Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 4/16/2018
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Hearing on FERC Budget
Apr 17, 2018 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee
Location: 2123 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
Hearing on Surface Transportation Board
Apr 17, 2018 | Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee
Location: 2167 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
(ACC Blog) Earth Day 2018: To Fix Plastic Pollution, We Need to Solve the Right Problem
Apr 16, 2018 | American Chemistry Matters
By Steve Russell
This Earth Day will bring a variety of enthusiastic calls for cleaner oceans. Plastics makers share and welcome that enthusiasm, because no one wants oceans full of plastics. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Groups Debate Proposed Trade Tariffs
Apr 13, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
In a trade war with China, American Chemistry Council CEO Cal Dooley said what he fears most is retaliation damaging U.S. chemical and plastics exports. -
(ACC Mentioned) ACS and ACC Condemn Chemical Weapons Use in Syria
Apr 13, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Linda Wang
An attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7 killed at least 40 people. Authorities suspect that chemical weapons, possibly a nerve agent or chlorine, were involved in the incident. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Resins Have Caught the Attention of China
Apr 16, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
U.S. plastics pros often lament the fact that many outside the industry are unaware of the impacts that plastics have on everyday life. -
(ACC Mentioned) Watchdog to Issue Report on Hiring Method EPA Used to Give Raises
Apr 13, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog is planning to issue an interim report on the Trump administration’s use of a special hiring authority that was central to a recent scandal involving EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Watchdog to Release Interim Report on Pruitt's Hiring Practices
Apr 13, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA’s inspector general will release an interim report Monday afternoon related to its probe of whether Administrator Scott Pruitt misused the special hiring authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the IG’s office announced today. -
(ACC Mentioned) Fighting Ocean Plastics at the Source
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
In Muncar, on the coast of East Java, Indonesia, fishers still make their living the traditional way, launching from the shore in the hand-painted boats they have used for generations. -
Ethics and the EPA: How One Government Office Helped Turn up the Heat on Scott Pruitt
Apr 15, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Jennifer Rubin
Very few Americans know what the U.S. Office of Government Ethics — which sounds like an oxymoron, some would say — is, what it does or who runs it. -
Gowdy Expands Probe into EPA's Pruitt
Apr 13, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna and Alex Guillen
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Friday he's expanding his probe into the alleged ethical and spending abuses by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt one day after his staff met for several hours with a former EPA aide who was pushed out of the agency. -
EPA Includes Active-Inactive Designations on Updated TSCA Inventory
Apr 13, 2018 | Lexology
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Carla N. Hutton
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) April 2018 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory is now available. -
NRDC Sues EPA for Emails on Delayed Chemical Bans
Apr 15, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is suing EPA to turn over emails between former Trump EPA toxics nominee Michael Dourson, who failed to win Senate confirmation, and career agency officials over proposed chemical bans that the Obama EPA... -
Sweden's Kemi Acts After Lead, SCCPs Found in Small Articles
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemi) reported 11 companies to environmental prosecutors after it found lead and short-chained chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) in small electronics and soft plastics items that children can put in the mouth. -
The Petrochemicals Party Shows No Signs of Stopping
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
The chemical industry is booming, and little in the forecast indicates that the good times will let up anytime soon. -
Rover Natural Gas Pipeline Wants to Start up Additional Facilities to Serve US Midwest
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Harry Weber
Energy Transfer Partners' Rover natural gas pipeline asked US regulators on Friday to quickly give it permission to begin service on additional facilities so stranded US Northeast shale gas can be transported to Midwest markets. -
Oil Companies Waste $34 Billion in Gas Emissions, Group Says
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom
The amount of methane, a potent climate-warming gas, that gets into the atmosphere in one year is enough to heat every home in Africa two times over, according to a new report by an environmental group. -
Pennsylvania Touts Well Inspection Program Data
Apr 13, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Friday released the first four years of data from its mechanical integrity assessment program and said an analysis shows that oil and natural gas wells are being operated in an environmentally safe manner. -
Opinion: Who Will Spur the next Energy Revolution? Not Private Industry
Apr 16, 2018 | Roll Call
By Norman Augustine and Chad Holliday
In just a decade, America’s energy landscape has been transformed. Wind and solar units have cropped up across the country, quadrupling their output. -
Ruling That Exxon Mobil Can Avoid Chemical Board Requests Appealed
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Federal attorneys will appeal a judge's ruling that let Exxon Mobil Corp. avoid turning over nearly half of investigators’ requests for records on its former refinery in Torrance, Calif., where an explosion injured two workers in 2015. -
Committees Take up FTA Nominee, STB Reauthorization
Apr 16, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
Lawmakers in both chambers this week will continue turning their attention to the nation's transportation infrastructure. -
Exxon Loses Again in Court Attempt to Dodge Climate Change Probe
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Erik Larson
Exxon Mobil Corp. suffered another legal defeat in its attempt to dodge state investigations into whether the company's public comments about climate change misled investors for years. -
We Still Need to March for Science
Apr 14, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.)
Congressman Bill Foster represents the 11th District in Illinois. For over twenty years, he worked as a high-energy physicist and particle accelerator designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was a member of the team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter. -
Nations Strike Deal to Curb Shipping Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anna Hirtenstein, Jeremy Hodges, and Ali Qassim
Most of the world's nations agreed to a mandatory deal that for the first time will limit greenhouse gas emissions from the global shipping industry.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Apr 17, 2018 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee
Witnesses: FERC commissioners.
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Hearing on Surface Transportation Board
Apr 17, 2018 | Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee
Witnesses: Surface Transportation Board Chairwoman Ann Begeman and Surface Transportation Board Vice Chairwoman Deb Miller.
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(ACC Blog) Earth Day 2018: To Fix Plastic Pollution, We Need to Solve the Right Problem
Apr 16, 2018 | American Chemistry Matters
By Steve Russell
This Earth Day will bring a variety of enthusiastic calls for cleaner oceans. Plastics makers share and welcome that enthusiasm, because no one wants oceans full of plastics. And to effectively turn awareness into meaningful results, it’s worth being clear about how plastics are getting where they shouldn’t be.Where do ocean plastics come from?
Although some of the plastic currently in the ocean is from lost or abandoned nets and fishing gear, experts have found that most comes from poorly managed municipal solid waste on land. Of that, more than 50% comes from a small number of rapidly developing economies that have yet to invest in systems to collect and manage that waste.
The use of plastics in emerging economies is a sign of a growing middle class with increased access to fresh foods, personal care products, connectivity, transportation systems, and employment. Unfortunately, in many regions, growing demand for consumer goods has outpaced the infrastructure needed to manage used materials of all kinds. And without an infrastructure to collect and manage municipal solid waste, an endless stream of debris winds up in rivers and open dumpsites that eventually feed into our oceans.How can we keep plastics out of the marine environment?
In 2015 Ocean Conservancy published a report (Stemming the Tide) that explored the most effective interventions that could be applied to prevent plastic from polluting our oceans. That report recommended implementing optimized systems to collect, sort and treat the various waste components (i.e., compost, recycle and/or recover the materials). This report is an important milestone because if we want to make a difference quickly, we need to start where the problem is occurring.
Stemming the Tide also pointed out that value capture is important. If trash has value, then it will be collected. And to give it value, we need to develop waste management infrastructure that separates and captures the constituent materials so they can be turned into valuable products. Mechanical recycling is available for many plastics, and an ever wider number of products are being designed for recycling.
Still, there remain valuable consumer products and packaging for which mechanical recycling is not yet available. Fortunately, one exciting new innovation is a form of recycling that breaks down plastics into their basic molecules. This family of technologies can produce a variety of outputs, including raw materials for new plastics, basic chemicals for manufacturing, transportation fuels, waxes, and lubricants.
Another area of research has demonstrated that automated sorting technologies in use today can be optimized to capture flexible plastic packaging, including multi-material pouches. This promising area of research could lead to the creation of a new stream of recovered materials (e.g., multi-layer packaging) while helping to reduce contamination in other streams. And other promising developments, such as solvents, additives and compatibilizers, could yield additional options for processing and reusing mixed plastics. All of these options have enormous potential for advancing a more circular economy.Can’t we just ban plastics?
Plastics have improved virtually every aspect of how we live—from everyday safety and convenience to advanced healthcare, technology, and even sustainability. Because plastics are strong, lightweight and cost-effective—they allow us to do more with less, which significantly reduces our environmental footprint. For example, plastics allow us to: package more fresh food with less packaging, drive further on a gallon of gas; heat and cool our homes for less, expand access to critical safety devices and personal care items… and much, much more.
And while plastics clearly don’t belong in our oceans, studies show banning them would do more harm than good. A 2016 study by the firm Trucost found that replacing plastics in packaging and consumer products could raise environmental costs nearly fourfold. Another study showed that replacing plastic packaging with other materials would increase the amount of packaging generated in the United States by 55 million tons annually and increase energy use and carbon emissions by 82 percent and 130 percent, respectively. So, eliminating plastics clearly won’t benefit our planet.But if we stop using single-use plastics, they won’t pollute our oceans, right?
As a society we can—and should—do more to reduce waste. That includes designing recyclable products, recycling whatever we can, not taking straws or carryout utensils when we don’t need them, and bringing a reusable cup or bag when we can. Yet some have called for bans on “single-use plastics,” i.e., items designed to be used once or only for a short time. But in many cases, single use plastics give us sanitary conditions for food, beverages and medical applications. And, while bans on particular products might feel like a quick fix, we can’t simply enact bans in every country for every item that might find its way to the ocean. And without increased access to waste management infrastructure, there would just be different waste—and in all likelihood a lot more of it—piling up in rivers and dumpsites.What Are Companies that Make and Use Plastics Doing to Prevent Pollution?
Many companies across the private sector are working together and partnering with governments and nonprofits to help prevent trash from leaking into the ocean. Much of this work is aligned internationally and focused on providing waste management infrastructure in countries where the most plastics leakage is occurring.
