Preview Newsletter
PM acc 11/21/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) All Quiet on the Resin Front, Except for PET
Nov 21, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American commodity resin prices were surprisingly quiet in October, with only PET bottle resin showing any movement. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Corporate Donors Want Their Money Back
Nov 21, 2018 | Roll Call
By Emily Kopp
Half a dozen corporations have asked Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith to reimburse their contributions to her runoff campaign. -
Let’s Vote on the New Nafta in the Current Congress
Nov 21, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Pat Toomey
For free traders like me, the recently negotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, is a mixed bag of trade-enhancing and trade-restricting changes to the current North American Free Trade Agreement. -
First Draft of TSCA Risk Evaluation Released by EPA
Nov 21, 2018 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
The EPA has issued its first-draft risk evaluation for the first 10 chemicals the Agency must evaluate under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
US Will Add Antimony Trioxide to Carcinogen List
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) has confirmed its provisional conclusion that antimony trioxide is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" amid continued criticism from the antimony sector. -
California Proposes Clarifying Changes to Prop 65 Guidelines
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has proposed further amendments to guidelines for "clear and reasonable" consumer product warnings, as mandated under Proposition 65. -
Monsanto Appeals $78m Verdict in Calif. Roundup Suit
Nov 21, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
Agribusiness giant Monsanto on Tuesday appealed a $78 million verdict in favor of a dying California man who said the company's widely used Roundup weed killer was a major factor in his cancer. -
The Energy 202: Trump Administration Eyes More of Alaskan Arctic for Oil Drilling
Nov 21, 2018 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
The Trump administration is taking its first steps toward expanding oil and natural gas drilling in an area roughly the size of Indiana in the Alaskan Arctic. -
Chemical Clues Found for Methane Leaks Caused by Fracking
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Katherine Bourzac
Methane can seep from underground deposits into people’s well water through leaks occurring naturally or those caused by nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations. -
Trump and MBS Reveal What Energy Dominance Really Entails
Nov 21, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
As millions of his fellow citizens began easing into Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump was tweeting about oil again early on Wednesday morning. -
New York City Climate Nuisance Appeal Wins Support from States, Mayors
Nov 21, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Backers of municipalities' nuisance lawsuits against fossil fuel producers over their contribution to climate change are adding additional weight to the legal challenges, with major groups of states, cities, law professors and environmental groups weighing in... -
Trump Administration to Release Climate Report on Black Friday
Nov 21, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
A major report on climate change from the federal government will be released at 2 p.m. on Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a notice today. -
Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Rollbacks Stumbled in Court. His Successor Is More Thorough.
Nov 21, 2018 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Before resigning as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency this year, Scott Pruitt delighted President Trump with his zeal for proclaiming sweeping regulatory rollbacks, even though he left behind a trail of courtroom setbacks. -
Key House Democrats Launch Early Scrutiny Of EPA Climate Rule Rollbacks
Nov 21, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Top Democrats on the House energy committee aren't waiting until they officially take control of the chamber in the next Congress before starting aggressive oversight of Trump EPA climate rule rollbacks -- an effort that appears to both signal plans for 2019... -
The Face of the Green New Deal (She's Not Who You Think)
Nov 21, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
She's only in her 20s, and she's already the face of an ambitious push for Congress to tackle climate change. -
New Technology, Transparency Will Soon Tie Air Pollution Back to Brands
Nov 21, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Aileen Nowlan
Most businesses contribute to air pollution in some way through their operations and supply chains. They use fossil fuels to heat and cool buildings, to keep restaurant stoves lit and machines operating. Their delivery vehicles and airplane transports...
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(ACC Mentioned) All Quiet on the Resin Front, Except for PET
Nov 21, 2018 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American commodity resin prices were surprisingly quiet in October, with only PET bottle resin showing any movement.
Time will tell if this was the calm before a pricing storm.
Regional PET bottle resin prices declined by an average of 1 cent per pound for the month, ending a streak of two consecutive monthly price hikes. Prices had jumped 6 cents per pound in September after a 2-cent hike in August.
Market watchers cited improving supplies of purified terephthalic acid and other raw materials as reasons for the October decline. Sources added that buyers may see more price declines for PET in November. Demand for bottle resin typically declines in the fall and winter months, the result of declining sales of bottled water and carbonated soft drinks.
Longer term, sources said that the U.S. International Trade Commission's decision not to place antidumping duties on PET resin imported into the United States from Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan could increase the volume of lower-priced PET. ITC's decision came even though the U.S. Department of Commerce previously had determined that PET from those countries are sold in the United States at less than fair value.
Other commodity resins flat
Prices for all other North American commodity resins were flat for the month. All grades of polyethylene had moved up by an average of 3 cents per pound in September, with ethane feedstock cited as the big driver for that hike.
The September PE increase followed a chaotic pricing month in August, which ended with 3-cent-per-pound reductions for most grades of low and linear low density PE and for film and other flexible grades of high density PE.
Backed by new production capacity, export sales of PE had fueled U.S. and Canadian PE growth in the first nine months of 2018, according to the American Chemistry Council. Exports of LLDPE in particular had exploded, growing almost 94 percent vs. the same period in 2017.
LLDPE exports, combined with domestic demand growth of more than 4 percent, lifted total regional LLDPE market growth to more than 23 percent for the period.
HDPE exports from the region were up an impressive 36 percent for the nine months. Those levels and domestic growth of more than 8 percent created nine-month HDPE growth of more than 13 percent. Growth in LDPE exports was more modest at 15 percent. That growth helped the regional LDPE market overcome a loss of almost 1 percent in domestic sales for overall LDPE growth of more than 3 percent.
Benzene down, but not PS
Regional solid polystyrene prices had bumped up an average of 2 cents per pound in September after being flat in August. October prices for benzene slipped down by 13 cents per gallon — about 5 percent — to $2.85, but that wasn't enough to move prices for PS resin, which was flat for the month.
North American solid PS sales have struggled so far in 2018, dropping more than 4 percent through September. Exports have provided a bright spot, growing 20 percent and somewhat reducing the impact of a 5 percent drop in domestic sales.
Polypropylene was the only major commodity resin that experienced lower prices in September. Average selling prices for the material were down 1 cent per pound, giving back half of a 2-cent hike that the market had seen in August.
Resin prices for PP in September again followed the path of propylene monomer feedstock. Prices had been flat in July after surging a combined 15 cents in May-June.
North American PP sales were down almost 1 percent through September, although market watchers said domestic consumption of the material actually may have increased because of a surge in the amount of PP imported into the region. Based on ACC totals, flat domestic PP sales were made worse by a decline of almost 33 percent in export sales.
Some domestic PP end markets have fared well in spite of the overall decline. Sales of PP into oriented film were up almost 14 percent for the nine-month period. Sales of the materials into injection molded caps and closures grew 6 percent.
More of the same for PVC
Regional solid PVC prices were flat for the seventh consecutive month in October. Some buyers had expected an increase for the month, but it never came. A small fire in early October at a Westlake Chemical plant making PVC feedstock VCM in Plaquemine, La., didn't have much impact on the PVC resin market.
U.S./Canadian PVC sales were strong through September, climbing just over 5 percent vs. the same period last year. Domestic growth of 1 percent was bolstered by a jump of almost 15 percent in export sales. Among end markets, extruded windows and doors showed explosive nine-month growth of more than 26 percent. That segment accounted for almost 7 percent of all domestic PVC sales during that period.
