Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 04/09/18
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'Sparks Will Fly' — Kavanaugh Faces Off Against Senators
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
It's showtime. -
Science Nominees, Resources Bills Up for Vote
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this week is expected to vote on two Trump administration nominees who could sway federal policy on climate change and scientific research. -
Court Questions Monsanto’s Small Size of Dicamba Studies
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
When Monsanto Co. sought to gain approval for its new herbicide XtendiMax, the company submitted a trove of scientific studies to back up a claim that the new product, unlike its predecessors, would not evaporate off fields and settle on neighboring crops. -
First Hearing Set on PFAS Contamination, Cleanup
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold Congress' first hearing Thursday on the controversy surrounding perfluorinated chemicals. -
Philadelphia's Appeal To Plaintiffs Crosses Borders; 41 Dominicans File Pesticide Lawsuit There
Sep 4, 2018 | Forbes
By Nicholas Malfitano
Americans from all over the country have traditionally flocked to Philadelphia courtrooms, to the point their anti-business reputation has resulted in a “Judicial Hellhole" designation, and now plaintiffs are coming from other countries to seek their day in court. -
(ACC Mentioned) Natural Gas Hub Developers Announce a Partner
Sep 4, 2018 | West Virginia MetroNews
By Brad McElhinny
The group aiming to develop a natural gas storage hub in the region has taken another step forward. -
'America First' or Coal First? LNG Groups Want to Know
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
As the Trump administration marches forward with its plan to aid economically distressed coal and nuclear power plants, the natural gas industry is looking for recognition from the White House. -
Bill to Expedite Small Exports Nears House Vote
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
Days after a Department of Energy rule expediting the approval process for small-scale natural gas exports took effect, congressional Republicans are moving toward passing a bill that would codify it into law. -
State Ballot Measures Tee Up Energy Fights
Sep 4, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Kelsey Tamborrino
Control of the House may be up for grabs in the November midterm election, but voters will also weigh in on major energy issues on ballots in several states, ranging from a proposal that would sharply restrict fracking in Colorado and the creation of the nation's first fee on carbon emissions in Washington to the rollback of the gas tax hike in California. -
Flood of Sand Points to Shakeout for Shale Suppliers
Sep 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christopher M. Matthews
Two years ago, many investors had the same idea: Tapping the dunes of the West Texas desert to supply shale drillers with the sand they use in fracking. -
A New Oil Field Danger — 'Fluid Transfer'
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Federal worker safety researchers say toxic petroleum gases can kill oil workers on the ground at well sites as they fill up tanker trucks with crude oil. -
Hearing to Explore New Technologies
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
House lawmakers this week will examine the latest technologies coming to the nation's roads. -
Panel Revisits Cost of Permitting, Environmental Reviews
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Kellie Lunney
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawmakers on Thursday will discuss the cost of delays associated with environmental reviews and permitting for infrastructure projects. -
Climate Talks Enter a `Critical’ Stage in Bangkok, UN Envoy Says
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mathew Carr and Natnicha Chuwiruch
Envoys at a special round of global climate talks are nearing a crucial stage in their effort to flesh out the landmark Paris agreement, the United Nations diplomat helping organize the meeting said. -
Trump Sends Civil Servants to Major Climate Talks
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
The Trump administration is expected to send career staff — not political appointees — to high-stakes international climate talks that kick off this week in Bangkok and continue into the fall. -
In California, Facts and Science Still Matter
Sep 3, 2018 | The New York Times - Opinion
People who worry about climate change have been in a state of high anxiety about President Trump’s ignorance about the issue, his assault on Obama-era policies designed to do something about it and the growing evidence that extreme weather events and other consequences of global warming, long predicted by mainstream scientists, are now upon us. -
Environmentalists Need to Get Real
Sep 4, 2018 | Wall Street Journal - Opinion
By Walter Russell Mead
Last week French environmental minister Nicolas Hulot, once a prominent supporter of President Emmanuel Macron, threw in the towel. -
You’ve Heard of Outsourced Jobs, but Outsourced Pollution? It’s Real, and Tough to Tally Up.
Sep 4, 2018 | The New York Times
By Brad Plumer
Over the past decade, both the United States and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home. That trend is often held up as a sign of progress in the fight against climate change. -
Companies Could Line Up to Take Anti-Carbon Plunge
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
When companies, investors, and cities lead on climate change, national governments will follow.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
LCSA - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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'Sparks Will Fly' — Kavanaugh Faces Off Against Senators
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
It's showtime.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh formally goes before senators this week at his confirmation hearings, a multiday event that will likely produce a lot of fireworks but change few, if any, minds.
The action begins at 9:30 a.m. today with opening statements and introductions from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and attorney Lisa Blatt.
The biggest draw — the questioning of Kavanaugh — will begin tomorrow and is expected to last two days. It will be followed by testimony from outside witnesses.
"There will be sparks at this hearing. Sparks will fly," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Friday.
Judiciary Committee Democrats are preparing to throw everything but the kitchen sink at Kavanaugh, a prominent judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in the hope of landing a fatal blow that will sink his nomination.
They're planning to focus on abortion, gun rights and presidential power and are bringing in a host of witnesses to speak on those issues. Those expected to testify include Nixon White House Counsel John Dean and Aalayah Eastmond, a survivor of the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Kavanaugh meeting with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). @lisamurkowski/Twitter
Kavanaugh will likely face many questions about his views on existing Supreme Court precedents, such as Roe v. Wade, and when precedents should be overruled. But if past judicial nominations are any indication, he'll frustrate Democrats who ask such questions by explaining that he doesn't want to give anything away about how he might judge a particular case before the court.
Much of the hearing is also likely to focus on Kavanaugh's work prior to his 12-year tenure at the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh got his political start as one of the lead lawyers for independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton; he would go on to serve in the George W. Bush White House, including as assistant to the president and staff secretary.
"We're hoping for a hearing that lets the public thoroughly understand where he is on major issues that the Supreme Court will decide," said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the committee who has raised concerns about Kavanaugh's record, both in the Bush administration and on the D.C. Circuit.
Democrats have also invited speakers on environmental regulations and administrative law, signaling that such issues are part of their broader strategy to knock down the Kavanaugh nomination.
Historically, though, environmental issues have played second fiddle at Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Still, green issues may get more play this time around, as Kavanaugh's long record on the D.C. Circuit provides a lot of fodder and includes decisions on topics such as climate change, air pollution rules, ethanol mandates and Endangered Species Act decisions.
Kavanaugh — who would fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, long considered the court's swing vote — could have an almost immediate impact on environmental law. If he's confirmed by Oct. 1, he would likely participate in a key case testing wildlife agencies' ability to designate critical habitat for imperiled species (E&E News PM, July 9).
Foes have focused on what they see as Kavanaugh's natural tendency to question federal agency authority and side with corporations and industry groups. They are afraid that Kavanaugh would give the Supreme Court the fifth vote it needs to roll back environmental and public health regulations.
Last week, Public Citizen released a report finding that Kavanaugh sided with corporations or states, and against federal agencies or environmental groups, in 11 of 13 environmental cases decided in split decisions at the D.C. Circuit. The report also argued that Kavanaugh is inconsistent in that he defers to federal agencies when public interest groups challenge their actions.
This past week has seen a flurry of letters to senators, both those opposing the nominee and those calling for his confirmation. Off Capitol Hill, the League of Conservation Voters launched a $200,000 ad campaign with a focus on Nevada, Maine and Alaska — all states where greens have hoped to persuade vulnerable and moderate Republicans to oppose the nominee.
EPA's decision last week to reconsider an Obama-era rule aimed at limiting mercury and other toxic air pollution emissions from power plants only emboldened environmental groups opposed to Kavanaugh. While on the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion that was later mostly adopted by the Supreme Court finding that EPA unlawfully failed to consider costs when deciding whether to regulate power plants.
"If our Senators want to protect our health, they will reject Brett Kavanaugh's nomination immediately," Sierra Club Democracy Program Director Courtney Hight said in a statement last week.
Still, neither greens nor Democrats have succeeded at slowing Kavanaugh's inevitable progress through the Senate until after the midterm elections.
Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has ignored several calls by Democrats to delay this week's hearings, including a request by Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who said they needed more documents from Kavanaugh's time at the White House to be able to fully review the nominee's environmental record.
"Any confirmation hearing or vetting process that fails to include and consider Judge Kavanaugh's complete environmental record, specifically his time as White House staff secretary and White House counsel, is a hearing that would be uninformed, illegitimate and an abdication of our constitutional duties," EPW ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) and other committee Democrats said.
Grassley also rebuffed calls to delay the hearing based on President Trump's legal woes. Following the guilty plea by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and the federal convictions of former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and all 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee called on Grassley to push back the start of this week's hearing.
A handful of Democrats, including Judiciary Committee member Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, canceled planned meetings with the nominee.
"It's absolutely not clear to me what one has to do with the other," Grassley said on the floor last week. "But this is by my account at least the third strategy Democratic leaders have used to tried to delay Judge Kavanaugh's hearing."
Some Democrats have taken heat back home for their decisions to not meet with the nominee. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) was challenged last week by his Republican opponent, Matt Rosendale, on his failure to meet with Kavanaugh. The Montana Senate race is considered one of the top contests this fall.
Republicans are still pushing to have the conservative judge approved for the start of the Supreme Court's fall term.
"I hope we'll move forward quickly thereafter to vote on his confirmation," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said last week.
Schedule: The hearings begin Tuesday, Sept. 4, at 9:30 a.m. in 216 Hart.
Witnesses: Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He'll be introduced by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and attorney Lisa Blatt.
Second panel: Paul Moxley, chairman of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, and John Tarpley, the committee's principal evaluator.
Third panel — testifying for the majority: Luke McCloud, associate at Williams & Connolly LLP; Louisa Garry, teacher at the Friends Academy in Locust Valley, N.Y.; Theodore Olson, partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and former U.S. solicitor general; Colleen Roh Sinzdak, senior associate at Hogan Lovells; and Akhil Amar, professor of law and political science at Yale Law School.
