Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 3/23/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) Russell: Plastics Must Be Part of the Solution
Mar 22, 2018 | Plastics News
By Bill Bregar
Just across the street from the pristine beaches of the Gulf Coast, Steve Russell was talking about marine debris at Plastics News'Executive Forum and how the industry is working on solutions. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Signs on $50bn Tariffs Against China
Mar 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Daniel Haydon
US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday to impose $50bn in tariffs on imported goods from China. -
Rebuking White House, GOP Lawmakers See Sweet Spot for EPA Funding
Mar 23, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna and Emily Holden
After years of demanding sharp budget cuts to trim what they see as fat at a bloated EPA, some Republicans now appear to be concerned about hitting bone. -
(ACC Mentioned) Firms’ Stockpiled Asbestos Should Prompt Probe: Health Advocates (1)
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
U.S. manufacturers that import asbestos to make certain chemicals may have accumulated twice as much of the carcinogenic mineral in 2016 as federal officials previously thought. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Fees to Repay $10M of Toxics Risk Program Funding (1)
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA would have to use chemical industry fees to repay $10 million of a toxics risk program's funding under a giant spending bill the House passed March 22. -
Congress Pushes EPA to Help Public Clean Up Persistent Chemicals
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Congress is proposing to give the EPA a little more money to quickly clean up emerging public health threats found in contaminated drinking water, groundwater, and soil. -
Fluorochemical Health Study, Military Cleanups Funded in Omnibus
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A national study on the health effects of drinking water contaminants linked to child development problems and increased cancer risk would be funded in the omnibus spending bill passed by the House March 22. -
Monsanto’s Toxic Legacy: An Investigative Reporter Talks Glyphosate
Mar 23, 2018 | In These Times (In Alternet)
By Tracy Frisch
What’s the origin of the chemical that became the world’s most widely-used weed killer? -
Appalachian Governors Renew Commitment to Promoting Shale Gas
Mar 22, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have extended for another three years a cooperative agreement to promote the region’s shale gas resources and create more economic opportunities. -
EPA Rebuffs Challenge of Exxon Plant Permit
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has rejected a challenge to the Texas operating permit for one part of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s giant Baytown refinery and petrochemical complex near Houston. -
Cheniere Faces Ruling on Gas Leak U.S. Sees as ‘Serious Hazard’
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik and Ryan Collins
America's first exporter of liquefied natural gas from shale is awaiting a federal ruling on whether it can restart storage tanks it was forced to shut after a leak. -
Pennsylvania’s Legacy Oil, Gas Production Addressed in Legislation
Mar 22, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Republican lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House and Senate have introduced companion bills that would enact an updated version of the Oil and Gas Act of 1984 to clarify language and address the current challenges facing conventional producers -
NOVA Chemicals, Energy Transfer Partners Team up for Proposed Ethylene Export Project
Mar 22, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays
Alberta-based NOVA said the companies have entered a non-binding memorandum of understanding to possibly link up on an 800,000 mt/year terminal, pending customer commitments, that could start up by mid-2020. -
Perry Defends Proposed Cuts to Renewable Energy Research
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
Energy Secretary Rick Perry yesterday defended the Trump administration's proposed deep budget cuts to renewable energy research. -
Toxic Spills Caused by Hurricane Harvey Worse Than First Reported
Mar 22, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Hurricane Harvey's impact on Houston's petrochemical plants was far greater than revealed, according to a new report from The Associated Press and The Houston Chronicle released Thursday. -
Perry Says He Agrees Russian Attacks on U.S. Grid an Act of War
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Kim Chipman
Energy Secretary Rick Perry says he agrees that attacks by Russian hackers on the U.S. power grid and other sites amount to an act of war. -
Wehrum Said to Favor Quick Ozone Naaqs Review over Reconsideration
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA air chief William Wehrum is said to be leaning against reconsidering the Obama-era decision to tighten the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb, instead aiming to speed up the next Clean Air Act-mandated NAAQS review... -
Oil Giants Back Switch to Natural Gas as Study Tallies Pollution Deaths
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
International oil and gas industry groups told Bloomberg Environment they would encourage greater use of natural gas and less reliance on coal after a report linked the dirtiest fossil fuels with millions of premature deaths. -
Bipartisan Bill Would Boost Carbon Utilization, Capture Research
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
Senators from both parties have floated new legislation that would promote the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) and research into direct CO2 air capture, a bill that builds upon the recent enactment of an expanded section tax credit for storage and use of carbon in industrial operations... -
Judges Inclined to Clarify ‘Natural’ Air Pollution Exemption
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Lu
Judges seemed amenable to environmental groups’ request to provide a legal definition of what constitutes an uncontrollable, natural air pollution event under EPA regulations. -
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rose Last Year. Here Are the Top 5 Reasons.
Mar 23, 2018 | New York Times
By Brad Plumer
If the world wants to avoid drastic global warming this century, we’ll need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions sharply in the years ahead.
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(ACC Mentioned) Russell: Plastics Must Be Part of the Solution
Mar 22, 2018 | Plastics News
By Bill Bregar
Just across the street from the pristine beaches of the Gulf Coast, Steve Russell was talking about marine debris at Plastics News'Executive Forum and how the industry is working on solutions.
"We've got to do something. We're doing a lot now," said Russell, vice president of plastics at the American Chemistry Council. He encouraged plastics executives to "show up for the hard discussions that are taking place."
"We need be engaged."
The proactive message, he said, is that plastics offer great solutions, and the industry is doing something about marine debris.
"Every single one of us in our business needs to know how to talk about this or our story won't be told," Russell said. "This is our opportunity to make this industry part of the solution so that we're here for the next decade and the decade after that, providing the environmentally sustainable products that society's going to need going forward."
Plastics packaging is taking some big hits. Russell showed slides of children digging through a mountain of garbage in Manila, Philippines. He talked about the well-known photos of fish ingesting pieces of plastic and that viral, hard-to-watch video of scientists pulling a plastic straw out a sea turtle's nose. And the BBC show "Blue Planet II," hosted by David Attenborough, shocked viewers with an episode showing plastic killing marine animals.
"Blue Planet II" has led many people and institutions in England to give up single-use plastics for Lent, including the Church of England and dozens of Tory members of Parliament.
Not smoking. Not alcohol. Not chocolate. Plastics.
Russell said ACC members realize that this is a major threat.
"The thing they all have in common is the vulnerability of plastics to competing materials," he said.
"They've been around awhile, and they remember garbage barges floating around New Jersey. They remember the beginning of the BPA [bisphenol A] scares. They remember the consumer doesn't distinguish one resin from another, and vulnerability shared by one is shared by all."
Russell said studies have shown that 8 million metric tons of waste goes into the oceans every year, from solid waste that is not collected, most of it from developing countries with significant populations clustered around the coasts or major rivers, without modern waste collection. When it rains hard, the trash, including plastics, gets washed out to sea.
Most of the waste comes from five countries, he said: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
"But there's nothing that is a problem of Southeast Asia. It's a problem of infrastructure," he said.
In the United States and around the world, legislation and regulations are happening. ACC supported the elimination of microbeads in cosmetics. But now the states of Rhode Island, California and Maine have proposed extended producer responsibility regulations. And bag bans have proliferated.
"Every nongovernmental organization in the world has now named marine plastic pollution as a primary issue," Russell said.
ACC and several major plastics companies are active in the Ocean Conservancy and its Trash Free Seas Alliance. They worked in partnership on a McKinsey Center for Business and Environment report that proposed ways to cut "leakage" of plastic from land-based sources by 45 percent by 2015 and eliminate it by 2035, at a cost of about $5 billion a year.
Russell said McKinsey concluded the main problem is the absence of modern waste handling systems in key industrializing nations. Proposed solutions include better waste collection, process for recycling, and starting an infrastructure for recycling and waste-to-energy programs, which Russell said probably would be gasification or pyrolysis.
Pilot projects would come in major metropolitan areas that have a large enough scale to make it work, he said. Funding would come from a combination of private capital and government financing.
Plastics trade associations around the world have signed a joint declaration pledging to work for solutions on marine litter. Since the declaration was completed in 2011, 69 plastics organizations and allied industry groups have signed it.
Last year, the Trash Free Seas Alliance and its plastics sector partners pledged to raise at least $10 million by 2020 for scientific research and build public support for addressing the problem.
The marine waste issue is fairly complex, Russell said, and simple solutions like plastics bans are not the solution.
"We've got to work together [as an industry], and we've got to work together with the policymakers who are tempted do it the easy way," he said.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180322/NEWS/180329954
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Signs on $50bn Tariffs Against China
Mar 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Daniel Haydon
US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday to impose $50bn in tariffs on imported goods from China.
Trump left the possibility that the total could be higher.
In announcing the memorandum, Trump estimated that the US trade deficit with China is about $500bn out of a total global deficit of $800bn.
The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office will create a proposed list in 15 days for which goods from China will be specifically targeted.
Earlier this month, Trump signed a proclamation calling for tariffs on steel and aluminium , a decision which the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said put $133bn of chemical industry investment at risk.
The prospect of tariffs have raised concerns in the petrochemical and refining industries because they increase the risk of retaliation from other countries.
The US exports large amounts of refined products and petrochemicals. As the nation continues to start up new petrochemical plants, those exports will rise even further.
Retaliatory tariffs could target these exports just as the new plants start up.
Additional reporting by Al Greenwood
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/03/22/10205291/trump-signs-on-50bn-tariffs-against-china/
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Rebuking White House, GOP Lawmakers See Sweet Spot for EPA Funding
Mar 23, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna and Emily Holden
After years of demanding sharp budget cuts to trim what they see as fat at a bloated EPA, some Republicans now appear to be concerned about hitting bone.
After winning control of the House in 2010, congressional Republicans pressed for billions in budget reductions for the Obama administration's EPA that they complained was out of control and was strangling the economy with regulations.
But the omnibus bill released Wednesday showed lawmakers were unwilling to heed the Trump administration's calls to slash EPA’s fiscal 2018 budget by nearly a third, the deepest cuts it sought for any federal agency. Instead, they plan to keep EPA spending levels about the same as fiscal 2017 — while also funding many of the climate and clean energy research activities that the White House had targeted for elimination.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations EPA and Interior Subcommittee, said it was rare for Congress to give EPA more than the agency requests.
