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ACC PM 7/6/2018

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Finally Strikes Out
Jul 6, 2018 | Politico - Morning Energy
By Kelsey Tamborrino

PRUITT FINALLY STRIKES OUT: Today marks Scott Pruitt's last day as EPA administrator after his resignation Thursday afternoon.
(ACC Mentioned) What's the Real Price of Getting Rid of Plastic Packaging?
Jul 6, 2018 | BBC
By Richard Gray

Walking along a short section of stony beach, Claire Waluda stoops briefly to pick up something from between the rocks. It is a brightly coloured plastic bottle top – just one of hundreds of bits of plastic that she finds washed ashore on the remote, windswept island of South Georgia.
Former Coal Lobbyist Would Face a Fight if Tapped to Head EPA
Jul 6, 2018 | Roll Call
By Jeremy Dillon

Fresh off a long fought victory to rid the EPA of the scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt, Democrats and environmental groups have already turned their attention to the next head of the agency that is charged with protecting the nation’s air and water.
How Scott Pruitt Blew It
Jul 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén and Andrew Restuccia

Scott Pruitt’s once bright political future has all but cratered after his fall from grace as head of the EPA, following an avalanche of revelations about his first-class flights, pricey security trappings, backdoor raises for proteges and cozy deals with lobbyists stretching back to his days as an Oklahoma lawmaker.
Energy Industry Sees Brighter Future Without Pruitt
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan

Some environmentalists popped the Champagne corks yesterday when they heard Scott Pruitt had resigned as head of EPA. But that doesn't mean that industry lobbyists were weeping into their pinstriped sleeves.
Scott Who? Onetime Allies Happy to See Pruitt Go
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender and Zack Colman

Scott Pruitt is already an afterthought.
Ewire: Even After Pruitt Exit, Some Investigations Could Continue
Jul 6, 2018 | Inside EPA

Scott Pruitt was facing more than a dozen official investigations over his ethics and spending decisions when he announced he is resigning effective today, and some Democrats say at least a few of those inquiries will continue after he leaves office.
Pruitt’s Political Future Uncertain Back Home in Oklahoma
Jul 6, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Sean Murphy

Scott Pruitt’s tenure as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency ended with his resignation, but political experts in his home state of Oklahoma say he could continue his career in public office.
The Second-Biggest Confirmation Fight This Year?
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen

The Supreme Court battle isn't the only fiercely partisan confirmation fight looming ahead for the Senate.
Agency Solicits Nominations for Science Advisory Board
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly

EPA is gearing up to fill another round of vacancies on its Science Advisory Board this fall, potentially giving Trump administration appointees control of the panel as it undertakes reviews of several closely watched regulatory initiatives.

LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Epa Officials Claim Political Interference in Cancer-Causing Chemical Study: Report
Jul 6, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John Bowden

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say that political appointees put in place by departing administrator Scott Pruittare slowing the release of a report warning that most Americans are exposed to enough formaldehyde on a regular basis to increase risks of cancer.
(ACC Mentioned) Scott Pruitt and His Team Reportedly Suppressed a Study on Cancer-Causing Formaldehyde
Jul 6, 2018 | The Week Magazine
By Summer Meza

Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt may be gone, but his legacy of unethical behavior remains.
(ACC Mentioned) The EPA Is Hiding Proof That a Widely Used Chemical Causes Leukemia: Report
Jul 6, 2018 | New York Magazine
By Eric Levitz

During a Senate hearing in late January, Ed Markey asked then-EPA director Scott Pruitt about a little rumor that he’d overheard.

Energy News

Crude Exports Fall in China Tariff Crosshairs
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold

Beginning this weekend, shale oil country may no longer continue exporting crude to the world's largest oil export destination.
Thanks to Natural Gas, US CO2 Emissions Lowest Since 1985
Jul 6, 2018 | Real Clear Energy
By Jude Clemente

At 80 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), the U.S. just hit another record for dry natural gas production, a 46 percent increase since 2008 when the “shale gas revolution” started.
Delaware River Basin Frack Ban Remanded to District Court
Jul 6, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has overturned a lower court's decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by a small exploration and production company that is challenging the authority of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to enact a de facto moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
Swap Shores up Conocophillips' Position in the North Slope
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson

Two of Alaska's largest oil producers shook up the state's energy industry this week by announcing an asset swap that gives ConocoPhillips Alaska greater control over a promising new oil region in the state, while increasing BP's holdings in the North Sea.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

U.S. EPA Launches Electronic Hazardous Waste Reporting
Jul 6, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson

The U.S. EPA has begun a long-awaited shift to an electronic rather than a paper reporting system to track the movement of hazardous waste from waste generator to treater to storage and disposal facilities.

Environment News

Pruitt's Evolving Views on Climate Change
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Chelsea Harvey

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid a flurry of ethics scandals. But he'll also be remembered for controversies around science.
Trump Official Urges 'Donor-Driven' Push, Without U.S. Cash
Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick

The U.S. representative on the United Nations' Green Climate Fund board suggested this week that the fund be "donor-driven," even though the Trump administration doesn't plan to remain a donor.

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Finally Strikes Out

Jul 6, 2018 | Politico - Morning Energy

By Kelsey Tamborrino

PRUITT FINALLY STRIKES OUT: Today marks Scott Pruitt's last day as EPA administrator after his resignation Thursday afternoon. Though he was only head of the EPA for 500 days, his tenure was marred by a seemingly endless stream of scandals into his ethics, finances and management. Pruitt’s many issues have generated headlines for the past several months, and it was those “unrelenting attacks” on him and his family that he blamed in his resignation letter.
President Donald Trumpannounced Pruitt’s exit in a tweet in which he commended the EPA chief for doing an “outstanding job” at EPA. Trump announced that Pruitt’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, will become acting administrator of the EPA until a permanent replacement can be found.
SO, WHAT HAPPENED? For weeks the White House has maintained it was concerned with the numerous allegations of wrongdoing by Pruitt, all the while affirming Trump still had faith in the administrator, particularly for his deregulatory zeal. But one Republican close to the White House said Thursday that Trump’s support for Pruitt finally dropped when he realized Wheeler could easily carry out the same regulatory rollback — sans the scandals.
For Trump’s part, he told reporters aboard Air Force One there was “no final straw,” but said the decision had been in the works for “a couple of days.” POLITICO’s Anthony Adragna, Alex Guillén and Emily Holden report that among Trump's confidants, North Dakota billionaire oilman Harold Hamm was one of the few hold-outs left defending Pruitt.
The Washington Post reports Pruitt was also drawing scrutiny from the Office of Management and Budget. Officials told the Post OMB had determined that a $43,000 soundproof phone booth installed for Pruitt was a violation of federal law, though the report has not yet been published.
But the news still dismayed prominent GOP donor Doug Deason, who told POLITICO late Thursday that he was "so disappointed in the President’s failure to support Scott against the angry attacks from the loony left." Deason added: "Nothing he did amounted to anything big. He was THE most effective cabinet member by far."
Inside the EPA, the general mood Thursday was one of joy, according to both career staffers and political appointees. “A lot of people are relieved it’s going to stop,” one EPA employee said. There were “a lot of jokes about, ‘Like, what do we do with the tactical pants now?’ A lot of sharing funny tweets we’ve seen out there. There was one that was like, ‘For sale: Barely used secure phone booth. Very motivated seller.'”
WHAT’S IT MEAN? The change-up at the EPA won’t mark a large difference in the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy, and many of the investigations into Pruitt will continue on. But Wheeler, a longtime Washington lobbyist and former Hill staffer, is expected to steer the ship more smoothly. “I have no doubt and complete confidence he will continue the important deregulatory work that Scott Pruitt started while being a good steward of the environment,” said GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, for whom Wheeler formerly worked. “What changes is that Wheeler knows how to get things done at the agency and, in general, in Washington,” a refining industry source told Pro's Eric Wolff over email.
In contrast to Pruitt, Eric and Alex write: “Wheeler is a smooth insider with a penchant for policy details and a reputation for working well with both friends and adversaries. But those who have dealt with him say he's on board with the broad deregulatory agenda that Pruitt and Trump have pursued.”
Career EPA staffers were enthused but wary of Wheeler, who is known around the agency as friendly and competent, a skilled lawyer who knows how to bulletproof regulatory rollbacks, while avoiding the kind of controversy that has propelled Pruitt into the limelight. Wheeler is also expected to engage more with career staffers, rather than relying solely on a tight circle of political appointees, as Pruitt did. “Will this be a turn for the better or more of the same? ... I’d say we’re not optimistic for much better,” one person said. “You can’t fix stupid by replacing Pruitt.”
“[T]he proverbial fox hasn’t left the henhouse,” said Denise M. Morrison, acting head of AFGE Council 238, which represents about 9,000 EPA workers across the country. “Pruitt’s blatant disregard for regulations mustn’t be the standard for his former coal lobbyist successor at EPA, Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler.”
The president said Wheeler was "very much an early Trump supporter,” although some were quick to point out that Wheeler called Trump a “bully” in a Facebook post during the presidential primaries. In a statement to ME, Wheeler said he made those comments during his time on the Marco Rubio campaign. But Wheeler said that when he attended a Trump speech in June 2016, Trump gave “the most comprehensive energy speech by a presidential candidate” he’d ever heard. “I then joined the Trump campaign and worked on environmental policy for him,” Wheeler added.
WHAT COMES NEXT? If Trump were to soon nominate a permanent replacement for Pruitt, the nominee will certainly face an uphill battle in the Senate, where a contentious agenda is already heating up in the lead-up until midterm elections. Senators on both sides of the aisle have condemned Pruitt’s actions, and issues like the Renewable Fuel Standard would be front-and-center in any eventual hearing.
And, even with Pruitt gone, EPA will continue to be forced to release public records detailing how he has managed his agency. One longtime EPA employee said Pruitt’s resignation was overdue and hoped that a criminal investigation would take place — and that he would be indicted. “Congress has seriously abdicated any pretense of oversight,” the source said. “How many Benghazi hearings?”
Read up! POLITICO’s profile on Wheeler here | The complete guide to Pruitt’s scandals here | Pruitt’s full resignation letter here | How Pruitt blew it here | Pruitt’s EPA tenure, in photos | Wheeler's email to staff here
For fun: The Bird, a restaurant in Shaw, has been offering up drink specials whenever a member of the Trump administration is fired. So it should come as no surprise, the restaurant offered $4 happy hour drinks last night, including its “Pruitt Blew It” cocktail special, which features herbs and blueberries. See it here.
FINALLY FRIDAY! I'm your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Andeavor’s Stephen Brown was first to correctly name the Marion Star, the newspaper for which Warren G. Harding was publisher before he was elected president. For today: Name the first sitting House speaker to lose reelection to his House seat. Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @kelseytam, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
MORE FROM THE SUPPRESSED STUDY BEAT: A draft health assessment of one of the most commonly used chemicals in the country is being suppressed by the Trump administration's EPA, current and former agency officials told POLITICO. The assessment details that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of their daily lives to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, Pro's Annie Snider reports. EPA scientists completed the formaldehyde assessment just before Trump took office, the officials tell Annie, arguing that top Pruitt advisers are delaying its release as part of a larger campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals. “They’re stonewalling every step of the way,” the current official said, accusing political appointees of interfering with the formaldehyde assessment and other reports on toxic chemicals produced by EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System.
Pruitt told a Senate hearing earlier this year that he believed the draft assessment was complete — but five months later, it has yet to see the light of day. Meanwhile, internal documents show, a trade group representing businesses that could face new regulations and lawsuits if the study were released had frequent access to top EPA officials and pressed them to either keep it under wraps or change its findings. “As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical,” Kimberly Wise White, a representative of the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel, wrote in a Jan. 26 letter to top officials at EPA. Pruitt appointed White to EPA’s influential Science Advisory Board last fall.
And while Pruitt may be gone from the agency, his replacement also has a history with the chemical, Annie notes. He was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, Inhofe, soughtto delay an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment. Read the story here.
IN THE MEANTIME: Aides on the House Oversight Committee say they'll continue their investigation into Pruitt, despite his exit, with Committee Democrats releasing new transcripts from interviews with some of Pruitt’s aides on Thursday. Three aides acknowledged removing many meetings from Pruitt's calendars deemed “personal,” including retroactively removing reference to a dinner with Cardinal George Pell after his arrest on alleged sexual abuse charges. “I did that because there were — and there have been since — just personal dinners or personal meetings which he has had that if it doesn’t relate to EPA business, I don’t think it’s necessary to put it on the schedule,” chief of staff Ryan Jackson told committee staff.
TRUMP HITS TESTER IN MONTANA: At a Montana rally for GOP Senate candidate Matt Rosendale, Trump took aim at Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, up for reelection in November in a state with particular interest in public lands and conservation policy. “It’s time to retire liberal Democrat Jon Tester,” Trump declared to the crowd. “A vote for Jon Tester is a vote for Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the new leader of the Democrat Party Maxine Waters.” POLITICO's Matt Nussbaum points out, however, Trump's attacks don't seem to have bothered Tester, who took out full-page newspaper ads in the state Thursday that read “Welcome to Montana & Thank You President Trump,” and listing “Jon’s 16 bills signed into law by President Trump” — an attempt to show the state’s Trump-friendly voters that the senator can work with the president. Read more.
BUNDLED UP: It worked so well with the first so-called minibus, House Republicans are expected to bring another spending bundle to the floor this month, according to a notice posted Thursday by the Rules Committee. This time around the 2019 funding package will combine the Interior-Environment H.R. 6147 (115) and Financial Services H.R. 6258 (115) spending bills. Both bills “are flat-funded compared to current spending levels, though not all agencies and programs would see the same levels,” Pro Budget and Appropriations’ Sarah Ferris reports. The package is slated for floor action the week of July 16.
STUDY LOOKS AT TRUMP COAL PLAN CONSEQUENCES: The Trump administration’s plan to prop up economically struggling coal and nuclear power plants would result in 353 to 815 premature deaths in 2019-20 due to the additional emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, according to a new study from Resources for the Future, an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington. The paper also calculated that each year the policy is in effect would cause 1 death for the 2 to 4.5 coal-mine jobs that it supports. The administration’s plan, which it says is being pursued in the interest of national security and is detailed in a draft DOE paper, would delay the retirement of plants that have announced they will close by the end of 2020. Such a policy would support 790 coal-mine jobs, the study found, “though it would be likely to reduce economy-wide employment.” Read the report here.
EERE GETS ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY: While the president’s permanent pick for DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy office awaits confirmation, Pro’s Darius Dixon reports Cathy Tripodi will take on the role of acting assistant secretary for EERE. Dan Simmons was nominated for the permanent role last month by the White House. “As the confirmation process moves forward, Daniel has moved to Environmental Management to serve as an adviser to their leadership team,” Alex Fitzsimmons, who has been Simmons' chief of staff, wrote in an email.
Tripodi joined DOE in January 2017 and has been the director of the department’s Lab Operations Board, which coordinates research and mission objectives between the agency headquarters and its far-flung national laboratories.
EU EXTENDS RUSSIA SANCTIONS: The EU extended sanctions against Russia for another six months on Thursday over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, POLITICO Europe’s Magdaline Duncan reports. The sanctions target, in part, Russia’s energy sector by limiting access to EU markets for three energy companies. EU leaders have said that the sanctions will be lifted once all sides in Ukraine commit to the cease-fire agreed in the Minsk accords.
PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR TAKES IT TO COURT: Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced Thursday his government would go to court to challenge the authority of the island territory’s federal oversight board to impose policies on the commonwealth, Pro Financial Services’ Colin Wilhelm reports. The oversight board in question was established by Congress to address Puerto Rico’s debt and has mandated cuts to pensions and government spending in its most recent recovery plan.
— Separately, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said this week that 99.9 percent of power has been restored in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria — 10 months after the hurricane destroyed Puerto Rico’s grid.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-energy/2018/07/06/pruitt-finally-strikes-out-272028

