Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - October 8, 2018
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EU Member States Approve 1,2-Dichloroethane Authorisation Applications
Oct 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
EU member states have voted in favour of applications for uses of 1,2-dichloroethane (EDC). -
NGOs Urge Envi to Reject Proposed EU POPs Amendments
Oct 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A group of NGOs is calling on the European Parliament’s Environment Committee (Envi) to vote against a draft report of proposed changes to the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) Regulation. -
(ACC Mentioned) Bipartisan Bill Aims to Boost Capture, Reuse Technologies
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
House lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation last week to advance technologies capturing heat from electricity and reusing it. -
U.S. Natural Gas Growth Said Shifting Supply Dynamics for Global Petrochemicals
Oct 8, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
The United States is poised to return to prominence as a low-cost region for petrochemical production thanks to the unconventional natural gas revolution, the International Energy Agency said. -
The Oil Industry Is Enjoying a Boom, but Will it Last?
Oct 8, 2018 | The New York Times
By Stanley Reed
The good times are back. Or are they? The money is rolling in once again for the international oil giants after a grim period of budget cuts and job reductions following the plunge in oil prices in 2014. The profitability of major oil companies now approaches or, by some measures, exceeds the levels before the crash. -
U.N. Issues 'Red Alert' on Warming
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick and Chelsea Harvey
It's still possible to avoid catastrophic climate change, but it will require immediate and aggressive action, said a long-awaited United Nations report. -
Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040
Oct 8, 2018 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.” -
Top Calif. Lawyer Hammers EPA Rule Rollback
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Toxic emissions could soar in California as a result of a Trump administration repeal of a decades-old hazardous air pollution policy, the state's top attorney argues in new legal documents. -
Trump Administration Aims to Sideline Kids' Trial
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration is again heading to the Supreme Court in an attempt to derail litigation from a group of kids and young adults concerned about inadequate government action on climate change.
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EU Member States Approve 1,2-Dichloroethane Authorisation Applications
Oct 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
EU member states have voted in favour of applications for uses of 1,2-dichloroethane (EDC).
At the REACH Committee meeting on 28 September, they unanimously approved three companies' authorisations for conditional uses of the substance, which is listed as an SVHC under REACH Annex XIV.
EDC is a carcinogen and had a sunset date of 22 November last year.
The companies and uses are:Akzo Nobel Chemicals applied to use the substance as a recyclable solvent in the production of a polyacrylate surfactant. The recommended review period is due to expire on 22 November 2026;Microbeads intended use is as a swelling agent during the sulfonation reaction of crosslinked polystyrene beads in the manufacture of ion exchange resins for purification of radioactive waste. Its application is set to be reviewed 12 years after the adopted decision; andOrgapharm applied to use EDC as a process solvent in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients: flecainide acetate and nefopam hydrochloride. The recommended review date is 22 November 2024.
The European Commission published its delayed second Review of REACH in March and set out 16 actions, including promoting the substitution of SVHCs and simplifying the authorisation process.
Some member states and industry have called for a reduction in authorisation application fees, while NGOs argue that reducing these and making the process easier "incentivises" the use of SVHCs rather than encouraging substitution.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70818/eu-member-states-approve-12-dichloroethane-authorisation-applications
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NGOs Urge Envi to Reject Proposed EU POPs Amendments
Oct 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A group of NGOs is calling on the European Parliament’s Environment Committee (Envi) to vote against a draft report of proposed changes to the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) Regulation.
In a letter addressed to MEPs ahead of the committee vote on 10 October, they said that some of the European Commission’s twelve proposals would "weaken the Regulation substantially". In some cases, they added, these would "violate" the EU’s international obligations under the Stockholm Convention.
The EU executive’s changes would align regulatory procedures of the Regulation with requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and give Echa new tasks. They would also introduce recent decisions taken within the framework of the Stockholm Convention and the POPs Protocol.
In their letter the NGOs highlight several areas of concern and say that many of the amendments would "go directly against" a priority objective of the 7th Environment Action Programme to 2020 – to safeguard "the Union’s citizens from environment-related pressures and risks to health and wellbeing".
The group of eleven NGOs includes: the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel), the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) and the International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen).Waste recycling
A key concern is that the recast would "authorise" the recycling of waste containing POPs into new products "without adequate controls, despite numerous studies showing that this practice leads to POPs contamination in consumer goods", including:children’s products;hair accessories;kitchen utensils; andfood packaging.
