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PM ACC 13/11/17
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(ACC Mentioned) New U.S. EPA Science Advisers Heavy on Industry Experts
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
EPA’s science advisory panels now have more experts from industry, including the chemical, oil, and gas sectors. Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt added more than 20 new advisers in early November after cutting the panels’ rosters by barring researchers who get EPA grants... -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Makers Plot the Future of the Car
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
This fall, hungry University of Michigan students are participating in an experiment. Ford Motor, in partnership with Domino’s Pizza, launched a self-driving delivery vehicle near the school’s campus in Ann Arbor. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemicals Program Under Scrutiny
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee are urging Chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to hold a hearing related to EPA’s oversight of toxic chemicals. -
Mammoth Chinese Gas Investment Deal Questioned
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ken Ward Jr.
Last week's announcement that a Chinese energy firm would undertake a two-decade, $83.7 billion investment in West Virginian shale gas and chemical manufacturing is spurring questions about what it might mean for the state, given the paucity of concrete detail. -
Week Ahead: Senate Panel to Consider Arctic Drilling Bill
Nov 13, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A Senate Committee is scheduled to consider legislation next week opening the door to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). -
The Fire Is Out in West Virginia’s ‘Chemical Valley,’ But Health Fears Remain
Nov 13, 2017 | Rewire
By Ellee Achten
Ashley Way left her Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to run some errands in the late morning on Saturday, October 21, as dense, black clouds of smoke concealed the sky. -
Editorial: Override Christie Veto on Oil Train Safety
Nov 13, 2017 | NJ.com
By Editorial Board
In July, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have required railroads in New Jersey to provide detailed information about shipments of flammable liquids — like Bakken crude — to local first responders. -
Fossil Fuel Pitch By White House Gets Grimaces
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
BONN, Germany — American dignitaries are thick on the ground here at the U.N. climate talks, assuring a nervous global community that President Trump's rhetoric about unleashing coal, and its emissions, is mostly talk. -
Climate Economics Loom Over Agencies' Heartland Victory Lap
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Pamela King
A senior Interior Department adviser last week took the podium in front of a crowd of climate change skeptics to outline his agency's agenda for cutting through swaths of Obama-era rules. -
N.M. Loses $27M A Year To Gas Leaks — Report
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Mike Lee
The oil and gas industry in New Mexico wastes enough natural gas to heat every home in the state, according to a report from an environmental group. -
Global CO2 Rising After 3 Flat Years. A Glitch Or A Problem?
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Chelsea Harvey
Global carbon dioxide emissions are on the rise again after three years of little to no growth, dashing hopes that they had peaked for good. -
Former EPA Lawyers Assail Pruitt's 'Sue and Settle' Directive
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Nearly 60 former U.S. EPA lawyers are urging Administrator Scott Pruitt to rethink his recent directive aimed at curbing the "sue and settle" practice by which groups take the agency to court to force regulations. -
Another Closed-Door Meeting To Plot Climate Science Attack
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Academics and conservative activists huddled in Houston last week to discuss strategies around pressuring the Trump administration to wage war on mainstream climate science. -
Trump Appointee Floats Overhaul To Key Climate Strategy
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
A strategy investors use to push corporate America on climate change might be in the federal government's crosshairs. -
Virginia to Consider Legislation to Link with RGGI
Nov 13, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
Virginia lawmakers will take up a measure in January to link to the Northeast regional cap-and-trade program, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said today at a panel discussion among Democratic governors at climate meetings in Bonn, Germany.
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(ACC Mentioned) New U.S. EPA Science Advisers Heavy on Industry Experts
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
EPA’s science advisory panels now have more experts from industry, including the chemical, oil, and gas sectors. Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt added more than 20 new advisers in early November after cutting the panels’ rosters by barring researchers who get EPA grants from serving on them. New members of the Science Advisory Board—EPA’s flagship panel that provides advice on chemical . . .
...New members of the Science Advisory Board —EPA’s flagship panel that provides advice on chemical safety, water pollution, and other issues—include Kimberly Wise White , an environmental toxicologist who is a senior director at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a chemical industry association....
§ Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i45/New-US-EPA-science-advisers.html?type=paidArticleContent
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Makers Plot the Future of the Car
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
This fall, hungry University of Michigan students are participating in an experiment. Ford Motor, in partnership with Domino’s Pizza, launched a self-driving delivery vehicle near the school’s campus in Ann Arbor.
A special Ford Fusion outfitted with radar and light detection and ranging equipment (lidar) will navigate the college town under the watchful eye of an engineer. Without a driver to bring the pizzas to their doors, customers will need to walk out to the car and unlock a compartment with a smartphone app. Ford Chief Executive Officer Patrick Doyle enthuses that his company is “excited to help lead research into how self-driving vehicles may play a role in the future of pizza delivery.”
But the effort has a bigger goal than just getting a hot pizza from point A to point B. It is one of many tests Ford is rolling out with the aim of having driverless vehicles in production by 2021. And Ford is laying down serious cash to do this. In addition to its internal efforts, the automaker is investing $1 billion in Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based artificial intelligence and robots company that is developing a driverless system.
While companies work on autonomous vehicles, the global stock of cars is slowly electrifying. Some 750,000 plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles were sold worldwide last year, representing about 1% of the total car market, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). U.S. consumers bought 160,000 hybrid and electric vehicles last year.
About 2 million hybrid and electric vehicles are on the road today, IEA reports. By 2020, that number will climb to between 9 million and 20 million, the agency expects, and from there it will more than triple by 2025.
“What the auto industry is facing is unprecedented in terms of the scale and the nature of change ahead of it,” says Richard Mayo, global business director of engineering plastics at the specialty products division of DowDuPont.
These changes are also influencing the business of supplying engineering plastics to the auto industry. Demand will increase for plastics used to make connectors and housings for the many electrical and electronic components required for both electric and autonomous vehicles. The use of plastics for parts unique to internal combustion engines, such as fuel lines and air intake manifolds, will gradually decline.
Plastics makers see opportunity in the auto industry’s evolution. The changes will place a premium on high-end materials that can withstand the extreme heat and electrical conditions in electric and autonomous vehicles. “The automotive industry needs partners that can help them navigate all of this change,” Mayo says. “This will mean exploiting existing materials but also, where necessary, developing new materials.”
Polymers have aided vehicle improvement for generations. Notably, they reduce vehicle weight when they replace heavier materials such as metal and glass, saving energy. An old rule of thumb in the auto industry says that for every 10% of vehicle weight reduction, fuel economy improves by about 5%.
Plastics impart other benefits as well. Cars are sleeker now that thermoplastic polyolefins and other polymers have replaced bumpers made of steel, and polycarbonate has replaced glass in headlamps. Car interiors are more ergonomic and quieter than they once were because of plastics.
Plastics also save carmakers money. For example, a nylon bracket that holds together components under the hood might have mounts and other features molded right into it. A similar part done in metal would be made of many pieces requiring expensive assembly steps.
For these reasons, the amount of plastics used in automobiles has increased over time. In 1960, the average car made in North America had only 8 kg of plastic and composite materials, according to the American Chemistry Council, a trade group. In 2016, the typical car was made with 151 kg of plastics and composites. This represents about 8% of the car’s weight and about 50% of the volume of materials in the car.