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(ACC Mentioned) What's the Real Price of Getting Rid of Plastic Packaging?

Jul 6, 2018 | BBC

By Richard Gray

Walking along a short section of stony beach, Claire Waluda stoops briefly to pick up something from between the rocks. It is a brightly coloured plastic bottle top – just one of hundreds of bits of plastic that she finds washed ashore on the remote, windswept island of South Georgia.
Located in the south Atlantic, on the fringes of the Antarctic, it is nearly 1,000 miles (1,500km) from the nearest major human settlement. Yet even here Waluda, an ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey, is finding worrying signs of our throw-away attitude towards plastic. Regularly she finds seals entangled in this debris or albatross chicks coughing up bits of plastic film.
These are just a few examples of the damage our throw-away relationship with plastics is inflicting on the environment. More than 78 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced worldwide every year by an industry worth nearly $198 billion. Just a fraction of that is recycled while the vast majority is thrown away. Plastic litter now clutters every part of our planet, from remote parts of the Antarctic to the deepest ocean trenches.
High profile campaigns and TV programmes such as the finale of the BBC’s Blue Planet II, where Sir David Attenborough highlighted the problems plastics are causing in the world’s oceans, have led to growing public alarm over the issue. In response to mounting pressure, governments, manufacturers and retailers are beginning to take steps to tackle the tide of plastic waste. But how much will this fundemantal change to the way we buy our goods actually cost?
Many of the companies attempting to tackle the amount of plastic waste generated by their products admit it will eat into their profits. Coca-Cola, for example, produces 38,250 tonnes of plastic packaging in the UK each year and estimates indicate it sells more than 110 billion single-use plastic bottles globally. The company has pledged to double the amount of recycled material in its plastic bottles in the UK and is trialling refillable bottles. Although it refuses to give details, Coca-Cola says these efforts will increase costs.
And even companies that have been dragging their heels will soon have to address the amount of plastic packaging they use. More than 60 countries are introducing legislation aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags and other single use plastic materials. This month, tiny Pacific island nation Vanuatu became the first in the world to ban single use plastic bags, straws and polystyrene food containers.
The cost of change
Several major supermarkets, including multinationals Tesco and Walmart, have already promised to reduce the amount of plastic packaging they sell their products in. Alongside Coca-Cola, drinks manufacturers Pepsi, food and cleaning multinational Unilever, food producer Nestle and cosmetics company L’Oreal have also pledged to ensure all their packaging is either reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
But despite these commitments, much of the food and drinks industry is still trying to work out how it will meet the targets it has helped to set for itself. Some experts fear that without the right approach, this rush to banish plastics from our shopping baskets will make the goods we buy more expensive.
“It is not as simple as ‘plastic is bad’ so let’s use something else,” warns Eliot Whittington, policy programme director at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where he advises drinks manufacturers on reducing waste. “It will require a complete change in the way we use product packaging at the moment. Most packaging is now used just once and thrown away. We need to move away from that. It needs some form of leadership from government.”
More than a third of the food sold in the EU now comes packaged in plastic and each of its 510 million residents produce about 31kg of plastic packaging waste a year. One reason plastic is so dominant is its ability to do more, for less: it takes less material to make a drinks bottle out of plastic, for example, than it does to make one out of glass.
“Plastics are cheap, lightweight and adaptable in ways many of the alternatives are not,” says Susan Selke, director of the school of packaging at Michigan State University.
Fifty years ago, before the plastics revolution had gathered pace, most drinks were sold in glass bottles. Today almost all soft drink bottles are made from a tough plastic material called polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.
While the cost of producing bottles can vary depending on the raw material and energy prices at the time, it is generally not that much more expensive to produce a glass bottle versus one made from PET – about $0.01 more, according to some analysis.
However, when manufacturers start transporting produce in glass bottles, costs start to rise. A 330ml plastic soft drink bottle contains around 18 grams of material while a glass bottle can weigh between 190g and 250g. Transporting drinks in the heavier containers requires 40% more energy, producing more polluting carbon dioxide as they do and increasing transport costs by up to five times per bottle.
“In many cases plastics are actually better for the environment than the alternatives,” explains Selke. “It is surprising until you look closely at it.”
A report by the American Chemistry Council and environmental accounting firm Trucost estimates that the environmental costs – which places a value on dealing with the pollution generated by a product – would be five times higher if the soft drinks industry used alternative packaging like glass, tin or aluminium instead of plastic. As governments seek to penalise polluting companies with carbon taxes and levies, these costs may be passed onto consumers.
“Food costs are going to increase – there can be no doubt about that,” says Dick Searle, chief executive of the British Packaging Federation, which represents the industry in the UK. Using glass milk bottles instead of plastic, for example, can lead to additional costs for producers.
But does this mean the costs will be passed back to shoppers?
Iceland, a British supermarket that pledged to remove plastics from its packaging by 2023, is already switching its ready meals from black plastic trays to ones made from paper and plans to use other packaging materials like glass and cellulose, which is made from wood.
“Making this change is going to cost money,” warns Richard Walker, the chain’s managing director. “But we are determined that our customers will not have to foot the bill.”
There are some, however, who warn that abandoning plastic after nearly 70 years of using it to package our food could have other far more costly, unintended consequences.
What may at first appear to be a wasteful plastic bag wrapped around your cucumber, for example, is actually a sophisticated tool for increasing the shelf-life of your food. Years of research have allowed plastics to push the time food lasts for from days to weeks.
“I think people underestimate the benefits of plastics in reducing food waste,” says Anthony Ryan, professor of chemistry and director of The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield.
The shrink wrap used on cucumbers for instance, can more than double the length of time the vegetable can last, allowing it to be kept for up to 15 days in the fridge and cutting food waste in half. An unwrapped cucumber would last just two days at room temperature and 9 days if refrigerated.
A meaty problem
Beef bought in polystyrene foam trays covered with plastic film will generally last between three and seven days. However if it is vacuum-packed in multilayer plastic, it can be kept for up to 45 days without spoiling. Environmental accounting firm Trucost estimate that vacuum-packing sirloin steak can cut food waste almost in half compared to conventional plastic.
Much of the food we now buy in supermarkets comes tightly wrapped in sealed plastic films and protective trays. This keeps fresh meat in an oxygen-free atmosphere, helping to prevent it from spoiling. Delicate fruit and vegetables are also kept safe from bumps that can degrade them, meaning they’re more likely to be sold. Putting grapes in their own individual plastic boxes has been found to cut food waste by 75%.
Plastic wrapping can also keep fruit and vegetables in their own little microclimates – known in the industry as modified atmosphere packaging – which can help to prevent them from ripening too quicky. Putting sweet peppers into a bag with a modified atmosphere can extend their lifespan from four days to 20, according to the Flexible Packaging Association. Extending the shelf life of food can greatly reduce the cost of food waste to supermarkets. Extending the shelf life of produce by just one day would save shoppers in the UK up to £500 million ($661m), according to anti-waste charity Wrap.
The global cost of food waste is already estimated to be almost $1 trillion a year, which is largely borne by manufacturers and retailers. While some believe that single-use plastic packaging has actually led to an increase in the amount of food we throw away by encouraging a culture of disposability, many in the plastics industry argue that without plastic packaging, the cost of food waste could rise.
Smart thinking
In this light, it might not make sense to ban plastics altogether but instead make plastics better.
“Rather than going back, it is perhaps more useful to look at innovation,” says Eliot Whittington. “There are more and more companies that are reinventing plastics with additives that help them break down or making plastics that are biodegradable.”
Whittington points to the growing bioplastics industry, which uses starch or protein from plants like sugarcane to generate the basic hydrocarbon materials needed to create plastics. Some of these bioplastics are not biodegradable at all, but others – like polylactic acid (PLA) – can break down over time and some are compostable, meaning they disintegrate entirely rather than merely crumbling into smaller “microplastics”.
One company that has already shifted to bioplastic is British skincare company Bulldog. It has swapped its traditional plastic tubes for polyethylene made from sugarcane.
The new tubes are more expensive but “we still think it is the right thing to do,” says Simon Duffy, the company’s founder.
Another bioplastics leader is Coca-Cola, which two years ago launched the PlantBottle, a PET partially made with Brazilian sugarcane. It too has found that producing bottles from plants comes at a premium, although it wouldn’t share with BBC Capital what this cost was.
Looking at a few examples, however, it becomes apparent just how much more expensive bioplastics can be.
A burger box made from sugarcane for instance, is almost twice as expensive as one made from polystyrene. A biodegradable takeaway fork made from plant starch costs 3.5 times more than a basic white plastic one.
Neither Bulldog or Coca-Cola are using bioplastics that can be considered biodegradable or compostable, instead encouraging consumers to recycle their bioplastics. And, in fact, there is some resistance to the widespread use of biodegradable materials.
“Bioplastics like PLA are huge contaminate for traditional recycling,” says Dick Searle.
Surprisingly, due to rising oil prices, recycled plastic is actually cheaper to use than fresh, virgin plastic made from oil. A tonne of virgin PET costs around £1,000 while clear recycled PET costs just £158 per tonne.
Contamination of PET plastic with PLA, however, can leave the resulting bottle weaker and unfit for use, meaning the whole batch will have to be discarded. As manufacturers try to reduce their plastic footprint by using greener, biodegradable plastics, the risk of mixing with conventional plastics will only increase, potentially driving up the cost of recycled materials.
“Introducing these innovative products in a system that is used to more traditional waste stream is difficult economically,” says Whittington.
It is a problem that will require new ways of identifying, sorting and dealing with plastic materials when they are thrown away to ensure biodegradable materials are kept separate from those that can be recycled.
But Anthony Ryan sees other problems with the widespread use of biodegradable packaging.
“It treats the symptoms, not the disease,” he says. “If the disease is our throw-away society, making packaging biodegradable only encourages people to throw more away.”
Instead, he suggests another solution: use more plastic.
“In modern meat or soft fruit packaging you might have several thin layers to give it strength, to stop gas permeability and to act as an adhesive,” he explains. “You could get all of these properties from a single thicker piece of polyethylene. Then you would have a reduced set of materials, which would make separating and recycling this stuff easier.”
He believes that making plastics more durable could help solve the current waste problem that is blighting our planet. Rather than abolishing plastics altogether, he proposes reusing the packaging we currently throw away.
Already deposit and reuse schemes like this – where plastic bottles are returned in exchange for a cash deposit and then are refilled – are in use in Finland, Germany, Denmark and parts of Australia.
According to research by the European Commission, however, reuse and refill schemes like this can work out to be up to five times more expensive than using packaging once and then throwing it away. But the World Economic Forum found innovative reuse and refill measures could actually reduce packaging costs by at least $8 billion a year,savings that could potentially be passed onto consumers.
And as many countries seek to introduce new laws that will put new levies on plastic bags and ban certain types of single use packaging, refillable and reusable options may become more attractive.
For Claire Waluda, whose team is monitoring the levels of plastic waste in South Georgia, the price of making these changes is one worth paying.
“We are seeing wandering albatross parents feeding plastic to their chicks,” she says. “Anything that can reduce the amount of plastic debris in the environment is a step in the right direction.”
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180705-whats-the-real-price-of-getting-rid-of-plastic-packaging

