Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 26/09/18
-
(ACC Mentioned) Mizzou Researchers Find Potential Link Between Insulin, Plastic Additive BPA
Sep 26, 2018 | St. Louis Public Radio
By Sarah Fentem
Biologists at the University of Missouri have found that a chemical commonly used in consumer plastics could affect how a body reacts to and regulates blood sugar. -
Interior-EPA Funding Will Likely Wait Until After Midterms
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink and Geof Koss
Congress isn't expected to wrap up work on a fiscal 2019 Interior-EPA spending bill before the new fiscal year begins next week, leaving many environmental and land use agencies facing at least two months of flat funding. -
(ACC Mentioned) PEER Sues EPA for Release of Formaldehyde IRIS Documents
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
A government watchdog group is suing EPA over its failure to turn over documents that could explain the agency's delay in releasing a long-promised draft assessment of the human health risks of exposure to formaldehyde, which former Administrator Scott Pruitt said was completed a year ago. -
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Asks EPA To Correct Ethylene Oxide Risk Level After Chloroprene Deal
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The chemical industry is targeting for correction EPA's combined use of its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment for ethylene oxide (EO), a sterilizer chemical, and air toxics modeling data, a request that could be bolstered by the agency's recent agreement to review similar industry concerns over EPA oversight of chloroprene. -
(ACC Mentioned) Ill. Dems Seek Answers on EPA Website Document Removal
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Three Illinois lawmakers are pressing EPA to explain why a document accompanying a report on air quality in a Chicago suburb was "abruptly removed" from an agency website. -
Federal Efforts to Clean Up, Control Fluorochemicals Enter Spotlight
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Efforts to remove fluorochemicals from water, destroy them, and prevent future contamination are among the topics three federal agencies are expected to address during a Sept. 26 Senate subcommittee hearing. -
Citing New Study, Environmentalists Urge Senate To Address PFAS At Bases
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
Charging that EPA is “not doing nearly enough,” environmentalists are urging the Senate to require the Trump administration to quickly take a series of steps to address water contamination from per- and polyflouroalkyl substances (PFAS), citing a new study that suggests levels at many military bases exceed a federal health agency's draft risk values. -
This Week in DC: PFAS Chemical Crisis in the Spotlight
Sep 25, 2018 | Safer Chemicals, Health
By Liz Hitchcock
An estimated 110 million people in 39 states use drinking water that has been contaminated with toxic chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). -
Wastewater From Michigan Auto Parts Maker Far Above Chemical Limit
Sep 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
A Michigan company that supplies auto parts for Ford Motor Co., Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota Motor Corp. sent wastewater to a treatment plant containing chemicals at more than 2,300 times the state limit. -
Pret A Manger Sued Over Weed Killer Residue
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Julie Steinberg
Pret A Manger, Ltd. deceptively touts sandwiches and cookies as “natural” when they contain traces of the weed-killer ingredient glyphosate, a proposed class suit alleges. -
OECD Publishes Case Study on Grouping and Read-Across for the Genotoxicity of Nano Titanium Dioxide
Sep 25, 2018 | National Law Review
On September 21, 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced four new case studies on integrated approaches for testing and assessment (IATA), including a Case Study on Grouping and Read-Across for Nanomaterials — Genotoxicity of Nano-TiO2. -
Big Oil Warns of Backlash as It Makes Vow on Climate Change
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Nussbaum
The world’s biggest oil and gas companies made an unprecedented vow to cut their contributions to global warming, even as they warned of a potential backlash from pushing change too quickly. -
How Much is Big Oil Working to Pass a Carbon Tax? We Checked
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac and Kelsey Brugger
At a low-profile briefing on Capitol Hill in 2016, officials from Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas company, told members of Congress that the firm would back a carbon tax. -
LNG Export Terminals Should Model Explosion Risk — Safety Expert
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Liquefied natural gas export terminals face explosion risks that are not accounted for under current safety regulations, a longtime LNG safety expert is warning federal regulators. -
Trade War Hobbles Chinese Plan to Buy U.S. Crude
Sep 26, 2018 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By Alfred Cang and Serene Cheong
U.S. oil exports to China are becoming a casualty of President Trump's trade war with President Xi Jinping's administration. -
New Farm Bill May Undercut Chemical Safety Measures Inspired by West Explosion
Sep 26, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey
A little-known provision tucked into the Farm Bill could exempt the entire chemical manufacturing industry from key safety rules and jeopardize workers’ health, according to one of the government agencies charged with overseeing safety in the chemical industry. -
FERC, PHMSA Execute MOU on LNG Transportation Facilities
Sep 26, 2018 | Lexology
On August 31, 2018, FERC and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (“PHMSA”), an agency under the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) to coordinate the siting and safety review of FERC-jurisdictional Liquified Natural Gas (“LNG”) facilities. -
MBTA Applies for PTC Deadline Extension
Sep 25, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) late last week applied to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for a two-year extension of the federally mandated deadline to implement positive train control (PTC). -
California Ballot Initiative Seeks to End High Speed Rail
Sep 25, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
Opponents of the California gas tax increase passed by state legislators last year on Tuesday proposed a new ballot measure for 2020 to provide money for road repairs and eliminate the state’s $77 billion high-speed rail project. -
How the Climate-Change Debate Has Shifted, Not Ended: QuickTake
Sep 26, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Eric Roston
Is there still a debate over climate change? -
N.Y., Calif. Pensions Lead Way in Climate Change Investments
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ayanna Alexander
Public pensions are addressing whether to incorporate climate change-related issues—as socially responsible investing surges globally—as their fiduciaries seek to make the best, most-profitable investments. -
Fight Over Ozone Limits Set for December Argument
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A federal appeals court is nudging ahead a lawsuit over national ozone standards even after the EPA announced it wouldn’t revisit the 70 parts per billion limits that it set in 2015. -
Macron Says No Trade Deals Without Complying with Climate Treaty
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gregory Viscusi
French President Emmanuel Macron told the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 25 that trade pacts shouldn’t be signed with countries that don’t respect the 2015 Paris climate treaty, a clear reference to the U.S., which announced plans to leave the carbon treaty last year.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Mizzou Researchers Find Potential Link Between Insulin, Plastic Additive BPA
Sep 26, 2018 | St. Louis Public Radio
By Sarah Fentem
Biologists at the University of Missouri have found that a chemical commonly used in consumer plastics could affect how a body reacts to and regulates blood sugar.
Bisphenol A — or BPA — is a plastic additive found in bottles, the resin lining of food cans and thermal receipt paper. An experiment by Mizzou researchers exposed a small group of people to the chemical. After the exposure, the researchers measured subjects’ insulin levels, and found people exposed to the BPA had produced more insulin.
“In the presence of BPA as well as sugar, you have about twice the amount of insulin released relative to what you would have without the BPA,” researcher Fred vom Saal said.
Healthy bodies produce insulin in response to glucose levels in the blood. Insulin helps the body absorb that blood sugar. When a person produces too much insulin, their body needs to work more to create larger amounts of insulin. Eventually, this can lead to a condition called insulin resistance in which a person stops producing it, vom Saal said.
“At first, you release too much, and then you don’t make enough,” he said.
BPA has been a point of contention for years. Scientists know it can act similar to the hormone estrogen and can disrupt certain bodily functions. But scientists, trade groups and government agencies disagree about the amount of BPA that causes problems in humans.
Many studies have been conducted on BPA’s effects on cells. But it’s rare to have human studies of the chemical’s effects, vom Saal said. That’s what makes the new Mizzou experiment notable.
“We thought, 'That’s been shown in cell culture, but does that really happen in people?" "The answer is, 'Yes, it does,'” he said.
The federal Food and Drug Administration recently completed a large study conducted on rats that showed typical amounts of the chemical don’t cause adverse health effects.
But many academics still say BPA poses health hazards.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that advocates for the plastics industry, criticized the Mizzou study, saying the amount of BPA the experiment used was much larger than an amount a person would normally be exposed to.
“The dose administered in the study to human volunteers is more than 1,000 times higher than typical human exposure as repeatedly documented by large-scale biomonitoring studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others,” the organization’s spokeswoman Kathryn St. John wrote in an email.
St. John also criticized ethics of the experiment.
“Remarkably, the authors claim that an Institutional Review Board, which is responsible for providing ethical oversight and protecting human test subjects, approved the project,” St. John wrote.
Vom Saal said the problem is continuous exposure, not a single, one-time dose of BPA. Even though it’s rapidly metabolized, many people have BPA in their bodies at any given time.
“If you look at people, they all have BPA in them; If it’s rapidly metabolized, how could that happen? The answer: there are so many ways to be exposed to this,” he said.
Vom Saal defended his experiment, saying the dose was of an amount the FDA had deemed “safe.” He said he would like to see more experiments looking at how human subjects react to BPA.
The experiment showed people with higher blood sugar are more sensitive to the chemical’s effects — an area his team would like to look into further, vom Saal said.
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/mizzou-researchers-find-potential-link-between-insulin-plastic-additive-bpa#stream/0
-
Interior-EPA Funding Will Likely Wait Until After Midterms
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink and Geof Koss
Congress isn't expected to wrap up work on a fiscal 2019 Interior-EPA spending bill before the new fiscal year begins next week, leaving many environmental and land use agencies facing at least two months of flat funding.
