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Lawmakers Scrub Microbead Bill
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Washington state lawmakers failed to advance a bill to phase out plastic microbeads in a dispute over what type of plastic particles should be restricted. -
15 Years After 'Erin Brockovich,' Town Still Fearful of Polluted Water
Apr 12, 2015 | LA Times
By Paloma Esquivel
Maneuvering his pickup through this Mojave Desert town, resident Daron Banks pointed at empty lot after empty lot. -
15 Years After 'Erin Brockovich,' Calif. Town Cleanup Far From Over
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Fifteen years after the Oscar-winning film "Erin Brockovich" showed a group of Hinkley, Calif., residents winning a $333 million verdict against Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the town is continuing to empty out and unanswered questions remain. -
2 Controversial Obama Proposals to Go Under the Microscope
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E Daily
By Annie Snider and Scott Streater
A key House subpanel will make its first major foray of this Congress into federal water policy tomorrow with a hearing that will further define the battle lines over significant policies that the Obama administration is racing to the finish line. -
Parties Split On Need For Emission Offsets In ESPS Reliability Safety Valve
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Utilities, grid operators and environmentalists remain in general agreement that there is a need to create a reliability “safety valve” (RSV) to address concerns over the effect of EPA's greenhouse gas (GHG) rules for existing power plants, but they are split on whether states must ultimately make up for any extra emissions from a plant that is excused from compliance because it is needed for reliability purposes. -
Both Sides Ready Arguments for Case that Could Scotch EPA Power Plant Rule
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
Energy companies and 15 predominantly Republican-led states will press federal judges this week to halt President Obama's greenhouse gas standards for power plants. -
The Dirty Secret of Obama’s Carbon Plan
Apr 13, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Warner Baxter
Americans don’t give much thought to whether their electricity will be there when they need it. You flip a switch, the lights go on. Your phone charges up. -
Enviros Hail Appeals Court's Narrow Reading of Supreme Court GHG Decision
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
A federal appeals court on Friday narrowly implemented a Supreme Court decision on U.S. EPA climate change rules, limiting the decision's impact to a smaller set of sources than industry and other challengers wanted. -
She's Ahead in the Polls, But Where is Hillary on Climate Change?
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Lisa Friedman and Evan Lehmann
Early in Hillary Clinton's term as secretary of State, climate change expert Nigel Purvis approached her with a wonky request. -
What Environmentalists Get Wrong When They Use the California Drought to Attack Fracking
Apr 13, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
With the continual worsening of California’s drought, an odd argument — in some ways as much meme as argument — has arisen.
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Lawmakers Scrub Microbead Bill
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Washington state lawmakers failed to advance a bill to phase out plastic microbeads in a dispute over what type of plastic particles should be restricted.
The bill would have banned the manufacture and sale of products containing synthetic microbeads, tiny plastic particles that are present in many personal care products.
The bill previously passed the state Senate, but lawmakers on the House Environment Committee tabled the proposal.
The Personal Care Products Council supports banning the substances, but not in the way Washington lawmakers were proposing.
The state would have banned "nonbiodegradable" plastic particles, which was broader language than the industry preferred.
Melissa Gombosky, a lobbyist for the Personal Care Products Council, said the group disagreed with the language because it wants to ensure a uniform standard across the country. Gombosky said it's unlikely that companies will switch from banned microbeads to other synthetic beads (Kim Drury, Investigate West, April 13). -- SP
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15 Years After 'Erin Brockovich,' Town Still Fearful of Polluted Water
Apr 12, 2015 | LA Times
By Paloma Esquivel
Maneuvering his pickup through this Mojave Desert town, resident Daron Banks pointed at empty lot after empty lot.
"Last time I was here there was a home right here. There was a home here, there was a home here," he said, making his way down the bumpy road in the place made famous by the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich."
Fifteen years after the film showed triumphant residents winning a $333-million settlement with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for contaminating its water — and nearly 20 years after the settlement itself — Hinkley is emptying out, and those who stay still struggle to find resolution.
For residents, questions remain about the safety of the water, just how much contamination PG&E caused and how to fix it.
This year, a final cleanup plan is moving toward approval. Last month, a long-awaited, five-year study to determine how much contamination PG&E may be responsible for finally got underway.Daron Banks stands on the empty road that leads to his home in Hinkley, Calif. Nearly two decades after the town settled with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. over contaminated groundwater, few residents remain, Banks says. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
"At some point in the next few years we're going to get some closure," Banks said.
But today there's little left in Hinkley beyond some scattered homes and acres of alfalfa and other grasses, planted to help clean the contamination.
"You had a great community out here and now it's gone," said resident Roger Killian.
Hinkley was a small farming community in the 1990s when residents learned that groundwater was polluted with chromium 6, a cancer-causing heavy metal. It had seeped into the water after being dumped into unlined ponds at the utility company's compressor station in the 1950s and '60s.
Since then, hundreds of residents have left. Property values dropped because of the stigma surrounding the town, and PG&E launched a buyout program.
Roberta Walker, a plaintiff in the original lawsuit and Banks' mother-in-law, said that at the time of the settlement, residents like her believed the plume of contamination was limited to a well-defined area around the compressor station.
But in 2009, PG&E "let it get away from them and it started migrating toward other properties," said Lisa Dernbach, a senior engineering geologist specialist with the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency overseeing the cleanup.