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Former Coal Lobbyist Would Face a Fight if Tapped to Head EPA

Jul 6, 2018 | Roll Call

By Jeremy Dillon

Fresh off a long fought victory to rid the EPA of the scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt, Democrats and environmental groups have already turned their attention to the next head of the agency that is charged with protecting the nation’s air and water.
And while Pruitt’s ethical lapses provided easy fodder for their effort to oppose the Trump administration’s environmental record, the new leadership at the EPA — for the time being, Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler — brings years of steady Washington experience to the position, making the upcoming battles more about policy than personality.
“Elevating former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to head the EPA is only trading one fossil fuel friend for another,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. “We must continue to fight the fossil-fuel entrenched interests that have gripped the EPA and want to undermine the public’s health and progress on climate action.”
The top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, led the Senate opposition to Wheeler’s 53-45 confirmation in April. But on Thursday, after Pruitt’s resignation, he said he would meet with Wheeler “to understand how he intends to get to work immediately to restore the public’s trust in the Environmental Protection Agency.”
He may already have the answer to his questions if Wheeler’s past is any indicator for his future atop the agency.
A former lobbyist for coal giant Murray Energy Corp. before returning to the EPA this year, Wheeler has vocally rebutted the need for increased federal environmental regulations throughout his career. Wheeler’s first work in the EPA came during the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, when he worked in the office of pollution prevention. Before his lobbying gig, he served as chief of staff to Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and was a staffer for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for approximately 14 years.
In his tweet announcing Pruitt’s departure, President Donald Trump emphasized Wheeler would “continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda.”
That would be welcome news to Capitol Hill Republicans, who throughout the months of scandal backed Pruitt for his enthusiasm to roll back environmental regulation that they argued were impeding the success of U.S. business. While those repeal efforts are still works in progress as they move through the lengthy public notice and comment circuit, Pruitt has set the stage for actions to eliminate Obama-era initiatives like the Clean Power Plan, which limited greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and the “Waters of the U.S.” rule, which greatly expanded federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.
“It has become increasingly challenging for the EPA to carry out its mission with the administrator under investigation,” said Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., adding he “looks forward to the confirmation of the next head of the EPA. In the meantime, I know [Wheeler] is well prepared to continue the progress already made under President Trump.”
Wheeler is unlikely to receive warm congratulations for his promotion from Democrats. Only three Democratic senators — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana — voted to confirm him as deputy administrator of the EPA in April, when the first wave of Pruitt scandals hung over the confirmation vote.‘Assault on Human Health’
That deregulatory policy emphasis already has Democrats worried.
“I’m concerned that the Trump Administration’s assault on human health and the environment will continue long past Pruitt’s departure from EPA,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
During his confirmation process, Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups raised concerns that Wheeler’s past lobbying for fossil fuels would influence his behavior as a senior official responsible for environmental protection. Those same concerns surfaced as soon as Pruitt’s departure was made official.
“Like Pruitt, this veteran coal lobbyist has shown only disdain for the EPA’s vital mission to protect Americans’ health and our environment,” said Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director for government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Make no mistake: we’ll fight Wheeler’s pollution agenda with the same vigor as we did Pruitt’s.”
Pruitt’s deregulatory agenda was still a work in progress. While he had proposed or was in the process of proposing regulation repeals, Pruitt never reached the finish line for marquee efforts to roll back regulations. But all could be finalized in the coming months with Wheeler as head of the EPA. And he’ll have to contend with the lawsuits certain to be filed by environmental advocates seeking to block the rollbacks.
At the least, Wheeler has 210 days to serve as acting administrator, according to the federal vacancies law enacted as part of an omnibus spending bill in 1998. The clock would restart if the Senate rejects a nominee during that period.
It remains unclear if Trump — who has demonstrated willingness to put outsiders in charge of big agencies — would nominate someone other than Wheeler to the head the EPA. Senate Democrats have already begun to stake out the battle lines for a new confirmation fight. And in a Senate with 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats and independents, finding a consensus choice to unite Republicans will be hard.
“The American people’s disgust with Scott Pruitt should serve as blaring red siren for the Trump administration,” said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the top Democrat on the Interior-Environment spending subcommittee. “Americans will not tolerate another EPA administrator whose primary goal is to fight the core mission of the EPA.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/epa-andrew-wheeler-scott-pruitt

