Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 2/22/2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Why Materials & Mining ETFs Are Riding Higher
Feb 21, 2019 | Zacks
By Sanghamitra Saha
Things have been going great for materials industry this year for a host of reasons. -
Endangered Deference Doctrine Could End EPA’s Streak of Court Losses
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA could soon end its losing streak in litigation over rollbacks of Obama-era policies as lawsuits shift from procedural challenges to fights over the merits of rules on which courts often defer to the agency, but that outcome faces a growing threat... -
(ACC Mentioned) ‘Groundbreaking’ PFAS Plan Floated by EPA
Feb 22, 2019 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
With considerable fanfare, including news conferences in every EPA region, the Agency unveiled its Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a large class of manufactured chemicals that have proven to be highly effective in many industrial applications... -
EPA to Host TSCA Inventory Reporting Webinar
Feb 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA is holding a webinar to explain TSCA inventory reporting obligations related to active and inactive substances. -
(ACC Mentioned) Debate Over Ethylene Oxide Rages As Some Exposed Grow Sick
Feb 22, 2019 | American Legal News
By Andrew Bare
Residents of a Chicago suburb are demanding answers and calling for greater regulation of the chemical ethylene oxide after many of them contracted cancer and other serious illnesses following decades of exposure to the gas. -
Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water Leave Military Families Reeling
Feb 22, 2019 | New York Times
By Julie Turkewitz
When Army Staff Sergeant Samuel Fortune returned from Iraq, his body battered by war, he assumed he’d be safe. -
More Defense Sites Targeted for Perfluorinated Chemical Study (1)
Feb 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A federal agency wants to find out more about the health effects of a family of ubiquitous chemicals used by the military to fight fires by studying specific communities near military properties. -
ATSDR Selects Sites for PFAS Exposure Studies
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
Federal health agencies have announced the sites of eight additional exposure assessments it will undertake -- all near military bases -- to aid communities in understanding their level of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)... -
Agencies Pick 8 Sites for PFAS Exposure Study
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services this year will start studying people in eight sites for exposure to toxic chemicals found in drinking water. -
FDA Proposes Changes to US Sunscreen Rules
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt Erickson
The US Food and Drug Administration is seeking data to show that certain ingredients found in sunscreens sold in the US are safe and effective. The agency is also looking to expand the range of ultraviolet light that sunscreens block. -
FDA Says Mineral Sunscreens Are Safe, Chemical Sunscreens Need More Research
Feb 22, 2019 | ABC News
By Stephanie Ebbs
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working on a rule that could change the way consumers think about which ingredients in sunscreen are considered safe, saying they believe now that mineral sunscreens are safe but products that use chemicals need more research. -
EPA Knows This Pesticide Is Dangerous, so Why Did It Reverse the Ban?
Feb 22, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Marc L. Lame
The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to overturn a court-ordered deadline to ban chlorpyrifos, abdicating its mission to protect human health and the environment. -
(ACC Mentioned) In a Sleepy Louisiana Town, Two Chinese Chemicals Firms Are Being Hit on Multiple Fronts by the Trade War
Feb 20, 2019 | South China Morning Post
By Cissy Zhou and Finbarr Bermingham
US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has thrown a spanner in the works of two Chinese chemicals companies spending billions of dollars building factories in the United States. -
Chatterjee Advocates Patience on Pipeline Cybersecurity
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro and Jeremy Dillon
The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants to give federal agencies and industry time to complete their "dialogue" on cybersecurity for natural gas pipelines before considering mandatory standards. -
FERC Approves 1st LNG Plant in 2 Years After Resolving Deadlock
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern and Stephen Cunningham
The top U.S. energy regulator gave the first authorization in two years for a new liquefied natural gas export terminal, breaking an impasse that had threatened to bring approvals to a standstill. -
U.S. LNG May Have a New Path to Asia
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Japanese investors and the government here are steadily forging new markets for U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to Southeast Asia. -
Trump's Atlantic Oil Search Runs Aground in S.C.
Feb 22, 2019 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By Carlyann Edwards
More than half the registered voters in Republican-controlled South Carolina supported Donald Trump in a poll last month, but there's at least one area where state leaders are ditching the president to join rival Democrats: a fight against oil exploration off the Atlantic coast. -
Ohio Natural Gas Pipeline Suit Tossed
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
A lawsuit challenging air pollution permits issued to Nexus Gas Transmission for two natural gas pipeline compressor stations must be dismissed, a divided federal appeals court ruled Feb. 21. -
Chevron Phillips Names Potential Spot for New $5.8b Petrochemical Project
Feb 21, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck
The city of Orange is on the short list of places where Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. is considering building a massive $5 billion to $6 billion petrochemical expansion, recently released state documents show. -
Labor Department Pursues OSHA Fines from Fatal Okla. Rig Fire
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
The Labor Department has filed a complaint to enforce citations issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration against Patterson-UTI Drilling Co. after five workers were killed in an Oklahoma rig fire. -
New Federal Rule Will Require Response Teams for Possible Oil Train Derailments, Fires
Feb 21, 2019 | The Register-Guard
By Dylan Darling
A new federal rule will require railroads to create regional spill response plans for oil trains. -
Revised EPA ‘Ambient Air’ Policy Definition Spurs Fight On Legality, Scope
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA’s draft guidance narrowing its policy definition of “ambient air” is spurring a fight between environmentalist critics and industry supporters, with opponents arguing the move is unlawful and will allow facilities to evade Clean Air Act permitting requirements... -
D.C. Circuit Sets Argument in Suit over Scrapped ‘Once in’ Air Toxics Policy
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set oral arguments for April 1 in litigation brought by environmentalists and California against EPA’s guidance allowing industrial sources of air toxics to escape maximum achievable control technology (MACT)... -
'Green New Deal' — an Obama Stimulus 2.0?
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
In 2009, with the nation's economy in a tailspin, President Obama signed into law a stimulus package that aimed to give a herculean lift to the cause of clean energy, with $90 billion in investments. -
Climate Hedgehogs and Foxes
Feb 21, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Armond Cohen and Steve Brick
The Democratic take-back of House of Representatives and the recent introduction of the “Green New Deal” Congressional resolution have reinvigorated discussion of action on climate change. -
America's Strongest Climate Governor Might Be a Republican
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
During his first run for governor, Charlie Baker sat for a meeting with a group of leading environmentalists in Massachusetts. It quickly turned combative. -
New Climate PAC Will Back Inslee for President
Feb 21, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Reid Wilson
A new super PAC launching on Thursday will back Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) potential run for president.
Industry and Association News
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Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Why Materials & Mining ETFs Are Riding Higher
Feb 21, 2019 | Zacks
By Sanghamitra Saha
Things have been going great for materials industry this year for a host of reasons. Several corners like mining, chemical, and oil and energy are showing promise this year. One of the biggest materials ETFs S&P 500 Materials Sector SPDR (XLB - Free Report) has gained 10.4% this year,while the fund suffered a lot in 2018 and is still down 7.4% in a year’s time. The space is now hovering around a one-month high and deserves a special mention for rallying on Feb 20.
Let’s take a look what’s driving material and mining ETFs.
U.S.-China Trade Optimism
China is one of the biggest consumers of materials. The fate of the one of the key companies in the space, DowDuPont DWDP, is closely associated with the U.S.-China trade war. Though management believes that DowDuPont “has experienced little impact from China's tariffs on U.S. petrochemicals because the company can supply China and Asia through its non-U.S. operations,” some investors remain skeptical.
Tariffs are also expected to increase the company’s cost structure to some extent. The company also faced pressure on its agriculture business as China has started purchasing more soy beans from Brazil and imposed a 25% tariff on U.S. soybeans. Thus, stronger cues of improvement in the U.S.-Sino trade relation this year helped material stocks to rally. DowDuPont, a major stock in most materials ETFs, saw shares gaining 3% on Feb 20 on hopes of trade deal.
Optimistic Company-Specific News
Praxair, the wholly owned subsidiary of Linde plc (LIN - Free Report) , another major holding of materials ETFs, announced an expansion on Feb 11. The expansion entails Praxair to double the capacity of its plant in Neosho, MO.
On the other hand, several asset management companies started taking interest in DowDuPont. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. boosted its stake in DowDuPont by 1,905.9% in Q4, according to its most recent 13F filing. Advisors Asset Management upped its position in shares of DowDuPont by 4.8% in Q2 and now owns 272,035 shares of the company’s stock after purchasing an incremental 12,478 sharesin Q4. Legacy Bridge LLC boughta new stake in DowDuPont in Q4. Bogart Wealth LLC, Douglass Winthrop Advisors LLC and Stock Yards Bank & Trust Co. lifted its position in shares of DowDuPont by 46.5%, by 0.3% and by 0.9% in Q4, respectively.
Promising Chemical Industry
Most of the funds in the sector have huge focus on chemicals, containers & packaging and metals & mining. The outlook for the American chemical industry offers a promising outlook. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) projects national chemical production (excluding pharmaceuticals) to rise 3.6%in 2019, after 3.1% growth in 2018. Sustained demand across light vehicles and housing markets as well as steady manufacturing sector are expected to spur growth. New capacity additions should bump up basic chemical productions.
Global Packaging Industry on the Rise
The Containers - Paper and Packaging industry has also been on an uptrend. While a U.S.-China trade deal would give a boost to exports and demand for packaging, global urbanization, in any case, is lending a hand to the growth of this industry. The fast emergence of e-commerce has significantly aided demand in the industry (read: Material ETFs Stand Tall Amid Weak Q4 Earnings).
A Dovish Fed
Apart from the said causes, the Fed also came up with dovish comments. The Fed indicated still-subdued inflation led the central bank to consider a “patient” approach to future rate hikes. A dovish Fed results in a subdued greenback, which in turn boost commodities’ prices. This along with a hopeful trade deal has been benefiting mining ETFs like Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX - Free Report) . The fund was up 3.1% on Feb 20 and added about 1.1% after hours (read: Dovish Fed Minutes Should Boost These ETFs).
https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/356271/why-materials-amp-mining-etfs-are-riding-higher
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Endangered Deference Doctrine Could End EPA’s Streak of Court Losses
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA could soon end its losing streak in litigation over rollbacks of Obama-era policies as lawsuits shift from procedural challenges to fights over the merits of rules on which courts often defer to the agency, but that outcome faces a growing threat from conservative federal judges who are looking to narrow or even scrap such deference.
“In the first couple of years of the administration, they tried to move way too fast with a crew of people who didn’t know how to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, and that got them into a lot of trouble,” said Robert Percival, director of the University of Maryland Carey School of Law’s Environmental Law Program, in a Feb. 21 interview with Inside EPA. He was referring to early Trump administration moves to delay or undo Obama EPA policies that critics successfully challenged in court cases that focused on procedural flaws in those efforts.
But litigation over regulatory rollbacks is now moving into its next stage with a focus on the substance of Trump EPA replacement rules, rather than initial procedural challenges -- such as expected suits over a planned narrower Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction standard to replace a broader 2015 CWA policy, and over a rule to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) greenhouse gas rule for existing utilities.
“[N]ow that they’re coming out with their own vision of what the ‘waters of the U.S.’ should be and how we should deal with greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, normally Chevron would benefit them greatly,” said Percival.
Chevron is the landmark precedent that requires judges to defer to agencies’ “reasonable” interpretations of ambiguous statutes, and figures to be a decisive factor in court challenges to pending EPA rules and rollbacks, including the Affordable Clean Energy rule to replace the CPP, an expected “freeze” on the previous administration’s vehicle emissions and fuel economy limits, and the narrower CWA standard.
Deference has not been a factor in EPA’s string of losses in litigation so far during the Trump administration, because those cases have largely focused on whether the agency followed proper notice-and-comment procedures for its initial round of stays that blocked implementation on a host of Obama-era rules.
Almost every federal court to decide on the legality of those measures has ruled against the agency, with decisions striking down stays of the prior administration’s rules governing methane emissions, CWA jurisdiction, facility safety planning and others.
“Thankfully [former EPA Administrator Scott] Pruitt screwed so much of this up in the first few years that it bought us a lot of time. They were clownishly incompetent,” says one environmentalist, referring to the Trump administration’s only Senate-confirmed EPA chief who resigned last July following a series of ethics scandals.
Deference Test
But with the agency poised to finalize many of its high-profile substantive rules in the coming year, Chevron is likely to be much more important in the next round of court challenges.
And observers have often said that Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler -- nominated by President Donald Trump to head the agency permanently -- will pursue a more methodical approach to developing replacement rules and ensuring that the substance of those eased regulations can withstand legal challenges.
However, the agency will have to rely on deference from courts in order to win most of those lawsuits, and conservative judges’ increasing push-back on Chevron could create a hurdle for EPA.
Speaking during a Feb. 7 American Law Institute-Continuing Legal Education (ALI-CLE) environmental law conference in Washington, D.C., former Obama-era Department of Justice environment chief John Cruden said of the split between procedural and substantive suits, “They were disproportionately losing those cases. . . . But that will probably change some now, as you move from administrative-law issues to more substantive issues. Chevron is still alive and well.”
But it may not be “alive and well” by the end of President Donald Trump’s current term, since conservatives in both Congress and the judiciary -- including on the Supreme Court -- have pushed to pare back judicial deference principles or eliminate them entirely, on the grounds that deference gives executive agencies too much power to interpret the law rather than only enforcing it.
The high court is already weighing a repeal of the so-called Auer deference that gives priority to agencies’ “reasonable” readings of their own regulations, in the pending case Kisor v. Wilkie. While the precedent set in that case will not directly affect how courts review EPA’s substantive rulemakings, it could serve as a sign that the justices are taking a dim view of deference generally and discourage lower courts from applying Chevron broadly.
