Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 11/16/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Amcor, P&G, APR Honored For Plastics Recycling
Nov 16, 2017 | Plastics News
By Jim Johnson
A trade group and two companies are being recognized by the Plastics division of the American Chemistry Council for their work when it comes to plastics recycling. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sullivan County Celebrates America Recycles Day
Nov 15, 2017 | 10,000 Couples
By Shelley Chandler
For the past 20 years, nonprofits, communities, companies and individuals have gathered together to participate in various recycling activities and events throughout the country. America Recycles Day is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the holiday this year. -
(ACC Mentioned) Covestro LLC Announces Changes In Leadership
Nov 16, 2017 | European Coatings
Effective Feb. 1, 2018, Jerry MacCleary, currently president and managing director of Covestro LLC and head of the Polyurethanes business unit in North America, will assume new responsibilities as chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Covestro LLC. -
(ACC Mentioned) Blog: Chemical Industry Gets Payback From Trump
Nov 15, 2017 | Malibu Times
By Pam Linn
As someone who has avoided using chemicals her whole life, I tend to rely on regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Buying only certain fruits and vegetables that are labeled “Organic” has been a huge help. But now the Trump administration is making that much more difficult. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Outlines Options To Prioritize Chemicals For TSCA Risk Analyses
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA is proposing for public comment multiple approaches to prioritize existing chemicals to enter the pipeline for high- or low-priority designation and potential risk evaluation as part of its new responsibilities under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), with some of the proposals reflecting ideas that have enjoyed industry support in the past. -
(ACC Mentioned) Dourson's EPA Nomination In Doubt With Two GOP Senators' Opposition
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
Michael Dourson's controversial nomination to head EPA's toxics office appears in doubt after GOP North Carolina Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis announced late Nov. 15 that they would oppose him, because along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) as a likely no vote, Democrats can kill the nomination if they all vote against Dourson. -
Two GOP Senators Oppose Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee
Nov 16, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Two Republican senators said Wednesday that they won’t support President Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office. -
Senators Burr, Tillis Oppose Trump's EPA Nominee Dourson: Reports
Nov 16, 2017 | Reuters
By Ishita Chigilli Palli
North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis said they will not support the Trump administration’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, media reports said. -
Trump EPA Nominee Opposed by GOP Senators From NC
Nov 16, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
North Carolina's two Republican senators say they oppose President Donald Trump's pick to oversee chemical safety at the Environmental Protection Agency, putting Michael L. Dourson's nomination at serious risk. -
EPA Started Hiring Process For Dourson Ahead Of Hearing, Document Shows
Nov 16, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
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US And Australia Criticise EU's Proposed EDC Restrictions
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US and Australia have complained to the WTO that hazard-based EU proposals to regulate endocrine-disrupting substances (EDCs) in biocidal and plant protection products will harm international trade. -
Monsanto Sues California Over Forced Herbicide Warning
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Margaret Cronin Fisk
Monsanto Co. and groups of farmers sued California officials to stop the state from forcing a cancer warning on the company's herbicide glyphosate. -
Target Removes Fidget Spinners Containing Lead
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
US chain store Target has removed two fidget spinner models from sale, after a study from NGO the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) study found they contained high levels of lead. -
Historic Court Decision On Lead-Based Paint In California Court Of Appeals
Nov 16, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
Yesterday, after three years of deliberations, California’s Appellate Court for the Sixth District held that three defendant companies – Sherwin-Williams Company, NL Industries, and ConAgra Grocery Products[1]— created a public nuisance in ten plaintiff jurisdictions in the state by promoting the use of lead-based paint in the interior of residences built before 1951 even though they had actual knowledge of the harm the paint would pose to children. -
Health Canada Proposes Restriction On Pigment Red 4 In Cosmetics
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The Canadian government has formally proposed adding pigment red 4 to its cosmetic ingredient hotlist, as well as making changes to several existing listings. -
PlasticsEurope Files Second Case Against Echa Over BPA
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Trade body PlasticsEurope filed a lawsuit against Echa over its decision to update the REACH candidate list entry of bisphenol A (BPA) to include its endocrine-disrupting properties affecting human health. -
Netherlands Develops RMOAs On Suspected CMRs
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Netherlands is developing risk management option analyses (RMOAs) on nine substances suspected of having carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) properties. -
European Union Wants to Change the Ink in Your Tattoo
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
Tattooing has been around for thousands of years, but its popularity is bigger than ever. Once considered an act of rebellion against cultural norms, today nearly one in three Americans and nearly one in six Europeans have a tattoo. -
Consumer NGO Calls For Limit On Lip Balm Mineral Oils
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Beuc, the European Consumer Organisation, has called on the European Commission to impose a safety limit on mineral oil hydrocarbons in lip care products. -
Senate GOP Eyes Separate 'Extenders' Bill For Energy
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss and George Cahlink
Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee said today they're looking to assemble legislation to address a number of unresolved energy issues that will move separately from the broader tax overhaul the panel is marking up this week. -
U.S., Mexico, Canada Energy Chiefs Pledge Cooperation in NatGas, Oil Projects
Nov 15, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday said he expects Mexico and Canada will join the United States in drafting a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to incorporate cooperation for the continent’s burgeoning natural gas and oil trade. -
Perry Says Renegotiating NAFTA Needed Because Of U.S. Energy Bounty
Nov 15, 2017 | Chron
By Collin Eaton
At appearances in Houston this week, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said it makes sense for the United States, Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, in part because of the enormous new supply of U.S. oil and gas locked in once-inaccessible shale rocks. -
Chemical Plant Owners Urged to Prepare for Worst-Case Flooding
Nov 15, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christopher M. Matthews
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is warning that many industrial sites where hazardous materials are stored may not be adequately prepared for extreme weather events. -
Chemical Plants Face New Reality in Natural Disaster Preparation
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nushin Huq
As tropical storms in the Gulf Coast increase in frequency and intensity, it's imperative that facilities reassess operation plans and worst-case scenario assumptions, Chemical Safety Board Chairwoman Vanessa Sutherland said Nov. 15. -
CSB Backs Parts Of Obama EPA RMP Rule To Address Facility Flood Risks
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is backing parts of the Obama EPA's facility safety prevention rule to help facilities better prepare for worsening risks from flooding, saying companies should reassess their emergency planning and coordination with first responders and communities to ensure adequate planning for extreme weather. -
Eastern States’ Carbon-Trading Program Set to Expand
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is poised to expand to two large Eastern states as soon as next year, marking the biggest expansion of the cap-and-trade program since it was created almost a decade ago. -
Four Air Pollution Bills Move Through House Panel
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee and Jennifer Lu
A House environment panel voted Nov. 15 to move forward four bills aimed at easing clean air regulations for coal refuse plants, brick kilns, wood heaters, and race cars. -
State Deadlines Loom But No Word From EPA on Ozone Decisions
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Lu
States’ upcoming deadline to address their ozone pollution that crosses state lines by 2018 looms, even though the EPA has yet to announce which areas exceed federal standards for the pollutant. -
Cross-State Rule Linked To 21% Drop In NOx Emissions
Nov 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
A senior U.S. EPA official outlined an upbeat picture today of compliance with the latest version of the agency's interstate air quality rule, pointing to preliminary data showing a 21 percent drop in power plant emissions of nitrogen oxides in the summer ozone season. -
Manufacturers Push NSR Reform To Promote Lower-Emitting Technology
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Manufacturers are calling for an overhaul to ease EPA's Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permitting program to help promote technologies that can improve facilities' efficiency and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and conventional pollutants, arguing that NSR discourages installation of such technology. -
Manufacturers Call For Changes To EPA Permitting Program
Nov 16, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
A top officer with the National Association of Manufacturers urged senators yesterday to help "fix" U.S. EPA's New Source Review permitting program, saying it can discourage companies from taking steps to curb emissions. -
California's Housing Policy Is Holding Back Its Climate Policy
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Esmé E Deprez
The high cost of housing in California isn't just hurting the state's economy, fueling homelessness, and exacerbating economic inequality. It's imperiling its reputation as a global leader in emissions reductions, too. -
World Leaders Press Climate Case As Poor Countries Decry Loss Of U.S. Funds
Nov 15, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
Heads of state arrived at the international climate conference Wednesday to press ahead with negotiations on implementing the global pact, while developing countries warned the loss of U.S. money would imperil their ability to meet their goals. -
Modest Progress Seen in Bonn Toward Global Emissions Trading
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Bonn are on the verge of scoring a modest victory toward international trading of emissions credits, which may be crucial if the world is to take the kind of actions needed to halt global temperatures’ rapid rise. -
How Companies Are Pushing Ahead on Climate-Change Targets
Nov 16, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Zeke Turner and Sarah Kent
More of the world’s biggest corporations are taking the fight against climate change into their own hands, aiming to cut their energy costs, pre-empt regulation or burnish their reputations with investors and customers.
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(ACC Mentioned) Amcor, P&G, APR Honored For Plastics Recycling
Nov 16, 2017 | Plastics News
By Jim Johnson
A trade group and two companies are being recognized by the Plastics division of the American Chemistry Council for their work when it comes to plastics recycling.
The Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards for 2017 are going to Amcor, the Association of Plastic Recyclers and Procter & Gamble, the ACC said.
The winners were announced on Nov. 15, America Recycles Day.
Amcor, the packaging giant, is being recognized for creation of a mono-material plastic pouch that contains 20 percent post-consumer recycled content.
"Amcor notes that the pouch itself can be recycled along with other mono-material plastic bags and product overwraps at drop-off locations across the U.S. The pouch features the How2Recycle label, which educates consumers about how to recycle various packaging materials, including plastics. The latest company to use Amcor's innovative pouch is Method," according to ACC.
APR is being honored for its newly created Recycling Demand Champions Campaign that encourages companies to use durable products such as crates, totes and pallets that have recycled content. The new program, started just this fall, already has seen more than 10 companies agree to participate in the campaign.
And P&G is being recognized for its work with PureCycle Technologies "to develop a recycling technology that produces high-quality recycled polypropylene, increasing the variety of end-market applications for the material," ACC states. P&G will use the recycled PP and make it available to other companies through PureCycle.
"This year's award recipients are doing critical work to help support and grow domestic end markets for recycled plastics," said Craig Cookson, senior director of recycling and energy recovery for ACC, in a statement. "The honorees are leaders in innovation, helping to ensure that valuable recycled plastics are being kept out of landfills and used in new products."
The awards are designed to "recognize companies, nonprofits, and government bodies that successfully bring new technologies, products, and initiatives to communities and the marketplace, which demonstrate significant innovations in plastics recycling," according to ACC.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20171115/BLOG06/171119939/amcor-pg-apr-honored-for-plastics-recycling
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(ACC Mentioned) Sullivan County Celebrates America Recycles Day
Nov 15, 2017 | 10,000 Couples
By Shelley Chandler
For the past 20 years, nonprofits, communities, companies and individuals have gathered together to participate in various recycling activities and events throughout the country. America Recycles Day is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the holiday this year.
America Recycles day only lasts one day but places like Waste Management of Tampa are counting on people to do their part every day.
The initiative is sponsored by the American Chemistry Council, H&M, Indorama Ventures, Keurig Green Mountain, Northrup Grumman and Waste Management. And this year, the celebration is bigger than ever.
"Learn more and take the "#BeRecycled Pledge" at http://AmericaRecyclesDay.org. Recycling programs have changed a lot since 1997 and the event has changed along with the times.
"Do not put tires in your recycle bins", Kashar said. For example, according to Recycle Across America, recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours. A contaminated item placed in the recycling container can come into contact with other recyclables such as paper or cardboard, and potentially contaminate the other batch of recyclables.
DEP will launch a new statewide recycling education program RETHINK
Through the simple act of recycling (and buying products made with recycled content), we can continue to "give our garbage another life".
Participants in America Recycles Day and the Be Recycled movement are encouraged to spread the word by educating their families, friends and coworkers about recycling in the community. The first official Global Recycling Day will be celebrated on March 18, 2018. Glass can be recycled and made into new products countless times, and the recycling of one glass jar can run a compact fluorescent light bulb for nearly 20 hours.
Consider that 20 years ago, 217 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) were generated and 58.6 million tons - 27% - were recycled or composted. It's a day created to raise awareness about recycling and the purchasing of recycled products.
An unrelated holiday dubbed International Recycling Day was organized on May 17, 2017, but that event didn't gain much traction. Together, Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful, Keep Indian River Beautiful, Keep Wakulla County Beautiful and the city of Crystal River, Florida, have enabled their communities to recycle almost 320,000 bottles and cans in the past six months
In order to improve recycling, the organization is focusing on 3 clear factors. The factors are convenience, communication and cause.
http://10thousandcouples.com/2017/11/sullivan-county-celebrates-america-recycles-day/
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(ACC Mentioned) Covestro LLC Announces Changes In Leadership
Nov 16, 2017 | European Coatings
Effective Feb. 1, 2018, Jerry MacCleary, currently president and managing director of Covestro LLC and head of the Polyurethanes business unit in North America, will assume new responsibilities as chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Covestro LLC.
MacCleary will be succeeded in his role as head of the Polyurethanes business unit by Christine Bryant, currently head of Coatings, Adhesives and Specialties. Dr. Erik Haakan Jonsson, currently chief operating officer, will succeed MacCleary as president and managing director of Covestro LLC. About Jerry MacCleary
MacCleary, who currently represents Covestro as vice chairman of the board, a member of the Executive Committee and an officer at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), will become chairman of the ACC Executive Committee Jan. 1. He joined Covestro (then part of Bayer) in 1979 as an accountant, before embarking on a diverse career path that included sales, marketing and strategic management roles throughout the United States and Germany. In 2004, he was named head of the North American Polyurethanes business unit – a role he maintained after becoming president of Covestro LLC in 2012.About Christine Bryant
Bryant has led Covestro's Coatings, Adhesives and Specialties (CAS) business in North America since 2012 and also leads the unit's global key account business. She joined Covestro in 1989 and has held increasing roles in marketing, sales, distribution and business development throughout her career. A chemical engineer by training, Bryant's focus has been on creating stronger relationships with customers and developing new business and markets within the CAS area.About Dr. Erik Haakan Jonsson
Jonsson joined Covestro in 1992 as a scientist in Pittsburgh. His career has led him throughout the United States and Germany, as he took on diverse roles in manufacturing, innovation, supply chain and business development. Jonsson has served on the board of directors of various chemical industry, community service and educational organizations. He is a chemical engineer and holds his Ph.D. in polymer technology.
http://www.european-coatings.com/Markets-companies/Raw-materials-market/Covestro-LLC-announces-changes-in-leadership
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(ACC Mentioned) Blog: Chemical Industry Gets Payback From Trump
Nov 15, 2017 | Malibu Times
By Pam Linn
As someone who has avoided using chemicals her whole life, I tend to rely on regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Buying only certain fruits and vegetables that are labeled “Organic” has been a huge help. But now the Trump administration is making that much more difficult.
