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ACC AM 17/09/18

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Downstream Chemical Investment Linked to Shale Hits $200 Billion
Sep 14, 2018 | Marcellus Drilling News

Earlier this week the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced that U.S. chemical and plastics industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable domestic supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale formations has surpassed $200 billion.
(ACC Mentioned) Corrected: US Rolls Back Tariffs on Raft of Chemicals
Sep 17, 2018 | ICIS
By Tom Brown

Correction: The ICIS article headlined “US quietly rolls back raft of China chemicals tariffs” dated 14 September 2018 was clarified throughout, as it had suggested that the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill rolled back the China tariffs being imposed by US President Donald Trump.
(ACC Mentioned) New US Law to Ease Tariffs Will Not Halt Duties Against Chinese Products: ACC
Sep 14, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays

President Donald Trump has signed into law a bill that will reduce or suspend tariffs on roughly 1,660 products imported into the US, more than half of which are chemicals and plastics.
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Signs Tariff-Cutting Bill Into Law
Sep 17, 2018 | Politico
By Sabrina Rodriguez

President Donald Trump signed legislation on Thursday that would reduce tariffs on nearly 1,700 imported products used by U.S. manufacturers — an uncharacteristic move for the leader who has shown an affinity for imposing tariffs on foreign goods.
The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Chemical Maker
Sep 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Rick Mullin

News this year of the sale of PCI Synthesisand Ampac Fine Chemicals to French and South Korean companies, respectively, came as something of a surprise.
EPA Science Policy Purged Researchers, Advocates Tell Judge
Sep 15, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adrianne Appel

An EPA policy barring scientists who receive agency grants from providing advice on scientific matters is arbitrary and amounts to a purging of top researchers, a scientists’ group told a federal judge Sept. 14.

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

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) BPA Alternatives are Also Harmful, Researcher Says
Sep 17, 2018 | The Daily Evergreen
By Hannah Welzbacker

WSU researchers have found that alternatives to the chemical bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, are causing genetic abnormalities in mice.
(ACC Mentioned) Exposure To Safe Levels Of BPA May Still Affect Insulin Response In Humans
Sep 14, 2018 | DLife.com
By Suvarna Sheth

In a first of its kind study, researchers have found that exposure to levels of bisphenol A (BPA) deemed to be “safe” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may actually be enough to have implications for the development of Type 2 diabetes.
(ACC Mentioned) Chinese Legal Case Heightens Formaldehyde Concerns
Sep 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Ellen Tatham

Concerns over ambient levels of formaldehyde in newly built or renovated flats and schools in China have been heightened by a high-profile legal case.
Bayer May Face Next Roundup Cancer Trial Sooner Than Planned
Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joel Rosenblatt

Bayer AG isn’t counting on another trial over its Roundup herbicide until February, but an elderly couple who say exposure to the weed killer gave them cancer has other ideas.
PFAS Suits, Enforcement On Rise Amid Lack Of Standards, Attorney Says
Sep 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan

As EPA continues to grapple with whether to craft an enforceable cleanup standard for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), private litigation and regulatory enforcement related to contamination from the substances increases due in part to a lack of such standards, an industry attorney says.
European Parliament Votes in Favour of Microplastics Ban
Sep 14, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer

The European Parliament has backed calls to adopt a ban on microplastics intentionally added to cosmetics, personal care products, detergents and cleaning products by 2020.

Energy News

U.S. Nudges Merkel to Build LNG Terminals for `Exploding’ Market
Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment
By Matthew Miller and Brian Parkin

The U.S. urged Germany to get started building infrastructure for liquefied natural gas and tap a growing market that will be crucial in cutting carbon pollution.
Shell to Lay Out Targets to Manage Methane Emissions
Sep 17, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah Kent

Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.37% PLC said it will announce plans to lay out targets to manage its emissions of the greenhouse gas methane Monday, joining a handful of major oil companies that have made similar pledges this year.
Will It End In Tears? Enron Author Examines Fracking Boom
Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee

Halfway through her new book, Bethany McLean offers an epitaph for the late Aubrey McClendon, one of the pioneers of the fracking boom.
Pipeline that Exploded in Pennsylvania Part of Push to Build Fracking-Reliant Petrochemical Network
Sep 15, 2018 | DeSmog (In Truthout)
By Sharon Kelly

Just before dawn Monday morning, Chuck Belczyk thought a jet had crashed near his home roughly 25 miles outside Pittsburgh — until he heard the sound of hissing gas.
An Old Problem: Aging Pipelines Lead to Deadly Explosions
Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

The natural gas pipeline in the United States is vast, sprawling across 2.5 million miles in a complex pressurized system that delivers a quarter of the energy consumed nationwide, according to the American Gas Association.
Deadly Gas Explosions near Boston Put Focus on Pipe Safety
Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik, Rachel Adams-Heard, and Terrence Dopp

Federal investigators were dispatched to three towns just outside Boston after dozens of explosions and fires along NiSource Inc.’s natural gas network left at least one person dead and 13 injured and displaced over 8,000 customers.

Chemical Security News

Regulators Keep Watch on Toxic Waste Sites During Hurricane
Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

As Hurricane Florence spins inland, environmental regulators are monitoring more than three dozen toxic waste sites in the storm's path, as well as scores of low-lying water- and sewage-treatment plants at risk of flooding.
Hearing to Examine Keeping Hackers Out of U.S. Infrastructure
Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Blake Sobczak

Lawmakers are meeting behind closed doors tomorrow to discuss the government's handling of hacking threats to critical networks like those running the power grid and gas pipelines.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

Decade-Old Rail Safety Measure Will Take Longer to Implement
Sep 15, 2018 | Route Fifty
By Dave Nyczepir

Most railroads plan to request a federal extension on implementing a legally required safety measure, positive train control, beyond 2018, according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.

Environment News

Warren Calls for More Corporate Reporting on Climate Risks (1)
Sep 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrea Vittorio

Public companies would have to provide investors with more information on risks they face from climate change under new legislation from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
EPA Presses Appeals Court to Keep Case on Hold
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Jeremy P. Jacobs

EPA today urged a federal appeals court to keep a major lawsuit on the Obama-era Clean Power Plan on hold as the agency moves forward with a replacement.
EPA Proposes Changing Clinton-Era Standards
Sep 14, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly

In a fresh step to relax regulations on power plants and other large industrial polluters, EPA is moving to change Clinton-era requirements for monitoring nitrogen oxides emissions.
'America First'? Climate Rule Tests Trump Pledge
Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Maxine Joselow

Since taking office, President Trump has repeatedly touted his "America First" policies. But in at least one significant climate battle, his administration is siding with foreign companies over American ones.
API Pushes EPA For Pruitt's 'Sweeping Change' To Ozone NAAQS Review
Sep 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is pushing EPA to implement a “sweeping change” to its ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) review process based on an overhaul outlined by former agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, including an “aggressive” review timetable that would condense several scientific reviews.
California Had Its Own Climate Summit. Now What?
Sep 15, 2018 | The New York TImes
By Brad Plumer

For years, presidents and prime ministers have been the public face of the fight against climate change, gathering at United Nations summit meetings and pressuring each other to reduce emissions.
The Oceans are in Danger. We Need to Do More Than Ban Plastic Straws.
Sep 14, 2018 | The Washington Post - Opinion
By John Podesta

Over the past year, the movement to ban plastic straws has seen tremendous success.
We Don’t Need More Doomsday Climate Predictions. We Need Solutions — Like This One.
Sep 17, 2018 | The Washington Post
By David Von Drehle

Like most people (according to polls), I believe greenhouse gases trap heat — a fact easily proved by experiments simple enough to perform at home.

Congressional Hearings

Hearing on Infrastructure Security
Sep 18, 2018 | Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity

Location: 217 Capitol Visitor Center/ 2:30 PM

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Downstream Chemical Investment Linked to Shale Hits $200 Billion

Sep 14, 2018 | Marcellus Drilling News

Earlier this week the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced that U.S. chemical and plastics industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable domestic supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale formations has surpassed $200 billion. That is a staggering number! Incomprehensible. Since 2010, 333 chemical industry projects cumulatively valued at $202.4 billion have been announced, with 53% of the investment completed or under construction, and 41% in the planning phase. Some 68% of the total is foreign direct investment or includes a foreign partner. Other countries love our shale! As good as all that is, consider this: ACC analysis shows that the $202.4 billion in capital spending could lead to $292 billion per year in new chemical and plastics industry output and support 786,000 jobs across the economy by 2025! Behold the miracle of shale fracking. Here’s the mind-blowing, fantasticly good news…
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) today announced that U.S. chemical and plastics industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable domestic supplies of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale formations has surpassed $200 billion.Cumulative Announced Chemical Industry Investments From Shale Gas, December 2010-September 2018 (click for larger version)
Since 2010, 333 chemical industry projects cumulatively valued at $202.4 billion have been announced, with 53 percent of the investment completed or under construction and 41 percent in the planning phase. Fully 68 percent of the total is foreign direct investment or includes a foreign partner. Project types include new facilities and capacity expansions.
“This is an exciting milestone for American chemistry and further evidence that shale gas is a powerful engine of manufacturing growth,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “The U.S. remains the most attractive place in the world to invest in chemical manufacturing. We look forward to continuing to transform energy into a stronger economy and new jobs.”
ACC analysis shows that $202.4 billion in capital spending could lead to $292 billion per year in new chemical and plastics industry output and support 786,000 jobs across the economy by 2025.
These include 79,000 chemical industry jobs, 352,000 jobs in supplier industries, and 355,000 jobs in communities where workers spend their wages. Additional, temporary jobs are created during the capital investment phase.
Robust supplies of NGLs, especially ethane, are key to the U.S. chemical industry’s competitiveness. NGLs are the main feedstock for basic petrochemicals and plastics in the United States, while companies overseas mostly use naphtha, which is oil-based. Since feedstock comprises about 75 percent of the cost of ethylene production, lower prices favor U.S. chemical makers in global markets.
A note of caution is in order. U.S. manufacturers often rely on inputs that are not available or made in the U.S. to create products that cost less, yet perform at the high level our downstream customers have come to expect from us. Protectionist trade policies such as tariffs and quotas unnecessarily raise the costs of those inputs, deter innovation and economic growth, and could ultimately weaken our country’s competitive advantage.
Today’s announcement provides another update to ACC’s first report, “Shale Gas, Competitiveness, and New U.S. Chemical Industry Investment – An Analysis of Announced Projects.” Released in May 2013, the report analyzed 97 chemical and plastics industry projects totaling $72 billion in potential investment that had been announced as of March 2013. As new projects are announced, we update our tally of announced projects and cumulative investment.
ACC analysis employs the IMPLAN input-output methodology, an economic model that quantifies interdependencies among industries or economic sectors. IMPLAN is used by government agencies including the Army Corp of Engineers, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and over 20 others, and by over 250 colleges and universities, local governments, non-profits, consulting companies, and other private sector companies.*
*American Chemistry Council (Sep 11, 2018) – U.S. Chemical Industry Investment Linked To Shale Gas Reaches $200 Billion
https://marcellusdrilling.com/2018/09/downstream-chemical-investment-linked-to-shale-hits-200-billion/

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(ACC Mentioned) Corrected: US Rolls Back Tariffs on Raft of Chemicals

Sep 17, 2018 | ICIS

By Tom Brown

Correction: The ICIS article headlined “US quietly rolls back raft of China chemicals tariffs” dated 14 September 2018 was clarified throughout, as it had suggested that the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill rolled back the China tariffs being imposed by US President Donald Trump. The bill applies to earlier tariffs imposed on a variety of countries before the trade war began. A corrected headline and story follows.
LONDON (ICIS)--US President Donald Trump has approved the rollback of sanctions on numerous chemicals 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 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 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.
Importantly, the MTB law does not void the US 25% tariffs on a total of $50bn in Chinese imports in rounds 1 and 2 which are additional tariffs. It also would not void any planned US tariffs on $200bn in Chinese imports in round 3. It simply reduces the normal rate on all imports listed on the MTB to zero or by a significant amount.
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 US was softening its stance on China, as the two powers prepare to re-enter talks.
"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/corrected-us-rolls-back-tariffs-on-raft-of-chemicals/

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(ACC Mentioned) New US Law to Ease Tariffs Will Not Halt Duties Against Chinese Products: ACC

Sep 14, 2018 | Platts

By Kristen Hays

President Donald Trump has signed into law a bill that will reduce or suspend tariffs on roughly 1,660 products imported into the US, more than half of which are chemicals and plastics.
However, the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill of 2018, or MTB, which Trump signed late Thursday, does not apply to new so-called Section 301 tariffs on Chinese products implemented in July and August and potentially another chemical-heavy round that could be implemented as soon as late September.
The process to suspend or reduce duties on products listed in the MTB had been ongoing for about five years, said Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, in an interview Friday. While it rolls back tariffs on products already in the US tariff schedule, MTB will not erase additional Section 301 duties, he said.
For example, if a chemical or product that was already on the schedule had a 5% tariff, MTB will reduce or suspend it. If the same product faces a new 25% duty imposed August 23 as part of $16 billion in tariffs on Chinese products amid escalating US-China trade tensions, MTB will not apply. The product would have a 25% duty -- or slightly more -- rather than a 30% duty because MTB would erase or reduce the duty that was already in place, Brzytwa explained.
"It doesn't take away the president's authority to apply these additional duties," he said of MTB.
Matt Francoeur, regulatory and sales specialist with The Chemical Company, a global chemical supplier, said in an interview Friday that the last MTB expired in 2012, and the version that became the bill Trump signed Thursday was introduced in November last year. He said the new law likely made it through Congress to Trump so quickly in response to tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on imports so far this year, starting with steel and aluminum in March.
The ACC has vehemently argued against imposing more tariffs on Chinese chemical and plastic products, saying the additional cost threatens growth in petrochemical manufacturing and infrastructure by siphoning demand for US chemical and resin exports.
"Depending on the elasticity of demand (responsiveness) for US products in China, the retaliatory tariffs could result in substantial losses for American producers, their employees, and for the communities that depend on the economic activity that the chemicals and plastics industry generates," The ACC said in a report last week.
ACC said Trump signing MTB into law showed support for US chemical manufacturers that rely on foreign inputs to retain their production cost advantage over other regions, and hoped that it would help Trump "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."
So far, $50 billion in new Section 301 tariffs on Chinese products have been implemented in two parts: $34 billion on July 6 and $16 billion on August 23. China responded with retaliatory tariffs on US goods of the same value on the same dates.
Another $200 billion in US tariffs on Chinese goods is under consideration, with China ready to retaliate with $60 billion in duties on US goods.
Of the new tariffs in place, the $16 billion list was chemical heavy, and China's response included two grades of polyethylene that make up 80% of the 9.2 million mt/year of known US polyethylene capacity starting up along the US Gulf Coast in 2017 through next year and beyond. All or most of that new output will be exported, and most of that is targeted to Asia - mainly China and India - which have the highest expected demand growth in the world, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/091418-new-us-law-to-ease-tariffs-will-not-halt-duties-against-chinese-products-acc

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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Signs Tariff-Cutting Bill Into Law

