Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - May 10, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical, Manufacturing Groups Oppose US Tariff Hike
May 10, 2019 | Plastic News
By Steve Toloken
The U.S. government followed through on plans to raise tariffs May 10 on $200 billion worth of imports from China, but the decision is drawing opposition from chemical and manufacturing industry trade groups. Talks between... -
(ACC Mentioned) Should We Say No to Styrofoam?
May 10, 2019 | Daily Journal
Come 2021, the state of Maine is banning the use of disposable Styrofoam. That’s the plastic material, usually white, used in throw-away coffee cups, plates and doggy-bag containers at restaurants. Actually, Styrofoam is a misnomer. -
U.S. Slaps Higher Tariffs on Chinese Imports as Trade Talks Resume
May 10, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis and Josh Zumbrun
The U.S. increased tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% Friday as President Trump ratcheted up pressure on Beijing and threatened to impose additional levies on virtually everything China exports to the U.S. -
Consortium Aims to Bring World-First PET Recycling Technology to Market
May 10, 2019 | Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Jasi
PEPSICO, Nestlé Waters, and Suntory Beverage and Food Europe have joined a consortium to help bring the world’s first enzymatic plastic recycling technology to market on an industrial scale. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic... -
Companies Get More Time to Put Chemicals on Official EPA List (1)
May 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Companies that make chemicals or mix them into products like paint, detergent, and wax have until Aug. 5 to let the EPA know if a compound they make or use was omitted from an official EPA list, the agency announced May 9. -
Senators’ Bill Looks to Address PFAs at Military Bases
May 10, 2019 | Sea Coast Online
By Jeff McMenemy
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan joined a bipartisan group of U.S. senators Thursday to introduce the PFAS Accountability Act. This legislation seeks to hold federal agencies accountable for addressing contamination for... -
Drinking Water Crisis Update: Supplies in 43 States Found Contaminated With Harmful PFAS Chemicals
May 10, 2019 | EcoWatch
By Sam Nickerson
Millions of people across the U.S. have been exposed to toxic PFAS chemicals in their drinking water, according to a new report from Northeastern University and the Environmental Working Group. The report found that at least 610... -
Michigan AG Seeks Legal Expertise on Suing 3M, Other PFAs Manufacturers, and Calls for Repealing Law Impeding Opioid Lawsuits
May 10, 2019 | MLive
By Julie Mack
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is seeking outside legal experts to help with potential lawsuits involving opioids and PFAS. Nessel says she considering legal strategies to hold 3M and other PFAS manufacturer... -
(ACC Mentioned) The Chemical Recycling Alliance Expands Member Roster
May 10, 2019 | Recycling Today
By DeAnne Toto
The Washington-based American Chemistry Council’s (ACC’s) Plastics-to-Fuel and Petrochemistry Alliance has changed its name to The Chemical Recycling Alliance (TCRA) and has added three new members. -
Trump Administration Moves Forward With Final Rule to Allow New California Drilling
May 9, 2019 | The Hill
By Miranda Green
The Trump administration moved forward Thursday with its plan to open up hundreds of thousands of acres on California's Central Coast to oil and gas drilling. The effort comes despite opposition from Democratic officials in the... -
Facing Democratic Resistance, Interior Secretary Promotes Oil and Gas Drilling
May 10, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration will calculate the climate effects of its oil, gas and coal leasing decisions, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in an interview Wednesday, but will not make those impacts the key factor in its final... -
DOE's Process Rule: Wonky Changes Could Have Big Impact
May 10, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council
By Lauren Urbanek
NRDC submitted comments this week in response to the Department of Energy’s proposed changes to its Process Rule for setting energy efficiency standards, citing several grave concerns over their divisive nature and the peril in which... -
Louisiana Dedicates Lake Charles Petrochemical Complex
May 10, 2019 | Oil & Gas Journal
By Robert Brelsford
Lotte Chemical Corp. subsidiary Lotte Chemical USA Corp. and Westlake Chemical Corp., Houston, have completed their long-planned $3.1-billion grassroots petrochemical project in southwest Louisiana (OGJ Online, Apr. 23... -
Pennsylvania's Gas Power Problem, Part 1: the Build-Out
May 10, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council
By Mark Szybist
Part II of this blog discusses the costs and risks of Pennsylvania's gas power build-out. The factors driving the build-out are discussed in this part. For most of the last decade, the biggest energy story in Pennsylvania has been fracking... -
Top Aide to W.Va. Governor Stepping Down From EQT Board
May 10, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greewire)
A top adviser to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is stepping down from the board of directors of the second-largest natural gas producer in the state. Pittsburgh-based EQT announced Wednesday that Bray Cary will not seek reelection... -
Despite Claims of Economic Diversity, It’s Still About Oil in Houston
May 10, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Rob Gavin
In another life, in another time, for another newspaper, I wrote about the regional economies of the western United States. Up in Seattle, Microsoft was minting millionaires and Amazon.com, having decimated book stores, was turning... -
Biden Crafting More Centrist Plan for Climate Change Policy: Report
May 10, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Max Greenwood
Former Vice President Joe Biden is looking to pitch a middle-ground approach to climate change, as he faces a field of Democratic presidential primary challengers that has increasingly embraced more sweeping solutions on the... -
Appropriations Subcommittee Advances Bill Barring Paris Withdrawal
May 10, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Anthony Adragna
A House Appropriations subcommittee today advanced a spending bill that would prevent the U.S. from leaving the Paris climate accord and enable contributions again to the Green Climate Fund. The State and Foreign Operations... -
The Energy 202: The GOP Campaign Against the Green New Deal May Be Working
May 10, 2019 | Washington PosT
By Dino Grandoni
For months, Republicans have spent a tremendous amount of energy railing against the Green New Deal, the pitch from progressives to drastically reduce the nation's contributions to global warming while checking off a list of liberal -
GOP Senators Might Hate the Green New Deal But Can't Ignore It
May 10, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Liam Denning
Senator William Cassidy of Louisiana is a big fan of empiricism. Here he is at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources last month, addressing a panel of experts who had just discussed ways to combat... -
Ewire: Republican Voters' Support for 'Green' Deal Slips
May 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
Support among Republican-leaning voters for the “Green New Deal” (GND) climate resolution is slipping, according to new polling results, following a concerted campaign by GOP lawmakers and conservative media to target the plan as... -
Climate-Action Delay May Cost Investors More Than $1 Trillion
May 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Matthew Carr
Delays in tackling climate change could cost companies about $1.2 trillion worldwide during the next 15 years, according to the United Nations. That’s the preliminary analysis of a UN Environment Finance Initiative project that...
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical, Manufacturing Groups Oppose US Tariff Hike
May 10, 2019 | Plastic News
By Steve Toloken
The U.S. government followed through on plans to raise tariffs May 10 on $200 billion worth of imports from China, but the decision is drawing opposition from chemical and manufacturing industry trade groups.
Talks between Washington and Beijing were continuing at press time, as the American Chemistry Council and the National Association of Manufacturers urged a solution to trade disputes without using tariffs.
In a statement before the tariffs went up, ACC said that “the risks of continuing to use tariffs as a negotiating tactic with China are simply too high — and any potential benefits still unclear.”
NAM urged negotiators to “accelerate their efforts to reach a lasting agreement that ends China’s unfair practices, eliminates tariffs and provides real enforcement.”
President Donald Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion in imports to 25 percent from what had been 10 percent. The administration said the higher tariffs only apply to goods shipped on or after May 10, not products in transit.
The U.S. government, in a May 8 announcement, said it was hiking tariffs because “in the most recent negotiations, China has chosen to retreat from specific commitments agreed to in earlier rounds.”
Washington has sought what it calls “structural changes” in China’s economy on issues like forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection and cyberspace.
A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry told reporters that Beijing has “good faith” in continuing talks and that “raising tariffs won’t resolve any problem.” It said it hoped that the U.S. “can work with China to meet each other halfway.”
The tariffs on $200 billion in imports from China were first imposed last year, in the largest of several rounds of U.S tariffs. ACC estimates that total U.S. tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports thus far include more than $15 billion in chemicals and plastics.
ACC said Beijing’s retaliation to those tariffs has also hit nearly $11 billion in U.S. chemical and plastics exports to China and have put 55,000 America jobs and $18 billion in U.S. economic activity at risk.'Eroding ... competitiveness'
ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley said in a statement that China is the third-largest export market for the U.S. chemical industry, and that the trade war is hurting the industry. Beijing has said it will respond to the U.S. tariffs but did not give specifics.
“We are starting to see signs that the tariffs are disrupting supply chains, cutting off markets, and eroding U.S. chemical manufacturing competitiveness,” Dooley said. “Although chemical imports from China grew by 22.7 percent in 2018, the retaliatory tariffs significantly dampened U.S. chemical exports to China, resulting in only a 2.7 percent increase in 2018 — nearly tripling the chemicals trade deficit, from $1.4 billion to $4.0 billion.”
Dooley said that the U.S. chemical sector, including plastics materials makers, prefer other solutions to trade problems with China, rather than tariffs and counter-tariffs.