In the U.S., cars will need even more plastics to reduce weight if they are to meet fuel economy standards. By 2025, carmakers will need to get 54.5 miles per gallon (23.2 km/L) from their fleets on average to meet federal regulations. Today, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average new car gets only 24.8 miles per gallon (10.5 km/L).
Automakers will need to sell more hybrid and electric vehicles to hit these targets. At the same time, they continue to advance toward fuel economy goals through improvements in conventional internal combustion engines.
“The new engines are more powerful while fuel economy is getting better,” says Joel Kopinsky, director of the ITB Group, a consulting firm that specializes in helping suppliers to the auto industry with technological transitions. He cites, for example, a new in-line six-cylinder engine made by Mercedes-Benz. It has power comparable to that of an eight-cylinder motor and sips gas like a four-cylinder one.
Towards the plastic car The plastic content of cars has been growing steadily since the 1960s.
Credit: American Chemistry Council
And Kopinsky points out that internal combustion engines will be a part of the mix for a long time to come. While industry forecasts say electric vehicles will make up anywhere from 10 to more than 20% of the new car market around the world in 10 years, most cars will still be powered by internal combustion engines.
“Talking about moving from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles is simplistic,” Kopinsky says. “There will be a spectrum of electric, plug-in hybrid, etc.”
Dalia Naamani-Goldman, market segment manager for transportation at BASF, agrees. Broad global adoption of regulations such as those in France, the U.K., and China calling for an end to vehicles that run on gasoline and diesel by the year 2040 are a ways off. She’s confident that internal combustion engines will be part of a “healthy mix” of power trains in the meantime. “We believe that those engines aren’t necessarily dying even into the midterm,” she says.
And plastics are still making solid contributions to conventional vehicles, Kopinsky says. As engines get smaller and more powerful, demand will increase for plastics that can withstand temperatures of more than 200 °C. He points to engine mounts and coolant control valves as recent examples of novel uses of plastics under the hood. “Resin suppliers have been innovative over the past five years,” he says.
But the consensus in the industry is that a full transition to electric vehicles will indeed happen eventually. And given the millions of hybrid and electric vehicles already on the road, it is a transition that has already begun.
In these vehicles, plastics will continue doing what they have always done: Make cars lighter. Importantly, a lighter electric vehicle has a longer range. So-called range anxiety, the fear drivers have that their batteries will go dead far from a charger, is a major obstacle to adoption of electric cars.
“The effect of vehicle weight is even more pronounced in electrified vehicles since we are pushing the limits of vehicle efficiency,” says Ted Miller, Ford’s senior manager of energy storage strategy and research.
Indeed, slimming down electric vehicles will be a challenge. Batteries are heavy, and electronics add weight. In an all-electric vehicle, some heavy parts, like the engine, do disappear. Plug-in hybrids pose an even tougher problem because they have all the components associated with both gasoline- and electric-powered cars.
“It is hard to know what the application mix will be,” DowDuPont’s Mayo says. “One thing I think is unavoidable in any scenario is that you’ll need to take weight out. That plays directly to the strength of plastics.”
Patrick Cazuc, global automotive marketing leader for the specialty products division of DowDuPont, thinks electrification of vehicles could create structural applications for plastics that weren’t possible before. For instance, car companies have long talked about a “skateboard” architecture in which the chassis is mounted on a flat assembly of the power train and wheels.
“What the electric vehicle allows is for car manufacturers to design their vehicles in a fundamentally different way. That opens up for considerable breakthroughs in terms of design,” Cazuc says.
For polymer makers, the switch to electric cars, and eventually to autonomous vehicles, also means a greater focus on plastics for electrical and electronic components.
“There are already a significant number of polymer components used in electrified vehicles,” Ford’s Miller says. These parts, he says, include insulation for the bus bars that connect battery cells with high-voltage components, as well as battery enclosures made with thermoplastic composites.
Tamim Sidiki, global marketing director for electronics at DSM, says such applications are second nature to engineering plastics companies that have long supplied materials for the consumer electronics and auto industries. “Now with all the changes coming up in electric cars and autonomous cars, we think that these two industries are fully converging,” he says.
One of the challenges for polymer makers will be supplying materials that can handle the high temperatures associated with the voltages used in electric vehicles.
“Ultimately, the goal for any of these electrified technologies is to increase power density,” explains Brian Baleno, global automotive business development manager at Solvay. “And when you’re increasing power density, you’re generally increasing voltage, which drives up temperature.”
Some of the resins needed to meet the challenge are familiar. For example, Baleno is seeing increased demand for the high-end resins Solvay makes—such as polyphthalamides, polyphenylene sulfide, and polyether ether ketone—in high-voltage, high-heat applications like traction motors and power modules.
Companies are also developing new materials. DSM has introduced ForTii Ace, a modified polyphthalamide with a glass transition temperature of 160 °C, about 40 degrees higher than other polyphthalamides and 80 degrees higher than nylon 6,6, a common polymer used in applications that confront heat.
Sidiki notes the material can withstand these temperatures without organic heat stabilizers, the addition of which could lead to corrosion of electronics. A typical application, he adds, might be in connectors for a circuit board that houses important central processing unit chips and is connected to sensors from around the vehicle.
High-voltage shielding requirements pose another challenge. Components such as the electric motor can reach voltages of 400 to 600 V, versus 12 or 48 V for vehicles today. The higher voltages can lead to electrical arcing and radio-frequency interference problems.
“A lot of interference with signals can happen in a vehicle, everything from your GPS to your automatic door opener to your radio to your rearview camera,” BASF’s Naamani-Goldman says.
She notes that automakers are generally at the 1.0 version of their electric vehicles and are now using metal because it is a simple solution to shielding problems. Given time, these applications will start migrating to plastic filled with conductive additives. “If you can create a plastic that mimics the performance, you can eliminate processing steps and additional weight in some cases as well,” she says.
For autonomous vehicles, the electronics will only be more complex. “Not only do you have the standard infrastructure that is on a vehicle, but it is more heightened,”Naamani-Goldman says. Carmakers will need plastics for all the new cameras, radar, lidar, and sensors on the vehicles.
Autonomous vehicles will also have an acute need for reliability and redundancy. “If a connector is failing and the sensor is based on that, the whole functionality is breaking down, and it could end up in a fatal crash,” Sidiki says.
Solvay’s Baleno sees a need for high-end plastics in sensors for autonomous vehicles. Some polymers, such as nylon, have a propensity to absorb moisture and expand. This could prove dangerous if used, for example, to house a lidar unit meant to scan the road. Polyphenylene sulfide, which has high dimensional stability, would be better, he argues.
“The sensors need to maintain really tight tolerances and dimensions because when you have technologies that are talking to each other, if anything absorbs moisture or moves, your autonomous vehicle technology goes away,” Baleno says.
Such considerations are far in the future. This early into the ascension of electric and autonomous vehicles, it is impossible to predict what the full effects on the polymer industry will be.