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How Scott Pruitt Blew It

Jul 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro

By Alex Guillén and Andrew Restuccia

Scott Pruitt’s once bright political future has all but cratered after his fall from grace as head of the EPA, following an avalanche of revelations about his first-class flights, pricey security trappings, backdoor raises for proteges and cozy deals with lobbyists stretching back to his days as an Oklahoma lawmaker.
Some of the most outlandish news reports about Pruitt’s leadership at EPA went viral in recent months because of the bizarre details, such as the accusations that he had used his bodyguards to search for a rare brand of lotion or had tasked an aide with trying to buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel.
But beneath it all, according to ethics experts and Pruitt’s critics, was the appearance that he had serially misused his Cabinet position, sometimes for simple vanity but occasionally — most consequentially — in ways that benefited himself and his family, drawing civil and potentially even criminal inquiries. And eventually, it was too much even for President Donald Trump, one of Pruitt's most outspoken fans.
Trump said the decision to resign was Pruitt's and that "no final straw" had precipitated the move, which has been in the works for a couple days. But in fact, Trump had begun to grow tired of the torrent of negative news stories about Pruitt and had come to believe they were a distraction that wouldn’t go away, according to an administration official.
Among Trump's confidants, Oklahoma billionaire oilman Harold Hamm was one of a dwindling number of people defending Pruitt, people close to Hamm and the White House told POLITICO.
"Scott is a terrific guy,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday after tweeting out the news of Pruitt's resignation. "And he came to me and he said I have such great confidence in the administration. I don’t want to be a distraction. And I think Scott felt that he was a distraction."
The news dismayed prominent Republican donor Doug Deason, who told POLITICO late Thursday that he's flabbergasted Trump would send such a loyal foot soldier packing.
"I am just so disappointed in the President’s failure to support Scott against the angry attacks from the loony left," said Deason, who had helped Pruitt pick new members of an influential EPA’s science advisory board last year. "Nothing he did amounted to anything big. He was THE most effective cabinet member by far."
"Scott Pruitt is a sacrificial lamb and I have no idea why," he added.
Chief of staff John Kelly had been pushing Trump for months to fire Pruitt, and he ramped up his campaign in recent days, according to one person close to the White House. The person described removing Pruitt as one of Kelly’s top priorities before leaving the administration, as he's expected to do sometime this summer.
But Kelly’s frustration with Pruitt alone would never be enough to secure the EPA administrator’s ouster.
At the White House, senior aides were increasingly convinced that Trump would soon push Pruitt out, but they didn't know exactly when and some were caught off guard by Thursday's announcement.
Pruitt, who believes he has a strong personal relationship with Trump, has told allies repeatedly in recent months that he wasn’t worried about his job, insisting that the president had his back.
But Pruitt nonetheless showed flashes of irritation over the wave of negative press attention that overtook him. He told aides recently that he believed the reports about him were unfair, adding that he simply didn’t understand why people were making such a big deal about his decision to enlist an aide to help his wife secure a Chick-fil-A franchise, according to another person familiar with the matter.
White House staffers had long ago given up on Pruitt, rarely coming to his defense when negative news stories dominated the headlines. Aides were sick of answering questions about the EPA chief and spoke privately about their hope that the president got rid of him. Even Pruitt’s own staff had begun to sour on him, with many worrying that their future career prospects would be damaged by their association with Pruitt’s tenure.
Each scandal seemed more damning than the last.
Pruitt faced criticism last year for his extensive first-class travel on the taxpayer dime and security expenses including a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office. Then news this spring that Pruitt had secured a $50-a-night Capitol Hill condo lease from the wife of a lobbyist kicked off several months of damaging headlines on a nearly daily basis. His staff talked of getting him a $100,000-a-month private jet lease. Two aides who came with him from Oklahoma received massive raises Pruitt was later forced to reverse. He replaced the head of his security detail who wouldn’t let him use lights and sirens to zip around the city like the president. And a top career official was dismissed after he questioned the security justifications for Pruitt’s beefed up, multimillion-dollar protective detail.
Questions were raised about why Pruitt hired a longtime friend, whose bank over the years issued Pruitt multiple mortgages and helped him buy part ownership of a baseball team, and who was recently banned from the banking industry, to run EPA’s Superfund program.
In recent weeks, former Pruitt aides told staffers on the House Oversight Committee about the administrator's search for a high-paying job for his wife and his use of EPA time and staff for personal matters. Although nascent, the new allegations raised questions of whether Pruitt had used his position to benefit his family or himself. Committee aides tell POLITICO their investigation will continue despite Pruitt's departure.
EPA’s inspector general opened multiple overlapping probes into Pruitt’s activities and spending. House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) turned heads when he launched his own investigation of Pruitt. Other inquiries are underway by the Government Accountability Office, the Oklahoma Bar Association and even the White House.
Pruitt’s controversial activities led conservatives to call for his departure.
“Pruitt is the swamp. Drain it,” Laura Ingraham, the conservative pundit known to have Trump’s ear, tweeted on Tuesday.
Democrats and environmental groups quickly claimed victory with Pruitt’s resignation.
“He made swamp creatures blush with his shameless excesses. All tolerated because President Trump liked his zealotry," Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said.
“Ethics matter. So does a commitment to EPA’s central mission. Scott Pruitt failed miserably on both counts,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Within the White House, a less splashy headline also helped undermine Pruitt’s standing with Trump’s inner circle: The news, first reported in early January by POLITICO, that Pruitt was advocating quietly but firmly behind the scenes to replace Jeff Sessions as Trump’s attorney general. That ambition was a turning point that soured Pruitt to key White House aides, if not the president himself, officials said in the intervening months. Pruitt grew bolder, eventually directly asking Trump for the DOJ job, CNN reported on Tuesday, just two days before Pruitt resigned.
Pruitt’s troubles had been simmering for a long time as other Cabinet officials were picked off following their own scandals or tension with Trump, including HHS Secretary Tom Price, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
His supporters noted that, unlike Price or Tillerson, Pruitt was viewed as an effective and loyal lieutenant to Trump.
"It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring," Pruitt wrote in his resignation letter to Trump.
Pruitt rose to prominence as Oklahoma’s attorney general, where he made his name suing the Obama EPA 14 times over what he called gross regulatory overreach. One of his greatest achievements was the Supreme Court’s early 2016 decision to block the Clean Power Plan, a massive regulation that set the first-ever carbon dioxide limits on the power industry, while a lower court reviewed the rule — the first time the justices had ever done that.
He convinced Trump that such tenacity would prove useful in fulfilling his many campaign promises to undo almost all of former President Barack Obama's environmental agenda.
It didn’t take long after Pruitt had arrived at EPA for him to halt and reverse key regulations Trump had vowed to roll back, including the power plant rule and Obama’s Waters of the U.S. rule, which farmers and other industries decried as federal overreach.
But Pruitt went beyond the standard-issue Washington conservative environmental agenda that called for repealing those rules.
EPA is soon expected to propose a much more restricted version of the Clean Power Plan to satisfy legal requirements. But Pruitt has also kept open the option not to replace it at all, a position that most legal experts agree is untenable but which helps satisfy the right-wing groups that want EPA to stop regulating greenhouse gases altogether.
More recently, Pruitt made it clear he was willing to fight California over rolling back auto emissions standards. Carmakers who asked EPA for tweaks to the program instead found an administrator more than willing to torpedo the fragile national program if one of the most anti-Trump states didn’t come to heel.
Pruitt proposed a new science policy that would exclude major public health studies while still accepting industry-backed research, a policy Republicans failed for years to pass out of Congress. He kicked academic researchers receiving funding from EPA off of key advisory boards, often replacing them with industry representatives. He made key policy changes to permitting rules and a key air quality program long sought by industry groups who said EPA was restricting their growth. He launched a review of how EPA calculates costs and benefits, a move that could make it harder to economically justify major regulations.
And he elevated climate change as a culture-war issue in a way that previous Republican administrators avoided.
Pruitt told POLITICO that he didn't even understand when critics called him a "climate denier” in an interview last summer. "What does it even mean? That’s what I think about it. I deny the climate? Really? Wow, OK. That’s crazy, in my view," he said.
As Hurricane Irma throttled Florida in 2017, the second of three major storms to devastate parts of the U.S. last year, Pruitt told CNN that it was "misplaced" to ask about climate change's effects on extreme weather during the disaster.
And Pruitt routinely criticized the “environmental left” for focusing too much on climate change to the detriment of other environmental problems like Superfund clean-ups and water infrastructure — although green groups said he failed to lead on those issues as well.
The climate change positioning helped Pruitt gain the ear of Trump, who had called the phenomenon a hoax created by the Chinese to disenfranchise U.S. manufacturing.
Pruitt outmaneuvered other top administration officials, including Tillerson and Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, to convince Trump that the Paris agreement was a bad deal that put America second. Trump then made the U.S. the only nation on Earth to ditch the Paris climate agreement.
Unsurprisingly, Pruitt’s rapid rise and strong conservative pedigree drew talk of future political runs.
Although Pruitt eschewed this year’s Oklahoma gubernatorial race, many observers suspected he would be the top choice in 2020 to replace Sen. Jim Inhofe(R-Okla.), who has not said whether he will run again but will turn 86 that year. Rumor swirled that the Senate gig would groom Pruitt for a 2024 presidential run, and Pruitt held meetings with politically connected people who could one day be useful for such a campaign, including a company linked to GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson and an Indiana coal executive-slash-Republican fundraiser.
But Pruitt’s political ambitions and penchant for secrecy eventually came back to bite him.
His behind-the-scenes lobbying for Sessions’ job earlier this year alienated him to top White House officials, and the slow drip of negative headlines about his travel, spending and hiring irritated them further.
But in late March, the news about his lobbyist-connected condo deal opened the floodgates to a seemingly endless stream of reports about Pruitt’s activities.
At first, the drip-drip of damaging stories was embarrassing but manageable.
Then, as part of a media tour that mostly consisted of friendly interviews with conservative outlets, Pruitt found himself forced into defense by a combative Fox News interview. Though the president was publicly supportive of Pruitt, the White House acknowledged it was reviewing his activities.
The investigation launched by Gowdy, the House Oversight chairman planning to retire after this year, showed the first cracks in Pruitt’s support on the Hill. Weeks later, Senate Republicans started airing concerns, while Inhofe — a longtime friend of Pruitt’s — said he was troubled by reports of Pruitt’s past purchase of a large Oklahoma City home from a telecom lobbyist when he was a state senator.
Inhofe, who later said Pruitt had allayed his concerns, praised his fellow Oklahoman’s work running EPA in a statement on Thursday.
“He was single minded at restoring the EPA to its proper statutory authority and ending the burdensome regulations that have stifled economic growth across the country,” he said. “I was pleased to work with him on critical issues, like pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and prioritizing the cleanup of Superfund sites.“
If Inhofe ultimately decides to retire but backs someone else to succeed him in 2020, Pruitt’s once-clear path to the Senate — and potentially one day the presidency — could be significantly muddied.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/07/how-scott-pruitt-blew-it-672035

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Energy Industry Sees Brighter Future Without Pruitt

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Mike Soraghan

Some environmentalists popped the Champagne corks yesterday when they heard Scott Pruitt had resigned as head of EPA. But that doesn't mean that industry lobbyists were weeping into their pinstriped sleeves.
Many, in fact, were quietly raising a glass to the ascension of Pruitt deputy Andrew Wheeler.
"Wheeler will be 100 times better," said one oil and gas insider. "Should be fun."
President Trump's deregulatory agenda isn't going away. And many think Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, can execute it more effectively.
For the energy industry, there was a lot to love about Pruitt's time at EPA. He took aim at Obama-era regulations and promised a lighter touch on enforcement.
But Pruitt brought heavy baggage to the job, which in turn put an uncomfortable national spotlight on the industry. Beyond the 13 investigations into his conduct, there was the question of whether Pruitt's ambitions for statewide office in Oklahoma imbued him with a zeal that wasn't always beneficial to the industries he was trying to help.
Wheeler appears more likely to opt for decisions that create regulatory certainty, even if they're less popular with the Republican base, said Kevin Book, analyst at Washington, D.C.-based ClearView Energy Partners LLC.
For example, on the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration rule that set carbon dioxide limits for power plants, many businesses would like to see the administration replace the rule with less dramatic restrictions. But that wouldn't play as well as simply "ripping it up," Book said. Book expects to see Wheeler support a new rule.
"How easy would it have been for Scott Pruitt to go back to Oklahoma after putting a climate rule on the books?" Book asked. "Ripping up a rule is a great way to win applause at a political rally. But it's a really terrible way to plan your business."
Home-state politics were also seen as a possible factor in Pruitt's handling of the renewable fuel standard, which earned Pruitt scorn from corn-state Republicans. Ethanol is unpopular in Oklahoma, where oil and gas is a dominant industry. Book expects a friendlier approach to ethanol and fewer small refiner exemptions from the RFS.
Wheeler isn't known to have political ambitions. What he's known for is a steady hand, an insider's instincts and temperament for the long game. And he's seen as having the same pro-industry inclinations as Pruitt.
For years, Wheeler was a top staffer for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Pruitt's mentor and the most vociferous opponent of climate regulation in Congress. Then he became a lobbyist, representing a broad spectrum of energy interests. One of his highest-profile clients was Murray Energy Corp., run by vocal Trump supporter Bob Murray.
Murray is an ardent critic of EPA and especially of the Obama administration. His company has sued the agency several times, including one suit to block the Clean Power Plan, which Pruitt was working to reverse.
But Wheeler's more conventional approach will likely present fewer targets for the environmental groups that have made hay with Pruitt's many scandals.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087981

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Scott Who? Onetime Allies Happy to See Pruitt Go

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Robin Bravender and Zack Colman

