Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 3/12/18
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Administration Asks Court to Dismiss Lawsuit from EPA Scientists
Mar 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Attorneys for the Trump administration are asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt’s new policy on science advisers. -
Study: Eating Highly Processed Foods Linked to Increased Cancer Risk
Mar 12, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Dawn Undurraga
The more highly processed foods you eat, the higher your risk of cancer. -
Echa Seeks Views on SVHC Identification Proposals
Mar 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Echa has opened a public consultation on proposals by member states and the agency to identify eight substances as SVHCs. -
EPA, Environmentalists Agree To Formaldehyde Rule Compliance Deadline
Mar 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Seeking to avoid supply-chain disruptions, EPA and environmentalists have agreed to a June 1 deadline for enforcing an Obama-era rule setting emissions standards for formaldehyde from wood products after a federal court last month rejected the Trump administration's one-year delay, giving industry an additional six months from the rule's initial compliance date. -
UK Releases Brexit Economic Impact Statement after Press Leaks
Mar 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The UK government has published its analysis of the impact of Brexit on sectors including chemicals, which it says will be one of the hardest hit. -
Don't Crown the US the New 'Swing Producer' in Oil Just Yet
Mar 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Bill Arnold
The CERAWeek conference, just held in Houston, was a feast of views on the energy industry. -
Road Map for ANWR Drilling Gets Clearer
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The Trump administration is taking the first steps in the long journey to opening oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain. -
Ryan's Piecemeal Approach May Keep GOP Infrastructure Push Afloat
Mar 12, 2018 | Roll Call
By Lindsey McPherson
A key piece of the Republicans’ 2018 legislative agenda is shape-shifting. -
Pruitt's Youth Advisers Slam Federal Inaction on Climate
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
U.S. EPA's youngest social justice advisers are hammering the federal government for its lack of action on climate change. -
Ewire: Trump's Staff Chief Kills Pruitt's Climate 'Red Team' Plan
Mar 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has killed an effort by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to launch a “red team, blue team” public debate on climate change science, according to a report, with Kelly and other top administration officials regarding the plan as “ill-concieved and politically risky.” -
Credits Will Cause a 'Surge' in Projects — Report
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Recently passed legislation in Congress will prompt an unprecedented "surge" in carbon capture, utilization and storage, and increase projects by more than 65 percent, the International Energy Agency said in a new analysis.
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Administration Asks Court to Dismiss Lawsuit from EPA Scientists
Mar 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Attorneys for the Trump administration are asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt’s new policy on science advisers.
Justice Department attorneys argued that Pruitt’s policy preventing EPA grant recipients from serving on external advisory committees is well within government ethics rules and Pruitt’s authority to pick his own advisers.
“Plaintiffs make the extraordinary claim that the EPA’s effort to ensure a diversity of viewpoints on advisory committees that provide advice and recommendations to the administrator somehow violates government-wide ethics rules. But the directive that plaintiffs challenge does no such thing,” the government wrote in a motion filed late Friday.
Lawyers further argued that the directive is not intended to change ethics rules, but is instead merely “a general statement of policy that describes the appointment philosophy EPA will apply regarding the federal advisory committees it administers.”
“Ultimately, the power to appoint committee members is the administrator’s alone and is non-reviewable by the courts under the circumstances presented here,” the attorneys said in asking for dismissal. “Plaintiffs’ challenge to these highly discretionary policy judgments and the EPA’s power to make them is unprecedented and should be rejected by the court.”
The case is being heard in the federal District Court for the District of Columbia by Judge Trevor McFadden, who was nominated last year by President Trump.
Pruitt rolled out the policy in October 2017, arguing that EPA grantees — generally academics with expertise in areas like public health and pollution — have significant conflicts of interests He said the new policy for advisers would eliminate such conflicts.
“We want to ensure that there’s integrity in the process, and that the scientists who are advising us are doing so with not any type of appearance of conflict,” Pruitt said at the time. “And when you receive that much money … there’s a question that arises about independence.”
Pruitt estimated that in the last three years, grantees sitting on the main three EPA advisory committees had received $77 million from the agency. The policy banning grant recipients from the boards is agency-wide, applying to all 22 advisory committees.
A handful of committee members were pushed out, and many were replaced by industry- or Republican-friendly advisers.
Some groups and researchers sued the EPA in December, saying the policy violated laws governing ethics, advisory committees in general and specific laws that authorized certain committees.
“EPA’s effort to purge independent scientists from its advisory committees has harmful implications for the nation’s health,” Barbara Gottlieb, director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said at the time. Her group is the leading plaintiff in the case, Physicians for Social Responsibility et al. v. Scott Pruitt.