Some things polymer makers do know for sure. DowDuPont’s Cazuc recalls a cartoon of an auto repair shop offering Tesla drivers a free oil change. Applications such as oil pans and fuel tanks will disappear in time. But polymers will pick up gains in other areas. Their role will evolve, but they will be as crucial to cars as they are today.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i45/Plastics-makers-plot-future-car.html
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemicals Program Under Scrutiny
Nov 13, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee are urging Chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to hold a hearing related to EPA’s oversight of toxic chemicals. The request follows an investigation by the New York Timesthat found the top official of EPA’s chemicals program, . . .
...Beck joined EPA in May after a five-year stint at the American Chemistry Council, a chemical manufacturers trade group.
§ Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i45/EPA-chemicals-program-under-scrutiny.html?type=paidArticleContent
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Mammoth Chinese Gas Investment Deal Questioned
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ken Ward Jr.
Last week's announcement that a Chinese energy firm would undertake a two-decade, $83.7 billion investment in West Virginian shale gas and chemical manufacturing is spurring questions about what it might mean for the state, given the paucity of concrete detail.
The agreement reached by China Energy Investment Corp. Ltd., President Trump and the West Virginia commerce secretary would be for "power generation, chemical manufacturing and the underground storage of natural gas liquids and derivatives," according to the state's Department of Commerce, which added that planning was already "underway." Industry and political leaders hailed it as a boon for jobs and revenues.
Union representatives were more mixed, given how little has been divulged about where and what kinds of projects would be involved, how state residents would benefit, and how the state's coal industry would be affected.
Others, including policy analysts and environmentalists, questioned the climate effects of an over-reliance on natural gas and said state regulators — who recently waived their authority to rule on whether a gas pipeline violated state environmental standards — were capable of handling a massive expansion of industry activity.
"What sounds like a quick fix for the economy and jobs has long-term implications written all over it that we are not prepared to handle," said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. "It feels like something spinning out of control" (Ken Ward Jr., Charleston[W.Va.] Gazette-Mail, Nov. 9). — DI
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066269
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Week Ahead: Senate Panel to Consider Arctic Drilling Bill
Nov 13, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A Senate Committee is scheduled to consider legislation next week opening the door to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) unveiled her bill to open up a portion of ANWR for drilling on Wednesday, a week after a tense committee hearingsaw supporters and opponents of drilling there go head-to-head for the first time this session.
The bill would direct the Interior Department to hold drilling lease sales for up to 800,000 acres of land in ANWR, with the federal government and Alaska sharing any potential royalties from production there. It would raise $1.092 billion over ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office score.
"The legislation I released ... will put Alaska and the entire nation on a path toward greater prosperity by creating jobs, keeping energy affordable for families and businesses, generating new wealth, and strengthening our security -- while reducing the federal deficit not just by $1 billion over ten years, but tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars over the decades to come," Murkowski said in a statement this week.
Any potential revenue from the bill is mandated by a Senate budget deal reached late last month, raising the issue of drilling in ANWR as a serious policy proposal for the first time in years. That also makes its potential income a key component of a GOP tax cut bill that will also begin movingthrough the Senate next week.
Republicans already shot down an effort to strip the ANWR provision from the budget bill, and environmentalists have said they're preparing to aggressively fight the proposal. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs, will consider the bill on Thursday.
During a committee hearing last week, Democrats and Republicans both drew battlelines over ANWR drilling.
Supporters of the plan say it's necessary for raising revenue not just for the federal government, but Alaska, where the state economy is based around oil and gas development. They argue drilling can be done safety and wouldn't disturb the wilderness.
But Democrats and opponents say ANWR is too ecologically pristine to even risk drilling in the region. They have also challenged the revenue projections, given the state of oil prices and the unpredictability of the global oil market.
Thursday's hearing is one of two high-profile meetings for the Energy committee next week.
On Wednesday, several officials from Puerto Rico will appear before the committee to discuss Hurricane Maria recovery efforts on the island, including efforts to repair its stricken electric grid.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló (D) is slated to testify, as are the executive director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the federal oversight and management board that is working to appoint a special manager to oversee the utility.
Officials from the Virgin Islands are also scheduled to attend.
Members of the Puerto Rico oversight board testified before the House Natural Resources Committee last week. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the committee, said the hearing didn't give lawmakers the chance to ask about the controversial Whitefish Energy contract because no one from PREPA was there to answer questions about it.
With Rosselló, PREPA and the oversight board all scheduled to testify together, lawmakers will have ample opportunity to raise the issue next week.
The House Natural Resources Committee will also hold a hearing on territorial recovery efforts on Tuesday. Bishop said last week that Rosselló and PREPA chief Ricardo Ramos will attend that meeting.
The House Energy and Natural Resources Committee will host its own hearing on Tuesday, focusing on "response and recovery to environmental concerns from the 2017 hurricane season."
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/359834-week-ahead-senate-panel-to-consider-arctic-drilling-bill
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The Fire Is Out in West Virginia’s ‘Chemical Valley,’ But Health Fears Remain
Nov 13, 2017 | Rewire
By Ellee Achten
Ashley Way left her Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to run some errands in the late morning on Saturday, October 21, as dense, black clouds of smoke concealed the sky. “The air was pungent and kind of syrupy. It had a taste to it and I knew then that something was suspect, and that this wasn’t just an abandoned property on fire,” she said.
When she returned a couple of hours later,ash was falling around her property.
“That’s the moment I became concerned and suspicious,” she said.
The former Ames Tool Plant was on fire. The 420,000-foot warehouse, used most recently for storing mounds of plastic for recycling, would burn for over a week, with firefighters still extinguishing “hot spots” as late as Sunday, October 29.
Two days after the fire started, Way, a nonprofit director, went in to work for 20 minutes and then went home with a migraine unlike anything she had ever experienced.
“The back of my eyeballs hurt with some kind of pressure,” she said. “The air quality was so poor it was hard to catch a breath. The odor was horrific.”
By that Wednesday morning, she woke with another headache and extreme nausea, while her wife had developed a sore throat. Both were unusually lethargic.
“Even though we had sealed the cracks in our older home, and had not been running the AC or heat, the odor was still seeping in. Our children were seemingly fine with no visible illnesses, but they’re 16 months old so they can’t obviously communicate. I wasn’t going to take any chance with them. We left that day,” Way said.
‘We Left on Day Five and There Were Still No Answers’
The warehouse in south Parkersburg—owned by Intercontinental Import Export, Inc., also known as IEI Plastics— was full of plastic recycling, had been quickly engulfed in flames. Multiple explosions were reported. Residents from miles around watched the dark skies and smelled the arid air. Many streets around the warehouse were closed. But two weeks later, the cause of the fire still remains unknown.
What’s most concerning for Way, and thousands of other residents in the affected area, is: What exactly burned? What fell from the sky and coated yards and roofs and cars? And what may have found its way into the water?
IEI Plastics provided an outdated list of materials stored in the warehouse at one time, which may have included titanium dioxide, formaldehyde, Teflon, nylon, PVC, carbon black, fiberglass, and styrene. But everything inside the building burned and is now completely unrecognizable.