That resulted in a $3.6-million fine against the company in 2012, she said.
Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, said what looked like growth of the plume was actually the result of additional testing in areas that had previously gone unexamined. Dernbach said the migration happened after the utility changed pumping in some extraction wells.
More recently, the contamination plume appears to have shrunk. Kevin Sullivan, director of chromium remediation for PG&E, said a system installed in 2007 to treat the contamination with injections of ethanol has reduced the chromium by 40%.
Starting in 2010, PG&E offered to either provide clean water or buy properties of residents whose wells tested positive for chromium.
Smith said that when the program was announced, there was a high level of anxiety in the community and many residents wanted to sell their properties rather than take the water. The company, he said, wants to see Hinkley thrive.
"I think sometimes it's misconstrued that PG&E wanted to come in and purchase a tremendous amount of land in Hinkley and that was just not the original intent," he said.
Between 2010 and October 2014, when the program was formally discontinued, PG&E purchased about 300 properties, he said.
With residents leaving, the school could no longer be sustained. It shut down two years ago.
The owner of the property that houses the town's post office and only market recently approached PG&E asking to sell and the utility agreed to buy, Smith said. The post office closed last month and the market will soon follow, an employee said.
As residents leave, the cleanup has progressed and technologies have improved. About 250 acres of alfalfa and other grasses now dot the town where some properties once stood and are used to help convert chromium 6 into the micronutrient chromium 3.
But despite the progress, many residents still worry about how much chromium 6 will remain in the water. PG&E is required to clean up to the levels at which chromium 6 naturally occurs in the groundwater — a number known as the background level.
A study commissioned by PG&E a few years ago said chromium 6 naturally occurred in Hinkley groundwater at levels of 3.1 parts per billion.
"Anything above 3.1 provided a lot of anxiety to the people in Hinkley," said Dernbach, of the water control board.
Last year, the state set a safe drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion.
Although levels of chromium 6 nearest to the compressor station — where no residents remain — exceed that by large numbers, PG&E's testing in domestic wells elsewhere in the community shows chromium 6 levels below 10 parts per billion, most often between 0 and 5, Sullivan said.
Smith, the PG&E spokesman, said the state-designated level has helped ease some residents' concerns.
But others say they are disturbed that chromium 6 is showing up in their wells at all. Some say neighbors and family members have suffered ailments they believe were caused by the contamination, leading them to believe that even low chromium levels are dangerous.
The safe drinking water standard adopted by the state — which is hundreds of times greater than a nonenforceable public health goal set by the state Environmental Protection Agency — has been criticized as too high by some environmental groups.
For years, residents questioned whether the study commissioned by PG&E putting the background level at 3.1 parts per billion was even accurate.
Banks solicited help from John Izbicki, a U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist who has studied naturally occurring chromium 6 in the Mojave Desert. With pressure from residents, PG&E acknowledged that its earlier study was lacking. It is paying for a five-year study led by Izbicki that is expected to conclusively determine the background level.
At a community meeting this month, fewer than a dozen residents gathered in the Hinkley Community Center to hear Izbicki describe his upcoming study.
Izbicki said water samples would be sent to Germany, Nevada, Virginia, Northern California and other places for testing. Some of it would be handled in the same USGS labs that do testing for NASA.
When he was done, the meeting's facilitator asked longtime resident McHenry Cooke, 81, if he would "trust the data."
"I haven't reviewed it all," he said skeptically.
As the meeting wrapped up, John Turner, who volunteers to keep the community center open, said he felt optimistic about the town's future. For years, community meetings have been filled with negativity, he said, but this one was productive.
He hopes PG&E will play a role in helping to rebuild the community so residents can move forward.
"It's time," he said.
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15 Years After 'Erin Brockovich,' Calif. Town Cleanup Far From Over
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Fifteen years after the Oscar-winning film "Erin Brockovich" showed a group of Hinkley, Calif., residents winning a $333 million verdict against Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the town is continuing to empty out and unanswered questions remain.
A final cleanup plan is expected to be approved this year, and a long-stalled five-year study to find out how much groundwater contamination PG&E may be to blame for has started up.
The community is quiet today, with many homes bought by the utility as families move away. Alfalfa and other grasses were planted to help clean up the chromium-6 contamination.
Hundreds of residents have left the farming community as property values have dropped amid the stigma of the groundwater contamination.
And in 2009, PG&E "let [the groundwater plume] get away from them, and it started migrating toward other properties," said Lisa Dernbach, a senior engineering geologist specialist with the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.
That led to a $3.6 million fine being issued to the utility in 2012; the company disputes the cause of the migration (Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times, April 12). -- SP
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2 Controversial Obama Proposals to Go Under the Microscope
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E Daily
By Annie Snider and Scott Streater
A key House subpanel will make its first major foray of this Congress into federal water policy tomorrow with a hearing that will further define the battle lines over significant policies that the Obama administration is racing to the finish line.
U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers' "Waters of the United States" rule is poised to take the spotlight at the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans hearing.
The rule is aimed at clearing up years of confusion over which streams and wetlands fall under the scope of the Clean Water Act following two muddled Supreme Court decisions. Supporters say it will add clarity to what is today an inconsistent and drawn-out process and will protect important water sources. But opponents call it a federal power grab, arguing that it will subject farmers and developers of all stripes to expensive and uncertain permitting processes, while bringing little environmental benefit.