Lawmakers in both chambers said they have yet to finalize a spending minibus that would contain the Interior-EPA, Transportation-Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture and Financial Services spending bills for fiscal 2019.
Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who last week said her title of the package was not the biggest obstacle to a deal, reiterated the point yesterday (E&E Daily, Sept. 19).
"I honestly believe that if we weren't part of a minibus, if we were just left to our own devices, we might be able to shake it loose," she told E&E News.
However, Murkowski also indicated that there were unresolved issues in the Interior-Environment section of the minibus, as well.
"In fairness, some of the issues in the other titles have just kind of consumed the discussion, and I think there's a sense that if we could unlock those, everything falls into place, and I believe that, as well," she said, adding that negotiations are ongoing.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) did not rule out a possible deal but said an agreement would have to come together by tomorrow in order to become law when the new fiscal year begins Monday.
"I think we could wind this up if the House could do it. We think we've gotten pretty close. Maybe we are, maybe we are not, we are not sure yet," Shelby told reporters, noting that he planned to meet with House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) yesterday.
"We're trying to clean as many of these policy riders and poison pills up as we can," he said.
Shelby said he does not favor breaking up the four-bill spending package and passing only those pieces that could make it through both chambers, an idea that has surfaced in recent days.
However, he added that GOP leaders would have final say on the endgame spending strategy, and he wouldn't rule out speaking to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) "if we reach an impasse and see if there's a way to break some of these loose."
"But let's see what happens between now and Thursday," Shelby said.House plans
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday he does not expect to vote on the Interior-EPA minibus in the coming days, saying he expected the House to adjourn at the end of this week and not return until after the elections on Nov. 13.
If new dollars are not in place, those agencies are expected to be funded at current levels under a stopgap plan that would run through Dec. 7. Under that scenario, Congress would return after the elections and finalize fiscal 2019 spending in a lame-duck session.
The House today will vote on the stopgap funding as part of a package that also includes fresh fiscal 2019 Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education spending bills. It already has been backed by the Senate and is expected to win broad backing in the House before being sent to President Trump.
Trump has offered mixed signals on whether he will sign the bill, lambasting the package as "ridiculous" last week for not including more border wall funding. At other times, though, the president has said the border fight could wait until after the elections.
Shelby said he had "high" confidence that Trump would sign the package, then added, "But you never know."
Hoyer said it would be politically disastrous for the White House to reject the continuing resolution minibus and force a shutdown ahead of the elections.
"To shut down government would be a stupid thing to do," Hoyer said. "Those who recommend shutting down the government are not responsible. The consequences of putting the government into chaos from economic, fiscal and political standpoints would be bad for the president and Republican Party."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/09/26/stories/1060099737
-
(ACC Mentioned) PEER Sues EPA for Release of Formaldehyde IRIS Documents
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
A government watchdog group is suing EPA over its failure to turn over documents that could explain the agency's delay in releasing a long-promised draft assessment of the human health risks of exposure to formaldehyde, which former Administrator Scott Pruitt said was completed a year ago.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group that represents EPA and other personnel, sued the agency in federal court in Washington, DC, charging that it is violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because it has not responded to a request filed last July.
PEER says that EPA failed to meet the statutory deadline to respond to the request, and “has yet to produce any of this material.”
PEER's FOIA request sought any drafts of EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) formaldehyde assessment prepared since 2015; any communications between former Administrator Scott Pruitt or acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler regarding the assessment; any records related to a meeting last January between officials of the American Chemistry Council's Formaldehyde Panel and EPA; any communications regarding the assessment between ACC's panel leader regarding the assessment and any “recommendations or requests to EPA from non-EPA employees or contractors about the release or delay of” the IRIS assessment since 2017.
EPA has so far failed to release its draft formaldehyde assessment despite a pledge in EPA's report to Congress last January on the IRIS program that the draft would be released by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Last May, Democratic Sens. Tom Carper (DE), Ed Markey (MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) wrote Pruitt to speed the release of the draft assessment. In the letter, they said EPA concluded in the 2017 draft as it did in a 2010 draft assessment, that formaldehyde exposure can lead to leukemia, a finding that industry groups strongly oppose because it could drive significant new liabilities.
Their letter alleged that the draft formaldehyde assessment was completed “during the fall of 2017,” but has yet to proceed through the regular intra-agency review process normally undertaken before the document is released for inter-agency review, public comment, and peer review. They argued that EPA has yet to release the draft document because “multiple political appointees within EPA have expressed reluctance to move the assessment through the agency review process, have repeatedly set up briefings on the assessment only to later cancel them, and/or have insisted that IRIS first set up briefings for industry stakeholders before completing agency review.”
The senators named Pruitt's chief of staff Ryan Jackson, air office chief Bill Wehrum and toxics office appointee Nancy Beck as among those delaying the formaldehyde assessment's public release.
Asked about the draft assessment's status at an Aug. 1 hearing of the Senate environment committee, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said he is reviewing the “accuracy” of the document prior to its release, issuing his first public assurance that the agency will ultimately make public the controversial review.
“I'm sure that we will release it, but I need to make sure that the science in the report is still accurate, and what I've asked, not just for that report but for everything that we're doing on the IRIS program, [is] to make sure that we know the purpose of the assessment,” Wheeler said.
“So far, EPA has shared this important, tax-supported science with industry but not the public,” PEER's staff counsel Kevin Bell says in a Sept. 25 statement, adding that “EPA has no legal basis for withholding reports that it has already disclosed to outside parties.
“EPA’s current leadership often talks the talk about scientific transparency, but we have yet to see them walking,” Bell said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/peer-sues-epa-release-formaldehyde-iris-documents
-
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Asks EPA To Correct Ethylene Oxide Risk Level After Chloroprene Deal
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The chemical industry is targeting for correction EPA's combined use of its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment for ethylene oxide (EO), a sterilizer chemical, and air toxics modeling data, a request that could be bolstered by the agency's recent agreement to review similar industry concerns over EPA oversight of chloroprene.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), the industry's major lobbying arm, Sept. 25 filed a request for correction(RfC) with EPA under the Information Quality Act (IQA) asking the agency to withdraw data on ethylene oxide in its recently issued National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) that relied on its 2016 IRIS values for the chemical.
“The 2014 NATA does not meet the IQA’s data quality requirements because the EO IRIS Assessment is not the best available science. Therefore, the 2014 NATA risk estimates for EO should be withdrawn and corrected to reflect scientifically-supportable risk values,” ACC's petition says.
The group also urged EPA to refrain from using the IRIS assessment’s cancer risk values to calculate EO risk in its risk and technology reviews (RTRs) to determine whether current air toxics rules are protective.
While the IQA requires EPA to respond, courts have found the law is not judicially reviewable so petitioners usually lack a means of enforcing any petition.
The NATA, based on the 2016 IRIS values and updated emissions inventory modeling, suggested persistent cancer risks from the chemical, which has long been suspected of causing breast and lymph cancers but is commonly used as an intermediate to make other chemical products like detergent, antifreeze and polyester, and to sterilize medical equipment and foods.
EPA has launched RTRs of some air toxics rules to determine whether they are adequately protective.
The NATA and underlying IRIS values have already prompted significant concerns in an area outside Chicago, where local residents and their congressional representative are urging EPA to demonstrate that EO emissions from a medical sterilization plant “are no longer a threat to public health or use its authority under Section 303 of the Clean Air Act to shut down the plant,” Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) wrote in a Sept. 24 letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
Lipinski notes in the letter that the plant's operating permit from the Illinois EPA was issued in 2015, before the IRIS assessment was completed, “and therefore does not take the updated risk assessment into account.”
ACC's move appears to follow the playbook of the Denka Performance Elastomer company, which filed a similar RfC after EPA combined 2011 NATA modeling with the 2010 IRIS assessment of chloroprene to bring an enforcement action to address concerns about the carcinogenicity of chloroprene emissions from Denka's neoprene plant in Louisiana.
The modeled cancer risk for those living near Denka's LaPlace, LA, facility led to regulatory oversight from EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
After EPA denied the RfC last January, Denka spent $30 million on pollution-reduction controls on its plant, though the company says the controls will still not enable it to meet the emissions standard that regulators have set for it based on what they view as the flawed IRIS assessment.
Over the past summer, EPA and Denka officials reached an agreement that has the potential for EPA to re-open the IRIS assessment. Under the deal, Denka is funding the development of a new model that could be used to update the IRIS assessment. EPA has agreed to review it and seek expert peer review of it if deemed acceptable by EPA modelers.
IRIS Assessment
EPA's agreement to reconsider its IRIS assessment for chloroprene is a potentially precedent-setting one, given that the agency's influential IRIS assessments, often used as the basis for regulatory decision-making, are often criticized as overly stringent by industry and other regulated entities, such as the Defense Department.
In the case of EO, however, ACC does not appear to propose creation of a new model, suggesting instead that the agency simply use an existing industry model, published six years before the IRIS assessment was finalized, to revise its 2016 analysis.
ACC did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
EPA's 2016 IRIS assessment set an inhalation unit risk estimate (IUR), or cancer potency estimate, of 5 x 10-3 per micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3), which corresponds to a one-in-a-million increased cancer risk concentration of 0.1 parts per trillion (ppt).
