Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 6/20/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemicals Boom While Cars Go Bust
Jun 19, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Justin Fox
For a few years now, optimists have been proclaiming that the time for a U.S. manufacturing resurgence is upon us. Labor costs have risen so much in China that they no longer confer a big advantage. -
Mulvaney Eliminates Dozens of Directives Dating to 1997
Jun 19, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has rescinded, paused and modified dozens of White House directives dating back to 1997 in an attempt to streamline executive branch activity. -
Former Bush Officials Eyed as Top EPA Contenders, Irking Trump Backers
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Several Bush administration officials are emerging as top contenders for key posts at EPA, including former air office chief Jeffrey Holmstead and former White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) counselor Paul Noe... -
(ACC Mentioned) One Year and Counting: On Its First Anniversary, Near-Term Threats Abound to Implementation of Our Strong New Chemical Safety Law
Jun 19, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This week marks the first birthday of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemicals Safety for the 21st Century Act, which was signed into law by President Obama on June 22, 2016, after passing the Senate and House with overwhelming bipartisan support. -
EPA to Issue Three Chemical Rules, 10 Risk Review Plans
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA is on track to issue by June 22 three final chemical rules regulating chemicals in commerce and documents laying out its strategies to assess the health and environmental risks of 10 specific chemicals that companies already use. -
EPA Preparing State Guidance on TSCA Trade Secret Information Sharing
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is preparing a guidance document for states listing the security and policy requirements necessary to protect confidential business information (CBI), requirements that states will have to meet to be able to receive information about chemicals from EPA... -
(ACC Mentioned) Replacement for Worrisome Flame Retardants Raises Its Own Concerns
Jun 20, 2017 | Undark Magazine
By Rachel Cernansky
A generation ago, environmentalists felt vindicated when a notorious class of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, was targeted by state and federal agencies for eventual phase-out. -
REACH Data Quality Comes Under Renewed Fire
Jun 20, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Having a complete picture of which substances must be risk managed, and which measures are most appropriate, will only be achieved once REACH registration dossier have high quality, complete data on hazards and risks and up to date information on a substance’s uses... -
Report: Dangerous Chemical Could Threaten Reservoir
Jun 19, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
A new report says that a dangerous chemical detected in groundwater near a Superfund site in New Jersey could pose a threat to a nearby reservoir that provides drinking water to as many as 3.5 million people. -
DIY Sunscreen? Bad Idea.
Jun 20, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Alanna Wellspeak
For the avid do-it-yourselfer looking for a natural source of skin protection, trying to make your own sunscreen might seem like a great idea. Sunscreen-grade zinc oxide is available for purchase on Amazon and there are lots of recipes readily available online. -
Interior Prepares to Issue Rule on Fracking on Federal Land
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Interior Department may soon issue a proposed rule to rescind and replace the Obama administration's rule governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas on federal and Indian lands. -
Fix Shale Problems Before It's Too Late, Task Force Chair Says
Jun 19, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
Texas industry leaders, scientists and regulators must identify and understand the environmental and social risk of shale oil and gas drilling before air pollution, water contamination or other effects lead to tighter restrictions that could derail the rebounding industry... -
Frackers Collide With Traditional Oil Drillers
Jun 20, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Erin Ailworth
Supersized new oil wells are sometimes running into existing wells, a little-noticed consequence of the shale boom that has started to trigger complaints and lawsuits. -
Trump Regulators Trigger Pollution Fight
Jun 20, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The fight over former President Barack Obama’s methane agenda has moved to the courts. -
Abundant Supplies of Marcellus Shale Gas Could Lead to More Chemical Plants
Jun 20, 2017 | StateImpact Pennsylvania
By Reid Frazier
Shell’s $6 billion ethane cracker in Beaver County could be the first of several large chemical plants in the region, petrochemical industry leaders and observers said at a conference in Pittsburgh Monday. -
Mountaineer NGL Ready to Line Up Contracts for Appalachian Storage Project
Jun 19, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Mountaineer NGL Storage LLC, a first-of-its-kind project in the Appalachian Basin to serve growing volumes of natural gas liquids (NGL), has completed its technical validation phase and preliminary engineering work... -
PHMSA to Reconsider Natural Gas Storage Safety Rule
Jun 19, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
Federal pipeline safety regulators said today they will not enforce aspects of an Obama-era safety rule for underground natural gas storage sites until they address concerns raised by the oil and gas industry. -
New OTC Chair Grumbles to Seek Upwind Ozone Cuts
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
Ben Grumbles, the former George W. Bush EPA water chief and currently Maryland's top environment official, has been tapped as the new chairman of the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) of mid-Atlantic and Northeast states... -
Big Oil Steps Up Support for Carbon Tax
Jun 20, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Timothy Puko
Some of the world’s largest oil companies and the country’s biggest auto maker are joining a group pushing the U.S. government to tax carbon in an effort to slow climate change. -
States Bet on Green Economy as Trump Dumps Climate Programs
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
States and cities are doubling down on the green economy despite President Donald Trump's dismissal of the Paris climate accord as a bad deal for the U.S. -
AP-NORC poll: Few Favor Trump Move to Ditch Paris Accord
Jun 20, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Michael Biesecker and Emily Swanson
Less than one-third of Americans support President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a new poll shows, and just 18 percent of respondents agree with his claim that pulling out of the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions... -
This Is the One Climate Solution That’s Best For the Environment — And For Business
Jun 20, 2017 | Washington Post
By George P. Shultz and Lawrence H. Summers
President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord has induced a fateful pessimism about what can be expected of the country on this critical issue.
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemicals Boom While Cars Go Bust
Jun 19, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Justin Fox
For a few years now, optimists have been proclaiming that the time for a U.S. manufacturing resurgence is upon us. Labor costs have risen so much in China that they no longer confer a big advantage. Multinational corporations have decided that the physical and political risks inherent in manufacturing far from consumers often aren't worth the cost savings. The boom in U.S. oil and natural gas production enabled by fracking and other new drilling techniques has lowered manufacturers' energy costs and provided abundant feedstock for the petrochemicals industry. And now there's a guy in the White House who has pledged to make manufacturing a top priority.
So boom times are upon us, right? Well, sort of. After a stall-out that lasted for most of 2016, the post-recession recovery in manufacturing employment seems to be back on track, with 73,000 jobs added since November.
Also, the Reshoring Initiative, a manufacturing advocacy group, has estimated that in 2016 the U.S. added about 27,000 more manufacturing jobs through reshoring by U.S. companies and new investments by foreign manufacturers than it lost through offshoring -- probably the first such net gain since the 1970s.
The chemicals industry in particular is in the midst of a big investment wave, with more than 275 new chemical production projects announced since 2010 with a total value of more than $170 billion, according to the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, which also estimates that in 2015 capital spending by the industry accounted for more than half of total construction spending by the manufacturing sector.
So that's great. Really. I've written skeptical things about the reshoring narrative in the past, but I am perfectly willing to applaud signs that it's actually happening. Still, there are two things to keep in mind about manufacturing jobs in the U.S. that should temper expectations about what might happen next.
First, manufacturing is just no longer all that big an employer in the U.S. It directly accounted for 8.5 percent of all nonfarm payroll jobs in May, down from 32 percent in the early 1950s (and almost 39 percent at the height of World War II). And even as manufacturing employment has bounced back since the recession, it has bounced back at a slower pace than the rest of the economy, accounting for just 5.8 percent of total nonfarm payroll job gains since employment bottomed out in February 2010. Manufacturing jobs do have bigger multiplier effects than jobs in many other sectors (that is, they create more ancillary jobs), and there are reasons to want manufacturers to locate in the U.S. beyond the direct impact on job creation. But with new manufacturing facilities likely to be more automated and less labor-intensive than those built decades ago, manufacturing's share of overall employment is probably going to continue to decline.
That said, manufacturing is still quite important in some states. Its share of nonfarm employment is highest in Indiana, at 16.9 percent in May, and is in double digits in 15 other states, mostly in the Midwest and South. 1 Which brings me to my second caveat: A bunch of those states, including Indiana, are heavily dependent on a manufacturing industry that, far from being on the cusp of a big reshoring-driven revival, may now be headed for a cyclical downturn after several boom years. Writes the Brookings Institution's Mark Muro:
Here’s the problem: after seven years of strong growth following the 2008 economic crisis and federal bailouts of both General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, auto sector output and employment growth have slowed markedly from record levels. Years of catch-up purchases by car buyers have finally plateaued. Likewise, automakers must economize to invest billions in developing the electric and self-driving cars of tomorrow.
And so the layoffs have begun. Last fall, Ford jolted the industry by revealing that its sales had peaked, while projecting a tough 2017. Then came the company’s April disclosure that it will need to slash $3 billion in costs to free up capital to invest in new technology. Soon after that came Ford’s announcement of as many as 20,000 layoffs worldwide, as well as word that GM had cut production at four U.S. assembly lines and would be laying off about 4,400 factory workers. Fiat Chrysler also laid off 1,300 workers at a Detroit assembly line.
Motor vehicle and parts manufacturing has accounted for 30 percent of all U.S. manufacturing job gains since February 2010, and more than 90 percent of the gains since the beginning of last year. If the sector goes into reverse -- and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' payroll numbers indicate that it may have begun doing so in May, with an estimated employment loss of 1,500 for the month -- it could cancel out coming gains in other sectors.
To get a sense of how that might work, I compared the history of employment in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing employment with that in the aforementioned chemicals industry, which turns out to have a workforce of similar size:
There are fewer Americans making cars and chemicals than there were in the early 1990s, but both sectors have actually seen smaller job losses than other manufacturing industries (since January 1990, employment in motor vehicle and parts manufacturing is down 3 percent; in chemicals, it's down 21 percent and in the rest of the manufacturing sector it's down almost 33 percent). Auto manufacturing is also much more cyclical than chemicals, so if it suffers a serious downturn, it seems likely to swamp the gains in its steadier counterpart.
On the other hand, working at a chemical plant now pays better than making motor vehicles and parts, a significant recent switch from the earlier order of things:
And while both the auto industry and the chemical industry have increased their real output even while shedding jobs in recent decades, the chemical industry's value added -- its contribution to gross domestic product -- is much higher:
If there is in fact a U.S. chemicals manufacturing boom in the offing, it will be a big boost to GDP and a creator of some really good jobs. It just may not be all that many jobs, though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-19/chemicals-boom-while-cars-go-bust
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Mulvaney Eliminates Dozens of Directives Dating to 1997
Jun 19, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has rescinded, paused and modified dozens of White House directives dating back to 1997 in an attempt to streamline executive branch activity.
Among the eliminated memorandums are four directives requiring identification and cost documentation of the 2010 BP PLC Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which left 11 workers dead and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil.
The budget hawk said these reporting requirements were eliminated because the key purpose for tracking and collecting that data was rendered unnecessary with the settlement of related litigation.
