Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - January 25, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) US Government Shutdown Woes Hit Chemical Industry
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
The chemical industry is feeling the pain of the US government partial shutdown, which started on Dec. 22, 2018, and is the longest in history. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips CEO Talks Leadership, Pollution and Trade War
Jan 25, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck
Two things happened just as Mark Lashier became CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.: his grandson was born and Hurricane Harvey hammered the Gulf Coast. -
Senate Panel Sets Feb. 5 Confirmation Vote on EPA Administrator
Jan 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a Feb. 5 confirmation vote on Andrew Wheeler, President Donald Trump’s nominee to succeed Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator, a committee spokesman confirmed Jan. 24. -
Buyer Beware: Dangerous Paint Strippers Still Sold at the Home Depot, Autozone and Other Stores
Jan 25, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Mike Schade and Sujatha Bergen
In 2018, we won a wave of commitments from eleven of North America’s largest retailers to ban the sale of paint strippers containing the toxic chemicals methylene chloride and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP). -
EPA's Stalled PFAS Groundwater Levels Stymie State Efforts At DOD Sites
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Trump administration's delay in issuing recommended groundwater cleanup levels for two of the most common per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is hampering state and local efforts to address contamination stemming from military bases as the Defense Department (DOD) resists compliance with state standards. -
Air Force Sues New Mexico, Arguing Overreach In Cannon's RCRA Permit
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Air Force is suing New Mexico’s environmental regulators over its recently renewed 10-year Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) permit for Cannon Air Force Base, a case that appears to mark one of the first formal disputes between a state and the military over efforts to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). -
Moms Join Suit to Force EPA Chemical Ban
Jan 24, 2019 | WebMD
By Sonya Collins and Aaron Gould Sheinin
Two mothers whose sons died after using the chemical solvent methylene chloride have sued the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ban the chemical. -
Publishing Models Fail to Give Early Hazardous Chemicals Warning, Study Finds
Jan 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
In the absence of known human health risks, US scientists have called for more "exploratory and speculative risk assessments" to be written up in peer-reviewed journals. -
New York State Delays Enforcement of Cleaning Products Disclosure
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
New York state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) is delaying by three months enforcement of a provision of its cleaning product disclosure programme. -
European Union Court Rejects Endocrine Disruptor Appeal
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union’s top court dismissed an attempt by a chemicals company to overturn a decision identifying one of its products as an endocrine-disrupting chemical. -
Disinfectant Byproduct on Food Faces New Limits in EU
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Food companies may have to upgrade their produce processing practices under a draft European Union law on maximum levels of a chlorate in food. -
Analysis Gives Complex Picture of Cerium Dioxide Nano Toxicity
Jan 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
Variation in the toxicity of inhaled cerium dioxide nanoparticles cannot be explained simply, according to analysis by scientists at BASF and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). -
(ACC Mentioned) Canadian Petrochemical Development Spurt Anticipated Regardless of Rising Need for Fewer Plastics
Jan 24, 2019 | Infosurhoy
By Denis Bedoya
Canada’s slow-growing petrochemical industry is headed for its biggest surge of expansion spending in five years in 2019, thanks in large part to incentive programs by federal and provincial governments. -
Democrats Probe Trump ‘Favoritism’ of Oil Industry in Shutdown
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Lawmakers are intensifying their scrutiny of the Interior Department’s decision to keep churning out drilling permits and restart work on offshore oil leasing despite the government shutdown. -
U.S. to Emerge as Net Exporter in 2020 — EIA
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Federal forecasters yesterday said the United States will emerge as a net energy exporter next year as growing oil and refined product shipments join natural gas in outweighing the country's imports. -
US Chemical Plant Antiterrorism Law Extended
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The day before a US antiterrorism statute affecting chemical companies was to expire on Jan. 19, President Donald J. Trump signed a 15-month extension of that law. -
DOE's $1M Grid Challenge Comes with a Cyber Warning
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Department of Energy is dishing out up to $1 million for new ideas to tackle emerging threats to the U.S. power grid, a top official announced yesterday in Seattle. -
Energy Agency Invests $40M to Improve Grid Security, Reliability
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern and Paul Shukovsky
The Energy Department is investing $40 million into its existing Grid Modernization Initiative, aiming to improve the electric grid’s security, reliability and resilience. -
Civil Penalties for Polluters Dropped Dramatically in Trump’s First Two Years, Analysis Shows
Jan 25, 2019 | The Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Civil penalties for polluters under the Trump administration plummeted during the past fiscal year to the lowest average level since 1994, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data. -
Mayors Nudge Congress on National Climate Policy, Carbon Tax
Jan 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Mayors of both political parties have a message for the federal government: Prioritize your climate-change policies. -
Democrats Say Shutdown Distracts from Climate Legislative Focus
Jan 24, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
The government shutdown is sidetracking Democrats' plans in the House to roll out their policy agenda in areas like climate change, according to several lawmakers. -
Shutdown Likely To Delay EPA Decisions On Revising SO2, Other NAAQS
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA appears poised to miss a Jan. 28 consent decree deadline for signing a final rule on whether to revise the “primary” health-based sulfur dioxide national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) due to the government shutdown, potentially signaling delays for looming decisions on revising other criteria pollutant NAAQS. -
Last Year Was Really Warm (But the Feds Aren't Saying It)
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Last year was the fourth-warmest on record. -
Berkeley to Start Charging 25 Cents for Disposable Cups Next Year
Jan 24, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Avery Anapol
Restaurants and coffee shops in Berkeley, Calif., will start charging 25 cents for disposable cups next year after officials voted unanimously in favor of the ordinance.
Industry and Association News
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Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) US Government Shutdown Woes Hit Chemical Industry
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
The chemical industry is feeling the pain of the US government partial shutdown, which started on Dec. 22, 2018, and is the longest in history. The US Environmental Protection Agency is not evaluating new chemicals and pesticides, creating a large backlog of substances waiting for approval to enter the market. The EPA has postponed meetings related to its evaluation of toxic chemicals currently in use and put on hold rules that would restrict the uses of certain toxic chemicals. Chemical companies are also delaying acquisitions because the government is not reviewing such agreements during the shutdown.
The EPA office that evaluates the risks of chemicals and pesticides employs 981 federal workers, of which 22 are required to work without pay during a government shutdown. “There is currently no ongoing work on new chemicals,” the EPA confirmed in a Jan. 22 email. The agency indefinitely postponed a meeting planned for Jan. 29–Feb. 1 on the health risks of pigment violet 29, the first of 10 chemicals the EPA must evaluate by the end of the year. In addition, a final EPA rule that is expected to ban methylene chloride in consumer paint strippers has been waiting for approval by the White House since Dec. 21.
“Along with delays in the rulemaking process and hampering the agency’s ability to meet important deadlines required by the law, U.S. innovation and competitiveness could be stifled because EPA’s new chemicals program is not reviewing submissions during the shutdown,” the American Chemistry Council, which represents US chemical manufacturers, says in a statement.
It is unclear how many new chemical applications have been submitted to the EPA during the shutdown because the agency is not checking the system. The EPA had 553 new chemicals under review on Dec. 18, the last day the agency updated such information on its website. That number, which does not include pesticides, is already well above the EPA’s average caseload of 300 because new chemical applications surged in early October just before new user fees paid by chemical manufacturers became effective under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The EPA completes about 1,000 reviews of new chemicals each year.
Environmental groups are concerned that when the EPA reopens, the agency will weaken regulatory standards in the face of pressure to quickly eliminate the backlog of new chemicals. When EPA was faced with a similar backlog in early 2017, the agency changed course in how it evaluates chemicals. Under President Donald J. Trump, “implementation of the 2016 reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has pretty much gone off the rails, deviating from what the law requires, failing to reflect the best available science, and not protecting public health,” Richard Denison, a lead senior scientist at the environmental group, Environmental Defense Fund, says in a recent blog post.
Pesticide manufacturers are worried that the EPA will not be able to review applications for new pesticide products or new uses of existing products in time for the spring planting season. The agency’s pesticide office typically reviews about 300 applications each month. The shutdown is also raising concerns about disruption in the production and supply of pesticides that rely on imported active ingredients. During a government shutdown in 2013 that lasted 16 days, pesticide imports languished at ports because the EPA did not process import notices.
The shutdown has also affected the US Department of the Treasury, which coordinates reviews related to foreign investment in the US. One consequence is that the acquisition of US silicone maker Momentive Performance Materials by a South Korean investment group may be delayed. The companies extended the foreign investment clearance deadline for the $3.1 billion deal to June 13.
https://cen.acs.org/policy/regulation/US-government-shutdown-woes-hit/97/i4
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(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips CEO Talks Leadership, Pollution and Trade War
Jan 25, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck
Two things happened just as Mark Lashier became CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.: his grandson was born and Hurricane Harvey hammered the Gulf Coast.
The flood burst through a Baytown chemical plant just as the company was about to complete a massive $6 billion capital expansion. Four feet of water filled the complex, destroying motors and electrical equipment that workers had only recently installed. Nearly half of Chevron Phillips employees had water in their homes or lost a car in the flood. The other half were trying to help family members, friends and strangers hit by the storm. Every Chevron Phillips plant shuttered and several were underwater.
Within days on the job, Lashier was faced with one of the most challenging moments of his career - overseeing an emergency response to a once-in-a lifetime storm all while being stuck miles away in Plano, where he was visiting his newborn grandson and family.
He turned his daughter’s dining room table into a makeshift headquarters with computers and a phone, teleconferencing to the company’s board room-turned-emergency operations center in The Woodlands.
“People say, ‘Well, that must have been terrible your first month.’ I said, ‘Well, it was a terrible event, but it was an incredible response,” Lashier recalled. “The whole Hurricane Harvey experience, what our employees did, that told us that our employees choose to care about each other, about their communities, about the facilities that they work in.”
Now after a little more than a year on the job, Lashier is trying to cultivate the comradery and caring culture he saw during the storm. His company, a joint venture of Phillips 66 and Chevron, is contemplating another big Gulf Coast capital project too.