“A lot of this is grants and things like that that are universally popular, so I’m not interested in cuts in those areas," Cole said. "You do have to have enforcement capabilities. I’d want to sit and work with the administrator ... I think this has been a more collaborative product than we’ve seen the last eight years and that’s all to the good.”
More than half of EPA’s budget funds programs run by states, and many lawmakers fretted those local programs would suffer or risk being shuttered by further reductions.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who chairs the Energy and Commerce Environment Subcommittee, said while conservatives want to make sure EPA spends money wisely, the budget is “close” to where it should be.
“Republicans will always scrutinize the Environmental Protection Agency and make sure it’s able to do the job of protecting health and the environment. They do have a role, but we want to make sure they’re focused on the core missions,” he said.
EPA’s base funding will stay level, but under a deal to raise spending caps, the agency will get millions of extra dollars to spend on grants and loans to states, including $300 million each for two water funds, $50 million for water infrastructure for small and disadvantaged communities and for reducing lead in school drinking water, and $66 million for programs to clean up Superfund sites.
And while there’s agreement on preserving some grant and cleanup programs, other Appropriators say they aren’t sure if there’s room to cut more at EPA.
“Whether it’s a sweet spot or not, I don’t know,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said.
But Democrats contended their persistent defense of the agency and the splits among Republicans were responsible for maintaining EPA funding, rather than a sudden change of heart from the GOP.
“The Republican caucus is not able to pass a spending bill with their own votes so they need Democratic votes. And when they need Democratic votes we get to ask for things like protecting EPA funding,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said.
EPA’s base budget for fiscal 2018 spending will be $8.1 billion under the omnibus, compared to the all-time high in fiscal 2010 at $10.3 billion. Its workforce has fallen by 1,400 since Trump took office and stands at 14,056, far below its peak of 17,417 at the beginning of the decade.
While the White House called for bigger cuts, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said the omnibus package funds a number of Administrator Scott Pruitt’s priorities, including new grants to eradicate lead in drinking water. She also touted provisions exempting farmers from certain emission reporting requirements and designating biomass as a carbon neutral energy source.
Jeff Holmstead, who was assistant administrator of EPA’s air office under George W. Bush, said both Republicans and Democrats understand that while some of EPA’s work is controversial, “a lot of it is just basic good government" services.
“My impression is both the members and the career staff on the Appropriations subcommittee clearly feel like over the last six or eight years, they really have kind of right-sized EPA. So I think there was reluctance to do it much further,” Holmstead said.
Advocates for research funding and environmentalists viewed the EPA budget that emerged from the GOP-controlled Congress as a stern rebuke to the White House’s demands for deeper cuts.
“I think this is a stunning rejection of both Trump and Pruitt’s goals to gut the EPA, and it really calls into question Pruitt’s management skills,” said Judith Enck, an Obama-era regional administrator at EPA.
In January, during a short-lived government shutdown, Pruitt announced that EPA's account had enough money to keep it open for five days, a sign some observers said indicated it wasn't running at full steam.
“They’re not spending the money they have, and they’re ignoring congressional directives by not spending what they have,” Enck said.
Despite President Donald Trump's criticism of climate change policies and support for fossil fuels, Congress either held steady or hiked spending on climate change activities, clean energy and science across agencies in the omnibus.
At the Department of Energy, the omnibus increased spending on research and development, clean energy loan guarantees and ARPA-E. The legislation raised NASA’s budget, gave more money for satellite acquisition at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and increased sustainable agriculture research dollars.
“In general, we’re pleased with the way Congress has prioritized the science budgets across agencies,” said Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “I do think that our conclusion is that although the Trump administration may not have recognized it in their budget, Congress recognizes a robust federal role in basic science and research and development is a key aspect of our future, and they have come up with a budget that invests in it in a responsible way.”
Not all Republicans feel they’ve had their final battle over EPA’s budget yet. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who oversees the agency funding on the Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers have worked with Pruitt to give him the resources to run the agencies.
“He’s been making efficiencies within the department,” Calvert said. “I think there’s still some efficiencies to create.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/03/rebuking-white-house-gop-lawmakers-see-sweet-spot-for-epa-funding-439738
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(ACC Mentioned) Firms’ Stockpiled Asbestos Should Prompt Probe: Health Advocates (1)
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
U.S. manufacturers that import asbestos to make certain chemicals may have accumulated twice as much of the carcinogenic mineral in 2016 as federal officials previously thought.
The new information is prompting health advocates to call for federal inspections.
Occidental Chemical Corp., the Olin Corp., and Westlake Chemical Corp., have chlor-alkali plants that use asbestos to prevent explosions as they make chlorine, caustic soda, and hydrogen, which are “building block” chemicals used to make hundreds of other chemicals and products.
“A significant quantity of asbestos may have been added to company stockpiles in 2016,” the U.S. Geological Survey said in its most recent mineral commodity summary.
The chlor-alkali industry, which imports nearly all of the raw chrysotile asbestos brought into this country, imported 702 tons in 2016 rather than the 340 tons the Geological Survey previously estimated.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which is evaluating the risks of asbestos to determine whether controls are needed, should investigate U.S. chlor-alkali manufacturers’ facilities to understand how much is stockpiled, Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, told Bloomberg Environment.
Issues EPA should examine include how it's transported, stored, maintained, whether workers are exposed, and how it's disposed of, she said. The EPA is evaluating asbestos’ risks to comply with the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016.
The TSCA amendments call for the EPA to work with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration when workers could be exposed, J. Brent Kynoch, managing director for the Environmental Information Association, told Bloomberg Environment.
EPA and/or OSHA inspections could reveal violations or identify asbestos-handling standards, worker exposure protections, or other “risk management” controls that either agency could pursue. For example, EPA could recommend such controls if its risk evaluation determines asbestos poses an unreasonable risk.
Moral Obligation
Asbestos is a known human carcinogen that can also harm respiratory function by causing scar-like tissue to build up in the lungs, making it hard to breathe and potentially causing disability and death, according to information from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
The EPA may not have a legal responsibility to ensure the safety of asbestos from the mines in other countries through its transportation and use until it is disposed of, Kynoch said.
“But we all have a moral obligation to the people who are sending this to us,” said Kynoch, whose organization provides information about asbestos and other building hazards to property owners and operators, interested professionals, and the public.
The EPA did not reply to multiple Bloomberg Environment requests about whether it would evaluate specific exposure concerns regarding the alleged stockpile.
The EPA, in an email to Bloomberg Environment, said it is developing a more detailed plan than it previously released describing how it will evaluate asbestos exposures. It declined to say when it will release that more detailed, “problem formulation,” plan.
The EPA will use the Geological Survey's updated 2016 import data “unless further reliable information becomes available,” the agency said. The EPA's initial risk analysis plan, or “scope“ document, released in 2017 before the USGS updated its import figures, said 340 tons were imported in 2016.
Chlorine, Caustic Soda Uses
Neither Occidental nor Westlake replied to Bloomberg Environment's phone calls or emails requesting comment on their possible stockpiling. Olin referred Bloomberg Environment to the American Chemistry Council, which replied with an emailed statement.
“While we can't speak to the amount of asbestos being used by individual companies, we do know that companies follow strict federal requirements to ensure the safety of employees and the environment in the manufacture of chlorine and caustic soda, which are critical to providing safe-drinking water, life-saving pharmaceuticals, electronics, solar panels, energy-saving construction materials, and much more,” the chemistry council's Chlorine Chemistry Division said.
When asbestos’ entire life cycle is considered, Reinstein said, “there is no such thing as safe and controlled use.”
A full risk evaluation would include activities such as loading ships with the mined material, off-loading, transport, and the disposal of asbestos-based diaphragms chlor-alkali plants use, through multiple shipments, to storage, use, and disposal, she said.
Chlor-alkali plants may fully protect their workers as they've said they do, Kynoch said. Yet other companies involved in the asbestos delivery and disposal chain may not, he said.
Concerns would arise whenever the asbestos is disturbed, for example, when bags of raw asbestos are opened or if the wet “membranes” used to make chlorine, caustic soda, and hydrogen dry, he said.
Business Rationale?
The three chlor-alkali companies may have had business reasons for stockpiling asbestos in 2016.
First, the companies may have wanted to ensure they had sufficient asbestos to meet the growing demand for caustic soda. Brazil, which has been the primary supplier of asbestos to the U.S. in recent years, closed its sole mine after the country's Supreme Court banned use of the mineral in 2017.
As a result of that ban and actions taken by other governments, the only remaining commercial producers of asbestos will be China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and potentially Zimbabwe, where two former asbestos mines may re-open by year end, USGS said.
Second, domestic prices for caustic soda, for example, have increased from $3.17 a metric ton in September 2016 to $19.91 a metric ton this February, according to price data that Bloomberg's terminal obtained from Tecnon Orbichem Ltd., which analyzes market information for the bulk chemical, petrochemical, and plastics industries.
During a Feb. 7 earnings call, John Fischer, Olin's president and CEO, discussed ways the company's chlor-alkali business is benefiting from market trends.
“In addition to higher caustic soda prices, we experienced higher chlorine and chlorine-derivatives pricing, both in the fourth quarter and for the full year,” he said, referring to 2017 earnings.
The company's 2018 domestic forecast reflects higher domestic and export causing soda pricing, higher chlorine pricing, and other opportunities, Fischer said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336966&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336966&jd=130336966
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Fees to Repay $10M of Toxics Risk Program Funding (1)
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA would have to use chemical industry fees to repay $10 million of a toxics risk program's funding under a giant spending bill the House passed March 22.
The omnibus appropriations bill (H.R. 1625), which would fund all federal agencies until Oct. 1, includes $92.5 million for the Environmental Protection Agency's toxics risk review and pollution prevention program.
The Senate expects to also pass the measure, although Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has suggested he might force a government shutdown by refusing to grant the unanimous consent needed for quick action.
