Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 1/22/2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Power Rental Market – Insights,Growth Factors, Regional Analysis, and Industry Forecast till 2025
Jan 22, 2019 | Ace Newz
Power rental plants are required for temporary supply of power for industries due to the supply-demand gap in electricity. To avoid financial losses, industries requires a constant power supply. -
(ACC Mentioned) Barite Market by Grade, Color, Growth Factors, and Region -Development, Size, Share, Opportunity Analysis, and Industry Forecast till 2025
Jan 22, 2019 | Ace News
Baryte or barite is a white or colorless mineral and is a major source of barium. The barite group consists of anhydrite, baryte, celestine, and anglestite. -
Congress Should Stop Tariff Power Grab, Bring Balance to U.S. Trade Policy
Jan 21, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Alison Acosta Winters
As the trade talks with China continue, administration officials are reportedly pursuing legislation that would expand the president’s authority to impose tariffs. -
Global Industry Alliance to Fight Plastic Waste
Jan 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch
An alliance of 28 major companies has launched a global organisation to push for solutions on eliminating plastic waste from the environment. -
Senate Panel Ponders Stricter PFAS Regulations
Jan 21, 2019 | VT Digger
By Elizabeth Gribkoff
In the face of federal government inaction, senators are reviewing a bill that would beef up state regulations for five chemicals that belong to the PFAS family, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. -
Key West to Ban Sunscreens That May Harm Coral Reefs in Florida
Jan 22, 2019 | Miami Herald (In The Washington Post)
By Gwen Filosa
In Florida, the Key West City Commission voted last week to ban the sale of sunscreens that contain two ingredients — oxybenzone and octinoxate — that a growing body of scientific evidence says harm coral reefs. -
Industry Fears Shutdown Will Hurt Production
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
The oil industry is watching the federal government shutdown with a sense of unease. -
EPA Model for Measuring Rule Benefits May Inspire Other Agencies
Jan 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee
The EPA’s bid to shift the way it calculates regulatory costs and benefits could spread to other agencies, and any such efforts would help the Trump administration fulfill its agenda to roll back rules, analysts say. -
Oil Majors Join Talks over 'Big' LNG Project
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Top Alaska officials have begun talks with the state's three major oil companies in hopes of renewing their joint venture to build a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline and export project. -
Trump's Wall Might Be His Biggest Climate Project
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick and Mark K. Matthews
President Trump likely would scoff at any suggestion that his desire for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has anything to do with climate change. -
Climate Tops Risk List as Leaders Gather in Davos
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
Climate change is the top economic and social risk facing the world. -
Most Americans Concerned About Human-Caused Warming — Poll
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe climate change is happening, and most agree it is caused by human activity, according to a new poll.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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Jan 22, 2019 | Ace Newz
Power rental plants are required for temporary supply of power for industries due to the supply-demand gap in electricity. To avoid financial losses, industries requires a constant power supply. Therefore, industries use additional power by introducing short-term initiatives, such as leasing or renting addition power by using diesel generators to fulfill their need for power.
Major drivers propelling the growth of power rental market globally include rapidly developing construction industry. According to CMI, the global construction industry is projected to expand at a CAGR of 5.8% from 2017 to 2025.
Some of the major players in the power rental market include Aggreko PLC, United Rentals, Inc., APR Energy, PLC, Caterpillar, Inc., Cummins, Inc., Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation, Generac Power Systems, and Rental Solutions & Services, LLC.
Market Dynamics
The major drivers in the growth of power rental market include increased demand for power and lack of power infrastructure. According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, the total world consumption of energy increases from 575 quadrillion Btu (British thermal unit) to 736 quadrillion Btu, with an increase of 28% from 2015 to 2040. Furthermore, many organizations and industries, such as oil & gas, construction, manufacturing, mining, and other industries periodically upgrade their electric substation for maintenance or growing load requirement, as they are not able to stop production for that amount of time. Hence, rental power generator fulfills the need of power for the continuous production until the regular operations ready to resume. Furthermore, increased construction activities and increase in demand for oil & gas industry is propelling the growth of power rental market.
On the basis of end users, construction and oil & gas industries held the largest position in 2016, owing to high adoption rate of power rental technologies by industries. According to American Chemistry Council (ACC), 294 new chemical projects started in the U.S. in 2017, due to availability of cheap and abundant ethane and shale gas. The ever increasing demand for oil and gas all over the world is the major factor driving the growth of global power rental market. According to International Energy Outlook, 2016, the global energy demand is set to increase from 268 mboe/d in 2013 to 399 mboe/d by 2040.
Base load/continuous was the largest segment in 2016 and is expected to maintain its position during the forecast period. Base load segment was valued at US$ 5.55 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.3% during 2017 – 2025.
https://www.acenewz.com/power-rental-market-insightsgrowth-factors-regional-analysis-and-industry-forecast-till-2025/
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Jan 22, 2019 | Ace News
Baryte or barite is a white or colorless mineral and is a major source of barium. The barite group consists of anhydrite, baryte, celestine, and anglestite. Barite can be commonly found in the lead-zinc veins in limestones and are deposited through wide range of processes including, evaporation, hydrothermal, and biogenic, among others. It is an industrial mineral that contains 34.3% sulfate and 65.7% barium oxide when in pure form. The properties such as low solubility, high density, chemical inertness, and low cost makes barite an essential industrial mineral, with high demand in the oil and gas, paint and coatings, and pharmaceutical industries.
