Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 5/31/2017
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Household Products Can Affect Young Girls' Thyroids — Study
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
Early childhood exposure to a class of chemicals found in several typical household products can hurt thyroid function in young girls, according to a new study. -
2018 REACH Registrants Making ‘Good Progress’
May 31, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has received 9,034 dossiers covering 4,454 substances for the 2018 REACH registration deadline, which is one year from today. -
Trump Admin's Review on Track — Lawyers
May 31, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration's reconsideration of the Clean Power Plan is moving along swiftly. -
EPA Halts Obama-Era Rule on Methane Pollution
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has halted an Obama administration rule to cut down on pollution of methane, a greenhouse gas produced at oil and natural gas drilling wells. -
EPA Finalizes Methane Rule Compliance Delay
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is moving ahead with a promised 90-day stay of compliance with key parts of its regulations to limit methane emissions from new and substantially modified sources in the oil and natural gas sector. -
Congress Should Just Say No to More Green Energy Handouts
May 30, 2017 | The Hill - Pundits Blog
By Christine Harbin
Politicians have rightly railed against pork barrel spending for years, but unfortunately, their actions don’t always match their words. -
Frozen Out Chemical Safety Board Puts in Own Budget Request
May 31, 2017 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which carries out independent investigations of industrial chemical accidents, submitted its own budget request separate from the administration’s after it became apparent that President Trump planned to eliminate the board in his 2018 budget. -
U.S. Sen. Baldwin Introduces Rail Shipper 'Fairness' Bill
May 31, 2017 | Progressive Railroading
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) has introduced the Rail Shippers Fairness Act that would, among other measures, require railroads to participate in competitive switching. -
What Has Rick Perry Been Doing?
May 31, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Umair Irfan
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is loving his job. -
Trump Expected to Withdraw from Paris Climate Deal
May 31, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey
President Donald Trump is planning to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, a White House official said Wednesday morning — only to have Trump himself revive the suspense less than an hour later. -
Trump Expected to Pull U.S. From Paris Climate Accord
May 31, 2017 | The New York Times
By Michael D. Shear and Coral Davenport
President Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, three officials with knowledge of the decision said, making good on a campaign pledge but severely weakening the landmark 2015 climate change accord that committed nearly every nation to take action to curb the warming of the planet. -
Trump Planning to Pull U.S. Out of Paris Climate Deal: Source
May 31, 2017 | Reuters (in Real Clear Energy)
By Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason
President Donald Trump plans to follow through on a campaign pledge to pull the United States out of a global pact to fight climate change, a source briefed on the decision told Reuters, a move that promises to deepen a rift with U.S. allies. -
Trump to Pull US Out of Paris Climate Deal: Reports
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry
President Trump will pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, according to several reports Wednesday. -
Trump Nearing a Decision on Whether to Pull U.S. from Paris Climate Deal, Breaking Ranks with More Than 190 Countries
May 31, 2017 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
President Trump is nearing a final decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with one White House official saying Wednesday that the president is leaning toward an exit but three others cautioning that he has not reached a verdict. -
Trump’s Misguided Thinking on Paris Agreement Does Disservice to America
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
As a member of Congress for over 22 years, I have made it my mission to advocate for the facts and to promote policies that are both aspirational yet grounded in reality. I have endeavored to always seek the truth by discerning what is real from what is fake. And when it comes to the issue of climate change, I have listened to the scientists. -
Todd Stern, Gina McCarthy Make Final Pleas
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
The Trump administration's withdrawal from Paris would be read as a kind of "drop dead" to the rest of the world, Todd Stern, the former U.S. special envoy for climate change, warned today. -
White House Continues Meetings on Proposed WOTUS Rollback
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Ariel Wittenberg
Groups opposing the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule will meet with White House officials in June about the Trump administration's plan to repeal the controversial regulation.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Household Products Can Affect Young Girls' Thyroids — Study
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
Early childhood exposure to a class of chemicals found in several typical household products can hurt thyroid function in young girls, according to a new study.
The study, published in Environment International, found that exposure to phthalates, which are used in many industrial and consumer products primarily as a plasticizer, can be linked to depressed thyroid function at age 3 in girls.
"The thyroid acts as the master controller of brain development," said senior author Pam Factor-Litvak of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Hormones in the thyroid set the timing of brain development, which could cause consequences later in the brain, according to Factor-Litvak.
The study looked at five phthalates and two thyroid hormones in 229 inner-city mothers and their children.
"The thyroid disruptions we see in this study, although they fall within the normal range, could explain some of the cognitive problems we see in children exposed to phthalates, and we are currently investigating that," Factor-Litvak said.
U.S. EPA has previously created phthalates action plans because of their toxicity and evidence of pervasive human and environmental exposure to them.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055342
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2018 REACH Registrants Making ‘Good Progress’
May 31, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has received 9,034 dossiers covering 4,454 substances for the 2018 REACH registration deadline, which is one year from today.
The agency says this number is in line with expectations and anticipates registrations will peak in the last quarter of 2017.
It estimates a total of 60,000 dossiers will be submitted for up to 25,000 substances by 31 May next year.
The agency is encouraging companies to register as soon as possible to avoid "the last-minute rush". Echa and industry associations should focus on reaching companies that are still unaware of their obligation to register, it says.
If companies are submitting several registrations and it is their first time, they should select one or two to familiarise themselves with the process and tools, rather than trying to register all at once.
It is also important, Echa says, to initiate discussions on the formation of the substance information exchange forum (Sief) and joint submission as soon as possible, including the nomination of the lead registrant. The agency says this is a "crucial" step that must be addressed now as it can delay progress later on.
Downstream users should also discuss registration intentions for critical substances with their suppliers, it adds.
To date, the agency has received 50,171 registrations for 10,831 substances from all three REACH deadlines – 2010, 2013 and for 2018. It says it will publish further updates of registration statistics this summer.
Meanwhile, an Echa registration survey targeting SMEs will close on 2 June. The outcome will help the agency to estimate the total number of registrations and improve readiness for receiving them.
The survey will be followed by other market intelligence activities conducted by Echa, its Directors’ Contact Group and industry associations. The agency will release the results of these after the summer.
2018 REACH deadline figures
Total registrations to date: 9,034
Total expected registrations: 60,000
Total substances to date: 4,454
Total expected substances: 25,000
'Well prepared'
Cefic REACH director Erwin Annys says the registration numbers are as they expected and show "good progress" is being made by companies.
Cefic has clear indications that its member companies are well prepared for the 2018 deadline despite the enormous workload, Mr Annys says, and they must "continue the good work" in preparing their dossiers.
