Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 23/04/18
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(ACC Mentioned) East Hampton Village to Ban Plastic Foam Food Containers
Apr 23, 2018 | Newsday
By Deon J. Hampton
The sale or use of plastic foam food containers will no longer be allowed at East Hampton Village businesses. -
Plastic Pollution: Firms and Governments are Combating Millions of Tons of Waste
Apr 23, 2018 | CNBC
By Cheang Ming
Not enough is known about the long-term effects of plastics pollution, but what we do know looks bad. -
'Shocked' by Noncompliance, Enforcement Chief Warns Industry
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
With an expression of surprise at the continuing lack of compliance with environmental laws, EPA enforcement chief Susan Bodine warned businesses Friday against cutting corners to save money. -
EPA Practices Are Hindering Transparency and Public Confidence in TSCA’s New Chemicals Program
Apr 23, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This is our final post in a series spurred by our review of 69 public files for new chemicals we received from EPA’s Docket Center. -
Lowe’s: Time to Spring into Action for Safer Chemicals
Apr 23, 2018 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
Recently CBS News aired the story of a South Carolina man, Drew Wynne, who died because of a deadly chemical in a product purchased from his local Lowe’s. -
California, Coffee and Cancer: One of These Doesn’t Belong
Apr 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By Aaron E. Carroll
About two-thirds of smokers will die early from cigarette-based illnesses. -
European Parliament Endorses Revised Waste Framework Directive
Apr 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Parliament has approved an amendment to the waste framework Directive that requires suppliers to notify Echa of the presence of substances of very high concern in articles. -
BLM Accepts Last Batch of Comments on Obama Rule Rollback
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A new analysis poses this question on an Obama-era rule on methane waste from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal lands: "Should it stay or should it go?" Resources for the Future researchers Alan Krupnick and Isabel Echarte ask in their recent report on the 2016 Methane and Waste Prevention Rule. -
Minn. Tackles Timing, Cost of Carbon Regulations
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jeffrey Tomich
When will utilities incur costs related to greenhouse gas regulation? And what will those costs be? -
Gov. Cuomo, Nixon Lay Out Competing Clean Energy Plans
Apr 23, 2018 | The New York Times (In E&E Greenwire)
By Jesse McKinley
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's challenger for the Democratic nomination, Cynthia Nixon, called for the state to use 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2050. -
The Secret of the Great American Fracking Bubble
Apr 23, 2018 | DeSmog (In Energy Collective)
By Justin Mikulka
In 2008, Aubrey McClendon was the highest paid Fortune 500 CEO in America, a title he earned taking home $112 million for running Chesapeake Energy. -
Coast Guard Responds to Oil Spill in Mississippi River
Apr 23, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times, The Washington Post)
The Coast Guard says hundreds of gallons of heavy fuel oil have spilled into the Mississippi River in Louisiana from a chemical tanker. -
CSB to Release Final Investigation Report on PCA Explosion
Apr 23, 2018 | Occupational Health and Safety
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has announced it will release its final report April 24 on the Feb. 8, 2017, explosion at the Packaging Corporation of America plant in DeRidder, Louisiana. -
Obama-Mandated Energy Reports Languish in Trump White House
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The White House is sitting on environmental sustainability reports federal agencies completed and submitted nearly a year ago, government officials said. -
OTC Seeks Emissions Cuts from Consumer Products
Apr 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states is floating a proposed model rule for its members to adopt that would further reduce ozone-forming air emissions from a wide range of consumer products such as solvents and aerosols. -
Trump Marks Earth Day by Touting Regulatory Rollbacks
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
President Trump touted rolling back environmental regulations in his Earth Day message to Americans.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) East Hampton Village to Ban Plastic Foam Food Containers
Apr 23, 2018 | Newsday
By Deon J. Hampton
The sale or use of plastic foam food containers will no longer be allowed at East Hampton Village businesses.
The village board of trustees in a 5-0 decision on Friday adopted a new law that makes it illegal for businesses to use or sell single-serve plastic foam items, including food containers, cups, trays and coolers.
Stores that sell raw meat packaging or prepackaged food items will be exempt, East Hampton officials said.
“A ban like this 15 years ago would have been controversial, but there are a lot of new options for restaurants and food service companies,” East Hampton Village Administrator Becky Hansen said Monday.
Plastic food containers can be a recyclable product but the board decided on the ban because it’s not as easy to recycle, Hansen said.
The new law is expected to go into effect by Aug. 1.
Village officials must first file the legislation with the New York State Department of State.
There were no comments from the public at a hearing about the ban, but board members did receive two letters in opposition of the law.Sign up for the Power on Trial newsletter
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One was from the American Chemistry Council and the other was from Michigan-based Dart Container Corp., a food service container producer.
Board members had been mulling the ban for months, but their efforts intensified earlier this year after Patchogue Village adopted a similar ban.
East Hampton contacted Patchogue for a copy of its legislation.
“The Village of Patchogue is pleased that East Hampton has taken this step, and we’re encouraging all neighboring villages to follow suit,” said Patchogue Trustee Joseph Keyes, who spearheaded the plastic foam container ban in his village.
Dozens of municipalities nationwide, including New York City, have adopted such bans.
Some commercial operations have stopped using plastic containers.
Dunkin’ Donuts plans to do away with plastic foam cups in its shops worldwide.
The Restaurant Action Alliance of New York has argued that the materials are recyclable and that more costly alternatives unfairly hurt small businesses.
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/east-hampton-foam-containers-1.18218893
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Plastic Pollution: Firms and Governments are Combating Millions of Tons of Waste
Apr 23, 2018 | CNBC
By Cheang Ming
Not enough is known about the long-term effects of plastics pollution, but what we do know looks bad.
For starters, there is an immense amount of it. Some 322 million tons of plastic, which amounted to more than 900 Empire State Buildings in mass, was produced in 2015, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Last year, a study published in scientific journal Science Advancesestimated that the modern world had produced around 8.3 billion metric tons of virgin — newly manufactured — plastic. By 2015, 6.3 billion metric tons of that had become plastic waste, but just 9 percent had been recycled, the researchers found.
Plenty of plastic also ends up in the ocean, where it harms marine biodiversity and can fragment into minuscule particles, or microplastic, that is ingested by animals and, indirectly, humans — although evidence is inconclusive about how harmful that is for us.
Many of the problems encountered with the material stem from the fact that the most popular plastics used today aren't biodegradable: The material doesn't decompose, and instead accumulates both on land and in the ocean.
And that build up in plastic looks set to worsen if no additional action is taken. The amount of plastic accumulating in the ocean is expected to triple between 2015 and 2025, according to a report by the U.K. Government Office for Science.
It's both an environmental and an economic problem: The United Nations Environment Programme found that marine litter costs a minimum of $8 billion annually in damage to marine ecosystems.Tackling plastic waste
Governments are among the institutions looking for measures to alleviate the situation, with the European Union adopting a bloc-wide strategy to tackle plastics in January this year.
Part of the measures in the strategy include reducing plastic bag usage, as well as investments into the technology and materials spaces. The EU pledged an additional 100 million euro to encourage the development of more recyclable plastics materials and to make recycling more efficient.Muhammad Fauzy | NurPhoto | Getty ImagesPiles of garbage at Kedonganan beach in Bali, Indonesia, on Jan. 17, 2018.
And it's not just Europe, either. The Indonesian government last year promised up to $1 billion a year to target slashing the amount of marine litter.
Corporations are also paying attention as consumer demand for environmentally friendly products grows. Tech giant Dell last year launched a pilot program to recycle ocean plastics to make packaging trays for laptops.
Others, like consumer goods conglomerate Unilever and food and drink giant Nestle, have pledged to move toward 100 percent recyclable plastic packaging.
Smaller start-ups have also attempted to make a difference. Berlin-based food delivery company Foodpanda began giving users in Asia Pacific the option of requesting for disposable cutlery this year amid growing concern that the popularity of food delivery services was generating greater levels of waste due to the increased use of disposable packaging.
In Singapore, where the measure was rolled out among Foodpanda's top 20 vendors in January, 10 percent of orders have opted out of receiving disposable cutlery with their food. The start-up expects to save a million sets of cutlery by the end of the year, said Laura Kantor, Foodpanda's head of marketing and sustainability lead.
Apart from that, Kantor told CNBC the start-up was looking into both cutting its overall use of packaging and replacing packaging with more sustainable materials.Bioplastics
The demand for alternative materials by businesses looking to adapt to consumer preferences for going green is, in turn, giving a boost to the bioplastics industry. Various market research estimates expect the sector to reach anywhere from $35 billion and $65.6 billion by 2022.
That's good news for Singapore-based bioplastic manufacturer Olive Green, which produces various biodegradable disposable tableware and packaging products from a corn-based bioplastic it develops. The niche sector is much smaller compared to the traditional plastics markets and market acceptance for alternatives can make the industry tough, said Olive Green Chief Executive Aloysius Cheong.
For comparison, total bioplastics capacity today stands at 4.2 million tons, according to market research firm PCI Wood Mackenzie. That compared to the 302 million tons in total demand for the top five polymers last year.
Still, Cheong said he was positive on the outlook of the sector. He pointed to government action taken in recent years as a source of optimism, citing a ban on disposable plastic bags in parts of India as a sign of building momentum.
For now, there are several challenges that bioplastics continue to face, including economies of scale for production and cost-related hurdles, analysts from PCI Wood Mackenzie told CNBC.
If those issues can be solved, "in the long term, we could see a material impact," PCI Wood Mackenzie said. "Should anything become more cost effective, it will likely be implemented," the analysts said, adding that legislation or taxation changes could be helpful for the bioplastic space — but they've generally been slow.
"Provided the challenges facing biomass today are overcome, biomass can become a larger portion of the supply. Biochemicals and bioplastics could then erode a portion of oil demand, much like recycling can erode overall virgin plastics demand," according to PCI Wood Mackenzie.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/22/plastic-pollution-firms-and-governments-fight-waste.html
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'Shocked' by Noncompliance, Enforcement Chief Warns Industry
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
With an expression of surprise at the continuing lack of compliance with environmental laws, EPA enforcement chief Susan Bodine warned businesses Friday against cutting corners to save money.
While that's bad for the environment and public health, it's also bad for the company, Bodine said at the EarthX festival in Dallas, "because you're going to lose whatever those savings were in penalties, lost reputation, even debarment from getting federal government contracts."
Alongside the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal — which cost the German automaker $4.3 billion in civil and criminal fines — Bodine cited several lower-profile incidents that also led to penalties for criminal behavior.
Those included a case in which Tyson Foods Inc.'s poultry unit agreed to a $2 million fine for discharge of acidic wastewater that led to a massive fish kill in Missouri after the company dumped the liquid into a municipal sewer system that wasn't equipped to handle it (E&E News PM, Sept. 27, 2017).
Bodine also mentioned the case of explosives maker Dyno Nobel Inc., which pleaded guilty to a felony in February after releasing six tons of anhydrous ammonia from an Oregon plant in 2015 and then failing to report the discharge to regulators for almost a week.
While such violations are not the norm, Bodine said, "I'm shocked that they're happening as often as they do happen."
Bodine, a former congressional staffer who enjoyed bipartisan support in winning Senate confirmation last December to serve as head of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA), also used her appearance to talk about carrots as well as sticks.
She referenced the possible expansion of an existing self-audit program for the oil and gas industry and noted that agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has stressed the need for companies to operate "under the rule of law" (E&E News PM, April 20).
Still, the relatively stern tenor of her comments stood out in an administration that's more inclined to highlight the importance of cooperation with the corporate sector through initiatives like EPA's Smart Sectors program (Greenwire, Sept. 25, 2017).
"There's still a lot of noncompliance going on out there," she said. "We need to deter violations; we need to deter future misconduct."
Environmental groups are already watching closely. While Bodine in February touted EPA's fiscal 2017 enforcement record, Cynthia Giles, her predecessor at OECA, argued that credit for most of the civil and criminal penalties for that year belonged with the Obama administration (E&E News PM, Feb. 8).
In a report last August, well before Bodine took over as enforcement chief, the Environmental Integrity Project found a steep drop in one gauge of enforcement activity during the first six months of the Trump administration.
In her Friday remarks at the EarthX event, Bodine also outlined several broad categories for why businesses fail to comply with environmental laws. Those may include ignorance of requirements or a lack of "capacity" to meet them, she said.
But Bodine added that she has also seen cases in which company leaders drive employees "to make a profit or to increase a profit, and that pressure has resulted in situations where people cut corners to save money."
"And cutting corners to save money in the environmental regulatory world is a really bad idea," she said.
The EarthX event, hosted by a Texas nonprofit over more than a week in Dallas, was billed as the world's largest environmental exposition, conference and film festival.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079817
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EPA Practices Are Hindering Transparency and Public Confidence in TSCA’s New Chemicals Program
Apr 23, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This is our final post in a series spurred by our review of 69 public files for new chemicals we received from EPA’s Docket Center. For most of these chemicals, EPA made a determination that they are “not likely to present unreasonable risk” under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which greenlights their entry into commercial production.
In our previous post we demonstrated EPA is not complying with a number of provisions under TSCA that require the agency to make public the premanufacture notices (PMNs), notices of commencement (NOCs), and information that is submitted with them. In this post we look further into how, through these failures and others, EPA has impeded meaningful transparency in the new chemicals program.
As originally enacted in 1976, TSCA recognized the value of public access to information, like health and safety information (see, e.g., TSCA § 14(b)). Even in EPA’s original (1983) regulations establishing the new chemicals review program, EPA recognized that “[p]ublic participation cannot be effective unless meaningful information is made available to the interested persons” (see here p. 21737). Among the many flaws of the original TSCA, however, was the law’s inability to ensure EPA delivered the promised transparency when it came to both information EPA receives and the agency’s decisions on new chemicals.
The amendments to TSCA in 2016 were meant, in part, to expand public access to information about both chemicals and agency decisions, and in doing so increase public confidence. For instance, under § 26, EPA must now make available to the public “all notices, determinations, findings, rules, consent agreements, and orders.” And under § 5, EPA must now make an affirmative determination on new chemicals, which under § 26 must be made public. These changes, in addition to the original TSCA provisions, clearly envision a robust program under which the public is able to readily access non-confidential information on new chemicals and information on EPA’s decisions about them.
Coupled with the policy changes EPA has made, the concerns we raise here make clear that EPA under this Administration intends to weaken a new chemicals program that Congress sought to strengthen through TSCA reform – and hide as much of it from public view as possible.
As implemented, however, a number of features of the new chemicals program severely hamper the ability of the public to understand EPA’s decision-making or engage in the new chemicals program. In addition to the failings we have discussed in previous posts in this series, this post will address several others:the convoluted and fragmented public information “system” EPA has created for PMNs;the failure of EPA to provide access to agency-generated health and safety information on PMN substances; andEPA’s failure to publish Notices of Commencement (NOCs) and EPA’s determinations on confidentiality claims for specific chemical identity in those NOCs.
1. Tracking the PMN review process is difficult at best.
Identifying the existence of a PMN, locating it and information associated with it, and tracking it through the review process require one to engage in a convoluted search of multiple disjointed websites and to make requests to the Docket Center, each of which has major limitations – and still leaves major gaps in information that should be publicly available:
Federal Register notices of PMNs received: Lists of PMNs received by EPA are supposed to be published at least monthly in the Federal Register. However, these lists lag many months behind (the most current one in the Federal Register is for PMNs received in October 2017). In addition, as discussed in our last post, there are often multiple entries for the same PMN, which may or may not refer to different versions of the PMN itself; some apparently relate to EPA’s receipt of other information associated with a PMN, but there is no way for the public to tell. Nonetheless, this source is the only place one can learn who submitted the PMN (unless that company’s name is claimed confidential, which is quite common). Also listed is the chemical’s intended use and name – unless these are claimed confidential (also very common), in which case a generic use description and generic name are provided instead.
PMN status tracker: This online table, which can be searched for a particular PMN number, is advertised as showing “interim recommendations and final determinations” on a PMN. EPA began displaying the final determinations in the same table as the interim recommendations about 18 months ago, which was very helpful. The table also has filters and sort-by-date buttons, though the latter have never worked properly.
EPA’s website (see the “After you submit” tab) directs PMN submitters to use this table to check on the status of their PMNs:
Many submitters want to follow the progress of their substances at intermediate points in the review process. Status reports on notices submitted to EPA under section 5 of TSCA are posted to the Status page within 14 days of a decision being made at the EPA Focus meeting.
Even though the table still claims to provide “interim recommendations,” EPA abruptly stopped doing this in August 2017. In December, EPA started adding entries again, but for virtually all of the entries added to the table since last summer, the table now merely indicates that a “Focus Meeting Occurred” for the chemical. This denies the public any knowledge of whether EPA professional staff identified initial concerns or a lack of sufficient information on a new chemical. There are now more than 200 such nearly useless entries.
Once a final determination is made, it shows up here relatively quickly, and 2-3 weeks later EPA inserts a link to the relevant decision document (a “determination document” for “not likely” findings, or a “consent order” for other determinations) housed in its ChemView database, which is helpful. These documents have to be retrieved one at a time, however, making it very difficult to conduct broader analyses across multiple PMNs.
The table does not provide the company or chemical name (whether specific or generic) or the use (whether specific or generic). That requires going back to the Federal Register notices or extracting the information from the decision documents.
Getting the actual PMN itself: None of what we’ve described so far gets you access to the PMN itself (not even a redacted version “sanitized” of claimed CBI), nor does it provide access to any information associated with the PMN. As we blogged about before, to get the PMN one has to submit a request to EPA’s Docket Center and wait a couple weeks until a CD-Rom arrives. Earlier episodes in our blog series have noted the major gaps and deficiencies in such information.
Notices of commencement (NOCs): The only way to know whether a new chemical has actually entered commercial production is to determine whether a NOC has been filed for it. The only way to do that is to go back to the Federal Register notices, where EPA also publishes a list of the NOCs it has received in a given month, identified by PMN number. As noted earlier, the publication of these notices is lagging months behind.
This step does not get one to the NOC itself, however. Despite the fact that EPA’s own regulations (40 C.F.R. §§ 700.17(b)(1), 720.95) require NOCs to be made electronically accessible to the public, EPA has failed to do so and we have yet to identify a means by which the public can obtain them. We discuss this issue further below.
We hope the above description gives you a feel for what it takes to track even a single PMN through the process. Imagine now trying to make sense of patterns of EPA decisions by looking across multiple or all PMNs in a given time period. We’ve been doing just that, but it has required painstaking and tedious work to extract data from multiple sources and integrate it into linked spreadsheets. Even with this effort, we are increasingly stymied by information EPA is intentionally now withholding from the public.
So much for transparency.
2. No EPA-produced health and safety information is present in the public files.
During EPA’s review of a new chemical under § 5, the agency typically generates health and safety information about the PMN substance, and EPA’s final determinations generally indicate when EPA has done so (see, P-16-0580). For example, EPA uses EPI (Estimation Programs Interface) Suite to estimate a number of physical-chemical and fate properties, including the potential of a substance to bioaccumulate and to biodegrade in the environment. EPA also uses the Ecological Structure Activity Relationships (ECOSAR) Predictive Model to estimate certain environmental hazards of a new chemical. Both of these programs generate information that constitutes “health and safety studies” as defined under both TSCA (§ 3(8)) and EPA’s implementing regulations, which is broadly defined to include “any data that bear[s] on the effects of a chemical substance on health or the environment.” This and other information EPA generates are summarized in various standard reports for each new chemical. Such information clearly should be included in the public files for a PMN.
We reviewed the 69 determination documents associated with the PMNs for which we received public files. This review revealed that EPA referred to information it generated using EPI Suite or ECOSAR at least 35 times. Yet none of these data are included in the public files we received, even though EPA occasionally provides this type of agency-generated information in other contexts, such as in the dockets it is required to establish when it proposes a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) (see, e.g., here, S-17-0004).
The EPA-generated health and safety information is critical in EPA new chemical reviews, especially because few PMN submitters provide anyhealth and safety information (see here p. 8, and here Q118-5). EPA’s failure to disclose the health and safety information it develops in its review of a new chemical leaves the public in the dark about how a decision was made, and without access to any health and safety information on the PMN substance. How can the public have any confidence in new chemicals that enter the market when EPA is failing to make public the only health and safety information available on those chemicals?
3. Notices of Commencement and Evidence of EPA CBI determinations are unavailable.
We also discovered that 22 of the new chemicals we requested public files for had notices of receipt by EPA of Notices of Commencement(NOC) published in the Federal Register (as of the latest published list for October 2017). We reviewed these notices of receipt of NOCs in light of mandates that EPA:place Notices of Commencement (NOCs) themselves in the public files (40 C.F.R. § 720.80(b)(2)(ii));require substantiation for and review all confidentiality claims for specific chemical identity when a NOC is received (40 C.F.R. § 720.102(c)(2));publish its determinations on those claims (TSCA § 26(j)(1)); andapply a unique identifier to each specific chemical identity for which EPA has approved a confidentiality claim (TSCA § 14(g)(4)).
Our review revealed a host of concerns:The NOCs are not in any of the public files we received;The Federal Register notices suggest that EPA has received multipleNOCs for some PMNs;Eighteen of these chemicals are still identified by their generic names, even though EPA has published no determinations or provided any other indication that it has reviewed and approved the associated CBI claims for specific chemical identity; andNone of the chemicals with generic names have been assigned a unique identifier.
Below is a bit more detail:
First, EPA’s regulations state that when companies submit information to EPA, if any information is claimed confidential, the submitter must provide EPA with a sanitized copy, which EPA “will place” in the public file. These requirements apply to NOCs:40 C.F.R. § 720.80 discusses notices containing CBI claims submitted under Part 720.Part 720 includes § 720.102 that is specific to NOCs and hence makes clear NOCs are subject to § 720.80.Section 720.80(b)(2)(ii) states sanitized notices are to be placed in the public file.
Yet EPA is failing to place sanitized copies of the NOCs it receives in the public files.
Second, it is unclear why, in some cases, the same PMN number appears in the NOC lists in multiple Federal Register notices (e.g., search the Federal Register for, P-16-0281 and P-17-0158). While this likely does not actually mean multiple NOCs were received (similar to what we highlighted for PMNs in our previous post), it is yet another example of EPA’s information management system failing to provide even a modicum of transparency on new chemicals.
Third, and more importantly, a number of the “NOC’d” chemicals we reviewed are still identified only by their generic names (i.e., the chemical identities in the NOCs presumably have been claimed CBI). When submitters file NOCs, they are required to re-assert and substantiate any claim that a chemical identity should remain CBI. EPA must then review the claim and publish its determination as to whether or not the claim is warranted. Yet EPA has provided no means for the public to know whether the required substantiations were submitted and whether EPA has conducted the required reviews of the claims. If it has conducted those reviews, EPA has not published any of its determinations on these claims. These violations are not only troubling, they are further examples of EPA denying the public any transparency as to how the new chemical’s program is operating.
Fourth, even assuming EPA has approved these claims, EPA has not applied a unique identifier to any of the chemicals with specific chemical identities that are being protected as CBI, as required by amended TSCA. A unique identifier is exactly what it sounds like: where EPA approves a claim to keep a chemical substance’s specific chemical identity confidential, EPA must assign the chemical substance a “unique identifier,” which is then to be applied to all information relevant to that chemical substance. Once EPA applies a unique identifier to a chemical substance, the public can then identify all non-confidential information on the chemical that is linked using that unique identifier, which would allow access to information that would otherwise not be able to be linked to the substance. EPA’s failure to implement this provision compounds the lack of transparency in the new chemicals program.
* * *
This series of blog posts has identified a large number of pervasive and systematic flaws and information gaps across all stages of EPA’s new chemicals review process that deny the public access to information on new chemicals and agency decisions about them to which the public is entitled. Coupled with the policy changes EPA has made that we have also blogged about and commented on, the concerns we raise here make clear that EPA under this Administration intends to weaken a new chemicals program that Congress sought to strengthen through TSCA reform – and hide as much of it from public view as possible.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/04/23/epa-practices-are-hindering-transparency-and-public-confidence-in-tscas-new-chemicals-program/
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Lowe’s: Time to Spring into Action for Safer Chemicals
Apr 23, 2018 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
Recently CBS News aired the story of a South Carolina man, Drew Wynne, who died because of a deadly chemical in a product purchased from his local Lowe’s. Drew was a 31-year-old entrepreneur, in the prime of his life.
Drew’s story has been picked up in print, radio, and TV outlets around the country, from Web MD to the Daily Mail, Center for Public Integrity, and Fox News in Charleston.
Drew is just one of at least fifty peoplewho have died from using products containing methylene chloride.
The sad truth is that this was preventable.
“He had been stripping paint using a Goof Off paint stripper product that is commonly available at home improvement stores around the country. He bought this product at a Lowe’s store in Charleston, SC. The active ingredient in that product was methylene chloride. The official cause of death from the Coroner’s report was methylene chloride inhalation.”
– Hal Wynne, father of Drew WynneLowe’s was warned about toxic paint strippers over one year ago
For five years our campaign has called on leading retailers to use their market power and influence to phase out the sale of products containing toxic chemicals, such as methylene chloride and N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP) paint strippers sold by retailers like Lowe’s and The Home Depot.
Never has the case for action been stronger.
Both methylene chloride and NMP are dangerous to consumers. Methylene chloride is not only deadly but is also linked to several types of cancers as well as liver, kidney, and reproductive toxicity. NMP has been closely linked to developmental impacts including miscarriages.
Last February, we sent Lowe’s a letter urging them to phase out the sale of these deadly and dangerous products. We sent them a list of paint strippers they sold containing methylene chloride and NMP. One of the products containing methylene chloride that we warned them about was the same one that killed Drew.
That was almost eight months before Drew bought the product from Lowe’s in Charleston last fall. They had nearly eight months to pull these products from store shelves and transition to safer alternatives.
They had plenty of time to do the right thing.
Sadly, Lowe’s did not heed our call. Today, more than a year after we first wrote to them, they still sell these dangerous products.
“I’m here to tell you that our family suffered an unimaginable loss due to methylene chloride which was present in a popular off-the-shelf DIY paint stripper that killed my son. We later learned that we were not the first family to lose a loved one to these deadly products. Paint strippers containing methylene chloride present a very real and continuing threat to DIY consumers today. … How many more people have to die before retailers like Lowe’s take action?”
– Cindy Wynne, mother of Drew WynneLowe’s can transform the marketplace
Methylene chloride has been banned in paint strippers in the European Union (EU) since 2012, and in February 2018 the European chemicals agency proposed adding NMP to the REACH “authorization” list, which could lead to a ban in the EU.
In January 2017 the EPA announced it was proposing to ban or restrict methylene chloride and NMP in paint strippers. This was the first time in a generation EPA was taking substantive action to restrict dangerous chemicals, acting under the new powers it was granted by Congress in 2016. Then in December 2017, the NY Times reported that the EPA was backpedaling on its proposal to ban methylene chloride- and NMP-based paint strippers, under pressure from big chemical corporations.
In response to Drew’s death, Republican members of Congress, Senator Graham, Senator Scott, and Rep. Sanford, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt urging the EPA to move forward on its TSCA restrictions. We applaud their leadership on this issue.
It’s unclear whether the Administration will act anytime soon. With the federal government asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting consumers from toxic chemicals like methylene chloride, retailers like Lowe’s must act. Because of Lowe’s inaction, we have launched a national campaign calling on Lowe’s to ban products containing these toxic chemicals.
Partnering with Drew’s parents, Cindy and Hal Wynne, we launched an online petition calling on Lowe’s to stop selling these products within six months or less. Had EPA’s proposed ban moved forward, companies would have had six months to comply with the federal rule.
More than 50,000 people have already signed the petition over the past few weeks. Our coalition partners at NRDC, Clean Water Action, and organizations across the country have also launched petitions on their websites. Last week, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Autism Society, ANCOR (American Network of Community Options and Resources), Autism Society, The Arc, and their state chapters sent Lowe’s a letter urging the company to ban methylene chloride and NMP, citing the dangers these chemicals pose to pregnant women and children.
We’ll be bringing our message to Lowe’s customers coast to coast in the weeks and months ahead, leading up to the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
This will be a spring of action. And that’s what we want Lowe’s to do – to spring into action so that no family has to go through what Drew’s family has had to endure. Lowe’s has the power to transform the marketplace away from these dangerous chemicals.
“It’s outrageous that Lowe’s and others are still selling this highly toxic product linked to dozens of fatalities. Because the EPA has failed to protect consumers from this deadly product, it’s critical that retailers like Lowe’s step up to protect their unsuspecting customers. Lowe‘s should take this poison off their shelves today, and EPA should finalize its ban now.”
– Erik Olson, Health Program Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council
Will Lowe’s do the right thing?
Will Lowe’s do the right thing? Or will Lowe’s executives continue to drag their feet while they and big chemical corporations profit from these deadly products?
Lowe’s has already shown substantial leadership on other toxic chemicals. Three years ago, Lowe’s announced they were banning phthalates in vinyl flooring. That same year, they took action on neonicotinoid pesticides because of the deadly hazard they pose to bees.
If Lowe’s can take action on chemicals deadly to bees, there’s no reason they should still be selling products containing methylene chloride that can be deadly to their customers.
We hope Lowe’s will ban these harmful chemicals so that no other family has to suffer. After all, DIY shouldn’t spell danger.TAKE ACTION: Sign the petition to Lowe’s.
https://saferchemicals.org/2018/04/23/lowes-time-to-spring-into-action-for-safer-chemicals/
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California, Coffee and Cancer: One of These Doesn’t Belong
Apr 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By Aaron E. Carroll
About two-thirds of smokers will die early from cigarette-based illnesses. Cigarettes are also very addictive. Because of this, it seems reasonable to place warnings on their labels.
If a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has his way, California businesses will have to put similar warnings on something else that can be addictive, coffee. His ruling, which is being challenged by coffee producers, is harder to justify in terms of health — if it can be justified at all.
California’s Proposition 65, enacted in 1986, mandates that businesses with more than 10 employees warn consumers if their products contain one of many chemicals that the state has ruled as carcinogenic. One of these chemicals is acrylamide. Like many other substances, acrylamide causes cancer in rats — when they are pumped full of huge doses in ways that don’t approximate real life.
In humans, the data are far less clear. The American Cancer Society(which does not shrink from saying things cause cancer) reports on its website that “there are currently no cancer types for which there is clearly an increased risk related to acrylamide intake.”
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Other organizations, such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer, have warned that acrylamide is a “probable human carcinogen.” But this is based almost entirely on animal studies, and the agency hasbackpedaled in recent years. It’s also worth pointing out that of the nearly 1,000 substances the agency has classified, it has ruled almost none to be non-carcinogenic.
Regardless, acrylamide isn’t an industrial additive. It’s a chemical that is made almost any time you cook starches at temperatures above 250 degrees Fahrenheit. You can make acrylamide from frying, baking, broiling or roasting — essentially anything that isn’t boiling or microwaving.
Toasted bread contains acrylamide. So do fried and roasted potatoes. So do roasted coffee beans. Acrylamide formation occurs whether this cooking is done by a corporation or by you in your home. It’s made even when you cook organic food — there’s just not much of a way to avoid it. Acrylamide is found in about 40 percent of the calories consumed by people in the United States.ImageA Starbucks shop in Los Angeles. Some coffee retailers already have warning messages.CreditRichard Vogel/Associated Press
Some California businesses that serve food and drinks, unwilling to wage a legal fight against Proposition 65 or possibly hedging against fines, have already posted warnings about acrylamide over the years. A handful of makers of potato chips and fries also agreed to reduce their levels of acrylamide by 20 percent. There have been no studies showing this has made any difference in health, certainly not with respect to cancer.
Coffee has had acrylamide in it since humans started drinking it. The Food and Drug Administration, in its Guidance for Industry Acrylamide in Foods, reports that there is no viable commercial process for making coffee without producing at least some acrylamide.EDITORS’ PICKSPruitt’s History: Fancy Homes, Lobbyists and a Shell CompanyWhere Facebook Rumors Fuel Thirst for RevengeCohen Said He’d Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore.
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If there were such a process, there wouldn’t be a reason to use it. After all, we have a wealth of evidence about coffee’s effects. Meta analyses have shown that coffee is associated with lower risks of liver cancer, and no increased risk of prostate cancer or breast cancer. When we look at cancer over all, it appears that coffee — if anything — is associated with a lower risk of cancer.
Even the International Agency for Research on Cancer has essentially reversed itself. In 2016, it declared that “drinking coffee was not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans.”
The more serious problem with California’s law is one of effect size. Health, and cancer, aren’t binary. Consumers can’t just be concerned with whether a danger exists; they also need to be concerned about the magnitude of that risk. Even if there’s a statistically significant risk between huge quantities of coffee and some cancer (and that’s not proven), it’s very, very small.
Cigarettes have a clear and easily measured negative impact on people’s health. Acrylamide, especially the acrylamide in coffee, isn’t even close.
Warning labels should be applied when a danger is clear, a danger is large and a danger is avoidable. It’s not clear that, with respect to acrylamide, any of these criteria are met. It’s certainly not the case regarding coffee. Whatever the intentions of Proposition 65, this latest development could do more harm than good.
In 1994, a systematic review in The Journal of Public Policy and Marketingon the unintended consequences of warning messages said, “The emphasis of policymaking in the past has tended to focus more on the identification of potential hazards than on helping consumers develop an understanding of the magnitude and probability of a potential hazard that can be used for informed decision making.”
If Americans slap a label on every substance that has the potential to cause cancer, eventually those labels will stop having any meaning. If nearly inconsequential dangers get the same warning as significant dangers, people might start ignoring preventive efforts entirely.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/upshot/california-coffee-and-cancer-one-of-these-doesnt-belong.html
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European Parliament Endorses Revised Waste Framework Directive
Apr 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Parliament has approved an amendment to the waste framework Directive that requires suppliers to notify Echa of the presence of substances of very high concern in articles.
The amendment to Article 9 of the Directive is part of the EU’s circular economy package to develop non-toxic material cycles so that recycled waste can be used as a major and reliable source of raw material, free from hazardous chemicals.
The EU Commission has proposed a number of amendments to waste-related Directives. The Article 9 amendment was added after members of parliament (MEPs) voted by a large majority a year ago to adopt other proposed changes to ensure a "progressive substitution" of SVHCs.
According to the amended Directive, Echa is required to establish a database for companies to submit the data eighteen months after it enters into force.
Echa has said this will treat articles made in the EU and those that are imported "the same way".
The amended text will now go back to the EU Council for formal approval – expected by the end of July – before publication in the Official Journal of the EU. The Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on the amendment to Article 9 and others last December.
Ahead of Parliament's vote last week, NGO HEAL sent a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron asking him to act in favour of a European transition towards a non-toxic environment, as outlined in the 7th Environment Action Program (EAP). Mr Macron addressed the Parliament the day before the vote.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66129/european-parliament-endorses-revised-waste-framework-directive
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BLM Accepts Last Batch of Comments on Obama Rule Rollback
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A new analysis poses this question on an Obama-era rule on methane waste from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal lands:
"Should it stay or should it go?" Resources for the Future researchers Alan Krupnick and Isabel Echarte ask in their recent report on the 2016 Methane and Waste Prevention Rule.
Stakeholders in the four-year debate on the Obama administration rule have until midnight to make their views known.
Kathleen Sgamma. @KathleenSgamma/Twitter
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management proposed revisions — effectively viewed as rescissions — to many provisions of the 2016 rule. The 60-day period for comment on the changes closes tonight.
The previous administration rooted its cost-benefit analysis of the original rule in the social impact of reducing the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Trump's BLM has justified its rollback of the regulation by pointing to savings to oil and gas operators that would no longer be required to comply with the rule.
The analysis attached to the Trump administration proposal acknowledges that taxpayers would lose at least $26.4 million in potential revenue from escaped gas.
"In deciding whether the rule should be repealed, the Trump administration should take into account that its goal of reducing regulatory burdens has the potential to result in large net costs to society," Krupnick and Echarte wrote. "Even if the administration believes that large net costs are unlikely, it should explicitly consider whether its goal — reducing compliance burdens for industry — warrants even the possibility of these large net costs."
Dan Naatz. Independent Petroleum Association of America
Trade groups like the Western Energy Alliance and the Independent Petroleum Association of America are likely to ask the Trump administration to keep costs to industry front-of-mind.
Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma and IPAA Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Political Affairs Dan Naatz are expected to sign off on the joint remarks later today.
Both groups have called on BLM to leave climate regulations to EPA and the states. They say the Obama rule imposed too many costs for small producers on public lands.
"We welcome the opportunity to talk about reasonable development of oil and natural gas resources on federal lands," Naatz said after the Trump administration announced its proposed rule revisions. "We need to make sure, as we always have, that these activities are designed to protect the environment."Western opposition
Westerners Gabriel Otero, Sam Dee and Don Schreiber last week traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the BLM rule change with Interior Department officials and lawmakers. Pamela King/E&E News
Westerners fighting the proposed BLM rule change last week visited the Interior Department and Capitol Hill to tell decisionmakers in Washington, D.C., why the regulation is critical for their communities.
Sam Dee, a former oil and gas liaison for the Navajo Nation, said he wants the federal government to capture more natural gas — and more revenue.
"We need economic development," he said. "We need better schools; we need a better health system, and as of today, nothing's been happening."
Other Westerners have pointed to the Obama-era rule as one potential barrier to new oil and gas activity in their region and therefore an economic bane to their communities (Energywire, Feb. 21, 2017).
Gabriel Otero of Grand Junction, Colo., grew up farming and worked in oil and gas for five years before becoming a conservation activist.
"Colorado has some of the highest state standards for oil and gas producers, but the pollution in New Mexico and around the Four Corners, it blows into southwest Colorado," he said. "We're feeling the impacts of that."
Don Schreiber of New Mexico made the trip to Washington, D.C., to once again share the story of oil and gas production and methane emissions on his Devil's Spring Ranch (Energywire, July 5, 2017).
"No one that's making these rules lives with a leaking gas well," Schreiber said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079773
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Minn. Tackles Timing, Cost of Carbon Regulations
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jeffrey Tomich
When will utilities incur costs related to greenhouse gas regulation? And what will those costs be?
For most Midwest utilities and regulators, they're relevant questions without an answer. In Minnesota, making a best guess is required by state law.
Last week, the Public Utilities Commission took on the issue as it does every couple of years and unanimously voted to reduce what it sees as the "likely" costs of carbon regulations to a range of $5 to $25 per short ton of CO2 from a previous range of $9 to $34 approved two years earlier.
Regulators also instructed utilities to assume CO2 compliance costs starting in 2025, a postponement from the 2022 start date approved two years.
The commission's decision to postpone the effective date for costs associated with CO2 regulation reflects uncertainty over the timing of greenhouse gas regulations under the Trump administration, which has sought to repeal EPA's Clean Power Plan.
The last time the PUC updated expected CO2 regulation costs was in the summer of 2016 (Energywire, July 1, 2016).
What effect last week's decision will have on Minnesota utilities' power plant fleet is unclear.
The range of likely regulatory costs settled on by the commission are among myriad assumptions such as fuel prices and electricity demand that are plugged into complex economic models to analyze how utilities meet long-term energy demand.
Minnesota also has other state policies to be considered, including the state's 25 percent renewable portfolio standard. The state's largest utility, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Inc., which is subject to a tougher 30 percent RPS, has been a leader among investor-owned utilities in transitioning its generation fleet to low carbon.
Xcel, in fact, has set its sights on getting 85 percent of its energy from non-carbon-emitting sources by 2030 while maintaining bill increases below the rate of inflation.
Despite progress toward reducing carbon-sector CO2 emissions, advocates say it matters that state law requires regulators and utilities to account for environmental externalities including greenhouse gas societal damages as well as estimate how the costs of carbon regulation get factored into electricity prices.
"Minnesota is definitely a leader in incorporating both of those things in planning," said Allen Gleckner, director of energy markets for Fresh Energy.
The estimated CO2 regulation costs adopted by the commission Thursday were the same ones proposed by a pair of state agencies — the Department of Commerce (DOC) and Pollution Control Agency.
The agencies reasoned that the previously established range of $9 to $34 per short ton of CO2 was too high based on declines in prices in U.S. carbon markets, specifically the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and in California.
The agencies also considered projections from consultants Synapse Energy Economics in March 2016 of $15 to $25 a ton beginning in 2022.'Significant' uncertainty
A coalition of clean energy organizations that included Fresh Energy had asked the commission to base estimated costs of CO2 regulation on forward-looking prices from existing carbon markets. Those markets include RGGI but also the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a collaboration among California and Canadian provinces.
Unlike RGGI, which involves only assigning a cost to power-sector emissions, the WCI is broader and also prices CO2 from the transportation sector.
"We were advocating for higher values and thought we had some pretty strong data there," Gleckner said.
Xcel Energy, meanwhile, recommended a CO2 regulatory cost range of $5 to $12 per short ton based on the average of RGGI and WCI allowance auction prices over the last two years.
The utility also asked the PUC to postpone the effective date for factoring in costs associated with CO2 regulation until 2025.
"We believe we are in a period of particularly significant uncertainty around carbon regulation that makes it difficult to approximate potential future regulatory costs, or the point at which they may take effect," the utility said in a commission filing.
Meanwhile, other parties including large industrial energy users urged the PUC to postpone application of CO2 regulatory cost values until 2035, meaning they wouldn't factor into utility resource decisions until 15-year plans submitted after 2020.
The industrial group noted that the PUC recently issued an order raising CO2 externality values to a range of $8.64 to $40.66 (in 2015 dollars) from the previous range of 44 cents to $4.64 a ton and said it sought to ensure carbon emissions weren't double-counted in long-range resource plans.
Ross Corson, a spokesman for Minnesota DOC, said the previous CO2 externality values established by the commission didn't appear to have a significant impact on utility resource decisions.
But the externality values did factor into a debate years ago about the Big Stone II power plant, a $1.6 billion coal-fired plant that a group of utilities sought to build in South Dakota. Part of the plant's output would have served demand in Minnesota.
Ultimately, developers pulled the plug on the project because of the recession and concern about how possible climate change legislation led to uncertainty over costs.
"The new higher approved externality values are expected to have a more significant impact, but it is too early at this time to judge how much and in what way," Corson said in an email.
A key test could come early next year, when Xcel files a much-anticipated integrated resource plan. Among other things, the 15-year plan due Feb. 1 will describe plans and scenarios for cost-effective and orderly retirement of its aging baseload fleet, including the utility's remaining coal and nuclear plants.
While the commission settled on CO2 regulatory costs that were higher than the utility recommended, Xcel said, "We are pleased with yesterday's decision, which we think strikes the right balance. We are confident our plans to invest in low-cost clean energy will provide benefits to our customers."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079769
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Gov. Cuomo, Nixon Lay Out Competing Clean Energy Plans
Apr 23, 2018 | The New York Times (In E&E Greenwire)
By Jesse McKinley
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's challenger for the Democratic nomination, Cynthia Nixon, called for the state to use 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2050.
Three hours before Nixon's announcement Friday laying out her first big environmental proposal, Cuomo's office called for increased efficiency targets to correct the "devastating effects of climate change."
Both announcements were likely meant to coincide with Earth Day over the weekend — and to avoid being outdone by the other.
Cuomo's plan calls for cutting the state's energy consumption by over 3 percent by 2025. Additionally, his office committed $36.5 million for clean energy job training.
Previously, Cuomo had agreed to a 50 percent renewable energy goal by 2030.
Nixon said work to prevent climate change "can't fall victim to business as usual in Albany and a political system that caters to the needs of corporate donors over the future of New York's children."
She called Cuomo's energy efficiency targets "rehashed" and said he was giving "free rein" to polluters. Cuomo's campaign defended his environmental record, including a hydraulic fracturing ban in 2014.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079789
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The Secret of the Great American Fracking Bubble
Apr 23, 2018 | DeSmog (In Energy Collective)
By Justin Mikulka
In 2008, Aubrey McClendon was the highest paid Fortune 500 CEO in America, a title he earned taking home $112 million for running Chesapeake Energy. Later dubbed “The Shale King,” he was at the forefront of the oil and gas industry’s next boom, made possible by advances in fracking, which broke open fossil fuels from shale formations around the U.S.
What was McClendon’s secret? Instead of running a company that aimed to sell oil and gas, he was essentially flipping real estate: acquiring leases to drill on land and then reselling them for five to 10 times more, something McClendon explained was a lot more profitable than “trying to produce gas.” But his story may serve as a cautionary tale for an industry that keeps making big promises on borrowed dimes — while its investors begin losing patience, a trend DeSmog will be investigating in an in-depth series over the coming weeks.
From 2008 to 2009, Chesapeake Energy’s stock swung from $64 a share under McClendon to around $17. Today, it’s worth just $3 a share — the same price it was in 2000. A visionary when it came to fracking, McClendon perfected the formula of borrowing money to drive the revolution that reshaped American energy markets.An Industry Built on Debt
Roughly a decade after McClendon’s rise, the Wall Street Journal reported that “energy companies [since 2007] have spent $280 billion more than they generated from operations on shale investments, according to advisory firm Evercore ISI.”
As a whole, the American fracking experiment has been a financial disaster for many of its investors, who have been plagued by the industry’s heavy borrowing, low returns, and bankruptcies, and the path to becoming profitable is lined with significant potential hurdles. Up to this point, the industry has been drilling the “sweet spots” in the country’s major shale formations, reaching the easiest and most valuable oil first.
But at the same time energy companies are borrowing more money to drill more wells, the sweet spots are drying up, creating a Catch-22 as more drilling drives more debt.
“You have to keep drilling,” David Hughes, a geoscientist and fellow specializing in shale gas and oil production at the Post Carbon Institute, told DeSmog. But he also noted that with most of the sweet spots already drilled, producers are forced to move to less productive areas.
The result? “Productivity goes down and the costs remain the same,” he explained.
While Hughes understands the industry’s rationale for continuing to drill new wells at a loss, he doubts the sustainability of the practice.
“I don’t think in the long-term they can drill their way out of this,” Hughes told DeSmog.
While politicians and the mainstream media tout an American energy “revolution,” it is becoming clear that — like the housing bubble just a few years earlier — the American oil and gas boom spurred by fracking innovations may be one of the largest money-losing endeavors in the nation’s history. And it caught up with McClendon.
In 2016, the shale king was indicted for rigging bids at drilling lease auctions. He died the very next day in a single car crash, leading to speculation McClendon committed suicide, a rumor impossible to confirm. However, the police chief on the scene noted: “There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway and that didn’t occur.”
The same could be said of the current shale industry. There is plenty of opportunity for these energy companies to correct their path — for example, by linking CEO pay to company profits rather than oil production volumes — but instead they are plowing full-speed ahead with a business model that seems poised for a crash.But Hope Springs Eternal
Of course, business media and conservative think tanks are still selling the story that the fracking industry has produced an economic and technical revolution.
In 2017 Investors Business Daily ran an opinion piece with the title, “The Shale Revolution Is A Made-In-America Success Story.” It was authored by Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute — a free market-focused think tank funded in part by the oil and gas industry.
How does the author measure success? Not via profits. The metric Perry uses to argue the success of the fracking industry is production volume. And it is true that the volumes of oil produced by fracking shale are increasing and currently at record levels. But here is the catch — when you lose money on each barrel of oil you pump and sell — the more you pump, the more money you lose. While it is true that the industry has been successful at getting oil out of the ground, its companies have mostly lost money doing it.
However, much like with the U.S. housing boom, this false narrative persists that the fracking industry is a money-making, rather than money-losing, venture.
A Wall Street Journal headline published in early 2018 projected this eternal optimism about the fracking industry: “Frackers Could Make More Money Than Ever in 2018, If They Don’t Blow It.”
This headline manages to be, at the same time, both very misleading and true. Misleading because the industry has never made money. True because if oil and gas companies make any money fracking in 2018, it would be more “than ever.”
However, the nuance comes in the sub-headline: “U.S. shale companies are poised to make real money this year for the first time since the start of the fracking boom.”
Poised to make “real money” for “the first time.” Or to put it another way, the industry hopes to stop losing large amounts of real money for the first time this year.
In March 2017, The Economist wrote about the finances of the fracking industry, pointing out just how much money these businesses are burning through:
With the exception of airlines, Chinese state enterprises, and Silicon Valley unicorns — private firms valued at more than $1 billion — shale firms are on an unparalleled money-losing streak. About $11 billion was torched in the latest quarter, as capital expenditures exceeded cashflows. The cash-burn rate may well rise again this year.
Some historic money-losing has been going on, and is expected to continue, as reported by the Wall Street Journal: “Wood Mackenzie estimates that if oil prices hover around $50, shale companies won’t generate positive cash flow as a group until 2020.” However, Craig McMahon, senior vice president at Wood MacKenzie, notes, “Even then, only the most efficient operators will do well.”
U.S. oil produced via fracking is priced as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), which averaged $41 a barrel in 2016 and $51 in 2017. The consensus is that WTI should average over $50 a barrel in 2018, thus providing the industry another reason to keep pushing forward. However, even in 2017 with the average over $50 a barrel, the industry as a whole was not profitable.Irrational Exuberance
In the introduction to The Big Short, Michael Lewis’ book-turned-movie about how the 2008 financial crash unfolded, he describes the finances of the housing bubble:
“All these subprime lending companies were growing so rapidly, and using such goofy accounting, that they could mask the fact that they had no real earnings, just illusory, accounting-driven, ones. They had the essential feature of a Ponzi scheme: To maintain the fiction that they were profitable enterprises, they needed more and more capital to create more and more subprime loans.”
If you substitute “shale oil and gas development companies” for “subprime lending companies,” it becomes an apt description of the current shale industry. These companies are losing more money than they make and can only sustain this scenario if lenders continue to bankroll their efforts, allowing the fracking industry to drill more wells as it points to production increases, rather than profits, as progress. Which — for now — Wall Street continues to do in a big way.
This article is the first in a series investigating the economics of fracking and where the vast sums of money being pumped into this industry are actually going. The series will look at how fracking companies are shifting these epic losses to the American taxpayers. It will review the huge challenges facing the industry even if oil and gas prices rise: the physical production limits of fracked wells, rising interest rates, rising water costs, competition from renewables, OPEC’s plans, and what happens if Wall Street stops loaning it money.
The oil industry has always been a boom or bust industry. And during each boom someone inevitably declares that “this time is different,” assuring everyone there won’t be a bust. The sentiment about the early 2000s housing bubble was much the same, with critics being drowned out by the players claiming that, this time it was different, arguing “Housing doesn’t go down in value.”
And what about for shale production? Is this time really different? Some in the industry apparently think so.
“Is this time going to be different? I think yes, a little bit,” energy asset manager Will Riley told the Wall Street Journal. “Companies will look to increase growth a little, but at a more moderate pace.” There is little evidence of restraint or moderation in the industry. Until analysts and investors start talking about profits instead of growth, however, this time is likely to end, at some point, in a completely familiar and predictable way: bust. A fate even Aubrey McClendon, the highest-paid CEO, the shale king, eventually met.
