Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - October 26, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) A Biochemist Is Beating a GOP Incumbent Backed by the Chemical Industry in Key House Race
Oct 25, 2018 | Motherboard
By Kaleigh Rogers
A tightly-contested midterm race could see a biochemist unseat a GOP incumbent backed by a trade group for the chemical industry, in part due to a recent scandal over dangerous chemical emissions. -
(ACC Mentioned) European Parliament Calls for Single-Use Plastics Ban by 2021
Oct 25, 2018 | Infosurhoy
By Marta Subat
It is the last straw for single-use plastic items in Europe as European Parliament officials adopted a plan Wednesday to ban such items in participating countries by 2021. -
(ACC Mentioned) Pollution Watch
Oct 25, 2018 | The Capitol Fax Blog
By Rich Miller
Chicagoans in minority neighborhoods on the West Side and South Side have the greatest exposure to toxic air pollution and other environmental health hazards in the city, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis that community groups are using to fight Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s industrial planning practices. -
Acting Deputy Briefs Senate Staff on Agency Reorganization
Oct 25, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA's second in command was on Capitol Hill today to discuss the agency's reorganization plans. -
Former SAB Chairs Raise Science Concerns With Wheeler
Oct 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
The three most-recent former chairs of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) are urging Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler to undo the “damage” wrought at EPA by his predecessor and other political appointees, in part by taking a series of steps the authors say will “restore broad public trust in EPA’s scientific leadership and judgment.” -
EPA Continues to Approve Toxic PFAS Chemicals Despite Widespread Contamination
Oct 25, 2018 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
Even as the Environmental Protection Agency has been trumpeting its efforts to find and clean up contamination from industrial chemicals known as PFAS, it has been allowing new chemicals in this class to enter into commerce, according to data from the agency. -
How Much Herbicide Can You Tolerate in Your Food?
Oct 26, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany
By now, many consumers have heard of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide known as Roundup, and warnings about its presence in many of their favorite foods. -
Thousands More Towns to Test Water for Nonstick Chemicals
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
About 5,000 more water utilities must test their drinking water for a family of ubiquitous compounds used in nonstick coatings and flame retardants under a bill President Donald Trump signed into law Oct. 23. -
Shell Says Natural Gas Faces Scrutiny as Demand Outpaces Supply
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mathew Carr
New natural gas projects are seen facing scrutiny as the fuel replaces dirtier coal, but it will prevail and even thrive in the transition away from fossil fuels, according to Royal Dutch Shell Plc. -
Shipbuilders Struggle to Keep up With Gas Demand
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
New liquefied natural gas carriers are entering the market at a fast pace. It may not be fast enough. -
Offshore Drilling Effectively Banned With Oregon Governor’s Order
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Paul Shukovsky
Oil and gas drilling off the coast of Oregon is effectively off the table after Gov. Kate Brown (D) ordered state agencies to take steps banning the practice. -
The Shale Boom Calmed Oil Markets, but for How Much Longer?
Oct 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Russell Gold
For the past decade, enough oil has flowed from America’s shale boom to allay worries that demand for the world’s most important commodity would outstrip supply. -
Dust Accidents, Worker Participation in Investigations Top U.S. Chemical Safety Board Agenda
Oct 25, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
Curbing a seemingly endless string of combustible dust accidents and clarifying the role company employees can play in chemical accident investigations topped the U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board agenda at its Oct. 24 business meeting. -
DOE Aims Defenses at Grid Weak Points
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
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ALL ABOUT: Wrangling Ocean Plastic
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily C. Dooley
A giant floating barrier meant to corral the massive accumulation of ocean plastic known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area twice the size of Texas, has arrived at its destination. -
Trump Admin Jettisons Letter Grades for NEPA Reviews
Oct 25, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Nick Sobczyk and Maxine Joselow
EPA will no longer issue letter grades in its reviews of environmental permitting documents, according to a memo issued earlier this week. -
High Court Stay Of Youth Climate Case Seen As Ominous Sign For Plaintiffs
Oct 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' unusual stay of a constitutional climate change case bought by a group of youth plaintiffs is an ominous sign for the complainants and a boost to the Trump administration, which is now pressing the high court to permanently halt the litigation, observers say. -
U.N. Climate Report Drives Questions in Senate Debates
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The release of a major international report on climate change has spread into a number of Senate races, giving the issue prominence in the final weeks before the midterm elections.
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Environment News
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Oct 25, 2018 | Motherboard
By Kaleigh Rogers
A tightly-contested midterm race could see a biochemist unseat a GOP incumbent backed by a trade group for the chemical industry, in part due to a recent scandal over dangerous chemical emissions.
Illinois’s sixth district House seat is currently held by Republican Peter Roskam, who’s held the seat since 2007. But Democratic candidate Sean Casten, a political newcomer and former biochemist who ran clean energy companies, is giving the incumbent a run for his money in a race that recent polls show is still quite close.
One of the biggest issues in the race is the environment and while Roskam’s campaign frequently calls him a friend to the environment, his voting record in Congress and support from the chemical industry have called this position into question.
This became further exacerbated towards the end of August when the Department of Health and Human Services released a report about high levels of Ethylene Oxide (EtO)—a toxic gas that can increase the risk of certain cancers—being emitted from a medical equipment sterilization company in the district. While other local politicians were calling for the plant, owned by a company called Sterigenics, to be shut down, Roskam said nothing for two weeks, and has remained reserved on the issue.
Using air modeling data provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, HHS determined that there was a high concentration of EtO in the air around Sterigenics, including nearby homes and schools. It found that due to these levels of EtO, people in the area were at a higher risk of developing cancer, with some areas having rates as high as nine times the national average.
“These elevated risks present a public health hazard to these populations,” the report read.
Casten held a press conference saying he was “extremely concerned” about the report and pointed to the current administration’s anti-science rhetoric as creating the backdrop that allows these kinds of problems to persist. He also criticized Roskam for not commenting on the issue, which he did in a statement two weeks after the report was published, though he did not immediately call for the shutdown of Sterigenics.
Casten’s campaign has pointed to Roskam’s backing from the American Chemistry Council—an industry trade association for US chemical companies, a large portion of which are located in Illinois—as an explanation for his lack of response to the Sterigenics scandal. Along with the ACC spending a reported $209,000 on advertisements supporting Roskam, Roskam has a record of siding with the ACC when voting on issues in Congress that the organization has lobbied on—such as an act that would have allowed private industry stakeholders to serve on the EPA’s scientific advisory council (the bill was passed by the House but lost steam in the Senate.)
Veronica Vera, a spokesperson for Roskam’s campaign, told me he has called for Sterigenics to temporarily shut down (Motherboard could not find a public statement from Roskam calling for the shut down), and said that while he wasn’t publicly talking about the issue at first, he had been working to get to the bottom of it from the day the report was released.
“Within a week of the first report, Roskam’s office initiated communication with Willowbrook Mayor Frank Trilla to get a better understanding of the situation,” Vera wrote in an email. “Over the course of next couple of weeks, Roskam spoke several times with the Illinois EPA and U.S. EPA Region 5 Administrator, Cathy Stepp, to get the answers the affected communities were seeking.”
Vera also highlighted times when Roskam has taken a pro-environment stand during his time in Congress, such as when he opposed President Trump’s FY18 budget proposal that eliminated the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and when he secured funding for an environmental cleanup project in his district.
But the questions surrounding Roskam’s support from the chemical industry raised by Casten’s campaign seems to have worked in the Democrats favor, in light of the Sterigenics scandal. In recent weeks, Casten has inched ahead in the polls and is now leading the incumbent.
“We have a pretty robust program going door to door and in Willowbrook and surrounding communities, it’s their top issue,” Greg Bales, Casten’s campaign manager, told me over the phone. “They’re super concerned.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43ezad/a-biochemist-is-beating-a-gop-incumbent-backed-by-the-chemical-industry-in-key-house-race
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(ACC Mentioned) European Parliament Calls for Single-Use Plastics Ban by 2021
Oct 25, 2018 | Infosurhoy
By Marta Subat
It is the last straw for single-use plastic items in Europe as European Parliament officials adopted a plan Wednesday to ban such items in participating countries by 2021.
The European Parliament said in a statement that plastic items like plates, cutlery, straws, cotton swabs, etc. make up more than 70 percent of the marine trash in oceans and other waterways. The parliament’s new measure would also go after products made of oxo-degradable plastics, which include bags, packaging and fast food containers made from polystyrene.
“We have adopted the most ambitious legislation against single-use plastics,” Frédérique Ries, a Belgian politician and European Parliament member who drafted the proposal, said in a statement. “It is up to us now to stay the course in the upcoming negotiations with the council, due to start as early as November.
“Today’s vote paves the way to a forthcoming and ambitious directive. It is essential in order to protect the marine environment and reduce the costs of environmental damage attributed to plastic pollution in Europe, estimated at 22 billion euros by 2030,” she added.RELATED Microplastics found in feces of all participants of small study
The parliament statement said member nations will create plans to reduce other single-use items not made of plastic by at least 25 percent by 2025, including sandwich boxes, as well as food containers for fruits, vegetables, desserts, and ice cream.
