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(ACC Mentioned) Procter & Gamble Joins Plastic Film, Bag Recycling Effort
Apr 14, 2015 | Environmental Leader
Procter & Gamble has joined the Flexible Film Recycling Group, an American Chemistry Council project that aims to drive recovery of flexible polyethylene (PE) film, wraps and bags. Stephen Sikra, P&G research and development manager, says working with FFRG and the company’s value chain partners to expand film collection and recycling... -
(ACC Mentioned) WSJ Economists' Survey: GDP Rose Just 1.4 Percent in First Quarter
Apr 13, 2015 | Newsmax Finance
By Dan Weil
If you thought the 2.2 percent GDP growth in the fourth quarter indicated a sluggish economy, wait until you see the first-quarter number, which will be released April 29. A survey of 62 economists by The Wall Street Journal produced a growth forecast of only 1.4 percent for the first quarter, down from an expected growth forecast of 3 percent in... -
(ACC Mentioned) Link Between Chemistry, Outdoor Goods Among Functions ACC Video Will Highlight
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The American Chemistry Council soon will release a video showing how fluorinated chemicals, polystyrene and polyurethane contribute to making outdoor jackets water resistant and warm and to helping bicycle helmets absorb impacts. -
Industry, Environmentalists Raise Concerns Over House TSCA Reform Bill
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Chemical industry officials and environmentalists are raising concerns over draft House Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) legislation including the sector's attacks on “opaque” provisions that create confusion over chemicals regulation and criticisms from advocates about the bill allowing delays in restricting harmful substances. -
EPA Formally Deletes Vacated Gasification, Comparable Fuels Waste Exclusions
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
The Environmental Protection Agency has formally deleted two hazardous waste exclusions vacated by a federal appeals court in 2014 from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulations. In a final rule effective immediately (80 Fed. Reg. 18,777), the EPA moved April 8 to remove the comparable fuels ... -
Toxic Cadmium in Jewelry: States Lead in Protecting Kids
Apr 13, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Tasha Stoiber
In the absence of adequate federal regulation of hazardous chemicals, the states have stepped up to protect public health and the environment. The Toxic Substances Control Act requires that state chemical regulations must be at least as strong as those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the law, which hasn’t been updated since... -
States Outpacing Feds in Safety Regs for Fracking
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Kathleen Sgamma
The Department of the Interior recently introduced a rule to regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal lands to much fanfare. Stating the need to update 30-year-old regulations, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell characterized Interior’s action as taking the lead and giving the states an example to follow. -
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. -
Interior Proposes Tougher Standards For Offshore Oil, Gas Exploration Work
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Proposed tougher standards for equipment and operational practices used in offshore oil and gas exploration work were released April 13 by the Interior Department. The standards incorporate best technologies and practices in the industry and add other requirements with the idea of providing a comprehensive proposed rule on well control that... -
Regulators Tighten Rules for Offshore Drillers
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Federal regulators are proposing a regulation to improve a piece of offshore drilling equipment, five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill raised questions about safety. The new standards unveiled Monday target blowout preventers, which serve as an emergency backup to stop oil and natural gas disasters like the one in 2010 at a BP... -
Obama Administration Proposes New Offshore Drilling Rules
Apr 13, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder & Daniel Gilbert
The Obama administration on Monday proposed new offshore oil and natural-gas drilling regulations aimed at preventing the kind of explosion that erupted nearly five years ago on BP PLC’s Deepwater Horizon rig, including provisions the industry has already adopted. The Interior Department draft rules impose tougher standards on equipment designed... -
State Department Rebuffs Chaffetz Document Request
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Manuel Quiñones
The State Department is refusing to give the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee a trove of documents related to its review of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. At issue are letters and other documents from different executive agencies weighing in on whether KXL's trans-boundary crossing is in the United... -
Southern California Utility to Make Gas From Solar Energy for Pipeline Storage
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
Southern California Gas Co. has started two pilot projects that will test the feasibility of using solar energy produced when power demand is low to split hydrogen from water and store the gas in pipelines. The projects, backed by U.S. government funding, will either ship the hydrogen for use as an automotive fuel or combine it with carbon dioxide ... -
What InsideClimate Got Right and Wrong About EDF's Methane Work
Apr 13, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Eric Pooley
On April 8, InsideClimate News published an in-depth story about Environmental Defense Fund’s groundbreaking work to measure emissions of methane. While we don’t agree with everything in the story, we’re glad it recognizes the scope, ambition and scientific integrity of our work. As InsideClimate News concludes... -
Power Plant Bill Would Be ‘Unprecedented Interference' in EPA Activity, McCabe Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Legislation set for consideration by a House subpanel that would enable states to delay complying with the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan marks “unprecedented interference” from Congress, the agency's top air official said in prepared testimony released April 13. -
EPA Blasts GOP’s Bill to Change Climate Rule
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined the Environmental Protection Agency Monday in criticizing the House GOP’s efforts to weaken the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said that the legislation that a subcommittee will consider Tuesday would effectively... -
Rural Electric Co-Ops, Greens Weigh In On Clean Power Plan Ahead Of Hearing
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Jean Chemnick
Representatives of the nation's rural electric cooperatives say their message during a meeting yesterday with U.S. EPA's top brass was clear: The Clean Power Plan doesn't work for them. In a conversation with E&E Publishing reporters immediately after their half-hour briefing with Administrator Gina ... -
Court Partially Vacates Tailoring Rule; EPA Expected to Set De Minimis Threshold
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency must set a minimum emissions threshold for greenhouse gas permitting after a federal appellate court vacated portions of the agency's tailoring rule (Coal. for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 09-01322, amended per curiam judgment filed, 4/10/15). -
Majority of Seven DOE Departments Reviewed Used Energy Incentive Programs, Report Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
While the majority of seven sites reviewed within the Department of Energy are taking advantage of the agency's energy incentive funding programs, two are not fully utilizing them, according to a recent DOE Office of Inspector General report. The energy incentive programs are designed to offset energy costs and are offered for new, energy-efficiency ... -
Tough Road For Minor Bill Means Deadline Is Expected To Lapse On DOE Rule
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Nick Juliano
Even the easy stuff is hard to do in Congress. A relatively minor energy efficiency bill -- which has virtually universal bipartisan support, is tied to an imminent deadline and is a key priority of rural utilities and efficiency advocates -- finally passed the Senate earlier this month, after years of behind-the-scenes political wrangling. -
Clean Energy to Be at ‘Top of Agenda,' Clinton Campaign Adviser Podesta Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will put addressing climate change and promoting clean energy at the “top of the agenda,” John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, said on Twitter. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic favorite who officially announced her campaign April 12, has yet to expand on her... -
Clinton’s Energy Agenda: More Than Obama, Part 2?
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Darren Goode
On energy and climate policy, Hillary Clinton’s biggest challenge may be showing how her presidency would go beyond serving as Barack Obama’s third term. Clinton and Obama agree in the broad strokes, of course. She’d certainly champion the president’s carbon regulations for power plants and whatever global climate agreement the... -
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... -
Elizabeth Warren Slams Big Oil, Says Major Companies Profit From Pollution
Apr 13, 2015 | National Journal
By Clare Foran
Elizabeth Warren highlighted the threat of climate change and called for regulations to rein in corporate polluters during a speech Monday delivered to an audience of climate and labor activists at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington. "A lot of people think that regulations bring higher costs," Warren said. "But regulation... -
Rubio Little-Known on Environmental Issues, Remembered for Denying Climate Change
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Rachel Leven
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who threw his hat into the growing field of Republican presidential hopefuls April 13, has devoted little public rhetoric to environmental issues as a senator, but he is remembered for denying in 2014 the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change. -
Rubio’s History On Cap and Trade Draws Critics
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén
Critics of Sen. Marco Rubio are digging up his support nearly a decade ago for a cap and trade-related bill in a bid to show that the new Republican presidential contender has shifted his views on climate change. Those critics, who requested anonymity, pointed to Rubio’s stance in 2007, when as speaker of Florida’s House of ... -
'Green Room' Charts Defense to GOP Energy Agenda
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
Environmentalists plan to mark Mitch McConnell’s 100th day as Senate majority leader by mobilizing the war room they launched in January to counter the GOP at every turn. Climate activists have dubbed it the “Green Room,” a rapid-response messaging operation aimed at the new Senate Republican majority, and it represents a strategic shift in... -
Supreme Court MATS Decision Unlikely To Affect Power Company Compliance Plans
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The U.S. Supreme Court review of the Environmental Protection Agency's mercury and air toxics standards for power plants likely will have little practical effect on companies that already have made long-term investments in pollution controls or retirement decisions in preparation for the upcoming compliance date, representatives of several large... -
9th Circuit Ruling Strengthens Courts' Split On Allocating Superfund Costs
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
A recent decision from the U.S Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has found courts have discretion under the Superfund law's contribution provision to decide "the most equitable method" for allocating contribution costs among private responsible parties, strengthening a split among appellate courts on the issue. -
Ontario to Join Cap-and-Trade Program To Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Ontario will join Quebec, California and other North American jurisdictions in adopting a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced April 13. The province will join the Western Climate Initiative's cap-and-trade system, impose a “hard ceiling on the pollution...
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(ACC Mentioned) Procter & Gamble Joins Plastic Film, Bag Recycling Effort
Apr 14, 2015 | Environmental Leader
Procter & Gamble has joined the Flexible Film Recycling Group, an American Chemistry Council project that aims to drive recovery of flexible polyethylene (PE) film, wraps and bags.
Stephen Sikra, P&G research and development manager, says working with FFRG and the company’s value chain partners to expand film collection and recycling plays a key role in P&G’s goal to shrink its environmental footprint.
The recycling of postconsumer plastic film grew 11 percent in 2013 to reach a reported 1.14 billion pounds, according to a February report. This marks the highest annual collection of plastic film — a category that includes product wraps, bags and commercial stretch film made primarily from PE for recycling — since the survey began in 2005.
Founding members of the Flexible Film Recycling Group include Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips, Berry Plastics, Wisconsin Film and Bag, Sealed Air Corporation, SC Johnson, Avangard and Trex.
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(ACC Mentioned) WSJ Economists' Survey: GDP Rose Just 1.4 Percent in First Quarter
Apr 13, 2015 | Newsmax Finance
By Dan Weil
If you thought the 2.2 percent GDP growth in the fourth quarter indicated a sluggish economy, wait until you see the first-quarter number, which will be released April 29.
A survey of 62 economists by The Wall Street Journal produced a growth forecast of only 1.4 percent for the first quarter, down from an expected growth forecast of 3 percent in January.
Much of the damage came from a strong dollar, the economists said. The Dollar Index, which measures the greenback against six major currencies, hit a 12-year high last month amid the global currency war.
A rising dollar hurts the economy by widening our trade gap, as it makes our exports more expensive in foreign currency terms and our imports cheaper in dollar terms.
The ascendant greenback also has taken a bite out of many U.S. companies' earnings by lowering the value of their foreign revenue when it's converted into dollars.
Many experts expect the dollar to continue rising. "I can't give a time, but I think the dollar will reach parity with the euro at some point," Kevin Swift, economist at the American Chemistry Council, told The Journal. The euro traded at $1.0599 around midday Friday.
For the year, the economists expect GDP to be 2.7 percent.
Meanwhile, the U.S. currency's surge has thrown a wrench into the Federal Reserve's planning for interest rate hikes.
"If the dollar goes higher, the Fed is not likely to raise rates," star investor Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, said in a call with investors last week, Think Advisor reports.
The minutes of the Fed's March policy meeting noted that some policymakers "anticipated that the effects of energy price declines and the dollar's appreciation would continue to weigh on inflation in the near term, suggesting that conditions likely would not be appropriate to begin raising rates until later in the year [after June.]"
Gundlach's take: "Clearly the Fed is cognizant of the strong dollar, and that gave the short-term yield curve a bit of a boost recently."
Many economists predict the Fed to raise rates in September. It has kept its federal funds rate target at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent since December 2008. -
(ACC Mentioned) Link Between Chemistry, Outdoor Goods Among Functions ACC Video Will Highlight
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The American Chemistry Council soon will release a video showing how fluorinated chemicals, polystyrene and polyurethane contribute to making outdoor jackets water resistant and warm and to helping bicycle helmets absorb impacts.
The video is the latest activity the trade association has undertaken in it Value Chain Outreach program, Debra Phillips, vice president of the outreach and Responsible Care® initiatives, told Bloomberg BNA in an April 8 interview.
Through the outreach program, Phillips said, the chemistry council is:
• expanding its work with companies that purchase products made with chemicals;
• meeting with product retailers, which play an increasingly important role in chemical purchasing decisions;
• using a website, videos and other means to show how chemicals make products durable, energy efficient, light weight and provide specific other functions; and
• contributing to the development of voluntary standards, such as the rating systems the U.S. Green Building Council uses to certify construction materials for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
Evaluating Hazard Screens
The outreach program includes a research component as well, Phillips said.
For example, the council is evaluating seven chemicals according to hazard criteria and software tools the apparel industry, retailers and other sectors commonly use to determine risk, persistence, toxicity other effects, she said.
The screening tools the outreach program is evaluating include GreenWERCS™, which uses criteria such as persistence, bioaccumulation potential, carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity; GreenScreen®, which uses 18 criteria to rank whether chemicals pose a low, moderate or high hazard; and the Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment approach, which examines known toxicity information and toxicity data from chemicals with similar structures.
The research is expected to identify similarities and differences among the hazard screening tools, how the tools could be improved and whether they could incorporate sustainability considerations beyond toxicity, she said.
Challenges Changing
The chemistry council's decision to develop a variety of educational tools for different parties within the value chain crystallized in 2013, Phillips said.
The council's member companies, spurred by questions they were getting from customers and manufacturers of goods such as cleaning or personal care products, which have been targets of campaigns against specific chemical ingredients, prompted the council to become more engaged on newer challenges of demonstrating sustainability, safety and other issues involving chemicals, Phillips said.
The new types of challenges include retailers becoming involved in the decision as to what chemicals would be used in the products on their shelves and product manufacturers being overwhelmed with questionnaires about the particular chemicals in their products, Phillips said.
The partnerships ACC is forming through its Value Chain Outreach program mean it will routinely meet with diverse audiences including architects, apparel manufacturers and nongovernmental organizations, Phillips said.
Standard-setting in particular will bring together diverse parties to get into the nitty-gritty of the value chemicals add to products, including the ways different chemistries contribute to sustainability, she said.
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Industry, Environmentalists Raise Concerns Over House TSCA Reform Bill
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Chemical industry officials and environmentalists are raising concerns over draft House Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) legislation including the sector's attacks on “opaque” provisions that create confusion over chemicals regulation and criticisms from advocates about the bill allowing delays in restricting harmful substances.