Third panel — testifying for the minority: Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.); Rochelle Garza, managing attorney at Garza & Garza Law; Elizabeth Weintraub, advocacy specialist at the Association of University Centers on Disabilities; Alicia Baker of Indianapolis; and Melissa Murray, professor at the New York University School of Law.
Fourth panel — testifying for the majority: A.J. Kramer, federal public defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia; Rebecca Taibleson, assistant U.S. attorney, Eastern District of Wisconsin; Maureen Mahoney, former U.S. deputy solicitor general; and Kenneth Christmas, executive vice president of business and legal affairs at Marvista Entertainment.
Fourth panel — testifying for the minority: Parkland shooting survivor Aalayah Eastmond; Jackson Corbin of Hanover, Pa.; Hunter LaChance of Kennebunk, Maine; and Melissa Smith, social studies teacher at U.S. Grant Public High School in Oklahoma City.
Fifth panel — testifying for the majority: Monica Mastal, real estate agent in D.C.; Paul Clement, partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and former U.S. solicitor general; Adam White, executive director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School; and Jennifer Mascott, assistant professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School.
Fifth panel — testifying for the minority: John Dean, former counsel to President Nixon; Rebecca Ingber, associate professor of law at Boston University School of Law; Lisa Heinzerling, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center; and Peter Shane, professor of law at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.
Reporters Geof Koss, George Cahlink and Kellie Lunney contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095607
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Science Nominees, Resources Bills Up for Vote
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this week is expected to vote on two Trump administration nominees who could sway federal policy on climate change and scientific research.
The markup originally was scheduled for last week but was postponed because of a change in the Senate floor schedule.
At a hearing last month, Kelvin Droegemeier — the pick for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy — told lawmakers he was "very excited" to work on climate change issues but left unanswered questions about his views of human-driven warming (Greenwire, Aug. 23).
He also called cyberattacks one of the nation's gravest threats and advocated for more science education. In addition, he said, "we've got to watch our dollars" with regard to scientific research, noting a funding push by other countries to develop new technologies. He didn't reference proposed budget cuts from the White House to the Department of Energy and other science agencies in his comments.
OSTP's staff is about half the size it was during the peak of the Obama years. The office has eliminated multiple positions dedicated to climate change and created ones on artificial intelligence and nuclear energy.
The committee will also consider James Morhard, the nominee for deputy administrator of NASA, who told the panel last month he could not say "authoritatively" that humans are the chief driver of rising temperatures. Like Droegemeier, he said there should be no political interference with the scientific process.
Additionally, the panel will vote on two bills:S. 1965, the "Allowing Alaska IVORY Act," from Alaska Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski. The bill would pre-empt states from banning walrus ivory or whale bone products that have been legally carved by Alaskan indigenous groups.S. 2773, the "Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act," from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). It would ban driftnet fishing off California's coast.
Schedule: The markup is Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 10 a.m. in 106 Dirksen.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095609
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Court Questions Monsanto’s Small Size of Dicamba Studies
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
When Monsanto Co. sought to gain approval for its new herbicide XtendiMax, the company submitted a trove of scientific studies to back up a claim that the new product, unlike its predecessors, would not evaporate off fields and settle on neighboring crops.
Two of those studies are now at the center of a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of XtendiMax, and arguing that the agency didn’t properly vet the product and its active ingredient, dicamba.
The EPA had “not even close to a realistic sense of how much this stuff would drift,” Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, told Bloomberg Environment. The center is one of the parties challenging the herbicide’s approval in National Family Farm Coalition v. EPA.
The EPA must decide whether to renew the two-year registration of Monsanto’s XtendiMax, BASF SE’s Engenia, and DowDuPont Inc.’s FeXapan herbicides or let them expire this November.
The dicamba-based weedkillers were approved for use on top of soybean and cotton plants—rather than before the plants emerge from the soil—for the first time in November 2016. This means they are applied in the late spring and summer months, when high temperatures drive up volatility, or the rate by which liquid spray droplets turn into gas.
It’s not the first time that outside organizations are claiming that EPA didn’t have sufficient information to make an informed decision on the dicamba weedkillers. University scientists in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and other states said in 2017 that they weren’t permitted to test volatility on XtendiMax before usage, and did their own independent studies only after the product came on the market.
Monsanto—which was bought by Bayer AG for $66 billion this year—commissioned two field studies to measure how likely XtendiMax was to volatilize under realistic conditions. Uncertainties in Studies
The company plugged the field results into a model to estimate real-world conditions—a 3.4-acre field in Georgia and a 9.6-acre plot in Texas. The results of the tests on those fields would help show the EPA in 2016 that the new product could be safely and effectively used to control hard-to-kill weeds.
While the EPA ultimately concluded that the product could go to market, it did note that uncertainties remained surrounding how XtendiMax would behave on fields. The uncertainties “could result in underestimates of vapor drift,” scientists from the agency’s pesticides’ office wrote.
More research would help, they added. The EPA pesticide scientists urged more studies to resolve outstanding questions about nontarget drift of dicamba through getting more information about the Texas study, how time-of-day and weather affected drift, and where and how much of the airborne dicamba lands elsewhere. ‘3 Million Acres of Real-World Experience’
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher seized on the size and small number of the fields tested for drift.
“Is that enough?” Fletcher asked John Brett Grosko, the attorney representing EPA, during Aug. 29 oral arguments. “It doesn’t seem like very much given the great danger that everyone knew that dicamba posed.”
Grosko told the judge that the EPA has the authority to decide what is the best available science.
The studies were sufficient under the standards of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Endangered Species Act, Grosko said, referring to the two statutes under which the registration was challenged.
“I’m not sure we need studies,” Fletcher said. “We now have 3 million acres worth of real-world experience.”50 Years of ‘Safe Use’
In 2017, about 3.6 million acres of soybean crops were allegedly damaged by drifting dicamba, the same year that Monsanto, BASF and DowDupont released their new weedkillers, designed to be sprayed on genetically engineered crops that don’t wilt when sprayed with dicamba.
The damage occurred on farms where growers didn’t plant the genetically modified seeds. This year, about 1 million acres of soybeans are allegedly affected, accordingto the University of Missouri’s Integrated Pest Management program.
Fletcher brought up the question again with Monsanto’s attorney Richard Bress.
“I don’t think it’s correct that we failed to provide them the data from the Texas tests,” Bress said, adding that the EPA concluded that the tests were done “under near-ideal conditions for volatization.” Bress added that the data from the Texas study was “suspect” because it may have been contaminated from dicamba spray from uncontrolled sources, which was why it wasn’t submitted to EPA.
Monsanto stood by its products in an Aug. 29 statement.
“Dicamba-based herbicides have a 50-year history of safe use, when applied according to label directions, and we are confident the Government’s exhaustive assessment will prevail,” spokeswoman Charla Lord said in an email to Bloomberg Environment. ‘Serious’ Deficiencies
David Mortensen, a professor of weed and applied plant ecology at Pennsylvania State University, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of challengers National Family Farm Coalition in which he calls Monsanto’s field studies “shockingly insufficient.”
“While they have their place in controlled-component research, there are serious scaling deficiencies associated with small plot work,” Mortensen told the court. Dicamba was sprayed on hundreds of acres of soybeans located close to one another.
“All of a sudden it’s not a plume arising from one 160-acre field; rather, it is the aggregate of many, many fields,” Mortensen said.
But Michael Yost, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, told Bloomberg Environment that small field studies shouldn’t be disqualified only for their size.
“The question really relies on how representative those studies are,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a large area in order to measure the emissions flux.”
The case is Nat’l Family Farm Coal. v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 17-70196, 8/29/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/court-questions-monsantos-small-size-of-dicamba-studies?context=landing&limit=10&tab=news
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First Hearing Set on PFAS Contamination, Cleanup
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold Congress' first hearing Thursday on the controversy surrounding perfluorinated chemicals.
The Environment Subcommittee hearing is titled "Perfluorinated Chemicals in the Environment: An Update on the Response to Contamination and Challenges Presented."
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, are a toxic class of chemicals that have been used widely for decades in everything from firefighting foam used by the military to nonstick pans.
They have been found to persist in the environment, and evidence suggests a link with some PFAS to health problems including cancer.
An analysis by Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality found more than 11,300 sites in the state may be contaminated with the industrial chemicals (Greenwire, July 30). They have shown up in drinking water at high levels in states including Michigan and Pennsylvania.
"Every family deserves to know the truth about what is going on regarding PFAS. It has been in the news and there is too little information about the health risks and ways to address it in the environment," subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said in a news release announcing the hearing.
"With all the questions about PFAS exposure impacts swirling around, it's critical that we investigate the facts, the real risks, and what it takes to protect the public and clean up the contamination," he said.
The Senate is planning to hold its first PFAS-focused hearing Sept. 26 (E&E Daily, Aug. 24). And in a recent spending bill, the chamber approved money for cleanups. The defense policy bill also had a provision tasking the Pentagon with studying PFAS contamination.
Separately, Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter last Wednesday to committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Shimkus calling for a hearing on EPA's implementation of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The legislation signed in 2016 revised the Toxic Substances Control Act.
It's the fourth time the committee's Democrats have made such a request. The panel has yet to hold a hearing on the topic, according to a news release.
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Sept. 6, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
Witnesses: TBA.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095611
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Philadelphia's Appeal To Plaintiffs Crosses Borders; 41 Dominicans File Pesticide Lawsuit There
Sep 4, 2018 | Forbes
By Nicholas Malfitano
Americans from all over the country have traditionally flocked to Philadelphia courtrooms, to the point their anti-business reputation has resulted in a “Judicial Hellhole" designation, and now plaintiffs are coming from other countries to seek their day in court.A case currently pending in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has been brought on behalf of 41 sugarcane plantation workers from the Dominican Republic who claim they were poisoned by herbicides and pesticides used and produced by several companies, one of which maintains operations in nearby King of Prussia. Philadelphia is located nearly 1,500 miles away from the Dominican Republic.
