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US Osha and Chemicals Society to Promote GHS Awareness
Apr 21, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has renewed its alliance with the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication, with the aim of promoting increased awareness of the requirements of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labelling of chemicals. -
EPA Planning New Peer Review For PAH Mixtures Assessment Approach
Apr 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA research managers are preparing to undertake a second peer review of a draft approach for assessing the human cancer risks of a group of petroleum chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), an approach the agency had shelved while it responded to its science advisors' 2010 call to first update a study related to the approach. -
EPA Advisors Weigh New IRIS Skin Cancer Risk Value In BaP Assessment
Apr 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA advisors reviewing the agency's draft assessment of the human health risks of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) are struggling to determine how best to advise EPA on the first-time dermal cancer risk toxicity value it calculated for the petroleum chemical, even as agency managers are planning to soon move to apply the analysis to a broader effort to assess numerous chemicals in its class. -
EPA Has Little Info on Schools' Asbestos Practices -- Report
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
The federal government has done little to assess whether public school systems are complying with asbestos management requirements, according to a report released today by the Environmental Working Group. -
New Cosmetics Framework Provides A Path Forward
Apr 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Melanie Benesh
Moving to address a gaping void in the nation’s system of consumer protections, Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) filed a bill (April 20) – the “Personal Care Products Safety Act” -- that would create a long-needed bipartisan framework for ensuring that cosmetics ingredients are safe. -
Report: Most Chemical Facilities Still Vulnerable to Terrorist Attack
Apr 20, 2015 | Chem Info
By Andy Szal
Most chemical facilities in the U.S. have yet to adopt federal anti-terrorism guidelines and remain vulnerable to attack, according to a recent report published in the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures. -
Chemical Safety Board to Vote on Recommendations
Apr 20, 2015 | Powder Bulk Solids
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) recently voted to update the status of 16 recommendations resulting from 12 accident investigations, including key safety improvements resulting from the 2006 CAI/Arnel fire and explosion in Danvers, MA and the 2005 BP Texas City refinery fire and explosion. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Offers Factors for Measuring Chemical Industry, Refinery Emissions
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
U.S. EPA released factors yesterday for measuring air pollution from the chemical manufacturing and refinery sector. -
Reliability Group: Utilities Need More Time for Climate Rule
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The organization responsible for electricity reliability said power utilities will need more time to comply with the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants. -
Delay Needed for States to Comply with Clean Power Plan -- NERC
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Hannah Northey
The grid's federally appointed monitor said today that parts of the industry need more time to comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, but its latest analysis was unable to quantify how much delay is required. -
EPA Says NERC Reliability Report 'Premature'
Apr 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
EPA said today that NERC’sprediction that EPA’s carbon rules will cause reliability problems for power plants is “premature” because EPA has yet to issue a final rule, and the states are only planning out implementation efforts. -
EPA Carbon Rule Would Boost Jobs Economywide -- Report
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Katherine Ling
U.S. EPA's proposed plan to regulate carbon emissions from power plants would result in an increase in jobs economywide -- mainly because of a drop in electricity prices over the long term, according to a new report from the University of Maryland and consulting firm Industrial Economics. -
Former EPA Official Perciasepe, Colo.'s Rudolph Talk Power Plan Challenges, Multistate Options
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - TV
Are market-based approaches to complying with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan in line with the environmental goals established by the agency? -
EPA Celebrates Victories Over Pollution
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is celebrating and taking credit for major reductions in pollutants that once harmed human and animal health. -
Moniz’s Energy Review Goes Bold
Apr 21, 2015 | PoliticPro
By Darius Dixon
The Obama administration called Tuesday for a multibillion-dollar effort to upgrade the nation’s aging energy network — including steps to replace aging natural gas pipelines, rein in greenhouse gas emissions and reflect the realities of a world where U.S. oil and gas production are surging while wind and solar power are on the rise. -
Obama Wants Billions to ‘Modernize’ Energy Infrastructure
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration released a report Tuesday calling for billions of dollars to “modernize” and “transform” the nation’s energy infrastructure. -
Biden Visits Philadelphia to Highlight Energy Plan
Apr 21, 2015 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The White House on Tuesday released a four-year energy plan designed to fight climate change, modernize power plants and find other ways to ensure the nation a steady supply of safe energy. -
2 Democrats Want to Stop Fracking on Public Land
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Two Democratic House members want to stop hydraulic fracturing and some other drilling activities on federal land. -
Okla. Science Agency Links Quakes to Oil
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Mike Soraghan
The state agency in charge of determining the cause of Oklahoma's earthquake swarms announced today that it is "very likely" that the shaking has been caused by oil and gas activity.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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US Osha and Chemicals Society to Promote GHS Awareness
Apr 21, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has renewed its alliance with the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication, with the aim of promoting increased awareness of the requirements of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labelling of chemicals.
