Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - September 14, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) US Quietly Rolls Back Raft of China Chemicals Tariffs
Sep 14, 2018 | ICIS
By Tom Brown
US President Donald Trump has approved the rollback of sanctions on numerous chemicals instituted as part of the country’s trade dispute with China by signing a bill to reduce the impact of import tariffs on domestic industry. -
(ACC Mentioned) Tit-For-Tat Tariff Escalation with China Draws More Concern, Criticism
Sep 14, 2018 | National Hog Farmer
By P. Scott Shearer
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration announced they will hold a joint public meeting October 23-24 to discuss the use of cell culture technology to develop products derived from livestock and poultry. -
(ACC Mentioned) Indusry Applauds MTB Zero Tariff Law
Sep 14, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Manufacturing groups in Washington, including the American Chemistry Council, are applauding passage of legislation that eliminates tariffs on some intermediate goods used in production processes, including in plastics manufacturing. -
(ACC Mentioned) Daily Digest: What Would It Take to Make Recycling a National Issue?
Sep 14, 2018 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
With state and local responses varying greatly, some have mused whether a federal approach could be required to help stabilize the domestic recycling situation. -
Senior Research Official Leaving Agency
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
Richard Yamada is leaving EPA. -
Echa's 2018 REACH Registration Numbers Get Mixed Reception
Sep 14, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Echa's release of its updated REACH dossier registration figures for 2018 has led to criticism in some quarters and optimism in others. -
Challenge to FDA's GRAS Rule Moves Forward After Court Rejects Request for Dismissal
Sep 14, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
In a critical ruling for food additive safety, a federal district court ruledon Wednesday that EDF, represented by Earthjustice, has standing in its legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule. -
Petrochemical Plants Turn Ethane into Building Blocks of Plastic
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
They say geography is destiny, but in this small city east of Houston, the force shaping its history, economy and future is geology. -
How Long Can the Fracking Spending Spree Last?
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
For the past decade Wall Street has lavished U.S. oil companies with cash, eager to get a piece of the fracking boom that turned what were thought to be undrillable shale fields in West Texas and North Dakota into the hottest oil prospects in the world. -
Hurricane Florence Affects Oil and Gas Projects, Facilities
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Hurricane Florence is churning over the Carolinas, knocking out power and threatening coastal flooding in a torrent that could have implications for energy trade and oil and gas construction projects in the area. -
PHMSA Sends Investigators to Site of Massachusetts Pipeline Explosions
Sep 14, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Department of Transportation is sending staff to Massachusetts to investigate the series of natural gas pipeline explosions that killed one person and devastated three towns north of Boston, an agency spokesman said Friday. -
Deadly Mass. Gas Blasts Highlight Dangers of Aging System
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee and Mike Soraghan
A gas explosion yesterday that destroyed dozens of buildings and killed at least one person in Massachusetts came after years of concern about the state's aging pipeline system and amid efforts to upgrade it. -
State Department to Conduct New Review of Keystone XL Nebraska Route
Sep 14, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
The State Department will conduct a new environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route through Nebraska, according to a notice slated to appear in the Federal Register on Monday. -
Va. to Establish Regulations Limiting Leaks
Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In E&E Climatewire)
Virginia officials say the state plans to develop regulations for limiting leaks of climate-changing methane from natural gas infrastructure and landfills. -
Railroads at Risk of Missing Positive Train Control Deadline
Sep 14, 2018 | American Shipper
By Kim Link-Wills
The House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials conducted a hearing Thursday on the implementation of positive train control in the United States. -
Governor Postpones Panel's Carbon Tax Proposal
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Kelsey Brugger
Amid a tough race for re-election, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) postponed the rollout of a state advisory board recommending a carbon tax, a politically charged issue that some say could jeopardize his seat. -
Ewire: Hurricane Florence Could Bring Major Environmental Risks
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
Hurricane Florence made landfall in southeast North Carolina early this morning, and the massive storm is expected to lash the Carolinas with at least 20 inches of rain and flooding over the weekend -- and experts say that at least part of the storm's damage is worsened by human-cased climate change. -
EEI Warns Against Imposing 'Retrospective' Cost-Benefit Review On Rules
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
The main trade association for electric utilities is warning EPA to pursue any changes to its cost-benefit review process prospectively -- not retrospectively -- citing concerns that looking backward could undercut past pollution control investments. -
EPA Draws Fire For Downplaying Health, GHG Risks From Methane Rule
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Environmentalists are criticizing EPA analysis downplaying the health and climate harms from its newly unveiled proposal to ease methane limits for new oil and gas facilities, citing a prior analysis by agency staff that they argue points to officials' ability to quantify specific health harms. -
NYC, London, D.C. Have All Seen Peak Emissions — Report
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
Twenty-seven major cities around the world may already have seen their greenhouse gas emissions peak, according to a new study. -
Gina Mccarthy: Stop Climate Change to Save Kids
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
Children are among the most vulnerable to climate change, facing greater risks of asthma attacks and mental health problems as well as developmental delays and changes in their genetic makeup, Gina McCarthy warned yesterday. -
Warren Wants Companies to Disclose More About Climate Change Impacts
Sep 14, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to require corporations to disclose to the public and investors about how much they are contributing to climate change and what risks it causes their businesses.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) US Quietly Rolls Back Raft of China Chemicals Tariffs
Sep 14, 2018 | ICIS
By Tom Brown
US President Donald Trump has approved the rollback of sanctions on numerous chemicals instituted as part of the country’s trade dispute with China by signing a bill to reduce the impact of import tariffs on domestic industry.
A variety of forms of plastics products are included in the list of over 1,600 Chinese products to see reduced or removed tariff burdens.
Originally passed unanimously by the US Senate in July, over 50% of products listed in the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) Act 2018 are chemicals, according to American Chemistry Council (ACC) estimates.
That total moves up to 60% including plastics, the council added.
The measures represent a tacit admission by the US that it cannot necessarily make up the shortfall caused by a loss of or dramatic drop in supply of Chinese product for its domestic industry.
The list includes products derived from polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) thermoplastic resins, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), fatty acids, esters, and a range of other chemicals forms.
A total of over 100 finished plastic products are mentioned in the list.
The bipartisan bill was backed by the US’ National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which released a letter signed by 150 business organisations earlier this month, claiming that the measures would reduce unnecessary import costs on products not made or available in the US.
“This is a relic of our country’s outdated tariff code,” the associations said in the joint letter.
The bill is likely to eliminate $1m/day of import tariffs worth a total of around $800m in savings through 2020, the association said.
Following presidential approval, the bill now needs to be signed into law.
The measures are likely to reduce the level of current 25% tariffs on Chinese exports to the US introduced this year, but the country has not signalled any rollback of its trade war plans.
The US and China introduced matching salvos of $50bn in punitive tariffs through July and August of this year, but the US concluded hearings on $200bn of additional tariffs on over 6,000 Chinese goods, and Trump is pushing publicly for a further $267bn on top of that.
The $200bn tranche would stand to have a far more substantial impact on global trade than the initial set of tariffs, but it is not clear when, or if, those will be introduced.
The ACC this week welcomed the news that Trump had approved the measures, stating that the MTB would bolster the competitiveness of the US chemicals industry by continuing to allow access to raw materials from China.
“By signing MTB into law, the President has affirmed his support for US chemicals manufacturers who rely on select foreign inputs to retain our position as the world’s leading, low-cost producer of chemicals," it said.
Writing on social media network Twitter, Trump disputed the idea that the passing of the bill represents a capitulation on the US' part.
"We are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us," he said.
"Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in billions in tariffs and making products at home."
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/09/14/10259492/us-quietly-rolls-back-raft-of-china-chemicals-tariffs/
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(ACC Mentioned) Tit-For-Tat Tariff Escalation with China Draws More Concern, Criticism
Sep 14, 2018 | National Hog Farmer
By P. Scott Shearer
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration announced they will hold a joint public meeting October 23-24 to discuss the use of cell culture technology to develop products derived from livestock and poultry. The meeting will focus on the potential hazards, oversight considerations and labeling of cell cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.
A key issue for producer groups and the meat industry is which federal agency will have jurisdiction over cell cultured products. In a letter to President Trump earlier this summer, producer and industry groups urged him to “preserve a fair and competitive marketplace” for all meat and poultry products regarding of how it was produced. The groups argued that USDA is equipped to regulate cell cultured protein with its on-site daily inspection and approving meat product labels to ensure the product meets its claims and prevent consumers from being misled. Those signing the letter were the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, National Turkey Federation and North American Meat Institute.
Groups Urge Administration to Avoid Further Trade Escalation with China
As President Trump is considering another round of tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports, a group of 150 organizations representing agriculture, retailers, manufacturers, technology and other industries submitted comments to USTR urging the administration to avoid further trade escalation with China and warned of the negative impact of tariffs on U.S. industries and workers. China has threatened to retaliate with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. imports.The organizations says, “Continuing the tit-for-tat tariff escalation with China only serves to expand the harm to more U.S. economic interests, including farmers, families, businesses and workers. Our organizations agree that longstanding issues in China have negatively impacted many U.S. companies, and we support the administration's efforts to negotiate meaningful, binding and long-term solutions with the Chinese government, but applying these high levels of tariffs on Chinese products will continue to miss the mark."
Those signing on to the comments were American Bakers Association, American Beverage Association, American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute, Corn Refiners Association, CropLife America, Farmers for Free Trade, National Retail Federation, North American Meat Institute, Telecommunications Industry Association, The Fertilizer Institute and U.S. Hide, Skin and Leather Association.
