Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 3/23/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Prices for Most Commodity Resins Rose in February
Mar 23, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
That trampling sound heard throughout North America in February came from resin sellers who were racing to pass through price increases before the shortest month of the year came to an end. -
Chemical Panel Expands from 18 to 29 Members
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
U.S. EPA has expanded its chemicals oversight board from 18 to 29 members. -
Is Tap Water Safe? Here's How to Tell
Mar 23, 2018 | Women's Health
By Laura Beil
Water. It hydrates you, powers you through workouts, and makes up 65 percent of your body. But lately, you may have some concerns. -
My Son Can't Afford Trump Appointees Who Don't Care About Clean Air
Mar 23, 2018 | The News Journal
By Meredith Hurst
In my bustling household with children spanning toddler to teenager, I measure the quality of our days by measuring the quality of our air. This is because my teenage son is asthmatic, and what he breathes matters a great deal. -
(ACC Mentioned) Could Shale Gas Lead To A Manufacturing Boom In Appalachia?
Mar 23, 2018 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
Coal’s downfall has exacerbated Appalachia’s economic struggles. But the emergence of shale gas has the potential to help liberate the region, although critics are concerned that such production would also leave an indelible environmental footprint that could do more harm than good. -
Will U.S.-China Trade Tensions Derail Energy Export Plans?
Mar 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Collin Eaton and Ryan Maye Handy
The U.S. energy industry, producing record amounts of oil, natural gas and petrochemicals, has planned to grow through exports, especially to booming overseas markets in Asia. -
U.S. LNG Firms Lament Bad Timing of Steel Tariffs and China Trade Spat
Mar 22, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Julie Gordon
The Trump administration's planned steel tariffs and a potential trade battle with China could hurt U.S. liquefied natural gas companies just as a new wave of developments in the fast-growing market is gaining steam, company executives say. -
Wyoming Natural Gas Flaring Issue Reignited with Enviro Study
Mar 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
While federal agencies are rolling back Obama-era rules to curb methane emissions, an environmental group’s report is seeking to make Wyoming a poster child for updating restrictions on wellhead natural gas flaring. -
Canada's NOVA, US Sunoco Explore Gulf Coast Ethylene Export Terminal Joint Venture
Mar 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Niall Swan
The olefins arm of NOVA Chemicals’ and Energy Transfer Partners subsidiary Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals have entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) regarding a joint venture to develop an ethylene export terminal on the US Gulf Coast, the Canadian producer said late on Thursday. -
Cash-Strapped Congress Taps SPR Oil Again
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Congress is again looking at ways to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help pay for the government's ballooning budget deficits. -
Is FERC Bent on Approving Pipelines? Judges Weigh Claim
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal judges seemed doubtful yesterday of environmentalists' claims that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is fundamentally biased in favor of pipelines. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Companies Review Lessons Learned from Hurricane Harvey
Mar 23, 2018 | The Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Doyle
An industry forum held in Texas has discussed the response of chemical companies to Hurricane Harvey and how a coastal protection system is vital to ensure the safety of chemical plants during future flooding. -
Ewire: Former Official Sees Missteps in EPA's Harvey Response
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
A top former EPA official is acknowledging the agency's missteps when it failed to warn Houston residents about scores of toxic releases stemming from Hurricane Harvey, the massive storm that battered the country's fourth-largest city earlier this year, driving a debate about the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events. -
The Energy 202: Congress Finally Found a New Way to Fund Wildfire Suppression
Mar 23, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
The toxic impact of Hurricane Harvey months after the storm slammed into the Texas coast is much worse than officials previously said, the Associated Press and Houston Chronicle reveal in a joint investigation. -
Feds: Iranian Hackers Hit FERC with 'Brazen Cyber Assault'
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Blake Sobczak
Iranian hackers hit the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during a "massive and brazen cyber assault" that claimed thousands of victims worldwide, U.S. authorities said today. -
Rail Workers Confront Execs on Safety
Mar 23, 2018 | People's World
By Mark Gruenberg
Taking their campaign for rail safety to the city where it matters the most, at least 75 railroad workers and their supporters confronted rail executives on the issue during the evening rush hour in Chicago, the nation’s rail hub. -
Congress Calls Biomass 'Carbon Neutral.' Scientists Disagree
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Chelsea Harvey and Niina Heikkinen
Lawmakers are once again pushing U.S. EPA and other federal agencies to recognize the burning of biomass as a carbon-neutral energy source. But scientists say that could be a bad move for the climate. -
Global CO2 Surged the Year After Paris Deal Was Inked
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Global carbon dioxide emissions surged to record levels the year after the landmark 2016 Paris climate agreement was signed. -
Study Finds Tough Climate Policies Could Save 150 Million Lives
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
A new study finds that tougher policies to limit greenhouse gases that cause climate change could save 150 million lives worldwide, due to the overlooked co-benefit of conventional pollution reductions that cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
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(ACC Mentioned) Prices for Most Commodity Resins Rose in February
Mar 23, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
That trampling sound heard throughout North America in February came from resin sellers who were racing to pass through price increases before the shortest month of the year came to an end.
For the most part, they were successful, as prices for polyethylene, PVC, solid polystyrene and PET bottle resin all finished higher for the month.
Prices for all grades of PE were up 4 cents per pound in February, with PVC up 3 cents and solid PS and PET bottle resin each up an average of 2 cents, according to market sources contacted by Plastics News. The PP dip averaged 6 cents per pound.
The price increases played out against a larger market picture of higher global oil prices and a weaker U.S. dollar, according to Phil Karig, managing director of Mathelin Bay Associates in St. Louis. Since early March 2017, Brent crude oil prices are up about 14 percent, while the dollar has depreciated about 15 percent vs. the euro.
"There are always other impacts on resin pricing such as capacity utilization and anticipated growth of the market locally and globally," Karig said. "But crude oil prices are the backdrop against which other price influences in the resin market play out against over time."
The 4-cent PE hike came after lower demand had sent prices down 3 cents in January. Prices for all grades of high, low and linear low density PE had been flat in November and December.
The February PE increase "was supplier-driven more than anything," said Mike Burns, a market analyst with Resin Technology Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas. He added that higher raw material prices played a role in the move, as well as some production issues and higher export sales.
Market analyst David Barry with PetroChem Wire in Houston sees the February PE increases as "a short-term move."
"The cold snap in January had a larger impact on PE operating rates than people thought," he said in an email to Plastics News. The market has seen a number of non-weather-related force majeure declarations as well, Barry added, at assets operated by at least five PE makers.
U.S./Canadian PE sales got off to a mixed start in January, according to the American Chemistry Council. Regional sales of HDPE were up almost 4 percent, with LLDPE sales rising 7.5 percent. But sales of LDPE had a rough month, slipping almost 9 percent.
For HDPE, domestic sales growth of 4 percent was dampened slightly by 2.5 percent export growth. In LLDPE, exports boomed 33 percent in January — fueled by new capacity added in 2017 — boosting domestic sales growth of almost 1 percent. LDPE's 6 percent domestic sales drop in January was worsened by a 17 percent plunge in export sales.
The 3-cent hike for PVC happened after prices were flat in January and down a penny in December. It took hold as a result of a stronger export market and because of limited production at some PVC plants in the region, according to an executive at a PVC maker contacted by Plastics News.
"There were some [production] issues associated with the hard freeze in the Houston area," the executive said. "That pushed operating rates under 80 percent. Exports were also up in price, which tightened supplies for the domestic market."
U.S./Canadian PVC sales grew just over 2 percent in January, with export growth of 14 percent making up for a 3.5 percent decline in domestic sales. January PVC sales into its flagship rigid pipe and tubing end market were down almost 8 percent as extreme winter weather slowed construction activity.
Regional PS prices climbed 2 cents after being flat in January, but up 5 in December. That topsy-turvy pattern has been dictated by changes in raw material prices. PS makers had been seeking price hikes ranging from 2-7 cents per pound for February.
Barry at PCW said the February PS move was influenced by tight supplies of styrene monomer. Higher butadiene prices also put pressure on prices for high-impact PS. By comparison, prices for benzene feedstock, which has been a main driver of PS prices in recent years, have been relatively stable, he said.
Regional PS makers in 2018 are looking to rebound from a 2017 year in which sales fell just over 2 percent. A domestic sales loss of more than 2 percent for full-year 2017 was softened by a gain of 5.5 percent in exports.
The 2-cent price hike seen by PET in February extended that material's streak to nine consecutive months of price increases. Most PET buyers have seen increases of 13 cents since September.
PET bottle resin prices in the region have remained a bit tight in the wake of M&G Polymers' bankruptcy-related shutdown of its 800 million-pound-capacity plant in Apple Grove, W.Va. That plant now has been purchased by Far East New Century Corp. of Taiwan and is expected to restart, which would improve supplies for the regional market.