At the macro-feedstock level, West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices began October at $75 per barrel but had slid down to $64 by the end of the month, a dip of almost 15 percent. Regional prices for natural gas rose from $3.20 per million British thermal units to $3.25 in the same comparison, for an increase of almost 2 percent.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20181121/NEWS/181129981/all-quiet-on-the-resin-front-except-for-pet
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(ACC Mentioned) Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Corporate Donors Want Their Money Back
Nov 21, 2018 | Roll Call
By Emily Kopp
Half a dozen corporations have asked Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith to reimburse their contributions to her runoff campaign.
The companies have been under intense scrutiny in recent days for their financial support of the senator in the wake of her remark that she would be “on the front row” of a “public hanging” at a campaign stop earlier this month. The NAACP has said her comments evoke Mississippi’s bloody history of lynchings.
The video has drawn new attention to her runoff race against Democratic challenger and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy, who is black.
The corporations say the remark does not reflect their values.
Public ire has centered on blue-chip companies whose contributions showed up in Federal Election Commission records after the video surfaced: Google, Walmart, AT&T, Union Pacific, Leidos, Pfizer and Boston Scientific.
A Walmart spokeswoman said Hyde-Smith is the first candidate from whom the company has looked to revoke a donation.
All of the companies have asserted they made the contributions before Hyde-Smith’s comments became public, though campaign finance law makes that unlikely.
Within 20 days of an election, campaigns must publicly report all donations within 48 hours. The Hyde-Smith campaign reported Nov. 18 donations from Walmart, Union Pacific, Leidos and Boston Scientific, a full week after the video surfaced on Nov. 11.
The campaign listed donations from major trade associations such as the American Chemistry Council and white shoe consulting firms like Foley & Lardner LLP in the same Nov. 18 report.
An independent reporter with the newsletter Popular Information first reported the donations.
The Hyde-Smith campaign reported the $5,000 contribution from Google on Nov. 13, two days after the video surfaced.
Google asserts the check was dated Nov. 2. That coincides with the date Hyde-Smith made the “public hanging” comment, though it was not made public until a week later.
However, the Hyde-Smith campaign said it received the donation from Google on Nov. 13 and reported it the same day. The campaign maintained it has reported donations in accordance with the 48-hour rule in a statement to the Clarion Ledger on Nov. 15.
“We have complied with all campaign finance laws,” a spokeswoman said.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson has drawn a parallel from Hyde-Smith’s remarks to President Donald Trump, who will campaign with the embattled senator on Nov. 26, one day before voters go to the polls. The remarks “prove once again how Trump has created a social and political climate that normalizes hateful and racist rhetoric,” Johnson said in a statement shortly after the video surfaced.
“Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ in a state known for its violent and terroristic history toward African-Americans is sick,” he said.
Hyde-Smith’s voting record closely aligns with the White House’s policy agenda; the senator has campaigned on building a wall at the southern border with Mexico and supported the president’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries.
Hyde-Smith has touted her support of Trump on the campaign trail — even referring to her campaign bus as the “MAGA wagon” — and repeatedly mentioned his upcoming visit during a debate Tuesday night.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/sen-cindy-hyde-smiths-corporate-donors-want-money-back
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Let’s Vote on the New Nafta in the Current Congress
Nov 21, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Pat Toomey
For free traders like me, the recently negotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, is a mixed bag of trade-enhancing and trade-restricting changes to the current North American Free Trade Agreement. My support for the new deal in the coming weeks, and perhaps that of many of my Republican colleagues, will depend on the steps the president takes to strengthen it.
On the positive side, the USMCA enhances the current Nafta with a new section covering digital trade, broader intellectual property-rights protections, and a ban on localized data storage requirements. The benefits of these improvements are unfortunately more than offset by the USMCA’s trade-limiting provisions. These include its expiration 16 years after it enters into force, continued use of Section 232 tariffs, severely limited investor dispute settlement protections, arbitrary wage requirements on auto and auto parts production, and numerous quotas on autos, steel, and aluminum, among other things.
To ratify the USMCA, President Trump faces a choice: make further trade-restricting concessions and hope they secure passage in a House of Representatives controlled by Democrats next year, or make protrade modifications in the implementing legislation and enact the USMCA under a Republican-controlled Congress before the end of this year. I urge him to choose the latter.
Entrusting House Democrats with passing the USMCA is a dicey proposition, at best. Many of the newly elected Democrats ran on opposition to all things Trump, and the next House speaker will not prioritize passage of President Trump’s signature trade achievement. In addition, liberal constituencies are already panning USMCA. Environmental organizations are actively opposed. Labor unions are withholding support despite significant courtship from the U.S. Trade Representative. And key House Democrats are demanding changes that would undermine trade among the three countries—and may even require reopening negotiations.
The new Democratic majority in the House also might indefinitely stall passage of USMCA, goading the president into responding with the “nuclear option”—a unilateral withdrawal from the existing Nafta. This would be disastrous for the American economy, and would kick off a constitutional battle between the branches over trade power.
To avoid this quagmire, President Trump should work with congressional Republicans to incorporate additional free-trade features in the USMCA’s implementing legislation so that it can be passed before the next Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2019. These improvements wouldn’t require reopening negotiations with Mexico and Canada. To preserve this option, the president, under Trade Promotion Authority rules, must submit the final text of the trade agreement to Congress before the end of this month. By doing this, the president would preserve the fast-track procedures of TPA, including a straight-up, simple majority vote requirement in the Senate. This procedural step does not commit President Trump to a strict timeline for passage of the USMCA. Rather it leaves open the option for congressional consideration this year or next.
Considering the USMCA before the end of this year would require a process more expedited than some of my colleagues would prefer. However, it may be the president’s best shot at securing a vote on USMCA, and preserving the North American trading relationship. That is why I, and 11 of my Republican colleagues, sent a letter to President Trump late Tuesday, asking him to keep open the option of passing this agreement in this Congress.
If President Trump chooses to pursue a USMCA vote in Congress this year, I will engage in a good-faith effort to work with his administration on implementing legislation that corrects the flaws listed above and that could pass Congress with the votes of free traders like me.
Mr. Toomey, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lets-vote-on-the-new-nafta-in-the-current-congress-1542758375
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First Draft of TSCA Risk Evaluation Released by EPA
Nov 21, 2018 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
The EPA has issued its first-draft risk evaluation for the first 10 chemicals the Agency must evaluate under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The draft addresses Pigment Violet 29 (PV29), a substance the Agency preliminarily concludes does not present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment; this includes no unreasonable risk to both workers engaged in the manufacture of the substance and other subpopulations who may be particularly susceptible because of conditions under which PV29 is used.As required by the TSCA amendments, the Agency states that the draft evaluation was completed without consideration of cost; this means the evaluation contained no consideration of either losses or gains any manufacturer of PV29 will experience should the Agency adhere to its preliminary evaluation or reverse itself and find that PV29 does present unreasonable human-health and/or environmental risks and needs to be subject to restrictions or even a ban.