The White House has backed the funding measure, which needs to be signed into law by the end of March 23 to avoid the shutdown.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to repay the U.S. Treasury the $10 million through chemical industry fees authorized by the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016, the Senate amendmentto H.R. 1625 said.
“We are pleased Congress and the administration have come to an agreement to fund the government and provide EPA the resources necessary for the effective and efficient implementation of the amended TSCA,” Jon Corley, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, told Bloomberg Environment.
Risk Information System Preserved
The funding bill would preserve another agency-wide chemicals analysis program called the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). The program analyzes health hazards of chemicals and the doses at which those hazards could manifest. EPA regulatory offices and state regulators combine that information with exposure data or projected exposures to set cleanup and water quality standards and air pollution limits.
IRIS, which was going to be discontinued under a previous version of the bill, would continue to be funded and would remain in the agency's research—rather than its chemicals—office.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) worked to protect IRIS and keep it in the research office because it serves the entire agency, an aide to the senator told Bloomberg Environment.
An “explanatory statement” accompanying the funding bill describes progress the IRIS program has made since being criticized in a 2011 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report.
The House and Senate appropriations committees “understand that the program intends to continue the development of new methodologies and technologies to enhance the development of future IRIS assessments and encourages the program to do so, while also encouraging the program to ensure that all IRIS methodologies attain the highest scientific rigor,” the explanatory statement continued.
Congress has rejected efforts to eliminate or reduce or sideline IRIS, which belongs in the agency's research office so it can continue to serve the entire agency, EPA regions, states, and local governments, Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, told Bloomberg Environment.
The Defense Fund agrees with critics that the IRIS program's chemical analyses do not keep pace with regulatory agencies’ needs, but the solution is to improve the program as its managers are striving to do—not to eliminate it, Denison said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336954&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336954&jd=130336954
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Congress Pushes EPA to Help Public Clean Up Persistent Chemicals
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Congress is proposing to give the EPA a little more money to quickly clean up emerging public health threats found in contaminated drinking water, groundwater, and soil.
The government spending bill, released March 21, would give the Environmental Protection Agency's $1.15 billion Superfund program an additional $8.6 million to help communities clean up “emerging” contaminants.
But one association told Bloomberg Environment that while the additional funding is a good start, it's not enough to address a complicated problem.
“$8.6 million's kind of a drop in the bucket,” Lauren Schapker, government affairs director for the National Ground Water Association, told Bloomberg Environment, “compared to the challenge of PFOS across the country.”
Emerging contaminants aren't well understood and may pose a risk to human health. Some of those contaminants, including perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), have been found in drinking water supplies across the country and have a range of health effects. Exposure to either of those two contaminants over time may cause cancer or affect the liver, immune system, and thyroid.
The two chemicals are part of a larger family of fluorochemicals, which includes as many as 3,000 different substances.
States Take on PFOS, PFOA
More communities are discovering the contaminants in their water supplies every day, according to Seth Kellogg, senior geologist at Geosyntec and a National Ground Water Association board member.
The EPA has released a 70 parts per trillion nonenforceable health advisory for the chemicals, but states are also drafting their own standards for drinking water. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, for example, is considering a standard of 14 parts per trillion for PFAS.
Other emerging contaminants include 1,4-dioxane, which is a likely carcinogen, and perchlorate, which affects the thyroid gland, according to the agency.
The goal of the EPA's Superfund program is to clean up the most contaminated sites in the country, especially those with hazardous substances. The program also responds to natural disasters, accidents, and other emergencies.
The $1.15 billion for the Superfund program in the bill includes about $190 million for emergency response and removal activities. Congress is asking the EPA to use some of that funding to collaborate with state, tribal, and local governments on addressing emerging contaminants.
The spending bill must be signed into law by the end of March 23 to avoid a government shutdown.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336946&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336946&jd=130336946
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Fluorochemical Health Study, Military Cleanups Funded in Omnibus
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A national study on the health effects of drinking water contaminants linked to child development problems and increased cancer risk would be funded in the omnibus spending bill passed by the House March 22.
“It is completely unacceptable that parents in our community, and those in affected communities across the nation, have to worry about the safety of their children's drinking water because of this contamination,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.J.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees, said in a statement.
The Defense Department would receive $10 million to evaluate the health effects of a broad group of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Chemical and other manufacturers have used those chemicals for years to make thousands of industrial, commercial, and consumer products that are heat-, oil-, and water-resistant. That widespread use resulted in the presence of PFAS compounds in the drinking water of more than 6 million Americans, including in areas near military bases that used perfluorinated-based fire-fighting foams.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would carry out the study with DOD's allocation, aides to Shaheen and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told Bloomberg Environment.
The spending bill, H.R. 1625, now heads to the Senate, where passage is expected, followed by the White House, which has backed the funding measure. The bill needs to be signed into law by the end of March 23 to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The giant spending bill would also provide the Navy with $42.2 million, and the Air Force with $15 million to remediate soil, water, and other PFAS contamination.
Chemical Information
Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are the most well-studied members of the broad group of about 3,000 chemicals. State health commissioners have repeatedly asked the federal government to fund a study on the chemical family, and have in some cases moved forward to issue their own standards.
According to an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies of PFOS, PFOA, and at least two other related chemicals have shown the chemicals may:
• affect growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children,
• hinder a woman's chance of getting pregnant,
• interfere with the body's natural hormones, increase cholesterol levels, and affect the immune system,
• increase the risk of cancer.
The PFAS study “is critically needed to establish stronger federal standards defining safety levels” for exposure, Stabenow, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said in a March 21 joint statement.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336943&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336943&jd=130336943
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Monsanto’s Toxic Legacy: An Investigative Reporter Talks Glyphosate
Mar 23, 2018 | In These Times (In Alternet)
By Tracy Frisch
Tracy Frisch: What’s the origin of the chemical that became the world’s most widely-used weed killer?
Carey Gillam: In 1950, while looking for new pharmaceuticals, the Swiss chemist Henri Martin synthesized the chemical we call glyphosate. … But it took Monsanto and John Franz, a young Monsanto chemist, to unlock the weed-killing magic within glyphosate and bring it to market as the highly profitable product Roundup. Franz discovered that glyphosate killed plants in 1970 and went on to receive great acclaim for his finding. In 1974, Monsanto rolled out Roundup as a very safe and effective weed killer, and it was quickly embraced for a number of different uses.
In your book, Whitewash, you note that the glyphosate patent was going to expire around the time that the first Roundup Ready crop—soybeans—entered the market.
This was certainly no accident. The company had very good sales over the years. But Monsanto discussed with investors its expectation that the glyphosate sales volumes would soar with the rollout of its Roundup Ready crops in the 1990s. Roundup use did explode, and Monsanto had fabulous sales. Selling the seeds and the herbicide that went along with the seeds was a really smart business play. Farmers that I interviewed did love it. For many years after these genetically engineered crops came out, Roundup was like gold.
When did Roundup start being widely used right before harvest?
That suggestion for glyphosate use came up fairly early on. Oklahoma wheat farmers thought that this could be helpful to them. The idea was to spray Roundup directly on your crops shortly before harvest to help them dry out. The problem, of course, is that this practice leaves higher residues of glyphosate in the finished products.
Glyphosate went on the market in 1974. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, fraudulent practices were discovered at IBT and Craven, two major testing laboratories that conducted many of the toxicological studies for Monsanto and other pesticide companies.
Three IBT officials were convicted of trying to defraud the government by covering up their research data. Though the company now claims it was a victim of the IBT fraud, Monsanto certainly had connections to it. A Monsanto employee had gone to work for IBT, was there during the scandal, and was charged in connection with falsification of scientific results. And Monsanto helped in his defense in the court case.
Even today, people still don’t know in which cases the EPA accepted the data sets from testing conducted at those discredited labs rather than insisting that the tests be redone.
There are still concerns that regulators may consider some tests done by these labs to be valid, though Monsanto will say that they had them all redone. But at this point we have a bigger concern. We now know that for many of the studies that the EPA relies on, Monsanto has worked very hard to manipulate the findings and the way they’re assessed. For instance, the documents we have show that the company has engaged in ghostwriting research papers that appear to be authored by scientists working independently of Monsanto.
Can you give an example of how Monsanto has influenced the EPA’s interpretation of a glyphosate study?
The 1983 mouse study illustrates a troubling dynamic. You can see in documents how Monsanto talked about what they did with that study and other studies, as far as regulators were concerned. The study in question involved 400 mice. The EPA’s toxicology experts looked at the study and came to the obvious conclusion: “This stuff causes cancer.” In the study, the mice, other than the controls, were dosed with glyphosate and some got these rare tumors. Monsanto’s response was to say, “You’re just not looking at it right. These tumors aren’t really due to glyphosate.” At first the EPA toxicologists held firm and remained outspoken. “Monsanto’s argument is unacceptable. Glyphosate is suspect. Our job is to protect the public, not the registrant.” They wrote words like these in memo after memo. Monsanto then hired a pathologist who, they said in their internal email chain, would convince the EPA that they were wrong. Lo and behold, he told EPA that there was a tumor in the control group that nobody had noticed before. The EPA toxicologists continued to fight back. This went on and on. The EPA had a separate outside group look at it, which told the agency to have Monsanto redo the tests. Monsanto refused. A decade later, in 1993, the EPA finally relented. They accepted Monsanto’s study and conclusions and classified glyphosate as having no evidence of carcinogenicity. Some of the EPA scientists refused to sign off on that determination. This case shows how hard it has been for the EPA to stick with the findings of their own scientists. This has occurred repeatedly for Monsanto, with PCBs and dioxin. Companies like Monsanto have a lot of clout, and they use that power. Monsanto spends a lot of money on lobbyists and campaign contributions, and political appointees hold the top positions at the EPA.
We seem to be at a watershed moment right now. From the outside it looks like this started when the International Agency on Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. What do we know about how scientists make such assessments for IARC?
The International Agency on Research on Cancer is a unit of the World Health Organization that looks at different substances to determine their cancer hazard. As with the working group on glyphosate, the people that serve on IARC panels are independent scientists invited to participate. They work at academic universities and government agencies around the world and are not supposed to have any ties to industry or organizations. The World Health Organization does not employ them and they are not paid.