Mulvaney announced late last week that his staff is undertaking efforts to identify and address low-value, duplicative and arcane management requirements. The initial overhaul is the first step in a yearlong review process, he said.
"From administration to administration, agencies have been asked to respond to hundreds of guidance documents related to management areas," he wrote in a memo to department and agency heads.
"Too often, burdensome tasks had piled up without consideration of whether the requirements collectively make sense. In many cases, agencies are asked to spend more time and resources complying with low-value activities versus allocating taxpayer dollars to meet their core agency mission."
Information technology requirements make up the largest chunk of rescinded memorandums, with at least 25 repeals.
For example, five homeland security public reporting directives were eliminated because they were issued before the enactment of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014, which superseded OMB guidance, Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney also eliminated "project labor agreement" reporting requirements for federal construction projects. In 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that required agencies to submit quarterly reports to OMB identifying all contracts awarded for large-scale construction projects and connected labor agreements.
The "project labor agreement" section of the order was intended to bolster collective bargaining and was considered a huge boon for unions. In Mulvaney's memo, he writes, with no further explanation, "The reporting requirement on the use of project labor agreements is eliminated."
Agency managers, Mulvaney said, are best equipped to manage operations, adopt best practices and find ways to reduce costs.
He said rolling back OMB memorandums is the first phase of an extensive review process. Over the next year, the administration plans to identify obsolete requirements and, when applicable, work with Congress to modify them.
The White House will work with the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration to identify and reduce "burdensome, low-value compliance activities," Mulvaney said.
The administration will also review OMB guidance to agencies to see where the process could be better coordinated and to ensure elements like sunset provisions when necessary.
And OMB will develop a long-term solution for reviewing and revoking guidance.
The full list of eliminated, modified and paused directives is outlined in Mulvaney's memo.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/06/19/stories/1060056249
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Former Bush Officials Eyed as Top EPA Contenders, Irking Trump Backers
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Several Bush administration officials are emerging as top contenders for key posts at EPA, including former air office chief Jeffrey Holmstead and former White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) counselor Paul Noe, signaling a desire for more experienced hands to oversee the administration's ambitious deregulatory agenda.
But the prospect of their selection is prompting opposition from Trump administration supporters who fear they will not be aggressive enough in rolling back rules.
“We're doing everything we can to stop” Holmstead being nominated to be EPA's deputy administrator, says one conservative source.
“I just don't think he's in sync with the Trump agenda, so we would prefer the position be left open rather than he be nominated,” even though conservatives have also been pressing the administration to fill vacant posts. “He's that bad.”
The source says Holmstead “is part of the [establishment] swamp” and his nomination would suggest support for career EPA staff -- many of whom are opposed to everything Trump wants to do.
Another source close to the Trump administration tells Inside EPA that Holmstead -- who had been considered a candidate for EPA administrator before the job was given to Scott Pruitt -- has resurfaced, “this time as the leading candidate for deputy administrator at EPA” while “Paul Noe is also in the mix. Bush people everywhere!”
But when asked whether Holmstead is likely to get the job, the source says, “I tend to doubt it. Too many problems to be nominated; too many problems to be confirmed.” The source similarly downplayed Noe's chances, saying he “could do a bunch of things” at EPA, “but most of those are already spoken for.” The source adds that Noe would be unlikely to accept an assistant administrator job heading a specific agency office.
If either Holmstead or Noe end up as the deputy nominee, they would join the only other sub-Cabinet nominee at EPA: Susan Bodine, the enforcement chief nominee, who is also a Bush administration alumnus who ran the EPA waste office from 2006 until the end of Bush's term in January 2009.
Bodine appeared before the Senate environment committee last week for her confirmation hearing but she has not yet been voted on by the committee. The administration has also tapped attorney Patrick Traylor, who recently left Hogan Lovells, as Bodine's deputy.
The source close to the administration says that Andrew Wheeler, who had long been thought to be chosen as deputy administrator, “kind of decided that he might not want [the deputy administrator job] after all. And [the Office of Presidential Personnel] was not wild about him taking on new [clients] while waiting for [an] appointment.”
Wheeler is a registered lobbyist who leads the energy and natural resources practice at Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting and previously worked as staff director for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on the Environment & Public Works Committee.
Wheeler, who also has prior EPA experience, could not be reached for comment but he told Inside EPA in March that he had “not been offered any job.”
'Highly Premature'
Holmstead is on vacation and could not be reached for comment but Scott Segal, who works with him at the Bracewell law firm, says he is “in no position to confirm whether the administration is actively considering Jeff for the post” and a press report of his consideration “seems highly premature.”
But he added that “we understand why the story is plausible. Jeff's record in public service is unparalleled,” noting is work at EPA during the George W. Bush administration and the White House during the George H.W. Bush administration.
“Jeff's reputation as an expert in all aspects of environmental law and policy is well known, and his subsequent role as a partner at Bracewell has only strengthened and deepened his experience.”
Axios, which first reported that Holmstead is under consideration, called him the “last man standing” for the No. 2 slot at EPA while noting no final decision has been made. But the report says Pruitt met with him and likes him, and the White House recommended him “so he's an easy pass from that end.”
However, his nomination would spark protests from conservative groups that want EPA to take a more radical posture, such as revoking the Obama-era finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
Holmstead has indicated in past conservations with Inside EPA that he believes he could help EPA execute at least some of the Trump agenda, but has cautioned that he did not support Trump when he was the GOP candidate for president.
He has also expressed concern that the agency will not be able to complete much of the work he does support -- such as narrowing the reach of the Clean Power Plan to focus only on “inside the fenceline” actions -- without personnel in place that have been lacking.
The source close to the administration adds that Holmstead is not a Pruitt fan but may be willing to set that aside.
But a former industry attorney downplays the likelihood that Holmstead would in the end take the job. “I think he is too fine a person for that crowd. Surprised he would take it” if offered, the source says.
However, the conservative source says Holmstead and others at his firm have been pressing for him to be nominated as deputy. “He really wants it . . . because he is personally ambitious” even though he would likely have to recuse himself from many issues based on his recent lobbying work.
Noe, who is vice president for public policy at the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA), could not be reached for comment but he has been leading industry efforts to push Congress to approve legislation overhauling the Administrative Procedure Act and the regulatory review system.
In a May 15 blog post, he urged the Senate to strengthen its regulatory review bill to make it more like the House companion, especially its judicial review provisions.
Among other things, he called for eliminating the deference courts provide agencies to interpret vague authorities and requiring judicial review for agencies' cost-benefit analyses. “A judicially enforceable benefit-cost test is needed because the status quo is inadequate for many reasons, including the institutional limitations of the agencies and OIRA,” Noe wrote, citing “bureaucratic turf battles, failure to utilize both internal and external expertise, bias, and the mismatch between the vast volume of regulation and shrinking resources, as well as political dysfunctions.”
From 2001-2006 he was counselor to OIRA chief John Graham in the White House Office of Management & Budget, where he helped to lead development of regulatory policy and interagency review. He also served as senior counsel for the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs from 1995-2001 under then-Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), when the committee sought unsuccessfully to enact regulatory reform legislation.
The conservative source would support Noe in the deputy administrator role as “very much preferable” to Holmstead but is “not wildly enthusiastic” about him either, and has “no confirmation that Paul is on the list” for deputy. “He was on the list for some other jobs.”
Conservatives support Wheeler as well as former North Carolina environment chief Donald van der Vaart, who had also been considered a candidate for No. 2 at EPA but was allegedly rejected by Pruitt. Wheeler is also “not somebody the hostile camp at EPA would support” but has EPA experience and “knows the place from the inside, but unlike Jeff, he never went native.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-bush-officials-eyed-top-epa-contenders-irking-trump-backers
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Jun 19, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This week marks the first birthday of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemicals Safety for the 21st Century Act, which was signed into law by President Obama on June 22, 2016, after passing the Senate and House with overwhelming bipartisan support.
The Lautenberg Act significantly overhauled and substantially improved the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the core provisions of which had never been amended since their adoption in 1976. Among the enhancements are new provisions that:
· mandate safety reviews for chemicals in active commerce;
· require safety findings for new chemicals before they are allowed on the market;
· replace TSCA’s burdensome safety standard — which prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even from banning asbestos — with a pure, health-based safety standard;
· explicitly require protection of vulnerable populations like children, pregnant women and workers;
· give EPA enhanced authority to require testing of both new and existing chemicals;
· make more information about chemicals available, by limiting companies’ ability to claim information as confidential, and by giving states and health and environmental professionals access to confidential information they need to do their jobs; and
· retain a significant role for states in assuring chemical safety, while strengthening the federal role.
Passage of the Lautenberg Act was made possible by the coming-together of members of both parties and a broad spectrum of stakeholders around two facts: the old law wasn’t working for anyone, and a stronger federal chemicals management system was needed to restore lost confidence among the public and in the marketplace over the safety of chemicals.
At the one-year mark, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) remains confident that the law is strong and can and will ultimately deliver on its promises. At the same time, its effective implementation in the near term is threatened on numerous fronts, unfolding as it is in one of the most anti-environmental and anti-regulatory climates this nation has faced in a long time.
To be clear, aspects of the bipartisan and broad stakeholder support for the new law remain and are evident in spots: Thanks to herculean efforts of career staff, along with calls from members of both parties for EPA to meet its deadlines, EPA complied with most of the early milestones set forth in the law. The same appears likely for the next set of deadlines, some of which fall later this week. To date, EPA’s reviews of and actions on new chemicals have been undertaken in a manner that adheres to the law’s new requirements, and appropriate additional resources are allowing the agency to eliminate the temporary backlog that resulted from the new requirements becoming effective immediately upon enactment.
This news pales, however, in light of the significant threats that implementation of the new law faces. Among them:
· EPA’s BUDGET: The President’s proposed budget would decimate EPA’s funding and staffing, including in areas critical for effective TSCA implementation. Despite preserving funding for the TSCA office, core agency functions such as enforcement and information management are on the chopping block. Scientific initiatives on which the TSCA office heavily relies are also proposed to be cut to the bone. The Office of Research and Development would be cut in half. That office includes:
o the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which conducts hazard characterizations of chemicals subject to risk evaluations under TSCA, including more than half of the first 10 chemicals slated for such reviews; and
o EPA’s ToxCast and related initiatives under the agency’s “Chemical Safety for Sustainability” research program, which has been shepherding the development of high-throughput testing and other predictive toxicology methods and computational tools that the Lautenberg Act calls on EPA to look to utilize in filling the major data gaps that exist for many chemicals regulated under TSCA.
· ANTI-REGULATORY EXECUTIVE ORDERS AND PENDING LEGISLATION: President Trump has signed several executive orders aimed at severely constraining EPA and other federal agencies from carrying out their missions to protect human health and the environment. And a variety of bills have passed the House of Representatives and are pending in the Senate that would impose even more severe constraints, including by limiting the scientific information EPA can use in developing regulations and the independent scientific advice it can obtain. One of these bills – the Regulatory Accountability Act – would, among other problems, impose across the entire federal government some of the worst flaws in the old TSCA that were removed by the Lautenberg Act; see here and here.