Some of the major players in the market are Seaforth Mineral & Ore Co. Inc., CIMBAR Performance Minerals, Shijiazhuang Oushun Mineral Products Company Limited, Excalibar Minerals LLC, Shanghai Titanos Industry Company Limited. International Earth Products LLC. Spectrum Chemical Manufacturing Corporation, Anglo Pacific Minerals, and Desku Group Inc,
Market Dynamics
The major diver propelling the growth of this market include rapidly developing oil & gas industry. According to American Chemistry Council (ACC), due to the availability of cheap and abundant ethane and shale gas, there is a boom in the chemical industry in U.S with influx of 294 new projects by the end 2017. Further, with rise in demand for energy, there is increased demand for oil & gas, which in turn has shown a positive effect on the barite market
The growing demand for barite from the paint and coatings industry across the globe is another major factor driving barite market growth. Since barite is used as a pigment in paints, the rise in demand for paints and coatings would subsequently result in an increased demand for barite.
North America is the largest market for barite and is expected to retain its dominance through 2025. North America barite market was valued at US$ 0.56 billion in 2016 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 6.21% over the forecast period. The shale oil revolution in the region has surged the growth in the exploration and development activities, which in turn has led to major capacity addition in the region, subsequently fueling demand for barite as weighting agent in the oil and gas industry. According to the U.S Energy information Administration (EIA), around 15.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was produced from shale reserves in the U.S. in 2016.
Europe is the second largest market for barite, projected to witness a CAGR of 5.24% during the forecast period. The growth in the exploration and production activities, especially in the North Sea has surged the barite market in the region. Moreover, the dominant automobile and consumer goods industry in the region has increased the demand for paint and coating in the region, which in turn is significantly driving the barite market due to its major use in pigments in paint and coating industry.
Among end-use industries, oil & gas was the largest segment in 2016 and is expected to show the same trend during 2017–2025. Oil and gas held a market share of 80.01% in 2016.
https://www.acenewz.com/barite-market-by-grade-color-growth-factors-and-region-development-size-share-opportunity-analysis-and-industry-forecast-till-2025/
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Congress Should Stop Tariff Power Grab, Bring Balance to U.S. Trade Policy
Jan 21, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Alison Acosta Winters
As the trade talks with China continue, administration officials are reportedly pursuing legislation that would expand the president’s authority to impose tariffs. The U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act would empowerthe president to raise tariffs on individual products if he determines that any of our trading partners have imposed higher tariffs than we have imposed on their products.
While Congress has delegated trade authority to the president before, often for legitimate reasons, we are now seeing an administration stretching the limits of that power on specious grounds. This proposal would allow the president to stretch those limits even further with even fewer checks and balances.
Although the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and the right “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” Congress has delegated much of that power to the president – from negotiating free trade agreements to unilaterally imposing tariffs – over the past century.
While this delegation has paved the way for implementing many beneficial free trade agreements, the current administration has strained credulity by invoking national security to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and possibly even automobiles and parts.
The result is a policy that is taxing billions of dollars’ worth of imported goods without an adequate check and balance by the Congress. These tariffs hurt the American people, raising costs on basic goods, squeezing small businesses, and provoking retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports.
Tariffs also give government officials the power to pick winners and losers. Since trade laws allow for affected companies to file for exemptions, they effectively double down on a “Washington knows best” approach; unelected bureaucrats are empowered to choose who gets to avoid the tariffs.
This proposal would delegate even more authority to the president to impose tariffs without building in any of the necessary checks and balances.
It is time for Congress to strike a more reasonable balance with the president on imposing trade barriers such as tariffs – one that better serves the American people and is more in line with its constitutional responsibilities.
Fortunately, there appears to be opposition to the proposal on both sides of the aisle. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said plainly, “We ain’t gonna give him any greater authority.” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) posted on Twitter that “Congress should be reasserting its constitutional responsibility on trade, not yielding even more power to the executive branch.” Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) also tweeted about the proposal, asking “in what world would this be a good idea?”
These are welcome signs of bipartisan opposition.
Congress was right to pass Trade Promotion Authority, which delegated some authority to the president to expedite negotiation of trade deals and lower barriers. But this proposal – which would grant the president the ability to unilaterally regulate international trade and impose taxes on the American people – simply goes too far.
We call on our lawmakers to ensure that that doesn’t happen.
Alison Acosta Winters is a senior policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/426325-congress-should-stop-tariff-power-grab-bring-balance-to-us-trade
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Global Industry Alliance to Fight Plastic Waste
Jan 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch
An alliance of 28 major companies has launched a global organisation to push for solutions on eliminating plastic waste from the environment.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), which has been working with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), includes chemical and plastic manufacturers, as well as consumer goods companies.
It has committed more than $1bn to the project and hopes to invest a further $500m over five years.
AEPW chair David Taylor said: "Everyone agrees that plastic waste does not belong in our oceans or anywhere in the environment. This is a complex and serious global challenge that calls for swift action and strong leadership."
And Mr Taylor, who is board chairman, president and CEO of Procter & Gamble, urged "companies, big and small and from all regions and sectors" to join in the effort.
In addition to a number of immediate projects, the AEPW says it will work and invest in four "key" areas.
These are:
· infrastructure development to collect and manage waste and increase recycling;
· innovation to advance and scale new technologies that make recycling and recovering plastics easier;
· education and engagement of governments, businesses and communities; and
· cleaning up concentrated areas of plastic waste already in the environment.
