Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - December 14, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemicals Start Q4 on Soft Note with Sluggish October Growth
Dec 14, 2018 | Zacks
By Anindya Barman
Global chemicals production started the fourth quarter on a sluggish note with October witnessing a slight uptick in production on lower capacity utilization, according to the recent monthly report from the American Chemistry Council (“ACC”). -
Exhibit PV29: Why This EPA Can’t Be Trusted to Forthrightly Assess Chemical Risks Under TSCA
Dec 13, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
I blogged last week about the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) illegal and hypocritical decision to deny the public access to health and safety studies conducted on the first chemical to undergo a risk evaluation under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Tucson Water to Upgrade Treatment Plant to Remove More PFAS Pollutants
Dec 13, 2018 | Arizona Daily Star
By Tony Davis
Tucson Water is installing new carbon filtering materials at its south-side treatment plant to remove more PFAS contaminants from drinking water. -
Flexibility in EPA Power Rule Could Also Bring State Liability
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The flexibility that utilities and many state regulators hailed the Trump administration’s EPA for including in its proposal to replace Obama-era power plant carbon limits could also be somewhat of a curse. -
EPA Methane Rollbacks Contradict Agency’s Own Scientific Findings
Dec 13, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Rosalie Winn and Hillary Hull
As the world races to adopt cleaner fuels and implement carbon-reducing strategies to combat a warming climate, the Trump administration is moving feverishly to severely weaken federal methane emissions regulations across the entire oil and gas industry. -
No. 2 Gas-Producing State Moves to Curb Air Pollution
Dec 14, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
Pennsylvania is aiming to curb air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from its vast natural gas exploration fields, with the governor's administration proposing new regulations yesterday even as the Trump administration moves to relax federal requirements. -
Corpus Christi LNG's First Shipment Headed to New Market in Europe
Dec 13, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The historic first shipment of liquefied natural gas from Texas is headed to a new market for U.S. producers in Europe. -
Saudi Arabia to Target U.S. With Sharp Oil Export Cut, Sources Say
Dec 13, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Javier Blas and Tina Davis
After flooding the U.S. market in recent months, Saudi Arabia plans to slash exports to the world’s largest oil market in the coming weeks in an effort to dampen visible build-ups in crude inventories. -
D.C. Circuit Weighs FERC's NEPA Duty in Pa. Project
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A panel of judges yesterday considered what level of scrutiny federal energy regulators must dedicate to an alternative to a natural gas pipeline project. -
Schumer Presses MTA to Implement Safety Technology Faster on LIRR, Metro-North Lines
Dec 13, 2018 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Raanan Geberer
Federal regulations have prompted MTA to begin installing Positive Train Control safety technology on its Long Island Rail Road commuter lines — some of which traverse Brooklyn and Queens — and on Metro-North. However, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and the MTA disagree about what deadline applies for the technology’s final rollout. -
Something's Happening on the Endangerment Finding. But What?
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA's detractors are worried the agency is taking a step that could weaken the cornerstone of the Obama administration's climate policy. -
Crucial Climate Decision 'Much Stronger Now'
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
President Trump often rejects climate science, but his administration still has to regulate greenhouse gases because of a 2009 determination that shows humans are harmed by climate change. -
EPA Adviser Casts Doubt on Science Linking Pollution to Health Problems
Dec 14, 2018 | The Guardian
By Emily Holden
A conservative science adviser to the Trump administration is casting doubt on longstanding research linking fossil fuel pollution to early deaths and health problems, worrying environmental experts. -
Study: EPA Endangerment Finding Looks Even Better with Age
Dec 13, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
A new report highlights increasingly strong evidence supporting EPA's 2009 determination that climate change hurts public health and welfare. -
Additional Scientific Data Bolster US EPA Endangerment Finding on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Study Says
Dec 13, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
Evidence continues to pile up supporting a pivotal 2009 scientific determination that forms the legal basis for the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say. -
Former CASAC Chairman Warns 'Joke' Review Hurts PM NAAQS Assessment
Dec 13, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Former EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Chairman Chris Frey is denouncing the agency's truncated national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) review process as a “joke,” and warning the shortened approach undermines the panel's ability to credibly assess the particulate matter (PM) NAAQS as mandated by law. -
U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rising, Government Reports
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, and and other energy-related sources in the U.S. are on the rise again after several years of declines, according to new government data. -
House Democrats Refine Early Focus On Climate Risks, GHG Rule Rollbacks
Dec 13, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
House Democrats are refining their plans to make climate change an early focus of their oversight when they re-take control of the chamber in January, with lawmakers saying they are still crafting the finer points of their agenda though many have come to terms with the revival of a select committee that will focus exclusively on climate issues. -
State Approves Price Ceiling for Cap-And-Trade Program
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
California regulators yesterday approved a first-ever price ceiling for the state's economywide cap-and-trade program but steered clear of dealing with a potential glut of carbon allowances. -
Countries Hope Climate Storytelling Will Inspire Carbon Cuts
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
The idea: If countries and communities could tell their stories about how climate change affects them, and what they think the solutions are, it would inspire the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters to cut more carbon.
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemicals Start Q4 on Soft Note with Sluggish October Growth
Dec 14, 2018 | Zacks
By Anindya Barman
Global chemicals production started the fourth quarter on a sluggish note with October witnessing a slight uptick in production on lower capacity utilization, according to the recent monthly report from the American Chemistry Council (“ACC”).
October Sees Modest Growth
The chemical industry trade group said that the Global Chemical Production Regional Index (CPRI) rose a paltry 0.1% in October on a monthly comparison basis, following flat growth in September.
The Global CPRI, which is measured using a three-month moving average, measures chemical production volumes for 33 major nations, sub-regions and regions. It is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board (“FRB”) production indices.
Per the ACC, the Global CPRI ticked up 0.6% year over year on a three-month moving average basis. Capacity utilization for the global chemical industry eased 0.2 percentage points to 83.6% in October. Utilization fell from 85.9% a year ago.
On a segment basis, growth was witnessed in agricultural chemicals, basic chemicals and specialty chemicals in October. By regions, October witnessed higher production across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. However, output fell in North America and Latin America.
Per the ACC, chemical production in the United States went down 0.2% on a monthly comparison basis in October. This follows a 0.1% sequential growth a month ago.
The trade group recently said that it expects U.S. chemical production (excluding pharmaceuticals) to rise 3.6% in 2019, following a 3.1% growth in 2018. The expansion is expected to be partly driven by growth in manufacturing and export and gains in business investment.
Chemical Industry Faces Multiple Headwinds
The prospects of the chemical industry have taken a beating due to the trade war between the United States and China. The Trump administration levied tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods earlier this year that led to China retaliating with tariffs on American products of equal value that includes a wide range of chemicals. The U.S. administration, in September, also imposed a 10% tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. In response, China hit back with tariffs on an additional $60 billion in American products.
China is one of the biggest export markets for U.S. chemicals. Beijing’s retaliatory trade actions have created an uncertain demand environment for U.S. chemical products in this major market. Chemical industry trade groups are worried that the tariffs would hurt U.S. chemical exports and the competitiveness of the American chemical industry. China’s retaliatory tariffs have hit more than 1,000 U.S. chemicals and plastics exports worth an estimated $10.8 billion, per the ACC.
Trade tensions have clouded the overall demand outlook for chemicals. Softer demand from the automotive space of late is a concern for chemical makers. Notably, the U.S.-China trade friction has led to a slowdown in demand in China in this major chemical end-use market.
Companies in the chemical space also face headwinds from a spike in costs of raw materials as a result of short supply partly due to production outages and plant shutdowns. China’s environmental crackdown has led to the tightening in the supply of certain key raw materials as a result of plant closures. The disruption in the supply chain has pushed up the prices of these inputs.
Nevertheless, strategic actions including expansion of scale through acquisitions, operational efficiency improvement, capacity expansion, price hike initiatives and continued focus on cost and productivity should help chemical companies offset these challenges.
Chemical Stocks to Watch For
A few stocks currently worth considering in the chemical space are Celanese Corporation (CE - Free Report) , Albemarle Corporation (ALB - Free Report) , Innospec Inc. (IOSP - Free Report) and Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. (SHECY - Free Report) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Celanese has an expected earnings growth of 47.9% for 2018. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 3.4% upward over the last 60 days.
Albemarle has an expected earnings growth of 18.3% for 2018. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 0.7% upward over the last 60 days.
Innospec delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 10.5% in the trailing four quarters. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 4.6% upward over the last 60 days.
Shin-Etsu Chemical has an expected earnings growth of 13.5% for the current fiscal year. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 7.4% upward over the last 60 days.
More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!
It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a $1.7 trillion market.
Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 6 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2020.
https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/342935/chemicals-start-q4-on-soft-note-with-sluggish-october-growth
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Exhibit PV29: Why This EPA Can’t Be Trusted to Forthrightly Assess Chemical Risks Under TSCA
Dec 13, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
I blogged last week about the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) illegal and hypocritical decision to deny the public access to health and safety studies conducted on the first chemical to undergo a risk evaluation under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In its draft risk evaluation, now out for public comment, EPA relied on these secret studies to assert that the chemical, commonly known as Pigment Violet 29, or PV29, is safe, so EPA’s denial of public access matters a great deal.