That provision would further "undermine" the EU’s circular economy goal, they added, by "allowing the contamination" of material cycles and recycled products such as toys, as demonstrated by a study conducted by Ipen on toys made of recycled plastics.
The amendments would also:
"violate" the Stockholm Convention by requiring socio-economic considerations in the initial proposal to list chemicals under the convention; and by allowing manufacture or use of POPs banned under it;
"severely restrict" member states’ ability to engage in the process of nominating a substance as a POP by requiring the use of a centralised proposal dossier prepared by Echa;
prevent the EU from using the most recent scientific and technical progress action to "go beyond" the convention's baseline requirements; and
limit the public’s right to know of infringements of Regulation provisions to only those cases deemed "appropriate" by each member state. This would, they said, contradict the public’s right to know and freedom to participate in environmental decisions under the Aarhus Convention.
Exposure to POPs has been linked to a serious health effects, the NGOs said, including certain cancers, birth defects, dysfunctional immune and reproductive systems and damage to the nervous system.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70835/ngos-urge-envi-to-reject-proposed-eu-pops-amendments
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(ACC Mentioned) Bipartisan Bill Aims to Boost Capture, Reuse Technologies
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
House lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation last week to advance technologies capturing heat from electricity and reusing it.
The "CHP Support Act," or H.R. 6949, targets the nearly two-thirds of energy wasted and released to the atmosphere during conventional power production. Combined heat and power (CHP) systems harness the captured energy and use it for heating, cooling or other industrial processes.
The bill would reauthorize the Department of Energy's Combined Heat and Power Technical Assistance Partnerships through 2022. The program supports seven regional hubs identifying markets for CHP and providing technical assistance to CHP developers and outreach to policymakers on the technology.
"Energy independence is critically important to our national security, and in order to reach our goal, we must have diverse sources of energy and the proper infrastructures to deliver safe, reliable and clean resources," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who introduced the bill. Reps. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), David McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) are co-sponsors.
In 2012, President Obama signed an executive order calling for 40 gigawatts of new combined heat and power capacity by 2020, a 50 percent increase over existing levels. The industry has grown incrementally in the past seven years, increasing from about 70 GW to 81 GW of capacity in the United States last year, according to DOE data. Most new installations last year were in New York, New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania.
According to DOE, current levels of CHP in the U.S. cut annual carbon dioxide emissions by 241 million metric tons, the equivalent of 59 coal plants. DOE has identified 149 GW of remaining technical potential for CHP in the U.S., according to a letter sent from bill supporters to leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week.
The House legislation is a companion to a Senate bill introduced by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). The Alliance for Industrial Efficiency, Alliance to Save Energy, American Chemistry Council and American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy are backing the measure.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/08/stories/1060100733
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U.S. Natural Gas Growth Said Shifting Supply Dynamics for Global Petrochemicals
Oct 8, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
The United States is poised to return to prominence as a low-cost region for petrochemical production thanks to the unconventional natural gas revolution, the International Energy Agency said.
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116036-us-natural-gas-growth-said-shifting-supply-dynamics-for-global-petrochemicals
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The Oil Industry Is Enjoying a Boom, but Will it Last?
Oct 8, 2018 | The New York Times
By Stanley Reed
The good times are back. Or are they? The money is rolling in once again for the international oil giants after a grim period of budget cuts and job reductions following the plunge in oil prices in 2014. The profitability of major oil companies now approaches or, by some measures, exceeds the levels before the crash.
For eight of the world’s largest oil companies including, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, combined free cash flow, a measure that tracks the money going in and out of company coffers, was $30.9 billion in 2017 — far higher than the $3.8 billion recorded in 2014, when oil prices were far higher, according to Bernstein Research.
That was after paying a rich $46 billion in dividends to shareholders.
The reasons for the fatter numbers: A combination of higher prices for Brent crude and a continuing squeeze on spending. There has also been a changing of the guard with executives like Michael Wirth of Chevron; Patrick Pouyanné of the French company Total and Ben van Beurden at Royal Dutch Shell, who worked in the less glamorous and more cost-conscious refining and petrochemicals units of companies, taking the reins and bringing a more tightfisted mentality to finding and developing new oil fields. In the $100-a-barrel era, in contrast, a “whatever it takes” approach prevailed.
“You definitely have a different culture permeating through these organizations,” said Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein in London. The current group of chief executives is more “focused on cost-cutting and not just building fancy toys,” he said.