The 2016 assessment's IUR is based on human epidemiology data of both incidence of lymphoid cancers and breast cancer. Part of its stringency is due to use of an Age Dependent Adjustment Factor, an extra measure of safety EPA uses when a chemical is considered to be of particular risk to children.
The 2016 IRIS assessment's IUR is significantly stricter than that EPA calculated for EO in a previous analysis of the chemical in 1985, of 1 x 10^-4 per ug/m^3.
But industry argued throughout its drafting the 2016 IRIS assessment, sets a cancer potency estimate that is overly strict, particularly for a naturally-occurring chemical with EO's benefits.
ACC reiterates those concerns in its RfC and urges EPA to refrain from using the IRIS values in the ongoing RTR, as well as any other regulatory action.
It cites as an example an air toxics rule EPA proposed earlier this month for “Surface Coating of Large Appliances; Printing, Coating, and Dying of Fabrics and Other Textiles; and Surface Coating of Metal Furniture Residual Risk and Technology Reviews,” where the agency seeks “comment on whether it should ban the use of EO for one of the source categories.”
The “risk estimates based on the EO IRIS value have significant regulatory implications for ACC member companies who produce commercial products of value to consumers using EO. Correcting these deficiencies will result in more accurate estimates of potential risk that will lead to improved regulatory outcomes, the dissemination of more accurate information to the public, and overall reduced misconception.”
ACC argues that the IRIS assessment is inaccurate for several reasons, including its use of a model for cancer risk from environmental exposure levels called a “supralinear spline.” ACC charges this model “predicts high risk at low exposures, lower risk at higher exposures, and estimates an unrealistically low concentration of 0.1 ppt.”
EPA performed the calculations with the spline model using lymphoid and breast cancer data from an epidemiology study conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
But ACC argues that the EO assessment's risk estimates are, “implausible” and “lack utility for regulatory purposes. The [1 in 1 million incidences of cancer-based risk specific concentration (RSC)] in the EO IRIS Assessment is 19,000 times lower than the air-concentration equivalent yielding normal, endogenous levels of EO in the human body. Likewise, the RSC is orders of magnitude lower than ambient levels of EO. Thus, if the EO IRIS Assessment is to be believed, normal human metabolism and/or breathing ambient air is sufficient to cause cancer. The EO IRIS Assessment does not provide a meaningful basis for assessing and managing risk for EO.”
In its stead, ACC argues that the IRIS assessment “can be corrected” by adopting the approach taken by Exponent consultants in a 2010 publication using a different cancer risk modeling approach, the log-linear Cox model, and including another epidemiology study with the NIOSH study.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/acc-asks-epa-correct-ethylene-oxide-risk-level-after-chloroprene-deal
-
(ACC Mentioned) Ill. Dems Seek Answers on EPA Website Document Removal
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Three Illinois lawmakers are pressing EPA to explain why a document accompanying a report on air quality in a Chicago suburb was "abruptly removed" from an agency website.
"We request an explanation for why this decision was made, and who made the decision," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin and Rep. Bill Foster said in a letter to acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and Region 5 Administrator Cathy Stepp released yesterday.
All three lawmakers are Democrats; they also asked EPA to conduct air quality tests near a plant in the Willowbrook area run by Sterigenics, a company that provides sterilization services.
Asked for comment, EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email that the agency would respond to the letter "through the proper channels."
According to the lawmakers, the document in question "was intended to provide context" to a report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a branch of the Health and Human Services Department.
That report concluded that ambient air concentrations of ethylene oxide, a chemical used at the plant, could pose an elevated cancer risk for residents and people working near the facility.
"The lack of context has led to confusion, anxiety and hardship on both the part of the community and Sterigenics," the letter said.
Aides to the three lawmakers could not be reached late yesterday for more details on the document.
At a public meeting late last month, hundreds of angry residents called for the plant to be closed, at least temporarily, the Chicago Tribune reported. Sterigenics says that it has recently reduced ethylene oxide emissions by more than 90 percent, according to the story.
The American Chemistry Council has also petitioned EPA to revisit its assessment of dangers posed by ethylene oxide (Greenwire, Sept. 25).
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/stories/1060099727/search?keyword=%22american+chemistry+council%22
-
Federal Efforts to Clean Up, Control Fluorochemicals Enter Spotlight
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Efforts to remove fluorochemicals from water, destroy them, and prevent future contamination are among the topics three federal agencies are expected to address during a Sept. 26 Senate subcommittee hearing.
The information-gathering hearing focuses on a large group of emerging contaminants called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The chemicals, used in firefighting foams and nonstick coatings, are linked to a variety of health effects in humans. The hearing comes as the Environmental Protection Agency weighs setting enforceable limits for those chemicals in drinking water.
The hearing will explore the state of the science about the chemicals, research underway, and current and potential federal costs, an aide to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management, told Bloomberg Environment Sept. 21.
“The prevalence of PFAS contamination in communities across Michigan and the country is truly alarming,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) told Bloomberg Environment by email Sept. 19.
“We have to get to the bottom of how these chemicals are being used and monitored, what long-term effects they may have on human health, and the necessary steps for cleanup,” said Peters, ranking member of the subcommittee, which is part of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs.
Federal agency witnesses include Peter C. Grevatt, director of the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water; Maureen Sullivan, deputy assistant secretary of defense, energy, installations and environment at the Department of Defense; and Linda S. Birnbaum, who directs both the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program.
Those four agencies conduct and fund a wide array of remediation, toxicity, and other research on older and newer fluorochemicals, according to information they provided Bloomberg Environment prior to the hearing.
Research HighlightsThe Defense Department has identified at least 401 military properties that may be contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which long have been used in specialized fire-fighting foams that quickly put out jet fuel and other dangerous fires.
The research includes identifying and testing fluorine-free firefighting foams to see if they can substitute for the current PFAS formulations.
The department also supports studies to better understand how fluorochemcials move through the environment and ways to remove them from soil and water.
The EPA is working to understand the extent to which people, animals, and the environment are exposed to the chemicals and whether those exposures could be harmful, and developing toxicity values for some fluorochemicals.
The agency also is examining drinking water treatment methods.
Activated carbon is the most widely used method to remove fluorochemicals from water, yet it’s unclear how well it performs for some of the newer, shorter chemicals.
The NIEHS is supporting research on other ways to remove the chemicals from water.
Other fluorochemical research the institute is sponsoring includes how exposure in the womb may affect later development.
Hearing ContextSenators have pressed the EPA to issue binding drinking water limits for some of the fluorochemicals, although Grevatt didn’t commit to do so during a recent Senate hearing. The agency said it will decide by the end of this year whether it will set enforceable limits.
Individuals from a New Hampshire and a Michigan community dealing with fluorochemical contamination also will testify, as will a firefighter representing the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Firefighters, including people whose military service includes emergency response, may be among those who are most highly exposed, because the specialized fire fighting foams they used often contained two older fluorochemicals called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS).
Both chemicals don’t break down in the environment, and they can remain in people’s bodies for years where they may contribute to making it harder to get pregnant, increased cholesterol, reduced immune function, and cancer, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Yet for decades those foams often were dispersed widely for training and actual fires at military sites, multiple researchers have told Bloomberg Environment. The foams also are used at commercial airports.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/federal-efforts-to-clean-up-control-fluorochemicals-enter-spotlight
-
Citing New Study, Environmentalists Urge Senate To Address PFAS At Bases
Sep 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
Charging that EPA is “not doing nearly enough,” environmentalists are urging the Senate to require the Trump administration to quickly take a series of steps to address water contamination from per- and polyflouroalkyl substances (PFAS), citing a new study that suggests levels at many military bases exceed a federal health agency's draft risk values.
The analysis, released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) on Sept. 25, comes one day before a Senate subcommittee is slated to hold the upper chamber's first hearing on PFAS contamination on Sept. 26, where lawmakers will hear from EPA, the Defense Department (DOD), communities and others on “The Federal Role in the Toxic PFAS Chemical Crisis."
In a statement announcing release of their analysis, UCS officials -- backed by a key senator -- reiterated a series of steps they are calling for policymakers to take to address PFAS contamination.
“This report reaffirms [that] urgent federal action is needed to address PFAS contamination at military bases and communities across the country,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) says in a UCS press release on the analysis.
Echoing Hassan, UCS' Genna Reed, the study's author, says “EPA is not doing nearly enough to protect families, especially military families from PFAS contamination of their water.”
She called for “immediate action” to reduce military families' risks, including limits on future uses of PFAS chemicals, requiring EPA to set an enforceable drinking water standard, mandating reporting of PFAS releases and providing support to clean up contaminated sites.
While EPA has committed to taking several actions to address PFAS, the agency is grappling with whether to set an enforceable drinking water standard, known as a maximum contaminant level, due to concerns that the substance may not be widely present in drinking water systems.
A national coalition of community groups, whose representative is slated to testify to the Senate subcommittee, is also meeting with home-state lawmakers to push for attention to PFAS contamination issues.
PFAS are a class of thousands of emerging contaminants that have drawn growing concerns from communities and states. The chemicals -- used in various non-stick and other commercial and industrial applications -- have been linked to a host of adverse health effects, including certain cancers, ulcerative colitis and thyroid disease.
The military faces cleanup liability at various bases as the chemicals were used in firefighting foam used in training and to fight fires on bases.