However, he adds that some stakeholders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe have expressed concern about the "significant costs" of registration and are unsure if they can register all substances necessary for their products.
Laura Portugal, regulatory affairs manager for the downstream users of chemicals coordination group (Ducc), says there is "no major cause for worry" at this stage, but some uncertainty remains until suppliers finalise their registration strategy.
Steve George, chair of Aerospace and Defence Industries of Europe's (ASD) REACH working group, has raised the issue of companies providing little notice that they do not intend to register substances. ASD members are end users of a wide range of proprietary formulations, he says, and formulators have to date "not given clear assurance" that no products will be removed from the European Economic Area (EEA) market.
"Our main concern regarding 2018 is therefore short notice obsolescence disrupting business," he says. There is a particular worry with non-EEA formulations, where the upstream supplier's business case for registration "may not be clear cut", he says.
Companies should request reassurance from their chemical product manufacturers and suppliers, he says. Taking into account the shelf-life of certain products, companies should consider "pre-stocking" where there is a concern.
https://chemicalwatch.com/56190/2018-reach-registrants-making-good-progress
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Trump Admin's Review on Track — Lawyers
May 31, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration's reconsideration of the Clean Power Plan is moving along swiftly.
Government lawyers told a federal court yesterday that U.S. EPA's review of the Obama-era plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector may soon be ready for interagency review.
The update came in a status report to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court last month paused litigation for 60 days but ordered the Trump administration to give monthly updates on its efforts to revise or rescind the regulation (Energywire, May 1).
"EPA continues to review the Rule, as required under the Executive Order, and may be prepared to begin the interagency review process of a resulting proposed regulatory action in the near future," the agency said in yesterday's filing. "We will update the Court as EPA takes further steps."
EPA began officially reviewing the rule — which was stayed by the Supreme Court last year and has never taken effect — immediately after President Trump issued his "energy independence" executive order in March.
An administration official last week said the agency has begun drafting rulemaking documents to rescind the Clean Power Plan and may be ready for review by the White House's Office of Management and Budget in the coming weeks (Climatewire, May 25).
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055317
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EPA Halts Obama-Era Rule on Methane Pollution
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has halted an Obama administration rule to cut down on pollution of methane, a greenhouse gas produced at oil and natural gas drilling wells.
The EPA on Wednesday said it had issued a 90-day stay of agency rules designed to limit methane leaks at drilling sites, as well as rules setting standards for equipment and employee certification.
President Trump ordered the EPA to reconsider the methane standards in March when he signed an executive order to repeal several Obama administration climate regulations.
Obama administration officials finalized the methane rule last May. The regulation, part of a federal methane reduction strategy that Trump has also repealed, was designed to cut 520,000 short tons of methane pollution by 2025. The EPA said compliance costs would be about $530 million.
Drillers opposed the rule, saying it was costly and duplicative. Several states sued over the standards at the time, including Oklahoma, whose then-attorney general, Scott Pruitt, is now administrator of the EPA.
The EPA said in April it would formally review the methane rule, a lengthy process that includes a formal federal rulemaking.
The decision to roll back its methane standards comes as Canada begins the process of tightening its standards. Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced their methane reduction strategies together in 2016.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/335777-epa-halts-obama-era-methane-regulation
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EPA Finalizes Methane Rule Compliance Delay
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is moving ahead with a promised 90-day stay of compliance with key parts of its regulations to limit methane emissions from new and substantially modified sources in the oil and natural gas sector.
In a news release this morning, the agency said the stay applies to the fugitive emissions, pneumatic pumps and professional engineer certification requirements in the rule, which was issued last June.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had announced plans for the stay last month in agreeing to requests from energy industry trade groups to administratively reconsider the rule (Greenwire, April 19). It will take effect upon publication of the reconsideration notice in the Federal Register.
The agency's announcement of the stay comes four days after Canada published a proposal to limit methane releases from its oil and gas sector, pursuant to an agreement with the United States last year while President Obama was still in office.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas; U.S. oil and gas companies have long called for addressing the emissions issue through voluntary measures. They also object to specific provisions in the EPA rule, such as the inclusion of low-production wells.
Environmental groups supportive of tighter regulatory curbs quickly attacked the agency's change of course.
At the Clean Air Task Force, Advocacy Director Conrad Schneider this morning said it was "ironic" that the Trump administration is reneging on last year's agreement just as Canada is proposing its standards.
"Clearly, the U.S. is no longer the climate leader even in North America, and is further abdicating its responsibility to the global community to address climate change," Schneider said in a statement.
The administration "is giving its friends in the oil and gas industry a free pass to continue polluting our air," David Doniger, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate program, said in a separate statement, adding that group will fight the move in court.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055363
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Congress Should Just Say No to More Green Energy Handouts
May 30, 2017 | The Hill - Pundits Blog
By Christine Harbin
Politicians have rightly railed against pork barrel spending for years, but unfortunately, their actions don’t always match their words.
Whenever a must-pass bill crosses the floors of Congress, many of these same politicians clamor to load them up with handouts for special interests. One case in point is the ongoing effort to renew a package of tax giveaways for green energy that expired back in 2015.
Expected participants in this latest effort include Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Sheldon Whitehouse(D-R.I.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The group will reportedly seek must-pass unrelated legislative vehicles such as government funding bills and negotiations on the debt ceiling so these handouts can catch a ride.
The expired tax provisions under consideration — around $1.4 billion pertaining to things like wind power and geothermal heat pumps — are little more than corporate welfare and were wisely and intentionally allowed to expire. The $680 billion tax extender package signed into law in December 2015 made some tax provisions permanent and allowed more than two dozen others to expire at the end of that year. This was a deliberate effort to lay the groundwork for comprehensive tax reform, which lawmakers are currently negotiating.
The practice of awarding billions to private interests through the tax code makes it harder to enact real comprehensive tax reform. Distorting the tax code to favor politically connected special interests means that regular American households and businesses across the country face a heavier tax burden. Keeping these loopholes in the tax code will impede lawmakers from bringing down marginal tax rates and broadening the tax base.
Despite this, quiet efforts to extend these giveaways has continued over the past two years — first on legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Authorization (FAA), and then again on a tax extenders package at the end of 2016 that never came to fruition. Proponents of extending the expired tax credits consistently argued they should have been given the same five-year extensions that other wind- and solar-related breaks received as part of the omnibus legislation, which was also signed into law in December 2015.
