to decide between withdrawing from an international climate change agreement and boosting the prospects of U.S. manufacturers like the company whose jobs he flamboyantly boasted of saving a few weeks ago.
G20 Panel Urges CEO Compensation Link With Climate Risk
Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jessica Shankleman

Energy companies should consider telling investors how executive compensation is linked to climate change risks, according to a panel advising the Group of 20 nations.

Industry and Association News

(ACC Blog) Need A Helping Hand This Holiday Season? Plastics Have Your Back

Dec 14, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters

By Steve Russell

It’s no secret the holidays can be hectic. Whether you’re hosting a large gathering, or transporting Grandma’s (in)famous fruitcake across cold and busy roads, the time is ripe for potential mishaps.
But here’s a not-so-well-known secret: plastics can help make the holidays a little safer and more manageable. For example, plastics help us keep foods fresh during travel, prepare holiday meals, and store leftovers for when our appetites return. Plastics help us decorate for the holidays, from faux trees to flameless candles, meaning the kids running around the house are no longer as much of a safety hazard—and plastic safety gear help keep the kids safe after they’ve opened their new bicycles and scooters. Home insulation made from plastics helps keeps cold winter air on the outside, and modern fleece and performance fibers help keep us warm when we’re out enjoying the snow.
To highlight some of the ways plastics have our backs during the holidays, our Plastics Make it Possible®campaign produced a short video – our own take on the popular “mannequin challenge” – to highlight “perfectly imperfect” holiday moments. Check it out here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6NmZG8jN8A

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(ACC Mentioned) U.S.’s Outlook Is Sunnier Than Europe’s

Dec 14, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Marc S. Reisch

Natural gas continues to give U.S. producers an advantage over their counterparts in Europe
The forecast for the U.S. chemical industry next year is brighter than it is for the business in Europe and Germany, reflecting in part the advantaged raw material position of the U.S.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), the U.S. chemical industry’s major trade association, is calling for a U.S. production increase of 3.6% in 2017 following a 1.6% increase this year. Growth in chemical production will outpace projected U.S. economic growth of 2.2%, ACC says.
In Europe, however, the European Chemical Industry Council says chemical production will increase a mere 0.5% in 2017 following a year in which output didn’t grow at all.
In Germany, Europe’s largest chemical maker, the outlook is even more muted. The Germany Chemical Industry Association says 2017 will be the second year in a row with no production growth.
To be sure, U.S. chemical producers face many of the same headwinds that their European counterparts face, including high regulatory costs, weakness in the manufacturing sector, and soft export markets, according to ACC chief economist Thomas Kevin Swift. But unlike Europe, the U.S. has “access to affordable and abundant supplies of natural gas,” Swift says.
The result is that European producers have to contend with higher energy and feedstock costs than their U.S. counterparts. Costs for ethylene, the chemical industry’s main feedstock, are twice as high in Europe as in the U.S., the European council says.
But for the U.S. chemistry business, long-term prospects are strong and getting stronger, Swift says, noting industry investment commitments of $170 billion since 2010, driven by the availability of cheap natural gas. Chemical demand in the year ahead will be led by healthy consumer spending on housing and automobiles, he says.
Swift won’t comment directly on Britain’s pending exit from the European Union or President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to eliminate regulations and renegotiate trade agreements. He does suggest that U.S. economic growth at present is below its potential because of high taxes, regulatory burdens, and economic uncertainty.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i49/USs-outlook-sunnier-Europes.html

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(ACC Mentioned) Global Plastics Associations’ Marine Litter Initiative Welcomes Seven New Signatories

Dec 14, 2016 | Plastics Today

By Karen Laird

When in 2011, representatives of 47 world plastics organizations from 29 countries collectively signed the newly drawn up Declaration of the Global Plastics Associations for Solutions on Marine Litter, it was the first time the global plastics industry committed to help create solutions to what was, after all, a global problem. The “Joint Declaration”, as it is known, is based on the premise that all stakeholders have a role to play, and that there is no single “silver bullet” to solve the problem. Building on work in individual regions, these organizations work with governments, NGOs, researchers and other stakeholders in projects designed to provide solutions for marine litter.
Since its launch, the initiative has continued to attract new partners. This year alone saw the addition of the American Fiber Manufacturers Association (AFMA), the Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers & Exporters Association (BPGMEA), the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA), the Ghanaian Plastics Manufacturers Association (GPMA), the Myanmar Plastics Industries Association (MPIA), the Indonesian Olefins, Aromatics and Plastics Association (INAPLA), and the Vietnam Plastics Association (VPA). Today, the Declaration has been signed by a total of 69 plastics associations from regions across the globe.
“We’re excited to welcome each of these new partners, who bring perspectives from countries in Asia and Africa, or types of plastic not previously represented in our Joint Declaration,” said Steve Russell, Vice President, Plastics, American Chemistry Council, at the 27th Global Meeting on Plastics and Sustainability in Hanoi, Vietnam. With delegates from 17 countries and four continents, it was the largest and best attended meeting to date. At the meeting, delegates also agreed that going forward the group will become the “Global Plastics Alliance.”
Karl-H. Foerster, Executive Director of PlasticsEurope, also welcomed the new members, pointing out that “Broadening our fold helps us find new partners and opportunities to tackle this very serious problem.” To which Callum Chen, Secretary General of the Asia Plastics Forum, added: “The strong participation at this meeting demonstrates that this industry is committed to providing solutions to ensure a more sustainable future. But there is still much to do. Growing our ranks helps further grow our work.”
Since initiating the Global Declaration, the signatory associations have identified numerous specific actions across six focus areas aimed at contributing to sustainable solutions. The six focus areas of the Global Declaration are education, research, public policy, sharing best practices, plastics recycling/recovery, and plastic pellet containment.
In May, leaders from plastics organizations across the globe announced that there were approximately 260 projects planned, underway or completed.
http://www.plasticstoday.com/sustainability/global-plastics-associations-marine-litter-initiative-welcomes-seven-new-signatories/114690903647141

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Lobbying Heats Up Over Pruitt Confirmation Fight

Dec 14, 2016 | Inside EPA

Supporters and opponents of Scott Pruitt -- President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA -- are stepping up their lobbying ahead of the Senate's confirmation process, with environmentalists preparing to run ads urging several Republican senators to oppose the nomination while at least one coal-state Democrat is facing home-state pressure to publicly support Pruitt.
Pruitt is expected to be confirmed given Republicans' 52-48 majority and rules adopted by the Democratic majority in 2013 eliminating the filibuster for executive branch nominees. But Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who is suing the Obama EPA over the agency's greenhouse gas and other rules, faces a challenging confirmation as Democrats have promised to make his confirmation a “litmus test” for lawmakers who have said they accept mainstream climate change science.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) has said that Democrats hope to pick up support of four or five Republicans who accept such science and could be persuaded to vote against him. “This is a litmus test for every member of the Senate who claims not to be a denier,” Schatz said during a Dec. 8 press call organized by environmentalists.
In an early indication that Democrats and their supporters are seeking to persuade Republicans to oppose the Pruitt's nomination, Politico reports the Sierra Club is preparing to run online ads targeting seven GOP senators -- Pat Toomey (PA), Lindsey Graham (SC), Susan Collins (ME), Lamar Alexander (TN), Dean Heller (NV), Jeff Flake (AZ) and Rob Portman (OH) -- as well as three Democrats who may be willing to support Pruitt -- Joe Manchin (WV), Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Joe Donnelly (IN).
“No fossil fuel ally or climate denier is fit to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” said Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce.
But Manchin is also facing home-state pressure to publicly support Pruitt. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) sent Manchin a Dec. 14 letter urging him to voice his support for the nominee.
“As you know, the EPA is in dire need of reform. For the past eight years, the EPA has repeatedly and significantly overstepped the bounds of its statutory authority in ways that have been particularly harmful to West Virginia,” Morrissey writes.
“Rather than focus on its mission of protecting the nation's environment, the agency has issued rules like the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to impose on the country the EPA's preferred sources for generating electricity. For our state, these actions are not only unlawful, but they also mean fewer jobs and have a devastating effect on our economy.”
Morrisey says that Pruitt “has a long record that demonstrates a thorough understanding of the proper role of and limits on the EPA,” noting their joint suits to block the agency's power plant GHG rule as well as its Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule.
“We can trust Scott Pruitt to rein in the EPA's excesses and refocus the agency on effectively carrying out its mission to ensure that our air and water are clean,” Morrisey said, urging Manchin to support the nominee.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/congress-lobbying-heats-over-pruitt-confirmation-fight

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Democrats Stake Pruitt Fight On Climate Change Denial