EPA asserts that these studies are entitled to protection as confidential business information (CBI) under TSCA, when in fact TSCA explicitly does not extend CBI protection to such studies. The only health and environmental information on this chemical that is public are brief summaries of those studies that were prepared by the companies that make the chemical, and were submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) when the chemical was registered under the European Union’s REACH Regulation. (EPA erroneously states that the studies were “summarized by ECHA.” This is simply not the case: Registrants, not ECHA, develop the summaries that are then made available in the registration “dossiers” for REACH chemicals.)
As we review EPA’s draft risk evaluation for PV29, we are finding that EPA’s assertions cannot be trusted even about what these summaries state are the findings of the underlying studies. I’ll discuss one such case in this post.
In the Executive Summary of its draft risk evaluation, EPA asserts: “The human health testing reported that no adverse effects were observed for all routes of exposure (oral, dermal, inhalation).” And after listing the studies on which it relies, EPA asserts on page 25: “These full study reports concluded that no adverse effects were observed for all routes of exposure (oral, dermal, inhalation). … As a result, the EPA concludes that C.I. Pigment Violet 29 presents a low hazard to human health.” As I noted in my last post, EPA has reached these conclusions despite very limited data on PV29, and no data at all relating to chronic effects.
Two of those studies are identified by EPA as follows: “Non-Guideline Acute Toxicity: Acute Inhalation Toxicity with Rats (two studies).” These studies, conducted by BASF four decades ago (in 1976 and 1978), are the sole basis EPA cites for its assertion that “no adverse effects were observed for” the inhalation route of exposure.
So imagine our surprise when we examined the summaries of these two studies and found that a wholly different conclusion was drawn by BASF, the company that conducted the studies and submitted them in 2013 to ECHA under REACH:
To repeat: BASF itself labeled these two studies “not reliable” due to use of an “unsuitable test system” and said the studies should be “disregarded due to major methodological deficiencies.”
(See for yourself: The first summary is available both here in EPA’s docket and here in the REACH dossier. The second summary is available both here in EPA’s docket and here in the REACH dossier. Both are also listed in Appendix D of EPA’s draft risk evaluation.)
Yet, as noted in Appendix D, EPA ranked these two studies as of “medium” quality, and proceeded to rely exclusively on them to conclude PV29 poses absolutely no hazard or risk from inhalation. How did EPA achieve this miraculous resurrection of these “not reliable” studies? By applying the dark magic of its TSCA Systematic Review approach. Readers may recall that this approach is being used in all of the first 10 risk evaluations being conducted under TSCA – despite the fact that it deviates in major respects from all other authoritative systematic review protocols and has never been subject to any independent scientific peer review. EDF earlier noted these deficiencies, among many other concerns, in our extensive commentson EPA’s TSCA Systematic Review document.
It took quite a bit of digging to ferret out what I report in this blog post. I can only imagine what other mischief lies beneath the surface of EPA’s first draft risk evaluation, as well as the other nine that are soon to come. All of this . . . despite a new law that demands EPA use the best available science when evaluating chemical risks.
Is it any wonder that EDF and other groups have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all of the full studies on PV29?
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/12/13/exhibit-pv29-why-this-epa-cant-be-trusted-to-forthrightly-assess-chemical-risks-under-tsca/
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Tucson Water to Upgrade Treatment Plant to Remove More PFAS Pollutants
Dec 13, 2018 | Arizona Daily Star
By Tony Davis
Tucson Water is installing new carbon filtering materials at its south-side treatment plant to remove more PFAS contaminants from drinking water.
The pollutants have become the subject of local and national concern this year as they’ve been discovered in drinking wells around the country, including in Tucson and Marana.
Formerly used in a wide range of products, including firefighting foam and nonstick containers, PFAS (perfluoroalkyl) compounds are known to be highly persistent in the environment and are suspected of causing cancer in humans over lifetime exposure.
Over the next nine weeks, Tucson Water will replace 56 tons of granular activated carbon in use at its Tucson Airport Remediation Project (TARP) treatment plant with carbon that’s more effective at removing the PFAS compounds.
The job is costing about $600,000 for buying and installing the new carbon materials, Tucson Water Director Timothy Thomure said in an email to the Star.
This is an interim measure toward grappling with the PFAS. City officials hope it will cut levels of the long-lasting compounds in drinking water to below the levels that can be detected by today’s technology.
Recent tests show the water contains PFAS concentrations well below the city’s goals, and much farther below those recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. But the city would like to get them even lower.
The action comes nearly four months after Tucson Water discovered that the plant was sending drinking water with higher-than-desirable levels of the PFAS compounds to customers in a V-shaped area covering downtown and parts of the city’s west, northwest and north sides.
In all, about 60,000 people drink water from the TARP plant, although not all got water with PFAS compounds at what officials decided were unacceptably high levels.
The levels found in three monitoring wells at the southern end of that area were at or just below 30 parts per trillion PFAS. That’s less than the EPA’s recommended health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion, but significantly more than what’s been recommended by the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That agency has recommended no more than a combined 18 parts per trillion for the two most commonly found PFAS compounds, known as PFOA and PFOS. That’s the goal Tucson Water has also adopted for its supplies.
In the fall, the city cut off the three south-side wells with high PFAS levels from having their water delivered to the treatment plant. It also added some Colorado River water that doesn’t have PFAS to the treatment plant’s water. Those steps pushed the contamination levels in the TARP water served to customers to 8 to 8.3 parts per trillion.
There have been warnings from some scientists and the Environmental Working Group that PFAS can be harmful even at levels below what’s in the treatment plant’s water today, or at worst, that there is no safe level.
Eventually, the utility wants to replace the treatment plant, now nearly 25 years old, with a more modern plant.
https://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-water-to-upgrade-treatment-plant-to-remove-more-pfas/article_2ba37805-6fa5-5191-adcd-2bcaff6afc5a.html
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Flexibility in EPA Power Rule Could Also Bring State Liability
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The flexibility that utilities and many state regulators hailed the Trump administration’s EPA for including in its proposal to replace Obama-era power plant carbon limits could also be somewhat of a curse.
The Environmental Protection Agency carved out a much narrower role for itself in its plans to replace the Clean Power Plan, which during President Barack Obama’s administration set first-time carbon limits on existing power plants.
The agency’s August proposal under President Donald Trump places much of the regulatory responsibility in the hands of the states, encouraging regulators to assess individual power plants in their states to determine whether they could make efficiency upgrades to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
But that flexibility also leaves the door open for critics of the rule to sue not just the EPA, but also individual states as they put forward plans to comply with the regulation. Critics could bring individual states to court if they feel their plans aren’t sufficient to cut greenhouse gas emissions, state regulators and utility representatives said.
“I think one of the ironies of this rule versus the Clean Power Plan is by allowing that state flexibility, I think there’s going to be a lot more avenues for intervention,” Scott Weaver, director of air quality services for the Ohio-based American Electric Power Co. Inc., said at a Dec. 13 event hosted by the Great Plains Institute.
Because states are the main decision-makers under the EPA’s proposal (RIN: 2060–AT67), known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, they could face direct legal pushback on how they choose to implement the rule, Weaver and others suggested. That, in turn, could create a less certain environment for utilities, which plan their generation mixes and investment decisions years into the future.
EPA ProposalThe EPA proposal provides states a list of several technologies that improve power plants’ efficiency rates. State regulators must consider whether any of the technologies is a good fit for the individual coal-fired power plants in their state.
That is a much more limited process than the Obama administration’s rule, which set specific state greenhouse gas reduction targets. The Obama EPA also encouraged states to look beyond what an individual plant could achieve, including generation shifting from coal to lower-cost, cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable energy.
American Electric Power, like many other utilities, backs the EPA’s new approach. Many states critical of the Clean Power Plan also support a more limited role for the EPA.
‘It Could Get Messy’But more flexibility for the states means more responsibility and legal liability.
“There are countless people lined up for the first state implementation plan to fight it,” Talina Mathews, a commissioner on the Kentucky Public Service Commission, said at the Dec. 13 event.
Critics already intervene in rate cases brought before the commission, wanting to weigh in on whether or not a power plant should continue to run, Mathews said. In rate cases, public utilities must set the rate to charge customers for electricity. Environmental groups have intervened in rate cases to argue against carbon-intensive generation or in favor of allowing more clean energy.
The EPA’s new proposal could allow similar opportunities for that intervention as states set their compliance plans, Mathews said.
“Basically what this sets up is all of a sudden, you have a rate case going for every plant within a state potentially, and it could get messy,” American Electric Power’s Weaver added.
Cutting EmissionsNonetheless, Weaver also said American Electric Power doesn’t intend to change its plans to cut carbon emissions. The Ohio-based utility has cut emissions 57 percent below 2000 levels, largely through shutting down coal units, shifting to natural gas, and investing in renewable energy, all of which Weaver expects to continue.
“Our industry is in the midst of a massive transition,” Weaver said. “Nothing with the change from the Clean Power Plan to the ACE rule is going to change that.”
But progress in reducing emissions such as American Electric Power’s shows the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule is divorced from the ways the power sector is decarbonizing, Megan Ceronsky, who advised President Barack Obama on climate and energy policy, said at the Dec. 13 event.