“Losing top-flight academic researchers, and replacing them with industry-dependent voices, will undermine actions to protect us from toxic pollutants and life-threatening climate change. If EPA won’t abandon this harmful approach, we’re happy to take them to court.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/377921-trump-admin-wants-case-over-epa-science-advisers-dismissed
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Study: Eating Highly Processed Foods Linked to Increased Cancer Risk
Mar 12, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Dawn Undurraga
The more highly processed foods you eat, the higher your risk of cancer.
That’s the takeaway from a new study that followed more than 100,000 French adults for eight years. It found that a 10 percent increase in consumption of foods like soda, sugary snack cakes, processed meats and breakfast cereals corresponded with a 10 percent increase in cancer risk.
The study, published last month in the London-based medical journal BMJ, is the first of its kind to link increased cancer risk to all “ultra-processed” foods, not just processed meats. Ultra-processed foods are defined as foods that undergo multiple physical, biological and mechanical processes to be highly palatable, affordable and shelf stable.
According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, cancer is estimated to affect more than 1.6 million Americans each year, causing nearly 600,000 deaths. Dietary links to cancer have long been established, with about a third of cancer cases estimated to be preventable through more healthful diet and lifestyle choices.
Diets high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes are known to reduce the risk of cancer, while those high in processed meats increase cancer risk. Learn about EWG’s Cancer Defense Diet here.
According to the study, ultra-processed foods make up a significant part of modern diets, contributing one-fourth to one-half of the calories of an average diet. Ultra-processed are often high in chemical additives and preservatives, and low in fiber, beneficial vitamins and minerals, and cancer-preventative plant compounds called phytonutrients.
In a podcast discussion of the study, the researchers said they really don’t know the full impact of ultra-processed products on health. They hypothesized that these foods’ low nutritional quality, coupled with the high calorie, sodium and sugar content, could contribute to the increased risk of cancer.
But those factors alone didn’t account for the entire cancer burden. The researchers said that other contributing factors could be the prevalence of food additives in ultra-processed foods and the presence of other compounds created during food processing.
See EWG’s Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Additives to learn which ones to avoid.
The science on the health effects of ultra-processed foods is just beginning to emerge. In the meantime, EWG’s Food Scores can help you to steer clear of ultra-processed foods by revealing the degree of processing for more than 80,000 food products.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2018/03/study-eating-highly-processed-foods-linked-increased-cancer-risk#.Wqam1mpua6I
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Echa Seeks Views on SVHC Identification Proposals
Mar 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Echa has opened a public consultation on proposals by member states and the agency to identify eight substances as SVHCs.
Four are proposed because they are suspected of having persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) and/or very persistent and very bioaccumulative (vPvB) properties. They are:
octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) and decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5) – Germany;
dodecamethylcyclohexasiloxane (D6) – Echa; and
benzo[ghi]perylene – Denmark.
Meanwhile, Finland has proposed terphenyl, hydrogenated as an SVHC due exclusively to its potential vPvB properties.
Sweden has proposed two chemicals it believes to be toxic for reproduction – lead and disodium octaborate.
And Echa is assessing ethylenediamine, which it suspects of having respiratory sensitising properties.
The deadline for comments is 23 April.
https://chemicalwatch.com/64770/echa-seeks-views-on-svhc-identification-proposals
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EPA, Environmentalists Agree To Formaldehyde Rule Compliance Deadline
Mar 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Seeking to avoid supply-chain disruptions, EPA and environmentalists have agreed to a June 1 deadline for enforcing an Obama-era rule setting emissions standards for formaldehyde from wood products after a federal court last month rejected the Trump administration's one-year delay, giving industry an additional six months from the rule's initial compliance date.
The March 9 stipulation and proposed order in the case, Sierra Club et al v. Pruitt, would lift a stay on a federal court's Feb. 16 order finding that the delay exceeds EPA's authority under a 2010 law directing the agency to craft and expeditiously implement the standards.
But Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California stayed his order through March 9, allowing the parties to agree to a schedule for implementing the rule.
In their proposed order, EPA and environmentalists say the June 1 deadline seeks to avoid supply-chain disruption that would occur should the court have required retroactive or immediate compliance.
“In recognition of and to avoid the substantial disruption that would result from giving retroactive effect to the Order, this Order lifting the stay results in the designated date of manufacture (i.e., the manufactured-by date) and corresponding compliance date being June 1, 2018, the date the stay is lifted, and not the December 12, 2017 manufactured-by date in the Initial Formaldehyde Rule, which has passed,” the order says.