Along with the bitter experience of low prices, concern about the role of fossil fuels in climate change is also influencing industry behavior.
While demand for oil has been growing strongly in recent years, the question is whether it will continue to grow as governments and societies demand a shift to a low-carbon economy that may only be achievable by reducing use of emissions-spewing fossil fuels. While the Trump administration may be trying to roll back regulation of energy producers, oil executives fear that future administrations may reapply the rules even more aggressively.
“I would argue that this is the most difficult time for the industry since the OPEC crisis and the nationalizations of the 1960s and 1970s,” said J. Robinson West, managing director of the BCG Center for Energy Impact, a consulting firm, referring to the western oil companies’ losing their lucrative concessions in countries like Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Pondering uncertainties like these, company boards are wary of approving the long term, multibillion dollar projects that used to be oil industry staples. “How do you approve these massive projects which have a 20-year life when you don’t know what the business environment will be in 20 years?” Mr. West asked.
In this environment of uncertainty, investors also want quick payoffs in terms of higher and higher dividends and share buybacks.
The contretemps creates an existential problem for the oil industry and for society as well.
With only a small fraction of global energy needs met by renewables like wind and solar, oil and gas seem likely to remain important fuels for decades. “I don’t think oil will be under pressure for the next 30 to 40 years,” Claudio Descalzi, chief executive of the Italian company Eni, said, while acknowledging that the industry must eventually slash emissions.
Yet, government and societal pressures on the oil business seem likely to increase, potentially discouraging investment in new finds that may be needed to satisfy demand. Julie Wilson, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm, said exploration spending plummeted to $35 billion last year, from $94 billion in 2014.
Ms. Wilson said chief executives now were focusing more on finding oil near existing installations, which could quickly be developed, as well as other activities like squeezing more oil out of existing fields — all of which produce relatively quick paybacks without making giant discoveries.
“Explorers, by their nature, push the boundaries of what is possible,” she said, citing the Gulf of Mexico, where explorers testing the limits of technology found oil at staggering water depths. “There is little appetite for that kind of exploration now; oil prices and budgets don’t support it,” she added.
Cost pressures appear to be behind recent decisions at Chevron, which earlier in this century developed one of the largest projects, Gorgon, a $54 billion liquefied natural gas giant in Australia that far outran its original cost estimates. The new chief executive, Mr. Wirth, has put the company’s aging fields in the British North Sea up for sale. On Oct. 1, Chevron said that it was selling the company’s future in the region: a promising but costly frontier field called Rosebank off Scotland to Norway’s Equinor.
The message seems to be that it is better to take cash now and turn the management attention and long-term risk for the coming decades over to someone else. “Chevron regularly reviews its global portfolio to ensure assets continue to meet our criteria for investment,” the company said in a statement.
BP, the London-based oil giant, was once known as a prolific dealmaker. In recent years, the company, though, has avoided major acquisitions, partly because of the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which has cost the company more than $66 billion in fines and reparations.
When BP’s executives felt secure enough to return to the table in July, they chose to pay $10.5 billion for the shale oil and gas properties in the United States of BHP Billiton, an Australian mining company.
The 470,000 acres acquired in Texas and elsewhere comes with very little risk, in the view of executives. Thanks to the work of BHP and others, they already know that the oil is there. Using finely honed techniques they can drill thousands of wells on the land in an almost industrial manner.
The shale wells will produce oil far more quickly than the years required to set up a deepwater oil project or a liquefied natural gas facility, reducing exposure to price fluctuations and, therefore, soothing the worries of investors and boards. “There is essentially zero underground risk, “ said Dave Lawler, chief executive of BP’s Lower 48, or shale, business.
While shale used to be the realm of smaller oil companies known as independents, most of BP’s rivals, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron, are now moving in, spending hefty portions of their capital on shale.
Many see Mr. van Beurden of Shell as a chief executive who embodies the attributes needed in the industry. Mr. van Beurden, who became chief executive in 2014, knows that the oil and gas business remains vital to a company like Shell. He improved middling financial performance by buying a British energy company called BG for $54 billion in 2016 when oil prices were low, bringing in a rich portfolio of liquefied natural gas, a fast-growing fuel that has a lower carbon footprint than oil. BG brought oil, too, mostly in Brazil.
Mr. van Beurden also recognizes that his company will be in trouble unless it convinces society and governments that it wants to be part of the solution to climate change, not the problem. He has gradually been placing bets on businesses — a solar company in California, a utility in Britain, an electric car-charging outfit in the Netherlands — intended to reduce the overall carbon content of the energy Shell sells.