Dec 14, 2016 | Politico

By Elana Schor

They see a chance to mobilize their base, although blocking the EPA nominee will be very difficult.
Senate Democrats are laying the groundwork to make the vote on Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency into a referendum on whether Republicans believe humans are causing global warming.
Scott Pruitt is high on Democrats’ list of no-go Trump nominees, in large part thanks to his resistance to the scientific consensus that human activity is the leading cause of global warming. Democrats are unlikely to derail Pruitt’s EPA bid, but they see the potential to turn GOP votes against him — a rare wedge between Trump and Republicans, given the tradition of party unity on Cabinet-level positions.
“I do think that there’s something we can do to stop” the nomination, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in a brief interview last week, noting that his party needs only a few of the Republicans who have voted “on the right side of climate” to oppose Pruitt to topple the nomination. “We are totally mobilized for this one and ready to roll.”
Whether or not Democrats manage to pick off even one Republican, starting a fight over the EPA nominee — and his divisive climate-change views — has already helped rally a liberal base demoralized by Trump’s victory. Outside groups and Democratic senators are gearing up for a hearing showdown, seeing Pruitt as a chance to highlight Republican intransigence on climate change issues.
It helps that they now have someone they can cast as the planet’s Public Enemy No. 1.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) vowed that Pruitt “is going to become the living embodiment of the fossil-fuel and anti-clean air, anti-clean water movement in the United States of America. And I like those odds.”
Incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted Friday that “I oppose” Pruitt, a direct public stance he has taken on no other Trump nominee so far. By contrast, Schumer singled out Rex Tillerson's "disturbing opposition to sanctions on Russia" among a serious of questions saddling the ExxonMobil CEO's nomination as secretary of state, but stopped short of declaring he would vote no.
Even Democrats’ incoming senior member on the environment committee, the moderate Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, sounded a combative note last week after Pruitt’s nomination.
“We cannot roll back the progress we made in the past eight years to protect the environment,” Carper tweeted. “Anyone leading EPA who wants to ignore science or look out for special interests at the expense of public health can expect a fight with me.”
Republicans say they don't feel threatened. Instead, GOP leaders cheered Trump's selection of Pruitt, who's set to dismantle most of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda, and say they are prepared for Democrats to make trouble.
“Democrats are still in shock that they’ve lost the presidency and are in the minority, still,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a GOP leader and incoming chairman of the environment committee, which will vet Pruitt, told reporters last week. "I don't take anything for granted."
Barrasso pointed out that Republicans let seven Cabinet nominees sail through on Obama's first day in office, a deference they hope Democrats will afford to Trump. But many senators already have told POLITICO that for nominees that they deem particularly objectionable, delay will be the order of the day.
Meanwhile, environmental groups both establishment and upstart are itching to provide backup for Democrats — and lay out the stakes for voters concerned about global warming — despite their long odds of success, given the 2013 rules change that ended filibusters of most presidential nominees. “We will continue to work with our allies in the Senate to make it crystal clear just what is at stake and why a climate denier like Pruitt has no business running the EPA,” League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld said in an interview.
Democrats are eyeing three Republicans — Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — as the most likely to oppose Pruitt, given their previous votes to affirm that human activity is warming the planet.
Jamie Henn, strategy director at 350.org, said his group is planning to specifically target those three — all of whom voted last year for a symbolic Schatz-written measure that said humans "significantly" contribute to climate change.
Pruitt's dispute with climate science has drawn opposition from George W. Bush's onetime EPA chief, bolstering Democrats' case to battle the GOP on his nomination even if they can't stop it. And Bush's former press secretary, Ari Fleischer, advisedDemocrats last week to focus their efforts on fighting Pruitt, as a base-rallying move, instead of trying fruitlessly to derail multiple Trump nominees.
Environmental advocates describe the nomination fight as a bright-line issue.
"This is about whether you are pro-science or anti-science," Henn said. "Both Democrats who need to hold the line and Republicans who have said a lot about this issue in the past will be faced with a choice."
Sit-ins and other grass-roots protests are a favorite strategy for 350.org, which protested outside the Washington home of former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) during the Keystone XL pipeline debate — tactics that are likely to be redeployed during debate on Pruitt.
Also on greens’ pressure list for the Pruitt vote are Republican Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who face reelection in 2018; Rob Portman of Ohio, who has championed clean energy proposals; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the energy committee chairwoman, who allies with her home state’s oil and gas companies but has prioritized global warming. The Sierra Club on Wednesday launched digital ads targeting GOP Sens. Graham, Collins, Alexander, Heller, Flake, Portman and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Collins said in a brief interview last week that she would have to delve more deeply into Pruitt’s record before deciding whether or not to support him. “It appears that it will require some scrutiny on my part,” Collins said of the nomination, “but I know virtually nothing about him.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said he thinks the business lobby has a vital role to play in siphoning Republican support from Pruitt, who has vowed to roll back major portions of Obama’s climate policies.
“[L]ook at where the bulk of corporate America is on climate change,” Whitehouse told reporters. Singling out the 81 corporations that pledged to help make good on Obama’s global emissions-cutting deal, he said: “If they take interest in this, that can change the way the nomination comes out.”
Trump’s nomination Tuesday of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as his interior secretary could further intensify the fight against Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma. Both are poised to enact a deregulatory agenda anathema to most Democrats, but Zinke is a freshman lawmaker and decorated veteran with an affable persona and Pruitt is a hard-driving fossil-fuel industry ally who has portrayed resistance to widely accepted climate science as principled dissent.
Zinke is drawing criticism from green groups, focused on his support for his home-state coal industry. But his record also includes endorsements from outdoors groups and support for the federal conservation funding program, which has put him at odds with other Western conservatives.
“Pruitt epitomizes the oil and gas industry, what’s wrong with the system that Trump was trying to attack,” one veteran progressive group official said, adding that a sitting member of Congress would likely “have a higher level of support than someone coming in fresh from outside.”
While the majority of Senate Democrats are expected to take a firm stand against Pruitt, a handful of moderates, particularly those up for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump won big, could feel pressure to back Pruitt. Many of them have been critics of excessive EPA regulation in the past.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wrote to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday urging him to back Pruitt, a pointed step given that the ambitious Morrisey is seen as a potential reelection challenger for Manchin. The Democrat responded by praising Pruitt's "impressive résumé" but declined to commit to a "yes" vote until he can talk with Pruitt about "how he intends to right-size the EPA."
However, Pruitt also has challenged the federal government’s ethanol mandate before the Supreme Court — a move that may not sit well with farm-friendly Democrats.
“I’m still learning about him, but I have serious concerns about his record of opposing” the ethanol policy that he would have to enforce, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said of Pruitt in a statement last week.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) “is very concerned about Mr. Pruitt’s history of not protecting clean air and clean water, which is a constitutional right in Montana,” spokesman Dave Kuntz said by email. “That said, he looks forward to reviewing Mr. Pruitt’s full resume, asking him tough questions to ensure he understands Montana’s values of responsible energy development, transparency and a ‘clean and healthful environment.’”
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is “reserving judgment on President-elect Trump’s nominees until their confirmation hearings,” a spokeswoman said.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/epa-climate-change-pruitt-232446

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LCSA News

(ACC Mentioned) Industry Nostalgic For Old Law As Enviros Laud EPA

Dec 14, 2016 | E&E News PM

By Gabriel Dunsmith

Industry groups and environmental organizations tussled today over the speed at which U.S. EPA tests new chemicals before approving or denying them for market.
The source of contention at a public meeting for stakeholders convened by EPA was Section 5 of the overhauled Toxic Substances Control Act, which governs EPA's testing regime. The law directs the agency to not impede chemical innovation while also ensuring that human health and the environment enjoy full protection.
Since President Obama signed TSCA reform into law this summer, EPA has moved to place restrictions on certain toxins, naming 10 priority compounds last month (E&E News PM, Nov. 29). It has also been slower to issue determinations for new chemicals, due to more comprehensive testing allowances under the new law.
Though chemical companies lobbied Congress for years to overhaul TSCA, the industry appears frustrated today with a law it had long championed. Several industry representatives spoke in favor of EPA's old testing procedures, which health advocates say flooded the market with untested compounds and provided ample reason to overhaul TSCA in the first place.
Stephen Wieroniey, director of occupational health and product safety at the American Coatings Association, castigated EPA's new testing regime as "simply unworkable."
"Since [the signing of the law on] June 22, our members have experienced significant delays in the evaluation of the pre-manufacturing notifications, far beyond what stakeholders expected or what the legislation intended to do," he continued, referencing the applications that companies must submit to EPA. "It was widely understood that Section 5 was a successful program under previous TSCA."
Karyn Schmidt, senior director at the American Chemistry Council, was more blunt, blasting the section of the law — 5(e) — that gives EPA the teeth to bar or limit the manufacture of certain compounds it deems hazardous.
"We've had an efficient and effective Section 5 for years. New chemicals have been brought to market on a reasonably expeditious basis, and we now find ourselves stuck in a trough where that is not occurring," she said. "We believe ... that EPA's conclusions that 5(e) orders are going to be necessary is not supported by congressional intent, and it's not supported by the statute."'Reasonable worst-case assumptions'
EPA representatives said delays could be prevented if companies submitted exhaustive details about their new products up front.
"It all basically boils down to providing a more robust chem[ical] submission," said Greg Schweer, chief of the agency's new chemicals management branch. "To the extent people can provide more information ... would help us a lot.
"In lieu of actual data," Schweer continued, EPA will "make reasonable worst-case assumptions" about the effects and exposure pathways of new compounds.
Environmental groups largely lauded EPA's testing timetable, issuing a vigorous defense of the agency's chemical management.
Lindsay McCormick, health fund project manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, said EPA's moves are "not only critical to protect public heath and the environment, but ... fully consistent with and mandated by the new law."
Joanna Slaney, also with EDF's health program, combated the American Chemistry Council's claims that EPA testing hampers innovation (Greenwire, Dec. 13).
"Innovation without safety is not true innovation," she said.
Slaney argued that robust testing is "absolutely essential" — and that without it, public confidence in the nation's chemical safety system could not be restored.
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a nonprofit advocating for reduced exposure to toxins, urged EPA to go even further "to develop significantly more health and environmental effects data" and crack down on "unwarranted" claims of confidential business information by companies, according to counsel Bob Sussman.
"EPA should not sacrifice the quality of its assessments and ... must take the time to make thoughtful and careful determinations, even if this requires time beyond the initial review period," he continued.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060047208/search?keyword=American+Chemistry+Council%22

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EPA Seeking to Redefine Small Business Under Chemicals Law

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Tiffany Stecker and Pat Rizzuto