“This accommodation ensures that the vacatur applies prospectively, provides fair notice to the affected industries, and avoids treating any composite wood products manufactured (in the United States) or imported (into the United States) between December 12, 2017 and June 1, 2018 as being noncompliant.”
Under the 2016 final rule, wood products had to comply with the new emissions limits by December 2017. But the Trump administration in a September rule extended the compliance deadline to December 2018, arguing that a provision in the law to accommodate the sale of existing stocks allowed extending the compliance deadline for the broader rule.
The proposed order appears to resolve a years-long rulemaking Congress required under the 2010 Formaldehyde Standards in Composite Wood Products Act, which amended the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Lawmakers enacted the legislation in response to health effects suffered by residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina and housed in government-issued trailers containing wood products with formaldehyde-containing adhesives.
White, in his Feb. 16 ruling, strongly rejected the Trump administration's one-year delay, finding that it exceeds EPA's authority under a 2010 law directing the agency to expeditiously implement the standards.
White also admonished EPA's argument that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs had waived their right to seek judicial review because they failed to oppose the extension during the delay rulemaking, saying that EPA should know its authority and not exceed it.
The litigation marks one of a host of lawsuits the Trump administration is facing over its efforts to delay Obama-era rules, including those governing methane standards for landfills, effluent guidelines for coal-fired power plants, facility safety standards for a host of industrial facilities and others.
Such suits are teeing up legal battles that pose major new tests for the limits of the Administrative Procedure Act's restrictions on how agencies make and undo their rules. Depending on how courts rule, it could set new precedents either expanding exemptions from the law or underscoring existing limits on agencies' discretion in its rulemaking efforts.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-environmentalists-agree-formaldehyde-rule-compliance-deadline
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UK Releases Brexit Economic Impact Statement after Press Leaks
Mar 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The UK government has published its analysis of the impact of Brexit on sectors including chemicals, which it says will be one of the hardest hit.
Rumour of so-called sectoral Brexit impact assessments surfaced late last year and David Davis, the government's secretary of state for exiting the EU, was criticised by MPs for being unclear on the question of their existence.
However, a document was leaked to the press in early February and, following further leaks last week, the government published a draft document EU Exit Analysis – Cross Whitehall Briefing, dated January 2018.
In it, the government says "emerging findings" suggest the largest effects of Brexit would be on chemicals, food and drink, clothes, manufacturing, cars and retail.
This reflects different trade barriers introduced on those sectors when the UK leaves the EU, their relative share of trade with the bloc and the "trade intensity of their inputs", it says.
The chemicals sector, it says, is diverse covering both specialty chemicals and bulk chemicals. It is also, the briefing adds, "an important foundation industry" for other sectors. The government gave the example of chemicals contributing 84% of the input to make medicines.
The briefing includes a dedicated page of "sector narrative" on chemicals which illustrates the types of non-tariff barriers that might be introduced. These, the government says, are:
EEA type scenario: customs declarations on leaving the customs union are expected to lead to significant non-tariff barriers across all manufactured goods sectors. The chemicals sector is highly reliant on EU supply chains for intermediate inputs crossing the border multiple times during the production process;
Free trade agreement type scenario: chemical manufacturers and/or importers would have to transfer registrations for over 9,000 chemical products to appointed representatives in the EU before they can continue selling to the single market. New chemicals would likely have to be registered twice - once in the UK and once in the EU. Standard registration fees vary between €1,700 and €34,000 and there could be additional costs of data gathering of up to €100,000; and
WTO scenario: EU tariffs on chemicals are an average of 4%. This would increase first order export costs by around £500 million, which would be additional to the non-tariff barriers set out above.
Ireland has also recently published a report pointing out that as the country shares a supply chain with the UK its domestic chemicals sector could be negatively impacted.
https://chemicalwatch.com/64744/uk-releases-brexit-economic-impact-statement-after-press-leaks
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Don't Crown the US the New 'Swing Producer' in Oil Just Yet
Mar 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Bill Arnold
The CERAWeek conference, just held in Houston, was a feast of views on the energy industry. The organizers listed 648 speakers over five days, ranging from government ministers and senators to CEOs of majors and large independent companies and think tank experts.
Most of us attending had a slice of that big pie, and each person may have had a different takeaway. Such is the nature of the industry.
Although the theme was “Energy in Transition,” the underlying focus was on industry disruptors — past, current and prospective — and some prevailing views ought to be challenged.
It has become conventional wisdom that the U.S. is now the “swing” producer in the global oil market, taking over the role that OPEC created for itself almost 50 years ago. U.S. production has grown dramatically over the last decade as a result of the so-called fracking revolution.