We’ve learned that one of the most important ways we can contribute is to partner with organizations that offer critical expertise in ocean sciences and conservation, investment and infrastructure development. For example, ACC and the World Plastics Council are members of Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Alliance®, which is working on cross-sector innovations to prevent trash from reaching waterways.
And plastics and consumer goods companies are among major brands working with the Closed Loop Partners to help launch a new fund (called Closed Loop Ocean (CLO)) that will provide a financing model for waste management. CLO is seeking funding commitments totaling $150 million to help finance technologies and infrastructure that advance the recovery and circularity of materials in countries with high levels of ocean bound waste. Plans call for funding projects—including a not-for-profit project incubator capability—as early as next year.
And we are tracking the ways in which our industry is contributing to cleaner oceans. In 2011, ACC initiated a Global Declaration aimed at organizing our collective efforts. Today, 75 associations from 40 countries have signed the Global Declaration, and are publicly reporting projects in six areas: education, research, public policy, sharing best practices, plastics recycling/recovery, and plastic pellet containment. The number of projects reported by declaration signatories has grown to 355, more than tripling since inception.
We know ocean pollution is a huge problem, and know there’s much more to be done. But this problem is solvable, if we stay focused on capturing and transforming municipal solid waste at its source.
https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2018/04/earth-day-2018-solve-the-right-problem-to-fix-plastic-pollution/
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Groups Debate Proposed Trade Tariffs
Apr 13, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
In a trade war with China, American Chemistry Council CEO Cal Dooley said what he fears most is retaliation damaging U.S. chemical and plastics exports.
ACC estimates the fallout from escalating tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Beijing could impact up to $5 billion of the industry's exports to China, with 40 percent of Beijing's response so far aimed squarely at squeezing American chemical and plastics makers.
The head of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, however, sees the Trump administration's proposed tariffs as a necessary evil.
AAM President Scott Paul argued that Chinese imports have played a "major part" in the loss of one in three factory jobs in the United States since 1998, making trade restrictions a risk worth taking to help level the field.
"To me, tariffs are an emergency room measure — they are triage until we can get a much more sustainable approach — but they are absolutely necessary," he said.
That was the heart of the argument playing out in an April 12 Congressional hearing on the Trump administration's proposed tariffs against China.
Various industry groups, companies and lawmakers debated the administration's plans to impose $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports and China's matching response targeting key U.S. exporters, including plastics and agriculture.
At the hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee, there seemed to be universal agreement among industry and members of Congress that the U.S. government should be tougher against what it sees as China's mercantilist behavior.
ACC, for example, supports Trump's efforts to tackle intellectual property rights and requirements for technology transfer. But tariffs are not the right tool, ACC argued.
The hearing offered competing visions of the U.S. economy.
One side focused on dislocations from global trade. AAM noted that the U.S. goods trade deficit with China has risen from $83 billion in 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, to a record $375 billion last year.
And the group cited estimates that the trade imbalance has cost the United States 3.4 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing.
Most subsectors in the plastics industry — products, molds and machinery — have deficits with China of $12.3 billion, $375 million and $212 million, respectively, in 2016, the last year figures are available.
The plastics resin sector was the exception, however, with a $2.7 billion surplus. Dooley said China imported 11 percent of U.S. plastic resins last year, or $3.2 billion worth.
That resin surplus is part of a growing U.S. industrial chemical surplus that hit $33 billion worldwide last year. ACC estimates that will soar to $73 billion by 2020, driven by low-cost shale gas feedstocks and the sizable investments underway in the U.S. chemical and plastics sectors.
That growing export strength framed Dooley's testimony.
"If you listen to some of the comments here, you would think that our economy was failing or not being globally competitive," he said. "But our service sector is globally competitive, if not a leader. Our energy sector has now become a global leader. The chemical manufacturing sector is a global leader. Our U.S. agriculture sector is a global leader.
"Our concern is if you're not tactical … it invites a retaliation," Dooley said. "That retaliation is going to go at our most competitive sectors. And that's where we have great concerns."
The automotive supply chain also appeared at the hearing and largely echoed ACC's caution.
Ann Wilson, senior vice president of government affairs at the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, said the industry was very worried about fallout from tariffs and trade conflicts.
"The combined impact of these tariffs has thrown many of our member companies close to a financial crisis and has made some of them question their future investments in the U.S." she said. "Tariffs will have a negative impact on these manufacturers, the jobs they create and ultimately the American consumer."
Wilson said the auto component sector welcomed U.S. government action on weak intellectual property protections in China but was "alarmed at the escalating rhetoric" on tariffs and trade.
There were other voices of concern on tariffs. An April 9 Brookings Institution study said jobs in the plastics products and resin sectors were among the most at risk from China's retaliatory tariffs.
The hearing included some pointed exchanges, such as between Dooley and Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), who challenged the ACC leader to spell out a "global solution" to problems that have proven difficult to solve with negotiation, like overcapacity in the Chinese steel industry.
AAM's Paul argued that China's plans for industrial modernization raise the stakes for U.S. manufacturers.
"There is not an easy answer, particularly with [Chinese] President Xi doubling down on the desire to build national champions and, as I mentioned, Made in China 2025, which is targeting the next generation of our industries," Paul said. "It's steel today; it's robots tomorrow. We have a lot at stake here with respect to American innovation and American jobs."
Underscoring the fluid nature of U.S. trade policy, Trump on April 12 reversed course and said he was open to rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Dooley praised TPP during the hearing, and on April 13 said he welcomed Trump's decision and called TPP the "most effective way" to gain leverage in talks with China.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180413/NEWS/180419945/industry-groups-debate-proposed-trade-tariffs
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(ACC Mentioned) ACS and ACC Condemn Chemical Weapons Use in Syria
Apr 13, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Linda Wang
An attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7 killed at least 40 people. Authorities suspect that chemical weapons, possibly a nerve agent or chlorine, were involved in the incident.
In a joint statement, the American Chemical Society and the American Chemistry Council condemn the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The full statement follows:
“The use of chemicals as a weapon is in direct violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention(CWC) and abhorrent to society. The American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) condemn the continued use of chemical agents as weapons against the citizens of Syria. The most recent alleged chemical use occurred on Saturday, April 7, in an attack in Douma, Syria, that reportedly killed at least 40 people. Rescue workers reported an overpowering smell of chlorine in the affected area. CWC, of which 192 nations are signatories, outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors. CWC is implemented by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). These indiscriminate chemical attacks, possibly carried out by member state(s) of CWC, are, if verified, in direct violation of the convention. ACS and ACC support the Fact-Finding Mission currently being conducted in Douma by OPCW, which is gathering information from all available sources to determine whether chemical weapons were used. The Fact-Finding Mission will report its findings to States Parties to CWC, which will determine next steps. ACS and ACC have been working cooperatively with the OPCW over the past several years in areas of chemical education and training and continue to offer their assistance as OPCW conducts their investigation in this urgent matter.”
https://cen.acs.org/policy/chemicalWeapons/ACS-ACC-condemn-chemical-weapons/96/web/2018/04
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(ACC Mentioned) US Resins Have Caught the Attention of China
Apr 16, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
U.S. plastics pros often lament the fact that many outside the industry are unaware of the impacts that plastics have on everyday life.
Based on the events of the last two weeks, we can say that China — the most populous nation on earth — is indeed very much aware of the U.S. plastics market. American plastics execs now might be thinking it wasn't so bad being ignored.
On April 4, China responded to a second wave of proposed U.S. tariffs on Chinese products with its own list of 106 U.S. items that might be hit with tariffs in an economic counterattack. To the surprise of some plastics market watchers, more than 40 of those items had some connection to the plastics industry.
Chinese officials targeted plastic materials ranging from commodity resins PVC and polyethylene to engineering resins polycarbonate and nylon and even high-end specialty resins like polysulfone. The list reads like a plastics nerd's approved word list for a mean game of Scrabble.
Elsewhere on the plastics-related side, proposed U.S. tariffs — which came out a day before the Chinese resin backlash — cover a long list of industrial products, including molds, injection molding machines, extruders, blow molding machines and thermoforming equipment.
Based on dollar value in 2017, plastics ranked fourth on the list of markets targeted for Chinese tariffs, trailing only aircraft, soybeans and cars.
"It looks like China basically chose the polymer categories where the trade deficit value — not necessarily volume — was highest with the U.S." market analyst Paul Bjacek said this week in an email to Plastics News. "That means that high value polymers were not immune to the tariff possibilities.
"This way, engineering polymers can have high trade balance values relative to some commodity plastics," added Bjacek, who's with Accenture Research in Houston. "This may demonstrate that the tariffs are not targeted to disrupt shale gas chemical-related exports per se, and any polymers can be a target having a large value deficit with China."
Shale gas comes into play, since new access to that feedstock has led to a massive wave of U.S. PE resin expansion, mainly on the Gulf Coast. Much of that new material is expected to be exported, with China seen as a major destination.
In 2017, the U.S. exported just over 500 million pounds of PE to China, according to data firm International Trader Publications in Tarrytown, N.Y. That amount is less than the size of a single world-scale PE production line, but was expected to grow in 2018 and beyond.
PVC is a different story, however. Although the volume exported from the U.S. to China is similar to that of PE — around 700 million pounds — that amount represents close to 40 percent of all Chinese PVC imports, according to ITP.
China also has become an important market for U.S. PC resin makers, as domestic production of optical media products such as CDs and DVDs has declined. The U.S. now exports around 40 percent of all domestic PC production.
As a result, reduced U.S. exports could put some pressure on China to find alternate suppliers of PC resin and of nylon resins as well, according to Paul Blanchard, a market analyst with IHS Markit in Houston.
"China is reliant on imports to provide the required supply of both of these materials," Blanchard said in an email to Plastics News. "Assuming the required grades could be replaced easily — which may not be the case — on PC there's a bit of available capacity in Asia and more in western Europe."