According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastics enter the world’s oceans each year and more than 150 million metric tons have already been deposited in the marine environment.
The organization says plastic can now be found in 60 percent of all seabirds and virtually all sea turtles because they mistake the plastic for food.RELATED Increasing levels of plastic pollution making way to South Atlantic Islands
There has been opposition to such “ban plastics” movements, particularly in the United States. In July, the Hawaii Food Industry Association, the Hawaii Restaurant Association, the Retail Merchants Association and the American Chemistry Council, came together to fight a measure in the state to ban plastic straws.
“Recycling, source reduction, recovery, and conservation are all tools to help reduce litter/disposal,” American Chemical Council senior director Tim Shestek told Pew’s Stateline.org about that measure. “In this particular instance, we think an ‘on demand’ approach makes the most sense.”
http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/top-stories/european-parliament-calls-for-single-use-plastics-ban-by-2021/
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(ACC Mentioned) Pollution Watch
Oct 25, 2018 | The Capitol Fax Blog
By Rich Miller
Chicagoans in minority neighborhoods on the West Side and South Side have the greatest exposure to toxic air pollution and other environmental health hazards in the city, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis that community groups are using to fight Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s industrial planning practices.
The findings were compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group that plans to use the document to try to persuade city officials to end the common practice of steering scrap yards, distribution warehouses and other polluting businesses to neighborhoods with large concentrations of Latino and African-American residents.
Among the most dramatically affected communities, the group found, are Little Village, Pilsen and the far Southeast Side.
Activists in those communities say Emanuel’s city planners are pushing dirty industries to majority Latino and black communities, while neighborhoods like Lincoln Park on the more well-to-do North Side are shedding their industrial past for new condo buildings and high-end amenities.
* Meanwhile, you may recall this TV ad last summer from the American Chemistry Council touting US Rep. Peter Roskam…
That $209,000 TV ad buy and $185,050 in chemical industry contributions are coming back to haunt Roskam.
* Tribune…
But the ad takes on new meaning now that the Sterigenics sterilization facility just outside Roskam’s west suburban district is under fire for emitting ethylene oxide, a highly potent, cancer-causing gas made by Dow Chemical, Union Carbide, Shell and several other members of the trade group.
Two months after the chemical industry’s pro-Roskam ad began airing, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a report revealing that communities surrounding the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook are among just a few dozen in the country facing alarmingly high cancer risks from toxic air pollution, most notably ethylene oxide emissions. […]
Roskam’s supporters in the chemical industry have a dramatically different view.
Soon after the EPA released its report, the industry trade group quietly urged President Donald Trump’s administration to scuttle a stringent safety limit for ethylene oxide adopted in 2016 after more than a decade of debate. The agency relied heavily on the safety limit when it calculated its worrisome estimates of cancer risks in communities surrounding Sterigenics and other facilities across the nation that either manufacture or use the chemical.
Chemical companies are pushing the Trump EPA to declare that ethylene oxide is far less dangerous than the agency’s career staff and three separate panels of independent scientists determined. Industry-supported scientists have repeatedly downplayed animal research showing the chemical mutates DNA and studies of medical sterilization workers who suffered high rates of breast cancer, leukemia and lymphomas.
https://capitolfax.com/2018/10/25/pollution-watch/
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Acting Deputy Briefs Senate Staff on Agency Reorganization
Oct 25, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA's second in command was on Capitol Hill today to discuss the agency's reorganization plans.
Henry Darwin, EPA's chief of operations who is serving as acting deputy administrator, briefed staff for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this afternoon. The Trump administration's moves to rework the agency have attracted attention as career staff members worry about their futures at EPA.
The briefing was closed to the press. When asked on his way out what was discussed at the briefing, Darwin said he could talk about it later.
The agency is moving quickly to realign its 10 regional offices with headquarters' functions. That effort may wrap by the end of this year, according to internal EPA records (Greenwire, Oct. 4).
Other reorganization proposals are afoot at EPA.
The agency is considering consolidating a number of science offices into its larger research program branch. In addition, EPA may combine its human resources and information technology offices into one new office (Greenwire, Sept. 27).
Critics question why EPA is undertaking the reorganization effort at all.
"No one has answered why, in this time of tight resources for EPA, this is absolutely necessary, how much it will cost, and how it will impact the mission of the Agency," Mike Mikulka, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents EPA Region 5 workers, and a spokesman for the Save the U.S. EPA campaign, said in a statement.
"Every hour of time spent on reorganizing and boxing up files and moving is an hour less spent on protecting human health and the environment. Every dollar spent on this is a dollar less spent on the EPA mission."
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/10/25/stories/1060104425
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Former SAB Chairs Raise Science Concerns With Wheeler
Oct 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
The three most-recent former chairs of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) are urging Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler to undo the “damage” wrought at EPA by his predecessor and other political appointees, in part by taking a series of steps the authors say will “restore broad public trust in EPA’s scientific leadership and judgment.”
“You are Acting Administrator at a time of crisis that has eroded the scientific foundations of the Agency, due to the interventions of your predecessor and other political appointees. The damage can be undone, but it will take your leadership,” former SAB chairs Granger Morgan, Deborah Swackhamer and Peter Thorne write in an Oct. 17 letter.
But they acknowledge that prospects may be limited. “We hope for change. Realistically, the prospects are modest,” Morgan tells Inside EPA. “But if we don't indicate what we think is needed” things won't change. As of Oct. 25, Morgan said the he has not received a reply from EPA.
Among other things, the former SAB chairs urge Wheeler to re-post EPA climate change webpages “that were censored and inappropriately shut down, without any deletions or edits by non-scientist political staff.”
They also urge him to promptly release scientific documents, such as the delayed assessment of formaldehyde risks. They say they “can see no scientific reason to further hold up” publication of the draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of the human health risks of exposure to formaldehyde vapors.
Senate Democrats last spring urged former Administrator Scott Pruitt to release the draft assessment, and raised concern over Trump EPA leaders' meetings with industry groups about it. Wheeler told reporters in June that he would release the draft assessment once its accuracy had been reviewed.
The three former chairs also urge Wheeler to publicly affirm EPA’s 2012 Scientific Integrity Policy, saying they are “particularly concerned with the ongoing potential for interference by conflicted political appointees in science-based reports and information.”
They also urge Wheeler to drop a series of controversial Pruitt policies, including one that barred scientists receiving EPA research grants from serving on SAB and other advisory boards “while allowing membership by scientist[s] who receive grants . . . from industries,” as well as the former administrator's controversial proposed rule barring EPA from use of research in any regulatory decision-making where the underlying data is not publicly available.
The former chairs do not mention Wheeler's delay in naming new members to SAB, after several members' terms ended Sept. 30. But they argue that Wheeler should rescind Pruitt's policy barring those who receive EPA grants, arguing that such recipients are “almost by definition the leaders in their fields because in choosing to support them the Agency has identified them as making valuable contribution to their fields."
And like many others opposing Pruitt's controversial proposed science transparency rule, the authors argue Wheeler should withdraw it because it “would not materially increase transparency, but would effectively restrict use of the best available science and research to protect public health.” The latest Unified Agenda, released last week, delayed the rule's expected finalization until 2020.
They also urge Wheeler to advocate for “ambitious action to protect public health” and “Retain the Office of the Science Advisor,” which EPA is planning to fold into EPA's research office as part of its pending reorganization. The former chairs argue is it important to have “someone who is responsible for developing a broad overview of science across the Agency . . . to assure that the Agency makes the best possible use of available high-quality science, and that critical understanding and insights are not overlooked as the Agency advances its agenda of protecting health and environmental quality for all Americans.”
Morgan is an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Swackhamer is a professor emerita of water chemistry at the University of Minnesota, and Thorne is an environmental health professor at the University of Iowa.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/former-sab-chairs-raise-science-concerns-wheeler
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EPA Continues to Approve Toxic PFAS Chemicals Despite Widespread Contamination
Oct 25, 2018 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
Even as the Environmental Protection Agency has been trumpeting its efforts to find and clean up contamination from industrial chemicals known as PFAS, it has been allowing new chemicals in this class to enter into commerce, according to data from the agency. The EPA has allowed more than 100 new PFAS compounds to be made and imported in large quantities in the U.S. after it became aware of the health risks associated with them, and many more have entered commerce through loopholes that allow them to be omitted from the official inventory of chemicals and to bypass a basic safety review.
Since 2002, the agency has allowed 112 new PFAS chemicals to be made or imported in very large quantities, according to a list of compounds kept by the agency known as the Chemical Data Reporting database, or CDR. Companies have to report a chemical on the CDR if they make 25,000 pounds or more of it in a year in a single location. At that point, the agency was already working on a risk assessment of PFOA, which it released the next year with the grim warning that the chemical “raised a number of potential toxicity concerns,” and required additional study. “To ensure consumers are protected from any potential risks, the Agency will be conducting its most extensive scientific assessment ever undertaken on this type of chemical,” the EPA assistant administrator said at the time.