Companies so far involved in the alliance are:
BASF
Berry Global
Braskem
Chevron Phillips Chemical Company
Clariant
Covestro
Dow
DSM
ExxonMobil
Formosa Plastics Corporation USA
Henkel
LyondellBasell
Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings
Mitsui Chemicals
NOVA Chemicals
OxyChem
PolyOne
Procter & Gamble
Reliance Industries
SABIC
Sasol
SUEZ
Shell
SCG Chemicals
Sumitomo Chemical
Total
Veolia
Versalis (Eni)
Several of the companies are among those that the WBCSD brought together last year to produce a chemical industry roadmap. This called on "industry peers" and public and private stakeholders to work together on engaging with the UN's sustainable development goals.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73533/global-industry-alliance-to-fight-plastic-waste
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Senate Panel Ponders Stricter PFAS Regulations
Jan 21, 2019 | VT Digger
By Elizabeth Gribkoff
In the face of federal government inaction, senators are reviewing a bill that would beef up state regulations for five chemicals that belong to the PFAS family, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
EPA regulation of the carcinogenic chemicals, which have been found in waterways and wells, has stalled.
Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, sponsored a bill that would set a combined maximum level of 20 parts per trillion for five PFAS chemicals in public water supplies and for releases into bodies of water. Managers of public water would be required to test annually for the contaminants.
The bill would also require landfill owners to pre-treat leachate — liquid contaminated with landfill pollutants — before sending it to wastewater treatment plants. Leachate from Vermont landfills can contain over 1,000 parts per trillion of one PFAS chemical, according to a state report.
Environmental advocates want the state to set standards for the thousands of manmade chemicals as a class rather than regulate the PFAS one by one.
PFAS first gained notoriety in Vermont after the discovery in 2016 that perfluorooctanoic acid from a ChemFab manufacturing plant had contaminated drinking water in Bennington. The state has been working since then to address the Bennington area contamination — including reaching a settlement with the plant’s current owner Saint Gobain requiring them to pay to provide clean water for residents.
Although PFOA has been outlawed in the U.S. since 2014, manufacturers have developed 900 new PFAS chemicals since 2006, according to Peter Walke, deputy secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, who gave testimony Friday morning during the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy’s review of the draft bill.
PFAS do not break down in the environment and are used in a wide array of manufactured products, from rain jackets to cookware to firefighting foam. Scientists now know that exposure to certain PFAS chemicals can lead to cancer, thyroid disease, immune system damages, developmental problems in children and low birth weight.
The Department of Health set a health advisory level for drinking water at 20 parts per trillion for five PFAS chemicals this summer. In response, the state’s Agency of Natural Resources now lists those compounds as hazardous materials and adopted the health advisory as an enforcement standard for groundwater — meaning companies that are found to have contaminated groundwater with those five chemicals would have to pay for remediation. Statewide PFAS sampling undertaken in the wake of the Bennington contamination discovery found that wells in Pownal near an old wire coating facility had elevated levels of PFAS.
Chapman said that the agency is seeking to regulate releases to groundwater rather than set drinking water standards. The state wants polluters to pay for remediation rather than put the financial burden on municipalities and others who manage public drinking water supplies.
This fall, Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups filed a petition with the agency seeking to make them set drinking water standards for the whole PFAS family, rather than take a chemical by chemical approach.
Jon Groveman, policy and water program director for VNRC — one of the groups that filed the petition — referred to efforts to regulate PFAS during testimony before the committee as “one step forward, two steps back” due to the emergence of new chemicals.
“The companies that put these chemicals out there knew they were harmful a long time ago,” Groveman said.
Senators questioned Chapman and Sarah Vose, state toxicologist, during the committee hearing about whether the state could go after PFAS as a whole class.
“Why are we in that legal posture that we have to defend the standard as opposed to something more proactive that says we’re going to protect you from exposure (until chemicals are proven safe)?” Bray asked.
Chapman said the water quality standards set by the state are based on input from the Department of Health on safe exposure levels. While there is a general consensus that PFAS are “not good,” not enough research has been conducted.
“On a lot of these chemicals, we’re waiting on … federal entities to complete these health advisories,” said Chapman.
Vose concurred, saying that there was a lack of definitive scientific research on toxicity levels of other PFAS chemicals aside from the five included in the state’s health advisory.
The federal Toxic Substances Control Act was amended in 2016, requiring the EPA to do more comprehensive risk assessments when industries create new chemicals. But under the Trump administration, the federal agency has not been ensuring that new chemicals are safe before they enter the market, said Walke.
“Talk about a use of resources and money to run around and clean up stuff that could be stopped at the federal level and isn’t,” said Sen. Party: DEMOCRATIC
Residence: WILLIAMSTOWN, VT
View all legislator information" class="glossaryLink " target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 176, 185); font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px dotted;">Mark MacDonald, D-Orange.Former EPA director Scott Pruitt came under fire this May after Politico reported he and White House officials sought to block the release of a federal health study on PFAS. One aide said the decision was a “public relations nightmare.”
Vermont, which set its health advisory for PFAS to one-fifth of the EPA’s standard, has been collaborating with other states to determine how best to regulate the contaminants in the absence of federal leadership.
“It’s something that every state in the country is interested in because nobody wants to go chemical by chemical,” said Walke.