Scott Pruitt is already an afterthought.
After months of dominating headlines for scandals like pricey taxpayer-funded travel, his penchant for Ritz-Carlton lotion and trying to land a high-paying job for his wife, it took no time for the spotlight to swing to his replacement.
Once President Trump announced Pruitt's resignation via Twitter, attention turned to the next chapter of the Trump EPA: the one headed by former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler.
"I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!" Trump tweeted.
Even some of Pruitt's former allies were ready to bid farewell to an EPA chief whose endless controversies caused headaches for Republicans. They're hopeful Wheeler will shepherd Trump's policy agenda without the need for constant damage control. Critics of the Trump administration, meanwhile, took a quick victory lap but pledged to keep pressure on his successor.
"Outrage from the American people are what just got rid of Scott Pruitt," billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer said. "Of course, his acting replacement couldn't be worse: a coal lobbyist with ties to the most famous climate denier in the country. We must ensure that Andrew Wheeler is met with the same anger and effective organization that led to Pruitt's resignation."
Trump said yesterday that the decision to resign was Pruitt's alone. The two had rubbed elbows a day earlier on the White House lawn while celebrating Independence Day.
"He came to me and he said, 'Look, I have such great confidence in the administration; I don't want to be a distraction,' and I think Scott felt that he was a distraction," Trump said yesterday aboard Air Force One, according to a pool report. "It was very much up to him."
But even if Trump still had his back, Pruitt had long ago lost the support of White House staffers. EPA aides complained that the controversies hurt their work, and some Republican lawmakers had turned against Pruitt. Daily stories piled up. Some of them revealed potential violations of federal law. That attracted unnecessary attention for the agency and administration.
"At some point, once it became evident that there was some inherent corruption, his support within the executive office of the president evaporated," said a former administration official.
A former senior EPA official called Pruitt's exit "a huge win for the Trump environmental agenda." Now, the official said, the agency can focus on that policy work, "as opposed to putting out constant or trying to put out fires around the scandal du jour."
Some Republican lawmakers also lauded Pruitt's departure.
"It has become increasingly challenging for the EPA to carry out its mission with the administrator under investigation. President Trump made the right decision to accept his resignation," Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a statement.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), co-chairman of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, tweeted of Pruitt's departure: "Finally. Actually he did a horrible job. He was a disaster and an embarrassment from day one, and the country is far better off without him."
Barrasso, whose committee vets EPA nominees, said, "I look forward to the confirmation of the next head of the EPA. In the meantime, I know Assistant Administrator Andrew Wheeler is well prepared to continue the progress already made under President Trump."
Senate confirmation of a Pruitt replacement is far from a sure thing. Under Trump, EPA has been one of the most polarizing agencies in the federal government. Wheeler was confirmed in April on a 53-45 vote for the deputy slot, but the EPA chief is another matter — particularly with the midterm elections looming.Industry welcomes Wheeler
Wheeler is likely to be the acting EPA administrator for a while and eventually could be Trump's nominee.
Trump's priorities for the agency, like cutting the budget and downsizing big environmental rules, aren't expected to change under Wheeler. But the execution could, and some expect Wheeler to be more effective than Pruitt.
A former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Wheeler is seen as a workhorse. That contrasts to former attorney general Pruitt, who wasn't steeped in environmental policy or issues like past administrators. Many thought his policy announcements were designed to attract a grander stage, as many believed Pruitt was constantly campaigning for an eventual political run in Oklahoma.
"I think Pruitt has been a little clumsy on some things. The way they went ahead on the secret science proposal, I think they went ahead with that before it was really thought through," said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA air chief under President George W. Bush. "In that regard, Andy is not going to be thinking about the next thing he can announce at the Heritage Foundation."
Wheeler did a stint at EPA before the Trump administration (he focused on toxic chemical regulations in the 1990s), and he has made inroads this year with some career staff members who perceived Pruitt as an enemy.
"He's getting the people-to-people stuff really well," a career EPA employee said of Wheeler. "He has been miles apart from how Pruitt behaved in the building."
Deregulation proponents see an opportunity for greater success under Wheeler.
"In some ways, I think because of all the controversies and the way he dealt with issues, if anything, it's kind of slowed EPA down," said Holmstead, now a lawyer at Bracewell LLP. "Nothing really happened in the first year, because they didn't have people in place. Now they have their team."
Repealing and potentially replacing the Clean Power Plan, nixing the Waters of the U.S. rule, and other major policy pushes will likely remain on the same course, industry sources said.
"We do think Andrew Wheeler will have the same agenda as Pruitt," said Michelle Bloodworth, chief operating officer with coal industry group the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. "We think that things are going to move forward like they have in the past."
Some view Wheeler as less likely than Pruitt to want to attack EPA's endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, the scientific finding that underpins the agency's climate rules.
Pruitt repeatedly touted plans to launch a "red team" effort to poke holes in mainstream climate science. One former Trump administration official said of that idea, "I don't think it ever had legs to begin with. It probably has less now."
Wheeler could also be tested on climate. Myron Ebell, director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said his group will use Pruitt's departure and Trump's nomination of a new Supreme Court justice to challenge the endangerment finding. EPA is moving toward drafting a replacement for the Clean Power Plan in what would amount to a concession by the Trump administration that the agency has the authority to regulate carbon.
"It's not clear to me how far they're willing to go," Ebell said. "It is useful to consider that two people Andrew has worked for, [Murray Energy Corp. CEO] Bob Murray and Sen. James Inhofe, have called for the reopening of the endangerment finding. Whether Andrew is on board or not I don't know, but I assume he's on board with their thinking."
Wheeler has criticized the finding in the past. He was quoted on his former law firm's website suggesting in 2010 that the finding was vulnerable to legal challenges. But Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the EPW Committee, said early this year that Wheeler "assured me that he views EPA's legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which is based on the endangerment finding, is settled law" (Climatewire, Feb. 8).
Structural changes at EPA that have riled Trump's critics in the science community will likely find support under Wheeler. That means that the overhauling of independent science panels that advise the agency will stay in place. The same goes for prohibiting "secret science" — studies without publicly available data — from being used in crafting EPA regulations. Scientists have pushed back against the effort, saying it would invalidate important research and run up against medical privacy laws.Pruitt joins Gorsuch ranks
Pruitt becomes the second EPA chief to leave the agency in a swirl of scandal.
Like Pruitt, Reagan-era Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford pursued a deregulatory agenda, alienated agency staff and utilized campaign-like rhetoric to sell her arguments. And like Pruitt, Gorsuch left as congressional investigators scrutinized her leadership.
Reagan ultimately chose to replace Gorsuch with William Ruckelshaus, EPA's first administrator, in an attempt to revive the agency. That kind of concession is unlikely to happen this time, according to two former EPA administrators, both Republicans.
"Policy is determined by the president, and he wants to dismantle the agency," said Christine Todd Whitman, who led the agency under Bush. "You have to worry we're going to get more of what we've been getting."
William Reilly, an administrator under President George H.W. Bush, said Pruitt's departure may make it easier for Trump to pursue his deregulatory ambitions.
"To the extent it was possible to equate the misbehavior with the regulatory decisions, that was helpful to those of us who did not agree with the course he was taking on a regulatory front," Reilly said.
But environmentalists are chalking up Pruitt's exit as a win, even as they gear up to fight Wheeler in his place.
"I'm happy. I think this is a good thing for Americans," said John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I just don't think that Scott Pruitt had any business being the head of the EPA, so I think it will be a better agency without him."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087983

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Ewire: Even After Pruitt Exit, Some Investigations Could Continue

Jul 6, 2018 | Inside EPA

Scott Pruitt was facing more than a dozen official investigations over his ethics and spending decisions when he announced he is resigning effective today, and some Democrats say at least a few of those inquiries will continue after he leaves office.
“Some of the investigations will continue, they should continue, but some may not,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), ranking member of the Senate environment committee, told NPR on July 6.
He said that an inquiry into Pruitt's directive for security officials to pick up moisturizing lotion “will probably slip away,” but that officials should continue probing allegations that Pruitt had agency staff charge items for him on their credit cards but were never reimbursed.
“I think that's just awful, that's just atrocious,” the lawmaker said.
EPA's inspector general had planned to release a long-awaited report on Pruitt's security and travel spending by the end of September, though it is not clear if the office will now complete that report. The office was also probing several other issues related to Pruitt's conduct, with the fate of those inquiries similarly unclear.
More broadly, Carper told the radio outlet that he is willing to give Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler a chance to prove himself when he takes over as acting administrator July 9.
Carper said Wheeler's former job lobbying for a major coal company is not his “whole resume,” citing his time as a career EPA staffer and a long-time Senate aide.
“We'll have a chance to see what he can do and whether he's willing to turn the page,” the senator said. He held out hope for a compromise on the agency's forthcoming proposal to weaken Obama-era light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards.
“We need somebody who will find a common-sense approach on continuing to increase fuel efficiency standards, but do it in a way that doesn't put the auto industry in extreme conditions,” Carper said.
Wheeler is expected to press ahead with Pruitt's broad deregulatory agenda, as Inside EPA reported, with some suggesting he could even have more success implementing it because he does not have the distractions of the ethics scandals that plagued Pruitt.
However, it is possible that some initiatives that were a particular focus of Pruitt's might be dropped or given a lower priority.
Before Pruitt's resignation, some industry sources said the outgoing administrator took a hard-line approach to the vehicle GHG rules, even as EPA air chief Bill Wehrum and the White House sought a more moderate approach that could result in a deal with California.
Additionally, Axios cites industry sources who say Wheeler “may go in a different direction” on the agency's controversial proposal to scrap production limits on high-emitting “glider” trucks.
That plan has drawn sharp pushback from much of the trucking sector, as well as many state officials concerned that it would drive a massive increase in pollution and threaten their ability to meet air quality targets.
Even Trump supporters are signaling that the status quo might not entirely continue despite expectations that Wheeler will continue deregulatory efforts.
“Yes, I think [Pruitt's departure] does endanger the president's agenda,” former Trump EPA transition chief Myron Ebell told NPR on July 5, before adding that Trump is “very determined to achieve his agenda” and that Wheeler is “fully on board.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-even-after-pruitt-exit-some-investigations-could-continue

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Pruitt’s Political Future Uncertain Back Home in Oklahoma

Jul 6, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)

By Sean Murphy

Scott Pruitt’s tenure as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency ended with his resignation, but political experts in his home state of Oklahoma say he could continue his career in public office.
The path could lead him back to Washington.
Pruitt, a former Oklahoma state senator and two-term Republican attorney general, resigned suddenly Thursday amid ethics investigations, including ones examining his lavish spending on first-class airline seats and a $43,000 soundproof booth for making private phone calls.
But even with the bad publicity, Pruitt, 50, has widely been considered a potential candidate for either governor or U.S. Senate. With Oklahoma’s gubernatorial field set for 2018, some have eyed Pruitt as a possible candidate to replace 83-year-old U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe if he decides not to run again in 2020.
Ethical charges aside, many Republicans in oil- and gas-dependent Oklahoma are focused more on what they consider his accomplishments at the EPA, said Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Pam Pollard.
As attorney general, Pruitt filed more than a dozen lawsuits against the agency President Donald Trump would later pick him to lead. In Washington, he worked relentlessly to dismantle Obama-era environmental regulations that aimed to reduce toxic pollution and planet-warming carbon emissions.
Pollard said that was the right strategy. Under Pruitt’s leadership, she said, the EPA now is focused on the mission it is supposed to have — one that is friendlier to industry.
“We’re proud of him for that,” Pollard said. “I think Oklahomans still love him, support him and trust him. We’ll give him the opportunity to tell his side of the story.”
Inhofe praised Pruitt in a statement Thursday for doing “great work” leading the agency. A longtime Inhofe staffer, Andrew Wheeler, was tapped to take over for Pruitt as acting head of the agency.
Criticism in the press and animosity from environmental groups are likely not enough to derail Pruitt’s political career, said Oklahoma GOP consultant Trebor Worthen.
“I don’t think that whatever things he may be accused of are things that most Oklahomans are going to hold against him if he decides to run for office in the future,” Worthen said.
Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, disagreed. He said Pruitt could overcome criticism from environmental groups and unflattering stories in the media, but not the lengthy list of political scandals that includes asking EPA staff to pick up dry cleaning and trying to obtain a used Trump hotel mattress for his apartment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/pruitts-political-future-uncertain-back-home-in-oklahoma/2018/07/06/34ef62c4-80e5-11e8-a63f-7b5d2aba7ac5_story.html?utm_term=.343f98b30fbc

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The Second-Biggest Confirmation Fight This Year?