The suit, which has been dubbed a clear effort at forum-shopping by the state's legal reform group, was filed earlier this year against Fanjul Corporation of West Palm Beach, Fla.; Inicia Group of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Alcoholes Finos Dominicanos of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic; Drexel Chemical Company of Memphis, Tenn.; Biesterfeld International GmbH of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and United Phosphorus of King of Prussia.
By August, several defendants had been dismissed from the action, leaving only the Fanjul Corporation and Biesterfeld as defendants.
Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform Executive Director Curt Schroder says the case's only connection to Pennsylvania is the office location of plaintiffs attorney Robert T. Vance, which he said doesn't confer jurisdiction to the state or make Philadelphia a proper forum.
“Pennsylvania does not have jurisdiction over the defendant companies with respect to the claims of the Dominican workers. There is no allegation that they suffered harm in Pennsylvania. The conduct giving rise to their claims occurred in a foreign country," Schroder said.MORE FROM FORBESUNICEF USA BRANDVOICEEbola Outbreak Ends In The Democratic Republic Of The CongoCivic Nation BRANDVOICEHow I Realized My School Needed An It’s On Us ChapterGrads of Life BRANDVOICEEmployers Open To Ditching Degree Requirements When Hiring
"The allegedly harmful aspects of the job and products at issue were not made in Philadelphia, let alone Pennsylvania. As for the PA Long Arm Statute – nothing was sold, nor was business transacted in PA that resulted in injury to the Dominican workers."
The plaintiffs, residing in the poverty-stricken provinces of La Romana, San Pedro de Macoris, El Seibo, Hato Mayor, San Cristobal and La Altagracia, all serve as plantation workers assisting in the cultivation and harvesting of sugarcane, a prime industry in the Dominican Republic.
Such harvesting is controlled by a trio of companies: Central Romana Corporation, Consorcio Azucarero de Empresas Industriales and Consorcio Azucarero Central. The corporate parents of both Central Romana and CAEI - Fanjul Corporation and Inicia Group - were listed as defendants.
In their work on plantations, the plaintiffs say they were routinely exposed to “toxic pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and other chemical products…via spray, drift or direct contact with treated crops or soil, or from inadequate personal protective equipment.”
Furthermore, the plaintiffs say such risk was transferred to their families when they would return home after working in such conditions and to individuals residing in the vicinity of agricultural lands and plantations, due to chemical drift.
Since sugarcane grows as a perennial crop and requires regular application of pesticide, the plaintiffs allege their exposure to the pesticides at issue was constant and continuous. Such exposure was alleged to have occurred in four ways: Exposure through the mouth, breath passages, eyes and skin contact.
“Humans can be harmed by pesticides in two ways. First, pesticide poisoning occurs when pesticides harm internal organs. Second, pesticide-related injuries are caused by pesticides that are external irritants. The adverse health effects of pesticide exposure range from short-term impacts such as headaches, fever and nausea, to long-term impacts such as cancer, reproductive harm and endocrine disruption,” the suit states.
The plaintiffs say the defendant chemical companies designed the pesticides used on the sugarcane plantations and were aware that their extensive use and contact would cause them harm.
Moreover, according to the lawsuit, its 41 plaintiffs use pseudonyms because they risk facing violence in their home country of the Dominican Republic for their mere participation in the litigation.
Their attorney, Vance, was not able to be reached for comment on the case.
Schroder concurred with the Biesterfeld defense and its “compelling argument” that the company does not “design, manufacture, produce, import or otherwise distribute agrochemicals into Pennsylvania.”
“Biesterfeld makes a compelling argument that neither due process nor the Long-Arm Statute are satisfied and that Pennsylvania does not have jurisdiction. Therefore the question of whether Philadelphia is a proper forum is moot,” Schroder stated.
For multiple counts of negligence, strict liability, breach of warranty, abnormally dangerous and hazardous activity, aiding and abetting, willful and wanton misconduct, violation of the right to health, violation of Article 62, Section 8 of the Dominican Republic’s Constitution, violation of Articles 1382-1384 of the Civil Code of the Dominican Republic, the plaintiffs are seeking judgment in their favor and all damages under the law, in addition to a trial by jury.
Philadelphia Continues to be Plaintiffs' Venue of Choice
Recently released statistics from the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas' Complex Litigation Center showed that 84 percent of pharmaceutical case plaintiffs were coming from out-of-state, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's near-unanimous ruling in Bristol Myers-Squibb v. Superior Court of California last year.
In that decision, the company successfully argued plaintiffs living outside California who alleged injury from BMS’s blood thinner Plavix should not be able to sue the company in that state, and the decision may spell the end of all-inclusive view of personal jurisdiction.
In the BMS case, Plavix was not designed or made in California, and the company is headquartered in New York – yet, in Pennsylvania, a sizable number of out-of-state plaintiffs still make Philadelphia their venue of choice.
In the most recent iteration of the American Tort Reform Association's annual report, it listed the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas as No. 5 on its list of “Judicial Hellholes” and names the court as a longtime “national center” for products liability litigation.
“The court’s Complex Litigation Center (CLC) hosts a mass torts program that attracts drug, medical device and asbestos cases from across the county. The CLC had undertaken reforms and, in recent years, seemed to become less welcoming to out-of-state plaintiffs. But a surge of new lawsuits and a string of multimillion-dollar verdicts have sadly returned ‘The City of Unbrotherly Torts’ to the ranks of Judicial Hellholes,” the report stated.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2018/09/04/philadelphias-appeal-to-plaintiffs-crosses-borders-41-dominicans-file-pesticide-lawsuit-there/#5046956d15e9
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(ACC Mentioned) Natural Gas Hub Developers Announce a Partner
Sep 4, 2018 | West Virginia MetroNews
By Brad McElhinny
The group aiming to develop a natural gas storage hub in the region has taken another step forward.
Appalachia Development Group, LLC, has announced the selection of Parsons Corporation as its engineering, procurement and construction partner for the storage hub.
Parsons is an engineering, construction, and management support company headquartered in Pasadena, Calif.
Parsons would initially focus on aspects of front-end engineering and design, including project management and execution planning.
Subsequent phases include the construction of the $3.4 billion project and its long-term operation.
The Appalachia Storage & Trading Hub is a proposed underground storage facility for natural gas liquids and intermediates. Supporters tout its potential for secondary products from natural gas.
The American Chemistry Council has estimated that development of the storage hub would stimulate an estimated $36 billion in follow-on petrochemical investments and more than 100,000 new long-term jobs.
The project is meant to take advantage of the potential of the Marcellus, Utica and Rogersville Shale methane deposits for domestic and international markets.
Opposition has come from the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other environmental groups who agree it would create a major petrochemical region. They contend that would include public health dangers and contribute to global warming.
Early this year, the Appalachian storage hub cleared a significant hurdle for a possible $1.9 billion federal loan guarantee.
Appalachia Development Group said it recognizes that would be the first of several steps to secure a conditional commitment and final loan agreement. The group said it also aims to secure $1.4 billion through other financing.Steve Hedrick
Steve Hedrick, president and chief executive of Appalachian Development Group, said the selection of Parsons will help move the project forward.
“Parsons has proven and successful experience with complex infrastructure projects. I have confidence in Parsons’s ability to support the development and completion of the Hub safely, effectively and efficiently,” Hedrick stated.
Appalachia Development Group is owned by MATRIC and the West Virginia University Innovation Corporation. Hedrick is also the CEO of MATRIC.
He received criticism from Gov. Jim Justice earlier this year over his involvement with potential natural gas investors from China.
The natural gas storage hub project has received support from West Virginia’s congressional delegation, including senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito and Congressman David McKinley.
http://wvmetronews.com/2018/09/03/natural-gas-hub-developers-announce-a-partner/
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'America First' or Coal First? LNG Groups Want to Know
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
As the Trump administration marches forward with its plan to aid economically distressed coal and nuclear power plants, the natural gas industry is looking for recognition from the White House.
Frustration has been building between oil and gas companies and the administration. Battles over renewable fuel policy, tariffs on steel that goes into pipelines and a confusing rollout about plans to allow offshore drilling have heightened tensions.
While those actions have stirred animosity, none has come close to eliciting the kind of angst stemming from the administration's proposal to keep ailing electricity generators afloat on national security grounds. It's a clear loser for the natural gas industry because the plan would extend support to competitors in the power sector. In turn, that could depress booming gas production.
The industry increasingly is turning to exports of natural gas as a way to soften the blow from an administration determined to assist its flailing domestic coal industry. That, too, has faced headwinds. President Trump's trade wars have put liquefied natural gas in the crosshairs. China, the world's biggest growth market for natural gas exports, is considering hitting U.S. fuel with a 25 percent tariff.
"If you make it more expensive for grid operators to purchase natural gas power, then there's a surplus of natural gas capacity," an industry source said. "What we're saying is start negotiations now. Get something done for us in the next year, so as soon as this thing happens, we have an outlet to make up for the loss that we're not selling here."
To some, that was acknowledged in late July when the United States and the European Union announced efforts to ship more American LNG overseas. Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said they agreed to a deal after meeting at the White House.
That wasn't altogether accurate. European import terminals are far from fully utilized. Perhaps some new import infrastructure could be built in underserved markets, like Croatia, but that's at the margins. Besides, federal governments aren't the entities that strike LNG deals. That's left to private companies.
"Promises to sell LNG to other countries do not assuage the concerns that industry has on all things trade-war-related or the nuclear bailout issues — mostly because on the gas trade overture front, the government plays a very small role in creating commercial opportunity, whereas they can do real damage to project costs and domestic market opportunities on the other two fronts," Sarah Ladislaw, director and senior fellow of the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an email.
In the end, advancing trade ties with Europe is a blip in the overall picture.