Thankfully for American taxpayers, efforts to extend this “green pork” face an uphill battle in Congress. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) led a “Dear Colleague” letter with 30 other House lawmakers in expressing opposition to adding in tax carve-outs for favored energy into unrelated legislation reauthorizing the FAA. On the Senate side, Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a similar letter to Senate leadership.
Extending these expired handouts also faces strong opposition from conservative organizations. A year ago, my organization, Americans for Prosperity, led a coalition of more than 30 conservative groups in criticizing this effort, sending a letter to the Senate Finance Committee urging the committee to exclude them. We were disappointed to see the tax credits included during committee on the Senate side, but pleased to see Congress ultimately agree to exclude them.
Lawmakers should not be looking toward must-pass legislation considered under the threat of deadline as vehicles to extend expired tax subsidies for renewable energy and other industries. They should instead hold firm and oppose extending these expired subsidies in favor of permanent comprehensive tax reform.
American taxpayers shouldn’t have to prop up large, well-connected special interests through tax handouts, carve-outs and loopholes — but that’s exactly what would happen if Congress extends these credits.
Christine Harbin (@ChrissyHarbin) is vice president of external affairs forAmericans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group that promotes for lower taxes and limited government. She leads the group’s federal lobbying efforts, including energy and environment issues.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/335634-congress-should-just-say-no-to-more-green-energy
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Frozen Out Chemical Safety Board Puts in Own Budget Request
May 31, 2017 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which carries out independent investigations of industrial chemical accidents, submitted its own budget request separate from the administration’s after it became apparent that President Trump planned to eliminate the board in his 2018 budget.
‘Congress provided the CSB with concurrent authority to submit its annual budget requests directly to the Congress, as well as to the Office of Management and Budget,’ said CSB chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland in a statement. ‘In our safety investigations of high consequence chemical accidents, we routinely examine the adequacy of the existing regulations and standards,’ she added. ‘No other federal agency, or private entity for that matter, provides this comprehensive safety role.’
The CSB requested $12 million (£9 million) for 2018, which would represent an increase of about 5.7% above its current budget. In contrast, the White House had proposed to give the board just $9 million to phase it out.
However, Congress is not expected to approve the budget put forward by the president. Last month, Congress rejected significant and immediate cuts that Trump had proposed for research agencies under the president’s budget reduction plan for 2017. In the end, lawmakers produced an omnibus spending package that increased federal R&D by 5% for the remainder of 2017.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/frozen-out-chemical-safety-board-puts-in-own-budget-request/3007502.article
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U.S. Sen. Baldwin Introduces Rail Shipper 'Fairness' Bill
May 31, 2017 | Progressive Railroading
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) has introduced the Rail Shippers Fairness Act that would, among other measures, require railroads to participate in competitive switching.
The bill aims to "reduce costs and improve service problems" faced by Wisconsin rail shippers, including farmers, manufacturers and utilities, according to a press release issued by Baldwin's office.
The legislation would reform rate case regulations and includes provisions to implement competitive switching, which Baldwin has called for in a previous letter to the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Additionally, the bill would prohibit railroads from charging customers for fuel "in a way that does not correlate with actual fuel costs," the senator's press release stated.
"Our Wisconsin businesses need a quality and responsive railroad system to effectively get their goods to market," said Baldwin. "In order to continue building a strong Made-in-Wisconsin economy that is fair to farmers, manufacturers, and consumers, we need to give these shippers a seat at the table."
The bill has received support from the Wisconsin Freight Rail Customer Alliance and the national Freight Rail Customer Alliance.
"This legislation builds upon the reforms to the Surface Transportation Board made by Congress when it reauthorized the STB in 2015," said David Sauer, president of the Freight Rail Customer Alliance.
Baldwin has introduced similar legislation in the past. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has opposed legislation and proposed STB rules that call for competitive or "reciprocal" switching.
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_regulation/news/US-Sen-Baldwin-introduces-rail-shipper-fairness-bill--51745
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What Has Rick Perry Been Doing?
May 31, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Umair Irfan
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is loving his job.
For the past few weeks, Perry has been touring the operations of the Department of Energy, an agency he once sought to dissolve. His Twitter feed shows him gunning it behind the wheel of a 3-D-printed car and leaving his John Hancock on supercomputers at national laboratories, praising the work of scientists and staffers at DOE.
"Being the governor of Texas is the greatest job I've ever had," Perry told an audience last month at an Earth Day event in Dallas. "But officially, the coolest job I've ever had in my life is secretary of Energy."
For the most part, Perry has conspicuously avoided generating controversy in his few public engagements, other than weighing in on a student election at his alma mater, Texas A&M University.
But some lawmakers are concerned that Perry has yet to tackle the tough questions at DOE regarding the agency's vision and its approach to climate change. Meanwhile, his counterparts from around the world will be looking to Perry for insights about the Trump administration's approach to clean energy and other issues as he sets off next week for high-level meetings in Japan and China.
The agenda includes the second Mission Innovation ministerial in Beijing, where energy officials from other countries may press him on why the United States isn't holding up its end of the agreement calling for 20 nations to double clean energy research and development funding.
So far, Perry's trips have largely focused on the nuclear weapons and nuclear waste cleanup side of DOE, a portfolio that constitutes more than 60 percent of the agency's budget.
"It looks like he hit at least one NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] lab, one applied energy lab, and one science lab," Jeff Navin, who worked as DOE chief of staff under President Obama and is now a partner at Boundary Stone Partners, said in an email. "Most Energy Secretaries at least make an effort to get to all of the labs, and I wouldn't read too much into which labs he's visited, and which ones he hasn't."
For Perry, this has included a visit to DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a storage site for waste from nuclear weapons. Perry also met scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a facility renowned for nuclear weapons research, and at Idaho National Laboratory, which is deeply involved in nuclear energy research.
The Energy secretary toured the Naval Reactors Facility at Idaho, along with the Advanced Test Reactor Complex, the Materials and Fuels Complex, and the Energy Systems Laboratory.
At Los Alamos, Perry received briefings on the lab's nuclear weapons and global security missions. "He toured facilities including the Laboratory's plutonium science and manufacturing facility, the supercomputing center, and the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility," lab spokesman Kevin Roark said in an email.
Last week, Perry toured Oak Ridge National Laboratory and met with researchers to discuss the launch of the Million Veteran Program-Computational Health Analytics for Medical Precision to Improve Outcomes Now (MVP-CHAMPION), an initiative that pools a vast library of medical data at the Department of Veterans Affairs with the surging supercomputing power at the national labs.