The Obama administration is shooting to have the rule finalized before summer and recently sent the final rule to the White House for interagency review (E&ENews PM, April 6).
That gives opponents a narrow window to act to block the rule. Killing the rule through the authorization process is a more permanent option than blocking it through the appropriations process, which would only stall the rule for a year at a time, although that option is being pursued, as well.
House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) have said they are preparing to unveil a measure this month that would require the administration to go back to the drawing board on the rule and engage state and local officials upfront. A similar measure passed the House last year with the support of 35 Democrats (E&E Daily, Sept. 10).
But the real action will be in the Senate. Opponents there reached the key 60-vote threshold on a nonbinding measure to the Senate's budget resolution last month that was widely seen as a referendum on the rule, gaining the support of Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar. But whether Klobuchar and other moderates would be on board for a measure to directly block the rule remains an open question. Klobuchar herself has said she will examine each measure on its own merits (E&E Daily, March 26).
Tomorrow's hearing will offer the freshest take on how both supporters and opponents of the rule are positioning themselves as the rule reaches crunch time.
The oversight hearing is also expected to touch on the Forest Service's so-called groundwater directive, which the agency says is needed to allow it to better manage and analyze potential impacts to groundwater resources from surface activity on national forestlands, such as mines and oil and gas wells.
The unveiling of the directive last May touched off a firestorm of criticism, mostly from state leaders who maintained that the Forest Service proposal would usurp the long-standing authority of states to regulate groundwater.
Leslie Weldon, the Forest Service's deputy chief, is scheduled to testify at the hearing on the groundwater directive. So is James Ogsbury, executive director of the Western Governors' Association, which has been highly critical of the directive and the Forest Service for not consulting with the states before publishing the directive in the Federal Register.
Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell in February withdrew the directive while the agency goes back to the drawing board and works more closely with states to devise a new plan for managing groundwater.
But Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) was adamant at two subcommittee oversight hearings last month involving the Forest Service's proposed fiscal 2016 budget that Tidwell should permanently withdraw the proposed directive.
"I urge you, with all the candor we can, to withdraw it permanently until you come up with another solution," Bishop told Tidwell last month during a Subcommittee on Federal Lands hearing (E&E Daily, March 25).
Tidwell assured Bishop at the hearing that the Forest Service would come up with a much better proposal than the one issued last year.
"I have no doubt that you'll have a much better proposal in the future," Bishop said, "because you can't really have a worse proposal."
Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, April 14, at 1:30 p.m. in 1324 Longworth.
Witnesses: Mike Heinen, general manager of Jeff Davis Electric Co-op Inc. in Jennings, La.; Timothy Mauck, District 1 commissioner in Clear Creek County, Colo.; Tom Myrum, president of the Washington State Water Resources Association; James Ogsbury, executive director of the Western Governors' Association; Ron Sullivan, member of the Division 4 Board of Directors for the Eastern Municipal Water District in Perris, Calif.; Estevan Lopez, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation; and Leslie Weldon, deputy chief of the Forest Service.
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Parties Split On Need For Emission Offsets In ESPS Reliability Safety Valve
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Utilities, grid operators and environmentalists remain in general agreement that there is a need to create a reliability “safety valve” (RSV) to address concerns over the effect of EPA's greenhouse gas (GHG) rules for existing power plants, but they are split on whether states must ultimately make up for any extra emissions from a plant that is excused from compliance because it is needed for reliability purposes.
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in April 3 comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) says that EPA approval of an RSV petition should not be conditioned on securing equivalent emission offsets, and a paper industry group calls such emission increases “infinitesimally small” compared with the harm of reliability problems.
Craig Glazer of the grid operator PJM Interconnection, which covers many Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, said during a recent event that, “there's a lot of talk about [whether] 'there has to be a mandatory offset'."
He argued that EPA's proposed existing source performance standards (ESPS) rule already requires such an offset because it includes language barring “backsliding” when the agency reviews modifications to state compliance plans, a provision that he said needs to be amended to provide sufficient flexibility to overcome reliability concerns.
“If I in fact have to backslide on emissions to keep the lights on, to me that is a legitimate grounds that there ought to be a modification,” Glazer said April 1 during a summit on the ESPS in Atlanta hosted by Infocast.
“But if the rule is not changed and those words stay in the rule, that in fact sets a legal standard that really will come to haunt EPA and all of us,” he said.
But John Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says in a recent blog post that in a scenario where plants run longer than planned to address reliability concerns, “the cumulative net excess emissions need to be made up within the averaging period."
“There's no need to excuse a state from compliance with the Clean Power Plan.” Moore says states can prepare for unexpected reliability challenges by “banking” early emission cuts, purchasing credits from other facilities or states, or “making deeper reductions after the incident.”
The question of offsets is one of several thorny issues that FERC and other policymakers are weighing as they consider how to structure an RSV and other mechanisms to address fears of grid operators, utilities, regulators and others that EPA's proposed ESPS -- which sets rate-based GHG targets for each state -- will shutter high-emitting coal plants and undermine grid reliability.
As a result, the critics are calling on EPA, FERC and others to include an RSV -- a mechanism by which power plants that are needed to maintain grid reliability may stay open for a longer period or run more hours than they might otherwise during the compliance period.