In order to understand the process, it helps to understand how these things work.
The chemical industry supports many politicians and their campaigns to the tune of $800 billion and lobbies its way out of effective regulation.
This has always been a problem, but now the Trump administration has chosen chemical industry lobbyists to oversee environmental protections and they are now siding with industry over the advice of doctors and the American Medical Association.
What’s troubling the medical profession now is a product of Dow Chemical Co. called chlorpyrifos that resembles sarin nerve gas in its deadly effects on the brain. To appreciate its effects on humans one has only to look at the results of nerve gas attacks that took place in Syria. They’re really ugly.
Chlorpyrifos was on track to be banned in the U.S. more than two decades ago. But now the Trump administration has overturned the planned ban that has been considered for so long.
The chemical was actually banned by the EPA for most indoor residential use 17 years ago and the agency was planning to extend the ban for agricultural and outdoor use this spring. However, the Trump administration has rejected that ban. Public health experts have expressed outrage at the move, noting that Dow donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
The pesticide, which belongs to a class of chemicals developed as a nerve gas made by Nazi Germany, can now be found in our air, drinking water and food, according to New York Timescolumnist Nicholas Kristof. Studies have shown that it damages the brain and reduces IQ while causing tremors among children and has also been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease in adults.
Scientists at Columbia University have isolated where a child’s brain is physically altered after exposure to this pesticide, Kristof writes. One 2012 study found that it was in the umbilical cord blood of 87 percent of newborn babies tested.
So now that the EPA ban has been rejected, the chemical may still be used on golf courses, road medians and food crops. EPA scientists have found levels of this pesticide on fresh produce at levels up to l40 times the limits deemed safe, Kristof writes. Do we really want to ingest this in our food?
The Trump administration has chosen chemical industry lobbyists to oversee environmental protections. The American Academy of Pediatrics protested the administration’s decision on the nerve gas pesticide, but officials sided with industry over doctors, Kristof writes.
The chemical industry lobby, the American Chemistry Council, has been likened to Big Tobacco for its tactics. The difference, as I see it, is that adults opt to smoke. The rest of us must eat, drink and breathe air that is contaminated with chemicals.
Trump has been cited for handing over the keys to our regulatory agency to the council and its industry allies in overseeing toxic chemicals. He also appointed two special assistants, which Kristof calls foxes guarding the henhouse.
The ramifications for this shift at the EPA will be with us for decades, long after Trump has returned to his New York real estate business—if he ever left it. But we will still be dealing with children suffering from lower IQs and brain damage and adults with lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
We will be shaking our heads and asking: “What were we thinking?”
If there were one thing we can do now, it would be to contact our senators and representatives and ask them to lean on the EPA to complete the ban on chlorpyrifos.
It’s never too late to fight back and we need to take this on.
http://www.malibutimes.com/blogs/article_d3a59ab2-c5a3-11e7-8d02-7b37f2a6812c.html
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Outlines Options To Prioritize Chemicals For TSCA Risk Analyses
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA is proposing for public comment multiple approaches to prioritize existing chemicals to enter the pipeline for high- or low-priority designation and potential risk evaluation as part of its new responsibilities under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), with some of the proposals reflecting ideas that have enjoyed industry support in the past.
In a Nov. 14 discussion document, EPA outlines six general approaches the agency could use to prioritize existing chemicals for priority assessment and is seeking comment on them. Existing chemicals are those that were on the market when the original TSCA took effect in 1976, and were largely grandfathered from regulation under that version of the law. The reformed TSCA tasks EPA with prioritizing these chemicals and beginning to assess the risks of those deemed high priority.
The document comes ahead of a Dec. 11 public meeting in Washington, D.C., where EPA will discuss options for “pre-prioritization,” a process the Obama EPA proposed to ensure the agency could meet decision deadlines in the reformed TSCA but which the Trump administration removed from the final TSCA prioritization rule it issued in June, saying the issue needs more discussion. Industry raised concerns about the Obama EPA proposal while environmentalists and California generally supported it.
EPA's first proposal would continue to use the prioritization process developed for the Obama EPA's TSCA workplan program, which identified more than 80 chemicals the agency deemed priorities for risk assessment. The Obama EPA developed the approach in 2012 to help it begin regulating existing chemicals under TSCA while waiting for congressional action on reforming the original statute.
The approach, however, received pushback from some in industry, with the American Chemistry Council even floating an alternative prioritization tool they pressed EPA to adopt. The agency, however, chose not to do so.
Otherwise, EPA proposes a series of new methods that it could develop -- one based on the approach the Canadian government adopted for use in 1996 and often heralded by industry as a model for EPA; two approaches based on chemical structure and functionality; an approach using alternative toxicity methods and an approach for designating low priority chemicals taken from EPA's Design for the Environment (DfE) program.
Designating chemicals as low priority -- generally setting them aside from risk evaluation by both EPA and states -- has been a priority for industry. Representatives have urged the agency to designate many more low priority chemicals than the 20 required by the reformed TSCA statute, and some have suggested that the Safer Chemical Ingredients List (SCIL) list developed by EPA's DfE program could be a working list for these designations. EPA's new document says it “is committed to identifying more than this statutory minimum through the prioritization process.”
Under the revised TSCA, EPA is required to establish a risk-based screening process and criteria to identify chemical substances as either high-priority substances for risk evaluation, or low-priority substances for which risk evaluations are not warranted at the time. The statute gives EPA 12 months to determine whether chemicals are a high or low priority for evaluation, and once deemed a high priority, the agency must complete a risk evaluation within three and a half years. The law requires EPA to have 20 existing chemicals under assessment at all times.
Prioritization Requirements
Staff working to implement the statute deemed it necessary to develop a pre-prioritization process to ensure that staff could meet the 12-month deadline for determining if a chemical is low or high priority. The new document explains that EPA must have sufficient data for risk evaluation, so it is important to fill information gaps before beginning the 12-month prioritization process.
EPA explains in the document that reformed TSCA “requires EPA to have completed the prioritization process for 40 chemicals, with 20 designated as low-priority and 20 designated as high priority, by approximately the end of December 2019 . . . EPA must identify at least 40 potential candidates and begin the 9 to 12-month prioritization process by no later than the end of March 2018.”
EPA provides a description of each prioritization approach, followed by a discussion of pros and cons. The first approach would update the methodology EPA used in its workplan program. The original prioritization approach used a series of authoritative lists from other agencies of chemicals of concern. EPA then screened these chemicals using existing information on hazard, exposure, persistence and bioaccumulation to rank them as high, medium or low priorities. The discussion document notes that the statute requires EPA to take half of its evaluations from the 2014 TSCA workplan chemical list -- and suggests one approach would be taking either 10 or all 20 from the list.
Other proposed approaches discuss different ways to update the workplan approach with updated authoritative lists or adding alternative toxicity testing information and other new information. EPA describes the benefits of building on the workplan program as compliance with the TSCA reform statute, as well as matching criteria in the final prioritization rule. It is also “a pragmatic consideration (time, effort and resources) to begin using these chemicals as a starting point given the efforts and resources already devoted to its development and update.”
However, this approach is better designed to identify high-priority candidates, rather than low-priority designations, and is based on a static list of chemicals.
A second proposed approach would be based on Canada's Chemical Management Plan (CMP), which industry leaders have generally praised and often recommended as a model for the United States during early TSCA reform discussions. EPA says benefits of this approach include its inclusion of peer-reviewed methods that incorporated “open public and stakeholder comment”; its use of modeling and rapid new alternative screening methods (NAM); and its ability to easily incorporate additional NAM methods.
But, CMP would have to be reviewed to determine that it meets all statutory requirements, EPA says. One known issue is that the approach does not address occupational exposure, which would need to be added for American adoption because of TSCA requirements.
Other Options
Using DfE's SCIL list of 917 chemicals identified as best in class compared to more toxic alternatives would be relatively easy to incorporate for identifying low-priority chemicals, EPA says. But some of the chemicals on the list may be too toxic in certain applications to meet TSCA low-priority designations, and EPA would still need to review all of the chemicals to ensure they meet other TSCA requirements, such as whether they are stored near drinking water sources.
EPA also proposes developing prioritization approaches based on a chemical's “functional category,” prioritized based on use, exposure or chemical structure. Benefits of such approaches include the facts that industry uses functional use categorization to create products, so it could build on existing information. Also, EPA suggests, grouping chemicals by functionality would provide “a better understanding of the uses within the cluster,” which would be useful in risk evaluation required by TSCA to consider conditions of use. Considering functional groups of chemicals would also help industry and EPA should risk management arise, as it would make it easier to determine substitutes.
But the document acknowledges that because the approaches focus “on exposure potential related to the functional use category . . . there is a possibility that a high hazard chemical that does not have a functional use category with high exposure potential might not be selected early for the prioritization process.”
EPA also proposes a group of approaches that aim to blend traditional data streams and NAM into web-based tools that would be used to prioritize chemicals by risk-based rank. Some of the approaches build on the groups of chemicals already identified in the TSCA workplan or the SCIL.
The document touts the approach's transparent, systematic and reproducible traits, among other benefits. But it acknowledges that there are gaps, particularly in terms of NAM data on some ecological endpoints and certain human health endpoints, such as respiratory sensitization.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-outlines-options-prioritize-chemicals-tsca-risk-analyses
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(ACC Mentioned) Dourson's EPA Nomination In Doubt With Two GOP Senators' Opposition
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
Michael Dourson's controversial nomination to head EPA's toxics office appears in doubt after GOP North Carolina Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis announced late Nov. 15 that they would oppose him, because along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) as a likely no vote, Democrats can kill the nomination if they all vote against Dourson.
If senators vote by majority to defeat former EPA toxicologist Dourson's nomination, it would be the first of President Donald Trump's nominees for the agency that opponents successfully block.
Burr and Tillis gave statements to the Star News in their home state saying they have concerns about Dourson's record supporting industry, and cannot support him in a full Senate floor confirmation vote.
Dourson cleared the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee in a party line vote on Oct. 25, but his and other EPA nominations are currently waiting votes by the upper chamber. Under Senate rules, nominees need a simple majority to win confirmation, and Republicans hold 52 seats to Democrats' 48. Vice President Mike Pence can break a tie vote in favor of a nominee, meaning that with all senators present, Democrats need three GOP defections to block a nominee.
“I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson,” Burr said in a statement to the Star News. “With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current GenX water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country.”
Burr had previously hedged on whether he would support Dourson, urging Administrator Scott Pruitt to determine whether to prioritize perfluorinated substances (PFCs) for future risk evaluations, suggesting a commitment on addressing his concerns could help secure his support for the nominee.
EPA's research office is already prioritizing its risk assessment work on the broad range of PFCs, but a more specific agency commitment that Burr is seeking to prioritize the substances for assessment under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) could be crucial as Dourson already faced a wall of opposition from Democrats over his past support for, and from, industry -- including an endorsement from the American Chemistry Council.
Tillis told the Star News that his objection is based on Dourson's record. “Over the last several weeks, Senator Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson’s body of work. Senator Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination,” his office said in a statement.
Highlighting critics' concerns about Dourson's potential pro-industry agenda if confirmed, eight Senate Democrats introduced a bill seeking to ban asbestos -- even as EPA is working on a precedent-setting risk evaluation of the substance under new responsibilities in the reformed TSCA -- in part because of concerns that Dourson wouldn't ban its use in the role of assistant administrator of the agency's toxics office.
Collins is widely believed to be a likely no vote on Dourson's nomination because of concerns about his record, so if she, Burr and Tillis join all Democrats in opposition it will block the nominee by a 51-49 vote.
Other EPA nominees still awaiting confirmation floor votes are the less-controversial picks of former George W. Bush EPA waste chief Susan Bodine to head the enforcement office, former Florida environment official Matthew Leopold to be the agency's general counsel, and David Ross, a former Wisconsin regulator tapped to lead EPA's water office.
Those nominees must likely must wait at least an additional two weeks, with the chamber not planning to take up any additional agency candidates until the week of Nov. 27 at the earliest, Capitol Hill sources say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/doursons-epa-nomination-doubt-two-gop-senators-opposition
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Two GOP Senators Oppose Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee
Nov 16, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Two Republican senators said Wednesday that they won’t support President Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office.
The opposition from North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burrputs Michael Dourson’s nomination in danger. If one more Republican votes against him, he likely wouldn’t be confirmed to the post.
Even before Tillis’s and Burr’s opposition, Dourson was one of Trump’s most polarizing nominees. Democrats and environmentalists saw him as a lackey for the chemical industry who, for years, was paid underplay the harms of various chemicals.
The opposition from the North Carolina senators, first reported by the Wilmington, N.C., Star News, stems from a pair of major health controversies in the state surrounding water contamination at the Marine Corps’s Camp Lejeune and the recent discovery of the as-yet-unrelated chemical GenX in the Cape Fear River. The senators do not believe Dourson would be an effective force to protect the victims of those incidents.
“I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson. With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current Gen X water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country,” Burr said in a statement.
“Over the last several weeks, Sen. Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson’s body of work. Sen. Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination,” Tillis’s office said.
Dourson worked at the EPA until 1995. When he left, he started a nonprofit firm to evaluate chemical toxicity, often working for the chemical industry and making conclusions more industry-friendly than states, the EPA or universities.
In 2015, Dourson merged his firm into the University of Cincinnati, where he became part of the faculty, but did similar toxicology assessment work.
Democrats repeatedly hounded him on his history at a contentious hearing last month.
“You’re not just an outlier on this science, you’re outrageous in how far from the mainstream of science you actually are,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Dourson has defended his work and committed to following sound science at the EPA.
After the hearing, EPA head Scott Pruitt hired Dourson as an adviser, bringing criticisms that he was circumventing the confirmation process.
Republicans have 52 seats in the Senate, compared to 48 in the Democratic caucus. If all remaining senators stay along party lines, Vice President Mike Pence could break a 50-50 tie.
