Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 26/06/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Flexible Packaging Project Names Sorting Partner
Jun 26, 2018 | Resource Recycling
By Jared Paben
MRFF has found a MRF. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Groups Urge Senate to Confirm Environment Nominee
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Industry organizations are urging the Senate to take up President Trump's nominee to head the Justice Department's environment division. -
Former Officials File Brief Against Advisory Board Policy
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
One-time acting EPA chief Bob Perciasepe and a half-dozen other former federal officials have leapt into the legal fray over the agency's restrictions on advisory board service. -
IRIS Staff Weigh Dual Modeling Approaches For Chromium Cancer Risk
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA staff are considering presenting both a linear and a non-linear modeling approach for its upcoming revised assessment of the cancer risks of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), an approach that if adopted would mark a win for industry officials who have long sought to provide regulators with such a range of values rather than a single estimate generated by the conservative linear approach. -
EPA Critic Praises Science Rule For Ending Strict Default Risk Approach
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
A toxicology professor and longtime critic of EPA and other federal agencies' conservative default approach to assessing human health risks is praising the agency's science rule for seeking to end its default use of so-called linear dose-response modeling, which assumes no safe level of exposure. -
US Raises Concerns Over EU's EDC Pesticides Criteria
Jun 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The US has voiced concerns over how the EU's recently adopted criteria for identifying endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plant protection products (PPPs) will affect trade. -
Council of Ministers Urges Action on Tracking Substances of Concern
Jun 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The EU’s Council of Ministers has called on the European Commission and Echa to implement measures, to ensure that by 2030 substances of concern in materials – including those in imported articles – can be traced through the entire supply chain. This includes end-of-life operations. -
(ACC Mentioned) As Trump Doubles Down on Coal, West Virginia Lawmakers Are Eyeing Natural Gas
Jun 26, 2018 | Roll Call
By Jeremy Dillon
As President Donald Trump readies a strategy to bail out coal and nuclear power plants in part to help reinvigorate Appalachia’s struggling coal industry, West Virginia lawmakers are working to up the state’s participation in the natural gas business. -
Another Pennsylvania Budget Becomes Law Without Natural Gas Severance Tax
Jun 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has signed into law the state’s $32.7 billion budget, which does not include his calls to implement a severance tax on unconventional natural gas production. -
U.S. Seeks to Export Its 'Energy Miracle' Even as Trade Tensions Mount
Jun 26, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Richard Valdmanis
The administration of President Donald Trump wants to help allies and trade partners replicate the U.S. natural gas and oil production boom by exporting American know-how, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Tuesday, even as trade disputes intensified. -
Exxon, Chevron CEOs Warn Trump Tariffs Hurting Oil Sector
Jun 26, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
The CEOs of the two largest U.S. oil companies said Tuesday that tariffs enacted by the Trump administration would slow growth in the U.S. oil and gas sector. -
Oil and Gas Meet Silicon Valley
Jun 26, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Fred Krupp
There’s a digital revolution coursing through the world’s oil and natural gas industry today. -
Global Natural Gas Markets Transforming Over Next Five Years, Says IEA
Jun 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Rising supplies from the United States, demand growth in China and more industrial demand will transform global natural gas markets over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday. -
Energy Journal: Big Oil Spared Risk of Climate Suit
Jun 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Neanda Salvaterra
Big oil firm executives breathed a sigh of relief after a U.S. judge dismissed lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland alleging that five of the world’s largest oil companies should be held responsible and pay for the impacts of climate change, write the WSJ’s Bradley Olson and Timothy Puko. -
Judges Grow Frustrated with EPA on Clean Power Plan
Jun 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden and Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today agreed to keep litigation over the Clean Power Plan on hold while EPA continues to work on a rewrite, but three of the nine judges on the panel said they were unlikely to support further delays. -
Methane Questions Leak to the Surface as Industry Gathers
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Global natural gas leaders gather in Washington, D.C., this week for a triennial confab on the industry's fortunes that meets in the U.S. for the first time since the shale revolution shook up world markets and turned the nation's net gas flow from import to export. -
Pipeline Regulator Feels the Heat on Climate Change
| Roll Call
By Ethan Howland
To what extent should the federal agency that approves the construction of natural gas pipelines consider their impact on climate change? -
King frets About Trump’s Eliminating White House Cyber Post
Jun 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
Sen. Angus King today pressed Energy Department nominee Karen Evans about the administration’s decision to kill a White House cybersecurity post, saying he was concerned about coordination in the federal government. -
Derailed Train Spills 230,000 Gallons of Canadian Oil Sands
Jun 26, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
A derailed train has spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into river floodwaters in Iowa. -
Groups Rail Against Highway Expansion
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
Policymakers should shun massive road expansion projects in favor of those that push Americans to drive less, a watchdog group said today. -
NS Appoints Sutherland VP Law
Jun 26, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
Norfolk Southern Corp. has named Vanessa Allen Sutherland vice president law. -
Environmentalists, Industry Seek High Court Review in HFC Suit
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and chemical manufacturers are asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate ruling that largely vacated an Obama EPA rule limiting hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants that act as potent greenhouse gases, arguing the ruling “destroys” a core Clean Air Act program. -
Leading California’s Legal Charge
Jun 26, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) insists that he doesn’t have an ax to grind with the Trump administration, but he’s not afraid to give the president all he’s got when it comes to defending the environment.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Flexible Packaging Project Names Sorting Partner
Jun 26, 2018 | Resource Recycling
By Jared Paben
MRFF has found a MRF.
The Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) project will partner with a Pennsylvania sorting facility to generate bales of flexible plastic packaging (FPP). The materials recovery facility (MRF), which is owned by J.P. Mascaro and Sons, will install optical sorters to separate the flexible packaging from the single-stream mix.
“Our company is thrilled to partner with the MRFF partners on this project,” Joseph P. Mascaro, company director of sustainability and general manager of the MRF, stated in a press release. “We are confident that the pilot will be successful and will generate industry data to show FPP generators, municipalities and the recycling industry that FPP can be efficiently and economically recycled and marketed instead of being landfilled.”
MRFF is a years-long industry project to solve challenges holding back recycling of FPP, a category that includes items such as films, wraps, bags and pouches. FPP recycling has been held back by issues related to sorting, contamination and the multi-material makeup of many FPP items. At the same time, FPP is quickly taking over stores shelves, prompting new efforts to find recycling and recovery solutions.
Consulting and research firm Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) is leading the project on behalf of the Foundation for Chemistry Research and Initiatives, a nonprofit organization established by the American Chemistry Council (ACC).How we got here
MRFF is one of a handful of recent efforts exploring recovery of FPP materials. A separate project, called the Hefty EnergyBag program, directs residents to place FPP and other difficult-to-recycle packaging types in orange bags. The bags are then taken to a MRF, pulled off the sorting line, baled and shipped to energy recovery facilities.
Additionally, Recycle BC, the extended producer responsibility group for printed paper and packaging in British Columbia, has begun accepting FPP drop-offs at depots around the province. The goal of the project, which is run in partnership with reclaimer Merlin Plastics, is to see if the materials can be recycled. Any FPP that can’t be recycled will be processed into fuel for burning.
MRFF takes a different approach in that it’s testing how FPP placed in a single-stream cart can be effectively separated at MRFs. And it’s looking at both mechanical recycling and energy recovery options for the bales.
The goal is to generate data on the most efficient and economical ways to recycle FPP, according to the release.
The Pennsylvania pilot project won’t be the first time MRFF has tested the ability of MRFs to sort FPP. In 2015 and 2016, RRS conducted smaller-scale tests at MRFs in San Diego; Surrey, British Columbia and Regina, Saskatchewan. The tests involved adjusting sorting equipment, including screens and optical sorters, to see how well they could separate FPP that had been thrown into the mix. One of the challenges was separating FPP from paper.
In August 2017, RRS also tested sorting at a large, high-tech MRF in North Las Vegas, Nev. According to a recently uploaded test recap, that effort involved planting RFID tags on 3,217 pieces of FPP and dropping them into the sorting system over a 15-minute period. Overall, the FPP made up 3 percent of the weight of material that passed through the single-stream system during that time. RFID readers placed at critical locations in the MRF monitored the FPP flows.
The MRF had a new optical sorter programmed to eject non-fiber materials, including FPP, to clean up paper bales. Part of the study involved seeing how effective it was at separating FPP.
The optical sorter itself was highly effective, missing only 3.4 percent of FPP. But the problem was much of the FPP never got to the optical sorter because, earlier in the system, it had followed newspaper and cardboard through the fiber screens. In fact, 60 percent of the FPP, by count, followed paper through the first newspaper screen into the paper bunker. The good news is the amount of fiber in the recovered FPP appeared to be relatively low, making up roughly 15 percent by weight.
RRS’ Chris King wrote in his report that the results showed additional optical sorters would be needed in any pilot MRF. Specifically, the optical sorters would be needed to capture FPP that followed fiber through the screens. The screens would also need to be adjusted to balance the flow of FPP and ensure they don’t overwhelm an optical sorter with huge volumes of FPP, he wrote.Pennsylvania project
The MRFF project first advertised it was looking for a facility to partner with in early 2017. Recently uploaded documents indicate project partners by May 2017 had preliminarily settled on J.P. Mascaro and Sons’ TotalRecycle MRF in Berks County, Pa. as the best candidate. At that time, they put conversations with other MRF operators on hold.
RRS estimates the TotalRecycle MRF will recover 3,100 tons per year of post-consumer FPP for various end markets. The MRFF project also involves testing end uses for the recovered plastic. End markets for recycled FPP remain underdeveloped in the U.S.