The Iowa native started his career at what was then Phillips Petroleum as an associate chemical engineer in 1989 before rising up the ranks to oversee projects in Saudi Arabia and Asia. When Phillips spun off its chemical division with Chevron to form a joint venture in 2000, Lashier oversaw the startup of the new joint venture’s operations in Singapore and eventually moved back to The Woodlands to take on various vice president and leadership roles before he was made CEO in August 2017.
Texas Inc. recently sat down with Lashier to talk about challenges in the industry, Chevron Phillips’ opportunities in 2019, and what he’s learned about leadership in his first 18 months as chief executive.
Q: You’re considering a major new investment in the Gulf Coast not long after Chevron Phillips Baytown complex started up. The American Chemistry Council estimates some $202 billion worth of chemical projects have been announced in the U.S. since 2010. How long will this boom last and is there a risk of overbuilding?
A: Polyethylene and the demand for these products is growing such that the world needs about four or five of these big cracking complexes a year. … The world is not adding capacity fast enough to meet the growth requirements. To say we couldn't overbuild is a naive. There are a lot of big companies very interested in growing in this business because they see the same fundamentals we do. But it’s not easy to build these big, very complex facilities and they're not easy to operate. And it takes billions of dollars to build one. So that kind of narrows the playing field for who can participate.
Q: The petrochemical industry is one of several U.S. sectors caught in the crosshairs of the ongoing trade feud with China. How have you felt the impact of tariffs or count-tariffs?
A: Like most companies in the U.S., we believe in free and fair trade. … There are tariffs on materials that we would export from the U.S. to China … as a result of that is the trade flow has shifted. We produce similar materials in the Middle East that aren't subject to tariffs in China. We can redirect materials from the U.S. to other parts of the world where we don't incur tariffs. And so if you think about it, you've got this system that's consuming these materials. It's still the system, still consuming as much as it was before, but it's coming from different locations. So the economics redirect where the plastics flow.
Q: Are you seeing the impact of these counter-tariffs affect the return-on-investment from your recent major capital investment in Baytown or do you expect to start seeing that?
A: What's maybe impacted it more than the tariffs themselves is the uncertainty it's created. When there’s uncertainty in the world, people hesitate. And when that happens people aren't making decisions that impact things in the short run. We believe that the long-term fundamentals are good and that (the industry) will overcome the impact of these tariffs, but in the short term, it's created volatility. We had very strong margins in the first half of the year that we're actually better than we forecast when we when we approved the project. But then the second half of the year, the price of oil came down, (there was) tariff uncertainty, people kind of freeze and say, ‘Okay, I'm not going to buy. I'm not going to buy so much of this material because I don't know what I'll be able to sell my products for next year.” Those kind of things resolve themselves over a time frame of, I'll call it six months. We’re looking at what this business is going to look like for the next 30 years.
Q: The issue of plastic waste is a huge problem facing the plastics and petrochemical industry. What should petrochemical companies’ roles be in limiting plastic waste and what are you doing to address this?
A: I think petrochemical companies that produce these materials should take a strong role in identifying solutions that the world can use to address plastic waste getting into the environment where it doesn't belong. I think it's known that the world is facing a huge problem with waste in general. … What we're focusing on … across the whole value chain — from those that produced the chemicals that go into plastics, to those that make the containers out of our plastics, to those that put things into those containers and sell them to consumers, to the [nonprofits] that are rightfully concerned about waste getting in an environment — we're working on systems to collaborate across that value chain to make sure that we use is scientifically-validated means, measures and mechanisms to address plastic waste. (That could be) from designing materials that are more easily recycled, designing materials that are lighter weight so there’s not as much volume produced, looking at ways to recycle those materials … and finding viable ways to sort and separate all the plastic.
Q: LyondellBasell recently started up a joint venture plastic recycling company in The Netherlands. Would you ever consider something like that or new investments in the plastic recycling business? Can you give an example of what you’re doing to recycle?
A: The approach we're taking is to partner with existing recycling companies that already take materials from our plants and use it in their recycling streams. We’re cooperating companies like that to make sure that we're making the most of each other's capabilities. … We own 50 percent of American Styrenics. If you order something — like if you get a case of wine from Napa that shows up at my house regularly — there's a lot of Styrofoam with those things. And I've got a pile of Styrofoam chunks. There are places in The Woodlands where you can take these materials and it's actually pretty easy to take that material back to the original components that you can then re-polymerize. That’s what American Styrenics is doing. The company has that technology and then they can take that material and feed it back into the process and make new polystyrene. So that really is the, the clearest example of a circular process.
Q: You’ve been at this in this position for about a little over a year and a half. What have you learned so far about leadership in a top executive role?
A: I've learned that in a position like this, people do listen to you and respond, so you have to choose your words wisely. Every conversation matters. Every conversation in the elevator, every conversation in a plants, it matters because people want to be led. They want to have confidence in their leadership. They want to know that the company has got a vision, that we've got a mission, that we're going to make a difference out there. People really do care about what we're going to do to change the world, what we're going to do to change the community, the impact. They want to feel good about what they're doing. And this position has a major role in articulating what we're going to do, why are we going to do it, how we're going to do it, and to get people engaged in that.
Q: You lived in Singapore when you were working the chemicals division of what was then Phillips Petroleum and you oversaw its transition when Phillips spun off the company into a joint venture with Chevron. Can you tell me about that experience?
A: We moved here in 1998 and Chevron Phillips was formed in 2000, so my time in Singapore kind of bridged from Phillips 66 facilities to Chevron Phillips. It was an interesting time, combining the two companies to make one joint venture company, and it was also an interesting time in Asia because there's a lot of growth going on. Then a lot of changes going on. It's kind of when China was taking off and so a lot of things we're seeing now, we're just starting back in the late nineties.
Q: What was living in Singapore like?
Amazing. It’s an incredible city. Our kids basically grew up in Singapore. They were six, eight and 10 when we moved there and 12, 14 and 16 when they moved back. Moving a 16 year-old girl back to The Woodlands, America - It was culture shock because Singapore, it's fairly regimented, all the kids had to wear school uniforms every day; and you come back to The Woodlands where it's all about nice hair and makeup and everyone is just spot on. And so it was a big adjustment for our kids.
Q: Is there anything that has surprised you about being a CEO?
A: There three things I think are very important for leadership and that's trust, transparency and simplicity. You need to have a trust-based organization. Trust means that you're only going to trust me if I'm good at what I do and I do it when I say I'm going to do it - so it’s competency and character. And transparency - you need to understand what I'm thinking and where we want to take the company, and I need to hear from you the challenges that you face out in the workplace. Then simplicity - we tend to over-complicate things. There's so much information flowing at people each and every day from so many sources that we've got to create a systems that simplify things and allow people to filter out all the noise so they can focus on what's really important.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/texas-inc/article/Chevron-Phillips-CEO-talks-leadership-pollution-13551919.php
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Senate Panel Sets Feb. 5 Confirmation Vote on EPA Administrator
Jan 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a Feb. 5 confirmation vote on Andrew Wheeler, President Donald Trump’s nominee to succeed Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator, a committee spokesman confirmed Jan. 24.
Wheeler, now the EPA’s acting chief, needs confirmation by the full Senate to be elevated to the administrator position.
The Senate environment panel held a confirmation hearing Jan. 16.
The acting EPA head has already passed in a previous Senate confirmation vote, held in April 2018, to be deputy EPA administrator. Wheeler was confirmed for that position by a 53-45 vote.
Democrat ObjectionsThe top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), voiced concerns that an early February vote on Wheeler, less than three weeks after the hearing, might mean Democrats won’t get detailed responses they sought from the nominee at the January hearing.
“I’m not sure. That’s a question, and I have been reviewing with my EPW [committee] staff, I’m going to ask how are we doing on those responses,” Carper told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 24.
But Carper isn’t objecting to the early February vote on Wheeler. Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) “originally said he’d like to have the business meeting seven days after the hearing,” Carper said, “and I said that seems awfully fast.”
Carper urged the chairman to settle instead on a date a bit later, perhaps just before Valentine’s Day, and Barrasso settled on Feb. 5. “He did move it a week,” Carper said.
Few if any Democrats on the environment panel are expected to back Wheeler, whose nomination for deputy EPA administrator was approved by the committee on a party line vote in February 2018.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/senate-panel-sets-feb-5-confirmation-vote-on-epa-administrator-1
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Buyer Beware: Dangerous Paint Strippers Still Sold at the Home Depot, Autozone and Other Stores
Jan 25, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Mike Schade and Sujatha Bergen
In 2018, we won a wave of commitments from eleven of North America’s largest retailers to ban the sale of paint strippers containing the toxic chemicals methylene chloride and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP).
How are these policies being implemented?
To see how these retailer policy commitments have been implemented, campaign staff, partner organizations and volunteers are visiting stores across the country to see whether retailers are following through to “mind the store.” Over the last few weeks, we and our partners visited 42 locations of five major retailers’ stores, all of which had pledged to ban the sale of these harmful products by the end of 2018. We visited stores in twelve states (CA, CO, DC, FL, ME, NC, NJ, OK, PA, SC, TX, UT) and Washington, D.C.
The good news:
All twelve Lowe’s stores we surveyed no longer had methylene chloride-based paint strippers on store shelves. Four out of twelvestores did carry one NMP-based paint stripper, and when contacted, a company representative pledged to reach out to the stores to remove the products. Lowe’s staff told us that they have issued a “stop sale” for methylene chloride and NMP paint strippers, which prevents these products from ringing up at the register. The NMP-based stripper we found at fourstores (Citristrip) has been reformulated to not contain NMP and the old version of the product may have the same barcode as the new one. Therefore, consumers should still read the label closely.
Two out of the seven Sherwin-Williams stores visited were still selling methylene chloride-based paint strippers. In response to our inquiry about these products, a Sherwin-Williams spokesperson said that every store would be re-checked on January 18th to ensure all products have been removed. No stores were selling NMP-based paint strippers; the company was not selling NMP-based products this past year.