"As a veteran of the United States Air Force and now as the secretary of Energy, this program is of the utmost important to me," Perry said in a video statement. "Our goal is simple: to improve the health and quality of life for our veterans."
Between site visits, Perry also returned to Texas for the funeral of his father, Joseph Ray Perry, who served as a B-17 tail gunner in World War II.
Lab leaders try to read budget tea leaves
Edmon Begoli, chief data architect at Oak Ridge and the primary investigator for MVP-CHAMPION, presented his research and his agenda to Perry during the secretary's visit there.
Using more than 22 million health records from 600,000 veterans, generated from more than 1,200 facilities, scientists want to sift through the numbers to find out how to solve problems for former military personnel like how to prevent suicide, mitigate the effects of aging and reduce complications from heart disease.
And, with its computational capabilities and know-how, DOE makes an ideal partner. Oak Ridge, for example, is home to Titan, the most powerful supercomputer that is openly available for science.
"You don't have to spend too much time explaining why it makes sense," he said.
Begoli described Perry's response to his work as "very positive and very supportive."
But it's uncertain whether the money will come through to support this and similar programs. The White House fiscal 2018 budget proposal includes a $280 million increase in funding for supercomputers, but it also has a 16 percent reduction, an $874 million cut, for DOE's Office of Science, which funds national labs.
The White House is asking for a $17 million increase in funding for WIPP and a $107 million increase for Los Alamos.
But Oak Ridge is slated for a $185 million trim below the $1.2 billion authorized for the lab in the omnibus spending bill passed earlier this year.
Perry praised the proposal that includes these cuts. "This budget delivers on the promise to reprioritize spending in order to carry out DOE's core functions efficiently and effectively while also being fiscally responsible and respectful to the American taxpayer," Perry said in a press release.
How Perry reconciles his support for programs like MVP-CHAMPION with a budget that reduces funding for the facilities that will carry them out remains unclear to scientists.
"I have no idea what's happening on the budget side," Begoli said. "I didn't get a sense one or the other way."
Bipartisan urging to invest in research
It also remains murky for lawmakers.
In response to an earlier budget proposal, 18 Senate Democrats signed onto a letter to President Trump decrying cuts to DOE.
"Your 2018 budget directly contradicts the statements and assurances your Energy Secretary provided to us during his confirmation process," they wrote.
This is part of a pattern. In March, Perry tweeted support for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a DOE initiative aimed at supporting high-risk, high-reward technologies.
"Innovators like the ones supported by our @ARPAE program are key to advancing America's energy economy," he wrote.
The White House's proposed fiscal 2018 budget that Perry endorsed would cut ARPA-E by 93 percent and aims to dissolve it entirely.
In one of his earlier trips, Perry attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Texas for the Petra Nova project, the world's largest carbon capture and storage retrofit system.
"While the Petra Nova project will certainly benefit Texas, it also demonstrates that clean coal technologies can have a meaningful and positive impact on the nation's energy security and economic growth," Perry said at the time.
The billion-dollar project received $190 million from DOE under the Clean Coal Power Initiative, with technical support from DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory.
DOE's Office of Fossil Energy, which supports carbon capture projects, is slated for a 44 percent cut. The Trump administration proposed slashing NETL's budget by $486 million, down to $340 million, a 59 percent reduction.
John Litynski, the acting carbon capture and storage division director at DOE, said the agency is now reorienting away from deployment projects and more toward fundamental science research.
Six Republican senators sent a letter to Trump earlier this month asking him to reconsider some of the budget reductions at DOE.
"Governing is about setting priorities, and the federal debt is not the result of Congress overspending on science and energy research each year," they wrote. "We urge you to continue to invest in the Department of Energy's research and development programs in fiscal year 2018."
Perry has also studiously avoided commenting on a study he commissioned to examine how renewable energy incentives harm baseload coal and nuclear power plants.
The study has received pushback from renewable energy advocates who say that the study is predisposed to siding against solar and wind energy incentives in favor of conventional power plants.
"I'm concerned that a hastily developed study, which appears to pre-determine that variable, renewable sources such as wind have undermined grid reliability, will not be viewed as credible, relevant or worthy of valuable taxpayer resources," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in a letter to Perry earlier this month.
DOE has remained tight-lipped about the study other than saying that the results, due out in June, will be made public. Travis Fisher, a political appointee who is leading the study at DOE, declined to comment.
Tiptoeing around climate change
Meanwhile, one site Perry didn't visit is likely to dominate his term in office. On May 9, while Perry was in Idaho, DOE's plutonium waste cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state suffered the collapse of a tunnel housing radioactive materials.
"Rick Perry may not have known about Hanford before being selected by Trump, but he's going to learn a lesson that most energy secretaries learn — Hanford will take far more of your time and energy than you can possibly imagine," Navin said.
In the international arena, Perry has tiptoed around any definitive language on climate change. He visited Rome in April to meet with energy ministers from the Group of Seven nations but did not sign on to a communiqué endorsing greenhouse gas emissions targets outlined in the Paris Agreement.
"I'm not going to tell the president of the United States to walk away from the Paris accord," Perry said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Future of Energy Summit last month. "I think we probably need to renegotiate it."
He has not since elaborated on what "renegotiate" means.
Trump has said he will decide this week on the United States' participation in the Paris Agreement.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055326
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Trump Expected to Withdraw from Paris Climate Deal
May 31, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey
President Donald Trump is planning to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, a White House official said Wednesday morning — only to have Trump himself revive the suspense less than an hour later.
The withdrawal would fulfill a Trump campaign promise but would be certain to infuriate America’s allies across the globe. It would threaten to destabilize the most comprehensive pact ever negotiated to blunt the most devastating effects of climate change.
Intrigue surrounding Paris has accelerated in the past week, after Pope Francis and other world leaders pressed Trump during his European visit not to abandon the nearly 200-nation 2015 agreement. Administration officials said they are still sorting out the details of how exactly Trump would withdraw, and one noted that nothing is final until an announcement is made.
Trump declined to make it official, at least not yet. "I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" he tweeted Wednesday morning.
Trump was slated to continue discussing the issue with senior advisers on Wednesday.
Axios first reported the news that Trump would withdraw.
Administration officials sent mixed messages on Wednesday, with some saying they are confident the president would pull out and others urging caution. But officials on both sides of the issue have become increasingly convinced he plans to exit the deal, despite arguments from moderate advisers like Trump’s daughter Ivanka that withdrawing would damage U.S. relations abroad.
Prime supporters of leaving the deal, including senior White House adviser Stephen Bannon, argued that its terms would hobble the U.S. economy and Trump’s energy agenda.