On nylon 6/6, he added "there appears to be capacity in northeast Asia to cover." But If adiponitrile feedstock ends up on the Chinese tariff list, "that would be a complication for nylon 6/6."
The proposed Chinese tariffs will have minimal impact on U.S. and European resin suppliers and compounders that have established operations in China or in other Asian countries, according to Robert Eller, president of the Robert Eller Associates consulting firm in Akron, Ohio.
But Eller added that companies that have resin and elastomer operations in the U.S. could be hurt if they can't find markets in non-Chinese regions. "There might also be trading between companies as work-arounds between companies to avoid tariff issues," he said.
China is one of the U.S. chemical industry's most important trading partners, importing 11 percent, or $3.2 billion, of all U.S. plastic resins in 2017, according to the American Chemistry Council. ACC President Cal Dooley said in a statement that ACC officials "are particularly concerned" that 40 percent of the products to which China has assigned new tariffs are chemicals, including polyethylene, PVC, polycarbonates, acrylates, and others.
"Nearly $185 billion in new chemical factories, expansions and restarts of facilities around the country are predicated on current tariff schedules, and market shifts caused by tariff increases may convince investors to do business elsewhere," he added.
It remains to be seen if any or all of these tariffs will come to pass in either direction. But it's already clear that if China's economic officials want to hit the U.S. where it hurts, plastic resin is part of that fight plan.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180413/BLOG07/180419946/us-resins-have-caught-the-attention-of-china
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(ACC Mentioned) Watchdog to Issue Report on Hiring Method EPA Used to Give Raises
Apr 13, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog is planning to issue an interim report on the Trump administration’s use of a special hiring authority that was central to a recent scandal involving EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
The report follows allegations that EPA officials circumvented the White House using that special authority in order to give two EPA aides raises.
The EPA’s Office of Inspector General said Friday that its Monday report will be a “management alert” related to the agency’s use of special hiring authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Agency officials used that authority in March to give big raises to two close aides to Pruitt, Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, after the White House refused to allow the raises. The report, which auditors began prior to the reported raises, may address the issue.
Pruitt denied knowing about the raises and ordered them undone, he told Fox News. His chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, later took responsibility for the increases.
The Atlantic later reported that Pruitt ordered the raises, and Kevin Chmielewski, a former top staffer for Pruitt, told congressional Democrats this week that Pruitt knew about them.
Congress gave the EPA the special authority to hire up to 30 employees in “administratively determined” jobs in the 1970s. Employees under the provision are not restrained by civil service or political appointee rules, so they don’t have to sign an ethics pledge and the White House doesn’t have to approve their raises, unlike normal political appointees.
The legal provision was meant to allow the agency to hire experts and scientists more easily, but it has been interpreted broadly. The Trump administration and previous administrations have used it to hire all manner of employees, including strategists, communications staffers, executive assistants and policy officials.
The inspector general began examining the EPA’s use of the hiring authority in January.
Democrats criticized the EPA last year for using the authority to hire Nancy Beck to a leading role in the chemical safety office. She previously worked at the American Chemistry Council, but did not have to sign Trump’s ethics pledge that would have put stronger restrictions on her ability to work on certain chemical industry matters.
-Updated 3:30 p.m.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/383063-epa-watchdog-to-issue-report-on-use-of-special-hiring-authority
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Watchdog to Release Interim Report on Pruitt's Hiring Practices
Apr 13, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA’s inspector general will release an interim report Monday afternoon related to its probe of whether Administrator Scott Pruitt misused the special hiring authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the IG’s office announced today.
The audit began in January, and focuses on Pruitt's use of the special hiring authority to bring on more than a dozen political staffers who were not subject to typical federal hiring restrictions or the Trump administration’s ethics pledge.
Among the so-called administratively determined hires are Nancy Beck, a former expert for the American Chemistry Council who is the new deputy assistant administrator in EPA's chemical office, as well as Lee Forsgren, the deputy in EPA's water office, and several public affairs staffers. Some of these hires have since transitioned to formal political appointees.
The scope of the interim report was not yet clear, but it could include urgent information the IG thinks Pruitt needs to know about before the audit is completely finished.
Also unclear is whether the IG has expanded that existing probe to include a recent controversy around EPA’s use of the SDWA authority to grant raises to two Pruitt aides. Those raises had been originally rejected by the White House, and Pruitt has denied any knowledge of them before they were reported. Democrats last week asked the IG to include that matter in its ongoing audit.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2018/04/epa-watchdog-to-release-interim-report-on-pruitts-hiring-practices-1030258
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(ACC Mentioned) Fighting Ocean Plastics at the Source
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
In Muncar, on the coast of East Java, Indonesia, fishers still make their living the traditional way, launching from the shore in the hand-painted boats they have used for generations.
But that doesn’t mean that this harbor town is untouched by time. Plastic waste is mounting on the riverbanks and in the waters around Muncar. Some probably lurks within the fish brought ashore on the boats.
Muncar is the second-largest fishing port in Indonesia, but it has barely a semblance of a waste management infrastructure. Dorothea Wiplinger, the sustainability manager for Austrian plastics maker Borealis, was on the ground in Muncar recently studying the problem. She says nearly 90% the garbage, mostly organic waste, that local inhabitants generate is either dumped haphazardly or burned.
“You cannot see the sand anymore because the beaches are just full of waste. And then the high tide takes the waste away,” she says. “The people there don’t have any other choice.”
The developing world is dotted with places like Muncar. The problem is particularly acute in China and in the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. These five countries alone are responsible for most of the plastics that end up in the ocean.
In such countries, rising affluence is allowing people to buy more plastic-wrapped food and drink than they could before. But infrastructure hasn’t kept up, leaving citizens with no environmentally sound means to throw stuff away.
By developing better waste management practices, like those that already exist in wealthier places, these countries could stop the trash from escaping into the ocean.
But some observers have more drastic measures in mind. A recent editorial in the Los Angeles Timesdeclared that the “sheer volume of plastic trash now littering Earth has become impossible to ignore.” Piecemeal bans by states and cities on plastic bags and drinking straws can’t clean up the environment fast enough, the paper said. It called for phasing out all single-use plastic.
Governments in places like Indonesia and Sri Lanka have pledged to improve. The plastics industry, eager to see the problem disappear, is mobilizing with business-friendly nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to develop methods for collecting, sorting, and recycling plastic trash. The parties hope they can roll out the solutions fast enough and at a large enough scale to make a difference to the ocean.
A growing problem
Scientists have been sounding the alarm about ocean plastics for more than a decade. And in recent years, the facts have grown increasingly disconcerting.
One of the earliest warnings came from the International Coastal Cleanup, run by Ocean Conservancy, an NGO. The International Coastal Cleanup began in 1986 when 2,800 volunteers collected 110 metric tons of debris on the Texas coast. Last year, a half-million volunteers from all around the world collected more than 8,300 metric tons of garbage.
The volunteers keep meticulous data, which amounts to a vast waste characterization survey of the world’s coastline. Last year, nine of the top 10 items collected were plastics, including beverage bottles and caps, food wrappers, straws, and grocery bags.
“It is really meant to be a snapshot of the most persistent items that are littering our beaches and waterways,” says Nick Mallos, director of the Trash Free Seas Program at Ocean Conservancy. “Over time, we have seen a shift towards more and more plastics, which reflects the global marketplace and the shift to plastics as the dominant material.”
Scientists have also been probing the ocean itself to understand the plastics problem. Organizations such as Algalita Marine Research & Education and the 5 Gyres Institute have been sending expeditions to trawl the oceans to capture plastics and assess how widespread the problem has become. Over the past decade, they succeeded in bringing the public’s attention to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area where currents converge and plastics flotsam accumulates.
In 2014, these organizations pooled data from their expeditions to estimate that 5 trillion pieces of plastic trash, weighing more than 250,000 metric tons, were afloat at sea.
Britta Denise Hardesty, a principal research scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation, has seen plenty of ocean plastics firsthand. Her fieldwork on plastics ingestion by birds has taken her to remote areas of Tasmania and Western Australia reachable only by pontoon plane. “You don’t see a single coastal site where you don’t find trash,” she says.
“It is reasonable to think that if we continue in the direction where we are going now, there’s going to be ecosystem impact,” Hardesty says. “Plastics don’t belong in our stomachs, in our food chain, or over our reefs. That stuff smothers and kills things.”
Hardesty recently participated in a study that dissected 378 seabirds in eastern Australia. Some 24% of them had debris in their digestive tracts. She helped compile a survey of published data suggesting that, by 2050, 95% of all seabirds will be ingesting plastic if the pollution isn’t mitigated.
Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, sees similarly alarming trends in fish. She led a 2015 study in which researchers bought fish at markets in Indonesia and California and dissected them to see if they could find microplastics—less-than-5-mm fragments that result when the environment shreds littered plastics over time. She found microplastics in 28% of the 76 fish from Indonesia. She also found debris in 25% of the 64 fish procured in California. In the U.S., most of the waste was microfiber, possibly from laundry water.
“That did get a lot of attention, I think because it is kind of striking to say that there’s plastic in your seafood,” Rochman says. “And it shows that the mismanagement of our waste has come back to haunt us on our own dinner plates.”
Researchers are probing other fundamental questions, Rochman says, such as how plastics might affect fish health. They have found plastic particles in fish blood cells, livers, and even brains. Plastics probably leach chemicals into fish and, she says, have been shown to promote liver tumors and pathology in their gonads.
In 2015, it became clear that the scale of the ocean problem was even bigger than was uncovered in the earlier gyre studies. That’s when a team led by Jenna Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia, published a paper titled “Plastic Waste inputs from Land Into the Ocean” in Science (2015, DOI: 10.1126/science.1260352).
Jambeck had read about the gyre expeditions and wondered if she could estimate the rate at which plastics were entering the world’s oceans from data about human consumption. “I thought that if our waste is ending up in the ocean, then it is probably because of something that is happening on land,” she recalls.