Resolve the Trade Issues
Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee told USTR and USDA officials during its hearing, “Perspectives on U.S. Agricultural Trade,” it is time for the administration to resolve our international trade disputes and find new trade agreements. Committee members raised concerns of the administration starting trade wars with our allies and the longer the trade wars continue agriculture will be severely impacted and agriculture is bearing the brunt with lower prices and lost sales. Also, as our competitors enter into new trade agreements, the U.S. is losing market share.Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) says, “We need to hold our trading partners accountable, but I am concerned that some of the trade actions we have seen in recent years are causing uncertainty and unpredictability for the agriculture industry. On top of already low prices, the agriculture sector has seen immediate negative impacts as a result of retaliatory trade actions. As time goes on without resolution, the concern of losing long-term market access only grows.”
USTR Chief Agriculture Negotiator Greg Doud says the actions taken by the President against China were necessary because of intellectual property theft and China’s failure to live up to its commitments when it joined the WTO. Doud says the administration is looking at “potential” trading partners in Southeast Asia and Africa and is increasing its dialogue with Japan. USDA Under Secretary for Trade and Agricultural Affairs, Ted McKinney, says the short-term pain would result in long-term gains for U.S. agriculture. Senators continue to be concerned the longer the trade disputes/wars last agriculture will continue to bear the brunt.
Corn and Soybean Crop Getting Larger
USDA increased its latest crop estimate for this year’s corn and soybean crops. Corn production is estimated at 14.827 billion bushels, up 241 million from last month’s estimate. Corn yield is forecast at 181.3 bushels per acre. This would be the second-highest corn crop on record. Soybean production is estimated at 4.693 billion bushels with a yield of 52.8 bushels per acre. This would be a record for both production and yield.USDA Releases Trade Damage Calculations
Secretary of Agriculture released a detailed accounting of how USDA determined damage from trade disruptions. The estimates were used to determine the payment rates for the Market Facilitation Program and the value of commodities to be purchased under the Food Purchase and Distribution Program.Perdue says, “We have pledged to be transparent about this process and how our economists arrived at the numbers they did. Our farmers and ranchers work hard to feed the United States and the world, and they need to know that USDA was thorough, methodical and as accurate as possible in making these estimates.”
Corn and wheat organizations had called for this information because of what they viewed as low payments for the damage caused to their producers. Corn is $0.01 per bushel and wheat is $0.14 per bushel.
https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/regulatory/tit-tat-tariff-escalation-china-draws-more-concern-criticism
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(ACC Mentioned) Indusry Applauds MTB Zero Tariff Law
Sep 14, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Manufacturing groups in Washington, including the American Chemistry Council, are applauding passage of legislation that eliminates tariffs on some intermediate goods used in production processes, including in plastics manufacturing.
President Donald Trump signed the so-called Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Sept. 13, cutting duties on 1,660 products that are used in other manufacturing processes and are generally unavailable in the United States.
ACC called it a "big deal" because 51 percent of the products are related to chemicals and 9 percent to plastics. The law gives exemptions through 2020.
"By signing MTB into law, the president has affirmed his support for U.S. chemicals manufacturers who rely on select foreign inputs to retain our position as the world's leading, low-cost producer of chemicals," ACC said. "We hope the success of the MTB will help the president see that a zero-tariff policy that helps create new markets for producers and brings innovative products of chemistry to new regions is the best course for U.S. trade policy."
The Plastics Industry Association, ACC and a variety of companies had signed a Sept. 4 letter to Congress from 150 manufacturing groups and companies urging passage of MTB.
Plastics additive maker Milliken & Co., for example, said in materials distributed by MTB advocates that the legislation would benefit its polypropylene clarifiers business.
"Because the raw materials needed are not produced in the United States, we have relied on the MTB to reduce our overall costs and improve our global competitiveness," Spartanburg, S.C.-based Milliken said. "Thanks to past MTBs, weíve been able to add jobs in South Carolina and grow our chemical business."
The Sept. 4 letter said there was an open process with public hearings to determine the 1,660 products that received tariff exemptions, and it noted that 800 other products were rejected from the list.
The letter said that to get an exemption, the product either has to not be produced in the U.S. or not have sufficient capacity in U.S. production, and it noted that federal agencies and members of Congress could object to specific products being on the list. The tariffs eliminated by the legislation bring in about $1 million a day in government revenue.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180914/NEWS/180919931/industry-applauds-mtb-zero-tariff-law
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(ACC Mentioned) Daily Digest: What Would It Take to Make Recycling a National Issue?
Sep 14, 2018 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
With state and local responses varying greatly, some have mused whether a federal approach could be required to help stabilize the domestic recycling situation. Trade associations have been urging federal agencies for more attention, and hope springs eternal that potential infrastructure investment could trickle down to the industry, but what if officials (elected or otherwise) actually took this up as a prime economic issue?
Last week, Waste Dive interviewed Chaz Miller – a 40-year industry veteran formerly with the NWRA — about this and many other topics for the Global Dialogue on Waste. The 45-minute session is available for free, along with several others, from the nonprofit be Waste Wise.
Miller said the U.S. has "terrible short-term memory loss" when it comes to this topic, recalled many of the same issues coming up during a White House recycling conference in 1998 and said that it's time to start thinking about rainy day funds to better deal with market volatility. Those could be managed by state or local governments, or possibly even companies with the right guidelines. Though aside from continuing to fund the EPA, Miller saw little role or desire for Congress to get involved.
The last time he could recall any serious push on this issue was in the early '90s, when the Multi-Option Packaging Strategy passed a House subcommittee. With the Mobro garbage barge debacle still fresh in people's minds, and fears mounting about limited landfill capacity, there were multiple recycling-related bills introduced at the time. The issue also inspired plenty of writing on the topic – such as this 1991 proposal published in Harvard Business Review about establishing a foundation to bridge the gap between government and industry on recycling work – but led to little in the way of national changes.
This current moment of disruption has inspired many an op-ed on reducing plastic waste and cleaning up the stream in the past year or so, and plenty of promising state or local initiatives, but few truly big picture ideas about how the U.S. can tackle this challenge/opportunity collectively.
As Miller notes from experience, the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act has been working as is for decades and would likely be far down the list of anyone in Congress, given everything else they're dealing with. Aside from the $100 million Zero Waste Development and Expansion Act that was re-introduced by soon-to-be-former Rep. Keith Ellison in early 2017, no one in the current Congress has come close to any bold concepts in recent years.
Though as a thought exercise, if nothing else, what if they did? What would that entail, and would it even be helpful to your business or public sector recycling efforts? We're well aware that this topic is considered unrealistic by many, but the fact that the decentralized, market-driven U.S. approach is different from many other developed countries, we can't help but ask the question.
As always, you can get in touch via waste.dive.editors@industrydive.com, Facebook or Twitter.
IN OTHER NEWSBig plastic goes to Washington — Plastics News
The Plastics Industry Association's annual D.C. lobbying day focused on trade, workforce and infrastructure this year, with a particular emphasis on recycling. While the group is still putting together detailed legislative proposals, it's calling for greater funding around MRFs, waste-to-energy and other industry facilities. The hope is to change perceptions about what constitutes normal infrastructure spending, stabilize recycling systems and, in turn, public opinion. Addressing growing concern around marine debris and plastic waste has become a key topic for the group and the American Chemistry Council, which was among four others that partnered for the event.Philadelphia bicyclist death leads to $6M settlement — Bicycle Retailer and Industry News & CBS Philly
The family of a 24-year-old bicyclist that was struck and killed by a Gold Medal Environmental truck in Nov. 2017 has been awarded $6.1 million in compensatory damages. An additional $125,000, paid out in installments, will go toward bicycle safety work in the city. Since the crash, Gold Medal has been taken over by new ownership and management and instituted a comprehensive new safety program. This includes "intensive behind-the-wheel interactions with bicyclists." Employees are also now eligible for safe driving bonuses.Waste Connections landfill in Louisiana to get new oversight — The Times-Picayune
The Jefferson Parish Landfill, which has been the source of ongoing odor complaints in recent months, will soon be monitored by a private company rather than a government engineer. The parish's longtime engineer, whom some believe wasn't stringent enough with Waste Connections subsidiary IESI, resigned in July. The Jefferson Parish Council will now decide between three firms that have submitted qualifications.
This week in M&A
WCA Waste's merger with Houston company Global Waste Services was the week's biggest announcement, but there are other deals to report too.
Pennsylvania company Clean Earth, in its fourth deal of the year, acquired Michigan-based Disposal and Recycling Technologies (DART) working with financial advisor Acquest International. DART comes with a transfer station in RCRA Part B-licensed transfer station in North Carolina and a non-hazardous waste facility in Michigan.
New York-based Modern Disposal Services also announced the acquisition of Ball Toilet & Septic Services, which has been serving Western New York more than 25 years.Orlando encouraging backyard composting — ClickOrlando
The Florida city has been offering free backyard composters since 2007 and continues to sign on new residents that are happy with the results. According to the Solid Waste Department of Orlando some customers have reduced the amount of wasted food they put out at the curb by 15-20% and largely don't required yard waste collection anymore.TRASH WORLDPlastic road debuts in the Netherlands — The Guardian
The city of Zwolle is now home to the world's first bike path made entirely out of recycled plastic. The 30-meter stretch used the equivalent of 218,000 plastic cups and is said to be three times as strong as asphalt. This project comes from engineering firm KWS, oil and gas company Total and pipe-makers Wavin. Making the path additionally unique is its prefabricated and hollow construction. The installation also includes sensors to track temperature, performance and traffic flow. A second path is already planned, with more to come.