“Future growth for our industry depends on a strong trading relationship with China and a trade policy that creates certainty and predictability for investors, not a looming threat of more or higher tariffs,” Dooley said.
The Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates said in a statement that raising the tariffs to 25 percent will “disproportionately burden specialty chemical manufacturers,” in part because the industry is very globally integrated.
It said that “in many cases China is the sole supplier of raw materials and building block chemicals” and noted that nearly half of the products removed from the initial U.S. tariff list after industry petitions were chemicals. Companies can continue to file those petitions.
“These sectors are thriving but cannot continue to sustain the volatility introduced by these actions,” said Jennifer Abril, SOCMA president and CEO.
This $200 billion round of tariffs also includes duties on some categories of plastic products, including vinyl flooring and some types of plastic packaging and closures. U.S. packaging maker Pactiv LLC had lobbied for tariffs.
Several large U.S. makers of vinyl flooring had urged Washington to impose the tariffs, saying it would benefit investment in U.S. factories. But other companies and importers argued it would raise home construction costs.
These are not the only tariffs on plastics industry goods. Tariffs on Chinese made injection molding machines, also at 25 percent, were imposed in an earlier round of tariffs last year.
The $200 billion at issue now first were imposed in September. Originally, the 10 percent duties were supposed to rise to 25 percent on Jan. 1 but that had been delayed while talks continued.
As well, 25 percent tariffs on Chinese-made injection molds, first imposed in July, were lifted in January after protests from U.S. mold buyers.
The U.S. traditionally maintains trade deficits with China in plastics products, machinery and molds, and has a surplus in resins. In 2017, the resin surplus was $2.9 billion, while the product deficit was $13.6 billion.
Trump also threatened in comments on Twitter to impose tariffs on the remaining Chinese imports, estimated at $325 billion.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190510/NEWS/190519999/chemical-manufacturing-groups-oppose-us-tariff-hike
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(ACC Mentioned) Should We Say No to Styrofoam?
May 10, 2019 | Daily Journal
Come 2021, the state of Maine is banning the use of disposable Styrofoam. That’s the plastic material, usually white, used in throw-away coffee cups, plates and doggy-bag containers at restaurants.
Actually, Styrofoam is a misnomer. That’s an actual brand name. The correct generic is polystyrene foam. Why ban it? For environmental reasons. The stuff does not biodegrade and becomes highly visible in the waste stream — or even worse, when you toss it out the window.
The American Chemistry Council issued a news release critical of Maine. Their preference would be for the state — and for the rest of us — to do a better job with reusing, recycling and recovering plastics.
Perhaps we also need to revisit why we use plastics in the first place. They’re cheap. They’re clean. Polystyrene foam is 98 percent air. It’s inexpensive to transport. You can use other kinds of containers and cups, but they will cost more. The chemistry council estimates twice the price.
The plastic also appeals to a desire for cleanliness. When you look at it, you say to yourself “I am the only person who has ever used this.” The same arguments go for plastic straws. They’re cheap. They’re clean.
An experiment was tried in Britain to get consumers to voluntarily change to reusable coffee cups. It more or less failed miserably.
There also is an element of déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. There was a time when almost all beverages came in glass bottles and you recycled those bottles, with either the milkman or at the grocery store.
There was a time when you made a full pot of coffee, poured out what you needed and threw out the grounds. Now everyone makes coffee one plastic pod at a time. You guessed it. A German city now is banning the plastic coffee pod.
So, what if you ate everything on your plate as your mother said rather than boxed it up? Kept your coffee cup and rinsed it out? Washed your bottles and returned them?
Those would be the good old days. Don’t forget to vote for Eisenhower.
https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/editorials/should-we-say-no-to-styrofoam/article_0dea6e80-701d-11e9-9b81-4762e016937f.html
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U.S. Slaps Higher Tariffs on Chinese Imports as Trade Talks Resume
May 10, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis and Josh Zumbrun
The U.S. increased tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% Friday as President Trump ratcheted up pressure on Beijing and threatened to impose additional levies on virtually everything China exports to the U.S.
The tariff hike went into force hours after U.S. and Chinese negotiators met Thursday in hopes of getting the troubled trade talks back on track. Discussions are set to resume Friday, but the White House said it had no plans to suspend the tariff increase, which will raise levies from the current 10%.
China said Friday it regretted the U.S. tariff increase and would take countermeasures, although it didn’t say what action it would take or when.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He for a working dinner Thursday night. Afterward, Messrs. Lighthizer and Mnuchin briefed Mr. Trump on the talks, the White House said.Trade’s Widening Battleground
Earlier Thursday, Mr. Trump told reporters the U.S. was also taking steps to impose fresh 25% tariffs on $325 billion in Chinese goods that aren’t currently taxed. If that happens, virtually all Chinese exports to the U.S. would face 25% tariffs.
“I’m different than a lot of people,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “I happen to think the tariffs for our country are very powerful.”
In a series of tweets Friday morning, he continued to back tariffs as good for the U.S. economy, while saying the U.S. would continue to negotiate but there is “absolutely no need to rush.” He said: “Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch!”
In his tweets, Mr. Trump also suggested there could be further assistance for American farmers, in which increased tariffs collected by the U.S. would be used to buy domestic agricultural products that would then be shipped overseas in the form of humanitarian aid. Last year, the Trump administration started compensating U.S. farmers for damage tariffs were doing to their business, but many farmers said they were worried the payments wouldn’t make up for lost sales to foreign markets.
China has rejected U.S. claims that it has backtracked in negotiations—the source of a setback this week that threatened to scuttle a potential trade agreement between the two countries—and has threatened unspecified countermeasures to the new U.S. tariffs.
“I came here this time, under pressure, to show China’s great sincerity,” Mr. Liu said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV after arriving in the U.S.
Mr. Trump’s tactics reflected U.S. negotiators’ frustration that Beijing had reneged on earlier commitments that had been expected to produce a preliminary agreement during talks this week in Washington.
But the move also made clear that Mr. Trump sees tariffs as a winning tactic, both internationally with trade partners and at home with Congress.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate’s Democratic leader, has backed a tougher stance toward China, although he could quickly withdraw his support if Mr. Trump, a Republican, fails to reach a deal that fundamentally changes Chinese economic policy.
The U.S. threats acted as a backdrop to resumed negotiations between Washington and Beijing, which began with meetings between midlevel negotiators on Wednesday and continued with Mr. Liu on Thursday. Talks had progressed smoothly over recent months but nearly derailed last week.
The U.S. thought China had agreed to detail the laws it would change to implement the trade deal under negotiation, according to administration officials. But late last week, Beijing said it had no intention of doing so, triggering Mr. Trump’s threat Sunday to escalate tariffs and bringing the dispute into the open. U.S. negotiators viewed China as reneging on earlier commitments. From Beijing’s vantage point, the move was an effort to renegotiate U.S. demands that it believed impinged on Chinese sovereignty.
The negotiation setback reinforced concerns in Washington that Mr. Liu didn’t have the political strength to push commitments through the labyrinthine Chinese bureaucracy and Communist Party structure.
Mr. Liu is a longtime colleague and trusted adviser of President Xi Jinping, but he was known mainly as an academic, not a party leader. U.S. officials were quick to say Thursday that Mr. Trump’s threat to escalate tariffs wasn’t aimed at Mr. Liu, who is considered an economic reformer, but at conservative policy makers in China who prefer a tougher stance toward the U.S.
Mr. Trump had also tempered his threats by saying that Mr. Xi had written him “a very beautiful letter” Wednesday and that he would probably speak with Mr. Xi to see whether personal diplomacy might help.
“Let’s work together,” Mr. Trump said. “Let’s see if we can get something done.”
It wasn’t known whether Mr. Liu would be carrying instructions from Mr. Xi to offer the concessions the U.S. thinks are necessary for a deal, or would just sound out U.S. officials to better understand their intentions. Unlike in prior visits, Mr. Liu wasn’t given the title of Mr. Xi’s “special envoy,” suggesting he may not have the power to make significant compromises.
China’s Commerce Ministry has threatened to take unspecified countermeasures should the U.S. move ahead with its planned tariff increase on the $200 billion of goods.
While Beijing has yet to spell out how it will retaliate, its options range from a reciprocal hiking of tariffs to punishing American companies. Beijing could sit on business-license requests by U.S. companies or withhold permission from American banks, brokerages and car makers to increase stakes in their Chinese ventures.
In previous rounds of retaliation, Beijing has imposed punitive duties on U.S. farm products, causing exports of U.S. soybeans, sorghum and pork to fall. A likely move now would be to raise tariffs on $60 billion in American goods—from semiconductors to chemicals—to 25%, from the current 5% to 10%. That was China’s initial plan last fall to counter the U.S. duties on $200 billion in Chinese goods. When the U.S. set its tariff rate at 10%, China kept to the lower threshold, and now that the U.S. has moved higher, Beijing could follow.
