Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - September 12, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) SDGs: The Chemicals Industry Assesses Its Role
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
UN Environment head Erik Solheim has acknowledged the importance of the chemical industry in society at several international meetings. -
(ACC Mentioned) Fundamental Issues
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Warmington
This month’s Briefing has the usual selection of feature articles from the Chemical Watch team and industry experts. -
ORD, Lacking Rule Expertise, Leads On Science Plan, Prompting Doubts
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has assigned its Office of Research and Development (ORD), an office with little rulemaking experience, to take the lead in rewriting former Administrator Scott Pruitt's controversial plan barring use of studies where the underlying data is not publicly available, a move that is raising doubts about the plan's prospects for completion. -
Congress Eyes Spending Options as a Shutdown Looms
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Congress returns this week in a race against the clock to get fiscal 2019 spending completed before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 as a potential government shutdown looms. -
EPA, Canada Update Cooperative Chemicals Framework
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA and its Canadian counterpart agencies have updated a cooperative framework allowing the three agencies to share information and work collaboratively on chemical assessments, including updates to the framework agenda, which includes collaborating on two of the first 10 chemicals EPA is assessing under the revised U.S. toxics law. -
Bipartisan Water Deal May Resonate in Congressional Races
Sep 11, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
Key lawmakers in the House and Senate have brokered a deal on water resources legislation that could help ease the path for passage ahead of this year's midterm elections, although it fails to make progress on the most immediate hurdle in the upper chamber. -
Efsa to Begin Hazard Assessment of BPA
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) working group is to start re-evaluate the hazards of the food contact material bisphenol A (BPA), examining toxicological data published since December 2012. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Investments Linked to Affordable Gas Surpass $200 Billion
Sep 11, 2018 | Oil & Gas Journal
By Nick Snow
US chemical and plastics industry investments linked to plentiful and affordable supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids from shale formations has surpassed $200 billion, the American Chemistry Council said. -
(ACC Mentioned) Robust Ethane Supplies from U.S. Shale Boom Drive Chemical Plant Investment to $200 Billion
Sep 11, 2018 | Oil & Gas 360
U.S. chemical, plastics plant investment of $202 billion is direct result of shale gas growth: ACC The American Chemistry Council (ACC) released data today and the trade group has determined that U.S. chemical and plastics industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable domestic supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale has surpassed $200 billion. -
(ACC Mentioned) Cracker Plant Buzz
Sep 12, 2018 | Oil City Derrick
By Judith O. Etzel
Martha Moore of the American Chemistry Council and Abby Foster of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council discussed how the petrochemical industry, ... -
Utilities Mobilize for 'Catastrophic' Damage from Florence
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro, Peter Behr and Kristi E. Swartz
Across the southeastern United States, masses of residents fled the approach of Hurricane Florence yesterday, with officials in a half-dozen states echoing the warning of National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham: "It's a catastrophic event." -
Hearing to Examine Exports to Europe
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
A Senate committee will examine the role of American liquefied natural gas in meeting European energy demand this week, while several Trump officials visit Europe for talks on the same subject. -
Federal Judge Erred in Scrapping Forced Leases, Idaho Says
Sep 11, 2018 | AP (In E&E News PM)
By Keith Ridler
A U.S. District Court judge made a legal error, Idaho officials say, and should reverse his ruling that Idaho violated the U.S. Constitution by forcing several landowners to sell their natural gas and oil to a Texas company. -
As Extreme Weather Gets Worse, Emergency Responders Deal With The Fallout
Sep 12, 2018 | Huffington Post
By Dave Jamieson
The Arkema chemical plant outside Houston wasn’t remotely prepared for the rainfall Hurricane Harvey unleashed last August. -
Markey's Prodding Hasn't Closed the Book on Russian Grid Hack
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobcza
More than a month after a homeland security official warned that Russia had penetrated part of the U.S. power grid, questions remain about the extent of the hacking campaign and the power sector's defenses. -
Cities Globally Commit to Carbon Cuts of 1.4 Billion Tons by 2030
Sep 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Cities are committing to emissions reductions of nearly 1.4 billions tons per year by 2030, local government leaders said. -
D.C. Circuit Doubts Utilities' Power To Sue Over SO2 Attainment Findings
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A three-judge federal appeals court panel at Sept. 11 oral argument doubted whether utilities have standing to sue EPA over designations for whether areas in Kansas are attaining or violating the agency's sulfur dioxide (SO2) air standard, while signaling some support for environmentalists' challenges to designations for parts of Colorado and Ohio. -
Trump Said to Relax Methane Pollution Curbs on Oil and Gas Wells
Sep 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration is preparing to unwind Obama-era limits on methane leaking from oil and gas wells, responding to industry concerns that the mandates meant to combat climate change are both unnecessary and too expensive. -
EPA Proposes To Ease Methane NSPS, Previewing Additional Deregulation
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
EPA's newly released proposal to ease methane limits for new oil and gas equipment is just the first stage of a process that would scuttle direct regulatory limits on the potent greenhouse gas, as Trump officials broadly seek to reduce regulatory burdens imposed on the sector by the prior administration. -
EPA's Methane Rule Signals Bigger Rollback for Oil, Gas Regulations
Sep 11, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén and Ben Lefebvre
The Trump administration on Tuesday took the first step toward loosening a key Obama-era rule curbing methane pollution from oil and gas wells, raising fears among environmentalists the move could foreshadow a broader push to exclude the potent greenhouse gas from federal regulations. -
Oil Industry Gets Its Wish on Emissions Rule
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Oil and gas companies offered praise and infuriated green groups voiced outrage yesterday as the Trump administration delivered on its promise to dial back key elements of the Obama-era methane rule. -
Wehrum's Narrowing Of NSR 'Adjacency' Test Could Raise Bar For Permits
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA is floating draft guidance that would narrow the definition of “adjacency” used as a factor in determining whether to combine nearby stationary sources for Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permitting purposes, the latest in a series of steps that scale back NSR policy by making it easier for facilities to avoid strict “major” source permits. -
Judge Questions ‘Passive’ EPA Role in Monitoring State Air Pollution
Sep 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA should have sought out the air pollution and weather data it needed to decide whether parts of Ohio and Colorado violate sulfur dioxide pollution standards rather than playing a “passive role,” a federal judge said Sept. 11. -
The U.S. Won’t Meet Its Paris Climate Goal Without Federal Leadership, Report Warns
Sep 12, 2018 | Think Progress
By Kyla Mandel
Thanks to the current dearth of federal leadership on climate change, the United States will fall short of meeting its 2025 target for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, according to a new report out Wednesday by America’s Pledge initiative.
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(ACC Mentioned) SDGs: The Chemicals Industry Assesses Its Role
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
UN Environment head Erik Solheim has acknowledged the importance of the chemical industry in society at several international meetings. "It can give us an endless number of products that we need to solve environmental and societal issues," he says. However, he also notes that it creates "huge challenges" for the environment, such as "plastics pollution" and "dangerous chemicals that destroy lives".
Because of these contrasting factors, the chemicals industry has been looked on as a major contributor towards achieving the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals since they were launched in 2015. Chemical companies and trade associations have released individual strategies, such as the European chemical industry association Cefic’s charter or the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) sustainability principles.
Under the flag of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the industry has now come together ad released a roadmap for how it can "advance the SDG agenda". The roadmap, which was developed by nine major chemical companies, with support from Cefic and the ACC (see box), is broad in its content.
Action points include, for example, "leveraging resources" to accelerate the international roll-out of the industry’s Responsible Care programme. This encourages companies around the world to adopt robust health, safety and environmental protection policies around the responsible use of chemicals. Another pledges to "enhance support" of the UN’s global chemicals programme, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm), with its plans for sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020.
The ACC says the roadmap’s intent is to identify and acknowledge, at a broad level, the chemical industry’s "opportunities, as a means for teeing up some more near-term direct and specific actions". A list of specific goals, timelines and objectives was never the intention, says Bryan Kuppe, the association’s director of sustainability. Instead the report serves as a "strategic foundation for how companies can interpret their own strategies to support the SDGs".
The lack of timelines and specific goals and objectives has disappointed some in the NGO community. David Azoulay, senior attorney and environmental health programme director at the Centre for International Environmental Law (Ciel), says it is important for every sector to think of its own responsibilities and strategies to reach the SDGs but "unfortunately, this document is unlikely to make much of a difference to the present situation".
The basic elements needed to reach most of the SDGs are well known, says Mr Azoulay. These, he says, include, a change in unsustainable consumption patterns to respect planetary boundaries, a shift towards agroecology practices, keeping fossil fuels in the ground and concentrating on preventing pollution rather than on depollution technologies that provide a social licence for contaminating water, soil and human bodies.
"It is therefore unsurprising that a sector that relies on turning fossil fuels into toxic substances, with a long history of denying the harms it has and continues to cause, would prefer to stick to glossy business-as-usual scenarios, based on increased use of agrochemicals, technological fixes and self-regulation," he says.
The need for the roadmap was a result of the continuing trend of industries and organisations "translating their sustainability strategies through the language of the SDGs," says ACC’s Mr Kuppe.
The group wanted to go beyond just tagging corporate initiatives to certain SDGs, he says. Instead they wanted to look at the goals as a whole and distill them down to where they had the greatest chance of near-term success.
"While we don’t want to ignore some SDGs, we do want to focus on the ones where we can make the biggest contribution and the roadmap helps us identify where there are gaps in our contribution," says Mr Kuppe.
However, the industry assessment of how their operations relate to topics covered by the SDGs is "at odds with reality", according to Joe DiGangi, senior scientist and technical adviser for NGO, the International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen). He highlights SDG 14 ‘Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development’.
Dr Digangi agrees with the roadmap in classifying the negative impact of the industry here as high. However, it positions the potential for contributing to SDG 14 as low, "which is wrong" in his view.
"This appears to indicate a lack of interest in addressing plastic pollution – a globally recognised threat to the oceans and a key industry product," he says. To address SDG 14, the industry should be prioritising reduction of plastic at source instead of rapidly ramping up production.
Critiquing the roadmap further, Dr Digangi says he is surprised that the industry rates its impact on SDG 12, ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’, as low. This is "the key chemicals-related SDG", he says, and includes the Saicm 2020 goal of achieving sound chemicals management globally.
There is a "consensus that global agreements, such as Saicm, struggle to address chemical safety and the severe impacts of the industry’s activities on human health and the environment," says Dr Digangi. The roadmap, he says, acknowledges that the industry’s "operations and supply chain can have direct negative impacts on people; from labour issues through to pollution in local communities, to health and safety standards on the work floor."
Its response to fulfilling SDG 3, ‘Good health and wellbeing’, is "successfully managing the risks derived from the misuse of chemicals". While this response hints at the harmful consequences of the industry’s operations and supply chain, says Dr Digangi, it recommits the industry to a risk-based one instead of a truly sustainable one of addressing their hazards.
"Many developing and transition country government representatives, struggling with the industry’s toxic products, would disagree with the statement that ‘The global chemical sector has a long history of promoting sustainable development in the communities in which it operates around the world’," Dr Digangi says.
The WBCSD group plans to convene this month to establish a "transparency mechanism" to report on progress, says Mr Kuppe. However, the group made the decision to launch a microsite, alongside the report, to share the progress of industry initiatives.
While reporting on progress will for now be more qualitative, Mr Kuppe says, the group is "committed" to reporting publicly on the roadmap. It plans to post case studies about how the industry is contributing to the roadmap and the SDGs.
WBCSD chemicals industry roadmap
The 48-page roadmap singles out ten goals relevant to the industry, and ways it can have an impacts they can have in five fields:
food;
water:
people and health;
energy; and
infrastructure and cities.
It also identifies four factors that cut across all of these:
human rights;
the need for a low carbon economy;
circularity and digitalisation.
Companies that worked on the roadmap alongside Cefic and the ACC are:
AkzoNobel;
Covestro;
Dow Chemical;
DSM;
Evonik Industries;
Mitsubishi Chemical;
Sabic;
Solvay; and
Sumitomo Chemical.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70235/sdgs-the-chemicals-industry-assesses-its-role
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(ACC Mentioned) Fundamental Issues
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Warmington
This month’s Briefing has the usual selection of feature articles from the Chemical Watch team and industry experts. Collectively, they address some of the most important regulatory and environmental issues facing the chemicals industry and its downstream customers.