· INDUSTRY EFFORTS TO ROLL BACK EARLY TSCA ACTIONS: The Lautenberg Act authorized EPA to take action to address high risks it had identified in previous chemical risk assessments, including certain uses of trichloroethylene (TCE), methylene chloride (MC) and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP). EPA proposed such rules in December and January, but much of the chemical industry has sought to derail, delay or dilute these rules, after failing to halt their proposal. The fate of these rules is uncertain at this point, despite compelling ongoing evidence of the need for them.
Many in the industry are also urging this Administration to repeal, delay or weaken a modest information-gathering rule on nanoscale materials that was over a decade in the making and was repeatedly scaled back in scope based on the industry’s concerns. In response, EPA has already granted an initial delay, and the rule’s ultimate fate is uncertain.
The law’s allowance for EPA to take early action was widely seen as an opportunity to demonstrate that the new law was working, which now may be lost.· UNDUE INDUSTRY INFLUENCE OVER IMPLEMENTATION: A senior chemical industry official was recently appointed as principal deputy in EPA’s TSCA office, where, among other things, she has been active in drafting the final “framework” rules under the Lautenberg Act that will set forth the key procedures EPA will use to prioritize and evaluate the risks of chemicals under TSCA. These rules, which are in their final stages and could be issued as soon as this week, will directly affect the financial interests of companies represented by her previous employer, the American Chemistry Council.
Each of these factors, which will heavily influence the early implementation of the Lautenberg Act, put at great risk the careful balance struck by the new law. If that balance is lost to short-term priorities of the new Administration and the chemical industry, the common ground so many of us fought for and found to support last year’s historic passage of the Lautenberg Act will quickly dissipate, and the conditions that led the industry to want reform in the first place – retail regulation and state and local action in response to an ineffective federal system – will pick up even greater steam. The crisis in confidence will remain unabated.
It was no accident that the Lautenberg Act built in many safeguards against inaction or unsound decisions, including deadlines, mandatory duties, public comment, mandatory documentation of EPA decision-making and judicial review. All are meant to drive transparency and accountability. EDF is prepared to use all of these tools to fight back against efforts to undermine scientifically robust and legally sound implementation of the law.
If this post seems too pessimistic, I hope I am wrong. Even if I am right, I believe what has been created by the Lautenberg Act is durable and will survive the near-term threats I’ve noted, leading in the long run to a stronger federal system that better ensures the safety of chemicals on or entering the market. Meanwhile, those of us who want to see health-protective implementation of the law certainly have our work cut out for us.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2017/06/19/one-year-and-counting-on-its-first-anniversary-near-term-threats-abound-to-implementation-of-our-strong-new-chemical-safety-law/
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EPA to Issue Three Chemical Rules, 10 Risk Review Plans
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA is on track to issue by June 22 three final chemical rules regulating chemicals in commerce and documents laying out its strategies to assess the health and environmental risks of 10 specific chemicals that companies already use.
“EPA will be releasing the scope documents for the first 10 chemicals to undergo risk evaluations under the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act at the same time that EPA releases the Lautenberg framework rules. We believe that the public will benefit from releasing the scopes at the same time as the rules because the scopes reflect our first efforts to implement the new risk evaluation process and the framework rules provide important context for that work,” Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, told Bloomberg BNA by email.
An EPA spokeswoman confirmed the rules and documents are scheduled to come out June 22, the statutory deadline for the three final rules.
The rules and risk evaluation scoping documents will affect companies up and down the supply chain as evidenced by a few examples of companies and trade associations that weighed in on them during their development. These companies included the Dow Chemical Co., the Procter & Gamble Co., the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the International Fragrance Association North America.
State regulatory agencies, unions, communities living near manufacturers and disease organizations are among the organizations tracking the rules and risk scoping documents to determine whether they lay out procedures that will adequately protect human health and the environment.
The Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which overhauled the Toxic Substances Control Act as of June 22, 2016, required the EPA to develop the three final rules and 10 risk evaluation scoping documents.
The three final rules will describe the procedures the EPA will use to know what chemicals are actively in commerce, select chemicals as high or low priorities for future risk evaluations, and carry out those risk evaluations. Risk evaluations will determine whether a chemical poses an unreasonable risk warranting some kind of labeling, use or other restriction.
Information Development
The “scoping” documents will discuss the health and environmental concerns, chemical uses and exposures, and populations the EPA will evaluate as it examines the risks of 10 chemicals:
• asbestos;
• pigment violet 29, which is used to provide color to art, glass and other decorative materials;
• 1, 4 dioxane, an impurity that can occur during chemical manufacture;
• the cyclic aliphatic bromide cluster of flame retardants called HBCD;
• carbon tetrachloride, which is used to make other chemicals; and
• 1-bromopropane, methylene chloride, n-methylpyrolidone, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, all of which are solvents.
Depending on what uses and exposures the agency says it will evaluate, companies and their trade associations, unions and other organizations may decide to gather or generate information to inform the agency's final assessments.http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114519070&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114519070&jd=114519070
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EPA Preparing State Guidance on TSCA Trade Secret Information Sharing
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is preparing a guidance document for states listing the security and policy requirements necessary to protect confidential business information (CBI), requirements that states will have to meet to be able to receive information about chemicals from EPA as outlined in changes enacted in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) last summer.
"To obtain access to CBI under the new law, because this is new authority, states will have to set up an agreement with EPA," Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), told Inside EPA in a recent interview, following an American Law Institute webinar late last month where she raised the issue. "EPA will have to agree [that states] have the same level of security as EPA."
To assist states, ECOS asked EPA to provide guidance on what requirements would be necessary to protect CBI, Dunn said. EPA plans to have a draft ready for discussion this summer, with a final version anticipated in the fall, she said. She described the guidance in progress as a checklist of elements that states will need to have in place.
"You can understand that CBI is important to the companies. They want to be sure that states have the ability to protect the information," she said.
One issue that may be a problem for some states and might need a legislative fix is the fact that some states have broad Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws, Dunn said. "Some states may need to do a regulatory fix or a [legislative one]."
She added that some states already have experience sharing trade secret information with EPA under the authority granted in other laws, such as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
Dunn said state officials are "really pleased" that EPA is developing the guidance, which she said will save states a great deal of time in preparing to be CBI-compliant. "The alternative is for each state to submit [their application] and be told" that it does or does not meet EPA's requirements.
Those requirements are outlined in new language inserted in TSCA Section 14 through the enacted revisions to the law last summer. Section 14 allows state, tribal and local officials to be one set of entities with certain exemptions to TSCA's CBI requirements.
The changes in the law allow EPA officials for the first time to release "to a State, political subdivision of a State, or tribal government, on written request, for the purpose of administration or enforcement of a law, if such entity has 1 or more applicable agreements with the [EPA] Administrator that are consistent with the guidance developed under subsection (c)(4)(B) and ensure that the entity will take appropriate measures, and has adequate authority, to maintain the confidentiality of the information in accordance with procedures comparable to the procedures used by the Administrator to safeguard the information . . ."
Further, such information "shall be disclosed to a health or environmental professional employed by a Federal or State agency or tribal government or a treating physician or nurse in a nonemergency situation if such person provides a written statement of need and agrees to sign a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator . . . [and] in the event of an emergency to a treating or responding physician, nurse, agent of a poison control center, public health or environmental official of a State . . . or first responder . . ."
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-preparing-state-guidance-tsca-trade-secret-information-sharing
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(ACC Mentioned) Replacement for Worrisome Flame Retardants Raises Its Own Concerns
Jun 20, 2017 | Undark Magazine
By Rachel Cernansky
A generation ago, environmentalists felt vindicated when a notorious class of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, was targeted by state and federal agencies for eventual phase-out. While used by industry to make furniture, upholstery, electrical equipment, electronic devices, textiles, and other household products fire resistant, a growing list of studies had linked these chemicals to significant health problems and highlighted their ubiquity in the environment, with traces of the compounds in everything from breastmilk to household dust. In response, manufacturers agreed to voluntarily phase them out — and to replace them with materials thought to be safer.
Now, however, the replacement flame retardants are raising new concerns— both for their environmental pervasiveness and for suspected health risks of their own. They are known as organophosphate flame retardants, and according to one study published in February, their use has skyrocketed over the past 15 years, leading to human exposure levels that are even higher than they were for PBDEs at their peak.
Researchers have found high levels of organophosphates in air and watersamples from around the world, from Lake Michigan to the Arctic. The far-flung signs of contamination — from remote environments to urban centers — are raising new alarm within the scientific community.
“We know everyone is exposed to organophosphate flame retardants,” said Heather Stapleton, a Duke University professor, who has been studying flame retardant chemicals for more than a decade. “We know children have higher exposure than adults, and that exposure is higher than it was for PBDEs.”
In response, researchers are putting renewed emphasis on learning more about the impact these compounds may have on the environment and human health. There are already hints of trouble that some of the substitute flame retardants should be considered suspected carcinogens and that others may negatively affect neurodevelopment and fertility.
A review published last year, for example, suggested that organophosphate flame retardants could in fact pose comparable health risks to the brominated materials that they’ve replaced. Such toxic effects aren’t entirely a surprise as the formula for these phosphorus-based flame retardants is related to that used to create some notably risky organophosphate pesticides, from parathion to chlorpyrifos. And they also reinforce a growing worry that we’ve simply replaced one class of long-lasting and problematic flame retardants with another.
“There’s a little bit of a bait-and-switch going on here with flame retardant chemicals,” said Robin Dodson, research scientist at the Silent Spring Institute, a nonprofit public health research organization. Dodson says she doubts the need for much more study: “We already have enough information to think that these are bad actors and we need to get them out.”
Flame retardant chemicals became as prevalent as they are in part through long-time use in furniture and other products in response to flammability and consumer-protection standards set by the U.S. and other countries at the national level, as well as by individual American states. Experts say that in particular, standards set by the state of California were instrumental early on in driving the use of chemical flame retardants. The state required materials to be tested on an “open-flame standard” meaning that products had to resist burning when exposed to a candle-like flame for 12 seconds — a demand that forced heavy use of retardant materials in everything from pajamas to bedding to furniture.
Four years ago, though, California replaced that with a “smolder standard,” which uses conditions more similar to a cigarette burn — the leading cause of furniture fires. The new test, it turns out, can be passed with a far lower concentration of retardant compounds or, depending on the material, none at all.
There are some signs that use of some organophosphates has decreased since California changed its standard. But furniture is only one product that is now routinely permeated with the retardant compounds. They’re also used in other products to meet flammability standards, such as home insulation and electronics.