How is IARC’s work different than what the EPA does?
IARC looks at the best, most authoritative studies—only published, peer-reviewed research—whereas the EPA relies pretty heavily on studies and research presented by the companies themselves. A lot of those studies have not been published or peer reviewed. That’s a very big distinction.
I’m under the impression that the studies that chemical companies submit to the EPA are often confidential, so that independent scientists never get a chance to see it.
Yes. I’ve gotten copies of them myself, and every single page is stamped “Trade Secret. Confidential.” That is a problem. Over time, independent researchers and scientists have done a number of studies on glyphosate and Roundup, and they have found problems. And some of that is what IARC looked at and how they came to their conclusion.
The revelations coming out of Monsanto’s internal documents are breathtaking. Why are they being released?
These documents that I used for my book and that continue to churn out come from several sources. There are discovery documents coming out as a result of litigation against Monsanto. In them you see Monsanto’s internal conversations among themselves or with others in the industry. We’ve gotten documents through Freedom of Information from the EPA, the FDA, and other agencies. There are also state record requests, which we’ve gotten from state universities, that show various professors and other academics collaborating with Monsanto on certain issues—like Monsanto assigning them policy papers to write and drafting reports that would carry the names of these professors, though in reality Monsanto wrote them. Putting all these documents together gives a fairly complete picture of the deception that’s gone on for so long.
Do you think that IARC’s classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen is what opened the floodgates to all the lawsuits against Monsanto?
It really is. The lawyers were aware of the research tying glyphosate and Roundup to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But when IARC made its classification, it really did open the floodgates, and the lawsuits started piling on from people all over the United States who either have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or family members who have already died from it. These are farmers and farm workers and others who were routinely exposed to glyphosate. Many of these farmers say they chose to use glyphosate because they had been led to believe it was so much safer than other herbicides.
As you have alluded to, one of Monsanto’s tactics to hide glyphosate’s health problems has been to work with academics as their paid operatives. Could you describe the behavior of one or two such scientists and their relationship to Monsanto?
There are academics all over the United States, Canada and Europe. Where Monsanto has forged collaborations or alliances to enlist these professors, they appear to be independent and neutral. Monsanto wants to leverage that to their benefit, and they talk about it. They have different ways of funding these academics, sometimes through grants or donations to their research programs or to their universities, or they may pay them as consultants. Bruce Chassy, for instance, was at the University of Illinois. Monsanto gave quite a bit of money to his program, funneled through the foundation there. They talk with Bruce Chassy about sending the money and about how much money. At the same time they’re communicating about things that Bruce Chassy can do that would be beneficial to their agenda. They have him traveling around the world, making presentations to policymakers in other countries about how wonderful and safe Monsanto’s products are.
Is he the one who was going to China without knowing what he’d be doing there?
Exactly. He was telling Monsanto, “I’m ready to go, but you haven’t told me what my mission is yet.” Monsanto was preparing slides and presentations and editing things for him. Their part in his appearances and articles was not disclosed, and that’s not what people expect when they think that they’re hearing from an esteemed, independent academic. It really made my jaw drop to read the emails where Monsanto wanted to set up a nonprofit organization to be used to promote its products and its agenda while attacking and discrediting scientists, journalists and other individuals who challenged the industry. They have set up a number of websites and nonprofits designed to look independent while they manipulate and influence media, public opinion, and, of course, lawmakers and regulators.
One notable example is Academics Review, a site that publishes pro-industry propaganda and attacks people who question the industry spin. In an email we’ve obtained that I talk about in my book, a Monsanto executive says, “From my perspective, the problem is one of expert engagement, and that could be solved by paying experts to provide responses. The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.” That’s so deceptive and unfair to people like farmers who just want the truth so they can make informed decisions. They deserve truth and transparency. I find such a concerted effort to deceive the public egregious.
The Séralini affair is another example of Monsanto tactics. What was unusual about the Séralini study?
The Séralini study was a two-year feeding study of rats that has become one of the most controversial of all the studies out there examining impacts of glyphosate and Roundup. It was published in 2012 in Food and Chemical Toxicology, but after a storm of protests engineered by Monsanto it was retracted and then republished in another journal. The study found health problems in rats fed genetically modified corn or given Roundup herbicide. The study ran much longer than most, and Séralini’s team said its work showed much deeper investigation was needed into the safety of GMO foods and of Roundup. Monsanto went after Séralini pretty hard with a variety of tactics. They got many different individuals to write letters of complaint and demand the journal retract the Séralini study. The documents show that Monsanto had a financial relationship both with the editor of the journal that ultimately retracted the study and with a scientist on the editorial board. The documents show that even though the company orchestrated the demand for a retraction, they wanted it to appear to be independent of the company’s influence.
(Image: ecofarmingdaily.com)
Where do we find glyphosate in the environment?
It has been found in our rivers and streams, and in municipal drinking water supplies. These are the findings of government scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey—not some random, crazy scientists!
What about in soil? In terms of growing plants, isn’t that of great significance?
The soil is something that really concerns me. The presence of glyphosate affects the health and nutritional value of our food. A number of scientists have documented changes in the soil after multiple years of glyphosate use. They’ve shown that heavy glyphosate use, which is so common, affects soil properties, plant growth, and soil microorganisms. Over time, the health of soil microbial community is eroded, and the soil becomes almost sterile.
Is it true that glyphosate has a patent as an antimicrobial or antibiotic?
Scientists are seeing that with repeated applications of glyphosate the soil becomes bereft of its natural microbial community, which negatively impacts the crops that farmers are using glyphosate to protect. Plants lose access to the nutrients mediated by these soil organisms and become more vulnerable to disease. So then farmers use more fungicides and more fertilizer. Glyphosate is creating an environment that encourages more pesticide use and we are eating food with more pesticide residues. Our government has even documented this. In its latest report, 85 percent of the foods that the USDA tested showed pesticide residues, the highest level in more than a decade.
In Whitewash, you write about the failure of government agencies to test food for glyphosate residues, despite the existence of monitoring programs for many types of pesticides. How did they manage to avoid testing for glyphosate?
A number of years ago this became a pet peeve of mine. Every year the USDA and the FDA monitor food for pesticide residues. They’re required to do this testing and keep track of it in a database. This allows government agencies to determine if food producers are violating the allowable levels determined by the EPA for particular pesticides. The monitoring program also enables us to understand what we’re taking into our bodies. As I’ve stressed, glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in history, but it’s the only pesticide that neither the USDA nor the FDA have tested for. (The USDA did one special project in 2011 looking at glyphosate residues in soybeans and found residues of the weed killer in more than 90 percent of the samples.) For decades they have refused to test for it. Many years ago I started asking them why they didn’t test for glyphosate. They told me that, first, it’s so safe so it doesn’t matter if they test for it. Second, they would say that it’s really expensive to test for. The third reason was, “We know that if it’s in the food, it’s probably not in very high amounts.” I found that laughable.
Don’t they require the pesticide manufacturer to provide a laboratory method for testing as part of its registration?
Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Actually, I don’t know. I think the companies do give a method, but that doesn’t mean the government agencies have the equipment to test for it. What they’ve told me is that doing the test is very expensive, and the methodology is very complicated. Interestingly, we know from internal documents that in 2017 the USDA was slated to start testing for glyphosate. They laid out what they were going to test. I was writing the story. Then early last year, shortly before they were supposed to start this program, they decided that they were going to continue to not test for glyphosate. The FDA has an even more interesting little saga. In early 2016, they said they were going to start some limited testing for glyphosate residues. I reported that in a big story that was picked up all over the place. The FDA was not happy that I reported that because they didn’t want people to know. That surprised me. If you’re a government agency and part of your job is to test food for pesticide residues, why wouldn’t you want to shout it from the rooftops when you’re finally going to start testing for the most widely used herbicide? You’d think they would be proud of it, but they weren’t.
Internal documents show that they did start testing and found residues that I suppose they didn’t anticipate, like glyphosate contamination in honey and oatmeal. One of the FDA chemists found pretty high levels of glyphosate in honey, even in the organic honey, which created quite an uproar. Bees are getting it from their environment, which is doused with glyphosate. In addition to farm fields, the herbicide is used on golf courses, parks, yards, playgrounds, roadsides, and other settings. Lawsuits have been filed against honey producers because of glyphosate being found. Yet EPA and FDA are remaining mum on this. After I reported on the oatmeal and the honey issues, the FDA glyphosate testing program was suspended. It was supposed to have resumed in 2017, but we haven’t heard anything. I recently received word that the FDA has explicitly told its scientists not to test any honey for glyphosate in 2018.
On top of that, didn’t the federal government bump the maximum residue level for glyphosate up many times higher than it used to be?
Yes. Over the years, the legal limits for residues of glyphosate have been raised many times, for many different foods and feed crops.
I loved that those members of the European Parliament did a urine test. What a great way to publicize glyphosate’s ubiquitousness!
When you have your own bodily fluid tested and you find that you have this pesticide in you, it really does resonate more. I’ve had my urine tested, and though I was on the very low side of the average among people tested at this particular laboratory, it still impacts you. You also realize that this is not the only pesticide you’re carrying around inside your body.
You reported that the average Member of Parliament had a 17 times greater concentration of glyphosate in their urine than the European drinking water standard.
Yes. That woke some people up a bit. With the license for glyphosate expiring in December, the European Union has been caught up in hot debate over whether to renew it. Parliament voted in October to ban glyphosate, but the member states have been struggling to reach a qualified majority on the re-authorization issue. It’s a very deeply divided situation. At the same time, the EPA is due to issue a new risk assessment of glyphosate.
Is the glyphosate saga indicative of the failure of mainstream chemical agriculture?
I say that Monsanto and glyphosate represent a poster child for a much larger problem—the pesticide treadmill. We’re stuck in a place of dependency, thinking that we can only grow food, manicure our lawns, and take care of our golf courses with an array of pesticides. It’s not good for our health or the environment, or for our future or that of our children.
I’m glad you included discussion of some front-line populations in your book. Why is glyphosate so widely used in Hawaii?