Groveman described steps other states and cities have taken, such as Washington’s ban of food packaging that contains PFAS. Environmental advocates, as well as some Democratic lawmakers, have expressed interest in reviving the two toxic bills that the governor vetoed last session, which would allow individuals to sue for polluters to pay medical monitoring costs and grant the state health commissioner more authority to regulate toxins in children’s products.
Henry Coe, a Danville resident who helped start the anti-Coventry landfill expansion group DUMP, expressed concern to lawmakers that the PFAS bill could have the unintended consequence of “drawing leachate from all of New England to Coventry” if Casella, the owner of the state’s last open landfill, built an on-site leachate treatment facility.
Bray said in an interview after the committee hearing that he chose leachate treatment as a focus of the bill after learning that the millions of gallons of leachate collected annually from the Coventry landfill are sent to wastewater treatment plants in Newport and Montpelier.
“Dilution (is) not what most people would think of as treating,” he said. “If a wastewater treatment facility is not in some way cleaning and detoxifying PFAS, then I think to say that ‘it’s been treated’ is maybe a little misleading.”
During the committee hearing, Bray stressed that his proposal was not a “finger pointing” exercise, but rather aimed at helping the state move forward in figuring out how to address the broad issue of PFAS exposure. He told fellow senators and attendees that he envisioned that the bill “will grow as we work on it.”
https://vtdigger.org/2019/01/21/senate-panel-ponders-stricter-pfas-regulations/
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Key West to Ban Sunscreens That May Harm Coral Reefs in Florida
Jan 22, 2019 | Miami Herald (In The Washington Post)
By Gwen Filosa
In Florida, the Key West City Commission voted last week to ban the sale of sunscreens that contain two ingredients — oxybenzone and octinoxate — that a growing body of scientific evidence says harm coral reefs.
“This ordinance is just one other thing we can do to help improve and protect our water quality,” said Mill McCleary, of the nonprofit environmental protection group Reef Relief.
But the measure, which passed 7 to 0, isn’t law yet. The commission must review it a second time and pass the measure again before it would become law. The second vote is scheduled for Feb. 5.
Commissioner Mary Lou Hoover said the sunscreen debate reminds her of sex and pregnancy prevention, since different practices — including condom use and abstinence — have a percentage of effectiveness, just as clothing, sunscreen and shade can help minimize the risk of skin cancer.
“They have alternatives to these two chemicals,” said City Commissioner Jimmy Weekley, who sponsored the measure with Hoover. “This is to me something we need to do in this community to protect our economy. What if we don’t pass this and three to five years down the road we have no reef?”
Weekley said people could still get a prescription from a doctor to get sunscreens that contain the two ingredients.
“This may be our last shot. It’s not the major cause of the loss of our reef,” Weekley said. “But this is one reason we can do something about. We can take a step to eliminate those chemicals going into our water.”
Environmental researchers have published studies showing how these two ingredients, which accumulate in the water from bathers or from wastewater discharges, can harm coral reefs through bleaching, DNA damage and ultimately cause the death of corals.
A February 2016 study in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, which examined the impact of oxybenzone in corals in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands, concluded the sunscreen ingredient “poses a hazard to coral reef conservation and threatens the resiliency of coral reefs to climate change.”
Last year, Hawaii banned the sale or distribution of any sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate, a measure that will go into effect Jan. 1, 2021. It was the first state in the nation to implement such a ban.
In Florida, the website for the South Florida Reef Ambassador Initiative, which falls under the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, tells divers to “Avoid sunscreens with Oxybenzone and Avobenzone. The benzones are compounds that are lethal to coral reproduction in very small amounts.”
Experts who have studied the issue say sunscreens with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide also block ultraviolet rays by creating a barrier on the skin.
A study published last year in the American Academy of Dermatology acknowledged there is “emerging evidence that chemical sunscreen ingredients” could affect coral reefs, but said further study is warranted. Dermatologists are concerned that a ban of these ingredients could have an impact on skin cancer rates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/key-west-to-ban-sunscreens-that-may-harm-coral-reefs-in-florida/2019/01/17/7ca5f454-19db-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.8c6a5a10c6b7
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Industry Fears Shutdown Will Hurt Production
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
The oil industry is watching the federal government shutdown with a sense of unease.
The lapse in funding hasn't yet widely affected production on federal land, and the Interior Department has continued to issue drilling permits and hold auctions for oil and gas acreage on federal land, angering environmentalists (Energywire, Jan. 18).
But the impasse has already gone on longer than any other in the modern era, and Congress and the Trump administration have yet to resolve the conflict over a border wall that derailed the budget in December.
Trade groups and state regulators say that a continued shutdown could start to cut into production if the federal government is unable to handle basic functions for a couple of months. A significant drop in production, if it happens, could cut into profits for oil companies and tax revenue for state governments.
"If this drags on for months, we will definitely have a situation where permits will not be available to keep rigs running," Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said in an interview Friday.
In the Mountain West states, the Bureau of Land Management pays for its oil and gas permitting operations through user fees, Sgamma said. Those fees haven't been affected by the shutdown, but there's a risk that companies may run into problems when they ask for routine changes in their permits, known as sundry notices, she said.
And it's unclear if the government will be able to process new permits once it works through applications that were already filed before the shutdown, Sgamma said.
The biggest impacts could be in New Mexico's section of the Permian Basin and Wyoming's Powder River Basin. New Mexico's oil production has jumped by almost half in the last year, to 771,000 barrels a day, and the state government is relying partly on energy taxes to pay for increases in education spending.