“We’ll find them in materials that are not technically required to meet standards,” said Stapleton. But, she adds, information on use is limited, meaning that it’s difficult to get a full picture of how many products use organophosphate retardants — and how many are leaching them into the surrounding environment. The chemicals are also used for purposes other than to reduce fire risk, including as an ingredient in plastic or synthetic rubber, where some organophosphates can improve flexibility in the soles of shoes, for example, or as an additive to floor polishes and paper coatings.
One measure of the chemical seep into the environment, though, is the way flame retardants show up in food products. Researchers in Sweden reported in February that they consistently found a range of organophosphate flame retardants in 12 different food categories, with levels highest in cereals, pastries, sweets and beverages — all among the most heavily processed categories of food, suggesting to the study’s authors that they were a result of contamination that occurred during processing. Such findings are a troubling repeat of similar food contamination by PDBEs found years ago in staples ranging from peanut butter to lunch meat.
“What we suspect is that the environment itself, [meaning where] the food is prepared and processed — including the industrial machinery and equipment, possible presence of dust and plastic tools containing flame retardants — could be a potential source of phosphate flame retardants,” said study author Giulia Poma, a researcher at the University of Antwerp’s Toxicological Center in Belgium.
In the February study that showed increased exposure to organophosphates, Stapleton and colleagues used data from 14 epidemiological studies and biosamples collected from the Northeastern United States, North Carolina, and California between 2002 (just before PBDEs started to be phased out) and 2015. They found metabolite levels of several organophosphates in people’s urine had increased significantly during that time frame — the levels of one such flame retardant was recorded at levels 16.5 times higher in 2015 than in 2002.
Organophosphate levels appear to have rapidly increased at least in part because they are water-soluble and can migrate easily, whereas PBDEs are fat-soluble — which meant they bioaccumulate, or become concentrated, in an individual’s body. In other words, the differing formulas offer a trade-off in type of risks. PBDEs can reach toxic levels more quickly through concentration, while organophosphates have more potential to travel throughout the environment.
Erika Schreder, science director at the advocacy nonprofit Toxic-Free Future, said the main ways organophosphates seem to get out of the products they’re used in, from couches and car seats to electronics and home insulation, are through volatilization, abrasion, and direct transfer to dust — meaning a chemical used in the plastic casing on a TV can directly migrate into the dust that collects on it.
Once they escape the products — and they continue to do so over long periods of time — organophosphates travel far and wide, creating what Dodson calls an infinite reservoir. They’ve been found at high levels, for example, in waterways around the world and in the air from the Great Lakes to the Arctic. In January, researchers reported evidence of organophosphates accumulating in sediment at increasing rates, and estimated that a quarter of the total burden of these chemicals in Lake Michigan is contained in sediment — which may serve as a secondary source of organophosphates released into to the water for years into the future.
Schreder and colleagues have done studies to understand how exactly the chemicals are getting from consumer products into waterways. They found the chemicals present in house dust, at higher levels in household laundry water, and at much higher levels in the effluent at wastewater treatment plants, which then send the materials circulating into the larger water supply.
They would like to know more, however, about where and in what quantities the materials are being used. Manufacturers don’t make that information publicly available, so it’s up to researchers like Stapleton and public health agencies to figure out what people’s exposure levels are, where those exposures are coming from, and what impacts they are having on human health and the environment.
Dodson, of the Silent Spring Institute, points out that manufacturers may not even know themselves. “They buy things to meet certain flammability standards not necessarily knowing what chemicals are used to meet those standards,” she said. “They just need to meet the standard and they can get there however they need to get there.”
The counter to all of the concerns, of course, is that flame retardants, for all their environmental downsides, save people’s lives. In response to queries on the matter, the American Chemistry Council, an industry group, sent a statement from the North American Flame Retardant Alliance, another industry group, regarding the use of organophosphate flame retardants: “Fires and fire deaths have dropped significantly over the past 40 years, due in part to the development of a comprehensive set of fire-safety measures that included flame retardants,” the statement read. “There are different types of flame retardants with very different health and safety profiles.”
While there has been increased debate on how effective the retardant chemicals actually are — a widely-praised Chicago Tribune investigationdebunked many of the protective claims, leading some furniture companies to quit their use — they are still favored by many industries as a safety buffer against runaway fires.
The state of California, meanwhile, has found that even under its new requirement, manufacturers are still slipping some retardant compounds into products that claim to be flame-retardant free. Myrto Petreas, environmental chemistry branch chief at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, said about 30 percent of such products tested did actually contain retardant compounds, including organophosphates. “And probably there are other things that we don’t even know to look for,” she said. “We can never sign a report saying there are no flame retardants. We can say we looked for these, and this is what we found,” she said.
The California legislation, though, is only part of the picture. Stricter flammability standards still exist elsewhere, and the chemical and testing industries have resisted the shift away from open flame toward smolder standards. “I don’t think that debate around chemicals in upholstered furniture is over. I think it is an ongoing debate and we just happen to be shifted toward the smolder standard right now — and it can swing back,” Dodson said. “It could be very easy that we slip back away from smolder standards to open flame standards, and that could have big implications on exposure to these chemicals.”
Experts do note that there are other ways for many products to meet flammability standards without retardant chemicals — such as by using barrier fabrics in furniture. Further, there’s evidence that the compounds may be less necessary in electronics: Flat-screen televisions, for instance, don’t get hot the way older CRT models do. Stapleton would like to see improved flammability testing for television sets that discriminates between the two. For products that do require a level of chemical-based protection, such as some electronics and home insulation, researchers are also looking into improved compounds with fewer health effects or less of a potential to migrate.
Ultimately, that’s the bottom line for Stapleton — finding the best balance of safety, including accounting for environmental health and fire safety at the same time.
“I don’t think any of us that study flame retardants feel that fire safety is not important,” said Stapleton. “We just want to make sure we’re maintaining fire safety in a way that also protects human health.”
https://undark.org/article/flame-retardants-organophosphates/
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REACH Data Quality Comes Under Renewed Fire
Jun 20, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Having a complete picture of which substances must be risk managed, and which measures are most appropriate, will only be achieved once REACH registration dossier have high quality, complete data on hazards and risks and up to date information on a substance’s uses, experts say.
In her article in this month’s Global Business Briefing entitled: REACH revolution at a crossroads, Chemical Watch CEO Mamta Patel says the "inescapable conclusion" is that many companies have done a poor job in providing adequate safety data.
The article quotes Echa head Geert Dancet’s recent comments at Echa’s tenth anniversary celebrations that "the detailed work of member states and Echa can only really begin when we have all the data. Only then can regulators judge whether a substance is of concern or not...At the moment this is not easy to do."
Echa says it lacks the information to decide what risks are posed by 3,000 of the 4,500 substances manufactured or imported by companies in volumes above 100 tonnes per year or notified under the previous EU new chemicals regime. And for 2,000 of these, their registration dossiers suggest some exposure is likely but the hazard properties are unclear.
REACH principles not applied
At the same event, head of the European Environmental Bureau Jeremy Wates warned that "there are very real problems with the slow pace of roll-out of REACH." When companies are awarded a registration number - whether or not they have complied with the data requirements - key principles of REACH, such as ‘no data, no market’ and ‘reversing the burden of proof’, are not, he said, being applied.
This situation, in turn, causes delays in other processes, such as substance evaluation, says ClientEarth’s Vito Buonsante,. When member state authorities select substances to examine, they see the holes in the data and instead send the dossiers to Echa for compliance checking.
The way REACH is implemented "gives perverse incentives to companies to drag their feet...companies are rewarded for having submitted poor data by winning more time to comply,"
Registrants faced big challenges
Cefic’s Erwin Annys agrees there is a data quality gap but says companies faced significant challenges in meeting the 2010 registration deadline. Many companies, says the chemical industry, lack the resources, motivation or in-house expertise of some multinationals.
Consequently, most dossiers have never been updated, as required by the Regulation. This will only happen, says Rainer Otter, head of regulatory affairs for BASF’s industrial petrochemicals business, when a legal obligation to do so is inserted into the REACH legal text.
Bjorn Hansen, head of DG Environment’s chemicals unit, says Echa should view dossiers with inadequate data as non-compliant rather than poor quality, and use its legal powers to bring them into compliance. He has suggested to Echa that it could speed things by conducting compliance checks at the same time as substance evaluations.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57000/reach-data-quality-comes-under-renewed-fire
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Report: Dangerous Chemical Could Threaten Reservoir
Jun 19, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
A new report says that a dangerous chemical detected in groundwater near a Superfund site in New Jersey could pose a threat to a nearby reservoir that provides drinking water to as many as 3.5 million people.
The report by the Jacobs engineering firm for the Wanaque Reservoir operators recommends treating the contaminated water at the Ringwood Mines site, once used by Ford Motor Co. and now polluted with paint sludge and industrial waste.
The Record (https://njersy.co/2rNfjxO ) reports that the probable cancer-causing chemical, 1,4-dioxane, is the main concern. The chemical hasn't been found in the reservoir but high levels have been found in groundwater and brooks that feed into the reservoir.
The report also says the reservoir isn't outfitted to remove the chemical.
Federal environmental officials are reviewing the report.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/06/19/us/ap-us-superfund-cleanup-reservoir.html?_r=0
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Jun 20, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Alanna Wellspeak
For the avid do-it-yourselfer looking for a natural source of skin protection, trying to make your own sunscreen might seem like a great idea. Sunscreen-grade zinc oxide is available for purchase on Amazon and there are lots of recipes readily available online.
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty.
EWG’s 11 years studying sunscreen have taught us that making an effective and usable natural sunscreen isn’t as simple as mixing up ingredients in a Mason jar.
To be effective, mineral sunscreens need ingredients that hold zinc oxide or titanium dioxide in a suspension to provide an even coating on the skin. Without careful formulation, the mineral ingredients can settle or clump, leaving gaps in skin coverage.
On her blog, Realize Beauty, professional cosmetic chemist Amanda Foxon-Hill describes how she made batches of sunscreen with zinc oxide, shea butter and other ingredients, and then had them tested at a lab. The mixtures she thought would come out at SPF 30 ended up at SPF 12. The one she thought would be SPF 35 came out at SPF 8.
“Epic failures all,” she wrote, “and what was worse was that this was all my own work.”
Besides the ineffectiveness of the final product, making your own mineral sunscreen could be hazardous. Nanoparticle zinc and titanium may pose health risks if inhaled.
The idea that coconut oil and other natural oils are effective sunscreens is also floating around DIY blogs. In reality, they only block about 20 percent of UV rays.
With homemade sunscreens, you don’t know what level SPF you’ll get. You don’t know if it will stay on. And the active ingredients are dangerous if inhaled.
Looking for a safe, natural sunscreen? Check out EWG’s 2017 Guide to Sunscreen. And as Foxon-Hill advised her readers, wear “a nice big hat.”
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/06/diy-sunscreen-bad-idea
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Interior Prepares to Issue Rule on Fracking on Federal Land
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Interior Department may soon issue a proposed rule to rescind and replace the Obama administration's rule governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas on federal and Indian lands.