But federal officials have been struggling to quantify the substances' risks. While EPA developed risk values that it used to set health advisory goals for two PFAS, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) earlier this year unveiled draft risk values for two of the most common PFAS that are more conservative than EPA's.
ATSDR's draft toxicological profile proposes minimum risk levels (MRLs) -- an estimate of the level of a chemical a person can be exposed to daily without a detectable non-cancer health risk -- for four PFAS. Most notably, its draft levels for "intermediate" duration oral exposures for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are between seven and 10 times stricter than EPA risk estimates underlying its 2016 drinking water health advisories for lifetime chronic exposure to the two PFAS.
Environmentalists have hailed ATSDR's work, which the agency released in the face of significant criticism from lawmakers and others after Inside EPA and other news outlets reported EPA and other Trump administration officials had urged the White House to block the document because it sought more conservative values for PFAS than EPA had used.
UCS Analysis
In its analysis, UCS compared PFAS levels in drinking water and groundwater at 131 active and formerly active military sites in 37 states, comparing those levels to ATSDR's draft risk values.
It relied on findings in a DOD report, issued earlier this year, that found 564 drinking water wells off-base exceed EPA's health advisory levels of 70 parts per trillion (ppt), and 24 DOD-run, on-base water systems in addition to 12 other on-base water systems not run by DOD have drinking water levels above the health advisory.
Also, DOD found 180 bases where groundwater sampling showed exceedances of EPA's health advisory.
But UCS in its analysis is pointing to how DOD's data shows exceedances in some cases far above ATSDR's draft MRLs, which the group says translate into drinking water guidelines of 7 ppt and 11 ppt for PFOS and PFOA, respectively, the group says in a fact sheet outlining the analysis.
Of the 131 military sites UCS examined, it says more than half of 32 sites with direct drinking water contamination had PFAS levels 10 times higher than ATSDR's risk level.
The analysis also found that 10 of the military sites had PFAS contamination in groundwater more than 100,000 times the ATSDR translated risk level of 11 ppt, the fact sheet says. And 87 of the sites were at least 100 times greater than the ATSDR level, it says.
“Perhaps most alarming are DOD data indicating shockingly high PFAS concentrations in groundwater at some military installations,” UCS says in the fact sheet outlining its analysis.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/citing-new-study-environmentalists-urge-senate-address-pfas-bases
-
This Week in DC: PFAS Chemical Crisis in the Spotlight
Sep 25, 2018 | Safer Chemicals, Health
By Liz Hitchcock
An estimated 110 million people in 39 states use drinking water that has been contaminated with toxic chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). This class of more than 4,000 chemicals is used in firefighting foam, food packaging, non-stick pans, clothing, building materials and manufacturing processes. Families across the country have been shocked to learn that their drinking water is contaminated with these chemicals that have been linked to numerous health problems. Many communities have been calling on the federal government to help address this drinking water crisis. And this week Congress is working to address it in a couple of ways.
First, we should see votes on both the House and Senate floors on legislation to fund the Federal Aviation Administration and to strengthen disaster programs that includes a provision allowing commercial airports to use firefighting foams that do not contain PFAS chemicals. The provision is important because much of the drinking water contamination is found near airports – military and commercial – that use PFAS-based aqueous film-forming foam.
PFAS-containing foams are in use at airports, by the military, and at ports, and by local fire districts. Firefighters apply them in fire emergencies, but also for vapor suppression after oil spills, and in regular training. Firefighting foams are also released during equipment maintenance. Firefighting foam without PFAS is being used successfully around the world, including at the Copenhagen and Heathrow airports, but federal guidelines require U.S. commercial airports to use foam that contains PFAS. Earlier this year, Washington State banned the use of PFAS-containing foams in training exercises.
The provision in the FAA reauthorization package will allow commercial airports to use non-PFAS foam. This is a good step forward to reduce the use of these toxic chemicals. We applaud the bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers who led negotiations of the final package: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.); Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.); House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.); and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
Tomorrow, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (yes, that IS just one subcommittee) will conduct a hearing on “The Federal Role in the Toxic PFAS Chemical Crisis.” This follows a hearing that was held earlier this month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment Subcommittee. If the House hearing was any indicator, we can expect substantial interest from senators on and off the committee, and activists from communities that have been affected across the country. In addition to EPA and Department of Defense, the witnesses will include Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program and representatives from communities in New Hampshire and Michigan that have been affected by local contamination. The hearing comes as the Union of Concerned Scientists Center for Science and Democracy releases a new fact sheet about military sites where PFAS contamination has been found in drinking water or groundwater.
We applaud the committee for holding this important hearing and hope that it leads to more steps forward in addressing the PFAS crisis.
https://saferchemicals.org/2018/09/25/this-week-in-dc-pfas-chemical-crisis-in-the-spotlight/
-
Wastewater From Michigan Auto Parts Maker Far Above Chemical Limit
Sep 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
A Michigan company that supplies auto parts for Ford Motor Co., Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota Motor Corp. sent wastewater to a treatment plant containing chemicals at more than 2,300 times the state limit.
Howell, Mich.-based Tribar Manufacturing has until Oct. 19 to draft a plan for bringing its discharges of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) back down to the state’s 12 parts per trillion limit.
Wixom, Mich., which issued the Sept. 19 administrative order to Tribar, began investigating after state monitoring showed discharge levels from the treatment plant into Norton Creek were 450 times the state limit. That prompted health advisories to not eat fish from the waterway and will be the numbers used in regulatory reviews.
PFOS is part of a group of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, which are commonly used in firefighting foams and nonstick coatings. The chemicals have been linked to a variety of health effects, including effects on liver and immune system function, increased blood cholesterol levels, developmental delays, and increased cancer risk.
Tribar Manufacturing didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company manufacturers electro-mechanical assemblies, advanced molding technologies, and automotive chrome plating.City, State Watching
Wixom hasn’t levied any fines against Tribar, but the city is monitoring the situation, Steven Brown, the city manager, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
“Going forward, we will evaluate appropriate actions as this situation develops,” he said. “Our actions will reflect the response from the company and the progress toward reduction and elimination of PFAS from Tribar’s wastewater.”
Tribar’s upcoming plan must include the types of equipment, contractors, procedures, and chemicals the company will use. The company also must reimburse the city for all associated remediation and monitoring costs.
State officials are also monitoring the situation.
“Currently, we are working to identify whether there are other sources contributing PFOS to Norton Creek through sampling,” Scott Dean, a spokesman Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
“In addition, we will continue to work with the City of Wixom and Tribar to reduce PFOS in the discharge from the [wastewater treatment plant] to comply with our water quality criteria.”
State inspectors visited the facility Aug. 15 to determine compliance with its industrial storm water permit. “The facility has been cooperative and responsive to any requests and inspections,” Dean said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/wastewater-from-michigan-auto-parts-maker-far-above-chemical-limit
-
Pret A Manger Sued Over Weed Killer Residue
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Julie Steinberg
Pret A Manger, Ltd. deceptively touts sandwiches and cookies as “natural” when they contain traces of the weed-killer ingredient glyphosate, a proposed class suit alleges.
Pret A Manger’s logo says the fare in its fast-casual restaurants is “natural food,” seeking to take advantage of consumer demand for healthful products, plaintiffs Samara Daly and Linda Virtue say.
But consumers wouldn’t expect “natural” food to contain residue of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, according to the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The suit joins others targeting “natural” foods that allegedly contain traces of the pesticide, which has drawn even more attention following a $289 million jury verdict to a groundskeeper who alleged exposure to the chemical caused his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a blood cancer.
Bayer AG, which acquired Monsanto, has challenged the verdict.
Shortly after the verdict, General Mills, Inc. settled a suit by several consumer groups that alleged its Nature Valley granola bars were deceptively labeled “100 percent natural” because of glyphosate residue. The company agreed to stop labeling the bars “100 percent natural.”
But several other suits targeting granola bars got thrown out when a federal court in Minnesota said it would be nearly impossible to produce a processed food with no trace of any synthetic molecule.
Here, the plaintiffs alleged independent lab testing revealed traces of glyphosate in Pret’s Harvest (oatmeal raisin) cookies and its egg salad and arugula sandwiches made with 9-grain granary bread.
The plaintiffs seek money damages and marketing changes, including an order that Pret disclose the presence of glyphosate in the food or reformulate it to remove the chemical.
They seek to represent a national class and a New York subclass.
Pret A Manger declined to comment on the suit.
The Richman Law Group represents the plaintiffs.
The suit is Daly v. Pret A Manger, Ltd., E.D.N.Y., No. 18-5368, complaint 9/24/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/pret-a-manger-sued-over-weed-killer-residue
-
OECD Publishes Case Study on Grouping and Read-Across for the Genotoxicity of Nano Titanium Dioxide
Sep 25, 2018 | National Law Review
On September 21, 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced four new case studies on integrated approaches for testing and assessment (IATA), including a Case Study on Grouping and Read-Across for Nanomaterials — Genotoxicity of Nano-TiO2. The European Union (EU) Joint Research Center (JRC) developed the case study for the genotoxicity of nano-titanium dioxide (TiO2) for illustrating the practical use of IATA. The case study applies the workflow for grouping and read-across proposed in the European Chemicals Agency’s (ECHA) Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) guidance update for nanomaterials and explores the extent to which ECHA’s Read-Across Assessment Framework (RAAF) is applicable to nanoforms for identifying sources of uncertainty associated with the read-across.