“Already, advocates have almost completely stopped making Chevron arguments before the Supreme Court, because they know that so many justices are on record wanting to get rid of Chevron deference,” Percival said during another panel discussion at the ALI-CLE conference.
For instance, during his confirmation hearing last September, Justice Brett Kavanaugh told lawmakers that he opposes giving deference to any new agency interpretation of a long-standing statute that it uses to justify broadening its authority compared to past rules.
“[A]n executive branch agency wants to do some new policy, and proposes a new policy to Congress. But Congress doesn't pass the new policy. What often happens, or too often, I've seen, is that the executive then relies on the old law as a source of authority to do this new thing. And they try to say 'well, the old law is ambiguous, so we can fit this new policy into the old law,' as justification for doing this new thing. I've seen this in national security cases, I've seen this in environmental cases -- you see it all over the place,” Kavanaugh said.
And his fellow Trump appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, is a long-standing deference critic who has continued to voice his displeasure with Chevron since joining the high court.
In 2017, he wrote in a statement on the court’s denial of review in the Chevron case Scenic America, Inc., v. Department of Transportation, “Chevron deference is often defended on the ground that statutory ambiguities reflect a kind of implicit decision by Congress to delegate lawmaking power to the agency to handle the problem on its own. But even assuming (without granting) the accuracy and propriety of that much, what’s the case for supposing that Congress implicitly delegates to agencies the power to adjudicate their own contractual disputes too?”
Impending Litigation
Among the upcoming rules that will test whether the Trump EPA’s policies can survive Chevron review are the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would replace the CPP with limited mandates for efficiency improvements at coal fired power plants; a rule expected to radically scale back or completely freeze vehicle emission limits; and the CWA jurisdiction rule that would roll back the law’s reach compared with prior policies that date back to the Reagan administration.
Each of those policies was crafted to implement ambiguous statutory language, meaning any change to the Chevrondoctrine could have major consequences for their prospects in court.
“It could turn out that Chevron may not benefit them that much, because it seems like sometime in the future this conservative court that is hostile to deference to agencies may not show them deference even when [the agency] is rolling back regulations,” Percival said.
But even without broad deference, conservative judges could uphold the administration’s rollbacks through a decision that EPA’s reading of the rule is correct, rather than merely “reasonable.”
“Some people have said that Chevron is just a label courts use when they agree with the substance of what the agency did. It may well be that the impact of Chevron in actually changing the results of cases has been exaggerated at times, and even without it they would reach the same conclusions,” Percival said.
Challengers could also try to avoid focusing their suits on the merits of the Trump administration’s rules, and instead argue that the final rulemakings suffer from the same procedural flaws that led courts to strike down many of the earlier interim policies.
Environmentalists have already floated such a tactic for their suits over the CWA jurisdiction rule, based on an expectation that the high court’s conservative majority will be inclined to agree with the Trump administration’s narrow view of EPA’s regulatory authority but would be less likely to set a precedent allowing regulators to sidestep procedural requirements for rulemaking.
But any win on procedural grounds could be short-lived, since it would only require EPA to repeat the challenged rulemaking process rather than striking down the ultimate result.
“That’s only good as a short-term strategy, to buy you time. The result is that you just have to go back and do it over again,” Percival said. But he added that a delay strategy could pay off if a Democratic challenger defeats Trump in the 2020 presidential campaign. Given his poor approval ratings, “People do not think there’s a high likelihood that Trump will have a second term.”
https://insideepa.com/weekly-focus/endangered-deference-doctrine-could-end-epa%E2%80%99s-streak-court-losses
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(ACC Mentioned) ‘Groundbreaking’ PFAS Plan Floated by EPA
Feb 22, 2019 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
With considerable fanfare, including news conferences in every EPA region, the Agency unveiled its Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a large class of manufactured chemicals that have proven to be highly effective in many industrial applications and have also spread risks to human health through sources of drinking water across the nation. The Action Plan relies primarily on the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to address the dangers of PFAS. The EPA also announced that it will begin researching whether at least some of these chemicals should be regulated under other statutory authorities, including the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), Superfund, and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).
In the keynote press conference, EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler called release of the Action Plan “an historic moment for the Agency and the American public.”
“It took groundbreaking efforts to develop this plan,” Wheeler continued. “This is the first time we have utilized all of our program offices to deal with an emerging chemical of concern. It is the first time we have put together a multi-media, multi-program national research and risk communication plan to address a challenge like PFAS.”
The Action Plan was prompted at least in part by a National Leadership Summit the Agency convened in May 2018 on the challenges of addressing PFAS contaminants and what has been and can be done. At the Summit, community leaders expressed their belief that the Agency needs to use its legal powers to accelerate solutions to PFAS contamination. The EPA says that it considered 120,000 public comments on what the Action Plan should encompass and how it should be implemented.Persistent in Products and in People
Introduced in the 1940s, PFAS have multiple applications. The best-known uses include providing fabrics with stain and water resistance and nonstick properties to cookware. PFAS are also used in firefighting foams and the manufacture of electronic products. Qualities such as durability that have made PFAS a desirable chemical also contribute to its persistence in the environment and in the human body. Studies indicate that two PFAS— perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—can cause cancer and reproductive, developmental, liver, kidney, and immunological effects (PFOA) and thyroid hormone disruption (PFOS) in laboratory animals.Maximum Contaminant Level
While PFAS exposure can occur in multiple ways (e.g., via soil and food consumption), the major current concern appears to be its presence in drinking water. Accordingly, the major “long-term” action in the plan is to “initiate steps to evaluate the need for maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for PFOA and PFOS. An MCL is the legal threshold limit on the amount of a substance that is allowed in public water systems and is the primary enforceable provision under the SDWA. The actual finalization of MCLs for PFOA or PFOS can take between 5 and 10 years, and it may be years after that before drinking water systems would be required to meet the MCL.
Beginning in 2000, some U.S. manufacturers voluntarily phased out production of PFOA and PFOS.Applying Hazardous-Substance Tag
Other long-term actions—those that will take more than 2 years to implement—include beginning the necessary steps to propose designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances through one or more of the available federal statutory mechanisms (e.g., Superfund, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), TSCA, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act; and EPCRA); developing groundwater cleanup recommendations for PFOA and PFOS at contaminated sites; and developing toxicity values or oral reference doses (RfDs) for GenX chemicals (hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO) dimer acid and its ammonium salt) and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS).
Short-term actions contemplated in the plan include developing new analytical methods and tools for understanding and managing PFAS risk; promulgating Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) under TSCA, which require EPA notification before chemicals are used in new ways that may create human health and ecological concerns; and using enforcement actions to help manage PFAS risk.A Prudent Plan or More Delay?
Release of the plan was generally welcomed by industry. 3M, which introduced PFOS chemicals in the 1940s and participated in the 2000 phaseout, said it agreed with the EPA moving forward with an MCL determination.
“We support regulation rooted in the best-available science and believe that this plan may help prevent a patchwork of state standards that could increase confusion,” said 3M in a statement.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) also voiced support, provided the Action Plan can be implemented quickly and that it is based on the best-available science. “It is also essential that EPA communicate effectively to the public to build confidence, transparency, and credibility in the actions it is taking,” said the ACC.
But environmental groups saw the Action Plan as all show and little action.
“EPA has been promising to address the serious public health threat posed by PFAS chemical exposures for almost twenty years,” Rob Bilott, an attorney who has represented clients with PFAS claims, said in a statement released by the Environmental Working Group. “The last ‘action plan’ was released a decade ago—in 2009. Unfortunately, despite the promising public relations messaging released in connection with EPA’s latest PFAS ‘Action Plan,’ EPA is still not actually taking any concrete action on PFAS. Promising to conduct more studies, investigations and further work toward formal regulatory action at some point in the future is not the same as actually taking formal regulatory action now. It is well past the time for promises and future action plans—it is time for actual action by EPA.”
https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/02/groundbreaking-pfas-plan-floated-by-epa/
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EPA to Host TSCA Inventory Reporting Webinar
Feb 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA is holding a webinar to explain TSCA inventory reporting obligations related to active and inactive substances.
Last week, the EPA released an updated inventory based on the more than 90,000 notifications it received during its ‘inventory reset’ exercise.
The updated list identifies 45,573 substances (53% of the total inventory) that are slated to be designated as ‘inactive’. Once this takes effect, those substances cannot be manufactured, imported or processed without advance notification.
The EPA’s final inventory notification rule, however, contained a provision designating a 90-day period for manufacturers and processors to react to an inactive substance identification before the designation takes effect by filing a forward-looking notification (Notice of Activity Form B). These forms will also be used to notify the agency of future plans to begin resuming use of an ‘inactive’ substance.
On the 13 March webinar, the EPA plans to provide an overview of how to file a NOA Form B and review of the electronic reporting system. Time will also be set aside for questions and answers.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74552/epa-to-host-tsca-inventory-reporting-webinar
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(ACC Mentioned) Debate Over Ethylene Oxide Rages As Some Exposed Grow Sick
Feb 22, 2019 | American Legal News
By Andrew Bare
Residents of a Chicago suburb are demanding answers and calling for greater regulation of the chemical ethylene oxide after many of them contracted cancer and other serious illnesses following decades of exposure to the gas. And now elected officials in the state of Illinois are making the same arguments.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said that the city, Willowbrook, is battling high rates of cancer as a result of toxic air pollution, one of the few communities in the country to merit that dubious distinction. Willowbrook is home to a factory run by Sterigenics, a company that provides sterilization services for a range of companies in the healthcare field.
That factory pumps out ethylene oxide as part of its sterilization work. And while chemical companies have fought hard over the years to muddy the science, it has become apparent that ethylene oxide represents a significant danger to those living and working near it.
What is Ethylene Oxide? Why Is It Dangerous?
As the Chicago Tribune puts it, “Ethylene oxide is a widely used chemical made in the US by some of the industry’s global giants, including Dow Chemical, Huntsman, Shell and Union Carbide.”
Ethylene oxide is often used in the production of other chemicals. However, many companies – including Sterigenics – use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. The chemical is undeniably quite good at killing bacteria and sterilizing equipment.
However, the chemical is also exceptionally dangerous to humans exposed to it. The EPA declared ethylene oxide a human carcinogen in 2000, but industry officials and government regulators have known the dangers of the chemical since the 1970’s at the latest. As the Tribune reports, Illinois regulators wrote in the mid-80’s that residents in Willowbrook would breathe in concentrations of ethylene oxide that were up to 14 times higher than was considered safe at the time.
A Tangled Regulatory History
The chemical industry has followed an old playbook in attempting to discredit the science linking ethylene oxide to human sickness.
In 2016, the EPA issued a report confirming its 2000 findings related to the carcinogenic qualities of ethylene oxide. However, the American Chemistry Council is asking the EPA to re-consider that designation.
The ACC claims that the EPA is ignoring an exculpatory 2006 study that raised questions about the actual danger faced by workers exposed to ethylene oxide. However, the 2006 study was funded by Union Carbide, and unaffiliated research scientists were dismissive of its design.
The EPA’s estimate of toxic air pollution-driven cancer risks, known as the National Air Toxics Assessment, listed seven census tracts surrounding the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook as being in particular danger. This, in an assessment that only listed a grand total of 109 such census tracts in the country.
Fights over ethylene oxide are not new. In 1981, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration received a petition asking OSHA to dramatically reduce the amount of ethylene oxide workers would be exposed to. OSHA, then staffed with strongly anti-government ideologues appointed by the new Ronald Reagan administration, denied the petition. The agency would only back down after years of legal battles.
Bi-Partisan Calls for Change
Illinois’ two Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth (both Democrats), have introduced legislation requiring the EPA to toughen regulatory standards for sterilization companies. They have been joined by three of their fellow Democrats in the state’s House delegation – Dan Lipinski, Bill Foster and Brad Schneider.
And in the state capitol, two prominent DuPage County Republicans – Senator John Curran and Representative Jim Durkin – have introduced a bill requiring sterilization companies in the state to gradually stop the use of ethylene oxide. Finally, the DuPage County state’s attorney has joined with the Illinois attorney general in suing to have the Sterigenics facility shut down as a public nuisance.
Industry officials are not going down without a fight. Sterigenics and other sterilization companies argue that ethylene oxide is by far the best way of sterilizing medical equipment, claiming that their processes have saved “millions of lives” through the prevention of infection.
And the industry dispatched a former director of epidemiology at Union Carbide to tell state legislative committees that the EPA’s assessment of ethylene oxide’s danger was “an abuse of science.”
Americans have every reason to assume the Trump Administration’s EPA will act as it consistently has since the president was inaugurated in 2017 – by adhering to a strict deregulatory agenda and doing the bidding of large polluters. However, Trump Administration officials have insisted they are seriously considering a stricter approach to ethylene oxide. Time will tell if that turns out to be the case.https://americanlegalnews.com/debate-over-ethylene-oxide-rages-as-some-exposed-grow-sick/
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Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water Leave Military Families Reeling
Feb 22, 2019 | New York Times
By Julie Turkewitz
When Army Staff Sergeant Samuel Fortune returned from Iraq, his body battered by war, he assumed he’d be safe.
Then the people around him began to get sick. Neighbors complained of tumors, thyroid problems and debilitating fatigue. Soon, the Colorado health department announced an unusually high number of kidney cancers in the region. Then Mr. Fortune’s wife fell ill.
The military, it turned out, had been leaching toxic chemicals into the water for decades.
Mr. Fortune felt “stabbed in the back,” he said. “We give our lives and our bodies for our country, and our government does not live up to their end of the deal.”