Producers in the Permian Basin are also clamoring for more pipelines, particularly natural gas lines, which typically require federal permits to cross rivers and streams. It takes years to build and permit interstate pipelines, but a lengthy shutdown could cause even more delays, Sgamma said.
In North Dakota, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has stopped approving pipeline routes across the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said on a conference call last week. So far, more than 20 permits have been delayed by the shutdown.
"If we see it drag on for two or three times as long, then there's going to be enough of a backlog it will impact things in May or June," Helms said.
Helms' department has also been negotiating with BLM about regulations to control flaring of natural gas on the reservation. Those talks have been on hold since December.
To be sure, the vast majority of onshore oil and gas is produced on private property, and the oil boom shows no signs of slowing. The United States pumped 11.5 million barrels of oil a day in October, the most since 1970, and is on track to surpass 12 million barrels a day in 2019, according to the Energy Department.
But the government is still routinely involved in the industry. In North Dakota, the BLM owns mineral rights in about one-third of the drilling units, because farmers defaulted on federal mortgages during the Great Depression (Energywire, May 20, 2015).
State agencies frequently rely on federal grants for some of their funding, too. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has canceled training for state safety inspectors during the shutdown, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust.
"That training system at PHMSA is already grumbled about frequently as being slow," Weimer wrote in an email. "This further delay will make it harder to get trained inspectors able to do inspections on their own on the ground in states."
Even some states with little federal activity are watching the shutdown closely. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees energy production along with other industries, only gets 1 to 2 percent of its funds from Washington. The commission has been using reserve funds to cover the shortfall in temporary funds.
"We will have to make up the gap in the here and now from our funds," commission spokesman Matt Skinner said. "We think we can weather this for now — the concern is still a long-term shutdown into May."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/22/stories/1060118011
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EPA Model for Measuring Rule Benefits May Inspire Other Agencies
Jan 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee
The EPA’s bid to shift the way it calculates regulatory costs and benefits could spread to other agencies, and any such efforts would help the Trump administration fulfill its agenda to roll back rules, analysts say.
Limiting the positives of a rule by discounting its “co-benefits"—as the Environmental Protection Agency proposed last month with its mercury emissions regulation—allows agencies to tweak their regulations in ways that are friendlier to those covered by them.
Co-benefits are the added, indirect advantages brought on by a regulation.
“If people at EPA find it appealing, people at other agencies might find it appealing as well,” said Janet McCabe, who headed the department’s air and radiation office under President Barack Obama. “I would expect that other agencies would follow EPA’s lead in narrowing the benefits and broadening the costs of regulations that impose requirements on private-sector actors.”
‘Outcome-Oriented Administration’
Late last year, the EPA said the financial cost of forcing power plants to keep cutting their mercury emissions would far outweigh any additional health benefits.
On that basis, the EPA proposed not to toughen its mercury rules.
In other cases, though, the administration has said co-benefits are good. Last August, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a rule that would freeze fuel economy limits.
One of the rule’s co-benefits, according to the agencies, was that it would cut down on traffic deaths by making new, safer cars more affordable.
“This administration doesn’t shy away from co-benefits in certain circumstances when it serves the purpose of supporting their proposals,” McCabe said. “It does seem to be an outcome-oriented administration when it comes to environmental and fossil-fuel regulations.”
The EPA’s mercury proposal cuts against established practice and accepted principles of cost-benefit analysis, said Thomas McGarity, an administrative and environmental law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The proposal also arguably defies White House Office of Management and Budget guidance put out in 2003, which told agencies to analyze co-benefits.
That guidance is still in use, according to Richard Williams, former director of the regulatory studies program at the Mercatus Center, a market-oriented research center at George Mason University in Arlington, Va.
Some Question Broader Application
Not everyone is convinced other agencies will be able to follow EPA’s lead. For starters, the mercury proposal comes after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the agency hadn’t properly considered the costs of the standards on power plants.
That put the statutory interpretation in flux, but other agencies may not have the same latitude, said Susan Dudley, who led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the George W. Bush administration.
Furthermore, the Clean Air Act doesn’t specifically require the EPA to consider the co-benefits of lower levels of particulate matter, said Dudley, who now directs George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center.
“EPA is, in many respects, a special case,” agreed Clark Nardinelli, president of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis. “Other agencies don’t have similar issues, generally have far less controversy over their benefit-cost calculations, and in any case perform benefit-cost analysis following their own or general guidelines.”
Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, said the EPA’s proposal is “a bit unique, not necessarily easy to extrapolate to other agencies, but is part of a pattern of agencies putting out highly questionable cost-benefit numbers to support policies that defy science and agency missions to protect the public.”
Possible Pathways
But McCabe said other agencies may still be able to find paths through those obstacles. The Supreme Court’s decision didn’t tell the EPA how to look at costs and benefits, instead leaving those calculations up to the agency’s discretion, she said.
At an informal level, too, regulators from across the federal bureaucracy frequently meet to compare notes and take inspiration from one another.
Some of those meetings happen at the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government’s regulatory clearinghouse, which has an interagency review process that brings rule makers together to see what other agencies are doing.
“Agencies do look to other agencies’ analytical practices, and EPA is often held up as the gold standard,” Dudley said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-model-for-measuring-rule-benefits-may-inspire-other-agencies
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Oil Majors Join Talks over 'Big' LNG Project
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Top Alaska officials have begun talks with the state's three major oil companies in hopes of renewing their joint venture to build a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline and export project.
