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ACC PM 3/3/2017

Industry and Association News

Who's Who on Trump's Energy and Environment Team
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender

After a slow start in filling key energy and environmental jobs, the Trump administration in the past two weeks has hired senior White House energy officials and installed a trio of environmental agency leaders.
Pruitt Tries to Repair his Image by Fighting Trump's Budget
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is making the rounds in Washington to advocate for some state environmental funding that the White House has reportedly proposed to cut.
Perry Says He'll be a 'Powerful Advocate' for DOE
Mar 3, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Darius Dixon

Energy Secretary Rick Perry turned to self-deprecating humor and patriotism in his first address to employees at the Energy Department to try to ease any lingering resentments they may hold against the new leader who had once called for the agency’s dissolution.
Why Perry's Flip-Flop on Agency He Now Leads is a Good Thing
Mar 3, 2017 | The Hill - Pundits Blog
By David Hart

While running for president in 2011, current Energy Secretary Rick Perry proposed to eliminate the department that he now heads. At his confirmation hearing, he expressed regret that he made that proposal.

LCSA News

(ACC Mentioned) Trump Plan for 40% Cut Could Cause EPA Science Office ‘to Implode,’ Official Warns
Mar 3, 2017 | Science Magazine
By Warren Cornwall

In 2015, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., unveiled a controversial regulation aimed at improving protection for wetlands and small streams, officials pointed to a 400-page technical tome assembled by agency researchers as the rule’s scientific foundation and justification.

Chemical Management News

US EPA Proposes Snur for Carbon Nanotube Substance
Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA has issued a proposed significant new use rule (Snur) for a carbon nanotube substance that was subject of a pre-manufacture notice (PMN).
California Agency to Assess Carcinogenicity of Fragrance Ingredient
Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has selected the fragrance ingredient coumarin for carcinogenicity assessment.
Coop, Walmart Bring Safer Materials to the Circular Economy
Mar 3, 2017 | Green Biz
By Cheryl Baldwin

Harmful materials present a significant barrier to shifting many products and supply chains to sustainable and circular economy solutions.
UK 'Must Pursue' REACH Changes to Secure Distributor Access to EU
Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

The UK's Chemical Business Association (CBA) has urged the government to push for changes to REACH provisions to ensure continued European market access for UK chemical distributors after Brexit.

Energy News

Greens Urge Court to Reject Industry Effort to Delay Ruling
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly

Greens are objecting to what they say is an industry attempt to delay a ruling in the massive litigation over the Obama administration's signature climate rule.
EPA Grants GOP Leaders' Request at Industry's Behest
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has swiftly complied with a request from GOP leaders in oil-and-gas-producing states to scrap an Obama-era request for industry information about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Ohio Extends Methane Leak-Detection Rules
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee

Ohio has followed through on a proposal to reduce methane emissions from pipeline compressor stations, continuing toward Gov. John Kasich's (R) goal of regulating the state's growing oil and gas industry.
EPA Halts Inquiry into Oil and Gas Industry Emissions of Methane, a Powerful Greenhouse Gas
Mar 3, 2017 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis

The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday announced it was withdrawing a request that operators of existing oil and gas wells provide the agency with extensive information about their equipment and its emissions of methane, undermining a last-ditch Obama administration climate change initiative.
Cracking Appalachia’s Ethane Code Part 3: Region Could Sustain Four Additional Crackers
Mar 3, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis

The Appalachian Basin's shale formations helped to birth the natural gas renaissance in North America, and the region now is poised to join the Gulf Coast as a major petrochemical hub, a group of experts said Monday.
Gulf Coast Cracker Startup Expands Petrochemical Boom
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold

New ethylene manufacturing capacity entering service this week is a sign of big things to come for natural gas and gas liquids demand along the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

Chemical Security News

Simpler, Faster Oil-Spill Cleanup Using Fish-Inspired Membranes
Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Prachi Patel

By mimicking the way some fishes eat, a new membrane easily separates and collects spilled oil on water without getting clogged.

Transportation News

(ACC Mentioned) Innovation, Diversification Helping Service Transport Find New Growth Opportunities
Mar 3, 2017 | Bulk Transporter
By Charles Wilson

Over the past year and a half, Service Transport Company completed a major renovation of its headquarters terminal that involved a 180-degree reorientation of the sprawling complex. Costing roughly $4 million, it was a major undertaking.

Environment News

Obama's Air Chief Sees 'First Concrete Steps' of Retreat by Pruitt
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess

The retreat from President Obama's Climate Action Plan formally started yesterday at U.S. EPA, when Administrator Scott Pruitt yanked a request to the oil and gas industry for information on methane emissions.
LA is Achieving Its Climate Goals — Officials
Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern

Los Angeles has cut its greenhouse gas emissions, reduced water use 20 percent per person and installed enough solar to power 12,000 homes, city officials said yesterday.

Industry and Association News

Who's Who on Trump's Energy and Environment Team

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire

By Robin Bravender

After a slow start in filling key energy and environmental jobs, the Trump administration in the past two weeks has hired senior White House energy officials and installed a trio of environmental agency leaders.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry's confirmation yesterday came after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt officially grabbed their agencies' helms.
And now the White House is hustling to fulfill the president's campaign promises on energy and environment.
President Trump is planning to sign an executive order next week aimed at repealing the Obama administration's signature climate change rule and lifting the moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands. That move will come on the heels of a Trump order to roll back a major Obama-era water rule and efforts by Zinke on his first day at Interior to start overhauling public land policies.
Meanwhile, the new Trump agency bosses have been thrust into budget negotiations that are expected to result in major cuts to agencies like EPA and Interior, and could result in the elimination of some renewable energy efforts and other programs at DOE.
Many Republicans and energy industry groups are eager to see Trump follow through on his promises, while Democrats and environmentalists remain deeply skeptical of the president's team and his agenda.
"The energy team, from the White House to executive agencies and Cabinet departments, represents a great deal of varied experience in energy policy development," said Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist at Bracewell LLP. "The administration has before it a lot of serious issues, from regulatory reform to taxes to support for diverse technologies. The energy team is fit to the task and is far more balanced and clearsighted than the activist community is willing to admit."
Groups on the left have slammed each of Trump's energy picks, and environmentalists have vowed to wage war against the administration's agenda.
Of Perry's confirmation yesterday, Greenpeace spokeswoman Cassady Craighill said, "Rick Perry's standing as one of the more acceptable of Trump's Cabinet picks indicates just how far off course Trump has thrown the United States." She added, "The U.S. Senate must not play along with this normalization of industry stooges in charge of this country."
Getting Perry and other top officials in place also means lower-level political staffers are beginning to move into energy agencies. Sub-Cabinet nominations are expected to be coming soon, although it's unclear how much leeway agency leaders will have in picking their own teams.
One major post that remains unfilled is the leader of the Council on Environmental Quality. It's unclear how much influence CEQ will have under the Trump administration. The delay in getting a nominee and a move to relocate some staff from CEQ's main office have worried some supporters of the agency. Current contenders for that job include former Texas environmental regulator Kathleen Hartnett White and Marty Hall, who was CEQ's chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration, according to sources close to the administration.
Here's a snapshot of Trump's leaders so far on energy and environment:
Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator
Hometown: Lexington, Ky.
Education: Bachelor's degree in political science and communication arts from Georgetown College (a Baptist school in Georgetown, Ky.), law degree from the University of Tulsa.
Resume: Attorney in private practice, Oklahoma state senator, co-owner of Oklahoma City's Triple-A minor-league baseball affiliate, Oklahoma attorney general.
Nickname: Possum (Greenwire, Jan. 4).
Quirks: Pruitt's favorite drink is coffee, with orange juice coming in at a close second, he told the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association in a 2010 interview. He's a "big fan of beef," he told the oil group, and for breakfast, he likes to eat raisin bread with almond butter and fruit. He named his dog, Winston, after Winston Churchill.
Notable quote: "I believe that we as a nation can be both pro-energy and jobs, and pro-environment. We don't have to choose between the two," Pruitt told EPA staff after taking office.
Confirmation vote: 52-46. Two Democrats voted yes; one Republican voted no (Greenwire, Feb. 17).
Ryan Zinke, Interior secretary
Hometown: Whitefish, Mont.
Education: Bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Oregon, master's in business finance from National University and master's in global leadership from the University of San Diego.
Resume: Navy SEAL, Montana state senator, U.S. representative from Montana's at-large district.
Nickname: Z-Man (Greenwire, Jan. 16).
Quirks: Scored a full-ride scholarship to play football at the University of Oregon, collects Navy SEAL knives, worked summers in college for his father — a plumber — pumping out septic systems.
Notable quote: "I have absolutely and unequivocally opposed any attempts to transfer, sell, or privatize our public lands, and serving as their top steward is not a job I take lightly," he told Interior staff in an email. "I approach this job in the same way that Boy Scouts taught me so long ago: leave the campsite in better condition than I found it" (Greenwire, March 2).
Confirmation vote: 68-31, including the support of 16 Democrats and an independent (Greenwire, March 1).
Rick Perry, Energy secretary
Hometown: Paint Creek, Texas.
Education: Bachelor's degree in animal science from Texas A&M University.
Resume: Air Force, member of the Texas House of Representatives, Texas agriculture commissioner, Texas lieutenant governor and governor.
Nickname: In the Texas Legislature, young legislative aides called Perry "Crotch" because "he wore his jeans so tight," Democratic strategist Paul Begala wrote in The Daily Beast.
Quirks: Perry was a "Dancing with the Stars" contestant and a cheerleader at Texas A&M. He was a Democrat for five years when he first began as a Texas state representative in the mid-1980s and admired former Vice President Al Gore (who was then a Democratic House member and later a senator representing Tennessee) as a Southern centrist, according to NPR.
Notable quote: "My past statements made over five years ago about abolishing the Department of Energy do not reflect my current thinking," Perry told Senate lawmakers in prepared testimony during his confirmation hearing. "In fact, after being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."
Confirmation vote: 62-37, with the support of 10 Democrats and an independent (E&E News PM, March 2).
George David Banks, White House special assistant for international energy and environment
Hometown: New Madrid, Mo.
Education: Bachelor's degree in economics, history and political science and master's in economics from the University of Missouri; law degree from George Mason University.
Resume: Diplomat for the State Department, CIA analyst, CEQ adviser during the George W. Bush administration, deputy Republican staff director of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), executive vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation.
Nickname: Dave or Banks.
Quirks: He's a trumpet player with a gun collection. He's also a baseball card collector and a St. Louis Cardinals fan.
Notable quote: "Environmental and climate mitigation goals are important, but such policies must be based on a rational approach and balanced by sound economic principles that promote the national interest," he wrote in an article for RealClearEnergy last October.
Mike Catanzaro, White House special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy
Hometown: Cleveland.
Education: Bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy from Fordham University, master's degree in government from Johns Hopkins University.
Resume: Energy lobbyist at CGCN Group, adviser to then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on energy and environmental policy, Inhofe's deputy staff director on EPW, associate director for policy at CEQ during the George W. Bush administration, associate deputy administrator at EPA.
Nickname: Catz.
Quirks: He's a guitarist, drummer and lacrosse player.
Notable quote: "I would think the Republicans would come in and one of the first things on their agenda at [CEQ], I would think, would be to toss this out," he said in 2015, referring to Obama-era federal climate guidance that critics said would stall new gas pipelines and export terminals (E&E Daily, May 12, 2015).
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050928