The TotalRecycle MRF will install optical sorters, provided by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, to target the FPP. The two-year pilot program will begin in late 2018 with the installation of the sorting equipment, followed by an internal testing period. RRS and the project team estimate communities served by TotalRecycle will be able to add FPP to their ‘accepted’ list in 2020.
“We are all committed to the success of this program and look forward to adding recycled flexible packaging into the circular economy,” Steve Sikra, MRFF chairman and associate director of global research and development for Procter & Gamble, stated in the release. “As a side benefit, we expect to see the quality of J.P.’s other recycling streams improve as the flexible plastics are processed.”
The MRFF collaborative members include the following companies and organizations: ACC, Amcor, Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), Canadian Plastics Industry Association, Dow Chemical, Flexible Packaging Association, LyondellBasell Industries, Nestlé Purina PetCare, Nestlé USA, PepsiCo, Plastics Industry Association, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Sealed Air and Target. Chevron Phillips Chemical recently signed on as a new member.
https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/06/26/flexible-packaging-project-names-sorting-partner/
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Groups Urge Senate to Confirm Environment Nominee
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Industry organizations are urging the Senate to take up President Trump's nominee to head the Justice Department's environment division.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Jeffrey Bossert Clark's nomination in January, but the full Senate has yet to hold a vote.
Trump first nominated Clark to be assistant attorney general for DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division in June 2017. Since the inauguration, Jeffrey Wood, a former Southern Co. lobbyist and staffer for then-Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, has been serving in the position in an acting role.
"His [Clark's] confirmation is needed to provide the Justice Department with key leadership and experience as it prepares to address critical litigation on a number of important energy and environmental topics," the groups wrote in a letter yesterday.
The letter's 24 signatories include: the American Chemistry Council, the American Farm Bureau Federation and other agriculture groups, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Clark is a partner at the D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he represented BP PLC during litigation regarding the oil company's 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico, and is a former George W. Bush DOJ official.
If confirmed, Clark would be both in charge of defending EPA, the Interior Department and other government agencies in litigation, as well as overseeing DOJ's enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.
His nomination has been strongly opposed by both Democrats and environmental groups.
During the confirmation process, he came under fire for saying the Obama administration's environmental agencies pursued "an agenda out of control," claiming that ground-level ozone pollution blocks ultraviolet radiation and expressing doubts about climate change science.
"He questions the science of climate change, and he's being asked to head up the division to protect the environment," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said at the Judiciary Committee's January vote.
January's confirmation vote was the second time the Judiciary Committee had approved Clark. In August, the panel sent him to the Senate floor after a contentious confirmation hearing, but the full Senate failed to take up the nomination before the end of the year. The Senate sent the nomination back to the White House in December, along with several other nominees for environment- and energy-related positions.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/06/26/stories/1060086495
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Former Officials File Brief Against Advisory Board Policy
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
One-time acting EPA chief Bob Perciasepe and a half-dozen other former federal officials have leapt into the legal fray over the agency's restrictions on advisory board service.
That policy, announced by current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt last fall, "tries to solve a problem that does not exist," Perciasepe and the others wrote in a friend-of-court motion filed yesterday in one of the lawsuits challenging the ban on service by active grant recipients.
While Pruitt maintains the prohibition is supposed to preserve the "objectivity" of advisory board members, the motion argues it will keep some of the most qualified researchers from joining EPA panels like the Science Advisory Board (SAB).
By grounding the agency's decisions in science, advisory boards may also serve as a check on over-regulation, the motion adds.
Because the SAB twice refused to support the designation of perchloroethylene as a carcinogen in 1987 and 1991, EPA was dissuaded from regulating the chemical, which is used by dry-cleaning businesses, said the motion.
The former federal officials filed the motion, which still needs a judge's approval to be entered in the court record, in one of the three suits seeking to void Pruitt's policy (E&E News PM, Dec. 21, 2017).
EPA attorneys are seeking to have the suit, brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, dismissed partly on the grounds that Pruitt has untrammeled authority over advisory board appointments (Greenwire, March 12).
The other two cases are pending in U.S. district courts for Massachusetts and the Southern District of New York.
Perciasepe, who currently heads the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, served as EPA deputy administrator from 2009 to 2014 as an appointee of President Obama. His tenure included a five-month stint as the agency's acting chief in 2013.
The other six officials, whose work for the federal government dates as far back as the Reagan administration, are: Karl Brooks, former EPA Region 7 administrator and acting head of the agency's Office of Administration and Resources Management; Lynn Goldman, who once led EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention; Dr. Bernard Goldstein, former head of EPA's Office of Research and Development; Kenneth Olden, past director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment; Terry Yosie, former head of SAB; and David Michaels, who headed the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Obama administration.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/06/26/stories/1060086501
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IRIS Staff Weigh Dual Modeling Approaches For Chromium Cancer Risk
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA staff are considering presenting both a linear and a non-linear modeling approach for its upcoming revised assessment of the cancer risks of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), an approach that if adopted would mark a win for industry officials who have long sought to provide regulators with such a range of values rather than a single estimate generated by the conservative linear approach.
“We haven't yet determined if the oral cancer assessment will assume linearity or non-linearity at low doses for the final [Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS)] value. This is something that we're still determining,” one of the assessment's chemical managers, Alan Sasso, said during a presentation to North Carolina's Science Advisory Board (SAB) at a June 18 meeting in Raleigh, NC.
“Regardless of what the final IRIS values are, we still may present both approaches in our assessment, that's linear and non-linear, just to provide insights into the uncertainties related to model choices. We haven't decided yet, but we may present both,” Sasso added.
Presenting a non-linear cancer risk model, even if alongside a linear model, would be a big win for industry and other regulated entities. They have long urged the agency to adopt such an approach, hoping to present regulators with a range of options and to underscore scientific uncertainty.
The question of how Cr6's cancer risk should be assessed was at the heart of EPA's decision to table its 2010 draft IRIS assessment of the chemical’s risks to human health.
EPA started re-assessing its 1998 Cr6 report following a landmark 2008 study from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) indicating for the first time that Cr6 could cause cancer when ingested in drinking water.
Previously, Cr6 had been recognized as a carcinogen only when inhaled.
In its previous draft, EPA used the default linear cancer modeling approach -- a strict method which assumes that there is no safe level of exposure -- to assess Cr6's cancer potency. The agency's 2005 cancer risk assessment guidelines direct risk assessors to use this linear default when it is unknown how, biologically, an environmental contaminant causes cancer, or if it does so through a mutagenic mode of action (MOA).
The strict assessment led industry groups to fund an extensive study into Cr6's MOA, and how the NTP study could have produced the results that it did.
The consultants eventually published a risk analysis based on the research program arguing that Cr6 had a non-mutagenic MOA and urging the agency to use non-linear modeling, producing a more lenient risk level than EPA's drinking water standard for total chromium, which includes both Cr6 and other forms of the compound.
EPA's draft assessment stalled because some members of the peer review panel that reviewed the draft urged the agency to delay its completion until industry's MOA research program completed its work.
Environmentalists decried their calls, arguing that several members of the panel had industry affiliations that should have removed them -- calls that eventually resulted in EPA updating its peer review handbook.
Different Approaches
EPA's consideration of both linear and non-linear approaches comes as some state officials are detailing different approaches for any assessment of CR6.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), for example, used the consultants' research to finalize its assessment of Cr6 in 2016.
The author of its assessment, Joseph Haney, reiterated to NCSAB June 18 his position that Cr6 is not mutagenic and should not be assessed using a strict linear approach.
“Without consideration of nonlinear [toxicokinetics] it appears at least to me that the simple application of a [slope factor] progressively overestimates target tissue dose and risk at progressively lower and more environmentally relevant doses,” Haney said. “The bottom line is that our detailed review of the available data indicates to us that a nonmutageinc MOA is best supported by the scientific evidence.”
But Alan Stern, a risk assessor with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), made the case for using a mutagenic MOA.
NJDEP has not adopted Stern' published risk estimate, but is instead waiting for EPA to publish its final number, though that could change, Stern said.
Stern followed EPA's approach in its 2010 draft assessment, concluding that Cr6 is mutagenic and using linear extrapolation for the cancer risk modeling.
Stern presented several arguments to back his view that Cr6 is mutagenic and thus linear modeling should be used, including “strong evidence” of mutagenicity in two studies as well as noting that in the NTP rat bioassay, the tumors in the rats' mouths “occurred without any obvious tissue damage, consistent with a mutagenic MOA.”
After EPA delayed the Cr6 assessment in 2011, leaders decided to update the assessment of Cr6's inhalation risks as well as the oral risks. Now, though, the assessment's other chemical manager, Catherine Gibbons, said the program has decided to focus its review of inhaled Cr6's effects to quantifying those risks after deciding that the chemical's general cancer risks are settled.
“What I can tell you . . . the assessment will include an evaluation of the evidence for cancer, as well as non-cancer effects for respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic, hematological, immunological, reproductive, developmental systems for oral and inhalation routes of exposure,” she said.
“We are also not planning to qualitatively re-evaluate whether [Cr6] is a carcinogen or nasal irritant when inhaled. It was decided that these are very well-understood effects of inhaled [Cr6]. So instead we will focus our energy on identifying data that may improve our quantitative dose-response analysis for cancer and nasal irritation when inhaled. We will also develop cancer and non-cancer values for the oral route of exposure.”
IRIS Changes
The decision is not surprising considering changes that the new leaders of the IRIS program are making. Tina Bahadori and Kris Thayer, who took the helm of IRIS in the waning days of the Obama EPA, are seeking to make the program more productive and responsive to agency partners by compartmentalizing chemical assessments that answer pressing questions rather than the broad reviews of all pathways and effects that have historically characterized the program's products.