According to local officials, significant testing of the materials at the site needed to wait until after a 36- to 48-hour cool-down phase once the fire was completely extinguished, which didn’t happen until around noon on Sunday, October 29. In an interview with the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, Eric Fitch, director of Environmental Science at nearby Marietta College in Ohio, said, “(T)hey’ll have to characterize it [what is left at the site] and clean it up. This is not going to be a quick, easy, or inexpensive process.”
An official report has yet to be released.
Wood County Unified Command urged residents to avoid exposure to particles (also known as “fallout material”) in the air, despite initial tests reporting acceptable air quality. “(P)articulates, especially fine particulates, can be dangerous in and of themselves, or as vehicles for transmission of other chemicals and byproducts,” Fitch said.
Women and children are especially at risk. “[M]aternal exposure to air pollution during pregnancy is associated with adverse birth outcomes,” including premature birth and low birth weight, according to a Johns Hopkins University study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives. As mounting scientific evidence reveals, “Preconception and prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals are of particular import because they may have a profound and lasting impact on health across the life course.” Children “are more vulnerable … because exposures to environmental contaminants create greater risks for children’s developing bodies and cognitive functions,” according to a 2017 Bulletin of the World Health Organization, which also estimated “modifiable environmental risk factors cause about 1.7 million deathsin children younger than five years and 12.6 million total deaths every year.”
In Parkersburg, schools were closed for days and workplaces sent employees home. On Monday, October 23, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) declared a state of emergency for Wood County, saying, “I don’t have the knowledge or the expertise within me to know what the environmental impact could be to our citizens yet. And we’re trying to source all the professional advice we can source, and do the right things for our people.”
Way, who attended some of the press conferences about the fire early on, remained uneasy. “It’s not that I distrusted the officials relaying the information, I was just plainly aware that there was very little information to relay. I do believe they provided the public with everything they knew. It just wasn’t enough,” she said.
It was the “fear of the unknown” that eventually caused Way and her wife to take their twin infants approximately 2 hours north to Columbus, Ohio.
“We left on day five and there were still no answers as to what was burning,” she said. “Officials were saying it was ‘non-toxic,’ but then admitted they didn’t have a clue.”
For residents, it’s not just the air quality that has become an immediate issue. As residue from the fire washes downstream, West Virginia American Water (WVAW) is closely monitoring water quality at its Huntington plant on the Ohio River, which has an intake approximately 124 miles downstream from the fire.
Parkersburg’s WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center has seen about 100 patients for smoke-related treatment at its ER, according to Roger Lockhart, director of marketing and public affairs. “We responded quickly,” he said, “making sure our emergency response team was ready. We handed out masks, made sure to offer free (pulmonary function test) screenings for first responders and the public. There were a number of employers that closed for a couple of days downtown. We didn’t close obviously—we were all hands on deck.”
According to Lockhart, also a resident of the area, the air inside the medical center has been odorless. But outside the hospital, just a few short miles away from the site of the fire, the conditions fluctuated.
“It depends on the day, the weather, the wind—that’s what the entire Mid-Ohio Valley is experiencing,” Lockhart said. “But, the sun is out and it’s pretty today.”
‘What Are We Doing to Prevent This From Happening Again?’
These kinds of events—and these concerns—are not new for longtime residents. Katie Craddock, a pharmacist, and her adult daughter Rachel live across the river from the warehouse and have chosen to stay, but are avoiding going outside as much as possible. Craddock gave up her morning walks as the air smelled like “burning tires.”
The Craddocks have experienced this kind of manufacturing industry disaster before. They were affected by the DuPont chemical spill more than a decade ago when perfluorooctanoic acid (C8) contaminated the Ohio River. They were not in any of the lawsuits that DuPont settled in court earlier this year for more than $670 million, but they were part of an ongoing study on the health effects.
Even before that, Katie remembers yet another industry event, when an explosion from an adverse chemical reaction caused a fire at the Belpre Shell plant in 1994.
“It’s part of living here for sure,” Katie said.
“We’re in a valley and by a river, and it all kind of collects here,” said Rachel, a 2014 graduate of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, who returned home to West Virginia this summer. “I’ve heard it called ‘Chemical Valley,’ and ‘Cancer Valley.’”
For Katie and Rachel Craddock, for Way and her family, and for many other residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley who have used bottled water as their main drinking source for a long time, there are always anxieties about the water. They all worry about the air. But Way also worries about the first responders who have been exposed to unknown chemicals, fighting the blaze at the plant for days. And she has concerns about the missing wildlife—noting that she has seen very few birds since the fire broke out.
“But, I’ll tell you what has me up every night,” Way said, “What are we doing to prevent this from happening again?”
Approximately 2,500 households in the Parkersburg and Vienna, West Virginia, and Marietta, Ohio metro area depend on income from manufacturing. “It’s a really complicated issue because jobs at these plants are so many people’s livelihoods, so trying to address the issue can seem like a personal threat on their jobs,” Rachel Craddock said.
With close to 1 out of every 5 West Virginians financially struggling to meet basic needs—the state had a poverty rate of 17.9 percent in 2016 and a child poverty rate of 24.6 percent the year before—for many West Virginians, the price of bottled water becomes easier to swallow than the price of lost industry.
“We should have some experts on this in our area. We are surrounded by all these plants and toxic things, so you’d think we’d have something in place,” Craddock said, “but we don’t.”
https://rewire.news/article/2017/11/13/fire-west-virginias-chemical-valley-health-fears-remain/
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Editorial: Override Christie Veto on Oil Train Safety
Nov 13, 2017 | NJ.com
By Editorial Board
In July, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have required railroads in New Jersey to provide detailed information about shipments of flammable liquids — like Bakken crude — to local first responders. As Staff Writer Curtis Tate reports, a June 2016 federal inspection of CSX track in Bergen County — where such shipments roll through densely populated communities — found 13 defects in a 10-mile segment of track that runs between Ridgefield Park and Harrington Park. The Legislature should move to override the Christie veto now.
We have consistently called upon Christie to support this sensible legislation. He has cited security concerns as his reason for the veto, but we question whether it is security or pressure by special interest lobbyists that have prevented New Jersey from doing what New York and Pennsylvania have done. Both states provide more detailed information to local officials about oil shipments by rail.
State lobbying records show CSX, Conrail and Norfolk Southern met with senior Christie aides advocating for a veto of the bill. They also sent Christie a letter in June pushing for the veto. Clearly, the lobbyists were successful.
No one wants to give terrorists a map to soft targets, but bad people can figure out the movements of these volatile shipments already. The trains going through New Jersey are on rails that connect to both New York and Pennsylvania. It’s the good people who are in the dark: the first responders who would have to act quickly to deal with a derailment and possible catastrophic event.
Track defects have been cited as the leading cause of high-profile derailments. Two of those derailments were on CSX track: in April 2014 in Lynchburg, Virginia, and in February 2015 in Mount Carbon, West Virginia. Both involved trains carrying Bakken crude. Both resulted in large fires and property damage. While there were no fatalities, in July 2013, a derailment in Quebec resulted in the deaths of 47 people.
There is a clear and present danger from these shipments. We do not expect the shipments to stop. There is big money in the extraction and refining of this crude. But there is big danger as well, and local officials need to know how great the danger is so they can prepare for a worst-case scenario.