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Pruitt Tries to Repair his Image by Fighting Trump's Budget

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Climatewire

By Emily Holden

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is making the rounds in Washington to advocate for some state environmental funding that the White House has reportedly proposed to cut.
Speaking first to reporters after the president's address to Congress on Wednesday and then before the U.S. Conference of Mayors yesterday, Pruitt reiterated that he wants to maintain funding to clean up brownfields and Superfund sites, meet unfulfilled air quality standards and keep paying for local water infrastructure.
Pruitt asked mayors to bring him "success stories" to take to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is drafting the president's proposed spending blueprint (Greenwire, March 2).
An initial version of the budget proposal suggested reducing EPA's overall budget by one-fourth, cutting state air grants by 30 percent, eliminating 3,000 employees and zeroing out 38 programs, according to a summary being circulated by sources familiar with the plan.
An EPA official who asked reporters not to identify him by name said yesterday that Pruitt made it clear that some of his budget priorities differ from the White House's draft. The official said he wouldn't characterize Pruitt's concerns as "pushback." He noted that there are some programs both Pruitt and members of Congress want to keep around.
"There's going to be back-and-forth," he said.
While Pruitt is doing damage control and touting his support of some of the money that goes to states, he hasn't addressed funding for other issues reportedly on the chopping block. These range from climate change and environmental justice to the largely successful Diesel Emissions Reduction Act and Energy Star programs.
In resistance to those proposed cuts, EPA employees protested in Chicago yesterday, and federal agency staffers rallied at the Capitol (see related story).
John O'Grady, an EPA union leader, said Pruitt's support for some programs is doing "nothing to allay" the fears of agency employees.
"EPA is full of very well educated and dedicated attorneys, biologists, chemists, ecologists, engineers, geologists, toxicologists, and other highly skilled professionals who are able to 'read between the lines,'" O'Grady said in an email. "Mr. Pruitt is here at US EPA to deconstruct the US EPA."
24% cut a 'good target'
Myron Ebell, who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and advised Trump's EPA transition, said the overall budget reductions would be "applying market discipline to a bloated bureaucracy."
"A 24 percent cut is a good target, although the specifics of the cuts should be carefully considered and revised if needed. If members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees want to increase spending on specific programs, they should justify it and find comparable savings in other programs," Ebell said.
Ebell argued that EPA has more employees than it needs, especially because much of its work has shifted to states. He called EPA "top-heavy" and argued for downsizing regional offices.
State regulators disagree, saying they need money from the agency to carry out the work required of them.
State agencies have noted that the initial cuts laid out by the White House would slash their grants for maintaining air and water quality and cleaning up hazardous waste by between 30 and 40 percent. The blueprint would leave in place state revolving funds for clean water and drinking water, which pay for infrastructure, according to a source who has seen the White House document.
The grants are "generally money going to hire people to enforce the law, to write rules, to inspect facilities, to respond to citizens' complaints, to help industry," said Bill Becker, head of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.
Becker said it's laudable for Pruitt to want to keep in place the state revolving funds for water infrastructure, "but to cut state air grants by 30 percent at a time when they're underfunded already, and talking about delegating more responsibility to our [state] agencies, seems extremely unfair and harmful to the environment."
The Environmental Council of the States, which represents state environmental agencies, raised concerns in a letter to Pruitt and the White House budget director yesterday.
States surprised by cuts
Alexandra Dunn, executive director and general counsel at ECOS, said EPA received the letter and is working hard on the budget issue. ECOS is proceeding to set up meetings with OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, she said.
Dunn said the grants in jeopardy represent the "core operational funds" states use to carry out the 95 to 96 percent of federal programs that the U.S. government has asked them to run.
Funding for those grants has not increased in years, even with inflation and as the federal government has imposed new standards for states to enforce. States are already filling the gap. Most legislatures are meeting now and would have to come back in special session to provide more environmental protection funding if Trump and Congress were to cut federal dollars, Dunn said.
"The reality is that the cost will come from somewhere," Dunn said, noting that states would likely raise fees on regulated companies.
Dunn said she's been told the White House will finish writing its budget by March 16, giving states and Pruitt two weeks to try to change minds.
She noted that in early communications with EPA's beachhead team, she got the sense that the agency understood that in order to give more authority to the states, it would have to continue to send them money.
"So it was a surprise, to say the least, to then learn of a proposal which came from OMB to cut the state grants," she said.
"There were many states very encouraged by the agenda of re-empowering the states, and I think that what I sense is people are now processing how that becomes a reality if the federal fiscal flow of money dramatically changes," she added.
Beyond grants to states, EPA could see huge cuts to science, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said on MSNBC on Wednesday. She said the agency could lose 42 percent of scientists with funding reductions to EPA's Office of Research and Development.
"I mean, this is not just disagreeing with the science and wanting to deny it. This is telling half of the scientists that they are no longer welcome in the premier science agency in the world, the Environmental Protection Agency," McCarthy said.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050895

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Perry Says He'll be a 'Powerful Advocate' for DOE

Mar 3, 2017 | Politico Pro

By Darius Dixon

Energy Secretary Rick Perry turned to self-deprecating humor and patriotism in his first address to employees at the Energy Department to try to ease any lingering resentments they may hold against the new leader who had once called for the agency’s dissolution.
In a speech the day after the Senate approved his appointment to run agency made up more than 100,000 federal employees and contractors, the former Texas governor hammered home a simple message: If you want to solve problems, I’m your best friend.
DOE staff should know, he insisted, “what a powerful advocate you are going to have in that corner office.”
Alluding to his statements in the 2012 presidential primaries where he called for abolishing three federal agencies — but also infamously forgot that DOE was on his list — the former Texas governor said that “getting to be able to come to this agency is an extraordinary journey for me. I still get reminded on a regular basis of something I couldn’t remember in a debate about this agency.”
Perry admitted that he only had a “cursory knowledge” of DOE when he made those remarks, and that it was a home state issue that began to drive his understanding. Last year, Perry's alma mater, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas were among a coalition seeking to win the contract to manage DOE’s New Mexico-based Sandia national laboratory.
“Knowing and learning about what you do,” Perry told the DOE staff, “and the potential of what we have in front of us, and the jewels that these national labs are, gave me this incredibly new appreciation about the Department of Energy, about each of you and the role that you play.”
Perry got a big laugh out of the agency employees in the room at DOE headquarters when the Air Force veteran noted that he grew up on a farm in rural Texas and had originally set his sights on becoming a veterinarian. “I wanted to be a veterinarian, and organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” he said.
He also noted that one of his meetings with President Donald Trump was “really pretty interesting.”
“We had been rivals,” Perry said before he paused, looked up from his podium and grinned. “I said some pretty harsh things about the president,” alluding to his comments early in the 2016 primaries where he called Trump’s campaign a “cancer on conservatism” that would lead the Republican party “to perdition.”
“I can assure you one thing, he is a very forgiving man,” Perry said of Trump, pausing again. “Generally.”
Perry didn’t dive into policy although Trump's budget proposal to boost military spending by $54 billion at the expense of discretionary programs could take a big bite out of DOE’s science and applied research programs that aim to help move new technologies into the market. Many of those programs have bipartisan support among House and Senate spending chiefs on Capitol Hill.
But the core of Perry’s address was a call to keep striving for scientific innovation — and an olive branch.
“I want you to know that I look at this as a team,” he said. “Yeah, I’m a manager. I managed the 12th largest economy in the world for 14 years. I know how to manage. And one of the reasons I was a successful manager is because I was pretty good at analyzing and hiring good people and empowering them.”
Perry added: “You all are brilliant, hardworking, dedicated Americans who care about the future of this country. My job is going to be partly in listening to you and getting feedback from you. ... I want you to know that I care about your ideas.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/03/perry-says-hell-be-a-powerful-advocate-for-doe-150428

