Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 07/11/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Reps: Future Investment Rules Should Not Be Modeled on USMCA
Nov 5, 2018 | Inside U.S. Trade
By Brett Fortnam
Investment language in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement should not be used as the basis for provisions in future deals because it promises less protection than NAFTA, industry representatives said last week. -
(ACC Mentioned) We Need More Momentum for Recycling, Less for Bans
Nov 6, 2018 | Plastics News
By Don Loepp
Lately, I've been seeing some big steps forward in the effort to make plastics the most sustainable packaging material. -
OIG Opens Review of EPA Enforcement Record Dating to FY06
Nov 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) is opening a sweeping review of the agency's enforcement in fiscal years 2006-18, with dual goals of analyzing long-term trends in the results of various types of agency enforcement actions and identifying “key factors” that explain differences in those results under various regions and environmental laws. -
SAB Poised To Review Updated Lead Model, Bolstering Key Rules, Cleanups
Nov 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) is preparing to peer review a long-awaited update to a model for estimating concentrations of lead in adults and children exposed to the potent neurotoxin, estimates that could help advance a court-ordered rule on renovations in public and commercial buildings as well as a host of site-specific cleanup decisions. -
Bayer Faces Roundup Woes in Germany as Ministry Urges Retreat
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naomi Kresge and Patrick Donahue
Germany’s Environment Ministry laid out a plan Nov. 6 for a step-by-step retreat from glyphosate, the weedkiller that has been a thorn in Bayer AG’s side since its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co. -
Sweden to Require Registering Products With Fluorinated Chemicals
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Marcus Hoy
Companies that import or manufacture products containing fluorinated compounds, such as those used in paints and coatings and non-stick products, will have to register them with the Swedish government starting next year, the country’s chemicals agency (KEMI) announced. -
Government Risking People’s Health by Failing to Guarantee Safety of Chemicals After Brexit, Peers Warn
Nov 7, 2018 | The Independent
By Benjamin Kentish
The government is putting British citizens’ health at risk by failing to ensure the safety of dangerous chemicals after Brexit, a damning parliamentary report has warned. -
Exxon Chief Says Size Doesn’t Matter in Potential M&A Deals (1)
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Erik Schatzker, Alfred Cang, and Dan Murtaugh
The world’s biggest public energy company doesn’t worry about size when it comes to potential deal-making. -
Mexican Pipe Delays, New LNG Demand Could Lead to Erratic Price Swings in U.S. South Central This Winter
Nov 7, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
The recently announced delay of two Mexican natural gas pipelines will postpone much needed relief in the constrained Permian Basin this winter, likely leading to increased flaring, possible production shut-ins and price volatility. -
Oklahoma Voters Reject Creation of Oil and Gas Revenue-Based Trust Fund
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Paul Stinson
Oklahoma voters Nov. 6 rejected socking away a fraction of the state’s revenue derived from oil and gas production into a fund that the state could tap during hard economic times. -
Colorado Voters Reject Curbs on Fracking
Nov 7, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By Josh Siegel
Colorado voters decided Tuesday to reject a measure that would have blocked drilling in most of one of America’s largest oil- and gas-producing states. -
Okla. Driller Stops Frack Job After Earthquake
Nov 7, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
An Oklahoma oil producer has permanently ended its hydraulic fracturing operations in an area shaken by an earthquake Sunday night, state officials said. -
Location of Wastewater Disposal Drives Induced Seismicity at U.S. Oil Sites
Nov 7, 2018 | Seismological Society of America (In Manufacturing.net)
The depth of the rock layer that serves as the disposal site for wastewater produced during unconventional oil extraction plays a significant role in whether that disposal triggers earthquakes in the U.S., according to a new study that takes a broad look at the issue. -
Governor, Land Commissioner Wins Bring Blue Wave to Permian
Nov 7, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Kelsey Brugger
Eight years ago, Republican Susana Martinez sailed into New Mexico's governor's mansion with her pockets full of oil and gas money. -
Insight From Brussels: Gas Sector Looks to P2G Technology to Survive Low-Carbon Future
Nov 7, 2018 | Platts
By Siobhan Hall
Could using low-carbon electricity to turn water into hydrogen and other gases keep the EU’s gas industry relevant in an increasingly CO2-constrained future? -
Duke Energy Exec Tapped for Homeland Security Infrastructure Post
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The head of Duke Energy Corp.'s cyber and physical security is moving over to the Department of Homeland Security to oversee its infrastructure protection office. -
Key Takeaways from the Inaugural Process Safety Summit in Washington, DC
Nov 7, 2018 | Lexology
By Eric J. Conn
The Inaugural Process Safety Summit in Washington, DC on October 23, 2018 was a huge success. The event allowed the more than 160 safety and legal… -
Capitol Corridor Ready to Start Fleet PTC Implementation
Nov 6, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
Northern California's Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) and its operating partners Amtrak and Union Pacific Railroad have completed installation and testing of positive train control (PTC) along the entire 170-mile Capitol Corridorroute between San Jose and Auburn. -
Texas, California Show Rare Unity Against EPA Air Pollution Plan
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Texas and California—in a rare moment of regulatory unity—agree the EPA’s plan to exempt all coal-fired power plants from an air pollution permitting program would create unnecessary confusion for other industries that require the permits. -
Delaware Sues EPA for Failure to Address Smog-Forming Pollution
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Delaware sued the EPA as a last-ditch effort to force the agency to address smog-forming pollution drifting inside the state’s borders from out-of-state power plants. -
Democrats to Sharpen Oversight, Play It Safe on Climate
Nov 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Andragna
Democrats plan to use their new House majority to turn up the heat on scandal-plagued Trump administration officials and amplify the dire warnings scientists are sending about the threat of climate change — but don't expect the party to produce any sweeping climate legislation in the short-term. -
Washington State Is a Weirdly Good Place for a Carbon Vote
Nov 6, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
Voters in the state of Washington will make history on Tuesday if they back Initiative 1631. -
Washington State Voters Reject Carbon Tax
Nov 7, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Voters in Washington state on Tuesday rejected a proposed carbon tax that would have been the first such levy in the nation. -
DOJ Ramps Up Attempts To Block Youth Climate Lawsuit Before Trial
Nov 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
The Trump administration is ramping up its legal campaign to prevent a federal district court trial in a high-profile youth climate case, filing a flurry of new motions to scuttle the litigation after its prior appeals were rejected by the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. -
Critics Say EPA Proposal lowballs Lost Climate Benefits
Nov 6, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA is underestimating the climate benefits lost by axing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan by billions of dollars, according to a new analysis of the Trump administration's proposed replacement rule. -
Ballot Measures Taking Aim at Climate Change Fall Short
Nov 7, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Dino Grandoni
Efforts to nudge the nation away from burning fossil fuels and toward harnessing renewable source of energy were rejected by voters Tuesday across a swath of resource-rich states in the western United States. -
The Out-of-Control NY Attorney General's Office Takes on ExxonMobil
Nov 7, 2018 | RealClearEnergy
By Francis Menton
Law enforcement is serious business. We give prosecutors tremendous powers over the citizenry, including the powers to put people in jail and to impose enormous fines on businesses; and then we trust them to act with the highest levels of honesty and integrity and discretion to protect us from the bad guys while also upholding our civil rights.
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Reps: Future Investment Rules Should Not Be Modeled on USMCA
Nov 5, 2018 | Inside U.S. Trade
By Brett Fortnam
Investment language in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement should not be used as the basis for provisions in future deals because it promises less protection than NAFTA, industry representatives said last week.
Language on domestic exhaustion of claims and covered government contracts are barriers to investors filing claims under the investor protections of USMCA, they said. The pact also unfairly differentiates between the protections afforded to certain sectors, they added.
USMCA scaled back the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism contained in the North America Free Trade Agreement. Only certain covered government contracts in a handful of sectors -- such as oil and natural gas, power generation, telecommunication, transportation services, and infrastructure -- will receive the same protections under USMCA that they have under NAFTA. Companies in those sectors that don’t have a covered government contract and all companies outside of those sectors will be subject to protections for breaches of national treatment, most-favored nation treatment, and direct expropriation only.
Even the sectors that are covered by the same ISDS protections as NAFTA say the USMA’s differentiation of sectors that have full access to those protections and those that don’t should not be replicated in future free trade agreements. Aaron Padilla, a senior adviser for international policy at the American Petroleum Institute, said API believes all sectors should receive the same robust investor protections under USMCA as the oil and gas sectors. API, he said, nonetheless supports USMCA because it sees it as sufficient for its member companies.
“We support the sufficiency for our members that we see in the USMCA, but we do not view it as a precedent,” he said at a panel discussion hosted by the Washington International Trade Association. “We think that investment protections and ISDS are good for all sectors and good for U.S. interests, regardless of sector. We’re glad that it was considered sufficiently with regards to our sector for this trade agreement, we were fortunate in that regard.… We didn’t see any clear enough distinction in treating sectors differently such that we think that this is a good precedent.”
Ed Brzytwa, the director of international trade policy for the American Chemistry Council, also said USMCA’s investor protections should not be the model for the U.S. going forward because they leave sectors, including chemicals, at risk of investment losses.
“The types of violations that occur are indirect expropriations, or regulatory takings,” he said at the WITA event. “The regulatory risk is what I think gives us the most pause.… We feel like we’re being arbitrarily left out of that select group.”
Regulatory takings are often discriminatory against foreign firms, said Marney Cheek, a partner at Covington & Burling LLP. “The exclusion for indirect expropriation I find very troubling,” she said. “Most governments these days, maybe with the exception of a few I can think of, don’t just issue a federal government decree saying they’re going to expropriate your property. It’s more sophisticated and it’s more complicated than that. For heavily regulated industries it often is through regulation that they lose the value of their investment, often with a discriminatory element.”
USMCA’s definition of “covered government contracts” will keep companies from the same investor protections they enjoy under NAFTA, Brzytwa said. “We’re concerned about the contract requirement,” he said. “Many of our companies do not have direct contracts with the Mexican government. That’s a very unusual case for a chemical company. We’re also worried that it limits the ISDS protections from the original NAFTA.”
Annex 14-E of USMCA’s investment chapter defines covered government contracts as written agreements between a U.S. or Mexican national authority and a covered investment or investor of the other party. The investor or investment must rely on the contract to establish the covered investment and the contract must grant rights to the investor or investment in a covered sector.
“I think it does some sort of reverse incentives for countries to create greater connections with national authorities in order to get that backstop to their investments,” Brzytwa said. “If this goes into effect, I think you’ll see a change in business behavior based on Canada’s transition out of ISDS, and then certainly I think a number of companies invested in Mexico will have to consider how best to preserve investments and how best to protect them.”
Padilla said he believed the investor protections in USMCA were crafted to allow U.S. investors to bring claims, but box out Mexican investors. “We would view it as largely a defensive measure, a construction that the U.S. has put forward in ways to limit the eligibility in the other direction of Mexican firms that may make ISDS claims against the United States while still preserving in more of an asymmetric way the eligibility of U.S. firms that will be able to make against any Mexican breaches of investment protections,” he said.