The only regional resin market that didn't see higher prices in February was polypropylene, where prices took a contrarian approach and fell 6 cents.
Month-to-month volatility in PP pricing is almost a given. The 6-cent drop came after a 9-cent jump in January had been caused by short-term supply tightness as cold weather griped the Houston area. Supplies of both PP resin and propylene monomer were tight.
Prior to the February slide, North American PP prices had increased for seven consecutive months, with those increases totaling 19.5 cents per pound. Higher domestic demand combined with supply outages had played a role in these price hikes.
"The market wasn't supporting the level that prices were rising to," RTI market analyst Scott Newell said. "That resulted in significant demand destruction across the propylene chain." A similar price decline is possible for March, he added.
North American PP sales got off to a rough start in 2018, dropping 4 percent in January. A domestic sales loss of almost 3 percent was magnified by a 46 percent drop in export sales.
On a macro-feedstock level, price increases for PE and PVC went against the grain in February. Regional prices for West Texas intermediate crude oil began the month at $65.50 per barrel but ended near $61 for a drop of more than 7 percent. U.S. natural gas prices also fell almost 4 percent during February, slipping from $2.80 per million British thermal units to $2.70.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180323/NEWS/180329938/prices-for-most-commodity-resins-rose-in-february
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Chemical Panel Expands from 18 to 29 Members
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
U.S. EPA has expanded its chemicals oversight board from 18 to 29 members.
The agency said yesterday the additions to the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals are "consistent with the statutory requirements" for the panel that is tasked with providing independent advice on science and technical issues related to implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act reform law.
EPA said it used public comments to decide on the new members, who would "increase the balance of scientific perspectives and add experts with experience in labor, public interest, animal protection, and chemical manufacturing and processing to the committee."
The panel members serve staggered terms, generally of two to three years.
The new members:
Charles Barton, Valspar Corp.
Steven Bennett, Household & Commercial Products Association
Sheri Blystone, SNF Holding Co.
Susan Dempsey, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services
Thomas Hartung, Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health
Michael Holsapple, Michigan State University
Sidney Marlborough, Noble Energy Inc.
Mark Johnson, Army Public Health Center
Jennifer McPartland, Environmental Defense Fund
Ruthann Rudel, Silent Spring Institute
Michael Wilson, BlueGreen Alliance
The SACC chairman is Dr. Kenneth Portier, a retired managing director of the American Cancer Society. The other 17 members who have been on the board since January 2017 are:
Henry Anderson, University of Wisconsin, Madison
James Bruckner, University of Georgia
Deborah Cory-Slechta, University of Rochester
Holly Davies, former scientist at the Washington State Department of Ecology
William Doucette, Utah State University
Panos Georgopoulos, Rutgers University
Kathleen Gilbert, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Concepción Jiménez-González, GlaxoSmithKline
Alan Kaufman, Toy Industry Association
John Kissel, retired University of Washington professor
Melanie Marty, retired California EPA official
Craig Rowlands, Underwriters Laboratories LLC
Sheela Sathyanarayana, University of Washington
Valentine Schaeffer, Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Daniel Schlenk, University of California, Riverside
Christopher Waller, Merck Research Laboratories
Catherine Willett, Humane Society of the United States
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077349
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Is Tap Water Safe? Here's How to Tell
Mar 23, 2018 | Women's Health
By Laura Beil
Water. It hydrates you, powers you through workouts, and makes up 65 percent of your body. But lately, you may have some concerns.
Last year, chemical sludge from a shoe manufacturer was found in the tap water of Plainfield Township, Michigan. The area lies about 120 miles from Flint, where, in 2015, dangerous levels of lead were found in the city's drinking supply. Experts soon linked the tainted water to local outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease (a severe form of pneumonia). More than a dozen people died, fertility rates plummeted, and the toll on countless children's future health might not be known for a generation.
Michigan isn't the only state with water worries. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, found that in 2015 (the most recent year available), one-quarter of Americans drank water from systems that violated rules set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. (And that doesn't include the more than 13 million private well systems exempt from federal safety requirements.) Scores more municipalities operate on leaky, lead-laden infrastructure. At least 6 million city water pipes in the U.S. are made of the metal, which is so dangerous there is no acceptable safe level, and many local governments have thin budgets for replacement, says Erik Olson, director of health and food at the NRDC.
It's not just bad plumbing that could be junking up your faucet's flow. Some lakes, rivers, and groundwater are polluted by worrisome levels of natural compounds like arsenic, human-made chemicals, and agricultural runoff such as animal waste, fertilizers, and pesticides. The treatment plants designed to remove contaminants don't always operate up to par (most use century-old technology). Sometimes residents aren't immediately told when issues are found.
The Trump administration has vowed to replace municipal pipes to combat lead levels but also plans to repeal the Waters of the United States rule, which defines which U.S. waterways are protected under federal law. Environmentalists say this move could strip protections from some drinking water sources. But you're far from powerless. Protect yourself by taking these steps.
1. READ YOUR WATER REPORTS
Plug your zip code into the Environmental Working Group's Tap Water Database(ewg.org) or request a report from your local water utility. Flummoxed by all those chemical names? Want to know what's being done to correct violations? Ask your provider. They're usually happy to explain, says Mark H. Weir, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
2. KNOW YOUR CITY'S PIPES
Especially those that serve your house. Your city water department can tell you whether you have lead service lines, but if your home was built in the late '80s or after, the chances you have them are relatively low, says Weir.
3. LIMIT LEAD
If you do have lead pipes, run water for at least 30 seconds (or until it's cold) before drinking it to flush out liquid that's been sitting in them (doing so can reduce lead levels in water by 90 percent); drink and cook only with cold H20 (the metal dissolves more easily in hot water); clean your faucet's filter screen every few months; and. . .
4. FILTER, FILTER, FILTER
Look for a unit that gets rid of the specific contaminants found in your area, and change the filter according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Expensive filtration systems will sift out everything, Olson says, but may not be necessary if your water has only one or two chemicals of concern.
5. TEST YOUR H2O
You can buy at-home kits at hardware stores, but the most reliable results come from state-certified labs (find one at epa.gov/safewater), which charge around $100. If you drink from a private well, have your water analyzed once a year—sooner if you have experienced a flood or if your water looks, smells, or tastes different.
6. BUY THE BEST BOTTLED
According to an NRDC report, about 25 percent of bottled water is actually tap water, which may or may not receive further treatment. A seal from NSF International signals the product has been independently tested and certified for quality.
7. CALL ON CONGRESS
"A lack of funding means the Environmental Protection Agency has very limited means to research what the emerging contaminants are, how to address them, and how they impact public health," says Weir. Urge your state representatives to support HR 1068, a bill that would mandate stricter standards on contaminants and provide grants for updating aging service lines.
8. . . .AND LOCAL LEADERS TOO
Attend public budget meetings and ask your city reps to include water systems in any new infrastructure funding.
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19566224/is-tap-water-safe/
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My Son Can't Afford Trump Appointees Who Don't Care About Clean Air
Mar 23, 2018 | The News Journal
By Meredith Hurst
In my bustling household with children spanning toddler to teenager, I measure the quality of our days by measuring the quality of our air. This is because my teenage son is asthmatic, and what he breathes matters a great deal.
My family knows better than to take the quality of our air and the stability of our climate for granted — and I expect no less of our Senators.
It’s why I was grateful to learn that Delaware Senator Tom Carper recently stood up for families by pushing back on two dangerous anti-environmental nominees, Kathleen Harnett-White and Michael Dourson.
Harnett-White was nominated to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where she would have been President Trump's senior environmental adviser. Dourson was chosen to lead EPA’s chemical safety office, a position with oversight over what chemicals are allowed on the market.
If approved, these two nominees would have spelled trouble for my family and countless others. Both have a long history of rejecting common sense health standards and basic science — with records pointing to contempt for climate science and toxic regulations, respectively.
For my son, these two issues hit home hard. His asthma is triggered by pollen, and climate change is making pollen season longer and more intense.
His asthma is also triggered by paints and perfumes in everyday household products. As a mom trying to keep toxic chemicals out of our stuff, Dourson — who routinely downplayed the health risks of chemicals known to harm the developing brains of babies and children — was not to be trusted.
During her tenure at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Hartnett-White rebuffed proposals to strengthen smog rules and even claimed that low-level ozone (or smog), an air pollutant, wasn't harmful unless "you put your mouth over the tailpipe of a car for eight hours every day."
As the mom of a child hospitalized eight times just this past year in part due to high-ozone days — a known trigger for asthma attacks — this disdain for science is shocking.
It’s no wonder that Sen. Carper said of her Senate hearings, “In the 17 years I have been in the Senate, I have never sat through a hearing as excruciating as Ms. White’s.”
It would be unimaginable for someone like Hartnett-White to coordinate federal environmental policy.