That was 2016. Since then, the Defense Department has admitted that it allowed a firefighting foam to slip into at least 55 drinking water systems at military bases around the globe, sometimes for generations. This exposed tens of thousands of Americans, possibly many more, to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of man-made chemicals known as PFAS that have been linked to cancers, immune suppression and other serious health problems.
Though the presence of the chemicals has been known for years, an announcement last week from the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time promised regulatory action, a significant acknowledgment of the startling scope of the problem that drew outrage from veterans and others living in contaminated communities.
Acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said that the agency would begin the process of potentially limiting the presence of two of the compounds in drinking water, calling this a “pivotal moment in the history of the agency.”
The admission drew some praise, but many said that it was not enough and that millions of people would keep ingesting the substances while a regulatory process plods along. “It should have been called an inaction plan,” said Judith Enck, a former E.P.A. regional administrator appointed by President Obama.
While the military has used the chemicals extensively, it is far from the only entity to do so, and in recent years, companies like DuPont have come under fire for leaching PFAS into water systems.
Though the presence of the chemicals has been known for years, an announcement last week from the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time promised regulatory action, a significant acknowledgment of the startling scope of the problem that drew outrage from veterans and others living in contaminated communities.
Acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said that the agency would begin the process of potentially limiting the presence of two of the compounds in drinking water, calling this a “pivotal moment in the history of the agency.”
The admission drew some praise, but many said that it was not enough and that millions of people would keep ingesting the substances while a regulatory process plods along. “It should have been called an inaction plan,” said Judith Enck, a former E.P.A. regional administrator appointed by President Obama.
While the military has used the chemicals extensively, it is far from the only entity to do so, and in recent years, companies like DuPont have come under fire for leaching PFAS into water systems.
The residents of Fountain, a mountain-flanked suburb of Colorado Springs, were told of the contamination by local officials who had been required by the E.P.A. to test the water for the substances, a step toward possible regulation. Soon dozens of communities from New York to Washington State discovered their drinking water was also polluted with PFAS.
Many people began demanding that state and military officials test their blood for the chemicals, hoping to learn the extent of their presence in their bodies.
The military has started an expensive cleanup effort that has involved shifting entire municipalities to new water sources and assessing toxic plumes that continue to spread for miles.
Maureen Sullivan, the military’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, said the government had moved “aggressively” to tackle the problem, assessing cleanup duties and looking for alternatives to the firefighting foam, a version of which the military still uses.
“I’m proud of what the Department of Defense has done in the past two-plus years,” she said.
But frustration persists. The military never alerted all of the people who drank polluted water, meaning some are still in the dark. When asked how many people were affected by contamination, Ms. Sullivan said she “couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“We’re tracking water sources,” she said, “not people.”
Local and state governments have had to carve millions from their budgets to deal with the problem, much of which may never be paid back. In places like Oscoda, Mich., where the lake now froths with toxic foam, residents are fighting with defense officials over the extent to which the military must clean up the mess.
“When I was in the Air Force, they preached all the time: ‘Do the right thing. Integrity first. Service before self. Excellence in all we do’,” said Aaron Weed, a 22-year veteran who is now Oscoda’s town supervisor. “This is not the Air Force that I was a part of,” he continued. “The side of the Air Force that I am seeing is just disgraceful.”
Blood testing has emerged as a sticking point. Specifically, a growing movement of veterans and others, united in advocacy groups with names like Fountain Valley Clean Water Coalition and Need Our Water, are asking the military test their blood for the chemicals, hoping to bring results to their doctors or use them in lawsuits.
Their requests have been denied, and the military says that too little is known about the substances to make the results useful. Instead, it will pay for the C.D.C. to start yearslong population-based health studies in some communities.
They don’t want to know,” said Cindi Ashbeck, 56, a veteran who worked out of Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan. “It’s not being addressed, because you open that can of worms, and you’ve got an Agent Orange thing on your hands.”
PFAS are a broad class of chemicals developed in the 1940s. Because they repel grease and water, they have been used across industries for decades, often to prevent stains. They are placed in a dizzying array of products: food packaging, nonstick pans, clothing, furniture. They are also used to extinguish fires where petroleum-based explosions pose a danger.
But the chemicals move quickly through the earth and into water, where they persist indefinitely. Some scientists have deemed them “forever chemicals,” and over the last two decades, a growing body of research has shown that the compounds meant to help us are likely hurting us.
The most comprehensive data, based on a study of 69,000 people living near in a West Virginia DuPont plant, say exposure is associated with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and ulcerative colitis, among other problems, while animal studies show delays in development.
Mr. Fortune grew up in Sheridan, Wyo., where joining the Army was the way to avoid the coal mine or a job at Wal-Mart, he said.
He enlisted in 1998, serving two tours in Iraq as a mechanic. On his final visit, while he was waiting on the airfield for his ride out of the country, enemy mortar threw him against a wall meant to fortify the area, damaging his back and tearing all the tendons in his shoulders. He had to be rebuilt, with metal. “Five rods, two plates, nine screws, 10 nails, 20 staples,” he said. “I make an X-ray glow.”
The Army then stationed Mr. Fortune in Colorado Springs, home to five military bases, placing him, his wife, Bianca, and their children, Bryan and Sophia, in the center of a contamination zone.
He learned about the contamination in 2016. The military said it had come from the Peterson Air Force Base nearby. His family had been drinking the water for a decade.
Soon, Ms. Fortune was in and out of the hospital, and Mr. Fortune became increasingly concerned that the cause was the chemicals. His wife told doctors of a debilitating pain in her right abdomen, intense joint pain and exhaustion. Her blood cell counts rose and fell like yo-yos. Some doctors thought it was Lyme disease; others weren’t so sure.
Like many around the country, Mr. Fortune has joined one of several lawsuits against the companies that made the firefighting foam, including 3M and Tyco Fire Products. Others, including the City of Newburgh, N.Y., are suing the military directly.
But the lawyer in the Colorado case, David McDivitt, said he thought that would be too difficult because “it’s tough to sue the federal government.”
For years, there were signs that the chemicals in the military’s firefighting foam were dangerous. Defense Department studies dating to the 1970s indicated that the substances were harmful to laboratory animals, according to an investigation by The Colorado Springs Gazette, and the Army Corps of Engineers told Fort Carson to stop using the foam in 1991, calling it “harmful to the environment.”
In 2000, under pressure from the E.P.A., 3M phased out production of some of the compounds, announcing that they could “could potentially pose a risk to human health.” Five years later, the E.P.A. declared that another compound was “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”
But the military has said it continued to use firefighting foams containing the compounds because companies have continued to produce them and the E.P.A. doesn’t regulate them.
Industry officials have said they are following E.P.A. rules, while the E.P.A. has said it is still exploring regulation.
“You know the Shaggy song, ‘It wasn’t me’?’” said Mr. McDivitt. “It’s like that.”
In Fountain, the Defense Department has installed short-term water filters and is building treatment plants meant to fix the problem in the long-term. This has won the praise of some local officials. “We’re pleased with where we’re at,” said Curtis Mitchell of the Fountain water district.
Not everyone agrees.
After news broke of the contamination in Fountain and nearby communities, the Colorado health department said that while the area had a higher-than-normal rate of several cancers, that might be explained by high rates of obesity and smoking in the region.
Steve Patterson, 62, whose family had been drinking fouled water for decades, is skeptical of that explanation. A dozen of his relatives have died of cancer, some genetically related to him, some not.
Mr. Fortune recently began asking the military to test his wife’s blood for the substances.
When officials declined, Mr. Fortune persisted, he said, and medical staff called him aggressive. “I’m not aggressive, I’m angry,” he said. “If you’re being poisoned, you want to know what it is, what it’s doing to you, and what you can do to stop it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/military-water-toxic-chemicals.html
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More Defense Sites Targeted for Perfluorinated Chemical Study (1)
Feb 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A federal agency wants to find out more about the health effects of a family of ubiquitous chemicals used by the military to fight fires by studying specific communities near military properties.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry announced Feb. 21 it has chosen eight locations where it will examine residents’ exposure to poly- and perfluorinated compounds.
The contaminants, also known as PFAS, have been part of an effective tool for the military to put out fires. For years, trainees sprayed firefighting foam that contained these chemicals on military bases, where they would seep into the ground and into aquifers. Many civilian firefighters also use foam containing PFAS.
The contaminants also have been used to manufacture nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer and industrial products.
The eight locations to be studied are:
· Berkeley County, W.Va., near Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base;
· El Paso County, Colo., near Peterson Air Force Base;
· Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, near Eielson Air Force Base;
· Hampden County, Mass., near Barnes Air National Guard Base;
· Lubbock County, Texas, near Reese Technology Center;
· Orange County, N.Y., near Stewart Air National Guard Base;
· New Castle County, Del., near New Castle Air National Guard Base; and
· Spokane County, Wash., near Fairchild Air Force Base.
The agency previously studied two sites—communities near military properties in Pennsylvania and New York—in a pilot project to help frame the eight-site study.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Feb. 14 that it will pursue tighter regulations on a specific pair of toxic firefighting foam chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, that are among the PFAS contaminants, and have caused environmental problems on numerous military bases across the country.
The chemicals could cause developmental effects to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver tissue damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.
“Assessing the extent of the harm that’s occurred will help to bring resources for removal of PFAS from drinking water, clean up of polluted sites, and remediation by responsible parties of the cascade of contamination problems, in many cases caused by the Department of Defense,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said in an email.
“But the slow pace and relatively meager funding to address these huge water problems is simply not enough, especially considering many people are still drinking water contaminated with dangerous levels of PFAS and very little is being done to abate the pollution,” she said.
Her organization focuses on protecting the health of the Delaware River watershed, which includes parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry expects to start the assessments in 2019 and finish them in 2020.
(Adds comment from Delaware Riverkeeper Network beginning in the ninth paragraph.)
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/more-defense-sites-targeted-for-perfluorinated-chemical-study-1
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ATSDR Selects Sites for PFAS Exposure Studies
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
Federal health agencies have announced the sites of eight additional exposure assessments it will undertake -- all near military bases -- to aid communities in understanding their level of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and to feed into a larger national health study.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) announced the communities -- located near Defense Department (DOD) facilities in West Virginia, Colorado, Alaska, Massachusetts, Texas, New York, Delaware and Washington -- in a Feb. 21 statement.
ATSDR's assessments will randomly select participants in the eight communities, checking their levels of PFAS levels through blood and urine samples, the agencies say.
The assessments will begin this year and last through 2020 and will “lay the groundwork” for ATSDR's future multi-site health study that will examine the interaction between PFAS exposure and health outcomes, the release says.
“The assessments will generate information about exposure to PFAS in affected communities and will extend beyond the communities identified, as the lessons learned can also be applied to communities facing similar PFAS drinking water exposures,” ATSDR Director Patrick Breysse says in the release. “This will serve as a foundation for future studies evaluating the impact of PFAS exposure on human health.”
The exposure assessments and multi-site health study are being funded through money authorized under defense legislation; known or suspected releases of PFAS have been identified at hundreds of Defense Department installations, where the military often used firefighting foam containing PFAS.
The eight locations identified by the two agencies are: Berkeley County, WV, near Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base; El Paso County, CO, near Peterson Air Force Base; Fairbanks North Star Borough, AK, near Eielson Air Force Base; Hampden County, MA, near Barnes Air National Guard Base; Lubbock County, TX, near Reese Technology Center; Orange County, NY, near Stewart Air National Guard Base; New Castle County, DE, near New Castle Air National Guard Base; and Spokane County, WA, near Fairchild Air Force Base.
This will build on work the CDC and ATSDR already began through a separate grant program to assess exposures in communities in Bucks and Montgomery counties, PA, and in Westhampton, NY, the release says.
The main goal of the new assessments is to offer information to communities about the levels of PFAS in their bodies, it says. These results will “help communities better understand the extent of their environmental exposures to PFAS,” it says. The statistically-based sampling will also provide scientists with data about community-level exposure, it says.
PFAS, a class of over 4,000 toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals, have been used for a variety of consumer and industrial uses, and have prompted growing concern around the country due to their presence in drinking water systems and links to adverse health impacts at low levels.
“Some studies have shown that PFAS exposure may affect growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children; lower a woman's chance of getting pregnant; interfere with the body's natural hormones; increase cholesterol levels; affect the immune system; and increase the risk of cancer,” the CDC/ATSDR press release says.
Last week, EPA unveiled a long-awaited action plan to address the chemicals that detailed plans to consider several regulatory actions but stopped short of firm commitments.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/atsdr-selects-sites-pfas-exposure-studies
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Agencies Pick 8 Sites for PFAS Exposure Study
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services this year will start studying people in eight sites for exposure to toxic chemicals found in drinking water.
"The assessments will generate information about exposure to PFAS in affected communities and will extend beyond the communities identified, as the lessons learned can also be applied to communities facing similar PFAS drinking water exposures," said Patrick Breysse, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR.
The goal of the studies is "to provide information to communities about levels of PFAS in their bodies," the agencies said in a press release.
The eight sites announced today are all close to current or former military bases. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — linked to cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease and developmental problems in children — have been used in firefighting foams on bases.
An ATSDR study previously found that "minimum risk levels" for several types of PFAS should be seven to 10 times lower than EPA's health advisories of 70 parts per trillion (Greenwire, June 20, 2018).
Assessments will begin this year and last through 2020. The studies will lay the groundwork for future health studies examining PFAS exposure and health outcomes, the agencies said.
Community members will be randomly selected to participate in the assessments. Study methods will be based on two pilot programs in Pennsylvania and New York.
The research will include people from:
· Berkeley County, W.Va., near Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base.
· El Paso County, Colo., near Peterson Air Force Base.
· Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, near Eielson Air Force Base.