ON THE AGENDA
Connecticut Recyclers Coalition Annual Meeting (10 a.m. EDT. Branford, CT). Featuring EPA Region 1 Administrator Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, along with a joint presentation on the current state of recycling by Waste Dive and Waste360.
2018 Pollution Prevention Summit (9 a.m. PST. Berkeley, CA). Columnist Rich Thompson will be presenting at this annual event hosted by Mapistry, with the goal of bringing "regulators, thought leaders, and corporate environmental professionals together to connect and learn about the power of next-generation compliance strategies, tactics, and technologies to drive efficiency and minimize legal risk."
https://www.wastedive.com/news/daily-digest-what-would-it-take-to-make-recycling-a-national-issue/532342/
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Senior Research Official Leaving Agency
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
Richard Yamada is leaving EPA.
Yamada serves as deputy assistant administrator for research and development at the agency and has been a key figure in the Trump administration's policies on science at EPA.
Yamada has been involved in the move to bar agency grant recipients from serving on EPA's advisory committees as well as the agency's proposal that could limit what scientific data EPA uses to craft its regulations. He also figured in discussions behind former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's now-defunct "red-team, blue-team" exercise to debate climate science.
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement that Yamada "has been a valuable member of the EPA team."
"I'm sorry to see him leave, but he has an exciting new opportunity, and we all wish him the best in his next endeavor," Wheeler said.
Liz Blackburn, chief of staff for EPA's Office of Research and Development, thanked Yamada for his service at EPA and said today is his last day at the agency in an internal email obtained by E&E News.
"Richard visited all of our locations, some more than once, and he told me how much he appreciates the work we do every day to carry out our important mission," Blackburn told EPA research staff in the email, sent this morning. "I think I speak for everyone in ORD as we wish him well as he moves on to his next adventure."
Blackburn attached to her email a handwritten note from Yamada saying he will start his new job next week. It was not immediately clear where Yamada is going.
"It has been an honor and privilege to serve this Administration and EPA leadership along with you all," he said.
Before coming to the agency, he was a staff member for the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. As an aide to Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), he worked on the controversial science reform ideas that are now being put in place at EPA (Climatewire, May 23).
Yamada was President Trump's top political appointee in EPA's research office. The president has yet to nominate someone to fill the office's top post of assistant administrator, which has not had a Senate-confirmed leader for six years now (Greenwire, Aug. 24).Science committee aide joins legal office
While Yamada is leaving EPA, one of his former House Science Committee colleagues has come to the agency.
Joe Brazauskas recently joined the EPA general counsel's office as associate deputy general counsel. He had served as staff director and senior counsel on the Environment Subcommittee for the House Science panel.
"Joe has significant experience conducting oversight of EPA programs, and I've asked him to take the lead for the front office on congressional matters and FOIA," said Matt Leopold, EPA's general counsel, in an Aug. 27 internal email obtained by E&E News.
Brazauskas also worked as counsel for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Originally from Massachusetts, he is a Colgate University graduate and earned his law degree from the American University Washington College of Law.
While at the House Science Committee, Brazauskas worked with EPA staff on furthering Smith's proposals to shake up the agency's scientific work.
"It was great to see you last week and appreciate the Administrator's time. Chairman Smith is very keen for our staff to get together to discuss further transparent science-based regulations at the EPA," he said in one email earlier this year (Climatewire, April 20).
Brazauskas and Yamada had joined forces in the past as staffers for Smith in the chairman's questioning of science at EPA.
In one June 2016 letter to EPA, Smith requested the agency make available four officials for interviews to discuss the agency's review of glyphosate, an herbicide linked to cancer. Both Brazauskas and Yamada are listed as staff contacts for the chairman at the end of the letter.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/14/stories/1060097095
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Echa's 2018 REACH Registration Numbers Get Mixed Reception
Sep 14, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Echa's release of its updated REACH dossier registration figures for 2018 has led to criticism in some quarters and optimism in others.
Marko Susnik, advisor to the European SMEs trade body Ueapme, said the figures are still below the most conservative estimates and raise a question about how many new substances are "hiding behind those dossiers".
The latest data showed that 848 dossiers submitted to Echa by the 31 May deadline have yet to be granted registration numbers. These include 477 cases that have been given extensions under a Directors’ Contact Group (DCG) solution.
Those with registration numbers – 32,515 by the end of August covering 10,708 substances – still fall significantly short of initial forecasts.
During the run-up to the 31 May deadline, Mr Susnik had repeatedly pointed to the low number of chemicals being registered.
However, he sounded a more optimistic tone this week, saying that "every additional registered substance is good news", and if all 848 are substances are registered for the first time "that would be even better".
Echa shared that optimism, saying it expects to complete the registrations of most of those, with a 1% rejection rate in the dossiers processed so far.
The agency said it was "pleased" that the vast majority of companies provided complete information, either at the outset, or as part of the dossier completeness check process. It expects to close all pending cases by May 2019.
The European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) said it "remains confident" that the third registration deadline is passing without major problems and that "substances we need have been registered".'Late dossiers matter'
Echa is also processing a "steady flow" of late registrations, including some linked to the 2018 deadline for the 1-100 tonnage band, and has said that the completeness check of these will be finished within three weeks.
Ueapme's Mr Susnik said the dossiers were late, either because people have overlooked the relevance of REACH registration or they have misunderstood how registration works.
Yet the late dossiers matter, he added, as "we are often talking about well established and accurately working enterprises".
As for substances not submitted for registration, Echa said it is "still a bit early" to assess their impact on the supply chains.
The Directors' Contact Group (DCG) will do a preliminary assessment of the impact of the 2018 deadline later this year, Echa said, with industry as well as downstream and end-user sectors. In addition, the European Commission is expected to run a study on the impact on SMEs later in 2019.
"We encourage the customers using chemicals to still be active and clarify whether crucial substances for their businesses are registered," Echa said.
Meanwhile, Ueapme is planning to present a paper to the Commission this month on how to improve REACH for SMEs.Compliance qualms
Echa has also responded to criticism from some in the industry that compliance standards it applies when evaluating REACH registration dossiers are difficult to predict.
One critic has called for an open discussion about what a compliant dossier is, saying that even a dossier with a study for every endpoint can fail a compliance check because of a difference in opinion in data interpretation.
Echa said determining non-compliance of dossiers is "much more complex" than checking for completeness, and "not always clear cut". But the agency has a robust decision-making procedure and is open for dialogue with stakeholders, it added.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70270/echas-2018-reach-registration-numbers-get-mixed-reception
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Challenge to FDA's GRAS Rule Moves Forward After Court Rejects Request for Dismissal
Sep 14, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
In a critical ruling for food additive safety, a federal district court ruledon Wednesday that EDF, represented by Earthjustice, has standing in its legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule. This 2016 final rule allows food manufacturers to make secret GRAS safety determinations for chemicals added to food, without notifying FDA or the public, and to use the chemical in food without anyone else’s knowledge. The court was considering a motion to dismiss from FDA arguing that plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the case. The judge found EDF and the Center for Food Safety (CFS) “plausibly allege harm to their members” and therefore “satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement for standing.” Our legal challenge now moves to the substance of our concerns with the flaws in the agency’s GRAS Rule.
The court found that members of EDF and CFS showed a risk of harm consistent with the requirements of the law in alleging that FDA’s “GRAS Rule poses a credible threat to their members.” Specifically the court stated that:Their members “have been and will be exposed to potentially dangerous substances that were introduced into the food supply without FDA oversight, public participation, or the opportunity for judicial review.”They “explicitly identify multiple substances that manufacturers determined to be GRAS and used in food despite concerns raised by FDA about their safety, as well as additional undisputedly dangerous substances that Plaintiffs reasonably anticipate will be introduced into the food supply under the GRAS Rule.”“[T]hese injuries are ongoing and imminent.
The court also rejected FDA’s arguments that our members have the power to avoid any potential injury from unsafe chemicals added to food and said that EDF is not required to show harm was unavoidable. Even if this were required, the court saw merit in our arguments that exposure to potentially unsafe GRAS chemicals was indeed unavoidable because the safety determinations and often the chemical names were publicly unknown.
The judge found FDA’s argument that a stronger rule might not make a difference as “overly simplistic,” stating that “I refuse to give credence to Defendants’ arguments that assume a lack of enforcement or incompetence on the part of FDA.”
We are pleased that the court ruled in our favor in this crucial first step. In light of the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy statementpublished in July 2018 that called for FDA to greatly strengthen or replace the GRAS determination process, we hope that the agency will update its final rule. As we said when the agency issued the final rule in 2016, FDA lost an opportunity for safer food additives. With this court decision, we are one step closer to correcting that failure and achieving a safer food supply.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/09/14/challenge-fdas-gras-rule-moves-forward/#more-8149
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Petrochemical Plants Turn Ethane into Building Blocks of Plastic
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
They say geography is destiny, but in this small city east of Houston, the force shaping its history, economy and future is geology.
Mont Belvieu is built atop a salt dome formed more than 100 million years ago from deposits likely left by an ancient inland sea that cut across the North American continent. For more than 60 years, energy companies have used it as a natural storage tank, carving out salt caverns some 3,000 feet deep to hold millions of barrels of petroleum products.
Today, those caverns are increasingly filled with ethane and other natural gas liquids that feed the plastics and chemical industries, making Mont Belvieu and its neighbor to the south, Baytown, the focal point of the Gulf Coast petrochemical boom. Here, where rice fields once stretched as far as the eye could see, Exxon Mobil alone has invested some $6 billion to dramatically expand its 36-year-old plastics plant as well as its sprawling refining and chemicals complex in Baytown.