The track defects are concerning, yet the federal inspections are good news in that there are independent checks of rails. But those checks may not come soon enough to stop a derailment. The legislation vetoed by Christie would not have prevented CSX or any freight rail company from shipping volatile crude, only to make the public more fully aware of the risks.
http://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/11/12/editorial-override-christie-veto-oil-trains/856576001/
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Fossil Fuel Pitch By White House Gets Grimaces
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
BONN, Germany — American dignitaries are thick on the ground here at the U.N. climate talks, assuring a nervous global community that President Trump's rhetoric about unleashing coal, and its emissions, is mostly talk.
"Coal's days are numbered; nobody questions that," former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told an audience Saturday. One day earlier, he had pledged $50 million of his own funds to help accelerate phasing out coal globally.
Even so, the White House will try to make the opposite point today. It's staging a controversial panel on the virtues of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. It's an attention-grabbing event at a conference designed to expand on the Paris climate agreement, which Trump has promised to quit.
The event will be headlined by White House energy and environment adviser George David Banks, a proponent of preserving U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. It will be moderated by Francis Brooke, a policy adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. It features Amos Hochstein, an Obama-era State Department special coordinator for international energy who now works for the natural gas company Tellurian Inc. Holly Krutka of coal company Peabody Energy Corp. and Lenka Kollar of NuScale Power Corp., a nuclear power company, will also be on the panel.
Hochstein, who is a strong supporter of the Paris Agreement, said he views natural gas and nuclear power as supporting the world's transition away from coal and toward more renewable energy use. He said he was surprised when Banks asked him to join the panel but agreed to participate.
"At some point, you've got to get away from all the politics, all the time," he said.
Hochstein said his own remarks would focus on liquefied natural gas exports, which he offers as a way to support low-carbon economic growth globally.
No participants are expected to deny the science of man-made climate change and deride the Paris Agreement. But their message will likely be out of step with many walking the halls of the former West German parliament building, where the virtues of near-total reliance on renewable energy are often touted.
"I have been told there's an absence of anybody delivering the message that if you want to meet the U.N. sustainability goals you have to use fossil fuels to get there," said Barry Worthington, a participant on today's panel and the executive director of the United States Energy Association. "We're looking for an opportunity to bring reality into the COP process."
It's the only official side event the United States will host this year — a departure from the myriad events U.S. delegations hosted annually under President Obama.
Worthington told E&E News recently that the use of fossil fuels is consistent with Obama's pledge to the Paris Agreement and with U.N. goals for poverty alleviation and universal electrification.
"Our industry is on track to achieve President Obama's emissions reduction targets," said Worthington. "We don't need any additional regulatory pressure. We have all kinds of other pressures on the industry that's causing us to reduce emissions."
Obama's promise to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025 was probably more ambitious than even his environmental policies could deliver, according to independent analyses.
But Worthington's optimism is shared by Bloomberg and Democratic governors and senators who have flocked to Bonn over the last few days to assure foreign delegates that the world's largest historic emitter will still meet its goals.
Bloomberg and California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) released a report Saturday on America's Pledge, the coalition of 20 states, cities and private entities that have promised to keep Obama's Paris goals.
Former Vice President Al Gore told a crowd at the sprawling pavilion sponsored by Bloomberg and other donors that the U.S. economy will turn away from fossil fuels as quickly as it abandoned landline phones.
But Worthington said that U.S. fossil fuels are key to developing technologies that poorer countries will need to decarbonize their own coal-fired power portfolios.
"We need to be much more serious about deploying carbon capture and storage on both natural gas and coal-fired units if we want to meet the climate goals," he said.
Worthington said carbon capture and storage (CCS) could flourish with subsidies on par with what wind and solar energy receive if the federal government also helped with demonstration projects.
Carbon storage has friends in the advocacy and policy community assembled here for a summit aimed at writing the rulebook on the Paris accord. In fact, the Obama administration's own blueprint for deep carbon reductions by 2050 relied on both CCS and nuclear power to supplement renewable sources of energy.
But few here say an approach of all carrots and no sticks could deliver deep carbonization in any form.
"It's clear that we can't count on the market alone to mobilize those technologies," said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. "It's going to take stronger policies and incentives, including ultimately a comprehensive federal approach."
Most participants view the U.S. side event promoting fossil fuels with suspicion. It comes after the administration mocked, derided and abandoned international climate action. More than one foreign participant has dismissed the event as "offensive."
"The world is quickly waking up to the fact that fossil fuel business is dying," said Tommy Remengesau, president of the island nation of Palau, in response to the U.S. event. "But from a climate perspective, we need to be doing everything in our power to complete the transformation as soon as possible."
"There are some serious energy people who might have been able to view some of the particular points being made in another context," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is part of a delegation led Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) that also includes Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
CCS is "a real enterprise," Schatz said. "But when it's the only thing they're doing, it's viewed differently. And this is a place for ambition — for aspirational ambition and a gut-level commitment to save the planet. So a presentation about why fossil fuels are not that bad is mostly not going to be received well."
But Paul Bodnar, a former White House National Security Council adviser on energy and climate issues, said some of the most pro-climate countries on Earth still support coal-fired power at home and abroad.
"A U.S. side event on high efficiency coal at a COP [Conference of the Parties] may seem shocking, but it shines a spotlight on a big disconnect," Bodnar said. "Many of the same countries passionately engaged in climate diplomacy are also buying or selling coal plants with public money in an era when coal is neither environmentally acceptable nor economically efficient."
Culprits include China, Japan and some European nations.
The U.S. delegation, led by career State Department diplomat Trigg Talley, has won praise for keeping its head down and not obstructing progress in negotiations. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon is also expected to play a "constructive" role as a U.S. leader this week.
But old conflicts have emerged between rich and poor countries, with developing nations making demands that their wealthier counterparts offer more in emissions reductions and financial aid.
Cardin told reporters that Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement had weakened the hands of "like-minded countries," while elevating the leadership of China on the global stage.
"The president's comments have weakened the U.S. role and its credibility in dealing with these types of issues," Cardin said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066323
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Climate Economics Loom Over Agencies' Heartland Victory Lap
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Pamela King
A senior Interior Department adviser last week took the podium in front of a crowd of climate change skeptics to outline his agency's agenda for cutting through swaths of Obama-era rules.
But the most powerful deregulatory tool at the Trump administration's disposal may be its changed approach to calculating the risks of living on a warming planet.
"The war on American energy is completely over," Vincent DeVito said in dinnertime remarks during Thursday's America First Energy Conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, a vocal questioner of climate science.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's energy counselor highlighted some of the steps the department has taken to systematically map out and roll back every action that presents a burden to energy developers — particularly those that extract fossil fuels.
"It's the tangible effect of having a president who believes in a free market and in limited government," DeVito said. "He knows those are the elements for American greatness."
Interior isn't alone in its actions. The department's review came in response to an "energy independence" executive order signed by President Trump in March. The wide-ranging directivealso offered specific instructions for U.S. EPA and triggered a batch of regulatory examinations from many agencies (Energywire, Oct. 24).
"Washington has become way too consequential in the lives of Americans across the country. And the president has elected to change that," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a video address to the Heartland conference. "We've been changing that here at the EPA. Regulatory reform is happening, but beyond that, we're changing attitudes here.