Alaska Department of Revenue Commissioner Bruce Tangeman said the state is reconnecting with BP Alaska, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to determine if they're again willing to take a significant role in building the ambitious Alaska liquefied natural gas project.
"We'll be talking with them to see what is the [economic] climate now: Is there an appetite to re-engage and see if we can move forward as a partnership again?" Tangeman explained last week at the annual Alaska Support Industry Alliance conference in Anchorage.
He said the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. (AGDC), the state agency in charge of the gas line project, is also doing a stage-gate analysis of the project's status, scrapping the deadline-driven approach that has been in place for the last two years.
Under former Gov. Bill Walker (I), the gas line agency intended to begin construction of the LNG export project late this year. But Tangeman indicated that current Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) doesn't plan to make a final investment decision on the project in the next year.
"This is a big, big project," Tangeman said. "We are a long ways away and many steps in the process to figure out how we're going to bring this thing to fruition. So it's very important for everyone to get educated on this."
BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil had been actively involved in early efforts to commercialize the state's 34 trillion cubic feet of stranded North Slope natural gas reserves.
In 2014, they formed a partnership with the state and developed an ambitious plan to build a North Slope natural gas processing plant, an 800-mile pipeline through the heart of the state and a liquefaction and export facility in southern Alaska. The project's cost is currently estimated at $43.4 billion.
But in late 2016, the companies dropped out of the venture, citing low fuel prices and a glut of LNG on the world market. At the time, then-Gov. Walker directed then-AGDC President Keith Meyer to take control of the venture.
But newly elected Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) has opposed that state-driven approach. Early this month, he appointed four new members of the AGDC board of directors, who immediately dismissed Meyer (Energywire, Jan. 11).
Now the team is taking a hard look at the status of the Alaska LNG project and refocusing their approach to the project, renewing their alliance with the three oil companies.
"Under the previous administration, 100 percent of the risk was brought onto the state, and I know Gov. Dunleavy is not comfortable with that whatsoever," Tangeman said. "So it's going to be important that we bring partners back in and, if this is to move forward, to share the risk."
He acknowledged that over the last two years, AGDC has made significant progress toward securing a construction permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC regulators are promising to complete a draft environmental impact statement on the Alaska LNG project next month, with a final EIS expected late this year.
Also under Walker, the gas line agency had been actively marketing the state's natural gas to potential Asian customers.
In late 2017, the state reached a nonbinding agreement with three Chinese companies to provide 75 percent of the funding for the project. The state would repay that loan by providing China with 75 percent of the LNG capacity of the pipeline for the length of the agreement.
The deadline for a final agreement with those companies is now set for the end of June.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/22/stories/1060118013
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Trump's Wall Might Be His Biggest Climate Project
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick and Mark K. Matthews
President Trump likely would scoff at any suggestion that his desire for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has anything to do with climate change.
But researchers in fields from geography to behavioral science increasingly have drawn a connection between global warming and mass migration — and a related rise in anti-immigrant nationalism in both Europe and the United States.
So Trump wasn't wrong when he recently highlighted the fact that Europe has built a rash of border barriers in recent years.
Where he is wrong, say critics, is in the administration's approach to the dual challenges of immigration and climate change.
Not only is a wall an ineffective deterrent to illegal entry, they argue, but Trump's rollback of carbon-fighting regulations could exacerbate mass migration in the Western Hemisphere and the world.
"Basically it's a Band-Aid on a cancer, because it's really not solving the root problem," said Elisabeth Vallet, a geographer from the University of Quebec, Montreal.
Vallet's research formed the basis of Trump's claim on Twitter last Wednesday that there are now "77 major or significant Walls built around the world" for border security.
In an interview, Vallet clarified that the figure includes walls slated for construction. And she said she disagrees with Trump's assertion in the same tweet that that European border walls have been recognized as being "close to 100 percent successful."
Rather, she said, barriers simply have encouraged migrants to take greater risks while providing political cover to lawmakers in countries where populations feel threatened by immigration.
"Border walls are a lot about border theater," Vallet said. "If you're desperate enough to cross the Mediterranean with your kids, that means a wall won't prevent you from going across."
European countries have erected roughly 600 miles' worth of border barriers over the last three decades — "the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Walls ... to prevent displaced people migrating into Europe," according to an investigation published last fall by the Transnational Institute, a social justice research group based out of the Netherlands.
Vallet divides that building spree into two eras: one in the late 1990s in response to increased globalism, and another over the last half-decade as Europe experienced a greater influx of immigration from the Middle East and North Africa.
Most of the barriers were built in the second wave.
Bulgaria and Hungary, part of the "Balkan route" into Europe for refugees fleeing Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, have constructed new barbed-wire fences since 2014. Norway, Latvia and Estonia also have put up new barriers this decade.
In addition, the "United Kingdom put pressure on France to build walls around the port of Calais on the Eurotunnel route connecting France and the United Kingdom," wrote the authors of the Transnational Institute report.
'Basic adaptive mechanism'
The overall result hasn't been a stop to migration, the report authors said, but it has made it more difficult. And the walls have contributed to a related rise in nationalist politics.
"The analysed data shows a worrying rise in racist opinions in recent years, which has increased the percentage of votes to European parties with a xenophobic ideology, and facilitated their growing political influence," they added.
Conflicts in Africa and the Middle East have spurred much of the recent migration to Europe. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a factor.