Reaction from the international community Wednesday was swift, mostly without mentioning Trump by name. "Climate change is undeniable," the United Nations tweeted from its official account Wednesday morning, quoting from a speech by Secretary General António Guterres. "Climate action is unstoppable. Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff expressed hope that the president could still be swayed. "As far as I can see, it is an ongoing debate within the administration," Peter Altmaier said at a POLITICO Connected Citizens Summit Wednesday afternoon in Berlin.
Others who have supported staying included Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and major oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell.
But the vast campaign to persuade the U.S. to remain ultimately did not seem to sway the president.
Trump’s move would mark the second time in two decades that the United States has negotiated, signed but then spurned a major international climate pactfollowing a change of party control in the White House. The previous occasion — the decision by George W. Bush to abandon the 1997 Kyoto accord negotiated by the Clinton administration — caused years of distrust of the U.S. in international climate circles.
Since then, climate scientists say, the problem has grown only more dire, with few years left for nations to act if they want to avoid the droughts, floods, famines, mass migrations and worsening storms that a changing climate would bring.
Only two countries declined to join the Paris agreement: Syria and Nicaragua.
Republican leaders in Congress had warned other countries before the Paris talks not to trust Obama’s promises, noting that a future GOP president could undo any commitments he made. The Obama administration had insisted that the deal’s carbon-cutting targets be nonbinding, avoiding the politically disastrous Senate ratification fight that a binding treaty would require.
It would take years for the U.S. to formally withdraw from the Paris deal. But the U.S. is the world’s second-largest carbon polluter, and its decision to walk away would threaten to weaken the resolve of major emitters such as China and India to keep their own pledges, even though both nations have pledged to remain in the agreement.
The move is certain to draw the ire of dozens of American allies who received assurances from the Obama administration that the United States was committed to the deal.
Wednesday's news comes on top of separate steps by Trump to weaken the major domestic planks of Obama’s climate agenda, including Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring cuts in greenhouse gas pollution from power plants.
Trump's advisers have been — and remain — at odds over how the administration should approach Paris. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, had pushed to stay in the deal, and Ivanka even brought Al Gore to Trump Tower to meet with her father in December. Gore spoke with Trump again this month in an effort to encourage the president to remain in the agreement.
Trump was also personally lobbied by world leaders at last week's G-7 summit in Italy, and foreign diplomats repeatedly made their case for remaining in the agreement during frequent calls with administration officials.
Others in the “remain” camp included Tillerson, who had praised the Paris deal when he was ExxonMobil’s CEO. During his confirmation hearing this year, he said the United States must keep "its seat at the table" for international climate talks.
But ultimately, Bannon and his allies in the White House appeared to win Trump over, arguing that the agreement wasn’t in the U.S. interest.
Even if the U.S. stuck with the deal, scientists and climate activists have warned that the targets Obama and other leaders promised in Paris wouldn’t cut enough carbon pollution to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Instead, they said, the signing nations would have to steadily escalate their commitments in coming years.
The agreement calls on countries to aim to limit global warming to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels, and it said countries should "pursue efforts" to keep temperature increases to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Under a business as usual scenario, global temperatures could rise by between 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to the United Nations, an increase that would have catastrophic consequences.
Trump's upcoming decision raises the prospect that other countries will move on without the U.S., lessening America's influence. Indeed, the European Union and China are set to pledge deeper cooperation on the Paris agreement and the promotion of clean energy technologies, according to a draft leaders' statement for an upcoming summit that was seen by POLITICO.
Maroš Šefčovič, the vice president of the EU’s energy union, said Thursday that Europeans will stick with their climate efforts regardless of what the Americans do.
“For Europe there is no plan B, because we do not have a planet B,” Šefčovič told reporters. “If they decide to pull out, this would be disappointing, but I really don’t think that this would change the course of mankind.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/05/trump-paris-decision-157425
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Trump Expected to Pull U.S. From Paris Climate Accord
May 31, 2017 | The New York Times
By Michael D. Shear and Coral Davenport
President Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, three officials with knowledge of the decision said, making good on a campaign pledge but severely weakening the landmark 2015 climate change accord that committed nearly every nation to take action to curb the warming of the planet.
A senior White House official cautioned that the specific language of the president’s expected announcement was still in flux Wednesday morning. The official said the withdrawal might be accompanied by legal caveats that will shape the impact of Mr. Trump’s decision.
And Mr. Trump has proved himself willing to shift direction up until the moment of a public announcement. He is set to meet Wednesday afternoon with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has advocated that the United States remain a part of the Paris accords and could continue to lobby the president to change his mind.
Even as reports surfaced about his decision, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter that he would make his intentions known soon.
Still, faced with advisers who pressed hard on both sides of the Paris question, Mr. Trump appears to have decided that a continued United States presence in the accord would harm the economy; hinder job creation in regions like Appalachia and the West, where his most ardent supporters live; and undermine his “America First” message.
Advisers pressing him to remain in the accord could still make their case to the boss. In the past, such appeals have worked. In April, Mr. Trump was set to announce a withdrawal from the Nafta free trade agreement, but at the last minute changed his mind after intense discussions with advisers and calls from the leaders of Canada and Mexico. Last week, a senior administration official said Mr. Trump would use a speech in Brussels to make an explicit endorsement of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense provision, which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. He didn’t.
The exit of the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas polluter would not dissolve the 195-nation pact, which was legally ratified last year, but it could set off a cascade of events that would have profound effects on the planet. Other countries that reluctantly joined the agreement could now withdraw or soften their commitments to cutting planet-warming pollution.
“The actions of the United States are bound to have a ripple effect in other emerging economies that are just getting serious about climate change, such as India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that produces scientific reports designed to inform global policy makers.
Once the fallout settles, he added, “it is now far more likely that we will breach the danger limit of 3.6 degrees.” That is the average atmospheric temperature increase above which a future of extreme conditions is considered irrevocable.
The aim of the Paris agreement was to lower planet-warming emissions enough to avoid that threshold.
“We will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security,” Professor Oppenheimer said. “And that’s not the kind of world we want to live in.”
Foreign policy experts said the move could damage the United States’ credibility and weaken Mr. Trump’s efforts to negotiate issues far beyond climate change, like negotiating trade deals and combating terrorism.
“From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake — an abdication of American leadership ” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and the under secretary of state during the presidency of George W. Bush.
“The success of our foreign policy — in trade, military, any other kind of negotiation — depends on our credibility. I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this,” he added.