USMCA’s domestic exhaustion requirements, which mandate that a company must first go through a country’s domestic courts before filing an ISDS claim, also serves as a barrier, Brzytwa and Cheeks said. Companies must file a claim within four years of learning of a potential breach, Cheeks said. If a company does not receive a judgment within 30 months, it can move forward with an ISDS claim. NAFTA required that companies must wait six months for a domestic judgment.
“We’re also concerned about the exhaustion period for making those types of claims,” Brzytwa said. “That’s practically speaking a disincentive to making an ISDS claim. That’s a very long time to go through the local court system.”
USMCA’s state-to-state dispute settlement system is unlikely to fill the void left by the rollback in ISDS protections because it would require a government to act on the behalf of an investor, the industry representatives said. “The bar is very high for a sovereign government to act on behalf of an individual investor however egregious the treatment may be,” Padilla said, because it would require a government to spend its own resources on behalf of an investor.
Cheeks said relying on the state-to-state dispute settlement system would subject claims to unrelated political effects. “If the burden is on the state to bring the dispute on behalf of the investor, then it’s subject to the broader political relationship between those two countries,” she said. “There’s a lot on the table between the U.S. and Mexico right now. Whether your investment dispute ranks high enough to become part of that mix, even if you have a very meritorious claim it just might not be the right time for the U.S. government to advance your claim.”
In comments submitted to the U.S. International Trade Commission last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also contended that the USMCA’s investment provisions should not be seen as setting a precedent for future trade agreements.
https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/industry-reps-future-investment-rules-should-not-be-modeled-usmca
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(ACC Mentioned) We Need More Momentum for Recycling, Less for Bans
Nov 6, 2018 | Plastics News
By Don Loepp
Lately, I've been seeing some big steps forward in the effort to make plastics the most sustainable packaging material.
It started in May, with the American Chemistry Council's announcement of a goal to reuse, recycle or recover all plastics packaging by 2040.
Last week, more companies jumped on board with even more aggressive goals. On Oct. 29, 290 companies and groups, including some of the world's largest consumer goods makers and plastics packaging firms, signed on to a plan from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Its goals include:
• Eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastics packaging and move from single-use to reusable packaging models.
• Ensure that 100 percent of plastics packaging can be easily and safely reused, recycled or composted by 2025.
• Significantly increase the amount of plastics that are reused or recycled into new packaging or products.
Many of the companies announced specific goals of their own. SC Johnson, for example, said it would triple the amount of recycled content in its plastics packaging. PepsiCo Inc. said it will use 25 percent recycled content in all its plastics packaging by the middle of the next decade.
I'm not pretending that the plastics companies and brand owners are leading the charge to make plastics more sustainable. It's closer to the truth to say they're being pushed, pretty hard, to do the right thing.
The bag bans that swept the globe a few years ago were just the beginning. Now the European Union has proposed a sweeping ban on many single-use plastics products starting in 2021. And the United Kingdom — led by a Conservative Party government, mind you — plans to introduce a national tax on all plastics packaging that does not include at least 30 percent recycled content, starting in 2022.
Bans and taxes are likely coming to the United States, too. Watch what's going on in New Jersey, which this year seriously debated a ban on many single-use plastics.
It's good news that plastics industry leaders aren't just putting their heads in the sand or battling bans by repeating the stale argument that plastics products are better than alternatives. People who say that are missing the point. No one is proposing laws that require consumers to replace single-use plastics with paper, metal or glass. The push is to eliminate single-use plastics. Environmentalists know that resin manufacturers are gearing up to make more virgin plastics, and they want to make sure that won't mean a massive increase in litter and marine debris.
I'm happy to see progress, but I feel the need to remind everyone that setting a goal to make plastics easier to recycle won't fix this issue. Neither will pledges to use more recycled content, although that should help a lot.
To meet all these aggressive goals, we'll have to see big improvements in recycling technology, materials science, product design and consumer attitudes. And, putting it bluntly, the plastics industry will need help from local governments, too — ironically, the same people who have been trying to ban single-use plastics. Used plastics need to have enough value so local municipalities will invest in the infrastructure to collect them for recycling.
To make progress, there needs to be more momentum behind plastics recycling and less behind product bans on the state and local level.
Loepp is editor of Plastics News and author of the Plastics Blog. Follow him on Twitter @donloepp.
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OIG Opens Review of EPA Enforcement Record Dating to FY06
Nov 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) is opening a sweeping review of the agency's enforcement in fiscal years 2006-18, with dual goals of analyzing long-term trends in the results of various types of agency enforcement actions and identifying “key factors” that explain differences in those results under various regions and environmental laws.
OIG's Kathlene Butler, director of the water directorate within the Office of Audit and Evaluation, announced the study in a Nov. 6 letter to EPA enforcement chief Susan Bodine.
Environmentalists have raised concerns about the agency's enforcement in recent years, largely criticizing President Donald Trump's EPA for reducing enforcement. But environmentalists also found fault with some Obama-era enforcement results, such as attacks on the “next generation” framework that emphasized self-implementing rules -- which some groups said were vulnerable to industry cheating.
Butler's letter highlights two questions OIG intends to answer through its analysis. The first is “What are the trends in enforcement results stemming from EPA enforcement actions (injunctive relief, supplementary environmental projects and penalties) over time (fiscal years 2006 through 2018)?”
The second reads, “What are the key factors explaining differences in enforcement results stemming from EPA enforcement actions over time, among EPA regions and among environmental statutes?
The letter does not specify whether OIG is acting on its own initiative or responding to a statutory mandate or outside request, only noting that the project “is approved for our fiscal year 2019 annual plan,” which has not yet been released to the public.
However, Butler writes that as part of the initial document production to OIG, Bodine should make available EPA's response to a Jan. 19 letter from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) to then-Administrator Scott Pruitt where he decried an apparent drop in enforcement actions under the Trump administration, and posed a host of questions on its environmental policy agenda.
OIG is also seeking EPA's “master list” of concluded enforcement cases for FY06-18, and “Any other official requests, and responses to congressional requests, for information about the EPA’s enforcement activities, received by the agency since October 2016."
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/oig-opens-review-epa-enforcement-record-dating-fy06
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SAB Poised To Review Updated Lead Model, Bolstering Key Rules, Cleanups
Nov 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) is preparing to peer review a long-awaited update to a model for estimating concentrations of lead in adults and children exposed to the potent neurotoxin, estimates that could help advance a court-ordered rule on renovations in public and commercial buildings as well as a host of site-specific cleanup decisions.
SAB's staff office announced in a Nov. 1 Federal Register notice that it is seeking nominations of experts to serve on a new panel it is forming to peer review the agency's latest draft All-Ages Lead Model (AALM). Once peer-reviewed, such a model could serve as the basis for numerous regulatory decisions, sources tell Inside EPA, including EPA's pending rule addressing lead paint in public and commercial buildings, as well as site-specific decisions to clean up hazardous waste and contaminated drinking water.
Any approval of the model is likely still months or years away. The agency's plan to review the model comes against a backdrop of sustained criticisms the agency is facing for its limited efforts to address the metal and its recent high-profile removal of the head of its children's health office in part over issues she believes are related to lead exposures.
In setting various screening or cleanup standards for lead, EPA has traditionally used a model called an Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic (IEUBK) model, and the AALM is an “outgrowth” of that model, the notice states.
The Federal Register notice explains that EPA's research and toxics offices “developed the AALM to provide a tool for rapidly evaluating the impact of possible sources of lead on blood and other tissue levels in humans from birth to 90 years of age. The AALM predicts lead concentration in body tissues and organs for a hypothetical individual, based on a simulated lifetime of lead exposure.”
Such models can be used to conduct the analyses underlying many risk management and regulatory decisions.
The newer model “advances our current level of understanding in a number of ways,” an agency source tells Inside EPA, noting that it pairs a child lead model with an adult lead model to expand the age range covered beyond just young children included in the IEUBK.
AALM “also captures episodic peaks” of exposure, whereas the “IEUBK [model assumed] more of a steady state” of lead exposure, the source adds.
An episodic peak of exposure could be an event such as a renovation project in a building that exposes individuals to old lead paint. Such a scenario is envisioned in one of the rules EPA is court-ordered to address, the Lead Renovation, Repair and Paint Rule for public and commercial buildings.
While EPA's lead regulations to date are based on analyses to protect developing children from it, the agency has been struggling to develop a rule to address lead paint dust in commercial buildings because it lacks adequate analyses of adults' exposure to lead.
As such, the AALM could help EPA craft the regulatory and technical analyses needed to show how such a rule might protect adults from exposures.
New Model
The new model will be useful in many scenarios, the agency source says, adding that EPA's toxics and Superfund offices, as well as the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry all “have an interest in this type of model.”
In addition, Sean Hays, president of Summit Toxicology who served on a previous SAB panel that reviewed an earlier version of the model in 2005, tells Inside EPA that the model will also be useful for any cleanup scenario that involves lead” such as “building decommissioning, Superfund cleanups [or] drinking water supplies” as in the cases of Flint, MI and Newark, NJ.
“EPA always had the IEUBK model for predicting pharmacokinetics of [lead] in children 0-6 years of age. This new model will apply to all age groups,” Hays says.
The EPA source adds that a desire to enhance the state of the science is also driving the advancement of the AALM model. The IEUBK model was validated with data from research in the 1990s, possibly as early as the 1980s.
“In general the data used to establish the IEUBK [model is from] communities where the lead exposures were much higher than they are today,” the source adds. “The confusing thing about lead is . . . the literature suggests even small exposures can have significant” health impacts.
“If the AALM is validated, it might start to sunset the IEUBK [model],” the source says. “People are looking to the state of the science.”
The AALM model's upcoming review by the SAB is not its debut. EPA presented an earlier version of AALM to an SAB panel for review more than a decade ago, resulting in a critical 2006 report.
“The SAB panel members were generally supportive of progress in developing the model,” the panel's final Nov. 13, 2006, letter to then-Administrator Stephen Johnson states. “However, in the judgment of this Panel, the current version of the model is not ready for deployment due to a number of deficiencies . . . the SAB encourages the Agency to continue its development of the AALM.”
Perhaps of greatest concern to the panel at the time, the AALM did “not model a population response and therefore does not meet the goals of EPA. Accordingly, in the judgment of this Panel, the AALM is not ready for use.”
Panelists' Confusion
At the meeting, panelists expressed confusion over the AALM, citing its lack of supporting documentation explaining how to use the model. The committee also questioned how the agency derived default values used to create estimates of lead concentrations in human tissue. The estimates are derived from a combination of environmental samples, such as measurements of dust in homes, as well as blood and urine samples.
And in advance of that 2005 meeting, industry officials argued that the model generates inconsistent results and predicts lead concentrations two to 30 times higher than existing models, which could lead to unnecessarily strict cleanup policies.
EPA officials acknowledged the concerns of both the panel and industry groups, though one agency source told Inside EPA at the time that the problems would be overcome as they further developed the AALM. EPA officials also confirmed at the meeting that the model would not be used for the then-pending analysis underling the lead national ambient air quality standard, and that the IEUBK model would be used instead, because the AALM was not ready for use.