Chemical company reporting requirements may change as the Environmental Protection Agency considers revising the size standards for small chemical manufacturers under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act.
The EPA is requesting comment on a possible decision to revise the standards that would exempt small producers from reporting certain data. This includes the location of a plant site, the quantity imported or manufactured, and the number of workers involved in the process.
The standards, established in the 1980s, describe which manufacturers are generally exempt from the reporting requirements.
Currently, producers of chemicals, pesticides, paints and adhesives, and petroleum products making less than $4 million in annual sales, regardless of production volume, are not subject to the same reporting mandates as large companies, with some exceptions. Those exceptions include companies that produce under 100,000 pounds of chemicals annually but have annual sales less than $40 million.
The EPA may adjust the sales values if the federal price index for chemical products changes more than 20 percent.
Between 1988 and 2015, the price of chemicals has grown by 129 percent. More than 75 percent of the Small Business Administration's size standards for firms are set higher than $7.5 million in annual sales.
“EPA's existing $4 million annual sales standard is an outlier at the low end of this range,” the agency's pre-publication notice says.
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Pub. L. No. 114-182), amended the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and became law June 22.
Help for Small Firms
The EPA has made a preliminary determination that the changes to the size standards are necessary under Section 8(a)(3)(C) of the new law, which requires the agency to consult with the SBA and decide which manufacturers and processors are deemed “small” manufacturers, and whether such a determination is warranted.
Dan Newton, senior government relations manager for the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates, told Bloomberg BNA his organization supports the agency's plan to update the criteria that define small businesses under TSCA.
About 70 percent of the society's members are small, specialty chemical manufacturers.
Newton pointed to comments the society provided the EPA in September regarding fees it will charge industry to recoup some of its chemicals oversight costs.
Business revenue is a reasonable approach to defining small businesses, but another approach would be to base the definition on the number of employees, the society said.
The EPA notice is scheduled to publish in the Federal Register on Dec. 15.

http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101985645&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101985645&jd=101985645

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US EPA Round-Up

Dec 15, 2016 | Chemical Watch

TSCA section 5(a)(3)(C) determinations
The US EPA has issued section 5(a)(3)(C) determinations for four substances that were the subject of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs). These are:
generic heteropolycyclic carboxylic acid, polymer with 2-ethyl-2-(hydroxymethyl)-1,3 propanediol and 4-substitutedbenzene, substituted carbomonocycle- and alkyl-substituted carbomonocycle-blocked;
two generic polyalkylether polyesters, intended for use as adhesion resins; and
generic trimethylolpropane ester of mixed linear and branched carboxylic acids, intended for use as a synthetic aircraft engine lubricant for contained use and an industrial lubricant.
In each case, the substance was determined not likely to present an unreasonable risk based on low human health and environmental hazard.
The agency also made "not likely" determinations for two microbial commercial activity notice (MCANs).Receipt of information under TSCA
The agency has announced receipt of test data submitted pursuant to a rule, order or consent order under TSCA for:octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4); andethanedioic acid.
For D4, the EPA received a benthic sampling events update. The information was submitted under an enforceable consent agreement.
Ethanedioic acid is subject to testing requirements for a group of high production volume (HPV) substances. The agency received an exemption request.Notice of intent to negotiate CDR requirements
The EPA has signalled it intends to establish a Negotiated Rulemaking Committee (NRC). This will negotiate a proposed rule to limit chemical data reporting (CDR) for manufacturers of any inorganic byproduct chemical substances, when they are subsequently recycled, reused, or reprocessed.
The NRC will be composed of representatives of those who will be significantly affected by the rule. It will aim to conduct discussions in a “good faith attempt to reach consensus on proposed regulatory language”.
The agency initially identified the following organisations as those likely to be significantly affected:Aluminum Association;American Chemistry Council;American Coal Ash Association;Environmental Defense Fund;Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries;IPC – Association Connecting Electronics Industries;North American Metals Council;National Mining Association;US EPA; andUtility Solid Waste Activities Group.
Potential participants may request representation by submitting a comment to the agency.
https://chemicalwatch.com/51565/us-epa-round-up

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DuPont Concerned By EPA New Chemicals Program That Others Back

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Pat Rizzuto

Chemical innovation is being harmed due to the Environmental Protection Agency's hardline interpretation of amendments Congress made to the Toxic Substances Control Act, chemical manufacturers and their representatives told the agency Dec. 14.
DuPont strongly supports the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, but the EPA's interpretation of its provisions “has the significant potential to erode the competitiveness of the U.S. chemical industry,” said Lynn Ann Dekleva, a senior consultant at DuPont working on product stewardship and regulations.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who introduced the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Pub. L. No. 114-182) that overhauled TSCA, said he supports efficient, sensible reviews of new chemicals.
A new chemical, however, should not enter the market unless the agency has sufficient information to conclude it would be safe or has restrictions necessary to prevent harm while sufficient information is being developed, Udall said via a statement read by Jonathan Black, a senior policy advisor to the Senator involved in the negotiations of the TSCA amendments.
“I want to ensure that our intent and the plain reading of the law is implemented,” Udall's statement said.
EPA Seeking Inhalation, Other Data
The EPA held a meeting to discuss its understanding of the Lautenberg Act's requirements and to hear the perspectives of chemical manufacturers; environmental, health and other advocacy organizations; state officials; academic researchers and other interested parties. More than 200 people registered to attend the meeting or listen to it online.
About 500 new chemicals are currently under review at the EPA, Jeff Morris, acting director of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, told the audience.
The agency has sent letters announcing preliminary decisions to more than 100 companies, he said.
These letters describe tentative restrictions and testing data the EPA may impose or require, said Maria Doa, director of OPPT's Chemical Control Division.
For example, the division has recognized that a number of the new chemicals raise respiratory concerns, she said.
Many of these letters are requiring companies to expose laboratory animals to the yet-to-be-manufactured chemicals through costly 90-day inhalation and other tests, industry officials told Bloomberg BNA on the sidelines of the meeting.
The requests for animal data are being made without an agency explanation of why the information is needed and whether existing data, modeling or other alternative analytic approaches could answer EPA's questions, several speakers said.
90 Percent Proposed for Regulation
Richard Engler, a chemist who worked in EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics for 17 years before joining the Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. law firm, offered some historical perspective on the extent to which the new chemicals program has changed since the TSCA amendments became effective June 22.
In the past, the office regulated about 20 percent of the new chemicals Engler said.
“Under new TSCA, the office is proposing to regulate over 90 percent,” he said.
The amount of data the agency is requiring and restrictions it is proposing to impose could provide an incentive for companies to continue using older chemicals that the agency has not evaluated, Engler said.
Such a bias against new chemicals “risks becoming an unacceptable barrier to new chemical innovation,” he said.
State, Academic, Advocacy Group Support
Many speakers, however, voiced strong support for the EPA's increased scrutiny of new chemicals.
Between 500 and 1,000 new chemicals enter the market each year, “ensuring the safety of these chemicals is clearly a public health priority,” said Joanna Slaney, legislative director for the Environmental Defense Fund's Health Program.
“EPA is on the right track,” said Robert Sussman, an attorney speaking on behalf of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition.
The new law “clearly gives the EPA not only the authority, but a mandate to require new testing,” when it fails to receive what the statute calls sufficient information to make a reasoned evaluation of whether the new chemical poses an unreasonable risk, Sussman said.
Meetings with EPA, Guidance

Melanie Benesh, an attorney with the Environmental Working Group, said presentations EPA made during the meeting and requests that the industry speakers made for more guidance point to a path forward.
Sharing more information would help achieve industry's goal of getting new chemicals to market, because companies would know what types of information could smooth the new chemical review process.
Increased information, in turn, would help protect public health, Benesh said.
Morris said the EPA plans to provide such information and to hold another meeting in about six months.
In 2017, the chemicals office will hold a meeting with interested parties to share information about its concerns on respiratory effects several types of chemicals are raising and discuss ways those concerns could be addressed, Morris told Bloomberg BNA.

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TSCA Reform Crossed The Finish Line

Dec 14, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Britt E. Erickson

After decades of negotiations, law that controls chemicals in the U.S. marketplace got a makeover
Britt E. Erickson
It was an epic year for chemical regulation in the U.S. For the first time in nearly 40 years, both chambers of Congress agreed to update the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the law that governs chemicals used in household items and industrial products.
The revised TSCA was enacted in June, setting the wheels in motion for EPA to evaluate throughout the next several years the safety of chemicals that are currently in the U.S. marketplace. As required under the new law, the agency chose the first 10 of these chemicals to assess in late November.
The new law gives EPA the authority to collect fees from industry to conduct safety evaluations. It also allows the agency to request safety data for new chemicals. Under the outdated 1976 TSCA, the agency had to first show that a chemical may pose a risk before asking industry to provide such data.
The chemical industry supported the overhaul of TSCA after years of negotiations, saying it would boost consumer confidence in the safety of chemicals in everyday products. “The path to more modern chemical regulation has been decades in the making, and it’s been over three years since work to achieve TSCA reform began in earnest,” Cal Dooley, CEO of the American Chemistry Council, said in June. “TSCA reform will have lasting and meaningful benefits for all American manufacturers, all American families, and for our nation’s standing as the world’s leading innovator,” he added.
Some environmental groups also supported the revised TSCA, but other activists said it doesn’t go far enough to protect human health. The new law improves the 1976 TSCA “in many ways and, depending on implementation by EPA, should do some good,” Andy Igrejas, national campaign director for the advocacy group, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, said in June. “Unfortunately, it still goes backwards in a few important ways,” because of lobbying by the chemical industry, he noted. Igrejas and other activists are particularly concerned about provisions in the law that curb state authority over chemicals and weaken EPA’s ability to stop imports that contain toxic substances.
http://yearinreview.cenmag.org/tsca-reform-crossed-finish-line/