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Why Perry's Flip-Flop on Agency He Now Leads is a Good Thing

Mar 3, 2017 | The Hill - Pundits Blog

By David Hart

While running for president in 2011, current Energy Secretary Rick Perry proposed to eliminate the department that he now heads. At his confirmation hearing, he expressed regret that he made that proposal. Now that he has been confirmed, he should take the next step and become a vigorous advocate for the department's vital work, particularly the function for which it is named: energy.
Longtime residents of the nation's capital have a term for this kind of a shift. They call it "going native." Critics may view it as capitulation to a bureaucratic imperative. After all, few chief executives want their organizations to shrink. But it might equally well be seen as education.
As Perry explained in his testimony, he changed his mind because he "learned a great deal about the important work being done every day by the outstanding men and women of the [Department of Energy]."
Like the former Texas governor, many Americans do not understand what the Department of Energy (DOE) does. It is responsible for the nation's nuclear weapons and for cleaning up the environmental mess at the facilities that built those weapons. The agency is also a major funder of basic research, especially physical science and engineering.
But most important, DOE is working to enable the nation's transition from dirty to clean energy, a transition supported by the vast majority of Americans, including most Republicans and even those who are skeptical that humans are changing the climate.
This last role, the one that most Americans naturally associate with DOE, comprises less than a quarter of its budget and is the most vulnerable to being cut. A proposal advanced last year by the Heritage Foundation — which has reportedly been adopted as a blueprint by senior Trump administration officials — would gut it. Heritage calls for the elimination of the Offices of Electricity, Fossil Energy, and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, along with massive cuts to the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Innovative programs that bridge the "valley of death" between scientific research on energy and its practical application, such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), would also be gutted.
The timing of such cuts could not be worse. The United States has a historic opportunity to refashion its inefficient, brittle, dirty system for producing, delivering, and consuming energy into one that is built for this new century: cheap, flexible and clean.
The country should be taking full advantage of emerging technologies like solar power, new techniques like green building, and new systems of distributed management that allow homes and cars to generate, store, and transmit energy rather than merely consume it. This transformation will limit the damage our energy system does to the global climate while strengthening the American economy and expanding freedom.
But it won't be easy. The energy system is gigantic, accounting for more than a trillion dollars a year of economic activity in the United States alone. (That's "trillion" with a "T.") It supports millions of jobs and is backed by deep-pocketed companies and investors. Above all, it must continue to function reliably while being transformed — the lights must go on when Americans flip their switches.
This opportunity will be lost if, as President Trump has argued, current energy markets are left to their own devices. Dirty energy has too big a head start and too many ways to thwart progress. Federal, state and local government agencies all have levers that they need to pull in order to nudge markets in the right direction and unleash the extraordinary power of America’s energy innovators and entrepreneurs. DOE should be leading this process, coordinating change across this vast system, so that no one is left in the dark.
The proposed budget cuts would destroy vital DOE functions like the development of standards that save Americans billions of dollars every year by making homes and factories more efficient. They would halt work on new designs for power plants, storage systems, and transmission lines that would nurture the emerging "energy internet" (a phrase coined by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman). They would undercut funding for research and development and technology diffusion with the potential to help wean our transportation system off what President George W. Bush called America's "addiction to oil."
Perry's home state of Texas is a national leader in energy system transformation, its status as a hub of the oil and gas industry notwithstanding. Texas leads in renewable energy, harnessing the wind and sun of its vast plains to power its growing cities, due in part to actions that Perry took during his three terms as governor. Texas leads in market design, allowing energy customers freedom of choice that they never had in the past. And, as Perry likes to point out, the economy of Texas thrived during his gubernatorial tenure.
Perry can lead the nation along the path that Texas has pioneered, but only if he sustains DOE's key energy functions, working closely with allies at the White House, in Congress and across the country as well as in the department itself.
Only a strong DOE can engage effectively with the defenders of the old energy system, cultivate the green shoots of the new one, and ensure that the lights stay on in the meantime.
So "go native," Mr. Secretary! The future depends on it.
David Hart is a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the leading U.S. science and tech policy think tank, and professor of public policy and director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. Follow him on Twitter @ProfDavidHart.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/322073-why-perrys-flip-flop-on-agency-he-now-leads-is-a-good

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LCSA News

(ACC Mentioned) Trump Plan for 40% Cut Could Cause EPA Science Office ‘to Implode,’ Official Warns

Mar 3, 2017 | Science Magazine

By Warren Cornwall

In 2015, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., unveiled a controversial regulation aimed at improving protection for wetlands and small streams, officials pointed to a 400-page technical tome assembled by agency researchers as the rule’s scientific foundation and justification.
But that document carried little sway this week as President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at gutting the rule.
Now, the White House wants to dramatically slash the budget of the EPA science office that produced that report, employs some 1700 researchers and others, and runs essentially all of the agency’s other major scientific activities.
The Trump administration wants to cut spending by EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) by more than 40% from roughly $510 million to $290 million, according to sources that have seen preliminary directives from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The cuts target scientific work in fields including climate change, air and water quality, and chemical safety. EPA’s $50 million external grant program for environmental scientists at universities would disappear altogether. Such erasures represent just part of a larger plan to shrink EPA’s budget by 25% to $6.1 billion, and cut its workforce by 20% to 12,400 employees, in the 2018 fiscal year that begins 1 October.
The cuts are needed, the OMB guidance suggests, to help reduce the burden that EPA regulations place on industry and state and local governments. But environmental scientists, regulators, and current and former EPA officials warn the reductions would devastate the agency’s efforts to carry out its mission of protecting human health and the environment.
The proposed cuts could cause EPA’s research office “to implode,” warns a senior EPA official. “This is serious stuff. We’re all concerned about what might happen, not just to our livelihoods, but to our ability to support the agency’s mission,” says the official, who does not have authorization to speak to reporters and so requested anonymity. “This is a premier research organization, and it doesn’t take much for the best and the brightest to start looking for other places for work. Even the uncertainty can cause a place to implode, almost, and you don’t build that back quickly if it happens.”
The Trump administration is “not just going after the climate science in the agency, but going after the scientists … that do fundamental air and water and land work,” says Gina McCarthy, the last EPA administrator under former President Barack Obama.
It is not yet clear whether the Trump administration will keep the steep EPA cuts in its final 2018 budget request to Congress, scheduled to be released on 16 March—or whether Congress will go along. Many federal lawmakers, as well as state and local officials, have already expressed strong opposition to some of the cuts, and even new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, long an EPA foe, has suggested that he will push back against parts of the preliminary White House plan.
But such talk is doing little to reduce the alarm among those who rely on EPA’s scientific expertise to help set pollution standards and understand environmental change. If the cuts are realized, “you will totally undermine the ability of EPA and its research arm to set standards at a level that science can rightfully be confident is protective of public health,” predicts William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a Washington, D.C., organization representing state and local air pollution agencies around the country.
Longstanding attacks
EPA’s scientific work has long been in the hot seat. Congressional Republicans in recent years have targeted the agency’s funding for climate science and criticized its handling of research into the herbicide glyphosate, among other things. Industries have chafed against tightened restrictions on chemicals such as pesticides, disputing the validity of the science behind the regulations. Congress has already trimmed ORD’s budget to $512 million in 2016, down 21% from a high of $647 million in 2004.
Although that number makes ORD a relatively small research office by federal standards (other agencies spend far more on basic and applied studies), it plays a critical role in underpinning EPA’s regulatory tasks. Often, the law requires EPA to use “the best available science” in designing regulations, and ORD scientists and outside researchers that the office recruits for review panels are tasked with deciding which studies meet that standard. ORD’s work also involves developing new approaches to environmental problems, such as ways to quickly screen thousands of potentially dangerous chemicals, new methods to assess contamination from a release of anthrax, and ways to use satellites to detect toxic algae blooms. The research is done at 14 EPA laboratories in 12 states, and through external grants to universities and contracts with private firms.
The OMB memo calls for a major shake-up of that system. “EPA is to reconfigure and restructure its activities to support the administration’s priority of reducing burdens related to certain regulations as it relates to scientific research and development,” the document states, according to a copy read to ScienceInsider.
Cuts spelled out in the new budget memo include:
Climate, air, and energy research would fall from $91.7 million to $45.7 million.
Research in chemical safety and sustainability would go from $89.2 million to $61.8 million.
Water-related science falls from $107.2 million to $70.1 million.
A category labeled “sustainable healthy communities” plunges from $139.7 million to $75.8 million.
Although the OMB memo doesn’t always state exactly which research programs would be axed, it does offer some specifics. EPA would no longer contribute to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a multiagency task force that coordinates federal research on global change. Research on chemicals that can disrupt the endocrine system would be scaled back. And one of the few sources of federal grants for academic researchers who study environmental science—EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program—would dry up.
Although STAR’s $50 million budget isn’t big by federal standards, “it’s big enough that [eliminating] it would have an impact in the subset of [environmental] science research,” says Shane Hutson, a biological physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Hutson is in the second year of a 4-year, $6 million EPA grant aimed at devising a faster way to test thousands of chemicals for whether they might harm fetuses. That could be vital as the agency searches for ways to satisfy 2016 changes to the federal Toxic Substances Control Act aimed at improving chemical screening.
Since hearing news of potential cuts, Hutson has been on the phone with EPA, trying to learn whether his funding—which has already been awarded—is in peril. “We were assured that [the money] would be there,” Hutson says, “but we'll see.”
The chemical industry, meanwhile, is also waiting to see budget details, says Kathryn St. John, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, a Washington, D.C.–based industry group. But St. John noted the group supports funding to ensure EPA can carry out the new toxic chemical law.
Pushback
Already, there are signs of pushback against at least some of the proposed cuts. At a Thursday meeting with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., new EPA chief Pruitt told mayors he was delivering a message to the White House and Congress that agency programs aimed at cleaning up superfund sites, rehabilitating former industrial land, and improving water infrastructure “are essential to protect.”
More broadly, even some senior Republicans in Congress have expressed doubts about the larger Trump administration budget plan that is driving the EPA cuts. It calls for boosting discretionary defense spending in 2018 by $54 billion, and paying for that increase by cutting discretionary spending at civilian agencies such as EPA. The shift would likely require Congress to change a 2011 law, called the Budget Control Act, that imposes caps on domestic spending—but Democrats in the Senate have already said they would block any change unless it also includes spending increases for civilian programs.
Such dynamics mean the battle over any proposed EPA cuts will be fierce and long. And even before the White House delivered its demand for 2018 cuts, EPA officials appear to have been tweaking their approach to describing ORD’s activities to the new Trump administration. Under Obama, reports issued by ORD trumpeted its climate change–related research. But in a presentation to transition officials last month, ORD officials stressed the legal mandates that require EPA to conduct much of its scientific work, quoting paragraphs from the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Toxic Substances Control Act. Climate change got a single, brief mention on the 13th slide of the PowerPoint.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/trump-plan-40-cut-could-cause-epa-science-office-implode-official-warns