According to the case study, the purpose of the read-across exercise was to determine the genotoxic hazard potential of two nano-TiO2 target substances based on the in vitro comet assay results from other TiO2 nanoforms. Overall, the case study shows the practical application of the ECHA guidance for grouping and read-across of nanomaterials, which was slightly adapted for the case study. Furthermore, the case study states, it demonstrates the usefulness of cheminformatics techniques to support the grouping hypothesis by identifying the differences between nanoforms and by supporting the weight of evidence. JRC successfully applied the ECHA RAAF for evaluating the confidence in the read-across argumentation of nanomaterials. According to the case study, some nanospecific issues were identified for further specification of the RAAF for nanomaterials, in particular the concept of similarity, which cannot be based only on structural similarity for nanomaterials.
OECD states that the objective of the IATA Case Studies Project is to increase experience with the use of IATA by developing case studies that constitute examples of predictions fit for regulatory use. The aim is to create common understanding of using novel methodologies and the generation of considerations/guidance stemming from these case studies. OECD published the following three case studies with the case study on nano-TiO2:
Case Study on the Use of Integrated Approaches for Testing and Assessment (IATA) for Estrogenicity of the Substituted Phenols;
Prioritisation of Chemicals Using the Integrated Approaches for Testing and Assessment (IATA)-Based Ecological Risk Classification; and
A Case Study on the Use of Integrated Approaches for Testing and Assessment for Sub-Chronic Repeated-Dose Toxicity of Simple Aryl Alcohol Alkyl Carboxylic Esters: Read-Across.
OECD also published a considerations document summarizing the learnings and lessons of the review experience of the case studies, Report on Considerations from Case Studies on Integrated Approaches for Testing and Assessment (IATA) — Third Review Cycle (2017).
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/oecd-publishes-case-study-grouping-and-read-across-genotoxicity-nano-titanium
-
Big Oil Warns of Backlash as It Makes Vow on Climate Change
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Nussbaum
The world’s biggest oil and gas companies made an unprecedented vow to cut their contributions to global warming, even as they warned of a potential backlash from pushing change too quickly.
A collection of 13 energy luminaries—including the heads of BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc—gathered in New York on Sept. 24 to acknowledge the need to reduce the planet’s reliance on fossil fuels. But they said a long road lies ahead that’s filled with political and technological challenges, and insisted petroleum will remain a key source of fuel for a growing population.
“The product portfolio will have to evolve, and I think we have a role in making that evolution,” Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said at the forum. But, he added, “all these things we cannot do by forcing it down people’s throats. In the end it is the consumer that has to decide.“
The meeting, organized by the industry-led Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, brought together top executives from firms representing one-third of the world’s oil and gas production, including European majors and national oil companies from China, Brazil, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.
They gathered as the industry comes under increasing pressure from governments and activists, while more investors are vowing to pull money from fossil-fuel producers.Startup Funding
The OGCI was founded in 2014. After years of negotiations, American oil majors Exxon and Chevron Corp. agreed to join last week, even as U.S. President Donald Trump ramps up efforts to relax rules covering greenhouse-gas emissions.
The companies present Sept. 24 announced a collective pledge to cut the rate of heat-trapping methane pollution from their operations by one-fifth by 2025, a move that would reduce overall emissions by 350,000 tons per year, according to a statement. The 13 businesses have also created a $1.3 billion investment fund to seed startups that are aiming to cut emissions from vehicles, oil wells, concrete production and other top sources of greenhouse gases.
The invitation-only forum in a Manhattan hotel ballroom could have been mistaken for a environmentalist convention at some points. But Big Oil’s executives made it clear their goal was survival in a carbon-constrained world, not forced retirement.
“If we do not provide the energy that is required, you will see an impact on the global economy,” said Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., better known as Saudi Aramco.‘No Substitute’
The energy sector produced about 68 percent of global greenhouse-gas pollution, with oil and gas accounting for just over half of the sector’s emissions, according to a report last year by the International Energy Agency in Paris.
The OGCI’s methane pledge sets a “good, strong goal”—if the companies follow through, Fred Krupp, president of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said in an statement. The danger, he said, is that “laggards” in the industry hide behind the OGCI’s proposal without addressing their own emissions.
“What we’ve learned through hard experience in the U.S. is that voluntary efforts of leaders are no substitute for government policies that level the playing field for all,” Krupp said.
Still, some climate activists remain skeptical of the OGCI. The initiative has very little to do with addressing climate change and everything with oil and gas companies trying to delay their “inevitable” demise, Patrick McCully, climate and energy program director at the Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, said in an email.
“The math is clear,” he said. To avoid “catastrophic climate change we need to stop expanding fossil fuel use and start the managed decline of the sector.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/big-oil-warns-of-backlash-as-it-makes-vow-on-climate-change
-
How Much is Big Oil Working to Pass a Carbon Tax? We Checked
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac and Kelsey Brugger
At a low-profile briefing on Capitol Hill in 2016, officials from Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas company, told members of Congress that the firm would back a carbon tax.
Then earlier this year, Shell Oil Co. lobbyists met several times with Republicans and Democrats from both chambers to say the energy giant would support a nationwide price on carbon emissions.
These are rare examples of oil majors urging elected officials to pass sweeping legislation to address climate change. The meetings raise comparisons between the companies' public claims to support carbon taxes with their efforts to actually pass one. Most of the majors have said for years that they support the controversial policy.
E&E News reviewed hundreds of lobbying records filed between 2015 and this year by lobbyists working for BP PLC, Chevron Corp., Equinor ASA, Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Total SA. (Statoil changed its name to Equinor in May.) The analysis also included lobbying forms submitted by industry trade groups.
Three companies — BP, Exxon and Shell — lobbied 17 times on carbon tax bills, related resolutions or carbon taxes broadly. It's a sliver of their lobbying efforts. In most cases, it's unclear whether they lobbied for or against legislation, including measures that opposed carbon taxes as an economy-crushing policy. None of the firms, when contacted, would answer questions about their message to lawmakers on specific provisions.
"We have met with numerous members of Congress to express our views about the principles we support regarding a carbon tax," Exxon spokesperson Scott Silvestri said in an email.
During the four-year span, the six firms together spent more than $120 million to lobby Congress. A tiny fraction went to advancing, or opposing, the prospects of a carbon tax.
That didn't catch observers by surprise.
"The only data point I have in the world that I inhabit is that Exxon Mobil did throw in with the Climate Leadership Council," said Bob Inglis, who advocates for taxing carbon as director of the conservative environmental group republicEN. "That's about all that I know I've seen."
At the first meeting of the Climate Solutions Caucus in April 2016, Kevin Massy (right) of Equinor ASA, formerly Statoil, met with bipartisan lawmakers to express support for a carbon price. @RepCurbelo/Twitter
Exxon, along with BP, Shell and Total, joined the Climate Leadership Council in June 2017 to indirectly push for a $40-per-ton levy on emissions.
At the same time, five of the six companies are members of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which emphatically opposes a carbon tax in any form. (Equinor is not a member of AFPM.)
AFPM issued a statement earlier this year supporting a House resolution that claimed a carbon tax would sink the U.S. economy. The trade group argued that the policy would increase the cost of energy and "disproportionately impact middle- and low-income families."
Yet all six oil companies have publicly stated, in one way or another, that they would support a carbon tax in the U.S.
In his first public statement after being named Exxon's chief executive, Darren Woods endorsed a revenue-neutral carbon fee.
But neither Woods nor his lobbyists have pushed for the passage of existing legislation to impose the fee, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has introduced a carbon tax bill with Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
"I am the author of the only carbon price bill in the Senate, and I have received no support for it from the oil majors," Whitehouse said in an interview. "Or any support to work on negotiating a bill that they could support."
Lobbying disclosure forms show that Exxon repeatedly lobbied on Whitehouse's bill, the "American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act." Records show in-house lobbyists met with members of the Senate and the House multiple times since 2015.
Laws that govern federal lobbying don't require disclosure forms to specify whether someone, such as an advocacy group or a corporation, supported or opposed a bill.
Asked about Whitehouse's bill, Silvestri declined to say whether the company lobbied for or against it.
There are other examples, too.
At the end of 2016, Exxon lobbied on "all provisions" of an anti-carbon tax resolution by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), according to a lobbying form filed by the company. The measure had a single message: Carbon taxes are "detrimental to the economy of the United States." It passed easily.
Exxon also lobbied on Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) carbon tax bill, which called for an escalating price on greenhouse gases that would have started at $15 a ton and ended at $73 in 2035. It never received a vote, and it's unclear what Exxon said about it to lawmakers. On the state level, Exxon opposed two carbon tax bills in the Massachusetts Legislature in 2016 (Climatewire, Jan. 27, 2017).'Talking a lot'
Before President Trump's surprising electoral victory, the industry braced for a Hillary Clinton presidency — and an increase in environmental rules. So it dispatched teams to Congress to broach the idea of a carbon tax deal.
"In the fall of 2016, oil companies were going around the Hill talking about carbon pricing with members that you think would be intransigent, or I would assess as being swing votes, on any carbon bill," said a source familiar with the talks.
They met with energy-state lawmakers in both chambers and from both parties, the source said. "That's probably where they have their strongest relationships."