Meanwhile, Dourson was chosen to run the chemical safety office despite a long history of being a scientist-for-hire in service of the chemical and tobacco industries. He repeatedly used his consulting firm to underestimate the dangers of toxic chemicals on behalf of his industry clients.
Even worse, Dourson would have been put in charge of implementing the strong chemical safety law that Senator Carper helped pass in 2016. After forty years of inaction due to a weak law, we finally have the chance to protect American families from toxic chemicals in consumer products. If Dourson had been confirmed, he would have undermined the new law. (That’s still a concern, given others who serve in Trump’s EPA.)
Again: these are the people Trump wanted to have calling the shots on federal environmental policy matters that impact human health. For anyone who cares about the health of children, these nominees were simply unacceptable.
These nominees might have made it were it not for Carper. They had to pass through the committee on which Carper is the senior Democrat, and he wasn’t having it. Through methodical evidence-gathering, tough questions, and a refusal to back down, Carper was able to effectively call attention to their woeful shortcomings and stop both nominations.
After Dourson finally withdrew his nomination late last year, Carper had sound advice for his colleagues: “In this body, our responsibility is to provide advice and consent – not to rush to approve unqualified or controversial nominees or ill-advised legislation for shortsighted political wins.”
We could use more leaders like Carper in Washington. During this difficult time for our country, I’m grateful that Carper is standing up for families, and representing Delaware and our country with the toughness and dignity we deserve. Thank you, Senator, for protecting my son, and all our state’s kids, from dirty air and toxic chemicals.
Meredith Hurst is a resident of Wilmington who works as a paralegal and advocates for clean air on behalf of her two children.
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/03/23/my-son-cant-afford-trump-appointees-who-dont-care-clean-air/452322002/
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(ACC Mentioned) Could Shale Gas Lead To A Manufacturing Boom In Appalachia?
Mar 23, 2018 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
Coal’s downfall has exacerbated Appalachia’s economic struggles. But the emergence of shale gas has the potential to help liberate the region, although critics are concerned that such production would also leave an indelible environmental footprint that could do more harm than good.
A new study says that the Utica and Marcellus Shale basins will provide 37% of the nation’s natural gas production by 2040, making it the best place nationally for manufacturers to invest — even better than the Gulf Coast.
IHS Markit concludes that the region, which is made up of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and which it calls Shale Crescent USA, will “provide a significant financial advantage” when compared to the Gulf Coast. It specifically refers to chemical plants, which would use “wet” natural gas as a feedstock to manufacture end products like plastics. Those so-called natural gas liquids are comprised of such chemicals as butane, ethane, methane and propane.
“The IHS Markit Analysis predicts that an ethylene project in the Shale Crescent USA region will produce a net present value in 2020 … of $930 million over the life of the project compared to a net present value of $217 million for a similar projects on the US Gulf Coast,” the study says, which was commissioned by Shale Crescent USA.
The analysis adds that Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have an advantage because their supplies are closer to where the shale gas would be consumed, and because of abundant fresh water supplies — a region that holds an estimated 141 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. It further notes that 900 chemical plants are already in the region, with most of those in Ohio.
Anadarko Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy, Range Resources, ExxonMobil’s XTO Energy and Equitable Resources are now actively drilling in those basins.
Ample shale gas supplies, in fact, are behind the resurgence of the U.S. chemical manufacturing sector. As of December 2017, the American Chemistry Council said that 317 projects are either in up-and-running, getting built or on the drawing board and collectively, they are valued at $185 billion. About 450,000 jobs are tied to that economic development, it adds, which are both direct and indirect jobs.
Studying the Data
In 2000, shale gas accounted for 5% of all gas production in the United States and today it is about 60%, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Specifically, hydraulic fracturing, which allows access to shale gas deposits locked in rocks deep underground, is the vehicle by which this revolution has begun. To retrieve it, sand and water are pumped down under, along with some chemicals.
Steel, chemical and fertilizer manufacturers are among the beneficiaries. Those industrials were paying as much as $14 per million Btus in 2005 and now it is about $2.70 for the same unit, which IHS Markit says will lead to an additional $328 billion in new manufacturing output by 2025.
"The (Shale Crescent USA) region has an abundance of natural resources at costs below their Gulf Coast equivalents," said Ron Whitfield, lead author and a vice president at IHS Markit, and "it is in close proximity to a very large installed base of plastics manufacturing customers, and the region benefits from reasonable costs of doing business."
Civic activists and environmentalists worry that fracking may taint drinking water supplies — that the chemicals used in the process would flow back up to the surface. The water must either be treated or re-injected underground. About 10% of the “fracking water” is treated and re-used. The rest is re-injected, which is of concern because developers are secretive about what comprises their concoctions.
The good news is that the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama concluded that there is no “widespread” problemassociated with fracking and drinking water supplies. EPA’s research looked at 38,000 oil and gas wells between 2000 and 2013. The vast majority of them got a good bill of health. Stanford University supports those findings, noting that those wells that are unsafe are those that are too shallow. Harvard University noted that a middle ground must be found.
Frame of Reference
The answer to the question as to whether the shale gas boom is a blessing or a curse for Appalachia depends on one’s frame of reference. For landowners who feel that their property has been marred while their potable water gets tainted, the surge is a nuisance at best and a horror, at worst. Others, though, see it as a savior — the best and most immediate hope for replacing lost coal and steel jobs.
“The region boasts a number of major advantages, including access to some of the lowest natural gas prices in the developed world from the abundant Marcellus and Utica Shale formations,” Jerry James, spokesperson for Shale Crescent USA said. “When taken with the close proximity to more than two-thirds of the domestic market for polyethylene consumption, it means we are the most profitable location for a petrochemical project.”
Natural gas consumption is on the rise, increasing by as much as 30% a year, according to government projections — an amount that will at least be sustained because of the expected demand from Asia. What then? The “answer” is to monitor closely such development to ensure the best possible environmental results while simultaneously researching and developing alternative energy solutions.
Traditionally, developers have maintained that federal oversight is costly and duplicative, all in relation to weaker state rules where they can leverage their financial power. But such strategies are short-sighted. Unless their product gets the ultimate stamp of approval from the public, neither the shale gas industry nor the Appalachian economies they serve will have a rewarding future.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2018/03/23/shale-gas-may-rescue-appalachian-economies-if-it-can-win-public-acceptance/#59cdd83b6eb7
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Will U.S.-China Trade Tensions Derail Energy Export Plans?
Mar 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Collin Eaton and Ryan Maye Handy
The U.S. energy industry, producing record amounts of oil, natural gas and petrochemicals, has planned to grow through exports, especially to booming overseas markets in Asia. But the rising trade tensions between the United States and China could setback those plans.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it would impose high tariffs on some $50 billion of Chinese goods each year. China quickly responded by announcing its own tariffs about $3 billion in U.S goods.
For the oil and gas industry the tariffs could be poorly timed. For one thing, oil companies use specialized machinery made in China, and costs could rise just as the U.S. shale boom is picking back up again. That could slow the energy sector's recovery.
"The tariffs are going to raise costs for the industry right as they are getting back into the game," said Praveen Kumar, executive director of the Gutierrez Energy Management Institute at the University of Houston.
The nation's biggest oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., which both have major operations in the Houston area, lost a combined $13 billion in stock-market value the rout spark by the tariff announcements Thursday. The S&P 500 index for U.S. oil producers dropped 2.2 percent.
"There is nothing about the imposition of these new tariffs that will be beneficial," said Karr Ingham, an Amarillo-based economist who studies the Texas oil industry.
The Gulf Coast petrochemical boom, which has attracted tens of billions of dollars in investment in new or expanded plants, is predicated in part on meeting the growing demand for plastics in emerging consumer societies, particularly China's. U.S. energy companies also are planning several multibillion dollar projects along the Gulf Coast to export liquefied natural gas, gambling in part that China, where gas demand is surging, will buy American.
Houston LNG exporter Cheniere Energy has long eyed China as a growth market as the country works to address an air pollution crisis by transitioning from coal power to cleaner-burning natural gas. In February, the company signed a deal with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to export 1.2 million tons of LNG a year under contracts that extend through 2043.
The U.S. Energy Department projects that China's demand for natural gas in the coming decades will grow the fastest worldwide, nearly tripling to 57 billion cubic feet a day by 2040. But local leaders fear that rising tensions over trade could lead China to buy most of its natural gas from U.S. rivals.
"These are the types of projects that could be in jeopardy with these sanctions," said Bob Harvey, president of the Greater Houston Partnership. "China can simply go to Russia, Australia or the Middle East for their LNG."