The impact of the U.S. tariff increase to 25% is unlikely to be felt right away. The goods facing that increase had already been subject to a 10% tariff since September. Companies that have discussed the levies in earnings calls this year have said they planned for the tariff increase in their financial forecasts.
The bulk of the goods facing increased levies are capital and intermediate goods such as circuit boards, microprocessors, vehicle parts, and machinery. About $40 billion of consumer goods will also be hit. All told, over 5,000 different items are subject to the tariffs.Airfreight shipments will be hit right away, but cargo that was loaded onto ships in China before Friday and is already bound for U.S. ports won’t be subject to the levies. A port in Shanghai.
The tariffs apply to goods leaving China and entering the U.S. after midnight on Friday. Airfreight shipments will be hit right away, but cargo that was loaded onto ships in China before Friday and is already bound for U.S. ports won’t be subject to the levies.
But should the U.S. press ahead to levy tariffs on the remainder of Chinese imports—$325 billion of goods, according to Mr. Trump—that would fall very heavily on consumers. Those goods include iPhones and other mobile phones, clothing, laptops and many other everyday products that consumers rely upon. The U.S. has tried to keep those items free from fresh tariffs to avoid a consumer backlash that could undermine the U.S. trade effort.
Any new tariffs would be weeks if not months away. The U.S. trade representative’s office would need to identify the goods, seek comments on its choices and hold hearings. The administration has moved carefully on tariffs to try to avoid being sued for failing to follow administrative procedures.
The trade conflict started more than a year ago when the trade representative’s office published a lengthy study saying that China systematically pressed U.S. companies to hand over technology to their competitors, and favored its domestic firms with improper subsidies and other aid. The study also said U.S. companies were unfairly blocked from participating in Chinese financial and digital markets.
Those issues have now taken a back seat to the dispute over whether China would commit in a trade pact to change its laws, and whether the U.S. could be persuaded not to raise tariffs.
China “started to renegotiate the deal. We can’t have that,” Mr. Trump said Thursday.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-move-forward-with-china-tariffs-trump-says-11557424081?mod=hp_lead_pos1
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Consortium Aims to Bring World-First PET Recycling Technology to Market
May 10, 2019 | Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Jasi
PEPSICO, Nestlé Waters, and Suntory Beverage and Food Europe have joined a consortium to help bring the world’s first enzymatic plastic recycling technology to market on an industrial scale.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic is typically used to produce food and drink packaging, especially drinks bottles. Green chemistry company Carbios designed and developed an innovative PET recycling technology based on enzymes that breaks down PET into its original building blocks, which can then be used to produce high-quality PET plastic equivalent to virgin PET. Additionally, the so-called “biorecycling” technology can recycle a broader range of PET plastics and polyester fibre feedstock than other recycling technologies.
The consortium was originally founded by Carbios and beauty company L’Oréal, to bring the recycling technology to market on an industrial scale. Nestlé Waters, the world’s largest bottled water company, PepsiCo, one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies, and Suntory Beverage and Food Europe have now joined the consortium to support Carbios’ “breakthrough” recycling technology.
Under the new four-year agreement, the new partners aim to bring the biorecycling technology to market and increase the availability of high-quality recycled plastics. This will help the partners to fulfil their own sustainability commitments and help make a circular plastic economy an industrial reality.
The biorecycling technology provides a competitive solution to increase global plastic recycling rates and has the potential to recycle PET repeatedly and pave the way for 100% recycled PET products. Recently, Carbios created PET bottles from 100% recycled plastic, a world-first.
The partnership includes technical milestones as well as support for efficient supply of consumer-grade, 100% recycled PET plastics for global markets.
Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of Carbios, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe into the consortium we have created with L’Oréal. Their contribution will accelerate our common ambition and help to industrialise our recycling technology, which brings a breakthrough solution in the treatment of plastic waste.”
Roberto Vanin, Chief R&D Officer, Suntory Beverage & Food Europe, added: “Addressing the global issue of plastic waste requires large-scale collaboration, innovative thinking and investment in new and ground-breaking technologies. We are delighted to partner with Carbios to drive real action to tackle plastic waste.”
Carbios’ biorecycling method can handle all forms of PET plastics, ie clear, coloured, opaque, and multilayer, and polyester fibres. The process uses enzymes to specifically depolymerise PET, in the various plastics to be recycled, into monomers which can be purified and repolymerised. Other polymers not degraded in the first stage can eventually be depolymerised using other enzymes.
Additionally, the process requires limited heat, and doesn’t require pressure or solvents, improving environmental impact.
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/consortium-aims-to-bring-world-first-pet-recycling-technology-to-market/
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Companies Get More Time to Put Chemicals on Official EPA List (1)
May 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Companies that make chemicals or mix them into products like paint, detergent, and wax have until Aug. 5 to let the EPA know if a compound they make or use was omitted from an official EPA list, the agency announced May 9.
The notice extends the time the Environmental Protection Agency is giving companies to get chemicals on a list of compounds that can legally be made in or imported into the U.S. The deadline originally was May 19.
The EPA released the list, the Toxic Substances Control Act inventory of chemicals active in commerce, on Feb. 19. After Aug. 5, it will be illegal for any company to make, import, or use any chemical not on the active list.
The original deadline of May 19 was based on a deadline the agency described in a final 2017 TSCA inventory rule (RIN: 2070-AK24). That rule, however, required the agency to issue a “signed action” specifying the deadline for inventory corrections, said Steve Owens, an attorney with Squire Patton Boggs in Phoenix.
“EPA apparently just realized that it had not really complied with its Inventory Reset regulation, since it never issued a ‘signed action’ (as required by the rule) when it posted the reset inventory,” Owens said in a May 9 email.
The EPA’s notice is that signed action, said Owens, who previously served as the agency’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention under former President Barack Obama.
The agency’s announcement may clarify some confusion. Owens and other TSCA attorneys recently told Bloomberg Environment that some chemical producers and processors didn’t know the precise date by which corrections for the active inventory had to be filed. The notice provides that deadline and specifies the form that companies must provide the EPA.
Companies BenefitThere is no apparent reason or basis for EPA to have taken nearly three months to issue the signed action, which the agency’s rule said would accompany the first version of the inventory, Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said May 10.
“EPA seems once again to be bending over backwards for the chemical industry,” he said by email.
“For an EPA that touts at every turn that it meets TSCA deadlines, the delays here—which only benefit industry—are particularly glaring,” Denison said.
“Under TSCA this process should have taken slightly over 180 days after the rule was finalized. By August, the timeline will have been dragged out to almost two years,” he said.
The EPA didn’t reply to a question about its reason for extending the deadline. Nor did it answer any questions about how many companies have filed inventory correction requests.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/companies-get-more-time-to-put-chemicals-on-official-epa-list
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Senators’ Bill Looks to Address PFAs at Military Bases
May 10, 2019 | Sea Coast Online
By Jeff McMenemy
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan joined a bipartisan group of U.S. senators Thursday to introduce the PFAS Accountability Act.
This legislation seeks to hold federal agencies accountable for addressing contamination for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at military bases across the country, like the former Pease Air Force Base.
The bill comes days after the release of a new report showing 19 million people in 43 states have been exposed to PFAS-contaminated water.
The PFAS Accountability Act sets clear deadlines and reporting requirements for cleaning up PFAS contamination at federal facilities across the country, including active and decommissioned military bases, and mandates greater transparency. It calls on federal facilities, including military and National Guard installations, to expedite cooperative agreements with states to address PFAS contamination.
The agreements commit the federal government to take specific actions and enable states and local communities to be reimbursed for costs incurred to address PFAS contamination.
“The potential health effects related to PFAS exposure are alarming, which underscores the urgent need to implement a coordinated federal and state response effort to clean up dangerous contamination from these materials as soon as possible,” Shaheen said Thursday. “The PFAS Accountability Act will ensure accountability and transparency in protecting the health and safety of our drinking water.”
“Remediation is a critical component to combating water contamination, which makes this bill so important in our strategy to end PFAS exposure,” Shaheen added.
Hassan said “by holding federal agencies accountable for addressing PFAS contamination at military bases, this bipartisan bill is integral to our efforts to ensure that all Granite Staters and Americans have the clean, safe drinking water they need to lead productive lives.”
Thousands of people working at Pease International Tradeport, along with children and infants who attended two day-care centers there, were exposed to multiple PFAS chemicals from contaminated water in the city-owned Haven well up until its closure in 2014. The tradeport is located at the former Air Force base, which is a Superfund cleanup site. The city closed the well in May 2014 after the Air Force found high levels of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS.Budgeting for ParenthoodAd by Merrill See More
The EPA in May 2016 set permanent health advisories for PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA at 70 parts per trillion.
Air Force officials believe the Haven well was contaminated by firefighting foam used at the former base.
PFAS are man-made chemicals used in products worldwide since the 1950s, including firefighting foam, non-stick cookware and water-repellent fabrics and carpet. They also have a range of applications in the aerospace, aviation, automotive and electronics industries, among others.
The Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registry states PFAS exposure can increase cancer risk, lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant, interfere with the body’s hormones and can “affect growth, learning and behavior of infants and older children.”