The team made assumptions about waste generation and probable plastics use in coastal populations around the world. Using the World Bank’s country-level data on waste management practices, they estimated how much waste was mismanaged through improper collection and disposal. Finally, the team modeled how much of that mismanaged waste hemorrhaged into the ocean. The conclusion: between 4.8 million and 12.7 million metric tons during the basis year of 2010.
Based on the study’s mid-range estimate of 8.0 million metric tons, leakage amounted to 3% of the world’s 2010 plastics production of 265 million metric tons, as reported by the trade group PlasticsEurope.
The Jambeck paper suggests that plastics waste could reach crisis proportions if people don’t come up with remedies more quickly than consumption increases. Plastics leakage to the ocean might grow to 17.5 million metric tons per year by 2025, and the cumulative buildup could hit 155 million metric tons by that time, doubling today’s levels.
Jeff Wooster, global sustainability leader for Dow Chemical’s packaging business, credits the Jambeck publication with creating a heightened sense of urgency. “I think a lot of people didn’t really recognize how big the magnitude of the problem was and how serious the crisis could be if it is not fixed,” he says.
A plan for plastics
Ocean Conservancy’s Mallos says the influence of the Jambeck paper cannot be overstated. “It really was a hallmark moment in this dialogue, and it really changed the global discourse from one that was largely focused on gyres to one recognizing a large vector from land, where we can intervene,” he says.
A key to this intervention is Jambeck’s observation that certain countries contribute more to ocean waste than others. According to her team’s survey, five countries—China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam—contribute more than half of ocean plastics. Improve waste infrastructure in these places, and significantly less plastic will escape into the ocean overall.
But the paper hardly exonerates countries with developed waste infrastructure. Because of littering of about 2% of total waste and very high per-capita consumption of plastics, the U.S. ranks 20th in the world.
Ocean Conservancy built on Jambeck’s paper and added its own analysis as well as research on the ground in China and the Philippines to come up with a blueprint for reducing plastic waste in the ocean. Its widely referenced report, “Stemming the Tide: Land-Based Strategies for a Plastic-Free Ocean,” came out later in 2015.
The Ocean Conservancy report focused largely on ocean leakage from the top five countries. Using its own research, it substituted Thailand for Sri Lanka as the fifth country. The group maintains that these five countries could reduce plastics litter to the ocean by 65% as early as 2025, reducing overall marine plastics leakage by 45%. The effort would cost $5 billion annually.
The essence of the plan is that towns and cities need to collect more garbage from residents. Ocean Conservancy estimates that 75% of plastics leakage comes from uncollected waste. Collection is sometimes as low as 10% in rural areas of China and the Philippines.
The other 25% of the leakage comes from cracks in the waste management system itself, the NGO says. This happens, for example, when an open-air dump is located near a river, allowing plastics to blow into the water. Remedies include better landfills, recycling, and waste-to-energy facilities where combustion can take plastics out of circulation for good.
The report says the region needs political commitment to see the reforms through. It calls on governments, NGOs, and the private sector to establish proofs of concept for local waste management schemes.
Mallos says governments have strong incentives to act. Collecting trash, after all, helps public health, too. “When it comes to waste management, it is not just good for the ocean,” he says. “It is good for society.”
Acting for oceans
Whether it is because they themselves have recognized the need to improve or they are reacting to prodding from NGOs, governments in Asia are starting to act. For example, noting that “marine plastic debris is a slow-motion catastrophe,” Indonesia made a commitment to the United Nations last year to reduce plastics debris by 70% by the end of 2025. The government said it would spend $1 billion to improve waste management and that it is eager to work with the private sector.
Sri Lanka banned single-use plastic items like shopping bags last year after a garbage dump collapse killed 32 people. Officials hope the ban will rein in the country’s reputation as one of the worst offenders when it comes to ocean plastics.
Some people think China’s new ban on the importation of postconsumer plastics may have a beneficial impact on the ocean. The country had been importing millions of metric tons annually from the U.S. and Europe for recycling. But a straw thrown into a recycling bin in Sacramento could easily end up adrift in the China Sea.
“They were importing mixed plastics, and they were picking through it and taking out the most valuable items, and the rest were just discarded into the environment,” Dow’s Wooster says.
The big fear about the China ban, however, is that the U.S. and Europe will simply export their waste plastics to other Asian countries rather than process them at home.
Increasingly, the plastics industry is heeding the call from NGOs and governments to collaborate. Companies are betting that focusing on Asia could yield dramatic results and remove a black eye on the industry.
Last year, Borealis, along with its joint-venture company Borouge and its recycling affiliate Mtm Plastics, kicked off a $5 million program with Indonesian officials and the social entrepreneurial firm SystemIQ. The partners are attempting to eliminate ocean plastics in Muncar by establishing a waste collection system and diverting plastics toward recycling.
“We want to create a mini-circular economy in that specific location—a proof point that a circular economic system works for that city—and then scale up,” Borealis’s Wiplinger says.
So far, the partnership has collected data on waste characterization and leakage. It has also assessed the informal plastics recycling sector—the trash pickers who pluck out metals and high-value plastics like polyester and polyethylene containers for recycling. “The plastic items that are wasted are mostly low-value flexible packaging items,” Wiplinger observes.
This month, the partners will implement the project using data they’ve collected. Their plan includes establishing sufficient collection points, deploying waste collection trucks and processing facilities, and hiring additional staff.
The partners also want to stimulate a market for difficult-to-recycle plastics like flexible packaging. “You have to increase recycling because this will give you the revenue that you need to finance waste collection,” Wiplinger says.
Dow has a long history with the marine plastics issue. It has been sponsoring the coastal cleanup since the first Texas event more than 30 years ago. As plastics consumption and litter grew, Wooster says, the company realized that it was “not going to fix this littering problem just by doing beach cleanups.”
About seven years ago, Dow helped form the Trash Free Seas Alliance with Ocean Conservancy and other big corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola. More recently, the company pledged $2.8 million toward efforts to fight marine debris.
For example, Dow is sponsoring a program to build roads in Indonesia and India made in part with flexible packaging that is otherwise difficult to recycle. Engineers recently blended 3.5 metric tons of plastics into a 1.8-km road laid in West Java, Indonesia. Such roads sequester plastic that might otherwise be discarded and may last twice as long as a conventional road.
Companies like Dow are feeling public pressure over the environmental impact of their products. And they aren’t being hounded just by one viral LA Times editorial. Some NGOs have made reducing and eliminating single-use plastics part of their advocacy platforms.
For example, one of the groups that sponsors the ocean plastics expeditions, 5 Gyres, along with other environmental groups, publishes the BAN (Better Alternatives Now) List, which includes many of the products that are ubiquitous in ocean cleanups. On it are bags and straws but also products such as food wrappers and beverage bottles, which the plastics industry has long insisted offer the environmental benefit of preserving food.
“I don’t think that the attention on fixing the problem in Southeast Asia is necessarily directed at preventing bans on single-use plastics,” Dow’s Wooster says. But he does admit that it’s bad for business when people turn against plastics because of a perceived impact on the environment.
“If they view it that way and it causes them not to use that material, then we know we don’t have a market anymore,” he says.
It isn’t just companies that make plastics that are trying to get involved. Last year, Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer products company, transformed the plastics that volunteers collected on French beaches into 150,000 Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles. This year, the company is rolling out Fairy dish detergent bottles made of ocean plastics.
Steve Sikra, associate director for global product stewardship at P&G, says the effort is meant to raise awareness in the minds of consumers “to signify plastic has value.” Additionally, he says the products are meant to highlight to consumers P&G’s goal of using 25% recycled content in its products in Europe by the end of this year.
P&G, along with Ocean Conservancy, the American Chemistry Council, Pepsi, Dow, and 3M, is participating in Closed Loop Ocean, an initiative pledging $150 million toward stopping plastics leakage in Southeast Asia.
Closed Loop Partners will manage the program. In the U.S., Sikra explains, its Closed Loop Fund, where he serves as an advisory board member, provides low-interest loans for recycling projects. These loans bear most of the financial risk and thus encourage commercial lenders to step up and provide the balance of the financing.
Closed Loop has helped fund recycling trucks in Ohio, material recovery facilities in Florida and Nebraska, and an enhanced recycling program in Connecticut. With the ocean plastics program, Closed Loop hopes to duplicate the same model in Southeast Asia, Sikra says. “It is about galvanizing investment in waste and recycling solutions in that part of the world.”
But Dow’s Wooster stresses that more than pilot programs are needed to make a dent in the problem. “We have taken these small projects, and we have learned from them,” he says. “The challenge for the industry right now is how do we start thinking bigger picture and on scalable solutions.”
That’s precisely Dell’s goal with its ocean plastics initiative. Last year, the computer company used about 7 metric tons of plastics that had been dumped in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to create packaging for its XPS 13 laptop. The company aims to increase usage 10-fold by 2025.
To boost its numbers, Dell is establishing a supply chain for plastics that have been improperly disposed of and are likely headed for the ocean. The company used data that it gathered in Port-au-Prince, such as population density and proximity to water, to come up with models to predict where trash accumulates. It then compared that data with satellite imagery of dumping grounds.
Dell applied this model to pinpoint hot spots in Asia where it could find sources of plastics. Oliver Campbell, the firm’s director of worldwide procurement and packaging, says the technique isn’t unlike the seismic imagery an oil company might use to decide where to set up a rig. “We weren’t drilling for oil; we were drilling for ocean plastic,” he says.
Hot spots include Chennai, India; Manila, the Philippines; and sites in Indonesia. In fact, Dell’s research found all too many sources of plastics in the region. “It is not like there’s a shortage of ocean-bound plastic; there is an overabundance of it,” Campbell says.
It will be a long time until plastics are hard to find. Pilot programs to stop plastics from flowing into the ocean in Southeast Asia are just getting started. Scale-up of productive schemes is likely years away.