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Chemical Management News

EPA Punts Concerns Over Pesticide Workers' Production Risks To OSHA

Dec 14, 2016 | Inside EPA

By Dave Reynolds

EPA science advisors reviewing the agency's analysis of whether the commonly used herbicide glyphosate causes cancer are faulting data gaps in the review including on potential risks to production workers, though EPA officials say such risks are the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) responsibility and outside the scope of the analysis.
EPA has convened a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) that started Dec. 13 and continues through Dec. 16, in Arlington, VA, to review the agency's conclusion in a Sept. 16 issue paper that available evidence suggests glyphosate is not likely to pose a risk of human cancers at relevant doses.
The SAP's input will inform EPA's ongoing FIFRA registration review of glyphosate. The agency planned the review in June, noting that in recent years other regulatory bodies have issued conflicting studies on whether glyphosate poses a risk of human cancers.
Several panelists raised concerns that EPA's analysis includes significant data gaps, stemming from the agency's focus on glyphosate rather than formulated products that contain the substance, and from search methods that may have overlooked certain studies, such as those written in foreign languages.
Eric Johnson, an epidemiology professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said workers who produce pesticides likely face a high risk of exposure, and that studies of those workers could inform the panel's review of the agency's analysis of whether glyphosate poses a cancer risk.
EPA officials said staff only assessed risks to agricultural workers, and that any risks to production workers fall under OSHA authority. But officials also suggested they would likely be aware of any data on whether glyphosate causes cancer in production workers, if it exists, though an agency literature review did not find any such studies.
“[S]tudies you will hear about are on agricultural workers,” Anna Lowit, of EPA's pesticide office told the advisory panel. EPA is not “aware that any such studies exist for production workers, and that is outside the purview of EPA to regulate,” she added.
In recent years, EPA's oversight of pesticides' risks to agricultural workers has been driven in part by farmworker advocates' claims that EPA's standards for protecting farmworkers are weaker than rules for protecting workers exposed to toxic chemicals in OSHA-regulated industries.
On Jan. 2, EPA is scheduled to begin phasing in 2015 revisions to its decades-old farmworker protection standards that seek to bring farmworkers similar protections to workers in industries regulated by OSHA, and also require more rigorous training and record-keeping to reduce pesticide exposures.
Environmentalists have long pressed EPA for stricter oversight of glyphosate, arguing that heavy use of the substance, particularly since the advent of genetically-modified crops designed to withstand glyphosate in the 1990s, poses significant ecological and human health risks.
Those calls picked up in March 2015 when the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found glyphosate probably causes cancer, a conclusion that conflicted with other risk findings, even from within the WHO.
Product Formulations
In separate comments submitted to the SAP this fall, groups, including Food and Water Watch, Beyond Pesticides and the Pesticide Action Network, argued that EPA's recent finding that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer is based on insufficient analysis that excluded consideration of studies of product formulations containing glyphosate.
EPA's issue paper said the agency would consider risks from product formulations in the future, though a pesticide industry group has argued in comments to the panel that such consideration is outside the scope of the SAP review.
Pesticide producers and growers also have argued that EPA's September issue paper finding that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer is backed by overwhelming scientific evidence, and that glyphosate is vital to modern agriculture. Industry officials have said EPA should speed its glyphosate re-registration decision.
During the SAP meeting's opening day, panelists raised a variety of possible data gaps in EPA's analysis. Laura Green, a toxicology consultant from Brookline, MA, noted that EPA's limiting its review largely to English language studies could cause the agency to overlook important data, noting there is significant production of glyphosate in China.
Citing other panelists' assertion that potential risks to production workers is a data gap, Green said data on that potential exposure scenario “might be available in the Chinese literature and might be worth trying to find."
Green also backed advocates' claims that EPA's review of glyphosate rather than products containing the substance may fail to capture real-world exposures. Commercial products “are expected to have very different properties in terms of water solubility and presumably absorption across the gut,” she said. “I at least would urge you to think about those different chemicals'” properties in formulated products.
Additionally, Green questioned whether EPA's method for excluding studies of glyphosate's potential ecological risks, including to aquatic environments, may have missed human health studies of exposure through drinking water. She noted that in searching for studies, EPA excluded studies containing the word “water” in the title.
EPA officials noted that they did seek to limit their review to studies of glyphosate's potential cancer risks, and that the agency's charge questions to the panel include a request for input on how the agency should select relevant studies.
In the coming days, the SAP will continue to weigh that question and others. EPA's charge questions to the panel seek input on whether the agency should consider additional studies of glyphosate's cancer potential, on the strengths and uncertainties of the agency's weight of evidence analysis of animal carcinogenicity studies, and on its interpretation of the reproducibility of certain studies, as well as on its evaluation of multiple lines of evidence.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-punts-concerns-over-pesticide-workers-production-risks-osha

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Does Glyphosate Cause Cancer? EPA Panel Meets to Find Out

Dec 14, 2016 | Eco Watch

By Stefanie Spear

From Dec. 13 - 16, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to evaluate "the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate," the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup.
For years, Monsanto has claimed that glyphosate is safe. Advertising at one time that Roundup was "safer than table salt" and "practically non-toxic."
However, many studies contradict Monsanto's assertions. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, concluded that glyphosate is a "probable human carcinogen." Then in July 2016, an IARC scientist, Dr. Kurt Straif, defended the agency's assessment that glyphosate probably causes cancer in humans. Dr. Straif stated that:
"Our evaluation was a review of all the published scientific literature on glyphosate and this was done by the world's best experts on the topic that in addition don't have any conflicts of interest that could bias their assessment.
"They concluded that, yes, glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans based on three strings of evidence, that is clear evidence of cancer in experimental animals, limited evidence for cancer for humans from real-world exposures, of exposed farmers, and also strong evidence that it can damage the genes from any kind of other toxicological studies."
The SAP meetings now taking place were originally scheduled for mid-October, but the EPA postponed them only a few of days before they were to begin due to "changes in the availability of experts for the peer review panel."
According to Carey Gillam, research director for U.S. Right to Know, the EPA's decision to postpone the meetings came after an intense lobbying campaign led by CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agricultural businesses. CropLife initially fought to keep the SAP meetings from happening at all, then said if the meetings were to be held, "any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate" should be excluded from participating.
In a letter to the EPA, CropLife singled out epidemiologist Dr. Peter Infante, who the lobbying firm felt should be "replaced with an epidemiologist without such patent bias." As the only epidemiologist slated to be on the panel, the CropLife felt that Dr. Infante may have had enhanced influence on the epidemiological evaluation on glyphosate.
Dr. Infante has testified on behalf of plaintiffs suing Monsanto over chemical exposure. Nonetheless, Dr. Infante is one of the leading experts in his field, having spent the better part of a storied career protecting the public from harmful chemicals.
Dr. Infante spent 24 years working for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where he determined cancer risks to those working on developing toxic chemicals, including arsenic, asbestos and formaldehyde. He has also served as an expert epidemiology consultant for a number of world bodies, including the World Trade Organization and the EPA.
CropLife's letter to the EPA was sent two days before the agency announced that the glyphosate meetings would be postponed. Many accused the EPA of kowtowing to lobbyists and the businesses they represent. The accusations only grew louder when Dr. Infante's name was no longer on the list of panelists scheduled for the December meetings.
Dr. Infante told Delta FarmPress that he was "mystified" by the EPA's decision to remove him from the meetings. "I didn't choose to leave the panel," he said. "No … I was removed from the panel. I'm totally mystified by it."
The EPA's move was also surprising to environmental advocacy groups, who say it is highly unusual for the agency to remove a panelist from a Scientific Advisory Panel.
"The industry wants to say that our own government scientists, the top ones in their fields, aren't good enough for these panels," said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, after the SAP meetings were postponed in October. "If the EPA wants to add extra epidemiologists that is great but why didn't they do it before? They are doing this because of pressure from industry."
According to Gillam, "the delay and the maneuvering by industry to influence panel participation does little to bolster consumer confidence for the likelihood of an objective outcome."
The EPA said it will issue a risk assessment for glyphosate by spring of 2017.
http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-glyphosate-monsanto-cancer-2145477947.html

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Energy News

Perry in His Own Words: How Trump's Energy Pick Views His World

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jim Polson

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is President-elect Donald Trump's choice to become Secretary of Energy. Here are some comments Perry, 66, has made in recent years on oil production, renewable energy, the role of government, climate change and other environmental issues:
Federal Energy Policy
Now is the time for bold leadership with a game-changing energy policy that protects American interests and our allies. It's not that we need a new energy policy, it's that we need an energy policy, period. The President should work with Congress to pass an energy plan that makes America “energy secure” by a specific date. Our plan should include becoming the world's largest net exporter of energy, it should allow for exploration and production in untapped fields, and it should help take us from the doldrums of anemic recovery to robust job growth (prepared remarks at Texas energy and climate policy summit, Sept. 25, 2014).
On the EPA
Somebody has to tell the EPA that we don't need you monkeying around and fiddling around and getting in our business with every kind of regulation you can dream up. You're doing nothing more than killing jobs. It's a cemetery for jobs at the EPA (remarks in Tea Party Republican Debate on Sept. 12, 2011).
On Russia's Threat
One of the most profound ways to enhance national security, to bring stability around the globe, and to change dynamics around the globe, is to aggressively market American energy around the globe. We see how energy can be used for malignant purposes through the actions of Russia. Energy is a weapon in the hands of aggressors. So I say, if energy is going to be used as a weapon, America should always have the largest arsenal (prepared remarks at Texas energy and climate policy summit, Sept. 25, 2014).
Energy Diversity
I feel strongly about any company that will come and deliver energy for the state of Texas, whether it's wind, nuclear, solar, coal, or natural gas. We have to have it, and I think that's the real issue here. I had the chairman of Exelon in here in the last six months, and we're working on two different nuclear sites with them. There was probably a time when people would have gotten all up in arms that we were for nuclear. Frankly, I think nuclear is the big savior (interview with Texas Monthly, published in May 2007).
Climate Change
The idea that we would put Americans’ economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said, “Here is the fact”—Galileo got outvoted for a spell. But the fact is to put America's economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I will suggest to you that it is not necessarily good science (remarks during Republican Presidential debate, 2011).
The ‘Oops’ Moment
It is three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, Education, and the—what's the third one there... I would do away with Education, Commerce, and, let's see. I can't. The third one, I can't. Oops (remarks during Republican Presidential Debate when he forgot Energy as one of the departments he'd eliminate, November 2011).
Alternative Energy
We will be missing a great opportunity as a state if we don't go to the Exxon Mobils, if we don't go to the bigger or smaller companies that are in the energy development business and ask them to join the state in creating an alternative energy effort here that is bigger and better than in any other state. There can be a lot of jobs created and a lot of wealth created by innovation in alternative fuels (interview with Texas Monthly, published in May 2007).
The Shale Boom
Texas innovation gave the world Spindletop at the turn of the century and hydraulic fracturing at the end of the century. Today horizontal slant drilling is tapping oil and gas fields unreachable just a few years ago. This technology is testament to the power of the private sector to drive economic change. In Texas, we have chosen jobs. We have chosen energy security, and we will one day end America's dependence on hostile sources of foreign energy (farewell address to Texas legislature, January 2015).
Wind Power
Texas doesn't just believe in the potential of wind energy, we are reaping its benefits already. People who talk about wind energy as a technology of the future clearly haven't been to West Texas lately: the future of wind energy in Texas is now. I am proud that our state's installed wind generation capacity leads the nation, a place we did not reach by accident (remarks to the American Wind Energy Conference, June 2, 2008).