They have also worked to fully deploy systematic review approaches in the program, with the goal of strengthening the assessments and making the decision-making behind them more transparent. Bahadori and Thayer gave a presentation at the June 1 meeting of EPA's SAB announcing they would release new systematic review protocol documents for the Cr6 and arsenic assessments -- both already years in the making -- in the final quarter of fiscal year 2018, which ends Sept. 30.
Gibbons told the North Carolina SAB she expects the protocol document will be released “for public comment this summer, in July or August, to be consistent with our current approach. … Because the protocol is a methods document, it will not discuss our interpretation of the literature. That won't be available until the draft itself released in fiscal year 2020.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/iris-staff-weigh-dual-modeling-approaches-chromium-cancer-risk
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EPA Critic Praises Science Rule For Ending Strict Default Risk Approach
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
A toxicology professor and longtime critic of EPA and other federal agencies' conservative default approach to assessing human health risks is praising the agency's science rule for seeking to end its default use of so-called linear dose-response modeling, which assumes no safe level of exposure.
In recent comments, Ed Calabrese, a toxicology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst praises EPA's proposal on science transparency for seeking to eliminate EPA's use of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for assessing cancer risk, where risk assessors assume that any exposure presents some level of risk.
Industry groups and Republican lawmakers have long criticized the default approach -- which forms the basis for EPA's 2005 guidelines for how the agency assesses cancer risks -- charging it is overly conservative and results in stricter standards than are necessary to protect human health.
Calabrese and his co-authors characterizes EPA's proposed rule as a proposal “to no longer use the LNT as the default model in cancer risk assessment,” which they applaud as “correct and long overdue.”
The proposed rule, signed in April by Administrator Scott Pruitt, generally seeks to require that the science underlying any major EPA regulatory decision is publicly available -- down to the raw data and models supporting it -- though it does provide the administrator with discretion to waive the requirement on a case-by-case basis.
The rule also seeks to establish a “clear policy for the transparency of the scientific information used for significant regulations: specifically, the dose response data and models that underlie what we are calling 'pivotal regulatory science'.”
The proposal defines “pivotal regulatory science” to mean "the studies, models, and analyses that drive the magnitude of the benefit-cost calculation, the level of a standard, or point-of-departure from which a reference value is calculated. In other words, they are critical to the calculation of a final regulatory standard of level, or to the quantified costs, benefits and other impact on which a final regulation is based."
Traditionally, EPA's dose-response default approach to performing cancer risk analyses has been based on LNT. The agency's 2005 cancer risk assessment guidelines direct EPA to use this approach when an environmental chemical is mutagenic, or when it is unknown, biologically, how it causes cancer.
EPA's proposal does not appear to mention the guidelines, though it would alter them.
EPA's cancer guidelines present an approach that industry and Calabrese have long protested. Linear assessments often produce stringent estimates of risk, which can lead to strict regulations. Industry often argues that chemicals have threshold dose-responses that must be exceeded before exposures can cause harm -- a theory that would result in less stringent regulations.
Pending Assessment
There may already be signs that the agency is considering moving away from the linear default. Officials told the North Carolina Science Advisory Board earlier this month that they are considering presenting both linear and non-linear approaches in an upcoming rewrite of the agency's assessment of hexavalent chromium.
Calabrese, a proponent of the biphasic hormetic dose-response model, which proposes that exposure to extremely low doses of chemicals can over time lead to biological resistance, has long argued that linear dose-response is an inaccurate scientific theory put forward in the 1930s and '40s by geneticists who sought personal success by advancing their theory.
In an early sign that the proposed rule was seeking to reverse LNT, EPA's statement announcing release of the proposed rule quoted Calabrese, who said it represents “a major scientific step forward by recognizing the widespread occurrence of non-linear dose responses in toxicology and epidemiology for chemicals and radiation and the need to incorporate such data in the risk assessment process."
His comments to the proposed rule's docket acknowledge his “longtime support” from the U.S. Air Force and ExxonMobil Foundation.
“Given the present EPA proposal, its major challenge is whether a cancer risk assessment default model is needed, and, if so, what should it be? A default model in cancer risk assessment gets around the practical impossibility of testing agents for cancer risk over a large number of doses and with very large numbers of animals.”
Calabrese argues that the best way for EPA to emerge from the “regulatory quagmire of using the historically corrupt and scientifically flawed LNT model” is through “the use of dose response model uncertainty, that is, using the leading dose response models and determining where they optimally converge to yield the so-called regulatory sweet spot … where health benefits are optimized and risks are minimized.”
Calabrese and his colleagues propose developing “a practical and scientific means to integrate the threshold, LNT, and hormetic dose response models, the three models with the most toxicological gravitas based on the peer-reviewed published literature.” They acknowledge that while they “strongly favor the hormesis model and feel it is far superior to the threshold model and even more so to the LNT model,” each model has its “strengths and limits.”
The authors explain they advocate for this approach “because it has the potential to integrate the best scientific features of the three models while limiting/minimizing the possibility of error.”
Calabrese and colleagues describe agreement among the models as an “attractive feature” of their integrated approach, stating that “the nadir of the hormetic dose response, based on a large number of studies in the hormetic data base (Calabrese and Blain, 2011), and the 'safe' exposure estimate using the threshold dose response model with a standard 100-fold uncertainty factor yield essentially the same value. Thus, these two models provide an agreement, even though they offer a different toxicological interpretation (i.e. no effect/safe threshold interpretation versus beneficial hormetic interpretation).”
Further, Calabrese argues that even the LNT model is not completely left out in this approach. “At this same dose, the LNT model was found to yield a cancer risk approximately 10^-4 (or 1 per 10,000 people over an 80-year lifespan). This value represents a low risk within society, which is not detectable via epidemiological evaluation under the best of research conditions. It is also about 500-fold lower than the cancer risk from background (i.e. spontaneous tumors).”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-critic-praises-science-rule-ending-strict-default-risk-approach
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US Raises Concerns Over EU's EDC Pesticides Criteria
Jun 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The US has voiced concerns over how the EU's recently adopted criteria for identifying endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plant protection products (PPPs) will affect trade.
In a 20 June statement to the WTO, it said it is concerned at the "EU's hazard-based approach to regulating substances identified as endocrine disruptors."
And, the statement adds, the revised criteria "will lead to the banning of many more substances than previously suggested in the EU's 2016 WTO notifications."
The EU has yet to clarify its policy on managing maximum residue limits (MRLs) for pesticides that meet the criteria, in food or feed imported from outside the Union.
The US says it is worried that the policy will consider the hazard of each substance – in line with the hazard-based criteria – and ignore the circumstances informing the environmental and human health risk involved in its use.'Legitimate factors'
Europe has said it plans to consider MRLs on a case-by-case basis, taking account of "legitimate factors" and the precautionary principle.
However, the US statement questions this, saying that: "No one has answered what a 'legitimate factor' is, which leads to an ad-hoc approach to the precise legal regime that may apply."
The communication asks the EU to explain: "What the factors are, how these relate to safeguarding human health and the environment, how long the process is anticipated to take, and how producers can effectively take advantage of it."
And the letter asks how the interim EDC criteria will affect PPPs, in the run up to the final criteria entering into force on 10 November.
The US notes that the EU recently withdrew authorisation for the active substance, pymetrozine, because it met the interim criteria.
"We ask that the EU explain how these actions achieve its objectives," the US statement reads. "By simply identifying hazards without identifying potential risks … these actions may offer no benefit, and indeed hurt the public by removing access to important tools."
The European Commission adopted criteria to identify EDCs in PPPs in April. Similar criteria for biocides became applicable earlier this month.
https://chemicalwatch.com/68024/us-raises-concerns-over-eus-edc-pesticides-criteria
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Council of Ministers Urges Action on Tracking Substances of Concern
Jun 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The EU’s Council of Ministers has called on the European Commission and Echa to implement measures, to ensure that by 2030 substances of concern in materials – including those in imported articles – can be traced through the entire supply chain. This includes end-of-life operations.
The Council urged the Commission to develop harmonised tools to track the substances, in conclusions for delivering on the EU action plan for the circular economy, adopted earlier this week.
Under REACH, suppliers of articles are already obliged to provide information on those containing SVHCs. And recently agreed provisions in the revised waste framework Directive "complement REACH obligations in this respect", it said.
There is a need, the Council added, to ensure a more consistent approach between chemicals and waste classification rules.
In order to establish non-toxic material cycles, the Commission, Echa and member states should define substances of concern to be "minimised or eliminated" in products and waste, it said. This will promote the circularity of products and achieve a high level of protection of human health and the environment.
It also emphasised the importance of ensuring a level playing field between EU and non-EU produced articles. It suggested this could be done through "promoting the timely use of restrictions and enforcement of chemicals, product and waste legislation at EU borders".
And the Council explicitly called on the Commission to ensure that SVHCs in imported articles face the same restrictions as substances that are not authorised under REACH for use in EU-produced articles.Managing waste
On waste management, the Council said the detoxification of waste containing legacy substances should be the preferred option. However, it added that to reach non-toxic material cycles, "certain derogations" to such criteria may be appropriate in individual cases subject to conditions – provided that risks for human health and the environment are adequately controlled and properly communicated.
It also encouraged the Commission to develop methods to tackle management of waste containing substances of concern. And it said that, in consultation with member states, it wants the EU executive to identify waste types that typically contain legacy chemicals and that could successfully be recycled in a "restricted set of specific applications that are safe for health and the environment".
It urged the Commission to develop concrete actions to remove "technical, financial and market barriers" that hinder recycling and prevent the uptake of secondary raw materials. This could include finding effective means to avoid, remove or reduce the presence of substances of concern "as much and as soon as possible" to ensure non-toxic material cycles.Fitness check
The Council also asked the Commission to "urgently conclude" its fitness check of all non-REACH chemicals legislation. In January, the EU executive said the review had been delayed until the end of the year.