Sep 17, 2018 | Politico

By Sabrina Rodriguez

TRUMP SIGNS TARIFF-CUTTING BILL INTO LAW: President Donald Trump signed legislation on Thursday that would reduce tariffs on nearly 1,700 imported products used by U.S. manufacturers — an uncharacteristic move for the leader who has shown an affinity for imposing tariffs on foreign goods.
The bill, which House lawmakers passed last week, temporarily reduces or suspends tariffs on various imported raw materials and intermediate goods that are not produced in the U.S. The Miscellaneous Tariff Bill has long received strong support from congressional trade leaders and major business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but it expired in 2012 after it became entangled in the House Republican ban on earmarks.
A win for U.S. manufacturers: The American Chemical Council welcomed Trump’s signature as a win for American chemical manufacturers “who rely on select foreign inputs to retain our position as the world’s leading, low-cost producer of chemicals.” Chemicals make up more than half of the products that will see tariff reductions, the group 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,” ACC said in a statement.
“President Trump has freed manufacturers and other businesses from a pointless $1 million a day tax,” said National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons. “Now that the MTB is law, manufacturers can better compete against companies in China, Europe and elsewhere.”
The China connection: Trump’s decision to sign the bill seems at odds with his trade actions in recent months, as he has slapped duties on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods and threatens to impose duties on another $200 billion or more.
Although the MTB tariff cuts apply to all countries, the measure would suspend duties on about 150 products found on the list of $50 billion worth of Chinese imports slapped with duties. The bill also would cover roughly 1,000 Chinese products that are targeted on Trump’s list worth $200 billion, Rep. Bill Pascrell said during House debate on the measure.
Doug has more here.
IT’S FRIDAY, SEPT. 14! Welcome to Morning Trade, where your host hopes everyone has a safe and dry weekend after far too many years of dealing with hurricane conditions in Miami. Got any news or tips while stuck inside? Send it to srodriguez@politico.com or @sabrod123.
NAVIGATE THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF THE CANADA-U.S. TRADE RELATIONSHIP. Now live, POLITICO Pro Canada, Pro’s latest subscription-based product, provides news and policy analysis on the deeply integrated Canada-U.S. relationship. Created for business leaders and policy professionals, coverage focuses on federal and state policies that affect bilateral economic interests and government relations. Visit www.politicopro.com/canada to learn more.
U.S., MEXICO COULD FACE ROADBLOCKS WITHOUT CANADA: The U.S. and Mexico may be willing to go ahead on two-way NAFTA text without Canada, but that could mean revisiting some of the thorniest issues that were thought to be settled between the two neighbors.
The U.S. and Mexico will have to modify some of their compromises on issues such as automotive rules of origin. Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo acknowledged that four or five issues would need to be reopened, as some issues were addressed under the notion that it would be a three-way deal.
“I don’t know if [the U.S. and Mexico] can work out those details and then convert that into the legal text in time,” said Antonio Ortiz-Mena, the former head of economic affairs at the Mexican Embassy and current senior vice president of Albright Stonebridge Group. Rules of origin is a “big political issue, a big technical issue,” he added.
Crunch time: Mexican negotiators returned to Washington on Wednesday to work on the legal text that must be turned over to Congress by Sept. 30 if all sides want the deal signed before Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto leaves office. Canadian negotiators are also in town trying to reach a breakthrough that would allow for Canada to be included in a new North American trade pact.
"I don't think there's a Plan B. They have to have the text by" Sept. 30, said Antonio Ortiz-Mena, the former head of economic affairs at the Mexican Embassy and current senior vice president of Albright Stonebridge Group. "Even if it’s a trilateral deal, they cannot just reach agreement in principle. The handshake has to be translated into legal language."
Guajardo said a deal with Canada must happen soon, as negotiators need “a pair of weeks, 10 days in sight to organize what’s going to be presented in any of the scenarios.”
Mexico “played the cards on the idea that a deal was better than no deal, and that Canada would have enough time to hop on,” a source close to the talks told Morning Trade. “But it’s the middle of September and I don’t see Canada in the rush I think [Mexico was] hoping for.”
Mexico sells both scenarios as a win: Guajardo and other Mexican officials have reiterated their desire for a trilateral agreement, but they see an upside to a bilateral deal — much needed certainty in the bilateral relationship.
“The agreement in principle that we closed with the US is positive for Mexico because it preserves free trade and modernizes our trade agreement in key areas for today's economy such as #digital trade; #telecoms; and #SMEs, among others #NAFTAWorks,” Mexico’s chief NAFTA negotiator, Kenneth Smith Ramos, postedon Twitter on Thursday evening. More from your host here.
TRUMP KEEPS UP TOUGH TALK ON CHINA: Trump downplayed on Thursday the likelihood of the U.S. and China reaching a breakthrough in the trade war amid reports that the world’s two largest economies may relaunch trade talks later this month.
“The Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home. If we meet, we meet?” Trump posted on Twitter.
But an invite has been sent: Despite Trump’s tough talk, White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow confirmed that discussions are ongoing to potentially hold another round of talks, which would be led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
“It’s just an invitation as far as I know. There’s some discussions and information that we received that the Chinese government — the top of the Chinese government — wished to pursue talks,” Kudlow told Fox Business, adding that he considered talking “a plus.”
Beijing welcomes the gesture: The Chinese government said Thursday it received the invitation and welcomed Washington’s goodwill gesture. Gao Feng, a spokesman with China’s Ministry of Commerce, said “an escalating trade war is not beneficial to the two nations.”
REPUBLICAN SENATORS YEARN FOR TPP RE-ENTRY: Republican farm state senators on Thursday urged Trump to consider rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, complaining his strategy of negotiating bilateral trade deals is too slow to make up for the lost market share caused by his tariffs. “Farmers and ranchers who depend on sending much of what they produce across borders are living in an economic nightmare because their products have been targeted by retaliatory tariffs,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.
Chief U.S. agricultural negotiator Gregg Doud did his best to reassure the panel that the administration is looking to make bilateral trade deals in Southeast Asia and Africa, and possibly with Japan. But senators on both sides of the aisle said the bilateral approach is too slow to give much of a lift to commodity prices buffeted by retaliatory action against Trump’s tariffs.
“I think we should take into consideration a blend of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements as a good strategy going forward here because knocking these pins over one at a time in a series fashion is going to take a lot of time, and we’re running out of time in farm and ranch country,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said. To read more, click here.
THE AGRICULTURAL CASE AGAINST CHINA: Typical of any trade hearing, Doud fielded questions and offered views on a variety of subjects, including the administration’s firm position that agriculture should be part of any future trade negotiations with the EU.
Turning to China, he acknowledged concerns that Trump’s trade war jeopardizes a market worth about $20 billion to U.S. farmers in recent years. But he also argued that China maintains far too many barriers against U.S. farm goods.
"They don't buy the wheat they said they would buy when they became a member of the WTO. They don't buy the corn. They buy no rice from us. Their tariff on distillers grains is 80 percent. Their tariff on ethanol is 70 percent. They don't buy any poultry from us because of [bird flu concerns],” Doud said.
A small victory came after China agreed last year to open its market to U.S. beef exports for the first time since 2003, but Doud said it was a hard-fought change.
“We finally got a thimbleful of beef in there after 15 years of me personally working on that. The grain sorghum thing is difficult, and we aren't selling them what we think would be a billion dollars’ worth of pet food. The point being with China is that they need to change their behavior." For more, click here.
USDA BREAKS DOWN TRUMP’S TRADE AID FORMULA: The Agriculture Department released a paper on Thursday explaining its economic analysis on how it calculated the payments farmers will receive as part of the trade aid package. The analysis comes after some agricultural industry leaders have argued that growers are not getting their fair share of the $6.3 billion aid package aimed at helping farmers hit by retaliatory tariffs tied to Trump’s tariffs against China and allies, such as Canada and the European Union.
USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson, who testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday, faced repeated questions from lawmakers about the methods USDA used when deciding how to dole out $4.7 billion in direct payments to farmers.
A look at the numbers: The overwhelming share of direct payments — some $3.6 billion — is going to soybean growers. But other growers and producers — particularly corn and dairy — expressed frustration when USDA released the numbers last month, arguing that the plan barely covers any of their losses.
USDA examined "gross trade damage" instead of "price methodology" when reaching its conclusions, Johansson said. That explains why soybean farmers received the largest amount of assistance, because their large export market has been hit hardest, he said before the paper was released.
More aid could be coming: USDA has budgeted up to $12 billion in aid, with the remaining money to be spent if farmers continue to suffer from retaliatory tariffs.
“The second part will be announced, if necessary, in December and may account for other factors, such as new tariff levels, regional basis effects, or other market conditions that may have mitigated some of the trade damages calculated above," the paper says.
NO HILL TIME FOR LIGHTHIZER TODAY: Lighthizer’s meeting with House Ways and Means members this morning has been postponed, a Hill aide confirmed on Thursday. Lighthizer was expected to brief committee members on the status of trade talks with Canada and other pending issues. This marks the second scheduled meeting between Ways and Means and Lighthizer in less than two weeks that has been postponed.
REPORT: COMPANIES SHOULD PRESS FOR OPEN TRADE, INVESTMENT AMID GLOBAL TRADING CRISIS: Trump’s trade actions will likely divert certain trade and investment opportunities away from the U.S. and to other countries, leaving American companies at a disadvantage, according to a new report by former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and former EU trade chief Peter Mandelson. Gutierrez is chairman of Albright Stonebridge Group and Mandelson is chairman of Global Counsel.
“In the current environment, global firms cannot assume that their home governments understand the value of an open, rules-based global trading system,” the report explains. “Companies should also invest in increasing coordination and coalition activities across sectors and nationalities to build out constituencies that support maintaining an open, rules-based global trading system.
With increased tensions, it’s up to multinational firms to push for open trade and make sure governments know their contributions to national economies, the report says.
“There is a risk that U.S. businesses can get caught up in an anti-American wave,” Gutierrez told Morning Trade. “We’re telling companies — don’t make big strategic decisions until you have to … and have the right networks inside of countries.”
INTERNATIONAL OVERNIGHT
— USTR negotiator says ending Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs on agriculture is on a separate track from NAFTA, POLITICO Pro reports.
— Trump plans to rebrand NAFTA as the “USMC” trade pact — named after the three countries — and will drop the “C” if Canada isn’t on board, The Wall Street Journal reports.
— Chinese investment faces backlash in around the world – not just the U.S., South China Morning Post reports.
— U.S. negotiators may need to add Canadian potato dumping to NAFTA to-do list, the National Post reports.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-trade/2018/09/14/trump-signs-tariff-cutting-bill-into-law-341200

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The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Chemical Maker

Sep 16, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Rick Mullin

News this year of the sale of PCI Synthesisand Ampac Fine Chemicals to French and South Korean companies, respectively, came as something of a surprise. Both drug contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) had been doing well, investing in growth and honing a focus on technologies and services that are in high demand.
On the other hand, the deals are only the latest in a string of acquisitions marking an evolution in the pharmaceutical chemical service sector toward large global operations offering a menu of services from early-stage process design to finished-drug manufacturing.
Notably, many of these large operations are based outside the U.S. In the U.S., by contrast, independent pharmaceutical CMOs have nearly vanished.
Many of the acquiring firms are European, which is not surprising given that contract pharmaceutical chemical production was pioneered by family-owned European companies such as Fabbrica Italiana Sintetici and Olon in Italy and Hovione in Portugal. The largest early player, Switzerland’s Lonza, remains dominant.
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“Who’s left?” asks James Bruno, president of Chemical & Pharmaceutical Solutions, a consulting firm serving the sector. Watching the nonstop activity in the U.S. and Canada over the past five years, he saw financial buyers and diversified service firms competing to pay top dollar for U.S. operations. The activity was fueled by a long stretch of profitability in the business.
“The only reason this is going to slow down is because there isn’t anything left to buy. Pretty soon there will be only one company left,” Bruno says, suggesting it might be Cambrex, a publicly traded U.S. firm that in 2016 acquired PharmaCore, a smaller U.S. player. More recently, Cambrex acquired Halo Pharma, a finished-dose drug contractor.
The acquired companies are not physically disappearing. For example, BioVectra—purchased in 2013 by the biotech firm Questcor, which was in turn acquired by Mallinckrodt—now operates as an independent unit of a diversified company.
Many others are being integrated into comprehensive service organizations in new roles that are likely to impact how they do business. In some cases, the U.S. operation becomes the front end, offering process design and small-scale manufacturing for projects that are transferred to other divisions for subsequent work.
A typical example is Ricerca, which the Italian firm Olon bought last year to gain a pipeline of early-stage projects from U.S. biotech firms. “It gives them an opportunity to take in projects early on that they wouldn’t normally have done if it was just Olon alone,” Bruno says.
The problem is that a small specialist risks losing customer focus when it becomes part of a chain of services. “Little guys suffer,” Bruno says, “because they go into a big company and they are a little bit of a lost number, all the way in the back some place.”
Guy Villax, CEO of Hovione, attributes the sweep-up of U.S. firms to the sector maturing during a boom. The CMO market, according to Villax, heated up incredibly in recent years with Lonza’s acquisition of Capsugel, and initial public offerings by Patheon, following its merger with DSM’s pharmaceutical chemicals operation, and Catalent.
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“These three things created a sector that has attractive multiples,” Villax says, referring to the ratio of the amount a buyer pays to the earnings of the acquired firm. A “massive string” of deals followed. Active pharmaceutical ingredient makers in the U.S. became prime targets for overseas companies like Novacap, SK, and Porton that were interested in a piece of the action.
“I think everybody agrees you now have a genuine sector being built,” Villax says, with “lots of money pouring in.”
Several of the targets were small, midwestern companies launched by entrepreneurs with chemistry backgrounds looking to take advantage of the fast-growing outsourcing market. One of those entrepreneurs was Michael Major, who launched Cambridge Major Laboratories (CML) in 1999 in Germantown, Wis.
“I went into it because of my love of science and research,” says Major, who describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool chemist. Success would hinge on solving process design and manufacturing problems by working closely with customers. Remaining independent was important.CONSOLIDATION
More than a dozen North American CMOs have been bought up in recent years.TARGETLOCATIONPURCHASERLOCATIONDATEGirindusOhioNitto Denko AveciaJapanNovember 2012BioVectraPrince Edward IslandQuestcor/MallinckrodtGermanyJanuary 2013Cambridge MajorWisconsinMerged with AAIU.S.October 2013CedarburgWisconsinAlbany Molecular ResearchU.S.April 2014Irix PharmaceuticalsSouth CarolinaPatheonU.S.April 2015AdesisDelawareUniversal DisplayU.S.June 2016Ash StevensMichiganPiramal Pharma SolutionsIndiaAugust 2016PharmacoreNorth CarolinaCambrexU.S.September 2016J-Star ResearchNew JerseyPortonChinaJanuary 2017Alphora ResearchOntarioEurofinsBelgiumJune 2017RicercaOhioOlonItalyJune 2017KalexsynMichiganDipharmaItalyApril 2018PCI SynthesisMassachusettsNovacapFranceJune 2018Ampac Fine ChemicalsCaliforniaSK HoldingsSouth KoreaJuly 2018
By 2007, CML’s annual sales had reached $20 million, and Major and his partner determined that further growth meant becoming a “full service” contracting firm. Planning to add formulation and regulatory consulting, Major sold a majority interest in the company to Arlington Capital Partners to access financial resources.
Major left the company shortly after that, and CML was sold to another financial buyer that merged it with AAIPharma Services, an analytical services firm in Wilmington, N.C., forming Alcami in 2013. Amid rumors of difficulties melding the two pieces together, Alcami was sold to another financial buyer this summer.
Ampac Fine Chemicals, on the other hand, emerged from a diversified corporation, American Pacific, and established itself as a specialist in simulated moving bed separations. In 2010, it acquired a fine chemicals plant in La Porte, Texas, and in 2016, it bought a Boehringer Ingelheim plant in Petersburg, Va. Ampac’s purchase by SK Holdings this year places it in a more comprehensive and global organization, according to Ampac CEO Aslam Malik.
Malik, who will remain at the helm of Ampac, says the diversified South Korean company operates on four “pillars”: chemistry, energy, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals. Ampac will join SK Biotek to compose the pharmaceutical pillar.
“What this means is that now we belong to a family, and in the family we have a sister,” Malik says. “We want to see what we can offer customers on our own, but we also see a lot of synergies.” It is possible now, he says, for SK to work on starting materials in South Korea, transfer them to Ampac for advanced chemistry, and then move the work to SK’s Swords, Ireland, plant, which SK recently purchased from Bristol-Myers Squibb, for downstream services.
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“But it’s customer first,” Malik says. “If the customer doesn’t want us to do synergies, we won’t.”
The handful of independent players remaining tend to highlight a customer-focused business model similar to the one Major touted as the basis for CML. They claim a higher level of responsiveness than U.S. operations that are part of widely dispersed service giants. They also regularly field calls from interested buyers.
“People call all the time,” says Louis Glunz, CEO of Morton Grove, Ill.-based Regis Technologies, a family-owned business. “But I’m quite happy owning the company.” Regis already has the U.S. location that overseas conglomerates covet, and it’s succeeding with a business model of R&D services in support of manufacturing, Glunz says.
The evolution of Regis’s competition from small to large poses little threat, according to Glunz. “It’s not like someone’s cornered the market on the raw material for something like steel,” he says. There is demand for Regis’s approach to chemistry services. He is expanding staff and finding a lot of talented chemists on the job market.
Joseph Miller, who recently joined Regis as vice president of chemistry and strategy after working at Patheon, says employee motivation and morale tend to be higher at small, independent firms. Top management is also more likely to be regularly involved in projects, which is appealing to Regis’s customers, most of which are located in the U.S.
“At small companies, workers know that what they do impacts the bottom line,” Miller says. “At larger companies, it’s hard to understand that.”
Bhaskar Venepalli is CEO of CiVentiChem, a Cary, N.C.-based CMO that also operates a facility in India. The company is doing well, he says, and next year will add a new clinical-scale plant in Cary certified to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s current Good Manufacturing Practices quality standard.
Recent acquisitions in the U.S. support the contention that European companies are interested in a U.S. footprint, Venepalli says, especially when it comes with a pipeline of early-stage projects. He points to Novacap, which over the past 10 years has amassed a European CMO business with the acquisitions of Chemie Uetikon in Germany and PCAS outside Paris. Novacap’s recent acquisition of PCI in Newburyport, Mass., fits the model perfectly, he says.
Prospective buyers have contacted Venepalli expressing an interest in CiVentiChem. As for his interest in selling: “Who knows? Everything is for sale,” he quips. “What I find mind boggling is, Where is the money coming from?”
Sources agree that companies have plenty of money to invest and that the venture capital market still sees the CMO business as primed for growth.
Industry watchers such as Major are even enthusiastic about the prospect of entrepreneurs launching new companies. But an investment in a start-up has a much longer payback cycle than one in an acquisition, and venture capitalists may not want to wait the five years it could take for a new plant to post a return on investment.ADVERTISEMENT
Bruno says he hears a lot of discussion about new ventures. “People talk to me all the time,” he says. “I know the rumblings are there.” Bruno says speculators point to a shift in the pharmaceutical business away from so-called blockbusters to rare disease treatments, personalized medicines, and high-potency therapies, all of which require high-tech chemistry and manufacturing services.
Could an entrepreneur succeed in launching a U.S. firm that serves the chemistry needs of small companies conducting drug discovery and development? “Absolutely,” Bruno says. “But I just don’t think we’d have the financial backing and the right market to do that.”
https://cen.acs.org/business/outsourcing/rise-fall-US-pharmaceutical-chemical/96/i37