· Hampden County, Mass., near Barnes Air National Guard Base.
· Lubbock County, Texas, near Reese Technology Center.
· Orange County, N.Y., near Stewart Air National Guard Base.
· New Castle County, Del., near New Castle Air National Guard Base.
· Spokane County, Wash., near Fairchild Air Force Base.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2019/02/21/stories/1060121863
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FDA Proposes Changes to US Sunscreen Rules
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt Erickson
The US Food and Drug Administration is seeking data to show that certain ingredients found in sunscreens sold in the US are safe and effective. The agency is also looking to expand the range of ultraviolet light that sunscreens block.
Under a rule proposed by the FDA on Feb. 21, manufacturers would need to provide FDA with safety data if their products contain any of the following 12 chemicals: avobenzone, cinoxate, dioxybenzone, ensulizole, homosalate, meradimate, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, oxybenzone, padimate O, and sulisobenzone.
“This request for additional data does not mean that FDA has concluded that these 12 ingredients are unsafe,” says Theresa Michele, director of FDA’s Division of Nonprescription Drug Products. Rather, the agency is requesting such data so that it can evaluate whether the chemicals are generally recognized as safe and effective (GRASE).
The FDA needs such data so it can finalize what is called an over-the-counter (OTC) monograph for sunscreens by Nov. 29, the deadline set by the 2014 Sunscreen Innovation Act. The monograph is a set of standards under which certain OTC drugs can be marketed without new drug applications because they are GRASE.
The agency is proposing to categorize zinc oxide and titanium dioxide GRASE without additional data.
The FDA is also proposing to deem para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and trolamine salicylate—two chemicals no longer used in sunscreens sold in the US—not GRASE because of safety concerns.
The FDA also investigated various forms of sunscreens. The agency is proposing to classify oils, lotions, creams, gels, butters, pastes, ointments and sticks GRASE. Sunscreen sprays would also be GRASE but with particle-size restrictions to minimize health risks from inhalation. The agency is asking for additional data for powders to evaluate whether such products can be considered GRASE. The FDA is proposing that wipes, towelettes, body washes, and shampoos are not GRASE.
One of the most significant parts of the proposed rule is a provision that would require broad-spectrum UVA and UVB protection in sunscreens with a sun-protection factor (SPF) of 15 or higher, Michele says. SPF indicates the ability of a sunscreen to block UVB rays, which have wavelengths of 400–320 nm. The FDA wants to ensure that consumers are also protected against UVA rays, which have wavelengths of 320–290 nm and penetrate the skin more deeply than UVB. The agency is proposing to require UVA protection in sunscreens to increase proportionally with increasing SPF.
The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, called the FDA’s proposal a big win for public health. “For a decade, EWG has worked to raise concerns about sunscreens with oxybenzone, which is found in nearly all Americans, detected in breast milk and potentially causing endocrine disruption,” David Andrews, a senior scientist at EWG, said in a statement. “If the FDA’s proposed changes are adopted, American consumers should be able to navigate the sunscreen aisle and choose better and more effective products for themselves and their families.”
FDA’S PROPOSED SUNSCREEN RULES AT A GLANCE
Generally recognized as safe and effective (GRASE):
Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide
Sprays, oils, lotions, creams, gels, butters, pastes, ointments, and sticks
Not GRASE:
Para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and trolamine salicylate; products that combine sunscreens with insect repellents
Wipes, towelettes, body washes, and shampoos
Insufficient data to determine GRASE status:
Avobenzone, cinoxate, dioxybenzone, ensulizole, homosalate, meradimate, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, oxybenzone, padimate O, and sulisobenzone
Powders
For SPF 15 and higher, broad spectrum UVA protection required.
https://cen.acs.org/policy/regulation/FDA-proposes-changes-US-sunscreen/97/web/2019/02
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FDA Says Mineral Sunscreens Are Safe, Chemical Sunscreens Need More Research
Feb 22, 2019 | ABC News
By Stephanie Ebbs
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working on a rule that could change the way consumers think about which ingredients in sunscreen are considered safe, saying they believe now that mineral sunscreens are safe but products that use chemicals need more research.
The FDA announced Thursday that it has proposed a rule to declare mineral sunscreen ingredients as safe, specifically zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. The agency said 12 other chemicals commonly used in sunscreens need more research to determine if they're can be officially listed as safe, including oxybenzone and octinoxate.
Two other chemicals will be declared unsafe, but an FDA spokeswoman said those two aren't used anymore in the U.S.
An agency spokesperson emphasized that the FDA is not concluding the 12 common chemical ingredients are unsafe, but that they need more information to decide. Products with those ingredients will still be available while FDA works with the manufacturers to answer their questions.
The Environmental Working Group, an outspoken advocacy group that works to eliminate dangerous chemicals in products, says the rule is a "major win for public health," and pursues changes they've been pushing since they started looking at sunscreen 10 years ago. The group only recommends mineral sunscreens because they say chemicals used in sunscreen can be absorbed into the skin and disrupt hormones, or be inhaled when people use spray sunscreen.
"The biggest takeaway from this for us, what is so gratifying, is finally we're seeing an indication that 14 of the 16 ingredients in sunscreens need further study or are not considered as safe," said Nneke Leiba, director of EWG's healthy living science program.
Leiba said the FDA proposal would put U.S. regulations more in line with European rules about sunscreen, which she said wouldn't allow 90 percent of the products available in the U.S.
Consumers would see several other changes when they go to buy sunscreen if the rule is finalized, including active ingredients listed on the front of sunscreen bottles and alerts on skin cancer, aging and sun exposure on packaging, specifically for products that have not been shown to help prevent skin cancer. Products that combine sunscreen with insect repellent would no longer be considered safe
Products that combine sunscreen and insect repellent would also be listed as unsafe and all sunscreens above 15 SPF would have to include protection against both kinds of UV radiation, called broad spectrum protection.
The FDA emphasized in the announcement that consumers should continue to use sunscreen and protect themselves from the sun as the agency considers more rules.
The FDA's rule will be posted for public comment next week.
As for other sunscreens, it could take months or even years to determine if any chemical ingredients will be listed as unsafe. If the FDA isn't satisfied with the information on those ingredients by the end of the process, the products could have to be reformulated or could be pulled from the market.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fda-mineral-sunscreens-safe-chemical-sunscreens-research/story?id=61217564
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EPA Knows This Pesticide Is Dangerous, so Why Did It Reverse the Ban?
Feb 22, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Marc L. Lame
The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to overturn a court-ordered deadline to ban chlorpyrifos, abdicating its mission to protect human health and the environment.
In 2016, with over 30 years of data, the Obama administration ordered a ban on chlorpyrifos. But under the Trump administration, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed that decision. Last August, a court ordered the EPA to finalize a ban by early October. Prior to that deadline, the EPA filed its appeal allowing the continued use of a pesticide its own scientists said was too dangerous for children and endangered species to be exposed to.
Simultaneously, the head of the Office of Children’s Health Protection whose office published a report on the adverse effects of chlorpyrifos was put on leave, the chief of EPA’s research office was replaced with a Koch industry engineer, and plans to eliminate the Office of the Science Advisor were announced — an apparent “scorched earth” approach to silence internal efforts to conduct and report sound science.
As an entomologist who for two decades implemented EPA programs protecting children from pests and pesticides and officially advised EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs from 2010 to 2017, I was alarmed when Pruitt decided to keep chlorpyrifos on the market.
I conducted field trials on cotton with Dow's agricultural formulation of chlorpyrifos, Lorsban, in the mid-1980s as an entomologist with the University of Arizona. Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate — a class of insecticides that inhibit nerve function.
At the time, chlorpyrifos was probably the most used insecticide in American farms and homes, typically sprayed in fields and topically applied to livestock or sprayed around homes and used in baits, pet shampoos and collars. As an EPA registered “safe” product it was known as Raid by homeowners, Dursban by exterminators, or Lorsban in the fields.
But scientific knowledge advances, and in the 1990s numerous studies demonstrated the harmful and ubiquitous effect of organophosphates on children, that it moved through our rivers and negatively impacted endangered species. Alarmingly, it appeared that this nerve agent bonded well with soft plastic, the type used to make toys that young children love to put in their mouths. By 2000 Dow discontinued use of Dursban where children live, visit and play.
The American Academy of Pediatrics disputed the use of chlorpyrifos in the early 2000s and in 2012 directly implicated pesticides and negative outcomes including brain anomalies in children. So why was chlorpyrifos not banned prior to 2016?
Unquestionably, the major reason was lobbying by the pesticide trade groups and agricultural producers. As a Federal Advisory Committee Act member, I watched interest groups coordinate with politically powerful groups to oppose any regulatory restriction or “right to know” regarding pesticides. They lobbied that chlorpyrifos provided a cheap and reliable tool for farmers and that its impact on “non-target organisms” was not a major concern.
In late 2017, opposing EPA’s own science, Pruitt rejected the ban with the assistance of newly hired decision-makers formerly with industry trade groups and appointed pro-pesticide advisors.
Over my 40 years practicing pest management, I witnessed the influence of pesticide manufacturers and grower associations over government agencies and universities. The two most common phrases used by lobbyists are “there is not enough ‘sound’ science to take action” and “the American farmer cannot afford to lose this valuable tool.” As an advisor to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, I heard similar comments delivered to our pesticide regulators during public forums. The pressure for the continued use of chlorpyrifos became particularly insistent in 2017, remarkably not only from lobbyists but also from the USDA and its state agricultural agency counterparts.
Good farmers have many tools for protecting their crops including alternative pesticides. They now can subvert the lifecyles of pests, preserve the natural enemies of pests and make use of other scientific innovations in an Integrated Pest Management approach.
Most American farmers are willing to play by the rules. They are members of our communities and care about the health of their children. The best of them know they do not have to rely on products that harm children and endangered species. They know the price they pay is environmental health risk and the cost of pesticide resistance.
Delaying the ban on chlorpyrifos and stifling the public’s scientists is unethical and dangerous. Upholding the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court siding with EPA's own scientists will force the agency to adhere to its mission. Maintaining chlorpyrifos is an unnecessary subsidy for industry and harmful for humans and the environment.
Marc L. Lame is an entomologist and clinical professor at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/431041-epa-knows-this-pesticide-is-dangerous-so-why-did-it-reverse-the
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Feb 20, 2019 | South China Morning Post
By Cissy Zhou and Finbarr Bermingham
US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has thrown a spanner in the works of two Chinese chemicals companies spending billions of dollars building factories in the United States.
Yuhuang Chemical was started in 1994 by a village branch of the Chinese Communist Party in Shandong Province, but in 2014, it raised some eyebrows when it announced plans to build a US$1.85 billion methanol plant in St James Parish, Louisiana.
Last year, Wanhua Chemical, a listed company also from Shandong, followed suit with plans to build a US$1.25 billion plant in the same town in Louisiana, which has a population of just 21,367.
Both companies were attracted to this sleepy town in the Deep South because of its proximity to America’s booming shale gas industry, which gives chemicals companies cheap access to the components they need to make their products.
In 2017, the US produced 71.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, more than any other country in the world, with large swathes of that coming from newly-discovered shale gas, buried deep underground within shale rock formations.
Chemicals companies from China, Japan and Taiwan have been flocking to the US’s shale hubs, drawing up manufacturing blueprints that would allow them to tap the abundant and cheap energy stores.
In April last year, Taiwanese company Formosa Petrochemical Corporation unveiled plans for a massive US$9.4 billion chemical manufacturing plant, also in St James Parish, employing 1,200 workers.
This was one of 333 announced chemicals manufacturing projects, as of September 2018.
“The US chemicals industry is in a renaissance period, where we’re growing, adding more chemical manufacturing capacity to the tune of US$202 billion. There are plans to build all over the US, particularly the Gulf coast, Appalachia, Pennsylvania, much of that investment is foreign,” said Edward Brzytwa, director for international trade at the American Chemistry Council.
The added bonus for foreign companies is that, theoretically, if you are making and selling in the US, you stand a better chance of avoiding tariffs placed on imports.
But not if you are selling back to China, which is what Yuhuang and Wanhua planned to do, and the companies are now being hit on multiple fronts by the tit-for-tat tariff war between the US and China.
In a 2014 statement, Yuhuang made clear that most of the methanol it made in Louisiana would be exported to Shandong to produce downstream Chinese chemicals, with just 20 to 30 per cent to be sold on North American markets.
“These companies will sell their products back to China, to downstream companies or to process them into relatively more advanced products, then export to other countries with added value,” said Wang Haibin, an analyst at Sinochem, the Chinese state-owned chemicals giant.
China, which makes 40 per cent of the world’s chemicals, has imposed tariffs on most chemicals imported from the US, Wang said, “which will definitely affect their plans”.
In addition, Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium, imposed in March last year, have had a serious impact on Wanhua’s plans to build their St James Parish factory.
The tariffs will add “tens of millions” of US dollars to construction costs, the company’s US general manufacturing site manager James Newport told US media, since Wanhua was using steel imported from China to build key parts of the plant.
To compound matters, Trump ordered a new round of tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods in September 2018, including a large number of chemicals products.
Among them was methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), a chemical used in the manufacturing of polyurethane, a critical component of spray foam insulation for residential and commercial buildings.
China is the world’s biggest MDI exporter and Wanhua holds around 15 per cent of the US market. It imports its MDI from China and the tariffs led it to threaten to scrap its plans for Louisiana.
In a public hearing in August, Newport said that “imposing additional duties on MDI and aniline [a key component of MDI] may jeopardise Wanhua’s plans to invest in the new facility in Louisiana”.