One out of the three Kelly-Moore stores visited was still selling NMP-based paint strippers. We did not identify any methylene chloride-based paint strippers still for sale at the three stores visited. In response to our inquiry about the product containing NMP, a Kelly-Moore spokesperson told us their director of purchasing is resending a memo to all stores reminding them of the company’s commitment and to remove the products from store shelves.The bad news:
Across the board, 62% of the stores we visited were still selling methylene chloride and/or NMP paint stripper products. We found the two other retailers whose stores we visited are still intentionally selling their remaining stock of methylene chloride and/or NMP-based paint strippers, despite their pledge to phase out the sale of toxic paint strippers by the end of 2018. This is deeply disappointing. We found:All eleven of The Home Depot stores visited were still selling methylene chloride-based paint strippers. Five out of eleven also sold NMP-based paint strippers. In early January, we also identified both methylene chloride and NMP paint removal products available on The Home Depot website. The company has since removed the methylene chloride products from the website, but there are still at least two NMP products available online.
Eight out of nine AutoZone stores visited were still selling methylene chloride-based paint strippers. Only one store did not. At five of the stores, we noticed the methylene chloride products were marked for clearance at almost 70% off, which could encourage consumers to unknowingly buy these dangerous products instead of safer ones. No AutoZone stores were selling NMP-based paint strippers.
While both The Home Depot and AutoZone indicated that they have stopped purchasing new orders of methylene chloride- and NMP-based paint strippers, corporate staff for each company told us they are continuing to sell off their remaining stock. This is out of sync with the public commitments these retailers have made: to phase out the sale of methylene chloride and/or NMP products by the end of 2018. Selling off dangerous products, in some cases at a deep discount, is not in the best interests of their customers.
While we visited a limited number of stores for each retailer, our store visits suggest this may be a problem for some of these chains.Mom demands action from retailers
Lauren Atkins, whose son Joshua died using Rust-Oleum Aircraft Remover, visited stores in her area. She saw the product that killed him being sold for about 70% off at the AutoZone store where he bought it. She also found products containing methylene chloride at her local Home Depot and Sherwin-Williams.
“For the sake of all of your customers you said you valued, and your future customers, please follow through with your commitment to remove the deadly products that contain methylene chloride and NMP from your shelves,” said Ms. Atkins. “The lives of your customers and their loved ones are depending on your commitment.”“The lives of your customers and their loved ones are depending on your commitment.”
The longer that retailers continue to sell these products, the greater chance that someone could be harmed. After all, at least four people have died from using these products, including Joshua, since the Trump Administration started dragging its feet on banning these dangerous paint strippers two years ago.How did we get here?
In May, in response to our national campaign, Lowe’s became the first major retailer to pledge to ban the sale of toxic paint strippers.
This led to a major domino effect. In the following months, Sherwin-Williams, The Home Depot, Walmart, Amazon, AutoZone, True Value, PPG, Kelly-Moore Paints, Home Hardware, and Canadian Tire all made similar commitments. These are big victories for our campaign and for public health. We applaud these retailers for stepping up and committing to ban these dangerous products. Their actions are likely saving lives.
In contrast, other retailers like Menards and Ace Hardware have failed to make public commitments to ban the products, and the EPA continues to drag its feet on banning these hazardous chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). That’s why Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, Vermont PIRG and the mothers of two young men who recently died from methylene chloride exposure have filed a lawsuit against Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler and the EPA for their failure to finalize a ban on the use of methylene chloride in paint strippers. NRDC has also served notice of its intent to file a lawsuit for EPA’s failure to take action required under TSCA.
EPA’s own scientists found that methylene chloride and NMP pose health risks to the public, including cancer, harm to the nervous system and to fetal development, and death. According to the EPA, more than 60,000 U.S. workers and 2 million consumers are exposed to methylene chloride and NMP annually.Retailers must follow through on their commitments to stop selling dangerous products
These retailers must follow through on the commitments they made and immediately pull these dangerous products from store shelves. If they haven’t already, they should also follow Lowe’s lead and issue a “stop sale” so that consumers can’t purchase these harmful products at the register.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue to monitor these five retailers’ stores, and plan to visit other retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and True Value to see how they are implementing their policies once they come into effect. We’ll also continue to call on other retailers like Menards and Ace Hardware to join them.
This new in-store research underscores why we need federal action and enforcement by the EPA, to ensure that no toxic paint strippers remain on store shelves.
In the meantime, consumers should remain vigilant. Until these retailers’ policies are fully implemented and EPA bans these products, consumers should exercise caution when purchasing paint strippers to ensure they don’t contain these dangerous chemicals.
https://saferchemicals.org/2019/01/25/buyer-beware-dangerous-paint-strippers-still-sold-at-the-home-depot-autozone-and-other-stores/
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EPA's Stalled PFAS Groundwater Levels Stymie State Efforts At DOD Sites
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Trump administration's delay in issuing recommended groundwater cleanup levels for two of the most common per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is hampering state and local efforts to address contamination stemming from military bases as the Defense Department (DOD) resists compliance with state standards.
In New Mexico, for example, state officials are battling with the military in several venues over contamination stemming from Cannon Air Force Base (AFB) while in Georgia, the service is declining to address off-site contamination from three bases in part because neither EPA nor the state regulates the substances.
Such disputes stem from EPA's failure to formally regulate PFAS under federal law. While the agency has floated draft interim groundwater cleanup levels to address perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) combined, two of the most common substances in the class, the document is stalled in interagency reviewat the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), according to Politico.
The document is stalled as EPA, DOD and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) remain at odds over recommended cleanup levels. While EPA reportedly proposed cleanup levels of 70 parts per trillion (ppt), the same level it set in its recommended drinking water cleanup advisory issued in 2016, CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has since issued a draft toxicological profile for two of the substances that indicate that EPA's levels are not strict enough.
Whatever groundwater cleanup levels EPA chooses will likely drive remediation at military bases and in surrounding areas across the country, as the military's commitment to following any state standards is tenuous.
The military faces significant environmental cleanup liability at its bases for PFAS as the chemicals have been used in fire fighting foam it has used in training or fighting fires at military properties across the country. The chemicals have been linked to adverse health effects, such as certain cancers, ulcerative colitis, thyroid function and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
DOD has pressed for federal groundwater standards. “We have been requesting that guidance for a number of years,” DOD environment official Maureen Sullivan told a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee Sept. 26. She added that while the department can calculate unacceptable risk on a site-specific basis by relying on reference doses used by EPA to set the health advisories, that is not a national, consistent approach.
“So it creates confusion . . .,” she said.
At the same time, Sullivan at a House hearing earlier in September indicated DOD would meet state standards for PFAS, provided various caveats were met. During questioning by one House Democrat, she said that state standards are rolled into the risk assessment process DOD conducts for a cleanup as a consideration.
Those caveats “leave a big gaping hole,” says Eric Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
And he adds that it is unclear that DOD would follow state groundwater cleanup standards if they were set at stricter levels than EPA. Are federal officials “going to observe those strict standards?” he says, noting that the group is worried DOD may try to “wriggle out of compliance” with state standards. He argues this nonetheless would likely be illegal.
States Lack Standards
Federal standards would likely prompt cleanups at sites where states lack groundwater standards.
In Georgia, which lacks standards, the Air Force is resisting calls to clean up contamination in residential areas surrounding three Air Force bases, declaring that in spite of high levels of PFAS in groundwater, it found “no immediate risk to human health through contamination of drinking water,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in a Jan. 3 article.
The Air Force told the newspaper that its response was limited by the lack of PFAS regulations. “Because PFOS/PFOA are unregulated and Georgia or federal entities have not established standards for non-drinking water sources, we cannot expend government resources on those water sources,” the Air Force told the paper.
“It's authority to mitigate contamination 'does not extend to risks posed to livestock and agriculture, to include indirect threats to humans through ingestion of plants and animals,'” the Air Force added.
But citizens and experts say the Air Force's examination was too narrow and neglected to test off-base water. The article notes that for instance, Moody AFB in Lowndes County, GA, recorded levels of groundwater contamination as high as more than 5,000 times the screening level.
They say the Air Force has not tested drinking water supplies off-base. And the Air Force maintains it did not test off-base because on-base drinking water supplies did not show PFAS contamination.
States are also struggling to enforce their existing standards, but are meeting with resistance from the military.
The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) is seeking to enforce state groundwater and surface water requirements at Cannon AFB in Curry County, NM, but is seeing pushback from the military. In early December, NMED announced it was “requiring swift action” from the base to comply with state water requirements, saying 40 years of using aqueous film-forming firefighting foam at the base has resulted in “very high concentrations” of PFAS in groundwater on and off the base.
NMED issued a notice of violation (NOV), requiring the Air Force to outline short-term corrective measures to mitigate the impact on nearby dairies, including “water hauling and water treatment of contaminated well sources for both livestock and irrigation of crops,” and to evaluate the feasibility of installing treatment systems on contaminated water supply wells, according to a Dec. 4 NMED press release. The release warned that if the Air Force fails to comply, the state could assess civil penalties of up to $15,000 per day.
Since then, the state has refused a request by the Air Force for an extension of time to comply with the NOV, given the military failed to demonstrate justification for the delay, NMED General Counsel Jennifer Hower told Inside EPA in a written response to questions. The Air Force has so far not complied, but the two entities are in discussions. “No decisions have been made on the next course of action at this time,” she says.
The NOV identified four deficiencies, she says. Regarding the groundwater violations, she says the state's narrative groundwater standard covers three PFAS compounds, and the high concentrations of these three in groundwater at, and down-gradient from, the base constitute violations of that narrative standard. The Air Force is violating the portion of state law mandating corrective action following the discharge of a water contaminant, she says.
The state is also facing a battle with the Air Force over a waste management permit it issued last month, which the Air Force is challenging in federal and state court.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epas-stalled-pfas-groundwater-levels-stymie-state-efforts-dod-sites
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Air Force Sues New Mexico, Arguing Overreach In Cannon's RCRA Permit
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Air Force is suing New Mexico’s environmental regulators over its recently renewed 10-year Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) permit for Cannon Air Force Base, a case that appears to mark one of the first formal disputes between a state and the military over efforts to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
The suit, filed against the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Jan. 17 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, challenges the permit’s definition of hazardous waste as it applies to corrective actions, saying it “exceeds the scope of RCRA’s waiver of sovereign immunity."
That appears to echo the military's long-standing argument it is not obligated to comply with state requirements governing PFAS because EPA has not set federal standards.