The partnership also seeks to reduce and prevent worker exposure to chemical hazards.
Osha and the SCHC will jointly “develop information materials on the health and physical hazards of chemicals and elements of a GHS-compliant label and safety data sheets, based on Osha requirements,” the agency said. It added that the society will host Osha training seminars and webinars on hazard communication health and safety issues.
The SCHC represents 724 industrial, consumer and specialty chemical companies.
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EPA Planning New Peer Review For PAH Mixtures Assessment Approach
Apr 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA research managers are preparing to undertake a second peer review of a draft approach for assessing the human cancer risks of a group of petroleum chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), an approach the agency had shelved while it responded to its science advisors' 2010 call to first update a study related to the approach.
EPA has yet to finalize the assessment of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), a PAH the agency intends to use as a reference chemical for the other PAHs, whose toxicity is less studied and less understood. Still, EPA's IRIS Director, Vincent Cogliano, indicates the draft document addressing the relative potency factor (RPF) approach will soon be prepared for a second peer review.
EPA science advisors in 2010 were critical of the agency's RPF approach for assessing PAHs as a group, although they agreed with EPA that it was infeasible at the time to accurately assess the risk of PAH mixtures using other approaches.
Cogliano at an April 15 meeting of the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) reviewing the BaP draft assessment reiterated the agency's focus on using BaP as a reference chemical rather than attempting to assess PAH mixtures.
"Our focus here is on BaP alone because it's a reference chemical, and when we move forward on our RPF document very soon, it's very important the index be on BaP alone," Cogliano said in response to a question from a science advisor about using a study of exposure to a PAH mixture of chemicals.
"We're reviewing the RPF document and expect to send it to peer review later this year," an agency source says.
EPA several years ago informed SAB that it intended to use BaP as an index chemical in a RPF approach for assessing risks of mixtures of PAHs, which are carcinogenic compounds stemming from a wide range of natural and industrial sources, including crude oil, asphalt and vehicle emissions. The effort is important to regulators who will use the new formula to calculate regulatory limits for a range of media exposures, including water contamination from runoff from roads, railroads and other sources of the chemicals.
The RPF approach for PAHs is similar to that EPA risk assessors use for dioxins: one chemical, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, is the reference chemical, and the other dioxins' potencies are compared to TCDD. These potency factors are then used to calculate the toxicity of a mixture of dioxins at a waste site.
Preparing the RPF document for another round of peer review remains a challenge for EPA, since the first advisory panel's concerns were not limited to the BaP assessment. EPA shelved its efforts to advance the RPF approach for PAHs in 2010, following the first peer review when the science advisors recommended that instead of using its published 1987 BaP cancer risk value, EPA needed to update the assessment and use the cancer risk values. The advisory panel had other concerns with the approach, however.
Though the panel had strong criticism for EPA's draft approach, it agreed with EPA it was infeasible to attempt a more scientifically advanced approach to assessing PAH mixtures' risks at the time, agreeing that the limited data available did not make a whole mixtures-based approach feasible.
Still, the advisors' 2011 report suggests that the agency set the goal of developing such an approach within the next five to 10 years, with the RPF approach to be used only in the shorter term. The panel urged EPA to seek assistance from the National Toxicology Program or other labs to test groups of PAH mixtures of concern to EPA to form the basis for this new PAH assessment approach.
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EPA Advisors Weigh New IRIS Skin Cancer Risk Value In BaP Assessment
Apr 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA advisors reviewing the agency's draft assessment of the human health risks of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) are struggling to determine how best to advise EPA on the first-time dermal cancer risk toxicity value it calculated for the petroleum chemical, even as agency managers are planning to soon move to apply the analysis to a broader effort to assess numerous chemicals in its class.
EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) BaP assessment for the first time presents a cancer risk estimate for dermal exposure. It is also novel because the agency plans to use the finalized BaP risk numbers in an approach to estimate the human cancer risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as a class of chemicals.
EPA advisors who met to peer review the draft assessment April 15-17 in Washington, DC, discussed the new dermal cancer risk estimate, or dermal slope factor (DSF), but appeared to be still struggling to reach final conclusions on the issue as the meeting ended. The advisors will continue to work on crafting their report to EPA over the next months, including a pair of conference calls in August and September.
Panelists raised concerns with how EPA might apply the BaP risk estimates in the future, particularly at existing contaminated sites, as several public commenters argued that the new DSF would create challenges for their clients. Chris Saranko, a toxicology consultant for the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group (USWAG), told the advisory panel that he discussed EPA's proposed DSF of 0.006 per micrograms per day with some regional risk assessors, who raised concerns about what would happen if the DSF were applied to the regional screening levels (RSLs) used to guide remediation at Superfund sites.
"If you basically apply the same methodology but apply the RSLs, . . . and you can't stray from them . . . when you do that, the RSL for all pathways combined is . . . below what EPA considers background" amounts of BaP in the environment, Saranko said.
This is an issue that USWAG and others have raised with EPA in public comments regarding the DSF in the past.USWAG writes in April 8 comments to EPA's Science Advisory Board Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee (CAAC) that "the DSF drives an RSL for residential land use scenarios that is lower than or near the detection limit for BaP/PAHs. This will frustrate and delay cleanups, creating significant hurdles for regulators and regulated entities alike -- without any scientifically sound justification."
Alan Stern, a panel member and toxicologist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said, "As a state risk assessor here, the fact that a given cancer risk is less than background is no reflection on [EPA], it just means that it defaults to background. It has no bearing on the underlying toxicology."
But Saranko replied, "In practice it's a very difficult assessment issue and a very expensive one. It shouldn't be minimized."
Industry's Concerns
Industry commentators also argued, as they have in the past, that existing literature indicated that certain types of skin cancer are caused by UV radiation, rather than exposure to BaP. They suggested that EPA's IRIS assessment overstates BaP's skin cancer risk.
Annette Rohr, a toxicologist with the Electric Power Research Institute, argued, "Our calculations show that dermal contact [with BaP] would account for 26 percent of all skin cancer on the head, hands, lower legs, and forearms for the entire U.S. population," per EPA's risk assessment.
But one advisor, Kenneth Portier, managing director at the American Cancer Society's Statistics and Evaluation Center, said skin cancer is significantly under reported. "Something like 80 percent of skin cancer is not reported to the [cancer] registry," he said.
"That's an important point," Stern replied. If 80 percent of skin cancers are not reported, industry's calculations are off, he said, adding that instead of 26 to 30 percent of skin cancers linked to BaP, it is something like 5 percent.
The panelists discussed a number of uncertainties in the DSF calculation, including differences between mouse and human skin, since the value was calculated from a study of mice whose skin was painted with mixture of BaP and acetone. Panelists also struggled with how to scale from animal to humans, because while EPA has such guidance for oral dosing, it does not have dermal guidance. EPA adopted this bodyweight three-quarters oral scaling factor for the dermal calculation.
As the large panel of advisors struggled to reach common conclusions on how to advise EPA on the DSF, one panelist suggested that not having consensus from the group wouldn't be a problem. SAB reports rarely include discussions of minority and majority recommendations, since their charge is to strive for consensus wherever possible.
"I'm not suggesting that we need consensus. Keep in mind there is no scientific consensus on inhalation scaling," which is a much older problem, said one advisor, Scott Bartell, an associate professor of public health at the University of California Irvine. "At the end of the day I don't think the lack of complete understanding keeps EPA from going forward. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
Bartell appeared to be joined in his remarks by the panel's chairman, Elaine Faustman, an environmental and occupational health professor at the University of Washington. "I don't want to come back in two years to see another draft. I want to have some numbers to protect children and adults."