Interior is acting under time pressure from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, where the department has requested that a legal contest over the Obama administration's fracking rule be held in abeyance pending a new rule (Wyoming v. Zinke, 10th Cir., No. 16-8068, 6/27/16).
Interior's Bureau of Land Management sent the notice of proposed rulemaking to the White House Office of Management and Budget June 17 for review. In a May 5 court filing, Interior based its request for abeyance on its intent to start a new rulemaking that could reverse the previous administration's approach to regulating fracking.
Federal attorneys representing Interior must file their next brief at the appeals court no later than June 20. Having the proposed rule at OMB—albeit a week later than intended—will allow the attorneys to say the BLM followed through and now needs the court to halt the litigation to await the outcome of the new rulemaking (RIN:1004-AE52).
Industry Wants New Rule
No date is set for the three-judge panel to decide whether it will halt the case or allow it to play out. The federal government appealed to the Tenth Circuit in 2016 after a district court ruled the BLM has never been given authority to regulate fracking.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America, one of the litigants who took the Obama administration rule to court, does not know what is in the proposed rule at OMB but expects to participate in an extensive rulemaking procedure, Dan Naatz, IPAA's senior vice president of government relations and political affairs, told Bloomberg BNA.
Naatz said he did not want to guess what the three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit will decide. But he expressed a hope that a new rule will give states the flexibility to regulate fracking. It would need to be genuine flexibility, not undercut by a complicating overarching federal scheme, he said.
“There's a lot of ways to do this,” Naatz said.
Fracking involves the injection of water, sand and chemicals into the ground under pressure to create fractures through which oil or gas can flow to a well. The district court ruled the BLM's role in leasing federal land is to apportion the use of surface land fairly, not to regulate an underground process.
BLM Authority Defended
OMB can take as long as it wants to review a proposed rulemaking, but a fast review is always possible if advance preparatory discussions have been held to speed the work. Interior has not said whether there has been such discussion.
Interior mostly has addressed the subject through court filings. In those, the government defended the authority of BLM to regulate fracking but said it needed time for the Trump administration to decide what it will do.
The government has not changed its position with respect to its authority to regulate fracking, an attorney involved in the case told Bloomberg BNA.
Environmental activist intervenors in the case have urged the appeals court to keep the case going to decide precisely that issue. Those intervenors included Earthworks, the Wilderness Society and others.
Four former Interior officials filed a joint amicus brief arguing that the appeals court should recognize the BLM's authority to regulate fracking on federal land under the Mineral Leasing Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. A group of law professors filed an amicus brief that made a similar argument.
Public Can Have Its Say
The Trump administration has argued it would not be a good use of the court's time to continue considering a case when the government's policy on fracking may be reversed.
A rulemaking would be open to all members of the public wanting to comment, notably including the litigants.
“The anticipated rulemaking will be an opportunity for the petitioners below to convince BLM to change its mind on the subject of regulation of hydraulic fracturing,” the government said in its May 5 brief.
Neither the BLM nor the court can lawfully pre-judge the outcome of the rulemaking process, the government said.
Petitioners include the states of Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota and Utah, the Ute Indian Tribe, and two industry groups, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114519071&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114519071&jd=114519071
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Fix Shale Problems Before It's Too Late, Task Force Chair Says
Jun 19, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
Texas industry leaders, scientists and regulators must identify and understand the environmental and social risk of shale oil and gas drilling before air pollution, water contamination or other effects lead to tighter restrictions that could derail the rebounding industry, the leader of a new study said on Monday.
“We really do thrive on the availability of energy in the United States,” said the University of Houston’s Christine Ehlig-Economides, chairman of a shale task force convened by The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas. “If we find that there are barriers, significant barriers that should put a stop to this kind of development, then the impacts are huge.”
“Where there are things that could threaten the future for this kind of development,” said Economides, a former Schlumberger petroleum engineer, “those are the things we really must address.”
Meanwhile, oil and gas industry representatives found their own victories in the report, pointing to sections of the study that said there was little evidence to tie fracking itself — as distinguished from the other parts of shale operations — to drinking water pollution or the exponential rise in Texas earthquakes.
RELATED: Study of oil and gas drilling finds pollution and connections to earthquakes
“This study is yet another indication that the campaign to shut down fracking is based on politics, not science,” said Steve Everley, spokesman for Texans for Natural Gas. “If fracking were a credible risk to groundwater, we would know about it in Texas, which produces more oil and natural gas than any other state.”
The report “reaffirms that Texas’ science-based policies are protecting our environment while allowing oil and natural gas development to make our communities, state and nation more secure,” Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staplessaid.
The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas released the 204-page report Monday morning. A 19-member task force combed relevant research and detailed page after page on the effects of shale oil and gas drilling on land, wildlife, air, water, roadways and residents.
The study concluded that the shale oil boom, while enriching companies, residents and state coffers, has also caused earthquakes, degraded natural resources, overwhelmed small communities and even boosted the frequency and severity of traffic collisions as oversized trucks rushed to and from the oilfield.
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Fix-shale-oil-problems-before-they-grow-says-11230798.php
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Frackers Collide With Traditional Oil Drillers
Jun 20, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Erin Ailworth
Supersized new oil wells are sometimes running into existing wells, a little-noticed consequence of the shale boom that has started to trigger complaints and lawsuits.
The emerging problem is known as a “frack hit,” and it has flared up in Oklahoma, where a group of small oil and gas producers say more than 100 of their wells have been damaged by hydraulic-fracturing jobs done for companies like Chesapeake Energy Corp. ,Devon Energy Corp. and Newfield Exploration Co.
In hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” firms pump sand and water deep underground at high pressure to break oil and gas from rock.
Some owners of older wells have filed reports with state regulators claiming their wells were flooded with water. In some cases, the wells became so full that the water rose to the surface and spilled over. Others have claimed that they had to shut in wells due to the damage. A few cases have ended up in court.
While newer wells damaging older ones is a longstanding problem, the issue is gaining attention as shale companies employ new technologies to drill wells horizontally.
Almont Energy LLC and TLS Oil & Gas Inc., vertical-well operators in Oklahoma, sued Newfield last year, claiming that fracking jobs performed by Newfield caused an Almont well to flood with water, “negatively impacting the further development potential” of the well.
A lawyer for Almont and TLS declined to discuss the case, which was filed in federal court. Newfield also declined to discuss the case, but spokeswoman Cindy Hassler said the company tries to be proactive when it learns of possible frack hits and works to negotiate compensation with anyone affected if an inspection shows damage.
“Newfield owns thousands of vertical wells ourselves, so we understand the challenges,” Ms. Hassler said.
Chesapeake and Devon, who have also been blamed for frack hits in reports to state regulators, declined to comment.
James West, an analyst with Evercore ISI who has been following frack hits, said they are of special concern in places like Oklahoma and Texas, where those drilling new wells must navigate around older wells drilled over decades.
“It’s becoming a pretty sizable issue,” Mr. West said, noting that Colorado in 2013 enacted regulations after state engineers had identified frack hits as a potential problem. “I suspect every basin is probably facing the same type of challenge.”
In Oklahoma, companies aren’t required to report frack hits unless there is a spill. Regulators there have received fewer than 20 confirmed reports of such incidents in the last three years and are currently reviewing several more.
“I know that it’s a larger problem than the data we’ve been given,” said Tim Baker, director of the oil and gas division at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.
Oklahoma last month passed a bill that eases restrictions on where producers can drill horizontal wells more than a mile long. Vertical-well operators now worry their wells are more vulnerable than before.
Joe Warren, a partner with Brown & Borelli Inc., a small oil-and-gas producer, said roughly two dozen of the company’s wells have been damaged by frack hits. He believes the problem is particularly acute in Oklahoma’s Stack, currently one of the hottest oil regions in the U.S. The Stack has many vertical wells and is now also popular with horizontal drillers.
“Most of the large players in the Stack have hit one or more of our wells,” he said.
Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil & Gas Association, questioned claims that hundreds of wells have been damaged. In some cases, he and others argue, frack hits can actually boost production from an affected well.
But given the potential for damage, the association supports making reporting frack hits mandatory, Mr. Warmington said, and would be open to having a mediation or arbitration process put in place.
Some experts expect the situation will only get worse.
“We’ve got bigger fracks, so more chance of them reaching across, well-to-well,” said Jennifer Miskimins, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “As we get closer and closer spacing, I think we’re going to see the occurrence go up.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/traditional-oil-drillers-are-getting-hit-in-oklahomaliterally-1497956402
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Trump Regulators Trigger Pollution Fight
Jun 20, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The fight over former President Barack Obama’s methane agenda has moved to the courts.
The Trump administration last week took two major steps toward wiping a pair of Obama-era methane pollution rules off the books.
Environmental groups have sued to stop President Trump from nixing the rules, though the oil and gas industry has stepped up to defend the administration’s actions.
Taken together, observers expect a raucous, lengthy legal fight over the standards, which were a key part of Obama’s climate change agenda.
“I expect at every step, we’ll be sued by the environmental groups,” said Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the industry-funded Western Energy Alliance, which wants to end the methane regulations.
Two agencies with jurisdiction over methane pollution said this week that they would delay the standards established by the Obama administration while they move to reconsider — and likely rewrite or repeal — the rules.
On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed delaying several aspects of its methane emissions rule for two years while reconsidering the measure, which sets emissions standards at drilling sites.
The next day, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would propose delaying compliance dates for its methane rule, which is due to impact drillers operating on federal lands by next January.
Green groups have already sued over the EPA’s decision, and lawyers say they expect to file suit against Interior as well.
Rewriting the methane rules was a key component of Trump’s energy platform during his presidential campaign, and an executive order in March directed the agencies to begin the process.
Environmentalists have dug in, vowing they will fight any effort to overturn the strict limits Obama set on methane leaks and flaring.
But the first legal skirmish over the methane regulations is relatively narrow, focused simply on keeping the measures on the books while the rewrite process moves forward.
In their suit against the EPA, filed last week, environmental opponents said the agency couldn’t legally justify its decision to delay implementation of the methane rule while reviewing it.
The agency and industry supporters like the Western Energy Alliance and the American Petroleum Institute say such a move is allowed under the law.
The EPA argued in a court filing this week that it “has broad discretion to reconsider its rules” and it “also has broad authority to issue a brief stay.”
“EPA’s decision fell well within the range of reasonable outcomes that were available to it,” the agency wrote.
But environmentalists say the regulation should stay in effect so that its predicted benefits — fewer leaks of a powerful greenhouse gas and other pollutants — can kick in as well.
“Those leaks are a major source of pollution and it affects communities that live nearby … and it affects the planet as a whole because methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas,” said David Doniger, the director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“The point is to stop the leaks, to zip up the leaks.”
Greens have yet to challenge the BLM’s decision, but Earthjustice associate attorney Joel Minor said, “I think I can say litigation is likely.”
The law “sets clear standards for the processes that agencies must follow when they take actions,” Minor said. “It is clear that the Trump administration, in its rush to enact whatever the oil and gas industry asks it to, is trying to find ways around those requirements.”