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Will-U-S-China-trade-tensions-derail-energy-12776140.php
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U.S. LNG Firms Lament Bad Timing of Steel Tariffs and China Trade Spat
Mar 22, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Julie Gordon
The Trump administration's planned steel tariffs and a potential trade battle with China could hurt U.S. liquefied natural gas companies just as a new wave of developments in the fast-growing market is gaining steam, company executives say.
China is the fastest growing major buyer of LNG, making it an important customer for U.S. producers. It is also a significant exporter of the steel components used in LNG plant construction.
With an LNG shortage looming as early as 2022, a rush of offtake deals with China and other buyers had been looking likely, boosting construction prospects, said company executives at the CWC LNG Americas Summit in Houston.
But the proposed steel tariffs, which will increase project costs and impact deal pricing, could make U.S. projects less attractive than international rivals.
"I think imposing steel tariffs at this juncture in the evolution of the second wave, right as we move into this very critical stage of the commercial process - locking in customer commitments - is a bad idea," said Patrick Hughes, vice president of corporate strategy with LNG developer NextDecade Corp.
Hughes said the prospect of backlash from steel-producing customer countries was "not insignificant," adding to the risks around increased costs.
U.S. President Donald Trump amped up his trade battle with China on Thursday, announcing possible new tariffs targeting the country's high-technology sector, following on from his decision to set general import tariffs of 25 percent on steel. China has already threatened to retaliate by hitting U.S. agricultural exports.
China is the world's No.2 LNG importer. It also exports many of the specialized steel components needed in LNG plants, products that are not made in the United States.
"I would say the overwhelming majority of steel in an LNG plant is pretty specialized," said Anatol Feygin, Cheniere Energy Inc's chief commercial officer, adding: "Presumably things that cannot be sourced in the U.S. will not be subject to those (tariffs)."
The U.S. Department of Commerce has said there will be an exclusion process for steel products not made domestically, but many details are still unknown.
Cheniere signed two major sales deals this year before the tariffs were announced, including one with China, fully commercializing the third liquefaction unit at its Corpus Christi project in Texas.
The company is now finalising financing, which will take six to eight weeks, the final step before it can formally greenlight the 4.5 million tonne per annum project, said Feygin. It will be the first new LNG build to go ahead in the U.S. since 2016.
That had emboldened many would-be U.S. producers, who were optimistic of their prospects of joining Cheniere in a second wave of development, with the potential to vault the United States ahead of Qatar and Australia to become the world's top producer.
The tariffs are not expected to meaningfully impact expansion projects planned by Cheniere and other first wave producers, but new entrants who need to build steel intensive infrastructure could now face harsher headwinds.
Energy executives told Reuters earlier this month that the steel and aluminium tariffs could increase the cost of big-ticket shale and LNG projects by as much as 10 percent.
More China-targeted tariffs would also slow deal-making between U.S. producers and Chinese buyers, just as a new buying window had opened, said Charlie Riedl, Executive Director for the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas.
"The industry is really close to laying the golden egg and this could potentially - kill it is probably too far - but it could be a real setback for the second wave of projects," he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/03/22/business/22reuters-energy-lng-tariffs.html
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Wyoming Natural Gas Flaring Issue Reignited with Enviro Study
Mar 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
While federal agencies are rolling back Obama-era rules to curb methane emissions, an environmental group’s report is seeking to make Wyoming a poster child for updating restrictions on wellhead natural gas flaring.
The Wyoming Outdoor Council (WOC) called for action by state regulators to reverse what is estimated to be an annual loss of $51-96 million in flared gas, or a loss of annual revenue of $8.8-16.1 million. The WOC outlined the issue in the Wyoming Natural Gas Waste Report.
To reduce flared gas, the WOC recommended that the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) air quality division apply leak detection and repair (LDAR) requirements statewide -- not just in the gassy Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields. Under the LDAR required in Jonah and Pinedale, operators regularly inspect wells and associated equipment using special tools to detect leaks.
The group also is advocating for "a full menu of waste-reducing methods and protocols for all existing wells statewide."
Five counties are being shortchanged on revenues because of flaring, according to the WOC. Converse, Goshen, Campbell, Laramie and Sweetwater counties were estimated to have per-county lost revenues ranging from $560,000 to $2.8 million a year.
Wyoming oil and gas supervisor Mark Watson said there are no plans to update the flaring rules. Gas flaring, he said, is “a small part” of total air emissions. He also pointed out that the WOC study recommended rule changes be made by the Wyoming DEQ, not the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
The industry-led Petroleum Association of Wyoming (PAW) said the anti-flaring steps were unnecessary.
"The rules are more than adequate to address the state's needs regarding flaring," said PAW Vice President John Robitaille, who challenged the accuracy of the report’s findings.
Robitaille said the report failed to account for the composition of the gas being reported as flared, such as volumes of nitrogen, and instead reported all of it as methane of a saleable quality and quantity.
"That is not usually the case," he said, noting that “companies do not willingly waste a product they are trying to sell; that's just not good business."
Over the past two years, Wyoming has revised its flaring rules and joined other states in suing the federal government over the now suspended U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) flaring regulations. The U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming denied the request by several oil and gas producing states for a preliminary injunction against the Obama-era venting/flaring rule.
Two years ago, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission revised the flaring rules, gaining a mixed reaction at the time from environmental groups. The WOC, Environmental Defense Fund and other environmental organizations had wanted a blanket ban on venting gas. Oil and gas producers were supportive of the changes when they emerged in late 2016.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113797-wyoming-natural-gas-flaring-issue-reignited-with-enviro-study
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Canada's NOVA, US Sunoco Explore Gulf Coast Ethylene Export Terminal Joint Venture
Mar 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Niall Swan
The olefins arm of NOVA Chemicals’ and Energy Transfer Partners subsidiary Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals have entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) regarding a joint venture to develop an ethylene export terminal on the US Gulf Coast, the Canadian producer said late on Thursday.
The terminal, which the parties anticipate will start up by mid-2020, is expected to have the capability to export 800,000 tonnes/year of ethylene to the global market.
The project would connect the Lone Star NGL Mont Belvieu LP (“Lone Star”) storage facility at Mont Belvieu, Texas, where the NOVA Ethylene Hub operates, and the Louisiana ethylene market to the export facility via existing pipelines already approved for ethylene transportation, the company said.
NOVA recently announced a separate joint venture with Total and Borealis for a 1m tonne/year ethane cracker in Port Arthur, Texas.
It also purchased an 88.46% stake in an olefins facility at Geismar, Louisiana, from US firm Williams Partners for $2.1bn, which has an ethylene capacity of 885,000 tonnes/year.
“An ethylene export terminal builds upon NOVA Chemicals’ leadership position in the continually expanding North American ethylene industry,” explained Naushad Jamani, senior vice president, Olefins & Feedstock for NOVA Chemicals.
“Together with the 2017 acquisition of our interest in the Geismar, Louisiana Olefins facility and our recently announced proposed joint venture in Texas with Total and Borealis, this project would further extend NOVA Chemicals’ presence in the US Gulf Coast, allowing us to better serve our customers in the Americas.”
The proposed joint venture is subject to sufficient market interest and customary conditions and approvals, including completion of definitive agreements and approval of NOVA Chemicals board of directors.
Energy Transfer Partners is also developing an ethane terminal on the US Gulf Coast to feed joint venture partner Satellite Petrochemical USA's China cracking facilities.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/03/23/10205554/canada-s-nova-us-sunoco-explore-gulf-coast-ethylene-export-terminal-joint-venture/
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Cash-Strapped Congress Taps SPR Oil Again
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Congress is again looking at ways to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help pay for the government's ballooning budget deficits.
The House passed a $1.3 trillion 2018 omnibus spending package yesterday, and the Senate followed early this morning. Awaiting the president's signature, the bill reverses a number of deep spending cuts proposed by the White House (Greenwire, March 22).
The bill would require a nonemergency sale of crude oil from the Energy Department's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Starting in 2020, the United States would sell 10 million barrels from its underground storage caverns to refineries. At today's oil prices, the sale would net the government about $640 million. Most oil market analysts expect oil prices to remain in the $60-to-$70 range where it's trading now.
"The Secretary of Energy shall draw down and sell 10,000,000 barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during the period of fiscal years 2020 through 2021," reads the language of the bill.
The bill that Congress passed yesterday also amends the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to allow the SPR to be drawn down to a level of 340 million barrels, from the prior 350 million barrels limit. The entire SPR system can hold up to 727 million barrels of oil.
A summary analysis published yesterday by ClearView Energy Partners says the SPR crude sell-off is further proof that lawmakers in Washington no longer fear energy shortfalls. The bill passed yesterday would be the sixth law passed since 2015 that taps the SPR, ClearView researchers note.
In all, analysts there estimate that Congress has ordered sales of nearly 300 million barrels from the SPR for fundraising and to pay for the modernization of the SPR itself.