Release of the draft was preceded by issuance of two preliminary documents for PV29: a scope of the risk evaluation and a problem formulation in which “the purpose for the assessment is articulated, the problem is defined, and a plan for analyzing and characterizing risk is determined.”Common Component in Color Formulations
PV29 is a high-production-volume chemical with the following applications: An intermediate to create or adjust color of other perylene pigments (approximately 90 percent) Incorporation into paints and coatings used primarily in the automobile industry (approximately 5 percent) Incorporation into plastic and rubber products used primarily in automobiles and industrial carpeting (approximately 5 percent) Merchant ink for commercial printing (less than 1 percent) Consumer watercolors and artistic color (less than 1 percent)
Sun Chemical Corporation of Goose Creek, South Carolina, is the only U.S. manufacturer of PV29 that reported to the TSCA Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) database in 2012 and 2016. According to the EPA, for those years, the PV29 annual production volume was about 650,000 pounds.Weight of Evidence
Under TSCA, the EPA must conduct chemical risk evaluations in a manner consistent with the best available science and make decisions based on the weight of the scientific evidence. The statute further provides that each risk evaluation must: Integrate and assess available information on hazards and exposure for the conditions of use of the chemical substance, including information on specific risks of injury to health or the environment and information on potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations. Describe whether aggregate or sentinel exposures (the plausible upper bound of exposure relative to all other exposures) were considered and the basis for that consideration. Take into account, where relevant, the likely duration, intensity, frequency, and number of exposures under the conditions of use. Describe the weight of the scientific evidence for the identified hazards and exposure.
Based on its review of “reasonably available data,” including human health testing, the EPA found that no adverse effects have been observed for all routes of exposure (oral, dermal, and inhalation) to PV29.
Much of the data the Agency reviewed are included in about 20 study reports acquired by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which is currently assessing PV29. The EPA says it reviewed these study reports and confirmed that the results are “consistent with the physical and chemical characteristics, environmental fate characteristics, and the determination of low environmental and human health hazards.”
Throughout the draft, the EPA states—as it had previously stated in the problem formulation for PV29—that it ceased its risk evaluation once it found evidence that the risk of human exposure was low.Request for Further Analysis
This approach was found insufficient by 17 “scientists, academics, and clinicians” who commented on the problem formation. The scientists stated that the Agency should request additional data on the relation between exposure to PV29 and carcinogenicity, developmental neurotoxicity, neurotoxicity, repeated dose toxicity, and endocrine activity “to ensure it has adequate information to complete the risk evaluation” (see comment letter).
Notice of the draft risk evaluation was published in the November 15, 2018, Federal Register. Comments on the document must be received by the EPA by January 14, 2019.
https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/11/first-draft-of-tsca-risk-evaluation-released-by-epa/
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US Will Add Antimony Trioxide to Carcinogen List
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) has confirmed its provisional conclusion that antimony trioxide is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" amid continued criticism from the antimony sector.
The conclusion of the final version of the Report on Carcinogens (RoC) monograph is unchanged from the draft. This was published in January ahead of the peer-review meeting.
The move will result in the addition of the substance to the NTP’s RoC list, a Congressionally-mandated public health report, prepared on behalf of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The NTP recommendation is based on "sufficient evidence" of carcinogenicity from animal studies and supporting evidence from mechanistic studies. The data available from studies in humans was "inadequate".
The International Antimony Association has consistently opposed the conclusion of the monograph.
Caroline Braibant, the association's secretary general, told Chemical Watch that the mode of action for the carcinogenicity observed in rats was not relevant for humans. Additionally, she said the evidence related only to the powder form of antimony trioxide.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72219/us-will-add-antimony-trioxide-to-carcinogen-list
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California Proposes Clarifying Changes to Prop 65 Guidelines
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has proposed further amendments to guidelines for "clear and reasonable" consumer product warnings, as mandated under Proposition 65.
Oehha implements the law, which requires businesses to provide the warnings of potential exposure to chemicals listed as a carcinogen or reproductive toxicants.
The warning guidelines, specified in Article 6 of Title 27 in California’s Code of Regulations, were adopted in August 2016 and amended in November 2017. After receiving input from stakeholders, California determined that further clarifying changes were needed.
The amendments will not impose any new costs because Oehha says they "simply clarify the responsibility of intermediate parties in the chain of commerce to pass along a warning for consumer products".
Affected businesses are likely to benefit from the proposed regulatory action, it says, which also further clarify the definition of "actual knowledge".
Public comments on the proposal will be accepted until 31 December.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72188/california-proposes-clarifying-changes-to-prop-65-guidelines
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Monsanto Appeals $78m Verdict in Calif. Roundup Suit
Nov 21, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
Agribusiness giant Monsanto on Tuesday appealed a $78 million verdict in favor of a dying California man who said the company's widely used Roundup weed killer was a major factor in his cancer.
The company filed a notice of appeal in San Francisco Superior Court challenging a jury verdict in favor of Dewayne Johnson. In August, the jury unanimously found that Roundup caused Johnson's non-Hodgkin lymphoma and awarded him $289 million.
Last month, Judge Suzanne Bolanos slashed that award to $78 million. Monsanto had sought a new trial or judgment in its favor.
"We continue to believe that the liability verdict and reduced damage award are not supported by the evidence at trial or the law," Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in June, said in a statement.
Bayer said none of the science presented at trial supported the conclusion that Roundup was a substantial cause of Johnson's cancer.
An email to a spokeswoman for Johnson's attorneys was not immediately returned.
Johnson, now 46, sprayed Roundup and a similar product at his job as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, according to his attorneys.
He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2014 at 42, and his doctor testified that he has less than three years to live.
Monsanto is facing thousands of similar lawsuits that claim glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — causes cancer.
Many government regulators have rejected a link between glyphosate and cancer. Monsanto says hundreds of studies have established that glyphosate is safe.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/11/21/stories/1060107195
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The Energy 202: Trump Administration Eyes More of Alaskan Arctic for Oil Drilling
Nov 21, 2018 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
The Trump administration is taking its first steps toward expanding oil and natural gas drilling in an area roughly the size of Indiana in the Alaskan Arctic.
The Interior Department is ready to abandon a management plan put in place under Barack Obama for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, or the NPR-A.
Joe Balash, assistant secretary of land and minerals at Interior, said that in light of "some exciting new discoveries" as well as "advances in drilling technology," the Trump administration wanted to open up more acreage in the reserve to drilling.
"We think it's time to re-evaluate some of the areas that were previously left unavailable for leasing," Balash said in a call, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Washington Post. He added that it will take "about a year" to develop a new plan for managing the petroleum reserve after publishing a notice Tuesday.
The move is in line with other attempts under President Trump to expand fossil-fuel extraction nationwide, whether by trying to revitalize coal mining in the Appalachia mountains or offshore drilling in the Pacific Ocean.
When it comes to onshore oil development, Alaska has been a main locus of that push. And unlike efforts to boost coal mining or offshore drilling, Trump has seen significant success in the nation's northernmost state.
The Republican tax bill signed by Trump nearly one year ago mandated oil and gas lease sales in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is to the east of the petroleum reserve. For decades, environmentalists successfully fought to keep a coastal tract of relatively untouched wilderness there full of caribou and polar bears free from energy development. By opening up the refuge to leasing, Trump succeeded where George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush tried and fell short.
As its name suggests, Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve was originally earmarked for eventual oil extraction. In 1923, President Warren G. Harding set aside the area over oil supply concerns as the U.S. Navy started burning oil rather than coal to power its ships.
