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ACC AM 27/11/18

Industry and Association News

Chemists Like to Experiment, Just Not with Opening Peer Review
Nov 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Andrea Widener

Peer review almost pushed Ulrich Pöschl to leave science.
The New Congress Wants to End the War on Science
Nov 27, 2018 | Bloomberg Quint
By Claire Suddath

Since 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency has been scrubbing its websites of information related to climate change.

LCSA News

EPA's PV29 Assessment Likely To Test Reformed TSCA's Data Standards
Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad

EPA's recently released draft assessment of pigment violet 29 (PV29), the first such study of an existing chemical under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is likely to pose a test of the new law's data standards as environmentalists and others doubt the agency has enough information on which to base its conclusion that the substance does not pose an “unreasonable risk.”
Senate Schedules Dunn Nomination Hearing Amid Potential EPA Shifts
Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins

The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) will hold a 29 November hearing and vote on the nomination of Alexandra Dapolito Dunn to the role of assistant administrator of the EPA.

Chemical Management News

Oehha Extends Deadline on Prop 65 Reprotox Exposure Consultation
Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has further extended the deadline for its consultation on calculating exposure to chemicals causing reproductive toxicity under Proposition 65 to 3 December.
California Eyes PCBTF Prop 65 Listing, Adds Two Others
Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has added gentian violet and N-nitrosohexamethyleneimine to its list of Proposition 65 carcinogens, and signalled its intent to likewise list the solvent para-chlorobenzotrifluoride (PCBTF).
Pending Settlement Could End Suits Over GenX Discharges
Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

Days after EPA proposed strict risk levels for GenX, the perfluorinated compound, chemical manufacturer Chemours has preliminarily agreed to a $13 million settlement with North Carolina officials and environmentalists, a step that could end state and federal litigation the plaintiffs had filed over releases of the substance into a local river.
Community Doubts EPA Reversal on Chicago-Area EtO Facility's Risk
Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

EPA's quiet announcement that it may have overstated the amount of ethylene oxide (EtO) in the air near a Sterigenics sterilizing facility in the Chicago-area is doing little to assuage community concerns, with one local group continuing to raise concerns over the risks.
Brexit Divorce Deal Gives Chemical Companies Two-Year Reprieve on Trade (1)
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim

U.K. chemical companies will trade freely with the European Union until at least the end of 2020 under the Brexit divorce deal, but the big question is whether British lawmakers will approve the landmark agreement Dec. 11.

Energy News

How American Fracking Changes the World
Nov 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal - Opinion
By Walter Russell Mead

The most important news in world politics this month isn’t about diplomacy.
Vote on FERC Pick to Go On Despite Dems' Attempts to Delay
Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Jeremy Dillon

Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday sought to delay today's confirmation vote on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission nominee Bernard McNamee.
Carlyle Expands Bet on New England Power by Buying Plants
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Eckhouse and Christopher Martin

Carlyle Group LP is boosting its bet on New England, where the wholesale electricity market rose 20 percent last year to $9.1 billion.
Ohio May Expand Emissions Rules for Unconventional Oil, Natural Gas Ops
Nov 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) is seeking input on potential rules that would expand air emissions rules for both existing and new unconventional oil and gas facilities that aren’t already covered by general permits for midstream and upstream equipment.
Chevron: Oil, Gas Flowing at Mile-Deep Field Off New Orleans
Nov 27, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)

Chevron Corp. says it is now getting oil and natural gas from a floating platform tethered in nearly a mile of water off New Orleans.
Pa. Supreme Court to Hear 'Rule of Capture' Case
Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King

Pennsylvania's highest court will soon consider a legal dispute with big implications for operators in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale.
N.M. Governor-Elect to Scrutinize New Wells in Methane 'Hot Spot'
Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee

New Mexico's new governor may have a chance to reverse a regulatory decision that'll allow more drilling in the San Juan Basin, an aging oil and gas field that's notorious for its greenhouse gas emissions.
'Break It Apart': Politicians Rail Against Mass. Gas Company
Nov 27, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
By Philip Marcelo

Congress members called for executives at the utility company to blame for September's natural gas explosions and fires in Massachusetts to step down as they held a special hearing yesterday into the disaster.
EU Power Sector Says it Can Hit Paris Climate Goal Five Years Early (1)
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jesper Starn

All European electricity generation can be virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, five years before a target set in the Paris climate agreement, a power industry group said.

Chemical Security News

(ACC Blog) Chemical Security: Unfinished Business in Washington is Risky Business
Nov 26, 2018 | American Chemistry Matters

There are many things Congress must address before it is set to adjourn but none can be more urgent than passing legislation to preserve one of the nation’s most important anti-terrorism programs, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS).
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Should Appoint Chemical Safety Board Chair, Legislators and Industry Representatives Say
Nov 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson

A mix of chemical industry representatives and Republican leaders in Congress are calling for the White House to appoint a chairperson to lead the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
No Answers Yet to Gas Leak That Disrupted Bridge Traffic
Nov 26, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

Officials are trying to determine what caused a chemical gas leak that forced the temporary closure of a heavily used bridge connecting Delaware and New Jersey on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Environment News

Trump Rejects His Government’s Warning on Climate Change Costs
Nov 27, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

President Donald Trump dismissed U.S. government scientists’ predictions that climate change will impose devastating domestic economic costs.
Rules, Money and the U.S.: What to Watch at UN Climate Talks
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anna Hirtenstein, Ewa Krukowska and Mathew Carr

Envoys from almost 200 countries will convene next week in Katowice, Poland, for an annual conference on reining in global warming.
How Trump Is Ensuring That Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Rise
Nov 26, 2018 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman

President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy.
Republicans Say They Want Free-Market Innovation. Then They Should Want a Carbon Tax.
Nov 26, 2018 | The Washington Post - Opinion
By Catherine Rampell

Republicans’ latest excuse for ignoring climate change — like all their other excuses — gets the problem exactly backward.
Drax Fires Up Europe’s First Biomass Carbon Capture Project
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy Hodges

Drax Group Plc started Europe’s first carbon capture and storage project using bioenergy at its Yorkshire power station Nov. 26, with the first emissions expected to be siphoned away within weeks.
Barclays and BNP Lead Banks Backing UN Principles on Environment
Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy Hodges

A group of 28 banks with combined assets of $17 trillion have signed up to a United Nations effort to make lenders more accountable for the impacts their businesses have on the environment and society.
Environmental Litigation Reform Going on the Back Burner
Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Ellen M. Gilmer

The House Judiciary Committee will have a whole new look next year.
Public Land Drilling Contributes a Quarter of All Greenhouse Gas Emissions in US: Report
Nov 26, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green

Drilling on public lands contributes nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to a new Trump administration report.
Banned Greenhouse Gas Resurges as Others Reach Record Highs
Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare

As the country digests the latest federal report warning that climate change could shrink the economy and threaten Americans' lifestyle, another report has found that reducing planet-warming emissions may be even more daunting than expected.
Former CASAC Members Fault EPA's 'Harmful' Shortened NAAQS Review
Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker

Former members of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) are attacking what they say is the agency's “harmful” decision to shorten its national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) review process, warning that it will weaken CASAC's input on the standards and undermine the quality of its advice and its reputation.
Federal Climate Study Gives GHG Rule Backers New Political, Legal Tools
Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey

The Trump administration's recently released national assessment outlining increasingly serious effects from climate change is giving critics fresh political ammunition to challenge officials' efforts to dismiss the issue, and could also provide legal fodder for those fighting EPA's various climate rule rollbacks.
EPA Proposes Relaxing Wood Stove Rules
Nov 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly

EPA is moving to aid the wood stove industry.

Industry and Association News

Chemists Like to Experiment, Just Not with Opening Peer Review

Nov 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Andrea Widener

Peer review almost pushed Ulrich Pöschl to leave science. About 20 years ago, Pöschl, a chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, was frustrated after reading yet another almost incoherent article in a peer-reviewed journal. The review system was supposed to improve good scientific studies and weed out bad ones before they were published. “Peer review was not really achieving what you would hope,” Pöschl says. Feeling disheartened, he says, “I was really almost about to quit science.”
Instead of dropping out, Pöschl funneled his frustration into action. In 2001, he brought together several colleagues to create one of the first science journals to use a system called open peer review. Traditional anonymous reviews are shared only with a paper’s editors and authors, but this new system aimed to be more transparent. The journal Pöschl helped launch, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, also allows authors to open their paper up for public comments.
Pöschl’s motivation “was really the desire to improve the flow of information between reviewers, authors, and readers,” he says. “Everyone would have more information to move forward.”
Dissatisfaction with the traditional peer review system has only grown since. It has prompted an increasing number of scientists and journals to experiment with ways to improve peer review. Many of these experiments focus on open peer review, which makes the process more transparent, both to authors and to the public. Some of the most prominent participating publications include the journals F1000Research and Nature Communications.
With open peer review, “we can assure ourselves that the quality-assurance process at journals is what we say it is,” says Tony Ross-Hellauer, who studies peer review and open science at the Know-Center, an Austrian data company.
Skeptics say that no one knows whether peer review is really broken because it hasn’t been studied enough. What’s needed, they say, is a change in the incentive system to improve reviews themselves by rewarding overworked reviewers for participating.
Many chemists are skeptical. They think the traditional peer review system is working well, or at least well enough. Only a handful of the hundreds of chemistry journals have experimented with new peer review paradigms, compared with dozens in biology and medicine. And surveys have shown that chemists are among the scientists least likely to support changes to peer review. C&EN asked experts why that might be.
Research journals are one of the fundamental ways scientists communicate with one another. Beginning in the 1940s, journals began employing primarily anonymous peer review, in which a paper’s authors can see reviews but do not know who reviewed their paper. The reviews are never shared publicly.A STEP-BY-STEP LOOK AT THE ROAD TO OPEN PEER REVIEW
▸ 1999: The journal BMJ (still the British Medical Journal at the time) reveals reviewers’ names to authors.
▸ 2000: BioMed Central and its associated journals include reviewer names and prepublication history with published articles.
▸ 2001: Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics opens papers for public comments before formal peer review.
▸ 2006: The journal Biology Directreveals reviewers’ names and publishes their reports with articles.
▸ 2010: The molecular-biology-focused EMBO Journal publishes the review process and editors’ names with articles.
▸ 2012: Several journals launch with different open peer review models, including the biomedical science journals eLife and F1000Research.
▸ 2014: BMJ becomes fully open, publishing both reviewers’ names and reports.
▸ 2015: Nature Communicationslaunches an experiment that allows authors to publish anonymous reviews with their papers. It decides to make the experiment permanent the following year.
▸ 2018: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and ASAPbio convene a conference on peer review to discuss alternatives to the current system.
Sources: F1000’s 2015 “Guide to Open Science Publishing,” C&EN
But peer review in that form, some say, leaves something to be desired. Critics say the anonymity of reviewers encourages bad behavior: Without the fear of consequences, some reviewers include harsh language in their evaluations; they unfairly attack scientific competitors, and they discriminate, either consciously or unconsciously, against women and minority scientists. What’s more, the secrecy of the traditional peer review system prevents the public from understanding and trusting science, detractors contend. The increasing prominence of the open access movement—some scientists, funders, and members of the public who advocate that all published papers be immediately and freely available—has also brought a push for greater transparency in peer review.
Definitions of open peer review vary widely, but most are talking about two things: open reports and open identities. “Open reports” means that anonymous reviews are published along with an accepted paper. “Open identities” means that reviewers’ names are published along with a paper. Journals conducting open peer review experiments could be sharing reports or identities or both, and these disclosures are made either automatically or if an author opts in.
One prominent example of a journal practicing open review is F1000Research, a biosciences journal that requires open reports and open identities. The journal was founded in 2012 by publishing entrepreneur Vitek Tracz with the aim of “removing the mystery behind editorial decision-making,” says Rebecca Lawrence, managing director of F1000, which publishes F1000Research.
Papers submitted to F1000Research are automatically accepted if they pass a series of preliminary checks to confirm the authors’ identities and scan for plagiarism, among other things. Then the review process begins. Flipping peer review to the end of the process changes the way both authors and reviewers interact with the reports, Lawrence says. “It is much more helping the author improve the quality of the article rather than an antagonistic type of process.”
Revealing reviewers’ names also helps avoid many of the issues that plague anonymous reviews, such as disparaging remarks about the experiments, Lawrence says. Reviewers won’t say such bad things if their names are attached to their evaluations, she says.
Another example is Nature Communications, a multidisciplinary journal that, since 2015, has allowed authors to decide whether to publish reviews with their accepted papers. About 60% of authors agree to publish their anonymous reviews, says Magdalena Skipper, editor in chief of Nature and former editor of Nature Communications, both published by Nature Research.
That doesn’t hold across all scientific disciplines, however. Nature Communications lost several regular reviewers in chemistry when it decided to make reviews open, and most chemists decline to publish reviews of their papers, she says.
Related: Grad school, in students' own words
Still, Skipper thinks that peer review is evolving. Nature tried an open peer review experiment in 2006, which failed when only 5% of authors opted in. “There was essentially no appetite for this,” Skipper says. But attitudes toward open peer review are changing. Now “we are actually in very active discussions about extending this transparent peer review system” to other Naturepublications, including the flagship journal, she says.
Whatever it decides, Nature will not make open reports mandatory or require that reviewers reveal their names. “What guides us in our thinking is the understanding of the needs of the different communities,” Skipper says. “I’m in favor of there being a choice. It is rare that in any walk of life one size fits all.”OPEN REPORTS AND IDENTITIES
In February, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and ASAPbio—a nonprofit organization that advocates for change in scientific publishing—convened approximately 90 scientists, advocates, and journal editors to talk about the future of peer review.
A poll taken at the meeting showed great support for open reports, with over 80% of attendees agreeing that peer review reports should be published.
Open reports can be helpful for many reasons. At Nature Communications, even though reports are available, few people look at them. “But for those who are really interested, that information can be instructive,” Skipper says. Reading them can be excellent training for young researchers learning to write reviews. Researchers working in the same subject area can benefit from reviewers’ detailed critiques of previous experiments. Openness is also helpful if a paper ever undergoes scrutiny for research misconduct or fraud, because people can see the discussion between reviewers and authors.
Ronald Vale, a University of California, San Francisco, biochemist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, hopes more openness can also prevent the erosion of the public’s view of science. “This is good for science overall,” says Vale, who is also president of the board of directors of ASAPbio.
Attendees at the February meeting were less convinced about the value of publishing reviewers’ identities. This finding is in line with survey results published by the Know-Center’s Ross-Hellauer and colleagues last year (PLOS One 2017, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189311). That online survey of over 3,000 scientists showed that 60% of researchers believe open reports should be published by more journals.
How various scientists view peer review
Data from one online survey of over 3,000 primarily European scientists show how different disciplines view peer review.
But slightly over 50% of respondents say that open identities would make peer review worse, primarily because they fear junior researchers would be unable to give candid feedback on a senior author’s paper without fear of retaliation. At F1000Research, Lawrence says she’s seen more support than retaliation for critical reviews by young scientists, but she recognizes the problem. “We shouldn’t be condoning senior researchers reacting to junior researchers’ criticisms in such a way as to cause harm. We need to improve the way we interact with each other,” she says.
After the meeting, ASAPbio Executive Director Jessica K. Polka, Vale, and other colleagues published a commentary in Nature calling for journals to publish anonymous reviews (Nature 2018, DOI: 10.1038/d41586-018-06032-w). So far, over 300 journals, predominantly those in the medical and biomedical fields, have signed a letter agreeing to publish reviews.
Still, the scientific community isn’t ready to make the same call for open identities. After peer review experiments have been running longer, “the culture of peer review may start to change so more people may feel comfortable having their identity revealed,” Vale says.
Overall, the conference confirmed that “there is a lot of interest in making peer review work the best that it can,” Polka says. “Peer review plays such an important role in science and the basic knowledge we are building up over time.”CRITICS AND CREDIT
Not everyone is advocating for science to move toward a new, more open system of peer review, though. Flaminio Squazzoni, a sociologist at the University of Brescia, in Italy, says scientists are advocating for open peer review without really studying it first.
“There are a lot of negative positions about peer review that are not well founded,” says Squazzoni, who has spent the last few years leading a group of scientists studying peer review. “It is not true that peer review doesn’t work. It is not true that it is dramatically biased.”
In 2014, Squazzoni founded the European Union-funded group Peere to help scientists study peer review—both the traditional system and experimental ones. The group has worked with journals to get access to data documenting their peer review experiments.
Squazzoni’s biggest concern with open peer review systems is that they might be driving out scientists who would normally be critical of studies. These are the people you want policing the quality of science, Squazzoni contends.
“Transparency is a positive, but there are other values that need to be considered,” he says. “It is very important that we don’t lose people because of the model we endorse.”
Scientists should be studying peer review experiments, Squazzoni says, but they should also spend more time looking at the current incentive system for reviews. “We can gain more by changing incentives around peer review than by changing the different models of peer review.”
Right now, “peer review at its base is an altruistic community action,” the Know-Center’s Ross-Hellauer points out. Scientists volunteer to serve as reviewers, whether it’s because they believe in community service or they want to improve the scientific literature, he says.
Related: Reviewers and editors favor scientific papers from those of their gender or nationality, study says
But journals often have trouble finding enough reviewers. A report on the state of peer review found that the number of review requests that scientists receive is increasing, even though the current system doesn’t give them credit for their volunteer work. Squazzoni says peer review might be improved if publishers and employers acknowledged reviewers for their efforts.
One idea is to incorporate credit for reviewing papers into tenure and promotion evaluations. The website Publons helps scientists track when they have reviewed papers for a particular journal, says Andrew Preston, cofounder of the website. And scientists are interested in getting credit for their work. Publons has registered more than 500,000 researchers who have collectively reviewed over 3 million papers.
Currently, the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal RSC Advances has the third most reviews on Publons’s site, in part because RSC has integrated Publons citations into its review system, Preston says. That shows him chemists are interested in getting recognition for their reviews. But Publons hasn’t caught on in the larger chemistry community. “I see the field of chemistry as being more traditional,” he says.WHY CHEMISTS ARE SKEPTICAL
Chemists’ conservatism extends beyond explicitly getting credit for reviewing papers. Surveys consistently show that chemists are more skeptical than other scientists about changing how peer review works.
In Ross-Hellauer’s survey, biologists and life scientists were more accepting of open peer review than chemists. “The differences in research cultures are very real,” he says.ADVERTISEMENT