Leading analysts, like the Paris-based International Energy Association, expect that growth to continue on a steady trajectory. They cite many bases for that view:
America’s abundant resources;
existing infrastructure and the ability to add more;
financial resources that may grow as overseas profits are repatriated;
an increasingly friendly regulatory environment and technology that has driven down costs;
increased production; and
smoothed-out wrinkles along the entire value chain.
At least one industry leader, Mark Papa, challenges the assumptions about sharp growth of production. He has a track record that makes his words count. At the failed Enron Corporation, his Enron Oil and Gas division made money. The successor company, EOG Resources, was almost in a league of its own for consistently fine performance.
Now in his third act in the industry with a newly-formed independent, he argues that geology itself is a constraint, investor demands have sharpened and technology is being oversold. That’s worth a hearty debate among technical experts to inform the policy debate.
This goes to the heart of energy markets: Who is the swing producer and how will they act? As U.S. production grew rapidly after 2010, it contributed to a surplus over world demand. It was a small fraction — less than 2 percent. But commodity prices can swing wildly as supply chases demand.
That meant that prices plummeted from over $100 a barrel (with some optimistic analysts projecting $200) to less than $30 for a while. That took a toll on producers, service companies and their bankers from the Middle East to Nigeria, Venezuela, Texas and North Dakota.
“Lower for longer” became the new mantra, but with fingers crossed in hope of higher prices. Those prices came after a nearly three-year drought by the end of 2017. By then, hundreds of thousands of people had been laid off worldwide, hundreds of companies took some form of bankruptcy and governments stared at shrinking treasuries.
Current oil prices in the $60-65 range, with more variation depending on quality and location, have resulted in some sense of stability, however tentative. Capital investing is resuming, in part funded in the U.S. by repatriated overseas profits, but not to levels at the peak.
But costs have dropped dramatically because of technology — much at the field level — and tough negotiations with service companies.
Maybe it’s time to explore a very different scenario — that the U.S. is becoming the base for global production — not the swing producer — and that base is growing; the argument is just over how much and how soon. There is no mechanism to control U.S. production outside of market forces.
Other producing countries will have to accommodate by restraining their production until world demand is very robust. Yet, most long-term projections are for declining liquid fuels. This would mean intense competition for the few growing markets, especially in Asia.
Saudi Arabia is in a unique situation that requires strong prices for the medium term. That is because Saudi Aramco is working to float a massive initial public offering of shares, reportedly for about 5 percent of its reserves.
While it is unclear how the deal will be structured, the valuation turns on investor expectations of oil prices. To support prices, Aramco disproportionately cut its own production during 2017.
How long Saudi Arabia, the rest of OPEC and Russia will do that remains uncertain. They may no longer control global production, but they still have the “lose-lose” option. They still can increase production and drive prices to very low levels. That might be more visceral than logical, but this is a strange environment.
As a result, some investors hesitate to invest in the seemingly rejuvenated U.S. market, and this dynamic will continue to keep oil executives here in the U.S. and around the world awake at night.
Bill Arnold is a professor in the practice of energy management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Previously, Arnold was Royal Dutch Shell's Washington director of international government relations and senior counsel for the Middle East, Latin America and North Africa.
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/377925-dont-crown-us-the-new-swing-producer-in-oil-just-yet
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Road Map for ANWR Drilling Gets Clearer
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The Trump administration is taking the first steps in the long journey to opening oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain.
Three months after Congress used a controversial Republican tax reform plan to allow energy development on ANWR's northern plain, Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt outlined the road map regulators will use to comply with myriad environmental laws governing oil development in Alaska.
Speaking at an Alaska Support Industry Alliance breakfast last week, Bernhardt said the Bureau of Land Management is poised to begin the initial scoping process for leasing in ANWR and plans to hold public meetings and open a 60-day comment period on the scoping proposal.
Once comments are in hand, federal regulators are likely to begin drafting an environmental impact statement on leasing in the Arctic refuge, Bernhardt said. He said that he's aiming to complete the EIS within a year but noted that Interior Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash has suggested that the yearlong timeline might be overly optimistic.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) recently said that Interior is moving aggressively to lay the groundwork for oil and gas lease sales in the coastal plain before the end of President Trump's first term.
"There is a strong commitment to work with us to get these leases out before the end of this term," Murkowski explained last month at an Anchorage business meeting. "Because once you get those leases out into the hands of those who can then move forward, it's tougher" for environmentalists to file court challenges against leasing in the Arctic refuge.
However, Bernhardt observed that companies interested in conducting seismic studies in ANWR's coastal plain would face an additional round of regulatory oversight under the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.
"There are a number of hoops that somebody would have to jump through if we were to process a [seismic] application," he said.