But as time passed scientists and conservationists began to recognize the area's ecological importance, particularly to migratory waterfowls that liked to frequent its wetlands. Working with subsistence hunters in Alaska and environmentalists in the Lower 48, the Obama administration put half of the petroleum reserve, or about 11 million acres, off-limits to oil drilling.
Environmentalists like Mark Salvo, vice president of landscape conservation at the Defenders of Wildlife, criticized the Trump administration for throwing out a management plan that took years to make. Interior similarly is trying to scrap wildlife management plans for the Mojave Desert in California and for sagebrush habitat through much of the rest of the western United States, Salvo noted.
These are examples of the Trump administration stealing defeat from the jaws of victory," he said. "These plans took years to produce and tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer resources to arrive at these carefully crafted compromises to conserve public lands."
Alaska's oil and gas industry, which originally balked at the Obama-era decision, praised the Trump administration for aiming to reverse it.
"There have been recent discoveries in the NPR-A and adjacent state land that suggests it may be a more prolific area for oil and gas development," said Kara Moriarty, president and chief executive of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association.
Last year the U.S. Geological Survey, Interior's main scientific arm, reassessed the reserve and estimated that it and the state and tribal areas around it contain 8.7 billion barrels of oil and 25 trillion cubic feet of gas. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had ordered the survey after ConocoPhillips announced a promising oil discovery in the northeast corner of the refuge earlier in 2017.
But a lease sale in NPR-A last December, which Zinke once touted as “large and unprecedented,” got only seven bids for less than 1 percent of the area offered.
Now the Trump administration is suggesting the land it is considering unlocking will garner more attention from oil and gas developers. "I do think it's important to point out that some of the acreage that is probably most prospective is currently not available for leasing," Balash said.
Of particular interest to the oil industry and concern to wildlife conservationists is Teshekpuk Lake and the surrounding area. That 320-square-mile freshwater body, the largest in the Alaskan Arctic, plays host to half a million shorebirds and tens of thousands of molting geese that groups like the Audubon Society worry will be impacted by oil operations.
Balash, the Trump land management official, told reporters the department's geologists believe the area around the lake is "extremely prospective" due to the volume of oil underneath it. But in the same breath, he recognized the needle the department must thread between not only the interests of wildlife conservationists but Native Alaskans who live and hunt in the reserve.
"The big question is: Can we make some of that acreage available in a manner that is responsible and and honors the subsistence way of life that the people who live in the NPR-A have lived for thousands of years?" Balash said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/11/21/the-energy-202-trump-administration-eyes-more-of-alaskan-arctic-for-oil-drilling/5bf461f71b326b477bfd64de/?utm_term=.57be34938232
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Chemical Clues Found for Methane Leaks Caused by Fracking
Nov 21, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Katherine Bourzac
Methane can seep from underground deposits into people’s well water through leaks occurring naturally or those caused by nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations. Such leaks are a concern because methane is a greenhouse gas and because it can build up and cause explosions. Now researchers report chemical signatures indicative of methane leaks tied to fracking in the Marcellus Shale, a rich gas deposit in the Appalachian Basin (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1809013115).
For six years, Pennsylvania State University geochemist Susan Brantley has been studying the water chemistry and geology at Sugar Run, outside Hughesville, Pa. The area has a high density of shale gas wells that were drilled between 2008 and 2012, and researchers including Brantley have reported methane leaking into the region’s potable water supply. But there is natural background leakage in the area, so it has been difficult to connect the presence of methane in the water with hydraulic fracturing.
By sampling ground and surface water, the Penn State researchers found a chemical signature to make the connection. They observed that levels of dissolved iron and sulfate were elevated in water samples containing high levels of methane from areas with fracking operations. But samples with methane present from nonfracking areas had normal iron and sulfate levels.
Methane does not have any direct health effects, but downstream chemical changes might, Brantley says. Microbes feed on the hydrocarbon, creating a reducing water chemistry that can dissolve metals and release sulfates. Brantley says homeowners concerned about fracking’s effects on their water quality could look for these chemical signatures in a typical analysis of their well water.
David Dzombak, who studies water quality at Carnegie Mellon University, is impressed by the environmental forensic analysis. But he says to truly understand the impact of fracking on ground and surface water, government, industry, and scientists need to work together on prospective studies throughout the life cycle of a well.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/water/Chemical-clues-found-methane-leaks/96/i47
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Trump and MBS Reveal What Energy Dominance Really Entails
Nov 21, 2018 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
As millions of his fellow citizens began easing into Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump was tweeting about oil again early on Wednesday morning.
While it constitutes a capital offense in oil-trading circles, the president mixing up West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude oil prices there is a mere trifle. Meanwhile, Texas and North Dakota may beg to differ somewhat on the effective-tax-cut thing.
The more important aspect of this, however, is what it says about one of the defining phrases of Trump’s presidency: “energy dominance.”
The tweet came a day after the president pardoned a turkey and issued an official statement about Saudi Arabia for which the phrase “where to start?” surely was invented. Its panoply of non sequiturs, inventions and exclamation points gave it an almost dreamlike quality. Throw in a couple of brilligs and we could have been marveling at the lost – albeit somewhat darker – stanzas of the Jabberwocky.
Lurking within, however, were some insights into where we are after almost two years of Trump’s drive for energy dominance.
The obvious reading is that this particular form of dominance leaves something to be desired. Despite the fact the U.S. may technically reach net oil imports of zero as soon as next year, the president felt it necessary to issue a statement that – while it led with “America First!” – could just as easily have been boiled down to a wild chant of “K-S-A! K-S-A!” And then he followed it up with a tweet that, in thanking Riyadh for falling oil prices, cast the U.S. as supplicant rather than master.
As my colleague Bobby Ghosh wrote on Wednesday, the president’s apparent willingness to throw overboard any moral qualms about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (and facilitate smears against him) runs counter to the real leverage the U.S. has over Saudi Arabia, not least in terms of the country’s ability to both wage war and defend itself.
When it comes to energy, the relationship is more complex. Despite surging production, the U.S. remains part of a global market that still provides it with about six million barrels a day of net crude-oil imports and much more to key allies around the world. Mathematical independence from oil imports is one thing; actual physical flows from field to refinery to customer are quite another.
I tend to think “energy dominance” is more about flogging U.S. energy overseas than anything else (see this). The surest means of asserting independence from foreign energy producers – namely, limiting consumption – is actively undermined by this administration.
Yet America’s role in the global oil market clearly has changed. Rather than dominance, though, I would characterize it as impermanence.
The relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has always involved turning a blind eye on human rights in exchange for energy and foreign-policy goals. But the Khashoggi affair highlights this at a time when U.S. dependence on oil imports, while still substantial, is falling at a rate that lets Washington be more assertive in condemning Riyadh if it so chooses.
This is a recipe for contradictions and uncertainty about a geopolitical relationship that, like so much else, is open to question as the main architect of the postwar order begins shredding the blueprints. Trump is in Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s corner today and lauding Saudi Arabia’s importance. But only last month he was boasting how the king wouldn’t last two weeks without Uncle Sam’s backing.
This gets at the real significance of Trump’s words and why the jumbled language actually suits the situation. The Middle East’s old order is crumbling as a more competitive global energy market and demographic and technological pressures upend the social contract underpinning regimes like Riyadh’s . This is the fragility lurking at the heart of the global oil market, with the tragedy of Venezuela providing a glaring example of the havoc wreaked when petrostates succumb to their inherent weaknesses.