It's the combination of Trump's protectionist trade policies and the potential bailout of nuclear and coal facilities that bothers Dan Eberhart, CEO of oil services company Canary LLC and a GOP fundraiser. Eberhart said he questioned the coal and nuclear proposal in an energy forum last month in Bismarck, N.D., with Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
"Honestly, I think it's very narrow for them to be so focused on coal. Either energy- or political-wise, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me," Eberhart said. "Not all of these policies seem to work in concert together. [Trump's] trade policies step on American energy dominance. They are for LNG exports, and Perry is going to stump for them, but they're for this resiliency plan that stomps on natural gas."
The natural gas industry's anxiety builds out of a political problem it never anticipated — that a GOP president would so radically upend trade and free-market philosophy, said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She said companies were laser-focused on the potential to end environmental regulations they found burdensome, which Trump said he would do, and ignored his decadeslong criticism of U.S. trade policy.
It was under former President Obama that the natural gas industry soared, she noted. Approvals for export terminals, while criticized by industry defenders as taking too long, got their start under Obama, she said. Although he didn't like taking credit for it, the expansion of natural gas also buoyed Obama's climate change credentials, as its replacement of coal in the domestic power sector reduced carbon emissions. There's a chance the same would have been true globally if it pushed out coal in markets like China.
The gas industry has been hesitant to openly criticize Trump, Jaffe said. But she said the president's trade policies squandered an opportunity for companies that want to send their gas abroad. U.S. gas is prized because it's linked to the Henry Hub price — a major distribution point on the natural gas pipeline network — that delinks it from world oil prices. At the same time, long-term contracts between Qatari and Russian suppliers and their customers are ending between 2020 and 2022. That meant the United States had a built-in advantage for securing new buyers.
Then Trump happened.
"It's like we're running a horse race, and we were five lengths ahead, and then somebody put five sandbags on the horse," Jaffe said. "I think that the industry underestimated the impact as a global industry — even if you're a U.S. domestic producer and you don't watch the international market — they underestimated the impact an 'America First' agenda would have."
Still, others said buyers are shifting away from long-term contracts. More fuel is being purchased on spot markets and on a short-term basis, underscoring a rapidly evolving natural gas market.
That doesn't mean the United States is out of the woods, though. The rancor with China is worrisome, an oil and gas industry source said, noting that uncertainty is starting to undermine some confidence in U.S. suppliers.
"We're already starting to see some folks take a more cautious position," the source said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095637
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Bill to Expedite Small Exports Nears House Vote
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
Days after a Department of Energy rule expediting the approval process for small-scale natural gas exports took effect, congressional Republicans are moving toward passing a bill that would codify it into law.
H.R. 4606 from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) would automatically grant approval to applications asking to export 0.14 billion cubic feet of gas per day or less, which do not require an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act.
It's set to be considered by the House Rules Committee today, with a vote on the House floor likely to follow close behind.
The language is effectively identical to a rule that DOE finalized on July 25 and took effect on Aug. 24.
Some Democrats opposed the legislation as it advanced through the Energy and Commerce Committee, and debate over the bill this week will likely center on whether it's necessary to duplicate a rule that's already been implemented.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the committee's ranking member, says it's not. "There are drawbacks to codifying a proposed rule with such a prescriptive volume requirement," he wrote in a dissent on the committee's report of the bill.
"For example, should the circumstance arise where exporting 0.14 Bcf/d of LNG is no longer in the public interest, then Congress would have to enact a new law to make changes," Pallone continued.
Democrats are also concerned the bill would remove consumer protections and could allow applicants to avoid the scrutiny needed for larger projects by splitting them up into smaller segments, as well as potentially contributing to higher gas prices and exacerbating climate change.
But Johnson and his fellow Republicans say a congressional mandate is needed to give more certainty and a clear timetable to American companies looking to export gas to emerging markets in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Passing the bill in Congress would prevent a future DOE from simply reversing the agency's rule. "Regulations change from administration to administration, so H.R. 4606 would codify the new rule into law," said Ben Keeler, a spokesman for Johnson.
"The small-scale exports rule and bill together are a step in the right direction to ensure the United States can take advantage of our abundance of natural gas with certainty," Keeler said.
If the bill goes to a House vote, it would likely pass easily after sailing through the committee with support from a handful of Democrats.
Schedule: The Rules meeting is Tuesday, Sept. 4, at 5 p.m. in H-313 Capitol.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095617
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State Ballot Measures Tee Up Energy Fights
Sep 4, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Kelsey Tamborrino
Control of the House may be up for grabs in the November midterm election, but voters will also weigh in on major energy issues on ballots in several states, ranging from a proposal that would sharply restrict fracking in Colorado and the creation of the nation's first fee on carbon emissions in Washington to the rollback of the gas tax hike in California.
Josh Altic, director for the Ballot Measures Project at Ballotpedia, says the many of proposals up for votes in November are “part of a trend toward more progressive measures” on ballots that proponents have sought to take directly to voters because of Republicans' success in blocking the issues at the state legislative level.
The ballot initiatives also show their backers are taking aggressive action, he said, and moving into the realms where corporations, utilities and unions are also active. “Almost all of these energy measures are going to be within the top 10 [or] 15 of the most expensive races in the ballot measure world this year,” he said.
Here are seven key measures on the Nov. 6 ballots to watch:
— Colorado’s anti-fracking measure: Initiative 97 revives the long-running fight over fracking in the state that's the nation's seventh-largest oil producer. The measure calls for widening the buffer zone between new fracking operations and “vulnerable areas” including homes, schools and water sources — a move energy industry backers says amounts to a de facto ban on drilling in the state. The proposal would prohibit fracking within 2,500 feet of those sites, far more than the current 500-foot buffer for homes and 1,000-foot buffer from schools.
“This is a response to a threat that is coming into many communities across Colorado,” said Anne Lee Foster, a volunteer for Colorado Rising, the group behind the ballot initiative. Foster said that the 2,500-foot threshold is based on a Colorado School of Public Health study that shows health risk can occur within a half mile of oil and gas development.
But the state regulator, the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, calculates the increased setback requirement would make about 54 percent of state's land surface off-limits for drilling, not counting the 36 percent of the state that is controlled by the federal government and not subject to the initiative, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association contends wiping the move would put at risk nearly 150,000 jobs in the state as well as $1 billion tax revenue.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jared Polis has said the ballot measure "would all but ban fracking in Colorado," echoing the stance of his Republican opponent, Walker Stapleton. But Stapleton has criticized Polis for backing a similar proposed ballot initiative in 2014 that would have made the minimum distance between wells and buildings 2,000 feet. That effort ultimately was pulledfrom the ballot, and two other initiatives that sought to curb fracking failed to make the ballot in 2016.
— Washington’s carbon fee: Washington state could make history this November by passing the first fee on carbon emissions in the U.S. Known as Initiative 1631, the ballot measure to fight climate change would charge “large emitters” $15 per metric ton of carbon content beginning in 2020, increasing by $2 each year. The annual fee — notably, not a “tax” under Washington state law because the proceeds would be directed for a specific purpose to promote clean air and energy rather than the state's general fund — would also adjust for inflation.
But oil and gas companies operating in the state oppose the measure and are pouring money into the “No on 1631” campaign. Three owners of refineries in the state, Phillips 66, BP and Andeavor, have kicked $3.7 million, $3 million and $1.7 million, respectively, according to public records. On the other side, The Nature Conservatory spent close to $950,000 to back the measure.
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is supporting the initiative, which he described as a “moderate proposal,” telling the environmental web publication Grist: "If you’re mad about what Donald Trump has done in denying climate science and trying to take us out of the Paris Agreement, he can’t stop you from voting for this initiative.”
— California’s gas tax repeal fight: This effort by Republicans in the Golden State appears to be designed to motivate the state's long-suffering Republican voters to turn out to the polls to support GOP lawmakers to try keep the party's control of the House. Democrats need to flip 24 seats nationally to take the House, and as many as 10 of those could come in California.
Proposition 6 would repeal the 12-cent per gallon tax that only took effect in November and was designed to raise $5.4 billion a year to pay for infrastructure spending. The ballot measure has energized state Republicans, who hope voters will see the higher price at the pump as a motivator to head to the polls.
House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have clung to the repeal effort, hoping it can save a handful of endangered California GOP House members. Republican Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego councilman who launched the repeal effort, has raised more than $1.1 million online through his Reform California super PAC. And polls show a majority of California voters support the repeal effort. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, for his part, opposes the measure to repeal one of his administration’s key legislative achievements, calling it “flawed and dangerous” in a June tweet.
— California’s water bond: Voters will also take up Proposition 3, which would authorize an $8.9 billion water bond issuance to fund water infrastructure, groundwater and surface water storage, dam repairs and watershed protection. The Sierra Club California opposes the effort, in part because it could “fund dam projects that are harmful to the environment and [are] strongly opposed by the environmental community.” But Gerald Meral, a former water adviser to Gov. Brown and director of the California Water Program at the Natural Heritage Institute who wrote the measure, says it "was designed to appeal to all different types of groups." The proposal would bring in new water for the state to supply an estimated 3 million families, Meral added.
It has support from environmental groups like National Wildlife Federation and Ducks Unlimited, as well as a host of California water districts.
— Arizona’s renewable push: Proposition 127 would require electric utilities to get 50 percent of their power from renewable resources like wind and solar by 2030. Renewables already contribute more than 15 percent of Arizona’s utility-scale net electricity generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pushed for the “Clean Energy for A Healthy Arizona” measure, while the industry-backed group Arizonans For Affordable Electricity says the measure will double electricity bills in the state. The opposition group also says because the initiative doesn’t consider nuclear power a renewable source, the state’s Palo Verde nuclear generating plant would be forced to close.