The Environment and Public Works Committee voted late last month along party lines in favor of Dourson.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/360615-2-gop-senators-oppose-trumps-epa-chemical-safety-nominee
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Senators Burr, Tillis Oppose Trump's EPA Nominee Dourson: Reports
Nov 16, 2017 | Reuters
By Ishita Chigilli Palli
(Reuters) - North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis said they will not support the Trump administration’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, media reports said.
If one more Republican votes against Michael Dourson, he likely wouldn't be confirmed to the post, the Hill reported on Wednesday. bit.ly/2hv1xgN
The Republican Senators raised concerns about the track record of Dourson, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who has worked as a consultant for chemical companies, StarNews reported. bit.ly/2jvLPpR
“With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current GenX water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country,” StarNews quoted Senator Burr as saying.
The U.S. Senate environment panel, on Oct. 25, approved Dourson and 3 other nominees to top posts at the EPA, in a 11-10 vote along party lines that was slammed by Democrats.
Dourson, while a consultant, had assessed some chemicals, including PFOA, used to make Teflon non-stick surfaces, to be safe at levels far higher than considered acceptable by the EPA.
Reuters could not reach the Senators for comment outside regular business hours.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax/congress-poised-for-a-major-test-on-tax-legislation-idUSKBN1DG1G3
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Trump EPA Nominee Opposed by GOP Senators From NC
Nov 16, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — North Carolina's two Republican senators say they oppose President Donald Trump's pick to oversee chemical safety at the Environmental Protection Agency, putting Michael L. Dourson's nomination at serious risk.
Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis issued statements saying they will vote against Dourson to serve as head of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Environmentalists and Senate Democrats have vehemently opposed Dourson, a toxicologist with close ties to the chemical industry. That means only one more Republican "no" vote would likely be needed to torpedo his nomination.
The White House and EPA did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday evening. Despite the fact he hasn't yet been confirmed by the Senate, Dourson has already been working at the agency as a senior adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
The Associated Press reported in September that Dourson has for years accepted payments for criticizing studies that raised concerns about the safety of his clients' products, according to a review of financial records and his published work.Continue reading the main story
Past corporate clients of Dourson and of a research group he ran include Dow Chemical Co., Koch Industries Inc. and Chevron Corp. His research has also been underwritten by industry trade and lobbying groups representing the makers of plastics, pesticides, processed foods and cigarettes.
Burr and Tillis, both of whom are considered reliably pro-business conservatives, cited Dourson's past work and worries among their home-state constituents about tainted drinking water, in opposing his nomination.
"Over the last several weeks, Senator Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson's body of work," said a statement from Tillis' office. "Senator Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination."
Marine veterans and their families blame decades-old contamination of wells at a North Carolina base with solvents and dry-cleaning chemicals for infant deaths and serious health problems that include cancer.
More recently, concerns have been raised about undisclosed discharges of chemicals used to manufacture Teflon and GoreTex into the Cape Fear River, a source of municipal drinking water for Wilmington and other southeastern North Carolina communities.
Dourson worked at the EPA for more than a decade, leaving in 1994 as the manager at a lab that assessed the health risks of exposure to chemicals. The following year, he founded Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a private toxicity evaluation nonprofit organization that tests chemicals and produces reports on which chemicals are hazardous in what quantities.
Dourson's views toward industry are consistent with others Trump has selected as top federal regulators. Among them is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who in March overruled the findings of his agency's own scientists to reverse an effort to ban chlorpyrifos, one of the nation's most widely used pesticides.
Court records show Dourson and his work have often been called on when his corporate clients are seeking to fend off lawsuits.
DuPont was accused of polluting a West Virginia town with Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a chemical that the company's internal tests had long ago concluded were toxic. Corporate officials discussed hiring Dourson as part of a strategy to defend themselves.
Dourson led a team that found in 2002 that PFOA levels up to 150 parts per billion were safe, a level higher than was found in testing of 188 private wells and springs.
That was also well above the 1 part per billion that Dupont's own scientists had concluded could be considered safe years before. The EPA now says that only 70 parts per trillion of PFOA are acceptable — or only 0.05 percent of what Dourson's team said was safe.
DuPont and a former subsidiary, Chemours Co., later paid $761 million to settle 3,550 lawsuits stemming from its use of the chemical.
Chemours is the company whose spills of a chemical called GenX, a replacement for PFOA, are now at issue in North Carolina's Cape Fear River.
"I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson," said Burr, the state's senior senator. "With his record and our state's history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current GenX water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country."
The stand was quickly praised by environmental advocacy groups that rarely find common ground with the two Tarheel Republicans.
"No one who has spent decades arguing on behalf of the chemical industry for weaker safety standards should be charged with reviewing chemicals for the EPA," said Scott Faber, a senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. "It would be like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/11/16/us/politics/ap-us-congress-epa-dourson.html?_r=0
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EPA Started Hiring Process For Dourson Ahead Of Hearing, Document Shows
Nov 16, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
EPA began laying the groundwork to get Michael Dourson onto the agency payroll without waiting for him to be confirmed — even before his nomination hearing occurred, according to documents obtained by POLITICO via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Dourson joined EPA as a senior adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt sometime last month. On Sept. 20, Pruitt and EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson signed Dourson's "position description coversheet,” outlining his duties advising Pruitt on legislative and regulatory issues related to chemicals and pesticides. That was two weeks before Dourson's Oct. 4 hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, though President Donald Trump nominated him in July as the assistant administrator for toxic substances. (In an apparent error, the document does not include Dourson's name, but was identified by EPA as Dourson's paperwork.)
The committee approved his nomination along party lines Oct. 25, but a Senate floor vote has not yet been scheduled. Dourson has drawn criticism over his past toxicology work for various companies, and some Republicans have indicated they have reservations.
EPA last month pointed out that previous administrations had hired nominees to begin working before their confirmation. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for a comment today.
Susan Bodine, who is awaiting a confirmation vote to become EPA's enforcement chief, also has already started at EPA. Pruitt and Jackson signed off on her job description July 12, according to a copy of the document obtained by POLITICO.
WHAT’S NEXT: It is unclear when Dourson may receive a final floor vote in the Senate.
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US And Australia Criticise EU's Proposed EDC Restrictions
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US and Australia have complained to the WTO that hazard-based EU proposals to regulate endocrine-disrupting substances (EDCs) in biocidal and plant protection products will harm international trade.
The US went a step further, arguing that the proposals could violate a WTO agreement on agricultural sanitation measures.
On 4 October, the European Parliament vetoed the European Commission's pending EDC proposal for plant protection products. The action was based on objections to provisions that would exempt some substances with endocirne-disrupting properties from the criteria.
Documents submitted to the WTO by the US and Australia on 8 November say that the EU appears to be moving toward stricter criteria that would lead to even more substances being classified as EDCs, and subsequently banned.
The submissions came as WTO members began a regular three-year review of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement.
The US and Australia, along with other countries, such as Canada, have argued since the EU began consultation in 2014 that a hazard-based approach to regulating biocides and pesticides labelled as endocrine disruptors would have a significant impact on agricultural trade.
The latest US statement argues that the EU proposals violate the TBT agreement’s requirement that "technical regulations are not more trade-restrictive than necessary," as well as the WTO agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) governing health-based restrictions on agricultural imports. The SPS agreement requires that such measures be based on "an appropriate assessment of the actual risks involved," according to the WTO.
The US acknowledged the EU's position that its "legal framework mandates the establishment of hazard-based criteria," but said this does not "relieve the EU of meeting its obligations under the WTO TBT or SPS Agreements".
"For these reasons, we urge the EU to consider seriously the concerns" voiced by WTO members "as it moves forward with its next steps in establishing criteria to identify and ultimately regulate substances with the potential to disrupt endocrine systems".Australia urges risk-based exemptions
Australia urged the EU to adopt "risk-based derogation elements" as a "concurrent consideration with the criteria components" of its EDC proposal.
"The risk-based elements of the derogation align with the scientific, risk-based regulatory approach of Australia and other key trading partners. This will ensure that safe chemical use can continue as part of modern, sustainable agricultural practice, and trade is not unnecessarily restricted."
Both countries said they are especially troubled by a statement submitted by the European Commission in July suggesting that EU legislation precludes establishing maximum residue levels (MRLs) and import tolerances (ITs) "for substances banned due to the hazard-based cut-off criteria".
"Producers around the world are concerned that they will no longer be able to export products to the EU if MRLs for banned substances are set at default levels and ITs are refused," the US said. "This would not only adversely impact agricultural producers and consumers, but would also harm EU food importers and manufacturers who source ingredients from third countries."
A "2016 independent analysis" estimated "damage to US exports" at nearly $5bn and "global trade damage" at over $75bn, the statement said.
For further details of the Australian complaint visit AsiaHub
https://chemicalwatch.com/61102/us-and-australia-criticise-eus-proposed-edc-restrictions
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Monsanto Sues California Over Forced Herbicide Warning
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Margaret Cronin Fisk
Monsanto Co. and groups of farmers sued California officials to stop the state from forcing a cancer warning on the company's herbicide glyphosate.
The world's biggest seed company is the latest to challenge California's uniquely stringent right-to-know law that's been ridiculed by critics for the proliferation of warnings everywhere from gas stations to grocery stores -- and for lining the pockets of attorneys who sue and settle. Even a cup of coffee in California comes with a cancer warning.
Glyphosate doesn't cause cancer and the state is violating Monsanto's First Amendment rights by compelling it to include such a warning, the company said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento Nov. 15. Monsanto asked for an injunction blocking enforcement of the California rule. (National Association of Wheat Growers v. Zeise, E.D. Cal., No. 17-at-01224, 11/15/17).
“Had California conducted any sort of reasonable scientific review before making the action challenged here, it would have determined -- as more than a dozen other global regulatory and scientific agencies already have -- that the cancer listing at issue is false and inappropriate,’’ Monsanto and the grower associations said in the complaint.
Xavier Becerra, California's attorney general, didn't immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment on the lawsuit.
California in July listed glyphosate as a substance “known’’ to cause cancer, which would require makers of products containing the herbicide, or even traces of it, to attach a warning label to products sold in the state, Monsanto said in a statement Wednesday. This would impact not just manufacturers but crops grown by U.S. farmers who use the herbicide and food products from those crops, the company said.
“This labeling requirement would do nothing more than compel false warnings about a safe product and unnecessarily increase food prices for consumers,’’ Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy, said in the statement.
Monsato's suit is the latest challenge to laws like California's Proposition 65, the state rule requiring listing products as cancer-causing. The Grocery Manufacturers Association and dozens of other trade groups are pushing for a federal law that could override state ingredient-disclosure rules and warning labels, including Proposition 65.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839975&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839975&jd=123839975
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Target Removes Fidget Spinners Containing Lead
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
US chain store Target has removed two fidget spinner models from sale, after a study from NGO the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) study found they contained high levels of lead.
US PIRG alerted the store and its supplier Bulls i Toys, after it carried out testing for lead content on the handheld toys. Lead exposure is known to be damaging for young children because of its impact on development.
Lab results showed the two fidget spinners contained the following levels of lead:Fidget Wild Premium Spinner Brass: the centre circle tested for 33,000 parts per million (ppm) of lead; andFidget Wild Premium Spinner Metal: the centre circle tested for 1,300 ppm of lead
The federal legal limit is 100 parts per million (ppm) for lead in children’s products, but fidget spinners are classified by the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) as general use rather than as children’s products. They are only considered toys if labelled age 12 and under.
Target spokesperson Joshua Thomas said: "While these two products comply with all CPSC guidelines for fidget spinners, based on the concerns raised, we’re removing them from our assortment. Additionally, we’re working closely with our vendors to ensure all of the fidget spinners carried at Target meet the CPSC’s guidelines for children’s products," he said.
US PIRG toxics director, Kara Cook-Schultz said: "We are pleased that Target is doing the right thing and removing the potentially dangerous fidget spinners from its shelves and its website."‘Absurd and unsafe’
In a press release, US PIRG said the CPSC’s position on fidget spinners was "absurd and unsafe" and called on the agency to classify them as toys.
Ms Cook-Schultz said: "All fidget spinners have play value as children’s toys regardless of age labeling. The buck has to stop with someone."
In August, CPSC acting chairman Ann Marie Buerkle, released a statement responding to concerns about the safety of fidget spinners, advising consumers to keep them away from small children and for companies to refer to the CPSC guidance.
But last week CPSC commissioner, Elliot F Kaye, tweeted: "Seems obvious fidget spinners are toys and should comply with all applicable federal safety standards."
Ms Cook-Schulz said: "We agree with Commissioner Kaye’s statement that all fidget spinners are toys. It’s common sense."
Earlier this year, a study by Fox6 News found high levels of lead in four fidget spinners sold at Amazon and Walmart.com.
And a test by the Danish Consumer Council's Think Chemicals initiative, also found high levels of lead in two fidget spinners sold in Denmark.
https://chemicalwatch.com/61079/target-removes-fidget-spinners-containing-lead
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Historic Court Decision On Lead-Based Paint In California Court Of Appeals
Nov 16, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
Yesterday, after three years of deliberations, California’s Appellate Court for the Sixth District held that three defendant companies – Sherwin-Williams Company, NL Industries, and ConAgra Grocery Products[1]— created a public nuisance in ten plaintiff jurisdictions in the state by promoting the use of lead-based paint in the interior of residences built before 1951 even though they had actual knowledge of the harm the paint would pose to children. The case now goes back to the trial court to determine the amount that defendants must pay into a fund to remediate pre-1951 homes with lead-based paint in those jurisdictions and to appoint a suitable receiver to manage the fund.
The Court of Appeals’ decision requires remediation of the lead-based paint, but not its complete removal, in the ten California jurisdictions that were plaintiffs in the case. The jurisdictions are: seven counties, Santa Clara, Alameda, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Mateo, Solano, and Ventura; two cities, Oakland and San Diego; and the city and county of San Francisco.
The case, which began in 2000, rests on public nuisance law in California. While all states prohibit public nuisances to protect the public from threats to their health and safety, the requirements vary significantly among the states and rely heavily on precedent set in prior state court decisions. In California, a public nuisance action requires proof that a defendant knowingly created or assisted in the creation of a substantial and unreasonable interference with a public right. The defendants must have actual knowledge of the public health hazard.