The definition included in the permit, which NMED issued in December, says the definition of hazardous waste includes, for the purposes of corrective action, contaminants such as perfluorinated compounds, as well as munitions constituents, perchlorate and other chemicals.
PFAS are currently unregulated contaminants, though EPA has been weighing plans to define the chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, which would trigger liability for the military and other responsible parties that have released PFAS into the environment.
A spokesman for Cannon AFB was unfamiliar with the suit and could not respond by press time to questions about the specific issues the Air Force has with the permit.
NMED General Counsel Jennifer Hower told Inside EPA the Air Force has not yet served the department the complaint.
The Cannon permit covers investigating and remediating sites at the base to address releases of contaminants, according to a fact sheet on the draft version of the permit.
The challenge to the permit comes as the military service appears to be dragging its feet on responding to violations alleged by NMED of state groundwater and surface water requirements at the base related to contamination from PFAS used in aqueous film-forming firefighting foam for the past 40 years there.
In early December, NMED announced it was “requiring swift action” from Cannon to comply with state water requirements, contending that PFAS are at “very high concentrations” in groundwater on and off the base due to the use of firefighting foam. The state is seeking mitigation including water treatment of polluted well sources for livestock and irrigated crops and an evaluation of the feasibility of installing treatment systems on wells.
The state refused a request by the Air Force to extend the time for complying with the violation notice, because it failed to give sufficient justification, according to NMED.
The Air Force’s complaint in the RCRA case does not specify how the waste definition is inconsistent with RCRA or state law. But it appears to echo push-back from the Air Force at PFAS contamination sites in Georgia, where the service has contended it cannot expend money addressing non-drinking water sources if the chemicals are unregulated under federal or state law.
The Air Force also says in the complaint against NMED that it will soon file a notice of appeal challenging the permit in the state’s court of appeals “as a protective measure only.” It then plans to move to stay the state court case until the federal case is resolved, the complaint says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/air-force-sues-new-mexico-arguing-overreach-cannons-rcra-permit
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Moms Join Suit to Force EPA Chemical Ban
Jan 24, 2019 | WebMD
By Sonya Collins and Aaron Gould Sheinin
Two mothers whose sons died after using the chemical solvent methylene chloride have sued the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ban the chemical.
Wendy Hartley and Lauren Atkins are joined in the suit by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group and Washington, D.C.-based Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on Jan. 14.
In it, the plaintiffs say the EPA had committed to banning methylene chloride from products sold in the United States but has failed to follow through. Federal law allows the public to sue the agency to force it to act.
The court will determine whether the EPA “has failed to perform its duties under the law,” says Robert Sussman, a Washington-based attorney representing the plaintiffs. “Our case argues that the EPA has determined that these uses of (methylene chloride) present an unreasonable risk.”
Sussman points to comments made by then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in 2017 that he would be finalizing a ban, “and indeed, he even said that it would be issued shortly and he testified to that effect before Congress and then, after that, no action occurred.”
The agency officially proposed the ban in May 2018, but Pruitt resigned on July 5, 2018, and no replacement has been confirmed and no action has been taken on the ban. Now, Hartley, Atkins, and the two environmental groups have stepped in to try to force the EPA’s hand.
An EPA representative declined to comment on the lawsuit.
If the suit is successful, Sussman says, methylene chloride products could be off shelves in less than a year.
WebMD told the story of Wendy Hartley in July 2017, just months after her son, Kevin, died while refinishing a bathtub at a Nashville apartment complex.
Doctors told Hartley that Kevin died after methylene chloride caused his heart to stop, starving his brain of oxygen.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/copd/news/20190124/moms-join-suit-to-force-epa-chemical-ban
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Publishing Models Fail to Give Early Hazardous Chemicals Warning, Study Finds
Jan 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
In the absence of known human health risks, US scientists have called for more "exploratory and speculative risk assessments" to be written up in peer-reviewed journals.
According to analysis of the literature in the US by professors Disgsheng Li and Sangwon Suh, publications largely fail to serve as an early warning system for hazardous chemicals. Instead, they found a strong tendency for the number of publications on an individual chemical to surge following major regulatory changes or exposure incidents associated with it.
The scientists, from the universities of Nevada, Reno, and California, respectively, analysed 342 articles covering 202 unique chemicals and distilled the information on the functional uses, product applications, exposure routes, exposure pathways, toxicity endpoints and their combinations.
Despite a growth in the literature, it is impossible for research to keep up with the increasing volume and diversity of such chemicals, they write in Environment International.
They found chemicals most discussed in the literature they looked at were:bisphenol A (BPA);phthalates; andpolybrominated diphenyl ethers.
And the most frequently reported combinations of functional use and product applications were found to be:plasticisers;polymers/ monomers;flame retardants used in food contact and personal care products, cosmetics, furniture, flooring and electronics.
"Reducing the costs and time needed for toxicity and exposure assessments is a key, to which the developments in predictive toxicity and risk assessment techniques for screening-level assessment, as well as the use of systematic prioritisation for high-risk exposure pathways and chemicals in consumer products would be crucial," they conclude.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73595/publishing-models-fail-to-give-early-hazardous-chemicals-warning-study-finds
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New York State Delays Enforcement of Cleaning Products Disclosure
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
New York state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) is delaying by three months enforcement of a provision of its cleaning product disclosure programme.
Adopted last June, the Household Cleansing Product Information Disclosure Program requires manufacturers to post specific information about their products and the ingredients they contain online.
The scheme’s first deadline is a 1 July requirement for manufacturers employing more than 100 people, and covered by the programme, to disclose intentionally added ingredients – with the exception of fragrances – and nonfunctional ingredients present above trace quantities.
But in a 9 January notice the NYSDEC said it will pause enforcement for a three-month period. Instead, it "will begin enforcing any violations of the above required disclosure as of 2 October 2019."
Unaffected, however, are the June 2020 requirements for smaller employers to comply, and for manufacturers to begin disclosing fragrance ingredients and nonfunctional byproducts and contaminants.
The Household & Commercial Products Association’s JD Darr, manager of state government relations and public policy, told Chemical Watch that the delay "was the result of a direct, but very respectful conversation with the state attorney general’s office."
"With the approaching 1 July implementation date, it was mutually agreed upon that the AG’s office should be allowed more time to thoroughly weigh the potential impact of their proposed guidance, but only if the original implementation date was rightfully delayed to coincide with their request," he added.Industry lawsuit
Meanwhile, litigation brought against the programme by the Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA) and the American Cleaning Institute continues.
The ACI’s Brian Sansoni told Chemical Watch that the groups filed suit because the New York agency "refused to work with affected stakeholders, violated important administrative procedure and exceeded its regulatory authority to release this unworkable regulation."
Chief among industry concerns is that New York’s programme differs from California’s cleaning product ingredient disclosure law, specifically around which impurities and contaminants must be reported.
And although California’s law was adopted several months earlier than New York’s programme, its disclosure deadline for intentionally added ingredients is not until 1 January 2020.
"We support science-based ingredient transparency policies that provide meaningful information for consumers and workable implementation for manufacturers," said Mr Sansoni. "Unfortunately, New York State’s regulation provides neither."
The NYSDEC told Chemical Watch, however, that it worked closely with stakeholders throughout the development of the policy "to address concerns and protect public health and the environment."
"Based on manufacturer input, final policy changes included web-based disclosure, reducing the number of lists to report against, and changing the reporting parameters, among others," it said, adding that it is unable to comment further due to the ongoing litigation.Compliance efforts continue
Meanwhile, ACI members "continue working to meet the overly complex and burdensome requirements", according to Mr Sansoni.
"Clearly this is a complicated, multi-tiered process involving cleaning product manufacturers and their ingredient suppliers," he added.
Industrial cleaning products trade group Issa said in a recent statement that New York’s policy, as designed, is "incredibly problematic for manufacturers", but that it will be continuing to provide compliance guidance to members. It is also "proactively advocating" in other states considering implementing similar programmes in the future.
For its part, the NYSDEC said in its notification earlier this month that it "will continue to work with any manufacturers on the design of their websites, or entertain any questions regarding compliance with website design or safety data sheets."
"NYSDEC remains committed to working with the manufacturers to implement this programme in the best manner possible," it added.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73669/new-york-state-delays-enforcement-of-cleaning-products-disclosure
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European Union Court Rejects Endocrine Disruptor Appeal
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union’s top court dismissed an attempt by a chemicals company to overturn a decision identifying one of its products as an endocrine-disrupting chemical.
DEZA AS, based in the Czech Republic, had argued that a 2014 European Chemicals Agency decision to label the plasticizer bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) as an endocrine disruptor—chemicals that interfere with the hormone system—went beyond what was allowed under the European Union’s REACH law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals).
DEZA already lost one case against the endocrine disruptor designation. The EU General Court, the bloc’s lower court, dismissed the case in 2017, but the company appealed.
DEZA respected the European Court of Justice’s dismissal of its appeal, which was issued Jan. 23, and would “consider next steps,” spokesman Jan Pavlu told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 24.
DEHP had already been added to a list of hazardous chemicals due for phaseout from use in the EU on the basis that it was toxic for reproduction. The prohibition on the substance took effect in 2015.
Under REACH, substances that are phased out can be authorized for continued use in specific applications if companies can prove no risk and if no alternatives are available.
Endocrine disruptors are assumed to have no safe exposure level, unless applicants to use it can prove otherwise.
The European Chemicals Agency told Bloomberg Environment in a Jan. 24 statement the ruling had confirmed it could add new designations to substances that are already slated for potential phaseout from use in the EU.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/european-union-court-rejects-endocrine-disruptor-appeal
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Disinfectant Byproduct on Food Faces New Limits in EU
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Food companies may have to upgrade their produce processing practices under a draft European Union law on maximum levels of a chlorate in food.
The draft law, which is available for public comment through Feb. 18, would set a range of maximum residue levels for chlorate depending on the type of produce. The level for strawberries and other soft fruit, for example, would be set at 0.03 milligrams per kilogram of produce, while for olives it would be 0.7 mg/kg.
The objective would be for chlorate residues to be “as low as reasonably achievable,” the draft law said.
Chlorate residues in food typically arise from processing or rinsing with water that has been treated with chlorine disinfectants. The substance also is used in pesticides, though it is no longer authorized in the EU as a pesticide ingredient.