Yet, in 2006, just three years later, when the CDR was next updated, the EPA had allowed four more PFAS compounds to be added to the list of chemicals made or imported in large quantities. That year, the EPA arranged to phase out PFOA and PFOS, two of the best-known chemicals in the class, due to evidence that they caused health problems in people and animals and persisted indefinitely in the environment. By 2012, when it had become clear that PFAS had contaminated water near several industrial and military sources, the list included an additional 14 new PFAS compounds made in large amounts. Last year, when PFAS contamination was so widespread that it was described as a nationwide crisis, the latest CDR was released with 19 more new PFAS chemicals
In all, 203 PFAS have been made in or imported to the U.S. in large quantities since 1986, when the first CDR was published, according to EPA data. Ninety-six chemicals in this class are still being used in large quantities, according to the most recent list, which came out in 2016. The total number of PFAS compounds on the market with the EPA’s permission is likely far larger, since the CDR lists only a fraction of chemicals in use. A tally of chemicals kept by the agency known as the TSCA inventory currently includes 1,223 PFAS, 1,013 of which are in active use, according to an EPA spokesperson. These numbers are expected to grow because the inventory is being updated. Of these, 674 were already in use when the agency began tracking chemicals and didn’t undergo any initial scrutiny before being made or used in the U.S.
The CDR, which listed 8,707 chemicals in 2016, represents just over 10 percent of the most recent TSCA inventory, which included some 85,000 chemicals, though that proportion may change after the update of the inventory is completed in a few months. A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development identified 4,730 unique identifying numbers associated with PFAS chemicals currently in use worldwide.Convenient Loopholes
Whatever the final number of PFAS on the EPA’s updated inventory, it will fall short of the actual number of these compounds in use because several loopholes allow chemicals to be used and made here without undergoing a standard safety review and being included on that official list.
The law exempts certain chemicals, including some mixtures, byproducts, and substances unlikely to be released in large quantities, from these basic requirements. The most often used of these alternate paths to market, the low-volume exemption, allows companies to begin producing less than 10,000 kilograms per year of a substance without having to undergo a full safety review. The EPA has reviewed 722 PFAS chemicals submitted for such low-volume exemptions, according to the EPA. An agency spokesperson declined to say how many of the chemicals submitted for the exemption were ultimately approved for use and import. But the EPA website shows that since June 2016, when the new chemicals law went into effect, the EPA granted low-volume exemptions for more than 80 percent of all chemicals submitted.
The EPA has had clear evidence of the dangers of PFOA and PFOS since at least 2000, when 3M sent the agency results of its internal research, showing that the chemicals accumulated in blood and caused health problems in people and animals. 3M, which first produced PFOS and PFOA, shared documentation of the harms of both chemicals, including two troubling monkey studies in which the exposed animals had immune impacts and some died. The next year, attorney Rob Bilott, who was suingDuPont on behalf a West Virginia farmer whose entire herd of cattle had died after PFOA contaminated their drinking water, mailed a packet of more than 100 documents to the EPA detailing evidence of the association between PFOA exposure and tumors, hormonal changes, and reproductive issues and other health problems.“Every PFAS that has been studied is causing problems.”
In recent years, scientists have found other PFAS to be associated with harms, including cancers, hormonal disruption, obesity, and immune and reproductive dysfunction. “Every PFAS that has been studied is causing problems,” Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told the audience at a PFAS conference last year.
The 2016 update of the Toxic Substances Control Act was meant to strengthen public health protections by increasing the scrutiny of chemicals. And right after the new law went into effect, oversight of new chemicals did improve, according to Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.
“During the first year, between 60 and 80 percent of new chemicals were having some kind of restriction, whether testing requirements, limits on their production, or use put on them,” he said. “That’s all going away now,” continued Denison, who went on to describe a recent easing of restrictions that allows new chemicals to clear the review process laid out by the law while providing only minimal information.
And while the standard review process in which manufacturers submit pre-manufacture notifications, or PMNs, to the EPA may be becoming more lax, many chemicals are circumventing this route altogether. Of the new compounds allowed onto the market since the new chemicals law went into effect in June 2016, more have bypassed the safety review the law put in place than have undergone it. Since then, the EPA has approved 570 chemicals for commercial use after receiving PMNs, which require the submission of basic safety information, such as how much companies plan to make, details of expected worker exposure, and any studies of the health effects of the chemical. During that same period, the agency granted 667 chemicals low-volume exemptions, a process that involves a more truncated review process and leaves them off the EPA’s official chemical inventory. Data on the number of chemicals newly allowed to be made and sold through other exemptions during that period were not available.
The exemption path to commerce is preferable to many companies in part because of the lower level of scrutiny it involves. “The advantage of filing [a low-volume exemption] application is that it undergoes only a 30-day review,” explains a blog post from Keller & Heckman LLP, a law firm that represents many chemical manufacturers. The post described the process as “an attractive option for high-toxicity substances.” The same substance “might well wind up being regulated” under the standard review process.No Public Record
Allowing PFAS compounds to be made, used, and imported without first undergoing a standard safety review may be a violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act, according to Eve Gartner, who heads Earthjustice’s toxic chemicals program. “The statute only allows EPA to allow chemicals to bypass the usual approval process if EPA is confident that the chemical will not present unreasonable risk of injury,” said Gartner. “But there’s no way EPA can make that determination for a PFAS chemical since it’s been known since 2006 or earlier that at least some of the chemicals in this class pose very serious health harms.”
The exemptions also present an enforcement conundrum. Because there is no public record of chemicals that have been approved through the low-volume and other exemptions, there is no way to independently verify that they have met the requirements to keep them off the public list. It’s very difficult to check whether chemicals are in fact produced in quantities below the low-volume exemption’s 10,000 kg per year threshold, for instance, or released to the environment in amounts that qualify them for the Low Release and Low Exposures Exemption without knowing their names. The EPA did not respond to a question about what steps it takes to ensure that chemicals granted the low-volume exemption are not produced in quantities that exceed the allowed threshold.
Meanwhile, hundreds of chemicals that do undergo the standard safety review and are entered into the official inventory are listed without making the basic facts about them public. According to the EPA, manufacturers have withheld the name, quantities to be produced, and location of production facilities or other data for 396 PFAS chemicals on the grounds that such information is “confidential business information,” or CBI.
Consider the unnamed PFAS chemical the EPA allowed the Agfa Corporation to begin importing last year. In a consent order it issued at the time, the EPA acknowledges that the “substance may be a persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemical” and that the substance may “cause liver toxicity, blood toxicity, and male reproductive toxicity.” The document also noted that “the Ecotoxicity hazard concerns are high for effects of the potential degradation products to terrestrial wild mammals and birds,” and concluded that the “EPA is unable to determine whether the PMN substance will present an unreasonable risk to health or the environment.”
Nevertheless, on September 1, 2017, just days after state officials from New York, Alaska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Vermont wrote to the Centers for Disease Control asking for help with PFAS, which were causing health crises in their states, and as extensive contamination with the chemicals from the Wolverine shoe manufacturing factory in Michigan was coming to light, the EPA approved the new PFAS chemical’s import while withholding its name from the public. The agency did ask for a limited standard review of the chemical, which notes that it will be used at “800 unknown sites” around the country. But with critical information shielded, the report is of questionable use to the public.
The cloaking of basic facts about chemicals is par for the course, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Richard Denison, who asked the EPA for more than 90 new chemical applications over the past year. “The information we got back was spotty, almost everything was claimed confidential,” said Denison. “With the vast majority of new chemicals, the identity of the chemical is claimed CBI, but so is the great majority of the other information the company submits — the manufacturing process, how many sites the chemical is being processed at, worker exposure.”
Even health information, which is required by law to be public, was missing in some cases, according to Denison. “You’d see in attachment list that there’s a 78-page study. And, in the file, there was a document labeled ‘acute toxicity in mice,’ but when you opened it up, it was just one blank page. Someone had made the decision to redact that study even though it’s a health study, and it’s not eligible to be redacted.”
Companies are only allowed to shield their data in certain circumstances and are required to file a form explaining the reasons for their CBI claims. But in many cases they don’t provide that information, according to Denison. “We see massive levels of redaction with no substantiation or insufficient substantiation and no evidence that EPA has reviewed any of those claims,” he said.
The EPA declined to comment on the record.
The inaccessibility of information about chemicals complicates the work of scientists hoping to prevent and clean up PFAS contamination because it’s almost impossible to look for a compound without knowing its name and where it’s made. Detlef Knappe, an environmental engineer, co-authored a 2016 study that identified 17 PFAS, including GenX, in drinking water that originated in the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. But Knappe fears there are many more.
“Have we identified all of the PFAS in the water?” asked Knappe. “That question right now is impossible to answer in part because there is confidential business information surrounding the production of these compounds.”
It’s clear that at least one of the PFAS chemicals found in the river got there through yet another loophole that allowed it to bypass safety testing and inclusion on the EPA’s official list of chemicals in use. When DuPont began releasing what is now known as GenX in 1980, the compound wasn’t listed on the TSCA inventory because it was made in the course of manufacturing another chemical — and thus spared from reporting and a basic safety review requirements through the “byproducts exemption.” The chemical first appeared on the list in 2010, a year after the company introduced it as a replacement for PFOA and entered a legal agreementwith the EPA that included restrictions on its production.