“The proposal is asking states and companies to do things that no state or company has ever done to reduce emissions from the power sector,” Ceronsky, now executive director of the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy, added.
Power plants are looking to low-cost natural gas and renewable energy to cut carbon, not efficiency improvements at individual coal plants, she said.
The EPA proposal “is a poor fit for the problem at hand,” Ceronsky said.
EPA spokeswoman Molly Block told Bloomberg Environment in a statement: “We look forward to reviewing feedback from the public comment period as the Affordable Clean Energy proposal moves through the formal rulemaking process.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/flexibility-in-epa-power-rule-could-also-bring-state-liability-1
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EPA Methane Rollbacks Contradict Agency’s Own Scientific Findings
Dec 13, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Rosalie Winn and Hillary Hull
As the world races to adopt cleaner fuels and implement carbon-reducing strategies to combat a warming climate, the Trump administration is moving feverishly to severely weaken federal methane emissions regulations across the entire oil and gas industry.
The Trump EPA’s current proposal to weaken the New Source Performance Standards 2016 methane rule will add 480,000 tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere within the next seven years, while simultaneously loosing tens of millions of dollars-worth of natural gas.
The EPA is proposing to weaken the current standards in the face of recent research warning that the excessive waste of natural gas (methane) from the oil and gas sector is much higher than previously estimated, underscoring the harmful climate implications of methane leaks from oil and gas production well sites. This move also comes on the heels of a new federal government report published last month highlighting the dire social and economic consequences of climate change.
Particularly baffling is that the EPA’s own new analysis recognizes that increasing methane detection efforts will reduce methane emissions in the atmosphere, and doing so is more cost-effective than originally estimated by the agency. Despite the agency’s own scientific conclusions, the Trump EPA is choosing to move forward and weaken the standards, disregarding logical and common sense.
The new EPA proposal targets methane leak detection efforts, otherwise known as leak detection and repair (LDAR), by significantly decreasing the frequency of routine operator equipment visits conducted to check for methane leaks. Details on the proposed changes can be found here.
Looking for leaks less often will result in more wasted gas—and further warming of the atmosphere. For instance, in Colorado, which requires oil and gas companies to check for leaks as often as every month, companies found roughly 75,500 leaks from 2014-2017.
Costs decreasing, benefits rising
In its rush to justify its proposal based solely on cutting short-term costs for the industry, the EPA has ignored that the current rule is in effect and working. The measures required by the current rule have been successfully implemented across the country and have consistently proven to be not only feasible, but also less costly than EPA originally predicted, as operators earn additional profits by capturing and selling gas that would otherwise be lost.
Even now, the EPA re-analyzed the 2016 rule’s fugitive emissions standards and found the benefits of LDAR to be even greater—and cheaper—than the Obama EPA had estimated. EPA admits in in its proposal that the original standards “appear to be cost-effective” under its own updated analysis.
Furthermore, the true benefits and cost-effectiveness of the current standards are likely underestimated by EPA, which calculated emissions reductions based on data from the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Earlier this year, a study found methane emissions were underestimated by 60 percent by the EPA. When EDF calculated the impacts of EPA’s proposed rollback using this latest evidence, we found it will in fact allow over 160,000 tons per year of additional methane in 2025—which is 2.9X higher than estimated by EPA.
Harm to public ignored
In its proposed rollback, EPA has failed to fully account for harm to the public—including the social costs of additional climate emissions, pollution, and other health-harming pollutants, such as smog-forming volatile organic compounds and cancer-causing benzene.
The agency also dramatically underestimates the social cost of methane, an economic measure of the future harm caused by climate change due to methane emissions. EPA disregards the widely accepted and peer-reviewed social cost of methane developed by a group of federal agencies, and instead relies on an “interim” social cost metric that ignores huge swaths of the harm caused by climate change. EDF analysis of the full social cost of methane shows that the climate costs of the proposal are more than seven times higher than estimated by EPA.
Rule gives states shortcuts
At the same time EPA is proposing to weaken federal leak detection requirements, the agency is also seeking to allow state programs with little to no protections to substitute for federal standards.
This runs contrary to the longstanding history of the New Source Performance Standards—which were meant to provide a uniform set of protections that all Americans can rely on. For example, in Texas, EDF analysis indicates that of the more than 12,000 wells subject to the current federal standards, at most eleven percent, and possibly as few as two percent, are required by the state of Texas to conduct some form of leak detection and repair. EPA is proposing to exempt Texas well production sites from LDAR requirements because of this program leaving the vast majority of wells currently subject to the NSPS in Texas unregulated.
While there is a growing segment in the industry of operators that are voluntarily adopting methane management programs, this group only represents 20 percent of the oil and gas industry, making common sense federal methane standards imperative to cut the needless waste of natural gas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA’s proposed rollback ignores the extensive evidence supporting the current standards, including the agency’s own analysis, and will allow significant additional emissions of methane and other harmful pollution into the air. Please submit your comments here to the EPA by Dec. 17th to urge the agency to withdraw this ill-advised proposal.
http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2018/12/13/epa-methane-rollbacks-contradict-agencys-own-scientific-findings/
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No. 2 Gas-Producing State Moves to Curb Air Pollution
Dec 14, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
Pennsylvania is aiming to curb air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from its vast natural gas exploration fields, with the governor's administration proposing new regulations yesterday even as the Trump administration moves to relax federal requirements.
Gov. Tom Wolf's administration brought the proposal to a technical review committee, the first step in what could be a two- to three-year process spurred by a 2016 federal requirement that applies to states and areas that don't meet certain clean air standards.
Wolf's office said the governor, a Democrat, is committed to seeing the proposal through, regardless of what President Trump's EPA does to weaken or repeal the 2016 Obama-era rule.
Wolf's office said the state has the legal authority to enforce its proposed rule, with or without the federal requirement.
"This process, which is just beginning, does not depend on actions by the EPA," Wolf's office said in a statement. The administration will, it said, work with "industry, organizations, and the public to understand any and all concerns that arise."
Pennsylvania is the nation's second-largest natural gas producer after Texas, and the Marcellus Shale beneath much of Pennsylvania is the nation's most prolific natural gas reservoir.
Under the 2016 rule, qualifying states are supposed to impose new emissions controls for oil and gas field sources by early 2021.
Pennsylvania's proposal would impose stronger limits on smog-forming pollutants — a 95 percent reduction on some sources, based on emissions reported in 2016 — and require companies to more aggressively search for methane leaks from equipment at existing oil and gas installations. Cutting smog-forming pollutants, called volatile organic compounds, has the added benefit of reducing methane emissions.
Environmental groups welcomed the proposal but say it should go further in imposing limits on methane emissions and should eliminate an exemption for equipment at low-producing well sites.
A gas industry trade group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said it is concerned about the cost for companies to comply and urged the Wolf administration to wait until the Trump administration finalizes any proposed changes to the 2016 rule.
The oil and gas industry is the nation's primary source of methane emissions, according to EPA, accounting for nearly one-third in 2016.
Earlier this year, Pennsylvania began enforcing tougher standards to reduce methane emissions and other air pollutants from new or updated equipment at well sites and on pipelines, a move environmental advocates said put the state among the leaders in going beyond federal requirements.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/14/stories/1060109621
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Corpus Christi LNG's First Shipment Headed to New Market in Europe
Dec 13, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The historic first shipment of liquefied natural gas from Texas is headed to a new market for U.S. producers in Europe.
An LNG tanker named Maria Energy left Cheniere Energy's Port of Corpus Christi facility on Tuesday and is headed for Greece, the U.S. Embassy in Athens confirmed.
The shipment is headed to the Revithousa LNG terminal about 25 miles west of Athens, Greece's state-owned National Natural Gas System Operator said in a statement.
Known as DEFSA, the Greek gas grid operator reported that the spot cargo shipment is expected to arrive at the Revithousa LNG terminal on Dec. 29.
"Natural gas is required to play a transitional role in securing Greece's energy security," DEFSA officials said in a statement.
The shipment marks the first U.S. shipment of LNG to Greece. It also marks the first shipment for Cheniere to the southeastern European nation.
Since it first began export operations in Feb. 2016, Cheniere has shipped more than 475 cargoes of LNG to 29 nations across the globe. Greece marks the 30th nation for the Houston-based company.
Cheniere's shipment from the Port of Corpus Christi is the first LNG export shipment from the Lone Star State. Corpus Christi LNG's long-term contract customers include utility company customers in Spain, Portugal, France, Australia and Indonesia but the facility can also sell spot shipments to other customers around the world.
"This first cargo of LNG from Texas is yet another key inflection point in the nation's historic emergence as the largest energy producer in the world," Port of Corpus Christi CEO Sean Strawbridge said in a statement. "Cheniere is a great partner for the Port of Corpus Christi and we are committed to helping them optimize their significant capital investment by ensuring all the necessary supporting infrastructure is in place and ready when their additional trains come online."
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Corpus-Christi-LNG-s-first-shipment-headed-to-13464506.php
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Saudi Arabia to Target U.S. With Sharp Oil Export Cut, Sources Say
Dec 13, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Javier Blas and Tina Davis
After flooding the U.S. market in recent months, Saudi Arabia plans to slash exports to the world’s largest oil market in the coming weeks in an effort to dampen visible build-ups in crude inventories.