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Chemical Management News

US EPA Proposes Snur for Carbon Nanotube Substance

Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA has issued a proposed significant new use rule (Snur) for a carbon nanotube substance that was subject of a pre-manufacture notice (PMN).
The agency had previously issued a Snur on the "bimodal mixture consisting of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and other classes of carbon nanotubes (generic)" as a direct final rule, but withdrew it following receipt of adverse comment.
The EPA says it identified concerns for pulmonary toxicity and oncogenicity based on test data of analogous respirable, poorly soluble particulates and nanocarbon materials. It also identified concerns for environmental toxicity.
As a result, it has proposed to designate as significant new uses the absence of the following protective measures, consistent with the consent order:
use of certain personal protective equipment (PPE);
submission of a dustiness test within six months of notice of commencement of manufacture (NOC);
submission of certain physical chemical properties;
use of the substance outside of those specified in the consent order, including an application method that generates a vapour, mist or aerosol (unless the application method occurs in an enclosed process); and
releases to water beyond those described in the PMN.
It has also recommended the development of certain test data.
Comments will be accepted for 30 days following the proposal's publication in the Federal Register.
https://chemicalwatch.com/53985/us-epa-proposes-snur-for-carbon-nanotube-substance

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California Agency to Assess Carcinogenicity of Fragrance Ingredient

Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has selected the fragrance ingredient coumarin for carcinogenicity assessment.
Oehha has referred the substance the Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) – the advisory board that gives opinions on whether a substance has been clearly shown to cause cancer. This process precedes a chemical's addition to Proposition 65.
It is requesting that the public provide information relevant to the assessment of substance's carcinogenicity. This includes:
cancer bioassays and epidemiological studies;
genotoxicity testing; and
data such as pharmacokinetics, biomarkers and effects on biochemical and physiological processes in humans.
Information may be submitted until 17 April.
https://chemicalwatch.com/53998/california-agency-to-assess-carcinogenicity-of-fragrance-ingredient

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Coop, Walmart Bring Safer Materials to the Circular Economy

Mar 3, 2017 | Green Biz

By Cheryl Baldwin

Harmful materials present a significant barrier to shifting many products and supply chains to sustainable and circular economy solutions. The typical microwave popcorn package in the market is not recyclable, which creates waste. Even if these packages could be recovered and recycled, they would not be sustainable: A remaining challenge is that the packages contain fluorinated chemicals (PDF) with known human health concerns that not only contaminate food but would continue to circulate, leading to even more exposure.
The key is a system built not just on the productive use of resources, typical of a circular economy, but one that also uses safer materials. Pure Strategies outlined these strategies for a sustainable and circular economy, which also includes clean energy and fair opportunities, in a research report that demonstrates momentum in this area. Notably, companies are ramping up their efforts and investments in sustainable chemicals management.
Coop leads by example
Denmark’s top food retailer, Coop, was the first to remove the known human health hazards in microwave popcorn bags. The company shifted from the grease-proofing packaging additives linked to a host of issues from cancer to endocrine disruption to a package comprising only bio-based, cellulose fibers and paper.
Its innovative delivery of a product without added chemicals is inherently safer than the offerings across the market and allows the package to become recyclable. Additionally, the company expects to gain a competitive advantage by tackling this chemical of concern before it is regulated and by meeting growing consumer demands for safer products.
Coop is not alone in proactive chemicals management. Moving to safer products is a leading sustainability strategy, according to companies analyzed in Pure Strategies’ report, ranking above efforts such as resource efficiency and renewable energy. Even more promising, the companies surveyed anticipate additional progress, growing from 64 percent of companies currently with well advanced or leading efforts to 79 percent in three years.
The Danish manufacturer continues to chart an aggressive course. The company made the shift with microwave popcorn packaging in 2015. Prior to that, it was among the first to commit to reduce hazardous chemicals in textile production with Greenpeace in 2013. In 2016, the company established a "dirty dozen" list of chemicals it is working to remove from its own brand products. The effort covers food and apparel as well as personal care products and other categories, for a store-wide approach to safer materials, similar to the initiative Target announced in 2017.
Walmart drives investment
Walmart is the top retailer driving investment in sustainability, according to the survey. When asked about sustainable chemicals management, meeting customer requirements spurred the greatest activity. Seventy percent of those surveyed indicated they already had well advanced or leading level efforts. As a result, the largest retailer has made impressive progress. Walmart reported that 95 percent of the weight of its high priority chemicals in home and personal care products was removed from Walmart stores in the U.S. between 2014 and 2015.
Companies indicated that they plan to focus their investments on identifying the chemicals in products and supply chains. This is key as it is the first step to developing safer products. Ingredient transparency was a critical element of Walmart’s achievement to date, with suppliers required to disclose product ingredients to them and to the public. However, the retailer does not have complete ingredient information as proprietary compositions do not need to be disclosed. This is an active area for improvement, with Unilever’s 2017 commitment to disclose fragrance materials to 0.01 percent by 2018 being a notable step forward.
Walmart announced additional goals to stimulate a sustainable and circular economy in November. The plan includes efforts with its suppliers to reduce Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 1 gigaton and to have all of its private brand packaging be recyclable. However, as the microwave popcorn example showed, recyclability isn’t the only challenge; material safety also is important.
A report in 2016 found that two-thirds of brand and retailer food cans, which are recyclable, contained bisphenol A (BPA) and carry with them concerns about endocrine disrupting activity. A key challenge with replacing BPA and other chemicals of concern is finding safer alternatives. Sometimes the available options are not safer, or there is not enough data available to support a change. Companies are recognizing this challenge; they noted in the survey that just behind identifying the chemicals in products and supply chains they are ramping up efforts to evaluate chemicals of concern and safer alternatives.
The survey results signal that companies are not only already making progress, but that they are committed to accelerating the shift to safer products. Gone will be the days with microwave popcorn and canned food containing endocrine disrupting chemicals. Within reach will be a future of a sustainable and circular economy with safer products at its core.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/coop-walmart-bring-safer-materials-circular-economy

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UK 'Must Pursue' REACH Changes to Secure Distributor Access to EU

Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical Watch

The UK's Chemical Business Association (CBA) has urged the government to push for changes to REACH provisions to ensure continued European market access for UK chemical distributors after Brexit.
Its statement comes ahead of next week's House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) inquiry oral session, which will continue to examine the future of UK chemicals regulation. And the government is expected to trigger Article 50 to start the formal process of the UK's withdrawal from the EU later in the month.
The CBA's chief executive Peter Newport said that unless the UK government "negotiates revised terms or some sort of opt-in", UK distributors importing substances from outside the European Union are likely to be denied access to European markets.
This is because under the current terms of REACH, UK distributors would not be 'non-EU manufacturers' as they import and distribute, rather than manufacture, the CBA said. As such, they could not appoint an only representative to comply with the existing REACH provisions.
Registration concerns
Trade bodies have expressed concerns to the EAC inquiry over access and ownership of REACH data and registration dossiers.
In its statement, the CBA said it wants clarity on the status of products already registered by its member companies under REACH's 2010 and 2013 registration deadlines. Securing continuance and benefits of these registrations post-Brexit should be a "key aspect" of the UK's negotiating position, Mr Newport said. "Failure will irreparably damage a significant proportion of the UK chemical supply chain."
At the last EAC inquiry on 21 February, the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) chemicals policy director Nishma Patel said a mutual recognition model between a UK-REACH system and EU REACH – whereby data requirements for registration dossiers would essentially be similar or identical – 'could work'.
She was joined by CBA technical director Douglas Leech, who told the inquiry that mutual agreement is a "likely possibility" if the UK and member states see benefits, but the "critical factor" will be getting that recognition in place.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54002/uk-must-pursue-reach-changes-to-secure-distributor-access-to-eu