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Niina Heikkinen

The Supreme Court battle isn't the only fiercely partisan confirmation fight looming ahead for the Senate.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's resignation yesterday came shortly after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement this month from the Supreme Court, setting up the Senate for two highly charged confirmation tussles just four months before midterm elections.
Pruitt was confirmed last February on a largely partisan 52-46 vote. But a Senate vote on his successor could be even more polarizing because senators will be juggling fewer nominations and will have more time to focus on the nominee's record, said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
It's still unclear when President Trump plans to nominate a replacement and how quickly the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would consider the nomination.
EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler will become the agency's acting leader next week. He's expected to be in the role for a while, and some expect Trump to formally pick him for the job.
Democrats and environmental groups are already hammering Wheeler for his connections to the energy industry. He has worked as a lobbyist for coal giant Murray Energy Corp. However, he had pledged in a recusal statement to avoid issues he lobbied on to EPA and other federal agencies for eight of his former clients, including Murray Energy (Climatewire, July 2).
Even though the EPA pick will be controversial, it will still not garner the same degree of attention as the hunt for Kennedy's replacement, a nomination that will consume much of the Senate's attention.
"We are going to see a bigger battle in the Supreme Court; it's very, very likely we'll see someone in place at the Supreme Court before EPA," Ornstein said. "[EPA] ought to be as important — we're talking about the planet here — but it won't be. It's not the hot button that Roe v. Wade is."
As an acting administrator, Wheeler will wield the same policymaking authority as his Senate-confirmed counterpart, though he perhaps may be less likely to strike out on new priorities at the agency, at least at first, according to some former EPA employees.
Wheeler can stay in his position for 210 days under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. That time can be extended longer depending on when Trump decides to nominate a replacement. Wheeler can stay in his post while the Senate considers up to two rounds of nominees for the position. If the Senate rejects a second nominee, then the president will have to nominate a new acting administrator (Climatewire, June 25).
If Trump takes his time in nominating a replacement and the Senate takes its time reviewing a replacement, EPA might not have a Senate-confirmed administrator until well into 2019.
Joe Edgell, president of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 280 — which represents EPA employees — suggested it's possible the president won't appoint a new administrator at all and might simply allow Wheeler to continue in an acting capacity.
"Should there be a nomination, I cannot imagine that it would get any traction on the Hill until after the midterm elections," Edgell said in an email.Replacement prospects
David Schnare, a former EPA transition team member who has been publicly critical of Pruitt, nonetheless described Pruitt's resignation as a sad, but inevitable, event.
Schnare speculated that Donald van der Vaart, the former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, could be a possible contender for permanent administrator. Van der Vaart's name had previously been under consideration for a position within the Trump administration.
Other names previously circulated for the post include EPA's air chief, Bill Wehrum; the chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Bryan Shaw; and the head of the Ohio EPA, Craig Butler (Climatewire, March 15).
"Democrats aren't going to make it easy. It's not going to happen anytime soon," Schnare said of the nomination.
While Pruitt's exit had long been anticipated, yesterday's announcement came with little warning, even to EPA's own staff.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office declined to comment on a nomination that hasn't yet been made by the president. The offices of the majority and minority leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also did not return requests for comment on how quickly they anticipate the nomination process will proceed.
But Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the EPW panel, cheered Pruitt's exit soon after the president's tweet about it.
"Hopefully, with Mr. Pruitt's resignation, we can finally return to more responsible leadership at EPA and an agency that can get back to doing its important work of protecting the American people rather than the highest bidder," he said in a statement.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087991

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Agency Solicits Nominations for Science Advisory Board

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Greenwire

By Sean Reilly

EPA is gearing up to fill another round of vacancies on its Science Advisory Board this fall, potentially giving Trump administration appointees control of the panel as it undertakes reviews of several closely watched regulatory initiatives.
EPA officials are set to begin seeking nominations Monday for seats on the full board, as well as four "standing committees" that focus on chemical assessment and other specialties, according to an upcoming Federal Register notice. The nomination period will last 30 days; appointments will then "be announced by the administrator and are anticipated to be filled by the start" of fiscal 2019 in October, according to the notice.
The Science Advisory Board (SAB) currently has 44 members. Of those, outgoing EPA Chief Scott Pruitt named 18 late last year after barring current agency grant recipients from serving, according to an official database. Pruitt also effectively ended a tradition of reappointing first-term board members to second consecutive three-year terms.
Assuming that EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who will take charge of the agency on an acting basis after Pruitt steps down today, maintains those policies and leaves the board's size unchanged, he will be able to fill another 15 seats for members whose terms expire at the end of September, the database indicates.
"The question is whether Wheeler basically solicits names from industry, and I'm 99 percent sure he'll do exactly what Pruitt did," Chris Zarba, who headed the SAB's staff office before his retirement in February, said in an interview this morning.
The board, which furnishes outside advice as requested to EPA on a range of scientific and technical issues, has traditionally been composed mostly of academic researchers. Pruitt's choices last year, however, also included representatives of business trade groups, consultants with ties to industries regulated by EPA and officials with state environmental agencies. The ban on service by EPA grant recipients is the target of three lawsuits brought by researchers and advocacy groups. All are pending in various federal courts; Zarba, a critic of the policy, has filed a declaration on behalf of the plaintiffs in one of those suits.
At a meeting in late May, the SAB voted to review several controversial Pruitt initiatives, including a proposal to limit the types of studies EPA can use in crafting new regulations (Climatewire, June 1). But the board depends on EPA to turn over information needed for the review; it's also up to the EPA administrator to decide how long the review will last.
Asked last week, before Pruitt announced his resignation, whether he would fully cooperate with the SAB's review of what is officially known as a proposed rule to "Strengthen Transparency in Regulatory Science," an EPA spokeswoman did not respond. Also unanswered was a question on how much time Pruitt would allow (E&E News PM, June 29).
The four SAB standing committees may be made up of both people who serve on the main board and others. Besides chemical assessment, they focus on issues related to radiation protection, drinking water and agricultural sciences. It's unclear how many seats on those four committees EPA plans to fill. At its May meeting, the full SAB unanimously agreed to abolish three other standing committees in what it described as an efficiency move (Greenwire, June 25).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/06/stories/1060088037

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Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Epa Officials Claim Political Interference in Cancer-Causing Chemical Study: Report

Jul 6, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By John Bowden

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say that political appointees put in place by departing administrator Scott Pruittare slowing the release of a report warning that most Americans are exposed to enough formaldehyde on a regular basis to increase risks of cancer.
One current and one former EPA official told Politico that Pruitt's appointees are stonewalling the report's release "every step of the way" over concerns that the report's release would have a negative impact on businesses that use the chemical.
“EPA continues to discuss this assessment with our agency program partners and have no further updates to provide at this time," EPA spokeswoman Kelsi Daniell told Politico. “Assessments of this type are often the result of needs for particular rulemakings and undergo an extensive intra-agency and interagency process.”
Pruitt's appointees are reportedly blocking the report from being reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, an independent panel of top scientists who have already been paid $500,000 to complete the review of the report. The EPA has yet to transfer the report to the scientists to begin the review.
“If the administration was really keen on protecting public health, why wouldn’t they send this to the National Academy and give it a really good review?” a former EPA official asked Politico, adding that there was only one reason to avoid submitting the report to the review panel: “You don’t want the answer.”
Pruitt told a Senate panel in January that the report was completed, meaning it is now almost five months since the EPA has taken any public action on the review, according to Politico.
Internal documents obtained by Politico show lobbying from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) urging the EPA to avoid releasing the report "prematurely."
“As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical,” wrote the ACC's Kimberly Wise White.
Democrats and other critics of the Trump administration's management of the EPA urged the EPA to "move past politics" in statements to Politico regarding the report's burying.
"Because formaldehyde can be found in everything from wood products to women’s hair straighteners, the public health risks are substantial,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey (D) said in a statement. “Delaying the EPA’s latest assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde only further endangers the health of Americans."
The report confirms that formaldehyde is linked to leukemia, nose and throat cancer and other ailments, according to Politico's sources.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/395768-epa-officials-claim-political-interference-in-cancer-causing

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(ACC Mentioned) Scott Pruitt and His Team Reportedly Suppressed a Study on Cancer-Causing Formaldehyde

Jul 6, 2018 | The Week Magazine

By Summer Meza

Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt may be gone, but his legacy of unethical behavior remains.
Aides are suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report on formaldehyde, Politico reported Friday, even after Pruitt told a Senate panel that it was complete.
The publication of the report, which finds that most Americans inhale enough of the toxic chemical to increase the risk of developing leukemia and other illnesses, is still being delayed by Pruitt's appointees, who are industry advocates rather than environmental scientists.
"They're stonewalling it every step of the way," one official told Politico, claiming that Pruitt's aides are kowtowing to industries that don't want stricter regulations of the chemical. Americans inhale formaldehyde vapors from wood cabinets and furniture, air pollution from refineries, and other products like hair straighteners.
EPA officials deny that the report is being suppressed, saying the agency is simply continuing to "discuss this assessment." The American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel is happy with the delay, saying "a premature release of a draft assessment" could cause "irreparable harm" to the "many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical." Pruitt, who told the Senate panel in January that he would be sure to push the report along, then joined his appointed aides in refusing to send emails about the formaldehyde study in order to avoid a paper trail evidencing the delay. Read more at Politico.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/783406/scott-pruitt-team-reportedly-suppressed-study-cancercausing-formaldehyde

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(ACC Mentioned) The EPA Is Hiding Proof That a Widely Used Chemical Causes Leukemia: Report

Jul 6, 2018 | New York Magazine

By Eric Levitz

During a Senate hearing in late January, Ed Markey asked then-EPA director Scott Pruitt about a little rumor that he’d overheard. “It’s my understanding,” the Massachusetts senator said, “that the EPA has finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers and that [the] completed new assessment is ready to be released for public review, but is being held up.”
“You know, my understanding is similar to yours,” Pruitt replied.
Formaldehyde is one of the most ubiquitous industrial chemicals in the United States. It’s in much of the wooden furniture that Americans sit in, the body wash they clean themselves with — and, for those who live in the vicinity of a major refinery, the air that they breathe. And here, the director of the agency responsible for protecting the American people from toxic chemicals was saying, under oath, that he was vaguely aware of a report linking formaldehyde to a variety of terminal illnesses.
If that report were released — and its findings independently verified by the National Academies of Sciences — then the EPA would strengthen restrictions on the chemical’s use, while cancer patients could draw on the findings in class-action lawsuits. The effect of all this would be to force industry to reduce its reliance on formaldehyde — and thus, to reduce the number of Americans who suffer from the ravages of Leukemia, nose and throat cancer, and a variety of less severe respiratory ailments.
Pruitt promised to follow up on the matter — but never did. And on Friday, a blockbuster report from Politico offered some insight into the cause of the EPA’s silence.
On January 24, the EPA’s top officials took a meeting with the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel — an industry group representing a variety of firms, including Exxon Mobil and a Koch Industries’ subsidiary. Two days later, the panel’s leader Kimberly Wise White wrote the EPA a letter, saying, “As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical.”
In November 2017, Pruitt had removed multiple academic scientistsfrom the EPA’s influential Science Advisory Board. He replaced with industry advocates — among them, Kimberly Wise White.
EPA officials who spoke with Politico say that the “scientific advice” of White and her ilk has led the agency to suppress the draft report on formaldehyde, as part of a broader “campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.”
That campaign has included a proposal to limit the EPA’s use of certain kinds of data on human health — while maintaining a special exemption for confidential, industry-funded studies that contain such data. Pruitt and his aides have also sought to postpone the release of a Health department study that suggests nonstick chemicals pose health risks, even at levels that the EPA had previously deemed safe — and, last May, the passionately “pro-life” EPA director overruled his agency’s scientists, and declined to ban a pesticide that’s been linked to fetal brain damage.
Government scientists aren’t always right. One can imagine industry advocates raising good-faith objections to the conclusions of any given study. But Trump’s appointees aren’t trying to subject the EPA’s report to independent scrutiny — they’re trying to prevent such scrutiny. As Politico explains:
By blocking the report at the first step of the IRIS review process, political appointees are keeping it from being reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, an independent panel of the country’s top scientists that must weigh in on all such risk assessments. EPA has already paid the academies $500,000 for that review, the highest level of scrutiny a scientific study can receive, but the work cannot start until Pruitt’s aides send the study.
“If the administration was really keen on protecting public health, why wouldn’t they send this to the National Academy and give it a really good review?” the former EPA official asked. “If it survives that review, then there’s a public health problem that needs to be dealt with, and if it doesn’t survive the review, then they can point the finger at IRIS and say, ‘You’re dead.’”
The former official said there would be only one reason not to ask the country’s top experts whether they agree with the analysis: “You don’t want the answer.”
Pruitt is, of course, gone; his personal corruption having become too much of a distraction from his agency’s vital mission of helping the Republican Party’s donors evade financial responsibility for poisoning Americans.
But that mission is safe in the hands of the EPA’s new acting director, Andrew Wheeler. As staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, Wheeler worked to delay an earlier version of the EPA’s formaldehyde analysis – and went on to profitable career as chemical industry lobbyist.
It’s worth noting that Democrats have a larger advantage on the “environment” than any other issue-set in American politics — and a recent Gallup poll found a supermajority of voters saying that the government is doing “too little” to protect the environment, while 57 percent of respondents said the government should prioritize environmental protection over economic growth.
To be sure, environmental regulation is not a top issue for many voters; but corruption can be. And the public is already inclined to believe that Republicans are too deferential to polluters. Thus, Democrats would be wise to campaign against the GOP’s policy of “giving more Americans cancer and fetal defects for the sake of keeping chemical manufacturers’ regulatory compliance costs low” this fall.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/the-epa-is-hiding-proof-that-formaldehyde-causes-leukemia.html