American-based oil refiners have been told to expect much lower shipments from the kingdom in January than in recent months following the OPEC agreement to reduce production, according to people briefed on the plans of state oil company Saudi Aramco.
Saudi crude shipments to the U.S. next month could even test the 30-year low set in late 2017 of 582,000 barrels a day, down about 40 percent from the most recent three-month average, the same people said, asking not to be named as the information isn’t public. The final figure could still change, they added.
By shifting the focus of Saudi export reductions toward the U.S., Riyadh hopes to show to the market it’s making good on its promise to cut supplies. Fluctuations in U.S. crude imports and stockpiles have an outsize impact on the market because data are available on a weekly basis. In other regions, oil traders only get official figures on a monthly basis, or not at all in the case of stockpiles in big consumers such as China and India.
The Saudi energy ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
While the plan to slash Saudi exports to America may ultimately convince a skeptical oil market about the kingdom’s resolution to bring supply and demand in line, it may anger U.S. President Donald Trump, who has used social media to ask the Saudis and OPEC to keep the taps open.
Saudi total exports are set to drop to around 7 million barrels a day in January, down from about 8 million barrels a day in November-December, one of the people said. Khalid Al-Falih, the kingdom’s energy minister, told reporters last week that Saudi production will drop in January to 10.2 million barrels a day, down from 11.1 million barrels a day in November.
The oil market has so far largely ignored the production cuts that OPEC and its allies announced in early December, a larger-than-expected 1.2 million barrels a day -- or just over 1 percent of global demand. Despite the OPEC+ curbs, benchmark Brent crude has hovered near $60 a barrel. Futures in London jumped 2.2 percent Thursday on the prospect of lower Saudi shipments to the U.S., closing at $61.45. Prices are still down 7.7 percent for the year.
The export curbs, if fully implemented, will affect big U.S. refiners such as Valero Energy Corp., Phillips 66, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., and Marathon Petroleum Corp. forcing them to buy similar crude elsewhere, such as Mexico, Canada or Venezuela. They could also hit Motiva Enterprises LLC, the Saudi-owned company that operates the largest refinery in the U.S.
Saudi Arabia has shipped 860,000 barrels a day of crude to the U.S. on average so far this year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on weekly customs data. Saudi exports into America had run even higher in the second half of the year, with July-to-December shipments rising to an average of 975,000 barrels a day, according to Bloomberg calculations.Inventories Scrutinized
Oil trader Andy Hall, who earned the nickname "God" for his prescient calls on pricing before closing his hedge fund after suffering losses last year, says the oil market is heavily influenced by data like the weekly U.S. stockpile figures.
“People look at these things, scrutinize them,” he said of the data on Bloomberg Television Thursday. “The fact is, they only cover the U.S., which is 25 percent of the world oil market. The data available for inventories elsewhere in the world is poor at best."
Hall now serves on the advisory board of Orbital Insight, a Palo Alto-based provider of analytic platforms to translate satellite and aerial images into useful data, including global oil supplies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-13/saudi-arabia-is-said-to-target-u-s-with-sharp-oil-export-cut
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D.C. Circuit Weighs FERC's NEPA Duty in Pa. Project
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A panel of judges yesterday considered what level of scrutiny federal energy regulators must dedicate to an alternative to a natural gas pipeline project.
At issue in the case is a proposal by Kinder Morgan Inc.'s Tennessee Gas pipeline to build and operate its "Orion Project," which includes 12.9 miles of new pipeline near its existing 300 Line through Pennsylvania. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network contends that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not adequately consider an alternative that would have allowed Tennessee to expand its capacity by adding new compressor stations instead.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland, a Clinton appointee, asked Delaware Riverkeeper whether FERC's authorization of Tennessee's application, which included the compression alternative, would suffice.
No, said Aaron Stemplewicz, who argued on the environmental group's behalf at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The lack of discussion by federal regulators is at issue, he said.
"There is value in FERC explaining the compression alternative," Stemplewicz said.
Review of that alternative, which was not included in FERC's final environmental analysis, only came to light through a separate lawsuit with the Army Corps of Engineers.
Judge Stephen Williams, a Reagan appointee, questioned Delaware Riverkeeper's argument that review was up for public scrutiny. He noted at one point that the document "fortuitously" fell in the group's hands.
"What does it really add?" he asked during Stemplewicz's plea for a deeper discussion by FERC of the compression alternative.
Williams also sought clarity on arguments that Tennessee and FERC improperly segmented Orion from two other gas transmission projects by the company. Delaware Riverkeeper argued that all three projects were interconnected, while Tennessee said the projects were distinct.
During briefing, Delaware Riverkeeper wrote that the compression alternative was "environmentally preferable" to the proposed Orion Project. Tennessee, an intervenor in the case, wrote in its brief that building the compressor stations would introduce more significant impacts, such as the need to permanently clear vegetation from the project sites.
James Danly, general counsel for FERC, took issue with Delaware Riverkeeper's claim that the commission discussed the compression alternative in a draft environmental analysis. There was no such document, he said — only an internal, pre-decisional document that was not subject to public comment.
"It is the order that is the issue," Danly said.
Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump pick, asked whether the FERC order's "arguably perfunctory and ambiguous citation" of the compression alternative was sufficient.
FERC issued its certificate of public convenience and necessity for the Orion Project in February 2017. The order required Tennessee to bring the project into service within two years.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/14/stories/1060109625
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Schumer Presses MTA to Implement Safety Technology Faster on LIRR, Metro-North Lines
Dec 13, 2018 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Raanan Geberer
Federal regulations have prompted MTA to begin installing Positive Train Control safety technology on its Long Island Rail Road commuter lines — some of which traverse Brooklyn and Queens — and on Metro-North. However, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and the MTA disagree about what deadline applies for the technology’s final rollout.
Schumer is attacking the transit agency for “announcing another two-year extension to fully implement PTC,” although MTA says it’s entitled to another two years under Federal Railroad Administration rules. “MetroNorth and the LIRR have met all federal PTC requirements for 2018,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said in a statement.
“Nationwide, we are in line with the majority of our peer commuter railroads’ PTC implementation timelines. We expect to complete our system-wide roll-out in advance of the two additional years we’ve qualified for under FRA rules,” said Donovan.
However, Schumer, also in a statement, called on the LIRR and Metro-North to “move heaven and earth” and fully install PTC technology as soon as possible.
“Despite PTC having been recommended by safety experts and required by law for nearly a decade, LIRR and Metro-North still may not meet the [latest] 2018 Congressional-mandated deadline for implementation of PTC technology,” Schumer added.
Originally, the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 required the implementation of PTC by December 2015, but during the Obama administration Congress passed a law extending that deadline to the end of 2018.
“According to the December 2018 LIRR and Metro-North board materials, the railroads have installed just 86 percent and 84 percent, respectively, of the hardware required for its PTC system,” said Schumer in the news release.
A spokesperson for Schumer told the Brooklyn Eagle that this month is the fifth anniversary of Metro-North’s Spuyten Duyvil crash in the Bronx. In that incident, a motorman who was rounding a curve at three times the allowed speed derailed a train, killing four passengers and injuring 61. A medical exam revealed that he suffered from sleep apnea and dozed off at the helm of the train.
“People living in all the boroughs should be able to rely on the MTA,” the spokesperson said. He added that PTC would stop over-speeding trains, whether the motorman suffers from such a condition or the train’s equipment fails.
Under PTC, specialized equipment on board usually stores information about sections of track in the system. The equipment constantly calculates the train’s current speed in relation to the desired speed in that area. If the train is speeding and there is a risk that the motorman won’t slow it down, the mechanism automatically applies the brakes.
While the Spuyten Duyvil accident was the worst local commuter train mishap in recent times, Brooklyn and Queens have both seen their share of train accidents.
In January 2017, a train smashed through a barrier at the LIRR’s Brooklyn terminal at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, injuring more than 100 people.
In August 2018, an LIRR train derailed in Long Island City just after it emerged from the railroad’s East River tunnel. No serious injuries were reported, but the first axle and front two wheels of the train came off the tracks.
In July 2015, two passenger trains going in opposite directions sideswiped each other just west of Jamaica. The LIRR later found that one engineer didn’t obey a stop signal. No injuries were reported.
Also, what may have been the worst commuter train crash in the city’s history occurred when two trains collided on the LIRR’s main line between the Kew Gardens and Jamaica stations. After an engineer disregarded a “Go Slow” signal, the trains ran into each other, killing 78 people and injuring 363.
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2018/12/13/schumer-presses-mta-to-implement-safety-technology-faster-on-lirr-metro-north-lines/
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Something's Happening on the Endangerment Finding. But What?
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA's detractors are worried the agency is taking a step that could weaken the cornerstone of the Obama administration's climate policy.
Last week, as EPA proposed its replacement for the Obama-era carbon rule for new and modified power plants, the agency added a footnote calling for input on the 2009 determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
The agency isn't seeking comment on whether such emissions harm humans, but instead is zeroing in on how much specific sources "cause or contribute" to that harm.