The federal government has explored ways to retool the SPR in light of the shale oil revolution and the dramatic rise in domestic crude oil production. A glut of oil in private-sector storage systems is leading to some bottlenecks at the four SPR sites — Bryan Mound and Big Hill in Texas and West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw in Louisiana.
Modernization proposals have included using the salt caverns to store refined products and to build more capacity for moving oil to shipping barges (Energywire, July 7, 2015).
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077277
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Is FERC Bent on Approving Pipelines? Judges Weigh Claim
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal judges seemed doubtful yesterday of environmentalists' claims that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is fundamentally biased in favor of pipelines.
In oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a panel of judges expressed skepticism toward the Delaware Riverkeeper Network's argument that FERC's funding structure encourages the agency to approve projects.
"First of all, it seems utterly unrealistic," said Senior Judge Harry Edwards, zeroing in on FERC officials' motivation.
At issue is whether the commission's funding creates a "structural bias" favoring natural gas pipelines. Under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986, the agency relies on fees and annual charges from natural gas companies to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for the natural gas program's budget.
According to the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which often opposes FERC-approved pipeline projects, the agency rubber-stamps pipelines to maintain its funding stream — violating citizens' due process rights by depriving them of a neutral decisionmaking body. A lower court tossed the claim last year, and the issue is now on appeal at the D.C. Circuit.
"Under the Budget Act, FERC is dependent on continuing to approve pipeline projects for its long-term funding," Curtin & Heefner LLP attorney Jordan Yeager, representing the group, told the judges yesterday. "That is, the natural gas program within FERC receives 100 percent of its budget through those continued approvals."
A win for the environmentalists could trigger a massive shift in operations at FERC and other federal agencies reliant on fees. That potential outcome was enough to prompt the Justice Department to get involved in the case alongside FERC to highlight the disruption such a ruling would have on "several dozen" government agencies.
"Given the breadth of the challenge here, if this court were to find that the type of generalized interests that petitioners claim introduce unconstitutional bias did indeed state a claim, then there could be serious doubts about numerous federal agencies' funding statutes," DOJ attorney Melissa Patterson said.Questions from the court
At least two judges didn't seem to buy the Delaware Riverkeeper Network's arguments.
Judge Gregory Katsas, the only Trump appointee on the D.C. Circuit, argued that the environmental group was asking the court "to go way beyond" Supreme Court cases dealing with biased adjudicators.
"It seems like to the extent there are any cases addressing those very diffuse and long-term issues, they all seem to cut in the government's favor," he told Yeager.
Edwards questioned why FERC commissioners, who serve five-year terms, would feel compelled to secure a revenue source to serve the agency years later: "A lot of these people come and go. What do they care?"
Yeager answered that many agency officials act with a sense of "institutional responsibility" that can influence their decisionmaking. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is asking the court to remand the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dig deeper into how the funding works.
Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee, questioned FERC on the bias issue, noting that many studies have explored the issue of "agency capture," in which regulators are controlled by the regulated community.
"Are we to disregard that?" he asked FERC attorney Ross Fulton.
Fulton responded that FERC's pipeline approval rate (nearly 100 percent of applicants get a green light) is misleading because it doesn't reflect all of the projects that abandon plans at the pre-filing stage, or the extensive terms and conditions FERC can place on approved pipelines.
"Even when projects are approved, [they] rarely if ever look as they were originally applied for," he said. "The commission uses its authority to shape and mold those projects to ensure that they can be operated safely and in an environmentally sound way."
Plus, he said, FERC in 2016 denied a permit for an Oregon pipeline connected to the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas project for a lack of demonstrated market demand.
Fulton added that FERC "cannot be structurally biased as a matter of law" because Congress sets the agency's budget, and pipeline fees are deposited into the Treasury.
The D.C. Circuit is expected to issue a decision in the next few months.Tolling orders
The case also featured a brief discussion of the legality of "tolling orders," which FERC often uses to extend the time it has to consider project opponents' rehearing requests after the agency has approved something.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network objected to FERC's use of a tolling order for the PennEast pipeline and raised the issue in this case, saying tolling orders keep project opponents from seeking timely judicial review. That's because the Natural Gas Act requires FERC to act on rehearing requests before challengers can go to court, but pipeline construction often begins in the meantime.
Yeager said it feels like a game of whack-a-mole because opponents seem to be told it's never the right time to challenge in a tolling order.
"We keep on hearing, 'Now's not the place; now's not the time; you've got to go do this somewhere else,'" he said.
FERC has maintained that the orders aren't subject to judicial review because they're not a final agency action. Courts have repeatedly accepted the use of the orders; the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week rejected challenges to the Nexus pipeline because FERC had issued a tolling order in that case and had not yet resolved rehearing requests (Energywire, March 16).
Edwards noted that construction is able to move forward before rehearing requests are ever processed. Fulton replied that the commission is sensitive to that issue — that's why it didn't approve the Jordan Cove pipeline, he said — but that challengers also have the ability to seek a writ of mandamus from a court to halt pipeline work.
"They ever win any of those?" Edwards asked.
"No, your honor," Fulton replied. "We have been successful."
"Well, that's what they're saying," Edwards said. "It's not a viable option, at least based on history."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077275
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Companies Review Lessons Learned from Hurricane Harvey
Mar 23, 2018 | The Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Doyle
An industry forum held in Texas has discussed the response of chemical companies to Hurricane Harvey and how a coastal protection system is vital to ensure the safety of chemical plants during future flooding.
Harvey caused extreme flooding in Texas in August 2017, forcing several oil and chemical facilities to shut down and causing a chemical fire at Arkema’s organic peroxide plant.
Hurricane Harvey: Lessons Learned was held on 5 March in Pasadena, Texas, by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the Texas Chemical Council (TCC). According to media reports, the forum discussed the importance of industry’s response in assisting the surrounding communities, how industry worked to protect the environment during storm-related chemical fires, how to improve infrastructure to protect chemical plants in the future, and the importance of information sharing between industry, government, and local communities.
Executives from major chemical companies explained how they dealt with their facilities, what they learned from it, and how they expect to deal with future events. The panellists included Bob Patel from LyondellBasell, Jim Fitterling from DowDuPont, Jerry MacCleary from Covestro, and Ken Reid from BASF.
Senator Ted Cruz spoke to the attendees about hurricane safety and how the US Army Corps of Engineers will begin studying the feasibility of a coastal barrier system. Senators Brandon Creighton and Larry Taylor emphasised in a later session that federal funding is crucial in order to improve the infrastructure and prevent future flooding and storm-related chemical fires.
Taylor spoke of the coastal spine project, which has an estimated cost of US$14bn. The project would create a network of seawalls, levies, and floodgates to limit the effects of hurricane-induced storm surges in the Galveston Bay area.
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/chemical-companies-review-lessons-learned-from-hurricane-harvey/
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Ewire: Former Official Sees Missteps in EPA's Harvey Response
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
A top former EPA official is acknowledging the agency's missteps when it failed to warn Houston residents about scores of toxic releases stemming from Hurricane Harvey, the massive storm that battered the country's fourth-largest city earlier this year, driving a debate about the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events.
Samuel Coleman, the acting EPA Region 6 Administrator who led the agency's response to the storm, acknowledged to the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle that the priority in the immediate aftermath of the storm was “addressing any environmental harms as quickly as possible as opposed to making announcements about what the problem was.”
In hindsight, he said, it might not have been a bad idea to inform the public about the worst of “dozens of spills.”
The two news services report that EPA and other agencies failed to warn residents about at least one hundred toxic releases from hundreds of petro-chemical facilities located in the region.
“Nearly half a billion gallons of industrial wastewater mixed with storm water surged out of just one chemical plant in Baytown, east of Houston on the upper shores of Galveston Bay,” the report says.
“Benzene, vinyl chloride, butadiene and other known human carcinogens were among the dozens of tons of industrial toxins released into surrounding neighborhoods and waterways following Harvey’s torrential rains,” it adds.
“In all, reporters catalogued more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases -- on land, in water and in the air. Most were never publicized, and in the case of two of the biggest ones, the extent or potential toxicity of the releases was initially understated.”
“Based on widespread air monitoring, including flyovers, officials repeatedly assured the public that post-Harvey air pollution posed no health threat,” the report adds.
The report notes that regulators alerted the public to just two well-publicized cases: the Arkema chemical plant northeast of Houston that exploded and burned for days, and a nearby dioxin-laden federal Superfund site whose protective cap was damaged by the raging San Jacinto River.
The article also says that beginning Sept. 1 a top city health official twice emailed EPA an urgent request seeking help determining whether spills or leaks from industrial and Superfund sites posed risks to residents.
“We are finding alarming levels of benzene in the neighborhood next to Valero. Should EPA evacuate the residents?” the article says, quoting emails obtained through public records requests. “There was no record of an EPA email response, though the agency did send a mobile air-monitoring van on Sept. 5.”