Shaheen previously drafted and passed legislation which created the first-ever national health study on the effects of PFAS exposure in water. New Hampshire’s congressional delegation also successfully lobbied the ATSDR so Pease will serve as the model site for the study.
The group of senators introducing the PFAS Accountability Act also included Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, and Marco Rubio, R-Florida.
https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20190510/senators-bill-looks-to-address-pfas-at-military-bases
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Drinking Water Crisis Update: Supplies in 43 States Found Contaminated With Harmful PFAS Chemicals
May 10, 2019 | EcoWatch
By Sam Nickerson
Millions of people across the U.S. have been exposed to toxic PFAS chemicals in their drinking water, according to a new report from Northeastern University and the Environmental Working Group.
The report found that at least 610 sites in 43 states were contaminated with the fluorinated compounds known as PFAS chemicals as of March 2019, including the drinking water systems for around 19 million people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), exposure to PFAS chemicals can lead to increased risk of cancer as well as immune, behavioral and reproductive health issues.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University used information from the Pentagon and water utilities to update an interactive map detailing the spread of the contamination. The Environmental Working Group said that when the map was last updated in July 2018, there were 172 locations in 40 states showing PFAS contamination.
Based on the new data, Michigan tops the list of states with the most contaminated sites on the map with 192, followed by California with 47 and New Jersey with 43. PFAS contamination was found at 117 military bases across the country, due to use in aviation-grade firefighting foam. The U.S Department of Defense officials estimate that it will cost $2 billion to clean up the contamination at all bases in the U.S., Military Times reported.
"This should be frightening to all Americans in many ways," David Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, told CBS News. "These chemicals ... don't break down in our body and they don't break down in our environment and they actually stick to our blood. So levels tend to increase over time."
PFAS chemicals have been manufactured since the 1940s and are used in a wide range of consumer products, including cosmetics, paint, adhesives, food packaging, furniture and cleaning products, as well as water, oil and grease repellants, HuffPost reported. Because they take thousands of years to break down, PFAS chemicals easily find their way into drinking water, lakes and rivers, and wildlife. The CDC says that basically everyone in the U.S. have some level of PFAS chemicals in their blood, usually due to consuming contaminated water or food.
Currently, there are no enforceable federal limits for PFAS chemicals in drinking water, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does have a non-binding health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion, the Daily Mail reported. For the report, the Environmental Working Group included all locations where PFAS were found, even if the concentration was less than the health advisory level. The organization has proposed a 1 part per trillion limit for PFAS chemicals in drinking water.
"The Environmental Protection Agency has utterly failed to address PFAS with the seriousness this crisis demands, leaving local communities and states to grapple with a complex problem rooted in the failure of the federal chemical regulatory system," said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook, president of EWG, in a press release.
The EPA has recently hinted at establishing a national limit for PFAS chemicals in drinking water and released draft guidance for cleaning PFAS contamination in groundwater, while legislators have introduced more than 15 bills so far this year with bipartisan support to require action on PFAS pollution.
The EPA said it had not fully reviewed the latest data from the Environmental Working Group and, for now, is sticking by its existing PFAS action plan.
"EPA is moving forward with the maximum contaminant level (MCL) process outlined in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for PFOA and PFOS," the agency said in a statement to CBS. "The process prescribed by the Act ensures scientific integrity and transparency when developing regulations for contaminants in public water systems."
https://www.ecowatch.com/drinking-water-contamination-pfas-2636775974.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3
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May 10, 2019 | MLive
By Julie Mack
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is seeking outside legal experts to help with potential lawsuits involving opioids and PFAS.
Nessel says she considering legal strategies to hold 3M and other PFAS manufacturers liable for widespread PFAS contamination of drinking water.
She also wants to hold drug companies responsible for the opioid crisis, but is impeded by a 1995 Michigan law that gives drug companies immunity from lawsuits involving drugs approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
That law -- sponsored by Bill Schuette, Nessel’s predecessor as attorney general when Schuette was a state senator -- “badly needs to be repealed,” said Kelly Rossman McKinney, who is Nessel’s spokeswoman.
Nessel has issued requests for proposals for attorneys and law firms nationwide with experience and resources to pursue claims against manufacturers, distributors and other responsible parties related to both opioids and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS.
The PFAS claims could specifically target 3M, a Minnesota-based company whose officials knew about the potential harms of PFAS decades ago, according to internal documents collected by the Minnesota attorney general’s office. The Detroit Free Press published those documents this week.
3M operated Wolverine World Wide tannery in Rockford, where PFAS contamination has been found, and the company is among Nessel’s targets in terms of PFAS legal claims, Rossman McKinney said.
“These manufactured chemicals – both opioids and PFAS – are having a devastating effect on our residents and on our entire country,” Nessel said in a press release. “We are compelled to pursue the very best legal expertise we can find in the country to assist us in successfully going after those who are poisoning our planet and our people.”
The press release said Nessel wants to determines “the appropriate litigation strategies," and says an outside law firm can assist in conducting investigations, determining claims, drafting complaints, conducting discovery, engaging in motion practice, and preparing for and conducting any trials that may proceed.
Opioid overdose deaths in Michigan almost tripled between 2012 and 2017. There were 1,941 opioid OD deaths in 2017; by comparison, Michigan had 1,028 traffic fatalities and 1,1,38 gun deaths that year.
A number of Michigan communities -- including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Genesee County, Saginaw, Lansing and Kalamazoo County -- have joined multi-jurisdictional federal civil lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, seeking damages for opioid-related deaths, treatment and law enforcement costs. In addition, 41 states have filed a similar class-action suit.
However, Michigan lawsuits against drug manufacturers face a stiff challenge, due to the 1995 state law giving pharmaceutical companies sweeping immunity.
That law “significantly impedes" the ability for Michigan individuals and entities to sue drug companies, Rossman McKinney said. “It’s means we’ll have to be creative” on legal strategies to hold opioid companies accountable.
Meanwhile, PFAS contamination in drinking water also is a growing issuein Michigan. The chemical are used in a wide-ranging number of products, including firefighting foam, carpet, and packaging materials, and for waterproofing fabrics and leathers, nonstick coatings, and industrial processes such as chrome plating.
Michigan municipalities are spending millions to extend new water lines, upgrade water system filters, hire legal advice and buy bottled water to deal with PFAS contamination. Some communities now are hiring haulers to bring solid wastes to the only hazardous waste landfill in the state. There are also worries about the impact on economic redevelopment and property values.
“Our state will spend hundreds of millions of dollars addressing these problems – costs that should not be borne by the people who live, work and play here,” Nessel said in the press release. “Many of those same people were poisoned here and we will make those responsible pay for their greed.”
https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/05/michigan-attorney-general-seeking-legal-expertise-on-opioids-and-pfas-issue.html
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(ACC Mentioned) The Chemical Recycling Alliance Expands Member Roster
May 10, 2019 | Recycling Today
By DeAnne Toto
The Washington-based American Chemistry Council’s (ACC’s) Plastics-to-Fuel and Petrochemistry Alliance has changed its name to The Chemical Recycling Alliance (TCRA) and has added three new members.
TCRA’s newest members are Sealed Air Corp., Charlotte, North Carolina; New Hope Energy, Tyler, Texas; and Golden Renewable Energy LLC, Yonkers, New York. The companies join chemical recycling technology providers Agilyx Corp., Renewlogy and RES Polyflow (now Brightmark Energy) and associate members Americas Styrenics LLC and Tetra Tech Inc.
“Advanced recycling and recovery technologies, such as chemical recycling, present a critical and tremendous opportunity for the entire plastics value chain,” says Craig Cookson, senior director, recycling and recovery. “Members of the American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division have committed to recycling or recovering all plastic packaging in the United States by 2040, and TCRA technology providers will play an important role in realizing that goal. A recent report found that many chemical recycling technologies are still in a nascent phase, but can reach scale with strategic investments and new, vertically integrated business models.”
Cookson adds, “We urge the entire value chain, including brands and technology providers, to work with us in promoting policies that help bring these solutions to scale.”
“Sealed Air has pledged to design and advance our packaging solutions to be 100 percent recyclable or reusable by 2025,” says Ron Cotterman, vice president of innovation and sustainability for Sealed Air. “We are excited to join The Chemical Recycling Alliance to help build out the infrastructure that could bring advanced recycling and recovery technologies to scale.”
“New Hope Energy is excited to join TCRA in educating policymakers, communities and others about the important benefits of these technologies and to help create opportunities to grow them across the United States,” says company CEO Johnny Combs.
“We’re proud to join TCRA in these efforts,” says Golden Renewable Energy Chief Operating Officer Michael Moreno. “Not only do these technologies create valuable products, they provide a solution to help eliminate plastic waste.”
Advanced plastics recycling and recovery technologies can create a wide range of products from postuse, recovered plastics, such as transportation fuels, crude oil and plastic and chemical feedstocks.
https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/chemical-recycling-alliance-adds-to-members/
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Trump Administration Moves Forward With Final Rule to Allow New California Drilling
May 9, 2019 | The Hill
By Miranda Green
The Trump administration moved forward Thursday with its plan to open up hundreds of thousands of acres on California's Central Coast to oil and gas drilling.