Hawaii has become a testing ground for Monsanto and other large seed companies. It offers an ideal year-round growing environment with its temperate climate, good rains, and sunshine. Some people call it a poison paradise. Big agrochemical and biotech companies have leased or purchased land there to test and grow their genetically engineered seeds. Glyphosate is one of the pesticides that they’ve been using, as well as a host of restricted-use pesticides. People there are very concerned that these pesticides are contributing to health problems.
What kinds of things are the citizens pushing for?
They’re scared and are trying to figure out what they can do to protect themselves. One of the main things they’ve asked for was transparency. Tell us what you’re spraying, how much you’re spraying, and when you’re spraying. The companies have even fought back on providing that information. People have also demanded increased buffer zones so there’s more distance between them and the pesticide spraying. Studies have found the pesticides in the water, soil, and dust, and the residue is in people’s homes and schools. It’s pervasive.
You wrote that weed scientists and others knew that the agricultural system Monsanto was promoting would be a perfect incubator for resistance, but neither Monsanto nor the EPA or USDA would listen to them. Where are we now?
It’s too late. I was reminded of how early people sounded the alarm bells on this problem. The weed scientists, who were in the best position to know, warned everybody, shortly after genetically engineered crops were introduced. They predicted that such extensive, repeated use of one chemical would create populations of resistant weeds and the herbicide wouldn’t be effective anymore. Monsanto brushed them off and convinced the EPA to ignore them, too. I remember talking to Monsanto about weed resistance issues and them telling me it wasn’t going to happen. Only after facts on the ground shifted and the company and the regulators could no longer deny the epidemic of resistant weeds did they get engaged. By that time, 2011 or 2012, the horse was already out of the barn. Farmers were using two and three times more glyphosate to try to kill these weeds. A lot of cotton farmers had to hire people to pull weeds by hand. It’s been extraordinarily costly in labor and decreased production.
Sounds like the worst of all worlds.
The chemical industry’s answer has been to pile on more chemicals. They’ve created crops with tolerance to both dicamba and glyphosate and to 2,4-D and glyphosate. This pesticide treadmill serves the chemical industry really well, but doesn’t benefit public or environmental health. Dicamba and 2,4-D have their own range of toxic problems. Dicamba especially is notorious for not staying where you put it. It volatilizes and drifts. It’s killing other farmers’ crops around the Midwest and South. Farmers who don’t have these specialty dicamba-tolerant seeds are finding their crops damaged or destroyed. It’s extremely costly. Farmers are suing and there are regulatory battles. It didn’t have to be this way at all.
Is there anything else you want to say about your book?
I hope that people understand that my book Whitewash is not aimed at Monsanto or at one particular chemical. I tried rather to use glyphosate and Monsanto as the storytelling vehicle to illuminate a much larger problem—our complacency with a pesticide-dependent system. It’s creating an unhealthy future for our children, which sets them up for a range of diseases, and it’s destructive to ecosystems. We’re smarter than this. The information is out there. We just need to pay attention to it. The book aims to help wake people up to that.
Editor’s Note: In the following interview, for Acres U.S.A., Tracy Frisch interviews Carey Gillam about her first book: Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. Gillam, a “Kansas-based journalist turned glyphosate geek” has been a reporter for over 25 years, 17 of which were spent with Reuters covering, among other topics, economic policy, corporate earnings and commodities trading. In that time, Gillam’s reporting specialized on corporate agribusiness and the agrichemical industry. The public health deceptions she’s since uncovered are numerous. Two years ago she became Research Director with U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit consumer group that “pursues truth and transparency in America’s food industry.”
This interview has been edited for length, but a link to the full (and more in-depth) conversation can be found at the bottom of the post.
("Glyphosate: A Toxic Legacy" was originally published in the January 2018 issue of Acres U.S.A. and was reposted on Rural America In These Times with permission from Tracy Frisch.
https://www.alternet.org/environment/glyphosate-monsantos-toxic-legacy
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Appalachian Governors Renew Commitment to Promoting Shale Gas
Mar 22, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have extended for another three years a cooperative agreement to promote the region’s shale gas resources and create more economic opportunities.
The states’ governors agreed to extend the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that was first signed in October 2015 to establish the Tri-State Shale Coalition.
“The extension of this agreement by all states signifies to domestic and international markets that the region’s shared goal is to maximize opportunities for these resources to be used to support additional manufacturing opportunities within the region rather than to simply export the resources to other areas,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration said.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s administration said the states are now free to continue working collaboratively on marketing and promotion, workforce development, transportation, infrastructure and academic research.
Since it was established, the coalition has shared information about policies, organized workshops and training activities, created a regional workforce platform, and promoted economic growth and job creation. Its efforts also led to Pennsylvania commissioning a studyby IHS Markit that found the Appalachian Basin could accommodate up to four more ethane crackers in addition to the one being built by a unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc in Western Pennsylvania.
The coalition also played a part in a study released last year that showed there are multiple options for underground natural gas liquids (NGL) storage in various formations throughout the basin. Led by West Virginia University, participants from the geological surveys in the three states mapped potential options for subsurface storage. The study was aimed at helping the private sector establish a major NGL storage hub in the region.
The coalition’s work is one of several partnerships that have involved both the private and public sectors to promote opportunities from Appalachia’s growing shale production. The MOU is to automatically renew annually through December 31, 2021.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113786-appalachian-governors-renew-commitment-to-promoting-shale-gas
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EPA Rebuffs Challenge of Exxon Plant Permit
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has rejected a challenge to the Texas operating permit for one part of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s giant Baytown refinery and petrochemical complex near Houston.
In a 2016 administrative petition, the Environmental Integrity Project and two other groups had questioned Texas' decision to classify a new ethylene production unit at the complex as a "minor modification" that did not trigger New Source Review permitting requirements that could have resulted in added pollution controls.
In making that decision, the groups alleged, state regulators had improperly relied on another permit that set "plantwide applicability" emissions limits at odds with the Clean Air Act.
But EPA, in a response signed by Administrator Scott Pruitt earlier this month and set to be formally published in tomorrow's Federal Register, hoisted procedural barriers in denying the groups' challenge to the "Title V" operating permit.
If the groups doubted the validity of the plantwide applicability emissions permit, Pruitt said, they should have raised those concerns when that permit was issued more than a decade ago. Similarly, any objections to Texas' decision to classify the ethylene expansion project as a minor source should have been brought through an enforcement action or under a different provision of the act.
Although EPA is legally required to make a decision on Title V permit challenges within 60 days, the agency regularly misses that deadline. In this case, Pruitt signed the ruling more than a year and a half after the Environmental Integrity Project, along with the Sierra Club and Air Alliance Houston, brought the petition.
Last July, the groups filed five lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force action on that petition and four others, with the common goal of getting EPA to clamp down on allegedly lax permitting practices by Texas regulators (Greenwire, July 20, 2017). Those suits have since been consolidated.
In an order late last week, Judge Amy Berman Jackson required EPA to rule on the remaining four petitions at the rate of one a month from April through July. Those petitions target another Title V permit for the Baytown complex, as well as aspects of the permits for the Welsh Power Plant, located in northeast Texas and owned by Southwestern Electric Power Co., a subsidiary of American Electric Power Co. Inc.; Motiva Enterprises LLC's Port Arthur refinery; and Petroleo Brasileiro SA's Pasadena refinery, which is also near Houston.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/03/22/stories/1060077219
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Cheniere Faces Ruling on Gas Leak U.S. Sees as ‘Serious Hazard’
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik and Ryan Collins
America's first exporter of liquefied natural gas from shale is awaiting a federal ruling on whether it can restart storage tanks it was forced to shut after a leak.
Regulators ordered Cheniere Energy Inc. to take two of the five tanks at its Sabine Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana out of service last month, citing a potentially “serious hazard to people and property” from a gas release discovered in late January. The agency may decide next week whether Cheniere can bring the tanks back online.
Since shipping the first cargo from Sabine Pass in 2016, Cheniere has been a key player in America's march toward becoming a major global LNG supplier to rival Qatar and Australia. Though gas flows to Sabine Pass—one of only two operating U.S. export terminals—have remained fairly stable, that could change if regulators force additional tanks to shut. That's a possibility Cheniere sees as remote.
“There was no discussion” at a regulatory hearing in Houston March 21 of “broadening the scope to other tanks being shut,” Cheniere spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said in an email March 22. The shutdown of the two tanks has no impact on production, he said.
During a hearing held in Houston on March 21, Cheniere argued that the gas release posed no public threat and that any leak could be contained on-site without affecting waterways and highways.
The tank shutdown at Sabine Pass has “limited their available storage capacity, but we have not yet seen an impact on liquefaction or exports,” Hannah Burk, director of proprietary natural gas products with Genscape Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, said via email. But if extreme weather prevents ships from leaving the terminal, storage limits could be stretched, she said.
A report from the manufacturer, Tulsa based Matrix Service Co., showed almost a dozen instances of gas leaking from one Sabine Pass tank into the space between its inner and outer walls between 2008 and 2016, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said. Such incidents can create cracks that would allow the gas to escape into the atmosphere.
Though two tanks have been removed from service at Sabine Pass, a third made by Matrix remains in operation. Another two were made by a different manufacturer. All five tanks at Sabine Pass were designed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
Representatives from Matrix and Mitsubishi didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Though the U.S. gas market hasn't been roiled by the Sabine Pass tank shutdowns, “it should be if it leads to a shut-in” of LNG production, said Bob Yawger, director of futures division for Mizuho Securities USA. “It would be a disaster.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336974&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336974&jd=130336974
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Pennsylvania’s Legacy Oil, Gas Production Addressed in Legislation
Mar 22, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Republican lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House and Senate have introduced companion bills that would enact an updated version of the Oil and Gas Act of 1984 to clarify language and address the current challenges facing conventional producers
State Rep. Martin Causer introduced House Bill (HB) 2154 in an ongoing fight to “ensure fair regulation” for the state’s legacy producers. State Sen. Scott Hutchinson, who has been pushing for similar legislation since last year, has also introduced Senate Bill (SB) 1088.