At these plants, the ethane molecules that squeezed through fissures in shale rock, flowed up a Texas well and traveled more than 150 miles by pipeline, will undergo chemical changes to transform them from once-overlooked byproducts of oil and gas drilling into one of most ubiquitous materials on earth. Hundreds of other pipelines stretching across Texas and beyond will carry millions more barrels of natural gas liquids from U.S. shale fields, converging near the salt dome under Mont Belvieu’s Barbers Hill.
“All roads lead to Texas,” said Kim Haas, Exxon Mobil’s operations manager, “and specifically the Baytown area.”
Barbers Hill rises 85 feet above sea level, a mile-wide distortion in an otherwise flat landscape. First settled more than 175 years ago and named for an early rancher, Amos Barber, the area began attracting oilmen after another salt dome called Spindletop began gushing crude in 1901.
The first successful Barbers Hill oil well was drilled in 1916, and annual production peaked at more than 8 million barrels in 1931. About 25 years later, Barbers Hill got a second life when Warren Petroleum, a Tulsa company now part of Chevron, starting drilling caverns to store petroleum products.
The community, however, was jolted in 1985 by fires on Barber Hill that killed two Warren workers, forced the evacuation of Mont Belvieu’sc 2,000 residents, and led the city to distribute letters to newcomers warning of the “serious danger and possible death” that came with living there. The population fell to about 1,300 by 1990.
But with improved safety, the recent petrochemical boom has revived the community, whose population has more than doubled since 2000 to about 6,000 residents. Today, Barbers Hill sits atop roughly 150 caverns potentially holding some 300 million barrels of petroleum products.
This is the next stop for the natural gas liquids produced by Exxon’s subsidiary XTO Energy. Here, processing plants known as fractionators use varying pressures and temperatures to break the natural gas liquids into components, each with a slightly different combination of carbon and hydrogen, including butane (C4H10), propane (C3H8), pentane (C5H12) and, of course, ethane (C2H6).
The ethane is piped 10 miles to Exxon Mobil’s Baytown complex, which is simultaneously one of the nation’s oldest and most modern plants. The refinery was built nearly a century ago by one of Exxon Mobil’s predecessor companies, Humble Oil. A chemical plant was added in 1979 and expanded in 1997.
Four year ago, Exxon Mobil launched another Baytown expansion, which, with the associated expansion of the sister plant in Mont Belvieu, is the company’s biggest U.S. industrial investment since Exxon and Mobil merged 20 years ago. The projects vastly increase Exxon Mobil’s capacity to process ethane into ethylene, the basic chemical building block of most plastics, and then into the most common plastic, polyethylene.
At the peak of construction, nearly 6,000 people worked at the two sites. The expanded Baytown facility, which began operations in late July, can produce about 9 billion pounds of petrochemicals a year, including 3.3 billion additional pounds of ethylene.
The focus of the Baytown expansion was eight furnaces, each costing more than $100 million and standing 23 stories tall — nearly the height of NRG Stadium. The furnaces, built in Thailand, are the heart of a plant known as a cracker, which gets its name from the process that uses extreme heat to crack ethane molecules in half and trigger chemical reactions that form ethylene.
Kevin Campbell keeps track of much of the process in his job as a hot ends coordinator, monitoring the operations and safety of the furnaces — the “hot end” of the cracking process. These control room jobs can easily pay $70,000 a year.
Exxon Mobil runs four overlapping 12-hour shifts, the first beginning at 4 a.m. Campbell, who works an early shift, sits in a control room, darkened to make it easier to see his console, where he’s observing digital images and the constant flow of data to track furnace operations.
He and his colleagues compare the job to flying an airplane, mostly uneventful, but requiring strict oversight and cool, rapid decision-making when needed.
“Right now it’s calm,” Campbell said. “But it’s not boring. It’s very exciting.”
The ethane enters the Baytown plant as a gas, fed by pipeline into a furnace, where it’s injected with steam and heated to more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to melt gold and silver.
In less than a half-second, the process breaks the ethane molecules, which contain two carbon and six hydrogen atoms, into two radicals each containing one atom of carbon and three of hydrogen. That frees the carbon and hydrogen atoms to recombine, forming ethylene, made of two atoms of carbon and four of hydrogen (C2H4), as well as byproducts such as propylene (C3H6), carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
The heated gas then moves to through a series of towers, where it is cooled, reheated, pressurized and cooled again — to minus-200 degrees — to remove byproducts and impurities. Finally, the ethylene is funneled through a 355-foot tower known as splitter, where any remaining ethane is removed and recycled.
The result: 99.95 percent pure ethylene.
The ethylene is piped back to Mont Belvieu, where some will be stored in the salt caverns, but most will feed another process that will change the hydrocarbons liberated from Texas shale once again.
Where the Baytown complex used heat and pressure to crack ethane into ethylene, Exxon Mobil’s Mont Belvieu plant relies on chemical reactions to fuse trillions of ethylene molecules into polyethylene.
The process begins in a chemical reactor, a tall cylindrical tower that’s fed ethylene bypipelines at least 10 inches in diameter. The reactor operates like a blender, mixing ethylene with a catalyst made from silica, alumina and proprietary materials that Exxon Mobil won’t disclose.
The catalyst, a fine powder that feels like dust, sparks a chemical reaction that fuses the ethylene molecules together. By mixing different catalysts from specific materials, manufacturers can produce different grades of plastic with varying levels of strength and flexibility.
The Mont Belvieu plant opened in 1982, producing mainly low-grade, flexible polyethylene used in plastic wrap and food packaging, and expanded nine years later to produce plastic for more rigid products, such as milk bottles. The most recent expansion, completed late last year, is dedicated to high-performance polyethylene that is light, flexible and strong.
Paul Fritsch is the plant manager. A chemical engineer by training, he has worked with Exxon for nearly three decades, overseeing expansions as far away as Singapore. He can touch almost any plastic in a supermarket and identify the type of polyethylene.
"When I go grocery shopping," he said, "I pick up the packaging and look to see if it's one of our customers."
Polyethylene comes out of the chemical reactors as a powder, similar to laundry detergent. It's fed into a purging tower where nitrogen and steam remove any residual ethylene and hydrocarbons that didn't properly bond.
The powder is then transported to hoppers that funnel the material to an extruder, which melts the plastic, compresses it and pushes out in dough-like strands of polyethylene, much like a pasta maker. Each extruder can churn out 200,000 pounds of polyethylene an hour.
As the strands come through the extruder, they are sliced by a large spinning blade into semi-translucent pellets. The pellets go into a centrifuge, where they are cooled by water, then spun dry, much as a salad spinner pulls moisture from lettuce leaves.
Made in America
After quality testing, the plastic is loaded into as many as 35 rail cars, each holding about 200,000 pounds of polyethylene pellets, and shipped throughout the country to customers who shape the polyethylene pellets into finished plastics products. About 40 percent of the polyethylene is made for the domestic market.
Polyethylene pellets marked for export are mechanically packaged in 55-pound bags, each holding about 1 million pellets. Every hour, the plant fills about 10,000 bags, which are loaded onto pallets, each holding 55 bags, and trucked to a 70-acre storage yard. As many as 100,000 pallets are kept for up to 45 days until they can be loaded into containers and shipped out of the Port of Houston.
“Our production is 24 hours a day,” Fritsch explained, “but the Port of Houston isn’t open 24-7.”
With the expansions completed, Exxon Mobil’s Mont Belvieu and Baytown campuses together cover about 3,400 acres, the equivalent of three Houston downtowns. The Mont Belvieu plant, which has doubled its polyethylene output to 5.5 billion pounds a year, is now the second-largest plastics plant in the world, after the Borogue complex in Abu Dhabi.
The Baytown and Mount Belvieu plants together employ 7,500 people, and Exxon Mobil estimates that the number doubles to 15,000 when counting contractors and jobs at local suppliers, restaurants and other businesses that support the plant. Exxon pays more than $150 million a year in local taxes and fees.
The plants also have contributed to a surge in exports that has made Houston one of few regions in the country that exports more than it imports. That brings new money into the area — tens of billions of dollars that can be used to expand business, hire workers and increase wealth.
“We’re going to have things that are made in America again and getting shipped overseas,” Fritsch said. “That’s what’s exciting about shale gas. It’s the explosion of industry again in the U.S.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Geology-makes-region-the-focal-point-13225097.php
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How Long Can the Fracking Spending Spree Last?
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
For the past decade Wall Street has lavished U.S. oil companies with cash, eager to get a piece of the fracking boom that turned what were thought to be undrillable shale fields in West Texas and North Dakota into the hottest oil prospects in the world.
If companies spent billions more than they were taking in, to buy up more acreage and their competitors, not a problem — the money was funding a once in a generation opportunity.
But after a decade of U.S. oil and gas companies spending beyond their means, a debate is underway in the energy and investment sectors on whether to keep pumping money into oil fields to keep the boom going full-speed. Or with interest rates rising and investors demanding better returns, are fracking firms going to have to live within their cash flows?
“The history of the industry is companies spend every nickel they have and a bunch they didn’t have,” said Nick Cacchione, owner of Oil and Gas Financial Analytics, a Florida research firm. “The question is, has the industry changed and have the become more conservative or are they going back to their old ways of doings things?”
Signs point to U.S. oil companies changing their habits, shrinking their capital budgets even as oil prices improve. After running a cash flow deficit totaling more more than $40 billion in 2015 - meaning their operating costs and capital expenditures exceeded the money they were paid - the 60 largest U.S. exploration and production companies shrunk that deficit to $17.7 billion last year.