Hays, who served on the 2005-6 peer review panel says he hasn't “seen the model, so I can’t tell if it satisfied the charge from our 2006 review panel. It never really needed that much fixing or refinement. I’m shocked it took them this long to get it done.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/sab-poised-review-updated-lead-model-bolstering-key-rules-cleanups
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Bayer Faces Roundup Woes in Germany as Ministry Urges Retreat
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naomi Kresge and Patrick Donahue
Germany’s Environment Ministry laid out a plan Nov. 6 for a step-by-step retreat from glyphosate, the weedkiller that has been a thorn in Bayer AG’s side since its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co.
The plan calls for a ban on the chemical—the active ingredient in Bayer’s Roundup herbicide—in areas that are environmentally sensitive or important for groundwater. The new rules also would make it tougher for farmers to use similar chemicals that kill a broad range of plants and insects, requiring them to reserve acreage for pesticide-free planting as well.
“There’s nothing gained for the environment if instead of glyphosate, other, perhaps even more damaging pesticides are used,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said in a statement. She called for using “every kind of legal leverage” to abandon glyphosate.
Schulze’s effort to lead a long-term retreat from Roundup comes after a tussle within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition over the chemical last year. Defying objections from center-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s agriculture minister unilaterally voted to keep the weedkiller on the market in the European Union until 2022. That makes it tough to ban the chemical outright at home.
Cancer QuestionBut if Schulze wins backing from elsewhere in the cabinet, a slow retreat may be possible.
The move would deliver another blow to Bayer, which has struggled to defend Roundup since it gained the world’s most widely used weedkiller with its Monsanto takeover.
A California judge in October upheld a jury’s verdict that Roundup caused a school groundskeeper’s cancer. Bayer must pay $78.6 million in the case—and it faces lawsuits from some 8,700 more plaintiffs.
“Unfortunately the debate about glyphosate in Germany is shaped by political interests instead of scientific evidence,” Helmut Schramm, chief of Bayer’s agriculture business in Germany, said in a statement. Not using the chemical would place German farmers at a disadvantage, according to Schramm.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer—an arm of the World Health Organization—labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen in 2015, a claim Bayer rejects. The company says that other studies and regulators have consistently shown the chemical is safe.
—With assistance from Tim Loh and Lydia Mulvany.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/bayer-faces-roundup-woes-in-germany-as-ministry-urges-retreat
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Sweden to Require Registering Products With Fluorinated Chemicals
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Marcus Hoy
Companies that import or manufacture products containing fluorinated compounds, such as those used in paints and coatings and non-stick products, will have to register them with the Swedish government starting next year, the country’s chemicals agency (KEMI) announced.
The registration requirement is intended to help Sweden keep track of the amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds (PFAS) in the marketplace so it can gauge the risk to public health and the environment, the agency said Nov. 5.
PFAS chemicals can persist in the environment and have been found in drinking water supplies.
Industry SkepticalThe chemical industry questioned the benefit of such a registry and said it would add administrative effort for manufacturers and importers.
“The product register only applies to chemical products and not articles, which can also contain significant amount of PFAS,” Kristina Neimert Carne, head of chemicals policy at the Swedish chemical industry association IKEM told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 6.
Chemical products in this context are defined as chemical substances and mixtures, such as paints and detergents, she added, while “articles” include textiles and clothing.
“If regulation is needed, IKEM believes this should be done under REACH,” Neimert Carne said, referring to the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals Regulation 1907/2006 (REACH).
Agency SurveyThe chemicals agency estimated in a 2016 report that there are over 3,000 types of PFAS on the global market, based on a 2015 survey, with only a few registered under REACH. This is because PFAS substances are often used in low volumes, requiring that only limited information be submitted under REACH, the report said.
The amendment mandating the new rules takes effect Jan. 1, 2019, the agency said. Companies would have to start filing notifications of products containing PFAS by February 2020.
Most types of PFAS are not currently defined as hazardous, but some are listed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention on long-lived compounds.
Costs and Next StepsThe registration requirement applies to companies that manufacture, import, or repack products containing PFAS, although it generally won’t apply to domestic distributors.
Companies will have to state whether their products contain deliberately-added PFAS regardless of the content level, which needn’t be specified, the rules said. Companies with an annual income of less than 5 million Swedish kroner ($0.55 million) are exempt from the requirement.
Products with PFAS concentrations of greater than 5 percent must be registered. Substances classified as hazardous must be reported regardless of the levels in which they occur. As PFAS are rarely found in concentrations above five percent, reporting requirements should be minimal, the agency said.
Johan Forsberg, the Swedish Chemical Agency’s legal adviser, said the requirement is only expected to cost industry around 3 million Swedish krona ($331,000) in the first year and substantially less thereafter.
The agency will have to develop a national action program for assessing the presence of PFAS and a strategy to minimize their presence in the environment, he told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 6.
The new rules amend Sweden’s Regulations on Chemical Products and Biotechnological Organisms (KIFS 2017:7).
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/sweden-to-require-registering-products-with-fluorinated-chemicals
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Nov 7, 2018 | The Independent
By Benjamin Kentish
The government is putting British citizens’ health at risk by failing to ensure the safety of dangerous chemicals after Brexit, a damning parliamentary report has warned.
Ministers have “not done enough” to secure the UK’s participation in the EU’s chemical regulation scheme or find an alternative once Britain leaves the EU, creating a “huge cliff edge” for companies that risk losing access to £18bn of exports, a committee of peers said.
The House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee said the government’s proposals for a UK chemicals database were “not credible” and raised “serious legal concerns”.
As a result, the committee said, there is an ongoing threat to human and environmental health, and a risk of chaos for businesses that rely on the thousands of chemicals imported from the EU.Watch moreMay told to ensure EU citizens do not have to pay to stay after Brexit
Regulation of chemicals is currently managed by the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (Reach) system.
Unless ministers are able to negotiate the UK’s continued participation in Reach, the government will be forced to establish its own system for regulating chemicals when Britain leaves the EU.
That would mean chemicals licensed for use in the UK could not be sold in the EU, creating a major headache for manufactures which would lose access to a major market unless they transfer product registrations to EU countries. The committee said this was unlikely to be possible before Brexit.
At the same time, British authorities and businesses would not have access to full safety information for EU chemicals being used in the UK.
Minsters have said they hope to negotiate access to Reach but the Lords committee said this was “highly unlikely”. Plans for a UK register are “not progressing quickly enough”, it said.
The delay “risks human and environmental health” and “disruption to the many supply chains that rely on access to chemicals produced across the EU”.
The government’s suggestion that it could simply “copy and paste” information from the EU’s database was “not credible” and “raises serious legal issues”, the peers added.
Brexit march for a final say – in picturesShow all 65
Chemicals constitute the UK’s second biggest manufacturing industry, with exports worth £18bn to EU countries last year.
21,000 chemicals are regulated under the Reach system, of which 5,000 are registered by UK-based companies.
The Lords committee warned: “The loss of access to 16,000 substances after Brexit would have a serious impact on the UK’s chemical industry and the many supply chains that rely on it.”
Peers said the government must “urgently” explain how it will ensure the regulation of chemicals after Brexit and put forward a “more credible plan” for enabling the safe trade of products to continue.Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds
The committee chairman, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Teverson, said: “Chemical regulation might seem like a niche area of Brexit considerations, but chemicals are used to make products that we all use every day, and the chemical sector is key to the UK’s economy.
“At the moment they’re regulated by Reach, which combines legislation with an EU database, an EU regulator and the EU single market to keep us all safe.
“Although we welcome the government’s aim to remain part of the Reach system after Brexit, its negotiation red line on the UK’s membership of the single market makes that highly unlikely. That means it urgently needs to be working on a plan B, and that simply hasn’t happened, which leaves the sector facing a huge cliff edge on the day we leave the EU.”
A government spokesman said: “We have set out our negotiating intention to be an associate member of the European Chemicals Agency.
“If such an agreement is not secured, we are already well advanced in our preparations for establishing the appropriate body and mechanisms to have effective chemicals regulation, which safeguards human health and the environment.
“A technical notice has already been issued on this, and we will continue to engage with businesses to ensure they have the information they need to prepare.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-dangerous-chemicals-british-citizens-health-uk-eu-regulation-no-deal-a8620806.html
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Exxon Chief Says Size Doesn’t Matter in Potential M&A Deals (1)
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Erik Schatzker, Alfred Cang, and Dan Murtaugh
The world’s biggest public energy company doesn’t worry about size when it comes to potential deal-making.
The driver of any acquisition for Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t the scope of the target, it’s whether the company finds more value in it than the market does, Darren Woods, chief executive officer of the Irving, Texas-based firm, said at the New Economy Forum in Singapore. The explorer is looking for opportunities to purchase assets even as it plans to expand output at existing fields from West Texas to Mozambique.
“We have the capacity to do any size opportunity that can come about, so it’s really a function of looking at the value that Exxon Mobil can extract, and how we would integrate that into our portfolio,” Woods said in a Bloomberg TV interview, while declining to comment on any specific targets.
Exxon spent $6 billion buying drilling rights from the Bass family in the Permian Basin last year and has been cited by analysts a potential purchaser of Endeavor Energy Resources LP, the basin’s largest privately-held oil producer -- an acquisition that could total more than $10 billion. The oil major certainly has the capability to do big deals, with more than $3 billion of cash on its balance sheet and low debt, according to Bloomberg data.
Woods sees a bright future for the oil industry, with 2.5 billion people set to enter the middle class in the next 20 years. That means more liquefied natural gas for electricity, more petrochemicals for plastics, and more oil to fuel the heavy-duty transportation required to move consumer goods.
The company is seeking to grow production with a focus on Guyana, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique and the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico. Exxon has already surpassed its plan to mobilize about 30 rigs in the U.S. shale region by year’s end: the company had 38 machines drilling Permian wells as of last week, a 40 percent increase in just six months.
Still, Woods said the company remains committed to not rushing development in the region. West Texas Intermediate crude prices had risen 26 percent this year through early October before giving back nearly all of the gains in the past month.
“The price in the oil markets are going to go up and come down again, and our view is the business we build in the Permian, we’re building for the long term,” he said. “It needs to be efficient, low-cost and effective, so we’re making sure the pace we go at allows that to happen.”
The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Law, and Bloomberg Environment.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/exxon-chief-says-size-doesnt-matter-in-potential-m-a-deals-1
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Nov 7, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
The recently announced delay of two Mexican natural gas pipelines will postpone much needed relief in the constrained Permian Basin this winter, likely leading to increased flaring, possible production shut-ins and price volatility. Meanwhile, the start-up of two liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains could tighten supply and lead to higher prices if winter conditions are worse than currently forecast, analysts said...
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https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116389-mexican-pipe-delays-new-lng-demand-could-lead-to-erratic-price-swings-in-us-south-central-this-winter
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Oklahoma Voters Reject Creation of Oil and Gas Revenue-Based Trust Fund
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Paul Stinson
Oklahoma voters Nov. 6 rejected socking away a fraction of the state’s revenue derived from oil and gas production into a fund that the state could tap during hard economic times.