Coleman, the former EPA official, now acknowledges that these assessments did not necessarily reflect local “hotspots” that pose potential risks.
Such responses appear unlikely to deter EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt from changing course as he works to roll back an Obama-era Risk Management Plan (RMP) update rule that would have strengthened reporting and other safety requirements for facilities that house chemicals and which supporters say would have helped address concerns following Harvey.
A federal court appears likely to back the Trump administration's delay of the update rule, including for greater coordination and planning with local officials.
And EPA has forwarded a revision rule to the White House Office of Management & Budget for review.
Pruitt also downplayed claims that climate change intensified the storm, saying such discussion was “misplaced” and “insensitive” to storm victims.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-former-official-sees-missteps-epas-harvey-response
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The Energy 202: Congress Finally Found a New Way to Fund Wildfire Suppression
Mar 23, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
Somewhere Smokey Bear is smiling.
Congressional leaders have reached a long-sought deal to fix the way the U.S. Forest Service pays for efforts to fight wildfires after blazes burned millions of acres of forest in the western United States in 2017, Darryl Fears and I report.
The agreement, reached as part of a broader spending package that passed the House Thursday and the Senate early Friday morning, would allow the agency to access billions of dollars in new disaster-relief funding when wildfires morph into monsters such as two fires last year outside San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In past fire seasons, the Forest Service was forced to borrow money from programs meant to prevent fires, manage forests and improve recreation to pay for more firefighters and equipment.
Key members of both political parties agreed the practice of siphoning money from other Forest Service accounts, called “fire borrowing,” creates a vicious cycle that fueled even worse forest fires and needed to be addressed in the latest spending bill.
The deal was sparked in part by the past year's record-breaking wildfire season that captured the attention of the country — including, it seems, its lawmakers in Washington. The fires, coupled with the trio of major hurricanes that raged through the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, made 2017 the most costly year on record for disasters in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Common sense has finally prevailed when it comes to how the Forest Service pays to fight record-breaking forest fires,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement.
Environmentalists hailed the bill as a hard-fought triumph. “It’s possibly the most important bipartisan natural resources accomplishment in years,” said Collin O’Mara, head of the National Wildlife Federation. “These things don’t happen every day.”
The Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, under current law cannot access disaster relief funds set aside to address damage from hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters if it uses up the initial pot of money.
Now starting in 2020, firefighting agencies will be able to tap more than $2 billion in additional funding to put out extreme fires on top of the $1.4 billion allotted every year. The extra funding will go up $100 million every year, topping out at nearly $3 billion in 2027.
But some environmental groups say these rule changes will enable more logging on public lands.
“We’re very grateful to Democrats for keeping many of the worst riders out of this bill. Unfortunately, there are still some pretty nasty provisions in there for the environment,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
For example, the spending bill allows the Forest Service to clear underbrush and small trees — fuel for forest fires during dry years — on plots of land smaller than 3,000 acres without having to go through a lengthy environmental review.
The bill also reverses a controversial U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruling that halted a logging project in Montana over concerns about its potential impact on the endangered Canada lynx. Both the Obama administration and Montana’s congressional delegation had sought to overturn the decision, fearing it imperiled other logging projects.
Some lawmakers had to drop their regional forest concerns as western Republicans with constituents devastated by forest fires, including Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson, both Republicans from Idaho, pressed congressional negotiators to include a fire-funding fix after failing to do so at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term.
Lawmakers went to work in 2017 to craft a number of proposals for potential wildfire management reforms so that next time a fire-borrowing fix didn't slip away. "The final package pulled together provisions from 10 or 11 different bills," O'Mara said.
One of those lawmakers, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), lamented that the bill did not give agencies even broader authority to thin trees on federal lands without the lengthy review required under the National Environmental Policy Act. His committee advanced a bill to do just that last year.
“The fire-funding fix slightly improves the Forest Service's flexibility, but the bill is not as aggressive as it should have been in restoring the health of our nation’s forests. The Democrats and the litigation activists who back them simply dropped the ball,” Bishop said.
Referring to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bishop added: “I am not looking forward to the Schumer fires of 2018.”
Overall, conservationists who often side with Democrats see the bill as a stand against President Trump. It rejects the president’s bid to cut National Park Service funding and environmental appropriations overall, said Scott Slesinger, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“Cooler heads seem to be prevailing at long last,” he said. “We welcome this bipartisan repudiation of the draconian spending cuts sought by President Trump.”
— While you were asleep: The Senate passed a sweeping $1.3 trillion spending bill and averted a government shutdown. What was the holdup? The legislation had been stalled for hours "partly because Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) objected to the renaming of a federal wilderness area after a deceased political rival," The Post's Erica Werner and Mike DeBonis report.
"Risch had been complaining behind the scenes, demanding that congressional leaders remove a provision in the bill naming the White Clouds Wilderness after former Democratic governor Cecil D. Andrus of Idaho, according to two congressional aides familiar with the dispute," they write. Andrus once called Risch a “mean, snarly little guy."
But Friday morning, Trump threatened to veto the bill:
— McMaster out, Bolton in: Trump said Thursday that he was naming former ambassador John Bolton as his new national security adviser, replacing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. The latest ouster elevates yet another critic of the Paris climate accord within the White House. Bolton told Breitbart News last year the landmark agreement was “an excellent thing to withdraw from" because, he thinks, it erodes national sovereignty.
Or as Bolton put it: "Even though it appears toothless in the near term, it sets a foundation that they hope to advance toward a greater multilateral global governance. Forget the environmental aspect for a minute — we could be talking about global cooling here, rather than global warming. The advocates of this treaty would propose the same kinds of structures because that’s their larger objective: the reduction of national sovereignty and the pooling of sovereignty as in their favorite institution, their paradigm of the world to come, the European Union."
— Temporary tariff exemptions: The Trump administration announced a temporary reprieve on steel and aluminum tariffs for some U.S. allies on Thursday. “The decision to exclude some of the United States’ closest trading partners from the import tariffs gave some breathing space to the U.S. allies as they sought to negotiate permanent exemptions Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the European Union and South Korea are on the list, U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer announced at a Senate hearing. Canada and Mexico already had been exempted,” The Post’s Michael Birnbaum reports.
— "The alternative is no good:" Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested to lawmakers Thursday that if the United States doesn’t work with Saudi Arabia to develop civilian nuclear reactors, then countries such as China and Russia, which don’t have nuclear proliferation standards, may step in. When asked whether the United States was considering a nuclear technology-sharing agreement that would not block Saudi Arabia from enriching nuclear fuel, Perry said “it’s really important to look at each of these agreements not in a vacuum…I always remind people that the alternative is no good," Bloomberg News reported.
— Fast-tracking Trump’s agenda: Lobbyists in Washington want to use the North American Free Trade Agreement as a way to push forward a legislative agenda to make it easier for companies in the United States to build factories, move goods and export coal. Or as Bloomberg News reports: “Lobbyists and lawmakers behind the plan have drafted a Nafta chapter on competitiveness that lays out broad goals for making regulation more predictable, investing in infrastructure and streamlining permitting."
The trick? Treaties can be passed by simple-majority vote in the Senate, so all lobbyists have to do is convince negotiators to tuck that chapter into NAFTA.
— "Decoupling" in doubt: Global carbon dioxide emissions from energy increased by 1.4 percent last year after remaining steady for three years, according to a new International Energy Agency report. That matters because the "failure of emissions to rise between 2014 and 2016," The Post's Chris Mooney writes, "had suggested to analysts that something may have finally changed in the global energy economy — a possible ‘decoupling’ of emissions growth from steady economic growth, thanks to the proliferation of renewables and increasing energy efficiency,” Now that hopeful theory is in doubt.
— Meanwhile, in San Francisco: Oil giant Chevron publicly accepted climate science and the human-driven contribution to the change. The Verge has a good rundown of the climate “tutorial” that took place in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Wednesday. “Chevron accepts what the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has reached consensus on concerning science and climate change,” said Theodore Boutrous, who represents Chevron and leads the legal team for the five oil giants that are defendants in this lawsuit.
— That’s a lot of plastic: In the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, there are 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic making up 79,000 tons of plastic debris. It takes up an area three times the size of France. And according to a new report, the area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is “increasing exponentially,” Mooney reports.
And here are two great longreads for your weekend:
— How a Houston suburb ended up in a reservoir: The New York Times has a stunning interactive on the homes that were built in large reservoirs in Houston, and which were majorly flooded once Hurricane Harvey hit. “No one wanted to tell the developers that you can’t develop because it’s in a reservoir,” said Charles Irvine, a lead lawyer in a class-action lawsuit against the federal government. “Everyone knew, but nobody wanted to do anything.” And this video from the Times checks in on homeowners in the area who, months after the storm, have to decide whether to leave or to rebuild.