The draft legislation, slated for debate at an April 14 House Energy & Commerce Committee environment panel hearing, is a more limited version of TSCA reform than two pending Senate measures. It significantly scales back preemption of state chemicals programs compared to sweeping preemption in a bill by Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) and at 30 pages is much shorter than the 175-page Vitter-Udall bill, S. 697, and a 169-page competing bill, S. 725, introduced by Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).
The draft House bill, circulated by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) -- chair of the environment subcommittee -- is a fresh attempt to advance toxics law reform in the lower chamber after a TSCA bill failed to move in the 113th Congress. Although the legislation is pared back compared to the upper chamber's pending measures, it nevertheless is prompting wide-ranging concerns from environmentalist and industry stakeholders.
For example, one environmentalist says the House draft comes up short from advocates' goals for ensuring stricter EPA chemicals rules, and that the industry “pay to play” provisions combined with a lack of an expedited process for reviewing the most dangerous chemicals “creates a lot of opportunity for mischief.”
And one chemical industry source says that it is “not clear from the changes made compared” to last year's House draft language or the Senate S. 697 bill “what the drafters intend with this draft.”
The source calls the bill “uneven” comparatively and says that some of the provisions appear to be based on concerns that neither environmentalists nor industry has raised during the reform debates.
“While this could represent new thinking, some of these changes seem to move the debate backwards or suggest a more opaque approach regarding key issues,” that source says. “One example is the lack of a prioritization scheme for how to address the existing universe of over 80,000 chemicals” grandfathered in under current TSCA.
But the environmentalist says while EPA must have clear, enforceable deadlines to assess and restrict chemicals they say are absent from the House draft, prioritization need not be established by a reform bill. “EPA has the authority to set priorities, Congress doesn’t need to ask EPA to set priorities,” the source says.
All three bills -- the House legislation and the two Senate measures -- aim to overhaul the 1976 TSCA, which many stakeholders including EPA, environmentalists and industry groups have said is out of date. Proponents of toxics law reform say updates are necessary to address thousands of chemicals already in the marketplace.
A second industry source says the House bill is “another important step to getting TSCA passed,” though both advocates and industry are likely to push for major changes to achieve their policy goals.
The first industry source says also suggests the bill will trigger broader discussions on a compromise, saying, “We hope that the sponsors intend the bill as a gateway to compromise notwithstanding the clear differences between the House and Senate, as well as differences with some provisions between this and last year’s bill.”
Draft Legislation
Shimkus' draft TSCA bill, known informally as the TSCA Modernization Act, represents a significantly pared-back effort compared to a draft Shimkus circulated last Congress known as the Chemicals in Commerce Act, as well as the Vitter-Udall bill that some states are opposing due to its preemption provisions.
The House draft appears to take a similar approach to the Senate bill on some issues, such as retaining an “unreasonable risk” standard that EPA would have to meet in determining the safety of chemicals, and removing a mandate that EPA assess the “least burdensome” alternative to restrictions for a substance.
But there are also major differences, including that the House draft language appears to significantly scale back the degree to which state programs would be blocked. Unlike the Senate bill, the House draft does not contain any exemptions to preserve existing state chemicals program such as California's Proposition 65.
The draft bill says that preemption of state chemicals programs would only occur after EPA issues a requirement or a rule for a particular substance under section 5 of TSCA, which applies to new chemicals, or section 6 of the toxics law, which allows EPA to take action on chemicals already in the marketplace.
In contrast, opponents of the Senate bill say it would restrict states from enacting identical chemical management rules, and that it would block existing state chemicals rules when EPA launches a safety assessment for a chemical it deems “high-priority” under the prioritization scheme that the bill would establish.
Opponents say the language would block states' ability to be “co-enforcers” of the law and would leave a potential seven-year regulatory gap until EPA issues a final rule during which no chemical restrictions would apply.
The Senate bill meanwhile would require EPA to within a year establish a risk-based screening process to designate chemicals high-and low-priority, and subsequently publish an initial list of at least 10 of each of the two priority designations, but the House draft contains no similar requirements for the agency.
The House draft would also avoid making substantial changes to the “new” chemicals program, compared to the Senate bill which would require a safety finding for new chemicals prior to their entering the marketplace. And the lower chamber's draft legislation would also leave in place the current “substantial evidence” standard for judicial review of agency decisions that some credit with hindering EPA's authority under current TSCA.
While both versions provide for industry to defray some of the costs of EPA regulation, the House draft establishes a fee system that would allow manufacturers to request expedited reviews for specific substances in exchange for fees of up to $2,500 or $100 for small businesses. In contrast, the bipartisan Senate bill would require EPA to establish by rulemaking a system for user fees of approximately 25 percent of the estimated costs up to $18 million.
The Shimkus draft bill is also likely to draw criticism from some stakeholders because it would include the section 5 new chemicals program in the preemption provisions, which some have said is not necessary because the agency has been able to successfully manage the program under current TSCA, and unlike the Senate bill it does not explicitly preserve some current state requirements such as the Prop 65 California law While last year's House draft TSCA reform bill failed to secure bipartisan support, a key House Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), ranking member of the full energy panel, has already offered tentative support for the pending measure. Pallone said April 7 in a joint press release with Shimkus that the bill is a “good starting point, and I look forward to hearing from and working with stakeholders as we move forward.”
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EPA Formally Deletes Vacated Gasification, Comparable Fuels Waste Exclusions
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
The Environmental Protection Agency has formally deleted two hazardous waste exclusions vacated by a federal appeals court in 2014 from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulations.
In a final rule effective immediately (80 Fed. Reg. 18,777), the EPA moved April 8 to remove the comparable fuels exclusion (63 Fed. Reg. 33,782), issued in 1998, and the gasification exclusion (73 Fed. Reg. 57), promulgated in 2008, from the RCRA rules.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in June 2014 that the agency lacked statutory discretion under RCRA to exempt the fuel products from hazardous waste regulations and the exclusions violated the unambiguous language of the waste statute (Sierra Club v. EPA, 755 F.3d 968, 78 ERC 2095, 2014 BL 180223 (D.C. Cir. 2014); Natural Res. Def. Council v. EPA, 755 F.3d 1010, 78 ERC 1745, 2014 BL 180218 (D.C. Cir. 2014)).
Originally promulgated in 1998, the comparable fuels exclusion exempted certain oil-bearing, hazardous secondary materials from hazardous waste regulations if they were burned as fuels in industrial facilities and had contaminant levels comparable to fossil fuels.
The second vacated hazardous waste rule, the 2008 Hazardous Waste Gasification Exclusion, exempted certain materials from waste regulations when used in the gasification systems at refineries.
According to the EPA, 31 facilities were known to have used the now-deleted exclusions.
The chemical industry had previously pressed the court to allow it 18 months to transition its operations, but the D.C. Circuit ultimately sided with the EPA and stayed its mandate only until this month (79 ERC W-2, (11/14/14))(214 DEN A-5, 11/5/14).
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Toxic Cadmium in Jewelry: States Lead in Protecting Kids
Apr 13, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Tasha Stoiber
In the absence of adequate federal regulation of hazardous chemicals, the states have stepped up to protect public health and the environment.
The Toxic Substances Control Act requires that state chemical regulations must be at least as strong as those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the law, which hasn’t been updated since 1976, also gives states the right to take stronger action to protect their citizens when federal regulations fall short. The issue of cadmium in children’s jewelry shows how important it is that states retain their right to set their own limits on hazardous chemicals.
Cadmium is a carcinogen. Exposures can also damage the lungs and kidneys and weaken bones. Some animal studies suggest that kids may be more susceptible to bone damage from cadmium than adults. Children are especially vulnerable to cadmium because they are still developing, and since kids tend to put things in their mouths, jewelry can be a source of direct exposure.
Many parents were alarmed when, in 2010, a high profile study tested children’s jewelry made in China and sold throughout the U.S. The findings determined that some contained substantial amounts of cadmium, up to 90 percent in several cases. A subsequent study found some kids’ jewelry had more than 200,000 parts per million of cadmium, which some manufacturers began using instead of lead after the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 called for even tighter restrictions on the content of lead in children’s products. There were no immediate cases of illness linked to the cadmium jewelry, but even low exposures over time can cause serious health problems.
In 2010, several public interest groups responded with a petition to the EPA and Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) calling for a ban on cadmium in children’s jewelry. The petition asked both agencies to require manufacturers to report health and safety data for cadmium in products, similar to that required for lead.
The petition was denied by the CPSC. Instead, the products safety commission worked with ASTM International, a private, industry-friendly standards group, to develop voluntary standards for cadmium in children’s jewelry. The commission also argued that the existing mandatory standard for cadmium in children’s toys was sufficient to protect children from exposure – although most children’s jewelry products are not regulated as toys.
On the other hand, the EPA’s response to the petition seemed promising at first, as a rule was published requiring manufacturers to provide health and safety data for products containing cadmium. The action was significant because it is often a first step to further regulation under TSCA. But the industry fought back, questioning the risk of exposure. The EPA caved and withdrew the rule.
In 2012, California responded by amending its Lead-Containing Jewelry Law to include cadmium, and renamed it the Metal-Containing Jewelry Law. Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington have also set strict limits on cadmium in children’s jewelry.
Congress is currently debating reforms to TSCA. The industry-friendly bill sponsored by Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.) would limit the right of states to set more restrictive limits on chemicals (although existing state regulations would remain in place). In contrast, the bill sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would protect the states’ power to act. It would also make it easier for the EPA to regulate products that contain toxic chemicals.
The case of cadmium underscores what we’ve seen again and again. Whether it’s bisphenol A, flame retardants or other harmful chemicals, states have filled the gaping hole in public health protections allowed by TSCA. It is urgent that the federal law be strengthened, by putting the burden of proof on manufacturers to prove chemicals are safe before they are put on the market, but the states must retain the right to go above and beyond federal regulations.
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States Outpacing Feds in Safety Regs for Fracking
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Kathleen Sgamma
The Department of the Interior recently introduced a rule to regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal lands to much fanfare. Stating the need to update 30-year-old regulations, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell characterized Interior’s action as taking the lead and giving the states an example to follow.
An example? Only in the logic of leading from behind. States have not been waiting for the federal government. They have long acted to strengthen their regulations and ensure that fracking is done safely while protecting the environment.
Colorado has completed multiple rounds of rulemaking over more than a decade, with increasing intensity in recent years. Wyoming is in a race to the top with Colorado in claiming the mantle of the state with the most stringent regulations. North Dakota, Texas, and in fact all western states with sizeable oil and natural gas development had updated their rules well before the federal government jumped in. In fact, 99.97 percent of the permits to drill approved last year by the Interior Department are in states with recently updated fracking regulations, with just one well in a state currently updating its rules.
The regulations aren’t simply about disclosure of the chemicals used in frack fluids, which is noncontroversial and already being done voluntarily or per state requirements. The real key to the safety of fracking is that the well is constructed properly, fluids are handled properly, and operational risks are minimized. States have been regulating these operations for many years, but have strengthened them recently as activity has increased and technology has improved.
Despite the characterization from the federal government, there is simply no regulatory gap. States have an exemplary safety record, as there is not one example of the fracking process resulting in the contamination of underground drinking water. But don’t take my word for it; all Interior and Energy secretaries and EPA administrators under President Obama have vouched for the safety of fracking.
Industry agrees that strong regulations are proper and necessary to ensure operations protect public health, safety and the environment. Improved practices and strong regulation ensure that environmental impacts are minimal and the risk of accident is small. When we do make a mistake, we are held accountable under the law and must clean up any spills and take other corrective actions.
So if industry is supportive of sensible regulation, why are Western Energy Alliance and IPAA challenging the new Interior Department regulations in court? Because these regulations are redundant with state regulations, and will further discourage responsible development on federal lands. The Interior Department cannot point to a single incident on public lands to justify the new red tape nor risk that isn’t already handled by the states.
Just as the federal government has been way behind state regulators, its inefficiencies have already discouraged development on federal lands. It takes years longer for federal project approval than on identical adjacent private and state lands. It is well-documented production lags on federal lands even as it is booming across the country.
Furthermore, the Interior Department does not have the staff and resources to properly implement this new rule. Environmental groups often criticize Interior for not performing enough oil and natural gas oversight. States regularly do a better job of inspecting wells at a higher frequency than the federal government. And rather than the four years it look the Interior Department to finalize this rule, states are constantly updating regulations to address issues and stay current with technology.
So why overburden an agency that already struggles to meet its current obligations? Why not work in partnership with the states?
Yes, state regulations don’t match these new federal requirements exactly, but they achieve the same goals. States tailor their rules for the geology, topography, infrastructure, and other circumstances unique to them. The new federal regulation on the other hand adopts a one-size-fits-all mentality that will take away state flexibility to better protect the environment based on actual conditions on the ground. There are examples where innovations that reduce water use, truck trips, and surface impact cannot be done on public lands because federal requirements are too rigid. These new rules will increase that inflexibility and discourage innovation.
The Interior Department has issued vague promises that it will allow certain state rules to prevail, but there is no assurance. Viewing state regulation through the lens of copying federal requirements rather than achieving environmental goals is not true partnership. For that reason, both Wyoming and North Dakota are also suing the government over these rules. Industry stands with the states and their proven record of success.
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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: Energy and Environment What environmentalists get wrong when they use the California drought to attack 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.
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 on agricultural 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 Times reported 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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Interior Proposes Tougher Standards For Offshore Oil, Gas Exploration Work
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Proposed tougher standards for equipment and operational practices used in offshore oil and gas exploration work were released April 13 by the Interior Department.
The standards incorporate best technologies and practices in the industry and add other requirements with the idea of providing a comprehensive proposed rule on well control that would substantially reduce the risk of a blowout.
The standards from Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which developed the proposal, will apply to blowout preventers, well design, well casing, well cementing, subsea containment systems and other technologies. It also would mandate practices such as real-time monitoring of offshore wells from onshore offices and the use of approved third parties for certification of compliance.
The BSEE estimated the cost at $883 million over 10 years. The BSEE offered two estimates for the 10-year benefits, either $1.54 billion or almost $5.3 billion.
A 60-day public comment period will start when the proposal (RIN 1014–AA11) is published in the Federal Register.
‘Already Spending Money on This.'
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the consequences of catastrophic blowouts like the Deepwater Horizon accident of April 20, 2010, far outweigh the costs of the proposed regulations. BP Plc, operator of the Deepwater Horizon, is facing tens of billions of dollars in expenses because of that accident (51 DEN A-3, 3/17/15).
Speaking during a telephone news conference, Jewell said the equipment and practices in the rule are largely in place for many companies. “They're already spending money on this equipment,” Jewell said.
Offshore oil and gas drilling is inherently expensive, often costing tens of millions of dollars per well. Jewell said the costs of the new rule should not make a material difference to the economics of the business.