The key, he said, in an earlier interview, was ensuring that the company remained relevant in the future.
“Understanding how this energy transition is going to play out,” Mr. van Beurden said, “and how we are going to respond is actually the main strategic question.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/energy-environment/the-oil-industry-is-enjoying-a-boom-.html
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U.N. Issues 'Red Alert' on Warming
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick and Chelsea Harvey
It's still possible to avoid catastrophic climate change, but it will require immediate and aggressive action, said a long-awaited United Nations report.
The document from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a consortium of the world's leading scientists, found allowing the planet to warm even a half-degree more — 2 degrees Celsius versus 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels — could have substantially greater consequences for both natural ecosystems and the humans who depend on them.
Small islands and vulnerable developing nations would experience some of the most immediate effects. That's why they've pushed for the tighter 1.5-degree limit to be adopted as the goal of international climate efforts since before the Paris Agreement three years ago.
The High-Ambition Coalition, led by the Marshall Islands and backed by the European Union and other parties, called yesterday's report "both a red alert and a call to arms" to increase ambition.
"The report confirms some of our worst fears, including that if we go beyond 1.5°C of average global temperature increase, we would be entering a dangerous new paradigm which will have severe impacts on our planet and which we will neither be able to fully adapt to, nor reverse," environment ministers from nations as diverse as Argentina and Finland said in a joint statement following the report's release.
The world is already about 1 degree Celsius above the baseline, and maintaining safe levels will require a more rapid and wide-reaching transformation of the world's economy than has ever happened before. The world would have to cut its greenhouse gas output in half by 2030 and become effectively carbon-neutral by midcentury.
Most of the report's scenarios explore the possibility of overshooting the 1.5 degree threshold and then taking steps to bring temperatures back down. It notes that exceeding the threshold even temporarily could have irreversible impacts.
The mandate for the report came from the same 2015 summit that produced the Paris deal, which set a goal of keeping warming to "well-below" 2 degrees Celsius with best efforts toward 1.5 degrees.
Global maneuvers to contain warming had long centered on the higher temperature threshold, and the scientific consensus was that such a goal would be enough to avert warming's worst impacts. The new IPCC report establishes the more-ambitious 1.5 degrees as the safe limit.
The study, which draws on thousands of scientific papers, shows that by 2100, global sea-level rise would be about 4 inches higher at 2 degrees of warming than at 1.5 degrees.
An additional 10 million people would be affected at the higher warming threshold. At 2 degrees, the Arctic would also be expected to experience the total loss of its sea ice during the summer months at least once per decade, compared with just once a century at 1.5 degrees.
"Every extra bit of warming makes a difference," said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II and one of the report's authors, during a news conference announcing the findings.
"Limiting global warming to 1.5 compared to 2 degrees would reduce the number of people exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred millions by 2050," he said.
The report comes two months before nations are asked to participate in a first stock-taking of actions toward the Paris accord, and it is expected to strengthen calls for countries to put forward more ambitious commitments by 2020.
If countries do only what was promised in Paris, the world is expected to warm nearly 3 degrees Celsius. Some countries — including the United States — have abandoned even their initial Paris contributions.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement yesterday expressing appreciation to the scientists but stressing that the U.S. does not endorse their findings.
"In light of references to the Paris Agreement in the Summary for Policy Makers, we reiterate that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement at the earliest opportunity absent the identification of terms that are better for the American people," it noted.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/08/stories/1060100737
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Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040
Oct 8, 2018 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”
The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.
The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.
The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change.
Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy within just a few years, said the authors, who estimate that the damage would come at a cost of $54 trillion. But while they conclude that it is technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7 degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely.
For instance, the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide emissions — perhaps as high as $27,000 per ton by 2100 — would be required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. Lawmakers around the world, including in China, the European Union and California, have enacted carbon pricing programs.
President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world’s seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to withdraw from the accord.
The report was written and edited by 91 scientists from 40 countries who analyzed more than 6,000 scientific studies. The Paris agreement set out to prevent warming of more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels — long considered a threshold for the most severe social and economic damage from climate change. But the heads of small island nations, fearful of rising sea levels, had also asked scientists to examine the effects of 2.7 degrees of warming.
Absent aggressive action, many effects once expected only several decades in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the report shows. “It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the report.