America’s changing role on both the energy and security fronts exacerbates this. And the White House has put Prince Mohammed at the heart of multiple policies pertaining to Middle Eastern foreign policy and energy. In doing so, it has placed its chips on a leader displaying all the signs of an impulsive autocrat. While defended as realpolitik, it actually raises the risk of further instability in this crucial region. America may never dominate the oil market again, but its capacity to tip it into turmoil is real enough.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-and-mbs-reveal-what-energy-dominance-really-entails/2018/11/21/5371e126-edb5-11e8-8b47-bd0975fd6199_story.html?utm_term=.10b229bd9237
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New York City Climate Nuisance Appeal Wins Support from States, Mayors
Nov 21, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Backers of municipalities' nuisance lawsuits against fossil fuel producers over their contribution to climate change are adding additional weight to the legal challenges, with major groups of states, cities, law professors and environmental groups weighing in on behalf of New York City's effort to overturn a district court's dismissal of its case.
The latest filings signal an expanding legal battle over the climate nuisance cases, which are being pursued by a handful of city and county governments across the country and one state.
The National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the International Municipal Lawyers Association filed a joint Nov. 15 amicus brief in City of New York v. BP PLC, et al., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, arguing the lawsuit is valid and belongs in state rather than federal court.
The municipal groups' filing also asserts that there are no “uniquely federal interests” at stake in the suit that would require the case to be heard in federal court, and that the cause of action for nuisance requires that state law be treated on its own terms.
Also supporting the city are Democratic attorneys general (AGs) from New York, California, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia. Their joint Nov. 15 amicus brief argues their states also have experienced “profound and costly impacts from climate change.” They say the lower court's dismissal was wrong because the claim does not seek relief for emissions but “for marketing and selling defendants' environmentally harmful products, conduct which has not been regulated by federal common law.”
New York City announced July 26 it would appeal to the 2nd Circuit a July 19 ruling dismissing its nuisance suit -- which seeks damages from fossil fuel producers -- by Judge John Kennan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He was the second federal district judge to dismiss such a claim, after a judge in California dismissed a similar suit by San Francisco and Oakland. That order is also being appealed in the 9th Circuit.
However, a separate federal district judge in California agreed with plaintiffs in a third nuisance suit brought by San Mateo and other counties in the state, and ruled to return the case back to state court. Industry is appealing that decision.
In the 2nd Circuit, New York City is appealing both the dismissal and Kennan's determination that the case belonged in federal court and as such was preempted by the Clean Air Act. In its Nov. 8 brief, lawyers for the city said the lower court erred because Kennan misunderstood its allegations, and thus erroneously concluded that various federal law doctrines barred the city's claims. The city said its allegations “do not render this one of the extraordinary cases where state law must be displaced by federal common law.”
The Manufacturers Accountability Project (MAP) -- affiliated with the National Association of Manufacturers -- has formed to seek to halt what it calls frivolous expensive litigation, but the addition of the amici in the New York City case suggest that the fight is only going to grow.
'Particular Perspective'
The mayors' and cities' brief was written by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Michael Burger of the Sabin Center notes in a Nov. 16 blog post that the associations' members represent the majority of the nation's population and “have a particular perspective on the question of whether state or federal law applies.”
Burger cites the brief to note, “Local Government amici have an interest in the Court's proper recognition of the existence and availability of state common law claims for climate change impacts. The district court's conversion of Plaintiff's state common law claims to federal common law claims and the subsequent dismissal of those converted federal common law claims threatens to intrude upon municipal government's authority, within our federal system, to rely on state law to seek redress for harms that . . . arise in a significant part beyond their jurisdictions but nonetheless have highly localized impacts.”
The venue fight is particularly important because there are no state clean air laws that could preempt the filings, as the federal Clean Air Act does, since the Supreme Court held in 2007 that GHGs are a pollutant subject to EPA rules.
The industry defendants -- with the support of MAP -- have sought to move all of the cases from state courts to federal ones so they can cite the preemption claim and have the suits dismissed.
Also, GOP AGs have already supported the fossil companies in a 9th Circuit case where King County, WA, has asked that its nuisance suit be placed on hold until the court rules on the San Francisco and Oakland appeal. In this case, King County v. BP PLC, et atl., AGs from Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin asked the court to accept an Oct. 3 amicus brief.
In that filing, they argue that the justiciability of these suits is extraordinarily important to the states because allowing federal courts to require millions of dollars for climate abatement would “disrupt carefully calibrated state regulatory schemes devised by politically accountable officials,” and that the claims “would have impermissible extraterritorial impacts” because, “In effect, King County would be imposing limitations on commerce that takes place wholly outside King County's borders.”
'Critical Interests'
The Democratic states say in their filing that the district court's dismissal reflects the court's “incorrect view that federal law alone governs all actions touching on climate harms. Courts have consistently held otherwise, recognizing that States have not only critical interests in abating climate change and mitigating climate harms, but also authority to address those interests. Amici States already have adopted numerous measures to mitigate the dangers of a warming world, including carbon-trading programs, efficiency mandates, adaptation measures, and more.”
The AGs add: “Like the City’s common-law claims here, many of these measures impose mandates or responsibilities on contributors to climate change in order either to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions or to respond to their effects. The district court’s holding here would lead to the extraordinary conclusion that no law at all applies to the environmental harms caused by defendants’ allegedly tortious activities.”
Also supporting New York City is the Natural Resources Defense Council and environmental justice groups, which say in a Nov. 15 amicus brief that the devastating effect of fossil fuels on the well-being of New York City, where the poorest and most vulnerable have been especially harmed, “are concrete and measurable,” “unique” to the city and “can be straightforwardly remedied under” state common law. The filing also details the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in 2010.
A group of Yale law professors who are experts on legal conflicts add in a Nov. 15 amicus filing that the district court's holdings “are erroneous. First, the presumption against extraterritoriality does not apply to common law claims. . . . Likewise, the notion of 'judicial caution' invoked by the district court provides no basis for limiting the geographic scope of New York law. . . . Here, these is no state interference with any affirmative federal act. Standardless efforts by federal courts to narrow state common law torts, absent any guidance from the political branches, are the opposite of 'judicial caution.'”
Finally, New York University law professor Catherine Sharkey says in a separate Nov. 15 amicus brief that by externalizing the costs associated with consumption of fossil fuels, the companies “enjoy a subsidy that induces inefficient overconsumption and leaves injured parties without a remedy. Tort liability would reasonably have them internalize this cost, while also enabling the City to take cost-justified preventative effort to mitigate the impact of climate change going forward.” She says applying nuisance law here “represents a natural extension of longstanding theoretical and doctrinal principles of tort law.”
Similar nuisance cases have also been brought against oil majors by Boulder County, CO; Baltimore; Rhode Island; and most recently, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations Inc. The latest suit was the first nuisance claim brought by a private group
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/new-york-city-climate-nuisance-appeal-wins-support-states-mayors
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Trump Administration to Release Climate Report on Black Friday
Nov 21, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
A major report on climate change from the federal government will be released at 2 p.m. on Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a notice today.
The Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II, which will be released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, will be "an authoritative assessment of the impacts of climate change on the U.S. and its territories," according to that notice.