In West Africa and the Sahel, for example, soaring temperatures and changing rainfall patterns have strained the ability of subsistence herders, farmers and fishermen to eke out a living, causing a wave of internal migration over the last decade as rural populations abandon their homes to compete for resources elsewhere or flee to urban slums.
The U.N. Security Council acknowledged in a statement last year that these hardships have helped terrorist groups like Boko Haram gain a foothold in the region.
Links between terrorism and climate change aren't always clear, but the council, which has been criticized for being slow to recognize the security implications of warming, stated that "the adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes" are driving violent extremism in West African and the Sahel countries.
Climate change has also been linked to Syria's bloody civil war, which will soon enter its ninth year. Between 2006 and 2011, rural regions of the country experienced devastating droughts, pushing farmers off their land and into Syrian cities already crowded with war refugees from Iraq. Existing political tensions and discontent over higher food prices from the drought helped sow the seeds of conflict.
There's little evidence that environmental pressures on the Middle East or Africa will ease anytime soon. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that those regions will experience some of the worst water shortages anywhere as the century progresses.
Africa alone is projected to have 250 million people living in regions with food and water insecurity by the end of the century. Three-quarters of the Sahel's arable land is expected to be lost in the same period.
"These are not the abstract complaints of climate scientists, but represent a profoundly disruptive trend in a region dependent on agriculture and other rural livelihoods such as herding and fishing, and lacking quality infrastructure and integrated markets to relieve localized disruptions," wrote Michael Werz and Max Hoffman of the left-leaning Center for American Progress in a 2016 paper. "When faced with deteriorating conditions, humans have long turned to migration as a basic adaptive mechanism.
"'Push' and 'pull' factors
Trump has described immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border as an unprecedented emergency and has made funding for a border wall a condition of reopening the federal government.
But his actions on climate could spur even more migration across the southern border.
In his first years in office, Trump has relaxed controls on emissions from both cars and power plants, announced that the United States would withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord, and reneged on President Obama's commitment to provide $3 billion for a U.N. adaptation and mitigation fund for poor countries threatened by climate change.
Trump has also retreated from plans by the Obama administration to examine the effect of climate change on mass migration, according to one government watchdog.
"For example, a fiscal year 2016 presidential memorandum — rescinded in 2017 — required agencies to develop implementation plans to identify the potential impact of climate change on human mobility, among other things," researchers with the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, wrote this month.
Research shows that's likely to increase the flow of climate migrants — not slow them down.
Subsistence farmers in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador are noticing many of the same climatic changes that are pushing smallholder farmers off their land in Mali, South Sudan and Chad. Northern Central America has become known as the "dry corridor"; while it has always been arid, conditions there have worsened in recent years.
Mexico's increasingly unpredictable weather has coincided with the removal of protective federal trade and farming policies and increased competition in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Liberalization has brought foreign investment and new industries, but it has also exacerbated regional and rural-urban inequality, with illiterate populations in the countryside receiving little benefit.
As smallholder farms became more untenable, families have tried to diversify by sending one or more members north in search of work to supplement the family income. The need is greatest when the crops fail, particularly after a drought.
"You can think of all of this as an adaptation to climate change," said Lori Hunter, director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in a recent interview.
In 2013, Hunter and two CU Boulder colleagues used data from the Mexican Migration Project, a joint initiative of Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara, to show that rural regions of Mexico that have historically sent the most immigrants to the United States sent fewer after a year of ample rainfall.
Notably, fewer people also left in drought years, but immigration pushed sharply up in the years after a drought, suggesting that families had been saving to pay for the journey.
A 2015 study by Hunter and CU Boulder colleague Raphael Nawrotzki found that after weather events linked to climate change, Mexican immigrants were more likely to be undocumented.
Hunter and others stress that the causes of migration from and through Mexico are complex, and include both "push" factors like instability, violence and poverty — all of which may be worsened by water shortages — and "pull" factors, like a strong U.S. economy or, ironically, the perception in countries of origin that access to the United States will become more difficult in the future.
Mass migration from Mexico
Trying to quantify the impact climate change has on migration is difficult, as there are a wide range of variables involved. But one team of researchers noticed a link when they looked at the mass exodus of people from Mexico to the United States from 1995 to 2005.
Mexico was dealing with a drought around that time, especially in the northern part of the country, and the investigators found a connection between migration rates and farm production.
"Using state-level data from Mexico, we find a significant effect of climate-driven changes in crop yields on the rate of emigration to the United States," wrote the authors in a 2010 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Put another way, they estimated a 10 percent decline in crop yields would prompt an additional 2 percent of the population to emigrate.
The team theorized that it could foretell a future of mass migration from Mexico.
"Depending on the warming scenarios used and adaptation levels assumed, with other factors held constant, by approximately the year 2080, climate change is estimated to induce 1.4 [million] to 6.7 million adult Mexicans ... to emigrate as a result of declines in agricultural productivity alone," the researchers wrote.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/22/stories/1060118021
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Climate Tops Risk List as Leaders Gather in Davos
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
Climate change is the top economic and social risk facing the world.
That's the view of the world leaders, business tycoons and financiers gathered in Davos, Switzerland, this week for the World Economic Forum, as laid out in the WEF's "Global Risks Report" for 2019, published last week.
Citing the continuing government shutdown, President Trump last week announced he'd skip this year's gathering in the Alps with a planned delegation that included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, among others.