In 2010, the California Supreme Court overruled a previous decision by the trial court and provided key interpretations of public nuisance law that shaped yesterday’s court decision. While the paint companies are expected to appeal this decision to the California Supreme Court, the decision is likely to stand because the Appellate Court hewed closely that court’s 2010 decision.
The Appellate Court for the Sixth District was reviewing a 2014 trial court’s decision that the Sherwin-Williams Company, NL Industries, and ConAgra Grocery Products must pay $1.15 billion to remediate homes built before 1978 with lead-based paint in the plaintiff’s jurisdiction. The three judge panel of the Court of Appeals narrowed the scope of the trial court’s decision from homes built before 1978 to those built before 1951. The panel found that there was insufficient evidence that the three companies had promoted lead-based paint for interior residential use after 1950, even though they may have sold the paint after that date.
Similar cases had been brought in other states including Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island. In 2008, the Rhode Island Supreme Court overturned a trial court decision finding paint companies liable for the state’s public nuisance law. The California court found its case was different because it involved an extensive assessment of voluminous evidence presented at trial. The other cases were decided on pleading and did not get to the merits of the evidence.
While lead-based paint is not the only source of lead exposure to children, it is the most significant for those children living in homes with lead-based paint, especially when the paint is deteriorated. Thousands of children still live in homes with lead-based paint hazards – with poor and minority children at greatest risk. This court decision is a first step that will hold companies responsible and result in the removal of toxic lead paint in homes across California and may serve as a roadmap for other states.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2017/11/15/california-court-decision-on-lead-based-paint/
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Health Canada Proposes Restriction On Pigment Red 4 In Cosmetics
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The Canadian government has formally proposed adding pigment red 4 to its cosmetic ingredient hotlist, as well as making changes to several existing listings.
The government is proposing adding the dye to the list of restricted substances, limiting concentration levels to 3%. The move comes as a result of potential health concerns at previously reported concentration levels, as assessed by the country's Chemicals Management Plan (CMP).
Health Canada notified stakeholders in July that the proposal was coming.
The hotlist informs industry about substances that are inappropriate for cosmetic use, are restricted in some way, or require hazard labelling. It was last updated in 2015.
Other proposed changes include:
· expanding the prohibited listing for chloramine T to include "related compounds";
· expanding the ban on oleandrin to include nerium oleander, its extracts and glycosides;
· amending the restrictions on boric acid to bar its use in "products for use on or around mucous membranes" and in those intended for children; and
· altering restrictions on methylisothiazolinone.
Health Canada will accept comments until 7 January.
https://chemicalwatch.com/61104/health-canada-proposes-restriction-on-pigment-red-4-in-cosmetics
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PlasticsEurope Files Second Case Against Echa Over BPA
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Trade body PlasticsEurope filed a lawsuit against Echa over its decision to update the REACH candidate list entry of bisphenol A (BPA) to include its endocrine-disrupting properties affecting human health.
The case — filed with the European General Court on 15 September — is the second time the association has taken action against Echa over the substance's SVHC classification. It filed the first lawsuit in March when the organisation disputed BPA's inclusion in the candidate list because of its reprotoxic properties.
The first case is still pending, but PlasticsEurope now says Echa's Decision in July to update the classification "infringed the principle of legal certainty by applying inconsistent and unforeseeable criteria to assess the endocrine disrupting properties for human health of BPA."
Echa's Decision over the second classification was based on REACH Article 57(f), which considers "probable serious effects" that give rise to equivalent level of concern to those of other SVHCs.
However, BPA cannot be identified as an SVHC under Article 57(f) when it has already been identified as an SVHC under Article 57(c), said Antonello Romano, senior EU policy advisor at PlasticsEurope.
BPA is used in the manufacture of polycarbonate, as a hardener for epoxy resins, an anti-oxidant for processing PVC and in thermal paper production. It was first added to the candidate list in January due to its toxicity to reproduction.
In comments to Chemical Watch, Mr Romano said Article 57(f) is reserved for "other substances" that are not covered by the preceding sections of the article, an not for "other properties" of the same substance.
PlasticsEurope also regards the identification of BPA as SVHC based on endocrine-disrupting properties "as not sufficiently substantiated," Mr Romano said.
Furthermore, he added, the decision is "premature" in the light of the pending results of the Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on BPA Toxicity research programme. Its results are expected in the first half of 2018.
The consortium, known as CLARITY-BPA, brings together academic researchers with several US federal regulators. It aims to help inform regulatory decision-making.
In the first case filed against Echa, PlasticsEurope argued that the vast majority of uses of BPA are as an intermediate, which is excluded from REACH. It also said BPA's inclusion on the list breached the principles of proportionality.
Mr Romano said while the procedure in the first case is "more advanced" there are no mandatory procedural deadlines for the General Court's proceedings.
He said, however, that the court has discretion "as to the possible, or potential joining of the two cases."
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Netherlands Develops RMOAs On Suspected CMRs
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Netherlands is developing risk management option analyses (RMOAs) on nine substances suspected of having carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) properties.
The work is being done under Echa’s public activities coordination tool (PACT), which also assesses hazards.
The substances are:
· 1,2-dichloropropane;
· 4-chloro-α,α,α-trifluorotoluene;
· beryllium oxide;
· butanedione;
· cobalt;
· ethanol, 2,2'-iminobis-, N-(C13-15-branched and linear alkyl) derivs;
· prop-2-yn-1-ol;
· toluene; and
· ethane-1,2-diol, which is also a suspected endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC).PBT review
Finland, meanwhile, has begun its RMOA on terphenyl, hydrogenated, which it believes may have persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) properties.
And two other EU countries have conducted hazard assessments of chemicals, suspected of having the same properties. The Netherlands conducted one for 1,2-dichloro-4-(trichloromethyl)benzene, but has postponed further assessment. And Finland made a hazard assessment of methylcyclohexane, which it says is not a PBT substance.EDCs
Five member states are developing hazard assessments of potential EDCs. Germany is doing so for 1,1'-(isopropylidene)bis[3,5-dibromo-4-(2,3-dibromo-2-methylpropoxy)benzene], Belgium for 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol and the UK for triphenyl phosphate.
In addition, Sweden is focusing on 2-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde, and France is investigating homosalate.
Last month, PACT showed three member states have begun RMOAs on other substances: the Netherlands is assessing indium tin oxide (ITO) because of concerns it has properties that could affect human health and the environment; Sweden is assessing lead due to its potential CMR properties; and France is investigating phenanthrene as a suspected PBT.
https://chemicalwatch.com/61099/netherlands-develops-rmoas-on-suspected-cmrs
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European Union Wants to Change the Ink in Your Tattoo
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
Tattooing has been around for thousands of years, but its popularity is bigger than ever. Once considered an act of rebellion against cultural norms, today nearly one in three Americans and nearly one in six Europeans have a tattoo.
But before deciding to get that dancing bear on your ankle, be warned: The inks and colorants used in some tattoos may be harmful, even years later.
Citing those health concerns, European Union regulators want to restrict some 4,000 substances when used in tattoo inks—a move that would cover tattoo artists and their customers across the 28-nation bloc and create the world's most comprehensive guidelines on tattoo inks.
But the move could limit color choices for customers and cause tattoo prices to rise in the EU, warns a U.S.-based distributor of tattoo inks.
Bright Colors, Toxic Chemicals
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) said its plan is needed to ensure public health.
“As these chemicals may stay in the body for life, there is also the possibility for long-term exposure to the potentially harmful ingredients,” ECHA said in its proposal announced last month to “restrict hazardous substances in tattoo inks and permanent make-up.”
In the old days, tattoo inks often contained carcinogenic heavy metals. For instance, red inks were found to have high levels of mercury, while cobalt was often used in blues, and chromium in greens. In recent years, most tattoo ink manufacturers have moved away from mineral-based pigments to less-toxic organic ones.
But in most parts of the world, there's no way of knowing if that's the case, or if even safer inks still pose a health hazard.
‘Cosmetics’ Under U.S. Law
For instance, while the EU now could adopt comprehensive oversight, no such federal rules apply to tattoo inks in the U.S.
Tattoos are considered “cosmetics” under U.S. federal law. And while the Food and Drug Administration has jurisdiction to regulate tattoos, it has opted not to do so.
While the FDA can investigate specific issues as they arise, “because of other competing public health priorities and a previous lack of evidence of safety problems specifically associated with these pigments, FDA traditionally has not exercised regulatory authority for color additives on the pigments used in tattoo inks,” the agency said in a fact sheet. “The actual practice of tattooing is regulated by local jurisdictions.”
Quick, Painful Reaction
A few months ago, when Shawna Thompson of Bloomington, Ind., went in to get a tattoo on her foot that read simply — “Mom” — across a bright-red rose, she didn't think anything of it. It was her fifth tattoo.
But, while the previous tattoos were all drawn with black ink, this one used bright reds, blues, and greens. The reaction on her skin was quick and painful.“By the fourth day I had to go to urgent care,” Thompson said. “It was starting to blister, there was also scabbing and swelling. It was so painful I was off of work for eight days.”
The doctors said Thompson was having a reaction to the chemicals in the colored inks. She was given a strong steroid and had to take several rounds of antibiotics to fight off the infection.
After more than a month, the wound eventually healed, “but not without scarring, and the color lifted off in some areas,” said Thompson.‘Most People Don't Have Problems’
Nicolas Kluger, a French dermatologist and expert on medical complications from tattoos, said: “Most tattoos are generally well-tolerated; most people don't have problems.”
But he told Bloomberg Environment that when problems do arise, the most common risk associated with tattoos is infection. Other known symptoms include allergic-hypersensitivity, autoimmune reactions, and tissue masses called granulomas.
While those in the industry say heavy metals are no longer added to tattoo ink, Kluger said small levels of impurities still turn up, as well as organic compounds, bacteria, and other potentially harmful substances.
And many of the pigments used in tattoo ink are in fact the same as those found in things like printer ink and car paints.
“These colors are coming from the colorant factories,” said Kluger, “BASF is a huge supplier of pigment.”
According to a 2013 presentation on tattoo safety and heavy metal, a representative for the German-based chemicals producer said, “BASF does not support its use in tattoos.”
‘No Procedure to Certify’ Absolute Ink Safety
In the past, researchers have approached chemical companies to ask what they were putting in new colorants, “so we can anticipate what will end up in tattoos,” Kluger said. “But they wouldn't tell us.”
There's relatively little data on exposure levels to toxins or contaminants from people who have had tattoos, and the budget and testing protocols for tattoo inks are nowhere near as rigorous as they are for new medicines or cosmetics, Kluger added.
“We just don't know much about the toxicology of tattoos in general,” he said. “Therefore, we can't say what a specific problem may be, whether it's the colorant, solvent, stabilizer, or impurities. Right now, there is no procedure to certify an ink is 100 percent safe.”
Fewer Color Choices, Higher Costs
Seven EU member states have developed their own laws based on a 2008 Council of Europe resolution, which recommended tougher standards for the safety of tattoos and permanent makeup.
And some in the business say the new ECHA proposal to cover all EU states is unneccessary.
“I am not happy when they just ban pigments that we have used for many, many years and never had any issues with,” said Lou Rubino, owner of World Famous Tattoo Inks based in South Carolina, which exports to the EU.
“It's such a a small amount that actually gets under the skin,"Rubino said. “If they want to put a warning on it—fine. Make it like cigarettes, which are proven to cause cancer, but are not banned.”
Ultimately, said Rubino, outlawing more substances would lead to fewer colors being available to artists, and higher costs for tattoos.
Safety ‘Our Calling Card’
But others in the tattoo industry said added protections for customers aren't necessarily bad for business.
“Safety is the most important thing for tattoo artists; that's our calling card,” said Andy Schmidt, chairman of the German Federal Tattoo Association (BVT) in Berlin.
“Even if the costs do go up a little, if a tattoo costs 500 euros instead of 450, I don't think that would stop someone from getting a tattoo.”
Schmidt said the biggest concerns he has is with pigment makers who won't share information with researchers.
ECHA Seeks Input
In the absence of an EU-wide standard, ECHA said it is proceeding on the assumption that the best way to manage the risk is to limit the presence of unwanted substances.
The agency plans to launch a six-month public consultation on the proposed restrictions, starting in mid-December.
The Danish environmental authority has created a website that assists tattoo artists in making sure they use safe ink. In 2016, Norway tested tattoo inks from 12 importers for the presence of heavy metals, as well as microbiological quality.
Apart from individual programs, the labeling of some inks could be covered under the EU's Classification, Labeling, and Packaging (Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008). And for the manufacture of more than a ton of a particular substance per year, the REACH law (Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006) on chemical registration could apply, the chemicals agency said.
The agency noted, however, that “as many of the hazardous substances may be present in tattoo inks or permanent makeup in small quantities, the obligations under CLP and REACH may not apply.”
The time frame for both the public consultation period and EU legislative process mean it would likely take two years before any new restrictions could become law.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839950&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839950&jd=123839950
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Consumer NGO Calls For Limit On Lip Balm Mineral Oils
Nov 16, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Beuc, the European Consumer Organisation, has called on the European Commission to impose a safety limit on mineral oil hydrocarbons in lip care products.
In a letter to Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU commissioner for the internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs, Beuc urged her to "explore a way" to implement official EU guidance values for mineral oils.
Beuc says concentrations of mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAHs) and mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSHs) should be kept at a level low enough to avoid a substantial contribution to total consumer exposure.
In an annex to its letter Beuc refers to a study proposing no more than 5% MOSH in lip balms. But the NGO told Chemical Watch it is too early to ask the Commission for a specific limit value.
"As a first step we instead ask the Commission to look into what can be done," said Pelle Moos, Beuc project officer on chemicals.
MOAH, a potential carcinogenic impurity in mineral oils, should be controlled by enforcing the cosmetics Regulation, Beuc said. It wants the Commission to work with member states to ensure that the fraction of MOAH in mineral oils is kept below the level of detection.
Carcinogenic substances used to be considered automatically banned from use in cosmetic products. But last year the Commission announced that a prohibition must be implemented by a specific act amending the relevant annexes of the cosmetics Regulation. The move was fiercely criticised by some member states.Evidence
Beuc says new evidence reflects the "need for a swift EU response" to reduce the amount of mineral oils in lip care products.
It refers to work by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), which has flagged current dietary exposure to certain mineral oils in the European population as "of potential concern".
Earlier this year a Danish study found that 14 out of 20 lip balms tested contained mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAHs).
And according to the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS), daily users will "eat" four lip balms each year.Next steps
Beuc says it has not received an official response to its letter yet. But the Commission has agreed to include it in a discussion at its cosmetics working group meeting on 17 November.