EPA asked whether it should consider a regulatory threshold above which emissions could be defined as causing or significantly contributing to air pollution that harms human health and welfare. The agency also requested comment on whether it should develop a new endangerment finding under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act for each new pollutant it regulates.
The Trump administration has spent months doggedly stripping away greenhouse gas regulations for everything from power plants to automobiles to landfills to oil wells. Hard-line conservatives have pushed the administration to go even further and open up the 2009 endangerment finding, which set the legal groundwork for the Obama EPA's climate agenda.
Those closely tracking EPA policy say this comment request — tucked at the bottom of Page 30 in Footnote 25 of last week's proposal — doesn't go that far.
But they say if EPA follows through with changes, it could slow regulation and potentially weaken the endangerment finding.
"I think what they are trying to say is that there are some source categories whose contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions is too small to justify performance standards, it's not worth the trouble of setting performance standards for this category," said Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity.
"But there is nothing in the statute to support that," he added.
During the Obama administration, EPA rejected establishing a threshold of harm for greenhouse gases.
"These Findings do not attempt to determine a quantitative threshold for a level of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, for future policy purposes or to determine a level above which there is (or below which there is not) endangerment," the agency wrote in response to comments on the endangerment finding.
Lienke pointed out the Obama EPA had also grappled with whether it needed to draft a separate endangerment finding back in 2012 when it first proposed regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified power plants.
At the time, the agency determined it had the right to regulate power plants because they were already a listed category of polluters under the Clean Air Act. EPA figured it could proceed with regulating any specific pollutant from those sources as long as it could provide a "rational basis" for doing so.
Even if EPA had been required to draft a separate endangerment finding, the agency had maintained it had the scientific backing to do so because power plants were significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.EPA reconsidering?
But EPA may now be weighing a different approach, said Romany Webb, a senior fellow and associate research scholar at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
"It appears that EPA may be reconsidering its previous view that an endangerment finding only needs to be made once for each source category," she said in an email.
EPA's decision to rely on one endangerment finding had generated controversy during the Obama administration. Oil and gas producers argued EPA should have been required to establish a new endangerment finding in order to control methane emissions.
While Webb declined to speculate why EPA might be considering a change, she said it could have significant implications for future regulations on greenhouse gases.
"If EPA were to conclude that a new endangerment finding had to be issued before it could regulate additional pollutants from an already-listed source, that would add another step to the regulatory process, and so could significantly slow things down," she wrote.
EPA, though, has denied it is taking comment on the endangerment finding itself and instead emphasized it is focused on whether there is a specific threshold of carbon emissions that endangers human health and welfare (Greenwire, Dec. 7).
In the footnote calling for comment, the agency stated it is planning to maintain the statutory interpretations of the Clean Air Act made by the previous administration.
"Nonetheless, the EPA is aware that various stakeholders have in the past made arguments opposing our views on these points, and the Agency sees value to allowing them to comment on these views in this rulemaking," the agency wrote.'Much more relevant'
But in an interview last week with Bloomberg Environment, EPA air chief Bill Wehrum suggested the move was more than simply a chance for critics to voice their grievances with agency policy.
EPA wanted people to start to consider the question in relation to methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, Wehrum said. He hinted that the Trump administration thought the sector's harm to human health and welfare was more of an open question compared with power plant emissions.
"When the time comes, I'm sure we'll ask the same question in that context, but it will be much more relevant in that context because we're dealing with a smaller slice of the emissions inventory," he said in the Dec. 7 article.
Researchers, though, warn EPA there is a large body of scientific evidence backing up the need to strictly limit emissions of heat-trapping gases (E&E News PM, Dec. 13).
Lienke noted another reason beyond the science that EPA might have trouble slashing requirements for regulating greenhouse gases for new and modified sources.
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to regulate new sources under Section 111(b) in order to then regulate the typically much greater emissions from existing sources under Section 111(d). By taking a stab at new source rules, EPA could be seen as trying to undercut rules for existing sources.
"That seems like gamesmanship that a court would frown on," Lienke said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/14/stories/1060109605
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Crucial Climate Decision 'Much Stronger Now'
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
President Trump often rejects climate science, but his administration still has to regulate greenhouse gases because of a 2009 determination that shows humans are harmed by climate change.
The endangerment finding relied on a mountain of research to show how six greenhouse gases threaten human health as a result of burning fossil fuels. Now, a review of that science released yesterday shows that the risks have grown more serious.
"Newly available evidence about a wide range of observed and projected impacts strengthens the association between risk of some of these impacts and anthropogenic climate change; indicates that some impacts or combinations of impacts have the potential to be more severe than previously understood; and identifies substantial risk of additional impacts through processes and pathways not considered in the endangerment finding," the authors wrote.
The endangerment finding is EPA's scientific judgment, supported by the courts, that established greenhouse gases as a dangerous class of air pollution that must be regulated by the agency. As such, it has long been a target for those who reject climate science.
The new report, published yesterday in the journal Science, shows that the scientific case for regulating greenhouse gases has only grown. The effects of those emissions are better understood today compared with nine years ago, the study says.
Dangers include ocean acidification, violence, national security and economic well-being, said Phil Duffy, director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and a former climate adviser in the Obama White House.
"The evidence was very strong in 2009. It's much stronger now," said Duffy, the lead author of the study. "It's more comprehensive now. It's broader, based on science: You cannot overturn the endangerment finding; you just can't do it."
Scientific advances show a clearer connection between extreme events, like Hurricane Harvey, and human-caused climate change.
"That science has really matured in the last nine years," Duffy said. "The societal impacts of extreme weather are pretty pervasive."
Sea-level-rise projections have also been revised upward more than once in the last decade. That's largely because land-based ice sheets are decaying at rates faster than previously believed, Duffy said.
The study highlights a series of risks that support the endangerment finding.
For instance, air quality will vary across the country as a result of climate change. The eastern United States could experience more particulate matter pollution, while wildfires will increasingly plague the West, doubling the frequency of smoke episodes in California.
The science shows that drought in the West could accelerate as snowpack shrinks. That endangers water supplies and river flows and threatens rare and endangered species, the report found.
Western forests stand to see a greater number of trees die from drought, beetle kills and wildfires. The area prone to forest fires in the West has already ballooned by 1,000 percent since 1984, the report found. The future will probably be worse.
People are already being displaced by climate change in areas hit by extreme storms and in Alaska, where coastal communities are battered by a sea that freezes less frequently and where permafrost is thawing and creating instability.
Infrastructure is more vulnerable than previously believed, as well. Military installations on the coasts are increasingly at risk. So is transportation and energy infrastructure.
Higher temperatures that will result from global warming can result in increased violence. Studies released in recent years show that exposure to high temperatures is associated with higher rates of domestic violence, rape, assault and murder, the report notes. In another grim finding, it says "hot periods elevate the risk of self-harm, including suicide."
While sea-level rise and extreme storms pose an obvious risk to human health, there are more subdued dangers, as well, according to one of the report's authors.
"I think all around the country there is a growing recognition from energy infrastructure providers that the normal conditions used to design, those normal conditions aren't normal anymore," Sue Tierney, a senior adviser with the Analysis Group and a former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Energy, wrote in the report.
"There is a need to be able to withstand winds at a certain speed, we are hitting 100-year events, I'm aware of utilities that are looking at the resilience of the systems," she added.
Water poses a particular threat to the nation's energy sector, from extreme precipitation events to drought. Refineries, railroads and highways are likely to be in low-lying areas or along rivers, where they are vulnerable to flooding from extreme weather events.
Tierney also noted that competition for water availability is a serious concern in the power sector, as water is needed for cooling power plants. She pointed to reports she and other authors reviewed on the effects of drought conditions on grid operators in Texas.
"Many of the grid operators were going to be dumping effluents into waterways that were already too hot, so they couldn't run those plants. Those are the kinds of weird things that happen that no one thinks about," she said in an interview.
Higher temperatures could also hurt long-distance transfer of renewable energy from sources like wind farms.
"When it's getting hot, electrical transmission lines can't carry as much juice, just at a time when you are seeing much higher demand for air conditioning and you want to rely on long-distance renewable supplies," Tierney said.
The report suggests that scientists may be too conservative in communicating with the public about the observed effects of climate change and future projections.
If anything, the troubling findings about climate change and its disruptions on human life are more conservative than they should be, Duffy said. That's because scientists, by nature, tend to wait until they have a lot of data before making claims.
"The scientific community is very cautious about accepting new findings, and so they have been slow to really endorse the idea that the ice sheets are melting, so they're constantly a bit behind," Duffy said. "But policymaking is about risk and risk management, and so you don't need 95 percent confidence that something is going to happen before you make policy to avoid it."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/14/stories/1060109661
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EPA Adviser Casts Doubt on Science Linking Pollution to Health Problems
Dec 14, 2018 | The Guardian
By Emily Holden
A conservative science adviser to the Trump administration is casting doubt on longstanding research linking fossil fuel pollution to early deaths and health problems, worrying environmental experts.
At a meeting to review air pollution science compiled by staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency this week the advisory board chairman, Tony Cox – a consultant and statistician who has worked for the industry and criticized EPA standards – questioned whether soot from coal plants and cars can be directly blamed for asthma and cardiopulmonary problems.