Obama and his administration’s regulators insisted that cutting emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with at least 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, would be an effective way to combat climate change.
The Obama administration created a methane reduction master plan in 2014 and eventually partnered with Canada on a strategy to cut emissions at natural gas and oil drilling sites in both countries.
The EPA finalized a rule last year to cut emissions from new wells and began work on a regulation for existing wells. The BLM in November finished work on a new well rule of its own, this time governing operations on federal land.
Trump ran on a platform of deregulating the American fossil fuel sector, and in a March executive order, he rescinded Obama’s methane action plan and set the stage for repealing the individual regulations under it.
Republicans in the Senate failed to end the BLM’s rule through the Congressional Review Act (CRA) earlier this year, dealing a blow to industry groups.
But the Trump administration has moved forward with rewrites anyway: Before moving to pause the rules this week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — who himself sued against the agency’s methane standards as Oklahoma attorney general — said he would not follow through with the existing site rule initiated by Obama.
The legal fight over the methane standards flips the script from the Obama administration.
During the Obama years, it was industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute and conservative states that were suing the feds over the standards, saying they were duplicative, overly broad and carried expensive compliance costs. The groups haven’t won yet in federal court, but they are already working to make sure Trump follows through on his promise to end the rules.
“The CRA was our preferred choice. That was plan A, and now we’re engaging on plan B and C,” Sgamma said.
“We’re in court on both of those rules, so we will be supporting the administration as they consider those rules.”
Environmentalists — who once allied with Obama and his efforts to cut methane — are bracing for a long fight with the new administration, acknowledging that they’re likely to go back to court to stop any Trump-initiated changes to the rules themselves, whenever they might come.
“If they ever get around to proposing the changes they want to make, we will comment on that and almost surely challenge those moves in court, too,” Doniger said.
“Meanwhile, the existing rules are supposed to be in effect, and people are supposed to be getting the benefits of the pollution reduction.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/338496-trump-regulators-trigger-pollution-fight
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Abundant Supplies of Marcellus Shale Gas Could Lead to More Chemical Plants
Jun 20, 2017 | StateImpact Pennsylvania
By Reid Frazier
Shell’s $6 billion ethane cracker in Beaver County could be the first of several large chemical plants in the region, petrochemical industry leaders and observers said at a conference in Pittsburgh Monday. That’s because there’s enough ethane being produced in the region to provide the chemical industry with the raw material without any additional drilling.
“It’s very difficult to hide the secret,” said Warren Wilczewski, a U.S. Energy Information Administration economist who attended the conference. In the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia region, production has grown almost 10-fold since 2011, Wilczewski said. “By our calculations, you could easily have another two or three world-scale crackers.”
Shell’s cracker will use ethane, a byproduct of natural gas drilling, to make the building blocks of plastics. Currently, the region’s ethane is sent to chemical plants in the Gulf Coast, Ontario, and Europe. But whatever ethane can’t get sold to plastics manufacturers is “rejected”, or mixed in with the gas that supplies homes and businesses for heating and cooking. For more, please visit The Allegheny Front.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/06/19/abundant-supplies-of-marcellus-shale-gas-could-lead-to-more-chemical-plants/
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Mountaineer NGL Ready to Line Up Contracts for Appalachian Storage Project
Jun 19, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Mountaineer NGL Storage LLC, a first-of-its-kind project in the Appalachian Basin to serve growing volumes of natural gas liquids (NGL), has completed its technical validation phase and preliminary engineering work, and now hopes to land customers in the coming months.
"Right now, it's my job to get some commercial contracts lined up," said Tim Hanley, vice president of business development for parent company Energy Storage Ventures LLC. "We're fairly optimistic that we'll be able to pull this off in the next 30 to 60 days and get this project moving."
Hanley delivered his update before an audience at the Appalachian Storage Hub conference on Thursday near Canonsburg, PA, that was organized by the consultancy TopLine Analytics and Shale Directories. Momentum is building for a substantial storage hub investment in the basin, as industry interest has piqued with a major petrochemical project announced by a Royal Dutch Shell plc affiliate last year, and more recently as U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation to study the prospect, provide funding and expedite the permitting process.
Hard rock caverns in Ohio and West Virginia provide storage for oil refineries throughout the region, while the first of other underground fuel storage caverns at the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in eastern Pennsylvania were built decades ago. Marcus Hook, a former oil refinery, has been repurposed by Energy Transfer Partners LP to store, process and distribute NGLs to international and domestic markets.
A larger hub, though, would bring Appalachian shale production closer in line with the Gulf Coast, home of Mont Belvieu and one of the world's largest centers of NGL trade and movement. Supporters want to link up Appalachian shale formations with a network of pipelines, equipment and underground storage that could ease supply and demand imbalances and help create more regional buyers and sellers of the commodities.
Mountaineer, backed by a Goldman Sachs investment fund, announced the project early last year with a nonbinding open season. The company received more than three times the amount of its initial planned capacity, leading it to instead offer up to 2 million bbl of storage capacity in the Salina salt formation. The formation is 6,300-6,700 feet underground at a site along the Ohio River near Clarington, OH, in Monroe County.
Hanley said Thursday the company is now targeting 3.25 million bbl of capacity and is "commercially focused" on getting about 1 million bbl operational. "Our development is limited by how much disposal we can accomplish." The caverns would store ethane, propane, butane and y-grade products below a 200-acre site nestled in an area along the river that hosts an expanding network of pipeline, rail, truck and barge infrastructure that has cropped up to serve shale development.
The site would require a 3.25 million bbl brine pond for fluids from Salina. Hanley said the project has secured all the local and state permits to store NGLs underground, but it anticipates it may take another two months before receiving approval from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for the pond because of the monitoring, containment and host of other regulatory requirements the impoundment would need to meet.
Mountaineer's phase one design calls for four 500,000 bbl NGL storage caverns to be in service by 4Q2018. It typically takes six months to develop a storage well, Hanley said. The site is near another proposed by PTT Global Chemical pcl (PTTGC), which is expected to make a final investment decision on a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Belmont County later this year. Hanley said the site would provide a true underground storage facility for the petrochemical company's facility if it's constructed.
The storage caverns would also be near Blue Racer Midstream LLC's Natrium Complex in Marshall County, WV, which processes and fractionates NGLs. Hanley said the company wants to link up with Natrium to load-in and load-out. Two eight-inch pipelines would feed ethane to caverns at the site, which would also have transloading capability with trucks and rail.
In addition to PTTGC and Shell, three other crackers have been proposed for the region over the years. A Pennsylvania-commissioned study released earlier this year found that the Marcellus and Utica shales hold enough ethane to accommodate up to four more crackers in addition to Shell's. But that analysis also estimated that the region needs 3.5-7 million bbl of liquids storage to foster more development.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/110817-mountaineer-ngl-ready-to-line-up-contracts-for-appalachian-storage-project
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PHMSA to Reconsider Natural Gas Storage Safety Rule
Jun 19, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
Federal pipeline safety regulators said today they will not enforce aspects of an Obama-era safety rule for underground natural gas storage sites until they address concerns raised by the oil and gas industry.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will not enforce certain aspects of the rule while it writes a new version, according to an advanced notice to be published in Tuesday's Federal Register.
The rule, published in December, was inspired by the 2015 Aliso Canyon disaster in California, during which 4.62 billion cubic feet of gas leaked from an underground storage facility.
Industry trade associations including the American Petroleum Institute and American Gas Association filed a petition two days before President Donald Trump took office asking the government to reconsider aspects of the rule they believed should be voluntary rather than mandatory. PHMSA says it hopes to have a new rule out by January.
Until one year after a new rule is published, PHMSA said it will not issue citations for failing to comply with the aspects API says should not be mandatory but reserves the right to address emergencies or imminent risks.
“PHMSA plans to leave the petition for reconsideration open and evaluate the petition, along with the comments it has received, during the development of a final rule,” the agency said in the notice.
WHAT'S NEXT: PHMSA now estimates it will issue a final rule in January 2018.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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New OTC Chair Grumbles to Seek Upwind Ozone Cuts
Jun 20, 2017 | Inside EPA
Ben Grumbles, the former George W. Bush EPA water chief and currently Maryland's top environment official, has been tapped as the new chairman of the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) of mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, a role he plans to use to push for additional cuts in upwind states' ozone emissions to help OTC states attain federal limits.
In an interview with the Frederick News-Post, published June 18, Grumbles called the “status quo” where 70 percent of ozone in Maryland stems from out-of-state pollution “not acceptable,” and predicted more petitions from OTC states to EPA seeking to drive down emissions.
Grumbles, who served Republicans on the House transportation committee, led EPA's water office under President George. W. Bush. He later led Arizona's environment department under then-Gov. Jan Brewer (R) and currently serves a Republican governor, Larry Hogan, in Maryland.
Earlier this month, he was unanimously selected at the next chairman of the OTC, a region of 12 states and the District of Columbia with historically high ozone levels. The group works on state and regional strategies for reducing ozone and also seeks stricter EPA regulations to help drive down ozone in other states.
Grumbles took over from outgoing OTC Chairman Jared Snyder of New York on June 8, after Snyder chaired his final meeting in Saratoga Springs, NY. At the meeting, OTC states including Maryland objected to the Trump EPA's one-year delay in implementation of the 2015 ozone standard of 70 parts per billion (ppb), which is stricter than the 2008 standard of 75 ppb that several OTC states are still struggling to meet.
Although Grumbles has long served Republicans, his approach to ozone reductions and interstate ozone transport has recently been aggressive, and similar to that taken by OTC states with Democratic governors.
At the OTC meeting, Grumbles called for a strong federal investment in air pollution monitoring and modeling, warning that proposed EPA budget cuts could hamper such work, which he called “not something you want to privatize.” And if “you are looking only at state budgets, that is not going to work either.”
As an East Coast state with persistent ozone problems caused in large part by emissions from upwind states, Maryland under Hogan and Grumbles has been very active in trying to resolve longstanding issues with interstate transport.
For example, Grumbles' air director, George 'Tad' Aburn, led efforts to negotiate a solution to the interstate transport issue with upwind states, by coordinating air quality research and policy through states' Clean Air Act “good neighbor” state implementation plans. The effort, known as State Collaborative on Ozone Transport, produced some technical collaboration with upwind states, but no policy agreement.
OTC states have been searching for solutions to the issue because EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and its predecessors have never fully addressed the ozone problem in the region. However the efforts of Aburn and others, such as New Hampshire officials, to forge a state-led solution with upwind polluters ultimately failed last year amid disagreements over how much upwind states should reduce their emissions by, and at what cost.
Maryland then took a stricter approach, filing petitions for EPA to directly regulate sources of industrial pollution under air law section 126 in upwind states that are causing problems attaining national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) in downwind states. The air law provision allows EPA to regulate individual sources where the petitioning state can demonstrate the source “contributes significantly” to problems attaining or maintaining NAAQS.