And it wants it to develop, in close collaboration with member states, an "overarching ambitious strategy for a non-toxic environment" in line with the 7th EAP and the Better Regulation agenda.
It has asked the Commission to produce an annual progress report on the implementation of the action plan for the circular economy. This will include:measures proposed in the plastics strategy; andthe results of consultations and measures addressing the interface between chemicals, product and waste legislation.Microplastics
The conclusions also addressed the EU plastics strategy. The Commission is being pushed to explore options for a "full ban on intentionally added microplastics in products from which releases to the environment are inevitable". In January, it had asked Echa to prepare a REACH Annex XV restriction dossier on the use of intentionally added microplastic particles to all consumer and professional use products.
However, the Council is calling for the proposal of further "concrete measures" to combat releases from other major sources. These include introducing requirements in the ecodesign Directive and addressing microplastics through best available techniques reference documents.
And it calls for the Commission to boost research and innovation in reducing unintentional leakage of microplastics into the environment.
https://chemicalwatch.com/68023/council-of-ministers-urges-action-on-tracking-substances-of-concern
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(ACC Mentioned) As Trump Doubles Down on Coal, West Virginia Lawmakers Are Eyeing Natural Gas
Jun 26, 2018 | Roll Call
By Jeremy Dillon
As President Donald Trump readies a strategy to bail out coal and nuclear power plants in part to help reinvigorate Appalachia’s struggling coal industry, West Virginia lawmakers are working to up the state’s participation in the natural gas business.
Their effort to clear a path for the federal government’s financial participation in a massive storage and trading hub for liquids extracted from natural gas could bring more than 100,000 jobs to the state, advocates say. Those liquids are used as feedstock for plastic manufacturing, so it could also turn the state into a major chemical and industrial center as manufacturers look for a steady supply of low-cost raw materials.
To achieve that, the lawmakers have launched a series of bills and administration lobbying to protect a Department of Energy loan guarantee program primed for the chopping block by conservatives who want to get the federal government out of the energy financing game.
But there’s no small irony in the approach: Such a hub is likely to bolster an industry that has been a source of woe for West Virginia coal miners. But jobs are jobs, and for West Virginia, natural gas would represent a new chapter in its storied energy resource production history.
“When natural gas development started, there was a lot of competition [with] coal. But you know they are both energy resources,” said Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. “We know how to do energy in our state. And natural gas is more versatile than coal obviously, so all those rivalries have gone by the wayside.”
The proposed $3.3 billion Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub would centralize the burgeoning natural gas liquid extraction industry in the Utica and Marcellus shale formations. A network of pipelines extending into southeastern Ohio and Pennsylvania would lead to a central storage center at a to-be-determined location in the four-state area.
The aim, according to the developers, is to take advantage of the resources like ethane, propane and butane in the natural gas pulled from the shale shelf that can be processed out for use in chemical industries, among other uses. According to a December 2017 Department of Energy report, the extraction of such liquids from the Appalachian region is projected to increase over 700 percent in the 10 years from 2013 to 2023, hovering above 1 million barrels produced a day by 2020.
But to fully take advantage of that increase, a corresponding infrastructure build is needed, DOE argued.
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The American Chemistry Council, the trade group representing major chemical companies like DowDuPont Inc., concluded in a May 2017 report that the creation of an Appalachian petrochemical trading and storage hub and related infrastructure could lead to an additional $36 billion in chemical industry investment in the region and more than a 100,000 new jobs.
“I’m fully confident that a healthy downstream petrochemical manufacturing sector that could locate here as a result of local abundant supply of natural gas could be a game-changing type of impact for the northwestern region of West Virginia,” said John Deskins, the director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. “We are talking about a largely rural area. There are some elements of a Rust Belt profiling, and it could be a game-changing type of experience for that region. And of course, it could provide much needed tax revenue impacts that would benefit the state overall.”
Currently, most of the material from the region is shipped to the Gulf Coast for processing and refining, eventually winding up back in Midwest and Northeast manufacturing centers closer to more heavily populated areas. That costly movement can lead to modest returns as well as transportation problems.
There is also the question of processing capacity and storage. With most facilities located in the Gulf region, extreme weather like hurricanes knocking out production and raising prices is a concern for the industry.
“You have a major hurricane come up through the Houston channel, and Rick Perry and I have talked about this, it disrupts everything we do in America,” said Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III. “So that’s critical for the defense of our country and for the liability of the energy we need.”
A separate processing hub could also free up more of the Gulf coast for products that can then be exported to countries where natural gas prices are higher. Recognizing it as an opportunity for more than just West Virginia, the Southern States Energy Board, a collection of southern state lawmakers, issued a unanimous resolution in support of the proposed facility.
The propose project is not without its opponents. Local environmental groups like the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition fear the resulting industry buildout could lead to chemical spills and increased exposure to carcinogens. Those groups have also opposed more natural gas extraction activities, citing its environmental impacts.Financing driving Washington action
According to Brian Anderson, who serves as a technology officer with the development group behind the project and is a director of WVU’s Energy Institute, the group would secure about 40 percent of its funding from the private sector. The developers are also seeking a $1.9 billion DOE loan guarantee — the intersection where Washington can make a significant impact.
A loan guarantee from the federal government can attract additional private sector investment because of its stringent methodology to ensure the viability of projects. Of the more than $30 billion loan guarantees across more than 30 projects issued by the Title XVII loan program, the federal government has an estimated loss ratio of 2 percent, according to a 2014 DOE accounting report.
“Having the DOE process is actually quite valuable,” Anderson said. “The process has as much rigor as any Wall Street equity fund debt financing that you would go after.”
In order to smooth that DOE approval process, Capito and Manchin, along with GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and GOP Rep. David B. McKinley of West Virginia, introduced legislation to direct the federal government to coordinate on a feasibility study of a storage hub in the region.
The West Virginia lawmakers also have a bill with Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio to amend the law behind the loan guarantee program to ensure “strategic energy infrastructure projects that are a regional project” qualify for the program. That bill moved out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a voice vote in March.
The storage hub’s application is currently in the second phase of the review process. DOE declined to comment on the review timeline, citing the business sensitivity of the process.
But the faster the better for the project, especially as conservatives and the Trump administration have proposed to ax the program to reduce federal spending. The White House called for its elimination in both of its budget requests for fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019, and the rescissions package that passed the House earlier this month included language to take some $523 million from the Title XVII loan guarantee program.
That bill met resistance in the Senate, where it failed in the Senate last week, and both House and Senate fiscal 2019 Energy-Water spending bills maintained the program despite the administration’s request. Manchin was also able to attach language in the Senate bill to prevent the administration from using any money to shut the program down.
That doesn’t mean the program could not go through some changes, according to GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“You have particularly on the House side folks who don’t really care for the loan guarantee program, and what I shared with [OMB Director Mick Mulvaney] is that loan guarantee is in my view an important program that needs to be reformed, so let’s reform it and let’s not get rid of it,” said the chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/trump-doubles-coal-west-virginia-lawmakers-natural-gas
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Another Pennsylvania Budget Becomes Law Without Natural Gas Severance Tax
Jun 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has signed into law the state’s $32.7 billion budget, which does not include his calls to implement a severance tax on unconventional natural gas production.
Wolf signed the budget late Friday, marking the first time since he took office that lawmakers sent a budget to him before the June 30 deadline that also includes his signature. In previous years, quarrels over spending and taxes led to prolonged budget impasses and Wolf’s decisions to let the state’s spending plans become law without his signature.
The budget includes $2.5 million for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which oversees oil and gas drilling in the state, to fill 35 positions. The agency has been chronically underfunded and understaffed, even as shale development has increased over the years. Wolf requested the funding to help fill positions in programs across the agency, including those that oversee air monitoring and oil and gas drilling, among other things.
The DEP’s $153 million general fund allocation is still just above where it was more than 20 years ago. About half of DEP’s budget comes from state and federal funds, while the other half comes from fees and fines. It is moving forward with a proposal to more than double unconventional oil and gas well permit fees to $12,500 to generate more funding.
While the budget -- signed by Wolf ahead of the general election in November, when he’ll face Republican state Sen. Scott Wagner -- included his request for more education funding, it did not include any new taxes or fees. Wolf, a Democrat, has proposed a severance tax every year since taking office in 2015.
Last February, Wolf proposed a volumetric tax that would have fluctuated depending on natural gas prices. Under the proposal, producers would have paid 4-7 cents/Mcf based on a price range of below $3.00/Mcf to more than $6.00/Mcf. The plan would have retained the state’s impact fee, but it was met with staunch opposition by the oil and gas industry and Republicans.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114842-another-pennsylvania-budget-becomes-law-without-natural-gas-severance-tax
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U.S. Seeks to Export Its 'Energy Miracle' Even as Trade Tensions Mount
Jun 26, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Richard Valdmanis
The administration of President Donald Trump wants to help allies and trade partners replicate the U.S. natural gas and oil production boom by exporting American know-how, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Tuesday, even as trade disputes intensified.
"We are bearing witness to this astonishing energy miracle," Perry said at the opening ceremony of the triennial World Gas Conference, referring to a surge in U.S. fossil fuels production over the past several years made possible by advanced hydraulic fracturing drilling technology.
"But this is not just about exporting our energy bounty, it is about exporting the technology, the know-how, that unleashed our bounty in the first place," he said.
The Trump administration has said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to allies through supply agreements and technology sharing even as it imposes steep tariffs on steel, aluminum and other imports and deals with retaliatory measures against U.S. crops, motorcycles and other products including petroleum.