Cox pushed staffers to specify what percentage of health problems are directly caused by the pollution or are just associated with it, a figure that the US government has not required in order to restrict pollutants that are known to harm people.
His comments appeared to confirm the fears of scientists who say the US government is now aiming to discredit research to bolster rollbacks of climate change and health regulations. The Trump administration is working to rescind rules for power plants, cars and oil and gas drillers.
“It’s really all a facade at this point,” said Christopher Frey, a scientist and professor at North Carolina State University who was chairman of the committee under the Obama administration from 2012 to 2015. “Almost everything that could have been changed to weaken the process has been changed, including how members have been appointed and the timeline.”Trump administration to strip pollution protections, harming vital wildlife
Read more
The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has appointed representatives from state-level agencies and industry to the science review committee, called the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. EPA political leaders also disbanded two panels of experts on soot and smog.
EPA leaders have said the changes are meant to provide more balance in the advisory groups and to ensure regulations are not overly burdensome. The agency is also moving to restrict what kind of science it can consider in writing regulations for industry, excluding studies that cannot share the health information of participants or be reproduced.
The advisory committee was meeting as part of a regular review of the science behind clean air standards.
The process for updating air standards would normally take about three years, Frey said, but the EPA wants to shorten that to one year. Where there were 42 experts examining the science on air pollution and specifically on particulate pollution and smog, there are now seven, he noted.
A group of former members of the panel focused on soot wrote a 134-page letter to Cox this week documenting their many concerns that his committee does not have the expertise or time to adequately assess the science.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/14/epa-adviser-casts-doubt-on-science-linking-pollution-to-health-problems
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Study: EPA Endangerment Finding Looks Even Better with Age
Dec 13, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
A new report highlights increasingly strong evidence supporting EPA's 2009 determination that climate change hurts public health and welfare.
The research analysis, published today in the journal Science, evaluates the body of scientific work on global warming impacts on humans and the environment in the decade following the agency's release of its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
"Since 2009, the amount, diversity, and sophistication of the evidence have increased dramatically, clearly strengthening the case for endangerment," said the report.
"New evidence about the extent, severity, and interconnectedness of impacts detected to date and projected for the future reinforces the case that climate change may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the health and welfare of current and future generations," the authors concluded.
The report's release comes after months of speculation over whether the Trump administration will seek to roll back the endangerment finding, which serves as the cornerstone for EPA regulation to control greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of sources.
Last week's proposed rule change on emissions from new and modified power plants renewed questions about whether the agency was taking aim at the finding.
The researchers based their assessment on peer-reviewed literature, including older versions of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and National Climate Assessment. The latest versions of these reports came out too late to be included in detail in their paper.
"To the extent that there would be a challenge of that original endangerment finding, we wanted to make sure there is a place people can go for another reference point on those same types of comments," said report co-author Sue Tierney, a senior adviser with the Analysis Group and former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Energy.
She described the report as aimed at deepening public understanding of the environmental changes seen in the last decade. It's also meant to provide further evidence to political and policy leaders that there is a "compelling record the U.S. economy, communities, and public health and welfare are truly seeing the effects [of climate change] today," Tierney said.
These effects include risks to the nation's food supply and coastal communities, and the threat water shortages could pose to the U.S. energy sector.
The authors also point out areas where scientists have gained confidence in their assessments of climate change impacts nationally.
In the past decade, researchers have made great strides in being able to link individual disasters like Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Katrina to human-caused global warming, and have been better able to track the ecological impact warming has had on marine and wildlife, forest cover, crops, as well as invasive pests and weeds.
Recent research has also more clearly defined social consequences of warming, such as the impact of disasters on mental health, as well as the increased risk of migration and conflict because of changing environmental conditions.
"We know from the very clear scientific evidence that we have to turn the tide on the emissions curve and reduce it dramatically if we are going to keep temperatures within tolerable levels," said Tierney.
The Trump administration has continued to weaken Obama-era rules aimed at controlling the heat-trapping gases. But it has sidestepped questions of whether it would seek to undo the endangerment finding itself, a move that scholars say is highly legally vulnerable.
Speculation about the fate of the endangerment finding surfaced again last week during EPA's release of its proposed replacement for the New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified power plants.
In a press release, EPA noted it was also seeking comment on setting a regulatory threshold of when a source category — like the power sector — either causes or significantly contributes to air pollution.
A top EPA official denied last week that this request signaled the agency was opening up the endangerment finding for consideration (Greenwire, Dec. 7).
"The proposal doesn't take comment on the endangerment finding, it takes comment on the threshold issue of contribution," Mandy Gunasekara, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, said during an event at the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/12/13/stories/1060109585
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Dec 13, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
Evidence continues to pile up supporting a pivotal 2009 scientific determination that forms the legal basis for the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say (Science, 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat5982). In that decision, dubbed the endangerment finding, the EPA concluded that the buildup of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride poses a danger to public health and welfare of current and future generations via climate change. A team of 16 researchers from 15 institutions, led by physicist Philip B. Duffy of the Woods Hole Research Center, finds that scientific support for that determination has strengthened in the past nine years. The study says evidence has expanded to include climate change–related impacts that the EPA did not consider in 2009: ocean acidification, violence and social instability, national security, and economic well-being. Some conservatives in the US are calling for the Trump administration to overturn the endangerment finding, though EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has said the decision is settled law. Duffy says, “There’s no scientific basis for questioning the endangerment finding.”
https://cen.acs.org/environment/climate-change/Additional-scientific-data-bolster-US/96/i49
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Former CASAC Chairman Warns 'Joke' Review Hurts PM NAAQS Assessment
Dec 13, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Former EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Chairman Chris Frey is denouncing the agency's truncated national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) review process as a “joke,” and warning the shortened approach undermines the panel's ability to credibly assess the particulate matter (PM) NAAQS as mandated by law.
In unusually blunt comments during a Dec. 12 CASAC meeting in Arlington, VA, Frey -- an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University -- claimed controversial new committee Chairman Louis “Tony” Cox is pursuing his own agenda and has “shut down” complaints from fellow CASAC members who are supposed to be co-equals in reviewing the agency's PM air standards as required under the Clean Air Act.
The committee's review of the integrated science assessment (ISA), which compiles and synthesizes scientific studies to support EPA's review of the NAAQS, “is a joke, honestly,” said Frey.
His remarks follow concerns raised by other panelists and public speakers at CASAC's Dec. 12-13 meeting to review the ISA, warning that the abbreviated NAAQS review process implemented by the Trump EPA risks resulting in an inadequate scientific review of the PM standards. Several observers have said that critics of whatever the agency decides to do with revising the NAAQS could cite the weak scientific review in a legal challenge.
EPA says its new process is designed to put the agency on track to finalize its PM NAAQS review by 2020. But at the first day of the two-day meeting, American Petroleum Institute senior policy adviser Ted Steichen warned EPA it risks blowing its review timetable with the streamlined approach to reviews.
Other speakers on the first day faulted the agency's decision to disband a specialized PM review panel that operated with the seven-member CASAC, saying its scientific expertise was invaluable.
During the Dec. 13 proceedings, Frey -- who was chairman of the PM panel -- said EPA has “arbitrarily and capriciously” dropped expert panels without consultation of the existing CASAC, or explanation of the rationale behind the move. His remarks echo comments on Dec. 12 at the meeting by former CASAC member and specialized panelist Lianne Sheppard, a University of Washington professor of environmental sciences.
Under the Clean Air Act, litigants must prove that EPA acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner in order to overturn agency rules. Critics of EPA's new approach say it undermines the integrity of NAAQS reviews, exposing them to legal jeopardy, and the warnings from Frey and Sheppard could bolster them.
“I am really stunned” that the panel has not taken action to resolve the process and capacity problems identified by multiple former CASAC members, and some of the current CASAC members, Frey said.
CASAC has the ability to notify EPA of its problems with the committee's size and composition, and with EPA's process, which cuts out opportunities for CASAC input, observers note.
Former CASAC panelist Douglas Dockery, an air quality expert with the Harvard School of Public Health, echoed Frey and Sheppard's views on the dysfunction at CASAC in his Dec. 13 remarks. “I cannot see that this PM review process is working,” he said. “You have been set up for an almost undoable task here.”
Cox's Memo
Ahead of the PM meeting, Cox sent other CASAC members a memo ahead of the PM meeting listing a series of eight particular topics he wanted the panelists to address, separate from the EPA “charge questions” that CASAC normally answers.
Cox's topics included: “Treatment of exposure estimation errors; Treatment of manipulative causality; Clear definition and quantification of direct, mediated, and total causal effects for causal 'respiratory functions,” and “uncertainty characterization,” among others.
His memo adds, “I intend them as background questions to keep in mind while reading the ISA and to be ready to discuss. There is no need to address any of them specifically in preparing our written comments unless they overlap with work we would be doing anyway in addressing the charge questions.”
Cox is an industry consultant and a critic of EPA's “causality framework,” which he appears to think leads the agency to assert causal relationships between PM exposure and adverse outcomes where no causation exists. EPA's critics have warned Cox's industry past undermines his credibility.