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Energy News

Greens Urge Court to Reject Industry Effort to Delay Ruling

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire

By Amanda Reilly

Greens are objecting to what they say is an industry attempt to delay a ruling in the massive litigation over the Obama administration's signature climate rule.
At issue: A trio of industry petitioners wants a federal court to add their lawsuits challenging U.S. EPA's denial of administrative petitions to the Clean Power Plan to the litigation over the underlying rule.
A coalition of environmental and health groups yesterday afternoon asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to deny the industry motion.
"The relief requested here — halting the court's consideration months after oral argument to consolidate separate reconsideration challenges — appears to be unprecedented," the groups said in a court filing.
The Obama administration's Clean Power Plan required states to develop and put in place plans to lower carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
More than two dozen states and dozens of industry and labor entities challenged the rule on claims that it exceeded EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act. In February 2016, the Supreme Court stayed the rule while the litigation plays out.
In September, 10 D.C. Circuit judges sitting en banc heard nearly seven hours of arguments in the case. The court has yet to issue an opinion.
While the litigation was ongoing, EPA considered dozens of petitions to administratively consider the rule. The agency denied the petitions just days before the Obama administration left office.
The denial of petitions led to a new round of litigation, all of which the D.C. Circuit consolidated into one case.
Three of EPA's opponents — the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the American Public Power Association, and LG&E and KU Energy LLC — last week asked the court to instead hear their lawsuits as part of the larger Clean Power Plan litigation.
"In the situation presented here, where the original petitions challenging a final EPA rule are still pending before the court," they wrote, "petitions for review of the agency's denial of reconsideration are routinely consolidated with those original petitions."
But environmentalists accused the groups of trying to bring "run-of-the-mill" issues in front of the en banc court with the purpose of delaying the court's opinion in the Clean Power Plan case.
"This Court should reject this extremely inefficient proposal," their court filing says. "The en banc court should decide the case that has been briefed and argued, including all issues properly brought in the petitions for review of the Plan."
Earlier this week, the Justice Department asked the court for more time to respond to the industry petition. It was the first document filed by the Trump administration in the Clean Power Plan case and came as the new administration is preparing to issue an executive order to weaken the rule (Greenwire, March 2).
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050917

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EPA Grants GOP Leaders' Request at Industry's Behest

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire

By Ellen M. Gilmer

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has swiftly complied with a request from GOP leaders in oil-and-gas-producing states to scrap an Obama-era request for industry information about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The agency yesterday withdrew a formal survey of oil and gas companies that required them to provide information about onshore equipment and controls that could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane. Industry and state officials complained that the information collection request (ICR) was time-consuming and expensive.
"By taking this step, EPA is signaling that we take these concerns seriously and are committed to strengthening our partnership with the states," Pruitt said in a statement. "Today's action will reduce burdens on businesses while we take a closer look at the need for additional information from this industry."
Eleven Republican state leaders, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, sent a letter Wednesday urging Pruitt to toss the information request (Energywire, March 2).
Industry groups were "overjoyed" at the news, calling the ICR an eleventh-hour attempt by the Obama administration to gather excessive data.
"We're overjoyed," Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said in an email. "The ICR was an ill-conceived action that was extremely burdensome not just on industry, but EPA career employees were struggling to figure out how to handle reams of meaningless data."
The ICR was part of the previous administration's plan to crack down on emissions from existing oil and gas facilities — a piece of President Obama's broader Climate Action Plan. A separate EPA rule finalized last year aims to slash methane emissions from new facilities and is now under review in federal court.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America argued in a statement that the ICR "should have been a real opportunity for the decision-makers at EPA to better understand the complexities of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry" but that "ended up not being the case."
"The exercise imposed significant costs on companies to produce additional paperwork and added unnecessary burdens on producers' technical teams to prepare and submit rushed comments under enormous time constraints," IPAA Executive Vice President Lee Fuller said in a statement. "IPAA welcomes today's announcement as it brings meaningful relief to independent producers across the nation and demonstrates that creating American jobs and developing U.S. energy is a high priority for the Trump administration."
The American Petroleum Institute hopes EPA's move is part of a one-two punch, with the Senate also considering using the Congressional Review Act to torpedo Bureau of Land Management restrictions on methane emissions for oil and gas development on public and tribal lands.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are worried that the oil and gas industry has Pruitt's EPA in its pocket.
"This appalling decision shows how quickly Pruitt is turning the EPA into an oil industry vending machine," Center for Biological Diversity attorney Vera Pardee said in a statement.
"Just one day after oil-friendly state governments complain about efforts to collect methane pollution data, out pops this cancellation," she said. "The Trump administration doesn't want this data because it doesn't want to rein in oil companies' massive emissions of this dangerous greenhouse gas."
Mark Brownstein, vice president of climate and energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said industry's complaints about the ICR are "ironic," considering operators' contention last year that EPA needed more information before it could craft new emissions restrictions.
"The larger point here is that Administrator Pruitt is saying it's OK for industry to withhold basic information on pollution from oil and gas operations from the American people," he told E&E News.
A number of companies have already submitted responses to the information request. EDF is seeking those responses in a Freedom of Information Act request.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050872

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Ohio Extends Methane Leak-Detection Rules

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire

By Mike Lee

Ohio has followed through on a proposal to reduce methane emissions from pipeline compressor stations, continuing toward Gov. John Kasich's (R) goal of regulating the state's growing oil and gas industry.
Operators of compressor stations, which are used to pressurize gas so it can be transported, will have to check for leaks once a quarter using an infrared camera or hand-held monitor, said James Lee, a spokesman for the state EPA. The requirement is part of a general permit system that allows companies to obtain faster clearance for compressors and other equipment if they agree to certain stipulations.
Gas production is growing rapidly in Ohio as companies drill into the Utica Shale formation, and the state began regulating methane from oil and gas well sites in 2014. Kasich, who ran unsuccessfully for president last year, has said he wants to promote the industry while protecting the state's environment (Energywire, April 8, 2016).
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. Environmentalists have warned that the U.S. won't be able to meet its climate change goals without doing more to prevent methane from being emitted into the atmosphere.
In addition to Ohio, Colorado and Wyoming have their own regulations on methane emissions, and Pennsylvania is considering similar rules. U.S. EPA passed its own regulations on methane from new oil and gas sources, but was promptly sued by West Virginia and other energy-producing states (Greenwire, Jan. 30).
State-level regulation will become more important as the Trump administration begins rolling back federal oversight of the oil and gas industry, said Andrew Williams, state regulatory and legislative affairs manager at the Environmental Defense Fund.
"Important signals are coming from states like Ohio, states that are conservative in nature," Williams said.
"It's good business practice to reduce waste."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050875

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EPA Halts Inquiry into Oil and Gas Industry Emissions of Methane, a Powerful Greenhouse Gas

Mar 3, 2017 | Washington Post

By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis

The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday announced it was withdrawing a request that operators of existing oil and gas wells provide the agency with extensive information about their equipment and its emissions of methane, undermining a last-ditch Obama administration climate change initiative.
The EPA announcement was a first step towards reversing an Obama administration effort – which only got underway two days after Donald Trump’s election – to gather information about  methane, a short-lived but extremely powerful climate pollutant which is responsible for about a quarter of global warming to date.
The agency cited a letter sent by the attorneys general of several conservative and oil-producing states complaining that the information request “furthers the previous administration’s climate agenda and supports … the imposition of burdensome climate rules on existing sites, the cost and expense of which will be enormous.”
Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, said the agency took those complaints seriously. “Today’s action will reduce burdens on businesses while we take a closer look at the need for additional information from this industry,” he said in a statement.
Environmental advocates saw the move as something else entirely.
“With this action, Administrator Pruitt is effectively telling oil and gas companies to go ahead and withhold vital pollution data from the American public,” Mark Brownstein, vice president climate and energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview. “This was a good faith effort on the part of the agency to collect additional information on oil and gas industry operations and the pollution that comes from them. [Now], it’s a complete lack of transparency.”
The EPA announcement  further advances efforts by the White House and Republicans in Congress to undo the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate emissions from oil and gas production.
Congress, through the Congressional Review Act, is already moving to dismantle an Interior Department regulation, finished very late in the Obama administration, that would have restricted methane emissions from wells drilled on public lands in particular. The EPA did not issue its request for information from companies until November 10, two days after Donald Trump was elected president.
Industry officials were quick to applaud Thursday’s action.
“The exercise imposed significant costs on companies to produce additional paperwork and added unnecessary burdens on producers’ technical teams to prepare and submit rushed comments under enormous time constraints,” said Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, in a statement.
But the EPA announcement could result in the United States emitting more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in coming years. At the very least, it means that the United States will not be tracking those emissions as closely.
Not everyone, however, thinks that withdrawing an information request is the same as an intention not to regulate.
“The withdraw doesn’t necessarily means that the Trump folks are not planning to regulate methane from existing oil and gas operations,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former EPA deputy administrator and a lawyer with Bracewell LLP, which has clients in the energy industry. “They may well come out with a less-burdensome request at some point, but they needed to withdraw the Obama request right away to ensure that the industry wouldn’t be forced to spend a lot of money to produce information that may not be necessary.”
The Obama administration’s efforts to tackle methane emissions got going in May last year when the EPA  announced new regulations to restrict methane emissions from new or modified oil and gas operations. Simultaneously, the agency sent out an information request to existing facilities — by far a bigger source of methane — asking for them to provide extensive information about their emissions and how they were seeking to control them. This was widely considered as a first step towards an eventual regulation of these facilities, as well.
The request for information was a way of “really launching our work to address methane emissions from existing sources,” EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said at the time.
But after  Trump’s inauguration, the EPA began to give companies more time to supply that information. Many of those companies assumed that the request itself would ultimately be undone. Now, it has.
Industry officials see that as a positive shift.
“This step will reduce the significant uncertainties and burdens on the oil and gas industry,” Howard Feldman, senior director for regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement. “The United States is leading the world in the production and refining of oil and natural gas and in the reduction of carbon emissions, and we look forward to working with the administration on lawful, common sense regulations that create jobs and benefit American consumers.”
But Vera Pardee, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said the “appalling decision” demonstrates how Pruitt is turning the EPA into an oil industry vending machine.”
“Just one day after oil-friendly state governments complain about efforts to collect methane pollution data, out pops this cancellation,” she said in a statement. “The Trump administration doesn’t want this data because it doesn’t want to rein in oil companies’ massive emissions of this dangerous greenhouse gas.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/02/epa-halts-inquiry-into-oil-and-gas-industry-emissions-of-methane-a-powerful-greenhouse-gas/?utm_term=.22f48c57341e