The American Chemical Society, which publishes over 50 chemistry journals, is keeping a close eye on open peer review experiments but hasn’t jumped in yet, says Sarah Tegen, ACS’s vice president for global journals development. ACS publishes C&EN.
While ACS is constantly working to make its peer review system better, it hasn’t yet seen the chemistry community call for a shift away from the traditional approach, she says. “If people were beating down my door, I would say let’s go ahead.”
No surveys show why chemists might be more skeptical of open peer review than other fields. Nature’s Skipper thinks that the problem is not a fear of innovation, because she has seen chemists embrace other innovations, such as social media.
Fields like genomics and high-energy physics, with large, shared data sets, are forced to collaborate and tend to be more amenable to open peer review than chemists, F1000’s Lawrence says.
Another explanation for chemists’ skepticism of peer review experiments could be the highly competitive nature of chemistry. Keeping your work secret “is a way of generating advantage,” Squazzoni suggests.
Or the reason might be that there has been no real driver for change. “It could just be inertia in terms of shaking up the system,” says Johns Hopkins University chemistry professor J. D. Tovar, who studies organic semiconductors. “I haven’t had any issues that would cause me to rethink or revisit the philosophy behind peer review.”
As more chemists learn about open peer review, they might want to try new things. Skipper says she has watched the broader scientific community move toward more transparency in publishing with great satisfaction, especially in light of concerns about reproducibility and the public’s increasing skepticism of science. As part of that, journals have required researchers to deposit data in public portals and more openly disclose conflicts of interest, Skipper says.
“Just as we expect and request transparency from researchers, we should offer that parallel transparency in our own process.”
With additional reporting from Tien Nguyen.

https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Chemists-like-experiment-just-opening/96/i47

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The New Congress Wants to End the War on Science

Nov 27, 2018 | Bloomberg Quint

By Claire Suddath

Since 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency has been scrubbing its websites of information related to climate change. The agency took its main climate change website offline in April 2017, and systematically deleted the term “climate change” from sites on which the concept had been discussed. The agency also eliminated the role of science advisor, proposed new guidelines that would severely limit the agency’s ability to craft scientifically sound regulations, and disbanded two panels of air pollutant experts—at a time when the EPA is also reviewing its emissions policies.
But the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has jurisdiction over the EPA, will soon be in new hands. Democrats won back control of the chamber in the midterm elections, and they’re ready to fight. On Nov. 6, the day of the vote, Eddie Bernice Johnson, the ranking Democrat widely expected to become the committee’s next chair, issued a statement promising to protect “scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks,” even if it means directly challenging the president. “We’ve gotten way off course by trying to stifle researchers and their research,” Johnson later said in an email to Bloomberg Businessweek. “I intend to get us back on track.”

She faces an uphill and largely lonely battle. Under the Trump administration, many federal agencies have already removed, redacted, or discontinued collecting an enormous amount of data on topics ranging from violent crime to animal welfare. Gone from the internet are training manuals for Immigration Services employees tasked with vetting asylum seekers, and documents designed to help the National Park Service deal with issues such as sea level rise. The Department of the Interior last year scrapped two ongoing studies, one on the health effects of “mountaintop mining” and another on oil rig workers’ safety. Action can’t be taken if no one knows what needs to be done. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“You’re seeing reports of data being removed in piecemeal fashion,” says Michael Gusmano, a health-care policy research scholar at the Hastings Institute, an independent bioethics research institute. “But if you pull them all together, there is a pattern of systematically eliminating information—or the posting of that information—by government agencies that, in my view, is part of a broader strategy, a desire to change the role of the federal government with regard to the dissemination of facts.”
Databases and wonky policy reports rarely inspire attention-grabbing headlines. But counting, measuring, and comparing the myriad social, economic and scientific minutiae of the country is one of the most fundamental services the federal government provides. More than 125 government agencies are dedicated to collecting and disseminating information; 13 of them focus primarily on statistics. They log everything from the amount of oil produced in the U.S. each year to how many fatal car accidents occurred in 2016 in Maine. (That would be 161.)
This information is vital to policymakers. “States and agencies rely on federal information. They use it to know where to put roads so they don’t flood, or how to protect people from potential pandemics,” says Michael Halpern, deputy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that advocates for scientifically informed government policies. “Overall, what we’re seeing is a low-information approach to government.”
Agencies that have adopted this new antagonistic attitude toward information have two different possible approaches to making it harder to find. The first is simple: just stop collecting it. For example, last year, the Office of Management and Budget scrapped an Obama-era rule that would have required businesses to report employees’ salaries to the government, broken down by race and gender. That way, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would know if businesses had systemic pay gaps based on gender. With the rule rescinded, the department won’t know if or when companies skirt the law prohibiting pay discrimination. At the time, the OMB wrote in a memo to the EEOC that it was “concerned” about aspects of the rule, including its potential to infringe corporate confidentiality and the “practical utility” of the data collected.
The second method is to discontinue longstanding information-sharing practices. In July, for example, the Department of Education ended its 18-year-long practice of routinely disclosing to state attorneys general and law enforcement agencies complaints about schools or student loans filed by students. “They were claims that schools misrepresented their accreditation status, costs of their programs, or job placement rates,” says Charlotte Gomer, press officer for Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring. “We’d use that information to see if we needed to open an investigation. We don’t know why they stopped sharing this.” In an email to Bloomberg Businessweek, the department played down the change and said, “we are still willing and able to share information with law enforcement agencies.”
The situation at the EPA is slightly different. It’s not withholding information from other agencies so much as from itself. Without the two air pollution panels it dissolved in October, whose job had been to synthesize research on particle matter pollution and ground-level ozone for the EPA’s seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the group will have to review hundreds of pages of research on its own. “What they’re doing with the panels absolutely undermines their scientific credibility,” says Christopher Zarba, who worked at the EPA for 38 years and led a different advisory panel until he retired in February. “In all other administrations, there was an understanding that environmental protections needed to be based on science. Now the approach to science is: How do we get around it?”
The EPA has been particularly intent on discounting facts. In April, the agency’s then-administrator Scott Pruitt proposed a new rule requiring that all environmental regulations be based only on data that’s accessible to the public, which is a problem because environmental impact studies often deal with people’s private medical records. The rule was protested by 69 medical and health organizations, including the American Medical Association. Pruitt’s replacement, Andrew Wheeler, has postponed implementation of the rule until 2020 but says he supports it. If it goes into effect, it’s unclear whether long-term health studies will still be used to inform pollution limits.
The EPA’s new rule was proposed in consultation with House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas, who had failed to get similar legislation passed in Congress. Johnson vehemently opposes it, noting that the EPA drafted it without consulting its own Scientific Advisory Board. “It seems to reason that when you propose a rule which directly affects how the EPA uses science, you’d want to consult with scientists,” she wrote in a letter to Pruitt in May. The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
If Johnson takes over the House committee as expected, she will likely also scrutinize the elimination of the two pollution advisory panels. “There are now some checks and balances on what the Trump administration chooses to do,” says Halpern at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who says he is now slightly less concerned than before. In fact, he says, “We are cautiously optimistic.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/democrats-are-ready-to-fight-trump-to-get-public-data-back#gs.AlY0E8Y

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LCSA News

EPA's PV29 Assessment Likely To Test Reformed TSCA's Data Standards

Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

By Maria Hegstad

EPA's recently released draft assessment of pigment violet 29 (PV29), the first such study of an existing chemical under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is likely to pose a test of the new law's data standards as environmentalists and others doubt the agency has enough information on which to base its conclusion that the substance does not pose an “unreasonable risk.”
In their comments on EPA's problem formulation document on PV29, environmental, academic and public health groups urged EPA last August to require new toxicity tests of the chemical, arguing that EPA had insufficient information to conduct an assessment of adequate quality to meet the revised TSCA's standards.
But a comparison of the studies that EPA said it had in its May 2018 problem formulation document appears to be the same as the list of studies included in the draft assessment that the agency released Nov. 14, which found that the substance does not pose an “unreasonable risk” that must be regulated.
“The problem formulation for [PV29] indicates that, based on the absence of significant evidence of hazard, EPA 'expects to be able to reach conclusions about particular conditions of use, hazards, or exposure pathways without further analysis,'” a coalition of environmental and public health advocates led by Safer Chemicals Healthy Families wrote in their Aug. 16 comments.
“Yet nowhere does EPA address whether it has sufficient information to reach such conclusions for major health endpoints.”
The group compares the studies EPA has for PV29 to the types of evidence that are required by the agency's voluntary green chemistry program, known as the Safer Choice program, for determining if chemicals meet its requirements for best in class chemicals used in cleaning products.
“EPA could not reach scientifically defensible conclusions that [PV29] lacks the potential to cause carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, developmental neurotoxicity, neurotoxicity, repeated dose toxicity or endocrine effects,” the groups say.
PV29 “is not the only one of the 10 chemicals with significant data gaps, the groups say, citing several other existing chemicals that EPA is poised to assess in imminent draft reviews, including 1,4-dioxane, methylene chloride (MC), tetracholoroethylene (PERC) and trichloroethylene (TCE) that they say also lack data for important end-points.
PV29 is the first of a group of 10 chemicals that the Obama EPA selected shortly before leaving office that would be assessed under the new requirements of the TSCA as revised by Congress in June 2016.
EPA's selection of the chemicals set a three-year statutory deadline to complete their assessments, in which TSCA directs EPA to determine whether the chemicals pose unreasonable risks to human health or the environment based on their conditions of use.
No 'Unreasonable Risk'
Critics of EPA's approach argue generally that the revised TSCA, as well as EPA rules, requires the agency to have “adequate data” when assessing chemicals for possible regulation, citing in their comments TSCA section 2(b)(1) which also states “that the development of such data should be the responsibility of those who manufacture and those who process such chemical substances and mixtures ...” as well as section 26(k), which directs EPA to use “reasonably available information” when conducting such assessments.
But EPA in the draft assessment concludes the PV29 “does not present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment."
The agency explains it reaches that conclusion based on “[r]easonably available data indicat[ing] that no effects were observed in environmental hazard testing with aquatic species up to the limit of solubility of the chemical and low hazard was reported for all routes of exposure in human health testing. The human health testing reported that no adverse effects were observed for all routes of exposure (oral, dermal, inhalation) and that [PV29] is negative for genotoxicity. Structural activity relationships (SAR) considerations support the EPA’s conclusion that [PV29] is unlikely to be a carcinogen.”
In a Nov. 16 memo on the draft's release, the law firm Bergeson and Campbell suggests that there may be little reason to challenge the agency's finding though it leaves the door open to questioning the data EPA relied on.
The draft “appears to cover all of the key elements required to be evaluated under the new law,” the firm writes. “Assuming that the available information is presented accurately and completely, we see little basis for questioning the conclusion that the substance does not present an unreasonable risk. It will be interesting to see how the draft, specifically its approach and conclusions, fare through the public comment and peer review processes.”
Comments from the pigments industry on EPA's 2017 PV29 scoping document suggest that the industry will concur with EPA's conclusions. In September 2017 comments, the Color Pigments Manufacturers Association, Inc. stated that PV29 “does not present a health or ecological hazard warranting further analysis in the problem formulation phase of EPA’s risk evaluation process under amended TSCA. Had [PV29] undergone the prioritization process, EPA would have recognized that [PV29] is not likely to present an unreasonable risk of harm to health or the environment, and thus should be classified as a low priority for further evaluation. EPA can and should reach that conclusion now, and focus its efforts and resources on other substances which may pose unreasonable risk.”
One reason that PV29 is the first of the drafts released is that it “is probably the easiest of the 10 chemicals to evaluate and will raise fewer issues than others,” an environmentalist attorney told Inside EPA, while adding that “there are important policy issues based on the lack of data for many end-points.”
Even before the draft's release, environmentalists were urging EPA to delay the draft assessments by six months, as allowed by the statute, to bolster their scientific rigor. The concerns appear likely unabated given the issues raised in environmentalists' comments on PV29's problem formulation documents, and the limited changes made.
'Adequate Information'
Similarly, Aug. 16 comments filed by researchers at the University of California San Francisco's Program on Reproductive Environmental Health and elsewhere also critically compare the available toxicity studies on PV29 with the Safer Choice program, as well as EPA's 2005 cancer risk assessment guidelines.
“TSCA statute and regulation requires adequate information to make a determination of whether or not a chemical poses an unreasonable risk,” the academics write in their comments. “Certain health hazards are specifically designated in TSCA statute, indicating that Congress expressly recognized these types of health effects as an unreasonable risk, and envisioned that EPA should assess them: 'cancer/carcinogenesis, mutagenesis/gene mutation, teratogenesis, behavioral disorders, and birth defects.' EPA does not have empirical data on the carcinogenicity of [PV29], nor on developmental neurotoxicity or endocrine activity, both of which are relevant to teratogenesis, behavioral disorders and birth defects.”
Further, the researchers questioned EPA's statement in its problem formulation document that based on the available evidence PV29 is unlikely to be carcinogenic. The draft assessment reiterates this conclusion, finding that “[t]he absence of a chronic exposure carcinogenicity study resulted in some uncertainty regarding the carcinogenicity of [PV29]. ... Despite the lack of this study, the carcinogenic potential of [PV29] was sufficiently assessed using available data, which included two short-term genotoxicity studies and a consideration of the structural activity of the compound, which determined that [PV29] is not likely to be carcinogenic.”
But the academics argue that reaching a carcinogenicity conclusion without additional information is inappropriate. Among other concerns, they pointed to the evidence required by EPA's 2005 cancer risk assessment guidelines which they say show “the available data on [PV29] are not adequate to support the conclusion that [it] is 'unlikely' to be a carcinogen ... following the criteria established by the EPA, to determine that [PV29] is not likely to be a carcinogen, supporting data from male and female animals of at least two species in well-designed and conducted studies would be required. Negative genotoxic data and SAR considerations are not sufficient data to come to this final conclusion.”
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) raises similar concerns in its Aug. 16 comments on the problem formulation document, and joins the other groups in calling on EPA to request more information from industry. The group argues that “[t]he evidence base for [PV29] hazards is completely inadequate. In fact, it does not even fulfill the OECD Screening Information Data Set (SIDS) -- 'the minimum amount of data that is required for making an initial hazard assessment of chemicals.' Notably absent from the existing information are a repeated-dose or chronic toxicity study.”
And, EDF questions some of the modeling on PV29's chemical characteristics that EPA uses to bolster the studies that it has on the chemical, using a program called EPI Suite. “[W]ith the exception of hydrolysis half-life and biodegradation, all environmental fate endpoints -- also required under OECD SIDS -- are estimated using EPI Suite, which EPA itself warns is questionable for dyes.” EDF quotes a footnote to a table in the problem formulation document stating, “[t]here are limited pigment data in the EPI Suite training set, therefore values should be used with caution.”
In the draft assessment, a footnote on a table of PV29's environmental fate characteristics provides a more nuanced caveat. “There are limited pigment data in the EPI Suite™ training set which is an uncertainty regarding the fate characterization. Despite the limitation in the dataset, similarities with other organic classes indicates that these predicted fate properties can be estimated by substructure fragments.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epas-pv29-assessment-likely-test-reformed-tscas-data-standards

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Senate Schedules Dunn Nomination Hearing Amid Potential EPA Shifts

Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch

By Lisa Martine Jenkins

The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) will hold a 29 November hearing and vote on the nomination of Alexandra Dapolito Dunn to the role of assistant administrator of the EPA.

Ms Dunn is being considered to lead the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), the EPA confirmed in September. The entire Senate will subsequently vote on the nomination.
Ms Dunn serves as an administrator for Regional Administrator for EPA Region 1 and previously represented state environmental agencies, taught environmental justice and worked as counsel to industry.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said he plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler, acting EPA chief, to permanently lead the agency. If nominated, Mr Wheeler will go through a similar Senate confirmation process and vote.
Mr Wheeler started his career at the EPA, where he worked on toxic substances policy. He has also worked as a coal industry lobbyist, which spurred controversy.
"Whether or not he’s confirmed by the Senate to be the next administrator, when [Mr] Wheeler’s time at EPA ends, more children will have been exposed to dangerous pollutants," the Environmental Working Group (EWG) said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72341/senate-schedules-dunn-nomination-hearing-amid-potential-epa-shifts

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Chemical Management News

Oehha Extends Deadline on Prop 65 Reprotox Exposure Consultation

Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has further extended the deadline for its consultation on calculating exposure to chemicals causing reproductive toxicity under Proposition 65 to 3 December.
The extension by a week was at the request of the California Chamber of Commerce and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72336/oehha-extends-deadline-on-prop-65-reprotox-exposure-consultation

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California Eyes PCBTF Prop 65 Listing, Adds Two Others

Nov 27, 2018 | Chemical Watch

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has added gentian violet and N-nitrosohexamethyleneimine to its list of Proposition 65 carcinogens, and signalled its intent to likewise list the solvent para-chlorobenzotrifluoride (PCBTF).
Under Prop 65, companies are required to notify Californians if they will be exposed to any of some 900 substances identified by the state as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity.
Gentian violet, also known as crystal violet, is an antifungal and dye. N-nitrosohexamethyleneimine is a chemical intermediate and used as an explosive in ejector seats in military jet fighter planes. Their addition to Prop 65 follows a California Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) meeting earlier this month in which the ‘state’s qualified expert’ advisory group determined the substances met carcinogenicity criteria.
The listings took effect on 23 November.
In a separate notice, Oehha announced plans to list PCBTF under the ‘authoritative bodies’ mechanism, based on a 2018 National Toxicology Program (NTP) report which identified "clear evidence" of its carcinogenicity.
PCBTF is a solvent used in paints, coatings and inks, and as an industrial intermediate in the production of other substances. Its use is of particular importance in California, because it does not contribute significantly to ground-level ozone formation and is therefore an alternative solvent for meeting the state’s stringent volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions requirements.
Comments will be accepted on the proposal until 24 December.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72340/california-eyes-pcbtf-prop-65-listing-adds-two-others

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Pending Settlement Could End Suits Over GenX Discharges

Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

Days after EPA proposed strict risk levels for GenX, the perfluorinated compound, chemical manufacturer Chemours has preliminarily agreed to a $13 million settlement with North Carolina officials and environmentalists, a step that could end state and federal litigation the plaintiffs had filed over releases of the substance into a local river.
The proposed consent order, filed Nov. 21 in state court, comes days after EPA released a draft risk assessmentfor GenX that proposes stricter risk values than North Carolina officials are considering adopting, raising the prospect that the company could face more aggressive enforcement in the future.
But while the proposed settlement ends litigation brought by the state and environmentalists, it may not end separate suits filed by the local water utility and others.
GenX is a one of hundreds of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -- a class of chemicals used to make non-stick coatings, firefighting foam and other products. While they provide significant benefits, widespread contamination poses significant health risks though EPA and other regulators are struggling to assess and regulate them.
As part of its effort to assess PFAS, EPA Nov. 14 released a draft GenX assessment that recommended a reference dose (RfD) -- an estimate of the maximum amount that can be ingested daily over a lifetime without incurring a related effect -- of 8x10^-5 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight per day (mg/kg-day).
EPA's proposed RfD is slightly stronger than the 1x10^-4 mg/kg-day RfD that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services generated in July 2017 for use in the state, after the chemical was detected in the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source located downstream of the Chemours plant.
In the proposed settlement, Chemours pledges to reduce air emissions and limit discharges to surface water.
But it denies any wrongdoing, saying it is agreeing to the order solely “to avoid the expense, burden and uncertainty of litigation and to address community concerns about” its Fayetteville Works Facility.
If the court enters the settlement, which is open for public comment until Dec. 21, it would end state enforcement actions and citizen suits brought by Cape Fear River Watch in both state and federal court, where environmentalists alleged the company violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) and Toxic Substances Control Act.
However, the agreement would not end other pending federal litigation brought by the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County and several individuals.
Chemours is agreeing to pay a civil penalty of $12 million and investigative costs of $1 million, as well as take various actions to reduce emissions and discharges of GenX and other PFAS.
These actions include installing abatement technology at the facility, including a thermal oxidizer, to permanently reduce annual air emissions of GenX compounds and other PFAS by at least 99 percent from baseline levels and control all PFAS emissions from process streams routed to the thermal oxidizer at an efficiency of 99.99 percent.
On an interim basis, the company will reduce annual air emissions of GenX compounds by at least 82 percent beginning as of Oct. 6, 2018, and by at least 92 percent beginning as of Dec. 31, 2018.
Chemours will also continue to capture for off-site disposal all process wastewater from its operations unless or until a CWA discharge permit is issued authorizing the discharge of process wastewater, and will undertake specific measures to remediate groundwater contamination and provide alternative drinking water supplies.
Among the actions to address surface water quality, Chemours will by Feb. 28 submit a plan to the state for funding an initial set of toxicity studies, to be conducted by state-approved third party, relating to both human health and aquatic life, which the state would then use to develop surface water and groundwater regulatory standards for up to five PFAS, the settlement says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/pending-settlement-could-end-suits-over-genx-discharges

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Community Doubts EPA Reversal on Chicago-Area EtO Facility's Risk

Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

EPA's quiet announcement that it may have overstated the amount of ethylene oxide (EtO) in the air near a Sterigenics sterilizing facility in the Chicago-area is doing little to assuage community concerns, with one local group continuing to raise concerns over the risks.
“The negative health impacts of human exposure to a known carcinogenic [sic] such as EtO have been scientifically established,” the community group Stop Sterigenics tweeted Nov. 26. “We will only feel safe when EtO is no longer emitted in our community.”
At issue are releases of EtO, a known carcinogen, from the sterilizing facility. EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment modeling data, released last August and combined with an EtO toxicological assessment the agency updated in 2016, indicates DuPage County, IL, residents may have an increased cancer risk from EtO exposure. As a result, EPA has conducted air monitoring near the facility, and Sterigenics installed pollution control equipment last summer.
In response, Illinois Democrats have been urging EPA to act and have proposed legislation that would require the agency to complete reviews of two air toxics standards to address EtO.
But EPA released a statement shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday explaining that it “recently discovered an issue with the way [EtO] has been measured.”
EPA's Nov. 21 statement explains that its “discovery means that the results of air quality monitoring conducted prior to October 2018 may have shown higher concentrations of [EtO] than were actually in the air. This includes air quality monitoring that U.S. EPA’s Region 5 conducted in mid-May 2018 in Willowbrook,” IL, where Sterigenics is located.
Michael Hawthorne, an environmental reporter for the Chicago Tribune, which has done a series of breaking stories on the Sterigenics facility's EtO emissions and regulatory responses, tweeted Nov. 23, that EPA's statement suggests that the “dangers of Sterigenics’ pollution aren’t as serious as predicted.”
Still, he noted that EPA still “stands behind earlier analysis showing company’s *legally allowed* pollution is responsible for alarmingly high cancer risks. Faced with a public outcry, @EPA and communities surrounding Sterigenics are conducting more air testing.”
And he said that a “big question remains unanswered: Given potency of [EtO], is it safe for Sterigenics to continue operating close to homes and shopping centers?”
Incoming DuPage County Board member Julie Renehan -- one of a slew of female Democrats who won seats on DuPage's 18-member board in the Republican stronghold -- reminded residents with a Nov. 23 tweet that today is the deadline to submit questions for EPA staff to answer during the scheduled Nov. 29 open house and community forum in Willowbrook. Renehan campaigned on the need to hold Sterigenics accountable.
In its statement, EPA explains that a different chemical, “Trans-2-butene can be incorrectly identified as [EtO] when air quality samples are being analyzed in a laboratory. Trans-2-butene can be released from petrochemical industrial processes and the burning of fossil fuels. EPA discovered the issue as part of its work to improve the analysis method for [EtO].”
Further, EPA said that it “cannot fully evaluate the difference between reported and actual [EtO] concentrations, as the samples of air collected in mid-May are no longer available for analysis. U.S. EPA has made a change to its analytical method to prevent this issue in the analysis of future air quality samples -- including those from monitoring started in November 2018 in the Willowbrook area.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/community-doubts-epa-reversal-chicago-area-eto-facilitys-risk

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Brexit Divorce Deal Gives Chemical Companies Two-Year Reprieve on Trade (1)

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Ali Qassim

U.K. chemical companies will trade freely with the European Union until at least the end of 2020 under the Brexit divorce deal, but the big question is whether British lawmakers will approve the landmark agreement Dec. 11.
The deal will allow goods including chemicals and pharmaceutical products to flow “easily across borders and keep supply chains intact” for a minimum of two more years, Prime Minister Theresa May said Nov. 25 at the EU Council.
Chemical manufacturers will lobby parliamentarians to support the deal because it ensures they remain part of the EU chemical regulation rules for at least two more years. The deal allows the U.K. government to request an extension of another 12 months if necessary.
The U.K. is the sixth largest chemical producer in Europe, with more than 35 billion euros ($40 billion) in sales in 2016, according to Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, which represents EU chemical companies.
Extension
Without this deal, businesses face the potential prospect of leaving the EU under a “no deal” scenario in which they would cease to be part of the REACH chemicals law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals) in April 2019. This would mean their existing certificates allowing them to export their products to the EU would be invalidated.
That’s why the U.K.’s Chemical Industries Association—which represents chemical and pharmaceutical firms—said the agreement “represents another small step towards the much-needed certainty that business has been calling for.”
The majority of the association’s members—60 percent—export to the EU while 75 percent of their imports and raw materials come from the trading bloc.
May faces an uphill struggle to persuade members of Parliament to back the deal, which was signed between the U.K. and the EU Nov. 25. Many members of her Conservative Party as well as the main opposition Labour party have publicly announced they will oppose the deal when it comes to a vote in the week of Dec. 10.
Brexit-supporting members hate the deal because it ties the U.K. too closely to the EU’s regulations, preventing the much-vaunted sovereignty for which they campaigned. Brexit-opponents say the deal fails to secure the trading advantages the U.K. has as an EU member.
Chemical Firms Seek Certainty
Despite their support for the deal, chemical firms too are unhappy with the divorce deal and the accompanying nonbinding political declaration which the U.K. signed with the EU’s other 27 members.
For instance, the deal doesn’t confirm the U.K.'s future participation in the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) once the transition period ends in 2020. By remaining a member of the Helsinki-based ECHA, chemical firms would continue to follow REACH rules well into the future and have access to the EU market.
Steve Elliott, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association, said in a statement the industry will work with government negotiators to ensure the U.K.'s continued participation in the European Chemicals Agency.
The U.K. is only allowed to launch negotiations into its future trading relationship with the EU once it has officially left the bloc at the end of March 2019.
Cefic said it also will push for the U.K.’s continued membership in ECHA.
Other business groups also are calling for the government to prepare for future trade talks.
“If the agreement clears the political hurdles ahead, there can be no pause for breath, and no let-up in the negotiations,” Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said in a Nov. 26 emailed statement.
“The fact is that businesses still need clarity and precision on the terms of trade they will face with the EU and many other countries within a matter of months,” he said.
(Update adds date to first paragraph and new information in fourth paragraph.)

https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/brexit-divorce-deal-gives-chemical-companies-two-year-reprieve-on-trade-1

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Energy News

How American Fracking Changes the World

Nov 26, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal - Opinion

By Walter Russell Mead

The most important news in world politics this month isn’t about diplomacy. Bigger than Brexit, more consequential than presidential tweetstorms, the American shale revolution is rapidly reshaping the global balance of power as energy prices plummet.
Until recently, observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to constrain output in the Permian Basin through 2020. Instead, shippers found ways to use existing pipelines more efficiently, and new pipelines were constructed faster than expected. U.S. crude-oil production is expected to average 12.1 million barrels a day in 2019, 28% higher than in 2017. Surging production has roiled world energy markets.
The biggest loser is Iran. Shale has been pummeling Tehran for some time. The economic benefits Iran hoped to gain from President Obama’s nuclear deal were largely offset by the sharp 2016 fall in the price of oil. Now the pesky Permian is blighting Iranian hopes again. Rising American output made it easier for the U.S. to slap tough sanctions on Iran without risking a sharp rise in world energy prices. Low prices also reduce Iran’s income from the oil it still manages to sell.
The next biggest loser is Russia. Oil is a key revenue source for the Kremlin. But the shale boom doesn’t only pick Vladimir Putin’s pocket; it also attacks his foreign-policy strategy.
Russia wants to control the world oil price and use that power to boost its diplomatic weight. Mr. Putin has two ways to influence the price of oil. The first is to increase geopolitical tensions. If threatening Ukraine or bombing Syria spooks traders and jacks up energy prices, Russia has a better hand in negotiations with Europe and the U.S.
Mr. Putin’s second option is to cooperate with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on price fixing. Building a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia over their common interest in inflated oil prices might loosen the kingdom’s U.S. ties and generate lucrative commercial and arms deals for the Kremlin.
Shale disrupts both approaches. With supplies relatively abundant, energy markets can shrug off geopolitical shocks. The surge of American oil and gas also reduces the benefits of OPEC-Russia cooperation for both sides. Russia and OPEC can raise prices by reducing output, but that makes new drilling projects more profitable for American frackers. Cutting prices to starve the competition also doesn’t work. Thanks to past pressure from OPEC and the innovation it forced on the industry, many wells in West Texas now break even at an oil price of $30 a barrel. That’s not a price Russia can accept.
America’s latest shale success is also bad news for the Gulf sheikhdoms. As their incomes fall, their control over the world’s oil price diminishes, as does their ability to fund global Islamic movements. Meanwhile, their importance to the U.S. gradually declines while their military dependence on the U.S. and even Israel grows.
Closer to home, falling energy prices from the shale surge also strengthen America’s hand. The pressure on Venezuela, a major oil producer, increases. The troubled Central American countries sending migrants to the U.S., energy consumers all, get an economic reprieve. Mexico may be pressured to pursue more business-friendly economic policies. More than a sixth of the Mexican government’s revenue comes from energy; falling prices will force the incoming government to find ways to attract more foreign capital.
Europe, too, benefits from low energy prices. They are a relief in particular to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government faced violent protests over the weekend over fuel taxes. Falling prices also offer relief to Italy. They might help Rome and Brussels reach a fiscal compromise.
Shale power is not, however, an unalloyed good for the U.S. China’s energy-intensive manufacturing economy benefits substantially when energy prices fall. In a world with low prices, Beijing is in a better position to ride out a trade war. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey also benefits both from low prices and the weakness of its Middle Eastern neighbors.
Ever since the shale boom began, diplomats and politicians have underestimated its importance. The U.S. has regained the position it lost in 1973 as the world’s largest oil producer, which it will likely hold through at least the 2040s. The consequences for energy markets and world politics will be far-reaching. Roughnecks in the American Southwest are doing more than most foreign ministries to change the world.
But the shale revolution isn’t only an energy revolution; it’s a technology revolution, enabled by advanced methods for oil prospecting and extraction. From the transistor to satellites, to the personal computer to the internet and now shale, it is America’s innovation—as much as its hard power and diplomacy—that shapes world politics.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-american-fracking-changes-the-world-1543276935?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

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Vote on FERC Pick to Go On Despite Dems' Attempts to Delay

Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Daily

By Jeremy Dillon

Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday sought to delay today's confirmation vote on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission nominee Bernard McNamee.
Republicans, however, plan to advance the controversial nomination later today, ENR Committee majority spokeswoman Nicole Daigle confirmed.
The calls for delay, led by ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington, follow the emergence of a video last week in which the former Department of Energy political appointee made inflammatory remarks regarding deployment of renewable energy, the advocacy efforts of environmental groups and the promotion of fossil fuel use (E&E News PM, Nov. 20).
The comments were made during a speech at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event in February.
For Democrats, those comments warrant an additional written explanation from McNamee, the current director of DOE's Office of Policy, before the committee votes to advance his nomination to the Senate floor.
But even with Democrats pushing for a delay, Republicans still have enough votes to advance the nominee. That conclusion only grew more clear after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters yesterday he would support McNamee.
While Republicans downplayed the Democrats' request, there is some precedent for ENR Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) for situations of a FERC nominee making remarks tilting one fuel source above another. In 2013, Murkowski, then the committee's ranking member, helped scuttle the Obama nomination of Ron Binz to serve as commission chairman over concerns he was too in favor of renewable energy deployment.
McNamee's nomination has proved to be more controversial than other FERC nominees that have moved this Congress. Most of that backlash has stemmed from his participation as a staffer in the department's Office of the General Counsel in drafting DOE's policy proposal to aid struggling coal and nuclear plants. That policy proposal ultimately suffered a unanimous rejection by FERC earlier this year.
Democrats sought McNamee's recusal for future decisions concerning the administration's efforts to support coal and nuclear plants under the auspice of grid reliability (Greenwire, Nov. 15). McNamee avoided those calls, instead vowing to remain impartial to fuel source in his considerations.
But the remarks made in the video of McNamee are providing new fodder for opponents to attempt to derail his confirmation as lawmakers contend with his time at the Texas Public Policy Foundation throughout much of 2018. That stop included an op-ed he penned in April in defense of the administration's efforts to help coal and nuclear plants, which prompted criticism from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).
"I'm very reluctant to support him based on the questions I asked at the hearing and his answers," King told reporters last night.
McNamee responded to the video's release last week noting that he stands by the comments made during his Nov. 15 confirmation hearing.
"I recognize the significant role that renewables play in our energy mix," McNamee said, "and I stand by my statement that if confirmed as a Commissioner, I would be an independent arbiter basing my decisions on the law and the facts, not politics."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/11/27/stories/1060107391

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Carlyle Expands Bet on New England Power by Buying Plants

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Brian Eckhouse and Christopher Martin

Carlyle Group LP is boosting its bet on New England, where the wholesale electricity market rose 20 percent last year to $9.1 billion.
The Washington-based private equity firm agreed to buy three natural gas-fired power plants in New England from Emera Inc. for $590 million, according to a statement Nov. 26.
The deal comes as as power-plant retirements in the region eat into a surplus of capacity, driving up the value of power plants. Average day-ahead power prices climbed 12 percent last year after three years of declines, according to ISO New England. In addition, winter gas supplies run tight in New England because the fuel is diverted to heat homes. Power prices in Boston can spike 10-fold or more during the coldest evening hours, according to Genscape Inc. data.
At least one of the facilities included in the Carlyle deal benefits from a pipeline that’s less likely to be affected by the issue, said Robert Lance, a power market analyst at Genscape. “They absolutely have an advantage of not having to give up gas capacity,” he said in an interview Nov. 26.
The sale comprises the Rumford Power, Tiverton Power, and Bridgeport Energy plants, which have a total capacity of 1,100 megawatts. Carlyle’s Cogentrix unit already manages about 1,400 megawatts of capacity in the Northeast, according to the statement. The Emera deal is expected to close in the first quarter.
With the acquisitions, Carlyle “will increase its generation capacity in the attractive New England market,” Matt O’Connor, head of Carlyle Power Partners, said in the statement.
“It’s a bet that New England’s going to look like a reasonably favorable market for power sales,” Kit Konolige, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in an interview Nov. 26.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/carlyle-expands-bet-on-new-england-power-by-buying-plants

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Ohio May Expand Emissions Rules for Unconventional Oil, Natural Gas Ops

Nov 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence

By Jamison Cocklin

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) is seeking input on potential rules that would expand air emissions rules for both existing and new unconventional oil and gas facilities that aren’t already covered by general permits for midstream and upstream equipment...
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Full story can be found here: https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116576-ohio-may-expand-emissions-rules-for-unconventional-oil-natural-gas-ops

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Chevron: Oil, Gas Flowing at Mile-Deep Field Off New Orleans

Nov 27, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)

Chevron Corp. says it is now getting oil and natural gas from a floating platform tethered in nearly a mile of water off New Orleans.
The company says the tension-leg drilling and production platform is in the deepest water of any such facility. The well is in the Big Foot field about 225 miles south of New Orleans.
Chevron estimates that it can get the equivalent of more than 8.4 billion gallons of oil from the field over 35 years.
It announced last week that production had begun at the platform, which is designed to extract up to 3.1 million gallons of oil and 25 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.
Chevron USA Inc. owns 60 percent of the project, Equinor Gulf of Mexico LLC owns 27.5 percent and Marubeni Oil & Gas (USA) LLC owns 12.5 percent. Equinor and Marubeni are Houston subsidiaries of foreign companies. Equinor — formerly Statoil SA — is based in Stavanger, Norway. Marubeni Corp. is based in Tokyo.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/27/stories/1060107413

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Pa. Supreme Court to Hear 'Rule of Capture' Case

Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Pamela King

Pennsylvania's highest court will soon consider a legal dispute with big implications for operators in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week agreed to hear an appeal of a lower court's finding that the "rule of capture" does not apply to hydraulic fracturing.
Under the rule, oil and gas extracted from underground formations belong to the party that first captured the hydrocarbons — even if they were accessed from a neighboring property. In the 2007 film "There Will Be Blood," the doctrine is famously described in Daniel Day-Lewis' "I drink your milkshake" diatribe.
The Pennsylvania Superior Court this year sided with landowner Adam Briggs and his siblings, who argued that because Marcellus gas is trapped in a layer of shale — and therefore does not migrate — it is not subject to the rule of capture.
"Traditionally, the rule of capture assumes that oil and gas originate in subsurface reservoirs or pools, and can migrate freely within the reservoir and across property lines, according to changes in pressure," the judges wrote in their April 2 opinion.
Southwestern Energy Co. and other companies asked the state Supreme Court to take the case, arguing that the lower court's ruling imposed a major hurdle for the state's energy operators (Energywire, July 12).
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/27/stories/1060107401

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N.M. Governor-Elect to Scrutinize New Wells in Methane 'Hot Spot'

Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire

By Mike Lee

New Mexico's new governor may have a chance to reverse a regulatory decision that'll allow more drilling in the San Juan Basin, an aging oil and gas field that's notorious for its greenhouse gas emissions.
The state Oil Conservation Commission (OCC) voted last week to allow Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co. to increase the number of wells in parts of the San Juan Basin without additional public comment.
Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who takes office in January, is "reviewing the ruling, and any potential steps upon taking office," her transition director, Dominic Gabello, said in a statement.
Environmentalists say the OCC has been stacked with former oil and gas executives under outgoing Gov. Susana Martinez, and the commission rushed the decision without input from the affected communities. The chairwoman of the commission, Heather Riley, previously worked for an oil and gas producer in the San Juan Basin, as did Ken McQueen, who is Martinez's secretary of energy.
"These sorts of decisions warrant a more thoughtful process and warrant more intellectual curiosity about what the heck is going on rather than just a dog-and-pony show by the oil and gas industry as a gift on their way out the door," said Mike Eisenfeld, an organizer in Farmington, N.M., for the San Juan Citizens Alliance.
The San Juan Basin covers parts of New Mexico and Colorado and is one of the top 10 gas fields in the country. It's also home to a methane "hot spot" that researchers have linked, in part, to emissions from gas processing plants in the basin.
Lujan Grisham called for a statewide regulation on methane pollution during her campaign (Energywire, Oct. 26).
Hilcorp, based in Houston, bought the drilling rights to 1.3 million acres in the area last year from ConocoPhillips. In May, the company asked the OCC to change the well spacing rules on its acreage in San Juan and Rio Arriba counties, from four wells to eight wells in each 320-acre production unit.
Hilcorp said the change won't alter the environmental requirements for new wells, but it will allow the company to drill more wells on the acreage without seeking individual approval for each new well. The company has already gotten 70 exceptions to the existing space rule.
Environmentalists and local landowners said the spacing change will lead to thousands of new wells, which will create more of an impact on the surrounding land and increase the amount of air pollution. They asked the OCC to allow more input from people affected by the change.
Riley, who is also the director of the state Oil Conservation Division and sits on the governor-appointed OCC, said the rules will apply to all companies that drill in the San Juan Basin, but the change isn't likely to lead to a rush of new wells.
"Whether or not a new well would be drilled is dependent upon many factors such as reservoir thickness, water saturation, gas price and drilling costs," Riley said in a statement. "It is far more likely that the companies will recomplete in existing wellbores in the foreseeable future."
Lujan Grisham and other politicians, including the incoming state land commissioner, Stephanie Garcia Richard (D), asked the OCC to delay the vote in order to hear from more stakeholders. Instead, the commission voted to approve the rule change Nov. 19.
At least one local landowner protested the decision, and the San Juan Citizens Alliance was denied standing to participate in the case.
Eisenfeld said the citizen's group may ask for the case to be reheard. Lujan Grisham also has some leverage because two of the OCC members are appointed by the governor's secretary for energy, minerals and natural resources. Garcia Richard, the newly elected land commissioner, will appoint the third.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/27/stories/1060107399

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'Break It Apart': Politicians Rail Against Mass. Gas Company

Nov 27, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)

By Philip Marcelo

Congress members called for executives at the utility company to blame for September's natural gas explosions and fires in Massachusetts to step down as they held a special hearing yesterday into the disaster.
The six House and Senate members from Massachusetts and New Hampshire who held the hearing at a packed middle school gymnasium in Lawrence, Mass., took aim at the corporate culture at Columbia Gas of Massachusetts and its parent company, Indiana-based NiSource Inc.
They painted a picture of a corporation that cut corners and lacked the internal procedures to prevent, let alone respond to, the Sept. 13 disaster that killed one person, injured dozens more, damaged more than 100 homes, and left thousands without heat or hot water in the Merrimack Valley communities of Lawrence, North Andover and Andover.
The companies face federal and state investigations as well as class-action lawsuits.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said the company's failure to account for pressure sensors in planning a routine pipeline replacement project in Lawrence led to the explosions and fires.
"At every step of the process, there was a chance to avoid this disaster," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to company executives. "Instead of choosing safety, you chose savings. Instead of choosing to do things the right way, you chose to do things the easy way, and the result was disaster."
Joseph Hamrock, CEO of NiSource, and Steve Bryant, the president of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, promised workers were doing everything in their power to restore gas service to thousands of customers despite missing an initial goal of full restoration before Thanksgiving. The company now says the process should be complete by early December.
Hamrock also told the panel he'd be asking his company's board to withhold certain incentives he's entitled to this year as part of his $5 million compensation. Bryant said he'd already asked that incentives on his more than $500,000-a-year compensation be similarly withheld this year.
But panel members weren't moved.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, pushed the executives to disclose whether anyone had been fired as a result of the disaster, but they declined to say. She also noted the company has been responsible for a number of gas leak incidents in Massachusetts in recent years.
"I just want to figure out what personal responsibility looks to you two," she said to Hamrock and Bryant. "You kept your jobs, and you're still getting paid what sounds like a lot of money."
Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera suggested Columbia Gas should not be allowed to operate in Massachusetts.
"Break it apart, revoke their license, make them sell their business to someone else," he said to the congressional panel. "Columbia Gas should cease to exist. No second chances."
The sister of the teenager who was the lone fatality in the disaster opened the hourslong hearing with tearful testimony, saying her family seeks justice for her brother and their community.
"We will not let this loss be without meaning," said Lucianny Rondon, the sister of 18-year-old Leonel Rondon, who was killed when a chimney toppled by the explosions landed on his parked vehicle. "Nobody should ever have to go through what my family has gone through ever again."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/27/stories/1060107417

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EU Power Sector Says it Can Hit Paris Climate Goal Five Years Early (1)

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jesper Starn

All European electricity generation can be virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, five years before a target set in the Paris climate agreement, a power industry group said.
Reaching the goal will require increased investment in renewables and grids, while as much as 111 billion euros ($126 billion) a year will be needed from the power sector and other industries to reduce emissions, according to a study by Eurelectric, which represents more than 3,000 companies. The falling cost of green generation means the Paris target can be hit earlier and at a lower cost.
“Renewables are game changers, shaking up the cost-equation in the power system and playing a key role in the energy transition,” said Francesco Starace, president of Eurelectric and chief executive officer of Enel Spa. “This transformation requires a build-out of the power sector.”
It is “totally possible to have a carbon-neutral system in place by 2045,” with coal phased out by 2035 or 2040, said Magnus Hall, president and CEO of Vattenfall, speaking at a Nov. 26 briefing in Brussels.System Changes
The switch to a decarbonized energy supply assumes major changes to transportation and the way that homes, offices, and factories function.
For example, if 95 percent of all energy consumed in the EU comes from sources other than fossil fuels, the “direct electrification” rate for transport—or the proportion of transportation directly powered by electricity—would have to rise from about 1 percent currently to 63 percent in 2045, the Eurelectric study said.
Within this share, 96 percent of passenger cars, 58 percent of buses, and 48 percent of trucks would have to be electric, the study said. Rail transport would also be largely electrified compared to about 70 percent today.
In buildings, heating in particular would have to switch to electricity. In industry, a number of energy-intensive processes—such as iron and steel production—could be electrified, the study said.
Such electrification is “technically doable and economically feasible,” said Kristian Ruby, Eurelectric secretary-general, at the briefing.
Various enabling developments would have to occur to ensure more direct electrification and generation from renewables, including better electricity distribution grids, better connections between EU countries and regions, and political decisions to, for example, phase out fossil-fuel powered cars, said Alistair Phillips-Davies, CEO of SSE, said at the briefing.Endgame
Electricity generation would be a “significantly growing industry” because more economic activities would be powered by electricity, which would be generated from non-fossil fuel sources, Hall said.
Reaching the Paris target will require that more than 80 percent of all generation comes from renewable sources. At the same time, systems are needed to offset the carbon emissions from the remaining fleet of conventional generation kept as backup on calm days or when the sun isn’t out.
Electricity prices are still set to rise for consumers, but not as much as previously expected. By 2045, average wholesale power rates in Europe will climb about about 59 percent to 70 to 75 euros ($79 to $85) a megawatt-hour. That compares with a European Commission outlook of about 105 euros ($119).
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/eu-power-sector-says-it-can-hit-paris-climate-goal-five-years-early-1

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Chemical Security News

(ACC Blog) Chemical Security: Unfinished Business in Washington is Risky Business

Nov 26, 2018 | American Chemistry Matters

There are many things Congress must address before it is set to adjourn but none can be more urgent than passing legislation to preserve one of the nation’s most important anti-terrorism programs, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS).
Chemistry is the lifeblood of our economy — directly touching 96 percent of all manufactured goods. Securing and maintaining the economic viability of this critical part of our infrastructure is vital to U.S. prosperity and our national security.
That’s why ACC members have invested more than $17 billion under the Responsible Care® Security Code to further enhance site security, transportation security and cybersecurity at their facilities. It’s also why ACC and its member companies support a host of federal programs that currently regulate all aspects of chemical security, including CFATS.
It’s hard to believe that more than ten years have passed since CFATS was put in place but it should come as no surprise that the program has made great strides over that time to help safeguard chemical facilities across the country and help secure the nation.
Unfortunately, CFATS is in jeopardy and is set to expire in December unless Congress takes action. For the sake of our industry and the nation, we are urging leaders in the House and Senate to come together in these final weeks and pass a bill that will provide a long-term extension for CFATS.
https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2018/11/chemical-security-unfinished-business-in-washington-is-risky-business/

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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Should Appoint Chemical Safety Board Chair, Legislators and Industry Representatives Say

Nov 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

By Jeff Johnson

A mix of chemical industry representatives and Republican leaders in Congress are calling for the White House to appoint a chairperson to lead the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. The board, which investigates chemically related industrial accidents, has been without an appointed chair since last June, when then-chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland resigned.
The five members of the CSB are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The board was one member down when Sutherland left and consequently has been operating with only three members. In the interim, board member Kristen Kulinowski is serving as executive.
Twice President Donald Trump has recommended eliminating the board. However, the CSB retains broad bipartisan support from most members of Congress, who have continued its funding. The CSB also enjoys support from industry, says the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the US chemical industry’s main trade group.
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“A fully functioning CSB plays an important role in helping to safeguard chemical facilities,” ACC says. “ACC’s member companies find considerable value in the CSB’s work—especially its reports and materials generated as part of its investigations. The results and recommendations from effective investigations have benefited ACC, its members, and the public.”
However, some in Congress see a new chair appointment as a way to overhaul the board. For four years, the House Oversight Committee has investigated the board amid allegations of mismanagement and other problems at the small independent agency. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, House of Representative Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) urged the president to fill the top slot and said the vacancy provided a “crucial opportunity to reverse the CSB’s troubled course.”A fully functioning CSB plays an important role in helping to safeguard chemical facilities.American Chemistry Council
In a similar letter, Senators John Barrasso (R-WY), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and committee member Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) also criticized CSB management and urged Trump to appointment as chair someone from outside the agency with experience operating industrial facilities and a long record of handling chemicals safety.
Interim leader Kulinowski defends the agency, saying the transition as Sutherland left the board was “seamless.”ADVERTISEMENT
Since June, “We’ve been fully operational,” Kulinowski says. “We have a full quorum of members and have been able to do all we need to do.”
But board members are appointed for five-year terms. Manuel “Manny” Ehrlich’s term ends in a year, in December 2019. Rick Engler’s term ends in February 2020. Kulinowski’s ends in August 2020. “So, looking forward, we see a need for additional board members. However, we have heard nothing from the White House,” Kulinowski says.
In the midst of this leadership uncertainty, CSB is attempting to hire this fiscal year eight to 11 new accident investigators, doubling the number of investigators on staff.
“I was surprised at the applicant pool,” Kulinowski says. “We had some 220 applicants. It seems that despite the continuous call for CSB’s elimination, the support of Congress has helped potential employees see that CSB has a strong future.”
https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrial-safety/Trump-should-appoint-Chemical-Safety/96/web/2018/11

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No Answers Yet to Gas Leak That Disrupted Bridge Traffic

Nov 26, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)

Officials are trying to determine what caused a chemical gas leak that forced the temporary closure of a heavily used bridge connecting Delaware and New Jersey on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
The leak of highly flammable ethylene oxide from a Croda production facility on Sunday forced the precautionary closure of the Delaware Memorial Bridge for more than six hours as the Thanksgiving holiday weekend wound down.
The bridge carries traffic along Interstate 295, a major East Coast artery, with a daily volume of about 80,000 vehicles.
Cara Eaton, a Croda spokeswoman, said in an email Monday that the company was focused on investigating the matter and that officials were not available for interviews.
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A company statement earlier Monday said the Atlas Point facility at the base of the bridge was shut down safely, and that final preparations were being made for an inspection of the plant, so that an investigation can proceed.
"We would like to reassure the public that gas levels were independently monitored during and after the incident and we can confirm that there was no point at which there was an unsafe level detected," the statement read. The company, which is based in the United Kingdom, also said one employee working on the plant at the time decided to seek medical advice as a precaution and was under observation.
"We are very sorry for the significant inconvenience that this had on the community and those travelling nearby," the statement added.
Meanwhile, Delaware environmental secretary Shawn Garvin said state officials, who oversee operations at the facility, do not yet know what happened.
"We are investigating, along with the company, to make some determinations as to what actually did go wrong," Garvin said, adding that the leak apparently was restricted to ethylene oxide.Editors’ Picks‘Forget About the Stigma’: Male Nurses Explain Why Nursing Is a Job of the Future for MenWhere Brexit Hurts: The Nurses and Doctors Leaving LondonThe New Brothels: How Shady Landlords Play a Key Role in the Sex Trade
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Ethylene oxide is an ingredient in the production of several industrial chemicals, including ethylene glycol, a compound found in automotive antifreeze and brake fluids, solvents, paints and other industrial and commercial products.
Ethylene oxide, which is also used as an agricultural fumigant and sterilizing agent for medical equipment and supplies, is highly flammable and reactive. Acute exposure can cause respiratory and skin irritation, while chronic exposure has been associated with cancer.
In 2015, Croda was granted a permit under Delaware's Coastal Zone Act, which limits heavy industry in designated coastal areas, to manufacture ethylene oxide from corn-based ethanol. In seeking the permit, the company touted the environmental sustainability benefits of using ethanol instead of petroleum products in the manufacturing process. It also noted that production would eliminate the safety risks involved in transporting ethylene oxide by railcar from the Gulf Coast.
"The process safety aspects of this project have been thoroughly analyzed and addressed," the company said in a slide presentation on its permit request. It also noted that it was following industry standards to guard against accidental chemical releases and would rely on redundant detection systems and use of automated computer control systems to help eliminate human errors.
Croda began production of ethylene oxide on Aug. 24, four days after state officials conducted a partial compliance evaluation of boilers and generators at the facility. In a Sept. 21 letter, a state environmental engineer informed Croda that the August evaluation resulted in an "excellent inspection."
Earlier this month, however, Croda sought a permit modification regarding particulate emissions for a temporary boiler the company was planning to use during maintenance and repair work on two primary boilers.
Croda acquired the Atlas Point site in 2006 from another chemical company, UiQema.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/11/26/us/ap-us-delaware-bridge-gas-leak.html

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Environment News

Trump Rejects His Government’s Warning on Climate Change Costs

Nov 27, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

President Donald Trump dismissed U.S. government scientists’ predictions that climate change will impose devastating domestic economic costs.
“I don’t believe it,” Trump told reporters Nov. 26 on the White House lawn, when asked about the grim forecast in the government’s National Climate Assessment. “Right now, we’re the cleanest we’ve ever been.”
The analysis, compiled by government scientists and issued Nov. 23, warns that the U.S. could shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs from unchecked climate change, as floodwaters swamp coastal communities, and droughts devastate crops.
All told, climate change could pare back a tenth of U.S. gross domestic product by the end of the century, according to the congressionally mandated assessment.‘It’s Fine’
Trump said he had “seen” the report and “read some of it—and it’s fine.” He also pointed out that it focused on the climate change consequences that would be borne by the U.S.—even though it is a global problem.
“If we’re clean, but every other place on earth is dirty, that’s not so good,” Trump said. “So I want clean air, I want clean water—very important.“
It’s not the first time that Trump has discounted the consequences or causes of climate change. On Nov. 21, Trump questioned the existence of global warming by citing the Arctic blast chilling the Northeast U.S. “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS — Whatever happened to Global Warming?” he posted on Twitter.
His administration, at the same time, is rolling back an array of government regulations meant to pare carbon dioxide emissions that result from burning the fossil fuels that drive climate change.Disregard
Environmentalists pounced on Trump’s comments, with Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune accusing the president of disregarding science.
“Trump is ignoring the alarm bells to protect our country from climate change, yet at the same time he is building sea walls in Scotland to protect his golf course from the rising sea,’ Brune said by email. “Trump needs to pull his head out of his sand trap right now because the climate won’t give us a mulligan.”
Government authorities reportedly gave permission for the construction of sea walls around a Trump-branded golf course in Scotland last year. Across the globe, coastal communities could be inundated as a warming planet elevates sea levels.
And according to the government’s climate assessment, Americans are already paying for the cost of rising seas. In 2016, the Obama administration gave $48 million to Louisiana to move a village inland.Trusting Scientists
“Unlike President Trump, we trust the experts at NASA, the Department of Defense, and 10 other federal agencies who reviewed and endorsed this report,” Keith Gaby, a senior communications director with the Environmental Defense Fund, said by email. “Mr. Trump is hiding from the facts, and failing in his responsibility to protect the American people.”
Brenda Ekwurzel, one of the report’s authors, said there’s ample evidence of rising costs from recent western wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes.
“It is no surprise that the fourth National Climate Assessment concludes that these climate-related impacts will only get worse and their costs will mount dramatically if carbon emissions continue unabated,” said Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Annual losses in some sectors are projected to exceed $100 billion by the end of the century and surpass the gross domestic product of many states.”

https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/trump-rejects-his-governments-warning-on-climate-change-costs

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Rules, Money and the U.S.: What to Watch at UN Climate Talks

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Anna Hirtenstein, Ewa Krukowska and Mathew Carr

Envoys from almost 200 countries will convene next week in Katowice, Poland, for an annual conference on reining in global warming. The meeting organized by the UN is aimed at drawing up a rulebook for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement, where all countries rich and poor alike pledged to limit fossil fuel emissions.
The first week begins with world leaders arriving for a summit hosted by Polish president Andrzej Duda on Dec. 3. Technical negotiators will meet in the following days to work through the nuts and bolts of the deal that will apply after 2020. Energy and finance ministers are expected to show up starting Dec. 10 to turn the progress into decisions. By the weekend of Dec. 14, if the talks go smoothly, the Katowice Rulebook will be adopted.
Here’s what to watch for at the meeting, known in UN jargon as COP24:The Rulebook
The biggest goal of this year’s climate talks is to transform the Paris pledges into a series of rules to govern how the world reduces its greenhouse gas emissions. Key points of discussion will be how to measure this, how to ensure it’s transparent and comparable across borders, and how to verify it through some form of international watchdog organization.
Without hard rules and a credible way to enforce them, the Paris agreement is not likely to have a real large-scale impact. The end result of this conference will show whether the world can come together to agree on a solution or if politics will bar progress on an issue where time is paramount.Climate Finance
Developing countries are pushing for financial aid from industrialized nations, saying that they have contributed much less to global warming and pollution and shouldn’t bear the same weight of responsibility. Richer industrial nations in 2009 committed to funnel $100 billion per year of climate-related projects to poorer countries by 2020. In 2016, those payments amounted to $70 billion, according to a report by a United Nations group.
China and India are typically the loudest voices advocating for closing this gap as well as for boosting technology transfers. There will also be discussions around how to measure climate finance flows and how to best administer these contributions, whether they should go through the Green Climate Fund, development banks, or be handled bilaterally.The U.S. Delegation
The U.S. delegation will be closely scrutinized for signals on what the current administration plans to do about the Paris Agreement. President Donald Trump has said that he would pull out of the deal but has also said that he would reconsider this if the pact can be made more favorable to the U.S. economy. This conference will determine what the deal will actually look like, so there’s a chance that the U.S. could reassess its position.
The country is also planning side events to promote coal in an extension of the administration’s agenda to advocate for the fossil fuel. Last year, it announced an initiative known as the Clean Coal Alliance, which is seeking to foster collaboration and research between countries to advance higher efficiency coal-burning technologies.Carbon Markets
There may be some advances in talks on carbon markets as well. The United Nations is currently in early stages of setting up an international market for carbon credit trading, known as the Sustainable Development Mechanism. Discussions will center on how to fit existing carbon markets such as the European Emissions Trading System into the post-2020 Paris era, how to make national carbon credits and reduction targets comparable across markets, and ideas on how to raise transparency.
Carbon markets are one way to make cutting greenhouse gas emissions more affordable. They give polluters the option of buying carbon credits rather than undertaking green projects. These credits are created by companies that build green power or energy efficiency projects which avoid emitting carbon dioxide.Adaptation
Countries already feeling the effects of climate change, such as small Pacific islands, will be the loudest voices in the discussions on adaptation to a warmer world. There will be questions around who should pay for defensive infrastructure such as seawalls and what to do with the first wave of climate refugees, as rising water levels swallow up inhabited land.

How to protect against intensifying weather patterns such as perilous droughts, floods, and storms are also likely to talked about, particularly by countries such as India, the Philippines, and South Africa, which have had to deal with recent catastrophes.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/rules-money-and-the-us-what-to-watch-at-un-climate-talks

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How Trump Is Ensuring That Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Rise

Nov 26, 2018 | The New York Times

By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman

President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
Mr. Trump then laid responsibility for cleaning the atmosphere on other countries like China and Japan: “Right now we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good. So I want clean air. I want clean water. Very important.”
The remarks fit a pattern, and not just for their bluntness. In almost two years since taking office, Mr. Trump has denied the scientific reality of climate change and taken aggressive steps that will increase emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — despite unequivocal scientific evidence that those pollutants are warming the planet to dangerous levels.
“Since virtually the first day the administration came into office they have systematically worked to reverse policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Robert N. Stavins, a professor of environmental economics at Harvard. “But this report, which is mandated by law, shows that greenhouse gas emissions are going to have profound effects on the United States in this century.”
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The report Mr. Trump referred to, the National Climate Assessment, issued on Friday, was the product of four years of work by 13 federal agencies. It concluded that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” and adds, “the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Those impacts include more devastating wildfires, severe storms and coastal flooding, droughts, crop failures, water shortages, threats to public health and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars to the American economy, according to the authors.
But in his disregard for scientific evidence, Mr. Trump has made the dismantling of policies to curb greenhouse pollution a centerpiece of his deregulatory agenda.What on Earth Is Going On?
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get our latest stories and insights about climate change — along with answers to your questions and tips on how to help.SIGN UPMr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum in October to “minimize unnecessary regulatory burdens.”CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
ImageMr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum in October to “minimize unnecessary regulatory burdens.” CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
The most direct way the Trump administration is working to allow more greenhouse gas emissions is by weakening the Obama-era regulations meant to reduce pollution at its source: the smokestacks of power plants and tailpipes of automobiles.
ADVERTISEMENTA ‘calculated effort’ on coal
In 2015 the Obama administration put forward its signature climate measure, the Clean Power Plan, designed to cut greenhouse pollution from power plants 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That would be the equivalent of preventing more than 365 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
By contrast, the Trump administration’s replacement unveiled in August, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, sets no national benchmark. It aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 0.7 to 1.5 percent by 2030.
According to estimates by environmental groups, that means the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from American power plants over the next decade could be up to 12 times higher than it would have been under the Obama-era plan.
“These are life-extension projects for coal plants,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former counsel to the Obama administration. “It’s a very calculated effort to go in the opposite direction from what’s needed.”The ‘exact opposite signal’ on car emissions
In 2012, the Obama administration put forth a major regulation on planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes, requiring automakers to nearly double the fuel economy of passenger vehicles to an average of about 54 miles per gallon by 2025.
If fully implemented, the plan would have cut about six billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution over its lifetime, the equivalent of roughly a year’s worth of greenhouse pollution for the entire country.
In August, the Trump administration published a proposal designed to drastically weaken that rule, freezing average fuel economy standards after 2021 at about 37 miles per gallon. While that rollback is not yet final, early analysis shows that it could lead to the increase of up to a billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution from 2012 levels.Editors’ Picks‘Forget About the Stigma’: Male Nurses Explain Why Nursing Is a Job of the Future for MenWhere Brexit Hurts: The Nurses and Doctors Leaving LondonThe New Brothels: How Shady Landlords Play a Key Role in the Sex Trade
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“They were a big deal because vehicle travel is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions,” said David G. Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego, of the Obama-era tailpipe rules.
“And they sent a long-term signal to Detroit that they need to make vehicles that produce fewer emissions,” Dr. Victor said. “Attempting to loosen them has sent the exact opposite signal to Detroit.”More methane in the atmosphereFlaring at an oil well in North Dakota.CreditJanie Osborne for The New York Times
ImageFlaring at an oil well in North Dakota.CreditJanie Osborne for The New York Times
The Trump administration isn’t only loosening Obama-era efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions. It has also taken multiple steps to make it easier for oil and gas companies to release methane into the atmosphere.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas — about 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere. It is emitted from landfills and coal-fired power plants, burned as part of oil drilling operations and routinely leaked into the atmosphere from faulty oil and gas wells.
Under Mr. Trump, both the E.P.A. and the Interior Department have proposed weakening Obama-era requirements that companies repair and monitor methane leaks in wells. New rules under consideration would also loosen restrictions on “flaring,” the burning of methane from drilling operations.
The Obama administration had estimated its steps to regulate methane would prevent the equivalent of 11 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by 2025.
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Experts say a rise in methane emissions is an inevitable consequence of Mr. Trump’s rollbacks.
“I don’t think there’s any question that dumping the venting-and-flaring rule is causing increases in emissions,” said David J. Hayes, a former deputy secretary of the interior during the Clinton and Obama administrations.A global leadership void
Finally, there is the Trump administration’s vow to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a voluntary accord under which nearly every country in the world has agreed to reduce emissions.
President Barack Obama pledged the United States would cut carbon at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Trump administration cannot formally withdraw from the Paris pact for two more years, but in rolling back key climate regulations it has effectively stopped all efforts to meet that goal.
But the United States’ role in the Paris Agreement was never just about driving down America’s own emissions. It was also about using its leadership to prod major developing countries like China, India and Brazil to also reduce their emissions despite still climbing out of poverty. Those countries, under United Nations rules agreed to by the United States in the 1990s, also are not legally obligated to cut carbon because of their status as developing nations.
“When the U.S. is not taking action on climate it makes it incredibly difficult for countries with lesser means than ours to take action themselves,” said Richard G. Newell, president of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan Washington-based research organization.
Already Mr. Trump’s actions seem to be reverberating in rich and poor countries alike. Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has threatened to pull out of the Paris Agreement. His conservative government has since said it will honor its pledges, but the country’s energy policy contains no plans for curbing emissions.
In Brazil, the far-right populist President-elect Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on a vow of pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
China, on the other hand, has worked to position itself as the new leader on climate change.
Countries will meet in December in Katowice, the heart of Poland’s coal country, to finalize a set of rules for implementing the Paris Agreement. The United States will attend the talks and, despite the intended rollbacks, is expected to push other countries to be more transparent about their own plans for cutting emissions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/climate/trump-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html

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Republicans Say They Want Free-Market Innovation. Then They Should Want a Carbon Tax.