"The attitude when we arrived said you can't be about growth and jobs and also be a good steward of the environment. That's inaccurate. That's a false narrative."
Pro-energy remarks by administration officials met a receptive audience at the Heartland conference. Panels included discussions of the "total insanity" of a renewable energy future and the "noble lie" of the dangers of air pollution and climate change.
After reading from a section of the National Climate Assessment — a document released this month by the Trump administration that found human activity was "extremely likely" to be the primary contributor to climate change — Thomas Hayward, former chief of naval operations, took a beat.
"Are we supposed to believe that stuff?" he asked.
One breakout session questioned the link between air pollution and human health. University of California, Irvine, researcher Robert Phalen, one of the panelists, suggested in 2012 that exposing children to contaminated air can help their bodies adapt to pollution. His comment drew the ire of environmentalists.
EPA has tapped Phalen to serve on its Science Advisory Board (Greenwire, Nov. 6).Changing the climate equation
Phalen's co-panelist, Texas physician John Dale Dunn, laid out a strategy for knocking out a slew of Obama-era regulations.
"If [environmentalists] can't show the nexus with human health, they've got nothing to work with. That's what they're always talking about: 'The air is killing people. Hot is going to kill people,'" he said. "That's what their hook is. And if we can establish that they can't prove anything about their claims, then the economics go to hell.
"They can't talk about benefits," he said. "Because they're counting deaths as their big benefit for doing these regs."
In a Nov. 1 analysis of the Trump administration's deregulatory strategy, ClearView Energy Partners LLC Managing Director Kevin Book pointed to calculations of the "social cost" of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane as a vulnerable element in efforts to bring to bear the future ramifications of climate change.
Those equations play an important role in estimates of the costs and benefits of EPA's Clean Power Plan and Interior's rule for curbing methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public lands. Both rules, introduced under President Obama, are set for repeal or suspension.
"Calculations that incorporate lower benefits from avoided [greenhouse gas] emissions leave less room for federal agencies to offset the explicit costs borne by industrial stakeholders and/or end-users in their regulatory cost/benefit analyses," Book wrote.
There are no statutory restrictions for changing those calculations, he said.
"In other words, the Trump Administration's SCC [social cost of carbon] may be just as valid as, and no less controversial than, the Obama Administration's SCC," Book wrote.
But climate scientists and advocates are set to fight the Trump administration's approach (Climatewire, Oct. 25).
The Government Accountability Office this fall urged the Trump administration to seriously reconsider its take on the economics of climate change.
"Climate change impacts are already costing the federal government money, and these costs will likely increase over time as the climate continues to change," GAO wrote.
"Even though existing information on the potential economic effects of climate change ... is imprecise, it could help identify significant potential damages for federal decision makers — an initial step in the process for managing climate risks."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066273
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N.M. Loses $27M A Year To Gas Leaks — Report
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Mike Lee
The oil and gas industry in New Mexico wastes enough natural gas to heat every home in the state, according to a report from an environmental group.
The report, issued Thursday by the Environmental Defense Fund, says the industry loses 61 million cubic feet a year, or 570,000 tons, worth about $182 million, largely through venting, fugitive emissions and flaring. The loss costs the state as much as $27 million a year in tax revenue.
An oil industry group said EDF overlooked evidence that shows methane emissions are already falling and questioned the need for more regulations.
EDF has worked with Colorado and other states on rules that require oil companies to find and fix leaks at well heads, tanks and other installations.
In New Mexico, EDF found that about one-fifth of the emissions were estimated to come from pneumatic control devices, which use pressure from a stream of gas to open and close valves. The next biggest source was leaks and "abnormal events" such as equipment malfunctions.
"Proven, low-cost fixes could eliminate up to half of the pollution by simply plugging leaks," Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in a news release accompanying the report.
Methane and other oil field emissions can contribute to smog and other forms of pollution. Methane is also a potent greenhouse gas.
The Obama administration wrote regulations similar to Colorado's for oil and gas production on federal land nationwide, but the Trump administration has tried to roll them back.
"With federal regulators retreating, New Mexico really has no other backstop" except to impose its own rules, said Jon Goldstein, director of regulatory affairs for EDF and one of the report's authors.
But the oil and gas industry is struggling with low prices, particularly in northwestern New Mexico. Any new rules could force some marginal producers out of business, costing the state both jobs and tax revenue, said Robert McEntyre, a spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
Ken McQueen, a former oil executive who is New Mexico's secretary of energy, minerals and natural resources, testified at a Nov. 3 legislative hearing that the state is losing only a little more than 1 percent of its gas. That figure doesn't include leaks and other malfunctions, though, according to EDF (Greenwire, Nov. 6).
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066277
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Global CO2 Rising After 3 Flat Years. A Glitch Or A Problem?
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Chelsea Harvey
Global carbon dioxide emissions are on the rise again after three years of little to no growth, dashing hopes that they had peaked for good.
According to the latest report from the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track the amount of carbon emitted by human activity, 2017 will see a 2 percent increase in the burning of fossil fuels, after nearly no growth in 2014, 2015 or 2016. Altogether, human-caused emissions this year are projected to reach 41 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
The findings, which have just been published in three separate scientific journals — Earth System Science Data, Environmental Research Letters and Nature Climate Change — will also be presented today at the U.N. climate conference in Bonn, Germany. The work included data from a variety of sources, including national emissions inventories kept by the United Nations, global estimates of energy use and direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and involved dozens of authors from institutes around the world.
"It's quite difficult to say whether this year is a little glitch in a trajectory that is otherwise more or less flat, or whether this is resuming the emissions upward," said Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new report.
Three straight years of flat emissions had raised the question of whether the world's carbon output had finally peaked and would eventually begin to fall again. The new report now indicates that this may not be the case.
According to Le Quéré, an uptick in emissions is not necessarily that surprising — but the strength of the sudden growth is unexpected. And while 2017 hasn't ended yet and there's still a bit of uncertainty about the projections, Le Quéré noted that the last few years' projections have been accurate within about a half a percent or so.
"Two percent, if it gets realized, is really quite high, actually," she told E&E News. "And so that's really where the surprise is, is how strong this growth is after three years of stable emissions."
The reason for the increase, the report suggests, falls largely on China, whose 2017 emissions are projected to grow by about 3.5 percent, thanks to increases in the consumption of coal, oil and natural gas. India is also projected to see an increase in emissions by about 2 percent.
Despite an expected increase in coal consumption in the United States this year, domestic emissions are expected to have declined by about a half a percent this year. The European Union may also see a slight decline, although emissions throughout the rest of the world are also expected to have increased by about 2 percent.
Just last month, the World Meteorological Organization reported that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are still rising at an unprecedented pace, despite the plateau in emissions over the last few years (Climatewire, Oct. 31). That's because flat emissions aren't the same as no emissions — carbon dioxide was still being poured into the air between 2014 and 2016; the amount simply remained the same from one year to the next.
The WMO report noted that CO2 levels exceeded 403 parts per million in 2016, up from 400 ppm the previous year — a threshold scientists say hasn't been crossed in 800,000 years. This year, the Global Carbon Project report suggests, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise again by about 2.5 ppm.One-off event?