More than 57 percent of the electorate voted against the measure, spelling the end for State Question 800. The ballot measure would have amended the state’s constitution to require 5 percent of the collections from the gross production tax—the value-based tax levied upon the production of oil and gas in Oklahoma—to be deposited into the Oklahoma Vision Fund, a kind of rainy-day pot of money to help the state weather tough economic times.
But opponents said the state doesn’t have enough money to meet immediate needs.
The Oklahoma State School Boards Association was among the measure’s opponents. The group feared its approval approval would result in a reduction in funding for schools without a guarantee that the lost revenue would be offset,
Opponent Calls Measure ‘Vague’“Simply put, this state question is vague, filled with unknowns and could erode millions of dollars in dedicated funding for public schools,” the association’s executive director, Shawn Hime, told The Oklahoman in October.
Deposits would have begun at the start of 2020, with annual input expected to range from $50 million to $60 million, depending on energy prices, according to an estimate by think tank Oklahoma Policy Institute.
Approval of the trust fund would have provided a bulwark against the boom-bust cycle of a state economy whose general revenue levels are typically a reflection of prevailing energy prices. The measure arrived on the ballot following the Legislature’s passage of Senate Joint Resolution 35 earlier in the year.
Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, lauded the measure as “good policy,” telling Bloomberg Environment prior to the vote that the presence of a piggy bank of sorts would lessen the likelihood of lawmakers hitting up the energy sector with new tax proposals.
“From a policy standpoint, it makes a ton of sense and helps further diversify our economy a bit, which is definitely a priority for us because when things don’t go well usually the Legislature comes knocking on our door,” Warmington said, referring to prospective rate hikes on oil and gas production.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/oklahoma-voters-reject-creation-of-oil-and-gas-revenue-based-trust-fund
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Colorado Voters Reject Curbs on Fracking
Nov 7, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By Josh Siegel
Colorado voters decided Tuesday to reject a measure that would have blocked drilling in most of one of America’s largest oil- and gas-producing states.
Coloradans shot down a ballot initiative banning new oil and gas drilling within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, and “vulnerable areas” such as playgrounds. The measure was intended to respond to complaints from communities close to fracking who say wells are increasingly encroaching on populated areas and played a role in recent deadly explosions and tainted groundwater.
A state analysis showed the measure would have blocked new oil and gas wells on 85 percent of nonfederal land in the state. Only New York, Maryland, and Vermont have banned fracking. But those states don’t have reserves like Colorado, which is America’s fifth-largest gas-producing and seventh-largest oil-producing state.Modern Conservatives: Sir Roger ScrutonWatch Full Screen to Skip Ads
The measure was polarizing, dividing even Democrats who want to transition away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a centrist Democrat with presidential ambitions, opposed the measure for economic reasons, as did U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who won his race Tuesday night to replace the term-limited Hickenlooper as governor.
But nationally-minded progressives, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Al Gore, the former vice president and environmentalist, backed the measure, viewing it as momentum for a bigger movement to ban fracking.
The Colorado Petroleum Council, a trade group for oil and gas companies opposing the fracking measure, said it would cost the state 43,000 jobs and more than $200 million in tax revenue in the first year, and $1.1 billion by 2030.
Opponents of the initiative — namely, the oil and gas industry — managed to succeed by heavily outspending supporters roughly 40-1, according to the Colorado secretary of state.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/colorado-voters-reject-curbs-on-fracking
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Okla. Driller Stops Frack Job After Earthquake
Nov 7, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
An Oklahoma oil producer has permanently ended its hydraulic fracturing operations in an area shaken by an earthquake Sunday night, state officials said.
Roan Resources Inc. told oil and gas regulators at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) it has stopped "fracking" at a three-well pad in the Bridge Creek area southwest of Oklahoma City, according to an agency news release.
A magnitude 3.3 earthquake rattled the area Sunday evening, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. It was preceded three days earlier by several smaller quakes. After that, OCC officials directed Roan to stop operations at one well pending further investigation and data review.
An Associated Press story posted in Energywire yesterday, but later removed, had incorrectly stated the well that was shut down was a disposal well. It was a production well.
Starting in 2009, Oklahoma saw a surge in the number of earthquakes, which scientists linked to deep injection of oil field wastewater for disposal. That tapered off with a slowdown in production in the wastewater-heavy Mississippi Lime field and stricter state regulation of disposal in quake-prone areas (Energywire, Feb. 28).
Production has shifted to shale plays south and west of Oklahoma City, known as the SCOOP and the STACK. But along with that shift came a new spate of smaller earthquakes linked to fracking.
SCOOP stands for South Central Oklahoma Oil Province, and STACK stands for Sooner Trend Anadarko Basin Canadian and Kingfisher Counties. State officials say the area accounts for the vast majority of new drilling in the state.
Many people have attributed man-made quakes in the United States to fracking, although nearly all of the ones strong enough to be felt have been linked instead to the disposal of wastewater associated with drilling. While many people use the term "fracking" to describe nearly all of the oil and gas production process, it actually refers to a specific part of well development when large volumes of chemical-laced water and sand are injected underground at high pressure to break open deep rock formations and release oil or gas.
Oklahoma City-based Roan Resources was formed last year from Tulsa-based Citizen Energy II LLC and part of Houston-based Linn Energy Inc., which had recently emerged from bankruptcy reorganization.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/07/stories/1060105317
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Location of Wastewater Disposal Drives Induced Seismicity at U.S. Oil Sites
Nov 7, 2018 | Seismological Society of America (In Manufacturing.net)
The depth of the rock layer that serves as the disposal site for wastewater produced during unconventional oil extraction plays a significant role in whether that disposal triggers earthquakes in the U.S., according to a new study that takes a broad look at the issue.
The research reviewed data on wastewater disposal for oil sites in Oklahoma, eastern Montana, western North Dakota, Texas, and New Mexico.
Seismicity levels are higher in Oklahoma compared to the other states in part because wastewater is injected deeper into the ground in Oklahoma, nearer to the underlying basement rock, according to study author Bridget Scanlon of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleagues.
The cumulative volume of wastewater injected into the earth in Oklahoma is also higher than in the other oil-producing areas, and can also be linked to increased rates of seismicity in the state, the researchers concluded.
The findings differ from an earlier study based on data in the mid-continent, which did not find a significant correlation between total disposed wastewater volume, or between depth of injection, and increased seismicity. The new study contains an additional 3.5 years' worth of data on injection volume and seismicity in Oklahoma, however, and also uses a new map of basement rock depth, said Scanlon.
Unconventional U.S. oil production, which extracts oil from shales and tight rocks using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal wells, has been linked to an increase in human-induced earthquakes across the mid-continent of the United States for nearly a decade. The main driver of this increase in seismicity is the injection of wastewater produced by extraction, which increases pore pressure within rocks and can affect stress along faults in the rock layers selected for disposal.
The "tightness" of the oil-producing rock layers at these sites means that wastewater can't be injected back into the same layers, so companies have instead found "looser," more permeable rock layers in which to drill disposal wells.
The study by Scanlon and colleagues examined wastewater injection rates, cumulative regional injection volumes, and injection proximity to basement rock for tight oil plays in Oklahoma, the Bakken play (Montana and North Dakota), the Eagle Ford play (Texas), and the Permian play (Texas and New Mexico).
Many of the wastewater disposal wells in Oklahoma are drilled into a rock layer called the Arbuckle Formation, which lies adjacent to the basement and is much deeper than the rock layers used for disposal in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian plays.
Wells drilled into the Arbuckle drain water into the formation without the need for pressure at the wellhead, and the rock zone is highly permeable, which makes it an appealing disposal site, said Kyle Murray, a co-author on the study from the Oklahoma Geological Survey. The Arbuckle also has extraction wells only "in a few small areas, so disposal does not diminish producing wells."
The ease of using the Arbuckle as a disposal site might be one reason why oil producers have chosen deeper disposal sites in Oklahoma compared to the other regions, "but drilling shallower wells and disposing in shallower zones in other plays may be related to economics. Deeper wells are much more expensive and not always successful," he added.
Murray said oil field operators in these other regions may also know about the studies linking the increase in seismicity in Oklahoma to injection proximity to basement rock, causing them to avoid deep disposal at their sites.
The researchers noted that their findings are consistent with the reduced seismicity documented in Oklahoma after directives by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission in 2014 and 2016 to reduce injection rates and regional injection volumes, as well as to plug disposal wells drilled into the basement. These directives have led to a 70 percent reduction in the number of magnitude 3.0 or larger earthquakes in the state in 2017, relative to 2015.
There are tradeoffs between injecting wastewater into shallow versus deep rock layers, the researchers note. Shallower wells, which often cost two to three times less than deeper wells and would appear to trigger lower levels of seismicity, could contaminate aquifers with saltwater or interfere with oil production wells.
Scanlon and colleagues say one way to reduce the amount of overall wastewater injection might be to repurpose the wastewater for hydraulic fracturing. "The value of reusing produced water for hydraulic fracturing is similar to re-injecting produced water for water flooding in conventional oil reservoirs, to maintain pressure," Scanlon said. "Reusing produced water for hydraulic fracturing would reduce water sourcing issues and water depletion related to that, and would also reduce wastewater disposal and related potential seismicity."
This strategy might work best in places where the wastewater produced is roughly similar to the amounts needed for hydraulic fracturing, however. In Oklahoma, for instance, hydraulic fracturing operations would use up only 10 percent of the amount of produced wastewater.
https://www.manufacturing.net/news/2018/11/location-wastewater-disposal-drives-induced-seismicity-us-oil-sites
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Governor, Land Commissioner Wins Bring Blue Wave to Permian
Nov 7, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Kelsey Brugger
Eight years ago, Republican Susana Martinez sailed into New Mexico's governor's mansion with her pockets full of oil and gas money.
Last night, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham won the race to succeed the termed-out Martinez.
Her double-digit advantage over Republican Steve Pearce gives Democrats hold of two branches of state government for the first time since 2010. Democrats also crushed the GOP in several state House races and in the competitive land commissioner race, prompting political observers to declare a state-level blue wave.CONTINUING COVERAGE
E&E News features, analysis and updates on the midterm elections.Click here to view the stories and interactive map.
"What we did tonight is send a very clear message that this state is ready to lead in so many ways," Lujan Grisham declared to hundreds of supporters in Albuquerque.
The first thing she brought up was energy.
"We will lead in renewable clean energy, and we will be known as the clean energy state of America," she said.
That's no small promise in a state that ranks third in the country in oil and gas production. Lujan Grisham's victory could mean stronger methane pollution rules and greater authority for state oil regulators, as well as influence over congressional redistricting in 2021.
Still, Lujan Grisham knows she must walk a fine line with the oil industry.
"She has underscored a commitment of wanting to work with the industry," said Robert McEntyre, a spokesman at the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association. "So we can keep our momentum going."
The industry has plenty of momentum. Since 2010, oil production has tripled in the state — a fact the oil industry attributes in part to Martinez, who "ensured that an effective regulatory scheme has been in place to handle the increase in investment and production," according to McEntyre.