Many of the requirements in the rule would become effective three months after the final rule is issued.
In recognition of the scale of the task, compliance with the real-time monitoring requirements would become mandatory after three years.
Better Blowout Preventers Wanted
Blowout preventers are very large sets of valves that in most cases sit on the seabed at the wellhead. BSEE Director Brian Salerno said the proposed rule would apply to their design, fabrication, maintenance and inspection.
Among other things, the proposal would require double shear rams in blowout preventers within five years to cut off pipe at two points during a blowout—reducing the risk that a cut at one point might fail.
American Petroleum Institute Standard 53, issued in November 2012, recommended double shear rams for subsea blowout preventers but said companies could opt out of using them for surface-mounted equipment. The BSEE proposal would make double shear rams the default requirement for all blowout preventers, surface as well as subsea.
A blowout preventer failed to do its job during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The surge of oil slammed the pipe to one side where it jammed a shear ram. The proposed rule would require that within seven years a blowout preventer also have equipment that would center the drill pipe during shearing.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) issued a statement welcoming the requirements for better blowout preventers, adding, “Congress must still act to hold the oil industry to the highest standards, including raising the fines for safety violations, and making the liability cap for oil spills unlimited.”
Industry Going Through Rule
The National Ocean Industries Association and the American Petroleum Institute issued cautiously worded statements saying they are reviewing the proposed regulations.
“The federal regulators promised a big rule, and at more than 200 pages, they certainly delivered,” NOIA President Randall Luthi said. He said his organization is keenly interested in the proposed design and function changes for blowout preventers, requirements for dual shear rams, real-time monitoring, testing schedules and other details.
“We are concerned that reasonable and necessary time is allowed for proposed design and manufacturing modifications and that third party certifications are a useful tool for verifying safety measures and not merely an increase in a bureaucratic process,” Luthi said.
Upstream Group Director Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute noted that the government is building on industry standards and said, “We are reviewing the proposed rules and hope they will complement industry's own efforts to enhance safety. Improved standards for blowout preventers are one of the many ways industry has led the charge to make offshore operations even safer.”
The proposed rule followed by about seven weeks a proposed set of regulations specifically for Arctic conditions (63 DEN A-1, 4/2/15).
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Regulators Tighten Rules for Offshore Drillers
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Federal regulators are proposing a regulation to improve a piece of offshore drilling equipment, five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill raised questions about safety.
The new standards unveiled Monday target blowout preventers, which serve as an emergency backup to stop oil and natural gas disasters like the one in 2010 at a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The standards are the most significant response yet to the 2010 incident, which started with a well blowout on the sea floor, killed 11 workers and resulted in an 87-day spill that was one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.
Officials said the proposed regulations from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) build on work the oil and natural gas industry has already done to improve standards since the 2010 spill.
“We’ve taken great strides since then to strengthen, update and modernize energy regulations to ensure that offshore oil and gas development is done safely and responsibly,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told reporters Monday.
“Through this proposed rule, we’re requiring more stringent design requirements and stricter operational procedures for critical equipment used in offshore energy development,” she added.
Jewell said it is the Interior Department’s responsibility to ensure that offshore drilling, which brings in 16 percent of the country’s oil and 5 percent of its natural gas, is done in a way that protects workers and the environment.
“We owe it to the American people to ensure we’re developing these resources responsibly and safely,” she said.
Investigators said the blowout preventer was one of the main points of failure in the Deepwater Horizon spill. The oil and gas coming out of the well bent the well pipe in such a way that prohibited the blowout preventer from cutting the pipe in the right way.
The new rule would mandate another set of cutting shears for that specific purpose.
In addition to the new design standards for the equipment, the BSEE also wants repair and maintenance actions to be logged with federal officials.
“It would provide verification of the performance of equipment designs through third party verification, enhanced oversight of operations through real-time monitoring viewed onshore, and require operators to, during operations, utilize recognized engineering best standards that reduce risk,” BSEE Director Brian Salerno said in a statement.
The oil industry said it would withhold judgment on the proposal while it reviews it.
But the American Petroleum Institute (API) said it hopes regulators take into account the work the industry has already done in this area.
“A great deal of effort has been put into strengthening spill containment and response, but our first goal is always to prevent accidents from happening at all,” said Erik Milito, director of upstream industry operations for API, said in a statement. “Our industry is committed to meeting the nation’s energy needs while maintaining safe and environmentally responsible operations.”
“This long overdue proposed rule helps bring drilling safety into the modern era, and that’s a goal everyone should embrace,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee.
“Before the critics start their predictable calls of ‘burdensome’ and ‘unnecessary,’ they should think about the ongoing costs of the spill — to our fishermen, lobstermen, tourism professionals, and above all the families of those who died because of a permissive regulatory culture that can’t continue,” he said.
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Obama Administration Proposes New Offshore Drilling Rules
Apr 13, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder & Daniel Gilbert
The Obama administration on Monday proposed new offshore oil and natural-gas drilling regulations aimed at preventing the kind of explosion that erupted nearly five years ago on BP PLC’s Deepwater Horizon rig, including provisions the industry has already adopted.
The Interior Department draft rules impose tougher standards on equipment designed to keep control of a well and require real-time monitoring of certain kinds of drilling that are in deep water or done at high pressures.
The proposals require a series of tests and maintenance on a device called a blowout preventer, a stack of valves that sits atop a well on the ocean floor and is designed to seal it off in an emergency. The preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig failed to stop the flow of oil and gas on April 20, 2010, and the out-of-control well led to the explosion that killed 11 people and caused the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Interior Department officials stressed the collaboration between government and industry in strengthening standards.
“Both industry and government have taken important strides to better protect human lives and the environment from oil spills, and these proposed measures are designed to further build on critical lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and to ensure that offshore operations are safe,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in a conference call Monday.
The Interior Department is expected to issue final rules later this year with an effective date three months after that. Acknowledging how long it takes for companies to install new technologies, the government is allowing three to seven years for companies to comply with the rules, depending on the particular provision.
The government estimates the rules will cost the industry $883 million over a 10-year period while offering benefits of $656 million in the form of time saved and reduction of potential spills.
Industry officials reacted cautiously to Monday’s proposals.
“We are reviewing the proposed rules and hope they will complement industry’s own efforts to enhance safety,” said Erik Milito, upstream director for the American Petroleum Institute, a group representing all parts of the oil and gas industry. “Improved standards for blowout preventers are one of the many ways industry has led the charge to make offshore operations even safer.”
Some environmentalists suggested the rules could be stronger and noted the proposal mirrors a standard the industry has already adopted. “Are we really strengthening safety or are we just making these [provisions] official?” said Jackie Savitz, vice president of U.S. Oceans at environmental group Oceana.
Environmentalists have pushed for Congress to pass legislation in response to the BP spill, hoping lawmakers would embed tougher standards into law—making them more difficult to undo. Those efforts have broken down over several issues, particularly the degree to which oil companies should be held liable for damage from spills.
In the absence of congressional action, the Interior Department has issued two major regulations on drilling safety since 2010, including tougher requirements on well casings and cementing practices of wells.
The new rules are designed to prevent some of the equipment failures that occurred on Deepwater Horizon, including the blowout preventer, which is the last line of defense against an out-of-control well. Such devices are equipped with a set of shears—like a cigar cutter—to slice through the pipe and seal it off in an emergency.
Investigators determined that the drill pipe of BP’s well was off-center when the blowout preventer tried to close around it. The shears failed to fully cut through the pipe, leaving it gushing oil and gas.
Regulators plan to require companies to employ a technology to center the pipe as the shears close around it, and for the blowout preventer to have two sets of shears to increase the likelihood that it will slice the pipe.
The new rules also raise the bar for companies to maintain what is known as a safe drilling margin. In 2010, BP decided to drill through a fragile layer of rock even though the pressure risked cracking open the whole formation. A federal judge last year called the choice “dangerous,” and concluded that it set in motion a chain of events that led to the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
The proposed rules provide specifics on what constitutes a safe drilling margin, and require that companies maintain it throughout drilling.
Investigations into the Deepwater Horizon accident found many systemic problems, including poor choices by workers aboard the drilling rig and government oversight that relied on the offshore drilling industry.
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State Department Rebuffs Chaffetz Document Request
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Manuel Quiñones
The State Department is refusing to give the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee a trove of documents related to its review of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.
At issue are letters and other documents from different executive agencies weighing in on whether KXL's trans-boundary crossing is in the United States' national interest. That review remains ongoing.
"So the committee can review the recommendations that the State Department is considering in the course of the Keystone XL permitting process, please produce all reports, recommendations, letters and comments received by the State Department from the advising agencies," panel Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Interior Subcommittee Chairwoman Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) asked in February.
In a March letter, obtained this week by E&E Daily, the State Department reiterated its intention to keep the documents secret, saying they "constitute an integral part of the Executive Branch's deliberative process."
Julia Frifield, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, told lawmakers that "disclosure of this information would raise separation of powers concerns. Accordingly, the State Department is not in a position to provide the requested documents to the Committee at this time."
Oversight Committee leaders have not said how they will respond.
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Southern California Utility to Make Gas From Solar Energy for Pipeline Storage
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
Southern California Gas Co. has started two pilot projects that will test the feasibility of using solar energy produced when power demand is low to split hydrogen from water and store the gas in pipelines.
The projects, backed by U.S. government funding, will either ship the hydrogen for use as an automotive fuel or combine it with carbon dioxide to form methane that can be used to generate electricity when demand is stronger.
The company is pitching the technology, already used in Germany with wind energy, as an alternative to battery storage. Renewable fuels must make up a third of California's power supply by 2020, according to state law.
“I think everyone knows that in meeting that requirement you will need a lot of storage,” Jeffrey Reed, director of business strategy and advanced technology for the utility, a unit of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, said in an April 9 phone interview. “We need resources to match the time of production with the time of use.”
The cost of storing power converted to gas is less than 35 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to analysis by Southern California Gas.
Once put onto the pipeline network system, wholesale power prices and the price of gasoline at the pump will determine how those gases are used, said Patrick Lee, senior vice president of customer service, innovation and business strategy for the utility in Los Angeles.
Fuel Flexibility
“It's really a flexible fuel that depends on the market economics,” Lee said. “It's especially suitable for long-term storage.” Germany is already using the process with surplus wind produced overnight, he said.
As part of the projects, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., will produce the hydrogen and combine it with carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming, to make methane with a negative carbon footprint, Reed said. The National Fuel Cell Research Center at University of California, Irvine will test the hydrogen for vehicle use and determine how much of the gas can be injected into the pipeline system.
Initially, the projects will convert about 200 kilowatts of solar power, producing enough hydrogen to fill up five or six vehicles a day. A year later the utility plans to produce 1 megawatt, enough to fill the storage tanks at a large filling station, Lee said.
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What InsideClimate Got Right and Wrong About EDF's Methane Work
Apr 13, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Eric Pooley
On April 8, InsideClimate News published an in-depth story about Environmental Defense Fund’s groundbreaking work to measure emissions of methane.
While we don’t agree with everything in the story, we’re glad it recognizes the scope, ambition and scientific integrity of our work. As InsideClimate News concludes:
Environmental groups almost never take on scientific research efforts. Investigations on this scale are normally organized by the federal government or the National Academy of Sciences. Coordinating what’s become an $18 million series of 16 studies by more than 100 researchers has turned EDF into a heavyweight on the science of methane pollution.
The project’s findings will influence government policy concerning the $292 billion-a-year U.S. oil and gas extraction industry and the regulation of fracking…[And] environmentalists acknowledge that EDF has managed to pass some of the nation’s strictest regulations where others have failed.
InsideClimate News interviewed 40 scientists, activists, academics and industry representatives - more than half of whom aren’t involved with the EDF research. This group included 15 methane researchers. None of them said they thought the industry was manipulating EDF’s research results or pressuring scientists to change their data.
But the story also gets some important things wrong, on issues the reporters never asked us about.
We’d like to offer corrections on those points, which we have raised directly with the editors, along with some additional perspective on this important story about methane – a potent greenhouse gas and main component of natural gas. Correcting the Record
The article says that EDF “generally supports fracking.” This is not accurate. We have never advocated in favor of fracking. Instead, we recognize that fracking is a widespread reality. Rather than trying to draw an untenable line in the ground, EDF has fought hard to protect communities and ecosystems from unacceptable impacts by putting in place strong rules and enforcement. That includes regulation to protect air and water as well as our methane work.
The writers also say that EDF’s position on natural gas is “evolving.” They quote EDF’s Mark Brownstein in 2012, saying that “On balance, we think substituting natural gas for coal can provide net environmental value, including a lower greenhouse gas footprint.”
This was true then, and it is true now. It does not suggest that natural gas will provide net value, only that it can - provided both local impacts and methane emissions are controlled. As we have always said, that is a very big if. Our position has not “evolved” on any of that, and it was bad form for the reporters to make such an assertion without letting us respond to it.
Finally, the article suggests that EDF supports natural gas as a “bridge fuel.” That is not a term we use or a concept we endorse.
The fact is, our society is on a carbon highway and needs to get off of it. With the right policies, natural gas can help provide an exit ramp, reducing our current emissions and helping to accelerate the transition to truly clean, renewable sources of electricity - the destination EDF believes we need to reach as quickly as possible. That’s why clean energy (not natural gas) is the fastest-growing program at EDF. Our commitment to transparency and sound science
Energy companies were involved in this research effort, making their facilities available to the scientific study teams and, in some cases, providing financial support to the academic institutions conducting the work (though never to EDF; we do not accept contributions from energy companies).
InsideClimate News and others seem puzzled that organizations that don’t necessarily share the same policy goals might still have a common stake in gathering honest and impartial data. It’s a measure of how polarized the energy debate has become that an attempt to reach agreement on basic facts is seen as suspect.
For almost 50 years, EDF has built our advocacy on strongest possible scientific foundations. We know that not everyone is always going to agree with our views, but our allies and adversaries alike know that we come by our positions honestly, rigorously, and with the utmost transparency.
This is particularly important given the atmosphere of mistrust surrounding natural gas development. That is why we have been clear from the start about the funding for this research, our relationships with industry and others collaborating on the work, and the rigorous review process to which all of the findings are subject before publication.
We undertook our methane research determined to go wherever the data led. We have found some instances where previous leakage estimates were too high - either because science got better, or the technology and operating practices improved, or both. And we have found many where past estimates would prove way too low.
Overall, the picture shows that methane is a huge and growing problem, that strong state and federal regulation is necessary to control it, and that there are cost-effective opportunities to reap major emission reductions.
We do not expect, nor have we ever suggested, that this research will be the last word on the subject. To the contrary, it is our hope and expectation that others will build on these findings, validating them where they can and challenging them when appropriate.