But Mr. Trump’s supporters, particularly coal state Republicans, cheered the move, celebrating it as a fulfillment of a signature campaign promise. Speaking to a crowd of oil rig workers last May, Mr. Trump vowed to “cancel” the agreement, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, has pushed the president to withdraw from the accord as part of an economic nationalism that has so far included pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade pact, and vowing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Coal miners and coal company executives in states such as Kentucky and West Virginia have pushed for Mr. Trump to reverse all of President Barack Obama’s climate change policies, many of which are aimed at reducing the use of coal, which is seen as the largest contributor to climate change.
In a May 23 letter to Mr. Trump from Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia and nine other state attorneys general, Mr. Morrisey wrote, “Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing the harmful energy policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era.” He added, “The Paris Agreement is a symbol of the Obama administration’s ‘Washington knows best’ approach to governing.”
Although the administration has been debating for months its position on the Paris agreement, the sentiment for leaving the accord ultimately prevailed over the views of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and close adviser, who had urged the president to keep a seat at the climate negotiating table.
Other countries have vowed to continue to carry out the terms of the Paris agreement, even without the United States.
President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, has promised that his country would move ahead with steps to curb climate change, regardless of what happens in the United States.
During a telephone call in early May with President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Xi told the newly elected French leader that China and France “should protect the achievements of global governance, including the Paris agreement.”
But the accord’s architects say the absence of the United States will inevitably weaken its chances of being enforced. For example, the United States has played a central role in pushing provisions that require robust and transparent oversight of how emissions are monitored, verified and reported.
Without the United States, there is likely to be far less pressure on major polluting countries and industries to accurately report their emissions. There have been major questions raised about the accuracy of China’s emissions reporting, in particular.
“We need to know: What are your emissions? Where are your emissions?” said Todd D. Stern, the lead climate negotiator during the Obama administration. “There needs to be transparent reporting on countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. If the U.S. is not part of that negotiation, that’s a loss for the world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/climate/trump-quits-paris-climate-accord.html
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Trump Planning to Pull U.S. Out of Paris Climate Deal: Source
May 31, 2017 | Reuters (in Real Clear Energy)
By Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason
President Donald Trump plans to follow through on a campaign pledge to pull the United States out of a global pact to fight climate change, a source briefed on the decision told Reuters, a move that promises to deepen a rift with U.S. allies.
White House officials cautioned that details were still being hammered out and that, although close, the decision on withdrawing from the international accord - agreed to by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015 - was not finalized.
Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, did not confirm the decision in a post on Twitter, saying only, "I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days."
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump was working out the terms of the planned withdrawal with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, an oil industry ally and climate change skeptic.
"The president will make an announcement when he’s made a final decision," one senior official said. Trump has changed his mind on large decisions before, even after previously signaling a move in the opposite direction.
Trump refused to endorse the landmark climate change accord at a summit of the G7 group of wealthy nations on Saturday, saying he needed more time to decide.
A U.S. decision to withdraw from the accord could further alienate American allies in Europe already wary of Trump and call into question U.S. leadership and trustworthiness on one of the world's leading issues. A pullout also would be one more step by the Republican president to erase the legacy of his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, who helped broker the accord and praised it during a trip to Europe this month.
A withdrawal would put the United States in league with Syria and Nicaragua as the world's only non-participants in the Paris agreement. It could have sweeping implications for the deal, which relies heavily on the commitment of big polluter nations to reduce emissions of gases scientists blame for sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms.
The United States is the world's second-biggest carbon dioxide emitter behind China.
The accord aims to limit planetary warming in part by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Under the pact, the United States committed to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.
Environmental groups derided the Trump administration's reported decision. The Sierra Club said a U.S. withdrawal from the Paris deal would be a "historic mistake." Friends of the Earth said it would make America the world's "foremost climate villain."
International leaders began reacting to the reports of Trump's plans.
A withdrawal by the United States would be disappointing but the European Union stands ready to take global leadership on the issue, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said in Brussels.
"There is a much stronger expectation from our partners across the world, from Africa, Asia and China, that Europe should assume leadership in this effort and we are ready to do that," Sefcovic added.
France's ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, said on Twitter that the Paris agreement "doesn't infringe on U.S. sovereignty" and noted that major American corporations had supported the deal.
Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila said a U.S. withdrawal would be a big setback, adding that "we must find partners to continue, because this work must not stop."
CAMPAIGN PROMISE
Trump had vowed during his 2016 presidential campaign to "cancel" the Paris deal within 100 days of becoming president as part of an effort to bolster U.S. oil and coal industries. That promise helped rally supporters sharing his skepticism of global efforts to police U.S. carbon emissions.
Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change, at times calling it a hoax to weaken U.S. industry. An overwhelming majority of scientists say humans' use of fossil fuels for energy is driving climate change.
Quitting the Paris accord may not resonate with members of Trump's Republican Party as much as his administration expects. A March Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll found that 50 percent of Republicans agreed that the U.S. should lead the global fight against climate change, while 37 percent disagreed and 13 percent were unsure.
Supporters of the climate pact are concerned that a U.S. exit could lead other nations to weaken their commitments or also withdraw, softening an accord that scientists have said is critical to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
Canada, the European Union, and China have said they will honor their commitments to the pact even if the United States withdraws. A source told Reuters that India had also indicated it would stick by the deal.
After taking office, Trump faced pressure to stay in the deal from investors, international powers and business leaders, including some in the coal industry. He also had to navigate a split among his advisers.
Senior adviser Steve Bannon, who wants Trump to focus on actions that will rev up his conservative political base, has long opposed the Paris accord. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, has come to the view that the standards set out in the agreement did not work for the U.S. economy and the question was whether to try to change those standards within the agreement or pull out, another senior administration official said.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, favors staying in, the official said, and has sought to ensure her father heard all sides in the debate.
Trump's administration has already begun killing Obama-era climate regulations.
Oil majors Shell and Exxon Mobil have also supported the pact along with a number of Republican lawmakers. Several big coal companies, including Cloud Peak Energy, had publicly urged Trump to stay in the deal as a way to help protect the industry's mining interests overseas, though others asked Trump to exit the accord to help ease regulatory pressures on domestic miners.
Both solar- and coal-related exchange traded funds were widely underperforming the overall stock market on Wednesday. FirstSolar fell more than 3 percent. Coal miners Arch Coal and Peabody Energy were both down more than 2 percent.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-idUSKBN18R1J4
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Trump to Pull US Out of Paris Climate Deal: Reports
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry
President Trump will pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, according to several reports Wednesday.