"We hope/expect that this will kick-start a discussion among member states and the Commission on how the concern for mineral oils in lip balms can be addressed," Mr Moos said.
"Involving the SCCS would in my view be a very relevant step, but let’s see what reaction we have on Friday."
Meanwhile, Belgian MEP Claude Rolin has submitted a written question to the Commission about this issue. The Commission has not yet replied.
https://chemicalwatch.com/61105/consumer-ngo-calls-for-limit-on-lip-balm-mineral-oils
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Senate GOP Eyes Separate 'Extenders' Bill For Energy
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss and George Cahlink
Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee said today they're looking to assemble legislation to address a number of unresolved energy issues that will move separately from the broader tax overhaul the panel is marking up this week.
"We don't want to mix the two together," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the former Finance Committee chairman, told E&E News this afternoon of the assortment of energy amendments that have been filed to the panel's tax overhaul.
The more than two dozen energy-related offerings include several Grassley amendments that would address expired biodiesel tax breaks. Other proposals would extend a key nuclear production tax credit and a variety of "orphaned" renewable sources left out of a 2015 tax deal.
The offerings also include a tweaked carbon capture and sequestration incentive, as well as a proposal to extend master-limited partnership (MLP) tax treatment from fossil fuel projects to clean energy sources (E&E Daily, Nov. 14).
Finance Republicans were pushing to address some of the energy amendments in the revised chairman's mark unveiled late last night, but that effort fell short (E&E Daily, Nov. 15).
The plan "right now is to have an extenders bill that moves separately from the tax reform bill," Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a member of the Finance panel and GOP leadership, said this afternoon.
However, Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was noncommittal when asked about the possibility of another extenders package after tax reform.
"I don't know," he said as he entered a GOP luncheon off the Senate floor.
While it looks as if Republicans will hold on to their energy amendments in committee, it's unclear whether Democrats will do the same.
The Finance markup is now in its third day, and the panel has yet to debate any of the 350-plus amendments that have been filed. Democrats have signaled they plan to use the amendment process to highlight the tax bill's effect on the middle class.
The committee has spent the past two days questioning the Joint Committee on Taxation over the changes included in the bill. Members of both parties have sparred, heatedly at times, over the process, with Democrats complaining about the GOP decision to bring the Affordable Care Act into the tax bill, a change made in the revised bill released last night.
Despite talk of an extenders bill, ClearView Energy Partners today said energy issues could still come up in committee or the floor, citing as an example the bipartisan MLP amendment introduced by Hatch on behalf of Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).
That proposal "could serve as a negotiating counterweight to House proposals to prorate the production tax credit (PTC) and investment tax credit (ITC)," the analysts wrote, referencing the House bill's retroactive repeal of an inflation adjustment for the PTC and new construction requirements for the ITC.
The House bill also contains a number of other energy provisions, including the extensions of the ITC for a handful of renewable sources left out of the 2015 agreement, as well as an extension of a key nuclear production tax credit that is crucial to Georgia lawmakers.
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas), a House Ways and Means Committee member and critic of renewable energy subsidies, said today he was satisfied with the House bill's treatment of the PTC and ITC.
"I like it the way it is in the bill," he told E&E News, adding he had not heard any discussion of a separate extenders bill.
However, more than 200 wind energy companies today wrote to House leaders urging them to jettison the PTC rate cut before tomorrow's floor vote on the tax bill.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who last week unsuccessfully offered an amendment during the Ways and Means markup to preserve the PTC and ITC deal as enacted in 2015, said talk of a separate extenders bill highlights widespread frustration over the GOP tax reform push (Greenwire, Nov. 9).
"I think there's a lot of blowback on what they're doing," he told E&E News this afternoon. "If it somehow passes, we're going to be involved with fixing things that are just going to boil over."
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/15/stories/1060066649
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U.S., Mexico, Canada Energy Chiefs Pledge Cooperation in NatGas, Oil Projects
Nov 15, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday said he expects Mexico and Canada will join the United States in drafting a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to incorporate cooperation for the continent’s burgeoning natural gas and oil trade.
The North American Energy Ministerial held in Houston brought together the top energy policy leaders from the three countries to discuss cross-border issues. Perry was joined by Mexico Secretary of Energy Pedro Joaquin Coldwell and Canada Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr.
Trilateral cooperation is imperative for energy, Perry said during a press conference at the University of Houston. NAFTA renegotiations are designed to update the 1994 treaty to reflect changes in Mexico’s energy sector and deepen ties to Canada and U.S. energy markets. Perry tried to dispel fears that the Trump administration’s protectionist slant could roil the continent’s oil and gas markets.
“Canada and Mexico are the largest energy trading partners of the United States," Perry said at the news conference. "And the energy security of our three countries is achievable because of mutual cooperation."
Renegotiating NAFTA “is a good process,” the former Texas governor said. “Competition is a good thing...It's a healthy process...I'm comfortable that our friends in Mexico and our friends in Canada are pretty good negotiators, and at the end of all this process, we will not only have a good agreement, it will be a fair agreement."
Fifteen years ago, Perry said, “they told us we had found all the oil and gas there was to find” but “that's not the case. Does it make sense to sit down and renegotiate a new North American trade agreement? Yes, I think it does. But that we wouldn’t find a deal? That’s really far-fetched.”
Potential collaboration was discussed regarding energy infrastructure, technology and cybersecurity. The three energy leaders also shared their views about climate change and reiterated commitments to mitigate carbon emissions while promoting economic prosperity.
Economic cooperation should surmount partisan politics, with cooperation continuing to develop low-carbon energy resources, Carr said. The Trump administration plans to withdraw from the global climate accord reached in late 2015, of which Canada and Mexico are signatories.
"We are moving toward a lower-carbon energy economy," Carr said. "This is not about partisan politics."
Mexico’s energy reforms offer a good opportunity to work with North American partners on energy trade, Coldwell said, citing potential partnerships for infrastructure, information, talent development and energy reliability.
“The future is very positive” said Coldwell. Mexico plans to invest $60 million, which could be doubled, to develop energy research and development. Mexico is partnering with the Houston Technology Center and Texas universities to advance some of its programs.
Also discussed at the ministerial was the security, affordability, resiliency and reliability of the continent’s shared energy systems. The leaders said they plan to collaborate on critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, system modernization, renewable energy integration and nuclear energy and security.
In addition, the trio discussed how to develop and diversify North America’s vast energy resources responsibly and how to use technology to advance renewable energy, nuclear power and “cleaner” fossil fuels. Energy issues related to women also were on the table, as the three men talked about providing access to “sustainable, secure, reliable and affordable energy, and the further inclusion of women within a growing energy workforce as being crucial to further driving economic growth and gender equality.”
While the energy ministerial resulted in no new policy agreements, the U.S. Department of Energy, Natural Resources Canada and the Mexico Energy Secretariat, or Sener, agreed to further North American energy cooperation where they share objectives to identify and implement areas of cooperation.
"The U.S., Canada, and Mexico share many of the same energy interests and aims, and each of our great nations has made important contributions to North America’s energy boom," said Perry. "We will continue a strong and robust cooperation among our three countries because underlying our partnerships is an understanding that the interconnectedness of our economies and our energy systems means we can achieve more by working together than we can by working alone."
North America “is truly positioned to be a global energy powerhouse...I look to the future with growing confidence."
The energy chiefs on Wednesday were to attend the North American Energy Forum in Houston. The event, sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership and the Asociacion de Empresarios Mexicanos, aka the Mexican Entrepreneurs Association, was being moderated by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Chairman Bobby Tudor.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Caitlin Webber and James Blatchford on Wednesday said a U.S. exit from NAFTA was “improbable,” but if it were to implode, U.S. gas exports to Mexico would slow and Canadian trade would be disrupted. “Neither Mexico nor the U.S. wants to risk their booming natural gas trade, which supports an outcome from the NAFTA renegotiation that avoids negative industry impacts,” the analysts said in a note. Domestic gas pipeline exports to Mexico “have more than quadrupled since 2010,” while Mexico’s demand has risen and output has declined.
Exiting NAFTA also could “unintentionally” slow the growth of U.S. gas exports, they said.
“Under U.S. law, such exports are given expedited approval by the Energy Department to countries with U.S. free-trade deals. If a country doesn't have such a pact with the U.S., that approval process can be lengthy and full of red tape.”
Meanwhile, the Canada-U.S. gas trade is “roughly 10 Bcf/d, 80% of which originates in Canada,” said the analysts. Nearly all of the pipeline trade was worth an estimated $7.3 billion in 2016. “It has been valued at an average of $11.3 billion annually over the past five years,” they wrote.
“In the event of an improbable U.S. exit from NAFTA, the natural gas industry would likely be affected by a range of secondary effects. A contraction in the Mexican economy as a result of an exit could reduce demand for electricity. Cancellation of investor-dispute panels might add risk to pipeline projects.
“Even without NAFTA,” the analysts said, “natural gas and liquefied natural gas could be traded duty-free between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, because those nations levy zero-percent tariffs on a most-favored-nation basis.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112455-us-mexico-canada-energy-chiefs-pledge-cooperation-in-natgas-oil-projects
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Perry Says Renegotiating NAFTA Needed Because Of U.S. Energy Bounty
Nov 15, 2017 | Chron
By Collin Eaton
At appearances in Houston this week, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said it makes sense for the United States, Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, in part because of the enormous new supply of U.S. oil and gas locked in once-inaccessible shale rocks.
Asked whether renegotiating NAFTA – a thorny and potentially yearlong process that the Trump Administration began this summer – would affect energy trade between the three countries, Perry said the renegotiation was a "good process; it's a healthy process."
"Fifteen years ago, they told us we found all the oil and gas there was to find and that the days of being able to develop oil and gas were over with," Perry said, "Well, that's not the case. So does it make sense to sit down with our colleagues in Canada and Mexico to renegotiate a new North America Free Trade Agreement? Yes, I think it does."
Speaking alongside Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr and Mexico's Energy Secretary Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, Perry called speculation that the United States, Canada and Mexico would not be able to agree on terms for a new cross-border trade deal "far-fetched."
"Our friends in Mexico and Canada are pretty good negotiators," he said. "We not only will have a good agreement, it'll be a fair agreement, and the private sector can know there will be contract in hand so when they come to invest in Mexico or Canada or the United States, there will be a good framework in place in which they can do business."
On Wednesday, at an energy conference in downtown Houston, Perry also urged collaboration between the three North American nations on hardening the cybersecurity of electric grids. The Department of Energy, he said, is charged with ensuring the nation's power grid is protected from online attacks, but Perry called cybersecurity "one of the greatest challenges of our generation."
"We work on it on a daily basis in our national labs," Perry said. "The bad news is there's a lot of bad guys out there with intent to do harm in this region in the cyber world."
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Perry-says-renogiating-NAFTA-needed-because-of-12359398.php
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Chemical Plant Owners Urged to Prepare for Worst-Case Flooding
Nov 15, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christopher M. Matthews
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is warning that many industrial sites where hazardous materials are stored may not be adequately prepared for extreme weather events.
A dayslong chemical fire outside of Houston during Hurricane Harvey erupted because the plant’s owner never anticipated the worst-case scenario that played out in August as historic rainfall swamped its facility, the federal investigator said Wednesday.
French chemical maker Arkema SA had a disaster plan in place for its Crosby, Texas, plant located 25 miles from downtown Houston, but it didn’t anticipate 6 feet of floodwater. Flooding caused the site’s main electrical source to fail and then forced workers to shut off emergency power generators. Without refrigeration systems to cool the organic peroxides manufactured at the plant, the compounds became unstable and ignited.
The Arkema disaster should be a lesson to other chemical and industrial plants that urgently need to reassess their flood planning, lead investigator Mark Wingard said.
Vanessa Sutherland, chairwoman of the Chemical Safety Board, said Harvey showed that more extreme storms are possible and industrial sites need to re-evaluate how they prepare for flooding and test their worst-case assumptions.
“Facilities on the Gulf must reassess,” she said. “Plan and plan again.”
Even 3 feet of flooding would have caused the Arkema plant to lose power, making its hazardous materials unstable, the agency said. Arkema produces organic peroxides at the site, which are used to make plastic resins, PVC, fiberglass and other building materials.
When off refrigeration, organic peroxides degrade and become a fire hazard. As the storm hovered over the Houston area, workers moved the compounds from powerless warehouses to nine refrigerated trailers at the site, the Chemical Safety Board said. Within a day those trailers flooded and the power failed, causing the peroxides to explode.
Arkema has said it was impossible to predict the historic rainfall and flooding caused by Harvey, which exceeded even a 500-year flooding event. A spokeswoman said the company would continue to cooperate with the investigation.
The Chemical Safety Board is an independent investigating agency but doesn’t have the authority to impose fines or force companies to change their practices. The board stopped short of issuing any formal recommendations to Arkema because its investigation is ongoing.
As the trailers caught fire sending dark plumes of smoke billowing into the sky, local authorities evacuated residents within a 1.5-mile radius and emergency responders set the remaining trailers on fire to speed up the process.
No one was killed during the fire, but seven first responders have sued Arkema, alleging they were exposed to dangerous fumes and hospitalized because the company didn’t properly prepare for the power outage. Arkema has denied the allegations.
A new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study suggests that looking at historical records of extreme rainfall won’t provide much insight into the future because high-intensity storms are increasing in frequency.
The MIT study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that Houston—and Texas in general—will face an increasing risk of devastating rainfall. Texas had a 1% chance of experiencing Harvey-scale rainfall for any given year between 1981 and 2000, the study said. That risk could rise to 18% by the end of the century if greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise. Those emissions help warm offshore waters—a phenomenon that can magnify the severity of storms and generate more rain, creating bigger floods, the authors said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chemical-plant-owners-urged-to-prepare-for-worst-case-flooding-1510774059
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Chemical Plants Face New Reality in Natural Disaster Preparation
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nushin Huq
As tropical storms in the Gulf Coast increase in frequency and intensity, it's imperative that facilities reassess operation plans and worst-case scenario assumptions, Chemical Safety Board Chairwoman Vanessa Sutherland said Nov. 15.
In August, Hurricane Harvey dumped over 50 inches of rain in Texas, resulting in widespread flooding and destruction, including a series of explosions at the Arkema Inc. chemical plant located on a flood plain in Crosby, Texas—30 miles outside Houston.