Existing Tools
While NRDC's Moore supports the need for an RSV, others say a federal mechanism is not necessary in part because the ESPS already provides states with significant flexibility to adopt their own systems. In addition, the Analysis Group argued in its March report that grid operators already have a number of existing tools to ensure reliability, including regular planning processes that determine the consequences of plant shutdowns.
Additionally, they can issue must-run orders for a period of time, and could also fast-track replacement generation or transmission upgrades to address reliability. As such, the report says any RSV should be crafted “in a way that creates appropriate incentives for reliance upon normal reliability tools and thus makes it unlikely that a waiver will need to be called upon.”
Glazer and others are pushing an RSV proposal outlined in a white paper from the ISO/RTO Council (IRC), which represents grid operators. Under that option, states or utilities could petition EPA for a modification of a state compliance plan if they can show that a plant must remain online to ensure reliable electric service.
Beyond the RSV -- which is intended to be used for unforeseen reliability events -- IRC is also urging EPA to include in the ESPS a reliability assurance mechanism (RAM) that would require grid operators, FERC and other reliability entities to conduct an analysis of state compliance plans, including potential reliability problems caused by simultaneous implementation of multiple state plans.
While there is general agreement on the need for an RSV, there is disagreement on how to structure such a mechanism.
FERC officials have also indicated they are unclear on how to implement a RAM. FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur, who recently stepped down as chairman, said there is an apparent lack of clarity on whether a RAM would place the commission in a broader role of backing state requests for more time to comply with the ESPS or a narrower role of verifying that the plans “work."
Another commissioner, Colette Honorable, who was nominated by President Obama, told an April 8 event hosted by Platts that the RAM has also drawn concern from state regulators, given their primary jurisdiction over generation. She added that reviewing state plans for reliability problems could place a large demand on FERC's resources.
“I would really want to learn more about how that would take place in reality,” she said. “I certainly respect and appreciate the offer and the recommendation, but we would have to really sit down and think about how that would play out in the real world.”
Given the uncertainties, the commission still appears to be some way from proposing recommendations to EPA. “Supposedly the staff is working up some recommendations in a big memo but we haven't seen it yet, but it will probably be the next step. I've been talking, but I haven't seen a lot of ideas being floated,” Phil Moeller, a GOP commissioner, told Inside EPA April 9.
Narrowly Tailored
Despite FERC's questions, PJM's Glazer and other RSV supporters are backing the IRC's proposal, arguing it is narrowly tailored. The IRC proposal “isn't open-ended,” Galzer told the Atlanta event, adding that entities must also show “how the state can bring itself back into compliance, what are the mitigation measures that were taken.”
“If I'm four, five years out [from the final 2030 compliance date], and it looks like I can get done but there are some other ways to do this, then in fact I might be able to still comply,” he said. “But if I'm in the year 2028 and the transmission line that I need can't get done, then it may be too late to sort of ramp up an energy efficiency program at that point.”
He added: “So, the degree of mitigation, the degree to which you have to show you're bringing yourself into compliance, really depends on the facts and circumstances.”
But NRDC's Moore argues that a plant that needs to remain online under an RSV request could offset its emissions by investing in cleaner energy resources such as renewables or efficiency programs, or by buying allowances.
He adds that high-emitting sources can be used in an unexpected reliability challenge, but that states should offset those additional emissions through previously “banked” emission cuts or deeper cuts afterward. He says regional trading programs help facilitate such reductions while ensuring reliability.
“The point is that these market-based mechanisms give states considerable flexibility to depend on reliability-critical plants when necessary to maintain reliable electric service,” he writes.
Glazer also backed IRC's plan for a RAM, saying the reliability analyses must be “stapled to” state compliance plans and that EPA, in consultation with FERC, “should have authority to send back inconsistent plans.”
“The authority has to lie within the four corners of the rule itself, to send plans back for reliability-based problems, not just for a state-by-state plan but within a region,” he said.
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Both Sides Ready Arguments for Case that Could Scotch EPA Power Plant Rule
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
Energy companies and 15 predominantly Republican-led states will press federal judges this week to halt President Obama's greenhouse gas standards for power plants.
In two consolidated cases, West Virginia and Murray Energy Corp. are leading a bid for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to take the unusual step of preventing U.S. EPA from finalizing the standards -- a key component of Obama's effort to address climate change.
A three-judge D.C. Circuit panel composed entirely of Republican appointees will hear arguments Thursday morning.
EPA's Clean Power Plan, due to be finalized this summer, would cut carbon emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, shifting the country from coal-based power to renewables like wind and solar.
The Ohio-based Murray, the country's largest privately owned coal producer, and 15 states are asking the D.C. Circuit to issue an "extraordinary writ" to prevent EPA from completing the standards.
Previous legal attempts by states and regulated industries to block the finalization of EPA greenhouse gas rules have failed. But Murray and the other challengers contend that the greenhouse gas standards are too significant to wait for them to be completed.
"In the ordinary course, [judicial] review would follow EPA's final promulgation of the mandate," Murray said in court documents. "But as the stakes are so high, and delay will waste enormous amounts of industry, state, and federal resources and result in increased coal fired power plant retirements that cannot be later remedied, this petition requests an extraordinary writ in aid of this Court's undoubted jurisdiction over EPA's mandate."