Climate change wasn't front of mind when WEF surveyed experts a decade ago. At the top of that list, where environmental concerns now are sat, were a very different set of risks to the world economy: asset price collapse, a slowdown in the Chinese economy, oil and gas price spikes, and the potential hit to developed country economies from globalization.
Ten years on, oil and gas prices are historically low and asset prices are near historic highs. And while the state of the Chinese economy remains a concern, it's the continued efforts by the United States to resist its growing influence that have grabbed most of the business section headlines this year.
This year's survey of 1,000 government leaders and international private-sector luminaries asked them to rank the likelihood and potential impact of risks ranging from weapons of mass destruction to cyberattacks. The results were shown in a cluster diagram, and the upper right quadrant where likelihood and urgency collide is populated by climate risks only: extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and natural disasters. Participants also saw an imminent and destructive risk of worldwide water crises, man-made environmental disasters and large-scale involuntary migration.
"Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe," the report states, noting last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that showed the world would pay a steep price for letting warming exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (Climatewire, Jan. 17).
As WEF notes, the United States' own National Climate Assessment in November warned the world is now on track for an average temperature increase of 5 C by century's end and has already shed 60 percent of its species diversity since 1970. The impact on human food and resource security was a particular source of fear.
"In sum, as the impact of environmental risks increases, it will become increasingly difficult to treat those risks as externalities that can be ignored or shipped out," states the report, which was written with input from Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., the National University of Singapore, the University of Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. "Domestic and coordinated international action will be needed to internalize and mitigate the impact of human activity on natural systems."
The 2009 list, though, seems more in line with the priorities of Trump, who has spent the first half of his term battling what he sees as the negative impacts of globalization on the U.S. economy, especially through the abandonment and renegotiation of trade deals he said advantaged other countries over U.S. manufacturers.
China and the United States are currently locked in negotiations over trade and tariffs. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who two years ago used the WEF to declare that China would implement its commitments to the Paris Agreement whatever Trump decided to do, is not attending the forum this year. Climate Change Minister Xie Zhenhua is.
This year, the 3,000 leaders gathered in Davos seem more concerned about the fate of globalization than fear of its repercussions. The theme of the week is Globalization 4.0, a concept framers say includes crafting an "architecture" for an interdependent economy that's more responsive to issues of inequality and environmental protection. The forum's conveners are also hoping to rekindle international enthusiasm for cooperation on shared challenges after two years of insurgent nationalism.
"Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking," the WEF report states. "Instead, divisions are hardening. The idea of 'taking back control' — whether domestically from political rivals or externally from multilateral or supranational organizations — resonates across many countries and many issues.
"The energy now expended on consolidating or recovering national control risks weakening collective responses to emerging global challenges," it states.
Since riding a wave of nationalism to the White House in 2016, Trump has announced a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and flirted with ending U.S. leadership in the NATO alliance. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who saw her plan for Britain's exit from the European Union go down in flames last week, is skipping Davos. But Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's new president who has also sometimes floated pulling his country out of Paris, did make the trip.
Also in Davos this week are David Attenborough, British broadcaster and natural historian, who told an audience yesterday that what happens in the next few years "will profoundly affect the next few thousand years" of life on the planet.
Former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the Paris negotiations three years ago, will release a new report by her group Mission 2020, the World Resources Institute and others outlining actions that must be taken to bring emissions from sectors like transportation, energy and finance in line with the goals of Paris.
She argues 2020 is the world's deadline to set emissions on course to keep warming well below 2 C. The report names diminished tree cover, a lack of plans to shutter the world's remaining coal-fired power plants and an absence of sustainable agriculture as threats to that goal.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/22/stories/1060118041
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Most Americans Concerned About Human-Caused Warming — Poll
Jan 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe climate change is happening, and most agree it is caused by human activity, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 71 percent of Americans think climate change is real, while only 9 percent do not. Nineteen percent are unsure.
Among those who believe climate change is real, 60 percent think it is primarily caused by human activities, while just 12 percent believe it is mostly or entirely caused by natural environmental changes.
"The results of the survey demonstrate that most Americans consider climate change a reality and acknowledge that human activity is at least somewhat responsible," said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center, in a press release.
Beliefs divided along party lines, as expected. Eighty-six percent of Democratic voters believe climate change is real, while 52 percent of Republican and 70 percent of independent voters agree, the poll found.
Further, the survey found that nearly half of Americans say the science of climate change is more conclusive than it was five years ago. Among those, 76 percent credit recent extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires and floods for changing their views. Just 47 percent cite the media as having influenced their opinion on climate change.
Nearly half of those surveyed support a carbon tax; 29 percent oppose one, and 25 percent neither support nor oppose such a policy. The support varies when respondents are asked how the funds from a carbon tax should be invested. More than 50 percent said they would support a carbon fee if the revenue were invested toward environmental restoration or renewable energy research and development. But that support drops slightly to 49 percent if the funds go to households as a rebate.
"Reinvesting in the environment and improving environmental quality are things that people tend to think as good things ... and they react positively to that," said Sam Ori, EPIC director, in an interview.
The survey also found that, in addition to supporting a carbon tax, more than half of respondents are willing to pay at least $1 on their monthly electricity bill to combat climate change. But the higher the amount, the less support there is for a monthly fee.
"I kind of thought maybe going into this poll — given all of the recent extreme weather — that you would not only see more support for things like a carbon tax but also see an increase in the willingness to pay," Ori said.
The survey was conducted in November 2018 and drew from about 1,200 respondents from across the country.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/22/stories/1060118025
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