While the 2009 agreement required DuPont — and later its spinoff, Chemours — to capture and recycle much of the chemical, up until that point, it had been dumping the very same chemical for decades directly into the Cape Fear River, which is the source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. The loophole allowed GenX to escape regulation because it, at first, wasn’t produced with the intent to sell.
In response to inquiries for this article, DuPont provided the following statement:
“DuPont worked closely with regulatory agencies to develop replacement materials that provide comparable properties and benefits with more favorable toxicological profiles. Throughout the time we introduced and used GenX, we always acted responsibly based on the health and environmental information that was available, and our commitment to safety, health and environmental stewardship is essential to everything we do.”
Chemours did not respond to requests for comment.
Almost 40 years after DuPont began quietly dumping that chemical into the river, the mess it has made is proving extremely difficult to clean up. “What mystifies me is the barrier for chemicals’ entry seems to be very low,” said Knappe, who has spent much of the past two years consumed with finding and cleaning up the PFAS compounds in drinking water. “But when it comes to thinking about developing regulation, the barrier is really high.”
The EPA says it is working to solve the problem. After holding a series of local meetings about PFAS contamination this summer, the agency announced that it will be releasing a plan to manage the chemicals later this year. The EPA website points to the work it’s already done studying the health impacts of the chemicals, monitoring their presence in drinking water, and coordinating with states and tribes dealing with contamination. But it’s hard to see how it can fix the country’s massive PFAS problem without addressing how these chemicals come onto the market in the first place.
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/25/epa-pfoa-pfas-pfos-chemicals/
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How Much Herbicide Can You Tolerate in Your Food?
Oct 26, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany
By now, many consumers have heard of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide known as Roundup, and warnings about its presence in many of their favorite foods. From oatmeal to granola bars, ice cream to even orange juice, trace amounts of the chemical can be found throughout your local supermarket.
It’s the world’s most widely used weedkiller—a blockbuster for Monsanto Co. since it was introduced in the 1970s. The vast majority of U.S. corn and soybeans have been genetically modified to withstand it, making it a critical component of modern farming. But in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer—an arm of the World Health Organization—labeled it a probable carcinogen. Since then, it’s become a legal headache for Monsanto, and now Bayer AG, which bought the company in June for $66 billion.
While regulators including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say the glyphosate found in food isn’t a problem because it’s at low levels, some scientists contend not enough is known about the effects of eating small amounts of it, especially over long periods of time.
“It does seem to be in everything,” said Cynthia Curl, the co-director of the Center for Excellence in Environmental Health and Safety at Boise State University. “We know enough that we should be learning more.”
Bayer rejects the IARC report and says glyphosate is “safe when used as directed.” For support, it points to numerous studies as well as regulators including the EPA and the European Food Safety Authority, which have said the weedkiller is unlikely to be a carcinogen. But in a major defeat this weekin California state court, a judge upheld a jury’s verdict that Roundup contributed to a dying groundskeeper’s cancer. Working for a school district in California, Lee Johnson had mixed and sprayed hundreds of gallons of the herbicide.
Growing consumer worries about chemical residue are part of a broader “clean food” movement. Shoppers are increasingly seeking foods in their purest forms, said Darren Seifer, food and beverage industry analyst at NPD Group. Foods labeled organic or all-natural have grown in popularity, and more than half of adults are avoiding artificial ingredients and preservatives. This is especially the case for millennials and Generation Z. Regardless of how the Roundup litigation ends, the food industry is already scrambling to adapt to public awareness of agricultural chemicals in the food supply.
New claims are showing up on food labels to satisfy discerning consumers. About one-third of vegetable buyers think “pesticide-free” is important, according to a Mintel report. One company, Detox Project, is offering “glyphosate-residue-free” certification for food brands; it said the number of companies asking for its services has soared along with interest in “clean food.”
“Some people are concerned with risks, no matter how small,” said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist of the Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.
The Trump administration has said there’s nothing to worry about. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is testing for glyphosate levels in harvested crops for the first time, released data earlier this month. In milk and eggs, none was detected, according to the agency. In corn and soybean samples that did test positive (many tested negative), the amounts were below minimum levels established by the EPA, the government said.
This week, a new study reminded Americans of the presence of the chemical in that quintessential American breakfast drink—orange juice—and the results were arguably good news for the industry.
Commissioned by the nutritional awareness advocacy group Moms Across America, it was performed by Health Research Institute Laboratories. The effective glyphosate level found in orange juice ranged from a low of 2.99 parts per billion (for Safeway’s Signature Farms brand) to 17.16 parts per billion (for Tropicana) at the high end. Results for Minute Maid, Stater Bros. Orange Juice, Florida’s Natural and Costco’s Kirkland brand all fell somewhere in between. Both ends of the spectrum are lower than last year’s results, which ranged from 4.33 to 26.05. The EPA guideline for allowable levels of glyphosate in citrus fruit is 500 parts per billion.
The Juice Products Association, an industry lobbying group, and Stater Bros., Minute Maid and Costco all emphasized that they adhere to federal and state regulations. Tropicana, Safeway and Florida’s Natural didn’t respond to requests for comment. The JPA, meanwhile, questioned the validity of the new study’s results because the method used (one created by Monsanto) was written for testing milk. As for why the study showed a decrease in the level of glyphosate, no one could say for sure.
The amount applied to control weeds in a citrus grove depends on rainfall, temperature and the variety of citrus being grown, among other variables, said Andrew Meadows, director of communications for industry cooperative Florida Citrus Mutual. While he can't explain the results of the study or vouch for their accuracy, he said growers are always looking to reduce their inputs, including pesticides. The state agency in charge of both regulating and marketing Florida citrus said groves are “treated judiciously with approved products that have been extensively evaluated for safety by expert groups and government agencies.”
Of the new study, Bayer toxicologist Bill Reeves said: “The numbers may be accurate, but the conclusion that there’s something to be concerned about is inaccurate.” Reeves, part of the company’s regulatory policy and scientific affairs team, points to the EPA guideline for citrus fruit, which is more than 29 times the highest concentration found in the study.
Carl Winter, a toxicologist at University of California at Davis, was more blunt. “One would need to be exposed to about 250,000 times the highest level of [the orange juice] sampling to pose any initial level of concern,” he said, noting that he performed this analysis with a 66-pound child in mind. “That in itself is still 100 times less than what causes effects in laboratory animals.”
Existing research is limited because there isn’t a promising method to measure how much glyphosate is in a human body, said Melissa Perry, professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control periodically conducts a national assessment of hundreds of chemicals to see how much is contained in the bodies of average Americans, glyphosate is notably absent, Perry said.
Companies that say products containing glyphosate are safe can’t point to any studies “that can measure glyphosate in the body and point to specific health outcomes,” she said.
Perry is among a group of researchers in Europe and the U.S. working on a study examining the health effects of the chemical at everyday exposure levels. A pilot released earlier this year found adverse health effects in rats when given doses of glyphosate at levels deemed safe by the EPA, including altered sexual development in female rats. In an emailed statement Thursday, Bayer said “the effects of glyphosate on reproduction and development are part of the regulatory assessments. The data consistently demonstrate that glyphosate does not harm reproduction and development in humans.”
Bruce Lee, associate professor of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center, said there should be more concern from companies and regulators before a chemical is introduced into the marketplace—not afterward. Bayer, when asked what testing of glyphosate took place prior to it being offered for sale, responded that “pesticides undergo incredibly comprehensive evaluations by regulatory authorities before they can be sold. In the U.S., the EPA requires all pesticides to undergo more than 100 safety studies before they are approved.”
Pam Factor-Litvak, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center, said that a lack of immediately apparent effects from chemical exposure on individuals doesn’t end the conversation. A longer timeline and evaluation of effects on the whole population are needed to properly evaluate risks.
“When you look at the studies of environmental chemicals, you can’t think of individual inferences,” she said, noting that individual results, for example, can be within a margin of error. But for the entire population, the results may be more concerning. “It gives you a larger tail on the harmful end.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-26/how-much-monsanto-herbicide-roundup-can-you-tolerate-in-your-food
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Thousands More Towns to Test Water for Nonstick Chemicals
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
About 5,000 more water utilities must test their drinking water for a family of ubiquitous compounds used in nonstick coatings and flame retardants under a bill President Donald Trump signed into law Oct. 23.
The Environmental Protection Agency asks municipal water systems serving more than 10,000 people to test their water for poly- and perfluorinated compounds. The new law, known as America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (S. 3021), lowered that bar to include thousands of smaller communities.
That change adds about 5,000 more systems to the list of those that must sample their water for the compounds, Jennifer McLain, deputy director of the EPA’s groundwater and drinking water office, said at the Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials’ annual conference in Bethesda, Md., Oct. 25.
Poly- and perfluorinated compounds number in the thousands and can cause adverse health effects, including liver tissue damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA. Fluorinated chemicals have been used to manufacture firefighting foams and in making nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer and industrial products.
Because of the law, systems serving more than 3,300 people must test drinking water for the compounds and other unregulated chemicals. That requirement starts in 2021, unless the EPA’s administrator decides laboratories can’t handle that volume of tests.