Pinnacle West Corporation, the parent company of electric utility Arizona Public Service, contributed more than $11 million to Arizonans For Affordable Electricity, while the Steyer-back NextGen Climate Action put close to $8.3 million into support of Proposition 127, according to campaign finance records. The industry group is also hoping to get the proposition pulled from the ballot, though a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected its challenge to the signatures on the petition that qualified the measure to be put to a vote in November.
— Nevada’s energy choice: Nevada voters will also weigh a 50 percent renewables target under its Question 6. But the most controversial energy measure in the state will likely be Question 3, which would add language to the state constitution “to minimize regulations on the energy market and eliminate legal energy monopolies.” The stated purpose of the proposal is to squash NV Energy’s monopoly by letting residents choose their energy provider. As it stands, Nevada law allows investor-owned utilities to be monopolies that are regulated by the Nevada Public Utilities Commission. NV Energy, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, controls around 90 percent of the state’s energy market. Voters already approved Question 3 in 2016, but they’ll need to do it again in November in order to meet the requirements to pass the constitutional amendment.
Proponents say breaking the NV monopoly could reduce residential power bills, and the initiative is supported by former FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, Tesla, its Solar City unit and Sun Solar Electric. Meanwhile, the opposition campaign says the measure would take away the state’s authority to limit electric rates and strip consumer price protections. The question has drawn record amounts of money to a ballot fight in the state, with more than $30 million in campaign funding coming from both sides by the end of May, the Las Vegas Review-Journalreports. NV Energy and the Nevada Mining Association are lined up on the "no" side, along with environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which argue the measure “could disrupt the state’s progress toward a clean energy future.” Steyer’s NextGen is backing the increase in renewables in Question 6, but the group doesn't have a position on Question 3. The monopoly-busting measure is backed by Las Vegas Sands Corp., the casino company owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, and data center operator Switch, according to the Nevada Independent.
The Nevada Public Utilities Commission released an April report that said passage of the ballot measure would rekindle the ugly fight over the state's net-metering debate "because it remains an unanswered question as to whether [net energy metering] can thrive in an open and competitive marketplace without Assembly Bill 405," which passed the state Legislature last year and set provisions governing net metering.
— Florida’s offshore question: Offshore drilling and vaping may have nothing in common — but both issues are tied together on the same ballot proposal in Florida. Amendment 9 would permanently ban both vaping indoors and offshore drilling for oil and natural gas on all state-owned waters, which extend three nautical miles into the Atlantic and nine nautical miles into the Gulf. The state's Constitution Revision Commission says it put the vaping and drilling amendmentstogether in order to keep “the ballot from becoming too lengthy to complete.”
Floridians of all stripes have long opposed any offshore drilling near the beaches that keep its tourist economy running, and the vote comes as oil companies have recently renewed their push to potentially bring oil rigs in federal waters as close as 75 miles to Florida beaches.
Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch, a member on the commission who supports the amendment, said the vote could be symbolic for voters to “send a message to the federal government, our president and the people that are working in that administration, that we do not want oil drilling in our federal waters near the state of Florida.” To pass the ballot measure, voters will need to meet a 60 percent threshold.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/09/ballot-measures-tee-up-environmental-fights-758658
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Flood of Sand Points to Shakeout for Shale Suppliers
Sep 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Christopher M. Matthews
Two years ago, many investors had the same idea: Tapping the dunes of the West Texas desert to supply shale drillers with the sand they use in fracking.
Now, around 20 sand mines are set to be active in the Permian Basin, America’s most active oil field, by year’s end, and even some of those who put hundreds of millions of dollars behind these startups predict they won’t all survive.
Sand is a key ingredient for shale drillers, who use a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to fracture rock formations deep underground and release the oil and gas trapped inside. But the flood of sand is hitting the market just as growth has begun to slow in the Permian Basin because of pipeline and labor constraints that make oil and gas more difficult to produce in the region, which straddles Texas and New Mexico.
There are also questions about the quality of Texas sand, compared with the sands from Wisconsin and other regions that frackers have traditionally favored, and whether using the cheaper local substitute crimps a well’s long-term production.
All of this has contributed to a quickly oversupplied sand market, a little more than a year since the first mine opened in West Texas. The 13 mines already active in West Texas have sufficient capacity to meet the basin’s 2018 demand for sand, around 39 million tons, according to energy research firm Infill Thinking LLC.
Ben “Bud” Brigham, an Austin geophysicist behind one of the largest Permian sand mines, Atlas Sand Co., said he expected a crowded field and that the better operators will persevere.
“We modeled this happening, and it appears to be happening faster than we thought,” said Mr. Brigham, who sold his oil drilling and pipelines firm, Brigham Resources, to Diamondback Energy Inc. for $2.55 billion in 2017 before going into the shale supplies business. “The oversupply will educate the market on…who is built to last.”
Atlas’ mine, which opened in July, features seven silos, each capable of storing 5,000 tons of sand and designed to fill about 500 trucks a day. They are now among the tallest structures in West Texas, offering views of rolling dunes for miles. The efficiencies of the heavily automated facility, which employs only around 100 people, will help Atlas withstand a downturn, Mr. Brigham said.
“We’re built to serve the Permian basin for decades…possibly a century,” he said.Atlas’ mine features seven silos, each capable of storing 5,000 tons of sand and designed to fill about 500 trucks a day. PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER M. MATTHEWS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sand demand is at a record-high in the U.S., up 29% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to energy consultant IHS Markit , and the outlook for long-term growth is rosy. The Permian, which pushed U.S. oil production to an all-time high of more than 11 million barrels of oil a day in July, will account for 50% of U.S. sand demand by 2023, IHS Markit said.
But as pipeline and other infrastructure problems hit the area, sand oversupply is leading to huge pricing concessions and painful stock-price declines for the handful of publicly listed frack-sand companies. Shares of Covia Holdings Corp. , the largest producer of sand for fracking in the U.S. by volume, have fallen more than 52% over the past three months.
“[S]ignificant capacity additions in the Permian have started to outpace demand growth,” Covia Chief Executive Jenniffer D. Deckard said in August. “As we moved further into July, we saw broad pricing concessions.”
The steepest price reductions—more than 15% per ton—have been for a type of sand called Northern White, analysts say, a high-quality grade mostly produced in Wisconsin that must be shipped 1,300 miles by train to the Permian, and is thus more expensive.
Frackers had traditionally favored Northern White because of its superior “crush strength,” or ability to withstand pressure deep underground—an important quality because the porous sand helps prop rock fissures open, allowing oil and gas to seep out. But when oil prices fell around 75% in 2014, companies were forced to seek savings in their supply chain and rethink using local sand.
Public sand companies like Covia, which had mostly focused on Northern White, along with private investors, rushed to grab land in the West Texas desert. Before the sand boom, the cost of an acre near Kermit, Texas, where Atlas’ mine is located, was between $500 and $1,000, Mr. Brigham said. Today, an acre can cost as much as $312,000, he said.
For oil producers, the cost savings of eliminating the rail costs of Northern White, sometimes more than $60 per ton, were immediate. Jagged Peak Energy Inc., a Permian producer, is using 100% local sand at a savings of $400,000 per well, the company said in August.
But there are still doubts about local sand’s long-term performance. So far, companies say it has not impacted initial production on wells, when they produce oil at their highest rates. But it could limit production at later stages, experts say, as higher pressures expose the weaker crush strength of the local sand.
Because companies have only been using the sand for a year, there isn’t enough data to determine its effectiveness under greater stress, said Ron Gusek, president of Liberty Oilfield Services, a hydraulic fracturing company that uses Permian sand.
“It’s obviously extremely economically compelling,” Mr. Gusek said. “There is a scenario, despite it showing well in the early days of a well…where it may affect the long-term productivity of a well.”
Still, Mr. Gusek said Texas sand is gaining market share and that it was possible producers will choose to use Texas sand early in a well’s life and shift to Northern White at later stages.
While Texas and Wisconsin sand may be able to coexist, companies and analysts alike say all the companies cannot, and some will surely be gobbled up by rivals in the next year.
“Consolidation is the next logical phase and will be healthy for the industry,” said Joseph Triepke, founder of Infill Thinking.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/flood-of-sand-points-to-shakeout-for-shale-suppliers-1536053400?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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A New Oil Field Danger — 'Fluid Transfer'
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Federal worker safety researchers say toxic petroleum gases can kill oil workers on the ground at well sites as they fill up tanker trucks with crude oil.
Worker safety officials have been sounding the alarm for several years about the dangers to workers when opening storage tank hatches that release petroleum vapors. But they now say there's a similar threat during what's called "fluid transfer."
Gases flow out of the truck tanks as oil flows in from storage tanks. At some sites, vent lines are used to divert the gases safely away from people. But sometimes they're vented right out the back of the truck where people are working. Contrary to what many may suspect, the gases don't always dissipate harmlessly.
"The plume remains remarkably coherent," said John Snawder, a research toxicologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), who has been researching oil field hazards.
When researchers took readings at one site during such a "fluid transfer" operation, they found that methane, ethane and other hazardous gases and vapors constituted 38 percent of the air.
Eight gases were at concentrations many times the level considered "immediately dangerous to life or health." The air they tested also contained hydrogen sulfide, or "sour gas," a well-known killer in the oil field. The concentration was 450 parts per million, 4 ½ times the "immediately dangerous" level.
They also recorded an infrared video showing the toxic plume.
NIOSH's Fatalities in Oil and Gas Extraction database lists three deaths in 2016 where such gases on the ground might have killed workers. One was a 54-year-old in Texas, another was a 46-year-old in North Dakota, and another was a 66-year-old in Oklahoma.
But authorities attributed both deaths to heart disease. Pathologists sometimes don't test workers killed at oil field sites for industrial chemicals despite pleas from NIOSH and others (Energywire, Sept. 18, 2015).
The vapors and gases can also catch fire or explode. The database lists one death from burns and smoke inhalation during fluid transfer at a disposal site.
All crude oil has compounds called volatile hydrocarbons such as benzene, butane and propane. Crude from shale formations sometimes has more of these compounds than conventional oil. It's related to why shale crude is more prone to explode in rail cars.