As Leigh Stringer reports (pages 1-2), Cefic, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and nine major chemical companies have just come together to releasea roadmap for how the industry can advance the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
This is, and was clearly intended to be, about broad principlesand opportunities rather than specifics like timelines and objectives, but it has nevertheless disappointed many NGOs.
They argue that the industry is still looking to "technological fixes and self-regulation" rather than addressing the fundamentals needed to achieve the SDGs. There is a clear gulf in perception on whether the industry is part of the problem or part of the solution (or indeed, both) and whether it should address all the SDGs or focus on those where it can have the biggest impact.
I have also reported on the recent results of a survey by the European Commission of the views of member state competent authorities (MSCAs) on REACH and CLP enforcement (pages 13-14). This was a complex exercise based on incomplete information and the way different ‘indicators’ were created and weighed is partly subjective, but it still led to some interesting conclusions.
The key finding, perhaps, was that although the information available has grown considerably, the quality of enforcement has scarcely altered. Whether this is a real problem or one of perception would take much more work to determine.
Then, of course, there is Brexit – an issue that is meant to be resolved one way or another by March 2019 but almost certainly will not be. And even if it is, the impacts will continue to be felt for many years to come.
As Nick Hazlewood reports (pages 15-16), the UK regulatory agency that will take over Echa’s role in the event of no-deal Brexit seems confident that it will be ready to manage the challenge. However, the German Chemical Industry Association, the VCI, warned its members to prepare for this eventuality and is considerably less sanguine. There are still many twists and turns to come in this most difficult and unnecessary of challenges.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70240/fundamental-issues
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ORD, Lacking Rule Expertise, Leads On Science Plan, Prompting Doubts
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has assigned its Office of Research and Development (ORD), an office with little rulemaking experience, to take the lead in rewriting former Administrator Scott Pruitt's controversial plan barring use of studies where the underlying data is not publicly available, a move that is raising doubts about the plan's prospects for completion.
ORD has “never done this before. I think it was given to them because it's a science rule,” says one knowledgeable source outside the agency. “They are scratching their heads, 'What do we do with [500,000-plus] comments?'”
While sources say ORD is moving slowly to review the comments and determine how to move forward, assignment of the rule to the office is the latest hurdle the measure faces after Pruitt rushed a draft version of the proposed rulemaking through the agency without following usual review procedures.
The rushed process leading to its release last April -- and the resulting effort to try to back-fill some of the normal regulatory process to develop it as a rule -- are leading to questions about whether the rule will be completed.
Observers are also questioning acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler's interest in advancing the proposal, after Pruitt departed due to a series of ethics scandals.
An EPA spokesman says ORD “has in-house expertise on rulemaking, including on efficiently responding to public comments. EPA has started reviewing the more than 597,000 comments received. EPA will be reviewing these comments through the fall.”
The proposed rule generally bars use of research for major rules when the underlying data is not publicly available. But the measure has drawn widespread criticisms, with Democrats, environmentalists, academics and others charging it would be used to bar studies that rely on confidential medical data from being used to justify strict standards.
EPA's own Science Advisory Board (SAB) has raised concerns about the proposal and is seeking to review it.
And even many that may support such an approach have warned that the proposal needs significant work before it can advance. For example, the Defense Department (DOD), often an opponent of EPA risk analyses that can strengthen cleanups that agency might have to undertake, strongly criticized the plan.
“While we agree that public access to information is very important, we do not believe that failure of [EPA] to obtain a publication’s underlying data from an author external to the Agency should negate its use,” DOD's Aug. 16 comments state, adding, “it is improbable that EPA will be able to obtain underlying data from all authors, this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
EPA rules are typically crafted in draft form by an interagency workgroup of staff through the action development process (ADP), with one office and its representative chairing the workgroup.
The science transparency plan was categorized as a “tier 3” measure, the lowest of three tiers in EPA's ADP, and therefore received the least scrutiny in the ADP process after it was largely developed by political appointees.
Agency sources told Inside EPA last spring that the proposal has all the hallmarks of a tier 1 rule that requires significant intra-agency review from career staff and others, usually in a special work group. And without such a work group, they questioned how the agency would be able to review and respond to the thousands of comments the agency is likely to receive on the draft rule.
EPA reversed course after SAB sought to review the plan and upgraded it to tier 1 status.
SAB Review
But one former EPA source sees reason for concern in delays to SAB's review of the proposed rule, as the number of SAB members selected by Trump EPA leaders increases.
“SAB doesn't do its own research. It's incumbent on EPA to conduct the analysis. That could easily take six months to a year or even longer,” the source tells Inside EPA. “Therefore there will be at least one additional round of membership rotations before any [SAB] review is finalized.”
The source adds that beyond the time it takes EPA to prepare its report for SAB, it will be “another six months to a year for a panel [to review the proposal and] another six months for the chartered SAB [to review the review]. That means 100 percent of SAB will be Pruitt or Wheeler picks.”
“I think it is likely there is a strategy here,” the source says. “It certainly plays to a certain constituent group. And even if it doesn't work, it shows that constituent group that this administration is taking this on.”
In this case, the lead office for the rule -- the Office of Science Policy -- is within ORD, though sources have been hard-pressed to remember ORD ever taking the lead on a rule before.
EPA's research office is generally responsible for generating scientific information and analyses that support regulatory decisions within EPA's program and regional offices.
The knowledgeable source adds that the staff workgroup's progress is being “watched very closely” by Brittany Bolen, the associate administrator of the Office of Policy within the administrator's office.
Prior to joining the Trump EPA, Bolen served as GOP counsel to Senate environment committee Republicans. She is among a number of former staffers for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to land roles in the Trump EPA.
Agency sources agree that the workgroup is making its way through the 597,030 public comments submitted to the agency's electronic docket on the proposed rule, along with the help of a contractor. As part of the ADP, the workgroup will have to respond to comments, through changes to the draft rule and by crafting a response to comments document that will be released along with any final rule.
Agency sources say that the workgroup's leader is Maria Doa, the former long-time head of the toxics office's chemical control division, who moved to ORD's Office of Science Policy as part of a shuffle of toxics office leadership earlier this year.
As a former toxics official, Doa brings needed regulatory experience to the ORD staff trying to advance the rule, agency sources say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/ord-lacking-rule-expertise-leads-science-plan-prompting-doubts
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Congress Eyes Spending Options as a Shutdown Looms
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Congress returns this week in a race against the clock to get fiscal 2019 spending completed before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 as a potential government shutdown looms.
Lawmakers from both parties insist they will find a way to make sure agencies stay open next month. But threats from President Trump that he might force a closure unless he gets border wall funding and the presence of controversial riders make the outcome uncertain.
Further complicating the efforts is Hurricane Florence, which could force Congress to cancel votes this week. For now, both chambers are planning to meet.
Here are three possible scenarios for how the spending fights will play out in the coming weeks that will have impacts on energy and environmental spending and policies.Multiple minibuses
Congressional leaders' goal is to move nine of the 12 annual spending bills by the end of the month in bundled packages, known as minibuses. They'd include those covering the Interior and Energy departments and EPA funding.
This week, House and Senate negotiators announced a deal on their first minibus, a $147.5 billion package that contains the fiscal 2019 Energy-Water, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch spending bills.
"I strongly urge my colleagues in the Senate to support final passage this week so we can get this bill to the president's desk and move to the next minibuses in the queue," said Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).
"If we continue to work together in a bipartisan manner we can successfully fund nearly 90 percent of the federal government on time — something Congress has not been able to do in many years," he said.
The House could take up the bill as soon today, with the Senate then expected to act.
Congressional leaders see minibuses as the best way to move bills quickly with limited floor time before the end of the fiscal year.
They also believe combining multiple measures will build bipartisan support and lead to fewer partisan policy riders that have derailed individual spending bills in the past.
House and Senate negotiators have scheduled conference meetings tomorrow on two more minibuses.
One package would combine the Interior-EPA bill with funding measures for Agriculture, Transportation-Housing and Urban Development, and Financial Services.
The other would marry up the annual Defense bill with the largest domestic measure, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
In recent years, Interior-EPA has been bogged down by policy riders, but congressional leaders are betting they can pass the bill this year by dropping those provisions if the bill is combined with three other more bipartisan measures.
Similarly, they believe Labor-HHS, long the toughest measure to pass, might move by being tied to the popular Pentagon funding plan.
Under the minibus scenario, Congress would defer three spending bills, the Commerce-Justice-Science, State-Foreign Operations and Homeland Security measures, until after the midterm elections.
All three are controversial in part because they touch on issues related to immigration and the border wall.
Leaders believe if they can move the other nine bills they'll have little problem getting support for extending current funding for those left out until a post-election, lame-duck session.Punting on funding
If Congress cannot move minibuses, lawmakers will once again rely on stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown.
Under that scenario, any agencies left without fresh fiscal 2019 dollars would be funded at least through the elections at current levels.
The legislative vehicle, a so-called continuing resolution, could also carry extensions of other programs expiring Oct. 1, including the Land and Water Conservation Fund and various agriculture programs.
Lawmakers, running the political spectrum from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Freedom Caucus Leader Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), have said they do not want a shutdown. Both parties say it would create great unpredictability ahead of what already is a volatile election.
Congressional aides say the first minibus, containing Energy-Water spending, is certain to move this week, but they say the others are not guaranteed. Conservatives could hold up the Interior-EPA measure if they don't get riders forcing some regulatory rollbacks, those aides have suggested.
A major question is how long any CR would run. GOP leaders would like to wrap it up this year, but conservatives favor tying it to a fight over border wall spending after the elections or next year, and Democrats increasingly prefer extending it to the next Congress when they believe they will control the House.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior appropriator, warned against going beyond this year, noting the chance the House may flip. He recalled in 2016 when lawmakers punted spending decisions to the next Congress and, ultimately, waited months for a brokered deal that increased spending.Shutdown worries
Tempestuous Trump has frustrated Republicans by musing about a shutdown — even as they have repeatedly warned him of its consequences.
"In the runup to the midterms, particularly in some of the districts we need to keep the House, shutting down the government is not a good strategy," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 GOP senator, who was one of several lawmakers who went to the White House last week to press Trump on signing spending bills.
Trump caught lawmakers off guard by saying at the meeting of a shutdown, "If it happens, it happens." He has repeatedly suggested he might close the government if Congress does not guarantee billions of dollars in funding for building a border wall with Mexico.
Trump, though, at various times has also suggested he might be open to leaving that fight for the lame-duck session.
Lawmakers in both parties say their best bet to avoid a shutdown would be to pass as many minibuses as possible. They believe if Congress can fund nearly 90 percent of government by Sept. 30, Trump would be hard pressed to reject those plans and deny an extension of funding to the remaining agencies.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/12/stories/1060096583
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EPA, Canada Update Cooperative Chemicals Framework
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA and its Canadian counterpart agencies have updated a cooperative framework allowing the three agencies to share information and work collaboratively on chemical assessments, including updates to the framework agenda, which includes collaborating on two of the first 10 chemicals EPA is assessing under the revised U.S. toxics law.
The updated assessment collaboration framework is intended to help EPA and Canadian agencies work together to reduce chemical risks, based on shared “policy objectives under” the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which Congress revised in 2016, and the 1999 Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
The updated framework says the agencies “recognize that [it] focuses on areas of technical collaboration on science and regulatory issues and practices related to chemical assessments. Issues pertaining to policy development in this area are generally considered beyond the scope of the Framework. However, work under this Framework may identify or inform policy issues.”
Canada released on its website this week an updated collaborative framework between EPA's toxics office and Canadian counterparts, along with an updated “rolling workplan” of agenda items. The agencies launched a number of the projects last year, with due dates going into 2019. The agenda is grouped under the agencies' goals of information sharing, “priority setting activities,” data evaluation, “risk assessment approaches/methodology for existing and new chemicals” and “risk assessment work sharing.”
Listed among this last category is n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), one of the first 10 assessments of an existing chemical that EPA is conducting under its revised TSCA responsibilities, with a December 2019 time line. The agenda also includes a second of these 10 assessments, described as “exploring opportunities for work sharing on 1-bromopropane” with a December 2018 time line.
Existing chemicals are those that were on the market when the original TSCA was enacted in 1976, and those that have been added to the TSCA inventory since.