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EPA Science Policy Purged Researchers, Advocates Tell Judge

Sep 15, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Adrianne Appel

An EPA policy barring scientists who receive agency grants from providing advice on scientific matters is arbitrary and amounts to a purging of top researchers, a scientists’ group told a federal judge Sept. 14.
The Union of Concerned Scientists challenged the 2017 policy in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, arguing that it “purged eminent scientists” from the Environmental Protection Agency’s advisory boards.
The EPA regularly assembles science advisory boards to guide it in making policy and rules. The boards include people drawn from universities, the government, and industry.
In October 2017, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued an order that scientists couldn’t sit on the agency’s advisory boards if they had received an EPA research grant.
Government attorneys representing the agency defended the rule at a hearing before Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV. The government wants to have the lawsuit tossed out.
“Members of an advisory committee serve at the pleasure of” the authority that appointed them, Daniel Bensing, attorney with the Justice Department, told the judge.
Saylor asked few questions during the testimony. Boards Guide Agency
The advisory board policy was aimed at enhancing a diversity of viewpoints by increasing the numbers of government officials and tribal members on boards, enhancing geographic diversity, and “promoting fresh perspectives,” according to a March EPA court filing.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, whose suit is one of three moving through the courts, said Pruitt’s order was designed to increase the number of industry representatives on boards, creating rules and policies that favor the business interests.
One of the plaintiffs is Elizabeth Sheppard, a professor at the University of Washington, who was culled from agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. That panel offers EPA technical advice on national standards for ground-level ozone, fine particles, and other air pollutants.
Pruitt’s order “ignores and conflicts with EPA’s own conflict of interest rules,” said Samuel Birnbaum, an attorney with Jenner & Block in Washington who is representing the Union of Concerned Scientists in the case.
The agency’s goal for the policy was to “strengthen member independence” and prevent those receiving grants from serving on boards, except if they are government employees or tribal members, according to the EPA’s court filing.
“The plaintiffs make an “extraordinary claim” that the EPA’s rule violates government ethics rules. The directive “does no such thing,”" the agency said.

The case is Union of Concerned Scientists v. Pruitt, D. Mass., No. 1:18-CV-10129, hearing 9/14/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-science-policy-purged-researchers-advocates-tell-judge

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(ACC Mentioned) BPA Alternatives are Also Harmful, Researcher Says

Sep 17, 2018 | The Daily Evergreen

By Hannah Welzbacker

WSU researchers have found that alternatives to the chemical bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, are causing genetic abnormalities in mice.
This discovery is not the first time Patricia Hunt, a professor in the WSU School of Molecular Biosciences and the lead author of a study in the latest issue of “Current Biology,” has dealt with BPA.
“I was pulled into the BPA world over 20 years ago and I have watched this whole BPA tsunami,” Hunt said.
Back then, while conducting mouse studies unrelated to BPA, Hunt and her colleagues saw sudden and dramatic change in the number of unhealthy eggs produced by female mice.
She realized a worker in the animal facility had used the wrong detergent to wash the cages, which caused them to leach BPA. The result was an increase in chromosomal abnormalities in the lab animals and their offspring.
Hunt and her team just recently discovered reproductive problems in mice kept in plastic cages made with Bisphenol S (BPS), a common replacement for BPA.
The mice exposed to BPS experienced changes in how the germ cells in their testes and ovaries copied and spliced DNA while producing sperm and eggs, Hunt said. The researchers found similar results with alterative chemicals BPF, BPAF and diphenyl sulfone. This led to a reduction in viable sperm and an increase in abnormal eggs.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct experiments without contamination from plastics, she said.
“These replacements were behaving almost exactly the same way that BPA did,” Hunt said.
BPA has been used in plastic products such as take-out boxes, water bottles, cash register receipts and food-can coatings.
“We think of plastics as permanent things and they’re just not,” Hunt said.
Hunt’s and others original research led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles and children’s drinking cups in 2012.
Last month, however, the FDA said BPA does not pose a health hazard when used in food containers. Additionally, the American Chemistry Council said earlier this year that a large FDA study found the chemical safe as it’s currently used.
However, Hunt said the FDA studies use an old school of thought.
“It is an outdated approach that is designed to think of chemicals only in terms of their toxic effects – how much will kill us?” Hunt said.
But consumers shouldn’t just be worried about what could kill them, Hunt said. She is concerned with the lowest dosage that would cause health problems instead of what would be considered toxic.
More research into how BPA alternatives interact is the next step, Hunt said. She encourages people to take measures to prevent contamination.
“Be aware of what you are using, think of plastics as things you need to keep an eye on over time,” she said. “If you see any signs of damage you should just get rid of it.”
https://dailyevergreen.com/36571/news/bpa-alternatives-are-also-harmful-researcher-says/

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(ACC Mentioned) Exposure To Safe Levels Of BPA May Still Affect Insulin Response In Humans

Sep 14, 2018 | DLife.com

By Suvarna Sheth

In a first of its kind study, researchers have found that exposure to levels of bisphenol A (BPA) deemed to be “safe” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may actually be enough to have implications for the development of Type 2 diabetes.
BPA has been known to be an endocrine-disrupting chemical that is used in a wide array of consumer goods including plastics, the lining of canned foods and even cash-register receipts, to name just a few.
Professor Frederick Vom Saal, an endocrinologist in the division of biological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science, and a co-author of the study wanted to test whether the FDA allowed daily exposure amount of BPA is actually safe.
Professor Fred Vom Saal. Credit: MU News Bureau
“Experiments with human and mouse pancreatic cells have revealed that low-dose exposure to BPA, in the presence of glucose, triggers an insulin response,” Vom Saal said in a press release. “We wanted to test the potential effects of BPA in humans to see whether it held true.”How Was The Study Conducted?
The study was carried out on humans without diabetes.
In the first group, 16 volunteers were orally given a safe dose of BPA. The amount was equivalent to the amount of BPA that customers might encounter by handling a cash register receipt. At a separate visit, the group received a placebo exposure for comparison.
In both instances, the subjects were administered glucose after, one half via a drink, the other half through an IV. The subjects were then tested for their insulin production in response to glucose, commonly called blood sugar.
When insulin and blood glucose levels were compared to the same measurements taken without exposure to BPA, researchers found that BPA significantly changed how glucose affected insulin levels.
In animal studies, repeated BPA exposure resulted in insulin resistance.Some Find Study Controversial
This is the first time researchers have tested BPA in humans.
According to an article in Environmental Health News, The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, called the new human exposure study “speculative” and stated the results do not demonstrate that the effects of BPA are related to diabetes.
The American Chemistry Council also questioned the ethics of using human volunteers.
“It’s a little ironic that they are trying to show very low levels of BPA might be dangerous but using the criteria of agencies that say it’s not dangerous,” Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University told Environmental Health News.
However, Krimsky points out “One of the justifications for doing the test is that the levels they administered were within the federal guidelines.”
Vom Saal said they took the ethical considerations very seriously — working for more than two years with the Institutional Review Board at the University of Missouri to address concerns with the study design. The board ultimately approved the experiment.
The study, “Experimental BPA Exposure and Glucose-Stimulated Insulin Response in Adult Men and Women,” was published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
https://dlife.com/exposure-to-safe-levels-of-bpa-may-still-affect-insulin-response-in-humans/

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(ACC Mentioned) Chinese Legal Case Heightens Formaldehyde Concerns

Sep 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch

By Ellen Tatham

Concerns over ambient levels of formaldehyde in newly built or renovated flats and schools in China have been heightened by a high-profile legal case.
Formaldehyde is a naturally occurring organic compound. It can be found in wood and laminates and is used in a wide range of paints, coatings and adhesives.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) classified the substance as a human carcinogen in 2004. Inhalation exposure can result in respiratory symptoms and eye, nose, and throat irritation.
Anxiety over formaldehyde spread in China after a 31 August post went viral on the country's social media app WeChat. An unnamed author suggested that the death of a 37-year old man from acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer of blood and bone marrow, was possibly linked to formaldehyde exposure.
The man, identified only as Mr Wang in the state-funded site The Paper, reportedly died in July just months after moving into a rented flat in Hangzhou, eastern China.
A lawsuit filed by the man's widow against the Ziroom house rental app, which supplied the flat, is due to be heard on 27 September, China Daily reported.Ziroom's 'systemic solution'
The company has provided various resolution options for concerned customers who rented flats after 1 June. In a post on its official social media dated 11 September, it said: "The air quality issue is an industry-wide problem that covers the complexities of the industrial chain."
Ziroom said it aimed to find a "systemic solution". Starting 24 September, the company said all first-time rental properties must pass an air quality inspection conducted by the authorities and the property must remain vacant for at least 30 days before it can be rented.US debate
The extent of the link between formaldehyde and leukaemia in particular is at the centre of a highly political debate in the US. The discussion involves an EPA hazard assessment that has still to be finalised after nearly a decade of preparation and a preliminary conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukaemia.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) disputes this conclusion and has argued for reevaluation of the underlying evidence.
More details available on CW+AsiaHub
https://chemicalwatch.com/70323/chinese-legal-case-heightens-formaldehyde-concerns

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Bayer May Face Next Roundup Cancer Trial Sooner Than Planned

Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Joel Rosenblatt

Bayer AG isn’t counting on another trial over its Roundup herbicide until February, but an elderly couple who say exposure to the weed killer gave them cancer has other ideas.
Among some 8,700 people who blame their cancer on Bayer’s recently acquired Monsanto unit, the couple is asking to go to the front of the line to present their case to a jury in December “before they die.”
The husband and wife, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, in their 70s are invoking the same California law—which gives scheduling preference to people who are terminally ill—that allowed a school groundskeeper diagnosed with just months to live to stage the first Roundup trial this summer, resulting in a $289 million verdict.
Bayer Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann sought to assure investors in a Sept. 5 conference call that the merger with Monsanto will beef up the companies’ legal firepower to defeat the sprawling litigation. He implied there would be more time to strategize by noting that trials set for October and January were being put off.
“A number of trials are currently scheduled beginning in February 2019, but may be subject to change,” Bauman said during the call. “So the bottom line—there is no further case that is going to be tried for the remainder of the year.”
Monsanto is fighting to postpone the Pilliod couple’s trial in state court in Oakland, Calif., arguing that they haven’t met the requirements for expedited scheduling.
A spokesman for Monsanto didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the couple’s request for an expedited trial.
Separately, Judge Vince Chhabria for the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California, who is handling all the Roundup cases in federal court, said he wants to schedule the first four trials for the spring of 2019.
The Oakland case is Pilliod v. Monsanto Co., Cal. Super. Ct., No. RG17862702, 9/14/18.