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Oil Men Take Washington, Signal Dawn of New U.S. Energy Era

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Catherine Traywick and David Wethe

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court broke up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil in 1911, the energy industry has been at loggerheads with the federal government. Now it is the government—or may be if Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is confirmed as President Donald Trump's secretary of state.
All across the oil patch, they're figuratively uncorking the champagne bottles as Tillerson and other well-placed leaders and friends are proposed for top jobs. Rick Perry, former governor of oil-rich Texas, has been picked to run the Energy Department, which he once famously threatened to do away with and whose name he forgot in a 2012 Republican presidential primary debate. Scott Pruitt, a friend to Oklahoma's homegrown shale industry and confirmed climate-change skeptic, would take over the Environmental Protection Agency. And Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana and former CEO of an oil and gas consulting firm, is poised to become head of the Interior Department.
“Oil and gas is really the future engine of the economy,” said Hess Corp. CEO John Hess. He lauded Trump's picks and added that he has “made it very clear that energy is critical.”
About-Face
It's a breathtaking turn of events for an industry that has battled the federal government for decades on tax issues, antitrust challenges, environmental regulations and ethics oversight under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Now, after eight years of especially antagonistic face-offs with the Obama administration, Big Oil is going from Washington outsider to running the show.
“It's clearly a u-turn from the current administration, which is very hostile to fossil fuels,” said Craig Pirrong, director of the University of Houston's Gutierrez Energy Management Institute. With “a representative of the world's largest energy company in the State Department, it's inevitable that they'll have a powerful and forceful and informed advocate.”
Arctic Oil
The industry is poised to wield previously unimaginable influence on a global scale in a Trump administration. Tillerson has legitimately honed his leadership skills as head of the largest publicly traded oil company in the world. He is equal parts diplomat and executive, having spent much of his career negotiating complex and controversial business transactions in countries with which the U.S. government has strained relations. In 2011, he famously went into business with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, signing a joint-venture agreement to partner with state oil company Rosneft on Arctic oil exploration.
“There is a very thin line between oil, geopolitics and diplomacy,” OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said in Washington Dec. 13. Tillerson's experience on that front makes him “more than qualified to occupy this very important office.”
But Tillerson's oil-industry positions also could pose problems for implementing U.S. foreign policy. Tillerson has said he opposes international sanctions; as secretary of state he could push for easing sanctions against Russia, which would have obvious benefits for Exxon Mobil's partnership with Rosneft.

“Donald Trump doesn't want to drain the swamp, he wants to drill in it,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D- Mass.). “These nominees’ ties to fossil fuel interests are as deep as an oil well.”
Tillerson, though, breaks with Trump's climate-change denials. The oil executive has characterized global warming as “a serious risk” and supports a carbon tax as the best way to curb industry emissions, something Trump has said he opposes. Perry, meanwhile, oversaw a massive wind-power boom during his terms as Texas governor.
Keystone XL
Like Tillerson's, Perry's business interests also could get a boost from his appointment. He sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the beleaguered Dakota Access pipeline project stalled this year by President Barack Obama's Army Corps of Engineers. Perry is broadly supportive of building out pipeline infrastructure. During his own short-lived presidential campaign, he promised to green-light TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, which is also a priority for both Trump and Tillerson. As secretary of state, Tillerson would have direct authority over approving the project.
At the Interior Department, an agency that oversees drilling on public lands and in federal waters, the selection of Zinke bodes well for oil companies that have criticized federal barriers to energy development. The Interior Secretary will have an opportunity to open up new coastal areas for drilling, including Arctic and Atlantic waters that were blocked from exploration by the Obama administration. In Congress, Zinke has co-sponsored legislation to expand drilling and mining on public lands.

Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, spent the last few years suing to block EPA rules opposed by energy companies. As head of that agency, he'll almost certainly begin working to dismantle them. In his home state, he created a “federalism unit” tasked with fighting “unwarranted regulation and overreach by the federal government” and has billed himself as the EPA's chief antagonist.
The agency is one of two that could significantly affect the U.S. energy industry, according to Ed Morse, head of commodity research at Citigroup Inc. and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international energy policy. The other is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which approves natural-gas pipelines and LNG terminals.
These agencies “set how policy is implemented, so a lot can happen without changing law,” Morse said. Their actions could have “tangible results on both U.S. and global prices.”
With assistance from Mark Shenk and Jennifer A. Dlouhy.

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U.S. Oil Industry Cheers Trump Energy Pick, Seeks Gas Export Boost

Dec 15, 2016 | Reuters

By Susan Heavey and Steve Holland

The U.S. oil and gas industry on Wednesday welcomed President-elect Donald Trump's choice of former Texas Governor Rick Perry to head the U.S. Department of Energy, and wasted no time making its first specific request of him: to support increased exports of America's natural gas overseas.
Trump named Perry as his pick for the top U.S. energy job on Wednesday morning, handing the portfolio to a climate change skeptic with close ties to the oil and gas industry, and who previously proposed abolishing the department.
The choice adds to a list of drilling proponents who have been tapped for top jobs in Trump's administration, worrying environmental groups but fitting neatly with Trump's promise to revive oil and gas drilling and coal mining as president by cutting back on federal regulation.
Jack Gerard, president of the Washington-based American Petroleum Institute representing oil and natural gas companies, said he welcomed Perry's nomination, and called on him to make increasing exports of U.S. natural gas a "top priority."
"As the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry knows the important impact that energy production has on our nation's economy. In his new role at the Energy Department, he has the opportunity to encourage increased exports of domestically produced natural gas," he said in a statement.
Natural gas companies are eager to access foreign markets for their supply after a decade-long drilling boom that triggered a domestic glut and depressed prices.
The oil industry successfully lobbied for an end to a decades-old crude oil export ban in December 2015 following a slump in prices, a move meant to help American companies weather lower prices at home.
There is no ban on natural gas exports, but U.S. law requires American companies to obtain authorization from the Energy Department before being able to ship it overseas, and there are tough permitting requirements for building the specialized facilities that make shipping gas possible.
The United States exported its first cargo of liquefied natural gas earlier this year from an export facility on the Gulf Coast, but the industry has complained that boosting exports to match global demand has been constrained by a slow and opaque bureaucratic process.
U.S. energy exports have long been a contentious political issue, dividing lawmakers seeking to balance the benefits of low consumer prices at home and American energy independence against opportunities for companies to expand access to potentially lucrative foreign markets.
BUSINESS CLIMATE
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has made energy a central part of his agenda, vowing a revival in the oil, gas and coal industries, and picking industry allies for top administration jobs.
On Tuesday, Trump selected oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp's CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. His Environmental Protection Agency pick is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a foe of Democratic President Barack Obama's initiatives to combat climate change.
Trump said during his campaign he would pull the United States out of a global deal to curb emissions of carbon dioxide signed in Paris last year, though he has since confused observers by saying he would keep an "open mind" on the accord.
An overwhelming number of scientists say carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels contributes to changes to the climate that are leading to sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms.
Trump's transition team said Perry's tenure leading Texas, the nation's second most populous state and a major producer of oil, gas and wind power, from 2000 until 2015 made him a strong pick for energy secretary.
Trump said in a statement Perry had created "a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy."
The department is responsible for U.S. energy policy and oversees the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Perry is a former presidential rival and critic of Trump who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2016 and 2012. His nomination requires Senate confirmation.
If confirmed, he would replace Ernest Moniz, a physicist who was one of the chief negotiators in last year's Iran nuclear deal.
After his tenure as Texas governor, Perry joined the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based company building the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota that has been stalled by protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and supporters.
Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the Trump transition team's executive committee, said the president-elect was focused on preserving the environment as well as boosting U.S. energy production.
"Whether you believe in climate change or not, we want clean air, we want clean water for the American people. What we also want is energy independence," Scaramucci told CNN.
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who backed Trump's Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election, said he hoped Perry's nomination would be blocked.
"Trump no longer has to abolish departments. He can dismantle them from within," Steyer said. "It's now up to the Senate to defend our health, our economy and our democracy by defeating this nomination."
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Steve Holland; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Will Dunham)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-energy-idUSKBN14316Q

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As Trump Vows to Boost Drilling, Fracking Foes Turn to Courts

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Alex Nussbaum

Janet McIntyre has heard President-elect Donald Trump praise fracking and the jobs it's created. She's living the other side of the story.
For six years, the western Pennsylvania woman and dozens of her neighbors have blamed their tainted groundwater—turned foamy, foul-smelling and undrinkable—on a drilling technique that slams sand, water and chemicals underground at high pressure to unlock oil and natural gas caught in the shale below.
Now McIntyre and others on the front lines of the fracking debate are getting support from an Environmental Protection Agency report, released Dec. 13, that says drilling can harm groundwater. The report, quickly denounced by the industry, comes as Trump's naming of a fossil-fuel champion to lead the EPA has activists despairing. They're vowing to turn to the states and the courts to fight a technology they blame for water pollution, earthquakes and climate-warming methane emissions.
For drillers, Trump is a hero, unchaining an overregulated industry. To anti-fracking activists, he is “the absolute nightmare,” said Karen Feridun, a co-founder of the group Pennsylvanians Against Fracking. “A lot of people are depressed. They know we have our work cut out for us.“