Axios first reported that Trump is working with a group led by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on the exact mechanism of pulling out before announcing his final decision. CBS News also reported that Trump is telling allies about his decision.
The move marks a dramatic departure from the Obama administration, which was instrumental in crafting the deal. It also makes the U.S. an outlier among the world's nations, nearly all of whom support the climate change accord.
But Trump’s decision fulfills an original campaign promise he made just more than a year ago to “cancel” the accord.
Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he “will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days.”
A White House spokeswoman refused to confirm or deny that a final decision has been made. She said an announcement would be coming in the next few days and that staff did not want to get ahead of the president's decision.
Trump had been telling close confidants about his decision in recent weeks, Axios reported. But a public letter sent to him last week by 22 Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), helped seal his decision.
The agreement was reached by nearly 200 countries in 2015, the first global climate accord to include that many nations. Each country made its own nonbinding pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Obama administration, which helped negotiate the pact, had promised a 26 to 28 percent cut in the country’s emissions, a pledge that Republicans had slammed as necessitating expensive, job-killing regulations.
Trump, who doubts the science behind climate change, has already begun the process of reversing American climate policies.
In March, he signed an executive order to undo most of Obama’s climate agenda, including a key rule to cut electricity sector carbon emissions, and he has proposed gutting funding to federal agencies that tackle climate change, renewable energy and the environment.
He delayed a decision on the Paris deal until after last week’s Group of Seven summit in Italy, where foreign leaders pressured him to stay in the agreement.
The White House said Trump was considering the leaders’ opinions on the agreement, but others, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, characterized the summit more as a six-on-one debate over the merits of the deal, with Trump standing alone.
His decision to leave the deal comes after scores of stakeholders asked Trump to keep the U.S. in the agreement, including businesses, environmentalists, major energy companies, Democrats, a handful of congressional Republicans and some officials in his administration.
Numerous companies and individuals aligned with Trump on other policies have publicly pushed him recently to remain in the agreement, including ExxonMobil Corp. and Cloud Peak Energy. They argued the U.S. needs to stay involved in climate work to have influence over global policy decisions that could impact their bottom lines.
Several GOP lawmakers, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.), had hoped he would stay in the deal as well.
But the president was also facing significant pressure from the right to exit the pact, including from Pruitt, White House strategist Stephen Bannon and major conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, as well as the 22 GOP senators who sent him the letter last week.
Within the White House, coalitions rose up in support of, or opposed to, the Paris deal. Pruitt and Bannon led the charge against the deal, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, top advisers Gary Cohn and Jared Kushner and first daughter Ivanka Trump, who is married to Kushner, supported staying in the accord.
Under Trump’s decision, the U.S. will stand with only two nations in not participating in the Paris agreement: Syria and Nicaragua. All other 194 countries in the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change have signed on, and 146 have ratified the agreement.
It is unclear whether Trump will work through the four-year exit process within the agreement or declare that since it is not binding, he can bypass it.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/335695-trump-to-pull-us-out-of-paris-climate-deal
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May 31, 2017 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
President Trump is nearing a final decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with one White House official saying Wednesday that the president is leaning toward an exit but three others cautioning that he has not reached a verdict.
The matter has deeply divided the administration. Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have urged the president to remain in the deal, and White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have been pushing for a withdrawal.
A withdrawal would put the United States in the same camp as Nicaragua and Syria: a tiny group of countries refusing to participate in the almost universally supported Paris climate change agreement.
Trump added to the intense speculation about the future of the agreement Wednesday morning, tweeting that his decision will be announced “over the next few days.”
More than 190 nations agreed to the accord in December 2015 in Paris, and 147 have ratified or otherwise joined, including the United States, representing more than 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
A U.S. withdrawal would remove the world’s second-largest emitter and nearly 18 percent of the globe’s present-day emissions from the agreement, presenting a severe challenge to its structure and raising questions about whether it would weaken the commitments of other nations.
Trump has, through executive orders, moved to roll back key Obama administration policies, notably the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, that comprised a key part of the U.S. promise to reduce its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by 2025.
As of 2015, emissions were 12 percent lower, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The Paris decision has deeply divided the administration, with internationalists, such as Tillerson, arguing that it would be beneficial to the United States to remain part of negotiations and international meetings surrounding the agreement, as a matter of leverage and influence.
Conservatives, such as Pruitt, have argued that the agreement is not fair to the United States and that staying in it would be used as a weapon by environmental groups seeking to fight Trump environmental policies.
As a result of Trump’s environmental policies, it has been clear hat it would be impossible to honor the Obama administration’s Paris pledge.
That leaves Trump with two clear choices: withdraw from Paris or revise the U.S. pledge downward to something more realistic in light of domestic policies, but nonetheless stay in the accord.
A downward revision would certainly prompt criticism from the international community, but not nearly so much as an abandonment. The Paris agreement is, after all, the first global accord on climate change action that has managed to unify both developed and developing nations behind a single framework to cut emissions.
Moreover, the accord is flexible in the sense that it does not mandate that any nation achieve any particular level of emissions cuts. Rather, every nation under the agreement pledges to do the best it can, and to participate in a process in which nations will regularly increase their ambitions over time.
The ultimate goal is to hold the warming of the planet to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above the temperatures found in the preindustrial times of the late 1800s. The Earth is already about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was at that time, scientists have determined, and current and near future emissions seem quite likely to take the planet past 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) in the coming decades.
According to the agreement, a party that has fully joined the accord, as the United States has, cannot formally withdraw for three years after the date of joining — and that is then capped by an extra year-long waiting period.
If this language frustrates Trump enough, he could opt to withdraw from the more foundational U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which laid the groundwork for the Paris deal and was signed by President George H.W. Bush and ratified by the Senate in the early 1990s.
But that is an even more radical move, which would further withdraw the United States from all international climate change negotiations.
It will be difficult for the president to argue that the Paris agreement hurts the U.S. economy, given that it has been overwhelmingly supported by U.S. businesses, and given that its flexibility means that it does not impose any specific requirement to cut emissions by a particular amount.
Because the United States is the second-largest emitter, removing the country from Paris could also remove 21 percent of the emissions reductions that would have been achieved by 2030, according to an analysis by the think tank Climate Interactive. Other countries would have to make up the difference, with the likeliest candidates being China — the world’s top emitter — or India, a nation expected to experience some of the fastest emissions growth in coming decades.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/31/trump-nearing-a-decision-on-whether-to-pull-u-s-from-paris-climate-deal-breaking-ranks-with-more-than-190-countries/?utm_term=.4e042146afac
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Trump’s Misguided Thinking on Paris Agreement Does Disservice to America
May 31, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
As a member of Congress for over 22 years, I have made it my mission to advocate for the facts and to promote policies that are both aspirational yet grounded in reality. I have endeavored to always seek the truth by discerning what is real from what is fake. And when it comes to the issue of climate change, I have listened to the scientists.