“Wanhua’s expansion plans depend on having enough MDI in the US to justify the potential new plant. As the costs to acquire MDI from China increase, downstream users will face higher prices and short supply because local capacity cannot meet demand, disproportionately harming small and medium-sized businesses and consumers,” Newport said in his five-minute testimony.
He requested that the Trump administration remove MDI and aniline from the list of products currently subject to 10 per cent tariffs, rising to 25 per cent on March 2 should negotiators not reach an agreement that would end the trade war.
Despite Wanhua reporting a drop of 56 per cent in profits for the first nine months of 2018, the company has not followed through with the threat.
A company statement in November said it would move forward with construction of the plant, which is due to be finished in 2021.
Wanhua Chemical declined to comment when contacted by the South China Morning Post.
Yuhuang, meanwhile, is due to finish building its factory in mid-2020 and is also wrangling with US tariffs on Chinese exports.
A company official said that they had not exported to the US for years due to a combination of capacity issues as they have enough demand at home and trade tariffs.
“Our biggest market is the domestic market. We export some of products to Southeast Asia because there is no tariff,” said a member of the company’s international trade department, who declined to give her name.
She said she was still optimistic about the prospect of their US production facility.
“The policies are likely to ease this year,” she added, hoping that the trade war does not persist.
For representatives of the US chemicals industry, the tariffs are viewed as problematic across the board.
“The 10 per cent is very concerning for a number of our member companies. Many of them are importing from China, not just to sell chemicals inside the US, but to make chemicals in the US. They’re making feedstocks and raw materials, which they make into various chemicals. They have buyers in the US that rely on these,” said Brzytwa.
He added that while many of the American Chemistry Council members are appreciative of the need for reform in China on issues such as intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer, “on the other hand the tariffs are making our lives more difficult”.
An American Chemistry Council report found that 1,517 chemicals and plastics products valued at US$15.4 billion are exposed to the tariffs.
Meanwhile, retaliatory tariffs on US$11 billion of US chemicals and plastics exports to China “have put nearly 55,000 American jobs and US$18 billion in domestic activity at risk as a result of reduced demand for those products”, the report said.
“Our members are very worried about that. The more tariffs you apply, the more complex it gets. Some may not follow through on investment, they may not hire. The chill on the investment is something we worry about, particularly if the trade war expands,” Brzytwa added.
US-China trade war sees China buy dramatically fewer US goods
Brzytwa said that companies are afraid they will have to spend more on customs and tariff compliance than on innovation, which would be a hindrance to the chemicals industry, but also the US economy.
He added that members are worried that US policy could escalate and turn into trade wars with other countries.
In China, meanwhile profits in the chemicals industry are falling, according to data from Industrial Securities, a Fujian-based financial company, which showed “slight month-on-month decline” for basic chemicals manufacturers’ profits at the end of last year.
There are fears that the relative chemicals downturn could feed into the wider slowdown and job losses being felt across China’s economy.
“The imposed tariffs will not only affect Chinese exports of basic chemicals, but also chemical products in broader terms such as chemical fibre clothes and shoes, which would have a further impact on employment,” said Sinochem analyst Wang.
https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2186787/sleepy-louisiana-town-two-chinese-chemicals-firms-are-being
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Chatterjee Advocates Patience on Pipeline Cybersecurity
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro and Jeremy Dillon
The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants to give federal agencies and industry time to complete their "dialogue" on cybersecurity for natural gas pipelines before considering mandatory standards.
FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee's said yesterday following the commission's monthly meeting that his wait-and-see approach reflects confidence in the Transportation Security Administration's recently expressed interest to "put resources into this and have a heightened focus."
TSA is the lead federal agency with jurisdiction over interstate natural gas pipelines.
Chatterjee is not backing away from possible mandatory standards, but the former senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted, "There's been legislation on mandatory standards that's been out in the Senate for a couple of years now, but we haven't seen much action on it.
"Mandatory is one way to address the issue but not necessarily the only way," he said.
Last week, Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee pressed Chatterjee on why the interstate power grid is governed by enforceable cybersecurity rules while the nation's gas pipelines operate under voluntary standards and oversight by a small office in the TSA.
"It's that, let's work at good faith with these actors who are putting a lot of work into this and see where the dialogue goes from there," he added.
He said he had not been briefed by intelligence agencies on a recent assertion by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that the Chinese were capable of cyberattacks that could disable a pipeline for weeks.
Chatterjee declined to say how long the dialogue with industry should be. But the issue would likely come up at a technical conference FERC is hosting March 28 on cyber and physical security practices used to protect energy infrastructure.
CO2 concerns divide commission
The climate implications of FERC's pipeline review process re-emerged during the meeting, as commissioners commented on the outcome of a recent federal court decision to uphold the agency's certification of the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Calling it a "consequential" finding, Chatterjee dubbed the court's decision an endorsement of "the strength of our process."
"While we don't typically discuss court decisions on FERC cases, our orders, court filings and decisions typically speak for themselves," Chatterjee said. "I raise the Mountain Valley case because I believe the decision stands as a testament to the dedication and skill of commission staff."
FERC's climate assessment adequacy was one of 16 contentions that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out Tuesday as part of an environmental group lawsuit against FERC's certification.
The court noted the climate considerations conducted by FERC on downstream effects were adequate for the National Environmental Policy Act review, despite the green groups' call for more intense social cost of carbon calculations (Energywire, Feb. 20).
Similar greenhouse gas concerns have also plagued the approval of liquefied natural gas terminal certificates. Those LNG terminal reviews have also faced other review concerns, although Chatterjee suggested the commission may find common ground on how to better streamline those approvals.
"It's been a priority of mine to streamline our LNG terminal application review process," Chatterjee said.
"I'm pleased to say FERC has made tremendous strides towards doing so, and I'm exceedingly optimistic that in the coming days, those efforts will yield significant results," he added.
Democratic Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur argued that the court embraced the greenhouse gas process used by the commission at the time. That process may be up for debate by FERC in the coming months.
"I also wanted to note that in this week's D.C. Circuit order on the Mountain Valley pipeline, the court did note approvingly the policy that the commission had at that time — since changed — to disclose downstream indirect emissions in our pipeline orders," LaFleur said. "I will continue to advocate for that."
Those downstream greenhouse gas emission calculations also arose as the commission approved certificates for two pipeline development projects in Maine and Minnesota on a 3-1 vote, with Democratic Commissioner Richard Glick the dissenting vote.
LaFleur voted to approve the projects with a separate concurring statement that noted her calculations of the two projects' downstream climate effects.
Those calculations, especially in the case of the Minnesota pipeline, which has the potential to limit the use of coal in the state, found the projects were in the public interest, she said.
Glick, however, determined that the lack of downstream calculations in the review made it difficult for him to endorse the projects even though he sees significant benefits to one of the projects.
"I want to point out if we were to undertake analysis that I believe the Natural Gas Act requires, it would be easier for the commission to reach consensus on certain certificate applications," Glick said.
"This is an excellent example, [the pipeline order] proposing to increase capacity into New England," Glick added. "But despite the fact there are significant benefits, the commission's approach severely limiting consideration of greenhouse gas emissions cuts the commission's public interest determination under the Natural Gas Act short. Leaving me no choice but to dissent."
Commissioner Bernard McNamee did not weigh in on the greenhouse gas issue.
Projects approved
One of the projects approved by FERC yesterday gave the go-ahead for the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System and Maritimes & Northeast pipeline plan to implement Phase III of the Portland XPress Project.
The project would boost capacity in the region by 0.2 billion cubic feet a day without new underground construction across the three phases of the project.
The second project for Northern Natural Gas Co.'s Northern Lights 2019 and Rochester Expansion natural gas pipeline projects across Minnesota would enable 26.5 miles of new lateral pipelines, 4.7 miles of looping for its existing pipeline, additional compression and the installation of various connected facilities, FERC said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/22/stories/1060122013
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FERC Approves 1st LNG Plant in 2 Years After Resolving Deadlock
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern and Stephen Cunningham
The top U.S. energy regulator gave the first authorization in two years for a new liquefied natural gas export terminal, breaking an impasse that had threatened to bring approvals to a standstill.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cleared Venture Global LNG Inc.’s proposed $5 billion Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana in an order late Feb. 21, according to a statement from the agency.
The project is one of several competing to be part of a second wave of LNG terminals sending U.S. shale gas overseas.
“The agreement that we struck today to break the dam open on this tricky issue gives me reason for optimism that we’ll be able to move expeditiously on these other applications,” Chairman Neil Chatterjee said in an interview.
Speculation of partisan divisions at the agency had been fueled when Venture Global’s project was struck from the agenda of the agency’s December meeting.
The commission has been split, 2-2, between Democrats and Republicans since Kevin McIntyre, a commissioner and former chairman, died in January.
Democratic Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur voted to approve the project, while her colleague, Rich Glick, dissented from the Feb. 21 order.
The compromise put forward to break the deadlock was to calculate the direct annual greenhouse gas emissions that the Venture Global project would emit as a percentage of total U.S. emissions.
LaFleur, who has repeatedly called for more analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in the agency’s environmental reviews, said in a Twitter post that the approval showed that the agency can take action when it’s willing to compromise.
“The commission now has a path forward and a precedent on other, larger LNG certificates,” said Mike McKenna, a Republican energy strategist. “That is really important.”
Venture Global has 20-year contracts with companies including Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc for 80 percent of Calcasieu Pass’s export capacity.
The facility is designed to produce about 10 million tons a year, although it could boost output to 12 million tons a year at optimal operating conditions, according to FERC. The company is aiming to make a final investment decision this year, it said on its website.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/ferc-approves-1st-lng-plant-in-2-years-after-resolving-deadlock
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U.S. LNG May Have a New Path to Asia
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Japanese investors and the government here are steadily forging new markets for U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to Southeast Asia.
By doing so, they are expanding the field of competition for the fossil fuel. Japan today is the world's largest LNG importer, taking in about 80 million metric tons per year.
But with demand flat or even poised to decline domestically, Japan's traditional LNG buyers are transforming themselves into some of Asia's key LNG middlemen, using their experience and strong financial backing to acquire LNG and resell it to emerging markets.
Future business success in LNG trading requires future customers, so Japan is fostering them by helping Asian economies build importing infrastructure and the back offices necessary to facilitate new markets. Executives and government officials described their initiative to an industry audience at the annual CWC Japan LNG & Gas Summit.
Kentaro Horisaka, a general manager at Tokyo Gas Co., said his company has moved swiftly to establish offices in Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), the Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok) and elsewhere in the region. These nations are seen eventually emulating China's example, shifting away from oil and coal to gas for power generation. They'll require LNG to accomplish this as the region's own natural gas production is on a decline curve.
"We are primarily focused on Southeast Asia as a location for future demand creation," said Horisaka.
He and others credit the advent of large volumes of U.S. LNG for helping open up new trading opportunities. U.S. suppliers sell their liquefaction services and are unconcerned about where the cargoes end up, breaking the decadeslong model of inflexible contracting that featured strict destination clauses.
Rising volumes of U.S. LNG exports are also helping to keep LNG prices down and boosting Japan's economy. The nation has increased its reliance on LNG imports since shuttering dozens of nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011.
Market watchers are anticipating a flood of new LNG supplies entering the market this year. By increasing the number of destinations and customers, Japanese companies are betting that the additional competition will actual help prevent price spikes in the future by moving LNG trading closer to the way crude oil is traded globally, in an open and transparent manner.
Last year, the government's Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. (JOGMEC) launched an international LNG training academy, inviting the citizens of developing Asia to Tokyo to essentially learn how to build and run national LNG receiving, regasification and distribution systems for power generation and other applications (Energywire, June 21, 2018).
JOGMEC Executive Vice President Yuki Sadamitsu said the program hosted 70 students from nine nations. JOGMEC sees the training as mutually beneficial, offering countries greater energy security to spur their economic development, while opening up new business opportunities for Japanese companies overseas.
The LNG training sessions will be expanded this year, he said, and will now include more tailor-made programs to better suit the specific needs of individual countries.
"There will be lots of know-how that Japanese companies can give," said Sadamitsu. He sees great potential for Japan's experience with modular and smaller-scale LNG technologies, noting that the Philippines and Indonesia in particular "have a strong interest in applying small-scale technologies to their domestic markets."
Many expect that China will be the most promising market for expanding LNG sales and that it will one day overtake Japan as the world's largest LNG destination. But the industry is waking up to the potential emerging in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. LNG market observers are watching Japan's efforts to build new importing and trading infrastructure in the region.
The Japanese initiative has grabbed the attention of the U.S. government, as well.
Joseph Uddo, a deputy assistant secretary for innovation and market development at the U.S. Department of Energy, attended this week's LNG gathering in Tokyo. He said DOE is well aware of Tokyo's efforts and that the United States would like to lend a hand if possible.
"The United States is very interested in partnering on that effort," Uddo said to the attendees.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/22/stories/1060121669
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Trump's Atlantic Oil Search Runs Aground in S.C.
Feb 22, 2019 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By Carlyann Edwards
More than half the registered voters in Republican-controlled South Carolina supported Donald Trump in a poll last month, but there's at least one area where state leaders are ditching the president to join rival Democrats: a fight against oil exploration off the Atlantic coast.
While no new drilling has been approved in U.S. Atlantic waters, the Interior Department said in 2014 the region may contain 90 billion barrels of oil and 300 trillion cubic feet of gas. The Trump administration, eager to promote new sources of domestic energy, cleared the way in November for an essential first step to future drilling: geologic surveys using sound waves to pinpoint potential oil deposits. Permits could be issued as soon as next month.