By contrast, public commenters urged the panel to recommend that EPA craft a guidance document for how to calculate future DSFs, before publishing a final DSF in the BaP assessment.
Asked after the meeting about the concern, Samantha Jones, associate director for science in EPA's IRIS program, acknowledged the concern, noting that it is helpful to have guidance but developing guidance documents can be time consuming and is most informed by experience. She said that IRIS staff are trying to balance efforts to move the state of the science forward while making progress on IRIS assessments. Additionally, this is predominantly a chemical-specific issue and it is unlikely that this type of analysis would be warranted for most other chemical assessments.
The large amount of data for BaP allowed IRIS technical staff to craft the first-time DSF, Jones said. "This is the first one that really allowed us to try it," Jones said of the DSF. "It was something we decided to try after discussing with Superfund and other parts of the agency that have been thinking about dermal exposures. We've worked really closely with other parts of the agency. This is a complex issues that is difficult to solve, and there is no scientific consensus on how to do it."
Toxicity Values
The peer reviewers also raised other challenges for EPA with the remaining toxicity values. EPA's other risk calculations include the inhalation unit risk factor (IUR); the oral slope factor (OSF); the non-cancer reference dose (RfD), or the maximum amount EPA estimates can be ingested daily over a lifetime without anticipating an associated non-cancer health effect; and the reference concentration (RfC). The RfC is analogous to the RfD by inhalation exposure. EPA proposes an IUR of 0.6 per miligram per cubic meter of air; an OSF of 1 per milligram per kilogram body weight per day; an RfD of 3x10^-4 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight per day and an RfC of 2x10^-6 milligrams per cubic meter.
The peer reviewers seemed to largely approve of EPA's literature search and the results of its evidence analysis, though they urged EPA to provide greater information to the public on why studies were excluded from the analysis and also to broaden a search for unknown health hazards.
In addition, some of the studies that EPA chose as the basis for chemical toxicity assessments, or the modeling and other approaches used drew concerns from CAAC members. For example, the study EPA used to calculate its IUR, is a study of hamsters exposed to BaP through inhalation means. But the study's weaknesses have been greatly questioned by various stakeholders.
Anne LeHuray, with the Pavement Coatings Technology Council, for instance, asked whether low quality studies were used to calculate the IUR in the IRIS assessment because it's the only study available. LeHuray added that the hamster study was not used in 2001 when EPA created a provisionally peer reviewed toxicity value for EPA's Superfund program.
Advisor Mike Foster, an independent consultant, agreed that the there are concerns with the hamster study, but added that there are also some positive attributes, such as the author group replicating the study a few years after the original publication.
Bartell and Leslie Stayner, a peer reviewer and epidemiology professor at the University of Illinois, proposed the idea of using human exposure studies to bolster the IUR, although Bartell noted that such work may prove a challenge for EPA should the analysis not support EPA's.
Similarly, EPA's non-cancer inhalation toxicity estimate also raised some concerns, again in large part due to the study that EPA calculated the risk estimate from. "What surprises me is that they come up with a confidence (level) of low to medium. The confidence is low to non-existent," said Richard Schlesinger, an advisor and associate dean of Pace University's arts and sciences college. "My position is the RfC doesn't have scientific validity. . . . I think they should've decided that they couldn't agree on a reliable RfC for this one study."
"In the current form, the current overall RfC is not supported," concluded Barry McIntyre, a toxicologist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. "We have serious concerns that the extent of the database is too weak to support an RfC even with low confidence." He suggested that EPA look at two other studies and use the group of studies as the basis for the RfC, rather than relying on one study alone to strengthen the calculation.
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EPA Has Little Info on Schools' Asbestos Practices -- Report
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
The federal government has done little to assess whether public school systems are complying with asbestos management requirements, according to a report released today by the Environmental Working Group.
The report said a lack of congressional appropriations and U.S. EPA oversight had left public schools largely on their own to manage asbestos.
In 1984, EPA surveyed 2,600 public school districts and private schools and found an estimated 15 million students and 1.4 million teachers were at risk of exposure to asbestos fibers, the report said, but there is no evidence EPA has conducted another survey since.
Under the 1984 Asbestos School Hazard Abatement Act, Congress appropriated $382 million to help schools with asbestos abatement from 1984 to 1993, but no funds have been given out since, the EWG report said.