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Cracking Appalachia’s Ethane Code Part 3: Region Could Sustain Four Additional Crackers

Mar 3, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence

By Carolyn Davis

The Appalachian Basin's shale formations helped to birth the natural gas renaissance in North America, and the region now is poised to join the Gulf Coast as a major petrochemical hub, a group of experts said Monday.
(See Part One; Part Two)
A webinar hosted by NGI’s Shale Daily, "Cracking the Ethane Code in Appalachia, delved into all sides of the petrochemical equation. Last spring a unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc made a final investment decision (FID) to build a multi-billion dollar cracker about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, officially signaling that the region will be a major hub. Sited on 400 acres in Beaver County, adjacent to the Ohio River in Potter and Center townships, the project as designed would have capacity to produce 1.6 million metric tons/year (mmty) of polyethylene and 1.5 mmty of ethylene. Construction would require 6,000 people at its peak, while another 600 permanent employees would staff the facility when it becomes operational in the early 2020s.
Shell's project will not only be huge, transformational in all ways, said an all-star panel of experts during the one-hour webinar. Joining NGI Associate Editor Jamison Cocklin, who was the moderator, were Consol Energy Inc.'s Don Rush, vice president of marketing, and James Cooper, senior petrochemical adviser to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers trade group. Also joining in the conversation were Denise Brinley, special assistant to the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), and Danielle Sandusky, president of Denver-based Level 2 Energy, a risk management firm.
It was a long and intricate process to convince Shell to build the cracker, Brinley said. She was on the team that began initial discussions in 2011.
"That's how long these deals take," she said. "It was five years in the making in terms of discussing and building an incentives package for Shell to entice them to come here. We don't want Shell to be the only ethane cracker in the region. And we think one of the best economic projects next would be PTT Global Chemical because it would shore up the region as a petrochemical hub.
Shell has said that without the economic development, job creation and investment savings it received from the state, the project would not have been possible. An incentive plan was crafted under former Gov. Tom Corbett that offered a package of tax credits that would allow the company to reduce its tax liabilities by up to 20% annually.
"Internally here at DCED, we're trying to educate as many people in the economic development world as we can, and then cross over into the petrochem manufacturing sectors to make folks aware of this region," Brinley said. The Gulf Coast "is so dominant with what they do, that a lot of times...we're out selling the region and making folks know that we have a great resource here…to build on our strong manufacturing base."
Pennsylvania "is a manufacturing state, and we're really good at it. We're nimble enough to advance this industry forward in meaningful ways for long-term benefits for our citizens...We are doing everything we can to position and market Pennsylvania as a great place to do business. We want to incentivize folks to look at this region. Take a second look, take a third look. One of the things that we know is critically important is having a ready site.
"So we're going to be making an earnest effort particularly in the southwest area of the state to help get the site pad-ready for additional manufacturing opportunities. We think that it makes an investment a little bit easier when the site has all the necessary infrastructure in place and teed up and ready to go."
Leaders from Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania two years ago signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the first ever Tri-State Shale Summit in Morgantown, WV, to spur regional development. The group has been "at the table since," Brinley said.
"The Tri-State Shale Coalition has just rolled out an action plan for 2017...It's broadly reliant on making sure we're marketing and promoting the region holistically. A rising tide raises all ships. We all believe across state borders that we want to get the pie and we can fight over the size of the slices of the pie but we really think we all have a strong economic development base upon which to build.
"We're trying to break down those barriers of competing across state lines...The marketing and promoting the region holistically will be really important in the upcoming year. We’re looking at regional transportation and infrastructure projects that will be meaningful to help toward the long-term viability of the resource."
The coalition wants to connect area colleges and universities and is collaborating on ways to ensure there is an adequate and trained workforce.
"We know that 6,000 construction jobs that will be seen at the Shell cracker at its peak will be drawn from a regional workforce," Brinley said. "So if other crackers come online, like PTT Global Chemical, Pennsylvanians will benefit as well. We'll have participated in building one cracker here in our own state. Certainly, those resources can work across state borders for the benefit of all."
More Crackers to Come?
"Purely from a volumetric perspective, you've got ethane production projected to grow to somewhere around 400,000 b/d or more," Sandusky said. Shell’s cracker will pull 100,000 b/d out of that, "so volumetrically, absolutely there is plenty of room to supply a second or even a third cracker."
However, it's got to be at an economic price.
"If the economics aren't quite as robust on the upstream side, you have to wonder if [potential entrants] will start taking a harder look at some of the other issues, where, for instance, you don't have the redundancies of infrastructure and storage like you do on the Gulf Coast. So if you’ve got a company that is looking at one or both, then you might see that as a big advantage to the Gulf Coast.
"On the other side, if there is more local market, there's an upside to building a cracker in the area. I think it's going to be interesting to see those companies in the next few years weigh all of those [issues] if the economics aren't the biggest slam dunk that they are expecting like Shell had."
The question of whether there could be a second or third cracker "is definitely not an easy one to answer," Rush said. "From where I sit and how I think about it, a lot of the infrastructure has been built up on the Gulf, where there is a source of low-cost supply. I do think if you look over time, if you are thinking in terms of decades instead of years, I think things will actually get incrementally built where there’s a low cost of supply and demand exists.
"I think for those two reasons, it's attractive to try to put something additional here in the region. There’s definitely enough supply to support it, and the demand side looks OK to support it as well. Obviously, there are big capital decisions...The necessary ingredients are here, with the transportation already in place and a lot of the workforce stuff that Denise spoke to, points to sooner or later we’ll have another one in the region."
PTT appears "serious" about wanting to build a cracker in Ohio, Cooper said. "The interesting part about the Ohio project is how quiet they were moving along and then all of the sudden, they made this announcement after they did quite a bit of work already. So that tells me that PTT is serious about the project and intends to inform me that the economics are going to work out for them.”
PTT recently announced that it would delay a final investment decision (FID) for the Ohio facility, which would produce 1 mmty of ethylene and consume about 65,000 b/d of ethane. The company said in 2015 it would invest $100 million for the plant’s preliminary design work. It now needs more time to review initial plans and said an FID would be made in late 2017.
"I definitely think another cracker is going to be built," Cooper said. "It's just a matter of who's going to be that mover because the first couple of movers, they're the ones who are going to get all of the advantage out of this. They are the ones that are going to be able to lock into a customer base and not have to ship long distances...There’s plenty of demand up there to accommodate that and continue to have supply coming from the Gulf Coast.."
Four Or More
Preliminary data compiled for Pennsylvania by IHS Markit found the region could support up to four more ethane crackers, Brinley said.
"With that information in mind and considering that we're within 700 miles of 73% of polyethylene users and 67% of polypropylene users in the United States, I think we're in a position to create a second hub within the nation," she said. "I think we are prepared to work hard to do that."
Consol has had conversations about other potential projects, which "are confidential, but we've been talking to folks and we stay very proactive" regarding "opportunities to link our products directly to end users and find long-term win-win type of arrangements," Rush said. "We do have incremental barrels of ethane to supply to new projects. Whether or not we participate comes down to our confidence in the company connected to the project and trust in the long-term relationship with them, and most importantly, the supply contract details..."
Can Shell's cracker lead to more gas production? From a demand perspective, "what’s unique about this area obviously is the wet gas, and the amount of ethane that's contained in an average barrel, which is anywhere from 60-to-70% ethane in there," Cooper said. "That’s what makes this such a desirable area and makes this such a unique project, to be able to get into an ethane-rich environment...It just depends on where the wet gas is, and that’s what a lot of folks are interested in.”
The cracker “definitely” would allow producers to put more capital to work in the wetter side of the play, Rush added.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/109621-cracking-appalachias-ethane-code-part-3-region-could-sustain-four-additional-crackers

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Gulf Coast Cracker Startup Expands Petrochemical Boom

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Energywire

By Nathanial Gronewold

New ethylene manufacturing capacity entering service this week is a sign of big things to come for natural gas and gas liquids demand along the Gulf of Mexico coastline.
Occidental Chemical Corp. (OxyChem) and partner Mexichem have announced the launch of their new ethylene cracker operation at Ingleside, Texas, near the port city of Corpus Christi. The facility will convert hydrocarbons into 1.2 billion pounds of ethylene per year. The chemicals will eventually be used to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) piping common in plumbing and other applications.
Both companies celebrated their milestone. Planning for the petrochemical manufacturing site occurred in 2013, and construction was launched in 2014. The partnership is slated to last at least 20 years via a supply agreement. The chemical-makers said the deal wouldn't have been possible were it not for the shale gas revolution in the United States.
"This is a significant milestone for both OxyChem and Mexichem, enabling us to capitalize on the advantages that shale gas development presents for the chemical industry," Robert Peterson, president of OxyChem, said in a release. Their 50-50 joint venture, Ingleside Ethylene LLC, represents a $1.5 billion investment.
2017 is slated to be a big year for petrochemicals and that industry's need for the natural gas feedstock that it depends on.
Though rising demand for crude oil is seen as slowing to eventually peaking, the oil and gas industry sees strong demand growth for plastics and petrochemicals. Developing countries are expanding consumption. In addition, the discovery of massive stores of shale gas in the United States has encouraged billions of dollars' worth of investment in new petrochemical and plastics precursors manufacturing along the Gulf Coast. Most of the industry's expansion is occurring in the eastern and southeastern Houston suburbs, and most projects are slated to enter into service this year.
Aside from Ingleside Ethylene, Chevron Phillips Chemical is spending $6 billion to expand its manufacturing capacity at Cedar Bayou, close to the Houston Ship Channel, and at Old Ocean, near Freeport, Texas. Chevron Phillips declares that its U.S. Gulf Coast Petrochemicals project "will use abundant shale feedstocks to meet the ever-increasing global demand for plastic products."
More is coming, at Baytown, Beaumont, Mont Belvieu and beyond. Energy Transfer Partners announced recently that it will spend $385 million to add a fifth natural gas liquids fractionator at its Mont Belvieu operations.
Industry analysts are expecting that these projects and liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity will experience a surge in natural gas prices later this year. They say the oil-directed drilling rush seen recently hasn't produced enough associated gas to meet coming gas demand. A new LNG train at Sabine Pass and LNG export capacity at Cove Point, Md., should be operational this year.
But natural gas drilling is increasing. Yesterday, executives at Goodrich Petroleum Corp. told investors that they've resumed active operations in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, with promising results.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050874