The work plan indicates that EPA and its counterparts are discussing a “Canada and U.S. analysis of priority setting approaches and lessons learned” and are or were participating in workshops “on priority setting activities.” Industry has long urged EPA and Congress to look to Canada's framework for chemicals management, and particularly, its approach to prioritizing those chemicals under assessment by its regulatory agencies as a model for the U.S. The Trump EPA has yet to release its pre-prioritization approach for determining whether chemicals should enter the toxics office's pipeline for one of its time-constrained evaluations. In January 2018 comments on the pre-prioritization process, industry groups and environmentalists clashed over whether the Canadian approach is an appropriate model for EPA's TSCA program.
The collaboration between EPA's toxics office and the Canadian Science and Risk Assessment Directorate within Environment Canada and Climate Change and the Safe Environments Directorate (SED) in Health Canada is part of the 2011 U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC), that seeks to promote economic growth and benefit consumers by harmonizing oversight of the agriculture, health and consumer product, transport and environment sectors.
Their collaboration follows that of EPA's pesticides office and Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), which began collaborating on pesticide assessments several years earlier. The pesticides agencies expanded that collaboration two years ago, agreeing to joint reviews of controversial neonicotinoid pesticides, new best practices for conducting required future reviews, and new guidance documents for waiving or replacing certain tests on animals.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-canada-update-cooperative-chemicals-framework
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Bipartisan Water Deal May Resonate in Congressional Races
Sep 11, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
Key lawmakers in the House and Senate have brokered a deal on water resources legislation that could help ease the path for passage ahead of this year's midterm elections, although it fails to make progress on the most immediate hurdle in the upper chamber.
The bipartisan measure, dubbed America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, S. 3021 (115), includes provisions aimed at issues that have become hot election topics in tight races from Florida to California, including improving drinking water safety, expanding water storage in the West, aiding drought-riddled farmers in Oregon and tackling south Florida's toxic algae crisis.
But the new bill appears to still face the same problem that kept the upper chamber from considering its previous version of the measure this summer: an objection from Sen. Richard Burr(R-N.C.) who has vowed to stall legislation until a deal can be reached to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Burr's office did not respond to a request for comment, but the new measure contains no language relating to the fund. The House is expected to take up the bill as soon as Thursday, but plans in the Senate are unclear.
The new package grows out of two earlier bills: the House-passed Water Resources Development Act, H.R. 8 (115), and America’s Water Infrastructure Act, S. 2800 (115), which advanced out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously in May but never made it to the floor. Leaders of EPW and the House Transportation and Infrastructure and Energy and Commerce committees released the bill late Monday. It would authorize a suite of new Army Corps of Engineers projects, incorporate key provisions from a House-passed drinking water measure, and include a handful of relatively noncontroversial provisions relating to hydropower.
Pressure to move the legislation will likely ratchet up as the fall's midterm elections loom and water issues addressed by the bill take on leading roles in key races.
For instance, toxic algae plaguing Florida's beaches — home to moderate Republican voters — is a top issue in the state's heated Senate race. The new water infrastructure bill includes a project sought by Florida Sens. Bill Nelson (D) and Marco Rubio (R), to build a reservoir near the northern end of the Everglades that would reduce the flow of pollution contributing to the algae blooms. Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who hopes to unseat Nelson in November, had accused the Democratic senator of not doing enough to get that project approved.
Meanwhile, drinking water has become a critical topic in several competitive House races as the breadth of contamination from nonstick chemicals called PFAS continues to be understood. The issue is particularly salient in Michigan, where the state has undertaken a proactive program to test for the chemicals that has brought problems to light in a number of communities, including the city of Parchment, in Republican Rep. Fred Upton's district, where the state has been providing bottled water for more than a month after the city found extremely highlevels of PFAS in municipal wells.
Upton has repeatedly touted the drinking water language included in the infrastructure package as an important first step towards dealing with the problem, although it does not specifically address the chemicals. The provisions are drawn from an earlier bipartisan bill, H.R. 3387 (115), that passed the House last year. It would increase the authorization for the popular Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and make some modest policy changes aimed at improving drinking water management.
And in California, ground zero for Democrats' bid to retake the House, Republicans have played up their efforts to secure reliable water supplies. GOP Rep. Jeff Denham, whose agriculture-heavy Central Valley district is rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, swiftly touted a provision he helped secure in the new water measure that would allow water storage projects to receive federal financing under an expanded version of WIFIA, a low-interest loan program originally authorized for drinking water and wastewater projects.
“We need new water storage in the Valley, period.” Denham said in a statement Tuesday morning. “My bill will deliver the money to build new storage and keep water here in the Valley instead of flushing it out to the ocean.”
Other winners in the bill include EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), whose state could see expanded water storage at reservoir on the Colorado River's headwaters under the measure — a controversial move on the already over-stretched river, and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) who secured drought relief for farmers in his district's Klamath River Basin.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/09/bipartisan-water-deal-may-resonate-in-congressional-races-779141
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Efsa to Begin Hazard Assessment of BPA
Sep 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) working group is to start re-evaluate the hazards of the food contact material bisphenol A (BPA), examining toxicological data published since December 2012.
Efsa's Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids (CEP) is to re-assess the potential hazards of BPA in food and review the temporary safe level set in the agency's 2015 full risk assessment. It established a temporary tolerable daily intake of 4 micrograms per kg of body weight.
Studies or data published after 31 December 2012 are eligible for submission and inclusion in the review. The deadline for submission is 15 October. The new assessment should be ready by 2020.
A US FDA study released in March provoked controversy by suggesting BPA had minimal adverse effects. The "core" rodent study was part of a research programme for the Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on BPA Toxicity.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70200/efsa-to-begin-hazard-assessment-of-bpa
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(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Investments Linked to Affordable Gas Surpass $200 Billion
Sep 11, 2018 | Oil & Gas Journal
By Nick Snow
US chemical and plastics industry investments linked to plentiful and affordable supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids from shale formations has surpassed $200 billion, the American Chemistry Council said. “This is an exciting milestone for American chemistry and further evidence that shale gas is a powerful engine of manufacturing growth,” said ACC Pres. Cal Dooley on Sept. 11.
Since 2010, 333 chemical industry projects cumulatively valued at $202.4 billion have been announced, with 53% of the investment completed or under construction and 41% in the planning phase, ACC said. Fully 68% of the total is foreign direct investment or includes a foreign partner. Project types include new facilities and capacity expansions.
“The US remains the most attractive place in the world to invest in chemical manufacturing. We look forward to continuing to transform energy into a stronger economy and new jobs,” Dooley said.
ACC said that its analysis showed that $202.4 billion in capital spending could lead to $292 billion/year in new chemical and plastics industry output and support 786,000 jobs across the US economy by 2025. These include 79,000 chemical industry jobs, 352,000 positions in supplier industries, and 355,000 jobs in communities where workers spend their wages. Additional, temporary jobs could be created during the capital investment phase, it said.
Robust supplies of NGLs, especially ethane, are key to the US chemical industry’s being able to compete globally, ACC said. NGLs are the main feedstock for basic petrochemicals and plastics in the US, while companies overseas mostly use oil-based naphtha. Since feedstock comprises about 75% of the cost of ethylene production, lower prices favor US chemical manufacturers in the global market, it said.
A note of caution is in order, ACC said. “US manufacturers often rely on inputs that are not available or made [domestically] to create products that cost less yet perform at the high level our downstream customers have come to expect from us. Protectionist trade policies such as tariffs and quotas unnecessarily raise the costs of those inputs, deter innovation and economic growth, and could ultimately weaken our country’s competitive advantage,” it warned.
https://www.ogj.com/articles/2018/09/us-chemical-investments-linked-to-affordable-gas-surpass-200-billion.html
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Sep 11, 2018 | Oil & Gas 360
U.S. chemical, plastics plant investment of $202 billion is direct result of shale gas growth: ACC
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) released data today and the trade group has determined that U.S. chemical and plastics industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable domestic supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale has surpassed $200 billion.Summary:
Since 2010, 333 chemical industry projects cumulatively valued at $202.4 billion have been announced
53 percent of the investment is completed or un...Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: https://www.oilandgas360.com/robust-ethane-supplies-from-u-s-shale-boom-drive-chemical-plant-investment/
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(ACC Mentioned) Cracker Plant Buzz
Sep 12, 2018 | Oil City Derrick
By Judith O. Etzel
The potential impacts stemming from a natural gas cracker plant near Pittsburgh on the chemical and plastics manufacturing industries in western Pennsylvania have the likelihood of sizzling up the local economy.
That was the message shared at a day-long gathering Tuesday of area manufacturers at Cross Creek Resort, site of what was billed as a "Manufacturing Summit" focused on the state's petrochemical industry.
Martha Moore of the American Chemistry Council and Abby Foster of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council discussed how the petrochemical industry, ...
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: http://www.thederrick.com/news/front_page/cracker-plant-buzz/article_5df67478-5978-5f81-b67b-bd1566efd3a5.html
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Utilities Mobilize for 'Catastrophic' Damage from Florence
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro, Peter Behr and Kristi E. Swartz
Across the southeastern United States, masses of residents fled the approach of Hurricane Florence yesterday, with officials in a half-dozen states echoing the warning of National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham: "It's a catastrophic event."
Florence, due to hit land Friday, poses a fearsome triple threat, he predicted — the expectation of 130-mph sustained winds, devastating storm surges threatening coastal areas and rivers alike, and massive flooding from an inundation of rainfall that could persist into Sunday.
Along with federal, state and local emergency responders, the region's utility companies prepared for multistate power outages that could match or exceed the damage from Hurricane Irma, in 2017, which blacked out 6.7 million customers in Florida, two-thirds of the state's total.
As Irma, Hurricane Harvey last year and Katrina, in 2005, showed, each of these calamities endangers generating plants and power grid operations in different ways. When Florence hits land, it could add more tragic evidence to the debate launched by the Trump administration on how best to protect electric power service in extreme emergencies.
Electric utility industry leaders and government agencies are mobilized, already having deployed thousands of workers to perform repairs.
The Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) — a high-level group of utility CEOs and federal officials — on Monday had its first of what promises to be many conference calls.
The National Hurricane Center today reported that the storm, currently a Category 4 hurricane, was increasing in size and getting better organized, and warned of "life-threatening storm surge possible along the coasts of North and South Carolina."
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is "in constant contact with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and its regional entities involved, and is monitoring the situation on a regular basis," said spokeswoman Mary O'Driscoll.
The agency's Office of Electric Reliability maintains real-time situational awareness of what's happening on the bulk power system through a 24/7 emergency reporting system. And the agency is getting regular updates from utilities and participating in ESCC calls, O'Driscoll said.
Energy Department officials did not respond to an inquiry about the department's role in coordinating a response to potential grid damage or widespread loss of power.'Battle rhythm' and a gathering storm
The Trump administration's focus on electric grid resilience through periods of extreme weather or man-made disruptions also will be put to the test in the coming days.
The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, is already in a "battle rhythm," with calls throughout the day with DOE, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its affected member companies, said Scott Aaronson, vice president for security and preparedness at EEI.
"Besides the culture of mutual assistance that is the hallmark of our industry, there is the commitment to constant improvement. We learned a lot from Sandy and then Matthew and the historic 2017 hurricane season," he said.
"One of the big messages on the call with the CEOs and government officials last night was 'Hey, let's make sure to look across the industry. Just because one segment of the sector is taken care of, before we say we've got this all under control, let's make sure we're working across the segments of the sector,'" Aaronson said.
There is no single individual in charge of the hurricane response effort, Aaronson said. The ESCC is there to work collegially and "solve problems in real time," he said, such as advocating for the lifting of flight restrictions to get drones and helicopters in the sky to do assessments.
"Individual grid operators know what to do to restore power. Every company has their storm boss, and it's their job to get the lights back on for their footprint," he said.
In terms of how the response to Florence informs on the resilience of the grid, "we can learn what works and what we need to invest in," Aaronson said. "The other part of resilience is to understand that you can't stop impacts all of the time from all of the threat."
Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp. said it expects widespread damage and power outages in the Carolinas. Historical data and experience indicate "that total power restoration from a storm of this magnitude could take multiple days to several weeks depending on the extent of damage and post-storm conditions, such as ongoing high winds and severe flooding," it said.
Assessing damage to the grid can take 24 hours or more, Duke said.