U.S. oil production surged 78 percent from 2011 to 2015 as improvements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling helped explorers pull oil and gas from previously inaccessible shale rocks, turning America into a petroleum powerhouse.
At the same time, the practice has sparked a backlash among critics. Five states, most notably shale-rich New York, have banned fracking, along with scores of municipalities. The Sierra Club and others have sued over alleged water and air contamination and waste disposal, demanding tougher regulation.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., parent of Bloomberg BNA.
Manufacturing Rebirth
David Spigelmyer, formerly an executive at Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s Appalachia division, is now president of the Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group. He calls the resurgent drilling a “job-creating force.“
“We're witnessing a manufacturing rebirth in our region that almost nobody predicted a few years ago,” Spigelmyer said by telephone.
Trump, meanwhile, has sided with the industry, promising to undo what he calls Barack Obama's “job-killing” regulations.
The Republican could start by killing Obama proposals to police methane emissions and groundwater impact, said Peter Cohn, an analyst with Height Securities LLC, a Washington-based consultant. On Dec. 7, Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a long-time ally of oil and gas producers, to lead the EPA.
McIntyre's response serves as a microcosm of the national debate.
“I understand everybody has to have a job,” she said in an interview at her home in The Woodlands, a rural area outside Evans City, Pennsylvania. “But when it damages other people, is it really worth it?“
‘Water Buffalo’
McIntyre's water now comes from what neighbors here call a “water buffalo,” a 1,500-gallon donated tank that sits outside her home. She also picks up 20 jugs each month from the White Oak Springs Presbyterian Church in nearby Connoquenessing. About three dozen families rely on the donations, the church's pastor, Lee Dreyer, said in an interview.
Their homes, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, sit atop the Marcellus shale play, the biggest source of natural gas in the U.S. Thirty-one rigs were drilling in the state as of last week, up from a low of 13 in July, according to Baker Hughes Inc.
During a 15-minute car ride, McIntyre pointed out a half-dozen well pads close to her home. She and her neighbors say their water was ruined after Rex Energy Corp. began drilling in 2010. Now, eight of the families are suing in state court, seeking unspecified damages. They had little choice, according to McIntyre.
“We have gone to our township and our county and the state,” she said. “It seems no one's listening.”
Not to Blame
The case is in discovery, with a trial not expected until late 2017, said the homeowners’ attorney, David McGowan. A Rex Energy spokesman declined to comment, but the State College, Pennsylvania-based company has said in the past it's not to blame.
“There are no notable differences in water chemistry between pre- and post-drill water quality tests of the water wells in question,” Rex said in a 2012 statement. That same year, the state Department of Environmental Protection concurred, and a review of the state's data by the EPA reached the same conclusion.
The residents say in their lawsuits that Rex's drilling may have let contaminated groundwater from past coal mining and oil drilling reach their aquifer. According to John Stolz, a professor of environmental microbiology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, testing cited by the state may have been too limited in time or scope to pick up the damage.
EPA Report
“Clearly something happened to their water, and it happened within the window during which the drilling companies were doing what they were doing,” said Stolz, who has been retained for his expertise by McIntyre and her neighbors.
The EPA report Dec. 13 said a review of more than 1,200 scientific sources found evidence that hydraulic fracturing can affect water resources “under some circumstances.” The impacts ranged in severity from “temporary changes in water quality to contamination that made private drinking water wells unusable,” the agency said in a statement.
That was a reversal from an earlier draft that said there was no evidence of widespread water effects from fracking. Still, the agency's final report noted that “significant data gaps” make it impossible to say just how frequent the damage has been.
A Thousand Sources
The finding drew a condemnation from the American Petroleum Institute, the industry trade group in Washington. “The agency has walked away from nearly a thousand sources of information from published papers, technical reports and peer-reviewed scientific reports demonstrating that industry practices, industry trends and regulatory programs protect water resources at every step,” said Erik Milito, the group's director of upstream and industry operations.
In a study published in November by the journal Science of the Total Environment, researchers said a review of 1,850 water samples from Pennsylvania and elsewhere found elevated levels of some chemicals near fracking sites. None were present at hazardous levels, but the results indicated drilling could be affecting water quality, said the scientists from Columbia University in New York, Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Pennsylvania.
The altered water chemistry “seems to be a fingerprint of drilling,” said co-author Reynold Panettieri, director of Rutgers’ Institute for Translational Medicine and Science.
McIntyre is counting on studies like that to help swing the court in favor of the residents. If she wins her case, she said she'll use the proceeds to pay for a new water supply in the area. Until then, she's counting every drop.
“They're not paying attention,” she said of politicians from the local level to Washington. “They are listening to whoever is going to make them money and who they're going to work for. They are not interested in the little guy.“

http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101985635&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101985635&jd=101985635

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In Reversal, EPA Confirms That Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water

Dec 14, 2016 | Environmental Working Group

By Tasha Stoiber

The Environmental Protection Agency has just confirmed what communities near many oil and gas production fields have known for years: fracking – the injection of a chemical slurry into drilling sites to free up underground deposits – can pollute drinking water.
The EPA’s report concludes that underground sources of drinking water in the U.S. have been contaminated by hydraulic fracking – something an EWG investigation found the agency has known since at least 1987. The final version of the five-year study, based on a review of more than 1,200 existing studies, reverses an earlier draft influenced by lobbying from the oil industry, which concluded there were no significant impacts.
The report found that drinking water can be contaminated by spills of chemical-laced fracking fluid or wastewater, improper disposal of wastewater, and leakage from faulty well casings. It also said water supplies were threatened by the use of huge volumes of water to frack in drought-stricken areas. Even so, the report falls short of characterizing the full extent of local and national impacts because of a lack of data.
Last year it was widely reported that the EPA altered the executive summary draft report just before its release to downplay potential risks and to claim that there was no evidence of “widespread systemic impacts” of fracking on drinking water. A review by a panel of independent scientists concluded that the summary was misleading and inconsistent with the data detailed in the study.
Science prevailed in the final report, as the definitive conclusions matched evidence of water pollution for which the oil industry has repeatedly denied responsibility, in states such as Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Texas and Colorado.
“The value of high quality science has never been more important in helping to guide decisions around our nation’s fragile water resources,” Dr. Thomas Burke, an EPA science adviser and deputy administrator, said in a news release.
However, mitigating all the environmental and health impacts of fracking remains a challenge. A new report by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility argues that a growing body of evidence shows state and federal fracking regulations are “simply not capable of preventing harm.”
The EPA should be commended for producing a rigorous and forthright report. But it’s uncertain how incoming EPA officials will enforce the law and support science, given what President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team members and cabinet nominees have said about expanding energy production, including fracking, and rolling back America’s environmental laws. Trump has repeatedly said that he wants “crystal clear” water for Americans, but so far he is setting up the proverbial fox to guard the henhouse.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/12/reversal-epa-confirms-fracking-pollutes-drinking-water