That followed intense pressure from hedge fund managers who questioned the fundamental economics of the fracking boom. After the first 12 months, the output of shale wells starts declining at a fast clip, requiring companies to drill more and more wells if they are going to keep up production. At an investment conference in 2015, billionaire investor David Einhorn dubbed the oil executives in Houston and Oklahoma City “frack addicts,” proclaiming “a business that burns cash and doesn’t grow isn’t worth anything.”
The tipping point came around 2017 when oil prices were rising, but the share prices of many U.S. fracking companies were flat or falling, as investors lost confidence that companies could live within their means.
“This was the first time there was that disconnect,” said Bill Herbert, a Houston-based managing director at the investment bank Piper Jaffray. “Public equity investors, they’ve become much more demanding of these management teams to live within cash flow and manage their balance sheets more responsibly than five years ago.”
When oil companies first discovered they could use the same hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques on oil shale fields that they uses to drill natural gas, they borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars developing oil fields in Texas and North Dakota. But when that surge in production caused global crude markets to plummet in late 2014, many companies couldn’t afford to pay their creditors and were forced to declare bankruptcy, stiffing lenders and investors on more than $70 billion in outstanding loans.
Oil executives appear to have learned the lessons from the oil bust, paying much more attention to financial discipline and focusing on providing investors with higher profits, dividends and stock prices. But will they keep it up?
With oil prices hovering around $70 since May - compared to less than $30 in early 2016 - the temptation is there to increase drilling again. Companies have reduced the extravagant debt loads of a few years ago, but with the Federal Reserve signaling it will interest rates two more times in 2018, raising yields on loans and bonds, plenty of investors will be ready to give oil and gas drillers more money, said Katherine Spector, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“Banks are going to make more money [through higher interest rates], so they're going to want to get more money out the door,” she said.
While rising oil prices have fixed much of what ailed the industry, companies must now contend with challenges that weren’t much of a factor five years ago.
To start, the historically low unemployment rate is beginning to drive up wages, particularly in West Texas oil towns near the Permian Basin, where unemployment rates are far lower than the national average. The unemployment rate in Midland, for example, is just over 2 percent, compared to 3.9 percent nationally.
The rise in interest rates also means oil companies have to pay more to borrow, putting the days of expanding with cheap money behind them. In addition, the savings oil companies squeezed from new technologies, more efficient production and discounts from contractors may have topped out. U.S. oil executives claim they can drill new shale wells with oil prices as low as $52 a barrel. But, analysts said, it’s unclear if they can keep their costs that low for long.
“The companies have probably reached the depths they can get their operating costs,” Cacchione said. “Cost inflation is starting to creep into the oil patch.”
How it will all turn out is anyone's guess, but there is little doubt that some oil executives will be tempted to expand their holdings, eager to take advantage of the relatively high oil prices. After all, even as a subset of oil companies have focused on raising returns for investors, “growth remains core to the sector’s business model and strategy,” Eric Otto, managing director at Rapidan Energy Group, a Maryland consulting firm, said.
In the months ahead, oil companies will begin releasing capital spending plans for 2019, revealing to investors whether they’re staying conservative or getting back to the high drilling activity of 2015. Cacchione, who has spent three decades tracking the industry, said that with companies still recovering from the oil price crash of late 2014, he is not expecting dramatic increases in spending — at least not yet.
“The blood bath is still pretty flesh in people’s minds,” he said. “At least for another year they’ll be responsible with the money and not go crazy.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/How-long-can-the-fracking-spending-spree-last-13228180.php
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Hurricane Florence Affects Oil and Gas Projects, Facilities
Sep 14, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Hurricane Florence is churning over the Carolinas, knocking out power and threatening coastal flooding in a torrent that could have implications for energy trade and oil and gas construction projects in the area.
S&P Global Platts on Friday noted that the Port of Wilmington in North Carolina is closed, and the Port of Charleston in South Carolina is only open for outbound traffic. That will affect small volumes of gasoline blendstocks, diesel and asphalt that arrive at those locations.
The firm expects the storm to have a limited effect on natural gas production, but several natural gas projects and facilities face temporary shutdowns.
Kinder Morgan said it will likely close parts of its liquids and bulk terminals during the storm. The company has also paused construction on its $2 billion liquefaction facility at its Elba Island export terminal in Georgia.
Meanwhile, S&P Global Platts noted, deliveries to Dominion Energy's Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland have fallen to just over 0.3 billion cubic feet per day during the last three days, down about 60 percent from this time last month. Dominion said it's preparing for severe weather and has a response plan in place.
The developers of the 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline have halted construction in Virginia for the duration of the storm. The construction process already faces challenges after heavy rainfall this summer.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Hurricane-Florence-affects-oil-and-gas-projects-13229773.php
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PHMSA Sends Investigators to Site of Massachusetts Pipeline Explosions
Sep 14, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Department of Transportation is sending staff to Massachusetts to investigate the series of natural gas pipeline explosions that killed one person and devastated three towns north of Boston, an agency spokesman said Friday.
Investigators from DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration were dispatched Friday morning. The explosions in Andover, Mass., and surrounding areas late Thursday resulted in dozens of home fires and thousands fleeing their residences, according to local news reports.
PHMSA “is in contact and coordination with Governor Baker’s office, Massachusetts DOT, and Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency about the incidents in northeast Massachusetts,” a DOT spokesman said. “PHMSA is sending a team to the site and will provide assistance to [National Transportation Safety Board] as needed."
Pipeline operator Columbia Gas of Massachusetts said on its website that crews needed to visit 8,600 affected customers to shut off gas meters and conduct safety inspections.
"We expect this will be an extended restoration effort, and we will work tirelessly to restore service to the affected customers," the company said. A spokesperson did not immediately return a call for additional comment.
Meanwhile, electricity provider National Grid had switched off the power to 18,000 people in the area per instructions from emergency officials, the company said on its website.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who represents Andover, said he had been in touch with PHMSA and other officials to help coordinate emergency response for residents. PHMSA staff told him a home system gas line may have been overpressurized, Moulton said.
Columbia Gas had not returned his calls seeking information, he added.
“Thousands of people are still out of their homes wondering when they can come back,” Moulton told POLITICO. “They want to know when they can return. A lot of people are asking questions and we don’t answers yet.”
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, a subsidiary of NiSource, reported 10 incidents with its distribution lines since 2012, according to PHMSA data. Those previous accidents led to no fatalities, but caused 19 injuries and $4.6 million in damage. PHMSA blamed some of the incidents on third parties damaging the pipes.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/09/phmsa-sends-investigators-to-site-of-massachusetts-pipeline-explosions-789767
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Deadly Mass. Gas Blasts Highlight Dangers of Aging System
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee and Mike Soraghan
A gas explosion yesterday that destroyed dozens of buildings and killed at least one person in Massachusetts came after years of concern about the state's aging pipeline system and amid efforts to upgrade it.
A series of rapid explosions ignited fires in 60 to 80 homes yesterday in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover, about 25 miles north of Boston, forcing the evacuation of entire neighborhoods and sending hundreds of people to hastily arranged shelters, the Associated Press reported. A teenager was killed when a chimney fell on his car, and dozens of other people were injured.
While it could take days or weeks to determine the exact cause, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts was repairing pipelines in the area shortly before the explosions started. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency blamed the fires on gas lines that had become over-pressurized but said investigators were still examining exactly what happened, according to AP.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration were sending teams to the scene, and the state's two senators asked the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to hold hearings on the incident.
"We urge the committee to call a hearing immediately with representatives from PHMSA, NTSB, and the natural gas distribution industry, including Columbia Gas of Massachusetts and NiSource, in order to examine whether regulators have adequate authority and resources to detect and remedy violations, respond to natural gas accidents in a timely manner, and ensure better operating procedures for companies linked to repeated misconduct," Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren wrote in a letter to committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and ranking member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
Safety advocates noted that the accident could reveal problems that present a hazard for other communities and companies across the country.
"We also hope that if the problem demonstrated so dramatically here is something that could occur in other areas of the country that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) will soon release national guidance or safety orders to ensure the safety of us all," said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Wash.-based advocacy group.
Massachusetts has some of the oldest gas lines in the U.S., and its system is the most leak-prone, said Audrey Schulman, president of the nonprofit Home Energy Efficiency Team, which tracks the integrity of the gas distribution system.
It is not clear if aging pipelines contributed to the explosions, Schulman said, but, "There's pipes involved and that are still in use that date back to the 1880s. You can't expect anything to last that long and continue to work well."
Data compiled by HEET show that the number of leaks varies widely across the state, with an average of 0.46 leaks per mile of streets in all municipalities, and a high of 2.8 leaks per mile in Weymouth, southeast of Boston.
In Lawrence, the biggest of the three towns struck by yesterday's explosions, there were 0.91 leaks per mile — about twice the state average, according to HEET's data. Andover and North Andover had lower-than-average rates of 0.29 and 0.25, respectively, Schulman said in an interview. The data are a few years old, she said.
About 14 percent of the natural gas mains in Massachusetts are made from cast iron, an older type of line that's prone to leaks and has been widely used for decades, according to PHMSA data.
The Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill in 2014 requiring utility companies to report leaks to the state Department of Public Utilities, and a 2016 law required them to focus on repairing the largest leaks.
Utilities have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to comply. NiSource, the parent company of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, estimated in 2015 it would spend $20 billion on infrastructure replacement nationwide over 20 years.