Spokesman Neil Nissan said the utility has about 4,600 restoration workers positioned in the Carolinas, and nearly 1,000 workers are coming from the Midwest and Florida to help. They'll wait outside of the storm zone and move in after the storm has passed.
Nissan said Duke does not expect "any generation issues as a result of this storm," citing its balanced portfolio of nuclear, combined-cycle natural gas, coal, hydro and renewable power.
Rural electric cooperatives in the path of Florence are "coordinating mutual aid agreements with co-ops in other states, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Ohio," said Stephen Bell, spokesman for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
During the recovery from Hurricane Irma last year, roughly 5,000 cooperative workers from nearly 25 states converged on the impact zone, Bell said.
North Carolina's 26 co-ops serve 2.5 million members in 93 of the state's 100 counties.
In South Carolina, major electric utilities put out early warnings that Florence would likely cause prolonged power outages, urging residents and businesses to prepare.'Deadly and important game of chess'
For some, their most recent memory is Hurricane Matthew, which rolled up the Carolina coast in 2016. Matthew knocked out power to 1.5 million Duke customers. It cost the utility $125 million to repair power lines and substations and replace waterlogged equipment. Roughly 300,000 customers of South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) lost electricity from Matthew, which had weakened to a Category 1 storm by the time it reached the coast.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) made references to Hurricane Hugo, which slammed into Charleston in 1989, during a media briefing yesterday. He called Florence a force that's even greater than Hugo and said officials are not going to gamble with anyone's life.
"We are in a deadly and important game of chess with Hurricane Florence," he said.
Scana Corp.'s SCE&G has inspected and replaced thousands of poles in an eight-year period as part of efforts to rebuild and harden roughly one-third of its transmission system, a spokesman said.
This includes replacing wooden poles with steel ones and adding roughly 540 miles of new circuit wire, said Paul Fischer in an email to E&E News.
Much of SCE&G's electricity travels over more than 3,500 miles of aboveground transmission lines in South Carolina, while only 20 miles of its transmission is buried below.
The utility, like others, faces an ongoing tug of war over how much of its power lines to place underground because much of the state is in low-lying areas. This means storms such as Florence that are expected to bring heavy rains and flooding could actually delay restoring electricity to areas where power lines are underground, Fischer said.
Santee Cooper, the state-owned electric company, started a corporate incident-response program recently to help better coordinate its power restoration process. The program created a more structured, coordinated way of making sure people, supplies and support systems are in the right place at the right time, spokeswoman Mollie Gore said.
Federal nuclear regulators have sent additional inspectors to nuclear plants in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia that may be in the storm's path, said Joey Ledford, an Atlanta-based spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Those inspectors will ride out the storm at the plant. At the same time, the NRC is encouraging the electric companies to start preparing the sites for high winds and heavy rains, ensuring that all loose debris and equipment has been removed from the area, he said.
One part of preparing a nuclear site for a storm is making sure the diesel generators are working and have fuel to operate in case they need to supply backup power to the site, Ledford said.
The NRC sent additional inspectors to Duke Energy's Brunswick and Harris nuclear plants in North Carolina, as well as its Robinson plant in South Carolina.
They also were sent to the operating reactor at SCE&G's V.C. Summer plant in South Carolina and to Dominion Virginia Power's Surry and North Anna nuclear sites in Virginia.
Safety regulators require utilities to shut down nuclear reactors before hurricane-force winds hit. Electric companies must bring the reactors to their safest possible state before heavy winds or storm surge gets to the area, Ledford said.
Based upon Florence's current projected path, Duke's Brunswick nuclear plant, north of Wilmington, N.C., is considered likely to have hurricane-force winds, Ledford said. The Harris plant outside of Raleigh, N.C., and the Surry plant, northwest of Norfolk, Va., also could have high winds.The lessons of Harvey
At the outset of his administration, President Trump set off a debate over protecting the nation's electric power infrastructure from extraordinary threats with his promise to reverse the precipitous decline of coal-fired generation and bolster coal companies and coal communities.
The Energy Department has advanced a plan to channel subsidies to money-losing coal and nuclear plants to prevent their early retirements. These units' on-site fuel supplies make them uniquely valuable assets in grid emergencies, DOE said in a draft of its plan, which is still being worked on inside the administration.
Representatives of the natural gas, petroleum, wind and solar power industries have attacked the proposal as unjustified and an unfair benefit to the coal sector, promising lawsuits if the plan is adopted.
The toll from deadly storms like Harvey last year, however, reveals indiscriminate damage to all kinds of power plants and transmission networks. After-action reviews on Harvey showed that none escaped unscathed.
Harvey made landfall near Port O'Connor on Texas' Gulf Coast at 10 p.m. local time on Aug. 25 last year. At least seven hours earlier, with Harvey still 85 miles off the coast, offshore wind turbines were forced to shut down because of high winds, according to a report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
When it did strike, 1,500 megawatts of generation of various kinds on the coast had tripped off or deliberately closed down, and the facilities' workers were evacuated. At the storm's peak, 68 generators totaling 13,000 MW of capacity were out of commission because of the storm, ERCOT said.
Flooded facilities had the biggest impact, then lack of fuel, as flooding and crew evacuation affected natural gas pipelines, ERCOT said. But coal-burning plants were hit, too. Close behind those two impacts were outages due to wet fuel.
An additional 5,700 MW of generation had to operate at reduced output over the four worst days of the storm due to wet coal, low gas pressure and high winds, according to Texas RE, the Texas grid reliability operator.
Regardless of the condition of generating plants, the damage to high-voltage transmission lines and utility distribution lines cut off power throughout the area, compounded by flooded substations. The storm damaged 850 transmission towers and 6,000 utility distribution poles, Texas RE reported.
Some communications channels carrying operating information back to control rooms were disrupted by flood installations and loss of backup battery power.
Nuclear plants did the best in Harvey, continuing to operate throughout the storm, although the potential loss of outside power to the plants increased.
And grid operators were able to keep power deliveries balanced, as the loss of generation was coupled with a steep dive in demand as customers evacuated or were flooded out. A total of 1.67 million customers were without power at Harvey's peak.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/12/stories/1060096601
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Hearing to Examine Exports to Europe
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
A Senate committee will examine the role of American liquefied natural gas in meeting European energy demand this week, while several Trump officials visit Europe for talks on the same subject.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is traveling to Russia, Austria and Romania to talk energy cooperation, while his deputy, Dan Brouillette, is in Germany to discuss opportunities for importing U.S. LNG.
Steven Winberg, assistant secretary of fossil energy, has a less glamorous assignment: Capitol Hill. He'll be one of several witnesses at tomorrow's hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
U.S. European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also held meetings in Europe this week.
The Trump administration has highlighted exporting LNG as a key part of its "energy dominance" plan, with Asia in particular a major destination for American shipments.
DOE and Congress have taken steps to boost LNG exports, including recently changing the agency's regulations to make it easier for companies to apply to export small amounts of gas (E&E Daily, Sept. 7).
But critics, including some Hill Democrats, have argued that expanding gas exports could harm consumers and lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions.
"The lobbying campaign to justify expanded LNG exports prioritizes the financial interests of natural gas producers at the expense of U.S. households and American value-added manufacturing," said Public Citizen's energy director, Tyson Slocum, who is also scheduled to testify this week.
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Sept. 13, at 10 a.m. in 366 Dirksen.
Witnesses: Steven Winberg, assistant secretary of fossil energy, Department of Energy; Kevin Book, managing director, ClearView Energy Partners LLC; Agnia Grigas, associate, Argonne National Laboratory; Mark Mills, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; and Tyson Slocum, energy program director, Public Citizen.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/12/stories/1060096567
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Federal Judge Erred in Scrapping Forced Leases, Idaho Says
Sep 11, 2018 | AP (In E&E News PM)
By Keith Ridler
A U.S. District Court judge made a legal error, Idaho officials say, and should reverse his ruling that Idaho violated the U.S. Constitution by forcing several landowners to sell their natural gas and oil to a Texas company.
The Idaho attorney general's office in documents filed yesterday says Chief U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill "was clearly erroneous" in a ruling last month that could have significant ramifications for a state-approved process intended to prevent a minority of mineral rights owners from stopping natural gas and oil production.
Winmill ruled that a special hearing held by Idaho officials to settle a dispute between several landowners and Houston-based Alta Mesa Resources Inc. ran afoul of the Constitution's protection of procedural due process. That's intended to protect an individual's rights from state authority, and Winmill ordered Idaho to vacate its decision.
Idaho officials wrote that Winmill's ruling doesn't meet a required legal threshold to determine that rights have been deprived. As a result, the state is asking Winmill to eliminate his order and rule that Idaho acted legally within the confines of the Constitution.
"The court cannot make the required finding that plaintiffs have been deprived of a constitutionally protected property interest," Idaho officials wrote.
Idaho also asked that if Winmill doesn't reverse his ruling, he make it applicable only to two landowners involved in the lawsuit.
Citizens Allied for Integrity and Accountability, a watchdog group concerned with property rights and public health, sued last year with the landowners. It contends the state discriminated against landowners with an order following the special hearing that finalized a deal that favors Alta Mesa.
Among the group's concerns are possible pollution and a decline in home values from nearby oil and gas wells that make royalties received by the landowners negligible.
James Piotrowski, an attorney representing Citizens Allied and landowners, said yesterday's filing represents Gov. Butch Otter (R) and his "administration doubling down on their claim that people don't have property rights to the minerals under their land." Piotrowski said he would respond to the state's filing before an October deadline.
Idaho has been working on its natural gas and oil laws in recent years as advancing technologies have helped Alta Mesa make Idaho a state that produces oil and gas. Winmill's ruling didn't negate any of those laws, but it appears to put a significant part of the process in question.
"We've now got a ruling that says the current system will not produce legal results," Piotrowski said.
The Idaho Department of Lands is named as a defendant. Department spokeswoman Emily Callihan said today the agency does not comment on pending litigation. The Idaho attorney general's office is representing the Lands Department. Spokesman Scott Graf said that office had no comment.
Specifically, the lawsuit involves a process called integration. Under Idaho law, when owners with at least 55 percent of the mineral rights in an area agree to lease, the remaining minority can be forced to take part.
Integration is a common practice in gas- and oil-producing states. It's intended to prevent a minority of mineral rights owners in an area from stopping natural gas or oil production, which can generate jobs and revenue for the state. It's also intended to ensure all mineral rights owners who deserve a share of oil and gas profits get it should one of the landowners decide to drill a well and pull out all the oil and gas.
The area being contested in the lawsuit has leases for more than 55 percent in the 640-acre parcel just across the Snake River from Oregon. But there are holdouts, so Alta Mesa asked state officials under state law to apply integration. That led to the hearing that Winmill found violated the Constitution. — Keith Ridler, Associated Press
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/09/11/stories/1060096545
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As Extreme Weather Gets Worse, Emergency Responders Deal With The Fallout
Sep 12, 2018 | Huffington Post
By Dave Jamieson
The Arkema chemical plant outside Houston wasn’t remotely prepared for the rainfall Hurricane Harvey unleashed last August. As the water rose to historic levels after days of unrelenting rain, the plant’s backup refrigeration systems failed, causing pallets of highly unstable chemicals to warm and then combust. Toxic clouds of organic peroxide drifted from the facility over nearby Highway 90.
The first workers to encounter the cloud were two police officers responding to a call on the night of Aug. 30, 2017. As they drove their squad car down 90, their eyes and throats began to burn. They called it into dispatch, which sent three more officers to check on them and review their dash cam video ― but those officers also drove into a toxic cloud emanating from the Arkema plant, and soon their heads ached and their stomachs turned.
First responders later described the scene on the highway as “nothing less than chaos.” Cops were doubled over and vomiting as they gasped for air. Medics rushed to the scene to treat them, only to inhale toxic fumes and get sick themselves. All told, 21 first responders had to be hospitalized for chemical exposure, prompting a complete shutdown of the highway.
The spectacle of police and medics vomiting in the road as they tried to help one another, which was described in a lawsuit first responders later filed against Arkema, offers an unsettling glimpse of what happens in emergencies no one is prepared to handle. The increased frequency and severity of major storms will make catastrophic flooding more routine and create treacherous conditions for the first responders and cleanup workers that are supposed to help average citizens make it through a disaster.
Occupational health experts are just beginning to grapple with this issue as climate change transforms working conditions in many fields, making major storms not just more common but also more devastating. Harvey dropped 40 inches of rain on some areas of Texas and was responsible for more than 80 deaths. A paper published by the American Geophysical Union estimates that the earth’s warming atmosphere made the rainfall up to 38 percent greater than it would have been otherwise.
Another paper in Environmental Research Letters projected that the intensity of Harvey’s rains was between eight and 19 percent higher due to global warming. By simulating several centuries worth of rainfall, they also found that the likelihood of a storm occurring on Harvey’s scale was increased by a factor of three.
“The more storms we have, the more incidents like this there are likely to be,” Nicholas Ashford, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chair of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety & Health, said of the Arkema fires. “And we’ve done very little to prevent them from happening.”Canaries In The Coal Mine
While climate change is a health risk to everyone, public health experts say laborers will be the canaries in the coal mine. They have little choice but to work through extreme heat and severe weather. The first responders at the Arkema fires are a perfect example.
The organic peroxides stored at the Arkema plant are used to manufacture plastics. If they aren’t kept cool, they can burn and explode. As Harvey’s waters rose and threatened to knock out power, Arkema workers moved the chemicals from their normal storage warehouses to backup refrigerated trailers on higher ground. But those, too, began to flood, leaving the crew helpless to stop the peroxides from warming. Emergency responders escorted the workers off the site and created a 1.5-mile evacuation perimeter for residents surrounding the facility.
But Highway 90, one of the last unflooded emergency routes in the area, bisected the evacuation zone and ran adjacent to the Arkema facility. Officials had to decide whether to shut down a crucial artery used to move personnel and equipment or to keep it open and potentially expose those who traveled it to toxic chemicals. This was “admittedly a difficult decision for the Unified Command,” investigators with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board wrote in their official report. (Several of the 21 workers who got sick on the route declined interviews through their lawyers.)
When the safety board released its report last May, its chair acknowledged that chemical dangers like those posed by Harvey are likely to increase in the future as massive storms become more typical. Portions of the Arkema plant sat within the 100-year and 500-year flood zones, and every contingency plan in the company’s hurricane response ended up breaking down.
“Clearly the company did not plan ahead,” said John Morawetz, a health and safety expert at the International Chemical Workers Union Council. “Granted, Harvey stalled, and it was record rain. But how many times have we heard about the once-in-a-hundred-year flood every few years now?”
The waterlogged Gulf Coast is riddled with chemical plants, many of which, like Arkema’s, probably haven’t done the due diligence to prepare for severe flooding.
The Arkema fires were hardly the only chemical incidents in the wake of Harvey. The National Response Center logged at least 102 releases at industrial plants, a little under half of which were carried out intentionally to get rid of chemicals as the storm bore down. The Houston Chronicle reported that more than a dozen plants sustained damage to their storage tanks or pressure release valves, concluding that it would be years before all of Harvey’s ramifications were understood.
Jordan Barab, a former OSHA official during the Obama administration, wrote on his blog that the Arkema fires were a “relatively inexpensive lesson,” given that no one was killed. But they are an indicator of “a potential national crisis” for workers and public safety, he said.
“After all the backup systems failed, the only thing left to do at Arkema was to evacuate the plant and wait for it to blow up,” Barab wrote. “That’s not a sustainable strategy for chemical plant safety in this country.”‘Second Responders’
Beyond the immediate threats of drowning, electrocution and chemical explosions, there are also less obvious health risks that emerge after a major storm ― like exposure to mold and bacteria.
A 31-year-old carpenter repairing homes in Galveston in the wake of Harvey died from necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria, nearly seven weeks after the storm. Doctors said the man was probably infected as he worked, through a cut by floodwater or Harvey debris. Although such deaths are rare, it prompted health experts to issue a warning to anyone working on Harvey recovery projects to seek first aid even for minor-looking scrapes.
“Workers come in to do this cleaning and rebuilding sometimes long after this storm has passed, and all the water has receded. It looks like everything’s fine, but it’s not,” said Craig Slatin, an occupational and environmental health expert at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. “Nobody is teaching these workers what you have to look out for.”
The unglamorous work of post-storm cleanup is known as “mucking and gutting,” and those who do it are sometimes called “second responders.” The job involves removing all the water and debris from a home, then stripping down all the flood-ruined wood and drywall to the studs. Rebuilding a home without doing this properly could lead to chronic mold behind the walls, which can cause respiratory problems.
Much of that mucking and gutting is done by day laborers working for fly-by-night contractors, especially for commercial properties and apartment buildings. As soon as the flood waters receded, Houston’s sidewalks filled up with workers looking to earn a day’s pay by clearing up the mess, said Marianela Acuña Arreaza, director of the Houston worker center Fe y Justicia.
Acuña Arreaza’s group worked with the Chemical Workers Union and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health to educate day laborers in the weeks following the storm. With a map showing three dozen of the city’s most common day-labor pickup corners, organizers and volunteers fanned out to hold bilingual streetside clinics. Many of the workers being hired weren’t being provided with basic safety equipment like gloves and safety goggles.
“The majority of people were like, ‘We have never received any training,’” Acuña Arreaza said.
Her group helped commission researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to carry out a survey of 361 post-Harvey day laborers. It found that more than eight in 10 second responders hired off the street weren’t told about the risks of encountering mold or contaminated water. Roughly a third of workers said they didn’t have work gloves, and nearly two-thirds of those who had been injured said it was the result of not having the proper safety equipment.
For many workers, the biggest occupational danger is not getting paid for their work at all. Twenty-six percent of day laborers said they had been stiffed on their pay at some point in the first four weeks of disaster recovery, shorted an average of $212.
In the weeks following Harvey, workers who’d been mucking and gutting reached out to the Texas nonprofit Workers Defense Project to say they were such victims. They had been employed by a subcontractor working on a project run by Interstate Restoration, one of the country’s leading disaster cleanup firms, and hadn’t been paid for their labor. Interstate swoops in and picks up lucrative contracts following storms like Harvey, as The Intercept reported in a profile of the company in March.
Rather than request a government wage theft investigation into Interstate and its subcontractors, the Workers Defense Project ended up filing a lien on workers’ behalf against the commercial properties they had cleaned up. That, in turn, pressured Interstate’s subcontractor to pay back wages. One of the group’s organizers said workers were able to recover hundreds of dollars apiece.
Although the Interstate case was ultimately a success story, worker advocates say there are far more recovery workers still owed money following Harvey. Some of them may end up dealing with unscrupulous subcontractors and workplace hazards once again after the next big storm. Climate change, Acuña Arreaza said, will only make it rougher.
“It’s a dangerous state to work in in the first place,” she said. “And when hurricanes happen, it just gets worse.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/storms-get-worse-emergency-responders-deal-with-fallout_us_5b86f48ee4b0511db3d44756
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Markey's Prodding Hasn't Closed the Book on Russian Grid Hack
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobcza
More than a month after a homeland security official warned that Russia had penetrated part of the U.S. power grid, questions remain about the extent of the hacking campaign and the power sector's defenses.
On Friday, the clock ran out on a key deadline set by Sen. Ed Markey (D), who had urged grid regulators and multiple utilities to shed more light on the cyber intrusions.
The Massachusetts lawmaker sent letters to 14 privately and federally owned power utilities — along with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — demanding answers about U.S. efforts to head off cyberattacks on the grid.
But a written response from electricity executives and a private Aug. 30 meeting between NERC and Markey staffers have done little to set the public record straight, even as DHS officials have scrambled to tamp down alarm over the case.
Markey issued his original request for information on Aug. 13, in the wake of media reports that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid as far back as 2016, positioning themselves to disrupt power flows.
"Unless we act now, the United States will continue to remain vulnerable to the 21st century cyberarmies looking to wage war by knocking out America's electricity grid," Markey said in a statement at the time. "We need answers and assurances from stakeholders who operate and oversee the grid that they are doing everything possible to secure our nation's electrical system against devastating damage from physical or cyber-terrorist attacks."
NERC officials met with Markey's staff later that month to address the lawmaker's concerns, including his request to learn of "efforts to engage both electric utilities and critical third party vendors to protect electric utility assets against vulnerability." The nonprofit regulator declined to share takeaways from the private meeting, and a spokeswoman for Markey did not respond to requests for comment.
Markey pushed for more specific information from private utilities such as Xcel Energy Inc. and Exelon Corp., asking flat-out whether their networks had been infiltrated by Russian spies.
"We encourage you to engage with us and our members in an appropriately protected forum to address the sensitive security details in your questions more thoroughly," the leaders of three power industry trade groups wrote in a Sept. 4 response (Energywire, Sept. 5).
Susan Kelly, CEO of the American Public Power Association; Thomas Kuhn, CEO of the Edison Electric Institute; and Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said they would be "happy" to join federal agencies and members of Markey's staff for a classified briefing on grid cyberdefenses.
The groups noted in their letter that "there was no new security incident" prompting a July 23 webinar in which DHS warned of Russian efforts to compromise U.S. energy providers. The hacking campaign was over a year old at that point, they said.
"Clarifications aside, the threat from nation states, such as Russia, and from many other adversaries that may wish to harm the energy grid, is real and growing," Kelly, Kuhn and Matheson said. "Industry is keenly aware of these threats thanks to close coordination and information sharing with government partners and to a shared responsibility across the sector to protect some of the nation's most critical infrastructure."Pointed questions
The grid's cyber and physical defenses surfaced at a meeting between EEI's board of directors and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen last week, according to DHS and an EEI spokesman.
It's unclear if DHS met with Markey to cover some of the same issues — a DHS spokesman said the agency does not comment on correspondence with Nielsen, in accordance with official policy.
But grid executives and DHS officials have offered at-times conflicting accounts of the nature of the hacking threat to the grid.
On March 15, DHS first publicly attributed a long-running, energy-focused cyberespionage campaign to the Russian government, posting a reconstructed screenshot of a power generation control system that officials said hackers managed to compromise (Energywire, March 16).
Months later, during a July 23 webinar, the chief of DHS's industrial control security systems group said the Kremlin-linked intruders "definitely got to a control system where they could effect physical impact," while adding the caveat that they took no further action.
On July 31, a DHS official and the CEO of Southern Co. confirmed that the power generation source involved would not have affected the wider grid if brought offline. Tom Fanning described the infection as affecting "one or two wind turbines," while DHS Undersecretary Chris Krebs characterized the control system as "a renewable source of energy."
There was just one hiccup — experts have said the hacked control system image that appeared in the March 15 alert more closely resembles an oil- or gas-fueled power generation unit, rather than the human machine interface for a wind turbine (Energywire, Aug. 1).
"The story has a long way to go before it's put to bed," noted energy security consultant Tom Alrich in a recent blog post.
Markey had sought to sort through some of the confusion, asking individual utility executives whether their companies fell victim to "this most recent attack."
"If so, please describe how your system was infiltrated and identify the steps you are taking to prevent a future incursion of the same nature," he said.
Based on the industry's response, that level of detail seems destined to remain behind closed doors.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/12/stories/1060096591
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Cities Globally Commit to Carbon Cuts of 1.4 Billion Tons by 2030
Sep 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Cities are committing to emissions reductions of nearly 1.4 billions tons per year by 2030, local government leaders said.
Some 9,149 cities worldwide, home to more than 750 million people, have committed to carbon cuts, which would double by 2050, through the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy. This reduction equals the removal of all cars from U.S. roads in 12 years, the organization said, led by 10 mayors and local officials from around the world.
The announcement of the covenant comes as the Global Climate Action Summit nears in San Francisco. One of the chairs of the Global Climate Action Summit is Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
A partnership with Google LLC will enable more uniform reporting of city greenhouse gas emissions starting Jan. 1, 2019. The framework also makes data shareable among cities.
Buenos Aires; Melbourne; Victoria, Canada; Pittsburgh; and Mountain View, Calif., began pilot testing Sept. 10.
Resource ConstraintsFinancial resource limitations hamper many small- and mid-size cities, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, that want to do more, Maros Sefcovic, one of the co-chairs, along with Bloomberg, of the Global Covenant of Mayors and vice president of the European Commission responsible for the Energy Union, said in a statement.
“Connecting them with vital GHG emissions data is the first step in enabling them to take the science-based climate action needed to increase urban resilience and improve the well-being of citizens,” he said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/cities-globally-commit-to-carbon-cuts-of-14-billion-tons-by-2030
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D.C. Circuit Doubts Utilities' Power To Sue Over SO2 Attainment Findings
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A three-judge federal appeals court panel at Sept. 11 oral argument doubted whether utilities have standing to sue EPA over designations for whether areas in Kansas are attaining or violating the agency's sulfur dioxide (SO2) air standard, while signaling some support for environmentalists' challenges to designations for parts of Colorado and Ohio.
At argument in Samuel Masias, et al. v. EPA, et al., U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judges Patricia Millett, David Tatel and Stephen Williams questioned petitioners and EPA over how much discretion the agency has when designating areas as attaining or in nonattainment with national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), including for SO2 and other criteria pollutants. The case consolidates several challenges filed by utilities, environmentalists and others over EPA's attainment designations for the 2010 NAAQS for SO2, set at 75 parts per billion (ppb) using a novel one-hour averaging time.
Colorado citizens are challenging EPA's decision to designate the area around a power plant in the state as “unclassifiable,” and seek instead a finding of “nonattainment."
EPA's decision is premised on its rejection of meteorological data from nearby Colorado Springs Airport as unrepresentative of wind conditions at the coal-fired power Martin Drake plant. This led the agency to decide it cannot classify the area around the plant, allowing the facility to avoid the tougher control requirements that would flow from being located in a “nonattainment” zone. But local citizens say EPA often uses the best available data from nearby airports when modeling NAAQS attainment, and the agency's action is inconsistent with prior practice.
Meanwhile, Sierra Club is seeking to shift EPA's designation of Gallia County, OH, from “unclassifiable” to “nonattainment,” claiming that EPA should have accepted the group's suggestion of a “simple mathematical fix” that would have rendered otherwise flawed state emissions modeling accurate. The state argued for an attainment designation, but EPA ultimately opted for “unclassifiable,” citing data accuracy concerns.
And the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is pressing for EPA to designate Wyandotte County, KS, as “unclassifiable/attainment,” rather than “unclassifiable,” a move that BPU claims would provide regulatory certainty that it need not plan for possible additional controls on a Kansas power plant.
Further, the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), representing the power generation sector, has intervened in the suit to defend EPA's designations from environmentalists' efforts to force more nonattainment designations.
At argument, the judges appeared to doubt the standing of both Kansas City BPU and also UARG to sue. For BPU in particular, judges were very doubtful of material harm that would give the board standing, siding with EPA on the issue. In effect, there is no regulatory difference between EPA's designation of “unclassifiable” and Wyandotte County's preferred designation of “unclassifiable/attainment,” judges noted.
“Unless there is a real-world difference,” then “it is really hard” to grant standing, Williams said.
Attorney Dennis Lane, representing the BPU, claimed that EPA's designation affords a local power plant far less regulatory certainty than the “unclassifiable/attainment” designation would. But the judges seemed to think this uncertainty was insufficient to provide standing.
Millet and Tatel also pressed attorney Lucinda Langworthy, representing UARG, to provide written evidence of UARG members who have interests in the affected areas of Colorado and Ohio, in order to prove the group has standing.
Nonattainment Status
On the substance of citizens' and environmentalists' claims, Millett appeared most sympathetic to petitioners' claims that EPA ignored better or corrected data in order to allow areas to escape nonattainment status.
Millett pressed Department of Justice attorney Amanda Berman on why EPA did not step in and find its own wind data for Colorado Springs, given a substantial federal government presence in the area.
Berman answered that the agency is now using data from a weather station near the Martin Drake plant, which shows very different wind patterns to those found at the airport.
Berman said that EPA often makes designations based on “best available data,” but that the data needs to be good enough, and that was not the case here.
Millett also pressed Berman on EPA's claim that the “simple mathematical fix” - required to change assumptions about “background” pollution levels -- is in fact very complex.
Berman said that the suggested “fix” is not simple and requires changes to millions of “data points,” with the outcome unclear.
Attorney Lisa Perfetto, for Sierra Club, countered that the agency could easily have determined that Gallia County was in “nonattainment” by making the suggested adjustments to its modeling.
Perfetto argued that “EPA is potentially opening up a huge loophole” for states to avoid nonattainment, by allowing states to supply flawed data, then declaring that it cannot designate areas based on that data.
Williams pressed Perfetto on why Sierra Club appears to be “writing off” more-recent emissions data, for the period 2013-2015, that show Gallia County in attainment of the NAAQS.
Perfetto replied that EPA did not have the data in hand at the time of the designation, and the agency has a duty to designate under Clean Air Act deadlines using data it has available. If you “wait and wait for data, you delay health benefits indefinitely,” she said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-doubts-utilities-power-sue-over-so2-attainment-findings
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Trump Said to Relax Methane Pollution Curbs on Oil and Gas Wells
Sep 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration is preparing to unwind Obama-era limits on methane leaking from oil and gas wells, responding to industry concerns that the mandates meant to combat climate change are both unnecessary and too expensive.
The Environmental Protection Agency has prepared a proposal to ease two-year-old requirements forcing energy companies to find and stop methane leaks at new and modified oil and gas wells, according to a person outside of government who was briefed on the plan and asked for anonymity to discuss the draft.
The Trump proposal seeks to undo some mandates for equipment upgrades and would lessen the frequency of required inspections to hunt for methane leaks. The drafted plan is in the final stages of an inter-agency review at the White House, with public release planned for Sept. 12. Even then, it could be a year before the changes are finalized, following a public comment period and further development by the EPA.
Oil industry leaders have said federal regulations are unnecessary in light of ongoing work to keep methane from escaping. Because methane is the primary ingredient in natural gas, energy companies have a financial incentive to keep it bottled up as it moves from the wellhead to compressor stations and into storage tanks.
EPA spokesman John Konkus said Sept. 10 that the agency had “nothing to announce at this time.”
The Interior Department is moving separately to ease Obama administration requirements that energy companies keep a better lid on natural gas escaping from wells on public land.
Obama Climate PlanBoth efforts are part of President Donald Trump’s effort to push back against former President Barack Obama’s climate legacy. Obama built a three-part strategy for combating climate change, with regulations capping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.
Trump’s EPA already proposed relaxing carbon dioxide limits for two of those targets in August: power plants and vehicles.
Now, with methane, the Trump administration is taking aim at the third piece of Obama’s climate proposals.
The oil and gas industry is the leading source of methane, an intense but short-lived greenhouse gas shown to warm the atmosphere 84 times more than carbon dioxide when measured over two decades.
Under the EPA’s drafted proposal, energy companies would have to search for leaks at high-producing wells annually—instead of twice a year as required under the 2016 rule. Very low-producing wells—known as marginal wells—would have to be inspected once every two years. In addition, the EPA would relax the current requirement to investigate possible leaks at gas compressor stations quarterly, shifting to a semiannual timetable.
Permissible repair times generally would double to 60 days, under the EPA plan.
The proposal also would give broad deference to states that already have enacted methane leak detection and repair requirements, including those with relatively lax rules. Some states such as Colorado have been praised for robust requirements, in some cases exceeding what the federal government requires.
Voluntary PlugsAlthough some energy companies have worked aggressively and voluntarily to plug methane leaks, environmentalists and some investors worry the industry as a whole is not moving quickly enough to address the issue. Federal mandates provide essential incentive for companies to spend money capturing methane emissions when the investments won’t swiftly pay off, environmentalists argue.
The existing EPA requirements imposed under Obama apply to new and newly modified facilities, including oil and gas wells, pumps, compressors and other equipment. Under the mandates, energy companies are required to upgrade pumps and compressors, conduct more frequent inspections of their sites and use “green completion” technology to capture gas surging out of newly fracked wells.
The coming EPA measure will be just the first step in the agency’s two-part effort to dramatically scale back federal limits on methane emissions.
The agency has already signaled it is working on a separate rulemaking to address whether direct rules on methane are even necessary; Trump’s EPA is expected to ultimately propose they aren’t.
The coming EPA proposal also is set to be the second attempt by the agency to suspend the Obama methane requirements. In July 2017, a federal court rebuked the agency’s first try: unilaterally suspending the mandates. The coming effort is designed to be more durable because it tracks legal requirements for altering federal regulations, with the new, formal proposal followed by a public comment period meant to guide the agency’s development of a final rule.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/trump-said-to-relax-methane-pollution-curbs-on-oil-and-gas-wells
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EPA Proposes To Ease Methane NSPS, Previewing Additional Deregulation
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
EPA's newly released proposal to ease methane limits for new oil and gas equipment is just the first stage of a process that would scuttle direct regulatory limits on the potent greenhouse gas, as Trump officials broadly seek to reduce regulatory burdens imposed on the sector by the prior administration.
EPA's Sept. 11 proposal to soften the 2016 new source performance standards (NSPS) would make several changes, including weakening monitoring requirements for methane leaks, easing schedules for repairing leaks, allowing an exemption for pneumatic pumps at certain greenfield sites, and recognizing compliance with state methane programs as complying with federal rules.
The agency plans to take comment on the plan for 60 days once it is published in the Federal Register.
But the agency indicated -- many observers on both sides of the issue expect -- the new proposal to be a prelude to a future plan that could eliminate methane-specific requirements for oil and gas sources, reverting to a prior approach that explicitly targeted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and achieved methane reductions as a co-benefit.
The latter approach might effectively bar future methane rules for existing sources under Clean Air Act section 111(d) on the grounds that the statutory language bars regulation for criteria pollutants assumed to be addressed by other Clean Air Act provisions.
The section requires EPA to regulate existing sources once a sector is covered by an NSPS, though it specifically prohibits such rules if the targeted pollutant in an NSPS is one of six criteria pollutants or is a hazardous air pollutant (HAP).
VOCs are a precursor to ozone, which is a criteria pollutant, while methane is not a criteria pollutant. As such, the law effectively bars such regulation of existing sources.
EPA acknowledges that its proposal could result in additional methane, VOC and HAP emissions from 2019-2025, including 380,000 tons of methane -- equivalent to 8.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide due to the fact that methane is a much more potent GHG than CO2. The proposal would also result in 100,000 additional tons of VOCs and 3,800 tons of air toxics.
But while EPA acknowledges the additional VOC emissions “may also degrade air quality and adversely affect health and welfare effects,” it does not quantify the VOC-related health harm, citing “data limitations.”
EPA does quantify cost savings from the proposal of $484 million from 2019-2025, assuming a 3 percent discount rate, as well as some of the eased requirements, such as semi-annual monitoring at compressor stations.
But the proposal is being criticized by environmentalists who say it will undercut a more-aligned approach developed by the Obama administration.
“Today's proposal is the first step in an apparent two-part strategy to eliminate regulation of oil and gas methane emissions entirely,” the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says in a Sept. 11 press release.
“If the Administration and its backers are successful, the result will be a hobbled federal framework that would likely reduce oil and gas methane emissions by no more than about 3 percent by 2025 according to EDF’s initial analysis,” the group adds.
Separate Proposal
Despite the environmentalists' criticisms, EPA indicates its plans for a forthcoming proposal, saying in a fact sheet on the just-issued plan that the agency “continues to consider broad policy issues in the 2016 rule, including the regulation of greenhouse gases in the oil and natural gas sectors. These issues will be addressed in a separate proposal at a later date.”
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is expected to release a final rule in the coming days that would largely repeal Obama-era rules restricting venting and flaring of methane on public lands. Those rules, which covered existing equipment, were largely aligned with EPA's NSPS.
EPA's new methane proposal includes several provisions to ease monitoring for methane leaks. They include including relaxing a current requirement to check for leaks every six months and instead requiring operators to check annually. For “low-production wells,” operators must conduct monitoring every two years, up from the current annual requirement for those sites.
The proposal would also allow stoppage of monitoring at well sites once all major production and processing equipment is removed.
In addition, the plan floats changing monitoring of emissions from compressor stations to every six months or annually, compared to quarterly under the current rules, while floating separate requirements for stations on the Alaska North slope.
EPA's proposal also extends from 30 to 60 days the amount of time that owners and operators have to complete repairs once leaks are found.
Further, EPA's plan proposes to allow operators in certain states to follow state requirements for monitoring, repair and recordkeeping in lieu of the NSPS, with some variation across state programs. Specifically, it would allow this equivalency for well sites and compressor stations in California, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and for well sites in Texas and Utah.
Other aspects of the proposed regulation include more flexibility for controlling pneumatic pump-related emissions as well sites, including new language that would allow greenfield sites -- not just existing sites -- to qualify for an exemption from controlling such emissions based on it being technically infeasible to do so.
“This proposal wold avoid the potential of requiring a greenfield site to control the pneumatic pump emissions should it be technically infeasible to do so, while having no impact on the compliance obligation of other greenfield sites that do not have this issue,” according to the proposed rule.
Industry Support
While environmentalists panned the proposal, industry supported it. The American Petroleum Institute (API) praised the plan for enabling cost-effective regulation. And in a likely reference to the VOC-focused approach, API says it supports “cost-effective, achievable regulations targeting our mutual objective of reducing emissions of volatile organic compounds that, as a co-benefit, also reduce methane,” the group said in a statement.
The issue has split some companies in the sector, however, with larger companies tending to be more comfortable with direct methane controls. ExxonMobil in a Sept. 4 blog post reiterated its call for a “cost-effective federal regulatory standard to manage methane emissions for both new and existing source oil and gas facilities.”
An agency press released announcing the proposal also showcased support from the Western Energy Alliance for the proposal, with President Kathleen Sgamma saying it amounts to “fixing a rule that was purposefully designed by the Obama Administration to tie up the American oil and natural gas industry in red tape.”
Sgamma in an interview with InsideEPA/climate says the proposal would help in several ways, including by preventing companies from being locked into a cycle of periodic inspections where “you constantly go back to the same sites” and find no leaks.
She also praises the rule for aligning requirements with states that have rules governing the oil and gas facilities, and downplays the notion that the proposal signals further deregulation.
“These are technical changes to a rule to make it more efficient,” she says.
But others, including EDF's Peter Zalzal, cite multiple signs that the EPA proposal is just the beginning of a deregulatory effort. He tells InsideEPA/climate that EPA has states in its regulatory agenda that it would be evaluating the appropriateness of direct regulation of methane, and multiple industry groups have pressed EPA for a “VOC-only” approach.
Zalzal also called the newly issued EPA proposal “incredibly damaging,” citing in particular its throttling back of leak detection provisions, because leaks can happen at any time. He says the group is still reviewing the proposal's provisions for recognizing state programs as in compliance with the NSPS.
EDF in its formal statement notes that the proposal comes just a few months after a comprehensive study in the journal Science found methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas industry are 60 percent higher than EPA reports.
“This amount nearly doubles the near-term climate impact of natural gas and represents the waste of enough natural gas to serve 10 million American homes every year, the group says.
BLM Rules
The prospect of a future rule that would weaken or gut EPA's current methane limits also raises questions about how those regulations will interact with BLM's efforts to scale back its methane rules on public lands. Industry has long charged that BLM's rules are duplicative of EPA requirements.
However, that argument becomes harder to make if EPA were to drop methane-specific rules on the sector, thus preventing future rules for existing sources.
But the the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners in a prior analysis of acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's priorities pointed to the possibility that EPA could narrow -- rather than eliminate -- methane rules, creating regulatory certainty.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-proposes-ease-methane-nsps-previewing-additional-deregulation
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EPA's Methane Rule Signals Bigger Rollback for Oil, Gas Regulations
Sep 11, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén and Ben Lefebvre
The Trump administration on Tuesday took the first step toward loosening a key Obama-era rule curbing methane pollution from oil and gas wells, raising fears among environmentalists the move could foreshadow a broader push to exclude the potent greenhouse gas from federal regulations.
The new EPA proposal — which comes on the heels of President Donald Trump's gutting of Obama's carbon rules for power plants and fuel efficiency rules for vehicles — would ease requirements governing how frequently oil and gas producers must inspect their newly drilled wells for leaks, changes EPA said will save the industry almost half a billion dollars by 2025.
But greens argue the move is the first step in a multipronged approach across the administration to stymie federal efforts to limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that environmental groups have targeted because of its outsized role in driving climate change.
Matt Watson, who helps lead the Environmental Defense Fund's energy program, said he saw EPA’s proposal to ease pollution monitoring for new wells as the tip of the iceberg, and he expects EPA to follow it with a new rulemaking that will avoid regulating methane pollution from more than 1 million existing oil and gas wells across the U.S..
“What this is clearly designed to do is prevent the eventual regulation of existing sources,” he said.
But oil and gas industry sources said Tuesday's move to relax the methane regulation was designed to ease the high cost burden the Obama administration had put on the industry, and it did not signal the eventual demise of methane gas regulation.
“This is a change to the rule. This is not getting rid of the rule,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of oil and gas trade association Western Energy Alliance, which lobbied for the change. “This is getting it more practical in the field.”
The Obama era-rule that EPA proposed changing covered only newly built oil and gas wells. And though that administration had started the process to address methane emissions from the existing wells, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt slammed the brakes on that effort shortly after taking the helm of the agency in early 2017.
Leaving the methane regulations for new wells in place would eventually require EPA to address the existing wells under the Clean Air Act. In announcing the new rule, EPA said it planned to reconsider other issues, "including the regulation of greenhouse gases in the oil and gas sector," in a later process.
Watson said that he expected that second round of rulemaking will expunge the methane-related requirements for the oil and gas industry. That would leave in place only provisions curbing volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, a class of chemicals that poses risks to human health and which combine with other pollutants to form ozone, or smog.
“They broke this into two separate rulemakings as a deliberate, clever strategy to try to obfuscate what they’re really doing,” Watson said
EPA declined to comment on whether the forthcoming rulemaking will remove the methane requirements.
“We will follow-up with additional details at the appropriate time in the future,” spokeswoman Molly Block said.
The EPA estimated its immediate proposal would lead to an increase of 380,000 tons of methane, equivalent to about 8.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. It would also increase VOC emissions by 100,000 tons and hazardous air pollutants by 3,800 tons, according to the proposal.
The proposal would probably have little effect on operations run by major companies such as BP or Exxon Mobil, which are already trying to capture as much methane as possible, since it is the main component of natural gas, analysts said.
Industry trade group American Petroleum Institute welcomed the move as way to “ensure that the rule is based on best engineering practices and cost-effective,” according to a statement. “Industry will continue to develop and employ the most efficient and effective technologies to help these trends continue, while working with academia and state and federal governments to achieve comprehensive, science-based best practices and regulations.”
But further relaxation of the EPA’s rules on methane leaks rule is likely to mostly affect new drilling projects, since oil and gas wells in the beginning stages may not be connected to pipelines and companies tend to allow escaped gas into the atmosphere, said Bernadette Johnson, industry analyst for the industry publication Drillinginfo.com.
“The bigger question is whether this foreshadows a more sweeping rollback of the EPA regulating greenhouse gas releases in oil and gas production,” Johnson said. “That would be a bigger deal, particularly in more remote areas or when a new play is being explored."
Producers try to avoid leaking or flaring gas, since "you’re basically letting money escape into the atmosphere," Johnson said.
EPA’s proposal was swiftly criticized by Sen. Tom Udall, a Democrat who represents New Mexico, where oil and gas development has taken off in the Permian Basin oil field that it shares with neighboring Texas. Earlier this week, energy producers poured nearly $1 billion into leases for federal land in the state.
“Methane gas is a super-pollutant for climate change and today’s EPA action is wasteful and outrageous,” Udall said in a statement. “Actions by EPA to weaken these commonsense, cost-effective oil and gas emission limits will increase pollution and endanger the health and well-being of surrounding communities.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown, who just signed a bill requiring his state to get 100 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2045, blasted the rule while speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.
“President Trump is about to issue regulations to encourage more methane emissions. Well, that is insane — it borders on criminality,” Brown said. “It perhaps is the most obvious and dangerous and irresponsible action by Mr Trump, and that’s saying quite a lot.”
In a separate but related development, the Interior Department is expected to finalize later this week its rollback of Obama-era methane waste regulations, also known as the venting and flaring rule, sources said. Interior is expected to revert to rules governing methane waste in place prior to 2016. That effort only covers wells on federal lands, meaning it has a more limited effect than EPA’s rollback, which affects new wells built anywhere in the U.S.
The venting and flaring rule was targeted by Republicans for repeal last year via the Congressional Review Act. The rule survived, however, after Sen. John McCain provided the decisive vote rejecting the resolution and keeping the Obama rule alive.
However, the rollbacks of EPA’s methane rules could weaken Interior’s contention that it should ease its own rule because the EPA is already regulating methane, said Nada Culver, senior counsel at The Wilderness Society.
“This would undercut one of the reasons for not needing the [Interior] rule, one of the reasons on their litany on why it was unnecessary or redundant,” Culver said.
The original 2016 rule required semiannual monitoring. EPA's proposal would reduce that to annual inspection for most wells, with wells producing 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day or less only having to look for leaks every two years.
EPA also proposed easing a requirement for certain wells to install pneumatic pump technology; allowing oil and gas producers to certify closed vent systems with in-house experts instead of outside professional engineers; and expanding an option for well owners to use emerging technologies as a "alternative means" of curbing methane pollution. The proposal includes some other minor technical changes.
The changes will save the oil and gas industry $484 million in regulatory costs from 2019 through 2025, according to EPA. It identified foregone domestic climate benefits at $54 million and the lost value of the methane at $62 million.
The current requirements force small companies to inspect wells that may be producing as little as 15 barrels of oil a day twice a year, Sgamma said. The new rule would allow those companies to conduct inspections less often once a well is verified to not be leaking.
Such “marginal” wells account for 20 percent of U.S. oil production, Sgamma added.
“In general, the record keeping was very onerous,” she said.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, said companies that had already complied with the Obama-era standards — and were capturing and selling the gas that would have leaked into the atmosphere — are not likely to stop using new waste-capture technology.
On the other hand, the industry will certainly benefit from not having to pay for inspection paperwork and other compliance costs, he added.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/09/epas-methane-rule-signals-bigger-rollback-for-oil-gas-regulations-779010
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Oil Industry Gets Its Wish on Emissions Rule
Sep 12, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Oil and gas companies offered praise and infuriated green groups voiced outrage yesterday as the Trump administration delivered on its promise to dial back key elements of the Obama-era methane rule.
"What we see makes sense," said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance. She said many elements of the current rule are simply unworkable.
But those rules remain in place for now, requiring companies to look for leaks in their equipment and repair them promptly. A 60-day comment period will begin once the proposal is published in the Federal Register. EPA is planning to hold a public hearing in Denver, where Colorado leaders enacted some of the most stringent methane emissions rules in the country.
EPA officials called the proposed changes "targeted improvements," leaving broader policy issues to be handled at "a later date." Those policy issues could include whether methane should be directly regulated.
The changes were requested by the oil and gas industry, a point that environmental groups sought to drive home yesterday.
"This is just another attempt by EPA to weaken the commonsense requirements for operators to look for, and repair, leaks in their operations," said Darin Schroeder, attorney with the Clean Air Task Force. The group called yesterday's proposal "yet another attempt by those in the Trump administration to cozy up to the oil and gas industry."
Still, beyond the statements of the day, there is disagreement in the industry. Its position has been that EPA should regulate emissions of volatile organic compounds, which contribute to the formation of smog. The American Petroleum Institute voiced that opinion yesterday in praising the proposed rule.
"API supports cost-effective, achievable regulations targeting our mutual objective of reducing emissions of volatile organic compounds that, as a co-benefit, also reduce methane," said Howard Feldman, API's senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs.
But industry giant Exxon Mobil Corp. has taken a different position. It has pledged to reduce its own methane emissions, and last week the head of subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. voiced support for more comprehensive restrictions.
"We think there should be a cost-effective federal regulatory standard to manage methane emissions for both new and existing source oil and gas facilities," wrote XTO President Sara Ortwein.
Including existing sources would go further than the Obama rule, although administration officials signaled that they hoped the successor would add existing sources.
Exxon joined with seven other large oil companies last year in promising to voluntarily reduce methane emissions from their operations around the world. Environmentalists have pointed to this as evidence that industry can do more and government should force them. Industry groups say companies have shown they can reduce methane on their own without government intervention.
Under the proposal rolled out yesterday, operators would have to monitor wells on an annual basis and low-production operations every other year, rather than twice a year under the Obama era rule (Greenwire, Sept. 11).