Maryland Nov. 16 filed a section 126 petition targeting 36 electric generating units in five upwind states -- Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- seeking to force these sources to run their existing emissions controls. Currently, sources in upwind states can legally avoid running controls if they purchase emissions credits under CSAPR to cover their emissions. EPA has not yet responded to the petition. Delaware has also filed three similar petitions, targeting individual power plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
EPA has also yet to finalize the Obama administration's proposed denial of a petition by nine OTC states, including Maryland, to expand the OTC area to include another nine full states.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/new-otc-chair-grumbles-seek-upwind-ozone-cuts
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Big Oil Steps Up Support for Carbon Tax
Jun 20, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Timothy Puko
Some of the world’s largest oil companies and the country’s biggest auto maker are joining a group pushing the U.S. government to tax carbon in an effort to slow climate change.
General Motors Co. , Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC are among almost a dozen companies joining the Climate Leadership Council, a new organization that advocates replacing many environmental regulations with a simplified tax on businesses that release carbon into the atmosphere. The plan proposes directly paying out this money to all citizens to defray the likely costs from rising energy prices.
A group of influential Republicans, including former secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, have spearheaded the group’s efforts, which are at odds with many in their own party.
Since winning control of the White House and Congress last year, Republican lawmakers have worked to roll back Democratic policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, culminating with President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.
Several business leaders criticized that decision, and some of the companies joining the group, which officially launched in February, have advocated more aggressive policies to address rising temperatures and air pollution. Exxon, GM and the other corporations are joining alongside astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, hedge-fund magnate Ray Dalio, Harvard economist and former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers and others.
Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods used his first blog post in that role this February to say a “revenue-neutral carbon tax” would be a “sensible approach” to cutting carbon emissions.
It can promote energy efficiency and incentivize low-carbon energy sources without “further burdening the economy,” he wrote.
“We have been encouraged by the proposal put forth by the Climate Leadership Council as it aligns closely with our longstanding principles,” Mr. Woods said in a statement Monday.
“We acknowledged long ago that climate change is real and that lowering emissions is both a social imperative and an economic opportunity,” GM said in a statement. “Addressing climate change in an effective and sustainable manner requires a holistic approach involving all sectors of the economy.”
By joining now, the companies will be able to help shape the fine details of the proposal that eventually comes from the council, said Ted Halstead, the group’s chief executive.
A tax is also simple enough that, if passed, it would mean the country could eliminate a collection of regulations that have guided climate policy in the last several years, including the Obama administration’s power plant rules, which the Trump administration has moved to reverse.
“My guess is that the big appeal is getting rid of all the regulatory morass,” said Benjamin Salisbury, policy analyst at FBR & Co. But “with Republican domination in Washington, you are talking about the very early stages of a massive uphill climb.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oil-steps-up-support-for-carbon-tax-1497931202
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States Bet on Green Economy as Trump Dumps Climate Programs
Jun 20, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
States and cities are doubling down on the green economy despite President Donald Trump's dismissal of the Paris climate accord as a bad deal for the U.S.
After the president announced that he would walk away from the international climate deal, a number of states and cities sprang into action, introducing legislation, signing executive orders, and accelerating initiatives already on the books to curb their greenhouse gas emissions. Where Trump sees a bad deal, several states only see green and they're intent on filling the gap left by the federal government.
“If you really start to scrub all your tools as an executive, you can do a lot,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) told Bloomberg BNA. “It might not make the headlines like a carbon cap, but it can establish the businesses and the technologies that are really necessary to solve this problem.”
The state efforts are a counterpoint to Trump's argument that the Paris accord would kill the U.S. economy and cost as many as 2.7 million jobs over the next decade.
The apparent groundswell is encouraging for climate activists, but also raises a number of questions, including: How far can the states go to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without a federal policy? And what specific steps will states, cities, and companies take to meet the Paris goals?
“I can't believe we're in 2017 and we're still having the same jobs-versus-the-environment tired conversation,” Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center, told Bloomberg BNA. “It's unfortunate that we're in this decentralized, balkanized kind of conversation.”
Paris Withdrawal Sparks Immediate Action
The ink was barely dry on the president's plan to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement when three Democratic governors—Andrew M. Cuomo (N.Y.), Jerry Brown (Calif.), and Inslee—announced that they had formed an alliance of states that plan to meet the pact's goals.
Nine other states have joined the U.S. Climate Alliance and more than 1,200 cities, businesses, and colleges formed a separate group called We Are Still In. Some 292 mayors representing 60 million people also signed the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda and pledged to uphold the goals in the Paris accord.
The We Are Still In coalition is backed by Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg BNA is an affiliate of Bloomberg L.P.
Hawaii wasted no time as Gov. David Ige (D) signed two bills (S.B. 559, H.B. 1578) on June 6 to commit the state to meeting the goals of the Paris accord. Climate change bills have also been introduced or have moved in California (S.B. 100), New York (A. 8270, S. 6617), Massachusetts (S. 477), and Illinois (S.B. 2212).
But it's difficult to quantify how much impact states and cities can have on overall greenhouse gas emissions. It's clear, however, that much of the low-hanging fruit in the electricity generating sector has already been picked by some states, particularly those who have joined the new alliances.
A Bloomberg BNA analysis of Energy Information Administration data found that the 12 states in the new climate alliance accounted for a mere 18 percent, or 985 million metric tons, of the total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. in 2014.
Cap-and-Trade Gets New Consideration
Many of the states pledging to pick up the Trump administration's slack have already set limits on carbon dioxide pollution from power plants under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
The initiative currently includes nine states, but there has been talk of expanding the network since the EPA released its Clean Power Plan, which set carbon dioxide limits on power plants. Now, with the Clean Power Plan set for repeal and Trump pulling out of the Paris pact, speculation has grown once again. In particular, Virginia and New Jersey are being looked at as possible new states for the cap-and-trade program.
William M. Shobe, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia, said the Trump announcement could potentially lead other states to join RGGI. It may also spur the nine states to tighten the emissions cap in the RGGI region, which has been undergoing a review since 2015. The current cap expires in 2020.
“The unanswered question is whether the coalition could hold together if there were an effort to expand coverage,” he told Bloomberg BNA in an email. “It seems to me that the lack of federal action may encourage, rather than discourage, more aggressive actions to reduce emissions.”
Jolting the Generation Mix
States don't need to cap their carbon dioxide emissions to drive cleaner energy sources. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have renewable portfolio standards that require a significant chunk of their electricity be produced by renewable energy, according to a June 12 report from Food and Water Watch. It said these standards account for 60 percent of the renewable electricity generation growth since 2000.
The report said most states have already exceeded their goals, leaving room to set stronger targets. Existing standards will get the U.S. to 40 percent renewables by 2050, it said.
“It is essential to expand and strengthen RPS programs to reach 100 percent clean energy by 2035 in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” the report said. “They may become an increasingly important driver of renewable production as the Trump administration seeks to cut back federal programs supporting wind and solar energy.”
In Massachusetts, lawmakers are considering five bills that would move up the date by which the state must achieve its carbon emissions goals or increase to 100 percent the amount of energy the state must receive from renewables. One of these bills (S. 477) would require the state to reduce carbon emissions from 1990 levels by as much as 65 percent by 2040.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R), one of two Republican governors in the newly formed Climate Alliance, has said his administration will pursue the state's climate change goals regardless of federal action or inaction.
In New York, Cuomo signed an executive order that requires that the state obtain half of its electricity from renewables by 2030, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and double its solar power capacity by 2030. The Trump announcement also led New York to accelerate its ambitious multi-year plan to generate $1.5 billion in investments in renewable energy. The state issued requests for proposals for the first round of the initiative June 7.
Cars Could Pave the Way
States and cities looking to wring out more greenhouse gas emissions reductions may set their sights on their transportation systems.
The transportation sector contributed 27 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2015, compared to 29 percent from electricity generation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Trump announcement could embolden states to step up efforts like the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a program involving 11 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to support the use of electric vehicles, invest in mass transit, and promote sustainable communities.
Five states—Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont—announced in November 2015 that they wanted to expand on the initiative to develop a regional, market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.
Arroyo, whose center is working with the states, said those efforts are still at the working group level.
A 2015 report from the Georgetown Climate Center estimated that carbon pollution in the Transportation and Climate Initiative region could be cut by 29 percent to 40 percent by 2030 through investments in clean vehicles, freight rail, mass transit, and other programs.
Philadelphia is embarking on a system-wide analysis of its roadways, mass transit, and bike share programs to reduce the city's emissions, Sarah Wu, deputy director for the city's office of sustainability, told Bloomberg BNA. The transportation system accounts for 17 percent of the city's carbon emissions, she said.
And California Could Paint the Lines
The potential battle over California's vehicle emission standards is one area being closely watched, as states move forward on emissions reductions.
California has unique authority under the Clean Air Act to adopt vehicle emissions standards stricter than the federal requirements, provided the EPA grants the state a waiver. Once the waiver is issued, other states may then adopt California's standards.
The White House announced earlier this year that it would revisit the Obama administration's fuel economy and emissions standards for model years 2022 to 2025 cars and light-duty trucks.
“That's going to be a really important thing to protect,” Arroyo said. “There are other battles to be fought at the state and federal level, and I think that transportation is right up there.”
Brown and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) have promised a legal battle, should the federal government roll back those standards, revoke California's waiver to set its own standards, or block the state's efforts to pursue tough vehicle emissions standards in the future.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told a House Appropriations panel June 15 that he is not currently reviewing California's authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards.
States Open Toolboxes
While power plants and transportation are the most obvious targets, state regulators and legislators are considering other tools in their arsenal.
“Most people don't think of capital budgets as climate change budgets, but we do,” Inslee said. “What I have learned about climate change is that to be successful, you have to embrace climate change in all of your areas and policies.”
While budgets are a tool to drive investment in energy efficiency and cleaner generation sources, states can also harness tools like building codes and land use planning to curb emissions, Shobe said.
In New York, Cuomo announced a Clean Climate Careers program, which aims to create 40,000 new jobs, one day after Trump's decision to leave the Paris climate deal. Rather than heralding endorsements from environmental groups, he emphasized support from the New York State AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union of America, the Utility Workers Union of America, and others.
In addition, Cuomo created a program for communities that face the retirement of carbon-intensive power plants. The program will provide $15 million for workforce development and training and establish a working group to develop policies for those communities.
Constructing Better Buildings
Energy efficiency in buildings is also an area where states and cities can have an impact on emissions. Shobe said there is “considerable room for gains in efficiency in building shells, lighting, and transportation.”
San Francisco, for example, has passed a city ordinance requiring that building owners use 15 percent of roof space on all new construction for solar panels, a roof garden or some kind of green space.