The report's release comes amid the Thanksgiving holidays, suggesting it may receive less media attention.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Rollbacks Stumbled in Court. His Successor Is More Thorough.
Nov 21, 2018 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Before resigning as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency this year, Scott Pruitt delighted President Trump with his zeal for proclaiming sweeping regulatory rollbacks, even though he left behind a trail of courtroom setbacks.
Andrew R. Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist whom Mr. Trump plans to nominate to lead the E.P.A., has been quietly cleaning up the mess.
Where virtually all of Mr. Pruitt’s hastily written rollbacks and suspensions have been blocked by the courts, Mr. Wheeler has taken a far more deliberative approach, immersing himself in the legal intricacies — a strategy that could make Mr. Wheeler one of the most effective drivers of the Trump administration’s ambitious plan to rewrite the nation’s rule book on the environment and climate.
“He’s done a fantastic job,” Mr. Trump said Friday of Mr. Wheeler, who has served as the E.P.A.’s acting administrator since Mr. Pruitt stepped down in July amid a wave of ethics scandals. Supporters say the White House sees in Mr. Wheeler the anti-Pruitt: drama-free, low-key, and, most importantly, able to get the proposed rollbacks through the courts.
Before resigning as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency this year, Scott Pruitt delighted President Trump with his zeal for proclaiming sweeping regulatory rollbacks, even though he left behind a trail of courtroom setbacks.
“I got phone calls from conservatives wanting to know, ‘Why did we do anything? Why are we putting forward a proposal at all?’” Mr. Wheeler acknowledged in an interview last week. His argument, that more restrictive replacement is better than killing off the climate regulation entirely, won the day.
Then, in August, the E.P.A. and the Transportation Department moved to gut another major federal effort to combat climate change by relaxing rules aimed at reducing car tailpipe pollution. The Trump administration plan also voided California’s ability to set its own, stricter standards, triggering a potentially ugly legal battle between Washington and blue states over the ability to fight global warming.
Mr. Wheeler, according to several people involved in the discussions, pushed back forcefully against an analysis used by highway officials to justify the rollback, which argued that stricter fuel pollution rules would cause thousands of deaths in road accidents. The agency argued thatmore efficient cars are less safe because they are lighter.
People who have attended meetings with Mr. Wheeler said he argued that the fatality numbers relied on bad calculations and were likely to be successfully challenged in court.
Mr. Wheeler on Friday denied that he had clashed with Jeffrey A. Rosen, the chief Transportation Department architect of the auto-standards rollback, saying he merely sought to understand his colleagues’ mathematical modeling and legal reasoning. “I wanted to make sure what we were putting forward would be upheld in the courts, and he assured me that the work they had done would be,” Mr. Wheeler said.
A department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said on Tuesday that there was “no dispute” between the agencies.
Mr. Wheeler’s predecessor, Mr. Pruitt, faced more than a dozen federal investigations into his conduct, including his extensive use of first-class air travel, renting a condo from the wife of an energy lobbyist with business before the E.P.A. and enlisting aides on personal tasks like buying a used mattress from Trump International Hotel and seeking a Chick-fil-A franchise for his wife.
The grandson of a coal miner and an Ohio native, Mr. Wheeler studied biology in college and got his first job after law school in the 1990s working at the E.P.A.’s office of pollution prevention and toxics. He later worked in the Senate for 14 years, most of that time for Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who has denied the established science of climate change.
During that time, Mr. Pruitt was seen as a protégé of Senator Inhofe. The senator last week said he strongly supported Mr. Wheeler’s nomination.
As an energy lobbyist since 2009, Mr. Wheeler’s top client was Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of one of the country’s largest coal companies, a fierce opponent of E.P.A. climate change regulations and a denier of established climate science.
Asked last week to describe his understanding of the best available science on global warming, Mr. Wheeler said: “I think climate change is happening. Man has an impact. CO2 has an impact.”
It’s not a full acceptance of the scientific consensus that humans are the dominant cause of rising global temperatures. But it’s closer to it than the positions of Mr. Pruitt, who falsely claimed that there was “tremendous disagreement” among scientists about how great a role humans play in driving warming, or Mr. Trump, who said “I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
Still, Mr. Wheeler argued, sweeping regulations, like the plan put forth by the Obama administration to force a shift toward renewable energy by asking states to reduce emissions from coal plants, would have “basically ended the coal industry in the United States.”
“People have to realize the use of coal worldwide has not peaked,” Mr. Wheeler said.
Since taking over as acting E.P.A. administrator, Mr. Wheeler has replaced Mr. Pruitt’s artwork of President James Madison with wall hangings of the Senate roll call vote for a highway spending bill he helped pass in 2005 and the bronze medals he earned for budgetary work at E.P.A. in the 1990s. He said he has not needed to use the $43,000 secure phone boothMr. Pruitt installed.
He also has made a point of being more deeply involved in the agency’s inner workings. He visited all 10 of the E.P.A.’s regional offices at the start of his tenure and has involved the agency’s longtime career employees in policy meetings, things Mr. Pruitt hadn’t done. Moves like these have won praise from some of Mr. Pruitt’s fiercest critics.
“He’s somebody that respects the institution of the E.P.A.,” Kevin Minoli, the E.P.A.’s former top ethics counsel who had called for investigations into Mr. Pruitt, said of Mr. Wheeler.
That hasn’t endeared him to environmental groups, however. In fact, many say Mr. Wheeler’s softer touch has made it harder to focus the public’s attention on his weakening of clean air and water laws.
“In some ways Pruitt distracted from some of the very negative things that were going on in environmental law, but in other ways there was a lot of attention being paid to E.P.A.,” said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental nonprofit organization.
Analysts on both sides say Mr. Wheeler is more pragmatic than his predecessor and more disciplined. Where Mr. Pruitt would throw his energy into ideological battles, like trying to create support for a military-style televised debate of climate science, Mr. Wheeler has eschewed the limelight and strategically focused on a handful of major policy initiatives.
Under Mr. Wheeler’s watch, the E.P.A. has moved forward with rolling back or weakening every major Obama-era climate change regulation. In addition to the proposal to loosen car pollution rules, those moves include replacing a landmark effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants with a plan that the agency says will see air pollution actually rise, and reducing limits on methane pollution, a powerful greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells.
He also has focused on work begun by Mr. Pruitt to revise Mr. Obama’s clean water regulation, known as the Waters of the United State rule, saying on Friday that the revisions “will be coming out soon.” He has taken on an effort to weaken and perhaps repeal a 2011 rule that limits mercury, a toxic chemical that is emitted from coal plants.
And, while he has pushed back to 2020 a plan initiated by Mr. Pruitt to impose broad new restrictions on the types of scientific research the E.P.A. uses to write regulations, he said he fully intended to finalize it. Emails obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, have found that Mr. Pruitt’s political staff excluded the E.P.A.’s chief science adviser from helping to design the rule. The group says the absence of scientists in the writing of the regulation undermined the administration’s argument that the proposal was done in the interest of science.
“Which is why we’re taking our time with it now,” Mr. Wheeler said. “It was proposed before I got here.”
However, under Mr. Wheeler, the E.P.A. also has eliminated the office of chief science adviser.