The EPA has yet to set an enforceable limit on poly- and perfluorinated compounds. The bill authorized $15 million for the EPA to pay for testing and water quality monitoring.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/thousands-more-towns-to-test-water-for-nonstick-chemicals
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Shell Says Natural Gas Faces Scrutiny as Demand Outpaces Supply
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mathew Carr
New natural gas projects are seen facing scrutiny as the fuel replaces dirtier coal, but it will prevail and even thrive in the transition away from fossil fuels, according to Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
The shift to cleaner technology and higher carbon prices will throw the spotlight on new production and export facilities, said Clare Harris, Shell’s executive vice president for integrated gas ventures development. Shell expects liquefied natural gas demand to keep growing at about 4 percent a year and doesn’t see supply from new projects at the same level, she said.
The energy company and its partners earlier this month announced an agreement to invest in a $31 billion LNG-export project in western Canada. That comes as 310 wealth managers in a group managing $32 trillion, including HSBC Global Asset Management and Legal & General Group Plc, ask the companies they own to bring their investment programs in step with the United Nations Paris Agreement to limit global warming. Environmental groups are also lobbying against fossil-fuel investments.
“I think we’ll see people scrutinizing more carefully,” Harris said in an interview. “If I look at Canada, it’s no secret it’s a very long-term project. We looked very carefully at how resilient that project will be in the energy transition and we believe it will be really resilient.”
Higher prices for emission allowances won’t kill off gas, which will continue to play a part as the world tackles emissions, Harris said.
“We actively support carbon pricing,” she said. “We would see responsible low-carbon value chains being a big part of the futur—carbon pricing and the future of gas don’t contradict each other.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/shell-says-natural-gas-faces-scrutiny-as-demand-outpaces-supply
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Shipbuilders Struggle to Keep up With Gas Demand
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
New liquefied natural gas carriers are entering the market at a fast pace. It may not be fast enough.
Dozens of specialized LNG carriers are under construction and poised for delivery to the market over the next couple of years. The latest to leave its shipyard is Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd.'s Marvel Eagle, "the first vessel equipped with the high performance ship operation data collection device," the company noted. The vessel, constructed at Japan's Sakaide Shipyard by Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., was declared ready for service last Friday.
"Detailed voyage and engine data on actual voyages will be collected from the vessel during operation and stored in a cloud-based data platform to develop applications," said Mitsui's representatives.
At least 33 new LNG carrier ships have been ordered so far during 2018, with the majority of orders going to shipyards in South Korea. By comparison, just 19 were ordered last year and six ordered in 2016, according to the research firm Wood Mackenzie.
Some observers suspected there are far too many carriers being built for the market at the same time. But an analysis published this week by an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-affiliated energy importers' club fears that new LNG carrier builds isn't keeping up with LNG export capacity expansion, openly speculating whether LNG carrier supply is the emerging "weak link" in burgeoning global LNG trade.
Thus far, LNG carrier capacity isn't on policymakers' radar, with the focus remaining on rising demand in India and China and financing for new LNG export capacity to meet that future demand. Project financing and demand facilitation were the main topics of discussion earlier this week in Nagoya, Japan, at the annual LNG Producer-Consumer Conferences.
"What they are talking about at the moment is financing of the new projects," said Mina Sekiguchi, an Asia-Pacific energy and natural resources expert at KPMG, referring in particular to discussions between Japan and the European Union. "One of the things we have to make sure of is that the producing LNG side, the project side, has to be constantly moving forward, and that's a big problem."
New projects are coming online.
On Tuesday, French oil and gas giant Total SA announced the first shipment of LNG from the new Ichthys project in northern Australia. And there's more to come, the company said. "LNG is currently being produced from the first liquefaction train, with the second train expected to start up as well in the coming weeks," it said.
This week, the Paris-based International Energy Agency issued its annual Global Gas Security Review. The report detailed how governments and industry are working to shore up gas supply and distribution in light of past winter supply crunches and gas price spikes (Energywire, Oct. 23).
Buried deeper in the report is IEA's concern that new LNG carrier builds aren't keeping pace with growth in LNG trade, which it expects will expand by around 30 percent over the next five years. The report says that the 2018 rush of new orders and carrier deliveries represents a peak, with the pace ebbing out to 2020 "and almost no new deliveries thereafter."
"Considering that LNG [carrier] construction takes between two and three years, fleet capacity is expected to remain almost flat in 2021 (and possibly 2022) unless new orders are placed in the coming months," IEA researchers point out. "This absence of available shipping capacity in a fast-growing LNG market could be a serious issue for flexibility and security of supply."
Though IEA analysts acknowledge that some 26 LNG carriers were ordered to be built in the first half of 2018 alone, "This may prove insufficient to keep the global LNGC market in balance, taking lead times into consideration," they worry. "The earliest a new build can now be delivered is 2021."
Market trends suggest that, for now, IEA's concerns may be warranted.
Though LNG carrier orders have surged, companies report that building these specialized boats remains relatively inexpensive compared with prior years — a lingering effect of the collapse the global shipping industry experienced in the wake of the 2008 financial crisism — despite the acknowledgement that LNG carriers are more costly to build than oil tankers.
Carrier operators also report getting good prices for their services as LNG exports rise.
"We continue to see improving rates for LNG carriers," Mark Kremin, president of Teekay LNG Partners LP, told his company's investors during quarterly financial reporting.
"Spot charter rates for 160,000 cubic meter LNG carriers were on average 63 percent higher year-over-year in the first half of 2018, reaching an average high of nearly $90,000 per day in June, according to Clarksons," Kremin noted. "Demand was driven by strong Chinese imports, which were almost 50 percent higher in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period of the prior year."
As shipyards rush to churn out new carriers, other bottlenecks to LNG trade are being lifted in the meantime.
In a report commissioned for this week's Nagoya conference, researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics, Japan, and Energy Policy Research Foundation Inc. praised new initiatives by the Panama Canal Authority to free up traffic in that waterway, to the benefit of the United States' rising volumes of LNG exports.
IEEJ-EPRINC noted that competitors to U.S. LNG were deliberately overbooking slots for Panama Canal passage in a move to constrain U.S. exports to Asia, angering the canal authority, as it saw only 60 percent of purchased slots actually used.
"By purchasing booking slots that they didn't intend to use, other nations could limit the amount of U.S. LNG that could make it to Asia, tightening the bottleneck in Panama," said IEEJ-EPRINC.
In response, the Canal Authority has raised the penalties it charges for unused slots. It has also loosened regulations on nighttime shipping and on the number of LNG vessels allowed passage through the canal at any time. The reforms show that the managers of the Panama Canal are keen on keeping LNG exporters happy, the research institutes concluded.
"This method of increasing LNG transit capacity is a direct response to frustration from U.S. LNG transport companies who insisted that safety regulations limiting nighttime operations of their vessels in the Panama Canal were too strict."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/10/26/stories/1060104409
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Offshore Drilling Effectively Banned With Oregon Governor’s Order
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Paul Shukovsky
Oil and gas drilling off the coast of Oregon is effectively off the table after Gov. Kate Brown (D) ordered state agencies to take steps banning the practice.
The order signed Oct. 24 directs state agencies to use all legal authorities “to prevent the development of any infrastructure associated with offshore oil and gas drilling.”
She said the move was necessary in light of the Trump administration’s effort to open more offshore areas, including all along the West Coast, to drilling despite opposition from many coastal states.
“At a time when the Trump administration is trying to allow oil rigs to be built off nearly every coastline in America, I’m tired of waiting for the federal government to come to its senses and realize that this is terrible mistake,” Brown said in an Oct. 25 statement.
President Donald Trump in April announced that he is “starting the process of opening offshore areas to job-creating energy exploration.” Trump’s statement followed a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management draft program that would open the vast majority of the outer continental shelf including off the entire West Coast.
No Exploration UnderwayThere currently is no oil or gas exploration or development activity off the Oregon coast, Western States Petroleum Association spokeswoman Kara Siepmann told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 25 by phone.
Brown’s office didn’t immediately reply to an Oct. 25 email inquiring if the governor’s staff is aware of any plans to commence exploration or development.
A 2016 BOEM report estimates relatively small technically recoverable oil reserves off Oregon and Washington of less than 1 billion barrels, as compared to more than 9 billion barrels off California and 142 billion in the Gulf of Mexico.
Brown is locked in a tight re-election race in November’s general election against Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/offshore-drilling-effectively-banned-with-oregon-governors-order
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The Shale Boom Calmed Oil Markets, but for How Much Longer?
Oct 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Russell Gold
For the past decade, enough oil has flowed from America’s shale boom to allay worries that demand for the world’s most important commodity would outstrip supply.
Now, new volatility in global oil prices—which are up 15% since the start of the year—signals that the calming effect of the shale bonanza is reaching its limits.
For perspective on shale’s impact, rewind to 2007, when some industry leaders saw world demand hitting a wall once it rose to 100 million barrels a day—a level they thought supplies would have trouble matching.
“Where is all that going to come from?” said James Mulva, the former chief executive of ConocoPhillips, that year, when the world produced and consumed about 85 million barrels a day.
In August, global oil demand reached 100 million barrels a day, and the world hardly noticed. What happened? Shale.