At high concentrations, the hydrocarbons can push enough oxygen out of the air to asphyxiate a person, even outdoors. The airborne chemicals can also disorient people to the point that they are unable to escape the lethal effect of the vapors.
The warning about dangers on the ground at well sites during transfer was part of a NIOSH posting on new data showing that oil workers have continued to be killed and injured by toxic petroleum gases at well sites.
The posting indicated that researchers suspect eight workers died in 2015 and 2016 from exposure to petroleum gases or hydrogen sulfide, or from explosions of petroleum gases. Ten other workers were hospitalized.
That's on top of the nine such deaths the agency recorded from 2010 to 2014 from exposure to petroleum gases (Energywire, April 13, 2015).
Earlier this year, an environmental group filed a safety complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after an employee of the group filmed an oil worker exposed to gases while checking tanks in West Texas (Energywire, July 11).
The researchers also found cases where people injured themselves after being overcome by the vapors. For example, Snawder said that while researching OSHA's severe injury database, he found a case where a worker was exposed to gases while checking tanks. He felt ill, then fell down the catwalk stairs and broke his wrist.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095597
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Hearing to Explore New Technologies
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
House lawmakers this week will examine the latest technologies coming to the nation's roads.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit will study a variety of emerging transportation trends, including self-driving cars, connected vehicles, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and mobility on demand (MOD) technologies.
The hearing comes as legislation to encourage self-driving cars remains stalled in the Senate because of safety concerns (Greenwire, June 13).
It also comes about a month after T&I Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) released draft infrastructure legislation to reinvigorate discussion of the issue (E&E Daily, July 24).
The draft legislation contains a plethora of proposals for fixing the nation's surface transportation infrastructure. Shuster is likely to tout those proposals at the hearing, though he's not expected to push through a broad infrastructure bill before he leaves Congress at the end of the year.
Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 10 a.m. in 2167 Rayburn.
Witnesses: James Barna, executive director of DriveOhio; Julia Castillo, executive director of the Heart of Iowa Regional Transit Agency; Shailen Bhatt, president and CEO of ITS America; and Randell Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa, Calif., Transportation Authority.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095613
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Panel Revisits Cost of Permitting, Environmental Reviews
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Kellie Lunney
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawmakers on Thursday will discuss the cost of delays associated with environmental reviews and permitting for infrastructure projects.
The permitting and environmental review processes for land, water, transportation and other infrastructure initiatives can be lengthy and complex because they involve multiple laws, regulations and agencies.
Streamlining the federal permitting process and modernizing America's infrastructure are among President Trump's major priorities. In February, the administration unveiled its plan, including a recommended $200 billion in new federal spending and reforms to the permitting process that would create a "one agency, one decision" framework for environmental reviews (Greenwire, Feb. 12).
The first public comment period on the administration's proposal to streamline National Environmental Policy Act regulations, which underpin environmental permitting for the entire federal government, ended in August (Greenwire, Aug. 20).
Supporters of a significant overhaul say permitting and environmental reviews have become mired in red tape, and the delays are costing money but also hurt communities in need of better roads, bridges and waterways.
But others have criticized the effort as a thinly veiled attempt to undermine important environmental protections embedded in laws such as the Clean Water Act and NEPA.
Several legislative measures are floating around the House and Senate that aim to expedite federal permitting and improve the management of infrastructure projects. Thursday's joint hearing between the Intergovernmental Affairs and Interior, Energy and Environment subcommittees will look at those ideas as well as other proposals.
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Sept. 6, at 10 a.m. in 2154 Rayburn.
Witnesses: Daren Bakst, senior research fellow, Heritage Foundation; Philip Howard, founder and chairman, Common Good; Frank Rusco, director of natural resources and environment issues, Government Accountability Office; and Christy Goldfuss, senior vice president of energy and environment policy, Center for American Progress.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/04/stories/1060095615
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Climate Talks Enter a `Critical’ Stage in Bangkok, UN Envoy Says
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mathew Carr and Natnicha Chuwiruch
Envoys at a special round of global climate talks are nearing a crucial stage in their effort to flesh out the landmark Paris agreement, the United Nations diplomat helping organize the meeting said.
Delegates from almost 200 nations are meeting in Bangkok this week, attempting to draw up the rule book for implementing the 2015 accord under which all those nations rich and poor alike for the first time pledged to limit fossil fuel emissions. The U.S. is involved in the talks even though President Donald Trump has vowed to pull out of the Paris deal.
“The work that needs to happen here is very critical,” Patricia Espinosa, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in an interview in Bangkok Sept. 3. “We normally don’t have a negotiating session at this time of the year,” but it’s needed because “we failed” to make enough progress at a previous gathering in Bonn in May.
Espinosa said there’s a risk talks won’t meet deadlines to complete rules by the end of the year. The delegates drawn from energy and environment ministries around the globe are seeking to produce a negotiating document for cabinet-level officials to approve at the UN’s annual climate gathering, which this year takes place in December in Katowice, Poland.
The co-chairs of the meeting have a difficult task on their hands. They must narrow an unwieldy set of working documents to something politicians can realistically agree on.
“We are going from hundreds of pages to a document that’s more digestible, more readable and allows delegations to be able to find common ground,” Espinosa said. “Sometimes you have very distant positions but you have also some proposals that are bringing those distant positions together.”
One area of disagreement is the use of markets to provide finance, cut the cost of emission cuts, and allow higher ambition for greenhouse-gas-reduction targets.
“It’s indeed one of the issues being discussed, and we still don’t know, sadly, what’s going to come,” Espinosa said. “There are different views among the parties and at the same time what we’re seeing are a lot of developments regarding carbon pricing and carbon markets in different parts of the world.”
Some nations including Germany, Canada, the U.K., and Norway are already preparing to fund projects to cut greenhouse gases in exchange for credits that can be used to comply with the Paris goals. The Bangkok texts may even imply a higher value for existing UN credits, which have jumped by about a third since April. The prices remain so low that traders are not yet expecting any breakthrough.
Diplomats also are looking forward to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which next month is due to produce a report on the impact of temperature increases above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“This is important because, for many developing countries -- especially island countries, this means even survival,” Espinosa said. “Some island countries will not survive if we don’t get to the point of maintaining 1.5 degrees.”
—With assistance from Jeremy Hodges.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/climate-talks-enter-a-critical-stage-in-bangkok-un-envoy-says?context=landing&limit=10&tab=news
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Trump Sends Civil Servants to Major Climate Talks
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
The Trump administration is expected to send career staff — not political appointees — to high-stakes international climate talks that kick off this week in Bangkok and continue into the fall.
The White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo haven't nominated officials for posts that would typically represent the United States at those talks, and civil servants are preparing to attend.
The lack of political envoys at international climate talks is the latest evidence that the negotiations aren't a high priority for a president who proudly signaled plans to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. The administration maintains that it will have an active presence at this fall's negotiations to ensure national interests, but some conservatives say the administration is missing a valuable chance to push its energy agenda abroad.
"The United States continues to actively participate in ongoing climate negotiations to protect and advance U.S. interests and approaches, in particular ensuring a level playing field," said a State Department spokesman.
But Office of Global Change Director Trigg Talley, a career official who is expected to represent the United States in Bangkok, is said to have had limited interaction with President Trump's political team, and that worries some conservatives. He also played a key role in negotiating the Paris Agreement in 2015 under President Obama.
"If this kind of flies under the radar and [Trump's political team is] not ingrained in the discussions as to what Trigg ought to say and how the United States is going to participate, I think then it becomes a huge missed opportunity," said Nick Loris, an energy economist at the Heritage Foundation.
The Bangkok meeting this week aims to make progress on a rulebook for the Paris climate accord. That rulebook is due to be substantially completed by year's end.
Talley will also be the point person at next month's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in South Korea, which could turn up the pressure to tighten emissions commitments by banishing the notion that the world will be safe if temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. And he may still be effectively the point person when the rulebook is finalized — if it is — in Katowice, Poland, in December.
Some business advocates see Talley as a reliable voice for long-held U.S. positions on issues like transparency and shared responsibility, as well as a role for businesses in the Paris process.
"We have a lot of confidence in Trigg Talley and in the U.S. delegation that attends these meetings," said Norine Kennedy, vice president of strategic international engagement for energy and environment at the U.S. Council for International Business. "They understand where we are, and we have had a good working relationship and dialogue with them."
But some conservatives note that he's not the pro-energy dominance firebrand they've been looking for.
Myron Ebell, director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment, lamented the White House's failure to appoint the right staff to write a National Climate Assessment that reflects administration views, or to steer U.N. climate negotiations.
"It's like they're missing in action," he said. "The presidential personnel operation in the White House has been totally incompetent and understaffed, and the president doesn't seem to think that there's anything wrong about that."
"Having Trigg Talley back at the U.N. climate meetings is another missed opportunity for the administration to push back hard on the U.N. Paris climate pact," said Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot, which disputes consensus climate science. He said he had hoped that Pompeo, who as a congressman took a dim view of both climate science and the U.N. process, "would coordinate a more hostile-to-the-U.N. team to attend the U.N. climate discussions."
It's less clear who will represent the United States at the high-level talks in the second week of the Poland conference.
Judith Garber, a career official, represented the United States at climate talks in Bonn, Germany, last year. She has since been nominated to be ambassador to Cyprus.
Garber has effectively served as acting assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) for 4 ½ years. (She changed her title to principal deputy assistant secretary last year for technical reasons.)
No pick has been named for assistant secretary of OES, and the appointment is said to be a relatively low staffing priority. That office only recently got its first political appointee: Jon Harrison, a senior adviser. There's no word yet on whether a chief climate negotiator will ever be named.
White House climate adviser Wells Griffith seems likely to attend December's round of climate talks in Katowice.
George David Banks, his predecessor, attended last year's talks in Bonn, but his involvement, while controversial, was viewed as peripheral to the discussions in which State Department career staff participated.