“By word and deed, Wheeler is proving to be as bad and dangerous as Pruitt,” said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Conservatives see Mr. Wheeler and his predecessor in a different light. Among them is Myron Ebell, who led Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. transition team. “Pruitt was an outstanding advocate for the Trump agenda, and now it’s up to Andy Wheeler to be the outstanding implementer of the Trump agenda,” Mr. Ebell said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/climate/andrew-wheeler-epa.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
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Key House Democrats Launch Early Scrutiny Of EPA Climate Rule Rollbacks
Nov 21, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Top Democrats on the House energy committee aren't waiting until they officially take control of the chamber in the next Congress before starting aggressive oversight of Trump EPA climate rule rollbacks -- an effort that appears to both signal plans for 2019 as well as preserve jurisdiction in the event that party leaders create a special climate panel.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who is expected to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 116th Congress, along with Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who is set to lead the oversight panel, and Paul Tonko (D-NY), likely chair of the environment panel, sent a Nov. 20 letter to acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler seeking detailed information from the agency about three high-profile measures to weaken Obama-era climate rules for power plants, vehicles and oil drilling.
Even before the party won a new majority in the Nov. 6 midterms, Capitol Hill watchers have said that a defining feature of the new Congress would be Democrats' close scrutiny of EPA's deregulatory agenda, with the goal of stopping, slowing or softening such rules.
But Democrats' climate oversight has been complicated by plans by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who is seeking to return as the next House speaker, to revive a special select committee on climate change that she created the last time Democrats took control of the House in 2007.
As before, Pelosi's plan has split the caucus, with committee leaders opposing the plan for fear it would limit their jurisdiction -- though the last time the panel existed it lacked legislative power.
For example, Pallone, along with Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is expected to chair the Natural Resources Committee, and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who is expected to chair the science committee, have already questioned the need to create the select climate panel at all, arguing that committees with jurisdiction over climate issues already have “champions” poised to lead in the upcoming Congress.
They have also signaled a blitz of hearings on climate risk and mitigation options in early January when the party assumes control of the chamber.
Pallone's new letter could be an attempt to prove that he will move quickly on climate policy once he takes over the gavel of the energy committee.
But the issue has been heated, with incoming freshman-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) urging Pelosi to give the select committee legislative powers so that it can craft a “Green New Deal” that would seek to set aggressive renewable energy targets.
Some Democrats have even urged Pelosi to make Ocasio-Cortez the special committee's chair, though observers believe Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) will lead the panel as he was the second-ranking Democrat when the panel last existed.
Now Pallone and two of his likely subcommittee chairs are again signaling they plan to hit the ground running with their oversight of EPA's deregulatory actions. “The tragic human and financial costs of unchecked climate change are high and increasing fast, and unfortunately the Administration's actions for the past two years are only exacerbating these conditions,” their letter says.
Range Of Complains
The lawmakers cite a range of complaints with EPA's narrow replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, its proposal to freeze vehicle greenhouse gas standards at model year 2020 levels and its plan to weaken methane rules for new oil and gas equipment.
“Combined, the Administration's rollbacks willfully turn a blind eye to the dangers of climate change, putting American communities at risk and diverting EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment,” the letter says.
The Democrats then ask EPA to provide by Dec. 4 a range of supporting documents related to the proposed rules.
For example, they ask for “presentations, briefings and any memorandums” regarding the agency's modeling to support light-duty vehicle GHG rules, and how such modeling compares with other modeling results conducted by the Transportation Department (DOT). They also ask for “an explanation” of why EPA has not posted its own modeling publicly.
Regarding the power sector proposal, the lawmakers focus on one aspect of the rule that eases new source review (NSR) permitting requirements for plants that make efficiency upgrades to comply with the climate rule.
Specifically, they ask for materials summarizing “estimated actual annual emissions of air pollution” under the proposed NSR changes, the number of plants that EPA anticipates would make efficiency upgrades due to the NSR changes, and a list of meetings, phone calls or email exchanges that then-Administrator Scott Pruitt made regarding the NSR issue.
Finally, regarding EPA's proposal to weaken 2016 new source performance standards for the oil and gas sector, the lawmakers seek materials that “summarize the climate and public health effects” of decreasing the frequency of methane leak monitoring.
Such materials should include discussion of impacts to “vulnerable populations like children, the elderly, outdoor workers, and minority communities.”
Oversight Agenda
While the internal Democratic squabble could be a factor in the letter's timing, it could also have more a prosaic explanation. One former Hill staffer earlier told Inside EPA that Democrats' oversight hearings could happen as soon as January, in cases where information for such proceedings is already available.
However, oversight that requires procuring new documents could take longer. As such, the recent letter could be an attempt to jumpstart negotiations for documents that the lawmakers likely know will take several weeks.
A host of EPA deregulatory policies are slated to be finished in March, including the power plant GHG rule and a new rule defining the scope of Clean Water Act jurisdiction, meaning Democrats must act quickly if they hope to shine a spotlight on those measures.
EPA and DOT are also publicly planning to finalize the vehicle GHG and fuel economy rule rollback in March, though many observers suggest that timeline is likely to slip.
The former Hill staffer calls the vehicle regulations a “classic example” of an area where lawmakers are likely to want to delve into the details of how officials decided to craft the proposal, given widely reported EPA objections to its contents. Those include EPA staff objections to the modeling assumptions behind the plan during the interagency process, and the freezing out of EPA technical staff to the extent that the agency asked to have its name removedfrom the rule's regulatory impact analysis.
Even so, a former GOP Hill staffer argued that Democrats will have "zero ability to affect the agenda and only a modest ability to affect the result. I am reasonably certain the current agenda is going to continue. At the end of the day, without the Senate, they are not going to be able to pass anything, they are not going to be able to block anything . . . I guess [the oversight] does affect things, sure, but it's on the margins.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/key-house-democrats-launch-early-scrutiny-epa-climate-rule-rollbacks
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The Face of the Green New Deal (She's Not Who You Think)
Nov 21, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
She's only in her 20s, and she's already the face of an ambitious push for Congress to tackle climate change.
Thinking of Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a rising star in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party at just 29 years old?
Think again. Her name is Varshini Prakash, and at 25 years old, she serves as the co-founder and leader of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-driven grassroots effort to hold elected leaders accountable for a warming planet.
"It's fundamentally about the future that our generation wants to grow up in," Prakash said in a recent interview. "We see this fight as being about our right to access good jobs and a livable future."
The Sunrise Movement has made waves with its backing of the "Green New Deal," a progressive plan to wean the United States off fossil fuels, boost renewables and build a "smart" grid (Greenwire, Nov. 16).
The group has lofty demands: It wants to revive a select committee on global warming in the House, which could produce draft Green New Deal legislation by 2020. It also wants incoming Democratic lawmakers to sign a pledge that they won't accept fossil fuel money.
To build consensus around these ideas, the group staged protests this month in the offices of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey (Greenwire, Nov. 16). Activists visited dozens of additional Democratic offices across the country yesterday, from New Hampshire to California.
But not everyone's on board. Disagreement is festering within the Democratic Party about the best way to address climate change in the next Congress, let alone to pass climate legislation — no small feat with Republicans controlling the White House and the Senate.
Prakash was born and raised outside of Boston by parents who originally hail from India. She attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she led the UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign, which declared victory after a two-week peaceful protest. She supported the creation of the Sunrise Movement this spring and now serves as lead spokeswoman.
E&E News recently spoke with Prakash about making big demands, staving off the "climate crisis" and battling for the "heart and soul of the Democratic Party."