EPA still provides grants for asbestos training, including a $124,741 grant to the Texas Department of State Health Services in 2014, but EWG said the agency was not able to determine the full value of these grants when the group asked.
EPA couldn't be reached for comment on the report this morning.
The issue of how schools manage asbestos is taking on new resonance this year as lawmakers discuss two Senate bills that would change how the federal government regulates toxic chemicals. Several senators in recent weeks have asked states to provide information on how they manage asbestos under a 1986 federal law called the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (E&ENews PM, March 31). States have until May 15 to provide responses to a series of questions about their asbestos management practices.
Federal law requires that public school districts, nonprofit and charter schools, and schools run by religious organizations to inspect their facilities for material that contains asbestos. The schools are also supposed to keep asbestos management plans on file and avoid or reduce the threat of asbestos exposure to students and employees. Among other requirements, the school sites are required to be reinspected every three years, and custodial staff must receive appropriate asbestos management training.
The policy is based on the idea that asbestos can be safely managed "in place" if proper procedures are followed.
Schools aren't typically required to remove asbestos from their buildings unless the material is damaged or is expected to be disturbed by demolition or renovation, according to EPA. However, when schools perform work on asbestos-containing buildings improperly, or when school systems do not properly handle asbestos materials, the results can lead to temporary school shutdowns.
"Many schools built before the early 1980s almost certainly contain asbestos, and almost every week brings another story of asbestos found in schools -- disrupting education, displacing students and disturbing parents," Bill Walker, an EWG Action Fund adviser and the report's author, said in a statement. "It's a national problem that demands a national solution, starting with a total ban on asbestos."
The EWG report cited six asbestos incidents at school systems that received media attention in recent years and noted that "the full extent of the problem may be unknown, but it is clearly widespread."
EWG along with Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and others oppose a bipartisan bill by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.), S. 697, or the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act," to update the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.
Boxer and Markey have introduced their own legislation, S. 725, or the "Alan Reinstein and Trevor Schaefer Toxic Chemical Protection Act." Its differences include an accelerated ban of asbestos and a class of chemicals known as persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic compounds. However, the plan lacks the support of Republicans and the chemical industry, who consider it unworkable.
Though the Udall-Vitter bill would not immediately ban asbestos, Udall has called EPA's failure to ban the substance an example of the flaws of existing law. He's also said he hopes that the agency would move quickly to ban the cancer-causing mineral if his bill is enacted.
Advocates of the Udall-Vitter bill have also noted that it would remove a requirement that EPA select the "least burdensome" action to restrict a chemical, which was the legal barrier that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991 ruled EPA's proposed asbestos ban could not meet.
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New Cosmetics Framework Provides A Path Forward
Apr 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Melanie Benesh
Moving to address a gaping void in the nation’s system of consumer protections, Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) filed a bill (April 20) – the “Personal Care Products Safety Act” -- that would create a long-needed bipartisan framework for ensuring that cosmetics ingredients are safe.
For nearly 80 years, cosmetics have largely escaped regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. The only pre-market assessment of the safety of cosmetics ingredients is done by the very industry that profits from their use, and the FDA lacks the basic tools the agency needs to monitor the behavior of cosmetics manufacturers. FDA’s oversight of cosmetics has remained largely unchanged since 1938.
While not perfect, the legislation developed by Sens. Feinstein and Collins would require FDA to evaluate five cosmetic ingredients a year to determine whether they can be used with reasonable certainty of no harm – the same rigorous standard required for pesticides on produce. The first five ingredients to be reviewed would include chemicals linked to cancer, endocrine disruption and damage to the nervous system. Coal tar chemicals used in hair dyes, which are currently completely exempt from regulation despite known links to serious health problems, could also be investigated and regulated by FDA.
If enacted, the bill would pave the way for assessing of many of the riskiest cosmetics ingredients within a decade. Industry would provide more than $20 million a year to help finance these reviews and enable FDA to act quickly if particular products or ingredients are found to pose a danger. The bill would require cosmetics makers to register with FDA, submit ingredient statements, report adverse events, adopt good manufacturing practices and provide access to company safety records.