It helped that the state overlies part of the Permian Basin, where business has boomed in recent years as the price of oil soared.
State coffers have ballooned, and New Mexico could have as much as a $2 billion budget surplus. Lujan Grisham has said she supports hiring more teachers and social workers to address poverty throughout the state.
In recent polls, oil and gas issues were not top-priority issues for most people surveyed. But political science professor Gabriel Sanchez at the University of New Mexico said climate change and pollution have "definitely been an issue" in the race.
At debates, there were some tense exchanges "where Pearce suggested Lujan Grisham's approach to increase royalties and provide more regulations on fracking could kill the state's economy," Sanchez said.
New Mexico has a lower royalty rate than neighboring states, drawing some oil operators there. Stronger government regulations could drive some out.
Some environmentalists in the state say that's not their goal. "We are not trying to put the oil and gas industry out of business," said Ben Shelton of Conservation Voters New Mexico. "We want to make sure they are good neighbors."
He added that New Mexicans "understand our dependence [on the oil industry]. and they understand the downside."
However, Democrat Stephanie Garcia Richard's somewhat unexpected 7-point victory over Republican Patrick Lyons in the race for land commissioner bodes well for environmentalists. The state's land commissioner has authority over state land and mineral rights, and oversees leasing and royalties on state-owned land.
Garcia Richard was not shy about her intentions to aggressively regulate polluters. She opposes hydraulic fracturing in some places, and water quality was among her top campaign issues.
The unique state lands oversight position is fairly autonomous and has garnered national media attention in recent days. Chevron Corp. funneled about $2 million into a political action committee supporting Lyons. Garcia Richard received $650,000 from Conservation Voters New Mexico's Verde Voters Fund for the primary and general races.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/07/stories/1060105349
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Insight From Brussels: Gas Sector Looks to P2G Technology to Survive Low-Carbon Future
Nov 7, 2018 | Platts
By Siobhan Hall
Could using low-carbon electricity to turn water into hydrogen and other gases keep the EU’s gas industry relevant in an increasingly CO2-constrained future?
The EU gas and power sectors are certainly interested in testing such technology at scale, as it could help them both with their different challenges going forward.
Natural gas and LNG suppliers are facing an expected dramatic decline in demand for their fossil fuels as the EU works to decarbonize its energy sector by 2050, while gas grid operators could see their assets stranded.
At the same time the power sector will have to integrate ever-increasing shares of renewable power, mostly variable wind and solar, creating huge demand for flexibility options to keep the grid balanced.
Coupling the two sectors through power-to-gas technology, known as P2G, would allow excess electricity in the system to be used to turn water into hydrogen or, in a second step using CO2, into synthetic methane, for example.
If the electricity used is renewable or zero-carbon, then the gases produced are also renewable or decarbonized. These gases can be used directly, for example in industrial processes or for transport. Or they can be injected into the EU’s extensive natural gas grid (within limits for hydrogen), and stored or transported as needed.
Small scale, high cost
Europe’s power and gas transmission system operators argue that this coupling would provide both the extra short-term flexibility and seasonal energy storage that will be needed to balance the power grid as more variable renewable power comes online.
EU policy is driving this change, with a new binding target to source 32% of the EU’s final energy demand from renewables by 2030. This is likely to push renewables’ share of electricity demand to around 50%, with even higher shares expected by 2050.
P2G plants can help by taking excess renewable and low-carbon power on the grid and using it to produce renewable, decarbonized gases. The problem is that such gases are currently much more expensive to produce than their fossil equivalents. This is in part because it is a high capital cost activity being done on very small scale in plants under 10 MW.
The EU’s formal gas TSO body ENTSOG wants to see a tenfold or greater increase in P2G capacity to around 1 GW by the early 2030s. This is to have enough capacity to test how this technology could support power grids with high renewable shares.
It wants to work with all stakeholders “to build a business case for P2G to attract investors.” That includes policy-makers, who have been rewriting the EU’s power market rules to help integrate renewables more efficiently.
“If the market does not deliver the investments in P2G facilities to scale them up to the EU industrial scale, some support schemes need to be designed,” ENTSOG said.
European gas suppliers’ group Eurogas has also called for an EU framework for supporting renewable and decarbonized gases, including harmonized national support schemes as well as a specific EU investment fund. It also wants the EU to set itself a binding target for using renewable and decarbonized gases, with the aim of enabling them “to reach technology maturity and scale.”
Crowded market for flexibility
The debate about whether to give renewable gas the same kind of preferential treatment that renewable electricity enjoyed during its early development is likely to continue into next year and beyond.
The European Commission is already exploring the options as part of planned updates to the EU’s gas market legislation. The formal proposals are expected toward the end of next year, after the new set of politically-appointed EU commissioners take office in November 2019 for five years.
A recent external study sponsored by the EC found that national tariff and grid access rules for renewable gas should be adapted as needed to encourage using it to gradually replace natural gas, while avoiding market distortions. The study cited support schemes and priority dispatch as options, both of which the EU has already used successfully to promote renewable power generation.
A key technical challenge for P2G will be developing large capacity electrolysers flexible enough to ramp up and down as needed in response to the amount of renewable power available. The economic challenge will be to make this flexible operation profitable.
P2G will also have to compete with other sources of power grid flexibility, including demand-side management, electric vehicle batteries, and other power storage technologies.
It will also have to compete with biomethane, a renewable gas made from purified biogas produced from organic matter.
The EU’s push to cut carbon is not just about the climate. It is also keen to reduce its fossil fuel imports, and developing all these new technologies could transform its political relations with its current energy suppliers, including Russia.
http://blogs.platts.com/2018/11/07/gas-sector-low-carbon-future/
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Duke Energy Exec Tapped for Homeland Security Infrastructure Post
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The head of Duke Energy Corp.'s cyber and physical security is moving over to the Department of Homeland Security to oversee its infrastructure protection office.
The White House announced the appointment late Nov. 5 of Duke Energy’s Brian Harrell to be assistant secretary of infrastructure protection, a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation.
Harrell has been managing director for enterprise protective services at Duke Energy, one of the world’s largest utilities, with 7.5 million customers. He currently leads physical security efforts throughout the company to protect the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power.
Harrell will run Homeland Security’s Office of Infrastructure Protection, which leads and coordinates programs and policies on critical infrastructure security and resilience across the government and the private sector. In particular, the office will work with the National Risk Management Center, launched in July, which focuses on sharing cybersecurity information with the energy, financial, and telecommunications sectors.‘Tailor-Made’ for Position
“This is a position that is tailor-made for Brian and his experience and expertise,” Frank Cilluffo, head of Auburn University’s Charles D. McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, told Bloomberg Environment.
“He comes to the issue with no learning curve and brings private sector experience, especially in the electric sector, which is arguably one of our most critical of our critical infrastructures, but also brings government experience,” Cilluffo said.
Before coming to Duke, Harrell was the director of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), the industry and government entity in charge of sharing cyber and physical threat information related to the North American bulk power system.
“Brian Harrell’s deep knowledge about critical infrastructure protection, as well as his focus on the utility industry, position him well for this role,” Shannon Brushe, a Duke spokeswoman, told Bloomberg Environment in a Nov. 6 statement.
Harrell didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment’s request for comment.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/duke-energy-exec-tapped-for-homeland-security-infrastructure-post
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Key Takeaways from the Inaugural Process Safety Summit in Washington, DC
Nov 7, 2018 | Lexology
By Eric J. Conn
The Inaugural Process Safety Summit in Washington, DC on October 23, 2018 was a huge success. The event allowed the more than 160 safety and legal…
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=89c76ef4-6d2f-48c6-97b2-8364644f02dd
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Capitol Corridor Ready to Start Fleet PTC Implementation
Nov 6, 2018 | Progressive Railroading
Northern California's Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) and its operating partners Amtrak and Union Pacific Railroad have completed installation and testing of positive train control (PTC) along the entire 170-mile Capitol Corridorroute between San Jose and Auburn.
The agency received Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) approval on Oct. 24 to begin fleetwide implementation of PTC, CCJPA officials said in a news release.
Under federal law, all railroads are required to implement the technology or seek an extension from the FRA by Dec. 31, 2018.
CCJPA, Amtrak and UP started initial system testing in July by enabling PTC on a limited number of trains that were rotated throughout shared fleets of the Capital Corridor. The PTC-equipped trains also were rotated along the Amtrak San Joaquins route, which serves California's Central Valley.
In early October, Amtrak deployed PTC on four weekday trains to test PTC on the Capitol Corridor route.
"As ridership grows throughout the Northern California mega region, the Capitol Corridor is poised to meet this demand with additional capacity, all while standing firm in our commitment to maximizing safety through PTC," said CCJPA Chair Lucas Frerichs.https://www.progressiverailroading.com/ptc/news/Capitol-Corridor-ready-to-start-fleet-PTC-implementation--56043
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Texas, California Show Rare Unity Against EPA Air Pollution Plan
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Texas and California—in a rare moment of regulatory unity—agree the EPA’s plan to exempt all coal-fired power plants from an air pollution permitting program would create unnecessary confusion for other industries that require the permits.
States, which administer the air pollution program known as new source review, pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to limit the permitting exemption to only those coal-fired power plants that also plan to make upgrades to meet a different standard—this one the agency’s proposed standards on carbon dioxide emissions.
The EPA had asked whether the exemption should be extended to all coal-fired power plants covered by the proposed standards, and not just those making changes to equipment and operations to meet the greenhouse gas emission standards.
That suggestion received pushback in Oct. 31 comments from states as varied as California, Virginia, Texas, and West Virginia. A blanket exemption for all coal-fired plants could allow some to keep polluting without having to install new controls under the guise of improving their efficiency, critics contend. States also said the new source review permitting provisions apply to a variety of industrial plants, not just power plants.
‘Uneven, Inequitable’
“The proposed new source review changes create an uneven, inequitable distribution of emission reduction requirements that is inconsistent with the statutory structure and purpose,” a coalition of states and cities, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, warnedEPA.
Texas, where Republican control starkly contrasts Democrat-dominated California, also expressed its concern that the EPA’s proposal, as it is currently written, would create inconsistency among industries other than the power sector that are excluded from these exemptions.
“Other industries often trigger major [new source review] when they implement more efficient processes, which allow them to increase annual production without increasing authorized hourly emissions,” several Texas agencies told the EPA.
New source review permits are required for any expansion or construction at large industrial facilities including refineries and power plants that cause an increase in nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels, such as coal in this instance, to generate power.
The changes the EPA is proposing to this permitting program could allow coal-fired power plants to escape controls for nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides despite the changes they make to improve the efficiency of their operations and equipment. This is because the efficiency improvements would reduce greenhouse gases—specifically carbon dioxide emissions—which is the goal of the Affordable Clean Energy proposal.
Changes in EPA Proposal
The EPA tucked the permitting changes in its Affordable Clean Energy proposal(RIN:2060–AT67), which would replace Obama-era greenhouse gas standards.
The specific changes that EPA wants to make to the new source review program under this proposal would allow states to determine whether industrial facilities trigger the requirement to install new pollution controls by calculating the nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides increases on an hourly basis rather than annually, as is done now. That would allow coal-fired power plants to operate for longer hours, generate more power, and release more air pollution on an annual basis even if the hourly pollution rates aren’t as high.