The former CASAC panelists felt Cox overstepped his authority with his memo and his treatment of fellow CASAC members. Dockery said the panel on Dec. 12 had spent more time discussing Cox's topics than EPA's charge questions.
When other CASAC members raised complaints over the process and the committee's lack of capacity, Cox “just shut you down,” Frey said, adding, “you are equal members of this panel, the chair should be a facilitator.”
Frey pronounced himself “puzzled” by Cox's talk of setting up a “tiger team” to complete the committee's work. “Are you guys just making it up on the fly?” said Frey.
Two former CASAC chairmen tell Inside EPA that Cox's behavior departs from historical norms for how the committee conducts its work. “Tony's memo is completely inconsistent with my experience on CASAC. I have never seen a chair be so prescriptive and insistent with a personal agenda. I have never seen a chair add to EPA's charge questions as Tony has done,” the source says. “This is not normal practice.”
Cox “is also either ignorant of or oblivious to the actual decision making and policy context of this review, and is repeatedly insisting on a normative approach to decision making that is not consistent with the mandate in the Clean Air Act for either the NAAQS or CASAC's role.”
A second former committee chair says, “When I chaired CASAC, I viewed my role as assuring that the documents were thoroughly reviewed by the right committee members and that EPA's charge questions were answered fully. Certainly I offered my views when appropriate, but I did not provide advance guidance as with the Cox note.”
'Causality' Findings
At the Dec. 13 meeting, CASAC appeared set to object to EPA staff's upgrade or first-time setting of the “causality” findings in three areas, from “suggestive of a causal relationship” to “likely” to be a causal relationship.
Stronger causal statements infer more likelihood of EPA tightening the NAAQS, although the agency also considers other key factors such as levels of a pollutant that are shown to cause harm, exposure of the population to the pollutant, and the susceptibility to harm of vulnerable groups such as children or those with chronic diseases.
CASAC members appeared ready to seek an EPA downgrade of the causality findings for long-term exposure to PM2.5 and also the even-smaller “ultrafine” PM and neurological effects, and also for long-term PM2.5 exposure and cancer. Available evidence did not appear to support EPA's conclusions over neurological effects, panelists said, because much of the evidence stems from animal studies, and human physiology differs from rodents' characteristics.
CASAC member Sabine Lange, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality toxicologist, questioned “temporal” discrepancies between PM exposure and the onset of lung cancer that cast doubt on the existence of a causal relationship.
But Lange also highlighted the challenges CASAC faces in completing its review under EPA's new procedures. EPA should reconsider its conclusions on cancer, and “this is one of the reasons I would like to see another draft ISA.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-casac-chairman-warns-joke-review-hurts-pm-naaqs-assessment
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U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rising, Government Reports
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, and and other energy-related sources in the U.S. are on the rise again after several years of declines, according to new government data.
The Trump administration has cited the earlier declines in justifying rolling back regulations to fight greenhouse gas emissions.
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise 3 percent in 2018, the Energy Department said in a report this week that attributed the uptick to a warmer summer and colder winter. The jump comes after three years of declines as utilities increasingly shut down coal plants and switched to natural gas, which produces about half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions when burned to generate electricity.
The Environmental Protection Agency has pointed to falling greenhouse gas emissions to justify proposals to ease Obama-era limits on emissions from power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas facilities.
The Energy Department included the 3 percent rise in emissions in a little-noticed section of its monthly short-term outlook published Dec. 13.
The Energy Information Administration figures represent 80 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. A separate inventory maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency tracks greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, from industry and livestock as well as electricity and transportation. No projections for 2018 have been issued, but according to the most recent report, the U.S. emitted 6,511 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2016, a 1.9 percent decline from 2015.
The EPA said the U.S. remains a leader in carbon dioxide reductions, pointing to a 14 percent drop in energy-related emissions from 2005 to 2017, while global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased more than 20 percent.
“Greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector are down 14 percent since 2005, continuing a downward trend that highlights how American innovation and technology, not burdensome federal regulations, have improved environmental outcomes,” Michael Abboud, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement.
Data from industrial facilities released by the EPA in October showed total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.7 percent between 2016 and 2017. The EPA said power plant emissions in 2017 were down 4.5 percent compared with 2016 and 19.7 percent since 2011.
“The Trump administration has proven that federal regulations are not necessary to drive CO2 reductions,” Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement at the time.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rising-government-reports
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House Democrats Refine Early Focus On Climate Risks, GHG Rule Rollbacks
Dec 13, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
House Democrats are refining their plans to make climate change an early focus of their oversight when they re-take control of the chamber in January, with lawmakers saying they are still crafting the finer points of their agenda though many have come to terms with the revival of a select committee that will focus exclusively on climate issues.
Several lawmakers suggest that Democrats are nearing consensus on the powers of the select panel, which will likely not have jurisdiction to advance legislation but might be able to write bills and can elevate the issue in public debate.
Democrats plan to start hearings on broad climate issues -- including a dissection of the Trump administration's recent National Climate Assessment that included a suite of dire threats from global warming -- before pivoting to a more-granular oversight of various Trump EPA climate rule rollbacks.
“We are going to be very aggressive in having hearings and moving legislation to address climate change,” incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) tells Inside EPA. “First of all, as you know, the president keeps denying climate change and trying to do everything to not only get out of the Paris Agreement but make it so the U.S doesn't address climate change.”
Pallone also faults the Trump administration for “trying to sabotage the Clean Power Plan, sabotage fuel efficiency standards, the list goes on. We are going to try to do oversight of all of that and try to find out what damage he is doing on all of these things and try to reverse course.”
Pallone -- together with Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is set to lead the natural resources committee; and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who likely will take over the science panel -- have already pledged to hold a blitz of hearings on climate risk and mitigation options in early January.
The lawmakers said in a joint statement last month that the hearings would be held over two days early next year “to assess the effects of climate change and the need for action.”
In addition, Pallone, together with Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Paul Tonko (D-NY), who are slated to lead two energy committee panels next year, sent a Nov. 20 letter to acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler seeking detailed information from the agency about three high-profile measures to weaken Obama-era climate rules for power plants, vehicles and oil drilling.
On a similar note, DeGette, who is slated to lead the energy committee's oversight panel, tells Inside EPA that she is “coordinating with [the] energy and environment subcommittees, we are also coordinating with the other committees of jurisdiction, with science, natural resources, to come out of the chute in early January with a series of hearings on climate change.”
After an initial round of hearings on broader climate issues, DeGette says lawmakers are “going to look at a variety of the rules they have promulgated. We are going to look and see what the scientific basis is. We are going to do thorough and robust investigations.”
She acknowledges that specific EPA oversight work will likely play out over time and require some information gathering. “We are going to start trying to get the documents,” she says.
Administration Headaches
The Democrats' oversight plans portend an array of new headaches for Trump administration officials facing newly aggressive congressional scrutiny of environmental rollbacks -- whether or not Democrats can unify behind an affirmative environmental agenda that likely faces hurdles in the GOP-controlled Senate and the White House.
Incoming House oversight committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) has broad responsibility for an array of topics, and he must pick and choose what issues his panel gets involved in. Even so, he tells Inside EPA he is interested in delving into at least some EPA issues, whether in his panel or in coordination with others.
Such oversight is critical “when you have the head of EPA [who] doesn't believe in science and at the same time we are seeing all the unfortunate things that are happening in the environment, fires, storms,” he adds.
Cummings acknowledged that “we haven't decided exactly how we are going to go about it yet. . . . There are some issues like this that fit into maybe three different committees.”
But he pledged that “we are not going to be stepping on each other and having duplicate hearings. . . . We are meeting constantly now, and we will be doing it probably straight on through December, straight on through Jan. 3 probably,” to parse who does what, he said.
Cummings says he would like to see oversight -- whether in his committee or elsewhere -- of the impacts climate change is having on both the economy and public health. “One thing you can't rebuild is a life,” he said. “When a person is dead they are dead. We have got to show that there is urgency” on the issue.
With respect to Trump's pledge to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, he said, “We stick out like a sore thumb.”
The oversight plans come amid questions of how hard and fast lawmakers can advance proactive legislation. Progressives such as Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are pushing a “Green New Deal,” and some environmental groups have held rallies outside House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) office.
But it is unlikely that established committees will be called upon to surrender legislative authority to the new select climate committee. For instance, Ocasio-Cortez dropped her call for the select panel to have legislative jurisdiction, instead calling on it to present legislation to existing committees.
This jurisdictional turf battle has flared up occasionally, including reports that Pallone and Ocasio-Cortez “fought” over the issue. But Pelosi and other party leaders are reportedly floating a proposal for the committee's structure in an attempt to assuage concerns from chairmen and other veteran lawmakers.
“I think a lot of that has been resolved,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), co-chair of the House progressive caucus, tells Inside EPA. He cites “language changes” related to the panel that he and caucus co-chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) helped develop, while acknowledging “there are people who have worked for decades on climate change here and there is committees who have jurisdiction.”
In this vein, he calls press attention to items like the Green New Deal “exciting,” but adds that the idea has been introduced by a “member who is not even here yet. . . . We have to remember there is just a few practical applications that still have to happen.”
Even so, Pocan points to the pent up need for oversight after years of GOP control while praising incoming lawmakers for “really appropriately raising the profile of this [climate] issue. Now that we are in the majority we have an obligation to do something.”