That's sparked a legal challenge by South Carolina and nine other Atlantic states, some coastal cities and environmental groups, to block a survey method companies have used for decades to scout petroleum reserves all over the world. The plaintiffs say the sound waves are unsafe for marine life, but their goal is broader — to prevent a new energy province off the East Coast that could threaten local tourism and fishing industries.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, is taking "any and all actions necessary to ensure that we will never see any seismic testing or drilling" in the state's coastal waters, Henry McMaster, the Republican governor and one of Trump's early supporters, said in a statement. McMaster took office in 2017 when Nikki Haley was appointed by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Last month, Wilson joined a lawsuit with states run by Democratic governors and attorneys general, including Maine, Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Maryland's Republican governor also is part of the opposition to seismic surveys. The suit was originally filed in December by several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, and dozens of coastal cities, such as Beaufort, South Carolina
.'Nonpartisan'
"I've never seen an issue be as bipartisan or nonpartisan as this one," said Jim Watkins, who lives on a tidal creek on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and is a chairman of a local group called Stop Offshore Drilling in the Atlantic. "Republican or Democrat, makes no difference."
On Wednesday, the coalition asked a federal judge in Charleston to block the issuance of any permits by the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. On Nov. 30, the National Marine Fisheries Service cleared the way for issuing those permits by granting waivers — to TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Co. Asa, Schlumberger Ltd., ION Geophysical Corp., CGG Services US Inc. and Spectrum Geo Inc. — from laws against disturbing marine life. The companies declined to comment.
Seismic surveys involve firing air guns to create acoustic pulses that penetrate the sea floor. Sound waves bounce off geologic formations in different ways, and the data can be used to compile maps that help identify areas likely to have petroleum reserves — or that may have none at all.
Seismic data makes exploration more efficient and cheaper, and helps governments around the world decide when and where to extract their natural resources, said Gail Adams-Jackson, a spokeswoman with the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, an industry group. Without the data, "countries are making decisions blindly," she said.
Too noisy
Spokesmen for the Interior Department and Department of Justice declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Conservationists say the surveys would send acoustic pulses into the sea floor every 10 seconds for months at a time. The blasts are so loud they could damage the hearing of whales, dolphins and other marine species that depend on sound to find mates, avoid predators, navigate and communicate, according to the lawsuit. Of particular concern is the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, the coalition said.
Government scientists concluded the impact of the sound waves would likely be negligible on animal populations, though some individuals may be affected, Ben Laws, a senior biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said during a press call.
Still, then-President Barack Obama denied the seismic-survey applications in January 2017. Two years earlier, more than 70 scientists wrote Obama to say that the impact of the air guns would affect all marine life, and that the Interior Department's assertion of negligible impacts wasn't supported by the best-available evidence. By April 2017, Trump had issued an executive order to streamline government permitting, though he's pledged to ban new offshore drilling in Florida.
"While oil and gas exploration could bring in billions of dollars, doing it without adequate study and precautions could end up costing billions of dollars and cause irreversible damage to our economy and coast," said Wilson, South Carolina's attorney general.
Coastal opposition
"Every East Coast governor and over 90 percent of coastal municipalities in the blast zone are opposed to opening our coast to drilling," said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, one of the environmental groups in the lawsuit. "This is the states versus President Trump."
Seismic surveys haven't been used on the Atlantic's outer continental shelf in about three decades, but the technology is employed in parts of the U.S. already producing oil and gas, such as the offshore waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the inland Permian Basin in Texas, and the Arctic region in northern Alaska.
Opponents say the U.S. doesn't need to tap into the Atlantic because domestic oil production has surged to a record over the past decade, and renewable sources such as wind and solar power have become a bigger share of the American energy menu. The U.S. produced about 9.4 million barrels of oil a day in 2017 compared to 5.5 million in 2010 and is expected to export more energy than it imports by 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The Atlantic states, communities and environmental groups said in their lawsuit that the seismic surveys would "irreparably harm marine life" and the communities and businesses that "rely on it for their economic livelihoods."
As of 2016, South Carolina valued coastal tourism at $8.96 billion a year, with commercial fisheries generating $42.4 million. A report from the American Petroleum Institute says opening the Atlantic to oil and gas exploration could bring more than $1.5 billion in state and local tax revenues over 20 years.
Rick Baumann, who has run a seafood store in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, for five decades, said he and other business owners who rely on the Atlantic catch are worried about what the seismic tests and, eventually, oil exploration off the coast would mean for their livelihoods. Fisherman already are coping with restrictions on how much they can catch, and when and where they fish, he said.
"Why is it that it's only on the fishing industry to look after the resources for oil that we don't even need?" Baumann said. "We have enough to be concerned about with hurricane season, climate change and rising sea levels."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/22/stories/1060122163
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Ohio Natural Gas Pipeline Suit Tossed
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
A lawsuit challenging air pollution permits issued to Nexus Gas Transmission for two natural gas pipeline compressor stations must be dismissed, a divided federal appeals court ruled Feb. 21.
The three citizens groups suing over the permits failed to show they had standing to challenge them, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in an unpublished opinion.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency approved permits for two compressor stations along Nexus’s $2.1 billion, 257-mile natural gas pipeline system.
Protecting Air for Waterville, Neighbors Against NEXUS, and Sustainable Medina County sued. But these citizen groups don’t have standing to challenge the permits, because they failed to lay out how their members will be harmed by emissions the compressor stations, the court said.
The group’s “bare allegations” that unnamed group members will be exposed at some point to toxic chemicals in the emissions weren’t enough, the court said.
The court’s opinion was written by Judge Joan Larson, and joined by Judge Deborah Cook.
Judge Gilbert Merritt dissented. “The petitioners have a clear interest in the outcome. They live close to the facilities in question. A leak could cause an explosion. If the proposed facilities are built, their property values may decrease, they may be exposed to air pollution, and their peace and quiet may be disturbed by two noisy factories,” Merritt wrote.
The plaintiffs were represented by Terry J. Lodge. The Ohio EPA was represented by the Office of the Attorney General of Ohio. Nexus was represented by Bricker & Eckler.
The case is Protecting Air for Waterville v. Ohio EPA, 6th Cir., No. 18-3025, unpublished 2/21/19.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/ohio-natural-gas-pipeline-suit-tossed
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Chevron Phillips Names Potential Spot for New $5.8b Petrochemical Project
Feb 21, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck
The city of Orange is on the short list of places where Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. is considering building a massive $5 billion to $6 billion petrochemical expansion, recently released state documents show.
For months, The Woodlands' company's owners, Phillips 66 and Chevron, have said they are considering adding more capacity in the region without saying where or how big of a project it could be.Recommended Video
A request for tax incentives filed with the state comptroller's office shows Chevron Phillips is considering buying 1,700 acres of undeveloped land to house a multi-billion manufacturing facility in Orange.
The project would convert hydrocarbons into ethylene which can be converted into polyethylene plastic pellets, the building block for packaging thousands of consumer goods, including milk jugs, bags, food and beverage containers, household chemicals and detergent bottles.
The proposed location is across a highway from Chevron Phillips' existing polyethylene plant on Farm Market Road 1006 so the two sites would likely work together.
Construction could start as early as the second quarter of 2020 and the company would start operations in the third quarter of 2024.
The city is one several locations in Texas and Louisiana where Chevron Phillips is looking.
"At this point in time, Orange, Texas , is a finalist undergoing due diligence for a new petrochemical investment if we make a final investment decision to proceed. However, the location is only one of the alternatives we are considering along the U.S. Gulf Coast," said a Chevron Phillips Chemical spokesperson. "It would simply be premature to say that Orange is definitively where we would put a new petrochemical facility if we decide to build one."
The company is eyeing the investment roughly a year after starting up its huge new ethane cracker in Baytown. A new petrochemical expansion on the Gulf Coast could create thousands of construction jobs and further cement the region's dominating role in an emerging export-driven U.S. petrochemical market.
"We remain very encouraged by the fundamentals supporting an additional petrochemical investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast. The availability of competitive feedstocks in the region and growing worldwide demand for our products appear to support such an initiative," the company spokesman said.
The potential new Orange project would generate 3,500 construction jobs at peak construction with an average salary of about $90,000, according to state documents filed in late January.
The number of permanent jobs the project would create isn't clear. The company committed to the application's minimum requirement of 20 permanent jobs, but it's likely a project of that scale would require hundreds of jobs. A recently-completed project of the same scale in Baytown now helps to support 1,000 permanent employees and 2,000 contractors, according to Chevron Phillips Chemical.
The average salary for permanent jobs would be $80,000 annually, according to the documents.
The project would include an ethylene cracker, at least one ethylene derivative units, a rail storage yard, utilities and related infrastructure and administrative buildings, the documents said.
Chevron Phillips is seeking Chapter 313 incentives from West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School District and Bridge City Independent School District, the two districts where its potential project would overlap.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Chevron-Phillips-names-potential-spot-for-new-13633632.php
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Labor Department Pursues OSHA Fines from Fatal Okla. Rig Fire
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
The Labor Department has filed a complaint to enforce citations issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration against Patterson-UTI Drilling Co. after five workers were killed in an Oklahoma rig fire.
Patterson has filed an answer to the complaint before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), an independent agency that hears appeals of OSHA enforcement actions. The complaint and answer were mentioned last week in the annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the drilling company's corporate parent, Patterson-UTI Energy Inc.
"The ultimate resolution of the OSHA citation items is not known at this time," Patterson's report states, "and we are unable to determine what alleged violations and proposed penalties will be modified or eliminated, if any."
Both EPA and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the report says, are continuing to investigate the January 2018 explosion and fire near Quinton in Pittsburg County, Okla.
OSHA levied a $74,000 fine against Patterson and also fined two other companies about $45,000 for exposing employees to fire and explosion hazards. The two companies, Skyline Directional Drilling LLC and Crescent Consulting LLC, are also contesting the alleged violations. OSHA did not weigh in on what caused the explosion.
The agency faulted the companies for failing to maintain control of the well, failing to inspect "slow-descent devices," allowing the use of an improper heat lamp that exposed workers to explosion risks and not implementing an emergency response plan.
The Jan. 22, 2018, fire was the deadliest oil field accident since at least 2010, when 11 men were killed in the BP PLC Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Oklahoma rig burned for eight hours. The workers' bodies were found in the rig's control room. Several wrongful death lawsuits have been filed by attorneys for the families of the men killed (Energywire, Dec. 11, 2018).
Patterson-UTI has a troubled safety record. Since 2008, when a Senate committee called the Houston company "one of the worst violators of workplace safety laws," at least 12 of the company's workers have been killed on the job.
OSHA referred questions and a request for copies to OSHRC, which requires Freedom of Information Act requests for releasing case documents. E&E News has filed a FOIA request but has not received the complaint or Patterson's answer.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/22/stories/1060121811
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New Federal Rule Will Require Response Teams for Possible Oil Train Derailments, Fires
Feb 21, 2019 | The Register-Guard
By Dylan Darling
A new federal rule will require railroads to create regional spill response plans for oil trains.
The regulation comes after a fiery derailment of an oil train in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge in 2016, as well as derailments in other parts of the U.S. and Canada in recent years.
“This new rule will make the transport of energy products by railroad safer,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement earlier this month. It will go into effect in about six months.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued the rule in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration. The regulation aims to have equipment and crews at the ready in case an oil train derails and causes a large fire, requiring comprehensive plans by railroads. The rule applies to oil trains with strings of 20 or more loaded tanker cars and longer trains with at least 35 loaded tankers.
Oil trains pass through Oregon, carrying crude oil to seaports such as Portland, as well as refineries in California. In recent years the trains have become a concern because of the volatile nature of their cargo. The Bakken oil patch in North Dakota and Montana produces most of the oil hauled by trains to the West Coast.
Transporting crude oil by rail remains inherently unsafe, said Michael Lang, conservation director for the Friends of the Columbia Gorge, a Portland-based nonprofit organization. The group advocates against oil trains passing through the Gorge. He added that the new federal rule fails to measurably improve safety for oil trains.
“While notification is improved, oil trains will continue to be a threat to our rivers and communities,” Lang said.
On June 3, 2016, a westbound Union Pacific train hauling Bakken crude oil derailed in Mosier, a small Oregon town in the Gorge, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Three of the 16 cars that derailed caught fire and four cars spilled oil.
The EPA estimates the burning and broken tankers released a combined 47,000 gallons of oil, and of that 16,000 gallons burned or vaporized. Emergency crews poured 2 million gallons of water on the massive blaze, which prompted the evacuation of nearly 150 people and closure of Interstate 84 and Highway 30.
A runaway train carrying crude oil from North Dakota derailed in 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and exploded, killing 47 people. Other fiery crashes and fuel spills have occurred in Alabama, Illinois, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia.
https://www.registerguard.com/news/20190221/new-federal-rule-will-require-response-teams-for-possible-oil-train-derailments-fires
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Revised EPA ‘Ambient Air’ Policy Definition Spurs Fight On Legality, Scope
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA’s draft guidance narrowing its policy definition of “ambient air” is spurring a fight between environmentalist critics and industry supporters, with opponents arguing the move is unlawful and will allow facilities to evade Clean Air Act permitting requirements while its backers are urging the agency to further limit air permit mandates.
The competing positions are detailed in recently filed comments obtained by Inside EPA on the agency’s unsigned guidance from November that would allow regulators to consider a wider range of physical restrictions on the public from accessing private land when determining what counts as ambient air subject to regulation beyond the traditional definition of private land being behind a fence or public barrier. The revised definition would now include other “measures” that bar access by the public, likely making it easier for facilities to avoid regulation.