Still, Ocean Conservancy’s Mallos is encouraged by what he is seeing. Ten years ago, he notes, people didn’t give marine plastics a second thought. Now, a broad coalition of industry, NGOs, and governments is hashing out solutions.
“If you look at climate change as an analog, it took almost three decades to achieve that type of public awareness and public debate,” he says. “I think that’s because, unlike climate, plastic floats in the ocean. It is a visible, tangible thing. You can see it on the beaches. You can see it in the ocean. And it is not hard to understand that it is alien and that it does not belong there.”
https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Fighting-ocean-plastics-source/96/i16
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Ethics and the EPA: How One Government Office Helped Turn up the Heat on Scott Pruitt
Apr 15, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Jennifer Rubin
Very few Americans know what the U.S. Office of Government Ethics — which sounds like an oxymoron, some would say — is, what it does or who runs it. More Americans should acquaint themselves with the OGE and its acting director David J. Apol. They might come to appreciate how a small government office headed by a longtime civil servant can make a difference.
According to the OGE website, the office’s mission is to:
“Provide overall leadership and oversight of the executive branch ethics program designed to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics oversees the executive branch ethics program and works with a community of ethics practitioners made up of nearly 5,000 ethics officials in more than 130 agencies to implement that program. When government decisions are made free from conflicts of interest, the public can have greater confidence in the integrity of executive branch programs and operations. OGE’s mission is part of a system of institutional integrity in the executive branch.”
With that, you would think OGE employees might throw up their hands in disgust, and take long lunches and plenty of sick days during the Trump presidency. Ethics in this administration?!
Well, Apol showed it is possible to preserve ethical standards, even in this administration. By taking his job seriously, he may have given Congress the poke it needed to be more diligent in its oversight duties.
The Post reported:
In a letter dated Friday and released Monday, David J. Apol, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, took the atypical step of telling EPA officials that several recent ethics questions deserve further scrutiny. “Public trust demands that all employees act in the public interest, and free from any actual or perceived conflicts,” he wrote to Kevin Minoli, the EPA’s principal deputy general counsel and the agency’s top ethics official.
Specifically, Apol mentioned the controversy surrounding Pruitt’s $50-a-night condo rental last year from a Washington lobbyist, noting that the EPA chief had not sought an ethics opinion on the arrangement in advance.
Former White House ethics counsel Norman Eisen told me what happened next. “Apol rightly called on EPA ethics officials to take a fresh look at all of the Pruitt ethics scandal allegations — the luxury lobbyist condo, the first class and unnecessary travel, the excessive pay raises and worst of all the retaliation against those who sought to raise questions,” Eisen said. “The response, unfortunately, was a cop out; EPA ethicists passed the buck to the EPA inspector general instead of also trying to do what they can to get to the bottom of things.”
While the EPA ethics personnel say that they lack investigative power, Eisen argued that “they have the power of the moral high ground, and they could at least try making inquiries, and updating or even withdrawing their flawed advice.”
Nevertheless, the inspector general is in the thick of the ethics investigations. Moreover, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has been jolted into taking real action. To date he had spoken disapprovingly of Pruitt’s excess (“I don’t have a lot of patience for that kind of stuff. . . . You’ve got to be a good steward.”), but had been busy with his own book tour. Democrats have, for some time, pleaded with Gowdy to schedule hearings on the EPA and to issue formal subpoenas when the administration provides nonresponsive answers to inquiries.
On Thursday, a group of Democratic senators and congressmen sent letters to both President Trump and to Pruitt detailing the revelations provided by whistleblower Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations. Chmielewski describes an ethical toxic-waste dump at the agency — including threats of retaliation, extravagant spending, misuse of government resources and more.
Gowdy’s letter also asks that Chmielewski, Pruitt’s chief of staff Ryan Jackson, along with Pasquale Perrotta (who heads Pruitt’s security detail and has been accused of ringing up huge bills, intimidating other EPA officials and abusing the contracting process), as well as two employees given outsize raises (including Millan Hupp, who helped Pruitt search for housing), all be made available for transcribed interviews.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House oversight panel, told me, “We are certainly heartened that Chairman Gowdy now seems to be starting to understand what we have been saying for weeks — that we need real, sustained, credible oversight of EPA and Mr. Pruitt.” He added, “That’s our job, after all. We will see if the committee actually gets the documents we asked for — which has been a real problem all year long — or whether the agency will be let off the hook yet again.” A Democratic staffer ruefully observed, “Democrats have been doing all the heavy lifting on this entire investigation and Chairman Gowdy seems to come along only when the evidence is literally overflowing and spoon-fed by a top Trump administration official.”
Well, maybe even Gowdy will agree to a hearing or two. If the chairman takes his oversight role seriously and wields subpoena power as aggressively as he did during the Benghazi hearings, the public may finally learn the extent of Pruitt’s malfeasance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/04/15/ethics-and-the-epa-how-one-government-office-helped-turn-up-the-heat-on-scott-pruitt/?utm_term=.849639879e63
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Gowdy Expands Probe into EPA's Pruitt
Apr 13, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna and Alex Guillen
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Friday he's expanding his probe into the alleged ethical and spending abuses by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt one day after his staff met for several hours with a former EPA aide who was pushed out of the agency.
Gowdy’s latest letter is a further sign of the deepening bipartisan scrutiny facing President Donald Trump’s environmental chief, whose critics accuse him of excessive spending on travel, vehicles, staff raises and luxe security features such as a $43,000 soundproof phone booth.
The committee's new request focuses on the decision to increase Pruitt's security to round-the-clock protection, contracts to sweep Pruitt's office for electronic surveillance, his trips to Italy and Morocco, the hiring of an Italian security firm, and travel by Pruitt's security chief Pasquale "Nino" Perrotta.
The letter comes after the committee interviewed ousted EPA employee and former Trump campaign aide Kevin Chmielewski, who is being treated as a whistleblower. A committee spokeswoman said the information he provided is consistent with allegations laid out in a letter released Thursday by House and Senate Democrats who had also spoken to him.
The committee also asked for sit-down interviews with four senior EPA officials: Perrotta; Ryan Jackson, Pruitt's chief of staff; Millan Hupp, a scheduling and advance aide; and Sarah Greenwalt, a senior counsel to Pruitt. Gowdy requested the agency schedule those interviews and provide a litany of documents by April 27. Gowdy also requested an on-the-record interview with Chmielewski, who spoke more informally with lawmakers this week.
Hupp and Greenwalt, both of whom have worked for Pruitt since he was Oklahoma’s attorney general, are the two staffers who received raises via a special authority granted Pruitt under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Pruitt told Fox News last week he was not aware of the raises, although Chmielewski told Democrats this week that the raises were “100 percent Pruitt himself.”
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said the agency had "responded to Chairman Gowdy’s inquiries and we will continue to work with him.”
EPA's inspector general is also investigating complaints about Pruitt's travel spending and other practices. The inspector general's office said it will release an interim report Monday afternoon on one of its probes, which involves whether Pruitt misused special hiring authority provided by the Safe Drinking Water Act to bring some key aides into the agency.
It's unclear whether the IG has expanded that probe to include a recent controversy around EPA's use of the same water law to grant raises to the two Pruitt aides despite the White House's disapproval.
Chmielewski told Democrats this week that EPA fired him after he refused to sign off retroactively on first-class travel for one of Pruitt’s closest aides, Samantha Dravis. Gowdy’s letter does not request an interview with Dravis, who has announced her intent to leave the agency.
During congressional interviews earlier this week, Chmielewski outlined a detailed litany of seemingly unethical behavior against Pruitt. He said the EPA chief insisted on staying at expensive hotels while traveling even if they exceeded permissible federal spending limits, directed staff to book him on Delta Air Lines so he could accrue frequent flier miles, made a close aide “act as a personal real estate representative” and then retaliated against staff who questioned his behavior, among other allegations.
EPA has previously dismissed Chmielewski as one of a “group of disgruntled employees who have either been dismissed or reassigned." The agency did not immediately comment on the latest letter.
Gowdy’s probe into Pruitt’s activities has been in contrast to his GOP colleagues who have adopted a “wait and see” approach toward the EPA chief’s ethical woes. Lawmakers this week expressed discomfort with Pruitt’s spending when asked and vowed to press him about it at future hearings. But they’ve stopped short of demanding documents or issuing subpoenas to investigate the alleged ethics lapses.
Pruitt last appeared before Congress in late January before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Unlike his fellow Cabinet members, he has yet to appear before any congressional committees to defend his fiscal 2019 budget request. And he’s not scheduled to return to Capitol Hill for another two weeks, when he is scheduled to attend an April 26 session with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“The Republicans are absolving themselves of all oversight responsibility even in the face of the most egregious conduct. They may as well stop calling committees oversight,” Melanie Sloan, senior adviser at American Oversight, told POLITICO. “What would it take? Would he literally have to kill somebody before they say it’s a problem?”
GOP lawmakers were less patient with Obama EPA officials. Senate and House lawmakers questioned former Administrators Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, as well as other senior brass, on issues ranging from the use of nonofficial email accounts, whether they used texting to avoid record-keeping requirements, whether they allowed a senior staffer to commit time fraud and why they hadn’t fired employees who spent hours watching pornography at work more quickly.
EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has said he planned to await the results of a White House review of Pruitt’s conduct and would not comment on multiple occasions this week on when the administrator would return to his committee.
“He was just here earlier this year and answered questions for two-and-a-half hours, but I expect him to come back again,” Barrasso told reporters.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/04/gowdy-expands-probe-into-epas-pruitt-482443
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EPA Includes Active-Inactive Designations on Updated TSCA Inventory
Apr 13, 2018 | Lexology
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Carla N. Hutton
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) April 2018 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory is now available. For the first time, the Inventory includes a field designating substances that are “active” in U.S. commerce based on the following:
Reporting from the 2012 and 2016 Chemical Data Reporting cycles;
Notices of Commencement received by EPA since June 21, 2006; and
Notice of Activity Form A’s received by EPA through the February 7, 2018, deadline, per the TSCA Inventory Notification (Active-Inactive) Rule.