That, of course, is the essence of the scientific method, and we’re committed to it.
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Power Plant Bill Would Be ‘Unprecedented Interference' in EPA Activity, McCabe Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Legislation set for consideration by a House subpanel that would enable states to delay complying with the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan marks “unprecedented interference” from Congress, the agency's top air official said in prepared testimony released April 13.
Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, called Rep. Ed Whitfield's (R-Ky.) draft Ratepayer Protection Act “premature,” given the agency has not finalized its carbon dioxide regulation for existing power plants and intends to incorporate changes to address cost and reliability concerns.
“EPA views the draft as premature, unnecessary and ultimately harmful,” McCabe said. “Although members of Congress have routinely expressed concern with EPA's rules and their legality over the years, we are not aware of any instance in the last 25 years when Congress has enacted legislation to stay implementation of an air rule during judicial review.”
McCabe will testify on the draft bill April 14 before Whitfield's Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power.
Whitfield's bill, unveiled March 23, would offer two avenues for allowing states to indefinitely delay complying with the EPA regulation.
One provision would allow states to postpone submitting their plans for complying with the emissions reduction goals until after all legal challenges are exhausted, and another would allow states to opt out of the rule if it would increase utility rates or jeopardize reliability (56 DEN A-7, 3/24/15).
“I would not recommend, and I am confident that the Administrator would not sign, a final rule that the EPA did not believe was on firm legal footing and worthy of being upheld by the federal courts,” McCabe said. “In light of that, the effect of the draft bill would be a wholly unnecessary postponement of reductions of harmful air pollution.”
As proposed under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33) would establish unique carbon dioxide emissions rates for the power sector in each state. States would be required to meet interim targets between 2020 and 2029, with a final emissions rate to be achieved in 2030, but would have flexibility as to how best to meet their individual targets.
Whitfield's efforts come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has urged states simply not to submit implementation plans for the proposal, forcing the EPA instead to issue federal plans. A White House aide slammed that strategy as “an inappropriate and unfounded attempt to dictate state decisions.” in a statement to Bloomberg BNA (54 DEN A-16, 3/20/15).
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EPA Blasts GOP’s Bill to Change Climate Rule
Apr 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined the Environmental Protection Agency Monday in criticizing the House GOP’s efforts to weaken the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said that the legislation that a subcommittee will consider Tuesday would effectively allow states to opt out of the EPA’s rule, while delaying its implementation indefinitely.
“The legislation is part of an overall plan to stop the EPA from doing its job fighting climate change,” Pallone told reporters Monday. “This has to be seen in the overall context of the Republican leadership continuing to oppose any kind of legislation that addresses the climate change issue.”
Pallone said Rep. Ed Whitfield’s (R-Ky.) legislation is simply an extension of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) attempts to encourage states to ignore the rule.
“The Whitfield bill is trying to enact this strategy into law,” he said. “It would automatically delay all compliance dates in the Clean Power Plan for ongoing litigation.”
The Energy and Power subcommittee, which Whitfield chairs, will hold a hearing on his Ratepayer Protection Act Tuesday.
In prepared testimony that the subpanel released late Monday, Janet McCabe, who heads the EPA’s air pollution office, called the bill an “unprecedented interference” into the agency’s regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act.
“Although members of Congress have routinely expressed concern with EPA's rules and their legality over the years, we are not aware of any instance in the last 25 years when Congress has enacted legislation to stay implementation of an air rule during judicial review,” McCabe said, among other criticisms.
The bill would delay the EPA’s rule until all court challenges are finished. It would also allow state governors to block any compliance plan under the rule for a number of reasons, like a determination that it would increase electricity rates or harm electric grid reliability.
David Doniger, the climate program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), joined Pallone’s news conference to blast the proposal.
“The Whitfield bill … would force us back to the dark days of 50 years ago, back when polluters had a free hand to poison the air, because states were unable or unwilling to protect their citizens,” Doniger said.
He added that anyone suing to stop the regulation could ask a federal court to temporarily bar the EPA from enforcing it, but that only happens in rare cases.
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Rural Electric Co-Ops, Greens Weigh In On Clean Power Plan Ahead Of Hearing
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Jean Chemnick
Representatives of the nation's rural electric cooperatives say their message during a meeting yesterday with U.S. EPA's top brass was clear: The Clean Power Plan doesn't work for them.
In a conversation with E&E Publishing reporters immediately after their half-hour briefing with Administrator Gina McCarthy and senior counsel Joe Goffman at EPA headquarters, members of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) said they used the opportunity to argue that the existing power plant draft rule would compromise their ability to deliver affordable power to the nation's economically disadvantaged rural communities.
"We wanted to focus on impacts, what is most difficult about managing the present version of the rule," said Kirk Johnson, senior vice president for government relations at NRECA.
So the group steered clear of the points it made in sharply worded comments filed with EPA last December about the rule's flimsy legal foundation (EnergyWire, Dec. 15, 2014). Nor did the members offer a specific set of alternatives for how EPA could restructure the rule, as some have in individual meetings with agency staff, the members told E&E.
Instead, they focused on rural cooperatives' concern that the rule's requirements -- especially those that phase-in during the interim period between 2020 and 2029 -- could force them to shutter units before the end of their useful lives and before they have been paid off. The rural communities that depend on these nonprofit cooperatives would then be faced with servicing those debts while incurring new costs for the lower-carbon generation built to replace largely coal-fired facilities.
EPA's rule bases state targets on assumptions about what each can do to reduce power-sector emissions via four "building blocks" -- potential for heat-rate improvements at coal-fired plants, capacity to shift from coal to combined-cycle natural gas, zero-carbon energy and demand-side efficiency.
The NRECA delegation said they told the administrator that when it comes to their organization's members, all of the rule's assumptions are flawed and would create price hikes and reliability problems.
"The building blocks and their construct is what cause all of these outcomes, and their timing," Johnson said. "And so if you start with changing some of the building blocks, reanalyzing some of the data, then you run into fewer of these problems."
The delegation proposed some general changes, especially to the way the rule requires reductions prior to 2030. Johnson said NRECA proposed allowing states to put forward their own "glide paths" that would show progress toward those eventual targets.
And they raised specific concerns about the assumptions EPA makes under Building Block 2, which saddles states like Arizona and Arkansas with massive early reduction requirements based on existing gas capacity. Building Block 4, which assumes that states can reduce overall energy consumption 1.5 percent per year through improved efficiency efforts, also presents special problems for their customers, they said.
NRECA President Mel Coleman, who is also CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, said cooperatives have always striven to help their ratepayers improve efficiency.
"We've been out there doing this for decades," he said, noting that the nonprofits have little incentive to sell more power than their ratepayers need. Much of the low-hanging fruit has already been harvested, and the only way to make substantial new reductions would be to chip away at customers' standard of living, he said.
The delegation said McCarthy seemed receptive to their feedback and assured them that the final rule released this summer would include changes. EPA is also working on a model federal implementation plan to be released in August.
The meeting at EPA headquarters comes ahead of today's hearing of a key House Energy and Commerce Committee subpanel on legislation that would allow states to put off submitting implementation plans to EPA until judicial review had concluded -- and that would give them cover for opting out altogether (E&E Daily, April 13).
Lisa Johnson, CEO and general manager of Seminole Electric Cooperative Inc. in Florida, will represent the NRECA at the hearing. She told E&E Daily yesterday that the association is particularly interested in the legislative stay the bill by Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) would provide. By allowing states to wait to submit plans until the courts weigh in on the rule -- and barring EPA from stepping in with a federal implementation plan in the meantime -- Whitfield's bill would allow them to avoid writing state strategies that are more stringent and costly than what will ultimately be required, she said.
The NRECA delegation said they had not endorsed the "just say no" strategy of state noncompliance with the rule that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promoted heavily. And Johnson said she hoped states would chart their own course.
"I believe there are benefits to a state being able to understand their own circumstances well better than anybody else -- certainly the feds," she said. "So my take on the bill as it's been drafted is not so much about this 'just say no' approach, but more like the safety valve concept that we've all been talking about."
Several stakeholders are advocating for a safety provision that would allow states to exceed their targets under the rule if needed to protect reliability. Pallone blasts 'climate denial ... mantra'
But House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and supporters of the rule said on a call with reporters yesterday afternoon that Whitfield's measure is an unnecessary assault on an already-sound regulation.
"This climate denial is the mantra that we get with the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate," he said on the call, which was hosted by the Climate Action Campaign. He called on GOP members to offer their own solutions to contain warming if they don't like the ones emanating from the White House.
Pallone said Whitfield's proposal to delay the rule's implementation until judicial review has concluded would only encourage more lawsuits.
"It's just basically a provision that would provide an incentive for polluters to run the clock on frivolous litigation just to delay implementation of the Clean Power Plan," Pallone said.
David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council noted that plaintiffs can already ask courts to stay implementation of a rule if their challenge is likely to be successful and if the rule threatens them with irreparable harm in the meantime. But the burden of proof is on them.
"What the Whitfield bill would do is just issue a blank check for this extended delay," Doniger said.
And the delay could be of very long duration, Doniger said. An attorney who has been involved in numerous Clean Air Act cases over the years, Doniger noted that litigation over a rule has sometimes continued even after the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the most substantive challenges. He pointed to continuing litigation over EPA restrictions for pollutants that cross state lines and over last year's challenges to its greenhouse gas permitting program.
In the case of the Clean Power Plan, litigation could continue until all 49 state implementation plans have been thoroughly vetted by courts. Vermont is not covered by the Clean Power Plan.
And the "just say no" strategy that underlies Whitfield's legislation would also kill the Clean Air Act's function of providing a regulatory floor across states, Doniger said. It is a precedent that could affect future rulemakings for a variety of pollutants.
Lauren Azar, a lawyer and former Wisconsin utilities commissioner, said on the same call that it could also tempt states to risk "painting themselves into a corner" on the rule, opting for delays that could limit their compliance options. This would make it all but impossible for those states to take advantage of regional programs, which numerous studies have shown can minimize cost and protect grid reliability, she said.
"Regional compliance requires that everybody start working now on those compliance plans, and if some states believe they can 'just say no,' they won't put their heart into developing a compliance plan that will protect the ratepayers in their state," she said. E&ETV's OnPoint: Electric co-op CEOs meet with McCarthy on power plan
As pressure grows for U.S. EPA to change its draft Clean Power Plan proposal, a group of electric cooperative CEOs met with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy this week to discuss their concerns with the current plan. During today's OnPoint, Duane Highley, CEO of Arkansas Electric Cooperative, and Lisa Johnson, CEO and general manager of Seminole Electric Cooperative, discuss the details of their meeting yesterday with McCarthy. Johnson also talks about her upcoming testimony before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on the impact of the Clean Power Plan on electric co-ops. Today's OnPoint will air on E&ETV at 10 a.m. EDT.
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Court Partially Vacates Tailoring Rule; EPA Expected to Set De Minimis Threshold
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The Environmental Protection Agency must set a minimum emissions threshold for greenhouse gas permitting after a federal appellate court vacated portions of the agency's tailoring rule (Coal. for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 09-01322, amended per curiam judgment filed, 4/10/15).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's April 10 order vacated provisions of the EPA's tailoring rule to the extent they require industrial sources to obtain prevention of significant deterioration or Title V permits solely due to their greenhouse gas emissions, implementing a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 2014.
The order requires the agency to move quickly to update the Code of Federal Regulations to reflect that vacatur. The court remanded to the EPA the remaining portions of the tailoring rule to determine whether any other corrections need to be made, which is expected to include establishing a de minimis threshold below which industrial sources would not need to permit their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The big question mark is what are they going to do with the thresholds,” Richard Alonso, a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP, told Bloomberg BNA April 13. “It really depends on how narrowly EPA interprets the [Utility Air Regulatory Group] decision. From an industry perspective, we feel the court told the EPA they need to revisit these thresholds.”
The EPA's tailoring rule had revised the statutory emissions thresholds that trigger prevention of significant deterioration and Title V permitting from the statutory levels of 100 tons or 250 tons of a regulated pollutant emitted per year to 75,000 tons and 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
While establishing a de minimis level would require public notice and comment, many of the other revisions to the rule should be completed much more quickly, Thomas Lorenzen, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, said. Lorenzen helped defend the tailoring rule when he worked at the Justice Department.
“It's quite possible they'll have to do something to formalize this, but it shouldn't take long,” he told Bloomberg BNA April 13.
The Supreme Court ordered the EPA to establish a de minimis level, below which greenhouse gas emissions would not require permits, in its decision in Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, which limited greenhouse gas permitting to those industrial sources that trigger prevention of significant deterioration or Title V permitting through emissions of other pollutants (, 134 S.Ct. 2427, 78 ERC 1585, 2014 BL 172973 (U.S. 2014)).
Lower De Minimis Sought
The EPA in its tailoring rule had originally set an emissions threshold of 75,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide-equivalent to trigger the greenhouse gas permitting requirement, but both the agency and the Supreme Court acknowledged that that figure was determined out of administrative necessity and not as a true de minimis threshold. The EPA said in a memorandum issued after the Supreme Court's decision that it would continue to apply that figure of 75,000 tons per year while it took steps to determine what level of emissions should constitute the minimum threshold (146 DEN A-3, 7/30/14).
Environmental advocates could press the EPA to set a de minimis level well below that original figure of 75,000 tons.
“That's not a de minimis amount at all. That's a huge amount of emissions,” Vera Pardee, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg BNA April 13.
Other Challenges Denied
In partially vacating and remanding the remainder of the tailoring rule to the EPA, the court denied petitions for review filed by some states and industrial groups that sought to force the EPA to undertake an entirely new rulemaking before it could apply greenhouse gas permitting requirements to industrial sources.
Instead, the court's order was consistent with the EPA's Oct. 2014 motion seeking to govern proceedings in the case (205 DEN A-5, 10/23/14).
“The most important thing is the program goes on,” Pardee said.
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Majority of Seven DOE Departments Reviewed Used Energy Incentive Programs, Report Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
While the majority of seven sites reviewed within the Department of Energy are taking advantage of the agency's energy incentive funding programs, two are not fully utilizing them, according to a recent DOE Office of Inspector General report.
The energy incentive programs are designed to offset energy costs and are offered for new, energy-efficiency construction and energy conservation at existing buildings. The National Energy Policy Act, as amended in 2005, requires agencies to take full advantage of financial incentives to reduce direct energy costs to the government.
The report found that the seven DOE sites that were selected for the audit generally took advantage of energy incentive programs.
However, it pointed out that the Hanford Site (in Richland, Wash.) and the Argonne National Laboratory (in Lemont, Ill.) were two sites that haven't taken full advantage of the incentive programs.