Why did you decide to storm Pelosi's office?
During the week preceding this action, there were massive fires happening in California. Forty-eight people had perished. Entire towns had been leveled. And the U.N. report on climate had come out, saying we have just 12 years to radically transform our economy and society at scale to stop the climate crisis.
So a lot of us were really frustrated after the Democrats took back the House, when we heard Nancy Pelosi endorsing this bipartisan marketplace of ideas and saying she was going to revive this committee on climate change but not making other promises. It felt like this was grossly inadequate to address the climate crisis at hand. So we chose to do an action targeting Nancy Pelosi in order to say that we need our leaders to step up significantly on climate.
What was your experience of the protest like?
It was inspiring; it was emotional; it was moving. There were over 200 young leaders there, ranging from 17 to 35. It was so moving to see what young people are willing to do today to actually take action to stop the climate crisis.
Oh, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to our action. It was really meaningful for the young people who were there to see someone who had walked the halls of power encouraging us and lending her support.
Do you support Pelosi's bid to become House speaker again?
Well, we're still figuring that out a little bit. Our line right now is that we really want Nancy Pelosi to back a resolution that was put forward by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to create a new committee called the House Select Committee for a Green New Deal.
What do you mean exactly by a "Green New Deal"?
Not everybody agrees on what it means. But to me and to Sunrise, when we talk about a Green New Deal, we're talking about the massive transformation of our society and our economy that we will need to stop the climate crisis and act in accordance with what science and justice demand over the next 10 years.
That looks like a rapid wartime economic mobilization that gets us to a 100 percent renewable energy economy. It looks like ending fossil fuel subsidies. It looks like supporting the creation of tens of millions of good-paying jobs for Americans. And it looks like massive reinvestment in communities on the front lines of the climate crisis: communities of color and low-income communities. It would also include energy efficiency and retrofitting of businesses and homes.
It sounds like it includes a lot.
The list just goes on and on. It's a huge, massive undertaking. And a lot of this stuff sounds scary and technical and overwhelming. But the basic value underpinning a Green New Deal is that all people have a right to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from chaos, harm and violence. That is fundamentally what the Green New Deal is about, and that is fundamentally what we believe all people should have a right to on this planet.
Is the term supposed to remind people of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal?
It does harken back to that. I would say it has some significant upgrades. It inherently includes equity and justice at its core.
Would you like to see a Green New Deal folded into a broader infrastructure bill, or would that be too watered down?
I think that would be a great first step. If a massive infrastructure bill didn't include a climate component, I think that would be truly negligent. But also I think we can do more.
How do you envision the Select Committee for a Green New Deal functioning?
One of the issues with the committee that Pelosi has proposed is that it would be pretty toothless. It would have no actual funding. It would have no power to draft legislation. But the resolution that Ocasio-Cortez has put forward would give this committee the power to actually draft legislation and build more of the political consensus around what the real solutions to the crisis are.
So the committee would work on the first major climate legislation since the Waxman-Markey bill in 2009.
Right. Here's the thing: The last time that Democrats even made a major move to pass climate policy legislation was in 2009. That was almost a decade ago. I think I was 14 years old at the time. And we have seen nothing significant — especially nothing at the actual scale and scope of the crisis — since then.
What do you make of Rep. Frank Pallone's opposition to the committee?
Frankly, we don't trust Pallone's leadership at this time because he's taken over $100,000 from fossil fuel PACs [political action committees]. It feels hard to trust someone who takes money from the industry and who doesn't seem to be supporting a committee that would actually address the issue at scale.
In addition to supporting the committee, you're also asking lawmakers to refuse donations from the fossil fuel industry. How politically feasible are your demands, given that Republicans control the Senate and the White House?
With the committee, we're not planning on trying to ramrod any legislation through or anything like that, especially considering that Trump's the president and Republicans have the Senate. But we do think that it's imperative that we lay the groundwork now, given the timeline that we're working on.
You've mentioned Ocasio-Cortez as a champion of your issues. Which other new Democratic members are you excited about?
Sunrise actually endorsed 30 candidates this election cycle, and 19 of them won. All of them have taken the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, and all of them support aggressively working to stop the climate crisis. We're especially excited about incoming first-years like Deb Haaland [of New Mexico], Ilhan Omar [of Minnesota] and Ayanna Pressley [of Massachusetts].
We are really excited to engage with Ocasio-Cortez and others in this battle, which is really the battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Sunrise sees itself as a part of that, as pushing the party to first and foremost become a party of the people, not just of wealthy interests, and pushing the party to actually protect the interests of all working people — black, brown and white — for generations to come.
Are there any Republicans you think your group or your members could work with?
Potentially, yeah. We haven't had any come through the woodwork right now. And I think we'd need them to really back a Green New Deal or back a transition at the scale that we need. We haven't seen that yet. But I am definitely not putting it out of the picture.
Where are you from originally?
I'm from Boston. My family is from India, but I'm from Boston.
How old are you?
I'm 25.
Do some people take you less seriously because you're so young?
[Laughs] Definitely. I mean, they all do, yeah. Being young, being a woman, being a woman of color. All of those things add up. But it doesn't really stop me because fundamentally we need to do everything in our power to change this world. And that's just where I'm at.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/11/21/stories/1060107185
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New Technology, Transparency Will Soon Tie Air Pollution Back to Brands
Nov 21, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Aileen Nowlan
Most businesses contribute to air pollution in some way through their operations and supply chains. They use fossil fuels to heat and cool buildings, to keep restaurant stoves lit and machines operating. Their delivery vehicles and airplane transports release harmful gases that pollute communities and the atmosphere.
Until recently, such impacts could be easily dismissed as someone else’s problem, but sensor and satellite technology that is making pollution sources more visible – and actionable – is changing the landscape.
Businesses today have a choice: Get ahead of pollution problems and gain the added benefits that come with a proactive environmental stance, or risk eventual exposure that can prove detrimental to the bottom line.
Fortunately, technology is shining a spotlight on a problem that can be solved.
Is that pollution hot spot yours?
Pilot programs are now collecting data on local hot spots in cities such as Oakland, Houston and London. Today, technology that can detect air pollution is made available to citizens, cities and companies – and new innovations are coming to market almost daily. Open source data analytics is also democratizing knowledge about pollution sources.
Altogether, this progress means that health and economic impacts from air pollution will soon be traced to fleets and individual locations.
It also means that companies will be able to use this data to measure their impact and take action to reduce their emissions footprint. Those companies will be able to show investors, employees, communities and customers the benefits from cleaner air.
Getting ahead of the game
Tackling air pollution offers a 2-for-1 benefit. Leading brands today are already taking steps to invest in renewable energy and clean transportation, and to cut emissions from their supply chains – efforts that could help alleviate air pollution, if done right.
There are steps companies of any size can take to join access to this leader club.
· Do an energy audit, invest in energy efficiency, and electrify building heat sources.
· Invest in renewables or purchase energy from clean energy providers.
· Work with your supply chain to set science-based targets, adopt best practices, and measure and report progress.
· Partner with other companies, utilities, communities and governments to innovate, create infrastructure; and to show demand for heavy-duty vehicle electrification.
Sounds like a good challenge, doesn’t it?
https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/11/21/new-technology-transparency-will-soon-tie-air-pollution-back-brands
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