The legislation comes almost two years after the General Assembly passed a bill Hutchinson sponsored that scrapped what would have been new regulations for the conventional industry and required the state Department of Environmental Protection to rewrite the package.
Those rules were written at the same time as those for unconventional producers. Opponents of the conventional rules successfully argued that they were too burdensome and similar to those drafted for better-financed shale producers. While shale gas production has continued to increase in the state, the glut has pushed down prices and hit the conventional industry hard.
Causer said his proposal to redraft the Oil and Gas Act includes several regulatory updates and clarifications, and would serve as the legislative framework for any future changes to rules impacting the conventional oil and gas industry. The legislation, his office said, has been developed in large part by the Penn Grade Crude Advisory Council, which was created in 2016 to advise and assist the DEP in crafting regulations for the state’s more than 150-year old conventional industry.
While legacy producers operate under the Oil and Gas Act, the state’s omnibus energy law, Act 13 of 2012, required the DEP to update environmental protection standards for producers. Act 13 was crafted in response to the advent of unconventional drilling and does not mention conventional producers or the shallower wells they develop. But the law stipulated that regulations would have to be promulgated to meet its requirements, which has indirectly extended to conventional producers.
“Although Act 13 was intended to address new issues with the unconventional industry, it also placed an unbearable burden on the much smaller conventional producers, Causer said. “The operations are very different, and the regulations must be as well.”
Both Hutchinson and Causer represent districts that include parts of Northwest Pennsylvania, which has long been home to the state’s legacy producers. HB 2154 was last referred to the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, while SB 1088 was referred to the Senate energy committee.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113789-pennsylvanias-legacy-oil-gas-production-addressed-in-legislation
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NOVA Chemicals, Energy Transfer Partners Team up for Proposed Ethylene Export Project
Mar 22, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays
NOVA Chemicals and Energy Transfer Partners have agreed to potentially form a joint venture to develop an ethylene export terminal on the US Gulf Coast, the third such project under consideration for the region, NOVA said Thursday.
Alberta-based NOVA said the companies have entered a non-binding memorandum of understanding to possibly link up on an 800,000 mt/year terminal, pending customer commitments, that could start up by mid-2020.
Naushad Jamani, senior vice president of olefins and feedstock for NOVA, said in a statement that a terminal would further increase the company's footprint in the North American ethylene industry, building on its $2.1 billion acquisition of Williams Partners' 88.46% interest in an 884,500 mt/year cracker in Geismar, Louisiana, last year. Sabic owns the minority interest in the Geismar facility.
NOVA also is expanding output at its 816,466 mt/year cracker in Corunna, Ontario, by 350,000 mt/year by 2022, and is planning a 625,000 mt/year polyethylene plant with Borealis and Total in Bayport, Texas along the Houston Ship Channel.The Louisiana cracker is one of two merchant crackers in the US - Flint Hills Resources operates the other, with capacity of 634,000 mt/year in Port Arthur, Texas. When NOVA bought the cracker, the company indicated consideration of adding derivative plants on 525 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to the plant with riverfront access and use ethylene output as feedstock rather than operate it as a merchant facility as Williams had. Williams sold the cracker to exit what could be a volatile merchant ethylene business and focus on its pipelines.
However, a year ago NOVA, Borealis and Total announced a joint venture that includes the Bayport PE plant that NOVA would operate, Total's adjacent 400,000 mt/year PE plant, and Total's new 1 million mt/year cracker under construction in Port Arthur. In December, NOVA also announced it would move ahead with plans to build a new 450,000 mt/year PE plant in Sarnia, Ontario, to start up in late 2021.
More than 11 million mt/year of new and expanded ethylene capacity slated to start up in Texas and Louisiana between 2016 and 2019, with more to come after that.
The potential NOVA/Energy Transfer project would be the third new ethylene export terminal planned for the US Gulf Coast. Enterprise Products Partners and London-based Navigator Gas have teamed up for a 1 million mt/year facility likely to be built at Enterprise's ethane export terminal at Morgan's Point on the ship channel and start up in the first quarter of 2020. Norwegian chemical shipper Odfjell has proposed a $350 million, 750,000 mt/year facility at its terminal near the mouth of the ship channel.
Enterprise is converting an ethane cavern at its operations in Mont Belvieu, Texas, to hold ethylene, and is planning a 24-mile, bidirectional pipeline to connect that to Morgan's Point and Bayport, where multiple producers operate ethylene pipelines adjacent to Odfjell's terminal, including INEOS, Shell, Chevron, LyondellBasell and Flint Hills Resources. Odfjell is eying connections to those pipelines as well, though its CEO, Kristian Verner Morch, said during the shipper's quarterly earnings call last month that Odfjell is "less likely" to build its project Enterprise moves ahead on its facility.
Neither Enterprise nor Odfjell have announced final investment decisions on their projects, though Enterprise said it has signed contracts with customers, including Flint Hills. Odfjell's Morch said last month that the shipper remains in discussions, but had not secured sufficient customer contracts.
Energy Transfer executives had made a few public comments about possibly building an ethylene export terminal, but NOVA's announcement Thursday was by far the most detailed. Earlier this month Energy Transfer announced it had agreed to form a joint venture with Satellite Petrochemical USA to build an ethane export terminal on the US Gulf Coast and a pipeline connecting its Mont Belvieu, Texas, operations to the facility.
NOVA did not disclose a specific location for the project. The company said it would connect Energy Transfer's Lone Star Mont Belvieu storage facility, where NOVA operates a US ethylene trading hub, and the Louisiana ethylene market to an export facility via existing pipelines that can transport ethylene.
NOVA said the proposed project is subject to sufficient market interest, including completion of definitive agreements and approval from NOVA directors.https://www.platts.com/latest-news/petrochemicals/houston/nova-chemicals-energy-transfer-partners-team-10315301
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Perry Defends Proposed Cuts to Renewable Energy Research
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
Energy Secretary Rick Perry yesterday defended the Trump administration's proposed deep budget cuts to renewable energy research.
"What I'm telling you is just because a line item doesn't have the same amount of money in it in 2017 doesn't mean that the focus isn't there," Perry said during a heated exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Warren sparked Perry's response by questioning why the administration had proposed slashing funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by more than 65 percent in its fiscal 2019 budget request. EERE would get just $696 million under the proposal, down from $2 billion in fiscal 2017 (Greenwire, Feb. 12).
Perry's response largely mirrored what the administration has been saying about energy research for the past year: Government funds should be used only for early-stage research and development, and renewables no longer qualify.
"We're different from China in the sense that our private sector is where a substantial amount of R&D is done," Perry said, referring to country's large investments in renewable technology.
"We have a role in early-stage development, which I think we've done a very good job of," he added. "Once those technologies become more mature and we can commercialize them, then the private sector can take over."
Still, appropriators are unlikely to comply with the administration's request. The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill that's expected to pass the Senate and hit President Trump's desk today boosts EERE's budget to $2.3 billion.
And Warren said she sees the proposed cuts as a rejection of the administration's own energy strategy.
"This is a $1 trillion market, and we're cutting ourselves out of it," she said.
The hearing — which focused on the budget request for DOE's atomic energy defense programs — also featured various questions about pet issues from senators on both sides of the aisle.
Perry and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) fell into a back-and-forth about the national security benefits of building more pipelines and exporting liquefied natural gas.
"Anytime that we can deliver LNG, for instance — whether it's sending it into Poland, to that LNG facility up there — it sends the message to the rest of the European Union, 'You do not have to be held hostage by Russian gas,'" Perry said.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/03/23/stories/1060077251
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Toxic Spills Caused by Hurricane Harvey Worse Than First Reported
Mar 22, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Hurricane Harvey's impact on Houston's petrochemical plants was far greater than revealed, according to a new report from The Associated Press and The Houston Chronicle released Thursday.
Looking at county, state and federal records, the report found more than 100 releases of toxic substances on land, in the water or in the air due to the storm.
In one documented case, nearly half a billion gallons of industrial wastewater from just one chemical plant mixed with storm water.
Harvey devastated Houston, leaving tens of thousands of people temporarily homeless as it flooding huge swatches of the city. The new report is calling attention to the potentially long-lasting effects the storm had on the environment.
Houston is considered the energy capital of the country, home to 500 chemical plants, 10 refineries and more than 6,500 miles of oil and gas pipelines.
Harvey's destruction contributed to the release of various hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals including benzene, vinyl chloride and butadiene.
Looking into Harvey's impact six months after the storm, the AP and Chronicle found that only a handful of the industrial spills have been investigated by federal regulators, and that no enforcement actions have been announced.
The man who headed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regional office during the storm, Samuel Coleman, said the agency's initial goal was "addressing any environmental harms as quickly as possible, as opposed to making announcements about what the problem was."
He told the two publications that in hindsight the agency should have alerted the public to "dozens of spills."
The impact on a handful of older chemical plants were documented in real time during the storm, including the flooding of the Arkema Inc., plant, which resulted in two explosions.
But the report found that the number of spills from all chemical plants was impossible to tally during the storm.
In September, the AP also reported that there was evidence toxic waste had leaked from a number of Superfund sites located in Houston.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/379818-hurricane-harveys-toxic-onslaught-worse-than-first-reported
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Perry Says He Agrees Russian Attacks on U.S. Grid an Act of War
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Kim Chipman
Energy Secretary Rick Perry says he agrees that attacks by Russian hackers on the U.S. power grid and other sites amount to an act of war.
His comments during a Senate Armed Services panel hearing came in response to a question from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said the Russians have been linked to hundreds of attacks on U.S. and European power grids.
“We know that Russia is willing to go much more further,” Blumenthal said.
Perry declined to give details on what actions the U.S. is taking to deter such attacks, saying he would speak of it further in a classified setting.
“I agree the United States and the rest of the world need to send a very powerful message to Russia relative to some of their activities,” Perry said. The U.S. is “rapping their kneecaps pretty hard” to get Russia's attention on matter.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336956&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336956&jd=130336956
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Wehrum Said to Favor Quick Ozone Naaqs Review over Reconsideration
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA air chief William Wehrum is said to be leaning against reconsidering the Obama-era decision to tighten the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb, instead aiming to speed up the next Clean Air Act-mandated NAAQS review as a potential vehicle to weaken the limit, sources say.