The objective of the OIG audit was to determine whether the DOE had taken advantage of available energy incentive programs. Seven sites were selected to be reviewed, including Hanford, Argonne, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (in Newport News, Va.), the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (in Richland, Wash.), the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (in Batavia, Ill.), the Kansas City Plant (in Kansas City, Mo.) and the Pantex Plant (in Amarillo, Texas).
Among those sites that took full advantage of these funding mechanisms were the Thomas Jefferson and Argonne sites, which received $820,000 and $1.8 million, respectively, in incentive funding since 2010 for participating in curtailment programs offered by their utility providers.
Also, Argonne has received more than $350,00 in incentive funding for conservation projects since 2010, the report said.
Missed Opportunities
The report found that Hanford had not applied for energy incentives available for two newly built facilities. And as of July 2013, when the auditors visited, Argonne management wasn't aware of incentives for two newly built facilities, for which it then ultimately applied later in 2013.
The report said that opportunities were missed at Hanford and Argonne because staff weren't aware of incentive programs.
The report recommended managers at Hanford and Argonne look for available incentive programs in order to maximize energy cost savings.
In not applying for energy incentives, the Hanford and Argonne sites missed out on potential savings. The report identified $190,500 in savings that one site missed.
Managers at both facilities agreed with the report's recommendations, and have worked to improve their processes related to energy incentives, according to letters sent by the management to the OIG in February 2015.
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Tough Road For Minor Bill Means Deadline Is Expected To Lapse On DOE Rule
Apr 14, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Nick Juliano
Even the easy stuff is hard to do in Congress.
A relatively minor energy efficiency bill -- which has virtually universal bipartisan support, is tied to an imminent deadline and is a key priority of rural utilities and efficiency advocates -- finally passed the Senate earlier this month, after years of behind-the-scenes political wrangling. But now the bill is stuck in the House, and the deadline will be missed, at least temporarily.
The Senate bill, S. 535, would tweak a Department of Energy efficiency standard for large water heaters that would ban the manufacture of the appliances that rural utilities say they rely on for demand-response programs. It also would establish a voluntary Tenant Star program that efficiency advocates have spent years pushing as a way to provide better incentives for landlords and tenants to cut their energy use.
Facing apparent -- but largely unexplained -- objections within their ranks to the Tenant Star piece, House Republicans are planning to split the bill in half. The Energy and Commerce Committee will take up and is expected to pass H.R. 906, which would address only the water heater issue.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other tea party-aligned Republicans had been objecting to inclusion of the Tenant Star component but did not block it at the end of the day -- literally -- when it passed the Senate around 4 a.m. EDT just before recess. At the same time, efficiency supporters such as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) insisted Tenant Star be a part of the deal to offset any potential increased energy use from tweaking the water heater rule, which mandates that the appliances become about twice as efficient as they had been.
The DOE water heater rule rule goes into effect Thursday -- meaning there will likely be at least a brief period when manufacturers will have to stop producing the traditional systems used in the demand-response programs.
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who is sponsoring H.R. 906, said he was unfamiliar with the details of the Tenant Star program but also said he was unaware of Republicans who would object to a voluntary program. No outside groups have been vocally lobbying against the Senate bill.
"As long as it's voluntary, we probably wouldn't have a problem," he said. "We want to get something to the president on this, because as you know it's going to become effective very soon."
Whitfield also said he was trying to determine whether President Obama would sign the bill if it makes it to his desk and would continue to discuss the issue with other members.
DOE recently withdrew a rule it had been working on that would have allowed manufacturers to receive waivers from the rule to continue making water heaters that were better suited for the demand-response programs, leaving Congress as the only avenue to address the concerns. The legislative fix is supported by interest groups representing almost all energy and environmental policy stakeholders, from the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association to the Natural Resources Defense Council to the National Association of Manufacturers.
The water heater bill is expected to pass the House next week, but it remains to be seen how the House will address the other provisions included in the Senate-passed bill, Republican aides said yesterday.
One aide, who requested anonymity because plans are in flux, said the House would likely find a way to send the full Senate bill to Obama in the coming weeks but that the precise procedural steps remained unclear last night.
The water heater piece is moving first, the aide added, because the deadline for that rule is looming and there is nearly unanimous support in both parties to fix it. Whitfield said he and committee staff were continuing to evaluate the rest of the Senate bill and expected to know more about the road ahead in the coming days.
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Clean Energy to Be at ‘Top of Agenda,' Clinton Campaign Adviser Podesta Says
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will put addressing climate change and promoting clean energy at the “top of the agenda,” John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, said on Twitter.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic favorite who officially announced her campaign April 12, has yet to expand on her energy agenda, but she has a long record of promoting renewable energy and in 2014 remarks called for making the U.S. “a clean energy super power for the 21st Century.”
“If we come together to make the hard choices, the smart investments in infrastructure technology and environmental protection, America can be the clean energy superpower for the 21st century,” she said at the National Clean Energy Summit 7.0. in 2014 hosted by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “China and other competitors are racing ahead with big bets on renewables. We cannot afford to cede leadership in this area. Our economic recovery, our efforts against climate change, our strategic position in the world all will improve if we can build a safe bridge to a clean energy economy” (173 DEN A-11, 9/8/14).
Support for Net Metering in 2008
Clinton's energy platform during her 2008 campaign included a call for issuing “energy independence bonds,” which would be similar to U.S. Savings Bonds and would be used to fund clean energy projects and grid modernization.
Also on the 2008 campaign trail, Clinton advocated for establishing national “net metering” standards, which allow residences and businesses that generate more electricity then they consume to sell the excess power back to utilities.
“Many states have some kind of net metering rule, but they vary widely,” Clinton's campaign said in a 2007 news release archived by the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Hillary will set national standards to ensure that families and businesses everywhere can sell power to the grid on fair terms.”
In addition, Clinton called for “every American to take a pledge to reduce global warming and decrease our dependence on foreign oil,” according to the release, which was published prior to a scheduled discussion with home improvement expert Bob Vila in New Hampshire.
“My plan to meet these challenges is based on the old fashioned idea of shared responsibility. It will take leadership—but also citizenship. It will take a movement for change from the ground up,” Clinton said.
Tax Credits, ‘Climate Star.'
Clinton's energy plan also included tax incentives for “small-scale” renewable energy systems, such as rooftop solar panels, a “Climate Star” program that would provide consumers information about the greenhouse gas emissions related to products and a program to give homeowners direct loans to make energy efficiency improvements to their residences.
Clinton's record of supporting clean energy development has given some environmental groups reason to cheer her official entrance into the race.
“As a senator, Clinton supported comprehensive climate change legislation and efforts to promote clean energy and energy efficiency,” the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement April 12. “As Secretary of State, she was very active in international climate negotiations, and she created the Climate and Clean Air Coalition with many other countries to reduce climate super pollutants like soot and methane.”
Concerns About Natural Gas, Keystone
But some of her energy position's have given environmentalists pause.
In her remarks at the 2014 National Clean Energy Summit, Clinton said she supported expanding the export of natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries and said the natural gas boom in the U.S. could provide “a safe bridge to a clean energy economy.”
“If we do it right, it can be good for both the environment and our economy,” Clinton said. “With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal.”
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have opposed development of natural gas because of concerns about hydraulic fracking and methane, a primary component of natural gas with a global warming potential that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Global warming potential is a measure of a gas's warming effect on the atmosphere compared with carbon dioxide, which has a warming potential of 1.
“I don't agree with her on natural gas,” Carl Pope, the former executive director of the Sierra Club, told reporters after Clinton's remarks. “I don't think I'm in the same place on natural gas that she is.”
In 2010, Clinton said she was “inclined” to approve TransCanada Corp.'s permit to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude from oil sands in Alberta to refiners along the Gulf Coast .
Since then, Clinton has not spoke publicly about the topic, leading environmental groups such as Credo Mobile to call on her to take a stand.
“Keystone XL is a bright line test for commitment to climate change,” Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, said in a 2014 statement. “Hillary Clinton needs to show her dedication to fighting climate change by denouncing this dirty and dangerous pipeline.”
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Clinton’s Energy Agenda: More Than Obama, Part 2?
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Darren Goode
On energy and climate policy, Hillary Clinton’s biggest challenge may be showing how her presidency would go beyond serving as Barack Obama’s third term.
Clinton and Obama agree in the broad strokes, of course. She’d certainly champion the president’s carbon regulations for power plants and whatever global climate agreement the administration reaches this year in Paris. Like Obama, she has promoted the role of natural gas — and by extension, fracking — in aiding the energy security of the U.S. and its allies. And until a few months ago her campaign chairman, John Podesta, was the White House adviser in charge of shaping Obama’s green agenda — a set of policies that will need the next president’s buy-in to bear fruit.
But the next president will also have to make big decisions that could take energy policy beyond the Obama mold. Among them: Should the U.S. lift the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil? Should it expand federal regulations on fracking and widen offshore drilling along the East Coast and in the Arctic?
Green activists and Republicans also want to see which side she takes on the biggest environmental cliffhanger of Obama’s presidency: whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project she said five years ago that she was “inclined” to support.
For now, environmentalists are counting on her to continue Obama’s policies, and both Democrats and Republicans are readying to use them as wedge issues in 2016. But continuity will not be enough by itself to frame a compelling theme for Clinton’s White House hopes.
“If you think it’s important to reduce carbon pollution, she has certainly demonstrated a commitment to that. The question is, what’s the next step?” said Carol Browner, who was Obama’s first White House climate adviser and led the EPA under President Bill Clinton. “Oil and gas is the piece that’s not as advanced.”
It’s unclear who has Clinton’s ear on these issues, beyond her husband and Podesta. But Browner and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer — who was a major financial backer when Podesta founded the Center for American Progress — are among those who have known both Clinton and Podesta for a long time.
“I certainly do not see any space or issue vis-à-vis her and Obama,” said Chris Lehane, a veteran Democratic strategist who is now the top adviser to Steyer’s super PAC, NextGen Climate Action. “But every presidential campaign, by definition, is about the future.”
At the same time, the oil industry also sees reasons for hope from a potential Clinton presidency, based on her track record.
“I think Secretary Clinton provided clear leadership … in helping to ensure global security issues related to energy issues were carefully examined,” said Louis Finkel, executive vice president for government affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, a group pushing hard to lift the oil-exports ban and expand exports of liquefied natural gas. He said she “clearly understands the global security issues and … ongoing engagements in places like Europe,” where U.S. allies “are almost begging for liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports.”
Republicans, meanwhile, say Obama’s environmental legacy will leave her with plenty of baggage.
“On energy issues, Hillary Clinton is either busy playing politics or backing President Obama’s job-killing policies,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short said by email. “And at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton can’t say she’s for middle class Americans and the working poor when she’s 100 percent behind the Obama regulatory regime that’s making it more expensive for them to keep the lights on, keep their jobs and put food on the table.”
Clinton has yet to lay out her policy platform, although Podesta said in a tweet on Sunday that “tackling climate change & clean energy” were among the issues at the “top of the agenda,” along with “helping working families succeed [and] building small businesses.”
Still, her track record shows her active on both the pro-climate and pro-fossil fuel fronts of Obama’s agenda — showing few if any differences from the incumbent’s policies.
She devoted a chapter of her memoir, “Hard Choices,” to climate change, highlighting the roles she and Obama played at the tense 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Last year, at an energy forum in Las Vegas hosted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, she called global warming “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.”
At the same time, her efforts to elevate energy’s role in diplomacy included the creation of a State Department Bureau of Energy Resources that encouraged the spread of shale gas production. Clinton has boasted about how increased domestic energy production, especially natural gas, can create jobs, decrease manufacturing costs and give the U.S. a competitive advantage. “The shift to natural gas is also helping lower carbon emissions, because it’s cleaner than coal,” she wrote.
As secretary, she also helped found the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation meant to reduce black carbon, methane and other “super pollutants” in the developing world. And the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has housed a climate initiative since 2006.
“From my time working with her, I found her to be a very committed environmentalist and [to] have a very comprehensive view of energy security,” said David Goldwyn, who was Clinton’s special envoy for international energy affairs during her first two years at State, and who served as the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for international affairs under President Bill Clinton.
Still, Goldwyn said, Clinton’s views on energy security would be “much more clear-eyed and non-ideological than the president’s.” He contended that Clinton would go beyond Obama in urging China and India to tap their unconventional natural gas to diversify away from coal, rather than just promoting renewable energy.
Some environmentalists are plainly unhappy with Clinton’s push for natural gas. More than 100 environmental groups urged her in a letter Friday to oppose fracking — including several groups from her adopted home state of New York, and a representative of the Sierra Club’s Atlantic chapter.
The signers did not include major D.C.-based groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council or the League of Conservation Voters. But the letter pointedly responds to Clinton’s acknowledgement, during a December speech at LCV’s annual dinner, that “our economy still runs primarily on fossil fuels.”
Anti-Keystone groups are also pressing her to budge from her years of silence on Keystone, a project now awaiting a verdict from her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry. The six-years-and-counting Keystone waiting game is a big potential political headache for Clinton, especially because the State Department issued several favorable environmental reviews of the project under her watch. In her 2010 remarks in San Francisco, she said that “we’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada,” at least “until we can get our act together” on green energy.
“I don’t think there’s a problem with the Clinton brand on environmental issues,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a global energy specialist at the University of California, Davis. “I just think that she has this particular problem that stems from her administration’s original position on Keystone and her department’s original report released under her watch.”
Mainstream environmental groups aren’t endorsing Clinton yet, but they’re plainly aching to paint the eventual Republican nominee as disastrously wrong on climate change.
And other observers contend that could be a smart strategy for her.
“What matters now is the campaign, not the presidency,” said Paul Bledsoe, a senior fellow on energy at the German Marshall Fund and a former Clinton White House climate official, who said Hillary Clinton could champion climate issues under the banner of economic populism. The GOP’s “denial of the economic and environmental threat of climate change is an illustration of the Republican Party’s willingness to deny facts that present a clear and present danger to the American people [and] sacrifice your actual safety on behalf of the interests of Big Coal, Big Oil,” he said.
But some hope Clinton may fare better than Obama has in dealing with a gridlocked Congress. At the very least, she would almost certainly face a Republican-controlled House at the outset of her presidency.
“She’s very accustomed to listening and making sure staff are not just talking to people that talk like them,” said Brian Wolff, executive vice president for public policy and external affairs at the Edison Electric Institute, a leading trade group for the power industry. “She’s going to go back to quite frankly where President Clinton was in doing that outreach and engagement.”