Using techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, U.S. oil drillers figured out how to get crude oil from ultradense shale rocks in North Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma. U.S. oil output rose from 5 million barrels a day in 2007, when Mr. Mulva raised his concerns, to a record of nearly 11 million a day in August, a remarkable increase that has rarely been replicated anywhere in the history of oil.
While this has helped the world meet rising demand for years, it cannot go on forever. Signs are mounting that shale won’t keep growing at the same rate in the U.S. Drillers face pipeline bottlenecks moving crude out of West Texas. This week, Halliburton Co. Chief Executive Jeff Miller said its oil-producing clients were facing “budget exhaustion” and he expected some to take extended breaks from drilling new shale wells. That is coinciding with warnings of plateauing, or even declining, production elsewhere in the world.
In Frack We Trust
Oil output from U.S. shale has grown quickly, boosting global oil growth for several years
All the while, global economic growth has been strong for several quarters and oil demand continues to grow. Since its last year-over-year decline at the end of 2011, oil demand has grown annually by 1.5 million barrels a day, according to International Energy Agency data.
The steady upward march of oil demand has left oil markets prone to price swings and spikes. The price of a barrel of Brent crude, the leading global benchmark, is up to near $77 a barrel, from $67 at the beginning of the year.
If U.S. production fails to grow at recent rates, it is far from clear that the world’s two other oil superpowers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, can pick up the slack. Russia is already pumping 10.8 million barrels a day of crude, a level unseen since the Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia, currently at 10.4 million barrels a day, is headed toward record-level output.
“The Saudis are just about out of spare capacity,” said Robert McNally, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush who heads the Rapidan Energy Group, a Washington consulting firm.
Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said this week, according to Russian news agency TASS, that the country would bump up its production to 11 million barrels a day to cool off the oil market, although some oil observers wonder if the kingdom would be able to fulfill this promise.
Meanwhile, exports from two other key oil-producing nations are falling.
In the midst of an economic meltdown under President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, has seen its production fall to 1.2 million barrels a day today from 3.2 million barrels in 2006, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil sector are set to take effect Nov. 4, barring companies from buying Iranian exports. Oil traders are still assessing how effective those sanctions will be at crimping Iran’s oil industry, but analysts say they could remove anywhere from 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day from global oil markets.
“This is the year geopolitics came back to the oil markets and it is back with a vengeance,” said Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. In recent weeks, the oil market has carefully watched growing strains in the U.S.-Saudi relationship over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The impact of Iranian sanctions or Venezuela’s falling output would have been muted a couple of years ago, when supply was plentiful. The rising demand means this is no longer the case.
“Geopolitics matter more when markets are tight,” said Sarah O. Ladislaw, director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
There are so far no signs of any actual supply squeeze and some believe that without the current geopolitical uncertainties, oil prices would still be stable. “Based on market fundamentals, there is absolutely no reason oil prices should be at this level,” said Ali Moshiri, chairman of Amos Global Energy LLC, a Houston-based oil producer and a longtime Chevron Corp. executive.
But if oil demand continues to rise—and Iranian exports are curtailed—prices could rise dramatically. A couple of years ago, such a rise might have been short-lived as shale producers accelerated operations and added more oil to the global market.
Geopolitical shifts also make for uncertain longer-term forecasts and price swings. While the U.S. hardline approach to Iran could lead to a rise in oil prices now, down the line the trade policies could erode oil demand and lead to future price drops.
For the U.S. to pursue both Iran sanctions and toughening trade policy at the same time “is a really big risk,” said Philip Verleger, an energy economist. “If we’re not careful, we could have a repeat of 2008 when oil prices started at $90 a barrel, went up to $140 and ended around $30,” he said.
For years, shale helped keep enough spare capacity in global markets that volatility began to feel like a relic of the past. In the years to come, the world may no longer have that shale shock absorber, ending a relatively peaceful decade in oil markets.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-shale-boom-calmed-oil-markets-but-for-how-much-longer-1540546200?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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Dust Accidents, Worker Participation in Investigations Top U.S. Chemical Safety Board Agenda
Oct 25, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
Curbing a seemingly endless string of combustible dust accidents and clarifying the role company employees can play in chemical accident investigations topped the U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board agenda at its Oct. 24 business meeting.
On dust, CSB announced a “call to action” to gather more information from companies, unions, regulators, workers, and others on safe management and control of combustible dust. CSB investigator Cheryl MacKenzie noted that since 1980, 386 dust-related accidents have occurred in a variety of U.S. industries, including chemical manufacturers and metal and plastic fabrication industries. Those incidents killed 178 workers and injured more than 1,000 others.
After several investigations, CSB has recommended four times that the Occupational Safety & Health Administration regulate industrial dust, which OSHA has the authority to do. However, OSHA has not proposed dust regulations. CSB does not have regulatory powers.
CSB’s call for information ends Nov. 26. The board hopes it will result in effective, nonregulatory solutions to control dust and eliminate accidents.
On participation of company employees in CSB investigations, the board adopted a new policy clarifying the role of workers in CSB accident investigations. The vote, however, split the board: Interim Executive Authority Kristen Kulinowski and board member Rick Engler supported the policy, while board member Manuel (Manny) Ehrlich abstained.
Engler, who introduced the new policy, said employee participation was a “pillar” of CSB accident investigations. However, CSB’s previous policy on employee participation was confidential and used only by CSB staff. The policy clarifies and updates participants’ roles, and it will be publicly available.
Ehrlich’s chief objection to the policy was that it was too lengthy and unneeded. In particular, he wanted to eliminate a provision describing how CSB investigators should address company management interference with employee participation in investigations.
The provision calls for CSB to report interference or obstruction with investigations to federal law enforcement. Ehrlich said the provision would be punitive and proscriptive and in the end would tie the hands of CSB staff doing the investigation. He proposed having CSB’s head of investigations, Stephen Klejst, rework the provision.
Engler countered that the new policy was drawn up by a team of CSB investigators and managers and mirrors policies in other government agencies. “Going backwas not a great use of time or resources,” he added. “We have bigger challenges.”
Other sections of the policy address whistle-blower protection, working with multiple labor unions, protection of companies’ confidential business information, and employee participation in site walk-throughs and on-scene investigations.
https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrial-safety/Dust-accidents-worker-participation-investigations/96/i43
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DOE Aims Defenses at Grid Weak Points
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The Energy Department's master plan for defending the nation's electric power system is focusing on the most vital weak points across the spectrum of generation, transmission and distribution, and fuel supply, Patricia Hoffman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Electricity, said yesterday.
"What we hope to do is help prioritize areas where we need to harden the system, look at additional investment" to do that, Hoffman told members of the WIRES organization, a nonprofit organization that advocates for stronger power transmission networks.
Hoffman's remarks elaborated on the goals of the North American grid threat assessment project developed by Bruce Walker, the assistant DOE secretary heading the Office of Electricity. It would create the first road map of crucial energy sector interdependencies, headed by the electric grid's increasing reliance on pipeline deliveries for gas-fired generation. Railway and trucking services to energy facilities will be included as well, she said.
She also gave an update on the work of a second DOE mission, to analyze civilian power facilities that support the most vital U.S. defense installations. Congress assigned the latter task to DOE in the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act.
Her focus on targeted defenses and recovery strategies for particular power facilities in these two efforts contrasts with another top-level DOE policy proposal to channel subsidies to a significant number of money-losing coal and nuclear power plants that are set to retire prematurely.
The support for the coal and nuclear plants would not be based on their strategic importance, according to a leaked draft of the DOE policy. Hoffman did not comment on the highly controversial coal-nuclear policy project, which has been held up by a debate in the White House National Security Council.
The threat analysis under the FAST Act extends beyond just generating plants, Hoffman said.
"Under Fast Act we are looking at what I would say are beginning-to-end requirements. It is generation; it is transmission; it is distribution. It is all the assets that are associated with supporting critical infrastructure," she said.
DOE has completed an initial list of critical energy facilities needed to support critical Pentagon installations, Walker told E&E News in an interview.
The first phase of building a North American resilience model is gaining "a more detailed understanding of location-specific vulnerabilities in our energy delivery systems," in order to prioritize investments in defense and recovery, Hoffman said.
The completed model would guide DOE in responding to losses of multiple transmission lines, pipelines or power plants from an enemy attack or extreme natural disaster, she said.
A second phase of the project involves the ability to analyze huge volumes of data on moment-to-moment grid operations to help detect and respond to hostile intrusions or approaching grid failures in fractions of seconds, she said. Last month DOE invited bids for research grants on this front.
This capability will require installations of many more sensing devices on power networks and development of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to interpret sensor data, she said.
The goal is "a real time model that will enable situational awareness across North American incorporating data to look at worst case analyses," she said.
The leaked DOE policy draft said two years would be required to complete the initial phase of the North American vulnerability assessment.
Paul Stockton, managing director of the Sonecon LLC consulting firm and former assistant secretary of Defense for homeland defense, told the WIRES session that the government's intelligence agencies need to help energy companies understand what likely cyber or physical attacks they must be prepared to resist and recover from.
"When we're looking at where you're going to get the power to transmit over your lines, think about what is an appropriate design basis threat that we ought to have developed for the natural gas pipeline system," he said.