Murray and the states make several arguments for why EPA is acting beyond its authority under the Clean Air Act.
Primarily, they point to a legislative "glitch" issue stemming from two versions of the relevant section of the Clean Air Act, 111(d), being passed into law in the act's 1990 amendments, one from the House and one from the Senate.
Both provisions were aimed at preventing duplicative or redundant air standards. Murray contends that one version bars EPA from issuing regulations under the section for sourcesalready regulated under the law.
Under that reading, EPA's greenhouse gas proposal would be foreclosed by the power plant air standards for mercury and other toxics that EPA finalized in 2012.
"By the plain terms of the Clean Air Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court and by EPA itself," Murray wrote, "this action foreclosed EPA from mandating state-by-state emission standards for these same sources."
The other version of the law prevents EPA from issuing regulations for pollutants already covered by existing regulations. That reading would allow EPA's new regulations.
EPA's supporters, which include about a dozen states that filed court briefs, contend that the challengers are misreading the statute. They note that even before the amendments, the law intended Section 111(d) to cover pollutants, not sources. To suggest otherwise, they say, would mean that Congress intended to weaken the provision when it was amended in 1990, even though Congress clearly stated its goal was to make the law more robust.
Further, the agency contends that the dueling versions are ambiguous and therefore the court should defer to its interpretation.
EPA has also been forceful in pushing back against the challenges. In court documents, EPA said there is "no legal basis" for the court to prevent the agency from going forward with the regulation.
In particular, it argues that Murray and the other challengers cannot show how they are directly injured by a regulation that has yet to be finalized -- a key legal procedural hurdle called standing.
"Speculation," EPA wrote, "regarding the consequences of one possible future outcome of an ongoing notice-and-comment rule making proceedings is not enough to demonstrate the concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent injury required" for constitutional standing.
The challengers and EPA will each have 40 minutes to present their case Thursday, longer arguments than usual at the D.C. Circuit. Judges Karen Henderson, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh will make up the panel.
All were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents and Kavanaugh in particular has been critical of EPA air regulations in previous cases.
Among the lawyers who will argue for the challengers is Harvard professor Laurence Tribe. A former mentor to Obama, Tribe has been sharply criticized for representing Peabody Energy Corp. in its opposition to the standards (Greenwire, April 6).
The states challenging the proposed standards are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and Wisconsin. Several industry groups such as the Utility Air Regulatory Group also support blocking EPA from finalizing the rules.
EPA is backed by California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, as well as environmental groups like the Sierra Club.
Rulings in Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA and West Virginia v. EPA are expected later this year.
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The Dirty Secret of Obama’s Carbon Plan
Apr 13, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Warner Baxter
Americans don’t give much thought to whether their electricity will be there when they need it. You flip a switch, the lights go on. Your phone charges up. The medical equipment in the emergency room does its job. Yet electric reliability, long a bedrock of this country’s prosperity and high standard of living, does not come as easily as its steady presence might suggest.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, a proposed regulation limiting carbon emissions from existing coal-fired plants, threatens to jeopardize the reliability that Americans and businesses have come to depend upon. The EPA proposal calls for states to cut emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. It also imposes aggressive interim targets starting in 2020 that will test states’ ability to meet these standards without disrupting service. For example, 39 states must achieve more than 50% of their final target by 2020.
Reliable power requires decades of careful planning. The appropriate amount and type of round-the-clock generation capacity, transmission and distribution lines must be finely balanced in advance to ensure the lights go on when a switch is flipped anywhere in the U.S. The EPA plan will significantly impair that planning process.
The EPA’s proposal is causing concern among those who provide electricity for a living. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held an event in St. Louis on March 31, the last in a series of conferences on the implications of the plan. The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit oversight group, has said the EPA plan could constitute “a significant reliability challenge, given the constrained time period for implementation.”
These concerns are driven in large part by the planned retirement, mostly thanks to the EPA’s carbon plan, of about one-third of America’s coal-fired power plants by 2020. This represents enough generating capacity to supply the residential electricity of about 57 million Americans. That’s a lot of power being taken off the grid in a very short period.
It takes years to site, permit and construct replacement power plants, and EPA’s compliance timeline does not account for this reality. For example, if a new gas-fired power plant must be built to meet the EPA’s 2020 interim target, all permitting and development would need to be completed by 2017. But that is impossible because state compliance plans might not even be submitted to the EPA until 2017 or 2018, and the agency has said it may take up to a year to approve them.
Beyond that, opening new natural-gas plants, as well as operating existing plants at higher levels, will require new pipeline infrastructure, and building natural-gas pipelines often takes five years or longer. More transmission lines will likely be needed to connect the new capacity to the grid. These projects can take 5-15 years. The point is that the 2020 interim targets are simply not achievable.
Like many utilities, my company, Ameren, has spent years developing a plan that achieves substantial carbon reductions without straining the grid or needlessly raising rates. With millions of people in Missouri and Illinois relying on us for safe, reliable and reasonably priced energy, we have to find responsible, practical ways to transition to a cleaner and more diverse portfolio. Our 20-year plan involves adopting a mix of coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewables, while improving energy efficiency, and reaches the EPA goal only five years later than the current plan—and at a staggering cost savings of $4 billion for our Missouri customers, according to company estimates.