The European Food Safety Authority in 2015 found that chlorate in food was generally not harmful to adults. But long-term exposure could harm children by contributing to iodine deficiency, which can lead to thyroid problems. Children in EU countries could be absorbing about twice as much chlorate than the recommended safe daily level of 0.003 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, according to the draft law.
Chlorate in WaterThe draft law setting maximum levels of chlorate in food is a parallel measure to a draft EU law on drinking water, which would put a limit on chlorate in water of 0.25 milligrams per liter.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, proposed the drinking water law in February 2018. It has been approved by the European Parliament approved it but not yet agreed to by the Parliament and the Council of the European Union, which represents the governments of member countries.
The draft law on chlorate residues in food was premature and should wait until after the law on water is finalized and enforced, Romans Vorss, senior food policy adviser with FRUCOM in Brussels, which represents processed nuts, fruit, and vegetables producers, told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 24.
“You have to wash produce, you cannot avoid it,” and it would make sense for the presence of chlorate to be reduced in water before introducing obligations on food companies, he said.
Produce found to have residues above the maximum levels would have to be “removed from the shelves,” Vorss said.
Dole Food Co. Inc. and Chiquita Brands International Sarl didn’t respond to a request for comment Jan. 24.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/disinfectant-byproduct-on-food-faces-new-limits-in-eu
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Analysis Gives Complex Picture of Cerium Dioxide Nano Toxicity
Jan 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
Variation in the toxicity of inhaled cerium dioxide nanoparticles cannot be explained simply, according to analysis by scientists at BASF and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). The results highlight some of the considerations facing German competent authority Baua, which is currently evaluating the substance under REACH.
Six experimental studies published between 2012 and 2017 found adverse effects in rats and mice, following inhalation of the particles. However, the effects found by the most recent of these studies, published in 2017, were markedly less severe.
The studies used nanoforms of cerium dioxide that differed across several parameters, including size, shape and chemical composition. They also used different model species: some used rats, others mice.
The aim of the current analysis, led by Susan Dekkers at RIVM – who also led the 2017 study – was to find relationships between the parameters, or the model species used, and the variations in effects observed in the six studies.
BASF scientists supplied data from additional experimental studies to enable proper comparison of the data in the existing six studies. They conducted the studies for the EU’s NanoMile project, but they are not yet published in peer-reviewed journals.
The scientists found that the variations could not be explained solely in terms of the external exposure, the particle size and the chemical composition.
"Particle size is highly important," they say in a paper published late last year in Inhalation Toxicology, but other physico-chemical properties, such as surface reactivity and surface shape, may influence toxicity.
They also found that rats were more sensitive to the effects than mice.
"This research does indicate that there are differences in toxicity between the different nanoforms of cerium dioxide," Dr Dekkers told Chemical Watch. "However, [these] depend on the dose metrics and post exposure period, which makes it impossible to confirm that one nanoform is more toxic than the others based on the current dataset."
A further study, in which exposure doses were adjusted to control precisely how many particles were deposited in the lungs, and where, would be needed to "confirm absolute differences in toxicity", she adds.Regulatory context
The European Commission is currently considering how to implement the category 2 carcinogenicity classification that Echa’s Risk Assessment Committee recommended for titanium dioxide. The classification – which covers all forms of the compound – has faced strong opposition from some sectors, including titanium dioxide manufacturers.
According to Rac, the mechanism of toxicity behind it is potentially common to all poorly soluble particles, raising concerns that a wide range of similar compounds, including cerium dioxide, might face similar regulatory action.
The issue – in relation to cerium dioxide, at least – might be cleared up definitively by a large-scale experimental study that BASF is currently conducting, partially funded by the German government. The study involves high numbers of rats and much longer exposure periods compared with others.
However, the multimillion Euro project has been delayed several years. When launched in 2012, the expectation was that the finals results would be available in 2016. In 2017, BASF told Chemical Watch that it expected publication in the second quarter of 2018.
Birgit Lau from the company told Chemical Watch today that investigations were complete, the final report was being reviewed and its completion due "within the next months".
"Such a comprehensive long-term inhalation study has not been performed before," she added, regarding the timing of the report. "Several tens of thousands of histological slides had to be examined. The evaluation is correspondingly time-consuming."
https://chemicalwatch.com/73715/analysis-gives-complex-picture-of-cerium-dioxide-nano-toxicity
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Jan 24, 2019 | Infosurhoy
By Denis Bedoya
Canada’s slow-growing petrochemical industry is headed for its biggest surge of expansion spending in five years in 2019, thanks in large part to incentive programs by federal and provincial governments.
The government support has angered environmental groups who point out that almost 90 per cent of plastics used in this country wind up as litter or in landfills.
But it’s welcomed by the industry as a necessary factor if Canada is to keep up with its competitors in the United States.
Capital spending on industrial chemical industry projects in Canada this year is expected to jump by 65 per cent to $1.9 billion, the highest since $2.2 billion in 2014 and third-highest in a decade, according to a year-end members survey by the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, which represents producers of 75 per cent of the country’s chemical products by value.
Employment is expected to rise by about four per cent or 640 jobs to 17,670.
The growth is coming despite rising concern over single-use plastics. Many jurisdictions are banning plastic straws and grocery bags in reaction to scenes like the great Pacific Ocean floating garbage island between Hawaii and California and dead and dying sea creatures.
His organization is calling for a national strategy with performance standards and tougher enforcement to get Canada to zero plastic waste by 2025.
Capital spending in Canada this year will come mainly from construction already underway on two projects to turn petrochemicals produced with natural gas into plastic pellets: Inter Pipeline Ltd.’s $3.5-billion polypropylene project in central Alberta and the $2-billion expansion of Nova Chemicals Corp.’s polyethylene plant at Sarnia, Ont.
The former is to receive $200 million in royalty credits under a 2016 Alberta NDP government program — the latter is backed by $100 million through Ontario’s Jobs and Prosperity Fund and $35 million from Ottawa’s Strategic Investment Fund.
“On a global basis, as all jurisdictions are trying to attract investment, the governments at various levels – federal, state and provincial…play a role,” said Nova CEO Todd Karran in an interview.
He said it’s always been so — the company’s $1-billion polyethylene expansion at its central Alberta complex opened in 2016, benefited from a multimillion-dollar provincial royalty credit program created by a Progressive Conservative government to spur new sources of ethane to remedy a shortage of feedstock.
Last year, Alberta announced two programs worth $2.1 billion in royalty credits, grants and loans to encourage investments in petrochemical feedstock and manufacturing facilities. Winning bids are expected to be announced soon.
Meanwhile, a final investment decision is expected soon on a $4-billion polypropylene project by a joint venture of Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corp. and a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corp., eligible for $300 million in royalty credits under the 2016 Alberta program.
“Our made-in-Alberta plan means new projects must do the right thing for the environment, and by upgrading more here at home instead of shipping our raw product south of the border, we reduce emissions and ensure Alberta is among the most responsible and lowest emissions petrochemical producers in the world,” provincial Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd said in a statement.
David Chappell, senior vice-president of petrochemical development for Inter Pipeline, wouldn’t say if the company has applied for further government funding, but conceded it would be “crazy” not to consider it.
Canadian petrochemical expansions are dwarfed by the activity south of the border.
A total of 333 new U.S. chemical industry projects using shale gas had been announced as of September, according to the American Chemistry Council. Those projects account for US$202 billion in new capital investment and are expected to create 431,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2025.
In both Canada and the U.S., the main driver of growth is an ample and inexpensive supply of natural gas-based feedstocks like methane, ethane and propane that can be transformed into chemical building blocks such as methanol, ammonia, ethylene and propylene, said Stephen Zinger, senior vice-president, chemicals, at consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The provincial and federal government supports, and Ottawa’s recent decision to allow a 100 per cent accelerated capital cost allowance for new investments, are being noticed by investors, said Bob Masterson, CEO of the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada.
“Where for most of the last decade the global chemistry community has just bypassed Canada … now we’re back on the radar. We’ve got the resource, we’ve got the people and now we’re starting to see the favourable investment conditions at the provincial and federal level,” he said.
The CIAC supports a target of 100 per cent of plastics packaging to be either reusable, recyclable or recovered by 2040 (and 100 per cent to be recyclable or recoverable by 2030), although it acknowledges it can’t accomplish that without the co-operation of manufacturers, regulators and the general public.
On Wednesday, Nova Chemicals announced it was one of 30 founding members of the International Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which is making a combined initial commitment of US$1 billion to find ways over the next five years to eliminate plastic waste in the environment.
http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/news/canadian-petrochemical-development-spurt-anticipated-regardless-of-rising-need-for-fewer-plastics/
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Democrats Probe Trump ‘Favoritism’ of Oil Industry in Shutdown
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Lawmakers are intensifying their scrutiny of the Interior Department’s decision to keep churning out drilling permits and restart work on offshore oil leasing despite the government shutdown.
At best the activity represents unfair favoritism for the oil industry, Democrats argued Jan. 23, and at worst it’s a violation of federal laws that generally bar agencies from spending money they don’t have except in emergencies.
“There are serious questions about the legality of these and other actions by the administration,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat from Minnesota, who heads the House appropriations subcommittee that sets funding for the Interior Department.
A separate panel that oversees the agency, the House Natural Resources Committee, has scheduled a hearing Thursday to examine “the Trump administration’s blatant favoritism towards the oil and gas industry during the government shutdown.”
The lawmakers’ responses played out as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on rival Democratic and Republican plans to end the impasse, which entered its 34th day on Thursday. Both measures are expected to fail.
Permits Continue as Parks CloseThe Interior Department, which oversees oil and gas development on federal lands and waters, has taken pains to ensure that the permits and other initiatives are immune from the shutdown—even as it closes parks, halts work on endangered species initiatives, and cancels meetings on a proposed renewable energy project off the Massachusetts coast.
For instance, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has issued more than 150 permits to drill on public land since federal funding for more than a dozen major government agencies lapsed on Dec. 22—a reversal of the approach taken during the 2013 shutdown, when the Obama administration halted work on drilling permits and canceled at least one lease sale.