Now, the hundreds of chemical, manufacturing, and refining facilities dotting the swamps and channels of Texas and Louisiana are facing doubts over their previous assumptions about wind, water, and losing power during potentially bigger disasters than Hurricane Harvey, Sutherland said.
“Don't be lulled into a false sense of safety that it can't or won't happen here,” Sutherland told reporters during a press conference in Washington about the CSB investigation into the Arkema incident.
Possible Guidance
It was the first hurricane-related incident the agency has investigated in several years and could prove to be an opportunity for the CSB to issue guidance for industry to prep for extreme weather, Sutherland told reporters.
Arkema's backup generators were placed two feet above ground, but the water rose above three feet, the CSB found in their initial investigation. While Arkema planned for this type of event, it wasn't enough, Sutherland said.
The CSB plans to learn why it wasn't enough and to share that with other companies. The agency would like to issue a final report on Arkema by June 2018, ahead of next hurricane season.
Flooding Factors
When Arkema was built, the facility wasn't located in a flood plain, Mark Wingard, CSB lead investigator, said at the press conference. That changed in 2007 when regulators reassessed the flood plains, and the redrawn maps placed the facility in the 100- and 500-year flood plains.
Companies often pick plant locations based on factors like access to waterways or communication, but a location's potential exposure to natural calamities should also be considered, Sam Mannan, executive director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, told Bloomberg Environment.
There is no reason to place a hazardous material site in a flood zone, Mannan said.
“Storms like Katrina, Rita and now Harvey are going to happen more often,” Mannan said. “I don't know if it's climate change or something else, but with the chemical industry, this is an issue that's going to need to be addressed.”
The chemical industry needs to build plants so that the consequences are less severe when the worst-case scenario happens. That means away from areas prone to flooding and areas with high population density, Mannan said.
A Tale of Two Plants
Just 3 miles down the road from the Arkema plant, another custom chemical processing plant owned by KMCO LP began preparing for the storm a week before Harvey made landfall, Keith Terhune, vice president of industrial and supply chain at KMCO LLC told Bloomberg Environment.
As soon as hurricane season begins, KMCO officials, like those of many other companies in the region, constantly watch weather reports in the Gulf region for any signs that activity might develop into a named storm.
Harvey came in quickly, so the company had less lead time than with other storms, Terhune said.
But for the week leading up to the storm's landfall, KMCO officials met daily. As the hurricane came closer, the meetings increased and the company went through a checkpoint system, secured the plant, and made sure it had the resources, such as backup generators, to support it for a few days.
KMCO's site is not located in the flood plain, but it does have runoff problems in heavy rain with water pooling around the plant, Terhune said. Some low-lying areas of the plant flooded during Harvey, but most of the processing areas for chemicals are diked and the company was able to pump water out of the dikes as needed, he said.
When it became clear the plant likely would be affected by the hurricane, the company planned for a 10-person crew—including operators, mechanics and electricians—to stay through the storm, which lasted from Aug. 27 to Aug. 29. KMCO officials also shut the plant down by Aug. 27.
Shutting the plant down makes consequences easier to manage, Terhune said, because it prevents unexpected power outages.
The company didn't move any chemicals out of the plant and brought in additional backup generators, Terhune said. If those generators failed, the company could have neutralized the chemicals.
KMCO's emergency plan worked, he said, and the biggest challenge the company faced was getting employees back to work. Some had flooded homes, and others weren't able to get gas for their cars.
After the Storm
As operations at KMCO were returning to normal following the storm, Arkema's challenges were just beginning, according to the timeline put together by company and federal officials.
A series of explosions occurred around Arkema's plant from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. Backup generators at the plant failed and weren't able to cool refrigerated trucks containing containers of organic peroxide.
As temperatures rose, the chemicals ignited. When company officials realized the backup generators had failed, they announced that an evacuation of residents within a 1.5 mile radius of the plant was needed.
Arkema is now facing multiple lawsuits from county governments, residents, and first responders, who allege the company was unprepared for the storm. But the plant's location in a flood plain came as no surprise to company officials, who said in a press conference shortly after the first explosion that the company had gone through multiple floods but had never seen anything like this.
A complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas by nearby residents said the company knew that organic peroxide products would burst into flames if not refrigerated, and that the company should have known the plant lies in a flood plain and is prone to flooding. The company also should have known that the loss of power and flooding would likely occur during a hurricane.
The plant is also under investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency, which last inspected the plant in 2003.
Arkema declined an interview with Bloomberg Environment, citing ongoing litigation.
Future Flooding Events
In light of Harvey, the chemical industry needs to re-examine its process hazards analysis, and consider very low-probability events, Mannan said, such as “500-year events” that can bring down over 50 inches of water.
Not everything in a plant can be built to withstand a 500-year event, but some things have to be built to that standard, Mannan said. He and his team are studying Harvey to try to determine not only the failures of companies’ emergency plans, but also things companies did that worked, such as removing certain chemicals from inventories ahead of the storm.
“Harvey didn't materialize overnight,” Mannan said. “They had some time to prepare for it. Particularly, if they had gone through the scenario analysis and did planning and training for it.”
Mannan would like to have some type of national tracking system of incidents in order to perform trend analysis.
“Are we getting better?” Mannan asked. “Should we target our resources in more incident prone chemicals and processes?”
More information about stored chemicals needs to be shared with the community as well as with first responders, who are often casualties when accidents happen at facilities, Mannan said.
Sutherland echoed the sentiment.
“We recognize that emergency responders, police officers are always the first to be exposed,” Sutherland said. “That's one of the things we continue to focus on, emergency planning and response communication before emergency responders show up on a site.”
Considering the concentration of chemical plants in Texas and the ferocity of the storm, the impacts from Harvey were limited, Mannan said.
“We came out very well,” he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839949&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839949&jd=123839949
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CSB Backs Parts Of Obama EPA RMP Rule To Address Facility Flood Risks
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is backing parts of the Obama EPA's facility safety prevention rule to help facilities better prepare for worsening risks from flooding, saying companies should reassess their emergency planning and coordination with first responders and communities to ensure adequate planning for extreme weather.
During a Nov. 15 conference call updating CSB's investigation of an Aug. 31 chemical facility fire sparked by Hurricane Harvey floodwaters, CSB Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland called for facilities to reassess emergency plans to account for flood risks, and underscored the need for key prevention concepts included in the agency's facility safety rule -- one of the regulations that the Trump administration plans to scale back.
With “tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico increasing in frequency and intensity, it's important that facilities have effective emergency response procedures in place,” Sutherland said.
While Sutherland did not overtly back the Obama EPA's Jan. 12 final rule updating the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility accident prevention program with new requirements for hazard analysis, coordination with first responders and streamlined sharing of facility hazard data with communities, she strongly backed the three concepts that were a significant part of the rule that now faces possible repeal.
There is a need for “better preparation and planning and communication with communities and emergency responders about risks and possible consequences,” Sutherland said. “We want people to be comfortable near a facility,” she added, noting that facilities should communicate “what they're storing and what the possible consequences could be of a catastrophic event.”
Sutherland also said the change from the Obama to Trump administration does not affect CSB's mission of investigating accidents and recommending improvements to safety rules.
“Our job as an independent non-regulatory agency is unique. Our mission is to hold everyone accountable -- the regulated community for how their operations run . . . and also to hold the regulators accountable,” she said. “The CSB will issue recommendations as many times as we need to to drive chemical safety change.”
CSB is investigating the Aug. 31 fire at an Arkema, Inc. facility in Crosby, TX. The fire occurred after rising floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed backup cooling systems needed for safe storage of organic peroxide chemicals stored on site and used in the production of consumer products. First responders sought medical attention after exposure to smoke from the fire.
Facility Safety
Environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers have argued that the Arkema fire casts doubt on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's nearly two-year delay and plan to revise aspects of the Obama-era RMP rule.
Although the Trump EPA has not announced potential changes, Pruitt, in his prior role as Oklahoma's GOP attorney general, opposed the proposed rule's requirement for sharing of facility data with the public, arguing such disclosure raises security concerns.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), in a Sept. 1 letter to Pruitt argued that the Arkema fire cast doubt on Trump administration plans to roll back the RMP rule, and suggested stronger requirements to bolster emergency planning may be necessary in an era of increased flooding, often attributed to climate change.
During the call, CSB officials said that as part of their investigation of the Arkema incident, staff is reviewing existing guidance documents on preparing facilities for flood risks to determine if new guidance or regulation may be necessary. Officials also said they plan on completing the Arkema investigation and issuing a final report by June to inform industry preparations for next year's hurricane season.
The CSB call for stronger efforts to harden facilities from future storms comes the day after board members voted 3-1 to rescind an earlier recommendation to bolster certain worker protections at off-shore drilling operations after the April 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The move came after the Interior Department's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement refused to implement the recommendation for strengthening requirements for worker participation in safety management, including empowering worker representatives to collaborate with employers on safety procedures and issue stop work orders if a task is deemed unsafe.
During the meeting board members who voted for withdrawing the recommendation said they plan to continue pushing for the new safeguards but must first urge Congress to determine which federal agency should implement the changes, noting that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is one possible recipient of the recommendations.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/csb-backs-parts-obama-epa-rmp-rule-address-facility-flood-risks
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Eastern States’ Carbon-Trading Program Set to Expand
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is poised to expand to two large Eastern states as soon as next year, marking the biggest expansion of the cap-and-trade program since it was created almost a decade ago.
The election of Phil Murphy (D) as governor of New Jersey and Ralph Northam (D) as governor of Virginia virtually assures that RGGI—which now covers nine states in the Northeast—will also include New Jersey and Virginia. The scope of the program will expand by about 60 percent, according to carbon emissions data from the Energy Information Administration analyzed by Bloomberg Environment.
The expansion means that electric power companies in the Northeast will have a larger market to buy and sell emissions allowances. It also means that Virginia power companies such as Dominion Energy— which has a considerable fleet of coal- and oil-fired plants—will need to purchase carbon allowances or transition to cleaner fuels.
If New Jersey and Virginia are linked to RGGI, the total carbon emissions in the electricity sector for the 11 states would make up 6.2 percent of all states’ emissions, or 125.5 million tons, according to EIA data for 2014. Virginia would have the second-highest amount of carbon emissions of all RGGI states after New York, and New Jersey would be third.
Larger Market
“The RGGI states recognize that all participating states can benefit from a broader market with more participants,” RGGI said in a Nov. 9 statement. “Larger markets increase economic efficiency and cost-effectiveness, align more closely with the regional nature of our electric grid, and can help drive even greater consumer savings. These economic benefits come hand-in-hand with benefits to our environment, climate, and public health.”
Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), New Jersey's largest provider of electric and gas service, welcomes the moves by New Jersey and Virginia, Paul Rosengren, a spokesman for PSEG, told Bloomberg BNA Nov. 14. He said the transition will be easy because it owns and operates plants in New York and Connecticut and already participates in the RGGI program.
“We've always felt that this is most effective, the more states that are involved,” he said. “We remain concerned about cross-border issues,” he said, referring to bordering states such as Pennsylvania. “We're committed to working to address that within the RGGI process.”
Pennsylvania has no plans to join RGGI, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Environmental Protection.
Separate Paths
Joining RGGI—or re-joining in the case of New Jersey—will have a different look in both states.
Virginia is expected to take a regulatory route that links it to RGGI, rather than formally joining the program, following a May directive by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) that the commonwealth develop a trading-ready program to reduce carbon emissions. Virginia's State Air Pollution Control Board is scheduled to vote on a draft rule Nov. 16 that will establish an emissions trading program compatible with RGGI's.
The rule will be subject to public comment and approval by the governor. A final rule is not expected until the spring of 2018, at which time Northam is expected to approve the regulation, Kristie Smith, policy and campaigns manager for the Virginia Conservation Network, told Bloomberg Environment.
The election victory of Northam over Republican Ed Gillespie, an opponent of joining RGGI, and the potential Democratic takeover of the state's House of Delegates, means that there is “no chance the Virginia Legislature could pass a law to prevent the state from joining RGGI,” according to William M. Shobe, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia.
“The general opinion among folks I talk to is that the negotiations with RGGI will continue apace, as will the state regulatory process,” Shobe told Bloomberg Environment in a Nov. 8 email. “This does not depend on the outcome of the House of Delegates races.”
RGGI Compliant
The draft rule would not only be in line with RGGI's current requirements, but would comply with key components in the program's revised program, which is expected to be approved by the nine states next year.
“As we evaluate Virginia's proposed regulation, we are pleased to note that it appears consistent with the RGGI program in a number of key ways,” RGGI said. “In particular, the Virginia proposal shares many of the recently announced proposed improvements to the RGGI program through 2030, including a cap that declines 30 percent between 2020 and 2030, incorporation of a cost containment reserve, and an emissions containment reserve to enhance market stability.”
Samantha Quig, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said the Chamber is committed to clean air, but has concerns “with any regulation or policy that may increase the cost of doing business in the Commonwealth.”
“One of Virginia's greatest strengths is our competitive energy rates, which rank in the top 10 nationally,” she told Bloomberg Environment in an email. “Virginia's industrial rate is 6.72 cents/kwh while the RGGI states average is 11 cents/kwh.”
New Jersey, which withdrew from RGGI in 2011 at the direction of Gov. Chris Christie (R), is expected to rejoin the program. The state Legislature has repeatedly passed laws to rejoin, only to have them vetoed by Christie. Murphy has pledged to immediately rejoin when he takes office.
Murphy will face opposition from the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, which contends that the move will increase the already-high cost of electricity for the state's businesses.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839948&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839948&jd=123839948
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Four Air Pollution Bills Move Through House Panel
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee and Jennifer Lu
A House environment panel voted Nov. 15 to move forward four bills aimed at easing clean air regulations for coal refuse plants, brick kilns, wood heaters, and race cars.
The bills, approved by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, now move to the full Energy and Commerce Committee.
Similar versions of all the bills, except the wood heater bill, were introduced in the last Congress but failed to become law. Their chances could be different in the current political environment, given the Trump administration's strong anti-regulatory stance.
The panel approved, by a 13-10 vote, the Satisfying Energy Needs and Saving the Environment (SENSE) Act (H.R. 1119), which would sustain an existing waiver for waste-to-power companies under the Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule before it expires.
Without the waiver, four of the nation's 18 coal refuse plants—three in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia—likely will go out of business in April 2019, when the current waiver expires, according to the bill's supporters. Opponents claim the bill would overturn evidence-based scientific decisions made by government agencies and courts.