However, electric utilities such as Dominion Energy and Tennessee Valley Authority want the permitting exemption. They argue that steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions may become cost-prohibitive by triggering the permitting review, requiring expensive controls for pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
Both states that support the proposed carbon dioxide standards—like Kentucky and Indiana—and those opposed such as Pennsylvania said the EPA should limit the permit exemptions to only those coal-fired power plants that will be making the operational changes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
That narrower application will “reduce the litigation risks and regulatory uncertainty for EPA, state, local and tribal air pollution control agencies when permitting other sources under this permitting program,” Kentucky’s Energy and Environment Cabinet said.
Less Risky Approach
“From a legal perspective, it’s much less risky to limit the new source review change to just projects to comply with the ACE rule,” Brian Potts, a Perkins Coie LLP attorney in Madison, Wis., told Bloomberg Environment.
However, not all coal-fired units that would be required to comply with the proposed carbon dioxide limits would undergo energy efficiency projects, Jennifer Tharp, an associate attorney with Squire Patton Boggs LLP in Cleveland, told Bloomberg Environment.
Applying the permitting exemption to all coal-fired power plants would encourage them to make necessary improvements, some in the power industry said.
Without that permitting change, power plants may take fewer steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions out of fear of triggering costly new pollution controls, Brenda Brickhouse, TVA’s vice president environment and energy policy, said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/texas-california-show-rare-unity-against-epa-air-pollution-plan
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Delaware Sues EPA for Failure to Address Smog-Forming Pollution
Nov 6, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Delaware sued the EPA as a last-ditch effort to force the agency to address smog-forming pollution drifting inside the state’s borders from out-of-state power plants.
Delaware’s Nov. 5 suit is similar to the one Maryland filed in October over the Environmental Protection Agency’s Sept. 14 denial of their petitions asking the agency to take additional steps to reduce nitrogen oxides from 36 coal-fired power plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
The latest suit was filed by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Both Delaware and Maryland claim smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions from those power plants hindered their efforts to meet the federal ozone pollution standards. Nitrogen oxides contribute to ground-level ozone, a lung irritant that can exacerbate breathing conditions such as asthma.
The states invoked the Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision in asking the EPA to impose air pollution controls on upwind power plants. The provision requires states to ensure that air pollution from within their borders doesn’t interfere with downwind states’ ability to meet federal limits for pollutants such as ozone.
Delaware, in particular, had asked the EPA to make a finding that Brunner Island Steam Electric Station in York County, Pa., the Harrison Power Station in Harrison County, W.Va., and the Conemaugh Generating Station and Homer City Generating Station, both in Indiana County, Pa., were driving the state out of compliance with the 2008 and 2015 ozone standards.
The EPA, however, had denied the petitions, saying its interstate power plant emissions trading program would address the states’ concerns.
The case is Del. Dept. of Nat. Res. and Env. Ctrl. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 18-01301, 11/5/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/delaware-sues-epa-for-failure-to-address-smog-forming-pollution
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Democrats to Sharpen Oversight, Play It Safe on Climate
Nov 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Andragna
Democrats plan to use their new House majority to turn up the heat on scandal-plagued Trump administration officials and amplify the dire warnings scientists are sending about the threat of climate change — but don't expect the party to produce any sweeping climate legislation in the short-term.
By late Tuesday night, Democrats were set to take control of the chamber for the first time since 2010. While several congressional races have not yet been called, Democrats are likely to have a relatively narrow margin, and House-watchers expect that will force them to train their focus on low-hanging oversight fruit, such as the ethical woes of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the removal of climate change language from government websites.
But Democrats still seem stung by the defeat of cap-and-trade legislation the last time they controlled Congress, and there is little appetite this time around to pursue politically perilous bills that stand little chance of getting past Republican senators or President Donald Trump. Votes are still being counted in the races that will decide control of the Senate, but even if Democrats manage to claim a majority, they would fall well short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a GOP filibuster.
Further complicating the picture is the mass of Democrats vying for their party's 2020 presidential nomination, including a handful of House members and senators. Nancy Pelosi, the next likely Speaker, wants to avoid boxing candidates or the party into a certain position, according to a House Democratic aide.
“There isn’t right now any sort of Democratic climate bill. Leadership is going to have to work this out,” the aide said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal party deliberations freely.
“She thinks about herself in terms of, ‘I have to look out for the potential nominee,’ so there is going to be some tension there,” the aide said.
Climate change and energy policy have received relatively little attention from Democrats on the campaign trail, as candidates have focused heavily on health care and taxes. House Democrats’ “For the People” platform, unveiled last year,does not have a specific section on energy or climate, but it vows Democrats will “expand renewable energy infrastructure” and “reduce the number of power failures by improving and modernizing our aging energy infrastructure.”
While policy wins may be hard to come by, control of House committees will allow Democrats to pursue oversight hearings on a variety of topics they say Republicans have ignored, including Zinke's alleged abuses of his office and EPA's decision to remove scientific warnings about climate change from its website.
The House Oversight Committee, to be led by Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), will be the primary venue for investigations into the Trump administration.Environmental advocates and Democratic observers expect Cummings to conduct focused, detailed oversight, including conducting joint investigations with other committees of jurisdiction. They argue that approach will produce better results, even if it doesn't generate the steady stream of headlines from Republican probes like the Benghazi Committee.
“I think there’s enough experience within the Democratic leadership, both committee leadership and House leadership, to be both measured and careful,” said Reid Stuntz, a former Energy and Commerce Committee staff director.
Some oversight work will be handled by other panels as well. Others expected to lead committees include Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) at the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) at the Natural Resources Committee and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) at the Science Committee.
Conservatives are preparing to pounce on the new majority.
“They’re the gift that keeps on giving, they’re so extreme. We know that playbook, we can do it in our sleep,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative Institute for Energy Research.
Pyle said he anticipated Democrats will push “messaging” bills on climate and rebukes of Trump administration environmental policies. They’ll be most effective through the budget process — potentially warding off riders and steering money to programs the White House would rather cut — and through oversight, he said.
Grijalva has already said he wants to examine Zinke and Interior's policies. Decisions like the agency’s proposal to open up vast new swaths of offshore waters to drilling and to roll back several national monuments offer attractive policy grounds for oversight, while mounting ethical concerns over Zinke’s travel practices, his handling of an American Indian casino project in Connecticut and a Montana real estate deal are also tempting targets.
“What they’d be smart to do is resist the temptation to subpoena the president’s tax returns on day one. Go after the low-hanging fruit. That’s how you get some early wins,” Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee who switched to being a Democrat in late 2017, told POLITICO. “Ryan Zinke is the most flagrant I think. What he has done is essentially what Scott Pruitt went down for.”
Democrats' oversight activities will be influenced by variables including how quickly the panels are able to staff up and whether many administration officials, like Zinke, head for the exits following the midterms as expected.
In addition to watchdogging the Trump administration, Democrats plan to focus on educating the public about climate science as they lay the groundwork for more sweeping legislation in future Congresses. Pelosi said in late October she plans to revive a select committee on climate issues as part of that push.
Democrats will have their crack at climate by compelling Trump officials to testify about the science they used to tear down and craft new environmental regulations, said John Coequyt, global climate policy director with the Sierra Club.
“I think there is a question whether the [EPA] is using scientific information that is mainstream to make its decisions,” he said.
There’s also anticipation for what emerges next from the business community about potentially putting a price on carbon. Well-known companies, including Exxon, Shell, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi and Unilever, have already endorsed a carbon dividends plan from former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz. More corporate endorsements might go a long way toward providing sufficient political cover for a more open discussion.
“With the huge base of corporate support that’s already been built for it — and the likelihood that more will come — I think there’s going to be real appetite to move forward with this,” former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) told POLITICO.
Eric Wolff contributed to this report.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/11/democrats-to-sharpen-oversight-play-it-safe-on-climate-910484
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Washington State Is a Weirdly Good Place for a Carbon Vote
Nov 6, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
Voters in the state of Washington will make history on Tuesday if they back Initiative 1631. They would be the first in the U.S. to impose a direct “fee” (don’t call it a tax) on carbon-dioxide emissions, starting at $15 a ton and rising gradually from there. Almost $46 million has been spent by committees supporting or opposing the measure, according to Ballotpedia.com, a staggering sum for this state.
Win or lose, though, 1631’s significance has less to do with what it means for Washington and more with how it is viewed outside the state’s borders.
One criticism of 1631 is that, if implemented, Washington likely won’t make a direct dent in emissions, largely because it already emits little compared to other states. Carbon emissions per capita or dollar of GDP rank way below the national average, in large part because about two-thirds of the state’s power comes from hydroelectricity.
But this actually makes Washington an attractive place to push for carbon pricing in one important respect: cost. Back in June, when I wrote about the interplay of gasoline prices and income across different House races, Washington was one of a handful of states characterized by relatively low per capita fuel demand but relatively high disposable income. The chart comparing states is reproduced below – though many races have moved around in the meantime – and you can see Washington in the bottom right:
ClearView Energy Partners, a DC-based research firm which provided much of the data for that chart, ranks the states by “Consumer Carbon Leverage” – a measure of how much a $10 per ton carbon price would erode disposable personal income, excluding industrial emissions. All states either already using carbon prices of some sort or contemplating them rank in the lower half of the table, but Washington is lowest of all.
On that basis, if you’re going to get carbon pricing passed anywhere, Washington’s lower emissions make it an easier sell.
The flip side of that, however, is that it can also make Washington a special case. Besides the state’s own characteristics, 1631 is unusual in that it dispenses with the idea of a revenue-neutral carbon tax – where proceeds are reimbursed via lowering other taxes – in favor of using the money for various clean energy and climate-change mitigation efforts. That inevitably opens it to criticism of government “picking winners” and hitting lower-income households hardest. Conventional wisdom says the revenue-neutral approach is more palatable to voters, especially in redder districts. But that approach was tried already in Washington in 2016, with the unsuccessful Initiative 732.
So 1631 will not necessarily set a template to be replicated elsewhere. That doesn’t make it just a curio of the Pacific Northwest, though. And that’s because of context.
This comes back to that argument around insignificance: How can a state with 2 percent of the U.S. population (and 0.01 percent of the global total) make a difference on global emissions? But such thinking encourages the status quo of drifting toward climatic catastrophe. We are where we are, and where we are is that we have a federal government, in the other Washington, populated by a critical number of players who prefer to ignore, belittle, or smear overwhelming scientific consensus rather than grapple with its implications. By definition, if the feds won’t act, then it’s up to those further down the chain to do so.
In that sense, the symbolism of what is decided in Washington state is undeniable. Initiative 1631 isn’t the only climate or energy-focused measure on the ballot today, with voters being asked to decide in several other states, including California, Colorado, Florida and Nevada. Importantly, some of those measures, such as California’s Proposition 6 or Washington’s own Initiatives 1601 and 1602, oppose climate activists’ desires.