A few solutions would significantly reduce the reliability and cost risks of the EPA’s proposed plan. A critical first step is that the EPA must replace its aggressive interim targets with a process that allows states to set their own paths toward the final goals. Each state should be allowed to tailor its compliance plan to local circumstances, balancing unique factors such as cost, fuel diversity and environmental benefits. In exchange for this flexibility, enhanced interim reporting requirements would help the EPA monitor the progress while providing a more accurate idea of the work under way—and challenges involved—in achieving the targets.
Beyond that, two safeguards should be added to the plan. First, it should include a mechanism to deal with reliability issues before a state’s plan is implemented. Such a mechanism would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to examine the effects of state-submitted plans on regional reliability. If issues are identified, the state should be allowed to resubmit a revised plan and potentially adjust its targets to maintain reliability.
Second, the EPA should incorporate a reliability safety valve that would operate throughout the compliance period if unforeseen events—such as tornadoes destroying a wind farm or extreme cold weather—require coal plants to operate at unanticipated levels. Owners of these coal plants need assurance that they will never be penalized for keeping the lights on.
Neither fallback measure is a substitute for addressing the EPA’s interim targets. While the EPA’s desire to reduce carbon emissions is understandable, doing so should not jeopardize reliability or unnecessarily threaten the affordability of the national electricity supply. There are better ways to achieve much the same end, and the agency should pursue a more reasonable course on carbon policy.
Mr. Baxter is chairman, president and CEO of St. Louis-based Ameren Corp.
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Enviros Hail Appeals Court's Narrow Reading of Supreme Court GHG Decision
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
A federal appeals court on Friday narrowly implemented a Supreme Court decision on U.S. EPA climate change rules, limiting the decision's impact to a smaller set of sources than industry and other challengers wanted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit order interpreted the Supreme Court's decision last June and instructed EPA on how to comply with it.
In a 5-4 vote, the conservative wing of the high court trimmed EPA's authority to require stationary sources to install pollution controls because they emit only greenhouse gases, not other air pollutants.
Such mandates are laid out in EPA's Prevention of Significant Deterioration, or PSD, and Title V permitting regimes.
EPA's original rule, issued in 2010, said stationary sources must obtain those permits even if they emit only threshold amounts of greenhouse gases.
The Supreme Court ruled that EPA could require greenhouse gas reductions for stationary sources that are required to obtain the permits for emissions of other pollutants, but not if they emit only greenhouse gases.
Such a requirement accounts for 83 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Under EPA's original rule, just 3 percent more -- 86 percent -- would have been covered by the program (Greenwire, June 23, 2014).
The case was sent back to the D.C. Circuit to govern any additional proceedings. In a three-page order that was largely a formality, the court interpreted the high court's ruling narrowly.
It vacated EPA's regulations, part of its "tailoring rule," "to the extent they require a stationary source to obtain a PSD permit if greenhouse gases are the only pollutant."
The court reached the same conclusion for the Title V program.
Industry groups, including the Utility Air Regulatory Group, and other challengers had pressed the court for an interpretation that would have included more sources and broadened the scope of the Supreme Court's ruling.
The order from the D.C. Circuit also formally upholds EPA's finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the agency's greenhouse gas regulations for motor vehicles.
Environmentalists quickly praised the order.
"This important decision confirms that factories, power plants and other big industrial sources of air pollution that hurts public health also have an obligation under the Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution," Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. "Now the EPA should enforce this obligation in a way that meaningfully reduces the planet-warming pollutants responsible for the climate crisis."
Click here for the order.
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She's Ahead in the Polls, But Where is Hillary on Climate Change?
Apr 13, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Lisa Friedman and Evan Lehmann
Early in Hillary Clinton's term as secretary of State, climate change expert Nigel Purvis approached her with a wonky request.
It was about using a particular slice of development aid to help communities in Indonesia stop cutting their forests -- filled with the kind of technical jargon that makes some political celebrities yawn. Purvis said he wasn't at all that sure Clinton -- who at the time was grappling with a popular revolt in Libya, tensions in Sudan and the burgeoning brutality of Syria's Bashar Assad -- would be familiar with this in-the-weeds issue, but she was.
"Most public officials at that level, when they are interacting with people that they're expecting to interact with, are very well-briefed by their staff and able to draw on facts and talking points to say the right things," said Purvis, who served as a climate change negotiator in Bill Clinton's administration and now leads a consulting company.
She knows the climate issue, but can she sell it? Photo courtesy of AP Images.
"What was impressive to me about that experience was that I caught her out in the middle of the country, at a time when she wasn't speaking about climate change and wasn't expecting climate change issues," he said. "She showed a real grasp of not just the problem at the high level but the very concrete solutions the State Department was pursuing."
Clinton, who officially launched her second presidential campaign in a video released yesterday, never developed a reputation for holding climate change dear to her heart like Secretary of State John Kerry, who has championed the issue since the early 1990s. Yet supporters of a 2016 Clinton presidency point out that she campaigned on major energy goals, including dramatically reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury.
As secretary of State, she appointed Todd Stern as America's first-ever special envoy in charge of climate change, pointedly bringing him along on her first trip to Beijing where they made energy a top focus. And when negotiations at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, hit their lowest point, Clinton swooped in with a game-changing pledge to mobilize $100 billion annually in global climate aid by 2020 that helped bring about a voluntary global agreement.
Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign.Some greens are skeptical
But that might not be enough for the green base of voters who might view Clinton with a dose of skepticism for taking a neutral stand on the Keystone XL pipeline. They argue that with Republicans sharpening their knives against President Obama's power plant emissions cuts, the United States needs a president who can be counted on to defend and advance U.S. climate policy.
Some activists said they remain bitter that international negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, did not result in a legally binding deal and question whether Clinton is the right person to champion a low-carbon future.
"I think she has an awful lot to prove to environmentalists," said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. "Her record so far is undistinguished."
"She was our nation's top diplomat when the climate fiasco in Copenhagen unfolded," he added. "So I think it's going to take more than just standing up and saying 'I believe in climate science' to convince many of us that she really understands the level of crisis we're dealing with."
To rally those voters who are passionate about addressing climate change, Clinton might have to build on Obama's rules on power plant emissions, not just defend them, McKibben said. That might mean banning new oil drilling in the Atlantic and the Arctic in order to, in his words, "leave most of the carbon we know about underground."
In announcing her bid for 2016, Clinton did not mention climate change or give any indication of how she would handle Obama's climate legacy. But she did make it the focus of two major speeches last fall.
Clinton signaled in September that she will stay apace of Obama's soaring oratory on the impacts of climbing temperatures (ClimateWire, Sept. 5, 2014). The president has described it as an ever-growing threat with deeper risks to the economy and the environment than perhaps even from disparate terrorist groups.
Clinton also puts it near the top of her priority list. She described global warming as "the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world" at the National Clean Energy Summit held by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Then, in December, she locked arms with Obama's climate legacy by vowing to defend U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan "at all cost" (Greenwire, July 1, 2014). Some see that as a sign that she'll wage war against Republican climate change deniers in her campaign for the White House, potentially giving climate a higher profile in 2016 than in previous elections.
"The science of climate change is unforgiving," Clinton said then. "No matter what deniers may say, sea levels are rising; ice caps are melting; storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc."
Clinton isn't a recent convert. She proposed a cap-and-trade program in 2007 when she and Obama were dueling to be their party's presidential nominee -- and to be the leader on climate solutions. Her goal was to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
That year, in a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she reminisced about a trip she had taken to the Alaskan wilderness, where she heard about warming winters from dogsledders, rising seas from villagers and drying lakebeds.
"There are no climate change skeptics inside the Arctic Circle," Clinton said then, adding later, "This is the biggest challenge we have faced in a generation."Podesta choice sends a strong signal
Purvis noted that her tenure as secretary of State was more punctuated by work on womens' empowerment than on energy. But, he argued, she also found a way to weave those concerns into new climate policies. She put $50 million into a new initiative to encourage families to use cleaner-burning stoves instead of kerosene, wood, dung and other solid fuels as a way to both improve health and cut emissions, focused on helping those hardest hit by climate change.
She also spearheaded the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, dedicated to curbing non-carbon-dioxide pollutants that cause global warming.
"One has to acknowledge that the issues that probably animate her the most are the rights of women, community empowerment, children and democracy. But I can't think of a time when she didn't make the right environmental decision," Purvis said.
Since leaving office, Clinton has toughened her language. Skeptical Republicans are now described as deniers by Clinton and her party.
Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser and now a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, noted that the fact Clinton tapped Podesta to run her campaign signals that she considers climate change a winning campaign issue and a top priority.
"I think she's going to run as an economic populist and a defender of the middle class against the depredations of extreme economic inequality," Bledsoe said. "Climate fits in because I think she's going to portray the Republicans as willing to put the average American in clear and present danger from climate change, because the solutions don't fit with the ideological litmus test of the party.
"I think she's going to be very aggressive in the campaign as pushing climate change as a part of the 'defender of the little guy' message," Bledsoe said.
But Clinton might not have to save the planet to get elected.
She can appeal to independent voters by talking about smaller effects of climate change, like local pollution from power plants, fluctuating crop yields and altered hunting habitats, said Paul Tencher, who managed Sen. Gary Peters' (D-Mich.) campaign last year. Peters embraced climate action on the trail and aired ads that portrayed local coal-fired power plants as a threat to the Great Lakes.
Focusing on local issues can resonate with the "middle voter" who isn't particularly political but who often decides elections, Tencher said. Talking about rising seas and superstorms isn't part of the recipe when crafting messages for voters like farmers, hunters and rural residents who might see nature change before urbanites do. To be persuasive, a candidate needs to connect climate messaging with a voter's "lifestyle," Tencher said.
"I think there's an environmental way to talk to moderate voters," he said.
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What Environmentalists Get Wrong When They Use the California Drought to Attack Fracking
Apr 13, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
With the continual worsening of California’s drought, an odd argument — in some ways as much meme as argument — has arisen. It’s the notion that in the context of the drought, it’s important to cut back on the water used in industrial hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” operations in the state.
Here’s one example of the basic idea being expressed, by Californians Against Fracking:
But there’s one problem. Whatever you might think about fracking — and there is ample room for disagreement on this complex issue — it is pretty hard to argue that the amount of water that the oil and gas technology uses in California reaches a scale sufficient to count as a major drought contributor. Rather, in the grand context of California’s water woes, the numbers appear small indeed.
How small?
While it’s not clear where the 2 million gallon figure above comes from, Reuters recently reported that California oil companies used “214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected.” The story, which cited “state officials” for the figure, was widely read, and the factoid ended up in viral images like this one:
California has ordered emergency water restrictions on residents while Nestle, fracking companies, and large farms have…
Posted by US Uncut on Monday, April 6, 2015
Seventy million gallons may sound like a large number. But in the context of California’s drought, it’s not. In December, NASA noted that it would take 11 trillion gallons to end the drought.
And in a blog post recently, Michael Campana, a hydrologist at Oregon State University, tore into those citing the 70 million number, noting that in 2010, California’s freshwater “withdrawals” amounted to “31 billion gallons per day or 11.3 trillion gallons per year” (excluding thermoelectric withdrawals, which Campana said he assumed were “not freshwater”).
What does that mean for the fracking number? Campana writes:
Fracking accounts for 0.00062% (or 0.0000062) of the state’s annual freshwater withdrawals. A lot of water? Not in my book. In fact, I thought there was an error – that the figure should have been 70M gallons per day. But note that locally 70 MGY could be a significant amount.
Similarly, California Gov. Jerry Brown was recently asked by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, “Considering how much water, by the way, is used for fracking, isn’t that, alone, your water crisis in California, isn’t that alone enough reason to prohibit fracking, or temporarily stop it?” Brown responded, “Fracking in California has been going on for more than 50 years. It uses a fraction of the water of fracking on the East Coast, for gas, particularly. This is vertical fracking for the most part. It is different.”
Vertical fracking means that while water is indeed being blasted underground to crack rock, it isn’t being combined with horizontal or “sideways” drilling, a relatively new technology that has enabled the unconventional oil and gas revolution by allowing for the drilling of long lateral passages beneath the ground, following a roughly 90-degree turn of the drill. Rock Zierman, chief executive of the California Independent Petroleum Association, says that most fracking in California is indeed vertical rather than horizontal, due to the state’s particular geology.
“Hydraulic fracturing is so much different here in California,” Zierman said. “We pretty much only do vertical, single-stage hydraulic fracturing.” Therefore, Zierman thinks the 70 million gallon figure is “about right.” (For a good contrast of vertical versus horizontal fracking, see here.)
A recent report from the California Council on Science and Technology concurred, noting,
Generally, current hydraulic fracturing in California tends to be performed in shallower wells that are vertical as opposed to horizontal; and requires much less water per well, but uses fluids with more concentrated chemicals than hydraulic fracturing in other states. For example, in California, a hydraulic fracturing operation consumes on average 530 cubic meters (m3 ; 140,000 gallons, gal) of water per well, compared to about 16,000 m3 (4.3 million gal) per well used in horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford Formation in Texas.
I called Californians Against Fracking to ask why the group was raising fracking in the context of the drought, given these relatively small numbers — and when there are so many bigger ways to cut water use, such as changing standards for people’s toilets and faucets or, heck, taking onagricultural uses, which consume an estimated 80 percent of California’s water supply.
Patrick Sullivan, a spokesperson for Californians Against Fracking, responded by raising some questions about the 70 million gallon figure (saying that it is, in his words, based on “self-reported data”) and also arguing that water used for fracking is different from other uses.
“This is water that is by and large taken out of the water cycle for good,” he said. “It’s too contaminated to use in any other way.” That, says Sullivan, makes water used in fracking different “from water that’s used to water your lawn or brush your teeth.”
Sullivan also pointed out concerns about water being contaminated by industrial wells used to dispose of wastewater. As the Los Angeles Timesreported last month,
Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources officials admitted last summer that for years they inadvertently allowed oil companies to inject wastewater — from fracking and other oil production operations — into hundreds of disposal wells in protected aquifers, a violation of federal law.
So, according to Sullivan, objections to fracking aren’t simply about the 70 or so million gallons used last year. Rather, it’s about all the different water uses of industry operations — and, especially, about the possibility of expanded fracking in California in the future, and thus, increased water use.
But Zierman doubts that’s going to happen, at least in the short term. “Because of oil prices, we’re going to see drilling cut significantly, maybe 40 or 50 percent less drilling,” he says. “That’s going to lead to less hydraulic fracturing and less water use, both.”
Longer term, environmentalists are also worried about fracking in the much touted Monterey Shale — but for the moment, it’s not clear how many hydrocarbon resources lie there. Estimates of recoverable resources were “dramatically lowered” recently, notes the California Council on Science and Technology, which calls the issue of how much oil can be recovered from the formation “highly uncertain.”
So there’s much uncertainty about how much this resource will be developed, or how much that will, in turn, bring on more fracking-related water use. The California Council on Science and Technology will be releasing further, independent fracking studies on July 1.
Undoubtedly, greens and industry will continue to tussle over the future of fracking in California — but the point for the moment is that all of this seems a side issue in the context of the drought.
It’s okay to be against the fracking boom for many reasons — such as what it does to communities, or its potential health risks, or methane emissions. But when it comes to the drought, environmentalists have better arguments at their disposal. For instance, the drought itself can be much more easily tied to climate change than to fracking.
Meanwhile, the California Energy Commission just moved to impose rules for the installation of far more water-efficient toilets, faucets and urinals — rules that, according to the commission, could save 105 billion gallons of water per year.
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