He also called the select climate committee a “really strong idea” that enables a “singular focus” on climate change. In addition, he embraces the strategy of advancing proactive climate legislation even if it faces an uphill battle in the Senate. “That could help put pressure on senators and people running for president and all the rest. That is all I think part and parcel to this idea.”
'Dumbing Down of Science'
Grijalva, whose panel has jurisdiction over the Interior Department and the National Environmental Policy Act, tells Inside EPA that he is also poised for oversight on issues including “the dumbing down of science,” failing to factor issues including climate change into decisionmaking, and possibly methane controls on public lands.
Grijalva also says that he is staffing up his committee -- a point DeGette also made -- and pegged February as a plausible start date for hearings, along with the potential for “some joint hearings” with other committees.
But he notes that more than half of his panel could be new members next year and cites the need for some time to bring them up to speed. “We are going to have to integrate them into the process and get them to invest in it and then we will take off,” he says.
Grijavla, one of several lawmakers who previously was critical of reinstating the select climate committee, said his panel is “going to continue to do what we are going to do and then mesh things together so we are not waiting, and more importantly there is some coordination of message and strategy.”
He also separately told The Hill and other reporters Dec. 12 that the panel is “something I’m comfortable with. It’s not a threat to anybody. And I think it galvanizes attention on the issue of climate change, and it’s a good thing.”
Grijalva in his comments to Inside EPA also partially echoed prior comments by Ocasio-Cortez that Congress has existing legislation that could be part of a green agenda, and that lawmakers do not have to start from scratch.
“There have been a lot of our bills that our side of the aisle has submitted on energy, endangered species” and other issues, he said. “We don't have to reinvent those pieces of legislation. We just have to get them refiled and give them a hearing . . . and they will finally get a hearing.”
Ocasio-Cortez during a Dec. 3 climate event with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) similarly said, “the goods news is we are not starting from scratch.” But she called on such legislation to be “consolidated” because time is running out to address climate change.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/house-democrats-refine-early-focus-climate-risks-ghg-rule-rollbacks
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State Approves Price Ceiling for Cap-And-Trade Program
Dec 14, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
California regulators yesterday approved a first-ever price ceiling for the state's economywide cap-and-trade program but steered clear of dealing with a potential glut of carbon allowances.
The changes were mandated by a 2017 bill, A.B. 398, that extended the carbon market through 2030 and contained concessions to emitters as well as to environmental justice groups that oppose carbon trading.
The California Air Resources Board's new rules will set "speed bumps" when prices reach certain limits, at which point more allowances will be released into the market. At the ultimate price ceiling, which starts at $65 in 2021 and will increase 5 percent per year plus inflation, the state will create additional instruments that businesses can buy at the ceiling.
Allowances are currently selling for around $15.30 per ton, but prices could spike in later years when the cap ratchets down on the way to the state's 2030 goal of 40 percent below 1990 emissions levels. A Brattle Group analysis last year estimated that prices in 2030 would be around $55 per ton, with a likely range between $35 to $80.
The approved amendments also contain restrictions on how many offsets companies can use after 2020.
Companies are currently allowed to substitute offsets for up to 8 percent of their emissions under the cap. The new post-2020 period limits their use to 4 percent through 2025 and then 6 percent through 2030.
Additionally, no more than half of the offsets can come from projects that don't provide "direct environmental benefits" within the state, defined as reductions of any air pollutant within the state or other pollutant that could adversely affect in-state waters. CARB plans to review out-of-state offset projects on a case-by-case basis.
A.B. 398 also directed CARB to study the issue of market oversupply. Economists have raisedthe possibility that a too-generous cap has produced an excess of allowances that will be used for compliance in later years when the cap tightens, thus jeopardizing the program's function as an emissions backstop.
But the amendments steered clear of addressing the issue, drawing criticism from environmentalists.
"With the climate crisis growing ever more dire, we ultimately need more ambition from our signature climate policies, not less," said Alex Jackson, legal director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's California climate project. "And we felt this package fell short."
CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols defended the program.
"We met the targets ahead of time, and we did it in a way that clearly has been associated with improvements in the state's economy," she said. "We have a lot to feel good about in connection with this program."
Still, Nichols directed agency staff to continue examining the issue.
"It hasn't been put to rest, let's put it that way, and it needs to be further considered somehow," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/14/stories/1060109653
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Countries Hope Climate Storytelling Will Inspire Carbon Cuts
Dec 13, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
The idea: If countries and communities could tell their stories about how climate change affects them, and what they think the solutions are, it would inspire the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters to cut more carbon.
The storytelling effort’s success and impact: uncertain.
Observer groups hope its impact will be apparent in rules being developed for the Paris climate agreement at the international climate talks this week in Katowice, Poland.
They also hope it will carry over to a special U.N. secretary-general’s climate summit in 2019 where countries will be asked to make firm pollution-cutting commitments.
DialogueCalled the “Talanoa Dialogue,” the storytelling process began as an initiative by the Fijian president at the climate talks in Germany in 2017, and were meant to feed into the Poland talks before countries are required to revisit their commitments to the Paris pact in 2020.
An international agreement that includes the Paris pact rules and a possible recognition of the Talanoa Dialogue is expected to emerge on Dec. 15 or 16 as the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP24, concludes in Poland.
“We’re in the crunch moment in the Paris agreement when we have to figure out what are the gears and the mechanisms that have to happen to make the Paris agreement operational,” Cassie Flynn, global climate change adviser for the U.N. Development Program, told Bloomberg Environment Dec. 13.
“Parties struggle with how the pieces fit together,” Flynn said. “What the Talanoa Dialogue has been able to do is give a more inclusive, relaxed atmosphere for countries to talk about their efforts on climate change, their successes, their challenges—to be able to tell the story of their efforts.”
Tales of Climate ImpactStories of climate vulnerability are everywhere at the climate conference, in Poland, especially from island nations that face the prospect of being submerged beneath the ocean as ice sheets melt and the earth warms.
But organizations from around the world, including the U.S., shared Talanoa stories. The Texas Interfaith Power & Light program, a faith-based organization, told ofHurricane Harvey’s impact on Houston and how organizers there held a series of Talanoa-related events there to discuss recovery and climate resilience.
“We have found that Gulf Coast residents are not resistant to discussing climate change, and in fact many now see climate change as a ‘given,’'' the group said in a statement.
The business-oriented climate action group Ceres touted how hundreds of companies have set their own climate targets and investors have shown interest in in clean energy.
People living on the front lines of climate change and many others told stories of what the ravages of global warming mean for them and what can be done with the hope that putting a human face on climate change would move polluting countries to cut more carbon.
Facing “forced migration and displacement” because of climate change, “we’re not talking in the abstract. We’re talking about real people’s lives,” Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu, a diplomat from Tonga, said at a panel on climate refugees on Dec. 11.
New ExpectationsThe Poland climate talks are being held to finalize rules for how to implement the Paris climate agreement. They weren’t widely expected to spur countries to announce that they’ll cut more climate pollution as a result of the Talanoa process or that they intend do so before 2020.
But two things changed that, Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bloomberg Environment.
First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report in October showing that global fossil fuel pollution must peak by 2020 and emissions need to be drastically drawn down by 2030. Then, as the opening of COP24 on Dec. 3, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that climate change is becoming an existential crisis for humanity.
In light of that, the final outcome of the climate negotiations is expected to include some recognition of the Talanoa Dialogue, raising the expectation that countries will commit to greater climate pollution cuts by the Secretary General’s summit in 2019, Meyer said.
Human-to-HumanThe Talanoa process resulted in Fiji and Poland’s Dec. 12 call for bolder political leadership on climate pollution cuts and international cooperation on heeding warnings that global warming is a rapidly unfolding existential crisis.
“It delivered the experience of sitting around these tables and talking to each other as human beings rather than as negotiators and talking about the successes and challenges they face back home,” Meyer said.
Talanoa gave everyone a chance to have their voices heard as part of the negotiations and by countries as they decide their next steps on how to address climate change, Genevieve Jiva, a Fiji-based coordinator for the OXFAM’s Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, told Bloomberg Environment.
“The strength of the Talanoa Dialogue was that it opened up to everybody—everyone could send in their opinions about where we are, where we want to go, and how we want to get there,” Jiva said.
Waste of Time?But the sense of that success was not a universal feeling in the developing world, especially if negotiators produce a weak final outcome of the talks, including a political call for greater pollution cuts and rules for the Paris pact.
“If the whole year of negotiations have not achieved anything here, then we don’t even see the reason for the Talanoa. It is just a waste of time,” Mithika Mwenda, executive director of the Nairobi-based Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, told Bloomberg Environment.
The expectation was that the Talanoa Dialogue storytelling and information-sharing process would help countries reach consensus on certain issues important to African nations, Mwenda said.
“But have you seen that consensus here?” he said.
The U.N. Development Program’s Flynn defended the storytelling.
“It has offered the world a new way of talking about difficult issues,” Flynn said. “When we’re talking about climate change, it’s so complicated and so tough, that [we need] to have a way to be able to talk about this human to human.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/countries-hope-climate-storytelling-will-inspire-carbon-cuts
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