The federal case is In re Roundup Prods. Liab. Litig., J.P.M.L., No. 2741, 9/14/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/bayer-may-face-next-roundup-cancer-trial-sooner-than-planned

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PFAS Suits, Enforcement On Rise Amid Lack Of Standards, Attorney Says

Sep 17, 2018 | Inside EPA

By Suzanne Yohannan

As EPA continues to grapple with whether to craft an enforceable cleanup standard for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), private litigation and regulatory enforcement related to contamination from the substances increases due in part to a lack of such standards, an industry attorney says.
“We have an uncertain regulatory backdrop,” but there is an uptick in litigation and enforcement, Adam Baas, an attorney with DLA Piper, said at the Sept. 12 seminar on PFAS at industrial and military facilities, hosted by the Environmental Law Institute.
Baas says that since EPA's issuance of non-binding health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), litigation against manufacturers and users of the chemicals have increased.
The suits, many of which allege various tort theories, are targeting manufacturers of the chemicals and downstream manufacturers that rely on the chemicals in other products, such as carpets, shoes, and aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), the last of which is used to extinguish airplane and other fires.
He expects these suits will show how courts handle the liability and causation arguments.
Baas said the increase in litigation is occurring because regulatory agencies are using EPA or state health advisories or screening levels -- non-enforceable guidance -- to say PFAS has the potential to cause harm to humans or ecological systems.
The chemicals have been linked to various adverse health effects, including certain cancers, ulcerative colitis and thyroid disease. PFAS has drawn growing concerns from communities and states as their presence has been found in drinking water systems, and in groundwater.
But, Baas said, there are “arduous, complex arguments” over the link between exposure to PFAS and health effects, as that issue remains unclear. He noted there are ongoing studies into the magnitude, frequency and duration of exposure to various PFAS.
As a result, the voluntary health advisories that EPA set -- and many states are adopting -- are helping plaintiffs bring cases.
But because the advisories are not backed by more-certain science, such as that used to set regulatory standards, it can slow the litigation.
For example, Baas cited North Carolina environmentalists' recently filed suit against Chemours over its releases of GenX. The suit, Cape Fear River Watch v. Chemours, is based on state advisory levels for the chemical, a replacement for PFOA, he said.
The statutory citizen suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, is focused on discharges and emissions from Chemours' Fayetteville Works Facility, which the group alleges is contaminating the Cape Fear River and the drinking water supply of over 250,000 people.
But Baas said it highlights that even though such advisory levels are non-actionable, that fact is only slowing down, but not stopping, the increase in litigation now being seen.
Regulatory Enforcement
He also warned of an increase in state and federal enforcement actions seeking to address contamination from legacy and other uses, saying these could be complicated by a lack of standards.
The agency is also boosting its enforcement at sites with high levels of PFOA or PFOS in groundwater, Baas says in his slides. He said at the conference that it is unclear yet whether this will result in impacting five-year reviews EPA conducts of cleanup sites, or whether the discovery of PFAS will trigger re-openers in cleanup settlements. This may be dependent on the data for the PFAS at that site, he said.
A “lack of standards leaves significant gaps for parties to fill when negotiating cleanup goals with the EPA or state agencies -- increasing the time and costs, [with] unknown outcomes,” he says in a slide presentation.
The take-away “theme,” he says, is that there are “no, or very limited, established cleanup goals to apply when investigating and cleaning up PFAS.”
His comments come as EPA is planning some steps to address PFAS contamination but is grappling with whether to set an enforceable drinking water standard, known as a maximum contaminant level (MCL), for PFOA and PFOS.
For example, EPA is considering designating PFOA and PFOS -- two of the more common PFAS -- as “hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation & Liability Act section 102. To do so, EPA must determine that the two chemicals present a substantial danger to public health, welfare, or the environment. Then, the agency would have to issue regulations setting the level at which releases must be reported, he said.
If EPA follows through with the designations, it will give the agency the authority to issue orders against potentially responsible parties (PRPs) and seek contribution for PFAS contamination. That will also trigger states' adoption of the designation, “and, of course, more litigation,” he said.
EPA is also planning to develop groundwater cleanup recommendations for PFOA and PFOS, which are now in draft form and under review by the White House Office of Management & Budget. Baas noted that the groundwater recommendations will offer some clarity as to the federal government's view of the science on PFAS.
The recommendations will come not long after the federal Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) published a draft toxicological profile for several PFAS, backing risk values seven and 10 times stricter than those EPA used to base its non-binding drinking water health advisories for PFOA and PFOS.
The agency is also planning to release draft toxicity values for newer PFAS chemicals GenX and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) this month. The two have been used as replacements for PFOA and PFOS and contain shorter chains of carbon molecules than the older PFAS that have been phased out.
They have also been subjected to rigorous testing under the Toxic Substances Control Act, he said, noting in slides that they had to be tested for bioaccumulation, fate and transport, carcinogenicity testing in animals, and other tests.
EPA is now reviewing those studies and preparing a position, he said, adding that the values EPA proposes will be significant, as they will represent EPA's first published position on short-chain PFAS. He said it will be interesting to see what position EPA takes on them, and whether that will spur additional studies and ultimately regulations for short-chain PFAS.
However, it is not clear whether EPA will embark on a fourth action -- developing an MCL -- despite calls by states and others who are seeking to avert a patchwork of standards.
A top EPA drinking water official said recently that an MCL may not be appropriate given that EPA ordered monitoring showed only a small percentage of drinking water utilities have PFAS present in their systems.
Baas said he expects to see a decision on whether to go forward with it in EPA's upcoming PFAS national management plan -- due by the end of the year.
State Actions
In the absence of an EPA standard, many states have adopted EPA's health advisory levels for PFOA and PFOS, set at 70 parts per trillion, while others have set stricter levels for PFAS found in drinking water systems in their states, Virginia Yingling, a hydrogeologist with the Minnesota Department of Health, told the ELI event.
But, she said, the result of the diversity in values being used by states has significantly complicated regulators' risk communication to the public, particularly in states that rely on EPA's health advisories. Citizens get on the web and quickly see levels being used by New Jersey, Vermont and Minnesota that are stricter, she said. “And there's a lot of pressure on those states [which are currently following EPA's advisories] to follow suit. So there's something of a free-for-all” out there, she said.
Yingling also noted that recent biomonitoring data her agency examined suggests that exposure from drinking water may be higher than the default value EPA has generally used, which could drive stricter standards than what EPA would otherwise develop.
While EPA's default is that 20 percent of exposures come from drinking water, she said data from the state's health department shows that 50 percent may be a more accurate value for so-called relative source contribution (RSC) for drinking water.
A 50 percent RSC would drive the allowable level of a contaminant in water down from the 20 percent value, Yingling said.
She also said EPA's sampling data collected from drinking water supplies across the country -- part of the agency's Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR) -- provides extremely useful data, but the data “may slightly under-represent the extent of the [PFAS] problem.” She noted that EPA's findings of exceedances in just 1 to 1.5 percent of supplies tested may seem like a small percentage, but represents the drinking water for millions of people. EPA uses the UCMR data to help it decide whether to set an MCL.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/pfas-suits-enforcement-rise-amid-lack-standards-attorney-says

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European Parliament Votes in Favour of Microplastics Ban

Sep 14, 2018 | Chemical Watch

By Leigh Stringer

The European Parliament has backed calls to adopt a ban on microplastics intentionally added to cosmetics, personal care products, detergents and cleaning products by 2020.
On Thursday, MEPs voted by 597 votes to 15 in favour of the Parliament's Environment Committee (Envi) July recommendation that the European Commission adopt a ban. There were 25 abstentions.
The Commission asked Echa in January to prepare a REACH Annex XV restriction dossier on the use of intentionally added microplastic particles for all consumer and professional use products.
It is also proposing a ban on certain single-use plastics, such as cutlery, plates and balloon sticks, and recommending that goods packaging companies contribute towards the cost of cleaning up discarded plastics. A Parliament vote on these proposals is expected in October.Imported materials
MEPs also backed calls for member state competent authorities to optimise controls on imported materials and products in order to ensure and enforce compliance with EU chemicals and product legislation.
Belgian MEP Mark Demesmaeker, who is steering the strategy through the Parliament, said that a link with the Commission's communication on the interface between chemical, product and waste legislation is essential to the establishment of a single market for recycled plastics.
Particularly important, he says, is to step up controls on imported materials, while "underlining that the presence of a substance of concern should not be a blanket justification to preclude the recycling of waste for certain specific, well-defined and safe applications".
In addition, Parliament voted in favour of adopting quality standards for recycled plastics. These would, according to Envi's recommendations, build trust and incentivise the market for secondary plastics and "help develop various grades of recycling which are aligned with the functionality of different products, while safeguarding public health and food safety".
Mr Demesmaeker said in a press release following the vote it is important the EU acts on plastics because "up until now we have been outsourcing our plastic waste problems to countries like China". China recently placed a ban on all imports of EU plastics waste.
The resolution will now be sent to the Council, the Commission and member states.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70327/european-parliament-votes-in-favour-of-microplastics-ban

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Energy News

U.S. Nudges Merkel to Build LNG Terminals for `Exploding’ Market

Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment

By Matthew Miller and Brian Parkin

The U.S. urged Germany to get started building infrastructure for liquefied natural gas and tap a growing market that will be crucial in cutting carbon pollution.
Germany, currently dependent on pipeline gas, should be in a position to build terminals and transit infrastructure within a few years, Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Sept. 14 in a Bloomberg Television interview in Berlin.
Building up LNG in Germany would leverage diversity of supply, improve gas price competition, and serve as a bridge in the nation’s energy shift, said Brouillette. As an emissary for LNG in Germany this week, Brouillette said he was very impressed by the response of industry and lawmakers to the prospect of building a market for imports of the gas.
“Our message to the German government, policy makers, and industry is develop the infrastructure now so that you can take advantage of this exploding marketplace in LNG,” said Brouillette. U.S. shale gas and LNG from other sources will help plug a power gap as Germany pushes its phaseout of coal and nuclear energy, he said. The U.S. is well aware that Germany needs pipeline gas right now to fuel growth and “we have no problem with that.”

The U.S. contends that LNG terminals and transit infrastructure can be built quickly. Lukewarm interest shown in the past by the government isn’t shared by shipbuilders, utilities such as RWE AG, and northern German states including Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, and Hamburg, which seek a fast roll-out of LNG infrastructure.
About $336 billion of planned LNG gas ventures are aiming to reach a final investment decision this year and next, fueled by rising demand in Asia and renewed interest from developers, according to a Bloomberg NEF report.
Carnival Corp., the world’s biggest cruise ship company, is building a flagship LNG liner, the Aidanova, in Pappenburg on Germany’s North Sea coast. Miami-based Carnival is investing more than $7 billion to build out its LNG fleet for its cruise lines, and German shipbuilders are touting to gain from the plan.
Merkel’s Opposition
Merkel’s administration showed opposition to creating an LNG infrastructure as late as 2015, citing the higher costs for shipped imports and its traditional reliance on long-term gas contracts with Russia as a form of foreign policy.
Cracks in that resistance have appeared since Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. Merkel still backs conditional expansion of Russian gas while seeking to assuage Germany’s U.S. allies that she’s serious about diversifying supplies.
LNG has “indeed gained in importance in the past few years—it also adds to the diversification of the gas supply,” Merkel said at a conference with Qatar investors in Berlin on Sept. 7. “Of course, German companies decide about their gas supply according to economic criteria.”
Europe’s biggest gas market will basically build an LNG market from scratch. A plan to build a terminal at on the Elbe River near Hamburg remains in the planning stage. Wilhelmshaven, a naval port on the Baltic, is a potential alternative site.
U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting between Russia and Germany and the possibility of imposing sanctions on the Gazprom PJSC-led project is not a ploy to push sales of LNG to Germany, said Brouillette.

“There are many reasons why sanctions may be imposed and everything is all on the table,” said Brouillette, echoing comments made Sept. 13 by Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Moscow.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/us-nudges-merkel-to-build-lng-terminals-for-exploding-market

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Shell to Lay Out Targets to Manage Methane Emissions

Sep 17, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal

By Sarah Kent

Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.37% PLC said it will announce plans to lay out targets to manage its emissions of the greenhouse gas methane Monday, joining a handful of major oil companies that have made similar pledges this year.
The British-Dutch oil giant said it will disclose objectives to bring down methane emissions related to oil and natural gas extraction and transportation. Methane is the main component of natural gas, but it often leaks into the atmosphere from wells, pipes, storage tanks and processing plants. Like carbon dioxide, it is a greenhouse gas that can contribute to atmospheric warming.
The company said it is aiming to limit methane emissions to less than 0.2% of the total natural gas extracted from any one project. Currently, Shell has no way of accurately measuring its so-called methane-emission intensity across the entire company, but for some projects it is as high as 0.8%, the company says.
The planned targets come even as the Trump administration moves to roll back Obama-era rules aimed at limiting methane leaks.
Shell’s head of gas, Maarten Wetselaar, said the company believes those limits should stay in place, though the U.S. regulation could be improved.
“Everybody should want their product to stay in the pipe and be sold to the customer rather than leak it,” Mr. Wetselaar said. “It’s essentially uncontroversial. Nobody in the industry should want to leak any methane.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. said in May it would cut its methane emissions by 15% by 2020 and cut flaring, or burning of natural gas, by 25%.
BP PLC made a similar commitment in April, pledging to keep its emissions flat out to 2025. Underpinning that goal is an aim to limit methane-emission intensity to 0.2%.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a network led by the chief executives of some of the world’s biggest oil-and-gas companies, has said it would announce methane targets by the end of the year. The group will hold its annual meeting in New York next week.Cutting the GasThe oil industry is one of the biggest sourcesof global methane emissions.Source: International Energy AgencyNote: As of 2012
30%24201169WetlandsAgricultureFossil fuelsWasteBiofuels and biomass burningOther natural sources
While carbon emissions have historically dominated climate discussions, methane has become a focus of concern in the industry in recent years. Big oil companies have positioned their natural gas businesses as a climate friendly alternative to coal and a way to show investors that they are prepared what many expect to be an energy-mix transition.
Shell has been outspoken about the value of natural gas as a “bridging” fuel—a cleaner-burning fossil fuel that can help bolster renewables like solar and wind energy when, for instance, the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
The company’s long-term strategy is wedded to gas. In 2016, it spent roughly $50 billion to buy smaller rival BG Group, an acquisition that cemented Shell’s position as one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas players.
The move comes as investors are increasingly pressuring companies to not only disclose climate-related business risks, but also act to reduce emissions linked to global warming. Last year, a group of investors with roughly $30 trillion under management launched a five-year initiative to push the biggest corporate emitters to reduce emissions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-to-lay-out-targets-to-manage-methane-emissions-1537138861?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2

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Will It End In Tears? Enron Author Examines Fracking Boom

Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Mike Lee

Halfway through her new book, Bethany McLean offers an epitaph for the late Aubrey McClendon, one of the pioneers of the fracking boom.
McClendon's company, Chesapeake Energy Corp., had become the second-largest U.S. gas producer after Exxon Mobil Corp., but he was forced out as CEO after complaints about his lavish perks and the company's debt load. He died in a car accident in 2016, a day after being indicted on bid-rigging charges, which were later dropped (Energywire, March 3, 2016).
"Is Chesapeake the model for this business? It changes the world but it ends in tears?" McLean quotes a hedge fund manager as asking.E&E SERIES
The United States has been in the throes of a shale boom and bust for over a decade. How's it going? Click here to read more coverage.
It's the kind of question McLean has built a career around. In 2001, she wrote an article for Forbes magazine asking how Enron Corp., the Houston-based energy trading giant, made its money. The article helped push Enron into bankruptcy, and produced a book and documentary, "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron."
Her latest book, "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World," is an attempt to ask the same kind of pointed questions about the unconventional drilling boom that's been going on since the mid-2000s.
The answer, McLean found, is complicated. The shale drilling industry has overturned assumptions about energy scarcity and given the United States an economic advantage that a lot of observers didn't think was possible at the turn of the century.
But it was built on mountains of debt and survived the oil bust of 2015 and 2016 because of easy access to credit, whether it's in the form of bank loans, bonds or investment from private equity companies.
Columbia Global Reports, New York
As The Wall Street Journal and other publications have reported, the major fracking companies have rarely lived within their cash flow. The problem is that oil and gas production from shale wells often falls by more than half within in a year, so companies have to constantly drill to keep up their production. And they use borrowed money to do it.
That reliance on debt leaves the industry exposed if interest rates go up, or if something else happens to cut off the supply of money, McLean argues.
Since The New York Times published an excerpt from the book, critics have said McLean missed key points: Companies have become much more cost-conscious and can turn a profit at far lower prices than before the bust. And besides, fracking could be the key to the Trump administration's goal of "energy dominance."
In a telephone interview, McLean told E&E News she came to think of shale drilling as "calculus rather than algebra" and said no one's sure how the story will play out. But she added that it's important not to overlook long-term trends, like the move away from fossil energy.
So who is at risk here? Is it the oil companies themselves, is it the banks, is it the bondholders?
I don't really think the important takeaway here is risk in the financial system from this, although I do think there is risk in the debt of companies, and I think there's risk to pension plans that are pouring their money into private equity firms, which in turn are pouring billions into shale companies.
That's not so much, to me, the key question as it is, how much oil and gas would we be producing if companies had to live within their cash flow?
If the capital markets stopped granting this incredible largesse to these companies, what would the shale revolution look like then?
As we beat our chests about American energy independence, the reliance on the capital markets is really worth thinking about. And that's, to me, the key point of the book.
It's a bigger-picture risk, you know, a risk to this thing we're all now starting to take for granted.
What impact would it have if all of a sudden you couldn't get easy credit in the oil patch?
I wish I had an answer, and I think my arrogance in setting out to write this book was believing that I could answer that question. What I learned in doing the book is that anybody who has ever forecasted anything about shale has been wrong — usually on the downside, right? They usually have missed the upside.
Anybody who has ever forecast about oil has been wrong. So I have a lot of humility about knowing what's going to happen.
I came to think of shale as calculus rather than algebra — meaning that there's so many factors that go into where this thing is headed from oil prices, which are set by factors no one can see coming around the globe, to technological improvements to geology itself.
To have an answer would be the height of arrogance.
My point is ... there is much more risk to this thing from the financial side than most people think. And maybe that makes the book less satisfying than it could be because I don't have a conclusion at the end of it.
The book echoes a lot of lot of discussion among industry and analysts about where the industry is going. There's been talk about a wave of consolidations. Is that a possibility if interest rates go up?
That's what everybody thought would happen in the bust from 2015 to 2016. And it didn't happen for the basic reason that credit was still available.
Wall Street allowed firms to extend their loans. Distressed-debt credit funds stepped in and allowed restructurings.
And so, as a result, you didn't have the cleaning and the washout that people predicted would happen.
So maybe in the next downturn, maybe it happens, maybe there's consolidation. But there's this wave of easy capital, easy credit that has lasted longer than anybody would've believed.
Predicting when that's going to end is another fool's prediction, I think.
What happens if we get another oil boom, if the price bounces up about $80 or $90 per barrel, would all these debts get paid off?
You would think they would go away, but this industry didn't make money even when oil prices were well over $100 a barrel.
So it's not that it doesn't make money at, you know, $40, $50, $60 a barrel; it's that it didn't make money at over $100 a barrel, either.
I think about the cost of this broadly in two buckets. The tech improvements, yes, can drive the cost of drilling a well down and increase the amount of oil and gas you get out, at least in the short term, making this stuff more profitable on a near-term basis.
But the service costs are cyclical — they go right in line with the price of oil. And so, as the price of oil starts to escalate and more and more drilling starts to happen, the service costs start to escalate, too.
I quote some people who have looked at this saying that, you know, service costs are sort of the swing factor. People are going to say, "What happened to my $40-a-barrel break-even?" But as service costs start to escalate, that break-even number moves higher, too.
I've heard the service companies are sort of the Levi Strausses of the gold boom. They get rich during the boom selling shovels and supplies, and they know when and how to raise their prices.
Right, and they cut to the bone as oil prices fall in order to preserve what business they have, but then the prices rise really quickly.
You talk about a little bit about the private equity players. ... The private equity money moves into a field like shale in order to buy it, develop it and flip it, right?
Well, they do, yeah. They've been able to make a lot of money — and they've had some really bad deals, too, by the way — but they've been able to make a lot of money because so far, the whole daisy chain has worked.
If you can assemble land and prove out the resource through a smart team, then you can sell that land to another publicly traded company. And everybody gets paid because the publicly traded companies have been valued not on cash flow but on a multiple of the acreage they own ... or production growth.
The whole thing has worked because of this kind of noneconomical way of valuing companies. And I don't know if at some point that doesn't end.
For companies that aren't planning to buy and flip, do you see an endgame for those guys?
One smart criticism I got, at least with the op-ed, is that a well can be really profitable. You can earn a return on capital on that single well, although even that depends on where and how you drill.
The problem is in publicly traded vehicles, where companies have to keep production growing every year, and so the capital needs continue to mushroom every single year as you have to surpass the previous year's production numbers.
I think there are privately held companies that are quite profitable. I think there's also a difference in the vehicle used to hold these assets.
There's been some concern that the majors aren't living within cash flow over the last couple of years.
Another criticism I've gotten of the book, which is valid, is that the oil industry overall kind of sucks and that this issue of outspending cash flow has been true of the majors, as well.
That said, I think the important difference is that the majors have for stretches of time gotten religion and been able to deliver a return to shareholders.
Shale hasn't even proven it can do that and that it can deliver a return even during a specific period. So I'd say shale looks one step worse than oil, overall.
The oil industry has always been a lot more willing to live with risks. Are we to some extent applying our own standards to the oil business?
To some extent, yes. I think the book, and I hope you agree, offers a pretty nuanced portrait of Aubrey McClendon. I'm obviously not negative about him. There's some negative stuff, but there's a quote in the book: "The world moves when people who like to take risk take action," and I think that's true.
I'm all for the ingenuity and the risk-taking of the entrepreneurs in this business who really have changed the world. I just think their fate is not entirely theirs to control. Unless they are producing cash flow, their fate is in the hands of the financial markets, and I think that's worth everybody understanding and being clear about.
To some extent, are the markets drawn to shale because there's no other place they can get the kind of returns they get out of shale?
I think that's a really smart point. Part of the reason pension funds, private equity funds have been putting money into shale is because in a very slow-growth world, where there isn't much economic growth, shale at least is growing.
It's been a growth spot in an otherwise fairly stagnant world.
Are the private equity firms and other investors coming into this with their eyes open?
I think they are, actually. I think there's a lot of questioning among private equity firm ... about how this plays out in the end.
Even more what I was really struck by and really surprised by were the smart private equity people I talked to who are no longer even investing in shale because they think the dawn of the age of renewables is that close.
And ... once you see the end of oil, even if the end of oil is 20 years off, once you see it, the price goes into a secular decline and it never recovers. That's what happened with coal.
People are actively spending tons of time trying to figure out when that might be.
I think that's the other reason I'm kind of skeptical about this whole notion of beating our chest about American energy independence when the world is rapidly moving away from nonrenewables.
For us to be so proud of ourselves for having this oil and gas wealth and not to invest in renewables is sort of missing the way the world is going to be.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/17/stories/1060097107

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Pipeline that Exploded in Pennsylvania Part of Push to Build Fracking-Reliant Petrochemical Network

Sep 15, 2018 | DeSmog (In Truthout)

By Sharon Kelly

Just before dawn Monday morning, Chuck Belczyk thought a jet had crashed near his home roughly 25 miles outside Pittsburgh — until he heard the sound of hissing gas.
“And that’s when it all hit us what was happening,” Belczyk told NPR’s State Impact. “You knew the pipeline went.”
A column of fire shot 150 feet in the air and destroyed a home, a barn, and several cars. Residents of over two dozen homes, including Belczyk, were evacuated, with one family barely escaping the flames that engulfed their home, neighbors said.
Interstate 376 was shut down amid concern over falling power lines, including a half-dozen high tension towers, which left 1,500 people temporarily without electricity. No one was injured or killed by the blast, authorities said, and because of recent rains, the possibility of a forest fire was averted.
The 24-inch diameter pipeline responsible for the blast had gone into service just seven days earlier. It’s owned by Energy Transfer Partners, the same pipeline company behind the Dakota Access pipeline project and the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has said it suspects that the blast was caused by heavy rainfall, which they believe may have caused the pipeline to slip on the saturated ground, break, and then explode.
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Energy Transfer Partners dubbed its new “gathering” line the Revolution pipeline. Revolution was built to connect individual gas wells to a new cryogenic plant, the Revolution gas processing plant, where so-called “wet gas” from Marcellus wells would be separated into natural gas liquids and dry gas.
From the Revolution plant, that dry natural gas, a fossil fuel made of methane that’s used for electricity and heat, would be shipped west direction on the 725 mile Rover pipeline. Natural gas liquids like ethane, which is used to make plastics and petrochemicals, would head out on the Mariner East 2 pipeline to a shipping terminal near the Atlantic Coast, where it could be shipped to the Gulf Coast or abroad.
By providing a path for the liquids and gas to flow to market, the Revolution gathering line would facilitate the drilling and fracking of roughly 500 Marcellus and Devonian wells in just one Pennsylvania County, Butler County, alone, officials from the company building the cryogenic plant said in 2015, when the deal was announced.
Or at least that was Energy Transfer’s $1.5 billion plan. All three pipelines have been plagued by construction problems, particularly the much larger Mariner East natural gas liquids pipeline project. In the meantime, Energy Transfer Partners has faced strong pressure to finish the project from shale drillers, who aim to sell ethane for a higher price than it commands when it’s left mixed in with methane.
Drillers have publicly warned that more delays finishing the Mariner East system would impact their bottom lines. “If it is delayed to later in the year, that certainly has some costs to it,” Glen C. Warren, CEO of Antero Resources, a drilling company which has leased nearly half a million acres in the Marcellus shale, said during an April 26 earnings call, responding to a question from investors about the impacts of delays to the Mariner East project.
In February, Thomas Long, the CEO of Energy Transfer told investors that while Revolution was “mechanically complete,” the rest of the project was behind schedule. “We’re evaluating other options to move residue and natural gas liquids on Revolution before Rover and ME2 are ready for service,” he said on a Feb. 22 earnings call.
Center Township Police Chief Barry Kramer Kramer told Natural Gas Intelligence, an industry trade publication, that local authorities hadn’t been aware ETP had begun using Revolution to transport any gas or liquids. An ETP spokesperson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the pipeline was being used as it would be commercially during a “commissioning” or testing phase when the explosion occurred.
Natural gas liquids are expected to play a growing role in the shale industry’s plans for Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and other parts of the Rust Belt.
A planned new petrochemical corridor in the region has already attracted over tens of billions of dollars in investment, as DeSmog earlier reported– $83 billion of that in West Virginia alone.
“I think the magnitude of some of these projects that we’re talking about here are hard for a lot of us and a lot of our communities to wrap their head around,” Chad Riley, CEO of The Thrasher Group, an oil and gas field and pipeline services firm, said at a petrochemicals conference in Pittsburgh this summer.
Not everyone is convinced that the coming plastics and petrochemicals build-out is a positive thing for the region — or for the rest of the world.
Much of the concern centers on the expansion of plastics manufacturing using fracked gas. “If all of this production capacity is constructed, it may lock in a massive expansion of cheap plastic production for decades,” a report last year by the Center for International Environmental Law found. “With expanded plastics production and consumption will come more spills and emissions from chemical plants, more plastic clogging shorelines and killing marine life, and more micro-plastic particles — and the pollutants they may absorb finding their way into food chains and tap water.”
At a more local level, safety concerns have fueled strong opposition to Energy Transfer’s Mariner East project, driven not only by the company’s troubling track record during construction but also by environmental concerns. Mariner East construction has been repeatedly shut down by the state after mishaps including sinkholes, spills and leaks. State regulators have hit the company with over $13.1 million in fines for violating state environmental and safety laws during Mariner East construction, including a $148,000 fine in August for breaking the state’s Clean Streams Law and the Dam Safety and Encroachment Act.
State Senator Andy Dinneman reacted to the Revolution pipeline blast on Twitter, connecting it to existing concerns over the Mariner East project.
https://truthout.org/articles/pipeline-that-exploded-in-pennsylvania-part-of-push-for-petrochemical-network/

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An Old Problem: Aging Pipelines Lead to Deadly Explosions

Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

The natural gas pipeline in the United States is vast, sprawling across 2.5 million miles in a complex pressurized system that delivers a quarter of the energy consumed nationwide, according to the American Gas Association. Many of the pipes are old, and utilities are in various stages of replacing them to improve safety.
There have been more than 300 fatalities and 1,200 injuries caused by natural gas pipeline incidents in the last 20 years, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency responsible for overseeing the industry. As residents recover from Thursday's stunning explosions in Lawrence, Mass., many wonder what they can do to protect themselves.
A series of fiery natural gas explosions three towns north of Boston killed a teenager, injured at least 25 others and left dozens of homes in smoldering ruins. The cause is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, but the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said the fires may have resulted from gas lines that had become over-pressurized.
Following fatal gas pipeline incidents, the Department of Transportation in 2011 called on the industry to replace aging pipelines, particularly those made of cast and wrought iron and bare steel that pose the highest risk.
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More than 177 million people nationwide use natural gas in their homes and businesses to provide heat, cook and dry clothes, according to the American Gas Association. Columbia Gas — the company whose pipelines exploded Thursday — and its parent company NiSource serve 3.4 million natural gas customers across seven Eastern states.
HOW IS NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTED?
Natural gas is a fossil fuel found deep beneath the earth's surface that's mostly made up of methane. It is extracted from the ground and distributed in pipelines that span 2.5 million miles nationwide.
The gas is delivered to customers initially through high-pressure pipelines and it goes through a process to reduce its pressure before entering smaller pipelines and eventually homes and businesses.
"In some places, we have 100-year-old gas lines coming up to people's houses," said Bob Ackley, owner of Gas Safety, Inc., a Massachusetts-based company.
WHEN HAVE THERE BEEN SIMILAR EXPLOSIONS?
In February, gas-related fires in Dallas killed a 12-year-old girl, destroyed three residences and injured others. A review by the National Transportation Safety Board later found that several sections of pipe near the incident site failed pressure tests.EDITORS’ PICKSEvery Generation Gets the Beach Villain It DeservesOpinionI Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump AdministrationCalifornia Tries New Tack on Gun Violence: Ammunition Control
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A gas explosion in 2014 killed eight people in New York City, and the utility Consolidated Edison later agreed to pay $153 million to settle charges that it violated safety regulations.
In 2011, five people were killed by a natural gas explosion in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and regulators called the utility's safety record "downright alarming."
Eight people were killed and 38 homes were destroyed in San Bruno, Calif. in 2010 when a Pacific Gas and Electric gas pipeline exploded.
WHAT CAN UTILITIES DO TO IMPROVE SAFETY?
Utilities nationwide are continually replacing older pipelines made of cast iron or certain types of steel with newer steel or plastic pipes, according to the American Gas Association. Many, including NiSource, accelerated those efforts after the deadly San Bruno incident, said Charles Fishman, an analyst with Morningstar Research Services who covers NiSource and other utilities.
"There was a real tragedy, and I think that woke people up across the country," Fishman said. "The whole industry said wait a second here, we've got all these old pipelines, there's a lot of disasters waiting to happen."
NiSource was spending $80 million to $120 million annually in Massachusetts to modernize its infrastructure, spending the vast majority on replacing aging gas pipelines, Fishman said. Those efforts are likely to accelerate, but "you can't tear up every street in the downtown at the same time...and it would dramatically increase the cost to do it really, really quick," he added.
After the deadly New York gas explosion in 2014, Con Ed set in motion a fleet of trucks that drives around the streets of New York City with leak detection equipment, passing each customer location at least once a month. The company also began a bilingual campaign to inform customers they should call whenever they suspect a gas leak.
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Incidents have also occurred when gas lines were damaged during excavation, and some utilities have installed above-ground markers to indicate the location of buried gas lines, according to the American Gas Association.
WHAT CAN CONSUMERS DO TO STAY SAFE?
If people think they smell gas in their homes, experts say they should leave the house or building immediately and call 911. They should not light a match, make a cell phone call or turn on lights or appliances since that can cause a spark.
To be proactive, homeowners also can call their utilities or fire departments to request to have their gas lines checked for leaks and to learn where the pipelines are in their homes.
"They can request a safety check at any time," Ackley said.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/14/us/ap-us-ap-explains-gas-explosions.html

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Deadly Gas Explosions near Boston Put Focus on Pipe Safety

Sep 14, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Naureen S. Malik, Rachel Adams-Heard, and Terrence Dopp

Federal investigators were dispatched to three towns just outside Boston after dozens of explosions and fires along NiSource Inc.’s natural gas network left at least one person dead and 13 injured and displaced over 8,000 customers.
Massachusetts State Police reported 39 incidents on the network in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover Sept. 13. The blasts appear to be pipeline explosions, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a briefing Sept. 14.
NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told reporters in Washington the agency sent a “go-team” of investigators that will arrive in the affected area at about noon local time to begin what he said is likely to be a long inquiry.
“Certainly things we will be looking at will be the design of the pipeline system, any maintenance or upgrades that may have been done or in the process of being done on the pipeline, the integrity management system of the pipeline operator,” he said. “This will be a multi-disciplinary investigation, we’ll be looking at a number of things.“
Pipeline work before the explosions creates “a higher potential for a financial impact to the utility,” CreditSights Inc. analysts Nick Moglia and Andy DeVries said in a note to clients Friday.
“Unlike other gas utility explosions that unfortunately occur every few years, this one appears to have been caused by the utility working on the gas lines immediately before the explosions occurred,” the analysts said. That could point to a “higher potential for gross negligence rather than just a corroded pipe.”
Ken Stammen, a NiSource spokesman, said in an email he could not confirm the details cited in the analyst note.
Leonel Rondon, an 18-year-old Lawrence resident, died after a house explosion sent a chimney crashing into his car, the Associated Press reported. Thirteen people were received at Lawrence General Hospital for injuries related to the explosions from smoke inhalation to blast trauma, according to the hospital’s Facebook page. One critical patient was transported to a Boston trauma center.
Andover Police Department Lieutenant Eddie Guy told NBC’s Today television show Sept. 14 that officials believe the blasts were caused by over-pressurized gas lines. Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, the NiSource unit responsible for the local network, said in a statement that its crews would need to visit each of the 8,600 affected customers to shut off each gas meter and carry out a safety inspection.
Aging Infrastructure
National Grid Plc, which operates the electric utility in the area, was asked to shut power to all of Lawrence and North Andover, and pockets of Andover, spokeswoman Christine Milligan said. The supply cuts were affecting about 18,000 customers as of 7 a.m., National Grid said on its website.
In April, Columbia Gas filed a petition with the state’s Department of Public Utilities to increase annual revenues by $24.1 million in part to help the company replace aging infrastructure. All three towns were listed as areas where neighborhood lines would be replaced, the utility said on its website Thursday.

“Replacing leak-prone infrastructure is a leading priority,” the utility said in April. “However, it will take a number of years to eliminate the aging pipe from the gas distribution system.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/deadly-gas-explosions-near-boston-put-focus-on-pipe-safety

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Chemical Security News

Regulators Keep Watch on Toxic Waste Sites During Hurricane

Sep 14, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

As Hurricane Florence spins inland, environmental regulators are monitoring more than three dozen toxic waste sites in the storm's path, as well as scores of low-lying water- and sewage-treatment plants at risk of flooding.
The Environmental Protection Agency has identified 41 Superfund sites in threatened parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland and Georgia, including polluted industrial sites, chemical plants, coastal shipyards and military bases.
EPA spokesman John Konkus said the agency is listening for any word of oil or hazardous substance spills from first responders, media reports and state and local emergency command posts. He said federal on-scene coordinators and equipment stand ready to deploy if needed.
Superfund sites are among the nation's most highly polluted places. They often contain contaminated soil and toxic waste at risk of spreading if covered by floodwaters. More than a dozen Superfund sites in the Houston metro area were flooded last year during Hurricane Harvey, with breaches of potentially harmful materials reported at two.
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Though it was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane at landfall Friday, Florence remains a massive storm that will dump trillions of gallons of rain on eastern North Carolina before sweeping across South Carolina.
No toxic spills had been reported as of Friday afternoon, but the region's rivers were not expected to crest for days. Forecasters predicted severe flooding for parts of southeastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina starting Sunday.
The worst natural disaster in North Carolina history was Hurricane Floyd in 1999, which dumped nearly 2 feet of rain and flooded a broad swath of the coastal plain, swamping whole towns and dozens of hog farm lagoons containing millions of gallons of untreated urine and feces.
Florence, a slow-moving system that forecasters say could release more than 3 feet of rain in places, could end up being even worse.
Environmental groups said Friday that they were worried that scores of hog lagoons will burst again or be overtopped by flooding, spilling their contents into rivers used as sources of drinking water. Also of concern were more than three dozen coal ash dumps at power plants in the region. The gray ash that remains after coal is burned contains potentially harmful amounts of mercury, arsenic and lead.EDITORS’ PICKSWhat Teachers Are Doing to Pay Their BillsHow Do You Get Better Schools? Take the State to Court, More Advocates Say‘If This Book Is Not Expressing Everything, What Am I Doing With My Life?’
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Among the Superfund sites most at risk from Florence is Horton Iron and Metal, a former shipbreaking operation and fertilizer manufacturing site in a low-lying floodplain along the Cape Fear River outside Wilmington, North Carolina. The 7.4-acre site is heavily contaminated with pesticides, asbestos, toxic metals and cancer-causing PCBs.
Upriver along the Cape Fear is Carolina Transformer Co., a 5-acre Superfund site in Fayetteville that also contains contaminated soil and groundwater contaminated with PCBs.
Forecasts call for the river to crest Monday at Fayetteville at more than 62 feet — nearly 30 feet above flood stage.
In Elizabeth City, the Triangle Pacific Corp. site includes a World War II-era Navy blimp base along the Pasquotank River that was later purchased by a company than manufactured wooden cabinetry. The site is contaminated with toluene, acetone, cadmium and arsenic.
Also of concern is the sprawling Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and Marine Corps bases at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point in North Carolina and at Parris Island in South Carolina.
The shipyard near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay dates to 1767 and contains contaminated soil and groundwater from more than two centuries' worth of dumped hazardous chemicals. Hazards at the Marine bases include ground saturated with toxic chemicals, old paint, ash from old trash burn pits and unexploded ordnance.
Nationwide, there are 327 Superfund sites in areas prone to flooding or vulnerable to sea-level rise caused by climate change, according to an Associated Press analysis of flood zone maps, census data and EPA records. Nearly 2 million Americans live within a mile of the most at-risk sites.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/14/us/ap-us-tropical-weather-toxic-sites.html

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Hearing to Examine Keeping Hackers Out of U.S. Infrastructure

Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Daily

By Blake Sobczak

Lawmakers are meeting behind closed doors tomorrow to discuss the government's handling of hacking threats to critical networks like those running the power grid and gas pipelines.
The Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee hearing will feature testimony from senior energy and homeland security officials, including DOE Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Bruce Walker.
Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, and Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security at the Defense Department, are also scheduled to appear.
The afternoon hearing on "Interagency Coordination in the Protection of Critical Infrastructure," chaired by Rep. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), will be closed to members of the public.
Lawmakers are likely to pose questions about a recent cyberespionage campaign targeting U.S. electric utilities, manufacturing and aviation firms. DHS and the FBI linked the cyber intrusions to the Russian government in March, but researchers have warned the hackers may be staging a comeback (Energywire, Aug. 10).
DHS is the lead civilian agency for U.S. cyberdefense. However, DOE, as the "sector-specific agency" for parrying cyberthreats to the power grid, plays a key role in critical infrastructure security.
Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Rick Perry set up a dedicated cybersecurity department at DOE, dubbed the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.
The Senate confirmed former U.S. Cyber Challenge Director Karen Evans to lead that office late last month, though it's not yet clear where she will take the new assistant secretary position (E&E Daily, Aug. 29).
"It's great that she's on board," Manfra said on the sidelines of a cybersecurity conference earlier this month. "Between [Evans] and Bruce Walker, Energy is already doing some good stuff and is going to continue to do that."
Manfra added that she expects DOE to continue working on "understanding what our national critical functions are, and understanding how we build resilience" into grid systems. "Specific things, I think [Evans] needs a little time to come up with," she said.
Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 2:30 p.m. in 217 Capitol Visitor Center.
Witnesses:Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security, Department of Defense.Bruce Walker, assistant secretary for the Office of Electricity, Department of Energy.Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, Department of Homeland Security.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/17/stories/1060097145

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Transportation and Infrastructure News

Decade-Old Rail Safety Measure Will Take Longer to Implement

Sep 15, 2018 | Route Fifty

By Dave Nyczepir

Most railroads plan to request a federal extension on implementing a legally required safety measure, positive train control, beyond 2018, according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.
PTC communications systems slow or stop trains being operated recklessly to prevent collisions, excessive-speed derailments, work zone incursions, and passage through wrongly positioned switches.
Amtrak is among 40 commuter and freight railroads ordered to execute PTC by Dec. 31, but only eight railroads—all commuter—won’t require an extension, GAO reported.
During a Thursday hearing of the House Transportation railroads subcommittee, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, expressed frustration with the slow implementation.
“I hope ... to hear about how we are going to meet the statutory deadlines of 2018 and full utilization by 2020,” DeFazio said at the start of the meeting. “I’m concerned at some of those at the rear of the pack … There is no feasible excuse for this committee or for the agency.”
For the Federal Railroad Administration to grant a maximum two-year extension, commuter and smaller freight railroads must perform advanced field testing, known as revenue service demonstration or RSD, on at least one track segment. Only sixteen railroads, including Amtrak, will do so by the deadline, GAO reported.
Of the remaining railroads, 15 will need an extension using substitute criteria—such as initiating any field testing at all, GAO reported. Eight out of 28 commuter railroads have currently initiated RSD, while 19 have begun field testing.
A total of nine railroads are considered “at-risk” of missing PTC implementation deadlines, having failed to install 90 percent of system hardware by August: New Mexico Rail Runner, CapMetro, New Jersey Transit, Altamont Corridor Express, MARC, Trinity Railway Express, Tri-Rail, Caltrans, and SunRail.
Should FRA begin approving substitute criteria requests, a third of the railroads will remain in the early stages of PTC implementation to start 2019, and reviews take 90 days.
“These issues, combined with the ongoing implementation, testing, and interoperability challenges that a number of railroads reported to us, raise questions as to the extent FRA and the railroad industry are poised for full PTC implementation by December 31, 2020,” reads the report.Sign up for Route Fifty Today
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FRA Administrator Ronald Batory said at the hearing that his agency would be able to handle extension requests “within a timely period” and that the calendar, not money, was the primary barrier to compliance for all but one railroad.
“We have to bring closure to PTC 1.0, as I call it, recognizing the calendar gives us as much latitude as 2023,” Batory said. “But we can’t wait that long, and if we get it done sooner we can have a more robust, efficient PTC system that will be less money to maintain and operate.”
Small commuter rail services find themselves “at the mercy of the marketplace” when vying for the attention of a single PTC equipment vendor in a national process, said Stacey Mortensen, executive director of the Altamont Corridor Express—the smallest such service in the country.
Altamont trains are operated on host railroads, so all that is expected of the service is PTC implementation on six locomotives and eight cab cars, setting up a back-office server, and crew training.
“Our PTC equipment was ordered in March of 2017, well in advance of this year’s deadline, well in advance of being able to work with our host railroad partners on the testing,” Mortensen said. “But because of the many other orders, and important orders across the county, the equipment was not delivered until April of this year.”
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Vendors then took time establishing a site workforce, she added, and a water intrusion recall on PTC antennas already ordered will require equipment replacement.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt questioned the FRA’s “lack of action” and the number of exemptions.
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Positive train control was mandated by the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, after a train collision in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles claimed the lives of 25 people. Since then, NTSB reports 22 mass-casualty train accidents due to human error responsible for 29 deaths, more than 500 injuries and $190 million in damages.
“Significant portions of the nation’s rail network,” or 60 percent, will remain unprotected by PTC after the initial rollout, Sumwalt said, including 14,000 miles of Amtrak mainland track in cities like Topeka, Kansas; Portland, Maine; and New Orleans.
“Here we are—10 years later and nearly three years after the original deadline mandated by Congress—and we still do not have PTC fully implemented in the United States,” Sumwalt said. “Is that acceptable?”
https://www.routefifty.com/public-safety/2018/09/implementing-rail-safety-measure/151298/

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Environment News

Warren Calls for More Corporate Reporting on Climate Risks (1)