A comprehensive understanding of gas pipeline vulnerabilities doesn't exist today, leaving grid operators unclear about the threats they could face from pipeline outages and the steps they need to take in response, he said.
"You can be sure that Moscow and Beijing are thinking like this. They're thinking here's an indirect way" to deny military facilities the power they need, by cutting off gas flows to generators, he said.Shooting back
John Conger, director of the Center for Climate & Security, and former principal deputy undersecretary of Defense, said the Pentagon has taken on new responsibility for grid defense, in an entirely different direction from DOE.
"It is not so much about getting into your business and making sure attacks don't work as much as shooting the archer as it were — finding the people who are going to be doing the attack and taking them out before they do attack," Conger said.
"It's going to be finding someone who wants to do something malevolent and shooting them before they do it," he said.
In the FAST Act amendment, Congress gave the Energy secretary full authority to direct civilian power plant and grid owners to alter their operations in a presidentially declared emergency, including authority to direct scarce electricity supplies to top-priority customers.
Although DOE has released a FAST Act policy statement, many utilities are uncertain what they would be told to do in such an emergency, another speaker at the WIRES conference said.
Caitlin Durkovich, a director of Toffler Associates, a security consultancy, and a former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection with the Department of Homeland Security, said she heard these concerns from energy companies attending a recent threat training exercise in California.
They were focused on the FAST Act and what that meant for investor-owned utilities "and the fact that the federal government might come to them and order them to shift [supply] to certain high priority national security assets," Durkovich said.
"There was a lot of confusion about what is going to happen under those orders, what the obligations would be on the investor-owned utilities and what it means to them from a regulatory standpoint and ultimately from a liability standpoint, because there is still not alignment between what the federal government orders might be and what the public utility commission orders might be.
"I was little taken aback by the lack of understanding" about the emergency provisions, she said. "At the end of the day, on a really bad day, what are going to be the assets that we need to assure have power, and does that mean that other lifesaving assets that used to get prioritization may be second on the list, or third on the list?" she said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/10/26/stories/1060104445
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ALL ABOUT: Wrangling Ocean Plastic
Oct 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily C. Dooley
A giant floating barrier meant to corral the massive accumulation of ocean plastic known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area twice the size of Texas, has arrived at its destination.
Towed out of San Francisco Bay by the Maersk Launcher in September, the U-shaped collection mechanism called System001 is now in place between California and Hawaii.
Launched by the Dutch nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup, System001 consists of a 2,000-foot barrier with a 10-foot skirt dangling below that corrals the plastic, keeping it from floating over the barrier and under the skirt.
Solar-powered and equipped with satellite sensors, cameras, and navigation lights, the system can alert other maritime traffic to its presence and monitor the cleanup.
Trapped plastic will be collected and shipped back to land where it will be recycled into products that can be sold to fund further cleanup efforts, The Ocean Cleanup said.
The organization plans to eventually deploy a fleet to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with a goal of removing 50 percent of the plastic debris within five years.
This All About appeared in today’s First Move, which is delivered at 7:45 a.m. on weekdays.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/all-about-wrangling-ocean-plastic
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Trump Admin Jettisons Letter Grades for NEPA Reviews
Oct 25, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Nick Sobczyk and Maxine Joselow
EPA will no longer issue letter grades in its reviews of environmental permitting documents, according to a memo issued earlier this week.
The memo states that EPA will stop using the Reagan-era grading system in draft environmental impact statements (EISs) issued under the National Environmental Policy Act.
It's a change long sought by industry and worrisome to some environmentalists, who say it could undermine transparency and public participation in the permitting process.
Brittany Bolen, a Trump appointee who leads the Office of Policy, shared the memo with colleagues Monday, according to an email obtained by E&E News.
"Please see attached memo revising EPA's environmental review rating process under NEPA," Bolen wrote. "If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me."
Scott Slesinger, legislative director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the change could make it harder for the public to interpret draft environmental assessments. The documents can be hundreds of pages long, and a simple letter grade can make them easier to digest, he said.
"Removing the grading system makes it harder for the press and for the public to really evaluate what type of draft EIS they've done," Slesinger said.
Slesinger used the analogy of students showing parents their report cards. Without letter grades, he said, parents would find it harder to interpret their child's performance.
Section 309 of the Clean Air Act gives EPA power to review other agencies' draft EISs, an authority the Trump administration proposed to eliminate as part of its infrastructure plan released earlier this year (Greenwire, Feb. 12).
EPA says tossing out letter grades in those reviews "will not lessen environmental protections." Rather, the change will "eliminate perceptions that ratings are inconsistently applied across the Agency," Bolen wrote in the memo.
She added that EPA had received feedback from officials at other federal agencies, who said EPA's written comments on their environmental review documents are more useful than the letter grades.
NEPA experts said the change is small but significant — and perfectly legal.
The tweaks to EPA's Section 309 reviews are a commonsense fix to what had become "an antiquated procedure," said Fred Wagner, a partner with Venable LLP who served as chief counsel for the Federal Highway Administration under President Obama.
Wagner said that in his experience, the vast majority of documents got a grade of "EC," for "environmental concerns." Agencies would then go in and make changes or add explanations to the document, which will still happen under the new guidance.
In short, the grades themselves had become meaningless, Wagner said. "I've been mentioning this to people for over 10, almost 15 years," he said.
The change has already won the praise of industry groups, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, which say it's one more step in the administration's efforts to reduce permitting time for infrastructure projects.
"These improvements will help increase manufacturers' ability to create jobs and to remain globally competitive," Robyn Boerstling, NAM's vice president for infrastructure, innovation and human resources policy, said in a statement. "Needless delays to the permitting process have an enormous impact on the infrastructure manufacturers rely on to ship goods to market and to supply affordable and reliable energy."
But Raul Garcia, legislative counsel for Earthjustice, said it's not clear that the change will benefit industry across the board. Instead, he said it could help selectively because it makes EPA's reviews less transparent.
"This is making everything more ambiguous and less clear," Garcia said. "The agency won't know what the standards are. So this isn't an issue that just cuts pro or against industry, or pro enviro."
The Trump administration has sought to make other changes to NEPA permitting, as well. Its most wide-ranging proposal is to rewrite the White House Council on Environmental Quality's NEPA regulations, which guide environmental permitting across the federal government.
EPA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/10/25/stories/1060104423
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High Court Stay Of Youth Climate Case Seen As Ominous Sign For Plaintiffs
Oct 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' unusual stay of a constitutional climate change case bought by a group of youth plaintiffs is an ominous sign for the complainants and a boost to the Trump administration, which is now pressing the high court to permanently halt the litigation, observers say.
While Roberts' stay is temporary, sources say that with the recent confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there appears to be five votes on the court to dismiss the case before it goes to trial, which had long been slated to begin Oct. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
The 21 youth plaintiffs filed Juliana, et al. v. United States in 2015, alleging the federal government is violating their constitutional due process rights and the public trust doctrine by continuing to promote and permit fossil fuels, whose greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and injuring them.
District court Judge Ann Aiken in 2016 rejected the Obama administration's arguments to dismiss the case, setting up the trial, and the Trump administration has been seeking to get it tossed ever since.
The Supreme Court's conservative justices have already shown their willingness to take unusual steps when it comes to climate change cases, these experts note, citing the first-of-its-kind stay the high court granted in early 2016 to stop implementation of the Obama EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP).
Granted on a 5-4 vote, the stay was noteworthy because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had not finished its consideration of the rule -- and the case remains on hold in the appellate court.
Roberts' recent stay of the youth climate case is similarly unusual. It came in response to the Department of Justice's (DOJ) second high court petition for a writ of mandamus -- which if granted would permanently toss the case.
Also worth noting, sources say, is that Roberts issued the order the same day he handed oversight of the 9th Circuit -- the appellate circuit with jurisdiction over the Oregon district court -- to Justice Elena Kagan. She replaced retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who earlier oversaw the circuit and in July rejected DOJ's first mandamus petition.
Even though Roberts' temporary authority over the 9th Circuit has now been ceded to a more liberal justice, he does not appear to be handing Kagan control of this case, given that his Oct. 19 order stayed discovery and trial pending “further order of The Chief Justice or of the Court.”
One attorney following the case also notes that under high court rules for stays, the youth plaintiffs should have been given an opportunity to file a brief before the stay was granted. “We believe that the stay was issued prematurely,” because of that rule. Roberts' not abiding by it is “unusual,” the source adds.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs submitted an Oct. 22 response to Roberts' order, arguing a stay of the district court trial “will disrupt the integrity of the judiciary's role as a check on the political branches and will irreparably harm these children. . . . The independence of the judiciary, free from pressure by the political branches, is instrumental in preserving our democratic institutions and the People's respect for them.”
'Essential Role'
DOJ submitted an Oct. 24 reply that underscores the need for the Supreme Court to grant the mandamus petition, which is considered an extraordinary move only done when a higher court believes a lower court has committed a grave error and that a case must be halted before it is ripe for appeal.