EPA states that it “carefully processed and conducted a quality check of the data to ensure duplicate entries and confidential business information were removed” from the large number of notices received under the Active-Inactive Rule. EPA also posted a list of substances reported in a Notice of Activity Form A from February 8 through March 30, 2018. According to EPA, this list should assist processors in determining which of their substances on the Inventory have not yet been designated as “active” to date. Based on our review, the Inventory lists approximately 38,303 total active substances, or about 44.5 percent. The deadline for voluntary submission of a Notice of Activity Form A by processors is October 5, 2018.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=29cc63e6-6ed9-489e-a48a-332f167cb9ad
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NRDC Sues EPA for Emails on Delayed Chemical Bans
Apr 15, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is suing EPA to turn over emails between former Trump EPA toxics nominee Michael Dourson, who failed to win Senate confirmation, and career agency officials over proposed chemical bans that the Obama EPA issued but which the Trump administration has delayed.
In an April 9 complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District Of Columbia, NRDC charges that EPA has violated statutory deadlines in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to respond to its January request for “[a]ll communications to or from [Dourson]” regarding the three proposed chemical bans.
At issue are rules the Obama EPA proposed in January 2017 banning use of methylene chloride and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) in paint strippers, as well as use of trichloroethylene (TCE) as a vapor degreaser.
The rules relied on TSCA section 6(a) authority, rarely used since a federal court struck down EPA's attempt to ban most uses of asbestos in the 1991. The decision prompted critics of TSCA to seek reform of the statute, eventually enacted in June 2016.
But late last year, the Trump administration shelved plans to finalize the proposed bans, categorizing the rules as "long-term actions," on the Unified Agenda of federal regulations.
Recognizing that the Trump EPA is not going to move quickly on the chemicals, environmentalists more recently have moved to press Lowes hardware stores to stop selling paint stripping products containing methylene chloride.
Last month, they were joined by a trio of South Carolina Republicans in their calls to EPA to re-evaluate the proposed ban on uses of methylene chloride after a Charleston, SC, resident died last fall from exposure to methylene chloride while using a paint-stripper containing the substance at his business.
In their complaint, NRDC says it wants the relevant emails regarding the three substances from Jan. 20, 2017 to the present, and “[a]ll records relating to [Dourson’s] involvement in EPA’s evaluation of methylene chloride, [NMP], and/or [TCE], from January 20, 2017 to the present, including, but not limited to, records related to Mr. Dourson’s involvement in EPA’s recent decision to postpone bans on certain uses of” the chemicals.
NRDC's suit follows an earlier FOIA suit the group filed last August, after EPA failed to turn over documents showing whether and how Nancy Beck, the former chemical industry official who is now the top Trump appointee in EPA's toxics office, is influencing rulemakings under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In that case, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York set a series of deadlines by which EPA had to respond to NRDC's requests.
Beck is the top toxics official at EPA since Dourson withdrew is nomination late last year after three Republicans indicated they would join Democrats in voting against his confirmation because of his business relationships with the chemical industry. Beck's slot does not require Senate confirmation.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/nrdc-sues-epa-emails-delayed-chemical-bans
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Sweden's Kemi Acts After Lead, SCCPs Found in Small Articles
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemi) reported 11 companies to environmental prosecutors after it found lead and short-chained chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) in small electronics and soft plastics items that children can put in the mouth.
Kemi inspected 162 small articles, such as mobile phone cases, ornaments and consumer electronics sold in Sweden by 59 suppliers, and found that 19 of them contained parts with prohibited hazardous substances children can suck or swallow.
All 19 products were removed from the market after the companies were unable to comply with a request from Kemi to obtain more information about the substances from their suppliers.
Three products contained lead, Kemi said, even though the metal is forbidden in the EU in small items due to a higher health risk for children from ingestion. The items – a refrigerator magnet, a soap container and a mobile phone case – had been imported into Sweden after the new EU ban came into force.
Ten other articles, including gloves and a toothbrush holder made of soft PVC plastic, contained SCCPs, Kemi added.
Twenty others contained phthalates, some of which are on the REACH candidate list. While the presence of these substances is permitted, suppliers need to notify this. None of the companies had received the information from their suppliers and they all choose to stop selling the products, Kemi said.
In February, Kemi took action on 16 electronics importers after it found prohibited levels of hazardous chemicals in products, including lead in imported electronics.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66002/swedens-kemi-acts-after-lead-sccps-found-in-small-articles
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The Petrochemicals Party Shows No Signs of Stopping
Apr 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
The chemical industry is booming, and little in the forecast indicates that the good times will let up anytime soon. That was the key message from the consultants and executives who presented at the IHS Markit World Petrochemical Conference 2018 in Houston last month.
Chemical makers are wrapping up tens of billions of dollars of investment in new petrochemical facilities meant to take advantage of cheap feedstocks derived from shale. Normally, such a swell in supply pours cold water on prices and hits the industry’s bottom line. But this time around, the thinking goes, demand is so strong that the world will devour every kilogram of product that firms can crank out.
Dave Witte, who heads energy and chemicals consulting at IHS Markit, began his presentation by noting that the chemical industry has enjoyed five years of strong profits and that it was natural for the 1,300 attendees to wonder when the prosperity might end. Historically, he pointed out, long periods of capacity buildup often coincide with economic weakness that compounds oversupply and results in painful industry downturns.
For example, a lot of capacity opened in 1990, just before the recession that cost George H. W. Bush the 1992 election. An industry peak in the mid-1990s was scuttled by the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the 2001 economic downturn, leading to a five-year trough for chemicals.
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This time may be different. “The industry is now seeing a relatively long period of stable, though generally subdued, demand growth,” Witte said. Although a big slug of U.S. capacity for chemicals such as ethylene and polyethylene is coming onstream over the next couple of years, expansion in the Middle East and China is muted, he pointed out.
Witte expects two more very strong years for chemicals, a “slight pullback” in 2020 as the market absorbs the new output, and a resumption of strong profitability thereafter.
Mark Eramo, vice president of global chemical business development at IHS Markit, was even more optimistic. He raised the specter of a “supercycle”—an extended period of little spare capacity and robust demand when profits fatten to enormous proportions. The chemical industry hasn’t seen such a scenario in a generation.
“In each element of the value chain, we are talking about strength,” Eramo said. “Consumers are pulling hard, the assets are running hard, the feedstock is there, and the investment is occurring.”
Over the next five years, combined worldwide capacity for the base chemicals ethylene, propylene, methanol, chlorine, benzene, and p-xylene will expand by 25% to 610 million metric tons, Eramo said.
And demand should keep pace. IHS expects years of relatively low oil prices that will stimulate strong demand for chemical products. Eramo predicted that over the next five years, demand for the industry’s most basic building blocks, ethylene and propylene, will grow faster than it did over the previous five years. Operating rates for ethylene should remain above a very healthy 90%.
Sudden events such as a supply outage or a surge in demand could trigger price escalation and “record-setting profitability,” he said.
It’s more than just low oil prices that are buoying the industry. In his remarks at the conference, IHS Markit Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh painted a picture of a world economy that is galloping along.
In the U.S., consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. Unemployment stands at 4.1% and may dip to 3.5% next year, which would be its lowest level since the Korean War.
Globally, emerging economies such as Brazil are climbing out of recession. Europe and Japan are growing faster than they usually do.
But Behravesh sees a couple of factors that could ruin everything. One is a trade war instigated by the Trump administration’s protectionist policies. “Trade wars are bad, and they’re unwinnable,” he said.
Another is inflation, a side effect of an overheating economy. The Federal Reserve has already been inching up interest rates as a preventive measure. Behravesh said the Reserve could cause a recession if it panics and jacks rates up too fast. “Recoveries don’t die of old age,” he said. “They get killed off.”
The chemical executives who spoke at the conference, remembering the scars they’ve received over the years, opined a little cynically about all the talk of industry invincibility.
“I know that one of these days, IHS is going to have a conference about how to climb out of the deep downturn,” said Mark Lashier, CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical. “We’ve all been around long enough to know this won’t go on forever.”
Lashier worries that strong demand and low feedstock costs won’t be enough to keep investment coming in the U.S. chemical industry. “We believe the key issue to address is rising capital costs,” he said.
In 2011, Chevron Phillips was the first chemical company in more than a decade to announce a new U.S. ethylene cracker. Since that time, Lashier has seen construction costs increase. For example, after the rush to hire construction workers, inexperienced laborers stymied productivity for a while at the company’s ethylene project.
Chevron Phillips is now evaluating building another cracker on the Gulf Coast. “But we have to be convinced that we can mitigate these risks,” Lashier said.
Doug May, president of olefins, aromatics, and alternative feedstocks at Dow Chemical, agrees. Like Chevron Phillips, Dow built an ethylene cracker on the Gulf Coast and is now planning additional expansions.
May said capital costs on the Gulf have risen by 40% over the past five years as the chemical industry was installing a lot of capacity. This rise, he said, “made many of the projects on an economic basis look very different from what was first predicted.”
Peter Huntsman, CEO of Huntsman Corp., acknowledged that industry fundamentals point to a period of prolonged profitability, but he also had a warning for attendees.
“The most feared time in the chemical industry is the very time when people say ‘we’ve learned our lessons, we’re not peaking, we’re not in the valley, we’re in a plateau, and that plateau is going to last forever,’ ” he said. “Nothing goes right in this industry for all that long.”
Huntsman told attendees to avoid getting complacent during the good times. He said his company’s polyurethanes business goes toe-to-toe with large competitors like Covestro and BASF, but it also competes with nimble young firms that formulate polyurethanes. Large chemical companies need to be flexible enough to make decisions quickly.