And now Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is summoning 11 furloughed employees back to work to prepare documents necessary for upcoming oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. According to an agency contingency plan updated Jan. 8, bureau personnel also are on call to help develop a new five-year plan for selling drilling rights in U.S. coastal waters from mid-2019 through mid-2024. A
All of that activity was excluded from the ocean energy bureau’s earlier, December 2018 contingency plan.
Fourteen Senate Democrats on Jan. 22 demanded to know what prompted the change as well as the legal justification for it, casting the move as a blatant bid to shield the oil industry from the budget standoff that has shuttered a quarter of the federal government.
‘Troubling Picture’“The newfound characterization of these projects as essential paints a troubling picture of an agency dedicated to mitigating the consequences of the shutdown for a powerful and well-connected corporate lobby at the expense of the American people,” the senators, led by Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said in a letter to Interior Department officials.
“While the oil industry might view a delay in the approval of new offshore drilling as an emergency, the American people deserve regulators who prioritize safety and environmental protection over political expediency and the wishes of moneyed special interests,” the senators said.
Under the 1870 Antideficiency Act, agencies generally are barred from spending money Congress hasn’t awarded them, except where there are imminent threats to “the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
Democrats and environmental advocates argue that that threshold hasn’t been cleared.
McCollum said she has already asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to testify about Interior Department spending decisions amid the shutdown, “so my fellow appropriators and members of the public can determine whether Trump administration actions constitute a misuse of taxpayer dollars under the Antideficiency Act or other provisions of law.”
‘Intent of Congress’“I’m troubled about the Trump administration changing the rules in the middle of the shutdown to bring back certain furloughed employees to ensure oil and gas drilling permits and the companies benefiting from them don’t feel the pain of the shutdown,” McCollum said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
Legal experts say there’s not much ordinary Americans can do to stop questionable shutdown spending. The responsibility for prosecuting violations of the 1870 Antideficiency Act falls to the Justice Department—and no one’s ever been taken to court to account for flouting the law. Antideficiency Act experts say it’s not clear anyone else would have standing to challenge agency spending and activities that continue despite a broad government shutdown.
One possible exception: Congress, which could mount its own legal battle by voting to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of agencies spending money it hasn’t appropriated. Even without that step, intensifying congressional scrutiny of Interior shutdown decisions could signal trouble for the agency in getting spending approval down the road.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/democrats-probe-trump-favoritism-of-oil-industry-in-shutdown
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U.S. to Emerge as Net Exporter in 2020 — EIA
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Federal forecasters yesterday said the United States will emerge as a net energy exporter next year as growing oil and refined product shipments join natural gas in outweighing the country's imports.
But such ambitious milestones are unlikely to be met when it comes to tackling climate change.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration's annual forecast released yesterday projects that starting next year and continuing for decades to come, the country will export more oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids and refined products than it imports, reflecting growing production and relatively flat consumption.
Natural gas liquids — hydrocarbons like ethane, butane and propane that are produced along with natural gas — are a fast-growing segment of the energy industry and account for almost one third of U.S. liquids production through midcentury, according to agency projections.
The data point to continued growth for natural gas in the nation's power mix, expanding from 34 percent of electricity generation last year to 39 percent in 2050, while solar, wind and to a lesser extent other renewables grow from an 18 percent power share last year to account for 31 percent of electricity production in 2050.
Retirements of coal and nuclear power plants are projected to continue over the coming decade, pushing renewables to overtake them in the electricity market by then in EIA's base case scenario, but both coal and nuclear power remain in the power mix through 2050 in the base case, at 42 percent and 22 percent of today's capacity levels, respectively.
The path laid out by EIA's projections does not put the U.S. on track for the kind of large-scale shift away from fossil fuels that scientists say is needed to blunt the impacts of climate change, which includes cutting global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and becoming nearly carbon-neutral by 2050 (Greenwire, Oct. 8, 2018).
Some analysts have long taken issue with EIA's projections, pointing out that they historically undercount the scale of growth of renewables, especially. Alex Gilbert, co-founder of SparkLibrary, an energy policy and market analysis platform, notes that the model includes no contributions from offshore wind energy and extremely limited growth in onshore wind after 2020, despite robust industry activity in both areas.
"EIA scenarios constantly project this death of the wind industry. Historically, they have blamed tax credit expiration. However, the tax credit expiration is (more or less) final now and the wind industry still plans to exist in five years," Gilbert wrote in a Twitter post.
The EIA projections are based on a range of scenarios for economic conditions but no changes to current energy law over the projection period. The agency maintains that backdrop will not reflect real-life conditions but serves as a useful analytical baseline for policy decisions.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/25/stories/1060118573
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US Chemical Plant Antiterrorism Law Extended
Jan 24, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The day before a US antiterrorism statute affecting chemical companies was to expire on Jan. 19, President Donald J. Trump signed a 15-month extension of that law.
The 11-year-old Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) requires industrial facilities that make, use, or store specified quantities of any of more than 300 hazardous chemicals to assess their risks and submit site-security plans to the Department of Homeland Security for review and approval. The facilities must then implement protective measures based on their level of risk.
Approximately 3,500 of these facilities are considered high risk under CFATS. They must devise and implement department-approved, site-specific security plans.
Legislation to extend CFATS stalled last year in debate between Democrats in the House of Representatives and Republicans in the Senate. Led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), some senators want to make industry-backed changes to CFATS before they endorse a multiyear reauthorization of the law. House Democrats oppose that idea.
For now, lawmakers settled on a 15-month reauthorization extending the current law. This effectively sets a deadline early in 2020 for them to reach a compromise.
https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrial-safety/US-chemical-plant-antiterrorism-law/97/i4
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DOE's $1M Grid Challenge Comes with a Cyber Warning
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Department of Energy is dishing out up to $1 million for new ideas to tackle emerging threats to the U.S. power grid, a top official announced yesterday in Seattle.
Bruce Walker, DOE's assistant secretary for electricity, said the agency would award up to $100,000 for each winner of the "innovation challenge." Energy officials at the XLab Grid Modernization Summit separately announced $40 million in funding for tools to protect the rapidly evolving U.S. grid.
Walker cast the million-dollar challenge as a chance to find new strategies for thwarting cyberthreats that "can tear at the core of our society's fabric."
DOE has expanded its focus on cyberthreats under President Trump, establishing a stand-alone Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, led by Assistant Secretary Karen Evans.
Walker said on the sidelines of the conference that cybersecurity issues have primarily moved to Evans' plate since she arrived at the agency last fall. But he said recent warnings from top U.S. intelligence official Dan Coats have motivated his focus on the grid's digital defenses (Energywire, Feb. 14, 2018).
"The present threats are very real and designed to exploit a system that was created and evolved during a period where there was no cybersecurity threat," he said in prepared remarks. "We are facing nation-state actors. We are dealing with nations that would rather the U.S. did not exist. ... Now is the time for us to think differently."
Devon Streit, director of institutional planning at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said in a recent interview that cybersecurity ranked among the top challenges during her three years as deputy assistant secretary of DOE's Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration Division.
"Cyber in the energy space was the thing that kept me up at night — and there are a lot of other scary things out there: earthquakes and hurricanes," she said.
Streit credited the oil, gas and electric utility executives for pressing action on cybersecurity during triannual meetings at DOE headquarters.
"The average person doesn't know the extent to which those companies are working together and being forward-leaning to address issues," she said, citing the creation of "cyber mutual assistance" programs to share network security experts among competing companies during a widespread attack. "Until you're in it, you think, 'Oh, yeah, all these companies — they're not doing anything except worrying about their bottom line.' That could not be further from the truth."
At the event yesterday in Seattle, Walker suggested the electricity industry's consistency in keeping the lights on could cloud the severity of new threats.
"Let's face facts: We have become overly reliant on the electricity grid," he said. "The success of the industry, the 99.999 percent reliability that we have provided and established through the hard work of corporations like ConEdison and Southern Co., have made us depend on it.
"It's always there," Walker said. "We must evolve."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/25/stories/1060118589
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Energy Agency Invests $40M to Improve Grid Security, Reliability
Jan 24, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern and Paul Shukovsky
The Energy Department is investing $40 million into its existing Grid Modernization Initiative, aiming to improve the electric grid’s security, reliability and resilience.
The funding will go to the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, a network of 13 Energy Department national laboratories focused on building public-private partnerships.
The money will fund lab collaboration with the energy industry to focus on resilience modeling, advanced sensors, energy storage, cybersecurity, and institutional support.
The details of the lab funding won’t formally be issued until March, the department said. The Grid Modernization Initiative started under the Obama administration in 2016, with an initial $220 million in funding over three years for the labs to partner on projects with industry.
“This funding demonstrates the administration’s commitment to technology innovations, which will modernize the nation’s grid and ensure that it remains smart, resilient, reliable and secure,” Mark Menezes, the department’s under secretary of energy, said Jan. 24 at the Energy Department’s Innovation XLab Grid Modernization Summit in Seattle.
“Now this new investment will build off of the previous efforts of the great lab consortium over the past three years,” he said.
Prioritizing CybersecruityAt the summit, Assistant Secretary Bruce Walker, head of the Energy Department’s Office of Electricity, was asked about whether climate change’s impacts on the electric grid are a priority for the department, in light of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. considering filing for bankruptcy after the California wildfires.
The department’s efforts are focused first on the threats of cyberattack and physical attack on energy infrastructure, Walker said.
“If everything is a priority, than nothing is a priority,” he said. But he pointed out that addressing the cyber and physical threats also brings resilience against all hazards.
He touted the development of the North American Energy Systems Resiliency Model, which will use sophisticated sensors located across the grid generating data analyzed by super computers in real time.
The model will address all hazards “whether it’s things like climate change or whether it’s the threats associated with physical and cyber,” he said during the summit.
A static version of the model using historical data will be up and running by the end of the year with a real-time version being on line some two years later, Walker told Bloomberg Environment in an interview after the summit.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/energy-agency-invests-40m-to-improve-grid-security-reliability-1
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Civil Penalties for Polluters Dropped Dramatically in Trump’s First Two Years, Analysis Shows
Jan 25, 2019 | The Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Civil penalties for polluters under the Trump administration plummeted during the past fiscal year to the lowest average level since 1994, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.