Pursuing a regular review of the standard rather than reconsidering the science underpinning a prior review could make it easier for EPA to rely on new science to justify weakening the limit. A reconsideration would require the Trump EPA to reexamine the science behind the October 2015 decision to tighten the standard, and the onus would be on the agency to explain why its prior scientific conclusions for tightening the NAAQS were not accurate.
In contrast, the Clean Air Act mandates that EPA review its six NAAQS -- including the ozone standard -- every five years, and the agency can perform this review by relying on a new body of scientific evidence. Therefore it could declare that more-recent data suggest it is acceptable to weaken the standard from the existing 70 ppb limit.
But to achieve this, EPA would have to accelerate its work on the review because the air law's five-year review cycle means the agency would have to finalize its next ozone decision by October 2020. Agency staff have suggested that on the current schedule, a target of 2021 or 2022 is more realistic for completing the review.
To speed up the process, Wehrum could try to shorten the scientific review process, overseen by EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), that must precede issuance of a revised NAAQS.
Such a move would be sure to draw legal threats from environmentalists, who argued that scientific data supported tightening the NAAQS further than 70 ppb. Under the air law, EPA is required to set its NAAQS at a level requisite to protect human health and the environment with an adequate margin of safety.
Yet EPA might fare better in a legal challenge over a new review of the NAAQS because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has often deferred to the agency's interpretation of scientific data underpinning NAAQS reviews. The agency might find it easier to defend such a case rather than pursuing a reconsideration, where it would have to justify legally why the Obama EPA's 2015 decision was wrong.
Litigation is pending in the D.C. Circuit in Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA in which coal firm Murray Energy and other industry groups claim the 2015 standard is unlawfully stringent. But that case has been put in abeyance while the agency pursues a potential reconsideration of the Obama-era decision at Administrator Scott Pruitt's direction. EPA is poised to update the court by April 6 on the status of its reconsideration process.
The agency is moving to implement the 2015 standard albeit on a significantly delayed schedule, a delay caused by Pruitt's decision to weigh a reconsideration of the rule.
But an informed source says that Wehrum has already decided against a formal reconsideration of the October 2015 decision. Reconsideration would rely on the existing rulemaking record for the 2015 NAAQS, which would include key studies the Obama EPA relied on in its decision to strengthen the standard. Under a new review, however, the scientific record could be different, and EPA would be able to give weight to different studies.
During Wehrum's Senate confirmation process, he wrote to senators that he would “endeavor to meet all statutory deadlines” for implementing the 2015 NAAQS. But he added, “I am not familiar with the record for the 2015 ozone NAAQS decision, so cannot comment on the decision to change the standard.”
In a subsequent Jan. 11 interview with Inside EPA after his confirmation, Wehrum said, “[W]e're going to take a hard look at 2015 NAAQS and one possibility is we decide it needs to be revised or rescinded. That is just a possibility. I have a lot to learn about the science behind the 2015 standard, and I have already started a series of briefings to try to get my arms around that science so I can advise the administrator on my recommendation to what I think we should do.”
An agency spokesman says, “EPA’s focus on the 2015 Ozone NAAQS has been on resolving implementation issues. No decision has been made on a review schedule. We will share more information once it is available.”
Accelerated Review
In terms of procedure, issuing a final ozone NAAQS rule would require EPA to alter the current review process to meet the air law's October 2020 deadline. Wehrum's previous tenure as acting EPA air chief during the George W. Bush administration may give some clues as to steps EPA could take to speed things up.
For example, he might try to reinstate a policy memo that elevates the agency political leadership's role in NAAQS reviews earlier in the process -- although it is unclear if this would actually accelerate the process.
During the Bush administration, Wehrum and then-EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock in a series of policy memos shifted the review process to involve input of political leadership earlier, by substituting an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” (ANPR) for the agency staff's traditional “policy assessment” document. The ANPR expresses the views of agency leadership, rather than staff, and invites stakeholder input as a precursor step to a formal proposal. Wehrum and Peacock justified the shift in part as an effort to speed up NAAQS reviews, but their critics say it had the opposite effect, further delaying the already slow proceedings.
This change provoked concern among CASAC members over the integrity of the scientific review and independence of EPA staff's positions that would ordinarily be presented in the policy assessment.
President Barack Obama's first EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in 2009 rescinded the review policy change, saying it in fact slowed the process and also introduced political bias into agency science review.
“I believe this step has complicated and delayed the NAAQS development process and made it vulnerable to the introduction of policy options that are not supported by the relevant scientific information. We must address these concerns by reinstating the use of a policy assessment document which presents a transparent staff analysis of policy options for senior management to consider prior to rulemaking,” Jackson said in a May 21, 2009, memo to senior EPA managers.
Jackson's own bad experience with an attempted NAAQS reconsideration may also be informing Wehrum's thinking. Jackson reconsidered the Bush 2008 NAAQS of 75 ppb, concluding that it was not sufficiently stringent to protect public health with the Clean Air Act's required “adequate margin of safety.”
But she was forced to withdraw a proposal to toughen the standard to 70 ppb in face of White House opposition, and President Obama justified the move by arguing that the reconsideration was discretionary and a needless burden to states and industry.
The Obama EPA under the next Administrator Gina McCarthy ultimately tightened the standard to 70 ppb, at the top end of the range of 60 ppb to 70 ppb then recommended by CASAC.
CASAC Membership
Any new review of the ozone NAAQS will also hinge to a large degree on the composition and views of CASAC, which EPA must consult when setting the standards. CASAC's membership is in flux, and the body has yet to convene a panel to formally begin its review of the 2015 ozone NAAQS.
The seven-member chartered CASAC that makes official recommendations on NAAQS to EPA is now chaired by Tony Cox, a consultant criticized by Democrats and others for his past work for industry groups, and EPA is now recruiting additional candidates to serve on the panel as well.
Critics say the Trump administration is attempting to re-make the advisory panel to be more industry-friendly, while administration supporters say it is merely trying to redress a bias toward ever-tougher NAAQS on the chartered CASAC and its various specialized panels, which include a wider membership.
Also, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has announced he will institute a policy to ensure that agency policy decisions are based on publicly-available, “reproducible” science. The policy would be based on a prior bill by Rep. Lamar Smith, (R-TX) banning the use of “secret science.” The issue has the potential to heavily impact NAAQS reviews, as several of the most influential studies used in setting NAAQS have contained proprietary information not available to the public.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wehrum-said-favor-quick-ozone-naaqs-review-over-reconsideration
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Oil Giants Back Switch to Natural Gas as Study Tallies Pollution Deaths
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
International oil and gas industry groups told Bloomberg Environment they would encourage greater use of natural gas and less reliance on coal after a report linked the dirtiest fossil fuels with millions of premature deaths.
Their comments followed publication this week of a studythat found air pollution created by the most greenhouse gas-intensive fossil fuels could kill 153 million people prematurely by 2100.
Cutting carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change, has a side benefit, the study found: Poor air quality caused by burning fossil fuels of all kinds will improve and fewer people will die.
“When you burn fossil fuels, in addition to carbon dioxide, you get a bunch of other pollutants that form ozone—very small particles that can penetrate deep into people's lungs and cause a variety of illnesses,” including heart disease, respiratory failure, and others, study lead author Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and former NASA scientist, told Bloomberg Environment.
“The status quo is not only leading us down the road to [climate] disaster, it's leaving our air pollution levels really astonishingly high in many parts of the world so that millions of people are dying every year,” Shindell said.
The study, published March 19 in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, was conducted by scientists at Duke University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The analysis is similar to some of the science underlying the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan showing public health benefits to cutting fossil fuel use, Shindell said.
The EPA, which regulates the air pollution described in the study in the U.S., has proposed under President Donald Trump to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants as a way to address climate change.
EPA spokesman Robert Daguillard told Bloomberg Environment March 19 that the EPA is referring questions to NASA, which does not regulate air pollution.
120,000 Fewer New York City Deaths
The study estimates that 153 million premature deaths will be avoided over an 80 year period if emissions are cut so that the goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, to prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), is met.
That includes 4.4 million premature deaths in Kolkata and 2 million in Mumbai, cities in India that are heavily reliant on coal for electricity.
A switch to cleaner fuels would save 360,000 premature deaths in Tokyo and 120,000 in New York City, where coal power is less common than in developing countries.
“This paper highlights the enormous health benefits of quicker action,” A. R. Ravishankara, an atmospheric science professor at Colorado State University who was not involved in the study, told Bloomberg Environment. “There is much to be gained by not putting off fossil fuel reduction for both climate and health.”
Industry Sees Benefits in Pollution Cuts
Responding to the study, global fossil fuel producers and trade groups said countries should use more natural gas, renewables and carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies as ways to uphold their Paris commitments and reduce fossil fuels’ impact on air quality and public health.
“Gas has a significant role to play in delivering the energy needed to ensure development for all countries, complementing renewables, and delivering a clear climate and clean air benefit, especially when compared to coal,” the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which represents 10 of the world's largest non-U.S.-based oil companies, told Bloomberg Environment in a statement.
Already, there is a shift toward natural gas for electric power generation in the U.S. because low natural gas prices have hastened the retirement of coal-fired power plants.
China has improved air quality in Beijing because it has switched from coal to gas, but gas shortages there this winter caused many homes to go without heat.
‘Calling on a Coal-to-Gas Switch’
“In those regions that are relying so heavily on coal, we're calling on a coal-to-gas switch,” Nareg Terzian, spokesman for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) in Brussels, told Bloomberg Environment. “China is turning to natural gas more and more because it wants to solve its urban air pollution issue.”
But Terzian dismissed the study's conclusions, calling them “confusing” because IOGP believes reducing air pollution and cutting carbon emissions are unrelated.
The study “can lead someone to read it and think, ‘I can reduce greenhouse gases and it's going to reduce deaths linked to air pollution.’ That's not the case,” Terzian said.
The IOGP represents many of the world's largest oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and others.