— Harvey’s toxic impact: The toxic impact of Hurricane Harvey months after the storm slammed into the Texas coast is much worse than officials previously said, the Associated Press and Houston Chronicle reveal in a joint investigation. In the more than six months since the catastrophic storm hit the nation’s largest energy corridor, the report found “more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases — on land, in water and in the air. Most were never publicized, and in the case of two of the biggest ones, the extent or potential toxicity of the releases was initially understated.”
Meanwhile, residents living near the Arkema chemical plant that was damaged and experienced explosions following the storm are wary of the long-term damage. Some told the AP they “still know very little about any potential health effects from the flood and fires. They don’t know what chemicals they’ve been exposed to — or about any threat from air they breathe or water they drink.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/03/23/the-energy-202-congress-finally-found-a-new-way-to-fund-wildfire-suppression/5ab41e9730fb045e48d05b7a/?utm_term=.fd66c6d6b1f4
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Feds: Iranian Hackers Hit FERC with 'Brazen Cyber Assault'
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Blake Sobczak
Iranian hackers hit the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during a "massive and brazen cyber assault" that claimed thousands of victims worldwide, U.S. authorities said today.
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, laid out the hackers' most "troubling" targets while announcing charges against nine Iranian nationals this morning.
FERC "has details of some of this country's most sensitive infrastructure," he said, citing the agency's role overseeing the bulk power grid and interstate gas pipelines.
The Justice Department did not detail what, if any, sensitive infrastructure data was stolen from FERC in an indictment unsealed today. FERC declined to comment.
The Iranian hackers allegedly tried "password spraying" the agency by finding lists of official email accounts and attempting to log in to them with commonly used passwords.
The same technique was used to compromise three dozen private U.S. companies, including 11 technology firms and an unnamed "industrial machinery" producer, DOJ said.
The hackers named in the indictment range from 24 to 39 years old and all reside in Iran.
In addition to going after FERC, they're charged with compromising the state of Hawaii, the United Nations and a slew of other organizations while working for the Tehran-based Mabna Institute, cast as a front for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Sending a message
In a related move today, the U.S. Treasury Department brought sanctions against the Mabna Institute and 10 Iranian individuals.
Sigal Mandelker, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the far-reaching hacking campaign "just the latest, extraordinary example of the Iranian regime's willingness to use cyber enabled and other illicit means to enrich itself and attack countries and companies across the globe."
Led by Mabna Institute founding member Gholamreza Rafatnejad, the hacking team is said to have sent malicious emails to more than 100,000 academic accounts worldwide, stealing scholarly journals, theses, dissertations and ebooks from nearly 8,000 professors in various technical fields.
Some of those documents were resold in Iran, according to the indictment, in addition to being fed to intelligence officials there.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said today's actions are aimed at "sending a powerful message" to the Iranian government. "We will protect our innovation, ideas and information, and we will use every tool in our toolbox to expose those who commit these cyber crimes," he said.
U.S. law enforcement authorities have previously accused Iranian hackers of breaking into U.S. critical infrastructure, including the networks of a small dam near Rye, N.Y. (Energywire, March 28, 2016).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077343
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Rail Workers Confront Execs on Safety
Mar 23, 2018 | People's World
By Mark Gruenberg
Taking their campaign for rail safety to the city where it matters the most, at least 75 railroad workers and their supporters confronted rail executives on the issue during the evening rush hour in Chicago, the nation’s rail hub.
Walking into the posh Union League Club in the Loop for a rail executives’ conference on March 12, the honchos had to cross a demonstration by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of the Way Employees/ Teamsters dramatizing unsafe conditions in Chicago’s railyards and a lousy accident record for freight railroads nationwide.
The workers also pushed the execs to abandon their plan for only one person – the engineer – aboard a miles-long freight, and the carriers’ overall opposition to safety improvements, said BMWE Organizer Corey Dall, who crafted the protest.
And just to make sure Chicagoans in general knew about conditions on the roads, the unionists and their allies distributed more than 2,000 flyers to passing pedestrians highlighting rail safety problems.
Chicago has been the nation’s freight rail hub for more than 150 years, and still is. Tracks crisscross the city and Chicago still has dozens of grade-level rail-road crossings, especially on the South Side. Its West Side rail yard is so large that when a miles-long freight train makes a 3-point rail turn, the locomotive often must travel all the way out to the western suburbs before the train can back up.
Freight rail safety – and the roads’ attitude about it – is a nationwide problem, BMWE says. Its unionized workers maintain tracks. Dall noted the nation suffered 1,190 freight train derailments last year, causing 888 deaths, according to Federal Railroad Administration data. “This raises real concerns for Chicago. It’s only a matter of time before the kind of derailment that hit Plainfield, Ill., on July 1, 2017, hits Chicago itself,” Dall said before the demonstration.
The Plainfield derailment had no casualties but 20 of the 115 cars in a Canadian National southbound oil train jumped the tracks. Three leaked up to 45,000 gallons of oil, leaving local responders scrambling successfully to prevent pollution of the nearby DuPage River.
“Communities and rail workers suffer when profits are put before safety,” Dall added. A BMWE chart shows profits of the nation’s four big Class I freight railroads exceeded 20 percent of revenues, starting in 2015.
Corporate honchos entering the Union League Club “scowled at us” when they saw the demonstration, Dall reported. “Some passively said mean things under their breaths. But the people in surrounding stores” and on the sidewalk “were quite supportive.”
“It’s time to call the big railroads to account, before more lives are lost, more water supplies are ruined and more rail workers are injured. The money is there and it’s time for the railroads to spend it on safety, not big payoffs to rich shareholders.”
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/rail-workers-confront-execs-on-safety/
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Congress Calls Biomass 'Carbon Neutral.' Scientists Disagree
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Chelsea Harvey and Niina Heikkinen
Lawmakers are once again pushing U.S. EPA and other federal agencies to recognize the burning of biomass as a carbon-neutral energy source. But scientists say that could be a bad move for the climate.
A massive fiscal 2018 federal spending bill unveiled by congressional leaders Wednesday night includes a provision urging the heads of EPA, the Energy Department and the Agriculture Department to adopt policies that "reflect the carbon-neutrality of forest bioenergy and recognize biomass as a renewable energy source."
The language has appeared in similar forms in previous spending bills the last few years, due to pressure from lawmakers in forest-heavy states. This latest version follows recent comments by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declaring biomass a carbon-neutral energy source. He has billed the change as part of the administration's broader efforts at "energy dominance."
In a letter to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) last month, Pruitt stated the agency's decision was partly in response to concerns articulated by the forest and forest products industry (Climatewire, Feb. 14).
But scientists have been expressing concern for years about the emissions produced by burning biomass. Many experts suggest that declaring wood burning a carbon-neutral form of energy is not only inaccurate, but a potential step backward for global climate change mitigation efforts.Renewable, yes. But carbon neutral?
William Schlesinger, a biogeochemist and former president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, was among the latest to weigh in with commentary published in Science yesterday. He said that "recent evidence shows that the use of wood as fuel is likely to result in net CO2 emissions."
Biomass is technically a "renewable" energy source, in that trees can be replanted after they're harvested. And some lawmakers have argued that because trees store carbon as they grow, replacement forests will gradually remove the carbon dioxide emitted when the previous trees were burned for energy, making the whole process carbon neutral — that is, putting no net emissions into the atmosphere.
But there are some serious flaws in that argument, many scientists suggest. One of the biggest issues is the matter of timing.
Burning biomass for energy releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere all at once. But depending on the type of tree, forests may take decades or even a century to draw the same amount of carbon back out of the air.
"We call it 'slow in,' as in it takes a long time for the carbon to accumulate in the forest, and 'fast out' — you're burning it so it goes into the atmosphere rapidly," said Beverly Law, an expert in forest science and management from Oregon State University.
One could argue that the process has the potential to be carbon neutral over very long time scales but not in the short term. And that means it's not a useful strategy when world leaders are working to reduce global carbon emissions immediately.
Even for the process to be considered carbon neutral on long time scales, Schlesinger noted, forest managers would have to be certain that replacement trees were given enough time to store the same amount of carbon that their predecessors contained when they were harvested. Especially if older, more carbon-rich forests are cleared to make room for faster-growing, easier-to-harvest trees, then even more carbon must be stored away to make up the difference.
The language in the spending bill does indicate that forest biomass for energy should only be considered carbon neutral if it "does not cause conversion of forests to non-forest use."
Schlesinger also pointed out that much of the wood raised and harvested in the United States for energy purposes is actually shipped to the European Union, where biomass is currently treated as a carbon-neutral energy source. Processing the biomass for energy use (converting trees into wood pellets, for instance) and shipping it overseas only adds to the total emissions produced by the industry, he noted.