In addition, Atlanta's City Council approved a $500 million bond financing package on June 5 for the city's new property-assessed clean energy program, which will provide loans for property owners to install solar panels and other renewable energy equipment. That came a month after the council also passed a resolution setting the goals of 100 percent renewable energy usage for all city operations by 2025 and for all private electricity usage in the city by 2035.
Philadelphia has also taken aim at reducing emissions in the building sector, urging state regulators to update outdated building codes. Pennsylvania requires building codes be uniform statewide. An estimated 79 percent of the city's emissions come from buildings and industry.
The commitment to uphold the Paris agreement is a new goal for the city, said Wu, the city's deputy sustainability director. “It gave us a timeline that we didn't have before,” she said.
Blue Cities, Red States
There are a number of “blue” cities in “red” states that have committed themselves to meeting the Paris pact.
Houston, a city at the center of the oil and gas industry, has focused its environmental initiatives on efforts that can also save the city money, such as renewable energy for municipal buildings, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles for municipal departments, according to Lara Cottingham, Houston's deputy assistant director in charge of sustainability and strategic customer initiatives.
She told Bloomberg BNA that the city signed a 20–year power purchase agreement for solar energy and is aiming to power 100 percent of its municipal buildings from renewable sources, mostly wind, by 2018.
“We're a bluish city in a really red state,” Cottingham said. “We're the energy capital of the world, so there has to be that balance because there's no way we can say, ‘We support the Paris climate agreement, so tomorrow we're going to outlaw fossil fuels.’ That's not just feasible.”
Similarly, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) signed an executive order June 7 that pledges to meet the goals of the Paris pact, even if the state does not. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) has been silent on the topic.
One of the reasons why cities—and states, for that matter—are moving on climate change is that they are on the front lines when it comes to the impact and costs of climate change and extreme weather events, according to Arroyo. She expects that states and cities will continue to be active in the areas of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
“It's real and it's here and its going to only grow over time,” she said.
Think Locally, Act Globally
The U.S. may be relinquishing its role as a global climate leader, but some state officials are willing to step into that breach.
California's Brown began stumping for climate change action in the days immediately following Trump's Paris announcement.
He met with Chinese provincial and national leaders to expand California's existing climate and clean energy partnerships. He signed pacts to collaborate with Tsinghua University and create a new working group with China's automobile makers and battery manufacturers to speed deployment of zero emission vehicles to support the U.S. market.
“We believe in the Paris Accord and we are going to stick to our commitments,” Brown said at Tsinghua University, June 8 according to a transcript. “And we're going to persuade other states and do everything we can to get the whole United States of America fully supporting all the efforts needed to decarbonize America's economy—and, in fact, the world's economy.”
—With assistance from Adrianne Appel in Boston, Joyce Cutler in San Francisco, Nushin Huq in Houston, Stephen Joyce in Chicago, Christopher Marr in Atlanta, Leslie Pappas in Philadelphia, Paul Shukovsky in Seattle, and Carolyn Whetzel in Los Angeles.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114519068&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114519068&jd=114519068
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AP-NORC poll: Few Favor Trump Move to Ditch Paris Accord
Jun 20, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Michael Biesecker and Emily Swanson
Less than one-third of Americans support President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a new poll shows, and just 18 percent of respondents agree with his claim that pulling out of the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions will help the U.S. economy.
The survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research earlier this month found that a slim majority — 52 percent — worry that withdrawing will actually hurt the economy. Twenty-seven percent think it won’t have an impact either way.
But digging deeper into the numbers shows a sharp partisan divide on global warming, with Republicans more likely to align themselves with the president’s views.
Seventy-eight percent of Democrats think withdrawing from the Paris agreement will hurt the national economy. Among Republicans, just 24 percent think it will hurt, 40 percent think it will have no impact and 34 percent think it will help.
Donald Nolan is a New Jersey businessman who has spent years living and traveling overseas. He worries that Trump is undermining U.S. credibility abroad. An independent voter, Nolan said he strongly opposes pulling out of the Paris accord.
“Where I live, we’re 36 feet above sea level. It the polar ice caps melt, there won’t be any dry land here,” said Nolan, 60. “If you are pulling out of something that pretty much every other country in the world is a part of, then that is not seen as being a leader. When I lived overseas, America was always looked at as being first. But I see our position to be deteriorating.”
Overall, 44 percent of Americans are very concerned and 26 percent are moderately concerned that withdrawing from the agreement will hurt the country’s standing in the world, with that concern also dividing along party lines.
By a 46 percent to 29 percent margin, more oppose than favor the U.S. withdrawing from the agreement. Democrats are far more likely to oppose than support withdrawing from the agreement, 69 percent to 16 percent. Republicans are more likely to support Trump’s withdrawal, 51 percent to 20 percent.
Independents are mixed in their views. Twenty-five percent support the withdrawal, 36 percent are opposed and 37 percent don’t feel strongly one way or the other.
Similarly, 43 percent say they’re very or extremely concerned that the U.S. withdrawing from the agreement will hurt global efforts to fight climate change, while 25 percent are moderately concerned. Seventy-two percent of Democrats, but just 13 percent of Republicans, are very concerned about the withdrawal hurting global efforts to fight climate change.
Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove and just 34 percent approve of how Trump is handling the issue of climate change, the poll shows. That’s similar to his overall approval rating, but there are other areas where Trump performs a bit better. For example, 43 percent approve of how he’s handling the economy and 47 percent approve of how he’s handling the threat of terrorism.
The poll shows about two-thirds of Americans think that climate change is happening, while only about 1 in 10 think it’s not. The remaining quarter aren’t sure one way or another.
Seven in 10 Americans — including some of those who aren’t sure whether climate change is actually happening — think it’s a problem that the U.S. government should be working to address. Among those who do think it’s a problem the government should address, more oppose than support withdrawing from the Paris agreement by a 60 percent to 21 percent margin.
More than half of Americans —53 percent — say climate change is a very or extremely important issue to them. Women are more likely than men to call climate change an important issue, 59 percent to 47 percent.
Bonnie Sumner, an independent voter who has lived in Colorado the last nine years, is among those who said doing something to combat climate change is important. She said her community in the Rocky Mountains is still dealing with the after effects of a devastating wildfire.
“It’s definitely gotten hotter than it used to be,” said Sumner, 72. “I try to keep up with science, not people who have money to be made by not wanting things to change.”
The poll shows that 35 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, 51 percent have some confidence, and 11 percent have hardly any confidence. But, again, there’s a big political divide: 53 percent of Democrats, but just 22 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of independents, say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists.
Sumner said Trump is too quick to dismiss the evidence of global warming compiled by climate scientists.
“His position, as it is with too many other things, is, ‘I know what’s best, I know better than everybody else, and this is a hoax, and this is fake news,’” she said. “I’m frightened for us, my children and my grandchildren. We only have one earth, we have to work together.”
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,068 adults was conducted June 8-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ap-poll-few-agree-with-trump-move-to-ditch-paris-accord/2017/06/20/fb7318ec-5589-11e7-840b-512026319da7_story.html?utm_term=.2992b92832ae
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This Is the One Climate Solution That’s Best For the Environment — And For Business
Jun 20, 2017 | Washington Post
By George P. Shultz and Lawrence H. Summers
President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord has induced a fateful pessimism about what can be expected of the country on this critical issue. Yet our long experience in Washington has taught us that the transition from the inconceivable to the inevitable can sometimes be very rapid.
The pressure on the administration to find an alternative to Paris will only mount, and its foundations have already been laid in the reasons the president cited for withdrawing. That is, any viable climate solution must promote growth and jobs, be fair to ordinary Americans and prevent other economies from taking advantage of us. It must also meet the broader test of American politics: the ability to appeal to the general public, corporate America and leaders in both parties.
Such a climate plan is not only feasible but is now gaining traction. On Tuesday, the Climate Leadership Council announced its founding members, a group of companies, opinion leaders and nongovernmental organizations who have joined forces to promote a consensus climate solution based on carbon dividends. We are proud to be part of this distinguished group.
The companies involved represent a cross section of industries: BP, ExxonMobil, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Santander, Schneider Electric, Unilever, Total and Shell. Two top environmental organizations are also involved, as are other opinion leaders from across the political spectrum.
We are convinced that the carbon dividends approach first put forward by one of us (Shultz) along with former secretary of state James A. Baker III a few months ago can strengthen the U.S. economy in ways highly valued by both the left and right and simultaneously spur global efforts to address climate change. Adopting a carbon dividend approach would pay huge dividends for the global climate, the U.S. economy and U.S. leadership in the world.
Our carbon dividend strategy has four interrelated elements that account for its strength: a gradually rising and revenue-neutral carbon tax; carbon dividend payments made equally to all Americans, to be funded using all the carbon-tax revenue; rollback of costly command-and-control regulations that were implemented because the environmental costs of carbon fuels have not been incorporated into their price; and border adjustment to ensure a level playing field and U.S. competitiveness.
A carbon tax set at $40 per ton would achieve substantially greater reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions than all of the regulation now on the table. The application of a border carbon adjustment that levied a tax on the carbon content of imported products would incent other countries to adopt carbon pricing, increasing its impact and preventing free-riders. So the carbon dividend approach is best for the environment.
It would also be best for economic growth, which explains why prominent companies are backing it. The alternative to a carbon tax is not the application of the free market. It is the current extensive regulatory apparatus in which government judges the products and production techniques that businesses employ and mandates particular business practices. The enactment of a significant carbon tax justifies the removal of these regulations, thus taking a burden off the economy. And unlike regulation, carbon dividends are consistent with border adjustment, assuring that U.S. firms are not disadvantaged against foreign exporters and carbon-intensive products.
The carbon dividend also represents an important innovation in social policy. Unlike many advocates of carbon taxes, we do not believe this revenue should be earmarked for any form of government spending or for the reduction of other taxes. Rather, we believe it should be rebated as a monthly dividend equally to all Americans.
This approach ensures that working-class Americans benefit financially. Because energy use rises with income and the dividend would be equal for all, the Treasury Department estimates that the bottom 70 percent of Americans would be better off with a carbon dividend plan in a direct sense. At a time when uncertainty about technology and trade looms large for many workers, assuring every American a basic benefit of citizenship with no need to go through an income test or qualification process is desirable.
Finally, there is the question of alternatives. We do not believe the American people will for long wish to stand apart from the global effort to limit the damage from climate change. Nor do we believe that an ever-growing web of government regulation or a proliferating program of subsidies is in our national economic interest. And we share the president’s conviction that in approaching international economic policy, we need to ensure that other nations do not free-ride on the United States.
Only the carbon dividend approach is consistent with these convictions. What we said at the outset here bears repeating: Our experience is that the transition from inconceivable to inevitable can be surprisingly rapid.
George P. Shultz, a former U.S. secretary of labor, treasury and state, is a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution. Lawrence H. Summers, a professor at and past president of Harvard University, was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-the-one-climate-solution-thats-best-for-the-environment--and-for-business/2017/06/19/9736b72c-542f-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html?utm_term=.f1b2b7645579
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