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The United States has become the world’s biggest natural gas producer, one of the top crude oil producers, and a growing exporter of both since last year.
The administration has said it hopes exporting energy and related technology will help create alternatives to geopolitical rival energy producers like Russia, while also forging bonds with big consumers like China.
AMBITION AND CHALLENGES
The global natural gas industry is currently forecasting rapid growth driven by low-cost production from the U.S. fracking boom and rising demand from Asia.
The International Energy Agency expects global gas demand to grow an average of 1.6 percent per year over the next five years, with Chinese consumption leading the way, according to the latest forecast released Tuesday.
But the trade dispute between the United States and China could make things complicated in the short-term.EDITORS’ PICKSShe Went to Jail for a Relapse. Tough Love or Too Harsh?‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s AttentionWhat We Learned From the Videos of Stephon Clark Being Killed by Police
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Beijing this month proposed 25 percent retaliatory tariffs on U.S. petroleum imports, which are expected to dent sales to the U.S. shale industry's largest customer and further pressure American firms that produce gas as a byproduct of oil drilling.
LNG imports have so far been spared, but the industry is concerned that the supercooled gas could be next if China's talks with Washington sour.
Longer-term, the IEA said the global gas market also faces the challenge of reducing its cost competitiveness in emerging markets, and of tamping down on leaks from the industry of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Gas is widely viewed as one of the cleanest fossil fuels because it burns more efficiently than oil or coal, but gas can be lost in production and transport.
The conference has drawn executives from global energy giants like Exxon Mobil Corp , BP Plc , and Total, along with senior officials from the U.S. State Department’s energy bureau, and ministers from energy producers and consumers like Argentina and Indonesia.
It follows last week’s OPEC meetings in Vienna, where the partner countries agreed on a modest increase in oil production from next month, following calls from major consumers to curb rising fuel costs.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/06/26/business/26reuters-gas-conference.html
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Exxon, Chevron CEOs Warn Trump Tariffs Hurting Oil Sector
Jun 26, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
The CEOs of the two largest U.S. oil companies said Tuesday that tariffs enacted by the Trump administration would slow growth in the U.S. oil and gas sector.
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods and Chevron CEO Michael Wirth, speaking at the World Gas Conference in Houston, said tariffs on imported steel would raise costs on new projects at a time the industry is seeking to expand domestic pipelines and expand LNG export facilities - both areas of interest to President Donald Trump.
"In our country I recognize the administration's desire to support the domestic steel industry but they have also expressed a desire to support the energy sector. Those things need to be balanced out," Wirth said. "These things run the risk of being a bit of a drag on growth."
Woods, who succeeded Trump's former secretary of state Rex Tillerson as Exxon CEO, echoed those comments, saying the tariffs "run the risk of making [energy] projects less competitive."Recommended Video:
Now Playing: Juncker responds to Trump's trade tariffs: 'We can also do stupid'
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has vowed to fight back against US President Donald Trump's threat of a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium imports. "So now we will also impose import tariffs. This is basically a stupid process, the fact that we have to do this. But we have to do it. We will now impose tariffs on motorcycles, Harley Davidson, on blue jeans, Levis, on Bourbon. We can also do stupid. We also have to be this stupid," he said in Hamburg on Friday evening. While Trump may be comfortable with the idea of a trade war, it wasn't just across the Atlantic where the leader's plans ruffled feathers. "We are impressing upon the American administration the unacceptable nature of these proposals that are going to hurt them every bit as much as they will hurt us," said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The warnings from leaders around the world mirrored those of the International Monetary Fund, which said Trump’s plan would cause damage both internationally and within America itself. Trump however remains defiant, insisting that trade wars are good and easy to win.Media: Euronews
"These are global businesses and free trade underpins our ability to compete," he said. "We're trying to keep a levelheaded voice in the conversation."
In March Trump announced he was imposing a 25 percent tariff on foreign steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum, in a bid to grow the domestic metals industry. That has drawn an outcry from across U.S. industry, perhaps nowhere more so than at oil and gas companies who are in the midst of a historic infrastructure expansion with the shale oil and gas boom showing no sign of abating.
The impacts could go much further than oil and gas, Wirth said.
"The world economy is really growing for the first time in a decade or so," he said. "The risk of trade skirmishes and trade wars start to weigh on peoples perceptions."
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Exxon-Chevron-CEOs-warn-Trump-tariffs-hurting-13026922.php
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Oil and Gas Meet Silicon Valley
Jun 26, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Fred Krupp
There’s a digital revolution coursing through the world’s oil and natural gas industry today. The same tools that have disrupted every sector from manufacturing to finance – cloud computing, predictive analytics, remote sensing and controls – are transforming this one, too. Suddenly, there’s a lot more silicon involved in the oil and gas business.
If all these technologies did was make it cheaper to get oil and gas out of the ground, it would be a cause for concern. But for those of us working to decarbonize the energy system as fast as possible the trend is also opening up crucial new opportunities to protect our climate, by reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with over 80 times the 20-year warming power of carbon dioxide.Game-changing technology raises the bar
Reliable, low-cost sensors and the data they generate are enabling companies to monitor facilities of all kinds for leaks, malfunctions and other wasteful emissions around the clock, instead of every now and then. As this technology continues to emerge, it raises the bar for everybody. In the face of rising expectations about corporate responsibility on climate, best practices should soon become standard practice, and doing nothing simply won’t be an option anymore.
It’s all part of an incredibly powerful wave of innovation changing the way we solve environmental problems, giving both business and advocates like us new ways to drive progress. We call this Fourth Wave environmentalism – it supercharges the kind of partnerships Environmental Defense Fund is known for.Understanding the true scale of the problem
For industry, the incentive is competition. Big energy companies today are betting heavily on natural gas, promoting it as a clean alternative to coal and oil. But stiff competition from increasingly inexpensive renewable energy means companies need to step up their environmental game.
Worldwide, annual oil and gas methane emissions are about 75 million metric tons, according to the International Energy Agency.
Last week, the journal Science published the latest in the pioneering series of methane studies organized by EDF, showing U.S. oil and gas methane emissions are 60% higher than current EPA estimates. Unchecked, those emissions effectively double the 20-year climate impact of gas-fired electricity.
EDF has done a lot to document the scope of this challenge through our methane studies. But we’re not just looking for problems; we’re looking for solutions. As countries and companies work to cut greenhouse gases, oil and gas methane emissions offer the fastest and most cost-effective steps we can take to slow the rate of warming.Partnering for cost-effective solutions
Digitization of the oil and gas industry greatly amplifies the potential synergy between environmental and business goals. Technology used to prevent accidents, improve efficiency and cut costs can also reduce methane emissions. Remote monitoring of well pads, processing plants and distribution systems can help energy companies recover – and sell – much of the methane they waste every year.
That’s why we’re working with companies across the industry to document, demonstrate and deploy effective, efficient ways to reduce methane emissions faster, for less money. Today, Shell and Equinor (formerly Statoil) are testing continuous digital monitoring technologies created by independent developers in response to the EDF Methane Detectors Challenge.Next-level methane mapping, from space
EDF recently announced MethaneSAT, a satellite built specifically to map and measure methane emissions almost anywhere on the planet, including all the major oil and gas basins. We’ll make the findings available for free, giving both countries and companies a new way to spot problems, identify solutions, and measure their progress over time. MethaneSAT is a prime example of the Fourth Wave accelerating our ability to address environmental challenges and scaling the impact of our corporate partnerships.
Since we began our methane work six years ago, we’ve seen the whole suite of industry stakeholders sit up and take notice – from investors to regulators to the communities where oil and gas companies operate. Gatekeepers to lucrative markets in Asia and Europe, where climate concerns are front and center, are also watching.
Whatever you think about the role of oil and gas in the global energy future, reducing these emissions is a both a major challenge and a huge opportunity to reduce the rate of warming we’re experiencing right now. The solutions are simple and straightforward. The International Energy Agency says 75% if the world’s oil and gas methane emissions can be eliminated cost-effectively. To be viewed as responsible corporations, oil and gas companies will have to do just that.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/06/26/oil-and-gas-meet-silicon-valley
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Global Natural Gas Markets Transforming Over Next Five Years, Says IEA
Jun 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Rising supplies from the United States, demand growth in China and more industrial demand will transform global natural gas markets over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.
The global energy watchdog issued Gas 2018, its latest market forecast, and predicted worldwide gas demand will grow at an average rate of 1.6% a year. Demand should reach just above 4,100 bcm in 2023, up from 3,740 bcm in 2017.
Major changes are also evident on the supply side, with the United States leading gas production growth worldwide to 2023, thanks to the onshore revolution. Most new domestic supplies will be geared to export markets as liquefied natural gas (LNG) or through pipelines. The development of destination-free and gas-indexed U.S. LNG exports is expected to provide additional flexibility to the expanding global waterborne traded market.
"In the next five years, global gas markets are being reshaped by three major structural shifts," said Executive Director Fatih Birol. "China is set to become the world's largest gas importer within two-to-three years, U.S. production and exports will rise dramatically, strongly and industry is replacing power generation as the leading growth sector.
“While gas has a bright future, the industry faces tough challenges. These include the need for gas prices to remain affordable relative to other fuels in emerging markets and for industry to curb methane leaks along the value chain."
Chinese gas demand is forecast to grow by 60 % between 2017-2023, underpinned by policies aimed at reducing local air pollution by switching from coal to gas. China alone accounts for 37% of the growth in global demand in the next five years and becomes the largest natural gas importer by 2019, overtaking Japan.
The IEA also is forecasting strong growth in gas use in other parts of Asia, including in South and Southeast Asia, driven by strong economic growth and efforts to improve air quality.
For end-use sectors, industry is forecast to become the largest contributor to the increase in worldwide gas demand to 2023, taking the lead from power generation, which had historically held this role.