George Frampton, co-founder of the Partnership for Responsible Growth, which advocates for taxing emissions, said companies were calculating what might have happened under Clinton.
"I think there were a number of companies and some manufacturing companies talking a lot about whether they might zig rather than zag if Hillary were elected," Frampton said. "How serious that was, I don't know."
He added: "I don't think it's entirely gone away. I think those people are still kind of talking to each other."
Shell Oil has convened regular meetings to discuss carbon taxes with environmental and industry groups since early 2016 (Climatewire, Sept. 6).
The meetings sprang up naturally from the small community of climate experts who work for oil companies and research institutions in Washington, D.C., according to sources. With carbon taxes on the agenda, they met for lunch, talked by phone and traded emails.
After Trump's election, interest increased among oil industry officials in a federal carbon tax, according to some observers.
"They believe this is inevitable," said Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank that supports pricing carbon. "It may not be during this administration. It might not be the next. It will happen within a decade or two."
Rather than butting heads with regulators and lawmakers, oil giants "would far rather settle," Taylor said.
Exxon, for instance, said in an emailed statement that it would support carbon pricing only if the policy replaced the "patchwork of literally thousands of regulations, laws and mandates today that have the effect of putting a price on carbon in a costly, inefficient way."
Last year, a Chevron spokeswoman told E&E News that the company "does not support general calls for implementing a price on carbon" (Climatewire, April 14, 2017).
Now, Chevron says it backs a carbon tax, under certain terms. It would have to be a "well-designed policy" that results in the "lowest-cost emissions reductions," promotes "global engagement" and includes "broad sectors of the economy," spokesman Sean Comey said by email.
"The details matter," Comey said.
Still, the oil industry is diverse in its carbon tax perspectives.
Some companies, particularly European operators, have spoken more pointedly about the warming effect that drilling has had on the planet and their role in addressing the problem.
"I think it's pretty well-known that a lot of the foreign companies are more comfortable or accustomed to this than American companies and showing that they can thrive in that environment," Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who has met with Shell this year to discuss carbon taxes, said in a recent interview.
Concern about curbing climate change has, for many years, been seen as a Democratic cause. But that has slowly changed, in part because oil majors have acknowledged that fossil fuel production has contributed to warming the planet.
At the first meeting of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a group comprising 88 lawmakers, representatives from Statoil told the group that the company supports carbon tax bills because of their "simplicity" and "fairness."
Still, Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, said he has had trouble rousing support from majors for a carbon tax, even though their positions align.
"We're constantly begging all of the above for help," he said of the oil majors. "You can't count on a corporate entity to lead change. You can count on a company to jump on when the train is moving."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/09/26/stories/1060099745
-
LNG Export Terminals Should Model Explosion Risk — Safety Expert
Sep 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Liquefied natural gas export terminals face explosion risks that are not accounted for under current safety regulations, a longtime LNG safety expert is warning federal regulators.
The warning comes in recent public comments filed with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration by Jerry Havens, a retired University of Arkansas chemical engineering professor who developed a computer model that was once widely used for gas dispersion analysis.
In describing the risk as a grave concern, Havens said existing regulations are written to accommodate LNG import terminals, not the rapidly growing U.S. LNG export business, which comes with different engineering issues.
"For export terminals, the gases entering the facility for liquefaction may (and typically do) contain significant amounts of high-explosion-risk hydrocarbons that must be stored and handled, thus presenting new risks not ordinarily attending import terminals," Havens wrote.
While natural gas itself will not explode if it leaks and builds into a cloud, Havens said, heavier hydrocarbons like propane and butane stripped from the pipeline gas stream before liquefaction and stored on site could accumulate in a cloud that is prone to exploding.
"I realize the gravity of this statement and I have struggled with the decision to put such questions of uncertainty on the table. But I have been unable to satisfy myself that my concerns are unwarranted," Havens wrote to PHMSA earlier this week.Process at a standstill
The comments were submitted in an online docket associated with a 2016 workshop held at PHMSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., that officials said at the time was geared toward an upcoming revamp of LNG safety regulations.
In 2016, key officials declined to say what kinds of changes might be under consideration, but they said anyone who raised issues would see them addressed (Energywire, June 7, 2016).
Since that meeting, the docket has been largely static; it has a total of nine comments submitted, three of which are less than 2 years old.
Federal regulators acknowledge the differences between LNG import and export terminals. LNG is a supercooled version of natural gas, its volume reduced 600-fold by bringing it to a temperature of minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit. If importing the liquid and gasifying it for use is akin to melting ice cubes, then chilling it to that temperature for export requires building a highly sophisticated freezer.
At a public meeting last week, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission general counsel James Danly described a new agreement between FERC and PHMSA under which the two agencies will work together to review LNG export terminal applications.
"LNG export terminals, when compared to LNG import terminals, are far more complex and can raise significantly different issues," Danly said, explaining that the added complexity has translated to a heavier workload for regulators and slower permit processing (Energywire, Sept. 21).
Under the new agreement, LNG developers will work more directly with PHMSA to clarify any questions that come up in reviewing their plans, which the agencies said would streamline the process and reduce permitting time. FERC is under pressure from Congress to move applicants more quickly through its review process.
Since the 2016 public workshop, PHMSA has shown no signs of moving forward on a revamp of LNG regulations. The issue is not included in a list of 25 rules at various stages of development in the agency's "unified agenda" of ongoing rulemakings.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/26/stories/1060099717
-
Trade War Hobbles Chinese Plan to Buy U.S. Crude
Sep 26, 2018 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By Alfred Cang and Serene Cheong
U.S. oil exports to China are becoming a casualty of President Trump's trade war with President Xi Jinping's administration.
Unipec, the trading unit of top Chinese refiner Sinopec, has put a plan to boost U.S. crude imports on hold as it assesses the impact of the Asian nation's trade war with America, according to company President Chen Bo. It previously planned to raise volumes to 500,000 barrels a day in 2019, compared with 300,000 barrels daily from January to August this year, he said.
The reluctance to boost purchases shows how the trade war between the major economies is reverberating in the world of energy trading even though crude isn't yet subjected to tariffs. Buyers are already bracing for higher prices and a supply crunch due to impending American sanctions on Iran. Unipec's caution means China — the world's biggest oil importer — may not be able to fully take advantage of booming output at U.S. shale fields.
Earlier this year, Unipec had shunned U.S. crude purchases due to the threat of oil being included among U.S. imports that will incur tariffs in China. The trader later resumed some purchases after crude was removed from the list by Beijing. Still, the possibility that it may be reintroduced is making buyers wary.
China on Monday said talks to resolve the impasse over trade with the U.S. can't happen as long as Trump keeps threatening to impose further tariffs. Just over an hour after the U.S. imposed further duties on another $200 billion in Chinese goods, Beijing published a document reiterating its position. Talks scheduled for this week were canceled as the imposition of fresh duties by Washington neared.
The disruption of trade with the U.S. will prove temporary, according to Chen, who said that American oil helps Unipec diversify supply sources. "We are confident that the trade war is for the short term, but in the long term we will very active in the U.S.," he said on Monday at the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference in Singapore.
The company will lift U.S. supply for third-party trading in September-October, Chen said in an interview on the sidelines of the APPEC event. West Texas Intermediate crude, the American benchmark, was up 0.4 percent at $72.35 a barrel at 7:13 a.m. London time yesterday.
Unipec was earlier this year embroiled in a dispute with Saudi Arabia, saying the top OPEC producer's prices were costly and cutting purchases. That's now been resolved and trading volumes with the Middle East nation are back to normal levels, according to Chen, who added that oil prices at $60 to $80 a barrel are acceptable.
Before the tariff kerfuffle, U.S. crude exports to China had risen to 15 million barrels in June, the highest volume in data going back to 1996, according to U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Energy Information Administration data. That made the Asian country the biggest buyer of American supply.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/09/26/stories/1060099705
-
New Farm Bill May Undercut Chemical Safety Measures Inspired by West Explosion
Sep 26, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey
A little-known provision tucked into the Farm Bill could exempt the entire chemical manufacturing industry from key safety rules and jeopardize workers’ health, according to one of the government agencies charged with overseeing safety in the chemical industry.
Officials from the Department of Labor say the provision would create a broad exemption to Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for managing highly hazardous chemicals, and could have “the unintended consequence” of allowing a large chemical facility to skirt the rules by claiming to be a retail store.
“This could effectively eliminate the entire chemical manufacturing sector from coverage of the (OSHA) standard, jeopardizing the safety and health of chemical facility workers,” Labor Department officials wrote, in documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle.Unlimited Digital Access for 99¢Read more articles like this by subscribing to the Houston Chronicle SUBSCRIBE
Five years ago, an explosion at a West, Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people and injured more than 200 people.
In the aftermath of the disaster, OSHA tried to clarify existing rules to make sure facilities similar to the one in West would face more scrutiny. A Dallas Morning News investigation in 2013 found there were more than 70 sites like West Fertilizer Company in Texas alone.
A lawsuit by the fertilizer industry stopped OSHA’s attempts, beginning a push and pull between lobbyists and chemical safety advocates on the right way to regulate these potentially dangerous facilities. After the 2016 election, the Trump administration swept into office backed by a GOP majority in Congress looking to roll back the reforms, which had been initiated during the Obama presidency.