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Transportation News

Railroad Industry Is Split On Worth, Effects Of New Mandated Safety System

Dec 14, 2016 | Omaha World-Herald

By Russell Hubbard

The new safety system that can automatically stop and slow the nation’s freight trains comes with the promise of fewer crashes — along with the prospect of reducing train crew sizes and adding another layer of scrutiny to their job performance.
The new apparatus called Positive Train Control has already attracted controversy for a variety of reasons. Railroads, such as Omaha-based Union Pacific and Berkshire Hathaway-owned BNSF, say it is expensive, unproven and subject to unrealistic compliance deadlines. Railroad labor unions have generally supported the safety aspects of what the industry calls PTC, an array of sensors, computers and control stations that can slow down a train automatically, such as if it is set to speed around a curve at an unsafe velocity.
But labor unions, which represent engineers, conductors and other railroad workers, also see conflicts with PTC. Some labor leaders wonder if the GPS-based automated safety system might be an excuse to move to one-person crews on the nation’s freight trains, which are now for the most part staffed with an engineer and a conductor. Another concern is that it might be unfairly used as an evaluation tool, with engineers getting demerits for having the train controls overridden by PTC.
“It seems to be the latest excuse” for one-person crews and additional micro-monitoring of train performance, said Ron Kaminkow, general secretary of Railroad Workers United, a coalition of rail workers from various unions united to advocate for issues affecting all of them. “They will definitely go for it if PTC gets implemented.”
For now, it is all a bit far off. Railroads — which include Amtrak, commuter systems and the seven Class I freight haulers — have two more years to complete installation. The deadline was extended to December 2018 last year by Congress, to the opposition of organized labor, which has generally supported PTC, saying it will prevent most train-on-train collisions.
Progress so far has been mixed. BNSF, based in Texas but owned by Omaha’s Berkshire Hathaway, leads the pack according to the latest report card from the Federal Railroad Administration. The employer of about 5,000 Nebraskans and also the largest freight hauler by ton-miles has 88 percent of locomotives equipped, 42 percent of route-miles in PTC operation and 74 percent of employees trained in its use.
Union Pacific, employer of 8,000 Nebraskans and the second-largest freight railroad, has equipped 0 percent of locomotives, according to the FRA, but the company says there is a good explanation for that. Union Pacific said in a statement to The World-Herald that almost 60 percent of locomotives are equipped with PTC gear, with the exception of one aspect called the crash hardened memory module, which has not been installed because of technical difficulties at the manufacturer.
The Association of American Railroads says the task is complicated, having been developed from scratch. Freight railroads have spent about $7.1 billion so far on development, testing and installation. Final costs are expected to reach about $10.6 billion to cover 60,000 miles of track.
“The reality is that this revolutionary technology is not off-the-shelf and isn’t just about plugging in or turning on components,” said AAR spokesman Ed Greenberg. “It is a complex step-by-step process, both in terms of safety, engineering and implementation.”
PTC was mandated by the 2008 Railway Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by U.S. Congress after a commuter train in Southern California crashed into a Union Pacific freight train, killing 25 passengers. Federal safety regulators say 25 crashes in the past 20 years would have been prevented by PTC. That is a fraction of total accidents. Through the first nine months of this year, there were 814 derailments, 259 other accidents and 66 collisions, according to FRA.
If it all leads to increased oversight of a train’s engineer, that will be nothing new, said John Risch, national legislative director of the SMART Transportation division of the United Transportation Union. Risch, who was a BNSF engineer for almost 30 years, said railroads already have monitoring systems that track every move of the throttle, brakes and other systems. Speed is closely watched for safety and fuel efficiency, he said.
“They are already using all that as an evaluation tool,” Risch said. “PTC will be more of the same. If they can, they will.”
Risch also said he expects the railroads — Union Pacific and BNSF each employed more than 40,000 people at the end of 2015 — to advocate reductions in crew members. Now, freight trains have at least an engineer who does the driving and a conductor responsible for the cargo, which can include grain, crude oil, lumber, coal or any number of commodities and products, some hazardous.
“There will be people who will use PTC to push for one-person crews,” said Risch, who came up as an engineer in an era when there were five crew members per train.
Kaminkow, an Amtrak engineer who heads the Railroad Workers United, said the freight railroads would save half of their per-train labor costs by going to one-person crews.
“They see the dollar signs,” he said.
Kaminkow said one-person crews are fraught with danger. One scenario: A train collides with a car at an isolated crossing far from any population center and vehicle occupants are injured. As it stands, a train engineer can’t just hop down and go to the aid of the injured.
“The operator could get off the train to go back and assess the situation and so forth, but — by rule — would have to secure the train first, which could take 10 to 15 minutes,” Kaminkow said.
That involves all of the steps related to engine, brakes and other systems that would make the train safe to be left unattended. And moving the train in such conditions, such as to allow emergency response vehicles to come through, would also be complicated by having only one crew member on hand, involving the exact reverse process of securing the train.
“No one is discussing any of this,” Kaminkow said. “I am unaware of any communication from any railroad about any of these issues.”
The railroad association says crew size is a collective bargaining issue, meaning the forum for deciding such matters is when labor contracts are negotiated. The association notes on its website that Amtrak and commuter rails carrying passengers operate every day with just one person in the locomotive cab.
“A recent AAR review of the FRA train accident database found no evidence that trains with one-person crews have accidents at a higher rate than trains with two-person crews,” the association says on its website. “The FRA itself, after its own review, stated in 2009 that it found no ‘factual evidence to support the prohibition against one-person operations.’”
And freight railroads are undeniably safer than ever, with each year in the past five a record for safety per million miles of travel. The freight train derailment rate on the country’s 140,000-mile mainline network in 2015 was down 58 percent from 2000 and about 80 percent from 1980.
The enormous PTC investments come as the railroads are struggling with declining coal shipments. Through November, demand from shippers at the seven Class I railroads has fallen 6 percent compared with the same period a year ago, led by a massive drop in coal, which is accounting for less U.S. electricity generation. Still, the railroads are profitable, with BNSF achieving nine-month 2016 profit of $2.6 billion and Union Pacific $3 billion.
Daniel Sherman, an analyst for wealth adviser Edward Jones who follows Union Pacific, said that investors have already figured in the cost of PTC and that most people see it as a worthwhile safety investment. When it gets completed, Sherman said, investors are looking forward to how the railroads will deploy the extra cash.
“Higher free cash flow likely means either more investment in profitable projects or more cash returned to investors,” Sherman said. “Since rails are already investing at a fairly high rate in the projects that they believe will create future value, higher free cash flow probably means more cash returned to shareholder in terms of share buybacks and dividends.”
Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition — which represents farmers who ship their crop via rail — said the idea of an automated safety system that can prevent major catastrophes sounds great and is hard to oppose when lives are at stake. At the same time, he said, perfect safety is an unrealistic expectation.
“When does it cross the line and become excessive?” Steenhoek said. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
http://www.omaha.com/money/railroad-industry-is-split-on-worth-effects-of-new-mandated/article_464e8c31-7f31-5d6f-9856-0b06bed9c261.html

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Environment News

Trump Team Steps Back From Questionnaire, But Dems Still Wary

Dec 14, 2016 | E&E News PM

By Hannah Northey

Efforts by President-elect Donald Trump's advisers today to disavow the transition team's search for Energy Department employees who work on climate change haven't eased Democrats' concerns.
Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, promised to continue pushing for more details on a brief Trump's advisers circulated at DOE asking for names of workers who attended climate-related meetings.
A Trump transition official was quoted on CNN today saying the list of 74 questions was not "standard protocol" and the "person who sent it has been properly counseled."
"One of our biggest concerns is whether or not these questions were [being asked] at other agencies and departments," Pallone spokesman C.J. Young said. "I think that's an outstanding question that they've avoided thus far."
Young said there's no reason the transition team's search for climate-related work would be solely directed at DOE when similar work and meetings are held at the departments of the Interior and Commerce and U.S. EPA.
DOE officials said they refused to provide the transition team with individual names of workers who attended any of the Conference of the Parties under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change or interagency working group meetings on the "social cost of carbon" (Greenwire, Dec. 13).
Pallone joined Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in asking Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the head of Trump's transition team, to give more details about the questionnaire (Greenwire, Dec. 14).
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who also blasted the transition team's questions, applauded the disavowal of the landing team memo but quickly warned against similar actions.
"This kind of inquiry is illegal and undermines the commitment to a peaceful transition of power by the Trump administration," Markey said in a statement. "No federal civil servant should be punished or fear that they may show up on a political 'hit list' simply for doing their jobs, even if the new administration disagrees with current policies and programs."
A DOE spokesman declined to comment on the CNN report, saying the transition process should be between career employees and the incoming administration.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/12/14/stories/1060047212

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How Climate Rules Might Fade Away

Dec 15, 2016 | Bloomberg Businnesweek

By Matthew Philips , Mark Drajem , and Jennifer A Dlouhy

In February 2009, a month after Barack Obama took office, two academics sat across from each other in the White House mess hall. Over a club sandwich, Michael Greenstone, a White House economist, and Cass Sunstein, Obama’s top regulatory officer, decided that the executive branch needed to figure out how to estimate the economic damage from climate change. With the recession in full swing, they were rightly skeptical about the chances that Congress would pass a nationwide cap-and-trade bill. Greenstone and Sunstein knew they needed a Plan B: a way to regulate carbon emissions without going through Congress.
Over the next year, a team of economists, scientists, and lawyers from across the federal government convened to come up with a dollar amount for the economic cost of carbon emissions. Whatever value they hit upon would be used to determine the scope of regulations aimed at reducing the damage from climate change. The bigger the estimate, the more costly the rules meant to address it could be. After a year of modeling different scenarios, the team came up with a central estimate of $21 per metric ton, which is to say that by their calculations, every ton of carbon emitted into the atmosphere imposed $21 of economic cost. It has since been raised to around $40 a ton.
This calculation, known as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), serves as the linchpin for much of the climate-related rules imposed by the White House over the past eight years. From capping the carbon emissions of power plants to cutting down on the amount of electricity used by the digital clock on a microwave, the SCC has given the Obama administration the legal justification to argue that the benefits these rules provide to society outweigh the costs they impose on industry.
It turns out that the same calculation used to justify so much of Obama’s climate agenda could be used by President-elect Donald Trump to undo a significant portion of it. As Trump nominates people who favor fossil fuels and oppose climate regulation to top positions in his cabinet, including Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency and former Texas Governor Rick Perry to lead the Department of Energy, it seems clear that one of his primary objectives will be to dismantle much of Obama’s climate and clean energy legacy. He already appears to be focusing on the SCC.
The Social Cost of Carbon underpins a large portion of Obama’s climate policies
On Dec. 7, the Department of Energy received a memo from the Trump transition team asking a litany of questions, many of which focused on identifying agency employees and contractors who worked on climate rules. Among its 74 questions, the memo includes a number of detailed requests about the Social Cost of Carbon: who worked on it, what methodology was used to calculate it, and what e-mails and materials could be provided that were associated with it. (A Trump transition official later disavowed the memo, telling CNN it “was not authorized.”)
Trump can’t undo the SCC by fiat. There is established case law requiring the government to account for the impact of carbon, and if he just repealed it, environmentalists would almost certainly sue. “Unfortunately, you can’t just pull this thing up by the roots,” says Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank in Washington. “While that might actually be a great idea on the merits, you have to address the court cases that will be litigated.”
There are other ways for Trump to undercut the SCC. By tweaking some of the assumptions and calculations that are baked into its model, the Trump administration could pretty much render it irrelevant, or even skew it to the point that carbon emissions come out as a benefit instead of a cost.
The SCC models rely on a “discount rate” to state the harm from global warming in today’s dollars. The higher the discount rate, the lower the estimate of harm. That’s because the costs incurred by burning carbon lie mostly in the distant future, while the benefits (heat, electricity, etc.) are enjoyed today. A high discount rate shrinks the estimates of future costs but doesn’t affect present-day benefits. The team put together by Greenstone and Sunstein used a discount rate of 3 percent to come up with its central estimate of $21 a ton for damage inflicted by carbon. But changing that discount just slightly produces big swings in the overall cost of carbon, turning a number that’s pushing broad changes in everything from appliances to coal leasing decisions into one that would have little or no impact on policy.
According to a 2013 government update on the SCC, by applying a discount rate of 5 percent, the cost of carbon in 2020 comes out to $12 a ton; using a 2.5 percent rate, it’s $65. A 7 percent discount rate, which has been used by the EPA for other regulatory analysis, could actually lead to a negative carbon cost, which would seem to imply that carbon emissions are beneficial. “Once you start to dig into how the numbers are constructed, I cannot fathom how anyone could think it has any basis in reality,” says Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the American Energy Alliance and a member of the Trump transition team focusing on the Energy Department. “Depending on what the discount rate is, you go from a large number to a negative number, with some very reasonable assumptions.”
Greenstone, who left the White House in 2010 and now teaches economics at the University of Chicago, insists that his team operated under a self-imposed “veil of ignorance” and made decisions without trying to make the final cost of carbon higher or lower. He concedes there is a broad range of values to ascribe to carbon but says that, if anything, they were too conservative in their cost estimates, and that it should be higher than it is. “Just because it can’t be written on the back of a napkin doesn’t mean the Social Cost of Carbon is not real,” says Greenstone.
Most serious policymakers believe the SCC is a valid concept, says Jeff Holmstead, a former senior EPA official under George W. Bush. “The problem is that the number is so malleable, you can almost put it wherever you want.” Putting a specific value on it, Holmstead says, “gives artificial precision to something that is highly uncertain.”
Another issue for those who question the Obama administration’s SCC: It estimates the global costs and benefits of carbon emissions, rather than just focusing on the impact to the U.S. Critics argue that this pushes the cost of carbon much higher and that the calculation should instead be limited to the U.S.; that would lower the cost by more than 70 percent, says the CEI’s Lewis. But to some, it makes sense to use a global estimate for the SCC, since climate change is worldwide. “This gets at a very basic economic concept of protecting the global commons and the natural resources we all share,” says Kenneth Gillingham, who served as senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House in 2015 and now teaches economics at Yale.
Still, by narrowing the calculation to the U.S., Trump could certainly produce a lower cost of carbon. Asked in an e-mail whether the new administration would raise the discount rate or narrow the scope of the SCC to the U.S., one person shaping Trump energy and environmental policy replied, “What prevents us from doing both?”
At an energy summit sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation on Dec. 8, David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow in energy economics and climate change at Heritage and a member of Trump’s EPA transition team, laid out one of the primary arguments against the SCC. “Believe it or not, these models look out to the year 2300. That’s like effectively asking, ‘If you turn your light switch on today, how much damage will that do in 2300?’ That’s way beyond when any macroeconomic model can be trusted.”
For climate economists, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Frances Moore, an assistant professor at the University of California at Davis, has co-authored a paper that suggests the cost of carbon should be much higher, closer to $200 a ton, or about five times higher than current estimates. “It comes down to whether or not you value the future,” she says. “Arguing for a lower number means you inherently don’t.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/how-climate-rules-might-fade-away