The effort comes despite opposition from Democratic officials in the Golden State, who have starkly criticized the plan.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued its final proposal as part of the administration's “energy independence” push on Thursday.
It would open up 725,500 acres of land across 11 counties in California to oil and gas lease sales. The counties affected include Monterey, Fresno and Santa Cruz.
The BLM hailed the proposal as a move that would strengthen U.S. energy independence.
“Sustainable development of oil and gas resources is a key component of the BLM’s multiple use and sustained yield mission," BLM’s Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment and Final Environmental Impact Statement reads.
"In keeping with the Administration’s goal of strengthening America’s energy independence, the BLM supports an all-of-the-above energy plan that includes oil and gas, coal, strategic minerals, and renewable sources such as wind, geothermal, and solar – all of which can be developed on public lands,” the report states.
The plan estimates that up to 32 new oil and gas development wells could be built on the federal lands during the plan's lifetime.
The Trump administration’s drilling plans run directly counter to California’s clean energy push, and the state's Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) criticized it for having an emphasis on fossil fuel use.
“In California, we're already well on our way to energy independence and we're doing it in the smart way. This is 2019, not 1920. We don't need to jeopardize our health or our environment to develop the energy sources we need,” he said in a statement.
California in September committed to transitioning its electric grid to 100 percent renewable energy use by 2045. Becerra outlined the health risks associated with fracking in a 2018 lawsuit he filed against the Trump administration for its Fracking Rule, implemented on Native American tribal lands.
Thursday’s final plan replaces a 2017 drilling proposal drafted largely under the Obama administration. The updated Trump administration plan raises the area available for drilling by nearly 327,000 acres.
The administration’s preferred plan, outlined in the final proposal, "applies the least restrictions necessary to develop Federal minerals within existing oil and gas fields where the vast majority of oil and gas production is projected to occur,” the plan reads.
The administration has been moving to open up more areas in California to drilling and fracking.
In April, the BLM issued a proposal to reopen 400,000 acres of BLM-administered public land and 1.2 million acres of federal mineral estate, the subsurface acreage managed by BLM, to fracking in California counties including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura. The finalized plan is anticipated in the fall.
It has insisted that the drilling will take place without harming other uses of land in California.
“The BLM strives to be a good neighbor in the communities we serve, where we provide opportunities for economic growth with space for traditional uses such as ranching, mining, logging, and energy development as well as hunting and fishing,” Serena Baker, BLM Central California District spokeswoman, told The Hill.
“This effort supports the Administration’s goals of promoting environmentally responsible development of oil and gas on public lands, creating jobs and providing economic opportunities for local communities. We believe that America’s free markets will help determine if energy development on public lands is feasible,” she said.
Around 10 percent of oil produced in California comes from BLM-managed land, according to Baker. About 5 percent of leases on all federal land use hydraulic fracturing, she said.
If either of the two plans go forward, it would end a five-year moratorium on oil and gas leasing of federal land and mineral estate in California. The ban has been in effect since a judge ruled in 2013 that BLM failed to consider the environmental risks of fracking when it issued oil leases in Monterey and Fresno counties.
The public will have 30 days to file a protest to the finalized BLM plan. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) also has a 60-day window to review the plan for any inconsistencies with state and local plans and policies and provide recommendations.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has sued the federal government over its fracking plans, said that together, both BLM drilling proposals would target more than 1.7 million acres of land across 19 California counties.
“Trump’s new plan aims to stab oil derricks and fracking rigs into some of California’s most beautiful landscapes,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney for the group. “From Monterey to the Bay Area, the president wants to let oil companies drill and spill their way across our beloved public lands and wildlife habitat.”
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Facing Democratic Resistance, Interior Secretary Promotes Oil and Gas Drilling
May 10, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration will calculate the climate effects of its oil, gas and coal leasing decisions, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in an interview Wednesday, but will not make those impacts the key factor in its final decisions.
Bernhardt, who took office a month ago, said he was committed to carrying out President Trump’s plans to expand fossil-fuel production on public lands. In March, a federal judge ruled that the federal government illegally approved two gas drilling plans in western Colorado; on Monday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management failed to account for the effect of fracking as many as 4,000 oil and gas wells in New Mexico’s Greater Chaco region.
Bernhardt, who noted that the leases in both decisions had been issued under the Obama administration, said he was confident the department could address these concerns.
“So that says to me that we have to do a better job in articulating certain things to the courts,” he said during a wide-ranging conversation in his office. “What I hope is, as an organization we learn from any error we make.”
Congressional Democrats have been pressing Bernhardt, who appeared before a House spending panel Tuesday and will testify before the House Natural Resources Committee next week, to factor climate change into the department’s decisions about energy development on public lands and in federal waters.
But he emphasized that Interior was not legally obligated to curb the nation’s carbon output, even if it had to assess the environmental effects of its leasing programs.
“The law requires us to analyze those things,” he said, referring to the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from a leasing decision. “It doesn’t say if there is an additional contribution, you should not go forward at all.”
The Trump administration has placed a hold on one of its most ambitious leasing proposals, a five-year plan for offshore drilling, after a federal judge ruled in March that the president’s order revoking a sweeping ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans was illegal. Bernhardt said the White House would make the ultimate decision on whether to appeal, and that he could not predict when the offshore leasing plan would be finalized.
Bernhardt is prepared to forge ahead on other deregulation efforts. He said that he expected to get a briefing on this week’s U.N. scientific report that an eighth of the world’s plants and animals are at risk of extinction, but added that Interior and the Commerce Department still planned to finalize an overhaul of endangered species regulations this year.
“We didn’t start doing them to not do them,” he said.
As he pursues the administration’s agenda, Bernhardt is likely to encounter resistance on Capitol Hill. In a phone interview Wednesday, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies, said that any spending bill passing the House this year would impose certain requirements on Interior.
“We will not be funding irreparable harm to the environment,” McCollum said. “Any bill we pass will include requirements for the Department of Interior to use real science, to use best practices, to protect the environment and to not to go to industry and ask them what they want, and what’s the bare minimum.”
In contrast to his predecessor, Ryan Zinke, who insulted one of the top Democrats overseeing Interior on Twitter, Bernhardt has made an effort to contact key lawmakers in recent weeks. He met privately on Tuesday with House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), and said he plans to meet with members of both parties in the months to come.
“You know, my own view is that everyone who is engaged in public service is trying to serve the public interest in the best way that they can,” he said.
Bernhardt, who started running the department in January but did not move into the secretary’s office until he was sworn in April 11, has made several changes to its decor. A stuffed polar bear stands as a sentry outside, and the skull of a moose Bernhardt shot in Alaska’s Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve sits atop the fireplace.
“I’m not somebody who would put somebody else’s stuff up,” Bernhardt said, noting that he and a friend had to carry the moose’s entire body themselves to ship it out on a small plane. “His neck meat alone was 135 pounds.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/facing-democratic-resistance-interior-secretary-promotes-oil-and-gas-drilling/2019/05/09/a9198b0e-7296-11e9-8be0-ca575670e91c_story.html?utm_term=.c7bbea5d7500
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DOE's Process Rule: Wonky Changes Could Have Big Impact
May 10, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council
By Lauren Urbanek
NRDC submitted comments this week in response to the Department of Energy’s proposed changes to its Process Rule for setting energy efficiency standards, citing several grave concerns over their divisive nature and the peril in which they would place timely, cost-effective future standards. The changes DOE proposes to the process for setting standards would likely result in a significant slow-down to creating new and updating existing standards, which means fewer bill savings and energy savings for consumers and businesses. At a time when it’s critical to cut power plant pollution to ward off the worst impacts of climate change, this is a step in exactly the wrong direction.
The Process Rule is a non-binding regulation that outlines the protocols that the DOE follows when updating energy-saving standards for appliances and equipment, which have been an unequivocal success: Existing efficiency standards will save consumers $2 trillion on their utility bills and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 7 billion metric tons by 2030. (Meanwhile, in a separate proceeding, DOE is attempting to roll back energy efficiency standards for lighting.)
The existing process DOE uses to set standards strikes a good balance between offering manufacturers the predictability to plan for future standards while allowing DOE to respond to unforeseeable issues that might arise. But the DOE’s proposed changes will actually hamper the process to setting standards, needlessly reducing benefits to consumers and the environment.
Here’s how:DOE proposes adding lengthy, cumbersome steps
By our count, DOE’s proposal would require at least 19 distinct steps, including eight public comment periods, to set or update a standard. DOE has not described any benefit to these additional steps, and we are concerned that they will increase confusion and decrease transparency. Additionally, the new steps would make it even more difficult for DOE to meet its statutorily mandated deadlines for new standards, of which it has already missed 17.
Elongating the process to set standards means that more deadlines will be missed, threatening significant potential energy and financial savings for U.S. consumers and businesses.