To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, the report said, greenhouse pollution must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050. It also found that, by 2050, use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to between 1 and 7 percent. Renewable energy such as wind and solar, which make up about 20 percent of the electricity mix today, would have to increase to as much as 67 percent.
“This report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and an author of the report.
The World Coal Association disputed the conclusion that stopping global warming calls for an end of coal use. In a statement, Katie Warrick, its interim chief executive, noted that forecasts from the International Energy Agency, a global analysis organization, “continue to see a role for coal for the foreseeable future.”
Ms. Warrick said her organization intends to campaign for governments to invest in carbon capture technology. Such technology, which is currently too expensive for commercial use, could allow coal to continue to be widely used.
Despite the controversial policy implications, the United States delegation joined more than 180 countries on Saturday in accepting the report’s summary for policymakers, while walking a delicate diplomatic line. A State Department statement said that “acceptance of this report by the panel does not imply endorsement by the United States of the specific findings or underlying contents of the report.”
The State Department delegation faced a conundrum. Refusing to approve the document would place the United States at odds with many nations and show it rejecting established academic science on the world stage. However, the delegation also represents a president who has rejected climate science and climate policy.
“We reiterate that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement at the earliest opportunity absent the identification of terms that are better for the American people,” the statement said.
The report attempts to put a price tag on the effects of climate change. The estimated $54 trillion in damage from 2.7 degrees of warming would grow to $69 trillion if the world continues to warm by 3.6 degrees and beyond, the report found, although it does not specify the length of time represented by those costs.
The report concludes that the world is already more than halfway to the 2.7-degree mark. Human activities have caused warming of about 1.8 degrees since about the 1850s, the beginning of large-scale industrial coal burning, the report found.
The United States is not alone in failing to reduce emissions enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The report concluded that the greenhouse gas reduction pledges put forth under the Paris agreement will not be enough to avoid 3.6 degrees of warming.
The report emphasizes the potential role of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. “A price on carbon is central to prompt mitigation,” the report concludes. It estimates that to be effective, such a price would have to range from $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution in 2030, and from $690 to $27,000 per ton by 2100.
By comparison, under the Obama administration, government economists estimated that an appropriate price on carbon would be in the range of $50 per ton. Under the Trump administration, that figure was lowered to about $7 per ton.
Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group funded by the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, has made a point of campaigning against politicians who support a carbon tax.
“Carbon taxes are political poison because they increase gas prices and electric rates,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded Washington research organization, and who led the Trump administration’s transition at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The report details the economic damage expected should governments fail to enact policies to reduce emissions. The United States, it said, could lose roughly 1.2 percent of gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees of warming.
In addition, it said, the United States along with Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam are home to 50 million people who will be exposed to the effects of increased coastal flooding by 2040, if 2.7 degrees of warming occur.
At 3.6 degrees of warming, the report predicts a “disproportionately rapid evacuation” of people from the tropics. “In some parts of the world, national borders will become irrelevant,” said Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and an author of the report. “You can set up a wall to try to contain 10,000 and 20,000 and one million people, but not 10 million.”
The report also finds that, in the likelihood that governments fail to avert 2.7 degrees of warming, another scenario is possible: The world could overshoot that target, heat up by more than 3.6 degrees, and then through a combination of lowering emissions and deploying carbon capture technology, bring the temperature back down below the 2.7-degree threshold.
In that scenario, some damage would be irreversible, the report found. All coral reefs would die. However, the sea ice that would disappear in the hotter scenario would return once temperatures had cooled off.
“For governments, the idea of overshooting the target but then coming back to it is attractive because then they don’t have to make such rapid changes,” Dr. Shindell said. “But it has a lot of disadvantages.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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Top Calif. Lawyer Hammers EPA Rule Rollback
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Toxic emissions could soar in California as a result of a Trump administration repeal of a decades-old hazardous air pollution policy, the state's top attorney argues in new legal documents.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) warned a federal appeals court last week that the rollback of the Clinton-era "once in, always in" policy may cause industrial releases of hazardous air pollutants to "more than double," jumping by as much as 935 tons per year under a worst-case scenario.
Becerra — one of the Trump administration's leading legal foes — made the argument in a brieffiled last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Becerra also said EPA's January decision to scrap the policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to give the public a chance to weigh in first.
Similar arguments came from a coalition of environmental groups that includes the Natural Resources Defense Council and California Communities Against Toxics.
The administration's decision "dramatically alters the compliance requirements for thousands of industrial facilities across the country, and increases the public's exposure to hazardous air pollutants," lawyers for that coalition wrote in a separate brief, also submitted last week.