Sep 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Andrea Vittorio

Public companies would have to provide investors with more information on risks they face from climate change under new legislation from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Many companies already report on climate risks but not in a standardized way. The bill, introduced Sept. 14, would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue a set of disclosure rules for companies in different industries, including fossil fuels.
The measure is the latest in a series of proposals targeting big corporations that Warren has floated before the midterm elections. It’s unlikely to get movement in the Senate unless power shifts to Democrats. Even then, it would be a long shot under the Trump administration, which has rolled back climate-related regulations.
But the bill could help burnish Warren’s image as a potential Democratic candidate for the next presidential election, though she has dismissed such speculation.
“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.”
Her bill would require companies report to the SEC on greenhouse gas emissions, fossil-fuel related assets, and how a company’s valuation could be impacted by climate change. Under the bill, companies would also have to disclose their strategies for managing risks from physical impacts, such as rising seas, and risks related to the transition toward cleaner energy.
The SEC told companies to report relevant climate-related risks in guidance issued in 2010. But the commission’s enforcement of that guidance has been lax.
The Climate Risk Disclosure Act has gotten backing from close to 30 environmental and investor groups. It also has several co-sponsors, including Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

(Updates with bill cosponsors in the eighth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/warren-calls-for-more-corporate-reporting-on-climate-risks-1

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EPA Presses Appeals Court to Keep Case on Hold

Sep 14, 2018 | E&E News PM

By Jeremy P. Jacobs

EPA today urged a federal appeals court to keep a major lawsuit on the Obama-era Clean Power Plan on hold as the agency moves forward with a replacement.
Earlier this month, 17 states and other parties asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to resume the litigation, accusing the agency of employing legal tactics to avoid regulating heat-trapping emissions (E&E News PM, Sept. 4).
EPA argued the court should deny the request, contending it is moving forward with its Affordable Clean Energy rule and plans to finalize that regulation in early 2019.
"There is no sound reason for the Court to change course," DOJ said. "EPA's final rulemaking — now expected within a period of months — could moot this case and render any further proceedings unnecessary."
The case has been on hold for nearly 1 ½ years since the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to grant a stay of the Clean Power Plan in February 2016. The D.C. Circuit heard arguments in the case later that year.
Some D.C. Circuit judges have expressed frustration with the Trump administration's delay.
That, in part, spurred the release of the Affordable Clean Energy rule, a more limited regime than the Clean Power Plan that would give states more flexibility in devising measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at a facility level.
Critics contend emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants could increase under the Trump plan.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/09/14/stories/1060097111

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EPA Proposes Changing Clinton-Era Standards

Sep 14, 2018 | E&E News PM

By Sean Reilly

In a fresh step to relax regulations on power plants and other large industrial polluters, EPA is moving to change Clinton-era requirements for monitoring nitrogen oxides emissions.
The proposed rule, signed yesterday by acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler, would give states the option of dropping a requirement that such large sources use what are known as "continuous emission monitoring systems" to track their summertime releases of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a key ingredient in ozone.
The mandate dates back to the 1998 so-called NOx SIP Call, which currently requires 20 states and the District of Columbia to curb seasonal emissions linked to downwind ozone formation outside their borders. In now seeking to allow states to substitute undefined "alternate monitoring requirements," EPA predicted the change could save some companies money.
But because the plan would not alter statewide caps on NOx pollution or enforceable limits for pollution sources, EPA expects it "would have no impact on emissions or air quality," the proposal says.
The agency plans to have the final version in place by November, according to a schedule listed in its latest semiannual regulatory agenda.
Besides coal-fired power plants, the planned change could also affect paper mills, chemical manufacturing facilities and oil refineries. The draft rule, which offers no estimates on the potential savings, suggests the bulk of the benefits would fall to industries outside the power sector.
While the draft rule says several states had expressed interest in changing monitoring requirements, an EPA spokeswoman did not reply to emailed questions seeking more information on the exact impetus for the proposal.
"It's not something that my members were asking for," Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, whose membership includes 35 state air regulators, said in an interview this morning.
But the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, a separate group of regulators mainly from the South and West, had flagged the NOx SIP Call monitoring requirements in a filing last year that called them "overly burdensome" and costly for businesses outside the power industry.
Clint Woods, the association's executive director at the time, is now the deputy chief of EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. Woods did not immediately answer an email this afternoon asking whether the proposed rule is a response to that concern and whether he was involved in putting it together.
A spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, had no immediate comment. At the National Association of Manufacturers, another trade organization that works on ozone issues, Michael Short, senior director of strategic communications, responded "no" when asked in an email whether the group sought the proposed change or had a position on it.
Environmental groups, while still studying the proposal, questioned the rationale. "It does strike me with all the problems out there, it's a misuse of resources to focus on deregulation," Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said in an email.
Given that companies have now had continuous monitoring systems in place for many years, "it just doesn't make sense," said John Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, is a lung irritant linked to asthma attacks in children and worsened breathing problems in adults with emphysema and other chronic respiratory diseases.
The exact number of facilities that could take advantage of a shift to alternate NOx monitoring requirements would ultimately hinge on how many states chose to grant that option.
Although the proposed rule does not furnish an estimate on the total number of plants that could be affected, it says about 310 "units" — a figure that encompasses large electric generating units, as well as boilers and turbines used in other industries — are subject to the current monitoring requirements.
Because most large power plants are now covered by similar monitoring requirements under the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Acid Rain Program, EPA predicted most would not be affected by the proposed change.
The proposed rule will carry a 30-day public comment period when published in the Federal Register. If it is made final, EPA intends to have it take effect immediately.
After the NOx SIP Call was issued in 1998, implementation of emission controls began in 2003.
Under the new proposal, states that could drop the requirement for continuous monitoring include Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Missouri.
Also covered are New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/09/14/stories/1060097117

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'America First'? Climate Rule Tests Trump Pledge

Sep 17, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Maxine Joselow

Since taking office, President Trump has repeatedly touted his "America First" policies. But in at least one significant climate battle, his administration is siding with foreign companies over American ones.
At issue is the fate of heat-trapping chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. While short-lived in the atmosphere, HFCs are thousands of times more potent as greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide.
The Obama administration made phasing out HFCs a key part of its climate agenda. In 2015, EPA issued a rule effectively banning uses of the chemicals across four industrial sectors: aerosols, air conditioning for new cars, retail food refrigeration and foam blowing.
But two foreign HFC manufacturers — Mexico-based Mexichem Fluor and France-based Arkema SA — sued EPA over the rule. And in an August 2017 majority opinion penned by Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with them, ruling that EPA had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act (Greenwire, Aug. 8, 2017).
The Trump Justice Department initially defended the Obama rule in court. But DOJ flip-flopped and last month filed a Supreme Court brief aligning the Trump administration with Kavanaugh and the foreign companies, arguing that the split D.C. Circuit ruling should be left intact (Greenwire, Aug. 29).
On the other side of the debate: Honeywell International Inc. and Chemours Co., two American chemical companies that have made significant investments in safer alternatives to HFCs. Honeywell, for example, last year opened a $300 million Louisiana facility to manufacture an HFC replacement for use in cars.
In a court brief last week, the two companies argued that the D.C. Circuit ruling was inconsistent with the Clean Air Act and would have a "devastating" impact on human health and the environment.
The administration's stance is hard to square with some of Trump's favorite rhetoric.
"From this moment on, it's going to be America First," Trump said in his inaugural address. "Every decision ... will be made to benefit American workers and American families."
The irony hasn't been lost on Trump's critics.
"It's ironic to see the Trump EPA side with two foreign chemical makers who make old and dangerous chemicals over American companies that invested billions in innovation to make safer alternatives," said David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Climate and Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has also asked the Supreme Court to step in and overturn Kavanaugh's decision.
Adding another wrinkle: Trump's famous campaign promise to prevent a Carrier Corp. factory from moving to Mexico.
The move of the Indianapolis factory to Mexico drew national headlines and was expected to result in the loss of 1,400 jobs. Then-candidate Trump made saving Carrier's "big, beautiful" plant a cornerstone of his stump speeches and protectionist stance on trade. (Incidentally, the plant ended up moving and laying off more than 500 employees.)
Carrier, too, is at odds with Trump over HFCs.
The air-conditioning company and four other firms that together make up more than 75 percent of U.S. residential and commercial refrigeration manufacturing filed an amicus brief in support of the Obama rule. They warned of dire economic consequences if it's rolled back (Greenwire, June 26).
The companies said they had invested "well over a billion dollars" in developing replacements to HFCs. "But the impact of the decision below," they said, "goes well beyond this dollar amount. The decision completely upends a regulatory program that has worked well for almost 25 years."
Francis Dietz, vice president of public affairs at the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, said the majority of member companies support the rule because it creates regulatory certainty.
"It's not typical for industry to be seeking regulation," Dietz said. "But in this case, we saw the writing on the wall. We knew that there were entities around the world and within the United States that were probably preparing to try and regulate HFCs themselves."
He added, "Industry likes certainty. A lot of people misunderstand and think industry is just reflexively opposed to regulations. But that's simply not true."Art of the deal?
The legal brouhaha over HFCs is playing out in the larger context of a global pact to curb potent greenhouse gases.
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol is one of the world's most significant greenhouse gas reduction pledges. Finalized in October 2016, it would avert enough emissions from air-conditioning units and refrigerators to reduce warming by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) by 2100.
Nearly 200 countries have ratified Kigali. But in the United States, the amendment has languished now that it lacks a champion in the White House (Greenwire, Feb. 19).
George David Banks resigned in February from his post as Trump's climate and international energy adviser. He was widely seen as a moderate voice in the administration who could convince Trump to support climate policies if an economic case could be made.
Banks is now at the helm of Let America Lead, a coalition of industry and conservative groups pushing Trump to send Kigali to the Senate for ratification (Greenwire, July 24).
In an interview, Banks said he believes he can convince Trump that regulating HFCs is consistent with his "America First" vision.
"You can make a very sound argument that the Montreal Protocol has helped lock in a U.S. competitive advantage that we're really benefiting from now," Banks said. "Without the Montreal Protocol, I would probably argue that Chinese state-owned enterprises in particular would come to dominate the global market."
He added, "If I were in front of the president, I would say: 'Sir, you have to know what happens if we don't ratify. If we don't ratify, we're going to have a situation where the Chinese come in and dump cheap HFCs into the U.S. market. They knock out a big chunk of manufacturing in this space.'"
If that pitch didn't work, Banks said he would appeal to the president's penchant for making good deals, encapsulated in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal."
"The president likes to talk about making deals that are good for the United States," Banks said. "In the case of the Montreal Protocol, there's no question that the U.S. has a deal that promotes U.S. leadership at the expensive of foreign competition."'It's a win-win'
In the absence of federal leadership on HFCs, blue states are filling the void.
Connecticut last week joined Maryland, New York and California in directing their state agencies to draft standards phasing out the use of HFCs.
"By phasing out super-polluting HFCs and turning to safer alternatives, these states are demonstrating strong national leadership in that global fight," said NRDC's Doniger. "They're protecting our children and future generations from climate chaos. And they're countering the Trump administration's heedless backing of polluters."
On Capitol Hill, there's bipartisan backing for tackling the potent chemicals.
In February, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) introduced legislation calling for EPA to ban HFCs. The "American Innovation and Manufacturing Act," S. 2448, would essentially bypass the courts and provide a legislative path for phasing out the chemicals.
Carper, an outspoken climate hawk, is tailoring his pitch to a president who cares about keeping jobs on American soil.
"I'll continue fighting for passage of my bill with Senator Kennedy that would phase down HFCs contributing to human-caused climate change and provide certainty to American manufacturers working to advance and export new technologies," Carper said in a statement to E&E News.
"It's a win-win for our environment and for American jobs."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/17/stories/1060097137

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API Pushes EPA For Pruitt's 'Sweeping Change' To Ozone NAAQS Review

Sep 17, 2018 | Inside EPA

By Stuart Parker

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is pushing EPA to implement a “sweeping change” to its ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) review process based on an overhaul outlined by former agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, including an “aggressive” review timetable that would condense several scientific reviews.
EPA started the Clean Air Act-mandated process of reviewing the 2015 ozone standard of 70 parts per billion (ppb) this summer with a call for information to inform the assessment. Before Pruitt left the agency in July over a series of ethics scandals, he floated an overhaul of the often-delayed NAAQS program and set an Oct. 1, 2020, target for completing the ozone review -- a target that API says the agency should meet, but only after revising the program.
“Clearly to meet this new timeline will require a sweeping change in the NAAQS review process,” API says in recent written comments to EPA, citing Pruitt's May 9 memo on the NAAQS overhaul.
Pruitt's memo suggested that the multi-step process for the last ozone NAAQS review was too long. He floated condensing the traditional steps that include an integrated science assessment (ISA) synthesizing new science made available since the last review, a risk and exposure assessment (REA) measuring risk to the public, a policy assessment (PA) document outlining policy options for the administrator, a proposed rule, and a final rule.
EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) has a key role in reviewing the various documents produced at each step, and in the past when CASAC has criticized a document, EPA has prepared a second draft.
API in its Aug. 27 comments to EPA reiterates industry groups' long-running concerns about the length of NAAQS reviews and asks EPA to “consider whether all of these documents are necessary to produce and review. The need to do no more than necessary is critical within the timeline the Administrator has established.”
Significantly, API suggests scrapping the PA document, prepared by EPA staff, and replacing it with an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR), a change advocated by current EPA air policy chief William Wehrum during his previous tenure as the acting agency air chief during the George W. Bush administration. The shift would have the effect of providing political appointees with input earlier in the review process.
Making the changes could achieve Pruitt's goal of putting the ozone NAAQS review on a fast track to completion in 2020, after years of EPA failing to meet a Clean Air Act mandate that it review its six NAAQS every five years. The memo announced a “streamlined” review process that will collapse three currently separate steps in the review process into one, which could limit CASAC's potential input.
Critics of the proposed changes to the review process fear it could make it easier for EPA to ignore data that might suggest a need for stricter ozone standards, among other concerns. But API and other longstanding critics of the NAAQS review process say it is too convoluted and lengthy.
API's comments are one of several that various groups filed on EPA's June 26 “Call for Information” on its upcoming integrated review plan (IRP) for the ozone NAAQS assessment.
The agency's request asked for information on the impacts of the NAAQS, including mandates for stationary and mobile sources; the effects on Clean Air Act new source review and prevention of significant deterioration permitting requirements; and potential economic and other effects of areas being placed out of attainment with the standard, including impacts on overall economic growth and employment, public health and welfare, and energy production.
A separate notice issued at the same time asked for relevant information to assist CASAC in reviewing potential health, welfare, social, economic and other effects from various strategies for attaining and maintaining the NAAQS, while the second launches the NAAQS review itself and seeks scientific and policy-relevant data on ozone pollution.
In its comments filed ahead of an Aug. 27 deadline for input, API urges EPA to prepare a “robust IRP that already outlines which new science may be most pivotal to review to accomplish the review. The CASAC and the public, at that point in the process, can provide feedback to the Agency to inform the development of a focused ISA."
The group echoes Pruitt's call for a “one draft” process where documents are not produced in several iterations. The group recommends a list of studies that should be included on a “pivotal” list.
Ozone Review
In addition to API, groups representing the power sector, environmentalists and others weighed in on the request for information, pitching either changes to the NAAQS review process or suggesting types of scientific data on ozone's environmental and public health impacts that the agency should consider in the review.
For example, the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), representing the electric utility sector, in its Aug. 27 comments urges that, “the Agency pay particular attention to issues for which the science was deemed particularly uncertain when the NAAQS were last reviewed and revised.”
UARG suggests questions to guide the agency in crafting the ISA, including, “are the responses of people to [ozone] exposure reversible? Are they transient? If so, how often might they occur in any individual? How large is the susceptible population?”
Further, UARG says that in the light of the Trump EPA's interest in “background” ozone concentrations -- those originating from natural or foreign sources that cannot be regulated -- it “urges EPA to assess recent information concerning all sources of background . . . including international transport.”
UARG also suggests a list of key studies for EPA to consider that include a 2017 study by leading American researchers including Sverre Vidal and Lianne Sheppard, titled “Air Pollution and subclinical interstitial lung disease: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) air-lung study,” and also several studies from overseas, including from China and England.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), in its undated comments, focuses heavily on the issue of background ozone and international air pollution transport, and specifically “regional background,” which critics of the 70 ppb NAAQS have said make it hard to meet the standard.
“In Texas, regional background ozone is a major factor on high ozone days observed in the state. Regional background ozone can be defined as the ozone affecting a metropolitan area that was not generated by emissions from the metropolitan area in question,” TCEQ writes.
EPA in 2015 tightened the ozone standard down to the current 70 ppb limit from the prior 2008 limit of 75 ppb, though environmentalists and public health groups have said the standard should be even stricter.
Environmental and public health groups such as the American Lung Association (ALA), Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in their separate Aug. 27 comments call for EPA to examine studies that confirm the health and environmental dangers of ozone.
“Most crucial of all are the recent studies confirming the increased risk of premature death, even under lower levels of ozone pollution,” ALA says in its comments.
EDF in its comments urges EPA to consider the role that hotter temperatures stemming from climate change may have in boosting ozone formation.
On the background issue, EDF notes that EPA has studied the issue before. EDF says, “even in areas across the Intermountain West where background levels are sometimes incrementally higher, anthropogenic sources are substantial contributors to exceedances of health-based standards.” Also, “there are available solutions to reduce this harmful pollution. Furthermore, EPA has tools in place to address rare instances when truly exceptional events impact air quality, and western and southwestern states including Texas, Arizona, and Wyoming, have previously sought to use these provisions.” EPA's exceptional events policy allows states to seek regulatory exemptions for high ozone episodes such as wildfires.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/api-pushes-epa-pruitts-sweeping-change-ozone-naaqs-review

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California Had Its Own Climate Summit. Now What?