Currently, the only seismic data available on the coastal plain were developed in the 1980s using antiquated 2-D technology. Based on those studies, the U.S. Geological Survey in 1998 estimated that the coastal plain, adjacent Native-owned lands and nearby state waters, is likely to contain a mean volume of 10.4 billion barrels of oil.
Last year, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a secretarial order directing USGS to reprocess the vintage data in hopes of developing a clearer picture of ANWR's oil potential. Under that plan, USGS work was slated to be completed by this summer, with a full assessment of the coastal plain's oil and gas potential expected in late 2018.
Now, however, Bernhardt is suggesting that the directive to reprocess the old seismic data may not be necessary, due to Congress' decision to allow leasing in part of ANWR.
"At one time we thought that [reprocessed seismic] information might be useful in informing people" of the oil potential on the coastal plain, Bernhardt explained.
He predicted that the oil industry is likely to seek a federal permit to conduct advanced 3-D seismic research in the coastal plain, which would be far more useful than the existing information.'We've got a shot at this'
The 19-million-acre Arctic refuge was created by Congress in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and included Section 1002, which set aside the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain for further oil and gas evaluation.
Over the years, the Alaska congressional delegation repeatedly tried to persuade Congress and the White House to allow oil and gas leasing in the 1002 area. Each time, however, the Alaskans were thwarted by Senate Democrats and environmental opponents.
Then, in 2016, the tide turned. After Trump was elected president, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Murkowski saw a new opportunity.
In January, with the GOP controlling the House, Senate and White House, Murkowski launched a low-key campaign to open ANWR's coastal plain to oil leasing.
From the beginning, Murkowski acknowledged that she wasn't likely to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster in the Senate. Instead she focused on a budget reconciliation bill, which can be passed by a simple majority vote.
"I said reconciliation is going to be our goal," she recalled. "So I went to [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch [McConnell] and said we've got a shot at this. Will you back me up on it?"
McConnell agreed but told Murkowski to get the blessings of Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). McConnell also directed her to add her provisions to the second budget reconciliation bill, rather than proposing them for the first bill.
"So I said OK," Murkowski said. "And then we went to Enzi and he said: 'Yep, I'm good. I'll work with you on this on one condition. You've got to make sure that it [provides] 50 percent [of the oil drilling revenues] to the federal government."
In agreeing to that provision, Murkowski was waiving the state's right under the Alaska Statehood Act to 90 percent of the oil royalty money from ANWR.
"That was when we really got things going, but we did it quietly," she said. "Because we knew that the effort [by environmentalists] to erode and undercut would be there just as it historically had been."Critical seismic findings
Meanwhile, Alaska state officials have repeatedly sought federal permission to answer the decades-old question of how much oil is actually available in the Arctic refuge's coastal plain.
In 2013, then-Gov. Sean Parnell (R) unsuccessfully petitioned the Obama administration to allow the state to conduct seismic testing on the coastal plain. After Interior rejected that request, Parnell filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska but lost. The state of Alaska's case was handled by now-Interior Deputy Secretary Bernhardt.
More recently, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) announced plans for the state to conduct seismic studies and has asked the Alaska Legislature to provide $10 million for exploration. That request is pending in the state House.
Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Andy Mack said the state would partner with other oil and gas companies to pay for a new round of studies, which the state would in turn make available to the public.
"Our goal is to increase the level of interest in the lease-sales stage, and eventually in oil and gas development and production in the 1002" area of the Arctic refuge, he said.
Mack noted that the state is currently sharing seismic data that it received from companies that participated in the now-defunct Alaska state tax credit plan.
Under that program, the state partially reimbursed oil companies for the cost of exploration on Alaska's North Slope. In return, the companies agreed to let the state share the seismic findings 10 years after the exploration was completed.
"That data has been a huge driver of the renaissance [in oil development] we're seeing on the North Slope," Mack said.
However, some state legislators worry that new seismic studies could work against the state if they indicate that the coastal plain holds less oil than USGS has predicted.
But Mack argued it's worth the risk. "We are pretty positive about" the oil potential in ANWR's coastal plain, he said. "You never want to get ahead of yourself. There's never a guaranteed well. But we are excited."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/03/12/stories/1060076031
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Ryan's Piecemeal Approach May Keep GOP Infrastructure Push Afloat
Mar 12, 2018 | Roll Call
By Lindsey McPherson
A key piece of the Republicans’ 2018 legislative agenda is shape-shifting.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s pronouncement last week that an infrastructure overhaul will be tackled in multiple bills serves a dual purpose: It keeps hope for one of the president’s top policy priorities alive, while setting more realistic expectations for what will get done this midterm election year.