Columbia Gas said on its website it planned to replace 1,100 miles of pipeline over 20 years.
Federal data show the company has had 10 incidents since 2010 that were serious enough to report to regulators, although six resulted from third-party damage, such as digging around a line or a car colliding with equipment. Eight involved explosions or fires.
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts reported at the end of last year it had 412 hazardous leaks from pipe weld or joint failure in mains and 367 hazardous leaks from corrosion failure in service lines. The company said it had 778 leaks scheduled for repair.
The information submitted to federal pipeline regulators showed that about 5 percent of its mains were constructed before 1940, and the construction dates for another 13 percent were unknown.
Nearly 10 percent of the company's roughly 5,000 miles of mains are made of cast iron, while 44 percent are made of coated steel with cathodic protection against corrosion. Another 43 percent are plastic.
Fewer than 1 percent of its service lines — the low-pressure pipes that connect directly to homes and businesses — date before 1940, and 35 percent were installed after 2000.
The vast majority — about 70 percent — of its service lines are plastic.
Natural gas is shipped across the country at pressures as high as 1,400 pounds per square inch and then gradually "stepped down" through a series of regulators until it reaches the gas meters at homes and businesses, which reduce the pressure to as little as 10 pounds per square inch, said Weimer at the Pipeline Safety Trust.
If the regulators fail, allowing high-pressure gas into homes, then weaknesses in the home's pipelines could fail or individual appliances could malfunction, Weimer said.
Columbia Gas said in a statement that it expected "an extended restoration effort" in the wake of the explosions. The company's crews need to shut off the gas meters and conduct safety inspections at 8,600 homes and businesses before they can be reoccupied.
Schulman, at HEET, said Columbia has generally had a good safety record compared with other gas utilities in the state.
"If it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/14/stories/1060097091
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State Department to Conduct New Review of Keystone XL Nebraska Route
Sep 14, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
The State Department will conduct a new environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route through Nebraska, according to a notice slated to appear in the Federal Register on Monday.
The plan for a new supplemental environmental impact statement, announced in a pre-publication filing today, comes after the Montana U.S. District Court in August ruled one was necessary because the route through Nebraska state regulators had approved in November 2017 was significantly different than the one for which pipeline operator TransCanada had originally applied.
The new review is tentatively scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018, a State Department spokesman told POLITICO.
Doug Hayes, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club and one of the plaintiffs in the Montana court case, called that timeline into question. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups are pushing for the State Department to conduct a new environmental review that would encompass Keystone XL’s entire planned route through the U.S.
“If you look at all the regulations they have to follow — a 45-day comment period, and they have to respond to those comments and do an inter-agency review — it’s just not realistic they can get done by the end of the year,“ Hayes said.
TransCanada is also waiting for additional permits from federal agencies. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management still must issue right-of-way permits to cross federal land in Montana. The Army Corps of Engineers must also approve the pipeline’s path over several waterways across the country.
WHAT'S NEXT: The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to rule on a challenge to the route regulators approved through the state.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Va. to Establish Regulations Limiting Leaks
Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In E&E Climatewire)
Virginia officials say the state plans to develop regulations for limiting leaks of climate-changing methane from natural gas infrastructure and landfills.
Gov. Ralph Northam's administration announced Wednesday that the Department of Environmental Quality would begin working on the methane-control framework.
The move comes as the Trump administration is moving to roll back Obama-era rules on finding and stopping methane leaks from oil and gas sites. Methane is one of the most potent agents of climate change.
Officials also announced Wednesday that the state will join the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a collaborative effort to reduce carbon pollution from the transportation sector, and the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification.
Environmental groups praised the moves.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/14/stories/1060096975
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Railroads at Risk of Missing Positive Train Control Deadline
Sep 14, 2018 | American Shipper
By Kim Link-Wills
The House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials conducted a hearing Thursday on the implementation of positive train control in the United States.
Written testimony and video from the hearing are available here.
“This important, life-saving technology is one of the most complex safety mandates ever undertaken by the railroad industry,” said Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Denham, R-Calif., in his opening statement Thursday.
Denham said nine railroads are at risk of not meeting federal deadlines for implementation.
Positive Train Control, or PTC, is a radio- or GPS-based system designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments, incursions into work zones and the movement of a train through a switch left in the wrong position.
“From its inception a decade ago, Congress and stakeholders anticipated that the PTC mandate would be a daunting undertaking. PTC had never been implemented on such a large scale and has never required such a high level of interoperability,” Denham said.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 initially required that certain freight, commuter and passenger rail lines in the United States install PTC by Dec. 31, 2015. Congress extended that deadline to Dec. 31 of this year.
“According to the Association of American Railroads, freight railroads will spend $10.6 billion implementing PTC, with additional hundreds of millions each year to maintain,” Denham said. “The American Public Transportation Association has estimated that the commuter railroads will have to spend nearly $3.6 billion on PTC.
“When Congress passed the bipartisan PTC Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015, we heard from railroads that funding was an issue. We heard those concerns, and in the FAST Act, we authorized $197 million in PTC grant funding. Additionally, the FAST Act specifically prioritized PTC installation projects for Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF) funding.
“In total, Congress made available more than $1 billion in grant funding for PTC implementation, in addition to financing programs like RRIF and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA),” he said.
Denham said while the railroads have achieved some significant improvements over the past year implementing the safety technology, nine railroads were at risk of not meeting statutory criteria required to qualify for an alternative schedule.
“FRA currently considers any railroad that installed less than 90 percent of its PTC system hardware as of June 30, 2018, to be at risk, as installation of all PTC system hardware is only an initial phase of implementing a PTC system and only one of the six statutory criteria required to qualify for an alternative schedule,” Denham said.
Witnesses at the hearing were Ronald L. Batory, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration; Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board; Susan A. Fleming, director of the physical infrastructure team in the Government Accountability Office; Scot Naparstek, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Amtrak; Edward Hamberger, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Railroads; Jeffrey D. Knueppel, general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority on behalf of the American Public Transportation Association; and Stacey Mortensen, executive director of the Altamont Corridor Express.
https://www.americanshipper.com/Main/full/Railroads_at_risk_of_missing_positive_train_contro_72514.aspx?source=Little4
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Governor Postpones Panel's Carbon Tax Proposal
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Kelsey Brugger
Amid a tough race for re-election, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) postponed the rollout of a state advisory board recommending a carbon tax, a politically charged issue that some say could jeopardize his seat.
Members of the Climate Action for Alaska Leadership Team were poised to submit a list of more than 60 climate policy recommendations to the governor yesterday, including adaptation plans and a controversial carbon tax proposal.
"The reason the climate rollout was shifted today was because of a scheduling issue," said Berett Wilber, deputy press secretary for Walker. "The governor's schedule changes all of the time."
The media event was abruptly rescheduled to Sept. 26, raising some eyebrows.
"I doubt the gov was prepared/ready and the press leading up to release has not been great," Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association and a member of the leadership team, wrote in an email.
The planned rollout coincides with a three-way gubernatorial race in a state visibly affected by climate change and whose economy is dominated by the oil and gas industry. Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, is being challenged by former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and former Republican state Sen. Mike Dunleavy.
It's a rare race that could be influenced by climate change.
At a debate in Ketchikan earlier this week, all three candidates were asked about their thoughts on the climate leadership team and the impending report.
"I have not seen the recommendations," Walker said. "They are headed my way, and I am anxious to receive them so I can take a look at them and see what we can do."
Begich did not mince words. "I don't support carbon tax," he declared, adding that there are elements of the report that he supports. He said he worked on the issue of climate change as mayor of Anchorage from 2003 to 2009.
Dunleavy acknowledged that there are areas along the coast that are eroding, but he shifted the conversation to the potential benefits for Alaska from rising temperatures, such as greater access to shipping lanes.
Dunleavy's campaign recently told E&E News in a statement that the climate team's recommendations "would be devastating for Alaska's economy."
If Walker were to move ahead on a carbon tax, the bill would have to be approved by the state Legislature.
"In my view, it's dead on arrival," said Republican state Sen. John Coghill, who represents the Fairbanks area.
Coghill, who said he does not believe human activity is the primary cause of climate change, called melting permafrost a "local problem," not a "global disaster."
He claimed that Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott (D) is a bigger champion of the state climate panel than Walker. Mallott, a lifelong Democrat who joined Walker's independent ticket four years ago, is seen as an advocate for climate policy.
"The lieutenant governor is running this show, and Walker is kind of having to go along with it because those are the people he came to the dance with," Coghill said.
Others expressed less cynicism.
"This isn't a political issue," said Mike LeVine, senior Arctic fellow at the Ocean Conservancy and a member of the leadership team. "This is an Alaska issue."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/14/stories/1060097027
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Ewire: Hurricane Florence Could Bring Major Environmental Risks
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
Hurricane Florence made landfall in southeast North Carolina early this morning, and the massive storm is expected to lash the Carolinas with at least 20 inches of rain and flooding over the weekend -- and experts say that at least part of the storm's damage is worsened by human-cased climate change.
Scientists debate about the extent to which a variety of hurricane-related risks are tied to climate change, but as the Washington Post reports, “one thing they do not disagree on is that climate change contributes to sea surge.” In the case of Florence, at least half a foot of the coming storm surge is tied to the phenomenon.
The basic idea is sea level rise over the past several decades intensifies every incident of coastal storm-related flooding. “The principle is simple: If you fill a bathtub higher, it's easier for splashes to get out of the tub,” said Benjamin Strauss of the research group Climate Central.
The Post cites various projections of the amount that is due to anthropogenic climate change, including estimates of between six and eight inches.