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Energy News

Crude Exports Fall in China Tariff Crosshairs

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Nathanial Gronewold

Beginning this weekend, shale oil country may no longer continue exporting crude to the world's largest oil export destination.
The Trump administration's proposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of imports from China are set to kick in today. Authorities in Beijing have pledged to retaliate with tariffs of their own. Reports indicate that U.S. crude oil is on the list of China's targets, despite that nation's rising dependence on oil imports to fuel its economy.
The trade spat is a result of a two-decade-long lopsided trading relationship tilted in China's favor. The world's second largest economy is also among the most closed to foreign investment and goods. Combined with Washington's opposite philosophy of open market access, the resulting massive U.S. trade deficit has been a sore point for voters for some time and is one of the main issues that helped propel President Trump into the White House.
But economists are sounding the alarm over the rising trade tensions and tariffs that are now threatening to slow global economic growth. Earlier this week the World Trade Organization cited rising trade restrictions among the Group of 20 (G20) major economies as reason for countries to pause the escalation and negotiate a compromise.
"A total of 39 new trade-restrictive measures were applied by G20 economies during the review period, including tariff increases, stricter customs procedures, imposition of taxes and export duties," the WTO said in its report. "This equates to an average of almost six restrictive measures per month, which is significantly higher than the three measures recorded during the previous review period."
The World Bank fears dire consequences should the back-and-forth tariffs and retaliatory actions escalate. "A worldwide escalation of tariffs up to the limits permitted under existing international trade rules could lead to cumulative trade losses equivalent to those experienced during the global financial crisis in 2008-09," the bank warns in a new world economic outlook report.
The U.S. already applies a 30 percent import tax on Chinese solar panels in response to Beijing subsidizing plans to corner to global panel market. The new tariffs of 25 percent the administration is planning to implement today will be applied to a range of products, electronics in particular, but also on energy products like nuclear power technology. Another $16 billion worth of Chinese imports are up for review for additional tariffs, potentially bringing the total to $50 billion.
China says it will quickly respond. Tariffs on U.S. oil imports will raise China's costs for importing crude, but at the same time would put a screeching halt to U.S. oil companies' sales of crude to China, which have expanded from nominal volumes to nearly $4.3 billion worth in 2017 since the U.S. lifted restrictions on U.S. crude exports, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A 25 percent tax on importing U.S. crude oil would almost certainly lead to Chinese refineries sourcing their crude from elsewhere. That's been made easier now that Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to boost their own crude oil production and exports (Energywire, June 25).
Analysts at JBC Energy said a tax by China on U.S. oil would not halt the sale of those crude volumes entirely — the barrels would still find other markets in the world. But they warn that it would make worse the discount West Texas Intermediate light sweet crude sells for compared to the higher Brent crude oil price. The Brent-WTI price gap has been driven by constraints in oil pipeline capacity in Texas.
"U.S.-to-China movements have expanded quickly over the last eighteen months, with China recently overtaking Canada as the biggest market for U.S. export volumes," analysts there said in a note to clients. "If this level were trimmed or halted it would almost certainly contribute to an even wider spread between Brent and WTI than recent forward assessments have been suggesting."Immediate concerns
Aside from fluctuations in the oil price and companies' stock prices, there will be little immediate impact from the cross-Pacific tariffs should they come into force this weekend. Economists are more concerned about the consequences should the tariffs remain in place for an extended period or should the U.S. respond to China's retaliation with even more expansive tariffs, as Trump has promised to do.
China has more to lose in the dispute. Its economic growth still greatly depends on exports and investment spending, and the U.S. buys far more from China than the other way around. China's imports from the U.S. are heavily weighted toward low-value commodities like soybeans, tariffs on which would generate problems for farm-belt lawmakers in the U.S. but would matter little to the overall U.S. economy.
Analysts at the Daiwa Institute of Research see China's economy taking a bigger hit than the United States' if tariffs are imposed and the trade fight lingers. They see the rift as being about far more than just the unbalanced trading relationship and speculate that recent Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and in other geopolitical theaters is giving hard-liners in Washington the upper hand in discussions on tariffs and trade policy.
"China is an emerging power which is challenging U.S. hegemony, and has been steadily increasing its strength and prestige both economically and militarily," said researchers Shunsuke Kobayashi and Yota Hirono in a monthly review by the Daiwa Institute. The two argue that some influential members of the U.S. government see trade policy as one means of protecting U.S. interests, "as long as trade policy is designed to serve this other long-term goal, there is always the possibility that strict tariff measures will be taken in regard to major products with strategic value in China's industrial development."
Lower export revenues may also compel Beijing to spend more on domestic infrastructure and other projections, expanding China's already sizeable debts.LNG OK for now
There is one major U.S. energy export that, so far, is off China's tariff retaliation radar: liquefied natural gas.
China is expected to become the world's largest importer of LNG as it tries to clean up its coal-heavy power and residential heating sectors, and the U.S. will likely be the world's fastest growing source of new LNG export capacity according to the International Energy Agency (Energywire, June 26).
But Beijing has indicated that it may consider adding U.S. LNG to the list should the trade fight escalate, according to Reuters.
Census data shows the U.S. exported $423.8 million worth of LNG to China last year. From the beginning of 2018 through April, the U.S. has sold $2.4 billion worth of crude oil and $291 million worth of LNG to Chinese end users.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087997

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Thanks to Natural Gas, US CO2 Emissions Lowest Since 1985

Jul 6, 2018 | Real Clear Energy

By Jude Clemente

At 80 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), the U.S. just hit another record for dry natural gas production, a 46 percent increase since 2008 when the “shale gas revolution” started. The economic and energy security advantages are well known, but what has gotten less attention is how huge the environmental benefits of producing and using more natural gas have been.
In particular, mounting domestic supply has increasingly pushed us to more gas use in the electricity sector, which accounts for 35 percent of our total gas usage, especially noticeable the past week with air conditioners ramping up to fight the heat wave. U.S. gas needed for electricity has increased 40 percent over the past decade to ~26 Bcf/d — pushing gas to become our main source of power in 2016.
More gas for electricity has been our most effective weapon at combating climate change. Gas has negligible local pollutants and 50 percent less CO2 emissions than coal and 30 percent less than oil. Accounting for over 80 percentof our greenhouse gases, CO2 is the energy-emission most blamed for warming the planet. And reducing CO2 in power is essential: the sector accounts for almost 35 percent of our total emissions.
Gas power plants are mushrooming all over the country, with almost a 20 percent gas capacity gain of 90,000 megawatts from 2017–2020 alone. Bolstered by rising efficiency, the more that we have turned to natural gas, the more our CO2 emissions have plummeted. Our power emissions are now the lowest they have been since 1985. As the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has shown, electricity is unique in that it is the only sector where emissions are actually declining, thanks mostly to natural gas.
In fact, the U.S. has slashed CO2 emissions much faster than our European allies that adopted the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions in 1997. Preferring markets over incessant regulation, non-signatory U.S. has been reducing emissions faster than any other nation on Earth. All the while, our economy has boomed nearly 60 percent to $18 trillion (real 2010 $).
Indeed, the climate group Carbon Brief reports that more natural gas use is the primary driver for declining CO2 emissions in the U.S. power sector. Gas has cut 50 percent more emissions since 2005 than wind and solar power combined. Natural gas is the reason why President Obama’s now pulled back Clean Power Plan has become completely irrelevant: We are set to surpass his reduction goals a decade early. Natural gas is the only fossil fuel that actually increases in demand under modeled scenarios that keep the rise in the global average temperature to below the critical 2°C threshold.
Looking forward, we are going to need even more natural gas to meet climate goals. The Brookings Institution concludes that natural gas plants cut 2.6 times more greenhouse gas emissions than wind and 4 times more than solar. Brookings also reports that natural gas is easily the “least expensive” path to a low-carbon energy system.
In fact, not just lowering emissions directly by more use, a natural gas backbone for the power grid gives us the critical peaking ability to enable a deeper penetration of renewables. Gas plants have the unique ability to quickly ramp up and hit maximum output in a matter of minutes, compensating for “when the wind isn’t blowing” or “the sun isn’t shining.” With capacity factors in the 33–43 percent range even on good days, naturally intermittent wind and solar are “unavailable more than they are available.” So as the required backup, natural gas that enjoys a much more reliable 85–90 percent range will remain crucial as the complement for renewables.
Although growing in importance, battery storage will simply not be able to displace gas peaking plants to fully support wind and solar: The scale of investment required is just too great. This explains precisely why EIA’s National Energy Modeling System projects that U.S. gas generation capacity will explode nearly 45 percent over the next 30 years — as nuclear and coal face drastic decline.
And why not? Our clean gas supply is effectively unlimited, with literally hundreds of years of gas at our disposal. We have 800 trillion cubic feet of low cost shale gas — far more than double our proven reserves — that can be produced even when gas is under $3 per MMBtu. EIA now projects that we will have a whopping 15–17 Bcf/d surplus (production – demand) by 2025, reaching 20–22 Bcf/d by 2040. This means that our gas prices will remain at record lows, encouraging even greater use in the decades ahead.
EIA forecasts that abundant and affordable natural gas will easily be the main source of new U.S. energy production, consistently soaring over 60 percent all the way through 2050. Thus, with its proven ability to drastically lower CO2, natural gas is much more than just a “bridge fuel” to a renewable future: Increasingly, gas is a destination fuel that will remain our go to source for clean electricity.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/07/06/more_natural_gas_is_slashing_us_co2_emissions_110310.html

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Delaware River Basin Frack Ban Remanded to District Court