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Chemical Security News

Simpler, Faster Oil-Spill Cleanup Using Fish-Inspired Membranes

Mar 3, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Prachi Patel

By mimicking the way some fishes eat, a new membrane easily separates and collects spilled oil on water without getting clogged (ACS Nano 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b07918). It could be an efficient and cost-effective way to clean up large oil spills, its developers say.
Disaster responders typically clean up large oil spills by containing the slick with floating booms and using skimmers to remove it. Many researchers are developing separation membranes that could potentially be faster and cheaper. These are designed to repel water or attract oil, which helps them separate the two liquids. But the membranes’ pores tend to get clogged with oil, which makes them ineffective after a while.
Dongliang Tian of Beihang University, Ziqi Sun of the University of Wollongong, and their colleagues designed a new filter inspired by the throat structures of filter-feeding fish. To filter out tiny prey suspended in water, these fish have bony arches in their throats that get narrower and more closely spaced deeper into the throat. Water flows into the throat, gradually seeping out from the spaces between the arches and out through the gills, while food particles collect at the back.
To mimic that process, the researchers made a 3-cm-long stainless steel membrane containing five mesh sections with gradually decreasing pore size—from 150 nm to 30 nm—from one end to the other. They coated the membrane with nanosheets of cobalt oxide which intertwine with each other, forming tiny pockets that lock in water, making the membrane water-attracting, or hydrophilic. Then they tilted the membrane so that the large pores were at the bottom and pushed it with a controller attached to the top, emulating how a ship might push the angled membrane, bottom edge first, through the water.
When the driving system moves the membrane through an oil-water mixture, the liquids stream up the membrane. Water permeates the membrane and forms a layer along its hydrophilic surface, preventing oil from clogging the pores. The large pores at the bottom, which encounter the highest water flux, allow water to flow through faster, Tian explains, while the water-logged small pores at the top repel oil, allowing it to easily flow over the top of the membrane into a container. Though oil may pass through the large pores on the first pass, the system makes multiple sweeps through a contaminated area, capturing more oil with each pass.
The researchers tested the system in a 100-cm-long, 10-cm-wide sink filled with a mixture of water and one of a variety of oils: crude oil, diesel fuel, corn oil, or hydraulic fluid. They were able to continually collect oil at a calculated rate of 50 liters per minute for each meter length of the membrane, pushing the membrane along the sink more than 2,000 times over 100 minutes. The efficiency drops by less than 3% after those uses, and Tian says cleaning the membrane would restore its efficiency.
By comparison, when the team tested a conventional setup by pouring an oil-water mixture through a 90-µm pore size membrane, the membrane became clogged and unusable after 50 uses.
This novel filtration technique could enable “one-step, fast, continuous, and high-throughput spilled oil collection,” says Lin Feng of Tsinghua University. The technique has promise for use in large-scale oil spills, especially on lakes and quiet seas, she says. Waves could be a challenge since the water could spill over the top of the membrane into the oil-collection vessel and reduce the membrane’s efficiency.
The researchers suggest that adjusting variables including pore sizes, the ship’s speed, and the membrane length and tilt could help withstand choppy water.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/03/Simpler-faster-oil-spill-cleanup-using-fish-inspired-membranes.html

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Transportation News

(ACC Mentioned) Innovation, Diversification Helping Service Transport Find New Growth Opportunities

Mar 3, 2017 | Bulk Transporter

By Charles Wilson

Over the past year and a half, Service Transport Company completed a major renovation of its headquarters terminal that involved a 180-degree reorientation of the sprawling complex. Costing roughly $4 million, it was a major undertaking.
The project was prompted by a number of factors including a desire to be a good neighbor. South of Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, is the largest in the Service Transport system and has served as the headquarters location since 1999.
“When our terminal was initially developed in the mid to late 1960s, this area was still little more than an oilfield on the southern edge of Hobby Airport,” says Jim Brown, president of Service Transport Company. “It was very rural. There were no homes or schools. Almeda-Genoa Road that runs along the south side of our terminal dead-ended at our front gate.
“Over the years that all changed. Residential areas are all around us now. In 2014, a new elementary school was built across the street from the entrance to our terminal.
“A large number of children walk to school, and heavy-duty trucks and children don’t mix well, but our drivers have to be careful to operate safely at all times. We’ve never had even the slightest incident, but it simply wasn’t a safe situation.
Hard look
“About two years ago, we began taking a hard look at the future of Service Transport. In meetings with our parent company, we discussed what we wanted to do with the headquarters terminal and what sort of diversification opportunities might be appropriate for Service Transport.
“We gave serious thought to moving out of the area to a less-crowded location. However, we estimated that option would cost roughly $30 million based on the systems, services, and space we have available at the Almeda-Genoa location.
“In the end, we decided to stay where we are and find a way to move our truck entrance away from the school. We were able to buy an additional 4 ½ acres, giving us a total of 30 acres and the ability to shift our truck entrance to State Highway 35 (Telephone Road), which runs north/south along the west side of our property. We invested $4 million and about a year and a half in the project. That was significantly less than moving to a new location.
“Probably our biggest challenge was getting the permits for the project. We had to go through both the City of Houston and the Hobby Airport Authority. It was a lot of bureaucracy, and the permit process took half a year. We were told that was quick.”
The project included building a new gated entrance and a dispatch/customer service center next to the entrance. Three acres of concrete was poured for a half mile of new driveway and enough new parking to accommodate upwards of 300 trailers. The newly developed section of the terminal is three feet above road grade, making it very resistant to flooding.
“Our drivers are very happy with the changes we made—especially the new entrance that makes entering and exiting the terminal easier and safer,” Brown says. “We also upgraded security and communication capabilities. We have the ability at our Houston terminal dispatch center to monitor and control security at each of the other five terminals in our system. We use TMW Suite for dispatch and operations, as well as TMT software for maintenance shop and wash rack operations. We added more emergency generators to provide electricity for each building in the Houston terminal complex.
Built and improved over the course of roughly five decades, the Houston terminal offers a sophisticated range of services. Capabilities include a state-of-the-art four-bay tank wash rack, 16-bay maintenance shop, and a regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) that was upgraded two years ago. The RTO incinerates vapors from tank cleaning.
More services
More specialized services are coming soon. Brown says tank container depot and drayage capabilities will be added before the end of the first quarter of 2017.
“The extra acreage we added during the Houston terminal renovation helped give us the room we need for a tank container storage area,” he says. “We’re adding 40 to 50 tank container chassis, as well as a 30-ton empty lift. We already have plenty of tank cleaning and tank repair capability in place. Customers have been asking for the container depot services because we have relatively easy access to railroads and the Houston Ship Channel.
“This will be the latest move in diversification that was requested a couple of years ago by our parent company—Adams Resources and Energy Inc. Our board of directors is calling for more diversification, both internal and external.
“To that end, we added dry bulk capability a year ago primarily for plastics. We bought 12 self-loading pneumatic trailers and we are renting three. We’re also looking to acquire mid-sized and smaller fleets. We’re buying; we’re not for sale.
Houston isn’t the only location targeted for growth by Service Transport. The terminal in Corpus Christi, Texas recently moved to a larger facility with a maintenance shop. The other terminals are in Beaumont, Texas; St Gabriel and St Rose, Louisiana; and Saraland, Alabama.
Quality service
Dispersed among the terminals are 265 tractors and about 600 tank trailers. Operations are conducted throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Chemical hauling has been a primary focus, generating more than $60 million in annual revenue. The carrier uses statistical process control to help ensure that its customers receive the best possible service. The process covers safety and on-time deliveries. Participation in quality action teams in-house and special outside seminars with most of the top 10 to 15 accounts is part of a continuous improvement program that benefits Service Transport and customers alike.
In addition, Service Transport is a Responsible Care Partner. This association with the American Chemistry Council represents a solid commitment to health, safety, and environmental issues surrounding the chemical industry.
The commitment to quality includes running a fleet of tractors and trailers that are designed and maintained to provide safe, reliable service. “We keep a close watch on operating costs across the fleet, and we are continually refining vehicle specifications,” Brown says.
The tractor fleet includes Internationals, Volvos, Macks, and Peterbilts. “We have bought a variety of tractor makes based on factors that include reliability, fuel economy, and pricing,” says Mike Leggio, Service Transport vice-president of operations.
The most recent purchases were for International ProStars and Freightliner Cascadias. The tractors were specified with proprietary engines rated at about 450 horsepower and automated transmissions. “We believe the automated transmissions help attract younger drivers,” Leggio says.
Safety equipment on the newest tractors includes the Bendix Wingman Fusion system with forward and side scanning radar. A forward-looking video camera captures data from speed limit signs that is fed into the Wingman Fusion system. All of the tractors in the fleet are equipped with PeopleNet on-board computers for managing electronic driver logs.
For product handling, tractors are specified with Paragon’s HydraChem system that includes a product pump, compressor, and hydraulic oil cooler in a compact package. Sixteen tractors also have a Paragon blower and are able to handle dry bulk cargoes as well as liquid chemicals.
Recent trailer purchases included 30 insulated stainless steel chemical trailers built by Brenner Tank and Polar Tank Trailer Inc. The typical DOT407 general chemical trailer in the fleet has a 7,000-gallon capacity. A large number of the tank trailers in the fleet were built with special equipment, including dessicant dryer systems, specifically for isocyanates.
The newest trailers in the fleet are 12 J&L Tank pneumatic self-loading dry bulkers that are being used to transport plastic pellets. The 1,636-cu-ft trailers have all BTI hardware, including butterfly valves and tees. Dual fill lines keep drivers off the tops of the tanks.
Riteway digital scales help prevent overloading of the bulkers. Hendrickson Intraax axle/suspension systems were specified with the Tiremaax tire inflation management system.
http://bulktransporter.com/tank-fleets/innovation-diversification-helping-service-transport-find-new-growth-opportunities