During an event with Home Depot employees in Georgia on Thursday, Ryan affirmed House Republicans’ intentions to complete an infrastructure overhaul this year but said it won’t be one giant package, as some had envisioned. Rather, the overhaul will be done in five to six bills, the Wisconsin Republican said.
“We think it’s easier to break it into pieces,” he said.
Some bills will be easier to pass than others. Not all of the pieces Ryan is envisioning are likely to make it to President Donald Trump’s desk, but if he can pass all or most of them out of the House, he can deflect blame to the Senate.
The speaker announced the piecemeal infrastructure strategy the week after Senate Republican leaders started to publicly cast doubt on their ability to pass an infrastructure overhaul this year.
“It could be challenging to get infrastructure done in light of everything else we have to do,” Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Feb. 27.
In addition to scheduling concerns, the Senate Republican Conference chairman said finding a way to pay for the federal investment in infrastructure — Trump has proposed $200 billion and some lawmakers want more — is “a big problem.”
The No. 2 Senate Republican, Majority Whip John Cornyn, joined Thune, the No. 3, in describing the effort to pass an infrastructure package this year as “challenging.”
“I certainly would be happy if we could, but we’ve got a lot of things to do, that being one of them, and I don’t know if we will have time to get to that,” the Texas Republican said in a recent Bloomberg News interview.Already planned
If Senate Republicans believe finding floor time for one big infrastructure package is tough, it could be nearly impossible for them to find floor time for the five or six bills Ryan wants to pass before the annual August recess.
However, some of the bills Ryan is talking about are things the Senate was likely already planning to include in its schedule.
For example, the Senate is aware of the need to pass a short-term extension of the Federal Aviation Administration, whose authorization is scheduled to expire March 31.
Ryan said the FAA extension, likely to keep the agency running into the summer, is going to be the first infrastructure bill out of the gate. On Thursday he said the multi-bill infrastructure effort would start “in about a week and a half.”
While Ryan didn’t specify whether the FAA extension would move as a stand-alone or on another vehicle, many lawmakers expect it to be attached to the fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill.
The spending measure will include a “down payment” on infrastructure funding, Ryan said. He was referring to a budget deal reached earlier this year on raising the sequestration spending caps that sets aside $10 billion in fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019 for infrastructure from the nondefense spending increase agreed to for those years.
Other specific bills that Ryan said would be part of the piecemeal infrastructure overhaul include a longer-term FAA reauthorization, the biennial Water Resources Development Act authorizing water infrastructure projects like ports and inland waterways, and legislation to streamline the permit approval process.
Congress had planned to do the FAA and WRDA measures this year anyway, separate of the larger infrastructure push from President Donald Trump and his administration.
The piecemeal approach could signal a rejection of a major part of the White House’s proposal, which would spend $200 billion of federal money, largely through three new grant programs, in an effort to spur $1.5 trillion of spending from all levels of government and the private sector.
Ryan didn’t mention the grant programs, or some infrastructure the administration wants to fund like the energy grid, rural broadband and Veterans Affairs hospitals. He did mention reducing regulations that slow construction permits and discourage private investment, which is one aspect of the White House proposal.
“We want to streamline the approval process so we can [get] these modernization projects going through to the system faster,” he said. “We also want to do what we can to get private sector dollars involved, because we can leverage public sector dollars to get more infrastructure in it.”Highway bill
Ryan also alluded to a traditional highway funding bill that would infuse money into the Highway Trust Fund.
“We’re going to do the traditional infrastructure you’re thinking of, which is like highways and roads and bridges,” he said.
The current surface transportation authorization lasts through fiscal 2020. The Highway Trust Fund, which pays for federal highway and transit spending, is projected to run out of money shortly after.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans have called for an increase in the federal fuel taxes that flow into the trust fund. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania has hinted that a bill he’s writing with ranking member Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon would include a gas tax increase.
Ryan, however, has ruled that out.
“There are some people who are talking about that, but the last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief in December and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes,” the speaker said Wednesday during a telephone town hall with conservative activists from Americans for Prosperity.
DeFazio said Democrats wouldn’t support an infrastructure bill without new revenue attached to it. He prefers a gas tax increase and said it was up to Trump to convince Ryan.
“I’ve said all along: Ryan is ideologically opposed to the federal government funding a national transportation system,” he said. “I never expected him to be supportive, and I told President Trump if he wanted to do a real gas tax increase that he was gonna have to take on the speaker of the House and his leadership team.”
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ryans-piecemeal-approach-may-keep-gop-infrastructure-push-afloat
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Pruitt's Youth Advisers Slam Federal Inaction on Climate
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
U.S. EPA's youngest social justice advisers are hammering the federal government for its lack of action on climate change.