Importantly, the bill would give FDA the power to order mandatory recalls of unsafe products and suspend a company’s registration – basic powers the FDA lacks under current law.
States would largely retain the authority to act on their own under the bipartisan proposal, including under existing reporting laws. States would also be free to issue new regulations under existing state chemical safety programs, such as those established under California’s Safe Cosmetics Act or Maine’s Children’s Safe Products Act. Although the bill would suspend some new state actions once FDA begins to review an ingredient, this “pause” would only last one year, and the FDA would be prohibited from adding the same chemicals to the list year after year.
The bill would create other new tools, such as allowing consumers to learn the identity of cosmetics ingredients, including those in fragrances. Companies would be required to list on their web sites the same information that is now included on product packaging. Products used by salon workers, who generally are more heavily exposed to the chemicals in personal care products, would include the same information as is provided for products sold to the general public.
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Report: Most Chemical Facilities Still Vulnerable to Terrorist Attack
Apr 20, 2015 | Chem Info
By Andy Szal
Most chemical facilities in the U.S. have yet to adopt federal anti-terrorism guidelines and remain vulnerable to attack, according to a recent report published in the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security established its Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards in 2007 in response to concerns following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The study by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, however, found that as of 2013, only 40 of the nation's 3,468 chemical facilities designated by DHS saw their final plans approved — and that "the pace of adoption and implement is yet to pick up."
Maria Rooijakkers and Abdul-Akeem Sadiq argued the slow pace of implementation jeopardizes the typically dense populations near chemical plants, as well as the economy due to the importance of chemicals in a wide array of industries.
They recommended that the chemical industry and DHS officials work together more closely to speed up the implementation process, and suggested that local officials develop their own preparedness plans. -
Chemical Safety Board to Vote on Recommendations
Apr 20, 2015 | Powder Bulk Solids
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) recently voted to update the status of 16 recommendations resulting from 12 accident investigations, including key safety improvements resulting from the 2006 CAI/Arnel fire and explosion in Danvers, MA and the 2005 BP Texas City refinery fire and explosion. All recently voted on recommendations are highlighted on a newly launched webpage designed to update the public on safety recommendation status changes.
Deputy managing director for recommendations Dr. Susan Anenberg said, “Safety recommendations are the CSB’s primary tool for achieving positive change and preventing future incidents. A recommendation is a specific course of action issued to a specific party, based on the findings of CSB investigations, safety studies, and other products.”
One of the recommendations voted upon and assigned a status of "closed- acceptable action" by the board was issued to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Public Safety, Department of Fire Services. The recommendation was to incorporate standards set forth by the National Fire Protection Association into the state’s fire regulations and was the result of a powerful explosion and fire that took place at the CAI/Arnel ink and paint products manufacturing facility in Danvers, MA, on November 22, 2006. On January 1, 2015, the state of Massachusetts adopted a revised fire safety code that incorporates the CSB’s recommendations.
Dr. Anenberg said, “We are very pleased that Massachusetts’ revised fire code includes our recommended safety improvements. Their action ensures that the Board’s accident investigation has a lasting impact on safety in the state.”
Another recommendation closed by the board is a 2007 recommendation to OSHA to implement a national emphasis program for oil refineries focusing on issues the CSB found contributed to the March 23, 2005, explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, TX. In response to the CSB recommendation, OSHA launched a “Petroleum Refinery Process Safety Management National Emphasis Program,” which led to enhanced inspections of over seventy refineries nationwide.
Also, the CSB successfully closed a recommendation made to the National Fire Protection Association to revise standards based on findings from its investigation into the May 4, 2009, explosion and fire at the Veolia facility in West Carrolton, OH.
Dr. Anenberg said, “Actions taken by CSB recommendations recipients trigger important safety changes that can prevent accidents and save lives. Our goal is for all CSB safety recommendations to be successfully adopted and we look forward to sharing our progress with the public through our new website feature."
For a full list of recently updated recommendations, visit www.csb.gov/recommendations/recently-updated.
The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents. The agency's board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. CSB investigations look into all aspects of chemical accidents, including physical causes such as equipment failure as well as inadequacies in regulations, industry standards, and safety management systems.