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The Obscure Climate Deal That Businesses Hope Trump Doesn’t Ax

Dec 15, 2016 | PoliticoPro

By Eric Wolff

President-elect Donald Trump will soon have to decide between withdrawing from an international climate change agreement and boosting the prospects of U.S. manufacturers like the company whose jobs he flamboyantly boasted of saving a few weeks ago.
Trump has been clear about his desire to "cancel" the Paris climate accord, but he has not said anything about the less prominent deal reached this year in Kigali, Rwanda, in which nearly 200 nations agreed to amend the Montreal Protocol to curb the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
While it will take at least a year to formally withdraw from the Paris deal, which went into effect in November, Trump could immediately ax the Kigali amendment by refusing to submit it to the Senate for ratification. A State Department official told POLITICO it will be up to the president-elect whether to do so.
The president-elect has previously called global warming a hoax and implicitly mocked the Montreal Protocol on the campaign trail earlier this year, but he also has promised to support U.S. manufacturers, virtually all of whom support the Kigali amendment.
Carrier, the furnace and air-conditioning manufacturer whose Indianapolis factory hosted a Trump rally earlier this month, is among the companies on board with the agreement, through its membership in the American Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade association. Supporters say exiting the deal risks outsourcing jobs because U.S. companies would no longer be able to export air conditioners, refrigerators or similar products as a condition of the treaty, which will take effect once 20 signatories ratify it.
"U.S. manufacturers’ goods would not be able to be sold in those countries that have approved the Kigali amendment, which would have significant impact on manufacturing and employment," said Steve Yurek, president of AHRI. "Instead of having products designed here and sold to China, those products would have to be manufactured somewhere else or not manufactured by U.S. manufacturers."
Greg Hayes, CEO of United Technologies, Carrier's parent company, addressed the Kigali agreement on a recent earnings call. UT subsidiary Carrier is "on top of this from what needs to be done from a regulatory standpoint," he said.
Trump's pick to lead the State Department, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has not weighed in on the agreement.
The president-elect's transition team did not respond to requests for comment on the Kigali agreement, nor did key Republican senators like incoming Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso or Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of whom have expressed doubts about climate science.
On the campaign trail, Trump mocked the Montreal Protocol, although he did not explicitly name the treaty, which was signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan with the goal of eliminating chemicals that were destroying the ozone layer, included in household products that used aerosol, like hairspray, and as a coolant in air conditioners and freezers.
"So if I take hairspray and I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer? ... I say no way folks. No way. No way," Trump told a crowd in Charleston, W.V., earlier this year, a claim the Annenberg Public Policy Center rated false. "That’s like a lot of the rules and regulations you people have in the mines, right, it’s the same kind of stuff."
Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol in October, joining with nearly 200 nations in curbing the use of HFCs. The 29-year-old treaty has been updated four times, and each amendment was ratified by the Senate.
But before the treaty amendment can go anywhere, the State Department has to finish going over the document. The Obama administration isn't making a policy decision to punt it to Trump, but it won't be ready until the next administration, a senior State Department official told POLITICO.
"The final text of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol was recently posted, and countries are now assessing their respective domestic processes to join and implement the amendment — a process which typically takes months," the official said in an email.
This is the first time the treaty has been used to tackle climate change, and the agreement was hailed by President Barack Obama, Kerry, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy as a major victory in that battle. That in turn has prompted fears that it could fall prey to the frenzy among Republicans and the Trump administration to roll back Obama's climate legacy and forced proponents to frame it primarily as a boon for U.S. business.
"Because US manufacturers have led the way in creation of new cooling chemicals for decades, and strongly support the Kigali Amendment, this should be an easy manufacturing policy win for the Trump Administration and Senate Republicans," said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser, who now runs an energy consultancy. "The only way they can fumble it away now is to let the issue become captive to the Moby Dick-like obsession some Republicans have with climate science denial."
According to his May financial disclosure, Trump owns a corporate bond issued by United Technologies that paid him between $2,501 and $5000 last year in interest. But that sum is likely too small to affect his approach to the deal, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, a think tank that supports the deal. "I can’t imagine ... this would register for him," Zaelke said.
Zaelke praised the climate benefits of the deal back in October, but now calls those a "bonus."
"There are no enemies to this treaty. This treaty works, and it protects jobs and it should continue to be supported by the new administration," he said. "So it has a climate benefit. That’s a bonus."
AHRI's Yurek, whose members produce 70 percent of global supplies of HFCs and the products that rely on the coolant, said he hopes that the amendment is not a high priority for the administration, giving him and other amendment backers time to lobby the both Trump's staff and the Senate.
"We will be supportive to help educate the Trump administration as well as the Senate on why this isn’t just a climate agreement but also a trade agreement that has significant impact if we don’t become a signatory," he said.
If Trump allows the amendment to languish without taking action, existing policies at EPA, along with market forces, have already begun the process of switching from HFCs to less global-warming inducing coolants.
The State Department official said that although the U.S. "strongly supports" the amendment, the US is "on track to meet our initial reduction commitment through industry leadership and policies already in place."
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/12/kigali-climate-deal-will-be-trumps-to-decide-on-140611

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G20 Panel Urges CEO Compensation Link With Climate Risk

Dec 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jessica Shankleman

Energy companies should consider telling investors how executive compensation is linked to climate change risks, according to a panel advising the Group of 20 nations.
Remuneration policies should consider how tighter pollution laws, extreme weather events and efforts to reign in fossil fuels could impact creditors and shareholders, according to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, the group set up by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney in his role as head of the Financial Stability Board
“How companies are remunerating their boards has been a very understated feature of the debate until now,” said Mark Lewis, a managing director at Barclays Plc and member of the task force, in a phone interview.
The link between environmental risk and executive pay was thrust into the spotlight last year by Volkswagen AG's “dieselgate” scandal. Its chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and other top executives agreed to significant bonus cuts after labor unions and the German state of Lower Saxony, the company's second-largest shareholder, opposed generous payouts following the financial backlash from the scandal.
In December 2015, Carney named Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News and its parent company Bloomberg LP, to lead the 31-member panel, which also includes executives and advisers from a variety of industries around the world.

Energy companies, which are responsible for about 60 percent of global emissions, are particularly vulnerable to a concerted global effort to tackle climate change, according to the report, which noted the rapidly falling costs of clean-energy alternatives. Organizations should consider describing in detail how manager and board member pay is tied to climate risks, the task force advised in its 110-page report annex. Almost 30 energy companies and utilities, including Enel SpA, Fortum Oyj, and Essar Oil Ltd. already offer their chief executives monetary rewards for the management of climate change, according to the CDP, formerly called the Carbon Disclosure Project, which surveys companies on their response to global warming. Another 17 energy companies and utilities, including SSE Plc and E.ON SE, reported monetary incentives for their board members.
“Carney was driven by the perception that this is a topic that's come of age,” Lewis said. “Investor pressure is already there.”
The advice, which may be adopted into law by some G20 countries, recommends companies use scenarios to investigate how they would be affected by targets to cut greenhouse gases. That's a key issue for fossil-fuel producers from Peabody Energy Corp. to Exxon Mobil Corp., which have clashed with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over accusations they didn't adequately inform investors about the climate risks they face.
The report will help financial markets “manage risks, and seize opportunities from climate change,” Carney said in a statement accompanying the report, which describes climate change as one of the most significant and misunderstood risks that companies face.
“As a private sector solution to a market issue, the Task Force has focused on the practical, material disclosures investors want and which all capital-raising companies can compile,” Carney said.
—With assistance from Chris Reiter.

http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101985634&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101985634&jd=101985634

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