In the two decades before President Trump took office, EPA civil fines averaged more than $500 million a year, when adjusted for inflation. Last year’s total was 85 percent below that amount — $72 million, according to the agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online database.
Cynthia Giles, who headed the EPA’s enforcement office in the Obama administration and conducted the analysis, said the inflation-adjusted figures were the lowest since the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance was established.
The decline in civil penalties could undermine the EPA’s ability to deter wrongdoing, some former agency officials said, because they help ensure it is more expensive to violate the law than to comply with it. But Trump administration officials have said they are focusing much of their effort on working with companies ahead of time so they don’t run afoul of the law, rather than punishing them after the fact. That approach, they say, will ensure business operations can thrive without harming the environment.
Giles, now a guest fellow at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program, questioned whether the new approach can achieve what administration officials promise.
“The public expects EPA to protect them from the worst polluters,” she said. “The Trump EPA is not doing that. What worries me is how industry will respond to EPA’s abandonment of tough enforcement.”
During his confirmation hearing last week, EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler told lawmakers that there had been “a lot of misleading information” suggesting that the agency had gone easier on polluters under Trump. He cited recent reports from environmental and governance groups that said the EPA’s enforcement had sagged.
[At confirmation hearing, Trump’s EPA pick vows to advance a deregulatory agenda]
Wheeler pointed to the fact that the EPA had opened more criminal enforcement cases during 2018 than the year before, reversing a downward trajectory. He said enforcement actions last year resulted in removing “809 million pounds of pollution and waste” from the environment. And hesaid the agency had worked with companies it oversees to ensure they comply with federal rules, rather than levying charges against them or imposing fines.
“And I think the more compliance assurance that we have, the fewer enforcement actions we need to take,” he said.
But the analysis conducted by Giles and reviewed by the Environmental Integrity Project shows that in addition to the drop in civil penalties for polluting, the amount of money companies must pay to come into compliance with federal environmental laws also declined last fiscal year, to nearly $5.6 billion. That represents the lowest amount of injunctive relief since 2003, in inflation-adjusted dollars, and is below the roughly $7.8 billion average for the two decades before Trump took office.
EPA officials declined to disclose the exact figures for past fiscal year’s civil or criminal penalties, saying they could do so only after the partial government shutdown is over.
In a statement Thursday, the EPA’s top enforcement official, Susan Bodine, called the analysis misleading because it included large settlements such as a single year when the BP oil spill raised the civil penalties by $5.7 billion.
“It is not statistically valid to imply a trend by averaging an outlier value with other values,” she said, noting that excluding the unprecedented BP penalty brought the agency’s average to $160 million a year.
Even when using that methodology, however, the Trump administration’s total last year represented a roughly 55 percent drop from the annual average.
Bodine emphasized that while enforcement penalties vary from year to year, the agency will continue targeting bad actors.
“Let there be no mistake — EPA enforcement will continue to correct noncompliance using all the tools at its disposal, including imposing civil penalties to maintain a level playing field and deter future misconduct,” she said.
Civil penalties, which the EPA applies for a range of violations, including water contamination and air pollution, aim to recover the financial benefit a company has reaped by breaking the law and to impose additional costs so that firms are deterred from doing it in the future.
While the EPA often imposes civil penalties in cases that also involve criminal conduct — such as in the case of Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal — the agency typically pursues criminal penalties when a firm knowingly and intentionally violates the law or engages in gross negligence.Duke Energy’s decision not to repair corroded pipes that lay under a coal ash pond that collapsed in North Carolina in 2014, for example, constituted a criminal case.
The agency’s numbers will undoubtedly rise in 2019 because the federal government recently reached a major settlement with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles over emissions cheating.
That agreement includes a civil penalty of $305 million — a figure the EPA noted is four times more than all civil penalties it collected last fiscal year. EPA said that while its overall number of cases declined last fiscal year, “EPA is continuing to direct its resources to the most significant and impactful cases.”
The recent settlement with Fiat Chrysler began with a notice of violation that the EPA sent the company on Jan. 12, 2017, just before Barack Obama left the presidency.
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the advocacy group Environmental Integrity Project, said the EPA’s enforcement record during Trump’s first full fiscal year offers a fuller picture of the administration’s approach to enforcement, because fewer cases would have been inherited from the previous administration.
“By that time, you should have momentum and you should be making your mark on the program,” said Schaeffer, who headed the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement from 1997 to 2002, adding that he found the analysis accurate.
[At confirmation hearing, Wheeler vows to advance deregulation at EPA]
That said, there are signs that the EPA has continued to pursue a number of cases the agency began before Obama left office.
In late December 2016, the agency gave a notice of violation to a scrap metal processing facility in Rockford, Ill., that was releasing an unlawful amount of lead into the air. Bob Ellis, senior vice president and general counsel for Alter Trading Corp., which bought the facility a few months before the EPA took action, said in an interview that it has spent the past couple of years working with the agency to resolve the issue. He said the two sides had reached an agreement, but he declined to disclose the terms because it was not yet public. “It was prosecuted fairly and settled fairly,” Ellis said.
Along with the Justice Department, the agency also has overseen completion of certain criminal cases from the Obama era. They include minor ones such as an auto repair shop owner illegally dumping chemicals down a drain and more significant ones, such as a company agreeing to a nearly $2 million fine for importing construction equipment with engines that did not comply with U.S. air emissions standards.
However a decline in the number of criminal investigators, which began during the Obama administration, has taken a toll. As of October, a Washington Post analysis showed, the EPA’s enforcement division was among the most affected by a broader exodus at the agency fueled by buyouts and retirements. It has lost at least 80 people since Trump entered office.
EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email that the enforcement division has been authorized to fill some of those vacancies and hire as many as 164 criminal special agents. “OECA began recruiting agents last summer and is in the process of bringing additional agents onboard,” Konkus said, adding that the current number of agents is 147.
Under the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act, the division is supposed to have no fewer than 200 criminal investigators. In December 2010, there were 272 at the agency, according to an analysis of Office of Personnel Management data, but that number declined during the Obama administration.
Wheeler suggested during his Senate testimony that the fact that Bodine was not confirmed until Dec. 7, 2017, had a meaningful impact on its enforcement activities.
“What our enforcement program needed in the Trump administration was a head of the office,” Wheeler said.
Bodine herself has emphasized the need to take a different approach when it comes to cracking down on polluters. On Aug. 21, 2018, she issued a memo outlining her thinking, in which she informed employees, “The EPA intends to evolve the National Enforcement Initiatives program into a National Compliance Initiatives,” italicizing key words for emphasis.
Daren Bakst, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, praised the administration’s approach.
“It is better to prevent environmental violations from occurring in the first place than to act after the fact when environmental violations have already occurred. This is why improving compliance is so important,” Bakst said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/civil-penalties-for-polluters-dropped-dramatically-in-trumps-first-two-years-analysis-shows/2019/01/24/7384d168-1a82-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html
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Mayors Nudge Congress on National Climate Policy, Carbon Tax
Jan 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Mayors of both political parties have a message for the federal government: Prioritize your climate-change policies.
Local leaders who gathered in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting are ramping up pressure on the new Congress and the Trump administration to establish a national climate policy with aggressive greenhouse gas cuts and clean energy targets.
Such federal action is critical to support and accelerate the work cities are doing to cut their emissions, both Democratic and Republican mayors said.
Mayors are working on two policy documents urging Congress to act.
The first, dubbed the “Mayors Call for Climate Action,” outlines a number of legislative requests. These include a national greenhouse gas emissions reduction program by 2030, a national renewable portfolio standard requiring how much energy should come from renewables, increased investments in low-carbon transportation, and funding for a grant program that mayors said was critical to their clean energy work.
Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski (D), who chairs the mayors’ Alliance for a Sustainable Future, is also drafting a resolution endorsing a national carbon price. She expects to present that resolution for mayors to sign onto at the conference’s annual meeting in the summer, she said.
“The mayors are the ones that are really driving our national leaders to step up and be a part of the solution because we deal with the impacts of climate change on a real-time basis,” Biskupski told reporters. “We need the help of our federal partners to come to the table and be a part of the solution. We can’t do it alone.”
Carbon FeeBiskupski praised the House Climate Solutions Caucus, which consists of equal numbers of members from both parties. Some of them introduced legislation near the end of the last Congress calling for a carbon tax. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who co-chairs the caucus, reintroduced his bipartisan bill Jan. 24 along with his Republican colleague Rep. Francis Rooney (Fla.).
“It’s exciting that Congress is taking this on,” Biskupski said. “It’s kind of slowed down a little bit, and we’re hoping that with all the new members of Congress coming in this year that we’ll see an uptick in that legislation and have it move forward.”
The details of the mayors’ carbon fee resolution are still being worked out, said Mayor James Brainard (R) of Carmel, Ind., who co-chairs the mayors’ Energy Independence and Climate Protection Task Force. But he supported the general push for a carbon fee.
“I like to remind my Republican colleagues that the carbon tax was originally an idea that came out of the Republican Party,” he told Bloomberg Environment. “It makes a lot of sense, and we need to revisit it.”
Despite bipartisan support in the House, the Republican-controlled Senate remains resistant to the idea. Among those opposed is Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a member of the Senate GOP leadership who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Smaller BillsMayors aren’t only pushing broad, sweeping climate legislation from Congress.
Brainard said he hopes this Congress can work on smaller bills focused on energy efficiency and clean energy that can create incremental progress in reducing emissions.
He highlighted an Energy Department grant program—the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant—that mayors want Congress to re-fund. That program offers money to local leaders to use for emissions reduction and energy conservation projects.
To date, the block grant was only funded once, and that was in the 2009 stimulus, which provided $3.2 billion for the program. Carmel used its portion, around $700,000, to convert its street lamps to LED lights, Brainard said.
“I think the key is to bring the Senate leadership in early and say, ‘What do you want to do?’” Brainard said of congressional debate on climate. “Maybe not try to tackle everything at once but start with some small bills that can have a good impact and make them work and then continue the discussions.”
In addition to the block grants, Brainard backed tax credits for solar energy and tax credits for retrofitting existing buildings to be more energy efficient.