An arbitrary energy savings threshold runs contrary to NRDC v. Herrington
Under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), any standard put forth by DOE must result in a “significant conservation of energy.” Though Congress does not have a specific definition of “significant,” the issue was decided in the court case NRDC v. Herrington in the 1980s. Since then, DOE has appropriately exercised its discretion to determine what constitutes “significant” energy savings.
Now, DOE is proposing to set an arbitrary threshold that standards must meet to qualify as significant (and worthy of a new or updated standard): either 0.5 quads, or a 10 percent improvement in efficiency.
As we noted in our comments, not only does this proposal conflict with the outcome of NRDC v. Herrington, it also undermines the savings accrued by standards that don’t meet the proposed threshold. Had this limit been in place all along, consumers and businesses would have missed out on more than 4 quadrillion Btus (quads) of energy savings. For perspective, the entire U.S. economy uses 100 quads of energy each year.
Test procedure changes would give greater power to industries
A vital part of an efficiency standard is establishing how appliances, equipment, and electronics will be tested to ensure they meet the energy levels specified in that standard. The DOE is now proposing to adopt industry-developed test procedures “without modification,” with few exceptions. However, DOE has not identified where under EPCA it is authorized to make these test procedure changes. Even if it did have such authority, this change would result in DOE taking away one of its most important powers and putting it in the hands of the industry it is tasked to regulate.
While there is nothing wrong with using industry test procedures as a starting point, DOE must maintain the final say in order to maintain the integrity of the standards program.
Changes to how DOE measures economic justification is prohibited by EPCA
DOE is proposing to alter its approach to ensuring potential standard levels are economically justified (meaning they will save energy in a way that benefits consumers without being overly burdensome for manufacturers or others). DOE has been using a method that is consistent with statutory requirements, that has been working well for years. Now, however, DOE is proposing to base standards levels on the concept of an “economically rational consumer.” This is highly problematic.
First and foremost, DOE’s proposal to change how it determines economic justification is flatly prohibited by law. Secondly, DOE gives no information about how it defines an “economically rational consumer,” making it impossible to provide feedback on the critical methodology. The concept of an economically rational consumer is hotly debated among academics. It’s not a proven concept, by any means, and is inappropriate as the basis of a regulatory program.
NRDC also signed onto comments with the Appliance Standards Awareness Project and other energy efficiency groups, stressing to DOE that any proposed changes to the process used to set standards should improve the program, not handicap it. DOE stopped taking public comments on Monday (May 6) but has not revealed when it will decide whether to make its proposed changes final. We urge DOE to focus on programs and initiatives that will save energy and be good for consumers. These unnecessary changes won’t do either of those things.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lauren-urbanek/does-process-rule-wonky-changes-could-have-big-impact
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Louisiana Dedicates Lake Charles Petrochemical Complex
May 10, 2019 | Oil & Gas Journal
By Robert Brelsford
Lotte Chemical Corp. subsidiary Lotte Chemical USA Corp. and Westlake Chemical Corp., Houston, have completed their long-planned $3.1-billion grassroots petrochemical project in southwest Louisiana (OGJ Online, Apr. 23, 2018; Sept. 6, 2016).
The state of Louisiana alongside Lotte Chemical and Westlake Chemical officials held a dedication ceremony for the completed petrochemical complex—including its more than 1 million-tonne/year ethane cracker and 700,000-tpy monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant—on May 9, the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) said.
Major construction on the Lake Charles petrochemical project began in June 2016 following an announcement of original project partner Axiall Corp.’s merger with Houston-based Westlake Chemical (OGJ Online, June 14, 2016).
During the first 3 years of operation, Westlake Chemical has the option of buying as much as a 50% equity stake in the ethane cracker portion of the complex, which would secure receipt of 50% of the 1 million tpy of ethylene, LED said.
Westlake Chemical plans to use its portion of the ethylene output to make vinyl chloride monomer and other products, such as caustic soda, chlorine, and ethylene dichloride, while Lotte Chemical will make MEG, a key component in the making of paper, textile fibers, latex paints, asphalt, resins, antifreeze, coolants, and adhesives.
https://www.ogj.com/articles/2019/05/louisiana-dedicates-lake-charles-petrochemical-complex.html
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Pennsylvania's Gas Power Problem, Part 1: the Build-Out
May 10, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council
By Mark Szybist
Part II of this blog discusses the costs and risks of Pennsylvania's gas power build-out. The factors driving the build-out are discussed in this part.
For most of the last decade, the biggest energy story in Pennsylvania has been fracking – the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to extract shale gas – and the dramatic increase in gas production that fracking has driven.
The recent shift of attention to whether the Commonwealth should subsidize its nuclear plants may seem like a different narrative. But the nuclear story – which took a twist this week, with Exelon's announcement that it will proceed to close the Three Mile Island nuclear station – is very much a gas story too. It's just about power plants that burn gas to make electricity, and how they've disrupted the electric generation marketplace in Pennsylvania at the expense of nuclear (as well as renewables and coal).
So Much Gas - Where to Sell It?
In 2004, when the first successful Marcellus Shale was completed in Washington County, Pennsylvania ranked 13th in the U.S. in natural gas production. Since then, gas production has increased more than thirty-fold. Today, some 17 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas is extracted every day – more than in any state except Texas.
Because of fracking in Pennsylvania (and various other places), U.S. gas production rose from 52 Bcf feet per day in 2007 to 90 Bcf in 2018 – a 73 percent increase. Supply quickly outstripped demand, and as a result gas prices dropped to consistently less than $4 per thousand cubic feet.
For the capital-intensive fracking industry, these low prices created a cash-flow problem that – at least so far – has been solved by the willingness of banks, private equity funds, and hedge funds to provide billions of dollars of debt and equity financing. The low interest rates that have prevailed since the Great Recession were a major driver of this willingness. But the promise of a return on all this investment depended largely on ever-increasing consumption by gas-fired power plants.
Pennsylvania has a "restructured" power sector. This means that power plants are owned not by the electric utilities (think PECO and PPL) that are regulated by the state Public Utility Commission (PUC), but by unregulated "merchant" companies that compete against each other in wholesale power markets designed by the PJM Interconnection. (PJM is the "regional transmission organization" that runs the electric grid in Pennsylvania, using markets to determine which generators sell power to utilities).
In this “competitive market” environment, companies’ decide to build new plants or retire old ones based on "price signals" from the markets. With a glut of cheap shale gas on the markets, the "price signals" from PJM said that there could be a handsome return on investment in new gas plants in Pennsylvania for three main reasons.
First, it was clear that gas could be burned to generate electricity at low cost because of the efficiency of new “combined-cycle” gas plants (i.e., more automation and fewer workers), the absence of a price on carbon pollution in Pennsylvania or PJM, and the fact that fuel costs are the biggest lifetime cost for these plants.
Second, based on the way that PJM’s markets are designed, it was apparent that the relatively low cost of operating new combined-cycle plants would translate into lower electricity prices for all generators, giving gas plants an advantage over existing plants (mostly coal and nuclear) with higher costs.
Third, PJM's markets make it easier for natural gas to make money than cleaner low-cost resources like wind, solar, and energy efficiency. Not only is there no price on carbon; PJM has designed its “capacity market” (which pays power plants to be available to produce electricity) in ways that uniquely favor gas plants. For example, PJM refuses to accept bids for “seasonal capacity.” During the summer, this hurts both solar and demand response programs that rely on turning down air conditioners en masse at critical times; during the winter, it hurts wind. And last year, PJM proposed to bar resources subsidized by state renewable portfolio standards from the capacity market. (Conveniently, gas generation is mostly subsidized indirectly, through tax breaks for gas production).
In the last six years, investors have put almost $13 billion into building new gas power plants in Pennsylvania. Around 9,000 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity have been brought into operation so far, including more than 5,000 MW in 2018 alone (which is more than a quarter of all new gas power brought online in the U.S. last year).
The map below, which is also available here, shows these plants, along with others that have advanced far enough in their development to seek air quality permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. (You can see whether a plant has been built, so far by clicking on the dot representing it). In all, there are more than forty (40) new gas power projects totaling more than 19,000 MW of capacity.
The Rise of Gas Generation in Pennsylvania
Because of this build-out, Pennsylvania is generating more and more power from gas. In 2005, gas-fired power plants produced 10.8 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity in the state. By 2018, that number had risen over 600 percent, to 76.8 million MWh. So far, this increase has come at the expense of coal: between 2005 and 2018, gas-fired power rose from 5 percent to 36 percent of the state's generation mix, while coal power fell from 55 percent to 20 percent. Nuclear rose slightly, from 35 to 39 percent, and renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) rose from less than 1 percent to around 3 percent. By contrast, the U.S. overall saw a 20-fold increase in wind and solar during the same period, from 0.4 percent to 8.1 percent.
As Part II of this blog describes, the coal-to-gas switching is cutting carbon dioxide emissions in the short term - but locking in more emissions in the long term, along with much more methane pollution.
Some preliminary modeling by NRDC projects that if Pennsylvania continues along its current energy policy path, gas generation could to rise to more than 70 percent of in-state generation by 2040, pushing offline most of what’s left of the state’s coal fleet and most of its nuclear fleet. In this case, by 2040, coal would fall to just 13 percent of in-state generation and nuclear to only 11 percent (down from around 40 percent today). Renewables would remain less than 5 percent. Expected changes to PJM's capacity market would help gas even more.
When Pennsylvania restructured its power sector in 1996, the future looked like ever-increasing load growth and competition between nuclear and coal plants. No one foresaw fracking or the massive investment in gas-fired power it would drive - and there's been relatively little discussion about the climate and consumer risks of the gas build-out.
Part II of this blog discusses those risks, and how Pennsylvania could chart a course towards a cleaner future. (Spoiler alert: it’s not by providing massive subsidies to nuclear plants with no means test while doing nothing to limit carbon pollution or ramp up energy efficiency, solar, and wind).
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/mark-szybist/pennsylvanias-gas-power-problem
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Top Aide to W.Va. Governor Stepping Down From EQT Board
May 10, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greewire)
A top adviser to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is stepping down from the board of directors of the second-largest natural gas producer in the state.
Pittsburgh-based EQT announced Wednesday that Bray Cary will not seek reelection to the company's board.
Cary released a statement saying "given my tenure on the board and my involvement in the Justice administration I figured it was a good time to step away."
The company says Cary joined its board in 2008 and has also served as the president, chief executive officer and director of West Virginia Media Holdings, a television and print media company, since 2001.
Cary is seen as having an instrumental role in Justice's administration, to the point where some lawmakers refer to him as "Governor Cary."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/05/10/stories/1060308669
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Despite Claims of Economic Diversity, It’s Still About Oil in Houston
May 10, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Rob Gavin
In another life, in another time, for another newspaper, I wrote about the regional economies of the western United States. Up in Seattle, Microsoft was minting millionaires and Amazon.com, having decimated book stores, was turning its attention to other markets.
These new-economy companies, not to mention a long-list of dot-coms, were grabbing the attention of investors, analysts and journalists, who hailed them as transforming a Northwest economy long based on timber, trade and manufacturing. But one regional economist told me, “Not so fast.”
The Seattle metropolitan economy, he said, was still about Boeing, founded there in 1916. It wasn’t only about the number of people who worked for the aerospace company — Boeing was the largest private employer — but also what Boeing paid. All Boeing had to do was hold employment steady, and the local economy would grow a steady clip because of the company’s high wages and salaries, which bought homes, cars, appliances and a raft of goods and services.
Boeing paid so much that laid-off machinists who had moved onto other companies would quit immediately if Boeing called them back — even after more than two years.
What called this to mind was the recent economic forecast from Bill Gilmer, director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business. Gilmer, in predicting moderate growth in the years ahead, reminded us, again, that for Houston, it’s about oil.
Catch-up
Despite all the talk and effort about diversifying the economy, oil — and oil prices — make Houston go. The industry employs more than 250,000 people, according to Gilmer’s figures, and its impact is amplified by the high wages and salaries that energy companies pay.
Much has been made here of how the Houston economy seemed to skate through the recent oil bust, a feat attributed to a 30-year effort to diversify the region’s industrial mix. But Gilmer noted that’s not quite the story. The last oil boom, which peaked in 2014, boomed so far and so fast that sectors that support the energy industry and its workers — retail, restaurants, health care and financial services — couldn’t keep up.
When the bust hit, these sectors were still trying to catch up with the growth of the previous years, Gilmer said, a process that kept them hiring during the two-year energy downturn. Retail, for example, added more than 14,000 jobs from the end of 2014 to the end of 2016; restaurants and bars added more than 16,000, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
The energy industry, of course, didn’t fare so well. Gilmer estimates that Houston lost some 75,000 oil jobs in 2015 and 2016. During those hard times, prognosticators worried that the industry would lose skilled workers for good as the downturn and weak recovery dragged on, forcing them into other industries.
But experience, again, is showing otherwise. Even two years after layoffs, Gilmer said, local oil workers were willing to come back to the industry.
In Houston, as in Seattle, economic developers seeking the next big thing can sometimes overlook the old big thing. But the technical skills and expertise built up by Boeing over the decades almost certainly contributed to the talent pool that allowed Microsoft and Amazon to happen.
Energy catalyst
If Houston is to succeed in diversifying its economy, its energy industry will have to play a role. For example, oil and gas companies, whose businesses increasingly depend on digital technologies, have the size and scale to attract the technical talent on which a local tech sector could be built.
If the future is renewables, Houston oil and gas companies will need to invest in developing new technologies here, instead of Silicon Valley or Boston. And if health care, finance and professional services are to continue to thrive, they almost certainly will need a healthy energy industry.
In other words, it’s still about oil.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Despite-claims-of-economic-diveristy-it-s-13834125.php?cmpid=ffcp
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Biden Crafting More Centrist Plan for Climate Change Policy: Report
May 10, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Max Greenwood
Former Vice President Joe Biden is looking to pitch a middle-ground approach to climate change, as he faces a field of Democratic presidential primary challengers that has increasingly embraced more sweeping solutions on the issue, Reuters reported Friday.
Heather Zichal, a former Obama administration official who is informally advising Biden’s campaign, told Reuters that part of that plan, which is still being crafted, will likely include re-committing to the Paris Climate Agreement, the global greenhouse gas emissions pact that President Trump withdrew from in 2017.
It could also mean preserving existing emission standards and fuel efficiency requirements, Zichal said.
A second unidentified source told the news agency that Biden’s climate change plan could also seek to embrace energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuel options.
TJ Ducklo, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the plan, but noted in a statement to Reuters that “Joe Biden has called climate change an ‘existential threat,’ and as Vice President was instrumental in orchestrating the Paris Climate Accord.”
In crafting a more middle-ground approach to climate change, Biden is hoping to appeal to working-class voters, who may be reluctant to back more extensive approaches to climate change, like the Green New Deal, which ultimately seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero over a ten year period.
Several other Democratic presidential hopefuls have backed that proposal, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has sought to put climate change at the center of his presidential campaign.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/443074-biden-crafting-more-centrist-plan-for-climate-change-policy-report
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Appropriations Subcommittee Advances Bill Barring Paris Withdrawal
May 10, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Anthony Adragna
A House Appropriations subcommittee today advanced a spending bill that would prevent the U.S. from leaving the Paris climate accord and enable contributions again to the Green Climate Fund.
The State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee advanced the measure without amendment, though Republicans expressed concern that “partisan riders” like the Paris language detracted from broader areas of agreement.
Another provision in the legislation aims to block the sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
WHAT'S NEXT: It has not yet been announced when the full Appropriations committee will mark up the legislation.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/05/appropriations-subcommittee-advances-bill-barring-paris-withdrawal-3236361
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The Energy 202: The GOP Campaign Against the Green New Deal May Be Working
May 10, 2019 | Washington PosT
By Dino Grandoni
For months, Republicans have spent a tremendous amount of energy railing against the Green New Deal, the pitch from progressives to drastically reduce the nation's contributions to global warming while checking off a list of liberal aspirations, such as improving health-care access.
If the goal of the anti-Green New Deal campaign was to sour the plan in the minds of Republican voters, it appears to be working.
New polling from Yale and George Mason universities suggests that support for that climate plan from prominent freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dropped steeply among Republicans over the past four months since she and other lawmakers formally introducedit in February.
In December, the Yale and George Mason team found few people of any partisan background had heard much about the Green New Deal, the idea of which had been gaining traction within progressive activist circles ahead of the 2018 election.
But when people were provided a description of its aspirations — but not of any of its potential costs or drawbacks — big majorities said they supported the idea, including most Democrats, Republicans and independents.
In the ensuing months the Green New Deal has gotten a lot of attention, so much so that by April nearly 3 in 5 U.S. adults said they've heard at least a little about it. And over the same period, opinions of the Green New Deal have also grown more partisan.
Support for the Green New Deal among self-indentified conservative Republicans shot down from 57 percent to 32 percent. Among moderate Republicans, support similarly fell from three-fourths to about two-thirds.
During that time, Republicans honed a message of opposition to the idea. Lawmakers claimed the Green New Deal, if enacted, would ban hamburgers, air travel and even ice cream.
That tsunami of dissent came even though Ocasio-Cortez's resolution does not mention any of those three things. Instead, an erroneous summary of the Green New Deal published by her office, but then retracted, mentioned eventually wanting to get rid of “farting cows and airplanes.”
Still, pundits on Fox News echoed that message, and they were apparently effective: support for the Green New Deal among Republicans is lower among frequent Fox viewers than it is with those who watch the network less often, according to the George Mason-Yale survey.
“Fox News really does punch hard, and is enormously influential in terms of shaping the views of conservative Americans,” said Edward Maibach, a George Mason professor who helped put together the poll.
The survey measured support for the Green New Deal in an unorthodox way, providing a paragraph-long description of the program that said its supporters claim it will “produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.”
It continued: “The 'Deal' would generate 100% of the nation's electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years, upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings and transportation infrastructure, increase energy efficiency, invest in 'green' technology research and development, and provide training for jobs in the new 'green' economy.”
The language did not include any mention of the possible costs of the program. Maibach said that was because, at the time the question was first written in December, there were no cost estimates to cite.
Since then, analysts at conservative think tanks have come up with their own price tags for the deal reaching as high as $100 trillion, though supporters of the plan dispute those estimates as misleading. The independent Congressional Budget Office, which provides official nonpartisan budget analyses to lawmakers, has not scored the deal. The GOP-controlled Senate ended up rejecting the deal as written in a March vote.
Where does support for the Green New Deal stand without such a description? A March national poll by the Winston Group, a Republican pollster, simply asked whether voters had a favorable or unfavorable view of the Green New Deal, or had no opinion of it all. That survey found 28 percent of voters were favorable to the idea, 36 percent viewed it unfavorably and 22 percent had no opinion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/05/10/the-energy-202-the-gop-campaign-against-the-green-new-deal-may-be-working/5cd46e0f1ad2e544f001dc9e/?utm_term=.c044fd99a682
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GOP Senators Might Hate the Green New Deal But Can't Ignore It
May 10, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Liam Denning
Senator William Cassidy of Louisiana is a big fan of empiricism. Here he is at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources last month, addressing a panel of experts who had just discussed ways to combat climate change:
You know I’m a physician so I look at things empirically. I have to admit that some of what has been said does not seem to – and I mean this by no offense – some of what has been said does not seem to empirically hold up.
There was much more along those lines, with Cassidy particularly unimpressed by talk of carbon taxes ("empirically" complicated) and wanting solutions to be "embedded in empiricism.” For me, though, those five minutes I will never get back offered ample and, dare I say, empirical evidence for the drawbacks of overusing the word “empirical.” 1
But I’m not here to pick on Cassidy.
That Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski and ranking member Senator Joe Manchin, both hailing from states strongly attached to fossil fuels, are even convening hearings on climate change is significant. Likewise, Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent call for the GOP to "just cross the Rubicon," and “say the Green New Deal sucks but climate change is real," is striking, not least because he considers accepting mainstream science to be “crossing the Rubicon.”
Like Graham, the committee is haunted by the specter of the Green New Deal. Unsurprisingly, the GND does not poll well with Republicans. Yet polling also suggests a GND – some generic, non-@AOC-branded package incorporating core aspects such as renewable power and investment in related infrastructure and jobs – can be popular even with Republican voters. The GND is pulling the argument about climate change leftward, which is presumably why some spooked senior Republicans now scramble to reposition themselves as at least tree-adjacent, if not quite at the hugging stage.
The GND also sits at the confluence of two other trends, says Kevin Book, a partner at Washington-based research firm ClearView Energy Partners. One is that, as much a social-media phenomenon as a policy platform, the #GND exemplifies how technology changes society’s patience for change. “You have a fast society plowing through a slow democracy,” says Book.
In parallel, Book notes the same erosion of the Senate filibuster currently helping to confirm more conservative federal judges could some day enable more radical legislation on climate change, as and when political majorities shift. On that point, while Governor Jay Inslee of Washington is hardly the favorite to win the Democratic nomination for 2020, it is interesting that he has called for ending the legislative filibuster for the express purpose of enacting climate-change laws.
The GND also represents a more direct, interventionist pathway to change. Rather than relying just on market, fiscal or standards-based measures to nudge investment and behavior in the desired direction, the GND’s timetable would likely require outright bans on some fossil-fuel-based technologies, along the lines of what happened with leaded gasoline and the mooted prohibitions of internal combustion engines envisioned by several European capitals. Anathema as that may seem, Book sees both politicians and populations having perhaps become more comfortable with interventionist policies after the tumult of the financial crisis. Even on the right, how else would you characterize the proposals made by the Trump Administration to subsidize coal and nuclear power?
These cross-currents make crafting a coherent positive message about climate change difficult for former skeptics. Some Republicans have embraced nuclear power with gusto. It featured prominently in the aforementioned committee hearing, and Murkowski has introduced legislation to encourage development of new reactor types. Yet, as recent debacles in Georgia and South Carolina have shown, nuclear power needs subsidies of its own. “You can’t be pro-nuclear and anti-government,” says David Sandalow of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, who was one of the experts on the panel (and is pro-nuclear power.)
Another favorite tactic is calling for good old American “innovation.” We definitely need innovation. But it is only a means to a solution, requiring clearly set goals, as Sarah Ladislaw of the Center for Strategic and International Studies pointed out to the assembled senators that day. Moreover, innovation isn’t sorcery; it requires incentives. Yet obvious ones such as pricing the carbon pollution we are trying to innovate against remain a real Rubicon for many.
Similarly, Manchin’s declaration of “I believe in innovation not elimination” signals proper concern for mining communities in his state (and has an eminently retweetable quality to boot.) Yet it also contains a contradiction – innovation frequently entails elimination of something – as well as implicitly degrading one of our most effective tools in addressing climate change, energy efficiency.
For a more extreme example of this sort of dissonance, however, we must return to Cassidy:
I understand renewable can be nuclear, because it’s always there. And natural gas because, golly gosh, it always comes out of the ground 2 . It can be wind and solar.
Much as I quibble with the senator’s understanding of empiricism, it looks positively sagacious next to his take on renewable energy. At least wind and solar power came in at numbers three and four, I guess.
Yet such errant nonsense is useful in one regard. It sums up the decades of obfuscation and delay, some of it fostered by fossil-fuel producers and tolerated by disinterested citizens, that have led to a point where the urgency of climate change provokes things like the GND.
Outright denialism is becoming less tenable. Once climate change is accepted as a real threat, though, its sheer scale demands an adequate response. You don’t fight cancer with cough syrup, especially after ignoring the symptoms for years. Even 10 years ago, federal cap-and-trade legislation like the unsuccessful Waxman-Markey bill would have been hailed as a landmark. Now, GND-ers might regard it as a mere stepping stone. That isn’t to say they now have the upper hand (Mitch McConnell still has a job, last I heard). More that, having fought more measured proposals, energy’s incumbents now run the risk of more radical solutions.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-10/green-new-deal-republicans-may-hate-but-can-t-ignore-it
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Ewire: Republican Voters' Support for 'Green' Deal Slips
May 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
Support among Republican-leaning voters for the “Green New Deal” (GND) climate resolution is slipping, according to new polling results, following a concerted campaign by GOP lawmakers and conservative media to target the plan as and expensive government takeover.
The poll, released May 9 by the Yale and George Mason universities, finds that the GND has “become much more politically polarized” since the plan began gaining wide public attention following the midterms.
While support among Democrats remains very high, the survey finds GOP support has “dropped dramatically,” or almost 20 percentage points. It adds that “Republicans who have heard the most about the Green New Deal are the least likely to support it,” suggesting that the frequent attacks on the plan on Fox News and other conservative media have started to influence voters.
“Fox News really does punch hard, and is enormously influential in terms of shaping the views of conservative Americans,” said Edward Maibach, a George Mason University professor who helped develop the poll, according to the Washington Post.
Republicans in Congress have been railing against the GND at every opportunity, frequently touting the plan's inclusion of several progressive social and economic policies -- such as universal health care and job guarantees -- that are not directly linked to climate policy.
In addition, they often cite a rough cost estimate floated by a conservative think tank -- even though the resolution includes broad, vague goals rather than discrete policy proposals.
The GOP even brought the measure to the Senate floor, only to unanimously reject it, a move that Democrats largely boycotted as a political stunt. Republicans have been hoping to secure a similar floor vote in the House, but would have to attract nearly two dozen Democrats to do so, an unlikely prospect.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-republican-voters-support-green-deal-slips
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Climate-Action Delay May Cost Investors More Than $1 Trillion
May 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Matthew Carr
Delays in tackling climate change could cost companies about $1.2 trillion worldwide during the next 15 years, according to the United Nations.
That’s the preliminary analysis of a UN Environment Finance Initiative project that brought together 20 global fund managers to measure the impact of climate change on 30,000 of the largest listed companies. The group has created a guide for investors to assess how their holdings would respond to different levels of global warming and policy making.
“Investors have a central role to play in moving the world to a low-carbon future,” said Maurice Tulloch, chief executive officer of Aviva Plc, one of the participants in the project. “This collaboration shows how we can all take better decisions, for our customers and for the environment.”
Extreme weather events, including floods, tropical cyclones, and extreme hot and cold days are already hitting business operations. Should governments install tougher policy in the push for cleaner technology, emission-intensive companies will increasingly struggle to compete.
As well as Aviva, the investor group included companies such as Manulife Asset Management, M&G Prudential Ltd. and DNB Asset Management AS. The work was guided by advisory and modeling firms Carbon Delta AG and Vivid Economics Ltd.
Investors are playing an increased role to protect financial stability against climate change. The research work will enable them to better understand climate-related risks and opportunities, in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, a part of the Financial Stability Board global regulator, the UN said. The task force is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/climate-action-delay-may-cost-investors-more-than-1-trillion
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