Banks, who is now an executive vice president at the American Council for Capital Formation, said it was a role better played by a White House staffer than an OES official.
"They could certainly benefit from having a political who can push the clean fossil narrative in the context of the international climate negotiations, but I'd want to emphasize that that role is more of a talking point role just because of the limits that OES has," he said, noting that the main task at hand in Katowice will be writing guidelines for Paris implementation, not touting "energy dominance."
"The more important piece of this is active White House engagement in the international climate discussion, simply because the White House carries with it the weight of the administration and the U.S. government, instead of just one small piece of it," he said. "I hope that the White House will continue to attend the climate discussions and really drive home the importance of advancing a cleaner fossil discussion within those venues."
But Kennedy of the U.S. Council for International Business said an OES assistant secretary would be key to safeguarding U.S. business interests not only in Paris but in other venues, like the Global Pact for the Environment proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron last year.
"There are some more specifically environmental deliberations or discussions that come at us next year where it would, I think, be quite valuable to have that triangle firmly in place," she said, referring to the OES position and assistant secretaries of State for economic and business affairs and for energy resources, who have already been confirmed.
There is a very small club of conservatives with international climate bona fides in Washington, and several of its members say they've given State and the White House suggestions about who should fill the assistant secretary and negotiator posts.
The last conservative to hold the climate negotiator position was Harlan Watson, President George W. Bush's special envoy to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Asked whether he would be interested in resuming the post under Trump, Watson instead suggested Stephen Eule, vice president for climate and technology at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Energy Institute, as "a person who is ready to assume the duties of such a position on day one."
The two men served together on the staff of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in the late 1990s. Eule declined to comment.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095635
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In California, Facts and Science Still Matter
Sep 3, 2018 | The New York Times - Opinion
People who worry about climate change have been in a state of high anxiety about President Trump’s ignorance about the issue, his assault on Obama-era policies designed to do something about it and the growing evidence that extreme weather events and other consequences of global warming, long predicted by mainstream scientists, are now upon us.
Along comes California — yet again — to make people feel better about the possibility of serious action. The state is taking new steps to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions and, in so doing, it is reaffirming its willingness to lead on a matter of global and national concern when Mr. Trump will not.
On Tuesday, the State Legislature approved a bill mandating that by 2045 all of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources like wind, solar and hydropower. The original goal was 50 percent renewables by 2030; this bill kicks the target up to 60 percent by 2030 en route to zero carbon by 2045.
The move is part of California’s broader effort to cut economywide emissions from all sources by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, and stands in luminous contrast to Mr. Trump’s recent power plant proposal that would do essentially nothing to reduce emissions beyond what market forces are likely to achieve. Unlike President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the Trump proposal sets no performance standards, or targets, and would allow states to decide how — or even whether — to regulate climate-altering emissions from coal-burning power plants. Making his political intentions crystal clear, Mr. Trump traveled to West Virginia to highlight the plan and extol the virtues of “beautiful, clean coal.”
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California’s action came in advance of what can be seen as another thumb in Mr. Trump’s eye, the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Sept. 12 to 14, co-hosted by California’s governor, Jerry Brown, and the former New York mayor and current climate activist Michael Bloomberg. There will be three days of speeches and seminars on the roles that technology, municipalities, states and businesses can play in the fight against climate change, plus appearances by climate combat veterans like Al Gore and John Kerry. The event as a whole will provide a kind of group therapy session — as well as a reunion of sorts — for officials and activists deeply angered by Mr. Trump’s refusal to hold up America’s end of the bargain struck at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. The Obama administration promised major cuts in America’s emissions, which alone account for about one-fifth of the world’s total, second only to the carbon pollution coming from China.RelatedMore on the Paris climate accordOpinion | Laurence TubianaWe the People Pledge to Fight Climate ChangeDec. 4, 2017Opinion | The Editorial BoardHope in the Era of Trump’s Climate FoolishnessJune 1, 2018
Mr. Trump startled the world on June 1 of last year by announcing his decision to withdraw from that agreement, but within days of his announcement an astonishing assemblage of more than 1,200 governors, mayors and businesses promised in a letter titled “We Are Still In” that they would do everything they could to honor Mr. Obama’s promises. The letter argued that global warming imposes real and rising costs, and that the clean energy economy to which the Paris agreement aspired offered enormous opportunities for American industry and workers. The same crowd, and these same themes, will be much in evidence in San Francisco next week.
California, obviously, is not alone in this fight. Massachusetts and other states are gearing up for a fierce legal response to Mr. Trump’s dirty power plan. But California is different in several respects, including its sheer size, its long record of leading the nation on environmental protection and, not least, its robust bipartisan history of tackling climate change. It was Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who in 2006 signed a landmark bill, known as AB 32, aimed at reducing economywide emissions from multiple sources of carbon dioxide. At the time, the administration of President George W. Bush was doing next to nothing about the problem.
The California law affected businesses and consumers across the board, requiring cleaner cars, energy-efficient buildings and alternative fuels. It was the same Governor Schwarzenegger who, four years later, beat back a coalition of oil companies and big money men, including Charles and David Koch, who tried to neuter that law with a ballot initiative. He also endorsed the most recent renewable-energy bill in a letter to legislators.EDITORS’ PICKSOpinionMake Your Daughter Practice Math. She’ll Thank You Later.OpinionThe Gift of MenopauseWhat Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?
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California may feel, too, a special sense of urgency, not to mention a special sense of grievance. In early August, in another big swipe at Mr. Obama’s climate agenda, the Trump administration announced a rollbackof part of the former president’s ambitious fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. The Trump plan would not only weaken the rules but also strip California of its historic right, conferred by federal clean air laws, to set its own air quality standards. Those standards — which 13 other stateshave chosen to follow — led during the Obama years to a set of nationwide fuel economy benchmarks that, until Mr. Trump intervened, promised consumers years of steadily cleaner and more efficient cars. California, not surprisingly, has vowed to fight.RelatedCalifornia v. Trump on auto emissionsCalifornia Strikes Back Against the Trump Administration’s Auto Pollution RollbackAug. 7, 2018
As if finding itself in Mr. Trump’s cross hairs were not enough, California has reason right now to feel especially vulnerable to climate change itself. This year’s brutal wildfires have set records for scope and financial destruction, and on Aug. 27 a new statewide assessment from the California Natural Resources Agency, based on dozens of peer-reviewed studies, promised more of the same in the decades to come. And not just more wildfires, but also rising oceans that could erode between a third and two-thirds of Southern California’s shoreline, many more heat-related fatalities, billions of dollars in damages and a diminished snowpack. All will bear the fingerprints of climate change.
“In California, facts and science still matter,” Governor Brown said in commenting on the report. “These findings are profoundly serious and will continue to guide us as we confront the apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change.”
The reference to facts and science was a nice little needle aimed at the White House. Where, on this issue, they don’t seem to matter at all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/opinion/california-climate-change-renewable-energy.html
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Environmentalists Need to Get Real
Sep 4, 2018 | Wall Street Journal - Opinion
By Walter Russell Mead
Last week French environmental minister Nicolas Hulot, once a prominent supporter of President Emmanuel Macron, threw in the towel. “I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t want to create the illusion that my presence in the government means that we are on top of [environmental] issues,” he said during a live broadcast announcing his resignation.
Mr. Hulot is not alone among environmentalists in denouncing the hypocrisy and inadequacy of government action on climate change. The Paris accords are “a fraud, really, a fake,” said climate activist James Hansen in 2015. “There is no action, just promises.”
Three years later, Mr. Hansen’s words look prescient. Even ostensibly committed countries like Germany and France are on course to miss the voluntary 2020 targets they announced to such fanfare in 2015. The Climate Action Tracker estimates that only Morocco and Gambia are on a “Paris agreement compatible” path.
The climate-change movement is stuck, even after a scorching summer elevated the issue across much of the Northern Hemisphere. It is powerful enough to command lip service from politicians, but too weak to impose the policies it says are needed to prevent catastrophic change.
Many environmentalists fail to grasp that the real problem isn’t skepticism that the climate is changing, or even that human activity is a leading cause of the change. Millions worry about climate change and believe human activity is in large part responsible. But they do not believe that the climate movement has the answers for the problems it describes. Green policy blunders, like support for ethanol in the U.S. and knee-jerk opposition to nuclear power, erode confidence that environmental activists—who too often have an anticapitalist, Malthusian and technophobic view of the world—can be trusted, to as they often say, to “save the planet.”
For center-right politicians and people who support both free markets and a healthy environment, the status quo is also a problem. In the U.S. and abroad, market-friendly politicians cannot embrace the stagnant, statist and rent-seeking policies often proposed by environmentalists. Yet neither do they wish to turn a blind eye to a consequential problem that voters care about.
The world needs a green movement that can command more than lip service from politicians. Such a movement would be tech-positive, pro-science and pro-growth, recognizing that capitalism can deliver technological and social changes that offer humanity’s best hope of a greener and cooler future. A realistic green movement would not only embrace zero-carbon nuclear power as part of the solution to the climate problem; it would embrace the broader potential of the information revolution to raise living standards around the world while reducing humanity’s carbon footprint.
One example would be the promotion of telework and other changes to the way people commute. The daily trek of hundreds of millions of commuters around the world is a major contributor to world-wide emissions. Commuting’s pernicious influence will grow as developing countries continue to urbanize. Promoting telework—substituting the movement of data for the movement of people and cars—will bend the carbon curve even as it saves time and money. The shift to autonomous cars can have a similar impact and reduce the number of vehicles on the road.
Videoconferencing is already making inroads in the business world. Instead of $100 billion boondoggles like California’s struggling high-speed rail project, policy makers should encourage the development and deployment of this technology—reducing emissions and saving taxpayer dollars.