Emissions Cuts ‘Top Priority’ for Industry
Chevron is committed to addressing the risks of climate change, company spokesman Sean Comey told Bloomberg Environment.
“Chevron is taking prudent, practical and cost-effective actions to address potential climate change risks, including managing emissions, testing new technologies and increasing efficiency,” he said.
Shell did not respond to emails requesting comment March 20. Exxon spokesman Scott Silvestri declined to comment on the study March 19.
The American Petroleum Institute said reducing emissions is a “top priority” for the oil and gas industry.
“The combination of natural gas use, cleaner motor fuels and technological innovations are significantly improving air quality in a host of ways previously considered impossible—all while the U.S. leads the world in producing and refining natural gas and oil,” API spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel told Bloomberg Environment.
Negative Emissions Difficult to Achieve
The study focuses on the public health benefits of rapidly cutting fossil fuel use because of what its authors see as a flaw in the models underpinning the Paris Agreement.
The models call for fossil fuel use to be curtailed too slowly to prevent warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, allowing people to breathe polluted air for longer periods of time, the study says.
The models do that because they assume that by the second half of this century, humanity will be actively sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere on a planetary scale and then storing it somewhere safely forever. Scientists call that a “negative emissions” scenario.
But assumptions about negative emissions rely on thus-far unproven technology and land-use techniques that many scientists believe are unlikely to be deployed widely and quickly enough to have an effect on climate change.
‘A Race Against Time’
The European Academies Sciences Advisory Council concluded in February that the Paris Agreement's negative emissions scenarios are “overly optimistic” because they rely on “hypothetical” technology. The council said relying on carbon removal technology constitutes a “moral hazard” because it suggests to countries that cutting carbon emissions is less urgent than it really is.
“It is no exaggeration to see responding to the real threats of climate change as a race against time: the longer action is delayed, the more acute and intractable the problem becomes,” the council said in its report.
Shindell said the only reliable way for the globe to meet Paris targets is to cut fossil fuel consumption rapidly, which will save millions of lives.
“Policymakers—I hope that they will start seeing climate policy more consistently as part of larger polices to benefit the well-being of their citizens,” he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336949&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336949&jd=130336949
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Bipartisan Bill Would Boost Carbon Utilization, Capture Research
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
Senators from both parties have floated new legislation that would promote the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) and research into direct CO2 air capture, a bill that builds upon the recent enactment of an expanded section tax credit for storage and use of carbon in industrial operations, including enhanced oil recovery.
The proposed legislation, dubbed the USE IT Act, would encourage use of CO2 with provisions including a requirement that EPA support carbon utilization and direct air capture research.
It also includes a directive that the White House Council on Environmental Quality develop guidance to assist developers and operators of carbon capture and utilization (CCUS) projects and CO2 pipelines, according to a press release from Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY).
And the CCUS bill would also create task forces to hear input on updates and improvements to such guidance over time, and would clarify that CCUS projects and CO2 pipeline are eligible for existing permit streamlining under legislation known as the FAST Act.
The bill was released weeks after Congress approved, and President Trump signed, legislation renewing and expanding tax credits, contained in section 45Qof the tax code. The legislation made the credits available through 2027, with credits rising to $50 per ton of stored carbon dioxide for “permanent sequestration,” and $35 per ton for sequestration tied to enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
Since then, a broad coalition of groups that supports CCS has indicated it plans further efforts, including for CO2 pipelines.
Barrasso, who joined with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) as lead sponsors of the latest measure, said in a March 22 statement that the legislation would promote “long term use” of oil and gas resources abundant in his home state of Wyoming and “keep American on the path to energy dominance.” He also praised the measure as a plan that would “make Washington a helpful partner to efforts taking place in Wyoming to develop carbon capture technologies, convert carbon into a useful product, and reduce emissions.”
Whitehouse in a similar fashion touted both national and home state interests as a rationale for the bill, saying the measure would “help innovators around the country” as well as a growing number of businesses in Rhode Island including bioalgae and other utilization companies.“That's a win for our climate . . and a win for the economy overall,” Whitehouse said.
Next steps for moving the legislation are not entirely clear, but it is already cosponsored by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND).
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/bipartisan-bill-would-boost-carbon-utilization-capture-research
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Judges Inclined to Clarify ‘Natural’ Air Pollution Exemption
Mar 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Lu
Judges seemed amenable to environmental groups’ request to provide a legal definition of what constitutes an uncontrollable, natural air pollution event under EPA regulations.
States can exclude uncontrollable pollution spikes from wildfires, dust storms, and other exceptional events from consideration of whether an area meets national standards for ozone, particulate matter, and other pollutants. Compliance with such standards is important because additional pollution controls are required at factories and other industrial facilities in areas that violate national air quality standards.
As it stands, the EPA's 2016 exceptional events rule leaves room for air pollution from human-made sources such as factories to be written off as natural events if the emissions were picked up by a very strong wind, said Margaret Hsieh, the Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer representing appellant environmental groups March 22 before U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges Gregory Katsas, Thomas Griffith, and Harry Edwards.
But Justice Department attorney Sue Chen in representing the Environmental Protection Agency, said petitioners “were getting tripped up” by the text.
Factory emissions carried by wind are still considered routine emissions because they come from an anthropogenic source—the factory—Chen said.
She then presented an example, which the EPA gave in the brief, of a natural event that can be counted under the exceptional events rule—airborne dust from a pollution-controlled road by the desert.
“Suppose you had a different example,” Katsas asked Chen. Say a bolt of lightning hits a container of toxic gas, “your regulation would classify this one as natural?”
Chen said it would.
In the response, Hsieh asked the court to “memorialize” the interpretation that emissions result from natural sources in an opinion.
“If we set that in the opinion, would that address your concerns?” Katsas asked Hsieh.
If judges could confirm the distinction between emissions resulting from natural sources as opposed to anthropogenic sources using the examples the EPA gave in its brief, which was not spelled out in the rule itself, Hsieh said, they would be satisfied.
“We're essentially concerned by smokestack emissions,” she said.
The case is Nat. Res. Def. Council v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1413, oral arguments 3/22/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130336953&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130336953&jd=130336953
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rose Last Year. Here Are the Top 5 Reasons.
Mar 23, 2018 | New York Times
By Brad Plumer
If the world wants to avoid drastic global warming this century, we’ll need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions sharply in the years ahead.
For now, however, we’re still moving in the opposite direction: Carbon dioxide emissions from the use of coal, oil and natural gas increased 1.4 percent globally in 2017 after holding steady for the previous three years, the International Energy Agency reported on Thursday. That’s the equivalent of adding 170 million new cars to the road worldwide.
The energy agency, which called the findings “a strong warning for global efforts to combat climate change,” detailed several big reasons CO₂ emissions are increasing again. Here’s a look at the main ones:
Emissions are rising fastest in Asia
Roughly two-thirds of last year’s emissions increase came from Asia, where fast-growing countries like China, India and Indonesia continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels as they lift themselves out of poverty.
China, which is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s industrial greenhouse gases, saw its emissions rise 1.7 percent in 2017, fueled by rapid economic growth and an increase in oil and natural gas use. The rest of developing Asia, including India and Indonesia, saw their overall emissions increase 3 percent.
That jump in Asian emissions overshadowed cuts made elsewhere in the world: The United States, for instance, reduced its emissions 0.5 percent last year, driven by the growing deployment of renewable energy. Britain, Mexico and Japan also managed to cut their emissions. (The European Union over all, by contrast, saw emissions rise 1.5 percent.)
Renewable energy is growing fast, but not fast enough
Renewable energy — including wind, solar and hydropower — was the fastest-growing energy source worldwide in 2017. China alone installed as many solar panels last year as the entire solar capacity of France and Germany combined. And the prices for renewable technologies keep falling.
The catch? Last year’s “unprecedented” growth in renewables, the I.E.A. said, satisfied only about one-quarter of the increase in global energy demand as the world’s economy boomed. Fossil fuels supplied the rest. “The overall share of fossil fuels in global energy demand in 2017 remained at 81 percent,” the agency’s report said, “a level that has remained stable for more than three decades despite strong growth in renewables.”
If the world wants to cut emissions quickly and meet the climate goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, the I.E.A. said, clean energy will need to grow about five times as fast each year between now and 2040 as it did last year.Coal made a small comeback
Over the past few years, coal demand has plummeted around the world as countries like the United States and China shift away from the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels. China, for instance, has been pushing to phase out coal use in residential heating in order to clean up the severe air pollution that is choking its cities.EDITORS’ PICKSN.I.H. Lobbied Industry to Fund Study of Alcohol’s BenefitHere’s What Could Derail the Economy’s Upward TrackA Lot Is Riding on ‘Wrinkle.’ Ava DuVernay Doesn’t Care.
But coal use rebounded slightly in 2017, rising by 1 percent, driven in part by an increase in coal-fired power in Southeast Asia. A particularly hot summer in China also led the country to run its existing coal plants more often to power air conditioning.
Yet despite last year’s uptick, there are signs that coal is falling out of favor worldwide. India’s coal demand is growing at a slower pace than it did over the previous decade, as the country turns to solar power and other clean energy sources. And, the I.E.A. said, both China’s and the world’s coal consumption remains below the 2014 peak.
S.U.V. sales keep booming
Demand for oil rose 1.6 percent last year, much faster than the average annual pace over the previous decade. As oil prices have declined, more people in the United States and Europe are buying larger S.U.V.s, pushing up transportation emissions further.
The I.E.A. noted that electric cars, which do not use oil, are quickly making inroads in countries like China, as a result of aggressive government mandates and falling battery prices. “For now, however, the strong growth in electric-car sales remains too small to make a dent in oil demand growth,” the agency said.
Energy efficiency efforts are slowing
In addition to switching to cleaner sources of energy, countries can also curb their emissions by improving the energy efficiency of their factories and homes and vehicles, through policies like building codes and fuel-economy standards.
On this score, however, the I.E.A. had bad news: In 2017, the energy intensity of the global economy — a measure of efficiency — improved by just 1.7 percent, a slower pace than in each of the previous three years. The agency noted that many countries appear to be easing up on government policies to improve energy efficiency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/climate/global-energy-demand.html
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