The real problem -- as is the case with a wide variety of climate-related risks -- is that the seas will only get higher as humans pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change.
“The sea-level rise we’ve experienced so far is really just a prelude to what we’re expecting to see in the half-century and century to come,” said Robert Kopp, a climate researcher at Rutgers University.
That's just one of the storm's environmental risks. The New Republic notes that EPA is now monitoring 40 sites for potential releases of hazardous waste, up from 9 earlier this week.
And CBS and the Associated Press report that Florence could become an “environmental disaster” due to the scores of “hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites” in the storm's path that could release waste into homes or drinking water supplies.
The article notes that pork producers have drained manure lagoon levels to absorb 2 feet of rain, and farmers in low-lying areas are moving their hogs to higher ground.
Further, about two dozen coal ash sites near power plants could be affected by the storm, though Duke Energy says it has been reducing wastewater levels at the sites following a state directive to begin phasing out ash pits following a 2014 spill.
The utility has already shut down its 1,800 megawatt Brunswick nuclear plant, which is located close to where Florence made landfall. The plant sits about 20 feet above sea level, and that area could see a storm surge of up to 13 feet, a Reuters report says.
Duke officials have stressed that they have “backups for backups for backups” to prevent any flooding-related damage at the plant, including many steps that were taken in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan following a tsunami. Brunswick's two reactors share the same design as the Fukushima plant.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-hurricane-florence-could-bring-major-environmental-risks
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EEI Warns Against Imposing 'Retrospective' Cost-Benefit Review On Rules
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
The main trade association for electric utilities is warning EPA to pursue any changes to its cost-benefit review process prospectively -- not retrospectively -- citing concerns that looking backward could undercut past pollution control investments.
The comments from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), offered as part of EPA's preliminary effort to establish more “consistency” in cost-benefit analysis, underscores that the supposedly industry-friendly effort might ultimately exacerbate regulatory uncertainty for a range of sectors.
The issue of retrospective reviews is one of several facing the agency as it reviews comments on its advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) on cost-benefit reviews, with backers of the rulemaking effort arguing that the agency's current analysis lacks transparency and the agency also has more flexibility under existing statutes to weigh costs than it has done in the past.
But it is unclear whether the cost-benefit ANPR, launched under the tenure of former Administrator Scott Pruitt and issued by EPA's policy office before the departure of former policy chief Samantha Dravis, still has committed champions at the agency.
EPA's June 13 ANPR opened up a 30-day comment period on a broad range of issues to address alleged “inconsistency” and lack of “transparency” in how the agency conducts cost-benefit reviews. These issues include ways to make analyses “consistent” with statutory direction; whether the agency should develop a general rule for weighing co-benefits from pollution reductions not directly targeted by a rule; and whether to adopt more uniform definitions for specific terms related to cost-benefit review.
The ANPR also teed up discussion on whether to include “a systematic retrospective review element” in new rules.
And it notes that previous administrations have also “periodically undertaken programs of retrospective review” and urged agencies to “reassess existing regulations and eliminate, modify, or strengthen those regulations that have become outmoded in light of changed circumstances.”
Reaction to the ANPR has been mixed, with detractors saying it is a thinly veiled pretext to elevate costs over benefits of federal rules, while some backers are calling for statute-specific rulemakings.
A number of economists, meanwhile, have embraced its calls for greater retrospective analysis of federal rules, including as a way to help formulate future regulatory efforts -- while criticizing as unwarranted the agency's interest in revisiting the role of co-benefits in justifying agency rules.
The ANPR is only preliminary, and implementing any changes could require a mix of subsequent rules or even guidance.
One industry source, however, says there is some concern that the ANPR “becomes a rationale” for reopening multiple rules which had seemed settled, and not necessarily to the benefit of industry.
'Stranded Investments'
In this vein, EEI's Aug. 13 comments warn against implementing any new cost-benefit approach retrospectively.
“Retroactive implementation can lead to undesirable consequences -- such as regulatory and legal uncertainty, as well as stranded investments and subsequent higher costs for customers should previously implemented regulations be undone and past investments based on those regulatory decision be undermined,” EEI writes.
“To the extent that EPA does move forward with a regulatory proposal regarding the use of costs and benefits in rulemaking, the Agency should take a prospective approach,” EEI writes.
The comments offer another indication of continuing tensions between Trump administration's deregulatory agenda and potential problems it creates for industry, in this case with respect to utility emissions controls.
Specifically, it comes as EPA is reconsidering its utility mercury rules despite bipartisan calls not to upend them.
EEI in a footnote links its concern with retrospective review to the mercury and air toxics (MATS) rule, referencing a July letter from a variety of groups -- including EEI, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the American Public Power Association. The groups urged EPA to leave MATS “in place and effective” while moving forward with a residual risk and technology review (RTR) in order not to add to costs in the sector.
“We believe a complete and robust RTR will recognize the capital investments already made for compliance and will allow the industry to continue full implementation of the MATS rule, which was completed in April 2016.”
Further, with respect to MATS, “all covered plants have implemented the regulation,” and upending it could also disrupt cost recovery for investments in regulated states with public utility commissions, which “in many cases still are in the process of reviewing the cost of these controls for inclusion in rates.”
The letter also noted that power plants that retired due to the rule and other factors, including low natural gas prices, “have been decommissioned and cannot be reinstated.”
EEI more broadly in its comments on the ANPR appears to temper its expectations for the cost-benefit revision effort, urging that if EPA moves forward with subsequent rulemaking it should establish “general principles” on cost consideration. Those would recognize that various statutes may still require different treatment of costs, at least with respect to standard setting. EPA “could consider issuing guidance limited to how costs and benefits are considered.”
The group does call on EPA to provide “complete and transparent information about assumptions, baselines, modeling and uncertainties” to help stakeholders evaluate EPA’s cost-benefits analyses and ensure “robust participation in the regulatory process and supporting reasoned decisionmaking by the Agency.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/eei-warns-against-imposing-retrospective-cost-benefit-review-rules
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EPA Draws Fire For Downplaying Health, GHG Risks From Methane Rule
Sep 14, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Environmentalists are criticizing EPA analysis downplaying the health and climate harms from its newly unveiled proposal to ease methane limits for new oil and gas facilities, citing a prior analysis by agency staff that they argue points to officials' ability to quantify specific health harms.
In addition, critics continue to oppose EPA's efforts to downplay the climate-related damages from the laxer regulations by focusing on domestic-only harms, even though the agency acknowledges deep in its regulatory impact analysis (RIA) that the proposal would have far bigger adverse effects if global impacts were considered.
EPA's Sept. 11 proposal represents only the first stage in the Trump administration's efforts to scale back Obama-era methane rules for the oil and gas sector, suggesting these issues could re-surface in subsequent rulemakings.
The criticisms underscore that environmentalists and public health advocates will seek to highlight potential public health harms from the deregulatory proposals, even as the agency minimizes them.
Specifically, Conrad Schneider of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) tells Inside EPA that a July paper authored by EPA staff, estimating ozone- and fine particulate matter (PM2.5)-related deaths due to oil and gas sector emissions, does not appear to have factored into the RIA, which does not quantify health effects from increased emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) due to the proposed weaker requirements.
“How could [EPA staff] go through this detailed analysis” of oil and gas emissions “and then [EPA] claims they cant do it,” for its revisions to the new source performance standards (NSPS), he says.
The proposal acknowledges that the eased compliance deadlines between 2019 and 2025 would lead to 100,000 additional tons of VOCs, 3,800 more tons of hazardous air pollutants and 380,000 extra tons of methane, which is equal to 8.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide due to its much higher global warming potential.
But the proposal states that “data limitations prevent the EPA from quantifying” the health effects from forgone VOC-related health benefits.
The RIA for the proposal further expands upon EPA's rationale for not monetizing benefits of pollution increases in ozone precursor VOCs or PM2.5, citing “data limitations regarding potential locations of new and modified sources affected by this rulemaking,” and other issues.
EPA “did not perform air quality modeling for this rule needed to quantify the forgone ozone benefits associated with forgone VOC emission reductions,” nor did it believe it could quantify the effects of the additional PM2.5 to which VOC's contribute, the RIA says.
The Trump EPA rationale is not unlike that in the RIA for the 2016 NSPS, which stated that, while avoided VOC emissions would reduce health effects, “we have determined that quantification of the VOC-related health benefits cannot be accomplished for this rule in a defensible way.”
The Obama analysis added: “This is not to imply that these benefits do not exist; rather, it is a reflection of the difficulties in modeling the direct and indirect impacts of the reductions in emissions for this industrial sector with the data currently available.”
Understating Damages
But unlike the Obama rule -- where such an omission conservatively downplays the benefits of a regulation that was justified solely on climate grounds -- the omission in the case of the Trump EPA proposal has the effect of understating potential health damages from easing the rule.
Schneider contends that, regardless of whether the Obama EPA's reasoning was valid, it is now overtaken by the July publication of the peer-reviewed paper by EPA staff on oil and gas pollution in Environmental Science and Technology.
Titled, “Assessing the Human Health PM 2.5 and Ozone Impacts from U.S Oil and Natural Gas Sector Emissions in 2025,” the analysis estimates that the sector's emissions would cause almost 2,000 deaths nationally in 2025.
“To our knowledge, this manuscript is the first reported benefit per-ton estimates for precursor emissions to PM2.5, or ozone for the oil and natural gas sector derived from full form photochemical grid modeling,” the paper says.
The analysis adds that because air quality impacts from the sector are “spatially heterogeneous,” the paper reports state-by-state estimates of PM2.5- and ozone-related premature deaths, describing particular “mortality burden” in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma, Illinois, California, Michigan, Colorado, Indiana, and Louisiana.
CATF's Schneider suggests the issue is likely to surface in comments on EPA's proposal.
“What we would say [to EPA] is your staff [in the July analysis] was able to determine what the footprint is from this industry. There are projections about where this industry is going to grow. You could have attributed increased emissions to those areas and calculated the health impacts,” he says.
More broadly, Schneider says the analysis underscores that EPA's proposal is moving “in the wrong direction” from both a local pollution health perspective and a climate perspective, where it would throttle back methane cuts that are the “cheapest tons available” for addressing climate change, given methane's status as a potent GHG and the payback to industry of capturing methane.
Another way EPA downplays the environmental cost of its NSPS revisions is through its “interim” changes to the Obama-era “social cost of methane” calculation that quantifies the benefits of rules that cut GHGs. Trump-era changes to the metric focus only on domestic, not global, impacts.
The regulatory preamble, for example, suggests that the proposal's cumulative net benefits from 2019-2025, assuming a 3 percent discount rate, are $431 million, taking into account $54 million in costs from forgone domestic climate benefits.
This narrower approach to valuing GHG reductions has been included in other EPA climate rollbacks -- most notably its proposal to scale back the Clean Power Plan utility GHG rule -- but it is magnified in the methane NSPS because that was the Obama EPA's first rule to rely solely on climate-related benefits in its monetized cost-benefit analysis.
The domestic-only approach, which EPA notes results in benefits about 85 percent lower than a global approach, thus has a major effect on the rule's cost-benefit review.
However, text buried in an “appendix” in the RIA indicates that calculating global climate impacts -- a calculation that longstanding White House guidance allows for -- yields forgone benefits of $110 million in 2025 alone.
That suggests that if EPA relied on global rather than domestic climate benefits, it would result in a situation in which the proposal results in more forgone benefits than it saves in costs.
'Tremendous Uncertainty'
An American Petroleum Industry (API) source, meanwhile, tells Inside EPA with respect to the EPA emissions study that it suffers from “tremendous uncertainty and questions,” including that it is based on emissions in the 2011 National Emissions Inventory that could have “very little” similarity to present day emissions given that industry continues to reduce emissions.
At the same time, environmentalists have also highlighted recent analysis showing that the inventory understates overall methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
The API source also questions the assumed health impacts from the sector for other reasons, including that many of the assumed effects from secondary PM2.5 spurred by additional VOCs depend on emissions increases likely to be occurring in geographic areas with low PM2.5 concentrations. The source says this means the health effects of the higher emissions may be overstated.
The source defends the supporting analysis for the proposal as “well prepared.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-draws-fire-downplaying-health-ghg-risks-methane-rule
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NYC, London, D.C. Have All Seen Peak Emissions — Report
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
Twenty-seven major cities around the world may already have seen their greenhouse gas emissions peak, according to a new study.
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London and Washington, D.C., are among the cities whose emissions have fallen more than 10 percent from their historic peaks, according to an analysis released yesterday by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a city-focused climate advocacy organization founded by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and championed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The group examined its 96 member cities' emissions inventories and found 27 cities that have reduced emissions at least 10 percent from their peak levels.
In order to qualify, the cities had to have peaked at least six years ago, and the peak had to be at least 10 percent higher than the most recent year of emissions data. Those thresholds are thought to be high enough to exclude natural variations due to weather or other short-term shifts.
"We feel fairly confident in the methodology," said Michael Doust, C40's program director for measurement and planning. "We think the 10 percent figure and the five-year delay means it takes it out of the range of natural variability or any other changes that could affect emissions."
San Francisco, for example, had peak emissions of about 8 million metric tons in 2000. Since then, its inventory shows steadily declining emissions, mostly due to changes in the electricity mix. In 2016, the city's emissions were roughly 6 million metric tons.
Sydney, which reported a 20 percent emissions cut between 2007 and 2017, credits energy efficiency retrofits in the building sector with saving 1,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year in 2017 compared with 2006 levels.
The full list of cities is: Barcelona, Spain; Basel, Switzerland; Berlin; Boston; Chicago; Copenhagen, Denmark; Heidelberg, Germany; London; Los Angeles; Madrid; Melbourne, Australia; Milan; Montreal; New Orleans; New York City; Oslo, Norway; Paris; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Rome; San Francisco; Stockholm; Sydney; Toronto; Vancouver, British Columbia; Warsaw, Poland; and Washington, D.C.
The group found that 20 other cities may have also peaked but didn't meet both thresholds of peaking by 2012 and declining more than 10 percent from the peak. An additional 66 cities are also on track to peak by 2020, according to the group.
Tokyo didn't make the cut because it has been replacing its nuclear generation with natural gas since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Although Tokyo's energy consumption in 2016 was 21 percent below the 2000 peak, its emissions were only 7 percent below their 2003 peak.
"They've peaked their energy consumption," Doust said, "but emissions have not gone down as drastically because of changes in the national grid, which is increasingly gas rather than nuclear."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/14/stories/1060097035
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Gina Mccarthy: Stop Climate Change to Save Kids
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
Children are among the most vulnerable to climate change, facing greater risks of asthma attacks and mental health problems as well as developmental delays and changes in their genetic makeup, Gina McCarthy warned yesterday.
"Climate change is not an equal opportunity killer; it actually focuses on our children and on our elderly, because they are the ones that are the most susceptible to the impacts of pollution," said McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator under former President Obama.
She emphasized that climate change is not an elitist concern, but has implications for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income and minority populations.
"We need to make climate change personal," McCarthy said. "What we want to talk about is ways of addressing pollution that is impacting our kids."
She gave a keynote address at a side event of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco yesterday. She then moderated one of two panels on how children are affected by climate change.
While the public may be familiar with impacts like flooding and sea-level rise related to climate change, rising temperatures also put children at greater risks of asthma attacks and allergies. Exposure to air pollution in utero can have adverse effects on developing organs and can lead to premature birth, said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, co-director of C-CHANGE at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"It is sort of shocking: Even before a child comes into this world, a substantial portion of their life is already determined," he said.
A less recognized impact of climate change is the trauma to children from events like major storms and fires that can destroy homes and uproot families, according to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness.
"You are increasing the frequency of traumatic events, which make children more vulnerable," she said.
Harris noted that toxic stress can increase the risk of illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer's disease. It can even change how a child's genetic code is expressed. Her organization's website, stresshealth.org, offers pointers for how parents can identify children affected by toxic stress and ways they can mitigate its effects.
The panelists emphasized the importance of bringing greater public awareness of the health effects of climate change.
McCarthy recalled being surprised by people's reactions to certain threats.
"I found something I really didn't anticipate: If you say premature death, it's a blank face. But if you say asthma attacks, people say, 'What?'"
Bernstein said medical schools should teach medical residents about heat waves and how they can increase emergency room visits related to asthma. Another lesson related to heat waves is the danger of death they pose to patients who take medications that inhibit sweating or urination.
"Doctors need to know how it will affect their ability to do their job," Bernstein said.
The American public can be successful at making local changes, said Dr. Kari Nadeau, director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University.
She explained how residents in Fresno, Calif., organized to replace diesel school buses after they saw asthma rates rise among their children. They were able to reduce incidents of asthma by as much as 50 percent in their community.
"I think we can all be instruments of change. Beyond politics, people are going to pay attention to things that affect their lives," said Nadeau.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/14/stories/1060097029
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Warren Wants Companies to Disclose More About Climate Change Impacts
Sep 14, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to require corporations to disclose to the public and investors about how much they are contributing to climate change and what risks it causes their businesses.
Warren, seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2020, has largely built her political career on pushing progressive policies on corporate accountability, like her role launching the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
She proposed the Climate Risk Disclosure Act Friday to raise public awareness of how dependent companies are on fossil fuels and how the effects of climate change could hurt them.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would dictate the exact rules, but Warren’s bill spells out sweeping standards for the disclosures, including companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, their fossil fuel holdings, how climate policies would impact them and how climate affects like rising sea levels could hurt them.
“Climate change is a real and present danger — and it will have an enormous effect on the value of company assets,” Warren said in a statement.
“Investors need more information about climate-related risks so they can make the right decisions with their money,” she said. “Our bill will use market forces to speed up the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy — reducing the odds of an environmental and financial disaster without spending a dime of taxpayer money.”
Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Ed Markey (Mass), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Harris (Calif.), Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Merkley (Ore.) co-sponsored the legislation.
Many big companies such as oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP already make some public disclosures about their climate impacts and risks. But Warren's bill would expand those and mandate them.
The legislation is very unlikely to pass while Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
But it nonetheless provides a clear statement of Warren’s policy position on corporate America’s role in climate change ahead of the the 2020 campaign season, and potentially how she would seek to steer SEC policy as president.
The legislation has the support of former Vice President Al Gore and environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace USA.
“Our addiction to fossil fuels has led to a ballooning sub-prime carbon bubble that threatens to strand assets in every sector of the American economy. Sen. Warren clearly understands this and is demonstrating strong leadership by introducing legislation to assess the financial risks of climate change and require that they be disclosed to the public,” Gore said in a statement.
Greens and Democrats have in recent years ramped up their efforts to increase corporate accountability for climate change and hold fossil fuel companies and their investors responsible.
Those efforts have largely focused on the courts, including lawsuits against big oil companies. But the cases have had, at best, mixed results in punishing firms.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406700-warren-wants-companies-to-disclose-more-about-climate-change
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