Jul 6, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence

By Charlie Passut

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has overturned a lower court's decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by a small exploration and production company that is challenging the authority of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to enact a de facto moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated a March 2017 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to dismiss a lawsuit filed nearly one year earlier by Wayne Land and Mineral Group LLC (WLMG), WLMG v. DRBC, No. 17-1800. Justices Kent Jordan, Thomas Hardiman and Anthony Scirica ordered the case remanded back to District Court Judge Robert Mariani for further review.
Court records show that the 1961 compact that created the DRBC includes language giving the commission authority to review "all public and private projects and facilities" within the basin. The DRBC is led by the governors of Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' North Atlantic division. However, while Mariani dismissed WLMG's lawsuit on the grounds that fracking constituted a "project," the appellate court justices weren't so sure.
"Because we conclude that the meaning of the word 'project' as used in the compact is ambiguous, we will vacate the order of dismissal and remand the case for fact-finding on the intent of the compact's drafters," Jordan wrote for the panel. He later added that "there are other provisions in the compact that suggest that the drafters did not intend to define 'project' as broadly as the commission contends...
"Broadly defining 'project' to include WLMG's proposed fracking-related activities would sweep in undertakings that could appear out of place among the (admittedly non-exhaustive) list of projects and facilities expressly set forth in the description of the commission's general powers. That list includes: water and waste treatment plants, stream and lake recreational facilities, trunk mains for water distribution, local flood protection works, small watershed management programs, and ground water recharging operations. Those are arguably different in purpose and in kind than fracking operations."
According to its complaint, WLMG owns about 180 acres of land in Wayne County, PA, including 75 acres within the river basin.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN), granted intervenor status as a defendant and which supports the de facto moratorium, predicted that the ban would ultimately be maintained.
"The court of appeals recognized the importance of these issues and is giving the parties the opportunity to establish a full record on remand to the district court," said DRN lead counsel Jordan Yeager. "We are confident that when a full record is established the courts will conclude that the DRBC has not only the authority to regulate fracking and related infrastructure, but the absolute duty to do so."
Last April, the DRBC said it had received more than 8,600 public comments over proposals to permanently ban fracking within the Delaware River Basin and discourage fresh water exports and wastewater imports that could be used to support the practice elsewhere. Much of the basin in New York and Pennsylvania overlaps the Marcellus Shale.
The DRBC said in 2009 that all gas drilling in the basin needed to be reviewed but said it would not approve any development until rules were adopted governing the industry. The agency postponed the gas development review in 2010 and failed to act on adopting rules in 2011, leaving in place a de facto moratorium.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114962-delaware-river-basin-frack-ban-remanded-to-district-court

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Swap Shores up Conocophillips' Position in the North Slope

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Margaret Kriz Hobson

Two of Alaska's largest oil producers shook up the state's energy industry this week by announcing an asset swap that gives ConocoPhillips Alaska greater control over a promising new oil region in the state, while increasing BP's holdings in the North Sea.
Under an exchange that took effect on July 1, ConocoPhillips acquired BP PLC's entire 39.2 percent holdings in Alaska's Greater Kuparuk Area oil fields as well as its 38 percent interest in the Kuparuk area pipeline system.
The transaction gives ConocoPhillips a 94.5 percent interest in the Greater Kuparuk Area upstream assets and 95 percent of the Kuparuk Transportation Co. Chevron holds 4.9 percent ownership, and Exxon Mobil has a 0.6 percent interest.
Houston-based ConocoPhillips is the operator of the Greater Kuparuk Area, the second-largest oil operation on the North Slope. That region consists of the Kuparuk field and four satellite fields and is located 40 miles west of the bigger Prudhoe Bay oil field.
In exchange for the Alaska assets, ConocoPhillips gave up 16.5 percent of its interest in the Clair field, which BP described as a "core asset" of its North Sea business in the United Kingdom. That transaction gives BP a 45.1 percent interest in Clair, with ConocoPhillips retaining a 7.5 percent interest.
The giant Clair field, located west of Shetland, is estimated to hold more than 7 billion barrels of hydrocarbons. Now in its first phase of development, the operation is currently producing 21,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Later this year, a second phase of oil production is expected to produce up to 120,000 barrels per day.
London-based BP indicated that its Alaska asset trade with ConocoPhillips will not affect BP's position as operator and co-owner of the Prudhoe Bay oil field. ConocoPhillips and Exxon are partners in that operation.
Rumored for months, the property exchange is described by the two companies as "cash neutral" to both firms. BP and ConocoPhillips are declining to provide further details.'Significant' move for ConocoPhillips
In taking near-total control over the Kuparuk operation, ConocoPhillips is further strengthening its position on Alaska's North Slope. ConocoPhillips officials said the asset exchange "will allow the company to make more efficient decisions and enable more development" of its Kuparuk Field.
ConocoPhillips Chairman and CEO Ryan Lance in a statement described the transactions as "significant for ConocoPhillips because they continue our strategy of coring up our legacy asset base in Alaska, while retaining an interest in the Clair Field in the U.K."
Earlier this year, ConocoPhillips paid $400 million to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. to take full ownership of oil leases that the two companies had partnered in buying over the last few years in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) and in state lands located just east of the reserve.
That purchase, finalized in May, gives ConocoPhillips a 100 percent interest in approximately 1.2 million acres of exploration and development lands, including its massive Willow discovery in the northeastern corner of the NPR-A.
First announced in January 2017, the Willow site is projected to hold more than 300 million barrels of recoverable oil and could produce up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day. In May, the company asked the Bureau of Land Management to begin work on an environmental impact statement for the proposed Willow master development plan.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087963

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Transportation and Infrastructure News

U.S. EPA Launches Electronic Hazardous Waste Reporting

Jul 6, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Jeff Johnson

The U.S. EPA has begun a long-awaited shift to an electronic rather than a paper reporting system to track the movement of hazardous waste from waste generator to treater to storage and disposal facilities. The new manifest system will be funded by charges to waste-receiving companies. EPA says companies that handle hazardous waste may choose to continue reporting on paper; however, such companies will pay higher processing fees to cover EPA’s costs to transfer the information into the electronic system. EPA has been studying how to shift to electronic reporting since 2001, according to agency material. In 2012, Congress forced the issue by passing a law that set an implementation deadline of June 30 this year, says Christopher Bryant, a former agency official and industry consultant with the law firm Bergeson & Campbell. Some 600,000 U.S. firms generate hazardous waste, and more than 1 million shipping manifests are filled out annually, Bryant estimates. EPA claims the new system will save waste handlers and states overseeing hazardous waste programs $90 million per year in paperwork reductions. The agency did not respond to implementation questions.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/US-EPA-launches-electronic-hazardous/96/i28

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Environment News

Pruitt's Evolving Views on Climate Change

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Chelsea Harvey

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid a flurry of ethics scandals. But he'll also be remembered for controversies around science.
His views became increasingly provocative the longer he stayed in office. Over the course of Pruitt's year-and-a-half tenure, his comments on climate change shifted from questioning its causes to asking whether it's such a bad thing for the planet after all.
Before he was nominated, Pruitt had a history of disputing mainstream climate science. As Oklahoma's attorney general, he joined a coalition of state attorneys general suing the Obama administration over its Clean Power Plan, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He also became an outspoken champion of Exxon Mobil Corp. after other states began investigating whether the corporation had failed to disclose what it knew about climate change.
In an opinion piece for National Review, published in May 2016, Pruitt and co-author Luther Strange, Alabama's then-attorney general, argued in defense of Exxon Mobil and said that "scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind."
In reality, an overwhelming majority of scientists — around 97 percent, by most estimates — believe that climate change is happening and is primarily driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
At his EPA confirmation hearing seven months later, Pruitt clarified this perspective. When asked whether he believed that climate change was caused by human emissions, he said he believed the climate is changing and that human activity contributes to it "in some manner." But he added that he thought "the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity's impact on the climate is subject to more debate on whether the climate is changing or the human activity contributes to it."
Throughout the rest of 2017, Pruitt mainly stuck to this stance — that although the climate is changing and human activity may play some role, science can't pinpoint the extent of it. In several media interviews, he suggested that carbon dioxide emissions are one of many drivers of climate change and may not be its primary cause, and that the human contribution to climate change is difficult to determine "with precision."
In early 2018, however, Pruitt's comments on climate science took a different tone. He began questioning whether climate change was likely to have a negative impact on the planet and human societies.
In a January interview with Reuters, Pruitt affirmed that the climate is, indeed, changing — but suggested there's a debate about "what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100."
The comment refers to a tendency for climate projections to focus on what conditions might be like in 2100 under various emissions scenarios. Under a business-as-usual climate scenario, under which greenhouse gas emissions would continue unmitigated into the future, studies predict that global temperatures could rise by more than 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above their preindustrial levels.
In fact, experts have chosen a desired cap for global temperatures through the end of the century — the Paris climate agreement calls for world leaders to keep the planet within 2 C (or potentially a more ambitious 1.5 C) of their preindustrial levels. Beyond that point, many scientists suggest that the planet could experience a variety of dangerous climate impacts and potential tipping points — catastrophic ice melt, sea-level rise and severe weather events being just a few.
Yet Pruitt went on to reiterate this view again and again. Later in January, at an oversight hearing held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Pruitt said that "what is the ideal surface temperature in the year 2100 is something that many folks have different perspective on."
And in February, he doubled down in an interview with a Nevada news station. When asked whether people should be alarmed about climate change, Pruitt responded that the extent to which climate change is a threat to the planet remains in question.
"I think there's assumptions made that, because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing," he said. "Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? That's ... I think fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100."
Yet multiple climate studies over the last few years have pointed to the negative impacts of severe future climate change and have suggested that keeping temperatures within at least a 2 C limit could substantially mitigate those outcomes.
So over the course of his time in office, Pruitt may not have directly disputed the fact that climate change is occurring. But he started by questioning the extent to which human activity drives those changes, and he ended by suggesting that global warming may not necessarily be a bad thing for the Earth. Those views fly in the face of established climate science.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087989

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Trump Official Urges 'Donor-Driven' Push, Without U.S. Cash

Jul 6, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Jean Chemnick

The U.S. representative on the United Nations' Green Climate Fund board suggested this week that the fund be "donor-driven," even though the Trump administration doesn't plan to remain a donor.
Geoffrey Okamoto, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs, said as the board wrapped up its meeting in South Korea on Wednesday that the next replenishment of the fund aimed at helping poor countries prepare for climate change must be "donor-driven," U.K.-based website Climate Home News reported.
The Trump administration has reneged on a $2 billion pledge to the fund after the Obama administration provided $1 billion.
Climate aid advocates expressed outrage about the United States using its place on the U.N. board to undermine its balance of power.
By suggesting that rich countries alone should dictate when and how they fill the fund's coffers, they said, Okamoto is ignoring that the board was designed to guarantee that developing countries had a voice in how the fund is managed and what projects it supports.
Brandon Wu, director of policy at ActionAid USA, called Okamoto's words "deeply unhelpful," although other developed countries have indicated that more funds would be conditioned on actions by poor countries. Those countries are being pressed to pay more to make up for the shortfall created by Trump's withdrawal.
"If you're using the withholding of funds as a way to drive policies that you want, that actually kind of goes against the principles of balanced governance in the GCF where developed and developing countries are supposed to have an equal say," he said.
Before Okamoto's appointment, the United States was represented on the board under Trump by Larry McDonald, a career official at Treasury.
But Okamoto's performance in Seoul wasn't the reason this week's meeting broke down without any new projects approved, likely delaying the next round of developed nations' commitments to the fund.
Board members spent two of the meeting's four days approving its agenda.
Observers say that's because Paul Oquist, the Illinois-born climate negotiator for Nicaragua and the board's co-chairman, didn't adequately consult with other developing countries' representatives ahead of the meeting, prompting them to demand changes to the agenda. Oquist himself didn't attend the meeting due to political turmoil in Nicaragua.
The meeting was thrown into further chaos when the fund's executive director, Australian Howard Bamsey, abruptly quit, citing personal reasons, leaving the panel the politically difficult task of choosing his replacement. These developments make it likely that the replenishment period for the fund will slip to next year, and some experts say that might lengthen the amount of time the United States remains a member of the panel.
Paul Bodnar, a White House climate adviser under Obama who is now at the Rocky Mountain Institute, said the board's politics are complicated by the fact that most of its members are climate negotiators and are mired in the "same cultural and political dysfunctions that have afflicted the [U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change] process for a quarter-century."
The fund, he said, should move quickly to professional management instead of direct management by the board.
"Otherwise, they'll really struggle to attract top talent to the executive director position," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/07/06/stories/1060087969

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