In 1980, then-EPA Administrator Douglas Costle established the current policy through which EPA excludes areas “owned or controlled by the source and to which public access is precluded by a fence or other physical barriers” from being considered ambient air. Sources do not have to model or demonstrate compliance with national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) in areas not considered “ambient” and therefore would be exempt from having to obtain potentially costly new source review (NSR) or prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permits.
EPA's initial regulatory definition of ambient air as established in decades-old codified regulation is “that portion of the atmosphere, external to buildings, to which the general public has access.”
The Trump administration’s draft guidance, on which it sought comment through Jan. 11, would revise the definition to make it easier to exclude more areas.
It responds to complaints from some industry groups, such as the American Wood Council (AWC), American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and others, that the 1980 definition should be revised to exclude private land not necessarily protected by a physical barrier. These and other groups argue that the existing definition is so broad it unfairly subjects some areas to NSR/PSD permits even though they should not be “ambient” regulatory areas.
EPA did not establish a regulatory docket for receiving comments and instead asked groups to submit them directly to the agency. The deadline for input came during the midst of the month-long government shutdown. Comments obtained by Inside EPA this week highlight major divisions on the guidance.
For example, in Jan. 11 joint comments the Natural Resources Defense Council, Clean Air Task Force, Environmental Law & Policy Center and the Environmental Defense Fund say the new approach defines ambient air too narrowly and exacerbates the already too-restrictive Costle policy. The narrow definition contravenes the air law’s directive to protect public health, the groups say.
The groups say, “any adoption by EPA of the interpretations reflected in this document would constitute final agency action that is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to the plain meaning of the Clean Air Act and agency regulations relating to the definition” of ambient air. Final agency action is subject to judicial review, although EPA argues the draft guidance is non-binding, and hence does not qualify as such final action.
“The 2018 Policy represents an unlawful departure from the governing EPA regulation and is entirely unsupported by the rationales the Agency advances,” the groups say. The policy is also procedurally flawed, because EPA did not allow for formal public notice-and-comment, they say.
Further, “the draft document limits the concept of ‘ambient air’ beyond any reasonable statutory interpretation and contradicts EPA’s implementing regulation -- in order to ease industrial sources’ permitting processes, resulting in increased ‘flexibility’ to emit higher levels of regulated air pollution that the Agency now deems would not occur in the ‘ambient air’” -- an approach that the groups argue “is consistent with this Administration’s relentless agenda to roll back safeguards for public health."
Industry’s Support
However, the industry organizations American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), the Air Permitting Forum, the Auto Industry Forum, and the AWC in their joint Jan. 11 comments praise EPA’s effort to revise the exclusion from ambient air beyond a “brick and mortar approach” that is no longer appropriate.
EPA is “appropriately anticipating ever-evolving technologies and other innovations as well as recognizing natural or other ways that mean there is a low likelihood that the general public will be accessing privately-owned or managed property,” the groups say.
However, they ask EPA to go further and to limit where air monitors can be placed “off-property” to determine NAAQS compliance. This involves projections of whether projects would consume too much NAAQS “increment,” in effect a quota of allowed pollution, required for PSD air permits. PSD permits are required in areas meeting the NAAQS, while tougher nonattainment NSR permits are required in areas violating the NAAQS.
The groups “urge EPA to go further and provide guidance on modeling receptor locations to address lack of public exposure at a given location off-property consistent with the frequency or averaging time specified for the NAAQS or PSD increment that is under evaluation. This may be beyond the scope of the Draft Revised Policy,” but is “an important second step in addressing the problems in this area of EPA policy that have interfered with economic growth.”
The American Petroleum Institute (API) in its Jan. 11 joint comments with six other industry organizations also says EPA should go further than the draft guidance.
The groups fault EPA for describing its new policy as an “exclusion” at all, arguing that EPA wrongly implies a burden of proof on industry to prove air is not “ambient” when no such duty exists under the air law.
They say EPA has focused only on physical access, but it must also clarify how it handles “legal access,” which determines which individuals have access to a facility.
“EPA should remove the phrase, ‘the exemption from ambient air is available only for the atmosphere over land owned or controlled by the source’ from its final ambient air policy because it is not compelled by the regulatory definition, is not necessary to protect public health or welfare, runs counter to responsible land use regulations, and creates the need for complex and time-consuming case-by-case determinations. Instead, EPA should focus its policy on practical access,” the groups write.
Also, EPA should “expand the discussion to address railways, roadways, and waterways” than run by or through private property, they argue.
Echoing AF&PA and others on placement of air monitors off-site, the groups led by API say, “Reviewing authorities retain discretion to account for site-specific circumstances and receptors need not be placed to simulate air pollutant concentrations in areas where natural, man-made, or jurisdictional barriers or hazards preclude the potential for general public exposure” at a given location, “even if such areas may qualify as ambient air.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/revised-epa-%E2%80%98ambient-air%E2%80%99-policy-definition-spurs-fight-legality-scope
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D.C. Circuit Sets Argument in Suit over Scrapped ‘Once in’ Air Toxics Policy
Feb 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set oral arguments for April 1 in litigation brought by environmentalists and California against EPA’s guidance allowing industrial sources of air toxics to escape maximum achievable control technology (MACT) emissions limits by reducing their pollution.
The court scheduled arguments in a Feb. 19 order, in California Communities Against Toxics, et al. v. EPA, et al., a suit in which EPA’s opponents are seeking to overturn agency air policy chief Bill Wehrum’s Jan. 15, 2018, memo that ended the “once in, always in” policy. The longstanding policy, dating from 1995, prevented sources of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) subject to MACT limits from removing stringent emissions controls even if they reduced their HAP emissions to below regulatory thresholds for “major” sources.
MACT limits are imposed on major sources, defined as those emitting 10 tons per year (tpy) of one HAP or 25 tpy of a combination of HAPs. Industry groups say that if they reduce emissions to levels below these thresholds, they should not be subject to MACT, and Wehrum agrees with this interpretation of the Clean Air Act.
But environmentalists and California argue that Wehrum’s memo allows polluters to evade MACT controls by reducing emissions to just below the MACT thresholds, increasing pollution rather than cutting it, in contravention of the air law’s purpose. They argue MACT limits should always apply regardless of emissions levels.
EPA is defending itself by arguing the memo constitutes non-binding guidance for states, and as such is not “final agency action” subject to judicial review. EPA plans to release a formal rule to enshrine the Wehrum policy in regulation. This shows the guidance is not final action on the issue, EPA argues.
But the agency’s opponents say the memo is final action subject to judicial review, and that it violates both the procedural and substantive terms of the air law. EPA has failed to take notice and comment on the policy shift, has failed to supply a reasoned explanation of its change of course and has failed to evaluate the likely environmental and health consequences of its action, environmentalists say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/dc-circuit-sets-argument-suit-over-scrapped-%E2%80%98once-%E2%80%99-air-toxics-policy
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'Green New Deal' — an Obama Stimulus 2.0?
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
In 2009, with the nation's economy in a tailspin, President Obama signed into law a stimulus package that aimed to give a herculean lift to the cause of clean energy, with $90 billion in investments.
Ten years later, the stimulus is being cited as a touchstone for the chief policy planners of the "Green New Deal," who are exploring ways to ramp up the renewable capacity-building of Obama's law and fuse it with a far-reaching greenifying of American life.
"In many ways, we think of our plan as the stimulus that Obama never really gave us," said Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor and senior adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who spearheaded the plan in Congress.
"Our view is, this is going to be much bigger than that first stimulus, and it's going to be more than just a stimulus. We're thinking of it as a massive national reconstruction," he said.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 poured billions in loans, grants and research funds into clean energy. Tesla Inc. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. got nearly $2 billion to finance their all-electric cars. Manufacturers of everything from batteries to fuel cells claimed tax credits. Energy efficiency programs paid to weatherize 800,000 homes. The Energy Department's innovation shop scored its first funding. And it provided funding for the country's first — and still only — large coal plant to capture the majority of its CO2 emissions.
The biggest slice of the energy funds, about 30 percent in all, went to building out the nation's renewable power capacity. The Energy Department doled out cash grants, backed loans for solar and wind developers, and expanded tax credits for production and investment.
In seven years, solar generation grew thirtyfold and wind generation threefold, according to a 2016 assessment from the Obama White House.
"Back then, mainstream solar needed a push to get to large-scale projects," said Dan Reicher, a Stanford University lecturer and former member of Obama's transition team who helped craft the stimulus's energy sections.
Several 100-megawatt solar farms — a size that had previously made private investors nervous — went online with the help of stimulus money, he noted.
"Now it will take you many, many hands to count the number of projects bigger than 100 MW," said Reicher.
A 'second bite'
The "Green New Deal" resolution introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) this month called for a transition to net-zero emissions within a decade, but the movement's researchers are still in the early stages of exploring ways to do it.
So far, many of the ideas being explored are products of the Democratic Party's progressive wing.
There's the universal job guarantee that cropped up in the resolution, or the idea of convening town hall meetings and other local and state forums meant to encourage citizen participation in the generation of policy. There's also the public bank, inspired by the New Deal-era Reconstruction Finance Corp., that would oversee investments and issue bonds to finance energy projects, partly as a way to protect the public's return on energy investment.
The stimulus also came at a unique economic time following a deep recession, when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress.
Even so, researchers say the "Green New Deal" ideas take a page from the stimulus's playbook when it comes to encouraging renewable development and keeping the cost of clean energy on a downward trajectory.
"I think you're going to see a lot of the same types" of investments, said Greg Carlock, "Green New Deal" research director at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank.
They also say they'll get a better shot at realizing the green jobs promises of the stimulus, which faltered from a lack of "shovel-ready" projects designed to get people back to work fast — or, perhaps, the Obama administration's failure to locate those projects.
"So much had to be spent so quickly without having time to gear up and get ready to go," said Hockett, the Ocasio-Cortez adviser. "One way of thinking of the 'Green New Deal' is a second bite at that particular apple."
Conservative critics of the stimulus, who assailed the clean energy sections as wasteful incursions into boutique technologies following a string of high-profile bankruptcies and canceled projects, also smell a reprise. Among the canceled projects were FutureGen, a planned coal plant in Illinois that would have captured its CO2 emissions.
"Dems announce Socialist 'Green New Deal.' Sound familiar?" tweeted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Feb. 7, after Ocasio-Cortez and Markey introduced their resolution.
Jordan, who once chaired a caucus of the chamber's most conservative members, recalled the failure of solar panel maker Solyndra and three other clean tech companies that got large loans under one stimulus-funded program.
"They received hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars. ALL went bankrupt," he said.
Defenders of the stimulus point out that in spite of those bankruptcies, the Energy Department loan program actually ended up netting an overall profit.
"It's had an investment track record that I'd put up against any private-sector investment fund," said Reicher.
The stimulus helped lay much of the groundwork for any far-reaching decarbonization plan, he argued. Since then, large-scale solar projects have become common, traditional renewables have opened the way for second-wave technologies like offshore wind and Wall Street has grown fond of green investments.
"We have a major commitment from the private sector," said Reicher, meaning that if new clean energy programs were to be created, the federal government could attract larger amounts of private capital using fewer public funds.
"Who knows where that specific approach will go?" he said in reference to the "Green New Deal," adding that he believed legislation with clean energy investments could pass with bipartisan support. "I do know that I feel strongly that clean energy and climate is on the table."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/22/stories/1060122143
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Feb 21, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Armond Cohen and Steve Brick
The Democratic take-back of House of Representatives and the recent introduction of the “Green New Deal” Congressional resolution have reinvigorated discussion of action on climate change. The Green New Deal resolution calls for meeting 100 percent of U.S. power demand through “clean, renewable, and zero-carbon electricity” – a recognition that it will take all of the technologies in the toolkit, including nuclear and carbon-scrubbed fossil, to fully decarbonize the power sector.
Despite pressure from those seeking an end to fossil use within 10 years and power the electric grid solely with wind and solar, coupled with batteries and other forms of energy storage, the Green New Deal resolution does not exclude any zero-carbon technologies. As the Senate sponsor, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), said in announcing the introduction of the resolution: “While the resolution does not mention any specific technology, it talks about any technology that can dramatically reduce greenhouse gases. . . .We are open to whatever works."
That is the wise approach. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, many leading environmental organizations and the last Obama White House report, argue for the broadest possible set of approaches – the use of wind and solar energy, as well as increased use of nuclear energy, scrubbing carbon out of fossil fuels, and, in some cases, the expanded use of hydropower and biomass energy.
Moreover, the most motivated states on climate issues have adopted the technology-inclusive approach. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently committed the state to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. Last fall, California set a target of carbon-free energy by 2045. Earlier, Massachusetts set a technology-inclusive goal of an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. While these state plans include a large minimum share of renewable power, they allow other technologies to provide the balance.
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once proposed a distinction between two kinds of thinking, quoting an aphorism that “[t]he fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin elaborated that hedgehog thinkers embrace single, pure explanations of the world, while foxes see complexity, contingency, and the potential for unintended consequences. The “100% renewable energy” vision is a Big Hedgehog Idea, consistent, attractive and highly marketable. But when it comes to solving climate change, the evidence favors the Foxes.
We’ve reviewed dozens of power sector studies and concluded that having a diverse set of technologies beyond wind and solar substantially reduces the cost of cutting carbon because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine. Worse, wind and sun vary dramatically over weeks and months, not just days, providing the needed power in some weeks and months, but virtually no power in others. At high levels of renewables you need to build three to eight times more wind and solar capacity to ensure that they can produce enough energy at times of low wind and sun – the rest of the time much of that energy would be wasted.
Some argue that batteries or other energy storage can solve this problem. But batteries typically store and discharge power over periods of 4-10 hours, not the weeks and months that are needed. Balancing wind and sun with firmer technologies such as nuclear, carbon-scrubbed fossil plants, and “firm” renewables such as hydroelectric, geothermal and biomass – can avoid the high cost of wasted excess, or massive storage.
Additionally, tens of thousands of large wind and solar farms would need to be sited, along with tens of thousands of miles of transmission lines. And we would also need massive flexibility in demand – where residential, commercial, and industrial customers would have to curtail their electric use frequently and for long periods.
To be sure, nuclear energy has its own challenges and risks, some of which are being addressed by advanced reactor designs and cost containment strategies, and carbon-scrubbed fossil fuels and advanced geothermal energy are still at an early commercial stage. But this argues for more effort to diversify – not less – through research and development, demonstration, and commercial incentives for early scale-up, as we successfully did for wind and solar in the past few decades.
So this is the time not to close off climate options but to cultivate them, as New York, California and Massachusetts have. Other states are considering this approach, and The Green New Deal resolution suggests the federal government may eventually follow.
Single-bet, Hedgehog strategies might work, but bring all-or-nothing risks. Foxes, on the other hand, are known for their ability to adapt and survive.
Armond Cohen is Executive Director of the Clean Air Task Force. Steve Brick is an Adjunct Energy and Climate Lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/431048-climate-hedgehogs-and-foxes
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America's Strongest Climate Governor Might Be a Republican
Feb 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
During his first run for governor, Charlie Baker sat for a meeting with a group of leading environmentalists in Massachusetts. It quickly turned combative.
Baker, a Republican who was challenging Gov. Deval Patrick (D), voiced doubts about the veracity of climate science and the high cost of renewable energy. He singled out Cape Wind as an overpriced offshore wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound. The project died four years later, in 2017.
Recounting the meeting to The Boston Globe, the environmental leaders recalled Baker using a whiteboard to lecture them about the shortcomings of their position. The greens were shocked. Baker, a former state budget official, municipal leader and health care executive, had a reputation as a technocrat. They assumed he accepted the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate.
He did not.
"I'm not saying I believe in it. I'm not saying I don't," Baker told the Globe in 2010. "You're asking me to take a position on something I don't know enough about. I absolutely am not smart enough to believe that I know the answer to that question."
He lost the race.
Nearly a decade later, Baker is a two-term governor, fresh off a landslide re-election victory in November that saw him commandeer roughly two-thirds of the vote in one of America's most liberal states. The result was not a surprise. Baker's approval ratings throughout his first term made him the most popular governor in the country.
More surprising is the list of climate victories Baker notched during his first four years. He can now reasonably claim to have accomplished more on climate than any other governor in office today — including Democrats.
His support for an offshore wind bill in 2016 helped launch the industry in North America, and made Massachusetts the first state to wade into the shallow waters of the North Atlantic in search of large quantities of renewable electricity (Climatewire, June 19, 2017).
After a series of climate-induced weather events battered the Bay State, Baker launched a series of efforts to raise funding for local resilience and adaptation initiatives (Climatewire, March 16, 2018). Other states are now pondering whether to follow suit.
Now, Baker is poised for perhaps his most ambitious and consequential push of all: a bid to curb transportation emissions, the largest source of greenhouse gases nationally and one of the most difficult to cut.
The man who once questioned climate science sounds different on the stump today. Last fall, speaking to environmentalists at a forum in Boston, Baker argued that the push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was inextricably linked to efforts to bolster the meager stock of affordable housing around the Massachusetts' capital (Climatewire, Nov. 2, 2018).
The governor has begun taking steps onto the national stage. He accepted Democrats' invitation to testify about the dangers of climate change before the House Natural Resources Committee earlier this month.
Climate change, he told the committee, is "not a partisan issue" in Massachusetts.
"While we sometimes disagree on specific policies, we understand the science and know the impacts are real because we're experiencing them firsthand," Baker said.
State Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Democrat and leading climate hawk in the Massachusetts Legislature, said Baker's evolution is so substantial that it's "like you're talking about a totally different person."
He credited climate activists and state lawmakers for pressuring Baker to address the issue. "To give credit to the governor, he has welcomed science," Pacheco said. "He's looked at the science, the data that has come across his desk, he has seen the evidence of how renewables can over the long term be a cost-saver and public health improver."
Unlike Trump
Baker is firmly in the minority in President Trump's Republican Party, where resistance to climate policy is a GOP staple. But the Massachusetts governor has an opportunity to make in-roads with his counterparts in other states, who may be more open to listening to one of their own, said state Rep. Maria Robinson, a Democrat and former policy analyst at Advanced Energy Perspectives, a clean energy trade group.
"I think it's hugely important to have an Republican voice," she said. "The struggle is each state believes its circumstances to be completely unique. If he can move someone like a [Republican Florida] Gov. Ron DeSantis, even just a little bit, to implement more solar in Florida, that's an incredible win."
The question is how far Baker intends to push the climate envelope. The governor has remained mum on proposals to institute a carbon price, and critics contend that his administration has been slow to wean the Bay State from natural gas.
Baker begins his second term at a time when America finds itself short of climate leaders. Trump spent his first two years in office dismantling environmental regulations and denying climate science. Congressional climate hawks have a public platform to champion a "Green New Deal," but not the votes to enact it.
And there is a void at the state level following the retirement of Jerry Brown, the former California governor who championed climate action over four terms as a Democrat. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, both Democrats, have positioned themselves to assume the climate mantle, helping to establish the U.S. Climate Alliance and making the issue a focus of their administrations. But both have struggled to notch legislative victories (Climatewire, May 29, 2018).
That may change this year. Cuomo and Inslee now have firm Democratic majorities to work with after last fall's midterms. Combined with a new crop of Democratic governors, the prospects for major state climate action are better than in previous years (Climatewire, Feb. 12).
But greens are increasingly looking to Baker for leadership. They're hopeful he is ready to step into a role once played by George Pataki, the former New York Republican governor who spearheaded efforts to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program covering the power sector in nine Northeastern states.
Baker has embraced RGGI as a model for how to deal with transportation emissions. He has emerged as a vocal cheerleader of the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), a group of nine states and the District of Columbia focused on developing a cap-and-trade program for cars and trucks (Climatewire, Dec. 19, 2018). The group is expected to finalize a program within a year.
Speaking to reporters following his congressional testimony, Baker talked up the virtues of applying the RGGI model to other sectors of the economy.
"As our economy has continued to grow, our energy draw is remaining the same, relatively flat, and our greenhouse gas emissions have gone down," Baker said. "I do think these are better done on a regional basis than on a state-to-state basis, because regions can work collaboratively, whether you're talking about electricity generation, energy generation or transportation."
Baker's test
The governor's push on transportation is notable on several fronts. Unlike the power sector, transportation emissions have steadily risen in recent years (Climatewire, April 17, 2018).
Massachusetts is on track to cut emissions 25 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, but it has little hope of meeting a targeted 80 percent reduction by midcentury if it does not tackle emissions from transportation.
"I think he has set himself up to be seen as a leader on climate, but there is a lot more to do, particularly in the TCI context," said Jordan Stutt, carbon programs manager at the Acadia Center, an environmental group focused on the Northeast. "Setting up the framework, moving the conversation forward is really important. He and his administration deserve credit for that. But ultimately he will be judged on whether he establishes a program that reduces emissions. That is where this next year will be so important."
Baker is not without his critics. He has done little to reduce the state's overwhelming reliance on natural gas, and his past appointments to the state's utility commission have been hostile to residential solar, said Deb Pasternak, who leads the Sierra Club's Massachusetts chapter.
The governor might be a leader by today's political standards, "but in terms of delivering a livable planet, he needs to step up," she said.
In some respects, Baker's hand on climate has been forced. Massachusetts is unique among states in that it has a law calling for deep emissions reductions and a directive from the state's highest court to fulfill those requirements.
The Conservation Law Foundation sued the Patrick administration for failing to uphold the terms of the law. Baker initially fought the lawsuit when he took over the governorship.
But once the state Supreme Judicial Court found in the foundation's favor, his administration quickly set about developing a plan to cut emissions, said Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation.
"I do think he is becoming an important climate leader," Campbell said. "He has grown into that role over the course of the last four years. He is someone who believes in fact and scientific-based decisionmaking. And I think more than anything else, the increasing urgency, particularly the threat to a coastal state like Massachusetts, has persuaded him that action is needed."
A series of winter storms in 2015, a severe drought in 2016 and several extreme weather events in the years since then have influenced the governor's thinking about the risks of a changing climate, said Matt Beaton, Massachusetts' secretary of energy and environmental affairs.
The response of private industry has also been important. Baker took note of the fact the insurance and financial industries were incorporating climate risks, Beaton said. Today, the governor frequently mentions the climatic changes observed by fishermen and farmers.
"It seems like the guy has put himself out on a limb, pushing the envelope and being passionate on the issue," Beaton said. "To me, it's remarkable to see how much leadership he's taken on the issue, particularly as a Republican."
What followed might be described as a GOP blueprint for climate action.
Green allies
Baker and lawmakers who crafted the 2016 offshore wind bill drew heavily on the experience of Cape Wind. Where state officials strong-armed Massachusetts' utilities into buying power from that project at a high price, the new law requires wind developers to compete for the right to win long-term contracts with the state's power companies. When the bids were revealed last year, the low prices received by the state caught many industry observers by surprise (Climatewire, Aug. 6, 2018).
"You have to make sure the transition is done in an economically sustainable manner that is reliable," Beaton said. Push too far too fast, he said, and you risk economic shocks that could blunt public support for climate action.
Massachusetts' focus on offshore wind has prompted a scramble up and down the Eastern Seaboard. New York and New Jersey have established ambitious offshore wind targets in the years since, with each vying to become the hub of the nascent industry.
They still have ground to make up on their New England neighbor. The Danish wind giant Ørsted AS selected Boston to host its North American headquarters in 2017. And the first offshore turbines associated with an 800-megawatt project could begin spinning some 20 miles south of Martha's Vineyard in 2021, when other states are still in the planning process.
State officials have paired their wind efforts with a bid to bring more Canadian hydropower. Combined, they estimate wind and water will provide roughly a third of the state's power needs. By 2030, they expect half of the state's energy to come from renewable sources.
Baker's attempts to steel Massachusetts against the impacts of climate change have been similarly groundbreaking. The governor has essentially pursued a two-tiered approach. Through the state Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan, Baker has sought to implement a statewide strategy for identifying vulnerabilities associated with climate-induced weather events.
At the same time, much of his work has been focused on aiding municipalities. The state recently implemented a municipal vulnerability preparedness program in which communities identify risks. Both programs can draw funding from a $2.4 billion state bond passed last year to fund climate resilience projects.
The governor hasn't stopped there. He recently proposed raising the tax on real estate transactions to pay for local adaptation programs. His office estimates the move could generate up to $1 billion in revenue over the next decade.
"I often cite Gov. Baker as a national leader to my Nature Conservancy colleagues across the U.S.," said Steve Long, a policy advocate at the conservancy who has worked closely with the administration on its adaptation efforts. "We're looking at replicating a lot of what has been done in Massachusetts and taking it to other parts of the country."
Baker's congressional testimony may ultimately mark an important juncture in his tenure, environmentalists said. The governor, they noted, could have rejected the committee's invitation or adopted a starkly different tone when testifying.
Instead, he doubled down, calling on the federal government to support local adaptation efforts and promoting a national emissions reduction target. At one point, Baker, a former Cape Wind critic, mounted a lengthy defense of the state's offshore wind industry. He said Massachusetts' experience with the failed project laid the groundwork for it to be successful going forward.
"The committment and courage he brought to the testimony before the House sends a clear signal that he's ready to be a leader among governors in taking bold action," said Campbell, the CLF president. "And it would be surprising and very unlike Gov. Baker for him to define the problem as he did without planning to take action. His tenure has not been marked by sweeping promises with no follow-up."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/02/22/stories/1060122119
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New Climate PAC Will Back Inslee for President
Feb 21, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Reid Wilson
A new super PAC launching on Thursday will back Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) potential run for president.
The group, Act Now On Climate, said it would back Inslee, who has made climate change a cornerstone of his two terms as governor.
“Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time and the most critical issue the next president will have to address,” said Corey Platt, a senior adviser to the new PAC. “It’s not simply an environmental issue, but also the nexus to jobs and national security.”
Inslee has not formally said he will run for president, but he has said repeatedly that his platform would be based on combating climate change, casting it as an economic and job-creating engine for a new economy, if he launches a bid.
The governor has strongly hinted that he will announce his decision in a matter of weeks.
“We’ll make the decision at the right time. We are actively considering it, and that has been going well,” Inslee told The Hill in a December interview.
He formed a political action committee of his own, Vision PAC, to raise money to fund his travels around the country. The PAC has three longtime Inslee aides on staff, forming what could become the nucleus of a future campaign.
Inslee recently ended his run as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, where Platt served as political director. The super PAC has also hired veteran Democratic strategist Christy Setzer, a former top communications aide to Al Gore, Howard Dean and several prominent unions.
“We’re hopeful that Gov. Inslee will continue his climate leadership with a bid for president — one that we would be proud to support,” Platt said in a statement announcing the super PAC, which filed papers with federal election officials on Thursday. “Gov. Inslee could capably carry the mantle for the millions of us who believe this has to be the number one priority of the next president.”
Inslee would begin any presidential campaign at a distinct disadvantage to front-runners such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris(D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Every Democratic front-runner has adopted Inslee’s language on climate change, though none can say they have taken the same actions that Inslee has.
He would not be the first Democrat from Washington State to run for president — the late Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson ran in 1976. But no Democrat from a state west of South Dakota, Texas and Nebraska has ever won the party’s presidential nomination.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/430954-new-climate-pac-will-back-inslee-for-president
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