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Environment News

Obama's Air Chief Sees 'First Concrete Steps' of Retreat by Pruitt

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Greenwire

By Hannah Hess

The retreat from President Obama's Climate Action Plan formally started yesterday at U.S. EPA, when Administrator Scott Pruitt yanked a request to the oil and gas industry for information on methane emissions.
In an interview this morning, former EPA air chief Janet McCabe, who led the charge to crack down on the potent natural gas component, called it "one of the first concrete steps that the administration is taking on actions that EPA was engaged in to address greenhouse gases."
"The pollution doesn't go away just because you don't focus on it, nor do the impacts on the climate go away just because you don't focus on it," McCabe said.
EPA forged ahead with rulemaking on methane in Obama's final year, with the administration's signature climate change rule, the Clean Power Plan, frozen by the Supreme Court pending the resolution of massive litigation.
Environmentalists and climate hawks in Congress had urged the agency to get serious about its goal of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector between 40 and 45 percent compared with 2012 levels by 2025 by focusing on existing infrastructure. According to EPA's estimate, methane is a greenhouse gas that's upward of 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
"Willful blindness," was how Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, characterized EPA's decision to withdraw a formal two-part survey that required more than 15,000 owners and operators to provide information about onshore equipment and controls that could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane.
The Obama administration's methane crackdown was at the heart of a historic pact last year with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accelerate efforts toward long-term greenhouse gas reduction strategies under the Paris Agreement (Greenwire, March 10, 2016).
EPA first finalized a suite of rules that targets methane emissions from new and heavily modified oil and gas operations.
Energy trade groups had asked EPA to pump the brakes on plans to expand methane regulations to existing oil and gas operations last summer, stressing the need for regulators to get a better understanding of the industry, including the declining nature of oil and natural gas wells and existing efforts to cut emissions (Greenwire, Aug. 3, 2016).
Critics of the effort were counting on President Trump to go after policies that the industry and their allies see as impeding production.
Republican leaders from 11 states urged EPA to stop collecting information earlier this week, calling it "an unnecessary and onerous burden on oil and gas producers that is more harassment than a genuine search for pertinent and appropriate information."
Pruitt met with two vocal critics of EPA regulations, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), last week.
"We are pleased that the EPA has responded to our request and withdrawn its burdensome and unlawful information demand to oil and gas producers across the country. We applaud Administrator Pruitt for his adherence to the rule of law as he pursues the balance Congress has struck between preserving our environment and allowing our economy to grow," Paxton said today in response to the news.
Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), an early Trump ally on Capitol Hill, also praised Pruitt for "quick action," declaring it "welcomed news to those of us seeking an EPA that respects states' rights and focuses on the authorities Congress has granted them."
"Quite frankly, the EPA should defer to or work with the state regulatory agencies who already have much of this information — as they work day in and day out with industry to ensure we have clean air and clean water," Cramer said.
Mark Brownstein, vice president of climate and energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview that it "does not bode well" that Pruitt "can't even muster the fortitude to collect basic information."
EDF is seeking information from companies that have already submitted responses via a Freedom of Information Act request (Energywire, March 2).
A draft inventory of greenhouse gases published by EPA earlier this month showed methane emissions declined from 659.4 million to 654.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2014 and 2015.
Overall methane emissions have decreased 16.7 percent since 1990.
According to EPA, the biggest methane emitters in 2015 were domestic livestock production and natural gas systems. Those two sources accounted for 25.4 and 24.4 percent, respectively, of methane emitted in 2015.
Last year, EPA sparked controversy when it published a final version of the annual inventory that included "significant new emissions" data on methane gathered through its greenhouse gas reporting program.
Environmentalists quickly jumped on the inventory as showing that new methane limits are needed for the petroleum industry. But industry groups pushed back, saying the new data were "fundamentally flawed" and accused the agency of putting "politics in front of science" (E&E News PM, April 19, 2016).
They argued EPA overestimated both the number of potential sources in the sector and the rate of methane emissions from those sources, while EPA maintained its inventory update was nothing unusual.
McCabe said the Obama administration EPA's approach was to focus on the industries that emitted the most, with an eye toward regulations that could make the most improvement to air quality.
Trump's administration has "articulated a very different view about regulatory and other activities that address climate change, which the vast majority of scientists agree is a serious threat to public health and to our way of life here in the United States and everywhere in the world," McCabe said.
"To take deliberate actions to slow and try to stop progress to try to address those public health threats, I think it's consistent with the positions that the administration has articulated," McCabe said.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050926

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LA is Achieving Its Climate Goals — Officials

Mar 3, 2017 | E&E Climatewire

By Anne C. Mulkern

Los Angeles has cut its greenhouse gas emissions, reduced water use 20 percent per person and installed enough solar to power 12,000 homes, city officials said yesterday.
California's biggest city is on track to meet the goals that Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) included in his "Sustainable City pLAn," first released in April 2015. It set a pathway for multiple environmental improvements. There are targets in 14 categories, including carbon reduction and "climate leadership," water, local solar, energy-efficient buildings, waste and landfills, boosting the economy, and helping disadvantaged communities.
"My Sustainable City pLAn is delivering results, because creating the city and economy of the future begins with a vision and a comprehensive strategy — and we could not have achieved the gains of the past two years without this blueprint," Garcetti said. "We are a healthier and more prosperous city today because we set bold targets and held ourselves accountable for making progress that Angelenos can see and feel."
Of the plan's 2017 goals, over 90 percent are on track to be completed this year, the city said.
"The Sustainable City pLAn has unlocked collaboration between government, the private sector and innovative Angelenos, while creating jobs, advancing environmental justice and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Matt Petersen, the city's chief sustainability officer.
The announcement came on the same day that U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt pleaded with mayors to share their environmental success stories with his agency. The new agency chief spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, stressing that he wants to protect certain EPA programs from budget cuts proposed by President Trump. The White House blueprint would cut EPA's budget by nearly a quarter, or roughly $2 billion, and lay off 3,000 employees, which would leave several agency initiatives in limbo (Greenwire, March 2).
Garcetti in 2014 co-founded the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda (MNCAA), an alliance that now counts 75 members representing 41 million Americans living in cities. The group in November sent a letter to then-President-elect Trump in affirming the cities' commitment to tackling climate change and urging him to join their efforts.
The mayor's office said yesterday that the city's utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP), has shrunk greenhouse gas pollution 40 percent below 1990 levels, 13 years ahead of schedule. Garcetti has directed LADWP to research how it can completely eschew use of fossil fuels.
LA officials said yesterday that the utility's updated integrated resource plan (IRP) will hit 55 percent renewable energy by 2030 and at least 65 percent by 2036. Under state law passed last year, all utilities in the state must generate half their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
The city has created 21,036 green jobs through January 2017, achieving the mayor's goal of creating 20,000 of those positions nearly one year ahead of schedule.
Officials said the wait time for residential solar photovoltaic interconnection has been reduced to less than two weeks. LADWP "streamlined and separated the processes for issuing solar permits and rebates" and energizing new systems. Since the start of online PV permit issuance, 13,061 out of 23,237 PV permits were issued online, they said.
They also said that more than 80 percent of city fleet vehicle purchases in the current budget year are electric vehicles, exceeding the 2017 target of 50 percent and giving LA the nation's largest pure battery electric vehicle municipal fleet, as well as the largest electric vehicle police fleet.
As of January, the city had 1,390 publicly accessible EV chargers, including 45 direct-current fast chargers — the most of any city in the United States, it said.
Some goals have not yet been achieved. The city aimed to retrofit 12,500 homes with residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing. At the end of last year, it had 6,377 PACE projects completed.
On total installed solar, the city's goal was 400 megawatts. It appears it will reach 320 MW, Peterson said, "but the pace is picking up with the revised [feed-in-tariff] program on the way" and online permitting.
The city had aimed to expand alternative maritime power (AMP) and alternative low-emission compliance mechanisms on 70 percent of ships calling at the Port of Los Angeles. Instead of running on diesel power while at berth, AMP-equipped ships plug into shore-side electrical power — an alternative power source for oceangoing vessels, according to the port.
Through the end of 2016, the AMP percentage was at 56 percent of regulated calls.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/03/03/stories/1060050896

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