The new provision, nestled into the massive Farm Bill, which passed the House in June, is being hashed out in a conference committee with the Senate, which approved its own bill without the OSHA exemption.
Congress is fast running out of time to meet a Sept. 30 deadline for reaching agreement on the five-year, $430 billion bill, struggling for agreement on key provisions, among them insistence by House Republicans on adding a work requirement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the government’s biggest food aid program.
Agriculture retailers’ group led effort
The fate of the proposed OSHA exemption may not be decided any time soon. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, worried aloud this week that negotiators would not meet the end of September fiscal year deadline and that it would be a “tall order” to get the legislation passed before the election.
Opponents say there’s an ulterior motive to putting the new chemical safety provision in the farm bill instead of a separate piece of legislation.
“They’re trying to codify bad language into law so a future administration would be unable to do anything about it,” said Katie Tracy, policy analyst for the Center for Progressive Reform, “They’re putting it in the Farm Bill where no one will ever see it.”
The Agriculture Retailers Association, which represents companies big and small, spearheaded the drive for the exemptions written into the Farm Bill.
Kyle Liske, the association’s public policy director, says the Obama-administration OSHA regulations would cost his industry more than $100 million.
Liske points out that retailers already comply with regulations from multiple government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency. He says the more stringent OSHA rules are not necessary, and retailers should be exempted from them. Besides, he said, the explosion in West was fueled by ammonium nitrate, which is not regulated by OSHA. The stricter requirements would apply to a different chemical entirely, anhydrous ammonia.
It’s like “regulating trucks in response to a rail accident. It simply doesn’t make sense,” he said.
The argument over how OSHA distinguishes between retailers and manufacturers has been at the heart of resistance to the new rules.
Five years later, new safety rules in limbo
An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives determined the fire leading to the explosion at West was an act of arson. The Chemical Safety Board’s investigation revealed a laundry list of problems at the facility; highly combustible fertilizer was stored in wooden bins and was too close to other hazardous chemicals, chemicals would frequently mix and cross contaminate, and the site was too close to homes and school in town.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/New-Farm-Bill-may-undercut-chemical-safety-13258045.php
-
FERC, PHMSA Execute MOU on LNG Transportation Facilities
Sep 26, 2018 | Lexology
On August 31, 2018, FERC and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (“PHMSA”), an agency under the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) to coordinate the siting and safety review of FERC-jurisdictional Liquified Natural Gas (“LNG”) facilities.
The MOU generally establishes FERC and PHMSA’s roles and responsibilities regarding the siting, construction, and operation of LNG facilities. Specifically, the MOU provides that PHMSA, which is responsible for standards governing the location and design of LNG facilities, will review LNG project applications to determine whether a proposed facility complies with the safety standards provided by PHMSA’s regulations. PHMSA will also issue a letter to FERC stating its findings regarding such compliance. FERC will then consider PHMSA’s compliance findings in its decision on whether a project is in the public interest.
In response to this agency coordination, FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre stated, “FERC is pleased to collaborate with PHMSA to better leverage each agency’s expertise and to process LNG applications in the safest and most efficient way possible. I would like to thank DOT Secretary Chao and PHMSA Administrator Elliott for their collaboration and leadership.”
A copy of the MOU is available here. A copy of FERC’s news release of the MOU is available here.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1de456d4-412f-4dfc-b53c-a8cbd76ef55e
-
MBTA Applies for PTC Deadline Extension
Sep 25, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) late last week applied to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for a two-year extension of the federally mandated deadline to implement positive train control (PTC).
MBTA submitted the request after completing all federal requirements necessary to qualify for an extension to implement PTC. Railroads are required to implement PTC by Dec. 31, or apply for an extension.
To apply for an extension, the MBTA needed to install all wayside and on-board equipment, perform field qualification testing on the Stoughton Pilot Line, train Keolis Commuter Services workers on PTC and configure its PTC management system.
The MBTA's wayside equipment included 194 interface units, 181 radios, 181 antennas, 3,097 transponders and 223 miles of fiber optic cable, according to an agency news release.
The MBTA also submitted a separate application to begin a revenue service demonstration of PTC along the Stoughton Line.
"As the highest-priority capital project for the MBTA, positive train control represents one of the most significant safety upgrades for our rail system in recent memory,” said MBTA General Manager Luis Manuel Ramirez.
Although FRA requires that PTC be implemented by December 2020, the MBTA and its contractors aim to complete deployment for the entire commuter-rail system by late August 2020, agency officials added.
The MBTA anticipates starting revenue service demonstration along the Stoughton Line in late November 2018, with the Lowell and Fairmount lines to follow over the coming months. The agency expects commissioning of the remaining lines by late August 2020.
In addition, the MBTA plans to complete vehicle fleet software upgrades in October and November, with interoperability testing to coordinated with Amtrak, CSX and Pan Am Railways on the Worcester, Needham and Franklin lines by 2020.https://www.progressiverailroading.com/ptc/news/MBTA-applies-for-PTC-deadline-extension--55696
-
California Ballot Initiative Seeks to End High Speed Rail
Sep 25, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
Opponents of the California gas tax increase passed by state legislators last year on Tuesday proposed a new ballot measure for 2020 to provide money for road repairs and eliminate the state’s $77 billion high-speed rail project.
The backers of the 2020 measure are also behind Proposition 6, which will ask voters in November if they want to repeal the state’s recent gas tax hike, which raised the state gas tax 12 cents per gallon. They contend the state can use existing revenue for transportation projects.
The 2020 initiative would change the state constitution to require that revenue from existing gas taxes be spent only for road and bridge work.
California’s Democratic-led legislature passed the increase on fuel taxes and vehicle fees last year. It is expected to raise about $5 billion a year for highway and road improvements and transit programs.
Republicans and Democrats agree the state needs a transportation overhaul but disagree on how to pay for it.
Last year, a Democratic state lawmaker from Orange County was recalled over his support for the fuel tax increase.
Those who support the tax increase contend it’s critical to maintain the state’s infrastructure. Those who argue for repeal say gasoline has become too expensive and the legislature should find other funding sources to cover the state’s transportation needs.
California’s high-speed rail project has become politically fraught as costs spike and the project’s end date pushes farther back.
Voters approved roughly $10 billion in bonds in 2008 to construct a high-speed train that would take passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours. It was supposed to cost about $40 billion.
Now, the cost has ballooned to an expected $77 billion — with the completion date pushed back to 2033.
Construction is underway in the state’s Central Valley agricultural heartland, but the high-speed rail authority does not have enough money to complete the first phase from Bakersfield to San Francisco. As of April, the project had between $20 and $28 billion in hand.
Money for the project comes from the bonds, federal dollars and revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program that requires businesses to buy credits to emit greenhouse gases.
The proposed ballot measure would halt funding for high-speed rail, force the state to cease activities on it and use any unspent bond money to retire the debt. The federal money has already been spent. The initiative does not specify how the cap-and-trade money earmarked for rail would be redirected.
The ambitious proposal is currently California’s largest single infrastructure project.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is a staunch supporter, while Republicans largely detest the project.
Some Democrats in the Legislature have grown frustrated by the cost overruns and delays. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox says he’d kill the project, while Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he supports it but is concerned about its financing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/california-ballot-initiative-seeks-to-end-high-speed-rail/2018/09/25/90a014fa-c0ec-11e8-9f4f-a1b7af255aa5_story.html?utm_term=.950d7568ba76
-
How the Climate-Change Debate Has Shifted, Not Ended: QuickTake
Sep 26, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Eric Roston
Is there still a debate over climate change? Yes and no. As a scientific matter, the issues of whether it’s happening and who’s to blame are long settled. But there’s no end to debates about what to do about it. Arguments about the need for and costs of action are playing out against a nonstop, live-on-TV drama of the massive storms, record wildfires and deadly heat waves already fueled by global warming.
1. What’s new in the climate debate?
For one thing, there’s been a revolution in renewable energy. The price of wind and solar has plunged in a way even its most ardent backers wouldn’t have dared dream 20 years ago. Bloomberg NEF projects that by 2050, renewable power will produce two-thirds of the world’s electricity, the same fraction that fossil fuel produces today. The world’s biggest polluter, China, is taking far more aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than was expected even a decade ago. A combination of slower economic growth and a drive for cleaner air have put China ahead of schedule for its emissions to peak by 2030.
2. How has the debate shifted?
There’s robust argument over how to balance the effort put into mitigation versus adaptation. Mitigation gets most of the attention — the headline news from the 2015 Paris climate accord, for instance, was about the pledges different countries made to limit the release of greenhouse gases. But adaptation is becoming a pressing need as temperatures rise. Some communities are already trying to relocate away from rising waters. Storm-surge barriers and flood gates geared to climate change have gone up in Rotterdam and Venice. New York installed gates after parts of the city were inundated by the surge driven by super storm Sandy in 2012, and Houston, flooded by Hurricane Harvey’s torrential rains in 2017, is considering new defenses. Even steps as small as providing air conditioners for the poor can play an important role in making cities livable in a hotter future.