Sep 15, 2018 | The New York TImes

By Brad Plumer

For years, presidents and prime ministers have been the public face of the fight against climate change, gathering at United Nations summit meetings and pressuring each other to reduce emissions.
The results have often been lackluster.
A climate conference in California this week tried something different. The meeting, organized by the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, had far fewer national leaders present. Instead, an array of governors, mayors and business executives from around the globe met to promote their successes in cutting greenhouse gas emissions locally and to encourage one another to do more.
A key premise of the conference was that if a handful of leading-edge states, cities and businesses can demonstrate that it’s feasible — and even lucrative — to go green in their own backyards, they might inspire others to follow suit. That, in turn, could make it easier for national leaders to act more forcefully.
“If a researcher does an experiment, and you find out they’ve got a medicine that works, it spreads,” Governor Brown said.
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There was no shortage of announcements at the meeting. Cities like Tokyo, Rotterdam and West Hollywood signed joint pledges to only buy zero-emissions buses after 2025. Companies like Walmart and Unilever rolled out new programs to limit deforestation in their huge supply chains. Dozens of philanthropic groups committed $4 billion over the next five years to fight climate change.ImageFrom left, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, Gov. David Ige of Hawaii and Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut. CreditEric Risberg/Associated Press
But it will take time to tell whether these local actions can scale up quickly enough to make a significant dent in global emissions. And scientists are warning that time is short if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
On Thursday, a group of researchers released a road map for what it would take to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the internationally agreed-upon goal. It entailed a rapid transformation of the world’s energy system (measures such as banning the sales of gasoline vehicles in many cities within a decade) that went far beyond many of the proposals made in California.
The sheer scale of that challenge hasn’t fully sunk in with many policymakers, said Johan Rockström, a sustainability scientist and co-author of the report. “We need to be thinking about exponential changes.”
ADVERTISEMENTGetting the U.S. back on board
The American politicians at the conference, who typically came from liberal cities and blue states like New York and Washington, had a more immediate concern: Trying to persuade the rest of the world that the United States hasn’t completely abandoned the fight, despite the fact that President Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Governor Brown met with Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief climate negotiator, and announced plans for California and China to work together on zero-emissions vehicles and fuel-cell research. Later in the week, several blue-state governors met behind closed doors with the environment ministers of Canada and Mexico to forge new partnerships on issues like electric vehicles and curbing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
It was an unusual situation: A handful of American governors were effectively taking the lead on international climate diplomacy at a time when the president has disengaged on the issue. But some foreign officials were happy to reciprocate.
“It is important to show the world that we’re still working with U.S. states,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, in an interview. “There really are practical things we can do together.”
There were even a few substantive policy announcements. California, New York, Maryland and Connecticut said they would craft new regulations to curtail hydrofluorocarbons, the highly potent greenhouse gasses used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. In 2016, nations agreed on a treaty to phase out these gases, but Mr. Trump has not submitted the pact for ratification or written federal regulations.
While businesses would prefer a single federal standard, even a few states acting together could create a significant market for cleaner alternatives to HFCs, said Caroline Davidson-Hood, general counsel for the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, an industry group.
Yet for all that, local leaders in the United States who have promised to uphold the Paris climate agreement still face an uphill battle.
Their coalition — which now consists of 16 states, Puerto Rico, hundreds of cities and nearly 2,000 businesses — has vowed to press ahead with climate action and ensure that the United States meets former President Barack Obama’s Paris pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
A new report commissioned by the group found, however, that United States emissions are on track to fall only about 17 percent over that span.
Those states and cities would have to pursue ambitious new policies, like retrofitting hundreds of buildings to make them more energy efficient and plugging methane emissions from landfills, to get closer to the target. They would also have to persuade several other states beyond the blue coastal enclaves to join them, the report found.
“We can’t just leave this to the states that have been the first movers,” said Mary Nichols, who heads the California Air Resources Board. “We need others to join us as well.”Looking ahead to the U.N. talks
While the California conference did see a flurry of announcements by states, cities and businesses from around the world, some of them seemed more aspirational than anything else, at least for now. It is unlikely that this meeting, by itself, will drastically alter the trajectory of the world’s emissions.
For example, mayors from dozens of the world’s largest cities promised to cut the amount of trash they send to landfills in half, build more carbon-neutral buildings and encourage walking and cycling in their cities over the next few decades. But how well these mayors follow through remains to be seen.
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Despite questions like that, however, some analysts made a case that one big benefit of the conference could be to generate a broader sense of momentum around action on clean energy and global warming as United Nations climate negotiations are entering a particularly difficult phase.
In December, countries will meet in Poland to finalize a “rule book” for implementing the Paris Agreement — touching on contentious topics like how to track and verify emissions cuts. Over the next two years, many nations will then have to decide whether to strengthen their national pledges on climate action, which are currently far too weak to avoid drastic warming.
Yet preliminary negotiations around these issues fell into disarray at talks in Bangkok this month, as poorer countries accused wealthier nations, including the United States, of reneging on their promises for financial aid to fight climate change.
“The U.N. talks are still locked in this finger-pointing dynamic, where people act as if tackling climate change as a zero-sum game,” said Alden Meyer, the director of policy and strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who had flown to San Francisco from the Bangkok talks.
“The atmosphere here in California has been different, there’s a real can-do spirit,” he said. “We’ll see if that mentality can permeate upward.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/15/climate/california-climate-summit.html

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The Oceans are in Danger. We Need to Do More Than Ban Plastic Straws.

Sep 14, 2018 | The Washington Post - Opinion

By John Podesta

John Podesta served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and counselor to President Barack Obama.
Over the past year, the movement to ban plastic straws has seen tremendous success. Major companies including Starbucks have decided to eliminate them in their stores, and some metropolitan areas have passed citywide bans. This consumer and environmental trend has been an encouraging example of collective action on an economy-wide scale and has no doubt helped keep plastic out of our oceans and out of marine life. But ultimately, these actions are small steps toward solving a massive problem. To truly save the ocean, we must take serious action to halt climate change on a global scale — and soon.
Our oceans are critical to every part of our lives — they feed us, transport us, secure our borders, employ us, give us oxygen and inspire us — but week after week, headlines reflect gloom and doom. Coral reefs around the world are dying; rising seas are flooding coastal communities and threatening to overwhelm some of the world’s busiest airports; fishermen from New England to Alaska are hauling in empty nets; and intensifying storms threaten not just our coastlines but inland communities as well. Climate change is a major contributor to all these problems, and yet the ocean is far too often left out of conversations about climate solutions.
If we as a nation want to survive and thrive on a warming planet, that has to change. At this week’s Global Climate Action Summit in California’s Bay Area, oceans are finally part of the agenda. This summit provides an opportunity for nonfederal actors to come together to discuss how we as a nation and world can mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change by leading from a local level — notably, without commitments or leadership from the U.S. government, which announced its intention to withdraw our country from the Paris agreement more than a year ago.
It’s certainly important to document the damage that climate change is doing to the ocean, but a major topic of discussion at the summit will be also be how to unlock the ocean’s climate solutions, which have many additional benefits. Creating and enforcing marine protected areas means fish stocks can recover even amid warming oceans, providing increased food security and additional fishing jobs. Improving our coastal infrastructure and making it more resilient to sea-level rise and extreme weather means not only stronger communities but also increased trade opportunities. Restoring “blue carbon” ecosystems, such as sea-grass beds and mangroves, would mean the oceans can continue to work hard to absorb our excess carbon, clean our waters and protect our communities. The oceans may be under deep threat from climate impacts, but they can also be the basis of a new blue economy.
However, the hard reality is that the subnational action being touted at this week’s Global Climate Action Summit, while thoughtful and hopeful, is not enough on its own to create the real change we need to avert disaster. A recent study found that the commitments to cut emissions from cities, states, regions and companies are significant but are “still not nearly enough to hold global temperature increase to ‘well below 2 degrees C’ and work ‘toward limiting it to 1.5 degrees C’ ”—the Paris agreement threshold for triggering dangerous warming. And at the national level, the Trump administration has not just been inactive — it has been on a rampage to warm our planet and harm our oceans, such as rushing headlong into increased onshore and offshore drilling.
We can’t let a president who doesn’t believe in science or care about climate change stop us. As small an action as it may be, banning straws shows that Americans are paying attention. Will Americans continue to use their voices and their wallets to make real change for our oceans? I believe that they can, and they will, and that making oceans a part of the climate solution conversation — at the subnational, national and global levels — will lead us to a more sustainable future.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-oceans-are-in-danger-we-need-to-do-more-than-ban-plastic-straws/2018/09/14/78ea6b66-b765-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_story.html?utm_term=.047806c6a27d

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We Don’t Need More Doomsday Climate Predictions. We Need Solutions — Like This One.

Sep 17, 2018 | The Washington Post

By David Von Drehle

Like most people (according to polls), I believe greenhouse gases trap heat — a fact easily proved by experiments simple enough to perform at home. More greenhouse gases will trap more heat. And when temperatures rise on Earth, they impact the entire ecosystem.
The case for limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is all right there. Most people get it. Yet many of our most passionate citizens on this topic seem to believe that only panic will produce results. In trying to stimulate alarm, however, they often wind up fortifying the dwindling but stubborn cadre of skeptics.
Case in point: Hurricane Florence. As the cyclone worked its way up the Saffir-Simpson scale of storm strength, I braced for the inevitable pronouncements that climate change is making our storms worse, with Florence as Exhibit A. Then the incredible complexity of climate kicked in. The cyclone went to pieces (as most of them, thankfully, do) and staggered ashore as a very wet and dangerous Category 1 storm. Power was knocked out, homes were flooded, trees were snapped or torn up by the roots. An unpleasant, unwelcome visitor, but hardly unprecedented.
Climate activists should get out of the prediction business, because climate is too complex to be reduced to a single factor. The strongest storm to hit the United States continues to be the Labor Day hurricane of — wait for it — 1935, which wiped out entire towns in the Florida Keys. Runner-up: Camille in 1969. Billions and billions and billions of tons of carbon dioxide have been pumped into the atmosphere since those storms raged.
Looking backward rather than ahead, however, a tentative case, a hypothesis, could be ventured that we are in fact seeing greater frequency of strong storms. Since the introduction of weather satellites in the 1960s made comprehensive tracking possible, meteorologists have calculated the total energy of Atlantic cyclones each year. All seven seasons of greatest hurricane energy have come since 1995. Even so, the years from 2013 through 2015 were unusually calm.
But debating over doomsdays only empowers the climate skeptics, because it takes a topic of consensus and puts it in the realm of dispute. People don’t need more fear of climate change. They need more hope for solutions. And one single step could galvanize the awesome power of America’s economy toward answers: cap and trade.
Capping total carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and allowing producers to trade emission permits are not an intrusion on the free market, as some conservatives have complained of thetrailblazing program underway in California. Instead, cap and trade empowers the market. As Adam Smith explained, the wealth-creating genius of a free market stems from its ability to efficiently gather vast stores of data about people’s needs and wants and convey that information to producers through the simple signal of what people are willing to pay. Good old supply and demand.
Carbon emissions impose social costs. But most of the U.S. economy is blind to that information. Without an overall cap on emissions, the market thinks that supply — in this case, the ability to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — is infinite and thus the cost of emitting is zero. Cap and trade switches on a price signal, which in turn focuses the creativity, innovation and efficiency of the entire economy on cutting emissions without sacrificing quality of life. The free market does what it does best (more Adam Smith): lowers production costs while maintaining and enhancing the appeal of its products.
Opponents of cap and trade say the idea has failed in Europe, but the hiccups in that market are attributable to weakness of the European Union — Brussels set its cap too high — and the slow European economy. A more revealing case comes from here at home. In 1995, the United States capped sulfur dioxide emissions (the primary cause of acid rain) and issued tradable permits. By 2010, according to one gimlet-eyed assessment, emissions were down nearly 70 percent and health-care costs were reduced by as much as $100 billion.
Admittedly, carbon emissions are a more complex market than sulfur emissions. Everyone has a carbon footprint, while sulfur dioxide is mainly a byproduct of coal-burning power plants. But there are many ubiquitous commodities in our lives: virtually everyone uses steel, paper, electricity, water, wheat and so on. Somehow, the market manages to put a price on all of them and efficiently collect those costs from willing consumers.
When carbon-dioxide emissions reflect what most of us agree to be their true costs, capitalists throughout the economy will turn their resources to cutting those costs. They will discover greater efficiencies. They will invest in alternative energy. They will sink money into inventions and technologies undreamed of today. They will move with speed and agility no government bureaucracy can match.
You might say I’m predicting a Category 5 storm of hope. But this is the U.S. economy I’m talking about; its potential power is never in doubt.
Read more from David Von Drehle’s archive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-dont-need-more-doomsday-climate-predictions-we-need-solutions--like-this-one/2018/09/14/6a95358c-b864-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html?utm_term=.fd14c8995d5d

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Congressional Hearings

Hearing on Infrastructure Security

Sep 18, 2018 | Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity

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