It's unclear for now whether the renewed uptick in emissions will remain a trend.
"The growth in 2017 emissions is unwelcome news, but it is too early to say whether it is a one-off event on a way to a global peak in emissions, or the start of a new period with upward pressure on global emissions growth," said another of the report's authors, Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, in a statement.
He added that it can take extended periods of time — perhaps as long as 10 years or so — to confirm whether a trend is actually occurring or whether it's just a short-term fluctuation. Three years of no growth was not necessarily long enough to say that global emissions had definitely peaked, and one year of renewed growth doesn't necessarily mean that emissions will continue to rise after this year.
That said, the news comes at a time of great uncertainty over the future of global emissions reduction efforts, while nations around the world are convening in Germany for the U.N. climate conference. Just last week, Syria joined the Paris climate agreement, making the United States — the world's second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — the only nation whose commitment to the plan remains in question, after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the agreement earlier this year.
Experts are still questioning the extent to which Trump's promised Paris withdrawal, along with his systematic unraveling of other Obama-era climate and environmental policies, may affect domestic carbon emissions in the coming years. While the new report indicates U.S. emissions have slightly declined this year, Le Quéré suggested these policy shifts may actually be "very damaging" in the long term.
"If the U.S. does indeed move back towards coal — the U.S. is the second-biggest emitter — it is going to have an effect globally," she said. "Then it depends if the other countries follow, or if the other countries on the contrary take a different path, developing much more toward renewable energy."
Indeed, she said, the future trajectory of global emissions now depends largely on what happens in China, as well as in developing nations in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world where emissions are still growing quickly in the background.
"So the political landscape is very, very critical at the moment, and there's really no time to be complacent," Le Quéré said. "People want to make a transition happen and want to address climate change. Now is the time to really establish policies in place and take action to make these trajectories change."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066327
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Former EPA Lawyers Assail Pruitt's 'Sue and Settle' Directive
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Nearly 60 former U.S. EPA lawyers are urging Administrator Scott Pruitt to rethink his recent directive aimed at curbing the "sue and settle" practice by which groups take the agency to court to force regulations.
In a letter today, the 57 former counsels called the Oct. 16 directive "patently biased" and a violation of the separation of powers contained in the Constitution. They warned that it will lead to longer litigation and rushed rulemaking by creating unworkable requirements for entering into settlement agreements.
"With some minor exceptions, it is unfair, unrealistic, and ultimately counterproductive," the former agency lawyers wrote, adding that, "We strongly urge you to revise your Directive and explanation so that it truly promotes fair, transparent, and efficient settlement of well-founded suits against the agency."
Signing the letter were former lawyers from EPA's Office of General Counsel and regional agency offices around the country. The list includes attorneys with decades of experience at EPA during both Democratic and Republican administrations.
"Administrator Pruitt's directive and explanation make many unfounded allegations and serious mistakes, and skew the settlement process heavily toward industry. We had to speak out," said John Hannon, a former assistant general counsel who worked at EPA during the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations until his retirement in 2014.
Pruitt's directive ordered the Office of General Counsel to put in place a number of provisions aimed at making the EPA litigation process more transparent, including posting complaints against the agency online and creating an online database of settlement agreements with outstanding obligations.
It required EPA lawyers to "seek concurrence" with regulated entities on proposed agreements with environmentalists. The agency should also "seek to exclude" attorneys' fees or costs to any petitioner or plaintiff, Pruitt ordered.
Pruitt said the directive was necessary because, in the past, EPA negotiated closed-door deals with special interest groups in order to set a regulatory agenda. Critics have dubbed the practice "sue and settle," though the Government Accountability Office has twice found that it is not occurring at EPA (Greenwire, Oct. 16).
Environmentalists have roundly opposed Pruitt's directive, saying it appears aimed at curtailing their efforts to hold EPA to mandatory duties contained in environmental statutes.
An EPA union also recently sent a letter to Pruitt outlining "deep concerns" and complaining that the administrator "falsely" accused agency lawyers of engaging in unlawful and unethical behavior (Greenwire, Nov. 7).
'Foolhardy and a waste'
In their letter today, the former EPA lawyers said that the agency already gives states and other entities the opportunity to comment on most proposed settlements. The new requirements are "foolhardy and a waste of limited EPA resources."
Further, the letter calls the directive "a novel and dangerous conception of executive power" that upends the Constitution's effort to balance the three branches of government.
The attorneys say they worry the directive's "unworkable" concurrence provisions would allow any regulated entity to effectively have veto power over a proposed settlement agreement.
The directive is an attempt "to give regulated parties a special and powerful seat at the table with no corresponding role for other members of the public," the letter to Pruitt says.
Pebble deal
The former lawyers also noted that EPA recently settled a suit filed during the Obama administration by a company that proposed to mine the Pebble deposit in Alaska's Bristol Bay region. That settlement did not abide by the transparency measures included in the directive.
"To the extent you exercise your discretion under the directive, you should do so fairly and even-handedly," the lawyers write, "and not only to promote and fashion settlements in cases brought against the agency by regulated entities."
Practically, Pruitt's directive will lead to prolonged litigation and more unreasonable time frames for EPA to issue regulations, the letter warns.
Environmentalists and their state allies often bring suits over the agency missing statutory deadlines for action. In such cases, courts typically set tighter timelines for EPA to comply. Settlement negotiations often provide the agency with more flexibility.
"It is EPA's failure to comply with legal requirements that is the problem, not the people who sue EPA, the courts that hear the suits, or the EPA and [Department of Justice] staff who faithfully negotiate settlements," the letter says.
The directive, the former EPA attorneys wrote, dooms "EPA and taxpayers to fewer settlements and more litigation, costing more money and resulting in more court-ordered timetables for agency action."
EPA did not respond to a request for comment today on the new letter. Pruitt last week defended the directive against the increasing criticism.
"EPA's dedicated attorneys are among the best in the country, so those who say that being more transparent and increasing participation will make settlements impossible or result in losses in the courtroom have not met my legal team," Pruitt said in a statement.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066359
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Another Closed-Door Meeting To Plot Climate Science Attack
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Academics and conservative activists huddled in Houston last week to discuss strategies around pressuring the Trump administration to wage war on mainstream climate science.
The Heartland Institute, an Illinois-based libertarian think tank, convened prominent climate skeptics in a hotel ballroom Wednesday for the latest in a series of talks titled "red team" briefings. The discussions are aimed at upending U.S. EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and assembling a so-called red team to poke holes in climate science.
Among the topics on Heartland's agenda last week: a presentation about rescinding EPA's endangerment finding, the scientific determination that underpins the agency's climate rules; a discussion about how to "fully end the War on Coal"; and a talk about the state of "corrupt climate science in government agencies."
John Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, who argues that dire predictions of climate change are overstated, was among those who spoke last week.
His presentation was about the history and current state of climate science and "how to get it back on the straight and narrow under Trump," according to Heartland's agenda.
Christy called the event a low-key meeting in an interview last week, estimating there were about 45 people in the room when he spoke.