Brick, Heaters, Cars
Another bill (H.R. 1917), which would extend the date by which brick makers have to control hazardous air pollution from their kilns, was approved by the subcommittee on a 12-10 vote.
Brick companies, most of which are small firms, would have to borrow millions of dollars to pay for the equipment needed to comply with EPA rules, according to Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who introduced the legislation. Opponents maintain the bill is merely a bid to delay health protections until industry lawsuits are fully litigated and appealed.
By a 12-10 vote, the subcommittee approved a bill (H.R. 453) that would give manufacturers three more years before their heaters have to meet more stringent emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.
The current rule prohibits companies from making and selling, after May 2020, any wood heaters, hydronic heaters, and forced-air furnaces that don't meet the standard.
Finally, the panel approved, on a 13-9 vote, a bill (H.R. 350) to exclude cars made or modified for racing from being regulated as motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. When introducing the bill in January, Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R-N.C.) office said, “Congress never intended for race cars to be subject to the Clean Air Act.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839956&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839956&jd=123839956
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State Deadlines Loom But No Word From EPA on Ozone Decisions
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Lu
States’ upcoming deadline to address their ozone pollution that crosses state lines by 2018 looms, even though the EPA has yet to announce which areas exceed federal standards for the pollutant.
Meanwhile, states cannot begin to work on separate plans to control ozone pollution until the problem areas, or nonattainment areas, are named, Jeff Underhill, Ozone Transport Commission modeling committee chair and an air pollution official from New Hampshire, said at the group's Nov. 15 meeting.
“We are still looking at the remaining areas of the country,” said Mike Koerber, associate director for policy in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, in an update to the commission. However, he didn't say when the EPA would make its decisions on regions that exceed the ozone standards set in 2015.
Those designations, due Oct. 1, trigger legal requirements for states to plan how to cut ozone pollution. The agency announced Nov. 6 that 2,646 counties met the ozone standards, but did not say which areas violated federal standards.
Underhill told Bloomberg Environment he was also concerned the EPA might not announce the nonattainment areas all at once. The commission is a multi-state group that works on regional solutions to ground-level ozone in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
If nonattainment designations are announced at different times, that could lead to the creation of varying state plans and different attainment plans for separate regions within the same state, Underhill said.
“It makes everything more complicated,” Underhill said.
More Face Time Sought
Some state air agency regulators also expressed a desire for more face time with the EPA.
Underhill said he would like more communication with the EPA, for example, when the agency does air quality modeling and forecasts.
Ali Mirzakhalili, air quality director in Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control asked the EPA to hold an additional Clean Power Plan public meeting somewhere in addition to Charleston, W. Va.
Given that cooperative federalism and increased state engagement have become buzzwords with the EPA, said Shawn Garvin, OTC vice chair, it would make sense for the agency to talk about national policy in a more central location. Garvin, secretary of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, suggested Washington, D.C.
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Cross-State Rule Linked To 21% Drop In NOx Emissions
Nov 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
A senior U.S. EPA official outlined an upbeat picture today of compliance with the latest version of the agency's interstate air quality rule, pointing to preliminary data showing a 21 percent drop in power plant emissions of nitrogen oxides in the summer ozone season.
That's a 78,000-ton drop for the 22 states covered by the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule update in comparison with last year, Reid Harvey, director of EPA's clean air markets division, told members of the Ozone Transport Commission holding their fall meeting in Washington.
Across the region covered by the rule, NOx emissions were 7 percent below this year's cumulative cap, known as a budget. Only a half-dozen states exceeded their individual budgets for the season, which ended Sept. 30, and none by more than 6 percent, Harvey said.
The rule, published last year, is intended to limit NOx releases from coal-fired power plants that make it harder for downwind states to comply with EPA's 2008 ground-level ozone standard of 75 parts per billion. Ozone, which irritates lungs, is created by the reaction of NOx and volatile organic compounds in sunlight.
The rule took effect this spring; Harvey attributed the emissions drop in part to plants turning on existing pollution controls. "We've been working this year to make sure implementation ... goes smoothly," Harvey said.
EPA's previous attempts to limit interstate pollution have spawned epic legal wrangling; the current rule is facing 18 lawsuits mostly brought by power companies and Republican-led states.
In a motion filed yesterday, EPA lawyers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to push back the deadline to file their next brief by 30 days until mid-January. Assuming the court grants that motion, final briefs will be due by April 9.
The Ozone Transport Commission (OTC), created by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, is an advisory body that also seeks to implement ozone curbs across a territory that spans all or part of a dozen Northeastern states and the District of Columbia.
Today's meeting was only the commission's second since EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, an appointee of President Trump, took office. It fell two days after Bill Wehrum was sworn in as the agency's air chief.
Harvey was among several career EPA employees to offer commission members a circumspect overview of various initiatives — such as the proposed repeal or revisiting of landmark Obama-era regulations like the Clean Power Plan and tighter truck emission standards — that have attracted intense criticism from elected officials in the mostly Democrat-led states that make up the OTC.
Under Pruitt, EPA has so far also failed to make nonattainment designations that were legally due Oct. 1 for areas out of compliance with the 2015 ozone standard of 70 ppb. Some states and environmental groups have formally threatened to sue.
Mike Koerber, associate director of policy in EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, offered no new information today on its plans, saying, "We will be taking action at some point in the future."
Koerber and the other staffers also got some polite but pointed questions about the potential impact of the Trump administration's proposed regulatory rollbacks, particularly in light of recently released EPA modeling forecasts for states to use in drafting "good neighbor" interstate pollution reduction plans.
One of them came from Anne Gobin, air quality chief for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Her state, which suffers from some of the nation's most stubborn ozone problems, is currently in nonattainment for the 2008 standard. EPA's modeling shows that ozone concentrations will drop by 10 ppb in the next five years, Gobin said, a projection she found overly optimistic.
"I don't quite see how that's going to occur without a lot of new things going on; I don't see what those things are," she said.
While some good things — such as a shift to natural gas as a fuel source — are happening, she said, there are "also signals from this administration that make me fear backsliding of things we were counting on."
Asked what he saw as the path forward, Koerber agreed the predicted 10 ppb reduction is ambitious but added that "we'll just have to wait and see" whether EPA's forecast turns out to be too rosy.
While no modeling is perfect, Koerber said, "it's really the best information we have at this point in time."
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/15/stories/1060066651
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Manufacturers Push NSR Reform To Promote Lower-Emitting Technology
Nov 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Manufacturers are calling for an overhaul to ease EPA's Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permitting program to help promote technologies that can improve facilities' efficiency and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and conventional pollutants, arguing that NSR discourages installation of such technology.
Representatives from the manufacturing sector made the argument at a Nov. 15 Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) hearing at which other witnesses and lawmakers generally agreed on the importance of new technology to reduce air emissions but disagreed about the role of regulation to spur deployment of such technology.
NSR can require new facilities or facilities making unit upgrades to obtain strict air permits requiring potentially expensive emissions control technology. EPA has pledged to overhaul the NSR program to ease permitting requirements for facility operators, including launching a task force to assess potential changes to its implementing regulations.
While the agency likely will explore such regulatory changes to ease the burdens, broader NSR changes could require new legislation.
“In practice, NSR has become a barrier to efficiency upgrades and the installation of modern air pollution control equipment,” testified Ross Eisenberg, the vice president of energy and resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), at the EPW hearing. “I'm not suggesting that NSR shouldn't happen. Let's figure out a way to actually let it enable these efficiency upgrades, that's really all we're looking for.”
He cited a range of technologies that could improve steam boiler efficiency by about 2 percent, which could cut GHG emissions by roughly 6 percent. However, he said most facilities aren't installing such equipment “because it would result in NSR and start that saga.”
A Commerce Department report released last month outlining recommended actions on regulatory “reform” cites changes to the NSR program as a “top priority,” along with almost a dozen other EPA programs, ratifying industry calls for administrative and legislative changes to reduce the scope of environmental regulations.
And the recent confirmation of former George W. Bush EPA acting air chief William Wehrum as the agency's new Office of Air & Radiation (OAR) assistant administrator is expected to help accelerate the NSR reform effort as OAR now has a political appointee to oversee it.
Climate Rules
Other topics at the hearing included Democrats and Republicans touting advancements in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to limit coal plants' GHGs, the role of EPA's light-duty vehicle GHG standards in spurring technology innovation and how the agency should revise its Clean Power Plan (CPP) rule to limit power plant carbon emissions.
Regarding CCS, several senators including Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) touted their bill to extend and expand an existing tax credit known as 45Q for CCS projects.
“It's hard to achieve that technological opportunity . . . as long as there is no price on carbon,” Whitehouse said. “We've got that opportunity [in the 45Q bill] to at least create a window of a revenue stream to support that.”
Kipp Coddington, a long-time industry attorney who now directs the Carbon Management Institute at the University of Wyoming, also testified that the school is partnering with industry to develop a range of technologies to reduce GHGs from coal power or to use coal for other products such as carbon fiber that do not result in emissions.
In his opening statement, EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) praised the CCS research as developing “promising technologies that will allow us to both continue reducing our emissions and use our natural resources.” He also cited the NSR complaints floated by NAM and other industry groups.
Regarding the vehicle rules, Democrats and a representative of a coalition of labor and environmental groups touted the agency's current GHG rules for the sector as spurring economic growth for automakers and parts suppliers. However, they also warned that Trump administration moves to weaken the standards could stunt that growth.
“If we were to roll back standards, or even introduce great uncertainty, we put jobs at risk. We put innovation at risk,” testified Zoe Lipman, director of the BlueGreen Alliance.
She noted that parts suppliers operate globally and are constantly looking for where they will be “deploying the next generation of technology.” If other countries move forward with more stringent fuel economy standards, “we risk losing those investments.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the ranking Democrat on EPW, reiterated a prior argument that the agency could give automakers some “flexibility” in current standards out to model year 2025, in exchange for setting “more rigorous” targets out to MY30.
While not endorsing that specific deal, NAM's Eisenberg noted that the auto sector has “never really shied away from long-term standards. I just hope we can get to a place where everybody wins.”
Stationary Sources
He said that prior vehicle rules to a large extent were widely accepted by a range of stakeholders. “For some reason, we're able to do it in the vehicle sector. We figured out a path forward that was aggressive and everybody was able to live with it and create jobs,” he said. “We weren't able to do that on a lot of these core environmental issues on the stationary source side.”
He urged lawmakers and EPA to “modernize” some of the requirements in the Clean Air Act for industrial sources, likening such an effort to last year's bipartisan bill to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act. The air law is “begging for a similar approach,” he said, while adding that both sides must “build trust” on the issue.
Regarding general efforts to reduce GHGs, Eisenberg in response to a question from Whitehouse said that NAM believes “we should be acting on climate, period.” He noted that the group opposed the Obama-era CPP, largely because it would have served as a “precursor” to rules for other industrial sectors.
However, he noted that NAM has urged EPA to replace the rule. It is developing “some ideas on what that should look like. . . . There are things you could do within confines of [air act section] 111 that would hold up under the law and would be effective in reducing emissions.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/manufacturers-push-nsr-reform-promote-lower-emitting-technology
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Manufacturers Call For Changes To EPA Permitting Program
Nov 16, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
A top officer with the National Association of Manufacturers urged senators yesterday to help "fix" U.S. EPA's New Source Review permitting program, saying it can discourage companies from taking steps to curb emissions.
The program, often known simply as "NSR," requires industries to install modern pollution control equipment when building a new plant or making major upgrades to an existing facility.
The flip side, however, is that it often thwarts adoption of innovations that could reduce pollution, Ross Eisenberg, the association's vice president of energy and resources policy, said at the hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Under NSR, a manufacturer who installs state-of-the-art equipment to cut releases of nitrogen oxides would also have to undergo a review of all the facility's emissions, Eisenberg said.
"That's a lot of risk to shoulder for the installation of really just one component," he said. As a result, plant owners may opt against modernizing facilities to avoid triggering NSR, he added.
Eisenberg's testimony, part of a short hearing on the potential of innovation to reduce air pollution, is the latest sign that revamping the NSR program — a quest that George W. Bush's administration unsuccessfully pursued more than a decade ago in the face of opposition from environmental groups — could be returning to the fore.
In a report released last month, EPA chief Scott Pruitt also called for re-evaluating the program as part of the Trump administration's bid to lower barriers to domestic energy production (E&ENews PM, Oct. 25).
The Commerce Department had already singled out NSR in a separate report about possible changes to streamline the permitting process for manufacturers (Greenwire, Oct. 13).
While not privy to EPA's precise plans, Eisenberg said in a short interview after yesterday's hearing that he expected New Source Review to be a focus. "It should be," he said.
Also testifying were Kipp Coddington, who heads the Carbon Management Institute at the University of Wyoming, and Zoe Lipman, director of the vehicles and advanced transportation program at the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups.
Wyoming, also the home state of EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R), produces around 40 percent of the nation's coal.
In his testimony, Coddington highlighted an array of research projects intended to reduce carbon dioxide releases from coal combustion, come up with new uses for coal and help develop the technology needed to convert CO2 into products like concrete and fertilizer.
The university "is doing its best to advance the frontiers of these research areas for a variety of stakeholders," he said.
Lipman hailed innovation's role in helping to make energy-intensive American industries like aluminum and steel manufacturing some of the most productive and "lowest-emitting" in the world, with good wages to boot.
Both she and Coddington underscored the need for federal support, whether for university research or to provide financing to turn technological advances into marketable products. But federal standards also count, Lipman said.
"A sound regulatory framework is critical to provide companies with the certainty necessary to make large, long-term investments in innovation and scale," she said.
Barrasso, who endorsed the need for changes to the New Source Review program, challenged the idea that government regulation could play a constructive role, with a poke at the Obama administration.
"America moved away from an innovative approach and instead pursued a regulatory approach, which punished our businesses instead of supporting and collaborating with them," under Obama's watch, Barrasso said in his opening statement.
That drew a quick rejoinder from ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.).
Courtesy of tighter fuel economy standards initially launched by Congress as part of a bipartisan deal in 2007, vehicle efficiency will almost double by 2025, cutting oil imports and saving consumers money, Carper said.