In her memoir, the chapter on climate change is dominated by the 2009 Copenhagen talks, including an opening anecdote in which she and Obama had to storm uninvited into a closed-door meeting convened by then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
She calls Obama’s climate strategy, announced in June 2013 and centering on EPA carbon controls for power plants, “an important step in the right direction” and an example of “strong executive actions” amid congressional gridlock. “But there’s a lot more to do,” she wrote. “Building a broad national consensus on the urgency of the climate threat and the imperative of a bold and comprehensive response will not be easy, but it is essential.”
As for fracking, she wrote that “there are legitimate climate change concerns about the new extraction practices and their impact on local water, soil and air supplies,” emphasizing methane leaks that occur during gas production and transportation as “particularly worrisome.” She advocated “smart regulations” and enforcement, “including not drilling when the risks are too high.”
“There are challenges here, to be sure,” she said in her speech in Las Vegas. “But the boom in domestic gas production is an example of American innovation changing the game. And if we do it right, it can be good for both the environment and our economy. With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal.”
Myers Jaffe said a crucial test for Clinton will be moderating the wings of the Democratic Party that differ on these issues. Clinton still needs to cater to an “environmental left that is a base in the Democratic Party, and it’s an important base for fundraising,” Myers Jaffe said, adding that while Podesta is “very visible in that space … the key here is to get the right people on her team.”
At the same time, she has a potential advantage in facing a GOP that is so uniformly opposed to acting on climate change.
“There’s ample opportunity for her to demonstrate obviously that she’s going to continue to grow on all the success of the Obama administration, but I also expect that there will be places and opportunities, perhaps around tax policy, perhaps around natural gas policy, infrastructure, to show what her vision for the country is,” former Obama energy and climate aide Heather Zichal said. “But again the other side is going to create a very low bar.” cshe has promoted the role of natural gas — and by extension, fracking — in aiding the energy security of the U.S. and its allies. And until a few months ago her campaign chairman, John Podesta, was the White House adviser in charge of shaping Obama’s green agenda — a set of policies that will need the next president’s buy-in to bear fruit.
But the next president will also have to make big decisions that could take energy policy beyond the Obama mold. Among them: Should the U.S. lift the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil? Should it expand federal regulations on fracking and widen offshore drilling along the East Coast and in the Arctic?
Green activists and Republicans also want to see which side she takes on the biggest environmental cliffhanger of Obama’s presidency: whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project she said five years ago that she was “inclined” to support.
For now, environmentalists are counting on her to continue Obama’s policies, and both Democrats and Republicans are readying to use them as wedge issues in 2016. But continuity will not be enough by itself to frame a compelling theme for Clinton’s White House hopes.
“If you think it’s important to reduce carbon pollution, she has certainly demonstrated a commitment to that. The question is, what’s the next step?” said Carol Browner, who was Obama’s first White House climate adviser and led the EPA under President Bill Clinton. “Oil and gas is the piece that’s not as advanced.”
It’s unclear who has Clinton’s ear on these issues, beyond her husband and Podesta. But Browner and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer — who was a major financial backer when Podesta founded the Center for American Progress — are among those who have known both Clinton and Podesta for a long time.
“I certainly do not see any space or issue vis-à-vis her and Obama,” said Chris Lehane, a veteran Democratic strategist who is now the top adviser to Steyer’s super PAC, NextGen Climate Action. “But every presidential campaign, by definition, is about the future.”
At the same time, the oil industry also sees reasons for hope from a potential Clinton presidency, based on her track record.
“I think Secretary Clinton provided clear leadership … in helping to ensure global security issues related to energy issues were carefully examined,” said Louis Finkel, executive vice president for government affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, a group pushing hard to lift the oil-exports ban and expand exports of liquefied natural gas. He said she “clearly understands the global security issues and … ongoing engagements in places like Europe,” where U.S. allies “are almost begging for liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports.”
Republicans, meanwhile, say Obama’s environmental legacy will leave her with plenty of baggage.
“On energy issues, Hillary Clinton is either busy playing politics or backing President Obama’s job-killing policies,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short said by email. “And at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton can’t say she’s for middle class Americans and the working poor when she’s 100 percent behind the Obama regulatory regime that’s making it more expensive for them to keep the lights on, keep their jobs and put food on the table.”
Clinton has yet to lay out her policy platform, although Podesta said in a tweet on Sunday that “tackling climate change & clean energy” were among the issues at the “top of the agenda,” along with “helping working families succeed [and] building small businesses.”
Still, her track record shows her active on both the pro-climate and pro-fossil fuel fronts of Obama’s agenda — showing few if any differences from the incumbent’s policies.
She devoted a chapter of her memoir, “Hard Choices,” to climate change, highlighting the roles she and Obama played at the tense 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Last year, at an energy forum in Las Vegas hosted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, she called global warming “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.”
At the same time, her efforts to elevate energy’s role in diplomacy included the creation of a State Department Bureau of Energy Resources that encouraged the spread of shale gas production. Clinton has boasted about how increased domestic energy production, especially natural gas, can create jobs, decrease manufacturing costs and give the U.S. a competitive advantage. “The shift to natural gas is also helping lower carbon emissions, because it’s cleaner than coal,” she wrote.
As secretary, she also helped found the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation meant to reduce black carbon, methane and other “super pollutants” in the developing world. And the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has housed a climate initiative since 2006.
“From my time working with her, I found her to be a very committed environmentalist and [to] have a very comprehensive view of energy security,” said David Goldwyn, who was Clinton’s special envoy for international energy affairs during her first two years at State, and who served as the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for international affairs under President Bill Clinton.
Still, Goldwyn said, Clinton’s views on energy security would be “much more clear-eyed and non-ideological than the president’s.” He contended that Clinton would go beyond Obama in urging China and India to tap their unconventional natural gas to diversify away from coal, rather than just promoting renewable energy.
Some environmentalists are plainly unhappy with Clinton’s push for natural gas. More than 100 environmental groups urged her in a letter Friday to oppose fracking — including several groups from her adopted home state of New York, and a representative of the Sierra Club’s Atlantic chapter.
The signers did not include major D.C.-based groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council or the League of Conservation Voters. But the letter pointedly responds to Clinton’s acknowledgement, during a December speech at LCV’s annual dinner, that “our economy still runs primarily on fossil fuels.”
Anti-Keystone groups are also pressing her to budge from her years of silence on Keystone, a project now awaiting a verdict from her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry. The six-years-and-counting Keystone waiting game is a big potential political headache for Clinton, especially because the State Department issued several favorable environmental reviews of the project under her watch. In her 2010 remarks in San Francisco, she said that “we’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada,” at least “until we can get our act together” on green energy.
“I don’t think there’s a problem with the Clinton brand on environmental issues,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a global energy specialist at the University of California, Davis. “I just think that she has this particular problem that stems from her administration’s original position on Keystone and her department’s original report released under her watch.”
Mainstream environmental groups aren’t endorsing Clinton yet, but they’re plainly aching to paint the eventual Republican nominee as disastrously wrong on climate change.
And other observers contend that could be a smart strategy for her.
“What matters now is the campaign, not the presidency,” said Paul Bledsoe, a senior fellow on energy at the German Marshall Fund and a former Clinton White House climate official, who said Hillary Clinton could champion climate issues under the banner of economic populism. The GOP’s “denial of the economic and environmental threat of climate change is an illustration of the Republican Party’s willingness to deny facts that present a clear and present danger to the American people [and] sacrifice your actual safety on behalf of the interests of Big Coal, Big Oil,” he said.
But some hope Clinton may fare better than Obama has in dealing with a gridlocked Congress. At the very least, she would almost certainly face a Republican-controlled House at the outset of her presidency.
“She’s very accustomed to listening and making sure staff are not just talking to people that talk like them,” said Brian Wolff, executive vice president for public policy and external affairs at the Edison Electric Institute, a leading trade group for the power industry. “She’s going to go back to quite frankly where President Clinton was in doing that outreach and engagement.”
In her memoir, the chapter on climate change is dominated by the 2009 Copenhagen talks, including an opening anecdote in which she and Obama had to storm uninvited into a closed-door meeting convened by then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
She calls Obama’s climate strategy, announced in June 2013 and centering on EPA carbon controls for power plants, “an important step in the right direction” and an example of “strong executive actions” amid congressional gridlock. “But there’s a lot more to do,” she wrote. “Building a broad national consensus on the urgency of the climate threat and the imperative of a bold and comprehensive response will not be easy, but it is essential.”
As for fracking, she wrote that “there are legitimate climate change concerns about the new extraction practices and their impact on local water, soil and air supplies,” emphasizing methane leaks that occur during gas production and transportation as “particularly worrisome.” She advocated “smart regulations” and enforcement, “including not drilling when the risks are too high.”
“There are challenges here, to be sure,” she said in her speech in Las Vegas. “But the boom in domestic gas production is an example of American innovation changing the game. And if we do it right, it can be good for both the environment and our economy. With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal.”
Myers Jaffe said a crucial test for Clinton will be moderating the wings of the Democratic Party that differ on these issues. Clinton still needs to cater to an “environmental left that is a base in the Democratic Party, and it’s an important base for fundraising,” Myers Jaffe said, adding that while Podesta is “very visible in that space … the key here is to get the right people on her team.”
At the same time, she has a potential advantage in facing a GOP that is so uniformly opposed to acting on climate change.
“There’s ample opportunity for her to demonstrate obviously that she’s going to continue to grow on all the success of the Obama administration, but I also expect that there will be places and opportunities, perhaps around tax policy, perhaps around natural gas policy, infrastructure, to show what her vision for the country is,” former Obama energy and climate aide Heather Zichal said. “But again the other side is going to create a very low bar.”
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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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Elizabeth Warren Slams Big Oil, Says Major Companies Profit From Pollution
Apr 13, 2015 | National Journal
By Clare Foran
Elizabeth Warren highlighted the threat of climate change and called for regulations to rein in corporate polluters during a speech Monday delivered to an audience of climate and labor activists at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington.
"A lot of people think that regulations bring higher costs," Warren said. "But regulation is also about making sure that someone doesn't get to beat out the competition because they're dumping filth in the river or spewing poisons in the air."
Warren warned that if corporations are not properly policed, the cost of doing business will be borne by "children who can't drink the water."
The senator also slammed major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips for pulling in "combined profits of 90 billion dollars" in 2014 while the industry "sucked down $5 billion in subsidies from the American people."
Warren called for an end to tax loopholes and subsidies that benefit mega-corporations, saying that those billions should be used for investment in infrastructure, education, and "scientific research that could lead to energy breakthroughs."
The anti-Wall Street crusader is not well known for her environmental record. But Warren's criticism of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that activists fear could weaken environmental protections, have made her a rising star in the environmental world.
Many progressive environmentalists believe Warren would be a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination—so much so that Ready for Warren, a group pushing Warren to make a presidential run, plans to launch "Environmental Activists for Warren" this month.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune called Warren a "strong voice for tackling the climate crisis" ahead of her speech on Monday.
The senator steered clear of some hot-button issues like fracking during her speech, but lamented the fact that "we haven't seen any major legislation on climate change" and called for greater investment in infrastructure so that the U.S. will be able to deal with extreme weather made worse by global warming.
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Rubio Little-Known on Environmental Issues, Remembered for Denying Climate Change
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Rachel Leven
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who threw his hat into the growing field of Republican presidential hopefuls April 13, has devoted little public rhetoric to environmental issues as a senator, but he is remembered for denying in 2014 the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change.
The first-term Florida senator has staked out familiar Republican positions opposing numerous environmental regulations from President Barack Obama's administration and has co-sponsored legislation to roll back many of them. But Rubio himself has devoted just two of 226 bills he has introduced since January 2011 to environmental issues, and he has highlighted neither energy nor the environment as one of seven issue areas on his Senate website.
What role the environment may play in his nascent presidential campaign remains unclear.
Industry observers expect Rubio to rarely veer from familiar Republican talking points opposing Environmental Protection Agency rules and other Obama environmental initiatives, while environmental advocates said they will turn the heat on Rubio for what they described as the “ultimate hypocrisy” for denying climate change in a state already feeling the brunt of the problem.
Rubio formally joined Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as a presidential candidate in a late afternoon rally at the Freedom Tower in Miami. His senate office and leadership political action committee, Reclaim America, didn't respond to messages from Bloomberg BNA requesting an appropriate contact or to questions on how he would prioritize the environment in his campaign.
His announcement came one day after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally declared she would seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 (70 DEN A-9, 4/13/15).
‘Significant Scientific Dispute' on Climate
On multiple occasions, Rubio has called into question the scientific consensus that human activity significantly contributes to climate change.
“I don't agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what's happening in our climate,” Rubio said in a 2014 interview with ABC's This Week. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
In 2009, the Florida Republican said there was “significant scientific dispute” about the causes of climate change. During a 2013 interview, Rubio said “I've actually seen reasonable debate” on the idea that human activity is significantly responsible for climate change and, in his response to the president's 2013 State of the Union Address, Rubio slammed government regulations and said “our government can't control the weather.”
A 2013 survey of scientific literature published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that 97.2 percent of climate scientists believe human activity plays a major role in climate change.
Environmental advocates Rubio's position particularly troublesome given he comes from the Miami area, which has been especially vulnerable to impacts of sea-level rise.
“[Rubio] is kind of the worst kind of climate denier in many respects because his state is under water,” Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the NRDC Action Fund, told Bloomberg BNA. “His is really the worst kind of hypocrisy because you can't honestly say that something is not going on there.”
Opposes Clean Power Plan
Throughout his time in the Senate, Rubio has opposed several EPA regulations aimed at addressing climate change and air pollution. A political action committee affiliated with Rubio announced it was gathering signatures to stop “Obama's job-killing EPA overreach” shortly after the agency announced its plans to address carbon dioxide pollution from existing power plants.
“The idea that we must destroy our economy by raising utility prices for Americans so the world will follow is naive,” Rubio wrote in a June 6, 2014, message. “Countries like China and India are going to continue to grow their economy and watch as we suffocate ours with regulations.”
Rubio also has pushed for legislation that would permanently exempt small vessels of less than 79 feet from having to obtain Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits. He has pledged to advance legislation in 2015 and called it a top priority (24 DEN A-19, 2/5/15).
Florida's junior senator also has devoted considerable time to water quality issues unique to his state. In 2012, Rubio introduced a bill that would require the EPA to adopt the Florida state standard for several nutrients, including total nitrogen and total phosphorus, to improve water quality and to reduce algal blooms caused by pollution.
Endorsement of Republican Energy Stances
Rubio also has lent his support to, although never introduced, legislation reflecting consistent Republican priorities on a number of energy and environmental issues.
During this time in Congress, Rubio has backed bills to block the federal government from regulating hydraulic fracturing, approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, reform the management of offshore energy development, kill a proposed Clean Water Act jurisdictional rulemaking and modernize the nation's chemical safety law, among others.