3. What’s the status of the Paris agreement?
Even though President Donald Trump intends to pull the world’s biggest economy out of the accord, the U.S. is still participating in nuts and bolts discussions on implementing the voluntary pledges made by almost 200 countries. Coalitions of cities, states, businesses and universities in groups such as We Are Still In and America’s Pledge have organized to keep progress going in the U.S. even if the country formally leaves the pact. (America’s Pledge was co-founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. He has told the New York Times that he is considering a campaign for president.) The U.S. is currently seen as on track for its climate goals for 2020 but falling short of its longer-term pledges, as are the European Union and Japan, according to Climate Action Tracker, a research project.
4. What’s Trump’s argument?
Money. Trump said the Paris pact would hurt American workers and amounted to a “massive redistribution” of wealth from the U.S. to other countries. Meeting the Paris goals would conflict with his efforts to revive U.S. coal production. He’s also moved to water down fuel-efficiency standards and proposed rolling back Obama-era regulations meant to force utilities to reduce emissions. Officials in his administration insist that U.S. economic growth is a more urgent priority than climate change.
5. Who’s agreeing with him?
Influential groups of voters in countries where a shift away from dirty fuels has raised energy prices. In Australia, Malcolm Turnbull was pushed out as prime minister in August after conservatives in his party rebelled over his plan to write the country’s Paris targets into law. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015 bowed to pressure to allow pipelines carrying carbon-heavy oil from tar sands to be expanded. Now his plan for a national carbon price to drive down emissions is under attack and is expected to be a focus for his opponents in 2019 elections.
6. How much would meaningful action cost?
It’s hard to know, and there’s a wide range of forecasts. The Deep Decarbonization Pathway Project, a research effort backed in part by a United Nations group, estimates that for 16 leading countries, meeting their Paris targets would require investments amounting to 0.8 percent of gross domestic product a year by 2020 and 1.3 percent by 2050. The International Finance Corporation has estimated that the Paris accord opened up $23 trillion in investment opportunities for government and private industry by 2030. BNEF projects that half that much will actually be spent. Developed nations have committed to boost climate-related aid to poorer countries to $100 billion a year by 2020, including money from both public and private sources.
7. What are the stakes?
Because the warming process is cumulative, if by some magic all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, researchers predict we may still be in for 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming this century — three times as much as we’ve seen since the mid-1990s. Climate Interactive, a research non-profit, calculates that even if the Paris pledges are met, we’d blow past the target of holding warming to 2 degrees above mid-19th century levels. If current emissions levels aren’t reduced, warming could gallop past 4 degrees. Studies have projected changes ranging from more kidney stones, smaller goats and less sex in the short run, to swamped cities and widespread extinction of species in the decades ahead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-the-climate-change-debate-has-shifted-not-ended-quicktake/2018/09/26/5ab007e0-c157-11e8-9f4f-a1b7af255aa5_story.html?utm_term=.1c24db0631cf
-
N.Y., Calif. Pensions Lead Way in Climate Change Investments
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ayanna Alexander
Public pensions are addressing whether to incorporate climate change-related issues—as socially responsible investing surges globally—as their fiduciaries seek to make the best, most-profitable investments.
Socially responsible investments—also known as environmental, social, and governance investments—are on every financial trustee’s priority list, according to data from the Asset Owners Disclosure Project. Of public pensions across the country, New York and California are leading in ESG investments specifically targeted at climate change, such as land protection, water and air quality, and renewable energy. Public pensions from the Empire State and Golden State mostly ranked in the top 50 out of 100 of the world’s largest public pensions in an AODP study, with one from New York as high as No. 3 and one from California at No. 12.
However, AODP also found that many U.S. public pensions have been slow to put their money in climate change-related investments. Outside of New York and California, the next-highest-ranked state fund was a Maryland pension at No. 40. Thirty-seven U.S. pensions were included.
Fiduciaries for private pensions must always prioritize the plan’s bigger picture and make investments accordingly under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA. Fiduciaries for state public pensions, however, may have more freedom when investing, according to Patrick Menasco, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Levan LLP.
“When an ERISA fiduciary decides whether to invest in climate change-sensitive investments, they must consider whether that’s good for the plan’s bottom line,” Menasco told Bloomberg Law. “But states are free to permit their plan fiduciaries to take into account climate change or other social policies when investing. In effect, they can have a double bottom line with a secondary goal.”
State Decisions
Twenty-nine U.S. public pensions have limited financial strategies for climate change, according to the AODP study. More than 60 percent of the world’s largest public pension funds have little to no strategy for climate change investing, it found.
AODP is run by ShareAction, an advocate for socially responsible investing.
New York City recently announced that its five public pensions would double their investments in climate change solutions by 2021, from $2 billion to $4 billion across all asset classes in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other climate solutions.
New York and California pensions, however, have different plans on whether to divest from fossil fuel companies. The New York funds will divest from fossil fuel reserve owners within five years. The New York State Teachers Retirement System and the New York State Common Retirement Fund both invest in renewable fuel and biofuel supplier Renewable Energy Group Inc.
Renewable Energy Group said that New York City is ahead of the curve when adopting green technologies, specifically biodiesel, which reduces “direct lifecycle carbon dioxide” emissions by 78 percent.
The New York State Common Retirement Fund was ranked third in the AODP study.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System hasn’t divested from fossil fuels for reasons of economics, according to Anne Simpson, the fund’s investment director in sustainable investments.
“Recently, we’ve had participants ask us to sell our shares in fossil fuel companies and we haven’t done that,” Simpson told Bloomberg Law. “The world’s economy is 18 percent dependent on fossil fuels. Selling our shares just doesn’t make sense, but what does make sense is that the energy sector should move to low carbon.”
CalPERS was ranked 12th in the study.
Balancing Act
Many state public pensions invest in companies that don’t appear to align with climate change solutions, such as Exxon Mobil Corp.
There could be more than meets the eye to those investments, Karen Barr, director of the Investment Adviser Association, told Bloomberg Law.
“It could be looked at like this: Exxon Mobil isn’t just oil, but they also invest in renewable energy,” she said. “A lot of the larger companies that have traditional sources of energy are also investing in renewable energy. I can’t say when it started, but it’s somewhat early.”
Exxon Mobil recently became one of the largest oil giants to join the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which is a pledge from giants in the oil and gas industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
A plan’s board of trustees gives fiduciaries investment guidelines—including ESG investments—so if there are conflicts among the pension’s board members, they have to fix it, according to Carin Pai, the director of equity management at Fiduciary Trust Co. International.
“There’s still a perception that ESG investing may be conflicting to fiduciaries,” Pai told Bloomberg Law. “It’s not a conflict. In fact, there’s language in the prudent investor rule that shows investing with ESG awareness is actually consistent with that rule.”
Recent data show that because ESG doesn’t add any extra costs to portfolios, these types of investments can be considered under the rule.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/ny-calif-pensions-lead-way-in-climate-change-investments
-
Fight Over Ozone Limits Set for December Argument
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A federal appeals court is nudging ahead a lawsuit over national ozone standards even after the EPA announced it wouldn’t revisit the 70 parts per billion limits that it set in 2015.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments Dec. 18 from Murray Energy Corp. the nation’s largest underground mining company. In addition, separate coalitions representing states, businesses, manufacturers, and environmental groups will argue before the court.
Ground-level ozone forms when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides—emitted by burning of fossil fuels—react in the presence of sunlight. Even at low concentrations, ozone can cause respiratory problems, especially in children, people with asthma, and older adults.
The Obama EPA had decided the more stringent standards were necessary, but that forces states to impose more stringent pollution controls on industries and vehicles.
Groups Push Ahead“Everyone wants the lawsuit to go forward,” Seth Johnson, an Earthjustice attorney who is representing the Sierra Club, American Lung Association, and environmental groups in the lawsuit, told Bloomberg Environment.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
The environmental groups argued the standard wasn’t protective enough of public health and the environment, and wasn’t as strict as the science warrants and the law requires.
Murray Energy had claimed the tighter ozone limits were hurting coal sales and jobs.
The EPA told a federal appeals court Aug. 1 that it would retain the standards set by the Obama administration and evaluate ozone pollution caused by wildfires and cross-border transport in the next review of the ozone limits in 2020.
The case is Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-01385, 9/24/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/fight-over-ozone-limits-set-for-december-argument
-
Macron Says No Trade Deals Without Complying with Climate Treaty
Sep 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gregory Viscusi
French President Emmanuel Macron told the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 25 that trade pacts shouldn’t be signed with countries that don’t respect the 2015 Paris climate treaty, a clear reference to the U.S., which announced plans to leave the carbon treaty last year.
Macron has in the past called for putting carbon reducing standards in trade pacts, but he has never linked entire accords to compliance with the climate treaty.
At a press conference after his speech, Macron said he wouldn’t rule out industry accords with countries like the U.S. that aren’t in the Paris treaty, but that he might opposed sweeping free trade deals.
“There could be accords for individual sectors, such as automobiles and pharmaceuticals, as long as they are neutral on climate,” he said. “But major accords across all sectors that go against climate conventions, that’s not OK.”
The U.S. and the EU began discussing in 2016 a free trade accord but the off-and-on efforts were halted when President Donald Trump took office. Recently, the EU and the U.S. have been discussing some sectoral accords after the U.S. threatened to impose tariffs on European metal and even cars.
France doesn’t actually have any trade accords of its own, because they are negotiated and signed by the European Union on behalf of its members.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/macron-says-no-trade-deals-without-complying-with-climate-treaty
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested