Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 05/12/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastic
Dec 5, 2018 | Bloomberg, The Washington Post
By James Greiff
Nothing exemplifies modernity like plastic. -
Chemical Firms Face High Re-Registering Costs Under ‘No Deal’ Brexit
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K.-based chemical companies face major costs to re-register their products if Britain leaves the European Union next March with no trading arrangements, industry representatives said Dec. 4. -
(ACC Mentioned) The Trump EPA’s Latest TSCA Gift to the Chemical Industry is Illegal and The Height of Hypocrisy
Dec 5, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
‘Tis the season for giving, but it’s not quite keeping in the spirit to have our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pile on giveaways to the chemical industry. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Seeks To Refute Key TCE Study Ahead Of EPA, Carolina Actions
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Chemical industry groups have submitted to EPA and its North Carolina counterpart a draft study intended to refute the findings of a controversial 2003 toxicology study that has driven conservative risk and remedial policies on trichloroethylene (TCE) as both agencies are poised to take important steps to address the ubiquitous solvent. -
(ACC Mentioned) Perry Backs Appalachia Petrochemical Build-Out
Dec 5, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Jeremy Dillon
Energy Secretary Rick Perry expressed support today for the petrochemical industry in Appalachia following the release of a Department of Energy report highlighting the region's potential because of its proximity to natural gas drilling. -
(ACC Mentioned) New DOE Report Backs Appalachian Ethane Storage Hub
Dec 5, 2018 | Kallanish Energy
An ethane storage/distribution hub in the Appalachian Basin offers the U.S. petrochemical and plastics industries supply and geographic diversity, mitigates feedstock price spikes, and lessens the possibility of weather-related production disruption, a new Department of Energy report states. -
More Texas Natural Gas Heading to Mexico After FERC Clears Expansion Project
Dec 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
FERC last week gave the green light for more natural gas flows into Mexico authorizing the in-service of Texas Eastern Transmission’s (Tetco) South Texas Expansion Project (STEP), which transforms its existing Line 16 system to bidirectional service. -
As Crude Oil Swoons, Natural Gas Prices Surge
Dec 5, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
Natural gas prices have climbed by more than 50 percent over the past two months, meaning higher heating and electricity costs as winter arrives while helping some energy companies in Houston offset profits lost during the recent plunge in crude oil prices. -
Thaw With China Could Boost Frozen U.S. Gas Projects
Dec 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McFarlane
Easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and China could unlock new American liquefied natural gas projects that stalled this year while seeking customers. -
Global, Oil, Gas Execs Eye Dealmaking in 2019, with Focus in U.S., Canada
Dec 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Most global oil and gas executives expect to make deals to buy or sell assets in 2019, nearly 10% above the global average, with most of the activity likely to be in the United States, spurred by onshore transactions, and in Canada, according to a recent survey. -
Fracking’s Major Contribution to Cleaner Air
Dec 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal - Opinion
By Mike Sommers
Regarding Walter Russell Mead’s “How American Fracking Changes the World” (Global View, Nov. 27): There’s no question the U.S. shale revolution has delivered massive economic and geopolitical benefits. -
Xcel Becomes First Big U.S. Utility to Swear Off Greenhouse Gas
Dec 5, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Eckhouse
Xcel Energy Inc. became the first major U.S. utility owner to pledge to fully phase out carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. -
Claims Over W. Va. Fire, Airborne Release Trimmed
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
The owner of a West Virginia warehouse couldn’t shake negligence claims stemming from a major fire and release of hazardous substances, the Southern District of West Virginia ruled. -
COP24, the New Round of Global Climate Talks, Has Begun. We Answer Three Key Questions.
Dec 4, 2018 | The New York Times
By Brad Plumer
With the world still struggling to get global warming under control, diplomats from nearly 200 countries are scheduled to meet in Poland over the next two weeks to try to put global climate negotiations back on track. -
On Climate, the Facts and Law Are Against Trump
Dec 4, 2018 | The New York Times - Opinion
By Richard L. Revesz
A major governmental report released by the Trump administration recently projects enormous damages to communities across the country as a result of climate change. -
Carper Seeks EPA Data Downplaying Climate Report
Dec 5, 2018 | Inside EPA
The top Democrat on the Senate environment committee is urging acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to provide information that supports EPA's effort to downplay the dire warnings contained in the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) that the Trump administration recently issued. -
Facing Court Losses, White House Mulls Limited NEPA Climate Guidance
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Following a series of court losses, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is mulling narrow new guidance to federal agencies for how to consistently consider greenhouse gas emissions in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, after it withdrew a detailed guide the Obama CEQ issued on the topic after years of work. -
EAB Deals Environmentalists Two Losses In Bid For Stricter NSR Permits
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has dealt environmentalists two losses in cases seeking stricter Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permits for energy facilities, deferring to state air regulators on an Arizona gas-fired power plant's permit and backing EPA Region 8's permits for a series of natural gas compressors in Utah. -
NYC Plots 'Green New Deal' Plan for Building Emissions
Dec 5, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
Members of the New York City Council introduced a package of bills yesterday that they described as a global model for cutting emissions from buildings, typically the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in cities. -
World's Largest Container Shipper Maersk aims to Be CO2-Neutral by 2050
Dec 5, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Stine Jacobsen
Maersk, the world's biggest container shipper, aims to be carbon neutral by 2050, in a challenge to the rest of the world's fossil fuel-dependent fleet. -
Five of Europe’s Biggest Banks Join Low-Carbon Lending Effort
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan
Five international banks with a combined loan portfolio of more than 2.4 trillion euros ($2.7 trillion) vowed to align their corporate lending with the Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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Dec 5, 2018 | Bloomberg, The Washington Post
By James Greiff
Nothing exemplifies modernity like plastic. It’s cheap. It can be molded into all sorts of shapes and textures, dyed any color or be transparent. Unlike glass or ceramics, it’s flexible and doesn’t easily break, and it won’t rot or corrode like wood or metal. These qualities make it ideal for use in shopping bags, drinking straws, car bumpers, water pipes, even paint. On the other hand, because most plastic doesn’t biodegrade, it’s with us, literally, forever. Almost 80 percentof all plastic ever produced is entombed in landfills, strewn across the world’s landscapes or drifting in the seas, where it can ensnare marine life or be devoured, injuring and sometimes killing creatures. Rising concern about this impact and possible effects on human health have provoked new restrictions, particularly on single-use plastics, around the world. Skeptics say alternative materials will exact at least as high a toll on the environment.The Situation
The European Union in 2018 said it will prohibit or limit plastic products such as straws, plates and utensils, as have countries including India and Rwanda. The tiny Caribbean island nation of Dominica is adopting the world’s most comprehensive ban. Reducing use has grown more urgent since the beginning of 2018 when China, which once imported as much as 45 percent of the world’s used plastic for disposal or recycling, stopped accepting the waste in part because too much of it was contaminated. In any case, just 9 percent of plastic is recycled. The process isn’t always cost-effective since the half-dozen main chemical variants of plastic must be separated first. In developing nationswithout well-established solid-waste systems, most plastic is simply tossed aside. A large share washes into streams and rivers, and ultimately the ocean. Scientists are still assessingthe threat plastic may pose to people.What Happens to Plastic When You’re Done With It
Fate of plastic waste, as measured in millions of metric tons, worldwide
Source: Science Advances, research by Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavendar Law
The Background
The first plastic, Bakelite, was synthesized from compounds derived from coal and formaldehyde in 1907 by Leo Baekeland in Yonkers, New York. It was widely used in household wares and jewelry, but the material was brittle. Modern plastics, mostly derived from oil, proved more versatile, and after World War II production soared. About 40 percent of all plastic is used in packaging, much of it discarded after a single use. In landfills, plastic can contaminate ground water while emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas. About 12 percent of plastic has been incinerated, often releasing toxins into the air. It’s estimated that about half the plastic in the oceans is abandoned fishing gear. This refuse and other waste is swept by currents into five recirculating gyres in the world’s oceans, creating vast, nautical garbage patches. There, the material is broken down into particles small enough to be ingested by zooplankton, which are then consumed by fish and other animals that people eat. Meanwhile, plastic microbeads once in wide use in personal-care products (the U.S., U.K. and several other countries have banned them) and fibers from laundered synthetic clothing pass through sewage-treatment systems into freshwater bodies. As much as 83 percent of the world’s drinking-water supplies contain plastic fibers and particles. The Argument
Critics of plastic restrictions note that a paper bag has to be reused at least three times and a cotton bag 131 times to undercut the effect on global warming of one use of a plastic bag, according to a report sponsored by the U.K. government. An analysis commissioned by the American Chemistry Council, an industry group, concluded that plastic is less damaging to the environment overall, and the ocean specifically, than the alternatives such as glass, tin and aluminum because they’re four times heavier on average and thus take more energy to transport. Critics of plastic restrictions say the solution to garbage in the oceans is to keep it out by improving waste-disposal systems, especially in quickly developing Asia and Africa, the location of eight of 10 rivers responsible for an estimated 90 percent of plastic input into the seas. Advocates of plastic curbs cite the damage from ocean debris to sea animals. They say even though it’s not clear whether people are harmed by eating animals that ingest microplastics, it’s safer to take precautions. The environmental organization Greenpeace urges companies and governments to bring an end to the production of single-use plastics. The Reference Shelf
A literature review in Science concludes that of reported encounters between marine debris and 693 species, 92 percent involved plastic.
A paper in Science Advances chronicles the “Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.”
An article in the Economist plots the knowns and unknowns in the plastic debate.
A report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization details current knowledge about the effects of microplastics on aquatic organisms and food safety.
The Guardian examines how the sudden backlash against plastic developed.
Related QuickTakes on recyling and on the idea of a circular economy, which would reduce material waste.
https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/plastic
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Chemical Firms Face High Re-Registering Costs Under ‘No Deal’ Brexit
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K.-based chemical companies face major costs to re-register their products if Britain leaves the European Union next March with no trading arrangements, industry representatives said Dec. 4.
Under a “no deal” Brexit, U.K. businesses would cease to be part of EU’s REACH legislation (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals), which allows them to trade freely across the bloc, Nishma Patel, chemicals policy director of the industry lobby group Chemical Industries Association, said at hearing of Parliament’s Environment Audit Committee.
Businesses have already paid over half a billion pounds ($635.6 million) in the last decade to comply with REACH, she told the committee. But a no-deal scenario would force them to make additional investments to re-register their products as a non-EU-based business with the European Chemicals Agency as well as with a future domestic regulator, she said.
U.K. companies hold 13 percent of the total REACH registrations.
Peter Newport, CEO of the Chemical Business Association, which represents chemical distributors and traders, said the costs of re-registering at least 21,800 chemical substances could escalate to as much as 1.5 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) based on the costs of new legal contracts and paying to negotiate access to date with EU businesses.
Chemical companies are supporting the government’s controversial divorce deal with the EU, which would guarantee them membership of REACH until at least the end of 2020. But with less than a week to go for the crucial Dec. 11 vote, a growing number of lawmakers have said they will oppose the plan, raising the prospects of a no-deal Brexit.Difficult Access to Data
Companies will have 60 days to carry across basic information of their existing EU REACH registrations under the government’s no-deal guidance and up to two years to provide the full data package that supported their EU registration.
But Elizabeth Shepherd, a partner at Manchester-based law firm Eversheds Sutherland, said the government has underestimated the practical difficulties of re-registering products.
“Copying and pasting is out of the question,” she said.
At the same time, U.K. companies “may not have all the access they need to populate the U.K, database even if they want to because complex data access rights to the ownership of individual data,” Shepherd said.
That’s because companies in the EU dealing with a third party, as the U.K. will become, will “be bound by data sharing rules. It will be a matter of private contract that has to be negotiated,” she said.
Susanne Baker, head of the environment and compliance program at TechUK, which represents 900 tech firms, agreed with Shepherd.
“The assumption that existing registrants will simply pass us the data is away with the fairies. There are some good competitive reasons why some registrants won’t want to share their data,” she said.Unrealistic Deadline
Baker also said the government’s current proposal of two years “is not enough to duplicate data.”
The Chemical Industries Association’s Patel shared this view. “Two years is extremely ambitious,” she said, reminding the committee that EU members had at least eight years to comply with REACH registration.
Even a non-EU country such as Turkey, which has “a much smaller portfolio of chemicals,” needed at least three years to register the chemical products it sold to the EU, she said.
For businesses that provide decorative, industrial, and powder coatings, printing inks, and wall covering, the costs of re-registering could be prohibitive, said Ellen Daniels, the head of public affairs and policy of the British Coatings Federation.
For many firms that provide “high-value, but low-volume, materials,” it may “not be economically viable to re-register,” Daniels said.
The U.K. risks losing its competitive advantage, especially as half of federation members are owned by firms in the EU or the U.S. who may decide to relocate to the EU to avoid the need to duplicate registrations, she said.Push for ECHA Membership
Even if Prime Minister Theresa May manages to pass her divorce deal next week, chemical companies will still need to continue lobbying for future membership of the European Chemicals Agency.
“There is no provision for a non-EU state to be part of REACH,” said Nigel Haigh, an honorary fellow at the Institute for European Environmental Policy. “The only way for the U.K. to become an associate member is if there is a treaty within the U.K. and EU like the one Norway has.”
The challenge, though, is that May has ruled out the option of the U.K. joining Norway as a member of the European Free Trade Association even though this option is being touted as a potential alternative to the proposed divorce deal.
Businesses are concerned that that if they outside the chemicals agency, “they lose the insight that participation gave them and the opportunity to influence regulation going forward,” Shepherd said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/chemical-firms-face-high-re-registering-costs-under-no-deal-brexit
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Dec 5, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
‘Tis the season for giving, but it’s not quite keeping in the spirit to have our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pile on giveaways to the chemical industry. The latest one I’ll discuss in this post is not only in direct violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA); it exposes this EPA’s two-facedness when it comes to making public the information EPA relies on in making regulatory decisions that affect our health and our environment.
EPA’s failure to make health and safety studies available to the public is blatantly illegal and a slap in the face to the 2016 bipartisan reforms to TSCA that sought to increase public access to information on chemical risks.
First some background. It has been a long time since EPA has proposed a rule to require testing to determine the hazards of a chemical; the last time was way back in 2011. (That proposed rule was never finalized. And despite Congress’ major expansion of EPA’s authority to require testing when reforming TSCA in 2016, EPA has steadfastly refused to even consider use of that new authority.)
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) filed comments opposing the 2011 proposed rule. As I blogged about at the time, ACC insisted that, instead of calling on its members to provide the health and safety data sought through the proposed rule, EPA should seek to get it from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). ACC asserted that ECHA likely had already received the requested data under the European Union’s (EU) REACH Regulation. I noted that’s not as easy as it sounds, because the chemical industry itself has thrown up major roadblocks to such inter-governmental data sharing. But here’s the rub: ACC further argued that, should EPA succeed in obtaining the health and safety data submitted to ECHA, EPA could and should deny public access to those data – despite the fact that TSCA clearly prohibits EPA from withholding health and safety studies. ACC added that the public should make do with mere summaries of the studies, summaries that were prepared by the companies making the subject chemicals.
At the time, EPA was having none of this. It indicated that if necessary it could use, and was considering using, its subpoena authority under section 11(c) of TSCA to get the studies from the companies that had submitted them to ECHA; see pages 16-17 of this 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
That was then. Now, with a former ACC senior official essentially running the TSCA office at EPA, the agency is virtually following ACC’s script.
On November 15, EPA announced the release of the first of its draft risk evaluations for the first 10 chemicals being reviewed under TSCA. The draft risk evaluation is for a chemical called Pigment Violet 29 (PV29). One notable aspect of this chemical is how few hazard studies have been conducted. EDF prominently flagged this concern in the last round of public comment in August, noting that the chemical lacked data on chronic effects. It doesn’t have the minimum amount of information deemed by international authorities as necessary to conduct even a screening-level assessment of a chemical’s hazards, let alone a full risk evaluation. Despite receiving these and similar comments from stakeholders, EPA took no steps to fill these major data gaps and as a result its new draft includes no additional data (which didn’t stop the agency from declaring the chemical safe).
What’s even worse, however, is that EPA is refusing to make even the limited hazard data on this chemical available to the public. Why? On page 5 of the draft, EPA states: “Due to a claim of business confidentiality, the full study reports are not publicly available.” And on page 6: “These study reports contain information protected under statute as Confidential Business Information (CBI) by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).” And on page 8: “[A] claim of business confidentiality by the data owners means that the EPA will not reproduce these full study reports in this risk evaluation.”
Instead, EPA only provides links to summaries of most of the studies that were prepared by the companies that registered the chemical under the EU’s REACH Regulation. For four of the studies, even summaries are not available.
EPA has implemented ACC’s earlier demands – lock, stock, and barrel.
EPA’s actions are illegal under TSCA
Let’s unpack this a bit further. EPA has accepted without question “a claim of business confidentiality” and asserts these studies are protected under TSCA as CBI. Yet section 14(b) of TSCA, titled “INFORMATION NOT PROTECTED FROM DISCLOSURE,” (emphasis added) says the opposite. That section explicitly states that section 14’s protection from disclosure for CBI does NOT extend to “any health and safety study” or “any information reported to, or otherwise obtained by, the Administrator from a health and safety study.” Nowhere does this language or TSCA as a whole make any distinction between full studies and summaries – section 14’s protection from disclosure does not apply to either.
The studies in question clearly constitute health and safety studies, as that term is defined under TSCA. EPA itself states that the studies “were conducted to determine the physical-chemical properties (n=2), environmental fate properties (n=2), human health hazards (n=17) and environmental hazards (n=3).” Notably, EPA does not even acknowledge section 14(b)(2)’s provision that health and safety studies are not CBI, much less articulate a theory for why this information should not be disclosed in light of this provision.
EPA’s failure to make the full studies available to the public is blatantly illegal and a slap in the face to the 2016 bipartisan reforms to TSCA that sought to increase public access to information on chemical risks.
EPA then asks us to take its word that the studies are accurately reported in the companies’ summaries and that they demonstrate PV29 is perfectly safe. Coming from this EPA, which is doing everything it can to ensure that it never identifies an unreasonable risk for any chemical, I can only say “Show me the studies.”
Implications for peer review
EPA has also announced that the PV29 draft risk evaluation will undergo peer review by the TSCA Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC). A four-day meeting will take place January 29-February 1, 2019, running for half of the first day and from 9-5:30 ET each of the other three days.
EPA says it will provide peer reviewers with copies of the “confidential” studies on PV29. A separate memo provided by EPA states: “[A]ll CBI materials (24 scientific studies) will be separately provided to the SACC who will be cleared for TSCA CBI access.”
One hour of the approximately 28-hour meeting will not be open to the public because the SACC peer reviewers are receiving the studies EPA asserts are CBI; see yet another memo, this one from Dr. Nancy Beck and approved by Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
So just how is this supposed to work? Questions abound. Will the peer reviewers be barred during the 27 hours of the meeting that are open to the public from mentioning any aspect of any of the “confidential” studies that is not included in the corresponding summary of that study? Are they instead to hold off discussing any of these issues until that single private hour of the meeting? What happens if one of them slips – will the record be expunged? Will EPA censor, or force these scientists to self-censor, their peer review report?
As to being “cleared for TSCA CBI access,” EPA has always made clear that is a very big deal, entailing fairly extensive training and agreeing to adhere to stringent procedures – not to mention agreeing never to mention to anyone not cleared for TSCA CBI access anything deemed to be confidential. Nor is any of this to be taken lightly: TSCA section 14(h) imposes criminal penalties for anyone found to have willfully disclosed TSCA CBI.
Just how can a robust, open peer review that the public can have any confidence in be conducted under these circumstances?
Bear in mind that some EPA staff and the SACC members – and, of course, the industry – will all have the studies EPA is claiming are CBI. Only the public and workers (including stakeholders representing their interests and any media following this story) will be denied access to this information that they’re entitled to under TSCA.
I have to wonder how many of the peer reviewers understood they were signing up for, and are comfortable with, all this.
Finally, here’s the hypocrisy
Some of you may have followed the major controversy that erupted earlier this year over a proposed rule that EPA issued (and is still pending) that would bar the agency from using any study unless that study and all of its underlying data, models, etc., are made public. That misguided proposal garnered widespread opposition from the nation’s scientific community because, among other concerns, of the widespread recognition that there are legitimate constraints on such disclosure due to legal and ethical protections on the confidentiality and privacy of human subject data.
Here, of course, the opposite is true: EPA is denying the public access to information on chemical risks that TSCA itself clearly precludes from being withheld.
If that isn’t a double standard, I don’t know what is.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/12/04/the-trump-epas-latest-tsca-gift-to-the-chemical-industry-is-illegal-and-the-height-of-hypocrisy/
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Seeks To Refute Key TCE Study Ahead Of EPA, Carolina Actions
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Chemical industry groups have submitted to EPA and its North Carolina counterpart a draft study intended to refute the findings of a controversial 2003 toxicology study that has driven conservative risk and remedial policies on trichloroethylene (TCE) as both agencies are poised to take important steps to address the ubiquitous solvent.
It is unclear whether or how EPA will account for the draft industry study's findings as it prepares to release a draft assessment of the chemical under its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) program. But North Carolina's Science Advisory Board (SAB) Dec. 3 rejected industry requests to delay approval of a state guidance for remediating vapor intrusion from TCE until the industry study and EPA's upcoming TSCA assessment are final.
“As you may be aware, [TCE is] one of the first 10 chemicals being reviewed under the [revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) by EPA],” Steve Risotto of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) told members of North Carolina's Science Advisory Board during a Dec. 3 meeting. “[EPA's] current schedule, as far as we are aware, [the draft TCE assessment] will be available in 2019; [EPA] will be [reviewing] this new study.”
Instead, the board voted unanimously to endorse the state's guide after a state regulator expressed concern with delaying implementation of the guidance on how to respond to TCE vapor intrusion until the new study's results could be peer-reviewed, published, and reviewed by EPA and North Carolina regulators.
“Rather than delay the decision we would request that the board move ahead with the decision with what we have proposed for the TCE action level and response guidance due to the critical nature of the health endpoint that we are trying to protect and the . . . nature of the reviews [of TCE's toxicity] by [the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR)], EPA, and other groups and ancillary studies that have been released since the IRIS study was released,” Sandy Mort, a toxicologist with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) told SAB.
Asked how to balance the new information with the need for regulatory decisions, Mort recommended “reach[ing] back out to that sponsoring group, tell them to resubmit when they are comfortable with that report being in its final form. This has not been peer reviewed, it's not been published. It's a draft report that has been submitted to us and to EPA.”
Mort added that she would also like “feedback” from EPA on the new study, but is unsure when EPA will be able to complete its review.
The industry study, sponsored by the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance (HSIA), seeks to refute the findings of a 2003 study by Paula Johnson, a University of Arizona professor and others, who found that exposure to TCE in utero could lead to cardiac heart defects.
Industry has long disputed the findings but EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program used it as the basis for its 2011 assessment of TCE, resulting in a conservative risk estimate that has driven strict management guidelines, including North Carolina's vapor intrusion guidance.
The Obama EPA had also proposed a ban on certain uses of TCE, arguing that they did not meet TSCA's unreasonable risk standard, but the Trump EPA has delayed those bans, and it is unclear what will become of them. Multiple Democrats pressed President Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA's toxics office, Alexandra Dunn, to finalize the bans, during her Nov. 29 confirmation hearing. She promised to look into the TCE ban's status.
EPA Assessment
Industry groups are now hoping to use their pending study to influence EPA's upcoming TSCA assessment of TCE, which will form the basis for any safety controls. EPA's draft TCE assessment, one of the first 10 the agency will release since the law was reformed, is expected by early 2019 so that the drafts can be peer-reviewed and EPA can address those and public comments in final versions by December 2019.
John Vandenberg and Elaina Kenyon, two EPA scientists who serve on the state SAB, said that they did not know when EPA would complete its review of the new TCE study. “I know the same report was provided to EPA. I don't have a time line. It is a complex study and will take some time to review. I don't expect that within the next few months or anything like that,” Vandenberg said.
In North Carolina's case, EPA Region 4 staff provided the state with the action levels it is using, based on the IRIS' assessment's fetal cardiac malformation endpoint, of 2.1 micrograms per cubic meter of air in residential settings and 8.8 ug/m^3 in occupational settings.
Should remediators find TCE vapor intrusion at levels above these values where women of child-bearing age are present, the state and EPA region determined that they should immediately inform the affected individuals, take immediate steps to reduce the exposures and notify the state within one business day.
But in North Carolina, as elsewhere, “[a]s regulatory agencies implemented response activities referenced to the TCE short-term action levels some stakeholders questioned the reliability of the toxicological science identified as the critical study, the Johnson et al. (2003) study, that served as the basis of the cardiac developmental reference value,” DEQ said in a report developed for SAB in the fall.
In ACC comments posted to the NCSAB website, emails between Risotto and a DEQ staffer provide some scale of the vapor intrusion issue in the Tar heel State. It notes that of the estimated 700 North Carolina sites investigated for vapor intrusion over the past 15 years, more than half of those sites saw remediation.
“Vapor intrusion risk demands a growing share of resources for federal, state, and County programs that address contaminated sites in North Carolina,” writes James Bateson, Superfund section chief with DEQ's Division of Waste Management.
In public comments at the end of the SAB meeting, Risotto raised ACC's concerns that “there is a rush to bring this decision to the board, in light of this new info . . . we would like some commitment from the board and the department they will revisit this decision when the peer review is available. We would expect those very soon.”
SAB Chairman Tom Augspurger replied that the board “certainly is open to review any information brought to our attention.”
Risotto also sought to bolster the draft report's status and downplay the amount of time remaining until the study is available in a final form. “The first thing is that what we've sent to you and to EPA . . . is an audited lab report. The results will not change,” Risotto said. “Secondly, a manuscript of the study in progress, will be hopefully completed by the end of the year and submitted for publication. Hopefully it will be available in early 2019.”
In its Nov. 21 comments, ACC adds that there are now “EPA guideline studies by all three exposure routes that have found no relationship between in-utero TCE exposure and cardiac malformations.” As a result, ACC urged the board to consider its draft study and noted that DEQ's report “relies heavily” on EPA's IRIS assessment of TCE for its immediate action level.
ACC also sought to push back on three additional epidemiology studies the DEQ cited in its report to justify the vapor guidance, charging they “contain[] substantial design or analytic limitations that likely explain the elevated results.”
ACC points the SAB to a “far better assessment of the TCE-cardiac defect relationship” published by ToxStrategies consultants for ENTEK International, an Oregon-based producer of battery components.
“This review notes that 'the inconsistent findings of a single animal study were likely explained by the limitations in study design assessed via [risk of bias] (e.g., lack of concurrent controls, unvalidated method for assessing outcome, unreliable statistical methods, etc)' and concludes that '[s]uch limitations considered in the context of the body of evidence render the study not sufficiently reliable for the development of toxicity reference values,'” ACC writes.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/industry-seeks-refute-key-tce-study-ahead-epa-carolina-actions
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(ACC Mentioned) Perry Backs Appalachia Petrochemical Build-Out
Dec 5, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Jeremy Dillon
Energy Secretary Rick Perry expressed support today for the petrochemical industry in Appalachia following the release of a Department of Energy report highlighting the region's potential because of its proximity to natural gas drilling.
Perry's comments could represent a sign of the department's willingness to aid the development of a massive natural gas liquid storage hub and related infrastructure there with a $1.9 billion DOE loan guarantee.
That application for money to help finance the $3.3 billion proposed Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub — an infrastructure project that would centralize the Marcellus and Utica shale formation natural gas liquid industry — currently sits in the second phase of the loan guarantee review process.
"There is an incredible opportunity to establish an ethane storage and distribution hub in the Appalachian region and build a robust petrochemical industry in Appalachia," Perry said in remarks today at a meeting of the National Petroleum Council in Washington.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry spoke this morning at the National Petroleum Council meeting in Washington, D.C. Jeremy Dillon/E&E News
"As our report shows, there is sufficient global need, and enough regional resources, to help the U.S. gain a significant share of the global petrochemical market," he said.
Ethane is a byproduct of natural gas and the main feedstock of ethylene, which is used in the manufacturing of plastics and other products.
DOE's report said increases in Appalachian gas production over the next decades would present ample supply for petrochemical companies.
The document said projected increased petrochemical capacity nationwide "will generate nearly $227 billion in revenue between 2018 and 2040."
Currently, 95 percent of the nation's ethylene production capacity is in Texas or Louisiana, said the report. DOE concluded that there may be security advantages in building out the industry outside of the Gulf region and its occasionally problematic weather and that Appalachia could meet those standards.
"Appalachia's abundant resources coupled with extensive downstream industrial activity may offer a competitive advantage that could enable it to displace marginal producers and help the U.S. gain global market share in the petrochemical industry," the report said.
The DOE review, citing U.S. Energy Information Administration projections, said the region could produce 640,000 barrels of ethane per day by 2025, 20 times higher than 2013. By 2050, ethane production could reach 950,000 barrels per day.
A 2017 report from the American Chemistry Council estimated an Appalachian-based petrochemical industry could lead to a $36 billion investment, with some 100,000 jobs resulting from that money.
"These are outstanding numbers of growth and potential," Perry said. "This is economic opportunity for a region that sorely needs it."
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is constructing a $6 billion ethane cracker project in Pennsylvania. In addition, Chinese investors have pledged nearly $86 billion in investments in West Virginia related to the state's natural gas industry.
The report comes at the behest of congressional lawmakers who, as part of the fiscal 2017 energy-water spending bill, told DOE to complete a feasibility report on the need for an ethane storage and distribution hub in the United States.
Congress, especially West Virginia-based lawmakers like Sen. Joe Manchin (D) and Rep. David McKinley (R), have been motivated by the economic potential of the project to lobby the administration to provide the needed financing.
Those efforts have even included legislation, S. 1337, to ease the path for the DOE loan guarantee.
Manchin met with President Trump at the White House yesterday. Topics of that meeting included infrastructure, according to a Manchin spokesman, although it remains unclear what exactly the two leaders discussed.
The project is not without its opponents. Local environment groups like the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition have expressed concerns about the potential for increased exposure to carcinogens on top of an increased risk of chemical spills as a result of more petrochemical industry plants.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060108741/search?keyword=Perry+backs+Appalachia+petrochemical+build-out
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(ACC Mentioned) New DOE Report Backs Appalachian Ethane Storage Hub
Dec 5, 2018 | Kallanish Energy
An ethane storage/distribution hub in the Appalachian Basin offers the U.S. petrochemical and plastics industries supply and geographic diversity, mitigates feedstock price spikes, and lessens the possibility of weather-related production disruption, a new Department of Energy report states.
The 91-page report, mandated by, and delivered to, the U.S. Congress, entitled “Ethane Storage and Distribution Hub in the United States,” highlights the potential in Appalachia for a hub due to the huge availability and low-cost of natural gas liquids available via the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.
And the Trump administration is prepared to support such a project, Kallanish Energyreports.
'Incredible opportunity'
“There is an incredible opportunity to establish an ethane storage and distribution hub in the Appalachian region and build a robust petrochemical industry in Appalachia,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, speaking Tuesday at the annual National Petroleum Council Meeting in Washington D.C.
“As our report shows, there is sufficient global need and enough regional resources to help the U.S. gain a significant share of the global petrochemical market.
“The Trump Administration would also support an Appalachia hub to strengthen our energy and manufacturing security by increasing our geographic production diversity.”
The report to Congress examines the potential for a hub by comparing it to existing ones that already service the Gulf Coast and Permian Basin, which account for most of the U.S. growth in natural gas liquids outside Appalachia.
Supporting economic security
In addition, market analysis from the report emphasizes development of an Appalachian hub may offer a competitive advantage for the U.S. to gain global petrochemical market share while not being in conflict with ongoing Gulf Coast expansion.
The report explains a new Appalachian hub would enhance the geographic diversity of the U.S. petrochemical industrial sector, supporting U.S. economic security.
The regional group currently working on securing both public and private funding for an Appalachian Basin hub, said it’s not surprised with the DOE report’s conclusion.
Pleased, not surprised
Appalachia Development Group LLC (ADG) told Kallanish Energy it’s pleased — though not surprised — with the results of the DOE report.
“This report further validates the strategic importance of the Appalachia Storage and Trading Hub and the positive impacts it will have on our country and our allies around the world,” said Steve Hedrick, chairman & CEO of ADG. “Ensuring the opportunity for geographic diversification of the nation’s chemical manufacturing assets, while leveraging the regional resources in Appalachia in the safest, most efficient manner possible, provides a truly unique opportunity that requires public-private collaboration to see it forward.”
Industrial catalyst
The proposed, roughly $3.5 billion hub is considered to be a catalyst for industrial development within the Appalachian region. The American Chemistry Council estimates $36 billion in new petrochemical investments, more than 100,000 new long-term jobs that includes more than $6 billion in annual payroll and $2.9 billion in annual tax revenue for the Appalachian region, should the hub be built in West Virginia, Ohio or Pennsylvania.
Currently, the U.S. has ethane hubs at Mont Belvieu, Texas, and Conway, Kansas. There also is a hub in Sarnia, Ontario Canada.
“… both Mont Belvieu and Conway are in relatively close proximity to the growing NGL production projected from the Permian Basin in the Southwest,” according to the DOE report (reviewed by Kallanish Energy). “The East region of the U.S. currently is without a NGL storage hub similar to Mont Belvieu, Conway, or Sarnia. The extent to which East region NGLs will be converted and consumed locally will depend on regional infrastructure additions and, more specifically, the interplay between storage and transportation.”
Ethane production keeps growing
Ethane production in the Appalachian Basin is projected to continue to grow through 2025, to a total of 640,000 barrels per day (Bpd) — more than 20 times greater than just five years ago.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas production in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia has increased so rapidly their combined share of total U.S. natural gas production has jumped from 2% in 2008, to 27% in 2017.
In addition, natural gas liquids processing and fractionating capacity in Appalachia has grown quickly to match this increase in natural gas production.
However, the Appalachian region currently lacks other physical infrastructure for a “hub” that connect supply and demand sources, including storage for NGLs.
http://www.kallanishenergy.com/2018/12/05/new-doe-report-backs-appalachian-ethane-storage-hub/
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More Texas Natural Gas Heading to Mexico After FERC Clears Expansion Project
Dec 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
FERC last week gave the green light for more natural gas flows into Mexico authorizing the in-service of Texas Eastern Transmission’s (Tetco) South Texas Expansion Project (STEP), which transforms its existing Line 16 system to bidirectional service...
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https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116666-more-texas-natural-gas-heading-to-mexico-after-ferc-clears-expansion-project
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As Crude Oil Swoons, Natural Gas Prices Surge
Dec 5, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
Natural gas prices have climbed by more than 50 percent over the past two months, meaning higher heating and electricity costs as winter arrives while helping some energy companies in Houston offset profits lost during the recent plunge in crude oil prices.
Natural gas prices have hit their highest sustained levels in four years as stockpiles have dwindled and demand has grown. Whatever savings consumers are realizing from lower gasoline prices to fill their vehicles at the pump are likely to be offset somewhat by higher utility bills; analysts estimate that household utility bills could rise 5-to-10 percent this winter, and possibly higher if an extended cold snap takes hold.
“It’s going to hurt no doubt about it,” said Mike Bradley, managing director at the energy investment firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. “We’re clearly coming into winter very, very low on inventories.”Unlimited Digital Access for 99¢Read more articles like this by subscribing to the Houston Chronicle SUBSCRIBE
Natural gas price have slumped in recent years with the flood of supplies coming from U.S. shale plays, falling below $2.60 per million Btus earlier this year. Since the end of the summer, however, prices have climbed rapidly, peaking at $4.70 per million Btus during the Thanksgiving holiday. Natural gas settled Tuesday at $4.46 in commodity markets.
It’s the first sustained stretch above $4 since November 2014.
Despite record production, demand for natural gas has grown more quickly — on several fronts. The power industry is consuming more natural gas than ever as it shifts from dirtier fuels, particularly coal. The petrochemical industry is also consuming more natural gas and natural gas liquids, which are feedstocks for plastics and other products.
In addition, record volumes of natural gas are getting piped to Mexico while a burgeoning liquefied natural gas export industry along the Gulf Coast is shipping more gas out of the country to foreign markets. The result: U.S. natural gas inventories are almost 20 percent below their five-year average, the U.S. Energy Department said Thursday.
CenterPoint Energy, the Houston area’s regulated natural gas utility, said consumers wouldn’t see an increase in its natural gas charges until February, when the company’s next cost adjustment. The cost shift is based a regulatory schedule that allows utilities to periodically update the cost of gas to reflect how much CenterPoint is paying to purchase the resource. Until then, CenterPoint will transport gas that largely was purchased and stored during the summer when prices were lower, said CenterPoint spokeswoman Alicia Dixon.
The climb in natural gas prices, however, could help many of Houston’s energy companies, whose profits are getting hit by a 30-percent drop in crude oil, which has plunged into the low $50s from more than $75 a barrel in early October. Many companies operating in the Permian Basin in West Texas are producing surplus natural gas alongside crude. Some such as Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP are targeting more natural gas as they diversify into cleaner energy, even though their focal point in the Permian remains crude oil.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Natural-Gas-13438553.php
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Thaw With China Could Boost Frozen U.S. Gas Projects
Dec 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McFarlane
Easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and China could unlock new American liquefied natural gas projects that stalled this year while seeking customers. But people in the industry say they need more confidence that warmer relations will endure before they can move forward.
The U.S. is one of the world’s largest suppliers of shipped gas, and China is shortly to become the world’s largest buyer, but the standoff between the world’s two largest economies has hindered new deals.
The Trump administration’s efforts to shrink its trade deficit with China led to tit-for-tat tariffs between Beijing and Washington. However, the U.S. agreed at the G-20 meeting over the weekend to put on hold further tariffs on Chinese products, suggesting the spat won’t escalate in the first three-months of next year while trade talks continue. China will continue to levy the 10% tariff on U.S. LNG introduced in September.
Companies looking to export U.S. LNG see a trade truce as a step forward, but not enough to secure new contracts. On Tuesday, stocks and bond yields around the world fell in a sign of investor skepticism about the agreement.
“We expect that some of the discussions with Chinese counterparts, which have been continuing but at a slower pace, will only become more concrete and focused to reaching binding agreements once there is confidence that U.S.-China trade tensions have eased over the long term,” said Vivek Chandra, chief executive of Texas LNG which is hoping to make a final investment decision by early 2020.Shrinking AppetiteChinese imports of U.S. liquefied-natural gas fall as trade tensions bite.LNG exports from the U.S.Source: Energy Information Administration.billion cubic feet
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“In order for Chinese buyers and investors to begin signing long-term commitments with Texas LNG and other projects, they will want to see some certainty, both in terms of tariffs and tensions between the two countries,” he said. “Thus, there has to be meaningful progress over the next 90 days from both sides to resolve outstanding issues.”
Some projects already announced delays due to the trade dispute. In October Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd. said it was delaying a decision on whether to build its U.S. Magnolia project due to the trade issues causing headwinds for signing deals with Chinese customers.
The latest apparent cease-fire between the U.S. and China is a positive sign for the development of U.S. projects, giving “assurance that projects like Magnolia LNG will be able to execute long-term LNG export contracts with ‘off-takers’ from China without punitive external factors,” said Micah Hirschfield, spokesman for LNG Ltd. The company’s time frame for a final investment decision remains in the first part of next year.
The U.S. shale revolution is catapulting the U.S. from being a net energy importer to a net energy exporter within the next five years. With over 100 million tons of LNG projects due to take a final investment decision in the U.S. next year, China is likely a key customer, given that its gas demand has been going through the roof in recent years. Last year Chinese LNG imports rose by around 50%.
China is switching from coal to gas to reduce pollution—a new gas power plant produces around half the carbon dioxide emissions of a new coal power plant. Beijing plans to increase gas’s share of its primary energy consumption to 10% by 2020, from around 7% last year, with a significant amount of the increase coming from LNG.
Banks financing LNG projects prefer to have most of the production pre-sold on long-term contracts, in advance of construction, to ensure payback.
China already imported around 15% of America’s LNG exports last year, but that has fallen to around 10% in the first nine months of this year.
The only long-term contract for the supply of U.S. LNG to China currently active is between Cheniere Energy Inc. and China National Petroleum Corporation, or CNPC, in a deal that started in July.
Thus far Cheniere has swapped the U.S. volumes for supplies from other countries such as Australian LNG to be shipped to China, helping avoid the Chinese tariff on LNG originating in the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frozen-u-s-gas-projects-welcome-any-thaw-with-china-1543947172?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=4
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Global, Oil, Gas Execs Eye Dealmaking in 2019, with Focus in U.S., Canada
Dec 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Most global oil and gas executives expect to make deals to buy or sell assets in 2019, nearly 10% above the global average, with most of the activity likely to be in the United States, spurred by onshore transactions, and in Canada, according to a recent survey...
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116667-global-oil-gas-execs-eye-dealmaking-in-2019-with-focus-in-us-canada
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Fracking’s Major Contribution to Cleaner Air
Dec 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal - Opinion
By Mike Sommers
Regarding Walter Russell Mead’s “How American Fracking Changes the World” (Global View, Nov. 27): There’s no question the U.S. shale revolution has delivered massive economic and geopolitical benefits. American security and global stability are both better off with the U.S. as the world’s leading natural-gas and oil producer.
But hydraulic fracturing contributes another, often overlooked benefit: cleaner air. Clean natural gas is now the leading source of electricity generation, driving U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions to their lowest levels since 1992, even as CO 2 emissions around the globe increased 50% since 1990. The U.S. simultaneously leads the world in production of natural gas and oil and in reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions—a feat once considered impossible.
According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “North American [CO 2 ] emissions from fossil fuel combustion have declined on average by 1% per year over the last decade, largely because of reduced reliance on coal, greater use of natural gas, and increased vehicle fuel efficiency standards.”
The natural-gas and oil industry is part of the solution. We’ve invested billions in technological advances, improving the environmental performance of our products, facilities and operations. We’re producing more natural gas more safely, and more cleanly, than ever. When we export U.S. natural gas to global trading partners, we’re also exporting a tool for climate progress to the world’s worst polluters, in some cases. It’s one more way the U.S. is leading in environmental progress.
Mike Sommers
President and CEO
American Petroleum Institute
Washington
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frackings-major-contribution-to-cleaner-air-1543951819?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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Xcel Becomes First Big U.S. Utility to Swear Off Greenhouse Gas
Dec 5, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Eckhouse
Xcel Energy Inc. became the first major U.S. utility owner to pledge to fully phase out carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.
The company, which serves 3.6 million customers from Michigan to New Mexico, plans to meet its objective using renewable energy and technologies that aren’t commercially available yet, according to a Dec. 4 statement.
Xcel did not pledge to quit fossil fuels. The company would consider using systems designed to capture and trap carbon dioxide emissions from gas or coal plants, a spokeswoman said.
The announcement comes as wind and solar energy have become cheap enough to compete with conventional forms of electricity generation. Other utilities have goals to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent. But Xcel’s goal is the most ambitious to date, according to Bloomberg NEF analyst Colleen Regan.
“We should expect to see other utilities follow suit. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually,” Regan said in an email. “Xcel ups the ante.”
Xcel’s goal includes reducing its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030, from 2005 levels. The Minneapolis-based company is already one of the largest U.S. wind farm operators.
In September, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed legislation that would require all of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by 2045. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Dec. 4 that coal consumption this year was expected to be the lowest in 39 years.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/xcel-becomes-first-big-us-utility-to-swear-off-greenhouse-gas
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Claims Over W. Va. Fire, Airborne Release Trimmed
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
The owner of a West Virginia warehouse couldn’t shake negligence claims stemming from a major fire and release of hazardous substances, the Southern District of West Virginia ruled.
There were enough allegations of injuries—including bodily injury, property damage and decreased property values—to proceed with the negligence claims, the court said.
But Surnaik Holdings of W.V. LLC did win dismissal of medical monitoring, nuisance, and trespass claims brought by a proposed class of tens of thousands of people and businesses from Ohio and West Virginia.
The medical monitoring claims failed because the plaintiffs didn’t show that ingesting the toxic substances released increased their risk of developing a disease, the court said.
The trespass claims were barred because airborne chemical deposits do not constitute a trespass under West Virginia law, the court said.
And, given the large number of plaintiffs, the nuisance claims appeared to be public nuisance claims, the court said.
But private parties may only bring public nuisance claims if they can show they suffered an injury different from that inflicted on the general public—plaintiffs here didn’t, the court said.
Medical monitoring and nuisance claims against SABIC Innovative Plastics US LLC and Kuraray America Inc.—companies that sent chemicals to the site—were all dismissed, but may be brought again if backed up by facts, the court said.
The suit stems from a fire that occurred Oct. 21, 2017 at a warehouse in Parkersburg, W. Va.
Styrene-acrylonitrile, formaldehyde, titanium dioxide, carbon black and Teflon were among the hazardous substances stored at the facility, the plaintiffs allege.
The complaint alleges that the fire released chemical smoke, odors, gases and/or fumes, particulate matter, and other harmful “fallout material.” Twenty emergency departments in six counties spread across West Virginia and Ohio responded to the fire, the complaint says.
Judge Thoms E. Johnston issued the ruling.
Law Offices of David A. Sims, Kathy Brown Law, and Houston Law represent the plaintiffs.
Mintzer Sarowitz Zeris Ledva & Meyers represents Surnaik.
Manko Gold Katcher & Fox represents SABIC.
Shuman McCuskey & Slicer represents Kuraray.
The case is Callihan v. Surnaik Holdings of WV, LLC, 2018 BL 444293, S.D. W.Va., No. 17-cv-04386, 12/3/18.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/claims-over-w-va-fire-airborne-release-trimmed
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COP24, the New Round of Global Climate Talks, Has Begun. We Answer Three Key Questions.
Dec 4, 2018 | The New York Times
By Brad Plumer
With the world still struggling to get global warming under control, diplomats from nearly 200 countries are scheduled to meet in Poland over the next two weeks to try to put global climate negotiations back on track.
The focus of the meeting? To hammer out a key set of rules for the Paris climate agreement that, delegates hope, will help prod countries to cut fossil-fuel emissions far more deeply in the years ahead than they’re currently doing.
Under the Paris deal, signed by world leaders in 2015, virtually every country on Earth agreed to submit a plan for curbing emissions and vowed to ratchet up efforts over time. But key questions about how that process would unfold were left unanswered: How thoroughlyshould countries report their progress on emissions? How detailed should their plans for making further cuts be?
Delegates at the conference — being held in Katowice, at the heart of Poland’s coal-mining region, and which is known as COP24, shorthand for its formal name — will haggle over a “rule book” that will lay out the answers to those and other key questions. The debates are often technical, but highly contentious: China, for instance, has suggested that developing countries should be held to looser reporting standards, but Europe and the United States have pushed back.
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“This is going to be one of the most difficult negotiations we’ve seen yet,” said Andrew Light, a senior climate change adviser at the State Department under President Barack Obama. “There are so many moving parts.”
The stakes are high: While countries agreed in Paris to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, the plans that various countries have written so far are wildly insufficient to that task. Currently, the world is on pace for around 3 degrees Celsius of warming or more, bringing far higher risks of deadly heat waves, floods, the collapse of polar ice caps and other potential calamities.
What’s more, some countries are now backsliding. The Trump administration has disavowed the Paris deal and plans to pull the United States out by 2020, though the country will nonetheless send officials to Poland to participate in talks. Australia and Brazil also have newly elected leaders opposed to more forceful climate action, and some analysts are now finding signs of a “Trump effect” that could undermine global efforts on climate change.What’s the point of these climate talks?
To understand the Katowice meeting, it’s useful to recall that the Paris climate agreement was largely intended to work through peer pressure among nations.
Under the Paris agreement, countries aren’t required to submit legally binding plans for reducing emissions. Instead, each country submits a voluntary plan tailored to its own domestic situation. This structure, the architects of the Paris deal said, was the most realistic way to get every world leader to agree to participate.Editors’ PicksHow a Liberal Couple Became Two of N.Y.’s Biggest Trump SupportersI Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore.Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.
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But those architects also realized that countries aren’t doing nearly enough to keep the world below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. So, under Paris, countries are required to meet periodically, assess their collective progress and see where stronger action can be taken. World leaders could then push each other to ratchet up their ambitions over time.
At least, that’s the theory.
But for this peer-pressure dynamic to have any chance of working, analysts say, countries will need to track and report their progress on curbing emissions in a transparent, standardized way. And they’ll need to offer much more detail on how they intend to cut fossil-fuel emissions in the future, so that outside experts can scrutinize their plans and point out exactly where current climate policies are falling short.
Right now, this is often difficult to do. For instance, many countries, like Indonesia, have pledged to reduce their emissions below a “business as usual” trajectory. But without a clearer sense of what counts as business as usual, it can be hard to track how much these countries are really doing.
So, in Katowice, negotiators will hash out these thorny details, like how rigorously countries should track their progress or what level of outside scrutiny future pledges should face. One current draft of the negotiating text is 236 pages long, and, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief, contains more than 3,700 items where countries still disagree on wording. Negotiators have until Dec. 14 to resolve all of them.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 UPDelegates at the opening of the climate meeting on Monday in Katowice. Talks are scheduled to run through Dec. 14.CreditSean Gallup/Getty Images
ImageDelegates at the opening of the climate meeting on Monday in Katowice. Talks are scheduled to run through Dec. 14.CreditSean Gallup/Getty ImagesWhat are the big disagreements?
The rule book is expected to provoke fierce debate. Some developing countries have argued that they should be given much more leeway in how they report and track their progress, especially if they have limited technical capacity to measure their emissions. China, in particular, has long been wary of outside scrutiny.
Other countries, like the United States and Europe, are leery of holding countries like China, India and others to a lower standard because developing nations account for 60 percent of global emissions today.
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Money is another perennial sticking point. India and African countries, for example, have long insisted that wealthy nations need to provide more financing to help poorer governments shift to clean energy or adapt to the impacts of global warming. They have pushed for much more detailed pledges on aid.
Looming over all these debates is the uncertain role of the United States, which played a critical part in bringing countries together to finalize the initial Paris agreement in 2015.
While the State Department is still sending a team to negotiate the rule book, the Trump administration has largely repudiated the Paris deal and has refused to send an additional $2 billion in climate aid that had been pledged by the Obama administration at Paris. It is still unclear how much influence the United States will have at this newest round of talks, or whether any other countries might step in to take a leadership role.
“The global political environment is really challenging right now, with nationalism taking hold in many countries,” said Samantha Gross, a fellow in the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate, in a recent telephone call with reporters.How will this affect climate change?
The most important work on climate change policy will continue to be done by national and local governments around the world; by private businesses, investors and individuals; and by scientists and engineers developing clean-energy technologies.
“While this multilateral process is important, it is not the solution to climate change,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “At best, it can help facilitate climate action over time.”
In that regard, few countries are expected to come to Poland with sweeping new climate policy announcements. For instance, Germany, which has been discussing when to set a date for phasing out its coal consumption, has postponed any major decision until after the meeting.
One big question is whether the negotiators will wrap up the talks with a strong rule book in hand. Under the Paris deal, countries have informally agreed to consider revising their near-term emissions pledges by 2020 to make them stronger. Analysts will be watching to see if countries emerge from Katowice with a clear intent to increase their ambitions, or if the Trump administration’s refusal to tackle climate change might persuade other leaders to slacken their own efforts.
If negotiators at Katowice struggle to agree on a robust rule book, or the talks deadlock entirely, that could further sap global momentum for climate action.
“The worst case is a complete collapse of talks, which would be seen as an unraveling of the Paris agreement,” said Mr. Diringer. “But for that reason, I think that’s an outcome most governments would like to avoid.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/climate/cop24-climate-conference-katowice.html
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On Climate, the Facts and Law Are Against Trump
Dec 4, 2018 | The New York Times - Opinion
By Richard L. Revesz
A major governmental report released by the Trump administration recently projects enormous damages to communities across the country as a result of climate change. This new volume of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment includes more alarming predictions than its predecessors did, and it officially puts the Trump administration on the record about the dire threats Americans face.
The report is likely to bolster anticipated lawsuits against the administration over its decision to vastly weaken the nation’s two major climate change regulations, which would limit planet-warming emissions from power plants and vehicles, the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The new report could play a key role in these lawsuits.
The administration lawyers who end up arguing these cases may find themselves turning to Carl Sandburg’s famous advice: “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
Now that this report is part of the official government record, the administration cannot credibly suggest that climate policies should be weakened. Prepared by dozens of experts and government officials, the assessment predicts hundreds of billions of dollars in damages from storms, crop failures, ruined infrastructure and climate-related deaths and illnesses. Stronger regulations to limit emissions are needed, it says.
With the facts against it, the administration will have to argue the law. But that approach has already led to numerous lost deregulatory cases. At the Institute for Policy Integrity, which I direct at the New York University School of Law, we have kept a tally of court challenges to Trump-era deregulatory rules. The administration’s record is dismal: It prevailed in two cases and either lost or abandoned its position in 20 others.
So not only have the facts been against the government’s position. So has the law.
On the power plant emissions rule, the administration’s own analysis shows that its weaker regulatory scheme will be dramatically worse for the public. In fact, the administration’s so-called Affordable Clean Energy Rule is likely to increase overall emissions by creating new loopholes for coal plants to evade air pollution restrictions and operate more frequently. That will cause a significant increase in climate pollution and up to 1,400 additional American deaths per year, according to the government’s projections. The E.P.A. says that it is exercising its discretion in choosing this rule, which will impose tens of billions of dollars of net harms on the American people. This is a textbook example of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct — exactly what the law prohibits.
In weakening the vehicle emissions rule, the administration relies on economic and legal arguments that don’t stand up to scrutiny. The current standards require automakers to steadily increase the fuel efficiency of new passenger vehicles, limiting climate pollution while reducing consumer fuel costs.
The Trump administration has proposed freezing the standards in 2021 and revoking a waiver that allows California to set its own, more stringent vehicle pollution limits, which other states follow.
Officials claim the resulting increases in pollution and fuel costs are justified by supposed safety benefits from rolling back the standards. It assumes that stricter efficiency standards raise the price of vehicles. Standard economic theory predicts that people would then buy fewer cars because each car would be more expensive. But instead, the administration’s faulty analysis leads it, wholly implausibly, to the opposite conclusion: that people will buy more cars, and therefore drive more miles and have more accidents.
Even Andrew Wheeler, the acting E.P.A. administrator whom Trump has nominated for the post, reportedly argued that this justification will fail in court. Yet the administration released the proposal anyway. At the same time, despite a lack of legal authority to do so, the administration has proposed to revoke California’s waiver, a move without precedent. Doing so would trample on the interests of California and other states that have relied on the waiver to set policies for their benefit, and do violence to core principles of federalism. Again, on these issues, the law is against the administration.
So without the facts or law on its side, the Trump administration may have no choice but to “pound the table and yell like hell” when explaining its willful inaction on climate change. It may yell about “freedom” — a rhetorical cover frequently used by administration officials trying to justify efforts to let industry pollute freely, regardless of public health consequences. For instance, Neomi Rao, the regulatory czar nominated to fill Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s federal court seat, wrote recently that the administration’s deregulatory efforts are about “unleashing the freedom of American workers, innovators and businesses.”
The freedom that the Trump administration favors has little to do with what the founding fathers prized. It is a freedom for favored industries to impose numerous premature deaths, hospitalizations and other major harms on the public in pursuit of profit, even when the net cost to society is large.
The Trump administration will have nothing to show for pounding its fists and yelling. Without the facts or the law on its side, these antics won’t be an adequate legal defense for the administration’s choice to undermine the very climate policies its report says are needed to protect Americans.
Richard L. Revesz is a professor and dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law, where he directs the Institute for Policy Integrity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opinion/climate-report-trump.html
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Carper Seeks EPA Data Downplaying Climate Report
Dec 5, 2018 | Inside EPA
The top Democrat on the Senate environment committee is urging acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to provide information that supports EPA's effort to downplay the dire warnings contained in the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) that the Trump administration recently issued.
In a Dec. 3 letter, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) argues that Wheeler's effort to distance himself from the report's findings “runs afoul” of a commitment he made to the senator. “We may not all agree about what to do to address these dire warnings, but it disturbs me greatly that counter to the commitment you made to me during your confirmation hearing, you seem to be actively working to undermine and distort the scientific evidence itself.”
Carper says Wheeler's response to the report -- including claiming that it only looked at a worst-case scenario and suggesting it was a political product of the prior administration -- contradicts his pledge issued during his confirmation hearing to be deputy administrator “not to distort climate science studies, saying, '[m]y goal would be to not distort any scientific or economic analysis.'”
Recently, Wheeler also said that when the Trump administration begins work on the fifth NCA, due in four years, it will reassess the modeling and other underlying assumptions, likely leading to different conclusions.
As such, Carper's letter suggests Wheeler could face additional questions on the issue when he appears before the committee -- likely early next year -- for his confirmation hearing to be the next EPA administrator.
In addition to Wheeler's statements, the letter also cites President Donald Trump's statement that he does not “believe” the report's warnings of economic damages, as well as claims by his press secretary Sarah Sanders that the NCA was not based on facts.
“This isn't an alarmist prediction,” Carper writes of the NCA. “It doesn't come from some left-leaning organization, and it doesn't come from talk radio. It come directly from our nation's leading scientists.”
He adds: “This nearly 1,700-page, congressionally mandated report highlighted the devastating impacts that climate change will have over the next [80] years if we do not change course now. The report was a dire warning to our nation and our planet.” He also noted it took years to write, included input from EPA employees, and went through extensive peer review and public outreach before it was finalized.
In the letter, Carper presses Wheeler for a range of documents leading up to EPA's response to the report.
Specifically, the senator asks for all briefing materials prepared for Wheeler or other EPA political appointees related to the preparation and release of the NCA, including a May 2 briefing for the air office, a May 14 briefing for the water office and a May 29 briefing for the research and development office.
Further, he seeks copies of briefing materials prepared by EPA and sent to “any other entity within the Trump Administration related to the preparation or release” of the NCA; copies of all documents related to release of the document, including regarding the decision to release it the day after Thanksgiving; copies of all documents related to Wheeler's appearance at a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event, where he made some of the disparaging comments about the report; and documents related to EPA's Nov. 29 press release, “Fact-Check: Obama Administration Pushed 'Worst-Case Scenario' In Climate Assessment.”
Carper tells Wheeler that he “must certainly know,” the report “is not developed at the direction of any one Administration, but was directed by Congress through the Global Change Research Act of 1990,” which was signed by President George H.W. Bush after clearing the Senate unanimously.
“If the United States continues to ignore the dangers of climate change, the costs for all Americans will be devastating.”
Carper seeks the requested documents by Jan. 15.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/carper-seeks-epa-data-downplaying-climate-report
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Facing Court Losses, White House Mulls Limited NEPA Climate Guidance
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Following a series of court losses, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is mulling narrow new guidance to federal agencies for how to consistently consider greenhouse gas emissions in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, after it withdrew a detailed guide the Obama CEQ issued on the topic after years of work.
A CEQ spokesman confirms that it has been considering issuing its own guidance “since the prior guidance was withdrawn for further consideration” in April 2017, as directed by President Donald Trump's March 2017 executive order on energy issues. Trump blames NEPA reviews for delaying infrastructure projects.
“Should CEQ propose guidance, we would submit it to” the White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs for interagency review, the spokesman adds.
The spokesman declines to say why the Trump administration might issue a new GHG guide, but sources outside of the administration suggest it could stem from a rash of adverse court decisions requiring NEPA reviews to be redone because they lacked consideration of climate change.
“The courts are requiring climate analysis irrespective of CEQ guidance,” says one source who follows NEPA climate reviews.
The source adds that White House political officials “don't like the fact that existing CEQ guidance calls for consideration of climate issues. However, I'm not sure if they want to go through this fight, since it might require some overt climate denial.”
Edward “Ted” Boling, CEQ's associate director for NEPA, told an American Bar Association conference in December 2017 that CEQ was reconsidering the guidance and that agencies were still free to use the withdrawn document. “We hear frequently at CEQ, 'Well, when are you going to come out with new guidance in this regard?' I think . . . that reconsideration will proceed under current leadership,” he said.
Since Boling remade those remarks, the adverse court decision have continued. For instance, the State Department on Nov. 30 announced it was beginning work on a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in response to a Nov. 8 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana that ordered the department to supplement the analysis in the project's 2014 EIS regarding GHGs and other factors.
CEQ's possible new GHG guidance also comes as the council is expected to soon propose broad new NEPA implementation rules, after it issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) in June, though the ANPR did not address climate change or GHG emissions.
The ANPR drew mixed comments, with former EPA officials, Democratic state attorneys general and environmental groups urging CEQ to drop the planned revisions because the current rules work well. But several industry groups said CEQ should proceed with a rulemaking to streamline requirements.
Another source who follows NEPA issues says the possible climate guidance is “a reaction to the administration seeing this isn't going away in the courts. They understand more now that the notion of doing an assessment of greenhouse gases or global warming is just part and parcel of what NEPA is, and so you just can't rescind a guidance document and hope that the requirement to look at those effects goes away. It doesn't.”
The question, according to this source, is “how to do it and how to provide guidance to all agencies for consistency and not lose these cases.”
Varied Approaches
Since the Obama-era guidance was withdrawn, different agencies have taken starkly opposing approaches. For instance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has taken a hard-line stance that it is “too far” of a reach under NEPA to look at the GHG emissions from fuel that is burned when approving a pipeline to carry that fuel.
However, FERC's position was rejected in a high-profile decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ruled that it had to assess the downstream GHGs as part of the NEPA review of the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline in the Southeast. The August 2017 decision in Sierra Club, et al. v. FERC, et al., held: “It's not just the [fuels'] journey, though, it's also the destination.”
Originally, FERC planned to seek Supreme Court review of that ruling -- which has been cited in many other ongoing NEPA GHG lawsuits over energy projects -- but it ultimately decided not to do so.
FERC did, however, seek to address the issue administratively in a different order approving an upgrade to a gas transmission project in New York, determining that upstream and downstream GHG emissions from many gas infrastructure projects are “outside the scope of our NEPA analysis.”
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has also lost a handful of NEPA cases in the West over its failure to adequately assess the GHGs from its approvals for coal extraction.
One of the most recent examples was a July 31 decision by Judge Brian Morris -- the Montana federal judge who also ruled in the Keystone pipeline case -- in Western Organization of Resources Councils, et al. v. BLM, et al. He ordered BLM to conduct a new NEPA review of management plans for the resource-rich Powder River Basin to consider downstream GHGs released when the fuel is extracted and burned. He set a November 2019 deadline for the review but declined to enjoin leasing in the region during the new review.
Some rulings have held that NEPA does not extend to broad GHG requirements, including a series of other D.C. Circuit decisions rejecting Sierra Club's arguments that FERC and then the Department of Energy needed to consider the upstream and downstream GHGs resulting from approvals of liquified natural gas export terminals.
The D.C. Circuit also rejected environmentalists' effort to force BLM to conduct a NEPA review of its entire coal leasing program to account for climate change, but it outlined a path for how they might successfully win such a review. A similar suit on that same issue is in the briefing stage in the Montana district court.
'Do Some Analysis'
The second source following the issue notes that the administration “can't make the issue go away by eliminating guidance” because that simply allows agencies to take their own approaches. While FERC has taken a “hard line,” agencies such as the Department of Transportation are giving the issue some consideration. In addition to the agency inconsistencies, there are inconsistent court rulings but the adverse ones are “gumming up projects,” the source says.
The new guide would likely be crafted narrowly and not wade into the climate change debate. It would likely be crafted in the vein of: “You don't have to 'believe' or not. You just have to do some analysis so it is there and if you do it, you're going to win” in court, this source predicts.
The source also believes CEQ is feeling pressure from some agencies to issue guidance because they are “getting enough pushback from courts and are continuing to be sued. . . . CEQ is realizing it is going to have to provide some guidance.”
If CEQ moves forward, it will likely embark on a much shorter process than the Obama administration conducted when it issued its guide that set broad GHG considerations, including that agencies consider downstream emissions and the effects of climate change on projects.
The source also expects that CEQ will “borrow . . . liberally” from the withdrawn guide “because a lot of it was not off the reservation, just standard NEPA stuff.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/facing-court-losses-white-house-mulls-limited-nepa-climate-guidance
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EAB Deals Environmentalists Two Losses In Bid For Stricter NSR Permits
Dec 4, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has dealt environmentalists two losses in cases seeking stricter Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permits for energy facilities, deferring to state air regulators on an Arizona gas-fired power plant's permit and backing EPA Region 8's permits for a series of natural gas compressors in Utah.
The two recent board decisions are a setback for environmental groups that often challenge NSR or related prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permits issued by either EPA or states under delegated law authority. EAB hears challenges to agency decisions, including signing off on state-crafted permits. It is unclear whether environmentalists plan to challenge the board's rulings in federal appeals court.
PSD applies to major sources of air pollution in areas meeting national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), while related nonattainment NSR permits apply in areas violating such standards. NSR can require companies to install strict, expensive pollution controls so facilities often aim to avoid triggering it.
In the most recent EAB decision, the board Dec. 3 decided In Re Tucson Electric Power v. EPA in favor of Arizona regulators, rejecting Sierra Club's appeal against the federal air permit granted by Pima County, AZ, for an expansion of generating capacity at the utility's mainly gas-fired Irvington Generating Station, now known as the H. Wilson Sundt Generating Station.
In its permit review under delegated air law authority, Pima County found that the nitrogen oxides (NOx) increases projected from the addition of new gas-fired generating engines at the Irvington plant would fall below thresholds that trigger full review under the PSD permit program. The engines complement the existing steam-electric generating units to provide additional power quickly.
Because the air permit limits the plant's potential to emit to below the thresholds, the plant escapes a more-onerous PSD permit that would have required best available control technology (BACT). Instead, permit terms keep the increase in NOx to below the threshold of a “major modification,” of 40 tons per year, that would trigger BACT.
Sierra Club argued that the air permit was unenforceable, allowing for unlawful increases in NOx that should trigger full review and tougher emissions controls. The group said that smokestack emissions testing every two years was “woefully inadequate” to ensure compliance.
EAB disagrees, finding no “clear error” on the county's part, and concluding that the suite of permit conditions in fact renders the permit enforceable.
EAB's Decision
Specifically, EAB finds no case to force the power plant to deploy continuous emissions monitors, instead deferring to the county's reliance of stack testing in combination with provisions to ensure correct functioning of emissions control devices, and other measures.
Judge Mary Beth Ward, in her unanimous opinion for EAB on behalf of herself and Judges Aaron P. Avila and Mary Kay Lynch, says “the Board concludes that Sierra Club has not carried its burden to show that Pima County clearly erred in its determination that the Permit’s NOx emissions cap is practically enforceable.”
Ward says, “Pima County does not claim that biennial stack testing is sufficient to make the NOx emissions cap practically enforceable. Nor do we read Pima County’s Response to Comments or its Response to the Petition as contending that biennial stack testing combined with monthly and yearly emission calculations based on that testing would alone provide adequate compliance monitoring requirements for the expansion of the Irvington facility.”