While EPA air chief Bill Wehrum contends that the "once in, always in" approach ran contrary to the "plain language" of the Clean Air Act, the statute "does not even permit EPA's new interpretation, let alone require it," the environmentalists said.
The filings mark the opening salvo in a legal battle likely to last well into next year, if not longer. Becerra's office and the environmental groups had filed suit this spring, a few months after Wehrum ended the 1995 policy in a memo released with no advance notice (Greenwire, Jan. 26). EPA's reply is due to the court shortly before Christmas.
The policy had applied to auto manufacturing plants, paper mills and other "major" industrial pollution sources covered by maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards because they annually release 10 tons of a single air toxic or 25 tons of any combination of such hazardous pollutants. Before January, the stringent MACT pollution control standards had remained in place even if a particular plant's toxic releases fell below those thresholds.
But critics, including senior congressional Republicans, said the policy acted as a disincentive for major polluters to reduce emissions. Wehrum, who worked as an industry lawyer before returning to EPA's air office last November, predicted that ending it would reduce regulatory burdens on businesses "while continuing to ensure stringent and effective controls on hazardous air pollutants."
In the January memo, he also signaled that EPA would "soon" take public comment on a proposed rule to reflect the new reading. The agency has yet to do so. Wehrum recently told the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee that the planned rulemaking should now advance sometime this fall. During his previous stint as acting head of the air office from 2005 to 2007, a bid to rescind the "once in, always in" framework was blocked by Congress.
EPA's air toxics regulations date back to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. In that law, Congress ordered the agency to curb emissions of mercury, arsenic and almost 190 other hazardous pollutants from major sources through what became the MACT standards. The agency took a more lenient approach, however, to smaller "area sources."
In their brief, the environmental groups last week described those area source standards as "far weaker" than the MACT thresholds, adding that in some cases EPA set no standards at all. Rollback of the "once in, always in" policy means that many "formerly major sources" can increase their releases of toxic pollutants "right up to the major source thresholds" of 10 tons and 25 tons, respectively, the brief added.
Brian Clerico, an air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board, fleshed out the state's argument.
In California, there are at least 42 industrial facilities with emissions below the thresholds that require the MACT pollution control standards, Clerico said in the declaration, which was attached to the state's brief. Those sources can now ask local regulators to drop those requirements from their permits, thus leading to the potential jump of up to 935 tons in annual emissions, Clerico wrote. "Moreover, certain air toxics, such as mercury or dioxins, are exceptionally toxic even in low amounts," he added. Accordingly, "small increases may have disproportionately high harms on the surrounding communities."
While California has its own generally stricter regulations for hazardous pollutants, the state still relies on EPA standards for more than 100 categories of pollution sources, Becerra's office said in the brief. "Therefore, the distinction between major and area sources is important to California as federal standards are currently a significant control of air toxics in the state," the brief said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/08/stories/1060100739
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Trump Administration Aims to Sideline Kids' Trial
Oct 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration is again heading to the Supreme Court in an attempt to derail litigation from a group of kids and young adults concerned about inadequate government action on climate change.
Justice Department lawyers filed a request late Friday asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon to halt an upcoming trial in what's become known as the "kids' climate case" while the government asks the high court to intervene.
The Friday filing urges the district court to freeze proceedings in light of the government's "forthcoming" petition for a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court.
"Because the United States will ask the Supreme Court to issue a stay pending its resolution of the government's forthcoming petition, we are asking this Court for a stay as well," federal lawyers told the district court.
The Justice Department's filing again slams the merits of the climate arguments.
"Plaintiffs may not redirect federal environmental and energy policies through the courts rather than the political process by asserting a manifestly wrong fundamental substantive due process right to certain climate conditions," the request says.
If the district court rejects the request to stay the trial, the government will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to step in.
The Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit have rejected previous government attempts to sideline the case. The 21 youth plaintiffs behind the 2015 lawsuit argue that the government has a duty to protect the environment and the climate for future generations (Climatewire, Oct. 5).
Our Children's Trust attorney Julia Olson, representing the plaintiffs, criticized the government's latest move.
"This redundant motion by the Department of Justice, with no new grounds for stopping the trial, is nothing more than a show of fear," she said in a statement Friday. "We trust that the entire federal judiciary will once again reject this administration's attempt to thwart justice and put itself above the federal rules of civil and appellate procedure."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/08/stories/1060100743
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