The change is especially marked in Asia and other emerging markets thanks to higher gas use in industrial processes and as feedstock for chemicals and fertilizers. Overall, industry accounts for more than 40% of growth in global gas demand to 2023, according to the IEA, followed by 26% for power generation.
LNG also is progressively taking a larger share in global gas trade, especially in Asia. LNG trade as a share of total gas trade is forecast to rise from a third in 2017 to almost 40% in 2023. Emerging Asian markets are expected to account for about half of global LNG imports by 2023. “This continued rise in the LNG market will have significant impacts on trade flows, pricing structures and global gas security,” IEA researchers said.
“The current wave of LNG export projects will increase liquefaction capacity by 30% by 2023. This will be led by an increase in output from the United States, which accounts for nearly three-quarters of the growth in total global LNG exports in the period, followed by Australia and Russia.
“However, a lack of new LNG projects after 2020 could lead to a tightening of LNG markets. Given the long-lead time of such projects, investment decisions will need to be taken in the next few years to ensure adequate LNG supply beyond 2023,” according to IEA.
Price competitiveness also is expected to be crucial for gas to gain a firm foothold in emerging markets.
“This requires market evolutions and reforms, such as the development of trading hubs, opening up of the downstream to competition and fair access to infrastructure,” researchers said. “Improving air pollution will be a key driver of gas demand, especially in emerging markets, and industry's ability to improve its environmental footprint, including by reducing methane emissions and expanding the deployment of carbon, capture, utilization and storage technology, will be critical for gas prospects.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114843-global-natural-gas-markets-transforming-over-next-five-years-says-iea
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Energy Journal: Big Oil Spared Risk of Climate Suit
Jun 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Neanda Salvaterra
JUDGE DISMISSES CLIMATE SUITS TARGETING BIG OIL COMPANIES
Big oil firm executives breathed a sigh of relief after a U.S. judge dismissed lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland alleging that five of the world’s largest oil companies should be held responsible and pay for the impacts of climate change, write the WSJ’s Bradley Olson and Timothy Puko.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a motion by the companies— BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp.—to dismiss the suits, ruling that while global warming was a real threat, it must be fixed “by our political branches.”
The ruling is a blow to an emerging legal campaign by cities and municipalities that are trying to argue that oil-and-gas companies created a public nuisance by producing fossil fuels they knew would result in harmful emissions. New York City and several other local governments in California, Washington and Colorado have also sued on similar grounds.
Meanwhile, oil futures rose on Tuesday on the back of Canadian supply outages and risks to Libyan exports, even as OPEC’s recent decision to ramp up production continued to largely put a cap on prices.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, was up 0.50% to $74.93 a barrel on London’s Intercontinental Exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate futures were trading up 0.24% at $68.23 a barrel.
GE TO SPIN OFF OIL AND HEALTH-CARE BUSINESSES IN LATEST REVAMP
General Electric Co. plans to unload its ownership in oil-services company Baker Hughes and its health-care business, writes the WSJ’s Thomas Gryta.
The moves come as the corporate giant has devised a strategy to come to grips with falling profits in several of its units in recent years.
The onetime industrial bellwether has slashed its dividend and has already set plans to shed numerous businesses. Its shares have tumbled by half in the past year, erasing more than $100 billion in wealth.
The final plan championed by CEO John Flannery is expected to be presented to investors on Tuesday. It focuses GE around its power, aviation and renewable-energy businesses.
SHELL MOVES AHEAD WITH ANOTHER NORTH SEA PROJECT
Royal Dutch Shell has greenlighted its third project in the North Sea, the Financial Times reports.
‘ If mismanaged and the China-U.S. trade war is fully upgraded, it could expand into a financial war, an economic war, a resource war, and a geopolitical war’— Ren Zeping, chief economist at China Evergrande Group
CHINESE EXPERTS QUESTION READINESS FOR A FACEOFF WITH U.S.
Given China’s slowing economy, experts have begun to voice concerns that the country may not be prepared to go against the Trump administration in an all-out trade war, Bloomberg reports. Energy industry executives have warned that the U.S.-China trade spat could destabilize the global economy and hurt the oil sector.
BIG NUMBER: 2023
U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil said it will make a final investment decision on what it describes as a “multi-billion dollar” refinery project in Singapore. If the project is green-lighted, the refinery is expected to come online in 2023, Reuters reports.
FUTURECURVE
Today: API issues forecasts on the U.S. crude inventory.
Wednesday: The U.S. Energy Information Administration releases its weekly petroleum status report.
Friday: Oil-services firm Baker Hughes Inc. releases its count of active drilling rigs, a bellwether for production in the U.S. oil industry.
https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/06/26/energy-journal-big-oil-spared-risk-of-climate-suit/?guid=BL-MBB-68959&mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1&dsk=y
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Judges Grow Frustrated with EPA on Clean Power Plan
Jun 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden and Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today agreed to keep litigation over the Clean Power Plan on hold while EPA continues to work on a rewrite, but three of the nine judges on the panel said they were unlikely to support further delays.
Judges Robert L. Wilkins and Patricia Millett said EPA and industry groups opposed to the climate rule have “hijacked” the court process to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, although they backed the decision to approve another 60-day stay in the litigation.
“If EPA or the Petitioners wish to delay further the operation of the Clean Power Plan while the agency engages in rulemaking, then they should avail themselves of whatever authority Congress gave them to do so, rather than availing themselves of the Court’s authority under the guise of preserving jurisdiction over moribund petitions,” Wilkins wrote in a concurring order Millet joined.
Judge David S. Tatel, in a separate concurrence, said he might also vote against future abeyance requests.
The Supreme Court in 2016 halted the rule while the courts reviewed challenges from conservative states and businesses, and the D.C. Circuit has kept that case on hold while the Trump administration considers replacing the rule. A draft of a narrow replacement was expected this spring but is behind schedule.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Methane Questions Leak to the Surface as Industry Gathers
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Global natural gas leaders gather in Washington, D.C., this week for a triennial confab on the industry's fortunes that meets in the U.S. for the first time since the shale revolution shook up world markets and turned the nation's net gas flow from import to export.
One theme of the World Gas Conference, which starts today with an address by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is the evolution in the world market for liquefied natural gas, which has already shaken off some traditional pricing constraints thanks to greater supply and will continue to shift as new LNG buyers and sellers reshape the market over the coming decade.
As the industry celebrates a world in which natural gas is increasingly competitive with coal both in the U.S. and in fast-growing markets like China, though, an undercurrent of warning threads through the week's agenda on the issue of methane loss from gas infrastructure.
Speaking at a side event before the official conference launch yesterday, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, expressed confidence that natural gas offers benefits over coal for both local air quality and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Gas is much, much better than coal, looking at it from a life-cycle analysis — there is no doubt about it," Birol said.
But the climate is not currently the biggest driver for global gas demand growth.
"This is the main driver of gas demand growth today: to have clean air in Asia and Asian cities," Birol said, pointing to gas's advantage in producing fewer smog-forming emissions than coal.
In today's markets, cheap pipeline gas and LNG are pushing buyers like China toward gas-fired power consumption. But Birol warned that if prices go up in the future, the industry will need to be able to make a strong case for gas's greenhouse gas advantages, too.
"If you want gas to be better than coal, especially when those days come that gas prices go up and coal prices are moderate, there should be a reason for governments and others to weigh in for gas," he said. "If the difference is very little in terms of emissions, I believe it will be a bad result for gas companies. So the wider the emission between gas and coal is, the better it will be for companies."
The IEA released a report today analyzing global markets and forecasting continued growth in gas demand (see related story).
Birol's remarks came during an event jointly hosted by the Environmental Defense Fund and Exxon Mobil Corp. on the methane challenge.
A scientific study led by EDF researchers along with other scholars and published Friday analyzed methane leak estimates from the oil and gas industry to conclude that 2.3 percent of the natural gas produced in the U.S. is leaked into the atmosphere, 60 percent higher than EPA's estimate of 1.4 percent (Climatewire, June 22).
The analysis finds that natural gas still offers climate benefits over coal but narrows its edge, while making the case that industry should move aggressively to stanch that loss using detection and repair technologies available today.
EDF estimates that 75 percent of global methane emissions could be reduced cost-effectively, in part through sale of the recovered gas, and that two-thirds of the leaks could be fixed "at zero net cost."
"This isn't one of these impossible problems where there's no answer; this is a very tractable problem, and actually the solutions are at hand with existing technologies, and inexpensive," EDF President Fred Krupp said yesterday.
"Reducing methane emissions gives us the most impact in the short run" in addressing climate change, he said, and even if the world aggressively moves toward renewable and low-carbon power, it will still be important as natural gas continues to play a role in heating and industrial applications.
Sara Ortwein is the president of XTO Energy Inc., an Exxon Mobil subsidiary focused on U.S. unconventional oil and gas production.
Ortwein said her company has taken voluntary measures to understand and manage its methane emissions, both from an efficiency and environmental footprint perspective. That effort, she said, has already resulted in a nearly 4 percent methane leak reduction since 2016.
But Ortwein took issue with Krupp's portrayal of methane leak reduction as cheap and easy, saying her experience shows it can be resource-intensive to hunt for leaks and the newly available technologies are expensive to purchase and operate.
Ortwein said "sound policies and regulations" would be part of an industrywide push to clamp down on methane emissions, but she warned against stifling natural gas development.
Birol said that as the gas industry comes to grips with methane leakage, it will take data transparency to win broad public support.
In the short run, price will always win out over qualitative metrics like climate footprint with many buyers, he said, but in the longer run, companies "are making a historic mistake" if they don't improve gas's climate profile.
"From my point of view, it would be very myopic just to look at the coal versus gas" balance and relax, he said. "It would be an easy way to get good publicity — leave the other [benefits] aside — and get lots of brownie points" by embracing the issue.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/06/26/stories/1060086395
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Pipeline Regulator Feels the Heat on Climate Change
| Roll Call
By Ethan Howland
To what extent should the federal agency that approves the construction of natural gas pipelines consider their impact on climate change?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has long argued that its job is to assess only the most direct effects of those projects, saying it would be too speculative to consider how producing the natural gas carried by the pipelines and then burned by customers will affect global warming.
But it’s under growing pressure from environmental groups and the courts to change course as the five-member commission decides whether to approve new pipelines and other facilities to deliver more gas to more power producers.
The outcome of that debate could determine how big a role natural gas will play in the business of generating electricity. Gas advocates note that while gas is a fossil fuel, it produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions and costs less than coal. Groups like the Sierra Club say the expansion of natural gas as a power source still locks the United States into higher emissions.
“We’re talking about a massive buildout of gas infrastructure that will impact climate change for decades to come,” said Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, which opposes new fossil-fuel infrastructure.
FERC’s reviews of natural gas infrastructure proposals are guided by the National Environmental Policy Act and the Natural Gas Act.
While NEPA is a “process” statute that simply requires federal agencies to take a “hard look” at the environmental effects of federal actions, FERC’s greenhouse gas reviews have real-world implications for pipeline development, according to former FERC Commissioner Tony Clark.
The large volume of data that goes into an environmental impact statement, he said, “becomes an avenue for litigation and creates opportunities to drag out the timeline. It’s a big part of the keep-it-in-the-ground strategy, challenging every step in the approval process.”
Depending on the makeup of its commissioners, in the future FERC could also use the greenhouse gas analysis to justify rejecting proposed pipelines and liquefied natural gas facilities, he said.Upstream, downstream
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The stakes are high for investors, consumers and the environment. In the last five years, about 2,100 miles of FERC-approved transmission pipelines capable of delivering 38.1 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas started operating, according to the commission.
In the same period, the commission approved additional pipelines totaling 5,375 miles with a capacity of 84.4 billion cubic feet per day to link areas that produce natural gas to major markets around the United States.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America expects companies to spend about $172 billion to build roughly 26,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines in North America by 2035, according to a mid-June report from the trade group. The group forecasts that another $86 billion will be spent on liquefied natural gas and natural gas liquids export facilities.
As required by NEPA, when FERC reviews natural gas projects, it estimates greenhouse gas emissions directly related to infrastructure construction.
In the final years of the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups pressed FERC to estimate how pipelines could spur upstream emissions by encouraging natural gas production as well as downstream emissions from burning of the fuel delivered by the pipelines. FERC had generally argued that it couldn’t accurately estimate upstream and downstream emissions.
FERC lags behind other federal agencies in the depth of its greenhouse gas reviews, according to Jessica Wentz, an attorney with Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “FERC has been pretty consistent in their unwillingness to do upstream and downstream analysis,” Wentz said, pointing to more rigorous reviews when agencies examine coal mine and coal railway proposals.
Courts have also found FERC’s greenhouse gas reviews lacking. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last year vacated a FERC decision approving the $4.2 billion Southwest Market Pipelines project in Alabama, Florida and Georgia, saying the commission violated NEPA by not estimating the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that would be supplied by a part of the project called Sabal Trail.
In a 2-1 decision, the court said FERC must consider downstream greenhouse gas effects that are “reasonably foreseeable,” such as burning the pipeline’s natural gas in power plants. FERC had argued that Florida regulators are responsible for considering the power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions, not the federal agency.
After FERC revised its environmental impact statement for the pipeline project to include downstream greenhouse gas emissions, the commission approved the project in mid-March. However, FERC’s Democratic members — Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick — said the new analysis should have gone further.
For example, LaFleur and Glick said, FERC should have used a “social cost of carbon” tool to help assess the effects of the pipelines.
“I believe we could better account for changes in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the end-use of the transported gas, and calculate a social cost of carbon that accurately reflects the climate change impacts of a particular project,” LaFleur said.
FERC’s Republican majority defended its stance, saying the social cost of carbon tool — which considers costs related to health and climate effects — is more appropriately used by regulators that oversee fossil fuel production or use than for the assessment of infrastructure projects.
The Sierra Club, which led the litigation over the Southeast pipeline project, has asked FERC to reconsider its decision re-approving the project, saying the agency’s greenhouse gas analysis didn’t fully respond to the court order. After FERC issues its response, the Sierra Club is free to return to the appeals court to challenge the commission’s decision approving the partly built project.
FERC itself will likely ask the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s Sabal Trail decision, according to ClearView Energy Partners, an energy policy consultant.
From the Archives: Braving the Summer Heat, Moms and Kids Rally for Cleaner Air and Climate Awareness
Taking the ‘narrow view’
In another decision that triggered dissent among commissioners, FERC in mid-May narrowed the scope of its greenhouse gas reviews by generally not considering upstream and downstream emissions when they can’t clearly be quantified. In its decision on a small New York natural gas project built by Dominion Energy Transmission, FERC said the analysis wasn’t required under NEPA.
“Providing a broad analysis based on generalized assumptions rather than reasonably specific information does not meaningfully inform the commission’s project-specific review,” the majority said.
The information “muddles the scope” of FERC’s obligations under NEPA and the Natural Gas Act, according to the decision.
Based on the appeals court’s Sabal Trail decision, FERC should be doing more, not less, greenhouse gas analysis in its environmental reviews, according to LaFleur. FERC has the broad authority to perform the analysis, she said.
Glick said FERC is taking a narrow view of its responsibilities under NEPA and the NGA. “As a result of the commission’s new policy, we frequently will not know whether [a project’s] benefits outweigh the costs because the commission is not asking enough questions or doing enough analysis,” Glick said.
Clark, the former commissioner who is now an attorney at the Wilkinson Barker Knauer law firm, said he views FERC’s narrowing of its greenhouse gas reviews as a “tweak” that returns the commission to its previous practice.
In the last two years, FERC had been adding “color commentary” in its greenhouse gas reviews that went beyond what was required under NEPA, making it harder to defend the decisions in court, according to Clark.
“FERC wants to write fairly tight orders … to make them more legally defensible on appeal,” Clark said.
Glick, however, said the failure to extend the greenhouse gas analysis increases regulatory risks for pipeline developers by making it more likely FERC’s decisions will be challenged in court.
The Sabin Center’s Wentz said the decision was an attempt by FERC to draw a line on what “reasonably foreseeable” means.
In a June pipeline decision, LaFleur said that even if the commission refuses to assess downstream natural gas emissions, she will perform the analysis herself in her pipeline decisions.
In the rehearing decision for Tennessee Gas pipeline’s Broadrun expansion project, LaFleur used an EPA methodology to estimate how the new infrastructure would affect downstream greenhouse gas emissions. Despite her dissent over the lack of downstream and upstream analysis, LaFleur supported the expansion project.New directions
Groups will likely challenge in court FERC’s decisions in cases where it isn’t clear how natural gas from a pipeline will be used as well as how to determine the point at which emissions are deemed “significant,” Wentz said.
So far, courts have upheld FERC’s decisions not to review upstream emissions, although the plaintiffs’ cases have been weak, according to Wentz.
The Sierra Club’s Martin contends that pipelines clearly have upstream impacts by facilitating natural gas production, which releases methane — a particularly powerful greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere.
The dissents by Glick and LaFleur signal the direction the commissioners want FERC to take in a just started, broad review of how the commission handles natural gas pipeline proposals under a policy set in 1999, according to Clark.
Through a “notice of inquiry” issued in mid-April, FERC is seeking comments covering four areas, including how it weighs emissions from pipelines and whether it should use a social cost of carbon calculation in its assessment.
In the review, FERC plans to explore how the commission determines if a proposed pipeline is needed. Currently, if a pipeline developer has agreements with shippers for capacity on a pipeline, FERC concludes the pipeline is needed.
However, pipeline developers and shippers who use the pipeline are increasingly owned by the same company. Glick, the Sierra Club and others argue that FERC needs to give those situations increased scrutiny when deciding whether a pipeline is needed.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/pipeline-regulator-feels-the-heat-on-climate-change
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King frets About Trump’s Eliminating White House Cyber Post
Jun 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
Sen. Angus King today pressed Energy Department nominee Karen Evans about the administration’s decision to kill a White House cybersecurity post, saying he was concerned about coordination in the federal government.
“I believe we need a leadership position because there are at least seven or eight agencies, by my count, that have responsibilities in cyber, not to mention working with the private sector,” he told Evans, who has been tapped to run DOE’s new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.
“Please urge the administration to think about a cyber coordination function,” King said, hoping the White House might “setup a structure so that there is one point of authority on the issues of cyberthreats in the United States government.”
Evans, who is DOE’s chief information officer, said she would pass the message along.
Last month, POLITICO reported that the White House had eliminated its top cyber post, a move that alarmed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“We know that a cyberattack is coming at some point. It’s the longest windup for a punch in the history of the world and shame on us if we’re not prepared for it,” King said.
WHAT’S NEXT: Any move to restore a cybersecurity post in the White House is unclear.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Derailed Train Spills 230,000 Gallons of Canadian Oil Sands
Jun 26, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
A derailed train has spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into river floodwaters in Iowa.
Fourteen of 32 tanker cars leaked oil after derailing near the city of Doon, in the state's northwestern corner, according to Andy Williams, a spokesman for BNSF Railway Co.
The spillage — of an estimated 230,000 gallons of Canadian oil sands — occurred in floodwaters of the Little Rock River. About 100,000 gallons was contained near the derailment site, according to Williams.
"In addition to focusing on the environmental recovery, ongoing monitoring is occurring for any potential conditions that could impact workers and the community and so far have found no levels of concern," he said.
The cause of the derailment has not been ascertained, though a disaster proclamation from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) blamed flooding on heavy rains.
http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/train-headed-oklahoma-oil-derails-iowa
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Groups Rail Against Highway Expansion
Jun 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
Policymakers should shun massive road expansion projects in favor of those that push Americans to drive less, a watchdog group said today.
In a new report, U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group, and the think tank Frontier Group criticized nine proposed highway projects across the country as "boondoggles," saying many were drawn up when the effect of driving on the climate was hazier than it is today.
The projects include a $9 billion road construction plan in Maryland, a $6.9 billion expansion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a $8.1 billion highway expansion in Austin, Texas. At an estimated total cost of $30 billion, they will increase government debt, chop up neighborhoods and contribute to climate change, according to PIRG.
"The money we spend today decides how we get around tomorrow," Matt Casale, PIRG's transportation program director, said in a statement. "We need to start solving our transportation problems, from potholes to pollution, and not waste money on the type of highway projects that should be in our rearview mirror."
On the list of so-called boondoggles is a $534 million lane expansion of U.S. Highway 101 in San Mateo, Calif., in the northern part of the state. It will add about 70 million vehicle miles driven and 40,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to California transportation authorities. "Meanwhile, funding is needed for projects that could actually help California achieve its climate goals by giving commuters options beyond driving," PIRG said.
EPA figures show transportation was the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, and Americans drive more per person — and generate more carbon in doing so — than any other nationality.
The Trump administration is rolling back climate regulations for the transportation industry, including Obama-era rules that required automakers to make their vehicles more fuel efficient.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt described those rules as "inappropriate" in April, and EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are working on a proposal for new standards.
Watchdog groups say expanding the U.S. highway system, even if vehicle mileage improves, undercuts national and local targets to limit emissions.
"In order to achieve the dramatic reductions in carbon pollution needed to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, the United States and the world must promote low-carbon forms of transportation wherever possible," the report says. "Highway expansion does just the opposite."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/06/26/stories/1060086413
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Jun 26, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
Norfolk Southern Corp. has named Vanessa Allen Sutherland vice president law.
Prior to joining NS, Sutherland served as chief executive officer and chairperson of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board in Washington, D.C.
She also served as chief counsel with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration; counsel and senior counsel with Philip Morris USA; and corporate counsel, senior corporate counsel, and vice president, deputy general counsel with Digex Inc.
Sutherland began her new role yesterday. She reports to John Scheib, executive vice president law and administration.
"Sutherland's experience in the transportation, technology and manufacturing sectors, along with her extensive experience in regulated and regulatory roles, will bring valuable knowledge and fresh insights to the Norfolk Southern team," said Scheib in a press release.https://www.progressiverailroading.com/norfolk_southern/news/NS-appoints-Sutherland-VP-law--54973
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Environmentalists, Industry Seek High Court Review in HFC Suit
Jun 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and chemical manufacturers are asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate ruling that largely vacated an Obama EPA rule limiting hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants that act as potent greenhouse gases, arguing the ruling “destroys” a core Clean Air Act program.
Separate June 25 petitions for a writ of certiorari from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and chemical firms Honeywell and Chemours ask the high court justices to review a split panel ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Mexichem Fluor v. EPA, et al.
In that ruling, the court vacated key parts of EPA's Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) rules limiting HFCs in a variety of end uses, finding that EPA lacks authority to require manufacturers that have already “replaced” ozone-depleting products with another non-ozone depleting product to then switch to a new substitute -- even if EPA has since found that the new substitute is better for the environment or public health.
The SNAP program was originally intended to address chemicals that destroy the stratospheric ozone layer, and HFCs were crafted as an ozone-friendly alternative to chlorofluorocarbons and other chemicals that damage ozone.
However, HFCs act as potent short-term GHGs, and the Obama EPA began using SNAP to require manufacturers to use replacement chemicals that do not deplete the ozone layer and have a far lower global warming potential.
The D.C. Circuit in January refused to rehear the ruling, and the chemical companies that support the rules have previously cited the “extremely high” stakes for the climate if the high court does not review the ruling.
The chemical firms -- which produce HFC substitutes -- and NRDC argue that the ruling took too narrow of a view of the statutory term “replace,” improperly finding it applies only to an initial replacement and not to subsequent replacements of the initial ozone-depleting chemical.
“The court held that such entities are forever free to continue using the original substitutes, no matter how harmful they are compared to safer substitutes that enter the market,” Honeywell's cert petition says.
It asks the Supreme Court to determine if “EPA lacks authority to prohibit the use of a less-safe substitute for an ozone-depleting substance in favor of a safer alternative, just because a company has already begun using the less-safe substitute.”
The companies also underscore their previous climate-related arguments, saying in the cert petition that the Mexichem ruling “demonstrably increases the likelihood of disastrous climate impacts from global warming. HFCs are super greenhouse gases, over a thousand times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
They add that EPA's rules “went a long way toward checking the growth in use of these chemicals.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-industry-seek-high-court-review-hfc-suit
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Leading California’s Legal Charge
Jun 26, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) insists that he doesn’t have an ax to grind with the Trump administration, but he’s not afraid to give the president all he’s got when it comes to defending the environment.
“We’re not looking to pick a fight, but we’re ready for one,” Becerra says.
With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress in addition to the White House, much of the resistance to President Trump’s policies has come at the state level from Democratic attorneys general such as Becerra.
For the Golden State, that has meant 19 separate environmental lawsuits since Trump took office, including nine specifically aimed at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The legal onslaught against the administration, and specifically EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, has helped earn Becerra the reputation of an anti-Trump crusader.
Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Northern California before moving to Los Angeles and serving the state as a congressman for 24 years, says that California did not purposefully take the lead on many of the environmental suits, but he doesn’t apologize for them.
“Our lawsuits weren’t driven by a desire to be out there first, to challenge an action by the administration simply because they were doing an action. It was because we were protecting California and its people and our values,” he said. Which, he added, “ultimately protects the values and interests of people throughout the country.”
Becerra acknowledges, however, that California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) might have been considering the battle with the White House when he appointed him as the state’s top law enforcement officer.
“I don’t think there was any doubt that we knew we were — as a state that’s leading the way on many of these [environmental] issues — going to be a target on many of the actions that candidate Trump talked about,” Becerra said in recent interview with The Hill.
The lawsuits California has filed since include challenges to the EPA’s decision not to implement the Clean Power Plan and its decision to change vehicle fuel-emission standards, as well as a more recent suit against the agency for failing to implement a landfill methane rule.
“No one, including the occupant of the White House, is above the law,” Becerra says. “So we all have to share the real facts and we have to respect the law, and on both accounts I think the Trump administration, including the EPA and Administrator Scott Pruitt, have failed miserably.”
California’s first Hispanic attorney general was born when the state was grappling with the effects of intense smog pollution, and he remembers the major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. He said pushing to protect the state’s rights to keep stringent environmental rules is part of its DNA — and his own.
“I still submit to almost anyone that the greatest environmentalists in our country are poor folks. Poor folks are not just environmentalists by choice, but they are environmentalists by necessity,” Becerra said, nodding to his early life near farms. “Growing up it was not a choice, it was a necessity for me to be a good steward of the land and the water. Now as attorney general it just makes good sense and it is a necessity.”
He said Californians, most of whom recently lived through a multiyear drought, have to face environmental issues head-on.
“As Californians we don’t have a choice. It’s a necessity for us to protect our resources because we don’t have enough water, there’s too much pollution in our air,” he said.
And a number of the state’s legal challenges have been successful.
California and others have forced the administration’s hand on at least 12 instances related to the environment. Wins include a recent EPA reversal on the suspension of a chemical requirement that aimed to help farmworkers handling toxic pesticides.
The policy reversal came less than a month after California, Maryland and New York filed a joint lawsuit against the EPA that argued that suspending the rule would hurt the laborers.
However, California’s biggest battle against the EPA likely still looms ahead: a fight against the agency’s plans to lower the current vehicle emissions standard, which could have an enormous impact on the West Coast.
The EPA declared in April that the Obama-era greenhouse gas rules for cars made between 2022 and 2025 are too ambitious and should be eased, setting up a fight with the Golden State, which currently sets its own car emissions rules and has argued for strong regulations. Twelve other states currently follow those rules, accounting for a third of the nation’s car market.
Just prior to making the announcement, Pruitt told Bloomberg News that California “can’t dictate to the rest of the country” what the emissions levels should be. The EPA has not submitted a final rule change on the topic, but it’s expected this summer.
Becerra at the time called the decision “politically motivated.” Nowadays he says he pays less attention to the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s actions and says he focuses on how his suits can help the country.
“Every one of the 17 or 18 lawsuits on the environment and half of those against EPA are going to help not just California but the entire nation and the people of the country,” said Becerra.
“Where California goes so goes the nation — so when we protect the clean car standards for California, we’re not just protecting the air that Californians breathe, we’re protecting the air that everyone breathes.”
The number of lawsuits he’s lodged against the administration has led to attacks, including during a recent Democratic primary, that Becerra is “obsessed with Donald Trump,” spending too many resources on fighting the White House and not enough on state issues.
Becerra, however, won the early June primary by double digits. He will face Republican Steven Bailey, a retired judge, in November’s general election.
Speaking a week after the win, Becerra showed no intention of slowing down his legal actions.
“We’re going to do what it takes to continue to keep California moving forward,” he said. “We’re not going to sit back. We’re not going to spectate. And we’re going to take charge of our own destiny.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/394064-leading-californias-legal-charge
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