Rather, the county relies on the requirement for the plant to use selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to reduce NOx, and monitoring to ensure that the SCR continues to function correctly, and also “conservative methodology for calculating emission factors.” Emission factors are estimated emissions rates for particular pieces of equipment, used to predict likely emissions from industrial projects.
But environmentalists failed to raise their objections to these other facets of the permit with sufficient specificity in their earlier comments on the draft permit.
“Although Sierra Club did challenge the practical enforceability of the NOx emissions cap in its comments, Sierra Club did not include as part of that challenge any critique of the role that the monitoring requirements for the selective catalytic reduction devices play. In fact, Sierra Club’s comments never even mentioned the Permit’s monitoring requirements for the selective catalytic reduction devices."
Hence the Sierra Club's argument is not “preserved for review” by EAB. Further, “Sierra Club further did not substantiate its challenge to either the adequacy of that monitoring or the conservative emission factor methodology.”
Utah Decision
Meanwhile, EAB in a Nov. 15 decision rejected a challenge from environmentalists seeking to force a fresh emissions analysis of natural gas compressor stations that EPA Region 8 granted “minor source” air permits to on tribal land in Utah.
The decision in the case In Re Anadarko Uintah Midstream, LLC finds such additional analysis unnecessary and the agency's minor source tribal permits to be sufficient. EAB grants wide latitude to EPA, which is the federal permitting authority in tribal areas not running their own Clean Air Act permit programs.
At issue in the case is EPA Region 8's issuance of “synthetic minor source” NSR permits to six gas compressor stations on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, UT. Such permits are issued to sources that limit their potential to emit to remain below “major source” NSR thresholds, and hence avoid more-stringent major source review. Region 8 covers the states of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
Judge Lynch, in her unanimous opinion for the same three-judge panel that heard Tucson Electric Power, disagrees with WildEarth Guardians' assertion that EPA cannot simply insert the terms of a 2008 consent decree limiting emissions from the compressors into new NSR permits without triggering a new round of air quality analysis.
WildEarth Guardians said in its petition filed in July that Anadarko should have submitted minor source NSR permit applications for all six compressor stations by Sept. 4, 2012, but failed to do so. “If a source fails to submit an application by September 4, 2012, it 'will become subject to all requirements for major sources,'” according to EPA's rules, the group said.
The group further claimed that because Region 8 would be permitting these facilities for the first time as synthetic minor sources, it is not relevant whether their emissions would likely rise or not, and the permits are required anyway.
Further, “EPA Region 8’s claim that there was no 'reason to be concerned' that permitting the Anadarko facilities would cause or contribute to violations of the ozone NAAQS was not based on any assessment of the actual air quality conditions in the Uintah Basin,” WildEarth Guardians argued. The group said that the sources cannot be considered “existing” under the terms of EPA's own regulations.
Lynch rejects this, and finds no reason for EPA to undertake fresh air emissions analysis. “Petitioner asserts, without providing or citing to any supporting documentation or legal authority, that by issuing permits to the six compressor stations for the first time, the Region’s actions 'caus[ed] construction' by 'effectively altering the method of operation of the facilities in order to reduce (i.e. change) emissions.'”
But “Petitioner’s unsupported arguments do not comport with the plain language of the regulations,” which define “construction” as the creation of a new emissions source, Lynch writes. EPA regulations “clearly limit the term 'construction' to those activities involving physical changes or additions. Petitioner’s attempt to incorporate the act of permitting a facility into the definition of 'construction' is unconvincing,” Lynch says.
Even then, the “applicable regulation does not require an air quality impacts analysis even when 'construction' or 'modification' occurs,” Lynch finds, saying that the WildEarth Guardians has failed to show why a fresh analysis is required.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/eab-deals-environmentalists-two-losses-bid-stricter-nsr-permits
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NYC Plots 'Green New Deal' Plan for Building Emissions
Dec 5, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
Members of the New York City Council introduced a package of bills yesterday that they described as a global model for cutting emissions from buildings, typically the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in cities.
The three bills, praised by Mayor Bill de Blasio's sustainability chief, would eclipse prior attempts to tackle the sector's emissions on a voluntary basis, instituting mandatory performance standards aimed at getting the city on track with its overall goal of 40 percent reductions by 2030.
Proponents of the package said the laws would constitute the most ambitious carbon policies to be enacted by a major city. About 70 percent of New York's emissions stem from buildings.
It would also be the first set of local laws to take up the mantle of the so-called Green New Deal, a loosely sketched series of federal policy ideas that has galvanized progressive Democrats and their movement allies, many of whom turned up in support at a pre-hearing rally on the steps of City Hall.
"This is the time to act," said Councilman Costa Constantinides, a co-sponsor of two of the three bills and chairman of the City Council's Environmental Protection Committee. He was one of several speakers at the council hearing to cite the findings of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published in October that gave global governments about 12 years to put in place the policies necessary to avert climate catastrophe.
"This is the moment to build a better future, kick-start a Green New Deal for NYC, and show the world we are up to the challenge and will continue to be an international leader on climate change," Constantinides said.
The package would establish annual limits for carbon emissions for buildings based on occupancy type and floor area, 25,000 square feet and up. Rent-regulated residences would be exempt from the requirements.
The limits would kick in in 2022, by which point the worst-performing 20 percent of the city's buildings would need to carry out retrofits, according to Constantinides. Within two years, that would broaden to those falling within the 75th percentile for emissions performance.
A new office would execute oversight of buildings' energy performance, with an advisory board and working groups responsible for assessing whether the law's performance metrics and penalties were adequate.
The other two bills in the package would update the city's grading system for energy efficiency and establish a low-interest loan program to help building owners cover the upfront cost of retrofits.'Single largest' impact on GHGs
The proposal follows a separate building emissions plan introduced by the mayor last year. Members of the City Council spurned that as insufficiently ambitious, though it has a chief feature in common. The policy would deal directly with buildings' energy efficiency, unlike Bloomberg-era efforts to lure buildings away from using certain types of fuel (Energywire, Oct. 2, 2017).
That feature and the creation of a market for tradeable energy-efficient credits among buildings were the two most "exportable" tenets of the package, said John Mandyck, chief executive at the city's Urban Green Council.
The waters in New York Harbor, said Mandyck, would continue to rise if other cities didn't follow suit with their own bills.
This can't be about the city's emissions goals alone, he said. "It has to be about policy tools that can work far beyond New York."
The package's approach would seem to foreshadow opposition from New York's powerful real estate lobby, which fought successfully to get the Bloomberg administration to back away from toothier measures.
Some points of contention that emerged during the hearing included the quick phase-in of the new emissions requirements, along with the exclusion of rent-regulated buildings — the latter a concern shared by some labor and low-income advocates.
But the state's green-blue alliances also came out in force to support the bill, predicting the creation of thousands of new unionized jobs in the building industry that would last decades, in tandem with accelerating emissions requirements.
"We need to be honest out loud that we're going to face both technical and political challenges on a strong bill," said Councilman Brad Lander, who extracted a promise of commitment from Mark Chambers, director of the mayor's Office of Sustainability.
Chambers estimated that the bill would account for about 7 percent of the emissions reductions contemplated by the 2050 goal, and 20 percent of those pertaining to the buildings sector.
"This is the single largest thing we can do to impact greenhouse gas emissions, period," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/05/stories/1060108783
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World's Largest Container Shipper Maersk aims to Be CO2-Neutral by 2050
Dec 5, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Stine Jacobsen
Maersk, the world's biggest container shipper, aims to be carbon neutral by 2050, in a challenge to the rest of the world's fossil fuel-dependent fleet.
Denmark's Maersk said on Wednesday it aimed to have carbon neutral vessels commercially viable by 2030 by using energy sources such as biofuels and would cut its net carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
The shipping industry, which carries around 80 percent of global trade, accounts for 2.2 percent of CO2 emissions, the UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) says.
But along with aviation, it avoided specific emissions-cutting targets in a 2015 global climate pact which aims to limit a global average rise in temperature.
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However, the United Nations shipping agency reached an agreement in April to cut CO2 emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared with 2008 levels.
Delegates from more than 190 nations are meeting in Poland to flesh out how to reach commitments made under the Paris Accord to keep the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius this century.
"The only possible way to achieve the so-much-needed decarbonisation in our industry is by fully transforming to new carbon neutral fuels and supply chains," Maersk's Chief Operating Officer Soren Toft in a statement.
Given the 20-25 years lifetime of a vessel, the industry would now have to start developing new types of ships that will be crossing the seas in 2050, Maersk said.
Last year, Maersk's greenhouse gas emissions amounted to almost 35.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, mostly from its container business, Maersk's sustainability report shows.Editors’ Picks50 Years Later, It Feels Familiar: How America Fractured in 1968China’s Women-Only Subway Cars, Where Men Rush InI Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore.
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Maersk said CO2 emissions per container had been reduced by 46 percent since 2007.
Denmark and Britain are the top countries when it comes to implementing measures to fight climate change, although Britain has lagged in phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, a report published by academics said on Wednesday.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/12/05/business/05reuters-maersk-emissions.html
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Five of Europe’s Biggest Banks Join Low-Carbon Lending Effort
Dec 4, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan
Five international banks with a combined loan portfolio of more than 2.4 trillion euros ($2.7 trillion) vowed to align their corporate lending with the Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, the U.K.’s Standard Chartered Plc, and France’s BNP Paribas and Societe Generale SA are joining Dutch bank ING Groep NV in plans to measure how well their portfolios align with a low-carbon economy and steer future lending to climate goals.
The banks, which announced the agreement Dec. 4 near the beginning of the United Nations climate talks in Katowice, Poland, said they’ll focus first on measuring their carbon assets in oil, gas, renewables, power, auto, shipping, and aviation. They’ll also collaborate on tools, technology and metrics to track their progress and determine when to reduce their investments.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/five-of-europes-biggest-banks-join-low-carbon-lending-effort
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