“Now is the time to prepare for when times ain’t so good,” he said.
https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/petrochemicals-party-shows-signs-stopping/96/i16
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Rover Natural Gas Pipeline Wants to Start up Additional Facilities to Serve US Midwest
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Harry Weber
Energy Transfer Partners' Rover natural gas pipeline asked US regulators on Friday to quickly give it permission to begin service on additional facilities so stranded US Northeast shale gas can be transported to Midwest markets.
The project began initial service on September 1, 2017, bringing about 700 MMcf/d of its certificated 3.25 Bcf/d capacity online, on a limited path. Since then, Rover has placed additional supply laterals and compressors into service, raising capacity to current levels of around 2 Bcf/d.
The latest in-service request to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission involves mainline compressor stations, mainline pipeline segments and a Vector Pipeline delivery meter station. The second phase of the project, the market zone north section, is designed to allow access to Vector and the Dawn Hub in Ontario.
"Rover respectfully requests that the commission promptly issue an order granting commencement of service by April 25, 2018, so that its shippers can make the requisite contractual and operational arrangements to flow natural gas on the Rover Pipeline system," the operator said.It added that "Rover's shippers have urgently requested Rover to place these facilities in service."
Earlier this month, Rover fired back at landowners who oppose start of service on several laterals associated with the project. Rover started up its Clarington and Seneca laterals, and since then it has been seeking to place additional laterals into service.https://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/houston/rover-natural-gas-pipeline-wants-to-start-up-21792918
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Oil Companies Waste $34 Billion in Gas Emissions, Group Says
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom
The amount of methane, a potent climate-warming gas, that gets into the atmosphere in one year is enough to heat every home in Africa two times over, according to a new report by an environmental group.
Oil and gas companies are struggling to contain leaks or the deliberate venting of methane as part of their operations, the Environmental Defense Fund said in a report April 13. Without better controls the industry increases the chances of potentially catastrophic climate change, and it also wastes money. Companies may be releasing 75 million metric tons of the compound annually, which would be worth $34 billion if sold, according to the report.
Methane is the main component of natural gas, which emits less carbon than oil and coal when burnt, making it the energy industry's champion in the fight against climate change. But when released directly into the atmosphere, methane traps heat and can be a major cause of global warming. Despite this, discussions about the gas often take a back seat to those about carbon, in part because its presence is hard to measure.
“Methane is a fundamental challenge for the global oil and gas industry because of how much the industry emits and how intensely methane impacts warming,” according to the report. “Institutional investors are becoming increasingly vocal about the need for companies to set targets.”
The energy sector has been responsible for large methane leaks, which can take a long time to detect because the gas is invisible and odorless. Companies also deliberately flare gas that is produced along with more valuable oil because, in some cases, they can't sell it for more than it would cost to gather, process and transport it.
Some investors in the world's biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, have pushed for more work on containing methane emissions. However, only six companies have specific reduction targets, according to the report, which doesn't name the companies.
The Environmental Defense Fund urged more to set goals. It said earlier this week it was planning to launch a satellite “to identify and measure methane emissions from human-made sources worldwide.”
EDF believes existing technology can affordably contain 75 percent of the methane released by the industry by 2025. It also estimates companies can keep leakages during oil and gas production to below 0.2 percent.
“Failure by the global oil and gas industry to drastically reduce its methane when it is straightforward to do so only casts more doubt about whether natural gas has a constructive role to play in a low-carbon future,” EDF said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=131698469&vname=dennotallissues&fn=131698469&jd=131698469
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Pennsylvania Touts Well Inspection Program Data
Apr 13, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Friday released the first four years of data from its mechanical integrity assessment program and said an analysis shows that oil and natural gas wells are being operated in an environmentally safe manner.
Adopted in 2011 and implemented about three years later, the program requires unconventional and conventional operators to inspect the mechanical integrity of wells on a quarterly basis and file annual reports with the DEP. The operators are required to inspect the structural soundness of their wells to ensure that gas migration is prevented, leaks are managed and groundwater is protected.
An analysis, including audits and independent site verification of data submitted in 2014, showed that less than 1% of operators indicated the types of integrity problems, such as gas outside surface casing, which could allow gas to move beyond the well footprint. A poorly constructed well is typically the cause of environmental impacts.
According to DEP, about 30% of the wells analyzed had gas present outside production casing. But the agency said in some instances, it occurred because of an approved well design that allowed for engineered vents. “In a properly designed and operated well,” DEP added, “gas is kept to the well footprint, and won’t flow into a water supply.”
DEP also said operators have consistently cooperated with the program’s inspection requirements. Since it began, 99% of unconventional wells have been in compliance, while 50-60% of conventional wells have complied. District offices are “actively working” to improve the number of conventional operators that are complying.
The agency, which bills the effort as the nation’s “most rigorous” routine well integrity assessment program, said the data has provided district offices “with useful information for identifying potential concerns at wells and more effectively assessing whether operator intervention is necessary to protect groundwater.”
Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Spigelmyer said the data shows that natural gas development and strong environmental protection “are not mutually exclusive.” He said “our industry is laser-focused on leveraging continuously improving technologies, world-class engineering solutions and best practices aimed at safeguarding and enhancing our environment, including groundwater protection, as well as public health.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114029-pennsylvania-touts-well-inspection-program-data
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Opinion: Who Will Spur the next Energy Revolution? Not Private Industry
Apr 16, 2018 | Roll Call
By Norman Augustine and Chad Holliday
In just a decade, America’s energy landscape has been transformed. Wind and solar units have cropped up across the country, quadrupling their output. Our oil production has nearly doubled over the same period, while natural gas has swelled by a third, due in large part to drilling and seismology advances that ushered in the shale revolution.
Who developed those technologies? Researchers at America’s national labs, thanks to decades of federal funding.
Washington has long pushed American industry and workers to outcompete the rest of the world. Without federal investments in energy innovation, we wouldn’t have our current energy boom, and advanced energy wouldn’t be one of the economy’s brightest spots.
Some say the federal government can no longer afford to make these investments. But we say it can’t afford not to. Here’s why: American consumers have already saved billions in energy costs and benefited from millions of new jobs. The right investments now could give us an edge in the fiercely competitive multitrillion-dollar global energy sector.
As we speak, other nations, including China, are investing more than America in cutting-edge technologies. The U.S. ranks as low as 10th in overall innovation, recent studies show. Some look to the private sector to make up the shortfall, but companies are reluctant because they can’t recoup such investments directly or quickly. It’s no coincidence that private energy sector R&D investments are just 0.3 percent of revenues, compared to nearly 20 percent in pharmaceuticals, 10.6 percent in electronics and 7.6 percent in aerospace.
This is where federal funding has made such a difference. The national labs gave us horizontal drilling, better drill bits, and breakthroughs in modern computing and seismology, allowing the private sector to commercialize shale gas. Advanced gas turbines, the result of research aimed at jet engines, meant that electric utilities could use those new natural gas supplies more efficiently, which in turn lowered costs.
Just last week, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Lab and others announced a forward leap in battery technology. Replacing lithium with more plentiful magnesium will result in safer electric auto batteries that can produce twice the electricity per unit weight.
For the nation at large, the return on investments from these projects is nothing short of astounding. Federal investments in building efficiency have yielded energy savings of nearly $22 billion — a benefit-to-cost ratio between 20-to-1 and 66-to-1. Likewise, DOE research aimed at reducing coal emissions will create 1.2 million jobs and deliver $111 billion in economic benefits by 2020 — returning $13 for every $1 invested.
No wonder FedEx founder Fred Smith says energy innovation programs are the among the best investments America makes.
Our bottom line is simple: The United States can beat out the rest of the world in the energy sector if we make smart investments in next-generation technology. This is why we joined 10 other leading business and technology CEOs in forming the American Energy Innovation Council. Our experience as top executives has shown us that federal investments are crucial to developing new technologies, which is key to global competitiveness. New jobs aren’t the only thing on the line; sometimes, it’s whole new industries.
Congress is beginning to rediscover this connection. Key energy research programs at the Department of Energy received modest funding increases in the recent budget agreement, far short of the doubling or tripling we need.
But spending every dollar wisely is also a must, which is why we support transformative programs like the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, which has already proven successful in squeezing more private sector growth out of every federal dollar. Further reforms should be considered even as funding grows.
The good news is that even more transformative energy technologies are waiting for investment. They include utility-scale electricity storage, materials science, advanced biofuels, next-generation nuclear power, super-efficient batteries for electric vehicles, and many others that can once again revolutionize the world’s energy systems.
The future is ours if we continue to invent it. Innovation is the key to U.S. energy competitiveness, to keeping America’s energy economy humming, and to making sure our best days are ahead.
Norman Augustine is retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin. Chad Holliday is former chairman and CEO of DuPont.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/who-will-spur-next-energy-revolution
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Ruling That Exxon Mobil Can Avoid Chemical Board Requests Appealed
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Federal attorneys will appeal a judge's ruling that let Exxon Mobil Corp. avoid turning over nearly half of investigators’ requests for records on its former refinery in Torrance, Calif., where an explosion injured two workers in 2015.
Department of Justice attorneys representing the U.S. Chemical Safety Board filed a notice April 12 that they will appeal the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The CSB is a federal agency charged with investigating major industrial accidents. It makes safety recommendations but does not issue citations or fines.
How the courts handle the matter could influence how wide a net the CSB can cast in future investigations of oil and chemical companies.
“Exxon Mobil has provided more than 350,000 pages of documents and images to investigating agencies since the incident occurred, and our workers participated in more than 150 witness interviews,” Suann Guthrie, a spokeswoman for Exxon Mobil, said in an email to Bloomberg Environment April 13. “This includes 137,000 pages and 65 interviews for the CSB alone. We stand on our record of good faith cooperation with the CSB.”
Relevance at Issue
U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall of the Central District of California ordered Exxon Mobil to comply with 29 of the CSB's documents requests, but denied 24 other requests she said were insufficiently related to the explosion in a ruling Nov. 3, 2017.
Attorneys for Exxon Mobil argued at a hearing in October 2017 the CSB exceeded its authority in expanding the probe to factors not at issue in the February 2015 explosion.