According to Law, a more climate-friendly approach would be to simply preserve or add to existing forests without harvesting them — a process that would enhance the nation's natural carbon sinks — and focus instead on truly carbon-neutral sources of energy, like wind and solar. Adopting policies that equate biomass with these cleaner energy sources could be "devastating," she said. "It does exactly the opposite of what we need to do: reduce emissions."
It's hardly the first time scientists and environmentalists have raised the alarm. In 2016, dozens of environmental groups submitted a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee urging members to reject any language in an upcoming appropriations bill that might deem biomass a carbon-neutral energy source. An energy bill also passed by the Senate in 2016 contained similar language, and more than 60 scientists responded with a letter outlining their concerns. Controversy arose over similar language in spending bills announced in 2017, as well.Scientific discussions 'left hanging'
The House and Senate have until tonight to pass the 2018 spending bill to avoid another government shutdown. In the meantime, EPA appears primed to follow through with some of the forest product industry's recommendations.
Pruitt said in his letter to Sununu last month that EPA was considering "a range of options consistent with a carbon neutral policy for biomass from forests and other lands and sectors" for Clean Air Act permitting programs. Pruitt described the move as a way to increase the "economic potential" of the nation's forests under an "all of the above" energy policy.
"Unquestionably, by providing certainty for the treatment of biomass throughout the agency's permitting decisions, the use of biomass energy will be bolstered, to the benefit not only to the forest products industry but to the environment as well, while furthering the Administration's goal of energy dominance," he wrote.
EPA is also reviewing certification standards for its federal procurement recommendations. Pruitt's letter noted that current standards excluded products from managed forests such as those certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the American Tree Farm System.
The agency did not elaborate when asked for more information about how the agency was progressing toward classifying biomass as carbon neutral.
Pruitt's statements also came as EPA's Science Advisory Board remains deadlocked after years of debate on the best way to advise regulators on how to account for emissions from burning biomass. Schlesinger, himself a member of the advisory board, noted that the group has not met since August and that discussions about the designation of biomass energy were "kind of left hanging as to what was happening."
"If he's made that decision, it was done without the input of the Science Advisory Board," he added.
Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and an advisory board member, criticized Pruitt's position during an interview last month.
"The science isn't done," he said. "The administration is not in a position to make a science-based determination in absence of scientific assessment, and this is a science question."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077233
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Global CO2 Surged the Year After Paris Deal Was Inked
Mar 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Global carbon dioxide emissions surged to record levels the year after the landmark 2016 Paris climate agreement was signed.
Energy-related emissions climbed 1.4 percent to 32.5 gigatons in 2017, the International Energy Agency reported yesterday in its annual survey of global carbon levels. The increase is the equivalent of adding 170 million cars to the road, the agency said.
The uptick — coming on the heels of the major international climate deal — signals an abrupt end to several years of stagnant emissions growth and raises questions about the world's commitment to reducing carbon levels.
"It's not good news," said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It certainly is a sign that we have a great deal of work to do to meet the commitments that countries made in Paris to limit emissions and the harmful effects of climate change."
Asia accounted for two-thirds of the increase in global carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions also climbed in the European Union.
Those increases stood in contrast to the United States, which posted the largest year-over-year decline in carbon emissions of any advanced economy. The decline was all the more notable given President Trump's outspoken opposition to global attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and his plans to withdraw from the Paris deal.
The IEA figures were not particularly surprising, analysts said, as a strong global economy and low energy prices prodded emissions higher. Growth in emerging economies like China and India has driven global emissions growth for much of the last decade, they noted. In that regard, the growth of emissions in 2017 represented a return to the norm following stagnating carbon levels in 2015 and 2016.
The numbers nevertheless laid bare the challenges facing climate hawks as they seek to tame an increase in global temperatures. An improved economic landscape worldwide resulted in a 2.1 percent increase in demand for energy. Roughly three-quarters of that increase, or 72 percent, was satisfied by fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the world backslid on other key metrics like energy efficiency. Global energy intensity still improved by 1.7 percent. But that was below an average of 2.3 percent over the last three years and short of the 3 percent annual reduction that analysts say is necessary to keep global increases in temperature to around 2 degrees Celsius.
Demand for oil remained as robust as ever. Oil demand rose 1.5 million barrels per day, or by 1.6 percent. That was twice the average annual growth rate witnessed over the last decade, IEA said.
A growing penchant for bigger and less efficient vehicles in the United States was a big reason for that jump, analysts said.
"What it underscores is why transportation as a sector is politically so difficult because you're requiring everyone to do something," said Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.'Just a blip'?
The IEA report was not uniformly bleak from an emissions perspective. Some of the trends figure to be temporary or at least subject to changes in the weather.
Rising Chinese demand for electricity in 2017 — which boosted power plants' appetite for coal and sent emissions from Asia's largest economy soaring — was the result of a brutally hot summer, said Dan Klein, head of global coal research at S&P Global Platts Analytics.
"I think [if it weren't for] the increase in overall demand, the biggest story would have been the increase in renewables," Klein said, noting Chinese wind and solar output were up 21 percent and 38 percent, respectively, year over year. "If you have a slowdown in power demand growth, especially if the weather is more normal, these trends will have a much bigger impact in 2018."
Indeed, the world's emissions story might have been significantly worse if not for renewables' strong year. Renewables boasted the highest increase of any energy source, with the United States and China accounting for half of the sector's growth, IEA reported.
The impact of increased renewable generation was particularly evident in the United States, where emissions fell for the third consecutive year. U.S. carbon emissions were 810 million tons in 2017, IEA reported, a decrease of 0.5 percent from 2017. Renewables and decreased electricity demand were largely responsible, the IEA said.
In contrast, emissions in the European Union increased by 1.5 percent, or 50 million tons. That represented a reversal from recent years and was mainly due to strong demand for oil and gas, IEA said.
"Time will tell if this is just a blip or a long-term trend, but the change in trend is not good," said Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate Research.
The emissions discrepancy between climate-conscious Europe and the fossil-fuel-loving United States highlights the challenges facing climate hawks under the Paris Agreement, analysts said. While the carbon-cutting compact can boast an achievement in getting most of the world to set a target for emission reductions, the policy lacks teeth, they added.
"It tells us a lot about the power of innovation and the power of market fundamentals over policy commitment," said Mehling, the MIT professor. "Right now, one quick interim conclusion is it underscores just how vastly inadequate our policies are. Even some of the forefront countries are running behind."
Both scope and ambition are needed for climate efforts to succeed, said Robert Stavins, a professor of energy and economic development at Harvard University. Paris succeeded in the first by bringing countries together to settle on a target, but the second remains a question, he added.
"There is a huge amount of work to be done, there's no denying it," Stavins said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/03/23/stories/1060077281
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Study Finds Tough Climate Policies Could Save 150 Million Lives
Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
A new study finds that tougher policies to limit greenhouse gases that cause climate change could save 150 million lives worldwide, due to the overlooked co-benefit of conventional pollution reductions that cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
The study, published March 19 in the journal Nature Climate Change and first reported by the Washington Post, finds that in addition to preserving Arctic sea ice and reducing sea-level rise, lowering industrial GHGs to near zero by the end of the century would also mean that premature deaths fall dramatically on nearly every continent.
This would require a combined goal of limiting average global temperature rise to less than 3-degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 -- a goal that is about 1 degree lower than the United Nations' Paris Agreement that the United States is leaving.
The benefit would mostly be felt in Asia, where 13 million lives would be saved in the largest cities of India alone. Bangladesh would have 3.6 million fewer deaths and Jakarta, Indonesia, would have 1.6 million fewer.
More than 2 million live would be spared in Cairo, Egypt, and Lagos, Nigeria.
And while the study notes that the United States has had the benefit of the Clean Air Act, which has reduced many conventional pollutants that cause respiratory and cardiovascular disease, more than 330,000 lives in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. would be spared.
The paper's abstract says, “Accelerating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions, including as a substitute for negative emissions hence reduces long-term risk but requires dramatic near-term societal transformations. A major barrier to emissions reductions is the difficulty of reconciling immediate, localized costs with global, long-term benefits.” But it notes that the reductions also bring cuts in co-emissions that cause ambient air pollution which dramatically avoid premature deaths, and with 40 percent of those avoided deaths occurring during the next 40 years.
The study's lead author, Drew Shindell of Duke University, told the Post, “Americans don't really grasp how pollution impacts their lives. . . . It's still a big killer here. It's much bigger than from people who die from plane crashes or war or terrorism, but we don't see the link so clearly.”
The study also found there would be 7 million premature deaths per year if governments fail to work toward zero emissions by the end of the century.
“There's got to be a significant amount of progress within the 2020s or it's too late,” Shindell said. And he recommended that doctors and public health professionals weigh in.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/study-finds-tough-climate-policies-could-save-150-million-lives
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