David Hughes summed up his take on the industry’s financial outlook: “Ultimately, you hit the wall. It’s just a question of time.”
http://theenergycollective.com/desmog/2431716/the-secret-of-the-great-american-fracking-bubble
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Coast Guard Responds to Oil Spill in Mississippi River
Apr 23, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times, The Washington Post)
The Coast Guard says hundreds of gallons of heavy fuel oil have spilled into the Mississippi River in Louisiana from a chemical tanker.
The Coast Guard said in a news release Monday that the source of the spill near Norco "is reported to be secured." The news release says approximately 2,600 gallons of oil spilled into the river from a foreign-flagged ship called Iver Exporter. The vessel currently is moored at the Shell Norco Manufacturing Complex.
No injuries or wildlife impacts have been reported. The cause remains under investigation.
The Coast Guard is overseeing cleanup work.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/23/us/ap-us-oil-spill-mississippi-river.html
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CSB to Release Final Investigation Report on PCA Explosion
Apr 23, 2018 | Occupational Health and Safety
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has announced it will release its final report April 24 on the Feb. 8, 2017, explosion at the Packaging Corporation of America plant in DeRidder, Louisiana. The explosion occurred at the company’s Pulp and Paper Mill during hot work activities during the facility’s annual shutdown, killing three contract workers and injuring seven others.
On the morning of the incident, an employee of the mill used a gas detector to check for a flammable atmosphere in and around the water piping and found none, but a nearby storage tank went unchecked and posed a serious safety hazard. On the day of the incident there was more flammable turpentine present in the tank than expected, and because of non-routine conditions during the facility shutdown, there was more air than usual in the vapor space of the tank, resulting in an explosive atmosphere.
An animation released by CSB earlier this month explains that the board was unable to determine an exact source of ignition but sparks or molten slag produced from the hot work likely landed on or near the tank, heating up the wall of the tank or igniting its contents. The tank exploded and separated from its base, launched up and over a six-story structure, and landed approximately 375 feet away.
CSB Chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland, Board Member Kristen Kulinowski, and Lead Investigator Jerad Denton are scheduled to answer media questions about the report on April 24.
https://ohsonline.com/articles/2018/04/23/csb-to-release-final-investigation-report-on-pca-explosion.aspx
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Obama-Mandated Energy Reports Languish in Trump White House
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The White House is sitting on environmental sustainability reports federal agencies completed and submitted nearly a year ago, government officials said.
Federal agencies are required under an Obama-era rule to annually draft reports called "strategic sustainability performance plans," which provide glimpses of what agencies do internally on a range of climate, energy and environmental issues.
Under that rule, which President Obama created through executive order in 2015, the Office of Management and Budget receives the reports. Then the OMB head must sign off before the reports are published online for anyone to read.
But under President Trump, agencies are sending their reports to OMB, where they're gathering dust.
At least seven agencies — the Department of Justice, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of State, Small Business Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, General Services Administration, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission — completed their latest sustainability reports and sent them to OMB, officials said.
Beyond those agencies, the Trump administration is broadly failing to stay current with its sustainability reports, removing a tool outsiders have to understand how the U.S. government addresses energy and environmental topics.
The White House and OMB did not respond to requests for comment.
E&E News contacted 30 agencies that have written and published sustainability reports. Only four — the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — have their 2017 reports online, meaning they are up to date.
The executive order requires that reports be published online annually in the year they address. And officials said the deadline is June 30, meaning reports for 2018 are due in two months, even though only a handful of agencies are up to date with their 2017 reports.
The remaining 26 list their 2016 documents online as their latest available sustainability reports.
A group of agencies' chief sustainability officers, who are often responsible for creating the reports, met with officials from the OMB and the Council on Environmental Quality earlier this year, according to Nancy Bechtol of the Smithsonian Institution, who attended (Climatewire, April 12).
White House officials didn't indicate that they would eliminate the reporting process or otherwise change it, she said.
An official from CFTC said they met with Dee Siegel of CEQ on Feb. 22, along with other officials from small government departments to discuss sustainability reports. Siegel did not respond to a request for comment.
It is not clear if that meeting was the same gathering Bechtol attended.
The CFTC official said they left their meeting sensing that the reports under the Trump administration may become smaller. But there was no indication that the White House wanted to gut the reports, that person said, adding that they feel like they're in limbo.
"We haven't received directions yet," the official said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079737
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OTC Seeks Emissions Cuts from Consumer Products
Apr 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states is floating a proposed model rule for its members to adopt that would further reduce ozone-forming air emissions from a wide range of consumer products such as solvents and aerosols.
OTC is taking public comment until May 11 on its proposed update to its existing consumer products model rule, adopted in 2012. The model rules aim to reduce the volatile organic compound (VOC) content of products. VOCs react in the atmosphere to form ozone.
OTC developed the model rule as part of a regional effort to meet the George W. Bush EPA's 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion (ppb). EPA in 2015 further tightened the ozone NAAQS, to 70 ppb, making more acute the OTC states' need to reduce ozone precursors. The OTC model rule is based on California regulations as updated in 2015.
States like those in the OTC that are struggling to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS are looking for a mix of state and federal regulations to reduce ozone-forming emissions, though EPA appears to be pushing states to take the leadon policies for reducing interstate transport of air pollution.
According to an April 20 statement, the amendments in the new rule “would add emission limits for a number of new consumer product categories, impose a more restrictive limit for other categories and expand the prohibition of certain toxics to automotive and other consumer product categories.”
The amendments “also include an optional 3 year sell through limit for existing products that do not comply with VOC limits and removes the category for structural waterproof adhesives.”
On an OTC conference call April 17, representatives of the consumer products industry called on OTC to eliminate the three-year sell-through deadline, arguing that it is unnecessary because almost all such products are sold within three years anyway. A sell-through allows manufacturers and retailers to dispose of their stock that is non-compliant with new, tougher regulations.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/otc-seeks-emissions-cuts-consumer-products
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Trump Marks Earth Day by Touting Regulatory Rollbacks
Apr 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
President Trump touted rolling back environmental regulations in his Earth Day message to Americans.
"My administration is dedicated to removing unnecessary and harmful regulations that restrain economic growth and make it more difficult for local communities to prosper and to choose the best solutions for their environment," the presidential message said.
"A healthy environment and a strong economy go hand in hand," he noted.
"We know that it is impossible for humans to flourish without clean air, land, and water. We also know that a strong, market-driven economy is essential to protecting these resources."
Trump has made deregulation a top priority for his administration. During his first year in office, agencies rolled back 22 rules for every new one issued (E&E News PM, Dec. 14, 2017).
EPA has been at the forefront of the anti-red-tape agenda, with major rules such as the Clean Power Plan on the chopping block.
In President Obama's final Earth Day message in 2016, climate change was the focus. Regulations weren't mentioned once.
"Human activity is disrupting the climate, and the challenge of combating climate change is one that will define the contours of our time," Obama's final message said.
"The effects of climate change are already evident in stronger storms, deeper droughts, more rapidly eroding soil, and longer wildfire seasons — and as of last year, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000."
Environmentalists were quick to blast Trump for highlighting rollbacks on a day dedicated to conservation.
Democrats sought to shift the conversation to the public health and environmental impacts of the rollbacks.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on Twitter, "We remember the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill — one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. @realDonaldTrump has already started rescinding key safety regulations that protect our coastlines from another BP-scale disaster. #EarthDay"
Other Democrats, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, called for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to step down on Earth Day as he faces mounting pressure regarding ethics scandals.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/23/stories/1060079821
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