100 Percent RenewableMayors are also grappling with how to transition to greater reliance on renewable energy. The U.S. Conference of Mayors—which represents more than 1,400 mayors of cities with populations over 30,000—adopted a resolution in 2017 supporting cities’ transition to 100 percent renewable energy.
But local leaders are asking for help—from the federal government and from the conference—on how to get there.
The next big step for the conference is to launch a study giving mayors a roadmap to get to 100 percent renewables, New Bedford, Mass., Mayor Jon Mitchell (D) said.
“It isn’t as simple as putting up more solar panels and LED lights,” Mitchell, who chairs the mayors’ Energy Committee, said. “We can embrace the moonshot, getting to 100 percent, but people will then say, ‘How do you do that and not break my electric bills?’ We have to have answers.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/mayors-nudge-congress-on-national-climate-policy-carbon-tax
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Democrats Say Shutdown Distracts from Climate Legislative Focus
Jan 24, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
The government shutdown is sidetracking Democrats' plans in the House to roll out their policy agenda in areas like climate change, according to several lawmakers.
Nearly 10 Democrats told POLITICO that their top priority is getting the roughly 800,000 federal employees paid and back to work as soon as possible, but they also admit that it's distracting the party from plans to develop legislation to address climate change, invest in infrastructure or expand access to health care.
“It’s holding back everything and it’s terrible because there’s lot of unfinished business and a lot of important work to do,” said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee. “The shutdown is causing that disruption.”
Lawmakers stressed that they haven't shelved those efforts, and the work to formally organize committees and begin to introduce legislation is continuing. But in conversations this week, they described the shutdown as interfering with their legislative agenda.
“It’s very distracting. Last November, Democrats ran on health care, infrastructure and getting rid of corruption. It’s harder for us to do that right now because of the shutdown,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) told POLITICO. “We’re still going to proceed, but it’s definitely slowing things down.”
House leadership has been focused on the shutdown, and they have passed more than 10 bills in the chamber to restore funding to federal agencies — though those were largely messaging exercises since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellsaid he would not take up any bills that did not have the support of President Donald Trump.
One of the most visible shutdown casualties emerged on Thursday as House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) backed away from a plan to make a high-profile climate change hearing his first of the new Congress and instead scheduled a hearing on the shutdown’s impacts on federal agencies. The E&C, Natural Resources and Science committees announced in November they’d hold early hearings on climate change to elevate the issue and put it among their top agenda items.
“I had previously announced our first three hearings never believing that this shutdown would still be going on when this Committee had a chance to organize,” Pallone said. “Those critical hearings on climate change, the future of the Affordable Care Act and oversight of the Trump Administration’s inhumane Family Separation Policy will still occur, but they will not be next week.”
Pallone later told reporters he didn’t think the ongoing shutdown was affecting the rollout of his agenda.
That stance places him at odds with several other senior Democrats, like Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) who’s spent his first weeks in the majority holding a series of roundtables and writing letters related to the shutdown. Among the issues he’s targeted are Interior’s decision to recall furloughed employees to work on oil and gas drilling issues and the shutdown's impacts to the National Park Service.
“With the shutdown, there’s no public space for this discussion right now,” Grijalva said of his agenda.
Not all Democrats think the shutdown is dramatically altering the rollout of their agenda, noting it was always going to take some weeks to get organized to begin their legislative business in earnest. But they fear a prolonged shutdown of many months, as Trump has previously mentioned as a possibility, might begin impacting their climate legislative efforts.
“It’s about to get in the way,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). “The shutdown will continue to be the main story and the main focus. You got to get the government open before you can do anything.”
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2019/01/democrats-say-shutdown-distracts-from-climate-legislative-focus-1112132
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Shutdown Likely To Delay EPA Decisions On Revising SO2, Other NAAQS
Jan 24, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA appears poised to miss a Jan. 28 consent decree deadline for signing a final rule on whether to revise the “primary” health-based sulfur dioxide national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) due to the government shutdown, potentially signaling delays for looming decisions on revising other criteria pollutant NAAQS.
The decree “gives EPA an automatic extension” on the deadline for lapses in appropriations such as the shutdown, says an environmentalist. “This delay matters greatly to people who are adversely impacted by sulfur dioxide pollution like the millions of asthmatics in the U.S,” says the source, who backs tightening the existing SO2 standard. The agency in May proposed to keep the limit at its 2010 level of 75 parts per billion (ppb) over one hour.
The government shutdown will not only delay a final decision on the SO2 NAAQS but also raises doubts on EPA's ability to meet its strict 2020 goal for deciding whether to revise its ozone and particulate matter (PM) NAAQS, says a separate informed source. “I assume this has slowed the review of the NAAQS and other rulemakings to a standstill, thus likely pushing back for example the accelerated review of the PM NAAQS.”
It is difficult to verify the status of the ozone and PM reviews, the source notes, given that EPA staffers are not currently returning inquiries from stakeholders as a result of the shutdown. Nor is the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee that offers input on the NAAQS review process conducting public meetings as it normally would.
While EPA plans to complete its ozone and PM NAAQS reviews next year, it signed a consent decree in April 2017 committing it to the Jan. 28 deadline for finalizing a decision on the SO2 standard review.
Environmentalists want EPA to tighten the limit to as low as 50 ppb in order to better protect public health, while a major oil industry group is pushing for a weaker standard of 150 ppb, and other industry groups are advocating for leaving the current 75 ppb limit in place.
The agency's May 25 proposal suggested leaving the current standard unchanged, citing no evidence of additional harm to public health that would warrant a tougher standard.
The shutdown means EPA likely will miss the Jan. 28 deadline, but the environmentalist notes language in the decree allowing a delay for the duration of an appropriations lapse.
The environmentalist source says the ongoing government shutdown has adverse consequences for public health by delaying even further EPA’s approval of state implementation plans (SIPs), which are blueprints detailing states’ programs to attain NAAQS. In instances where SIPs are missing or not consistent with air law requirements, EPA must issue federal implementation plans (FIPs) instead, directly imposing pollution control requirements.
The “delay in revising the SO2 NAAQS is an example” of the agency failing to meet air law deadlines, with potentially harmful consequences, the source says.
“But EPA is also delayed in processing thousands of SIPs and probably dozens of FIPs. This will all lead to delayed protection from the death and disease that air pollution needlessly causes in the U.S.,” the source adds.
EPA staff, many in regional offices, are mainly furloughed during the shutdown, and therefore not processing SIPs or issuing FIPs that would replace inadequate SIPs.
Some environmentalists have accused the Trump EPA of giving SIPs only a cursory review and quickly rubber-stamping them, in line with the administration policy of letting states take the lead on air law implementation. The Trump administration is further hostile to FIPs, in general, and has been pushing to convert them to SIPs wherever possible. GOP and industry critics regarded the Obama EPA as too keen to issue states with FIPs.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/shutdown-likely-delay-epa-decisions-revising-so2-other-naaqs
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Last Year Was Really Warm (But the Feds Aren't Saying It)
Jan 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Last year was the fourth-warmest on record.
It's not an official finding because the partial government shutdown has prevented NASA and NOAA from making that determination. But the data show that 2018 stacks up as one of the warmest years since the Civil War era, according to researchers from Berkeley Earth. Just three years were warmer: 2016 is first, followed by 2015 and 2017, according to NOAA.
Last year, global temperatures were 1.16 degrees Celsius, or 2.09 degrees Fahrenheit above the average temperature of the late 19th century, from 1850-1900, researchers at Berkeley Earth found. Some parts of the globe, including Europe and the Middle East, set records for highest average temperatures. Europe experienced its warmest May to October ever, causing drought in many areas. Notably, 2018 is the warmest year on record for ocean heat content, a sharp increase from 2017.
Though temperatures dipped slightly compared to the previous three years, last year's readings continue a clear trend of significant warming, researchers found.
"The slight decline in 2018 is likely to reflect short-term natural variability, but the overall pattern remains consistent with a long-term trend towards global warming," the Berkeley Earth researchers wrote.
Temperatures in individual years can be effected by natural weather patterns, even as they're being driven upward over decades by the burning of fossil fuels. In 2015 and 2016, during a period of extreme El Niño, one of the strongest ever recorded, temperatures catapulted upward. By contrast, 2018 began with a weak-to-moderate La Niña, and that caused a slight dip in temperatures.
Many countries saw their warmest year ever, since modern record-keeping began. They include: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, FYR Macedonia, Monaco, Montenegro, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Serbia, San Marino, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.
Antarctica and the Arctic experienced significant warming, which has consequences for sea-level rise as land ice melts.
This year will likely be warmer than 2018, but it probably won't break the record set in 2016, the researchers found.
"At present it appears that there is roughly a 50% likelihood that 2019 will become the 2nd warmest year since 1850," the researchers wrote.
The results were set to be announced by NOAA and NASA last week, but the government shutdown pushed it to some point in the future, likely a few days after the government reopens, according to Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/25/stories/1060118563
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Berkeley to Start Charging 25 Cents for Disposable Cups Next Year
Jan 24, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Avery Anapol
Restaurants and coffee shops in Berkeley, Calif., will start charging 25 cents for disposable cups next year after officials voted unanimously in favor of the ordinance.
The Berkeley City Council approved the measure this week, which is aimed at cutting down on restaurant waste by encouraging patrons to bring reusable cups, according to the Associated Press.
The policy, Disposable-Free Dining, will take effect in January 2020. It will also require restaurants to shift to compostable takeout containers and to only provide reusable dine-in cutlery by the middle of the year.
The measure mimics the tax on single-use plastic bags already in effect across California and other states. But in the case of the disposable cup ban, restaurants would keep the proceeds.
It also comes as a number of cities and businesses have moved to cut down on plastic waste by banning single-use straws.
Some businesses owners expressed concerns that the fee, combined with a recent statewide increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour, could drive away customers who aren’t fully informed about why food prices may be increasing.
Stuart Baker, executive director of Telegraph Business Improvement District, told AP that he hopes Berkeley officials work to educate the public about the policy’s effects.
"Everyone is excited about doing something about the environment — and then the food price goes up but the student doesn't make the connection and stops eating out and business goes down,” Baker said. “That's a concern.”
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/426840-berkeley-calif-to-charge-25-cents-for-disposable-cups
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