Rubio also backed a sense of the Senate resolution stating that EPA rules for regulating carbon dioxide emissions for both new and existing power plants should be withdrawn and a similar bill to require any regulation on power plant carbon emissions to obtain explicit congressional approval.
Rubio received a lifetime score of 9 percent from the League of Conservation Voters on its National Environmental Scorecard, in line with other declared Republican candidates for president such as Rand Paul (67 DEN A-1, 4/8/15).
Lack of Distinction
This general lack of differentiation among Republican contenders may keep environmental and energy issues out of focus when it comes to the Republican primary, Elizabeth Gore, policy director for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, told Bloomberg BNA. And while Rubio's stance on climate change may be “a little nuanced” compared to other Republican hopefuls, by the general election any slight distinction between his stance and other Republicans isn't likely to be significant.
“Assuming that Hillary Clinton becomes the Democrat's nominee, her position on climate change is going to be so demonstrably different than the Republican nominee, I think the nuances between the Republicans will be lost in the general election,” Gore, who was chief of staff to former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), said.
Louis Finkel, executive vice president for government affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, emphasized to Bloomberg BNA that the entire Republican field isn't set yet. API will look forward to hearing the vision of Rubio and other contenders—both Democrat and Republican—have for energy.
When asked what environmental stances taken by Rubio have struck a chord with API, Finkel noted Rubio's and other Republican nominees’ positions on the administration's regulatory approach.
“I think Sen. Rubio, much like many others in the party, have really called into question the administration's desire to overregulate,” Finkel said. “We appreciate [Rubio's] leadership in ensuring that that message gets out there.”
Rubio of Florida Politics
The Rubio of Florida state politics is in stark contrast to today's Republican candidates, including the senator himself. Rubio, during his time in the Florida House of Representatives, supported addressing environmental issues head on, including global warming.
For example, the Miami Herald reported that as speaker for the Florida House in 2008, Rubio said the state should “position itself for what I believe is inevitable, and that is a federal cap and trade program.”
In 2007 in the same position, Rubio said global warming, among other factors, would create a need for a new industry—one that could develop technological advances to make energy diversification and emission caps cost-effective.
“Florida should become the Silicon Valley of that industry,” Rubio said in the video found by BuzzFeed.
Rubio has been supported by many energy companies and trade groups’ political action committees in the past. In fact, individuals, companies and employees associated with the oil and gas industry made it the 11th top-donating sector to Rubio's campaign committee between 2009 and 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In 2013 and 2014 alone, committees for high-profile companies such as Valero Energy Corp., Koch Industries Inc., Murray Energy Corp., BP Corp. North America Inc., the American Forest and Paper Association and the American Gas Association donated to Rubio's campaign committee, according a Bloomberg BNA review of Federal Election Commission filings.
Employee political action committees for these companies also donated to Rubio's committee, such as Dow Chemical Co. The Center for Coastal Conservation's political action committee also donated during that time period, the FEC filings show.
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Rubio’s History On Cap and Trade Draws Critics
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillén
Critics of Sen. Marco Rubio are digging up his support nearly a decade ago for a cap and trade-related bill in a bid to show that the new Republican presidential contender has shifted his views on climate change.
Those critics, who requested anonymity, pointed to Rubio’s stance in 2007, when as speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives, he advocated that the state should become an early adopter of an emissions cap program. Only later, those critics said, did he back away from government efforts to take on climate change.
Rubio’s view was that Florida should aim for early compliance “so that it can help influence what that cap and trade looks like at the federal level.” He also wanted to charge the state Department of Environmental Protection with designing “a cap and trade or a carbon tax program,” subject to the approval of the Legislature.
His support, he said at the time, was based on the “inevitable” idea that the federal government was about to mandate a cap and trade program, and Rubio and other lawmakers were looking to get the best deal possible for Florida.
“I think he was being pragmatic in saying, ‘Why would Florida go ahead and do this? How do we make this work the best for Florida we can?’” said John Reilly, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Reilly, who at the time consulted with Florida lawmakers on the issue, described Rubio as “an incredibly sharp guy” who was searching for ways to turn a federal cap and trade program into a benefit for the Sunshine State rather than pushing an ideological viewpoint.
“As I recall, he didn’t express a strong view either way. He was interested in listening to what the message was,” Reilly said.
Rubio in 2007 advocated for Florida to be the “Silicon Valley” of energy technology.
“Florida has the opportunity to pursue bold energy policies, not just because they are good for our environment, but because people can actually make money at doing it,” he said that year. “This nation, and ultimately the world, is headed toward emission caps and energy diversification.”
By the time his Senate campaign was in full swing two years later, both Rubio the GOP was totally opposed to the idea of a cap-and-trade program, a position that emerged because of broader opposition to Democratic policies and the ailing economy. The cap-and-trade plan ultimately collapsed in the Democratic-controlled Senate in 2010.
The Miami Herald’s Beth Reinhard noted in 2009 that Rubio opposed cap and trade, earning him criticism from environmentalists of flip-flopping. Legislation he voted for that directed state officials to start considering ways to cap carbon emissions was “designed … to stop a cap-and-trade system in Florida,” Rubio countered at the time.
Since then, Rubio has remained staunchly opposed to cap and trade, or any other form of government climate action.
On most energy issues, Rubio is firmly in line with the GOP mainstream: He supports Keystone XL, opposes Obama’s environmental regulations, holds up Solyndra as an example of “crony capitalism” and says China and India must make significant strides on carbon emissions before the U.S. should consider acting.
And he has credited the “American technological know-how and free-market capitalism” for sparking the boom in oil and gas production in the U.S. in recent years.
“One of the most promising examples of the power of American innovation is the energy revolution going on in our country today. The United States is now the fastest-growing producer of hydrocarbon energy in the world,” Rubio wrote in his book “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone,” released in January.
Still, in a potentially politically risky move for a Florida politician, Rubio hasn’t backed away from supporting the offshore oil drilling industry. In 2010, even during the height of the BP oil spill that captivated the nation, the then-Senate candidate maintained that “in the long term, offshore drilling has to be part of our overall energy strategy.”
But his views about the Renewable Fuel Standard may draw some heat, particularly in early voting Iowa.
Republican Gov. Terry Branstad is behind a bipartisan, multimillion dollar campaign to pressure presidential hopefuls to support the RFS that is so important to Iowa’s economy. But unlike in previous elections, when King Corn often held sway over the nation’s first caucus, more Republican candidates now appear willing to criticize biofuel subsidies.
Rubio, who canceled plans to attend a high-profile agriculture summit in March, told The Des Moines Register that he supports a renewable fuel mandate, but that it should be phased out over time.
Ultimately, the most vocal attacks on Rubio are likely to come from environmentalists, not conservatives or the energy industry, which typically waits for a front-runner to emerge before dedicating significant political resources.
Green groups, however, have no qualms about criticizing GOP presidential hopefuls.
NextGen Climate, the group backed by California billionaire Tom Steyer, quickly lashed out at Rubio, calling him “an early favorite of the Koch brothers” and arguing that the Miami building where his presidential campaign launched could find itself threatened by rising seas in a few decades.
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'Green Room' Charts Defense to GOP Energy Agenda
Apr 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
Environmentalists plan to mark Mitch McConnell’s 100th day as Senate majority leader by mobilizing the war room they launched in January to counter the GOP at every turn.
Climate activists have dubbed it the “Green Room,” a rapid-response messaging operation aimed at the new Senate Republican majority, and it represents a strategic shift in tactics for the advocacy sector that spent much of 2014 helping to make the case for President Barack Obama’s broad emissions-cutting agenda.
When McConnell took the top spot in the Senate, environmentalists shifted into a defensive posture, with the sort of coordination last seen a decade ago, when the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the White House.
The result, as outlined in memos and other documents shared with POLITICO, is a classic Washington effort to siphon off political oxygen from the GOP at a time when energy policy occupies a dominant space on the new majority’s agenda — as shown in the long, freewheeling debate over McConnell’s Keystone XL bill that President Barack Obama ultimately vetoed.
“We’re happy we have President Obama in the White House,” said Friends of the Earth Action President Erich Pica, a key player in the genesis of the rapid-response operation. “But he can’t filibuster everything out there that undermines environmental protection.”
Those involved in the Green Room, from major groups like the Sierra Club to smaller movement players like Clean Water Action, hold a daily conference call with about 20 participants, and they maintain an email group and online portal aimed at keeping their messages ahead of the news cycle. Their focus falls roughly into four aspects of policy: climate, water, lands and wildlife.
When Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) tossed a snowball on the floor in an instantly viral climate-skeptic moment, environmentalists had a response planned within minutes. When constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe took aim at EPA’s power plant regulations, the groups were quick to circulate a critique of his reasoning by two Harvard Law School colleagues.
The rapid-response team doesn’t limit itself only to legislation or Senate Republicans, either. The Green Room tapped Earthjustice to attack House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy last week for lamenting the devastating drought in his home state of California while failing to support federal action on global warming.
Pica is set to join fellow green leaders at a Tuesday press briefing to tie environmentalists’ attacks to the 100-day mark of McConnell’s majority, pivoting off a $600,000-plus TV and digital ad push released Sunday by the League of Conservation Voters. But that doesn’t mean the group is giving up its efforts after this week.
“We decided to take the first hundred days as a pilot project to get everybody’s ships pointing in the right direction,” said Democratic strategist David DiMartino, a veteran climate consultant who helped spin off the rapid response team from a broader operation that aids green groups in promoting Obama’s agenda.
That project, the Climate Action Campaign, could end up encompassing the Green Room’s activities as the 114th Congress progresses. “What we’ve been highly successful with is in the digital space. … That’s something we’re going to continue to do until it doesn’t work anymore,” DiMartino said.
Republicans rapped the greens’ effort as a show of force for their wealthy patrons that runs contrary to public opinion.
“I understand these guys need to show a fight for their donors’ sake, but they’re not just going after the leader, they’re going after a bipartisan majority of Congress and their constituents,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said by email.
Not all of the rapid-response effort is directed toward slamming Republicans. After Sen. Kelly Ayotte joined just four other Republicans in supporting a symbolic January vote on whether “human activity significantly contributes to climate change,” green groups gave extra play to a New Republic story asking if she could prove to be the chamber’s “most surprising environmentalist.”
Alan Rowsome, senior government relations director for The Wilderness Society, said it’s as important to give Republicans the “credit they deserve for taking the right votes” as it is to slam them for what activists see as the wrong votes.
”The hope is that we move on to another phase where this effort breeds some bipartisan work across the aisle, that we’re not just being combative for two years,” he added. “But if that’s where we are for two years, that’s where we’ll be.”
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Supreme Court MATS Decision Unlikely To Affect Power Company Compliance Plans
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The U.S. Supreme Court review of the Environmental Protection Agency's mercury and air toxics standards for power plants likely will have little practical effect on companies that already have made long-term investments in pollution controls or retirement decisions in preparation for the upcoming compliance date, representatives of several large power companies told Bloomberg BNA.
American Electric Power, FirstEnergy Corp., the Tennessee Valley Authority and other power companies all said the Supreme Court's ruling would not affect their already-announced plant closures, while industry observers said decisions to shutter coal-fired power plants have been driven by a number of factors, not just the MATS rule.
Most power plants will need to comply with the MATS rule by the April 16 compliance deadline, but the Supreme Court's decision isn't expected until June.
Steve Whitworth, senior director for environmental policy and analysis at Ameren Corp., said that given the uncertainty over litigation on the MATS rule, Ameren needed to move ahead with ensuring the company's four coal-fired power plants in Missouri had the necessary pollution control technology to comply.
“Given that situation, we couldn't wait for the decision,” Whitworth told Bloomberg BNA. “We had to be prepared to comply.”
However, some companies said if the rule were vacated, they may not run pollution control equipment as frequently as planned, which could result in avoided operating costs.
The Supreme Court is reviewing whether the EPA unreasonably decided not to consider costs in determining it was “appropriate and necessary” to regulate air toxics emissions from power plants, a finding that ultimately led to the 2012 promulgation of emissions limits for mercury, filterable particulate matter as a surrogate for toxic metals and hydrogen chloride as a surrogate for acid gases. At least four justices appeared to have concerns with the EPA's argument that it wasn't required to consider costs during March 25 oral arguments, but observers said it was difficult to read what the court's ultimate decision will be (Michigan v. EPA, U.S., No. 14-46, argued 3/25/15; 58 DEN A-1, 3/26/15).
No Plans to Reverse Closures
Several companies told Bloomberg BNA they wouldn't change their plans to close coal-fired power plants if the Supreme Court were to vacate MATS.
American Electric Power plans to retire 7,201 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity by the end of 2016, including 24 coal-fired electric generating units by this spring, spokeswoman Melissa McHenry said.
The units slated for retirement wouldn't be affected by a Supreme Court decision against the EPA, she said.
“They have not been operated, staffed or maintained in a way that would support their continued operation,” McHenry said.
Stephanie Walton, a spokeswoman for FirstEnergy, said MATS has driven the deactivation of six coal-fired plants, with an additional three plant closures planned. Those three plants, the Eastlake, Lake Shore and Ashtabula plants in Ohio, are operating under “must-run” agreements with the grid operator but will be deactivated as of April 15, Walton said.
“We have no plans to reopen any of the deactivated plants,” Walton said.
‘Billion Dollar' Decisions Made
The Supreme Court's decision won't have any effect on long-range decisions made by the Tennessee Valley Authority to close some plants and invest billions of dollars in others, TVA spokesman Duncan Mansfield told Bloomberg BNA.
TVA has been making changes to its power portfolio for several years in anticipation of the MATS rule and other environmental regulations, Mansfield said. Also, a 2011 Clean Air Act settlement with the EPA led to TVA's commitment to retire 18 coal plants and spend $3 billion to $5 billion on pollution controls.
The decisions include the retirement of some coal-fired power plants, the conversion of some coal facilities to natural gas and the installation of scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction at coal-fired plants that will stay in operation, Mansfield said.
“Basically, every time we make one of these decisions, it's a billion-dollar decision,” he said. “It's not just MATS, but MATS is part of it.”
TVA will spend $975 million to build a new natural gas-fired plant to replace the Allen coal plant near Memphis, Tenn., and will spend about $1 billion to install pollution controls at the Gallatin plant near Nashville, Mansfield said.
Southern Co. has made about $9 billion in investments in environmental control technology and anticipates spending an additional $2.1 billion over the next three years to comply with MATS and other environmental regulations, company spokesman Jack Bonnikson told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail.
Southern is installing scrubbers and other pollution control technology at coal plants with a total generating capacity of 13,500 megawatts, switching about 3,500 megawatts of capacity from coal to natural gas and retiring 3,500 megawatts of coal capacity, Bonnikson said.