In a draft report — prepared for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and other agency officials — a group of outside advisers calls on the Trump administration to take action on climate change and offers tips on how to engage young Americans on the issue.
"Despite the urgency of climate change, political will at the national level has lagged behind or been outright captured by the powerful interests opposed to bold and just solutions offered by young people, desperate to defend their future rights to a clean and healthy planet," wrote the Youth Perspectives on Climate Change Work Group.
The report is an uncommon example of an EPA-requested document talking about climate change in an administration peppered with officials who question mainstream climate science. EPA has cut mentions of the largely man-made driven phenomenon from its website and is in the process of unraveling regulations meant to control greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft is yet to be approved by EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC),, which helped establish the youth group in 2015 in order to find ways to include more young people's perspectives in addressing climate change. The 85-page document is the result of collaborative work of 15 youth representatives between the ages of 19 and 29. Its members — who come from academia, environmental groups and local government — are either currently working with local communities vulnerable to climate change or have done so in the past.
Samantha Shattuck, a public health specialist and the group's co-chair, noted that each of the report's authors was representing his or her own views and experiences in the report. She added that she was not able to comment on the report directly as it is still unpublished.
The group members are charged with two main tasks — providing recommendations for how EPA could "authentically engage" with youth between the ages of 14 to 29 to be more resilient to climate change and suggesting ways to develop youth-led projects to address health problems related to climate. The report's recommendations are based on the experiences of its members as well as a number of case studies drawn from the organizations the group's members are affiliated with.
Shattuck said the authors sought to provide guidance not only to EPA, but for how other federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations could incorporate youth voices on climate change and environmental justice more effectively.
"The longevity of these vulnerabilities demonstrates the importance of engaging youth, the individuals who will be the next leaders in government, academia, industry, and in nonprofits. Youth need the capacity and knowledge to more critically assess and address climate justice challenges in the future, and engaging them effectively will aid in the development of future thought leaders in this space to help with growing infrastructure, research, and policy issues," the report's authors concluded.
A number of the recommendations focus on increasing youth representation across the decisionmaking process at the agency level and offer suggestions on how EPA can support the development of the next generation of climate leaders by providing funding to outside organizations.
For example, the authors suggest that at least 20 percent of federal advisory bodies should be made up of youth affected by climate change. They also call for EPA to target funding toward organizations that provide youth with a living wage.
"In the environmental field in general, there is a lot of barriers to entry, not the least of which being unpaid work," said Shattuck. "So coming from a privileged position, a lot of students are able to take off and work unpaid, they may have their families supporting them. But communities who are coming from low-income backgrounds may not be able to take off unpaid work."
This disparity is especially problematic because youth from low-income backgrounds are those most likely to bear the brunt of climate change impacts and other pollution sources, she added.
The report encourages the federal government and other groups to seek input from young Americans who aren't necessarily the straight-A environmental science students, but may have a "visceral level" understanding of climate effects and may not have any previous leadership experience.
"I think there's traditionally an idea that people of color don't care as much about the environment because they don't visit parks or national parks, but so much of it is about access and opportunity. Who is more likely to have paid vacation, who is more likely to live in places with a healthier environment, farther away from industry?" she said.
The report's authors received comments on the draft last week from NEJAC and expect to have the final report finalized and publicly available in May or June.
The draft report comes out the same week Pruitt announced the appointment of eight new members to NEJAC, which is overseeing the work group. The administrator also announced he was seeking nominations to fill four vacancies.
"I am proud to announce this distinguished group of new members to the NEJAC," Pruitt said in a statement last week.
"Their significant experience and expertise will be invaluable to the NEJAC as it provides advice and recommendations to help the Agency improve public health, protect the environment, and support economic growth for all people."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/03/12/stories/1060075985
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Ewire: Trump's Staff Chief Kills Pruitt's Climate 'Red Team' Plan
Mar 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has killed an effort by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to launch a “red team, blue team” public debate on climate change science, according to a report, with Kelly and other top administration officials regarding the plan as “ill-concieved and politically risky.”
The New York Times has the story, reporting that Pruitt officials had gone so far as to draft a press release in November announcing the effort but that top agency officials were “taken aback” during a White House meeting in which one of Kelly's deputies called the plan “dead” and said it should never be mentioned again.
Pruitt has long floated the idea of a “red team” climate science debate, in which separate teams of experts would present cases for and against scientific findings about man-made climate change. Scientists, environmentalists and others have sharply criticized the concept, arguing it would unfairly elevate the arguments of contrarian views and muddle public awareness of climate risks.