As I wrote here, from California’s State Capitol to the New York Attorney General’s office, America’s political and legal battle over climate change has devolved onto myriad fronts. Similarly, the extent to which Washington’s results have a wider impact depends partly on what happens in polling booths elsewhere.
Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times’ Lex column. He was also an investment banker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/washington-state-is-a-weirdly-good-place-for-a-carbon-vote/2018/11/06/bfad4b74-e1f7-11e8-ba30-a7ded04d8fac_story.html?utm_term=.db77ad0174b1
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Washington State Voters Reject Carbon Tax
Nov 7, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Voters in Washington state on Tuesday rejected a proposed carbon tax that would have been the first such levy in the nation.
The policy would have been an effort to fight climate change by mandating that companies using or selling fossil fuels pay taxes equal to $15 per metric ton of carbon, an amount that would rise in future years. The money would have paid for clean air and water projects, as well as community health initiatives.
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The proposal was one of the most aggressive attempts to fight climate change on the state level. Supporters saw the vote as a crucial test of whether carbon pricing can get support in the United States.
A handful of countries have carbon taxes, as do some Canadian provinces, but no U.S. state does.
The battle over Washington’s carbon tax got international attention and national funding during the campaign season. Supporters spent at least $12 million, and opponents spent more than $25 million.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), a potential 2020 presidential candidate, led the campaign to implement the tax, arguing that it was a reasonable method to make polluters pay for the damage they cause to the climate.
Conservatives and fossil fuel companies pushed back aggressive and argued that a tax would hurt struggling families and businesses when energy companies pass it along. Opponents said it would have cost an average household $440 in the first year.
The tax would have risen by $2 each year until Washington’s annual emissions reached 25 percent below 1990 levels.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/415418-washington-state-voters-reject-carbon-tax
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DOJ Ramps Up Attempts To Block Youth Climate Lawsuit Before Trial
Nov 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
The Trump administration is ramping up its legal campaign to prevent a federal district court trial in a high-profile youth climate case, filing a flurry of new motions to scuttle the litigation after its prior appeals were rejected by the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Late Nov. 5, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed three requests in Juliana, et al. v. United States, which claims the government is violating the youth's constitutional and public trust rights to a livable atmosphere by its actions to promote fossil fuels and its inactions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
In one filing, the government submitted a notice with Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon indicating that that it would again seek a writ of mandamus at the 9th Circuit.
DOJ also asked Aiken to reconsider her denial of its earlier request to allow an early appeal of her decisions rejecting two procedural motions to stop the case, and it asked her to stay the case until the two other motions are answered.
That same day, Aiken notified attorneys that she would be holding a status conference Nov. 8. While DOJ's latest requests are likely to be addressed at that time, it is unclear whether she will rule on them then.
DOJ said in its filings that it submitted what is now its fourth request for mandamus relief with the 9th Circuit, though that motion had not yet appeared in the appellate court docket by press time.
The court rejected two other such requests after finding that it would be better to consider the case after the trial is completed at the district court and a full record is developed.
The 9th Circuit denied DOJ's third request Nov. 2.
That came the same day that the Supreme Court reversed a temporary stay that Chief Justice John Roberts had issued Oct. 19, a surprise move given that many experts saw Roberts' temporary stay as an ominous sign for the plaintiffs.
But both the appellate and Supreme Court petitions were dismissed without prejudice, meaning DOJ can come back to either court.
DOJ is not signaling any new appeals to the Supreme Court at this point. But in a Nov. 5 statement to Inside EPA, DOJ teed up the additional appeals, saying it was pleased that the latest high court denial "sets a path" for DOJ to "continue efforts toward dismissal of this improper case."
Before the most recent round of DOJ appeals, the trial had been set to begin Oct. 29 and even as the government was seeking to halt the case it was also preparing for trial.
Last month, DOJ filed a witness list that includes an expert to rebut "the conclusion that it is both technologically and economically feasible to transition from a predominantly fossil fuel-based energy system to a 100 percent renewable energy system for all energy sectors by 2050;" experts to address the "standard of medical care applicable" to plaintiffs' allegations of respiratory health impairment and other harms; and experts to rebut the feasibility of the other actions the plaintiffs seek.
The government will not be putting agency heads or other high-profile officials on the stand.
Also in that flurry of pretrial documents, attorneys for the 21 youth plaintiffs filed a proposed pretrial order asking Aiken to declare, “By causing and contributing to dangerous climate change through their affirmative aggregate acts and policies with respect to fossil fuels and the national energy system, Defendants have violated Plaintiffs' substantive due process right to a stable climate system capable of sustaining human life and liberty guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/doj-ramps-attempts-block-youth-climate-lawsuit-trial
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Critics Say EPA Proposal lowballs Lost Climate Benefits
Nov 6, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA is underestimating the climate benefits lost by axing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan by billions of dollars, according to a new analysis of the Trump administration's proposed replacement rule.
New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity evaluated how EPA justified the costs and benefits of its proposed Affordable Clean Energy rule and noted a sharp divide between how the current and previous administrations calculated the cost to society of emitting carbon emissions from power plants.
"I think this one is deliberately confusing," Jack Lienke, the institute's regulatory policy director, said of the agency's analysis.
While the Trump administration has chosen to consider only the domestic costs of climate change, known as the social cost of carbon, the Obama administration had based its estimates on global carbon emissions.
The Trump administration has said it is using the domestic value to estimate the direct impacts of climate change that are anticipated within U.S. borders.
Buried deep in EPA's own economic analysis of the Affordable Clean Energy rule, the agency laid out precisely how much that change in calculations shifted the overall predicted forgone climate benefits of ditching the Obama-era rule.
When considering the impact of the CPP compared with the ACE rule using only domestic carbon emissions in 2035 in one analysis, the agency predicted between $300 million and $500 million in lost domestic climate benefits.
But when EPA assessed the rule using the global social cost of carbon metric it had used under the Obama administration, the forgone climate benefits ranged from $2.5 billion to $3.4 billion.
Lienke noted that EPA did not make it easy to compare the estimated climate effects of the Clean Power Plan and the Affordable Clean Energy rules. The agency tucked its estimates of global social cost of carbon into the appendix of its regulatory impact analysis and laid out the numbers in a single paragraph, rather than putting them in a chart like the rest of its estimates.
Critics of EPA's rule change also warn that along with changes to how it calculates the harm of climate change, the agency is also not fully accounting for the additional health benefits that come along with cutting power plant carbon emissions — like reductions in fine particulate matter. They also question the way the agency has estimated the costs to industry of implementing the rule.
In a joint public comment on the rule proposal, the Institute for Policy Integrity and a number of environmental groups castigated EPA for not fulfilling its "legal obligations to appropriately weigh climate effects" by only considering domestic carbon emissions.
"EPA's estimates of climate effects overlook a host of important factors like climate spillovers, international reciprocity, extraterritorial interests, intergenerational equity, uncertainty over long-term growth, uncertainty over catastrophic outcomes, risk aversion, option value, and unquantified effects to climate," the comments read.
Lienke pointed out that the domestic social cost of carbon is also being used in EPA's proposed change to the agency's rule on methane emissions from new and modified sources in the oil and gas industry.
"Interestingly, they are using all the same models that are used in global social cost of carbon; it's all based on the same science and economic work, it's just tinkering with the output," he said.
EPA has faced a torrent of negative comments on its proposal. The agency ended its public comment period Wednesday (Climatewire, Nov. 1).
Among those to weigh in on the rule were Democratic Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
The senators called the rule tainted by the fossil fuel connections of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who worked to draft the rule before leaving the agency under a cloud of scandal last July. The former Oklahoma attorney general was an active opponent of the Clean Power Plan before leading the agency's efforts to dismantle and replace the rule.
"As Oklahoma Attorney General and EPA Administrator, Pruitt used his official position to execute the agenda of his industry political patrons, on the CPP and other environmental issues. Given this history, there is no doubt that the proposed ACE rule reflects industry's interests," they wrote.
Whitehouse and Markey warned current EPA leadership, including air chief Bill Wehrum and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, were also similarly compromised by their industry connections.
"The extreme and well-documented regulatory capture of the Trump EPA is evidence that it has effectively delegated its authority to the industries that have captured it, in particular, the fossil fuel industry," Whitehouse and Markey wrote.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/11/06/stories/1060105331
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Ballot Measures Taking Aim at Climate Change Fall Short
Nov 7, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Dino Grandoni
Efforts to nudge the nation away from burning fossil fuels and toward harnessing renewable source of energy were rejected by voters Tuesday across a swath of resource-rich states in the western United States.
Voters in Arizona, one of the nation’s most sun-soaked states, shot down a measure that would have accelerated its shift toward generating electricity from sunlight. Residents in oil- and gas-rich Colorado defeated a measure to sharply limit drilling on state-owned land.
Even in the solidly blue state of Washington, initial results were poor for perhaps the most consequential climate-related ballot measure in the country this fall: A statewide initiative that would have imposed a first-in-the-nation fee on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.
The failure of the ballot measures underscores the difficulty of tackling a global problem like climate change policy at the local level, even as environmental advocates and lawmakers have turned to state governments to counter the Trump administration’s rollback of Obama-era efforts to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and as scientists warn the world has only a bit more than a decade to keep global warming to moderate levels.
Since President Trump took office, a handful for Democrat-controlled states — notably California — have vowed to be a counter weight on energy and environmental policy to the president, who frequently dismisses the consensus among climate scientists that the way we use energy is warming the globe. In September, California codified into lawa commitment to produce 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free courses by 2045.
But Tuesday’s ballot-question results demonstrate the limits to which other states are willing to follow California’s lead — particularly when campaigners against the proposals emphasize the supposed impact on pocketbooks.
“What we learned from this election, in states like Colorado, Arizona, and Washington, is that voters reject policies that would make energy more expensive and less reliable,” Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a free-market advocacy group, said in a statement.
Supporters and proponents poured an eye-popping amount of moneyinto the fight over the future of energy in Arizona. At more than $54 million, only two Senate races in the country — in Florida and Texas — saw more spending this year.
The influx of cash underscores how much both sides believed was at stake. The ballot initiative would have amended the Arizona constitution to require electric utilities to use renewable energy for 50 percent of their power generation by 2035. That might seem easily within reach in sunny Arizona. But the state currently gets only about 6 percent of its energy from the sun.
The state’s biggest utility, Arizona Public Service, or APS, emerged as the most fervent opponent of the proposal, pouring more than $30 million into a political action committee called Arizonans for Affordable Electricity. In an aggressive ad campaign, the group argued that the measure would cost households an additional $1,000 a year.
“We’ve said throughout this campaign there is a better way to create a clean-energy future for Arizona that is also affordable and reliable,” APS chief executive Don Brandt said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, an alliance of dozens of organizations called Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, argued that the shift toward cleaner energy will improve public health and create good jobs in the state. The group got a huge assist from California billionaire investor and political activist Tom Steyer, who donated the lion’s share of the nearly $23.6 million raised through the end of September.
Neighboring Nevada had a similar proposal on its ballot, though the outcome there is unclear as of Tuesday evening.
Twenty-nine states and the District already have programs, known as Renewable Portfolio Standards, or RPS, that require utilities to ensure that certain amount of the electricity they sell comes from renewable resources. But only a fraction of those have targets as ambitious as the ones proposed this year in Arizona and Nevada. For instance, New York and New Jersey also have targets of 50 percent renewable energy by 2050. Hawaii would require 100 percent of its energy to be from renewable sources by 2045.
During the 2018 campaign, however, 11 Democrats candidates for governor vowed to try to get all of their respective states’ electricity from “clean” energy sources by the middle of the century, according to surveys done by the state affiliates of the League of Conservative Voters. Several of those candidates, including Jared Polis in Colorado, won their races.
But elsewhere on the ballot in Colorado, environmental advocates failed to pass a measure known as Proposition 112. The initiative would have required new wells to be at least 2,500 feet from occupied buildings and other “vulnerable areas” such as parks and irrigation canals — a distance several times that of existing regulations. It also allows local governments to require even longer setbacks.
As oil production has soared in Colorado in recent years and the population has grown, more and more residents are living near oil and gas facilities. Those who supported the ballot measure argued it was necessary to reduce potential health risks and the noise and other nuisances of living near drilling sites. Opponents countered that the proposal would virtually eliminate new oil and gas drilling on non-federal land in the state — they have derided it as an “anti-fracking” push — and claimed it would cost jobs and deprive local governments of tax revenue.
The industry-backed group, Protect Colorado, raised roughly $38 million this year as it opposed the controversial measure, which it says would “wipe out thousands of jobs and devastate Colorado’s economy for years to come." By contrast, the main group backing the proposal, known as Colorado Rising for Health and Safety, raised about $1 million.
“We appreciate Colorado voters who realized what a devastating impact this measure would have had on our state’s economy, school funding, public safety and other local services, ” Karen Crummy, spokeswoman for Protect Colorado, said in an email late Tuesday. “The oil and natural gas industry and its employees look forward to discussing concerns with reasonable people looking for reasonable solutions.”
Separately, Chip Rimer, chairman of the board for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, called Proposition 112 “an extreme proposal” that would have devastated the state’s economy. "Moving forward we will continue working together with all stakeholders to develop solutions that ensure we can continue to deliver the energy we need, the economy we want and the environment we value,” he said in a statement.
Coloradans also rejected a separate but related measure Tuesday that would have amended the Colorado constitution to allow property owners to seek compensation if government actions devalue their property. The proposal has been sharply criticized by dozens of city councils and panned by Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), who called it “a dangerous idea" in which “unscrupulous developers and speculators could make claims on local governments for literally anything they think has hurt the value of their land.”
Meanwhile in the state of Washington, the effort to put a price on carbon emissions is on the verge of defeat, with 56.3 percent of voters rejecting the measure and 43.7 percent supporting it as of Tuesday evening, when two-thirds of the votes were counted. An official at the Washington secretary of state’s office said Monday the vote-by-mail system in the state means it could take several days for a final vote tally.
With the measure known as Initiative 1631, Washington would become the first state in the nation to tax carbon dioxide — an approach many scientists, environmental advocates and policymakers argue will be essential on a broad scale to nudge the world away from its reliance on fossil fuels and to combat climate change.
But that proposal, like other environmental initiatives across the country, had come with a fight, pitting big oil refiners against a collection of advocates that includes unions, Native American groups, business leaders like Bill Gates and former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as the state’s Democratic governor, Jay Inslee.
It also has set a spending record along the way for a state ballot initiative. The group pressing for the carbon fee, known as the Clean Air Clean Energy coalition, as raised more than $15 million. Meanwhile, oil companies belonging to the Western States Petroleum Association have pumped more than $31 million into opposing the measure, according to the state’s public disclosure commission.
Seventy percent of the revenue generated by the measure is earmarked for renewable energy investments, while the remaining 25 percent would go toward water and forest programs. The measure also would exempt eight energy-intensive manufacturing plants, fund training and early retirement plans for affected workers and create a board to allocate future revenue.
The initial $15-a-ton fee would kick in beginning in 2020, then increase $2 per ton (plus inflation) each year until 2035, when it would either freeze or rise, depending on whether the state had met its targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
When it comes to the ballot questions, one of the lone bright spots for climate campaigners Tuesday was in the Sunshine State.
Florida voters, likely with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill still fresh in mind, decided to amend the state constitution to ban offshore oil and gas in state waters.
That decision served as another blow to efforts by the Trump administration and the oil industry to expand offshore drilling nationwide. While Trump’s Interior Department initially suggested allowing drilling across 90 percent of the outer continental shelf, oil lobbyists eyed the section of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida as one of the biggest prizes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/11/07/ballot-measures-taking-aim-climate-change-fall-short/?utm_term=.dbf1f15262a2
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The Out-of-Control NY Attorney General's Office Takes on ExxonMobil
Nov 7, 2018 | RealClearEnergy
By Francis Menton
Law enforcement is serious business. We give prosecutors tremendous powers over the citizenry, including the powers to put people in jail and to impose enormous fines on businesses; and then we trust them to act with the highest levels of honesty and integrity and discretion to protect us from the bad guys while also upholding our civil rights. Or at least, that is how you might think it ought to work.
Then there is the New York Attorney General's office. Some 20 years ago, that office began a long and accelerating downward spiral when Eliot Spitzer won the head job. With Spitzer, bona fide law enforcement promptly took a back seat to pursuit of a new headline every day, preferably to be obtained by shaking down some disfavored financial institution under New York's notorious Martin Act, which under vague language can be argued to authorize prosecution of every financial unfairness as criminal "fraud." After achieving multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements from major institutions, Spitzer went on to become Governor, before resigning in disgrace in a prostitution scandal. His success in the Martin Act shakedown game was not lost on his successors.
In 2011, the Attorney General job was won by Eric Schneiderman, another wealthy Manhattanite and a darling of the progressive left. Schneiderman promptly upped the Martin Act shakedown game to become the primary focus of his office, devoting dozens of staffers to investigations of essentially every financial institution doing business in New York. Most of these investigations were for alleged misrepresentations to investors relating to the financial crisis that was already three years in the rearview mirror when Schneiderman assumed office, and involved wrongdoing, if any, that had already been thoroughly investigated and prosecuted (or not) by federal authorities.
So why waste precious law enforcement resources on such an effort? Clearly, Schneiderman had other goals in mind, notably including not only headlines, but also protection money ("settlement") payments from his targets, aggregating in the billions, that went not to the supposed investor victims of the alleged wrongdoing, but rather into slush funds controlled by Schneiderman himself that could be passed out to his progressive colleagues and supporters.
And now, why limit the Martin Act shakedown game to just financial institutions? In 2015, Schneiderman's sights landed on the next obvious and perfect corporate target, ExxonMobil – home of tens of billions of dollars in annual cash flow ripe to be plundered, besides being vulnerable to having the catchphrase "climate change" attached to its name by reason of involvement in the oil business.
But what exactly does "climate change," or the role of an oil company in selling fossil fuels to the consuming public, have to do with the law enforcement mission of the New York Attorney General? That kind of question was never the sort of thing to slow down Schneiderman. In November 2015, it emerged that Schneiderman's office had issued a broad subpoena to ExxonMobil, seeking extensive financial records, emails and other documents.
A New York Times article of November 5, 2015 stated that the focus of the investigation was whether "the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business." In March 2016, Schneiderman then held a big press conference, bringing with him some sixteen other attorneys general from other jurisdictions, and announcing that they were all now investigating ExxonMobil. For what, exactly? At the press conference, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said that fossil fuel companies "have deceived investors about the risks climate change poses to the planet and to their bottom lines [and]... must be held accountable."
And then – nothing for two and a half years. Was there anything serious about this investigation? Meanwhile, in May 2018, Schneiderman joined Spitzer in the resigned-in-disgrace club. In Schneiderman's case, the allegations involved beating and choking women that he had been dating. The time elapsed from emergence of the allegations (in a Ronan Farrow piece in The New Yorker on May 7) to Schneiderman's resignation was about three hours.
Also meanwhile, various cities and counties around the country brought a series of lawsuits, sounding in "public nuisance," seeking massive damages from various oil companies, one of them being ExxonMobil, for allegedly causing "climate change" by selling their products. In June 2018, in one of the decisions dismissing some of these cases, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California pointed to the extensive "alarm bells" about climate that have been ringing ever since the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began its work in 1988. Could anybody really have missed the flood of public information on that subject because of being misdirected by a statement buried in an Exxon 10-K?
But never underestimate the desire of dozens of committed lawyers to avoid having years of their hard work of reading turgid corporate documents just thrown away as useless. On October 24, with little fanfare, the New York AG's office, now headed by interim caretaker Barbara Underwood, filed a 97 page Complaint against Exxon, signed by some nine lawyers in the office – undoubted the tip of the iceberg of many times that who have been assigned to toil away for the past few years on the task of finding something, anything to pin on the pre-selected target.
What is the gist of all this verbiage? You will be hard-pressed to try to figure that out from the interminable Complaint. The best short statement appears in the AG’s press release of the same date as the Complaint: "Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations." It is 97 pages, all claiming that Exxon somehow underplayed the "risks" of "climate change regulation" – none of which have yet emerged and none of which may ever emerge.
Are world governments really going to force an end to the use of oil and natural gas sometime soon, and require valuable hydrocarbon reserves to be kept in the ground? You may believe that, but would you rely on anything that Exxon may say on that subject, rather than forming your own view based on the enormous amounts of information in the public domain?
Oh, and there is this in Exxon’s annual SEC filing (and similar versions of same in other such filings going back decades): "RISK FACTORS . . . Climate change and greenhouse gas restrictions:"
Due to concern over the risks of climate change, a number of countries have adopted, or are considering the adoption of, regulatory frameworks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These include adoption of cap and trade regimes, carbon taxes, restrictive permitting, increased efficiency standards, and incentives or mandates for renewable energy. These requirements could make our products more expensive, lengthen project implementation times, and reduce demand for hydrocarbons, as well as shift hydrocarbon demand toward relatively lower-carbon sources such as natural gas. Current and pending greenhouse gas regulations or policies may also increase our compliance costs, such as for monitoring or sequestering emissions.
Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the 16 other AG’s who showed up at the big March 2016 press conference have all fled the scene. It is only the New York AG on this Complaint. And the Complaint is filed in the friendly home forum of New York County Supreme Court – a state court in one-party territory which hasn’t seen a Republican judge in memory.
You might think that the New York Attorney General's office would be too embarrassed to file such a patently weak claim. But here in progressive New York, it is highly likely that the new Attorney General following the pending election – likely to be Democrat Letitia James – will continue this lawsuit. And probably, Exxon will pay multi hundreds of millions to settle, little or none of which will then be distributed to the investors who supposedly have been harmed. Instead, the settlement money will be picked out of those very investors' pockets, and will represent a far greater harm to them than any theoretical harm from which they are supposedly being "protected." The effect on the climate will be exactly nothing.
Francis Menton is the Manhattan Contrarian.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/11/07/the_out-of-control_ny_attorney_generals_office_takes_on_exxonmobil_110363.html
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