Far from burdening the auto industry, he said, the tighter standards helped make it more competitive worldwide, accompanied by "unprecedented growth" and record sales last year.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/11/16/stories/1060066691
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California's Housing Policy Is Holding Back Its Climate Policy
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Esmé E Deprez
The high cost of housing in California isn't just hurting the state's economy, fueling homelessness, and exacerbating economic inequality. It's imperiling its reputation as a global leader in emissions reductions, too.
Lila Cabrera's move last year to Palmdale, a city of 160,000 in the high-desert region of Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles, illustrates the connection.
As a renter in Sylmar, Calif., “I was overdrawn every month,” says the single mom of three. “I just couldn't see it turning around.”
Now, a $1,370 mortgage payment gets her family more space for less money. It also gets her a 51-mile commute, which, in typical bumper-to-bumper traffic, takes an average of two hours each way.
As residents like Cabrera move farther from their employment in search of affordable homes, the state's progress toward its climate goals is slowing. In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, the state's greenhouse gas emissions dropped at less than half the rate of the previous year, according to an August report from the San Francisco-based nonprofit Next 10.
Low gas prices and a lack of affordable housing prompted more driving and contributed to a 3.1 percent increase in exhaust from cars, buses, and trucks, the report says. Census data show that more than 635,000 California workers had commutes of 90 minutes or more in 2015, a 40 percent jump from 2010.
“California has failed to build [housing] in the communities where we're seeing the largest job growth,” says Patrick Kallerman, research director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in San Francisco. “The highest-income folks can afford to live wherever they want,” he says. “It's the middle- or lower-income folks who can't.”
The state needs 180,000 new housing units each year, but fewer than 100,000 are built, according to Governor Jerry Brown's office.
“Each year that it goes on, things get worse,” Kallerman says.
Lack of accountability is one reason. California tasks regional agencies with developing sustainable community planning strategies, which include reducing sprawl. But when communities fail to meet their own goals, there are no mechanisms to penalize them, he says.
One disincentive for builders is the fiscalization of land use: Housing raises less tax revenue for local governments than retail. For Cabrera, the incentives are even more twisted. She works as a mortgage loan processor for a bank near Hollywood. Her $72,000 yearly salary is heavily dependent on commissions, which are determined by real estate prices. Were she to swap her job for one in Palmdale, she'd earn less money and revert to living paycheck to paycheck.
So it goes for many Californians: When cost of living is accounted for, census data show that the state has the nation's highest poverty rate, at 20.6 percent.
Brown has embraced the role of counterweight to the do-nothing climate deniers in Washington, most recently at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany. A Democrat in his fourth and final term in office, he's championed the passage of the strictest emissions laws of any state.
But residents’ continued reliance on cars is getting in the way. Transportation accounts for almost 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in California, more than any other sector, compared with 27 percent nationwide.
The state legislature made the housing crisis a focus of this year's session, passing 15 related bills. One seeks to expedite construction by accelerating the approval process for affordable housing. Another could raise as much as $250 million annually for subsidized housing—enough to build just 750 homes, given the $332,000 per unit estimate from Brown's office. Another places a referendum on next year's ballot asking voters to approve $4 billion for low-income housing and home loans for veterans.
“They're good, they move the ball forward,” Brown said before signing the measures into law in October. “Have they ended the need for further legislation? Unfortunately not.”
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World Leaders Press Climate Case As Poor Countries Decry Loss Of U.S. Funds
Nov 15, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
BONN, Germany — Heads of state arrived at the international climate conference Wednesday to press ahead with negotiations on implementing the global pact, while developing countries warned the loss of U.S. money would imperil their ability to meet their goals.
Few world leaders dwelled on President Donald Trump's move to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, instead focusing on the need to set the rules for the pact.
But Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel lauded the U.S. governors and mayors who traveled here to promote their efforts to curb carbon pollution despite the Trump administration's work to erase any trace of former President Barack Obama’s climate actions.
“I very much welcome this,” Merkel said. “It underlines the importance attached to climate change in broad swaths of American society, irrespective of the decision of President Donald Trump to leave the Paris agreement.”
J. Antonio Marcondes, chief negotiator for Brazil, declined to comment on how the U.S. negotiators were influencing the talks other than to say “[w]e’re working with them. We’re talking with them. They are participating in meetings.”
Countries were disappointed by the U.S. plan to withdraw from the Paris agreement, he said, but the talks were proceeding.
“The point is now to keep working [with] those that are in the agreement, those that are staying in the agreement, to walk forward, to walk fast and be able to implement Paris. The U.S. decision is the U.S. decision and it’s up to them.”
China’s special representative for climate change, Xie Zhenhua, said the U.S. remained active in the talks and that China “hopes that the United States will continue to play a constructive role in those negotiations.”
State Department negotiators in talks hadn't veered far from the positions held under previous administrations. And the White House hasn’t sought to renegotiate terms already settled in Paris, raising hopes that the U.S. might ultimately alter its course and decided to remain a party to the deal after all.
Still, developing countries were worried about Trump’s pronouncements that he won’t fulfill Obama-era promises to fund climate action around the world.
“The U.S. team has been on the ground and they are working with us,” said South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa. “But the actual payment of the money they have committed already — it has to come.”
The U.S. has contributed $1 billion of the $3 billion that Obama pledged to help poor nations fight climate change under the Green Climate Fund, but the Trump administration has said it would not pay the rest. The GCF funding, which the Paris deal says should rise to $100 billion annually from 2020 to 2025, has long been a source of tension between industrialized nations that produced most of the carbon pollution over the past century and developing countries that are seeing their emissions now climb.
Asked whether the world should trust the U.S. after it has backed out of more than one climate agreement in recent decades, Molewa said the global community is “fairly concerned.”
“That’s why everybody is dong the level best to get all of us sobering up and really just thinking hard about what the world needs,” she said. “The issue of climate change, the fight we are engaging in, is not about us only as individual countries, but it is beyond us. For humanity to survive, it is important that we all work together.”
After a last-minute announcement that U.S. Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon would not attend the high-level segments of the talks because of a family emergency, acting Assistant Secretary Judy Garber is set to make the first big speech on behalf of the U.S. on Thursday. Like Shannon, she is a career State Department official, and she is not expected to promote the White House effort calling for developing countries to build more efficient fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Although the U.S. won't contribute to the GCF, Trump aides here say they’re open to working with other countries to build coal, natural gas and nuclear plants. White House energy adviser George David Banks said the U.S. may band together with countries that may want coal plants but can't get financing for fossil fuels.
“It’s come up a few times, but I don’t know if we’ve had any sort of real international discussions or lengthy discussions with potential partners on that kind of arrangement,” Banks said. “I would say that the administration is interested in the idea and would like to explore exactly what it means.”
The White House may also initiate discussions with development banks, like the World Bank, about financing coal projects, he said.
The administration's coal pitch could cheer politicians from heavy coal-producing nations. Jerzy Buzek, the former prime minister of Poland and current chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, raised questions in Brussels last week about the financing necessary to transition off of fossil fuels.
"In the medium term, we still need huge investments also into existing systems,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Buzek said he supports a transition to cleaner technologies but that it “is not very easy to achieve in all the regions of the European Union. In the regions with heavy industry — let’s say coal- and carbon-intensive regions — it’s not easy.”
Banks said the administration also supports renewable energy but couldn’t offer any evidence of how.
“The United States has been helping finance the deployment of renewable energy technologies, right? But it’s essentially been a job program for China and for other countries,” he said.
He said the White House is conducting a review of its renewable energy policies, but declined to offer details.
David Siders, Kalina Oroschakoff and Sara Stefanini contributed to this report.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2017/11/world-leaders-press-climate-case-as-poor-countries-decry-loss-of-us-funds-165050
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Modest Progress Seen in Bonn Toward Global Emissions Trading
Nov 16, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Bonn are on the verge of scoring a modest victory toward international trading of emissions credits, which may be crucial if the world is to take the kind of actions needed to halt global temperatures’ rapid rise.
The 2015 Paris climate deal didn't go so far as to launch such efforts. Instead, it set in motion a set of talks that have begun in earnest in Bonn to work out rules on how to avoid double-counting of emissions credits, ensure transparency, and whether the United Nations’ climate secretariat should oversee the system.
The carbon-trading procedures—along with more transparent reporting and verification on countries’ emissions and a 2018 process for reviewing each nations’ progress in combating climate change—are on the table at the Bonn summit, which ends Nov. 17.
The Paris deal envisioned only a voluntary system in which, for example, European nations could one day trade credits with China's still-developing emissions system. Rules for launching such trading are to be completed over the next year.
Negotiators say a clear sign of progress in Bonn was agreeing to have a U.N. technical group, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, begin drafting the first text of the market-mechanism rulebook.
Brazilian negotiators told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 15 that the text would ideally be available for review by the more than 190 nations at the spring 2018 meeting of the technical group and then finalized at the next climate summit, to be held in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland.
Cement, Oil Sectors Watching
Dirk Forrister, who is tracking the emissions trading talks in Bonn and heads the International Emissions Trading Association, said energy-intensive, multinational industries such as cement manufacturers and oil producers are watching the rules development closely.
Many of those sectors are already covered by the European Emissions Trading Scheme or other carbon markets and want the option of international trading of carbon credits, particularly if nations are to ratchet up the ambition of the climate actions they pledged in the run-up to the Paris accord.
“There's really an economic driver behind all of this, and that is that that effort would be a lot cheaper for everyone” if companies can maximize the use of emissions trading, Forrister said.
Forrister pointed to a 2016 World Bank report, which concluded that international emissions trading could reduce global mitigation costs by more than 50 percent.
That report, State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2016, said the Paris pact's goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) beyond pre-industrial levels “will be difficult to achieve cost-efficiently without more carbon trading.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123839946&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123839946&jd=123839946
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How Companies Are Pushing Ahead on Climate-Change Targets
Nov 16, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Zeke Turner and Sarah Kent
More of the world’s biggest corporations are taking the fight against climate change into their own hands, aiming to cut their energy costs, pre-empt regulation or burnish their reputations with investors and customers.
Apple Inc. has draped its new California campus with solar panels. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.cut the energy consumption of its refrigerators. Steelmaker Thyssenkrupp AGstreamlined trucking routes, Dell Inc. made its servers less power-hungry and MicrosoftCorp. pledged Tuesday to slash its carbon output.
Among just over 1,000 of the world’s biggest publicly listed companies, accounting for about 12% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, 89% have plans to cut those emissions, according to a survey from the CDP, a nonprofit platform for corporate environmental disclosures. That is a 16 percentage-point increase since 2011, said the CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. Earlier this month, a group led by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Gov. Jerry Brown presented a climate pledge under which 1,400 businesses have set emissions-reduction targets.
As world leaders gathered in Bonn, Germany, this week to negotiate enforcement of the 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement on capping climate change, company and bank executives said corporations will be as crucial as governments in making good on the U.N. pact, from which U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to withdraw.
“The world is going to be saved or doomed by what the private sector will be doing,” said Steven Tebbe, the CDP’s managing director in Europe.
Yet while the CDP survey shows many large companies world-wide have committed to emissions-cutting targets, some investors and environmental analysts say those goals are rarely ambitious enough to meet the U.N.’s aim to cap global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. The U.N. said last week that the average global temperature from January to September 2017 was about 1.1°C above the preindustrial era.
“Companies have been setting targets for more than a decade now,” said Cynthia Cummis, director of private-sector climate mitigation at the environmental think tank World Resources Institute. “But when you look at them they’re often just leading to incremental change.”
Only 14% of the companies in the CDP study have committed to emissions-cutting goals that align with the U.N. target—an effort backed by the World Resources Institute—although another 30% have vowed to set such targets in the next two years.
Some companies have resisted the trend. According to the CDP’s survey, the natural-resource and financial sectors have the greatest number of companies with no targets at all. Some companies that support the Paris goals have also criticized the practice, saying firm emissions targets are inflexible and counterproductive. Royal Dutch Shell PLC this year batted off a proposal from investor to set binding targets, but sought to allay their concerns with plans to link executive bonuses to emissions reductions.
“Don’t expect that the complexity of this system can be boiled down into a simple numerical target,” Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told investors in May.
Still, many companies are pushing ahead with emissions cuts, saying they make sense on the bottom line.
Investors with $100 trillion in assets world-wide—including BlackRock Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. —say they refer to the CDP’s database when making investment decisions.
This month HSBC Holdings PLC said it would invest $100 billion in low-carbon businesses before 2025, and cut financing for new coal-fired power plants in the developed world and thermal-coal mines world-wide.
“You don’t want to be the last one that wants to get out of certain assets once you realize they are no longer viable,” said Daniel Klier, HSBC Holdings’ global head of strategy and sustainable finance.
Companies say setting targets and working to cut emissions helps them get a head start on any coming government mandates.
“Once lawmakers begin making rules and coming to us for comment, it’s too late to start,” said Thomas Fußhöller, head of sustainability, environment and energy management at Germany’s Thyssenkrupp, which plans to cut a million tons of carbon dioxide a year from its production processes by 2020. The company emitted about 34 million tons of CO2 in 2014.
In terms of money saved from measures like streamlining trucking routes and recycling heat, Thyssenkrupp estimates a million-ton cut in carbon emissions will produce cost savings in the “high millions” of euros.
The CDP’s Mr. Tebbe said there is a correlation between emissions targets and cost savings. “If you save on energy, you save on your supply chain, you’re going to run a tighter ship,” he said.
Microsoft says it has saved millions of dollars through efforts to improve efficiency and reduce consumption at its headquarters.
Taking action on climate is “increasingly fundamental to our business,” said Michelle Patron, director of sustainability policy at the software giant, which Tuesday pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 75% from 2013 levels by 2030. Microsoft, whose data centers consume as much energy as Vermont, already aims to get 50% of its energy from renewable sources by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, Apple has called the 17 megawatts of generation capacity at its new headquarters “one of the largest on-site solar energy installations in the world.”
Investors and companies also say climate-change policies help attract customers.
This year Wal-Mart launched an effort called Project Gigaton to remove one billion tons of carbon dioxide—the amount more than 211 million passenger cars emit in one year—from its supply chain between 2015 and 2030. It “inspires brand loyalty,” according to Laura Phillips, senior vice president for global sustainability.
The so-called reputation bonus also pushed China’s Yingli Group Co., a global solar-panel manufacturer, to set emissions targets for its production and supply chain. “We want to play a leading role” in efforts to rein in climate change, a Yingli spokeswoman said.
—Kersten Zhang in Beijing contributed to this article.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-companies-are-pushing-ahead-on-climate-change-targets-1510790610
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