Almost every credible scientific voice tells us human activity has and continues to have a dramatic impact on climate change. Moreover, scientists have warned that inaction by the major industrialized nations of the world could lead to global catastrophe. That is why I applauded American leadership in helping to draft the Paris Agreement, an aspirational document encouraging all nations to submit national climate goals every five years.
The global pact, agreed to by 195 nations including the U.S., took effect last year. And the United States is the 2nd largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. By the accounts of most scientific experts, it is an ambitious and noble effort to curb climate change.
Trump has often questioned the need for such an agreement, and yet he has no scientific basis to pull away from the consensus of thought of most Americans. According to Gallop, 54 percent of Americans find climate change to be a serious problem. There is no political, scientific, or social justice mandate to pull away from this global pact. The voices of reason must prevail. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was right when he stated, “If he [President Trump] does withdraw, that would be a definitive statement from the president that he believes climate change is a hoax."
President Trump’s isolated and short-sighted view threatens to quash years of deliberation and work by corporate leaders, scientists, educators, social actors and others who work tirelessly to protect the planet. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would not only jeopardize America’s status as a world leader, but undermine our competitiveness in the emerging clean-environment global economy.
According to studies, China is the world leader in renewable energy investment, pouring more than $78 billion into renewable energy projects last year alone. By contrast, the U.S. invested less than $24 billion last year. Many jobs are at stake, and that means non-participation in the Paris Agreement could undermine American interests.
A resounding bipartisan chorus has called for continued American Participation. From Republican and Democratic governors to members of Congress, the chorus of voices counseling against withdrawal continues to grow. This agreement is voluntary. Why have such a devastating decision with international consequences?
The president needs to recognize that he represents the entire country; not just the Trump Organization. He is the president of the United States of America. And most Americans want this nation to lead on battling climate change. We cannot afford to be left behind as the rest of the world moves toward a clean economy.
As we have done in the past, America must continue to lead. If the President truly wants to ensure this nation’s greatness, then he will affirm America’s continued participation in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Congresswoman Jackson Lee is a Democrat from Texas’s 18th Congressional District. She is a senior member of the House Committees on Judiciary and Homeland Security and is Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/335768-trumps-misguided-thinking-on-paris-agreement-does
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Todd Stern, Gina McCarthy Make Final Pleas
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
The Trump administration's withdrawal from Paris would be read as a kind of "drop dead" to the rest of the world, Todd Stern, the former U.S. special envoy for climate change, warned today.
In a piece for The Atlantic, Stern predicts "bitterness, anger, and disgust would be the wages" if Trump chooses to join Syria and Nicaragua on the sidelines of the international climate agreement.
Stern's last-ditch attempt to influence the decision — which President Trump could announce as early as today — notes that an exit would "fly in the face of business leaders," including major oil and gas CEOs, who have urged Trump not to defect.
Stern wrote Trump "seems prepared to follow his own misguided calculus and, in the coming days, could render a decision that is indefensible," and offered his take on why and what should happen next.
The nearly 200 other countries that are part of the accord will work to build it into a regime that will enable the globe to meet the climate challenge, Stern predicted. He will encourage them to do so in a manner that would pave the way for re-entry by a future White House.
Blue states, such as California and Washington, and New England will examine whether there is still more they can do on climate, he added. Many more states, including red areas like Iowa, are charging ahead in development of wind and solar energy. Stern is also looking to U.S. cities to step up and work with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent body for the Paris accord.
Stern urged businesses and investors not to "bet on a go-slow, 'Trump' phase," but to "keep their eyes on the prize and not get distracted by the ideological wars of Washington."
Stern, who was the State Department's top climate diplomat under President Obama, also encouraged political engagement and activism.
"If America leaves the Paris Agreement, the Trump administration will have thrown down the gauntlet. And we will need to take up the challenge," he concluded.
McCarthy: 'Lean in' on climate
Former U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy also weighed in today. Writing in Foreign Policy, McCarthy described the U.S. track record of expanding the economy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
McCarthy noted that although climate diplomacy may be "less relevant under this administration's regressive brand of scorched-earth leadership," no one person can stop the trend toward a lower-carbon economy.
"The train to our clean-energy future has left the station," McCarthy wrote, echoing her final sentiments at the helm of the agency (E&E News PM, Nov. 21, 2016).
McCarthy, now a fellow at Harvard University, argued the United States must "lean into climate action, not away from it."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055361
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White House Continues Meetings on Proposed WOTUS Rollback
May 31, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Ariel Wittenberg
Groups opposing the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule will meet with White House officials in June about the Trump administration's plan to repeal the controversial regulation.
The American Farm Bureau Federation and National Mining Association have meetings scheduled with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs next week.
OIRA is currently reviewing a proposal from U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to rescind the Obama-era regulation that clarifies the reach of the Clean Water Act over small waterways and wetlands.
Both groups are members of the Waters Advocacy Coalition, an organization of more than 60 industry groups that seeks to limit federal water regulations, including the 2015 rule.
"We will be supporting our position to rescind the Obama-era rule," said NMA spokesman Luke Popovich in an email about the meeting.
The Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule, has drawn fire from farmers, land developers and energy companies who say it amounts to government overreach.
Though WOTUS has been stayed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration has made repealing and replacing the regulation a priority.
Environmental groups, however, have celebrated the regulation as providing critical protection to smaller waterways, which in turn protects larger ones.
OIRA met with some WOTUS advocates in May, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (Greenwire, May 15).
The office also has meetings scheduled with WOTUS proponents Clean Water Network and PolicyLink in June.
Text of the proposed regulation being reviewed by OIRA has not been released.
But EPA and Army Corps officials have said they will revert to a 1986 regulation and 2008 guidance to define "waters of the United States" covered by the Clean Water Act while the agencies work on a new definition for the Trump administration.
Clean Water Network spokeswoman Kimberly Williams said advocates from the Delaware River Basin will accompany her group to its OIRA meeting.
While Williams said she is not sure what impact the environmental organization will have on the proposed regulation, she said watershed groups have to make their voices heard on the importance of small waterways and wetlands "at every step of the way."
"Whether or not we will see a turn of events after these meetings, I think that sharing those stories at every opportunity is critical," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/05/31/stories/1060055348
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