In her ruling, Marshall did not grant all of CSB's document requests, but she also declined to adopt the oil company's argument limiting the CSB's probes. Marshall's ruling stated the agency can examine the “facts, conditions, and circumstances and the cause or probable cause” of the refinery explosion, not just the cause and probable cause.
The board was interested in Exxon Mobil's historic use of hydrofluoric acid, a chemical than can cause burns and was a concern to the community surround the Torrance refinery, and two related incidents in March and September 2015.
Exxon Mobil has until May 14 to turn over documents responsive to the 29 granted requests.
The company sold the Torrance refinery to PBF Energy Inc. in July 2016 for $537.5 million.
Thomas Zoeller, the CSB's senior adviser, referred questions to the Department of Justice April 13. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California didn't respond to Bloomberg Environment's request for comment April 13.
The case is U.S. v. Exxon Mobil Oil Corp., C.D. Cal., No. MC 17-00066, appeal filed 4/12/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=131698470&vname=dennotallissues&fn=131698470&jd=131698470
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Committees Take up FTA Nominee, STB Reauthorization
Apr 16, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
Lawmakers in both chambers this week will continue turning their attention to the nation's transportation infrastructure.
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will consider Thelma Drake to be administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.
Drake currently serves as assistant director of public works for the city of Norfolk, Va. She previously served as a member of the U.S. House, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
As head of the FTA, Drake would oversee some 3,000 transit agencies across the country.
Later this week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials will conduct oversight of the Surface Transportation Board Reauthorization Act of 2015, which established the board as a fully independent agency. Prior to the act, the STB was administratively aligned with the Department of Transportation.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/04/16/stories/1060079089
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Exxon Loses Again in Court Attempt to Dodge Climate Change Probe
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Erik Larson
Exxon Mobil Corp. suffered another legal defeat in its attempt to dodge state investigations into whether the company's public comments about climate change misled investors for years.
Massachusetts’ top court on April 13 affirmed a judge's decision that Exxon must hand over documents dating back to 1976 to Attorney General Maura Healey.
The court also agreed that Exxon's 300 Mobil-branded franchise service stations in the state give Healey sufficient jurisdiction over the Texas-based company.
Weighing in on the overall environmental threat at the heart of the dispute, the court wrote that Healey's investigation concerns climate change “caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions—a distinctly modern threat that grows more serious with time, and the effects of which are already being felt in Massachusetts.“
In an April 13 conference call with reporters, Healey said the ruling should put an end to Exxon's “scorched-earth campaign” to block investigations. “For two years now, Exxon has been fighting us at every turn while we are just seeking to do our job.“
The case is Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Attorney Gen., Mass., No. SJC-12376, 4/13/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=131698466&vname=dennotallissues&fn=131698466&jd=131698466
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We Still Need to March for Science
Apr 14, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.)
Today, thousands of people will once again take to the streets to march for science. For many Americans, science makes us think of test tubes in high school chemistry classes or a cool space documentary on Netflix. But science and logic have impacted our lives in ways that we often do not notice. That’s why as the only PhD physicist in Congress, I have spent my time in Washington fighting back against the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the scientific progress we have made due to decades of sustained federal investment in scientific research and education.
Our country has benefitted from lawmakers and political leaders who took their duty to the American public seriously and were willing to listen to technical experts who understood the facts and the importance of scientific research. First, investment in science greatly contributes to economic growth. Since World War II, science and technology were responsible for over half of the economic growth in the United States. Second, regulations based on scientific research have made American lives healthier and protected our water and air from harmful substances. Third, experts in scientific fields allow our government to prepare for potential future crises in national security and public health.
In the past year, we have seen the Trump administration attack science at each of these levels with proposed cuts to federally funded research, the dismantling of important regulations, and unfilled top-level government positions that require an advanced scientific degree. The Trump administration has moved to censure and politicize science to turn scientific research into a field that only exists to confirm their political truths or – worse yet – completely dismantle our scientific infrastructure altogether.
Many of the positions that require an advanced degree in science are still unfilled. After over a year in office, the president has yet to nominate a top science and technology advisor. The director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy helps to coordinate our country’s research agenda. It is currently held by a political appointee with an advanced degree in political science.
These developments might sound like nothing more than Washington chatter, but there are serious implications for Americans if we fail to have leadership with the qualifications they need for their positions. Each of these positions plays a critical role in our country’s response to national disasters, disease outbreaks and national security crises.
This administration has also gone to great lengths to censor scientific research and findings. Last December, policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were forced to remove words like “evidence-based” and “science-based” from budgetary language. The Environmental Protection Agency has taken great care to remove references to climate change and underplay the human role in global warming. These actions threaten to undo any chance we have to respond to climate change and other long-term problems.
Unfortunately, this administration has forgotten or simply does not care that science has improved the standard of living for millions of Americans and allowed us to confront technical and public health crises. The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to repeal numerous regulations that keep Americans safe, including rules that prohibit emissions from power plants and a rule that extends clean water protections from waterways and streams. These changes have occurred under the leadership of Scott Pruitt, whose tenure at the EPA has been marred by constant stories of corruption and the misuse of taxpayer money.
There is, however, some good news. The Fiscal Year 2018 spending agreement that Congress passed last month is an emphatic rejection of Trump’s proposed deep cuts to science budgets and funding. The National Science Foundation will receive a nearly $300 million increase, and the Department of Energy Office of Science will also receive an increase of $868 million.
We must continue to tell this administration that leaders cannot ignore scientific facts when it is politically convenient for them. Science is the foundation of a society whose innovation has made this country great and will lead the way to a more prosperous and safer country. That’s why I will join Americans across the country on Saturday to march for science.
Congressman Bill Foster represents the 11th District in Illinois. For over twenty years, he worked as a high-energy physicist and particle accelerator designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was a member of the team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/383070-we-still-need-to-march-for-science
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Nations Strike Deal to Curb Shipping Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Apr 16, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anna Hirtenstein, Jeremy Hodges, and Ali Qassim
Most of the world's nations agreed to a mandatory deal that for the first time will limit greenhouse gas emissions from the global shipping industry.
After a week of negotiations at a London meeting of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations body, envoys from 173 countries agreed cut emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 from 2008 levels. Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Iran, and Russia all objected.
The accord is a significant step in the fight against global warming. Shipping, one of the only industries not included in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, would rank as the sixth-largest greenhouse gas emitter if it were a country, according to the World Bank. If left unchecked, that share could account for 15 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050, a five-fold increase from today.
Vessels typically burn heavy fuel oil, one of the cheapest but also among the dirtiest fossil fuels. The industry wasn't included in the Paris agreement because each country presented an individual plan to reduce their own emissions, while the seas were left out.
“This is a ground breaking agreement—a Paris Agreement for shipping—that sets a very high level of ambition for the future reduction of CO2 emissions,” said Peter Hinchliffe, secretary general of the London-based International Chamber of Shipping, which represents more than 80 percent of the world's merchant fleet.
The April 13 agreement commits to pursuing emission cuts that will be consistent with the Paris deal goals and will act as a framework for a revised emissions strategy in 2023.
Hot Issue
Reducing the industry's emissions has been a hotly contested issue. One of the most vociferous proponents of emission controls have been the Pacific island nations, where rising sea levels are already swallowing up land, and the rate is expected to increase in the coming decades.
Other countries have resisted targets. Oil producing nations including Saudi Arabia have expressed concern about the impact of the measures on their fuel supply business, while Brazil and Argentina have said controls could penalize countries that are far from the world's main consumer hubs.
Canada, Argentina, Russia, India, Brazil, Iran, and the Philippines also raised concerns over the proposals for reasons ranging from worries that targets could have a negative effect on global trade to a lack of sufficient data.
“Given the very diverging positions before the meeting the result is surprisingly ambitious,” Tore Longva, principal consultant for international regulatory affairs at Norway's ship classifier DNV GL–Maritime, told Bloomberg Environment April 13. “However, the pressure from the Pacific, Europe, and major flags pulled over many on the moderate opposition.”
“A principle of the IMO is to have no discrimination, and that's what differentiates the deal and that's not the IMO's principle,” Jeffrey Lantz, director of commercial regulations and standards at the U.S. Coast Guard and head of the U.S. delegation, said.
Tougher Targets
Longva cautioned that “the ambition is only just enough though, in the view of European countries” that were seeking full decarbonization by 2050.
“The IMO should and could have gone a lot further but for the dogmatic opposition of some countries,” said Bill Hemmings, shipping director at Transport & Environment, which advocates for cleaner transportation. “Scant attention was paid to U.S. opposition. So this decision puts shipping on a promising track.”
International shipping emitted 796 million metric tons of carbon dioxide about 2.2 percent of the world's total, according to the IMO's latest greenhouse gas study published in 2014.
“It is likely this target will tighten further, but even with the lowest level of ambition, the shipping industry will require rapid technological changes,” said Tristan Smith, a reader at University College London's Energy Institute.
Meeting 2050 Goals
The 2050 target can realistically only be achieved if ships develop and switch to zero carbon fuels, the ICS's Hinchliffe said.
The UK Chamber of Shipping agreed that in the long-term the industry needs to be powered by carbon-free fuel.
“Whilst battery and hydrogen cell technology does exist, their current capabilities are not sufficient to become the dominant fuels of the industry at this time,” Guy Platten, the chamber's CEO, said in an emailed statement. “So research and development is now required on a massive scale.”
In a statement summing up the weeklong meeting of the IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee, the U.N. agency said a Working Group on Reduction of GHG emissions will present follow-up plans at the committee's next session in London Oct. 22-26.
“The IMO must move swiftly to introduce measures that will cut emissions deeply and quickly in the short term,” said John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, a group of nongovernmental organizations with observer status at the IMO. “Without these the goals of the Paris agreement will remain out of reach.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=131698465&vname=dennotallissues&fn=131698465&jd=131698465
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