E&E News reported in December that the White House put the plan “on hold,” though the Times indicates the plan has been killed and is not merely suspended.
The Times story says Kelly and others thought the idea “could become a damaging spectacle, creating an unnecessary distraction from” the administration's environmental policy rollbacks.
Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, “is said to share the pragmatic view held by military leaders . . . that climate change is happening and poses a serious national security challenge,” the story adds.
Pruitt does not publicly share this view, recently asking if climate change is “necessarily” a “bad thing,” and repeatedly stressing how difficult it is to measure humans' impact on climate change.
A major scientific report released late last year by the Trump administration found it “extremely likely” that human-released greenhouse gases are the “dominant cause” of global warming. That report is one of numerous examples of similar findings by the scientific community.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-trumps-staff-chief-kills-pruitts-climate-red-team-plan
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Credits Will Cause a 'Surge' in Projects — Report
Mar 12, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Recently passed legislation in Congress will prompt an unprecedented "surge" in carbon capture, utilization and storage, and increase projects by more than 65 percent, the International Energy Agency said in a new analysis.
The IEA report is one of the first deep dives into the impact of a bipartisan deal last month, which more than doubled the number of existing tax credits for carbon storage.
The language from Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) also eliminated a cap on the credit program and allows incentives for air capture and other utilization of carbon dioxide outside of enhanced oil recovery (Greenwire, Feb. 9).
IEA said expanded tax credits under Section 45Q of the tax code could prompt more than $1 billion in capital investment over the next six years and may lead to 10 million to 30 million metric tons of additional CO2 capture capacity.
"This would increase total global carbon capture by around two thirds and, by incentivizing industry to find the lowest-cost projects, could be cheaper than projects already operating around the world," IEA said.
However, the international organization does not see a jump in carbon capture use on coal or natural gas plants in the power sector or on many industrial plants, or "air capture" projects that would suck CO2 out of the air.
That would leave out the bulk of global emissions, including the third of greenhouse gas output that comes from electricity generation.
Instead, new projects would more likely be on hydrogen plants at refineries, natural gas processing plants and bioethanol facilities, which are already the source of the greatest number of projects for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), IEA said. There are about a dozen large CCUS projects operating in the U.S., but only one — NRG Energy Inc.'s Petra Nova — is on a power plant.
"Three quarters of the CO2 capture capacity built in the last decade and operating today has been on hydrogen production, gas processing and ethanol fermentation, all high purity sources of CO2," said the report.
"This represents almost half of all investment in CCUS made in the last decade, providing a strong indication of the sectors for CCUS that are favored by the market," said IEA.
That opens the door for more plants that theoretically have "negative emissions" by capturing CO2 from burned plant material that already itself sucks greenhouse gas out of the air. Last year, Archer Daniels Midland opened the first large-scale CCUS plant in the world tied to biofuels (Greenwire, April 7).
Deployment of projects also would be delayed mostly to the "mid-2020s," since the credits increase in value over time, IEA said.
Jeremy Harrell, managing director of policy at the group ClearPath, said he agreed with the report's conclusion about a surge but said it was too conservative in concluding tax incentives would do little for power plants.
In particular, companies have expressed interest in adding carbon capture with new natural gas builds, he said. There also is interest from a broad range of industrial emitters, particularly chemical manufacturers with a presence near oil fields in areas like Louisiana, said Harrell. The incentives also could help some coal retrofits "pencil out," he said.
Harrell cited NET Power LLC, which is building the world's largest demonstration of using CO2 to run a turbine. The company said expanded tax credits could determine whether it builds a commercial facility.
Because it can take a decade to develop a storage site for CO2, IEA projected most of the captured gas will continue to be used for enhanced oil recovery in the near term.
Using CO2 to increase oil production has prompted some environmentalists to question whether CCUS will really help the climate. Advocates say there still would be a net CO2 reduction.
Last month, the Natural Resources Defense Council cited concerns about supporting oil in pulling out of a CCUS coalition. Other groups like Friends of the Earth have slammed cancellations of major coal projects on the power sector as evidence the technology is a waste of taxpayer funds.
In total, oil production could increase by as much as 100,000 barrels per day because of the tax credits, IEA said.
The report's overall conclusions confirm what carbon capture advocates have been saying for years, said Brad Crabtree, vice president of fossil energy at the Great Plains Institute, which co-directs the Carbon Capture Coalition.
Targeted federal and state policies, such as new incentives for pipelines, could increase deployment even more, said Crabtree.
IEA said various factors, such as the price of oil and congressional action on additional financing legislation, could shift the industry's trajectory.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/03/12/stories/1060076085
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