DOJ in the reply seeks to counter the youth's argument that halting the case would undermine people's confidence in the courts. “That is not true. By granting the government's petition for a writ of mandamus or certiorari to confine the district court to a 'lawful exercise of its prescribed jurisdiction,' the court will prevent a 'judicial “usurpation of power,”' and preserve the judiciary's essential role under the Constitution.”
The attorney following the case notes that DOJ was not “given the opportunity” by Roberts' order to file a reply. “They just went ahead and did it.” The source adds that while the youth attorneys will not respond, a key point about DOJ's second filing is that it fails to “cite any case that says the fact that DOJ has to go to try a case -- which it does every day, that is what they do -- is irreparable harm,” which is a key factor in granting a stay.
Also, the source notes that DOJ is not a defendant agency in Juliana and that none of the named agencies have claimed they will suffer irreparable harm by going to trial “because no defendant is participating in this trial, other than sending a representative to authenticate documents, which the solicitor general's office has to know does not constitute harm at all.”
According to a list DOJ previously filed with the district court, it only intends to call eight expert witnesses at the trial.
“That's it, because candidly, they're scared to put anybody up there. That's the reality of this trial,” the attorney says.
The attorney notes that nobody knows when the Supreme Court will act next. Some suggest the case could be heard at the justices' weekly conference next slated for Oct. 26, but “we don't know, we have no idea.”
Legal experts, however, are already suggesting a trial is unlikely. The high-profile event would pit government experts against young people and could send a damaging political message about the government regardless of the eventual outcome in the litigation.
Ann Carlson, a University of California-Los Angeles law professor, says in an Oct. 22 Legal Planet blog post that while “a single Justice can issue a stay, a Justice may also refer a request for a stay to the whole Court. This typically happens in controversial cases. If Chief Justice Roberts decides not to lift the stay, he is very likely to refer the Juliana case to the entire Court.”
The court has stringent criteria for granting a stay, including that there be a “reasonable probability” that four justices will grant cert; that there is a “fair prospect” that a majority of the court will conclude that the decision below on the merits was erroneous; that irreparable harm will result from the denial of the stay; and that the balance of equities between applicants, respondents and the broader public weigh in favor of a stay.
Carlson says because the criteria are so demanding -- basically requiring the court to decide the merits of a case in advance -- “stays are highly unusual. With the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the high court, however, the likelihood that five Justices will decide in advance of trial that the children in the Juliana case have no basis in law for their claim is high.”
She expects Roberts will refer DOJ's request to the full court and that four other justices will “join him in issuing a stay,” and that the majority will “further allow the U.S. to seek a ruling in advance of trial that the plaintiffs have no claim to be in federal Court.”
Additionally, industry attorney Jeff Holmstead told the Washington Examiner that Roberts' stay is a sign that the high court doesn't want the judiciary used for “show trials.” He also argued that the case “has no legal merit.”
Nathan Richardson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, told the Examiner that the youth's claims are not “crazy” or “frivolous” but rather, are creative. However, he said the action sought by the plaintiffs would be hard to define and enforce, and called their success a “long shot.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/high-court-stay-youth-climate-case-seen-ominous-sign-plaintiffs
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U.N. Climate Report Drives Questions in Senate Debates
Oct 26, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The release of a major international report on climate change has spread into a number of Senate races, giving the issue prominence in the final weeks before the midterm elections.
Moderators have asked candidates about climate change and how they plan to address it in at least seven debates since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an alarming report that says the world could face irreversible changes within a few decades.
That has elevated an environmental issue in the final stretch of an election season that could reassemble political power in the legislative branch and give Democrats the ability to grill Trump administration officials in congressional hearings.
The U.N. report found that global warming could create millions of refugees around the world, increase deadly heat waves and render parts of some coastal cities uninhabitable by the end of the century. President Trump has largely dismissed climate change.
Moderators have asked about global warming in 14 of the 52 competitive Senate and gubernatorial debates tracked by Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has held hearings to criticize climate science, was asked on Oct. 16 whether he agreed with Trump's assertion that "something" was changing in the climate. Cruz said Democrats are using the issue to "control the economy." He touted the state's oil and gas sector and rejected basic climate science while attacking Rep. Beto O'Rourke, his Democratic challenger, for supporting climate policies.
"Of course the climate is changing, the climate has been changing from the dawn of time," Cruz said. "The climate will change as long as we have a planet Earth."
Turning to O'Rourke's climate votes, Cruz said they show "he sides with liberal extremists on the national level instead of the people of Texas, instead of jobs of Texas. And, by the way, alternatives are great, too."
O'Rourke said Cruz was dissembling, noting that Trump called him "Lyin' Ted" and that "man-made climate change is a fact." He said it's a "false choice" to either support the state's oil and gas sector or its growing renewable energy sector.
"The climate is changing, and man-made climate change is a fact. Three hundred years after the Enlightenment, we should be able to listen to the scientists and follow their advice and guidance. And they tell us that we still have time, but the window is closing to get this right," O'Rourke said.
In a debate Wednesday, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) attacked her challenger, Republican Chele Farley, who works in the financial services industry, for not standing up to Trump when he rejects climate change. Gillibrand said she supports putting a price on carbon dioxide and called for carbon exchanges. Farley said she wanted to balance climate policy with the American economy, and she pinned the blame for warming on India and China.
"We know that there is global climate change, but it is not American climate change," Farley said, adding, "The major polluters are China and India, we've got to hold them responsible."
In the Nevada Senate debate on Oct. 19, the candidates were asked about the IPCC report and how they would respond.
Republican Sen. Dean Heller said he was not a climate denier but added that the impact of human activity on global warming is up for debate. He also talked about the importance of renewable energy and touted efforts to give tax credits to alternative energy sources.
"I'm not a denier of global warming, I'm not a denier of the science as we're continuing to look at the science to see how much men, how man has been involved in this," Heller said.
His challenger, Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, connected Heller to the Trump administration's efforts to roll back environmental regulations. She talked about falling water levels in Lake Mead, saying it was a result of climate change. She accused Heller of "being in the pocket of Big Oil."
"We have to fund research, and we have to fund investment in this area so we can keep our clean water and our clean air and a sustainable future for our grandchildren," Rosen said.
In an Oct. 18 debate in North Dakota, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D) talked about carbon capture for coal plants and the need for regulatory certainty from the federal government. She said one of the state's most pressing issues was keeping the coal industry viable while investing in carbon capture technology.
"This is the future, the future for our coal industry, but also the future of tackling the problem of CO2 emissions," Heitkamp said.
Her opponent, Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who served as a surrogate on energy for Trump, said the Obama administration did not provide a pathway from today's reliance on coal to a viable energy future. He said politicians would need to work on climate policy.
"One of the things I would say about climate change, and solving climate change and whether or not you even believe in climate change, it doesn't matter, the country wants us to," Cramer said.
On Oct. 8, Indiana Senate candidates were asked about how they would react to the IPCC report. Neither directly addressed climate change but alluded to it by touting economic energy policy.
Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly said it's a "sacred obligation to our children" to give them a planet that's cleaner today than it was in the past. Then he touted the state's coal and ethanol industries and said they were important to the country's energy independence.
"Ethanol is a clean fuel, it's an extraordinarily good fuel, it is something that makes money go in the pockets of our farmers instead of the sheikhs in Saudi Arabia or in the Middle East," he said.
Republican Mike Braun criticized renewable energy industry subsidies that favor solar and wind over fossil fuels. He said he supports energy independence and protecting the environment.
"You can't do what the Democrats did and started picking winners and losers by trying to prop up industries that may be a part of a long-term solution, but that's the way government works," Braun said. "And when you try to pull the rug out from underneath other industries, and again, that's the way big government and bureaucrats work. When you learn it in the real world, you know the way to do it. And we now have got energy independence, and that has got to be always taken into consideration, while you're keeping the environment in healthy condition."
On Oct. 14, Ohio Senate candidates were also asked about the IPCC report. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown called for investments in solar and wind and accused state and local officials of being in the "pocket" of Big Oil. He attacked the Trump administration for dismantling climate policies and ignoring the threat.
"Congress and the White House have been derelict in their duty to address climate change, perhaps — certainly one of, perhaps the greatest moral issue of our times because of the future of the health of our planet," Brown said.
Like other Republicans, Rep. Jim Renacci did not directly address climate change but said Brown's policies would drive up electric bills. He said he would focus on the state's coal and natural gas jobs and lowering energy bills.
"You eliminate coal and natural gas like the senator would like to do, and energy costs from hardworking Americans are going to go up," he said. "Electric bills are going to go up. Let's be prudent. Let's do what's right."
On Oct. 15 at an Arizona Senate debate, Republican Rep. Martha McSally expressed frustration that the candidates were asked about climate change as the last question. She turned instead to military issues. McSally declined to address climate change.
Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema spoke about Arizona's water problems, which have worsened as a result of climate change. She said Arizona needed to work with neighboring states to conserve water resources for the next century. She also spoke of avoiding economic harm with climate policy.
"I firmly believe that as Arizonans, as Americans, we have the resources, we have the tools, we have the skills and we have the knowledge," Sinema said. "We can address issues of climate change together, and do so without harming our business prospects and without harming what makes Arizona so amazing."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/10/26/stories/1060104457
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