Nov 26, 2018 | The Washington Post - Opinion

By Catherine Rampell

Republicans’ latest excuse for ignoring climate change — like all their other excuses — gets the problem exactly backward.
Last week, on Black Friday, the Trump administration tried to bury a congressionally mandated report on the consequences of climate change. This nonpartisan assessment, produced by scientists across 13 federal agencies and departments, detailed the observed changes in the climate so far — and the dire and deadly risks that lie ahead if we remain on the same course.
These include more frequent and intense natural disasters (hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires); huge public-health costs (worse air quality, greater transmission of disease through insects, food, water); and devastating economic damage (to infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, tourism).
The report refrained from making specific policy recommendations. But it did press the need for policymakers to do something to substantially curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
Yet, as expected, Republicans instead offered multiple, sometimes contradictory cop-outs for why they plan to do nothing. (None of their excuses are related to the fact that the fossil-fuel industry donates big money to the GOP, of course.)
Two days before the release, for instance, President Trump again suggested that global warming wasn’t real. Which the scientific consensus, as reflected in this report, unequivocally says it is.
Others, such as former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), explained on the Sunday shows that the planet may be warming, but we don’t know whether humans are the cause.
Once again, the scientific consensus says unambiguously that we are. As the report released Friday put it: “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen.”
Alternatively, some Republicans suggest that, yes, the planet may be warming and, yes, humans may be the reason, but it’s too darn expensive to do much more than we are.
As Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) equivocated on CNN’s “State of the Union,” after plugging her state’s use of wind energy, “Any time that we are putting regulation out, we need to always consider impact to American industry and jobs.”
Yet the “impact to American industry and jobs” will also be enormous if lawmakers take no action: The climate assessment report forecasts annual U.S. economic costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars by the century’s end.
Which brings me to Republicans’ final, most confused excuse yet for ducking the most critical policy challenge of our time: The private sector will fix the problem for us, if only we leave markets alone to innovate.
“I think it’s clear that [the climate is] changing and it’s clear that humans are a contributing factor,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the real question, though, becomes what do you do about it? Because you can’t legislate or regulate your way into the past. We have to innovate our way into the future.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also acknowledged that “the burning of fossil fuels” isn’t the “healthiest for Planet Earth.” Asked if he supported a carbon tax, though, he said no. The reason: “If we’re going to move away from fossil fuels, it’s got to be done through innovation. And innovation can be choked out through excessive government regulation.”
Here’s the thing. Taxing carbon is exactly how you get faster innovation. That’s kinda the point.
A carbon tax prices in, upfront, the hidden costs of burning fossil fuels, including pollution and the warming of the planet. In the near-term, a carbon tax disincentivizes the purchase of carbon-intensive products, of course. But over the longer-term, it also increases demand for — and thereby incentivizes the development of — cleaner, less-carbon-intensive technologies. If you want to accelerate innovation in batteries, electric cars, solar, wind, etc., a carbon tax is a no-brainer.
Additionally, if Republicans truly want to walk the walk on reducing “excessive government regulation,” there’s plenty for them to do. There are tons of regulations and subsidies that encourage use of fossil fuels — and slow down innovation in greener technologies.
There are, for instance, the enormous tax breaks and other subsidies for oil and coal. Or Trump’s proposed bailouts for failing coal plants. Or his tariffs on solar panels.
Policymakers could also take action to crush the NIMBYism that impedes offshore wind farms. Or they could discourage or even preempt lots of other stupid state and local rules and regulations. These include building codes that inhibit solar, or the unstandardized, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction permitting process that makes installation more difficult.
All of which is to say that prioritizing innovation and the cutting of red tape are not actually an excuse for inaction on climate change. In fact, they’re key to the solution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-latest-lousy-excuse-for-ignoring-climate-change/2018/11/26/4b14d732-f1c4-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.b74b402ecf9c

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Drax Fires Up Europe’s First Biomass Carbon Capture Project

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jeremy Hodges

Drax Group Plc started Europe’s first carbon capture and storage project using bioenergy at its Yorkshire power station Nov. 26, with the first emissions expected to be siphoned away within weeks.
The six-month test project is aimed at removing a ton of carbon dioxide a day from the gases vented at the plant. The project coincides with the 10th anniversary of the U.K.’s Climate Change Act, one of the first pieces of legislation to tackle climate issues put in place by a developed nation.
Drax is burning biomass to make electricity at what used to be the U.K.’s biggest coal plant. The company has converted four of its six coal units to use biomass after the government ruled it was allowed to apply subsidies across the station rather than to individual units.
Scientists, lawmakers, and industry broadly agree that carbon capture and storage is crucial if the world is to cut pollution levels drastically enough to keep global warming to manageable levels. However, governments have been slow to announce subsidies for technology that the biggest polluters say is too expensive for them to foot the bill alone.

There are currently 18 large-scale carbon capture facilities operating worldwide, with five more under construction and a further four in advanced development, according to the Global CCS Institute, a body that promotes the technology. That’s a long way off the 10,000 active projects that Royal Dutch Shell Plc said were needed for carbon capture to exceed global emissions.
Drax has teamed up with C-Capture, which is based in Leeds, and is putting in 40,000 pounds ($51,300) for the initial project.
“If this project is successful, it could enable Drax to become the world’s first carbon negative power station, something many would never have dreamed possible a decade ago,” said Will Gardiner, chief executive officer of Drax.
CEOs of some of the world’s biggest energy companies, lawmakers and bankers are set to attend a carbon capture summit in Edinburgh on Nov. 28 where they will look at how investment into carbon capture can be accelerated.

https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/drax-fires-up-europes-first-biomass-carbon-capture-project

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Barclays and BNP Lead Banks Backing UN Principles on Environment

Nov 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jeremy Hodges

A group of 28 banks with combined assets of $17 trillion have signed up to a United Nations effort to make lenders more accountable for the impacts their businesses have on the environment and society.
The Principles for Responsible Banking includes Barclays Plc and BNP Paribas SA, which committed to setting public targets to address the most negative effects they have on the environment and society as a whole, according to the UN Environment Finance Initiative. If the banks miss their targets, they will be removed from the list.
The proposed rules reflect a trend in investing to increase transparency around environmental and social impacts so consumers and investors can make educated decisions about whether to use or buy their products.
At the request of the Group of 20 nations, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney set up The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, that encourages firms to voluntarily disclose climate-related risks.
82 Trillion in Pledges
Investors with $82 trillion under management have pledged that they will take into consideration environmental, social, and corporate governance issues, known as ESG.
Carney said last week that he’s is hoping to encourage that process by asking companies to disclose more details of their strategies that would help investors decide who has the most at stake with global warming.
Disclosure of risks will play a key role, as companies that don’t reveal anything may “run the risk of a binary decision” from investors, Carney said.
The UN’s new commitments come into effect from September and mean that banks will fall into line with the goals set out in the Paris Agreement on climate change.
“We are committed to playing our part to deliver the sustainable development goals and we do this by helping our clients to raise billions of dollars of social and environmental financing, upskilling millions of people, and helping to drive job creation,” said Jes Staley, chief executive officer of Barclays.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/barclays-and-bnp-lead-banks-backing-un-principles-on-environment

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Environmental Litigation Reform Going on the Back Burner

Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Daily

By Ellen M. Gilmer

The House Judiciary Committee will have a whole new look next year.
As the chamber switches to Democratic control, the panel will also see shuffling throughout its Republican roster as many members head for the exits.
The new lineup means a dead end for key conservative initiatives aimed at streamlining environmental permitting and reforming the courts.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is expected to take the reins as chairman and has vowed to use his position to investigate voter suppression, separation of immigrant families and Russian interference in the 2016 election, among other issues.
Republican priorities remain uncertain as at least three congressmen vie for the panel's ranking member slot.
Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio is the highest-ranking member seeking the position. Fellow Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is pushing for it, too, along with Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia.
The tangle comes as a wave of GOP veterans on Judiciary prepare for retirement. Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia will leave Congress at the end of this year, along with Lamar Smith of Texas, Darrell Issa of California and several other members.
The remaining Republicans say they're focused on keeping their Democratic colleagues in check in the new term.
"When they overreach, as I'm sure they will, I think we should push back and act aggressively," Chabot told reporters last week.
Falling by the wayside as Democrats take control will be perennial Republican efforts to reel in federal courts, reshape the judiciary branch and reform litigation.
Under GOP control, the committee has repeatedly pushed legislation to tighten the judicial review period for challenges to federal permits, including environmental approvals. Republican members have also attempted to bar lower courts from issuing broad injunctions that apply nationwide.
And they've taken aim at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by proposing to split up the large Western region into smaller circuits or divisions.
The 9th Circuit is a favorite venue for environmental groups and other left-leaning litigants and has been a frequent thorn in the side of the Trump administration, blocking many of the president's policies.
President Trump last week expressed anger at judges within the 9th Circuit and called for more scrutiny. With Democrats in charge of the House, change is unlikely.
Judiciary Democrats haven't yet revealed their own energy and environment-related priorities. The committee has jurisdiction over federal courts, law enforcement and the Justice Department.
Reporter George Cahlink contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/11/27/stories/1060107383

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Public Land Drilling Contributes a Quarter of All Greenhouse Gas Emissions in US: Report

Nov 26, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Miranda Green

Drilling on public lands contributes nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to a new Trump administration report.
The first-of-its-kind U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report, released late Friday, found that emissions from fossil fuels produced on federal lands and offshore areas represent an average of 24 percent of all national emissions of carbon, a major contributor to air pollution and climate change.
Wyoming was the top contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Federal lands within the state contributed 57 percent of the climate change contributing emissions across all states and offshore areas combined.
The report was released on the same day as another Trump administration report that raised an alarm over U.S. efforts to stave off the effects of climate change, arguing that they are insufficient. Democrats were quick to criticize the timing of that report's release — the day after Thanksgiving — and said it highlighted a need to address emissions as soon as possible.
The USGS report, requested in 2016 under President Obama, measured total greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas and coal drilling and mining on public land between 2005 and 2014. It found that emissions for all three greenhouse gases dropped in 2014 compared to 2005 values, including a 6 percent drop in carbon emissions.
Fluctuations in greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel production are closely tied, according to the study.
The Obama administration enacted a number of measures making it harder to drill on public land, including creating over 30 national monuments and expanding the boundaries of a number of others — a designation that forbids fossil fuel extraction.
Environmental groups point out that emissions are likely to be higher today due to the Trump administration’s more active and supportive approach to drilling on federal lands and offshore.
“The US government has kept the American public in the dark for far too long on the climate impact of subsidized oil and gas drilling and coal mining on our public lands. We know this administration’s relentless push to dramatically increase production by recklessly drilling and mining anywhere and everywhere has already threatened important wildlife habitat, recreation areas, and drinking water," said Chase Huntley, senior director for the Energy and Climate Program at The Wilderness Society, in a statement.
"Now top government scientists are clear that this foolhardy favoritism of polluters over people is also making the climate crisis even more severe.”
In March, the Interior Department under Secretary Ryan Zinke held the largest sale of oil and gas leases on federal land in U.S. history. Some 77.3 million acres of offshore waters were auctioned for drilling, covering coastal waters in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Thirty-three companies bidded on plots off the coasts of those five states for a total of $124.8 million.
The USGS report found that the forests and other terrain on public lands does help to counter carbon emissions, but only offsets the greenhouse gases released on federal land by 15 percent.
The Interior Department did not return a request for comment on the report’s findings.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/418242-public-land-drilling-contributes-a-quarter-of-all-greenhouse-gas

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Banned Greenhouse Gas Resurges as Others Reach Record Highs

Nov 27, 2018 | E&E Climatewire

By Ines Kagubare

As the country digests the latest federal report warning that climate change could shrink the economy and threaten Americans' lifestyle, another report has found that reducing planet-warming emissions may be even more daunting than expected.
The report — known as the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin — released over Thanksgiving week by the World Meteorological Organization shows that greenhouse gas levels have reached another record high. These gases include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
Carbon dioxide reached 405.5 parts per million in 2017, up from 403.3 ppm in 2016 and 400.1 ppm in 2015. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide also rose, while there was a resurgence of trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, an outlawed potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, according to the report.
"The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
CFC-11, which was used for refrigeration, was banned in 2010 under the Montreal Protocol — an international agreement to phase out the production of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer — but reappeared in 2013 in the Earth's atmosphere.
A report released this summer by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency concluded that China was to blame for the spike in CFC-11 use. The nation was using the chemical substance to make spray foam insulation for its building and construction subsector.
"We're finally reaching that stage, so the fact that countries would go back to producing it isn't what we want," said Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The Montreal Protocol has worked. Scientists recently reported that the ozone hole was recovering and that they expected it to return to its pre-1980s condition within 40 or 50 years (Climatewire, Nov. 6).
Although CFC-11 is still a greenhouse gas, Ackerman said the main contributors to rising temperatures are carbon dioxide and methane.
"Even if we were to stop the CFC, we would still see the warming unless we did something about the methane and carbon dioxide," Ackerman said.
He added that if the world continues to allow countries to use chlorofluorocarbons and release methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it will be difficult to reverse the effects.
"Why continue to use this option while there are other options?" Ackerman asked.
When CFCs were banned, the Montreal Protocol adopted hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) as a replacement. Although they have a minimal effect on the ozone layer, they still act as powerful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — and are even more potent than carbon dioxide or methane in the same volumes. As a result, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol asked for countries to phase out their use of HFCs starting in 2019, when the amendment goes into effect.
Along with noting the increase in greenhouse gases, WMO reported that since 1990, there has been a 41 percent increase in total radiative forcing — the warming effect on the climate by long-lived greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide accounts for about 82 percent of the increase in radiative forcing over the past decade, according to figures from NOAA quoted in the WMO bulletin.
"The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth," Taalas said. "The window of opportunity for action is almost closed."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/11/27/stories/1060107427

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Former CASAC Members Fault EPA's 'Harmful' Shortened NAAQS Review

Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

By Stuart Parker

Former members of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) are attacking what they say is the agency's “harmful” decision to shorten its national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) review process, warning that it will weaken CASAC's input on the standards and undermine the quality of its advice and its reputation.
In a Nov. 26 letter to current CASAC Chairman and industry consultant Louis “Tony” Cox, a group of 17 experts including 10 former members and three former chairmen of the committee says, “The myriad of changes to the NAAQS review process are collectively harmful to the quality, credibility, and integrity of the scientific review process and CASAC as an advisory body. . . . The current 7-member CASAC does not have the depth or breadth of expertise needed for the ozone review, nor could a group of this size cover the needed scientific disciplines.”
The former chairmen are Chris Frey, a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University; Jonathan Samet, Dean and Professor at the Colorado School of Public Health; and Ana Diez Roux, Dean and Professor of Epidemiology at Drexel University. Frey has criticized the NAAQS review process overhaul launched by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, saying it could lead to weak scientific assessments of the standards that could be used in lawsuits challenging any attempt to make the NAAQS less stringent.
Pruitt's overhaul, which Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is continuing to implement, would abbreviate the NAAQS reviews and reduce the extent of CASAC's input on the reviews.
EPA must under the Clean Air Act review its six NAAQS every five years, but has consistently failed to meet this deadline. It has set a goal of finalizing its review of the Obama EPA's 2015 ozone NAAQS by the statutory deadline of Oct. 1, 2020, and also finalizing the already-overdue review of particulate matter (PM) standards by December 2020. The NAAQS review changes are designed to speed up the process and meet those deadlines.
The new approach combines certain previously separate steps of the process and eschews multiple rounds of review of documents by CASAC. EPA also wants CASAC to evaluate the “adverse” effects of NAAQS implementation, and has abruptly dropped larger, specialized CASAC panels on ozone and PM standards.
EPA has replaced all Obama-era CASAC members with new members, a majority of whom are state air regulators, rather than research scientists. Critics of the new approach and membership say it leaves CASAC short-handed and lacking the correct skills to conduct reviews on such tight timelines, likely resulting in cursory EPA NAAQS reviews that fail to meet strict air law criteria and may not be defensible in court.
The former CASAC members raise those concerns in their letter to Cox, ahead of a Nov. 29 committee call to discuss EPA's ongoing review of the ozone NAAQS. The Obama EPA tightened the ozone limit to 70 parts per billion (ppb) in 2015, but agency air chief Bill Wehrum has questioned the merits of that decision.
In their letter, the former panel members says EPA's late 2020 deadline for completing the ozone review “does not provide sufficient time to complete the 'thorough review' of the “latest scientific information” of the 'kind and extent' of 'all identifiable effects' mandated by the Clean Air Act for the review of NAAQS.”
The letter also warns of “numerous deficiencies” with the Integrated Review Plan (IRP) for the ozone NAAQS review that will be under discussion on the Nov. 29 teleconference. An IRP summarizes the plan for the review, including policy-relevant issues and questions to frame the review. The letter urges CASAC to tell EPA to scrap the IRP and return to a more traditional model for the review that allows more time and input from CASAC.
NAAQS Recommendations
The group makes 30 recommendations for CASAC, including that the committee should tell Wheeler to rescind memos from Pruitt that changed the NAAQS review process, including the former agency chief's May 19 “Back to Basics” memo that prescribed the current contours of the review process.
“CASAC should acknowledge and advise the current Acting Administrator that it does not have adequate breadth and depth of scientific expertise to conduct thorough reviews based on the latest scientific knowledge of the kind and extent of scientific issues that pertain to either the Ozone or the Particulate Matter NAAQS,” the letter says. “CASAC should immediately call for the formation of an Ozone Review Panel and for the reinstatement of the CASAC PM Review Panel,” referring to specialized NAAQS review panels that Pruitt abolished.
CASAC should further reject EPA's current schedule for completing the ozone NAAQS review, and reject the agency's “one draft” policy for key review documents such as integrated science assessments (ISAs) that synthesize the latest science available on the health effects of a pollutant, the former members say.
The letter also criticizes CASAC's latest membership, saying that EPA should instead “emphasize scientific expertise, not geographic diversity nor affiliation with state, local, and tribal agencies” when recruiting for CASAC, and should not dismiss or hire panel members as a group.
They further warn CASAC that it risks “illegally co-mingling” the scientific review of NAAQS with assessment of the standards' implementation impacts if it follows EPA's current agenda. Under Supreme Court precedent dating from 2001, EPA may not consider implementation costs when setting NAAQS.
Therefore, the “review of implementation effects should be done on a separate schedule than review regarding science pertaining to retaining or setting standards,” the former members write. When CASAC considers implementation effects, including cost, it must also consider benefits, they say.
The former members also urge EPA to at once commence reviews of other NAAQS for carbon monoxide, lead and nitrogen oxides (NOx). EPA last reviewed the “primary,” or health-based NAAQS for carbon monoxide in 2011, lead in 2016 and NOx in 2010. The agency should recruit specialized CASAC panels for these reviews, the former members say.
Separate from the former CASAC members' letter, some past panelists have said they will pursue “shadow” reviews of the ozone and PM standards in order to potentially build a scientific record to defend the NAAQS in case the agency proposes to weaken either of the limits.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-casac-members-fault-epas-harmful-shortened-naaqs-review

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Federal Climate Study Gives GHG Rule Backers New Political, Legal Tools

Nov 26, 2018 | Inside EPA

By Doug Obey

The Trump administration's recently released national assessment outlining increasingly serious effects from climate change is giving critics fresh political ammunition to challenge officials' efforts to dismiss the issue, and could also provide legal fodder for those fighting EPA's various climate rule rollbacks.
While the report is just one of several issues likely to arise in litigation over the agency's rollbacks, the Nov. 23 National Climate Assessment (NCA) likely would serve as a strong rebuttal of any effort to reopen or scrap the agency's underlying endangerment finding that greenhouse gases pose a threat, the basis for the Obama administration's climate rules, sources say.
As such, the assessment could help make the legal case that any rollback -- such as the administration's planned vehicle rule that freezes standards at model year 2020 levels -- is at odds with the endangerment finding.
“Given that EPA has found that greenhouse gases from automobiles endanger public health and welfare, what is the rationale for freezing the standards at 2020 levels, causing an increase of 2.2 billion tons of emissions as a result?” says University of California-Los Angeles law professor Ann Carlson in a Nov. 26 blog post.
Some legal observers add that the report could also bolster litigation challenging agencies' approval of infrastructure projects where plaintiffs allege inadequate review of a project's greenhouse gas and climate impacts.
And others note the report could also provide political ammunition to administration critics. “This becomes yet another piece of evidence that Democrats can use to pummel the administration and get public attention to the climate change issue,” says former Obama EPA policy adviser Robert Sussman.
He adds that the assessment might not have much “practical significance” in persuading the Trump administration to halt its deregulatory efforts.
Even so, the report could bolster efforts by defenders of GHG controls to argue that the administration is failing to account for the costs of inaction as it touts its regulations for lowering costs to industry, he says.
The Trump administration quietly released the report -- the second volume of the fourth NCA -- the day after Thanksgiving in an attempt to limit news coverage, though there are signs that strategy might have backfired as the report garnered front-page coverage across the country.
The congressionally mandated report focuses on the “human welfare, societal and environmental elements of climate change and variability.”
The 1,600-page document paints an increasingly dire picture of both current effects from climate change and future risks, including a conclusion that annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach “hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century” -- if GHG emissions continue with historic rates.
“Climate change affects the natural, built, and social systems we rely on individually and through their connections to one another. These interconnected systems are increasingly vulnerable to cascading impacts that are often difficult to predict, threatening essential services within and beyond the Nation’s borders,” the report adds.
The report is also garnering public attention because of its suggestion that climate-related damages could shrink the country's future gross domestic product by 10 percent.
'Won't Change'
The White House in a statement quoted by the New York Times sought to downplay the report, saying it lacked “balance” because it was started under the Obama administration.
President Donald Trump told reporters Nov. 26 that he does not “believe” the report's warnings of economic damage from climate change and sought to argue that emissions in large developing countries are a far bigger problem than domestic GHGs.
“You have to have China and Japan and all of Asia and all of these other countries,” he said. “Right now we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been. It’s very important to me. If we’re clean and everyone else is dirty, that’s not so good.”
This stance has numerous observers saying it is extremely unlikely that the report will alter ongoing Trump administration efforts to scale back power plant GHG limits, freeze fuel economy regulations or weaken methane rules.
“President Trump won't change,” Natural Resources Defense Council's David Doniger said in a Nov. 26 blog post.
But the administration's regulatory response -- or the lack of it -- may be secondary to the report's political implications as Trump seeks re-election in 2020, as well as any legal implications the report may provide.
House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) in a Nov. 23 statement underscored how Hill Democrats will cite the report as part of broader oversight of Trump's climate rollbacks.
“The days of denial and inaction in the House are over as House Democrats plan to aggressively address climate change and hold the Administration accountable for its backward policies that only make it worse.”
Doniger also pushed back against the idea that the report will garner fleeting public attention, citing a series of events including the California wildfires that are shifting the climate issue from a “future problem” to a “now” crisis.
“The one-two punch of irrefutable science and irrefutable experience has raised the urgency of climate action in all voters and in both parties,” he writes, adding that the issue almost certainly will play a bigger role in the 2020 election.
One industry attorney downplays the report's immediate legal relevance, given that the administration is not actually proposing to eliminate all GHG rules but is choosing to modify them -- an issue on which federal agencies enjoy significant legal deference.
But the attorney says the report nevertheless could effectively block further talk among some of the most hard-line “voices” on the right urging the Trump EPA to reopen its GHG endangerment finding. “The report is a fairly powerful rebuttal” of such calls, the attorney says.
The source adds that opponents of the administration's rollbacks will seek to use the report as “another arrow in their quiver” when pushing back administratively or in court, to argue that the report is inconsistent with the supporting analysis for the rules.
One complicating factor to such legal strategies is the fact that the assessment comes after the comment periods on several major EPA rules have already closed.
But Doniger tells Inside EPA that the report is broadly consistent with prior comments on multiple Trump GHG rules, in which environmental groups argued the rollbacks are inconsistent with worsening climate change and EPA's obligation to consider environmental and health damages from climate change -- not just the cost of regulations to industry.
“One thing we would certainty consider doing” is filing supplemental comments to regulatory dockets citing the assessment, Doniger says, adding that the Clean Air Act includes specific procedures for bringing up information that comes in after the formal close of a comment period.
Such comments could be styled in the alternative as a petition to reconsider the rollback, he added.
Regulatory Suits
Columbia University's Michael Gerrard adds that the NCA shows that the adverse impacts of inaction are “even greater than previously thought. I am sure it will be frequently cited in all future rulemaking” proceedings, he said.
Gerrard also said the new report's unprecedented detail on climate impacts in various regions of the country bolsters efforts to require more stringent National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis of infrastructure projects and whether they are resilient to climate impacts.
“Going forward, it is going to be increasingly difficult for infrastructure agencies to ignore these impacts,” he said.
Gerrard added that the NCA “calls into further question” the legitimacy of the analysis supporting the Trump administration's proposal to freeze fuel economy standards -- arguably the most significant single pending rulemaking affecting GHGs. That analysis relies in part on arguments that humanity would essentially give up on controlling GHGs, he added.
While rollback opponents likely will cite the report as one of several legal arguments against those measures, Gerrard acknowledged it is not certain at present whether such a claim would prevail in court.
Carlson similarly argued the report could weaken the Trump administration's legal position on its climate rollbacks, and said it could pose a fresh obstacle to efforts to limit the legal standing of environmental plaintiffs to challenge rules.
To the extent plaintiffs cite climate-related harms to prove standing, such claims could be bolstered by the NCA's significant detail on specific injuries to various regions, she said.
“This new evidence should help environmental plaintiffs establish that they have met the injury requirement of the standing doctrine.”
She also suggested the report could help challenge administration efforts to weaken existing rules, like the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. “The Trump Administration’s replacement proposal would be so weak that it might actually result in an increase in greenhouse gases from existing power plants. How can a rule that may result in increases in such gases, and will not meaningfully reduce any emissions, be consistent with the law?” she says.
And Gerrard suggested the report's legal impact could transcend the specifics of detailed legal arguments. “Court judges read newspapers and so do their children,” he said -- meaning they are aware of what is and is not being done to address climate risks.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/federal-climate-study-gives-ghg-rule-backers-new-political-legal-tools

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EPA Proposes Relaxing Wood Stove Rules

Nov 26, 2018 | E&E News PM

By Sean Reilly

EPA is moving to aid the wood stove industry.
Almost four years after setting tighter emission standards for new stoves and other wood-fired heating appliances, the agency is now proposing to allow some dirtier-burning models to stay on the market longer. It's also seeking public input on the option of rolling back the final May 2020 compliance deadline for those standards.
The agency's plans are outlined in two separate drafts released late Wednesday, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday. Under a proposed rule, EPA would allow hydronic heaters and forced air furnaces made or imported before mid-May 2020 to be sold for another two years, or until May 2022, and take feedback on the option of providing similar "sell-through" relief to the rest of the industry. Under an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, agency officials also want input on the merits of delaying the May 2020 deadline for an unspecified period of time, as well as possibly making changes to certification test methods.
Taken together, the proposed amendments would save the industry $33 million from next year through 2022, while leading to a relatively small increase in releases of fine particulates in comparison with keeping the status quo, according to EPA estimates. In a summary, the agency said it is undertaking the revisions in part because of concerns that the emissions tests for gauging compliance with the 2015 standards "do not reflect how residential wood heaters are typically operated — including the type of firewood most people burn."
"As a result, the [2015] rule may not be achieving the environmental benefits it was supposed to provide," the summary said.
The industry has so far failed to win final congressional approval for legislation to push back the final compliance deadline until 2023. In a news release, the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association welcomed the proposed sell-through extension for forced air furnaces and hydronic heaters but said it was "very disappointed" that wood and pellet stoves wouldn't also be immediately covered.
Stoves and other wood-burning appliances can collectively be major sources of fine particulates that are linked to an array of heart and lung problems. "Astonishing timing given the dangerous #smoke from the California fires," Frank O'Donnell, president of the Clean Air Watch advocacy group, said on Twitter after the EPA proposals were released.
The 2015 Obama-era update to what are formally known as New Source Performance Standards for the residential wood-heating industry was the first revision since the initial regulations were issued in 1988 (E&E News PM, Feb. 4, 2015). At the time, the agency acknowledged that many manufacturers were small businesses and said it changed the original proposal to provide more regulatory flexibility. Compliance costs were expected to be about $46 million per year, with annual health savings in the form of fewer emergency room visits and other benefits projected to eventually total at least $3.4 billion, EPA said then.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/11/26/stories/1060107361

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