Multiple Factors Cited
Duke Energy Corp. has moved to retire or convert to natural gas about 6,300 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity in recent years, spokesman Thomas Williams told Bloomberg BNA.
Duke retired more than 4,400 megawatts of coal-fired capacity between 2011 and 2014, with several additional retirements planned over the next several years. Most of the retirements are of unscrubbed coal plants.
Those decisions were driven by a number of factors, not just the MATS rule, Williams said.
“It's not that simple,” Williams said in response to a question on whether a Supreme Court decision to vacate MATS could affect those closures.
The other factors cited by Williams included the age and efficiency of Duke's coal plants.
Hugh Wynne, a senior analyst with Bernstein Research, and Harold Blinderman, a partner with Day Pitney LLP, both told Bloomberg BNA that even if the MATS rule were no longer in place, there are a number of other factors that still would drive widespread retirements of coal-fired plants, including other environmental regulations and market factors, such as low natural gas prices.
Wynne said if MATS were to be struck down, power companies would need to consider whether coal-fired plants would be able to survive all of the other challenges the coal industry is facing. These include the EPA's December 2014 final rule on coal combustion residuals and the agency's planned July final Clean Power Plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
Avoided Operating Costs Possible
Blinderman said companies may take “a second look” at scheduled plant retirements if MATS were to be vacated but cautioned that MATS can't be viewed “in isolation,” given the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which targets pollution that crosses state lines, and other air regulations that impact power plants.
Blinderman said that although no companies would remove already-installed pollution control technology if the Supreme Court were to vacate the MATS rule, some companies could look at whether it would be necessary to run that control equipment as frequently as planned.
McHenry of American Electric Power said a Supreme Court decision to vacate MATS could affect the way its plants operate.
American Electric Power is investing in environmental controls at plants that provide about 6,150 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity, McHenry said, and much of the mercury reductions from those plants is being driven by the installation of selective catalytic reduction technology.
If MATS were no longer in place, those plants may not be required to run selective catalytic reduction as often as they otherwise would have, she said.
Whitworth of Ameren said ongoing operation and maintenance costs could be reduced if the EPA standards were no longer in effect.
Companies Making Use of Extensions
Several power companies told Bloomberg BNA they are making use of a compliance extension process the EPA established, so they have more time to install pollution controls and continue to operate non-compliant plants that are needed due to grid reliability concerns.
At least 165 power plants received one-year extensions for MATS compliance from their state or local permitting authority, according to a March survey by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (53 DEN A-2, 3/19/15).
FirstEnergy received one-year compliance extensions for its remaining six coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, Walton said. However, by the time the Supreme Court issues its decision in Michigan v. EPA, nearly all of the $370 million the company plans to spend on pollution control equipment at those plants will have been invested, Walton said.
Two of Ameren's four coal-fired plants were granted one-year extensions to install upgraded control technology, Whitworth said.
American Electric Power received 45-day extensions that allow units that will retire by May 31 to operate for a short time past the compliance deadline and one-year extensions to install pollution controls at several plants, McHenry said. Two of AEP's coal-fired units received one-year extensions to address energy supply and reliability issues before those units are retired.
Two coal-fired units at Duke Energy's Crystal River Energy Center in Florida received one-year extensions, although those units are expected to be retired in 2018, Williams said. By April 2016, those units will burn MATS-compliant coal during the interim period before their anticipated closure, Williams said.
Some Capacity Could Remain Online
A January 2015 report by Bernstein Research found that if the MATS rule were to be withdrawn or vacated, 48 gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity that would have been retired could remain online in 2015 and 2016.
Wynne said that analysis represents a best-case scenario for coal-fired power plants that wouldn't be able to comply with MATS but would be able to comply with the requirements of the cross-state rule. The analysis identified 37 gigawatts of coal-fired generation that would be able to meet more stringent 2017 emissions limits under the cross-state rule if they weren't first retired due to MATS.
The Bernstein Research analysis doesn't take into account a variety of other factors that affect the decisionmaking behind retiring a power plant, including other environmental regulations and relatively low prices for natural gas, Wynne said.
“The fact that MATS goes away may be necessary but not sufficient to draw plants back from the brink,” Wynne said.
Wynne said the plants that would be most likely to have their already-announced retirements reversed if the Supreme Court were to vacate the EPA standards would be competitive plants that are operating under a compliance extension and aren't scheduled to close until 2016. None of the companies contacted by Bloomberg BNA indicated any intention to alter retirement plans if MATS were to no longer be in effect.
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9th Circuit Ruling Strengthens Courts' Split On Allocating Superfund Costs
Apr 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
A recent decision from the U.S Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has found courts have discretion under the Superfund law's contribution provision to decide "the most equitable method" for allocating contribution costs among private responsible parties, strengthening a split among appellate courts on the issue.
In its April 2 unanimous ruling in AmeriPride Services Inc. v. Texas Eastern Overseas (TEO) Inc., the 9th Circuit effectively rejected that courts are compelled to use either a proportionate share approach or a so-called pro tanto approach, the latter of which can disfavor non-settling responsible parties.
"[W]e conclude that a district court has discretion under [section 113(f)(1) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation & Liability Act (CERCLA)] to determine the most equitable method of accounting for settlements between private parties in a contribution action," the 9th Circuit says.
The court says, however, that the lower court did not explain its method for allocation, and therefore the appellate court could not determine if the lower court abused its discretion. As a result, the appellate court has remanded the matter back to the district court for further proceedings.
The decision differs from the 7th Circuit's reasoning in a 1999 case, but generally concurs with the approach taken by the 1st Circuit in a 2004 case. In the 1st Circuit's ruling in American Cyanamid Co. v. Capuano, the court concluded that CERCLA's section 113(f)(1) provides district courts with discretion to decide "'the most equitable method of accounting for settling parties'" in private parties' contribution actions.
At the same time, the 9th Circuit says it disagrees with the reasoning by the 7th Circuit in Akzo Nobel Coatings, Inc. v. Aigner Corp., where the 7th Circuit found that CERCLA requires courts to rely on the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act (UCATA) pro tanto approach in every case.
One issue challenged by TEO in AmeriPride was the lower court's method for allocating liability among settling and non-settling parties. AmeriPride sued TEO to recover costs for cleaning up property it owned in Sacramento, CA, where a company TEO acquired had operated an industrial dry cleaning and laundry business for many years that contaminated soil and groundwater with the solvent perchloroethylene, or perc, according to the decision.
Other potentially responsible parties (PRPs) settled with AmeriPride, while TEO asserted a counterclaim for contribution. The district court found TEO responsible for AmeriPride's response costs under the cost recovery provision of CERCLA -- section 107.
Litigation Settlements
When a statute lacks an approach to determine how to credit settlements in litigation involving settlements with not all of the jointly and severally liable parties, courts generally rely on either the UCATA pro tanto approach or the Uniform Comparative Fault Act (UCFA), also known as the proportionate share approach, the court says. These are differing methods for deciding the amount of a nonsettling defendant's liability, according to the court.
Under the UCFA proportionate share approach, in cases where some PRPs settle and others do not, a non-settling defendant will be held responsible only for its proportionate share of cleanup costs, even if a settling PRP reaches an agreement where it pays less than its fair share of the injury, the court says. "Under this approach, an injured party who settles for too little may not receive full recovery."
In contrast, under the UCATA pro tanto approach, when an injured party settles with a PRP, "the settlement does not discharge the nonsettling tortfeasors but reduces the injured party's claims against them by the dollar value of the settlement," the court explains. This means that if a settling PRP settles for less than its proportionate share, the remaining nonsettling PRPs "will end up paying more than their proportionate share," the court says. This approach encourages early settlements, but can result in unfair or collusive settlements, although "good-faith hearings" can avert such issues, the court says.
The 9th Circuit ruling attempts to ascertain congressional intent for handling the issue under CERCLA, noting that while CERCLA specified the use of the UCATA approach between a state or federal government and a private party PRP, it does not specify how settlements between private parties affect the liability of a nonsettling PRP. The requirement for government settlements, along with the lack of any such requirement for settlements among private parties, "leads to the conclusion that Congress did not intend to impose a uniform requirement for a particular approach in private party settlements," the court says.
"CERCLA's statutory language is best read as leaving the allocation of liability among responsible parties to be guided by [section 113(f)(1)'s] more general principle that 'the court may allocate response costs among liable parties using such equitable factors as the court determines are appropriate,'" the court says.
But the court rejects TEO's arguments that the lack of a requirement in CERCLA for private party settlements means UCFA should be applied. Due to CERCLA's statutory scheme, the court says two decisions -- one from 1989 by the 9th Circuit itself and another from the Supreme Court in 1994 -- that supported the UCFA approach are not applicable to this case. CERCLA has differing policy goals than those identified in the 1989 9th Circuit case, which related to securities law, the court says. "Because the UCFA proportionate share approach does not promote early settlement to the same extent as the UCATA pro tanto approach, it may not be the best approach for furthering the goals of CERCLA in all cases."
'Uniform' Application
At the same time, the court says it disagrees with the reasoning by the 7th Circuit in Akzo that effectively requires the uniform application of the UCATA approach where the 7th Circuit alludes to language in the law providing that contribution claims "'shall be governed by Federal law'" and therefore implying "'the law should be nationally uniform.'" The court explains, "While the statement that [section 113(f)(1)] contribution claims 'shall be governed by Federal law,' clarifies that CERCLA requires us to adopt a federal rule, rather than adopt the law of the forum state, it does not raise the inference that Congress required federal courts to adopt a single method of allocating liability among nonsettling parties."
The 9th Circuit says that while courts have the discretion to choose an allocation method for nonsettling defendants in private-party contribution cases, they must be consistent with section 113(f)(1) and the purposes of CERCLA. Courts could abuse their discretion if they chose a method that would discourage settlement or result in clearly inequitable results, it says. In this case, the district court first stated it was adopting the UCFA proportionate share approach, but at trial, the court effectively used the UCATA pro tanto approach, the appellate court says.
Because of the district court's original ruling to use UCFA, TEO lacked the opportunity to present evidence or argue the fairness of the allocation, the decision says. In addition, the district court did not explain how its approach matched section 113(f)(1) and the goals of CERCLA. "Because the court failed to explain its methodology for complying with [section 113(f)] and furthering the goals of CERCLA, whether under the UCFA proportionate share approach or the UCATA pro tanto approach, we cannot determine whether it abused its discretion in allocating response costs," the appellate court says.
As a result, the appellate court says it is remanding the matter back to the district court to "explain which equitable factors it considered in allocating $3.25 million in costs to the settling parties, or select those factors and allocate costs in accordance with those factors in the first instance."
One legal observer, Robby Sanoff with the law firm Foley Hoag, says in a blog post on his firm's website that "[u]ltimately, under an equitable factor analysis, a court could select either the pro tanto or proportionate share approach or something different."
The court also found that in AmeriPride's attempt to also recover money it paid as a PRP to settle claims to downgradient property owners -- where contamination had migrated -- the district court "erred in failing to determine the extent to which the amounts paid by AmeriPride to [these two downgradient parties] were incurred consistent with" Superfund's National Contingency Plan (NCP), the law's regulatory blueprint. On remand, the district court should determine this, the 9th Circuit says. In effect, AmeriPride can seek contribution under section 113 only for those settlement costs that were "for necessary response costs incurred consistent with the NCP," the court says.
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Ontario to Join Cap-and-Trade Program To Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Apr 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Ontario will join Quebec, California and other North American jurisdictions in adopting a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced April 13.
The province will join the Western Climate Initiative's cap-and-trade system, impose a “hard ceiling on the pollution allowed in each sector of the economy,” and will reward “innovative companies” by letting them profit by trading excess emissions reductions, Wynne said in a statement.
“Climate change needs to be fought around the globe, and it needs to be fought here in Canada and Ontario,” Wynne said while making the announcement on the eve of a climate change summit of Canada's provincial premiers. “The action we are taking today will help secure a healthier environment, a more competitive economy and a better future.”
Wynne did not provide details of how the particular cap-and-trade system would operate or at what level the province would set a price on carbon. But the Ontario Ministry of the Environment said the province would work closely to align its market with the joint market already in place between Quebec and California .
A cap-and-trade system provides a financial incentive for companies to curb their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Typically, a company must limit its greenhouse gas emissions to a certain level or buy “credits” from companies that have reached the cap.
The Ministry of the Environment said any funds raised will be reinvested in projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help businesses remain competitive.
Provincial, Federal Action
British Columbia and Alberta both have taxes on carbon in fossil fuels; only Quebec currently has a cap-and-trade system in Canada.
But Ontario, which includes the city of Toronto, is the country's most populous province. With its adoption of a cap-and-trade system, more than 75 percent of Canadians will live in provinces that have some form of carbon pricing, the ministry said.
Canada's provincial governments said they are taking steps to implement climate change initiatives in general, and carbon pricing in particular, in part due to the vacuum created by the federal government's lack of action.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other federal officials have repeatedly assured decisive steps, but long-promised regulations to limit emissions from the oil and gas sector remain outstanding and Harper said in January that it would be “crazy” to regulate the industry during a period of low oil prices.
The federal government also has rejected consideration of any form of carbon taxation as an excessive burden on the Canadian economy (29 DEN A-7, 2/12/15).
California, Quebec Applaud Move
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called Ontario's announcement a “bold move,” and urged other jurisdictions around the world to take action to address greenhouse gas emissions. “There's a human cost to the billions of tons of carbon spewing into our atmosphere, and there must be a price on it,” Brown said in a statement.
Ontario's action will strengthen North America's largest carbon market, building on the November 2014 memorandum of understanding reached between Quebec and Ontario on joint efforts to address climate change, David Heurtel, Quebec's minister of sustainable development, the environment and the fight against climate change, said April 13.
Noting that Ontario and Quebec account for more than 20 million of Canada's overall population of 35.2 million—and for more than 50 percent of the national economy—Heurtel said in a statement: “Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions go hand-in-hand with the development of a green and sustainable economy.”
Industry, Environmental Groups React
Ontario's announcement drew praise from both industry and environmental groups.
“A well-designed cap-and-trade system that is sensitive to trade-related competitiveness issues will guarantee emissions reductions while sending a signal to the market that rewards good environmental behavior,” said Michael McSweeney, president and chief executive officer of the Cement Association of Canada.
“As Ontario moves to place a value on carbon, we will work together and support the development of market mechanisms that are effective, protect our manufacturing competitiveness and support consumers interested in adopting new technologies,” said David Paterson, General Motors of Canada Ltd. vice president of corporate and environmental affairs.
The Pembina Institute, an environmental group, was “excited” to see the province moving forward with putting a price on carbon pollution, said Cherise Burda, the group's Ontario director.
“We look forward to seeing the full details of Ontario's cap-and-trade system and climate change strategy as they are announced in the coming months,” Burda said.
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