A smarter green movement also would embrace the development and use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture. Tweaking the genes of specific crops can raise yields while shrinking humanity’s carbon footprint. A field of “tweaked” soybeans that need little or no fertilizer or pesticides is the real killer app for solar power. Human ingenuity plus sunlight can dramatically reduce the need for fertilizer and pesticides with all the greenhouse-gas emissions and other environmental damage they entail.
These ideas are neither Malthusian nor anticapitalist. For that reason, many green activists will shun them. Some would rather see the planet perish in a runaway greenhouse effect than see gene-tweaked soybeans in European grocery stores—just as they would rather risk catastrophic flooding than accept nuclear power. But market-friendly, pro-science think tanks, researchers and politicians should not be deterred. Developing a green agenda that is high tech but not hair shirt is a crucial project if the world is to break the dangerous gridlock on climate change.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/environmentalists-need-to-get-real-1536010580?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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You’ve Heard of Outsourced Jobs, but Outsourced Pollution? It’s Real, and Tough to Tally Up.
Sep 4, 2018 | The New York Times
By Brad Plumer
Over the past decade, both the United States and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home. That trend is often held up as a sign of progress in the fight against climate change.
But those efforts look a lot less impressive once you take trade into account. Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically.
Britain, for instance, slashed domestic emissions within its own borders by one-third between 1990 and 2015. But it has done so as energy-intensive industries have migrated abroad. If you included all the global emissions produced in the course of making things like the imported steel used in London’s skyscrapers and cars, then Britain’s total carbon footprint has actually increased slightly over that time.
“It’s a huge problem” said Ali Hasanbeigi, a research scientist and C.E.O. of Global Efficiency Intelligence, an energy and environmental consulting firm. “If a country is meeting its climate goals by outsourcing emissions elsewhere, then we’re not making as much progress as we thought.”
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Dr. Hasanbeigi is an author of a new report on the global carbon trade, which estimates that 25 percent of the world’s total emissions are now being outsourced in this manner. The report, written with the consulting firm KGM & Associates and ClimateWorks, calls this a “carbon loophole,” since countries rarely scrutinize the carbon footprint of the goods they import.
That may be changing. Last fall, California’s lawmakers took an early stab at confronting the issue by setting new low-carbon standards on the steel the state buys for its infrastructure projects. But dealing with imported emissions remains a thorny problem.
Some environmentalists see it as the next frontier of climate policy.‘Game of Whack-a-Mole’
The new report, which analyzes global trade from 15,000 different sectors — from toys and office equipment to glass and aluminum — builds on previous academic research to provide one of the most detailed pictures yet of the global carbon trade.
Not surprisingly, China, which has become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, remains the world’s factory. About 13 percent of China’s emissions in 2015 came from making stuff for other countries. In India, another fast-growing emitter, the figure is 20 percent.EDITORS’ PICKSWhy Are Puffins Vanishing? The Hunt for Clues Goes Deep (Into Their Burrows)Every Generation Gets the Beach Villain It DeservesWith Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific
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The United States, for its part, remains the world’s leading importer of what the researchers call “embodied carbon.” If the United States were held responsible for all the pollution worldwide that resulted from manufacturing the cars, clothing and other goods that Americans use, the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions would be 14 percent bigger than its domestic-only numbers suggest.
Between 1995 and 2015, the report found, as wealthier countries like Japan and Germany were cutting their own emissions, they were also doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide they outsourced to China.
Under the Paris climate agreement, countries are held responsible only for the emissions produced within their own borders. Experts have long debated whether that makes sense. Is it unfair that China and India are blamed for emissions that occur because they’re making goods for richer nations? What about the fact that they also benefit from having those factories and jobs?
The migration of industries like cement and steel overseas can also shift production to less-efficient factories governed by looser pollution rules. An earlier study that Mr. Hasanbeigi led at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that China’s steel industry, on average, emits 23 percent more carbon dioxide per ton of steel produced than American and German manufacturers do. One big reason? China’s grid relies more heavily on coal.
Since the financial crisis in 2008, however, the outsourcing of emissions from wealthy countries to developing countries has started to slow. More recently, much of the growth in carbon outsourcing is occurring between developing countries, according to a recent study in Nature Communications.
“Just as China’s starting to deal with its emissions, it’s been pushing some of its more carbon-intensive activities into countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and India,” said Steven J. Davis, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine and co-author of that study.
“From a climate policy context,” he added, “it’s like a game of whack-a-mole.”The Unlikely ‘Tax’ Solution
One possible solution to all this emissions shifting would be for all countries to work together to enact a global carbon tax that applied equally everywhere. But in the real world, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. And, while some politicians like President Emmanuel Macron of France have suggested that Europe put its own carbon tax on imported products, that idea has not gained traction.
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So some policymakers are exploring other ideas.
Last October, California enacted a new “Buy Clean” law that requires steel, glass and other materials used in public works projects to meet certain low-carbon standards. The law came after a controversy over the refurbishing of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, when the state bought steel from a heavily polluting Chinese mill instead of from cleaner facilities in California and Oregon.
California’s new law may initially favor domestic producers — which helps explain why it was supported by some steel companies and the United Steelworkers. And in the long term, environmentalists hope the policy could have a ripple effect worldwide.
“California can’t go regulate factories in other parts of the world,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of the Sierra Club’s California chapter. “But we can say, if you want to do business with us, the world’s fifth-largest economy, you have to do what you can to reduce emissions.”
Lawmakers in Washington State recently requested a study of “Buy Clean” standards for their state, and a similar bill was introduced in Oregon’s last legislative session. But the idea can be contentious: In California, the cement industry fought hard to be exempted from the rule. Steel and cement production worldwide each account for about 5 percent of global emissions.
The construction industry is also starting to take an interest in the carbon footprint of the materials it uses. The U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit that certifies buildings as “green” under the LEED label, currently encourages environmental disclosures for a variety of building materials like cement or glass. A new round of LEED standards, currently in development, could go even further by urging low-carbon standards.
Chris Erickson, the chief executive of Climate Earth, a firm that helps companies assess the environmental impact of their supply chains, says that even transparency can be eye-opening. His company built a searchable database of different concrete mixes that are available, allowing architects to seek out materials that have, in some cases, a carbon footprint that is one-third of the industry average.
That, in turn, could put pressure on suppliers to lower their emissions. “Even for companies who don’t want to admit it,” Mr. Erickson said, “they know a change is coming.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/climate/outsourcing-carbon-emissions.html
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Companies Could Line Up to Take Anti-Carbon Plunge
Sep 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
When companies, investors, and cities lead on climate change, national governments will follow. At least that’s the hope of U.N. organizers of next week’s Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.
During the three-day summit, as many as 500 global companies could announce that they’ll commit to aligning their business practices with greenhouse gas reduction goals called for in the 2015 global Paris climate agreement, organizers told Bloomberg Environment.
While the Paris Agreement focused on action by national governments, the San Francisco summit was borne out of a United Nations call for local governments, businesses, and other organizations to commit to climate action, as well, to help prevent global warming from spiraling out of control.
The role of such nonstate players became even more pronounced last summer when President Donald Trump said the U.S., one of the globe’s biggest carbon emitters, would walk away from the Paris Agreement. Within days, dozens of companies pledged support for fighting climate change, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp., and Facebook Inc.
‘Deeply Engaged’ Companies
“We’re going to see more companies commit to 100 percent renewable energy and electric vehicles,” summit advisory committee member Aron Cramer, the president and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility, told Bloomberg Environment. “The private sector has to be very actively engaged—very deeply engaged—in decarbonizing, or else the national goals reflected in Paris will not be achieved.”
Fujitsu Ltd. is among the few companies to announce new targets for climate pollution cuts ahead of the summit. In July, the company announced it will use 100 percent renewable electricity for its operations by 2050.
Unilever PLC, Bank of America Corp., Tech Mahindra Ltd., Google, Salesforce.com Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Kaiser Permanente are among those who have sponsored the summit or announced they’ll participate.
The Paris Agreement—where world leaders pledged to take action needed to hold global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels— officially takes effect in 2020, and countries will revisit their pledges every five years to consider even deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
After the San Francisco summit, which runs Sept. 12-14, discussions about how to push countries to make deeper climate pollution cuts will continue at Climate Week later in September in New York City and the U.N.'s international climate negotiations in Poland in December, where more than 190 countries are expected to finalize the details for how the Paris pact will be implemented.
Going Local
Nineteen global cities including Copenhagen, Sydney, and New York made new building energy-efficiency commitments ahead of the San Francisco summit. Other cities are expected to announce new efforts to install electric vehicle charging stations and new energy storage projects.
The summit, co-organized by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, is “trying to rekindle the kind of energy that gave governments the confidence to take the Paris Agreement over the line in 2015,” summit spokesman Nick Nuttall told Bloomberg Environment. “There will be a call out to governments to say that, ‘You’ve heard what the economy is asking for. Will you listen to this, please?’”
Not everyone is attributing such significance to voluntary pledges.
“We really need cheap, low-carbon electricity to have it spread and be adopted in other parts of the world,” said Catherine Wolfram, faculty director of the Energy Institute at the University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business. “Would the path be different if the climate summit didn’t happen? I doubt it. [But] it’s useful to hear what’s working for other countries, reaffirm that progress is being made.”
‘Beyond’ the Paris Targets
But leadership among companies could help ease the way for national governments to take stronger action, said Cramer.
“As policymakers see that the business community is all in addressing climate change, then it’s a lot easier for the political ambition to be present to achieve and go beyond the targets set in Paris,” Cramer said.
The Global Climate Action Summit is chaired by California Gov. Jerry Brown (D); Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change; Anand Mahindra, chair of the Mahindra Group; Michael Bloomberg, who controls entities that operate Bloomberg Environment and who is the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for climate action; Xie Zhenhua, special representative for climate change affairs of China; and Jayathma Wickramanayake, the U.N. secretary-general’s envoy on youth.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/companies-could-line-up-to-take-anti-carbon-plunge?context=landing&limit=10&tab=news
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