The proposal is the third in a series of regulatory rollbacks aimed at dismantling Obama's plans for reducing the emissions that cause climate change. Another swipe at Obama's climate legacy could come as early as this week, when the Interior Department is expected to release its revisions to emissions rules for drilling on public lands.
EPA says the reductions in monitoring and record-keeping will save oil and gas companies $484 million through 2025. That's much of the $530 million the rule was expected to cost drillers.
The agency has said that higher emissions, degraded air quality, and "adverse health and welfare effects" will forgo benefits of the rule valued between $13.5 million and $54 million between 2019 and 2025.
That calculation is based on a domestic social cost of carbon, which considers a dollar value for the harm caused by climate change. The Obama administration had relied on a global social cost of carbon value.
EPA's analysis of the proposal found that monitoring emissions on an annual basis from compressor stations between 2019 and 2025 would increase fugitive methane emissions by 100,000 short tons, volatile organic compounds by 24,000 tons and hazardous air pollutants by 890 tons, compared with monitoring on a semiannual basis.
A key element of the plan is allowing companies to opt out of the relaxed federal rules if they abide by their state rules. But advocates were sorting out the true effect of the proposal yesterday.
The state's rules must be deemed "equivalent." The EPA proposal grants that status to six states — California, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.
That's a broad spectrum. Colorado enacted some of the country's most stringent emissions rules on production in 2014. Texas generally doesn't regulate emissions from well sites. The proposal indicates companies could comply with an air quality permit previously used for operations in the Barnett Shale region around Dallas.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/12/stories/1060096587
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Wehrum's Narrowing Of NSR 'Adjacency' Test Could Raise Bar For Permits
Sep 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA is floating draft guidance that would narrow the definition of “adjacency” used as a factor in determining whether to combine nearby stationary sources for Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permitting purposes, the latest in a series of steps that scale back NSR policy by making it easier for facilities to avoid strict “major” source permits.
Under current EPA rules, regulators must use three factors to determine whether to combine facility emissions for permitting purposes: the operations must be under common control, they must fall under the same major standard industrial classification code, and they must be on contiguous or adjacent properties.
But EPA air chief William Wehrum signed Sept. 4 draft guidance that would narrow the scope of the third factor, compared to its past method of allowing consideration of issues beyond “physical proximity”
The guidance, on which EPA is taking comment through Oct. 5, would limit NSR permit writers to only considering physical proximity of emissions sources located near each other, instead of a more expansive view the agency has previously used that also weighed the “functional interrelatedness” of sources to determine whether their emissions should be combined in permit reviews.
“EPA believes that focusing exclusively on physical proximity when considering whether or not operations are adjacent is a more objective and reasonable approach, and one that is more consistent with the dictionary meaning of 'adjacent,' the 'common sense notion of a plant,' and the original intent expressed in the early development of the NSR program” as established in 1980, Wehrum writes.
The change likely will make it easier for companies to argue that sources located on the same property but not physically proximate should be considered separate sources, which could make it easier to classify them as minor sources and avoid major source NSR permits that can require installation of strict -- and costly -- pollution controls.
If several nearby sources owned by one company are aggregated, their emissions are combined and could exceed the threshold for triggering stringent “major” source NSR permits, which are required for facilities in areas that are violating EPA's national ambient air quality standards.
By contrast, if several nearby sources are considered individual sources, then it is much less likely that the emissions from the single sources would be high enough to reach the major source threshold.
EPA says that its decision is based on a review of past agency actions and recent court decisions, citing a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit decision from 2012 in Summit Petroleum Corp. v. EPA that rejected a permit source determination that relied in part on functional interrelatedness to determine adjacency. The agency now believes that functional interrelatedness “is not a relevant consideration” when assessing the adjacency of sources.
Wehrum's guidance, if finalized, would apply to all industries except for the oil and gas sector, for which the agency in June 2016 established a distinct definition of “adjacent” that says facilities located within a quarter mile of each other, with shared equipment, are considered to be adjacent.
Physical Proximity
The draft guidance, sent to the air division directors of all 10 EPA regions, says the agency now believes that “adjacency” solely means physical proximity.
But Wehrum is not proposing a “bright line” specific fixed distance to determine proximity, saying instead that permitting authorities will have to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis.
“EPA believes . . . that a determination that operations are 'adjacent' can be made only where it is reasonable to conclude that the operations in question are truly in physical proximity to each other. That is, 'proximity,' which generally conveys the concept of side-by-side or neighboring (with allowance being made for some limited separation by, for example, a right of way), must exist, and the determination must ultimately comport with the 'common sense notion of a plant,'” Wehrum writes.
The guidance is the latest step in a piecemeal approach to NSR reform that Wehrum is pursuing, after his prior sweeping NSR regulatory overhaul during the George W. Bush EPA either stalled or was struck down by the D.C. Circuit. The Trump administration's strategy for overhauling the NSR program is a mixture of guidance and regulation on key issues including aggregating emissions, and revising a policy on what qualifies as facility “maintenance” exempt from NSR.
EPA's Affordable Clean Energy utility greenhouse gas rule replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan also proposes to ease the emissions test for triggering NSR at power plants, reviving a decades-old fight and putting EPA on the opposite side of the issue from when it was last litigated early in the Bush administration.
Industry groups and Republicans have long claimed that EPA's NSR program is too onerous and that the threat of costly major source permits can discourage economic growth by making companies wary of expanding operations for fear of triggering NSR.
They are likely to welcome Wehrum's guidance because it could raise the bar for requiring NSR at nearby facilities if permit writers believe they are not physically proximate, even if they would have met the threshold for NSR permits under the prior functional interrelatedness test.
But states and environmentalists are expected to challenge the guidance's application, according to Eric Boyd, an attorney at Thompson Coburn, LLP, a law firm. In a Sept. 10 note, he says states and environmental groups are likely to challenge the policy once it is final. But he says that because EPA has sought to make clear the guidance is not a final action subject to judicial review, the agency expects that any challenges will come “when the guidance is used in permitting decisions, not when the guidance is finalized.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wehrums-narrowing-nsr-adjacency-test-could-raise-bar-permits
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Judge Questions ‘Passive’ EPA Role in Monitoring State Air Pollution
Sep 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA should have sought out the air pollution and weather data it needed to decide whether parts of Ohio and Colorado violate sulfur dioxide pollution standards rather than playing a “passive role,” a federal judge said Sept. 11.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Patricia Millett questioned why the Environmental Protection Agency lacked the information it needed to decide whether Colorado Springs, Colo., and Gallia County, Ohio, met or exceeded federal sulfur dioxide standards.
At oral arguments, Millett questioned why the EPA took such a “passive role” in gathering data and wasn’t proactive in seeking the information it needed to make those decisions.
“EPA had a really, really, really long time to get this data,” Millett said to Amanda Shafer Berman, the Justice Department attorney representing the agency.
Berman argued that the Ohio’s modeling data for Gallia County was flawed and the EPA didn’t have adequate weather data for the Colorado Springs region before it was required to make decisions in 2016 on whether those regions met or exceeded the federal standards.
The EPA set the health-based sulfur dioxide air quality standard at 75 parts per billion in 2010.
Burning of fossil fuels in power plants and other industrial facilities are among the largest sources of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the EPA.
Sulfur dioxide can harm the respiratory system of children, the elderly, and those with asthma.
The EPA’s decision to list both regions as unclassifiable—meaning it lacks the data to make a decision on whether they’re in compliance—is being challenged by the Sierra Club and Colorado Springs residents. The lack of an EPA designation in those areas means Colorado and Ohio won’t need to impose new pollution controls on nearby coal-fired power plants, factories, and vehicles.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
Math, Modeling ChallengedThe Sierra Club argues that the EPA should have corrected math errors in the data Ohio collected, which would have shown Gallia County is violating the federal standards. However, Berman said the data wasn’t sufficient to establish the region should have been designated as in excess of the sulfur dioxide standards.
Robert Ukeiley, a Boulder-based attorney with his own firm, represented Colorado Springs residents. He argued the EPA refused to consider meteorological data from a nearby airport that likewise would have shown the region exceeds the sulfur dioxide standards. However, the three-judge panel expressed skepticism about Ukeiley’s assertion, noting residents hadn’t sufficiently brought that issue to the EPA’s attention during the public comment period on the proposed designations.
The judges also heard a challenge to the EPA’s decision to list Wyandotte County, Kan., as unclassifiable.
The Kansas Board of Public Utilities, which operates the coal-fired Nearman Creek power plant, challenged that decision. The board worried that the region could be designated as exceeding the standards in the future, which would mean installing additional power plant air pollution controls. The board said it has already spent $240 million on pollution controls to meet other EPA rules.
Millett and the other two judges on the panel, David Tatel and Stephen Williams, expressed skepticism of the board’s argument, given that the current decision to list the region as unclassifiable means the power plant is unaffected.
It is not known when the court will announce a decision. The case is Masias v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1314, oral arguments 9/11/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/judge-questions-passive-epa-role-in-monitoring-state-air-pollution
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The U.S. Won’t Meet Its Paris Climate Goal Without Federal Leadership, Report Warns
Sep 12, 2018 | Think Progress
By Kyla Mandel
Thanks to the current dearth of federal leadership on climate change, the United States will fall short of meeting its 2025 target for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, according to a new report out Wednesday by America’s Pledge initiative.
State and local action can bring the U.S. within “striking distance” of the goal, said report author Paul Bodnar, managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, at the study’s launch in California Tuesday evening.
Without the federal government, the country can get close to the 26-28 percent drop in emissions (compared to 2005 levels) needed over the next seven years to meet the goals set under the Obama administration. Significant action taken by states and businesses could lead to a 21 percent reduction by 2025, the report predicts — just shy of the official target.
But with President Donald Trump’s plans to abandon the Paris climate agreement and steer the country away from action to address climate change, there is a significant gap in the federal leadership needed in order to fully achieve the Paris goals in time.
The U.S. is currently about halfway to achieving its Paris target. Under current conditions — with states, cities, and business leaders picking up the slack in the absence of political will — the report estimates that by 2025, economy-wide emissions will drop by 17 percent below 2005 levels. This would bring the U.S. two-thirds of the way to fulfilling its target.
Despite the current “hiatus in federal leadership,” as the report puts it, the country is seeing a “continual stream of ambitious policy changes, investments and decarbonization programmatic initiatives” from both regional governments and economic players, such as investment bankers, corporations, hospitals, and universities.
The report comes as the Global Climate Action Summit kicks off in California on Wednesday, where local leaders will reiterate their commitment to tackling climate change in the face of a White House led by climate science deniers and individuals tied to the fossil fuel industry.
“The best way to speed up innovation is to have a lot of different people trying,” said Carl Pope, co-chair of America’s Pledge.
Since November 2017, 18 cities announced greenhouse gas targets, making it a total of 142 cities with such targets across the U.S., representing over 40 percent of the country’s emissions.
Meanwhile, California recently announced a 100 percent renewable energy target. Hawaii earlier this year launched a plan to become carbon neutral by 2045 and Rhode Island has a target to cut emissions 95 percent by 2050.
And nearly half of America’s Fortune 500 biggest companies have set targets to cut their carbon footprints.
But as the report warns, “impressive as these efforts are, it has always been clear that commitments to date will neither ensure that the United States meets is 2025 Paris target nor establish a sufficient foundation for long-term deeper decarbonization.”
“Holding global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius,” it continues, “will require renewed engagement from all stakeholders and across all sectors, including the U.S. federal government.”
In addition to announcing plans last year to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, the Trump administration has actively courted polluted industries. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the rollback of multiple regulations designed to safeguard air and water and help tackle climate change — including the repeal of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, regardless of the human toll — while the Interior Department has opened up public lands to industry.
There is some hope, however. In its analysis, the report assumes there will be no federal re-engagement on climate change until 2030. The United States’ emissions reductions trajectory could change dramatically with a change in leadership.
And while action by cities, states, and businesses can bring the U.S. just shy of the 2025 Paris climate target, they “have the ability to drive an accelerating rate of decarbonization of the overall economy by themselves,” Bodnar said.
In other words, these actors “have the power to bring the nation to the brink of that ambitious target,” he said, and then accelerate progress post-2025.
https://thinkprogress.org/the-u-s-wont-meet-its-paris-climate-goal-without-federal-leadership-report-warns/
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