He said there's an active debate about what role a "red team" exercise should play in the administration. Some people are pushing for a debate between a red team and a blue team, where the red team would aim to find vulnerabilities in the blue team's arguments. Some people don't want to see a red team debate occur at all, he said.
Christy said that in his view, there should be no blue team, at least for now.
"They've already made their case," he said.
Some conservatives are advocating for the exercise to occur in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which could oversee an interagency scientific review.
Other speakers at the Houston meeting included Myron Ebell, Steve Milloy and David Schnare — prominent foes of EPA climate regulations who served on Trump's EPA transition team.
The closed-door meeting came a day ahead of Heartland's public America First Energy Conference in Houston.
Heartland has hosted similar red team meetings, including two in September and June. After the September meeting, Heartland CEO Joseph Bast expressed doubts about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's commitment to assembling a climate red team, despite Pruitt's stated interest in doing so (Climatewire, Oct. 16).
Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely declined to comment, saying the red team gathering was a private meeting.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066319
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Trump Appointee Floats Overhaul To Key Climate Strategy
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
A strategy investors use to push corporate America on climate change might be in the federal government's crosshairs.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton is calling for a review of how investors petition public companies to change their policies through outside proposals. It's a strategy that has for decades raised environmental issues like climate change to corporate leaders, but that's also come under fire from business groups.
In a speech in New York on Thursday, Clayton — appointed by President Trump to lead the independent agency — said the stockholder proposal process should be re-examined.
"The shareholder proposal process is a corporate governance issue that is subject to diverse and deeply held beliefs," Clayton said to the finance conference, according to his prepared remarks. "The commission should be lifting the hood and taking a hard look at whether the needs of shareholders and companies are being met."
Clayton added, "We hear strong views on all sides."
Now, investors who own enough stock in a company — often a few thousands dollars will do — can file proposals with companies whose shares they own, pressing firms to make changes on myriad topics they care about. Companies can try to get these proposals thrown out by appealing to the SEC on legal details. But most are put to votes at annual stockholder meetings, and investor advocates say the resolutions are a helpful way to begin a dialogue with companies, often bringing to light little-noticed concerns. While the resolutions are often simply symbolic, they carry significant importance as a way for small investors to voice their thoughts and can provide a good barometer of investor sentiment.
Changing this process as Clayton broached, or banning all but the biggest investors from filing proposals — as some major business groups have advocated — could seal off a method climate-minded investors have long used.
"This should not be a high priority at the SEC," Chris Davis, senior director and chief of staff of the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk and Sustainability, said in an interview. "I think the corporate community, or corporate lobby, sees an opportunity."
The rule works smoothly and effectively, he said. "I don't think in any way this is a material cost, or a material drain, on the time of corporate boards."Pressure from businesses, GOP
Many companies are known to chafe at the resolution process, saying it can be a bogged down by gadfly investors filing frivolous requests and that it racks up legal bills. But two of its biggest critics are among the most powerful lobbies in Washington, D.C.: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, which represents Fortune 500 companies.
The U.S. Chamber filed a letter with the SEC this summer, calling the process a rule "used by a minority of activist shareholders to promote agendas that are uncorrelated to enhancing long-term value for shareholders." And the Business Roundtable told the White House in a letter sent in February that the "shareholder proposal process" was a top "concern." Requests for comment sent to both groups went unanswered.
A bill from House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) would also have blocked all but the biggest investors from chiming in with resolutions. It passed the House in July and is waylaid in the Senate.
Still, Clayton acknowledged how companies can benefit from shareholder suggestions. "History has shown that shareholder proposals can gain traction and lead to corporate governance changes that better track the long-term interests of Main Street investors," he said.
A group of shareholder advocates met with Clayton and William Hinman, head of the SEC's corporation finance unit, in October at SEC headquarters in Washington to press the case that the shareholder process works well, according to people familiar with the meeting.
"It's the old if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it philosophy," said Adam Kanzer, managing director of corporate engagement for Domini Impact Investments, adding that Clayton doesn't seem too ideologically entrenched on the topic of shareholder engagement.
Proposals can be a fulcrum to get smaller investors a meeting at a big company, said Kanzer, who wants the current system to remain. "You sit down and talk about the issue," he said. "And that can develop into a good, strong relationship.
"It gets companies to open doors and focus on issues they don't normally look at," he said. "If you get rid of it, or you make it too difficult, where are you going to go?"
Investors filed record numbers of environmental resolutions after the Paris climate accord of 2015, many zeroing in on how companies were putting their reputations at risk with lackadaisical climate policies (Climatewire, March 9, 2016).
This year, coalitions of small investors and pension funds filed proposals that led to several companies — PPL Corp. and Duke Energy Corp., as well as oil firms Exxon Mobil Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. — agreeing to study climate change (Climatewire, May 31).
"Companies are recognizing that if they're forward-looking on climate and on their impacts on the environment, then that's good business," Josh Zinner, CEO of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said in a phone interview. "Investors have really been out front in talking to businesses on the risks of climate."SEC boss 'raises many more questions'
During his confirmation process, Clayton, a former Wall Street lawyer, told senators that companies should follow rules the SEC adopted in 2010 that require them to disclose how climate change affects their business. "Public companies should be very mindful of that guidance," he said.
It's an open secret that the SEC meekly enforces that rule and firms flout it.
Jonas Kron, senior vice president of Trillium Asset Management, appreciated that Clayton noted stockholder proposals can help companies in the long run.
"I guess I'm pleased he recognized that shareholder proposals do match up with the interests of long-term investors," Kron said. He said he found the speech cryptic. "It raises many more questions than it answers."
No matter what, Clayton opened the door to overhauling the relationship many investors hold with companies they own. That's a development Tim Smith, who has advocated for social and environmental causes through this method since the 1970s, found concerning.
The U.S. Chamber has been trying to hobble shareholder rights for years, he said.
"For the last three or five years, it's been a drumbeat for them," Smith, director of environmental, social and governance share owner engagement for Walden Asset Management, said in an interview. He said Clayton's comments raised "alarm bells."
After Hensarling's bill stalled in the Senate, the topic died down in Washington. Thanks to Clayton's speech, the situation changed.
"It's moved the debate down the spectrum," Smith said. "Now it's being actively discussed within the SEC."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/11/13/stories/1060066321
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Virginia to Consider Legislation to Link with RGGI
Nov 13, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
Virginia lawmakers will take up a measure in January to link to the Northeast regional cap-and-trade program, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said today at a panel discussion among Democratic governors at climate meetings in Bonn, Germany.
“Virginia will now become a member of RGGI. You would not have thought that possible,” McAuliffe said, adding that he previously pursued climate efforts via executive order when a majority of his state's lawmakers weren't on board.
The outgoing governor had ordered regulators to explore carbon dioxide trading options, including joining the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that aims to cut emissions from the power sector.
With the election of incoming Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and Democratic gains in the state house, legislators are now set to move to formally link with the program, following approval from leaders in the participating states, including Maryland and New York, McAuliffe said. Text of the legislation is expected to be released on Thursday.
McAuliffe said the Democratic sweep in elections in his state was both a referendum on President Donald Trump and an affirmation that voters want a clean environment.
New Jersey, which exited the pact under Republican Gov. Chris Christie, is also set to rejoin RGGI.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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