The board does not issue citations or fines but does make safety recommendations to plants, industry organizations, labor groups, and regulatory agencies such as OSHA and EPA. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Offers Factors for Measuring Chemical Industry, Refinery Emissions
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
U.S. EPA released factors yesterday for measuring air pollution from the chemical manufacturing and refinery sector.
The package of methodologies -- which includes one revised and seven new factors -- spells out how operators should calculate emissions from industrial flaring and several refining processes. For flaring -- used by refineries to burn off excess gas -- the agency finalized a new factor covering volatile organic compounds and revised its factor for carbon monoxide emissions.
"These new factors will help facility owners and operators estimate how much pollution is being emitted from their processes," EPA said in an emailed statement.
The Environmental Integrity Project, the advocacy group that in 2013 represented environmental groups in a lawsuit over the agency's failure to update the factors, said the new methodologies show that chemical and refining operations emit significantly more air pollution than has been previously reported.
"We're extremely pleased that EPA finally used the data available to adjust the factors," said Sparsh Khandeshi, a staff attorney for the group's refinery program.
Industry organizations argued that the agency shouldn't be changing emissions factors while it is working on new toxic air emission standards for refineries.
EPA did scrap a proposed update to industries flaring emissions factor for nitrogen oxides. Industry groups had said that the underlying data were inadequate.
In all, EPA maintains more than 1,700 emissions factors for more than 200 pollutants. They're used when emissions cannot be monitored directly. The agency and states use the estimates calculated from the factors to shape rulemakings, identify emissions controls, determine permit requirements and evaluate risks.
Yesterday's action arose out of a 2013 lawsuit by four environmental groups from Texas and Louisiana represented by the Environmental Integrity Project. In the suit, Air Alliance Houston, Community In-Power and Development Association Inc., the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services accused EPA of violating the Clean Air Act by not reviewing certain emissions factors for the refining and chemical sector every three years.
They argued that the emissions methodologies for the sector -- last set in 1991 -- weren't accurately capturing the air pollution coming out of refining and chemical processes.
EPA first proposed the new and revised factors last August under a consent decree with environmental groups. The agency said it received 59 comments on the proposal.
According to EPA, the final factors are based on data collected during a 2011 information collection request for refineries, data referenced in the environmental groups' complaint and other test data on flares, tanks and wastewater treatment systems.
For flaring, EPA's factor covering the release of volatile organic compounds assumes that flaring releases 0.57 pound of VOCs per million British thermal units. EPA also revised the flaring carbon monoxide factor from 0.37 pound to 0.31 pound per million Btu.
Previously, chemical manufacturers and refineries used the factor for total hydrocarbons to capture estimates of volatile organic compounds. The new factor for VOCs finalized by EPA is about four times higher than the agency's initial factor for total hydrocarbons.
According to the environmental groups, the new EPA factor means that about 100 refineries nationwide likely release up to 52,800 tons of volatile organic compounds every year through flaring.
In the final action yesterday, EPA also set new emissions factors for sulfur recovery units, catalytic reforming units, hydrogen plants and fluid catalytic cracking units at refineries. They span emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide, total hydrocarbons and hydrogen cyanide.
Environmental Integrity's Khandeshi expressed disappointment in EPA's decision to shelve its proposed NOx factor for flaring.
"Tt's something that we are currently reviewing to see what EPA's rationale is and whether it's appropriate," he said.
Along with not setting a new factor for NOx for flaring, EPA chose not to update the emissions factors for tanks and wastewater treatment systems.
"We found that the available data did not support a finding that revisions to existing emissions estimation methods for those sources was necessary," EPA said.Timing at issue
Several industry organizations had questioned the timing of the revisions because they overlapped with a separate EPA proposal to stem toxic refinery emissions. That proposed rule encompasses both the New Source Performance Standards and maximum achievable control technology for refineries under the Clean Air Act.
EPA is in the midst of weighing public comments to the proposed new standards and is working toward a June court-ordered deadline to complete the rule (Greenwire, Oct. 30, 2014).
The American Petroleum Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and American Chemistry Council all said that the rulemaking complicated the review of the emissions factors.
"It is difficult for covered facilities to truly understand the impacts of a proposal when both the emission limits and factors used to calculate the limits are under review and may be subject to change in the same time frame," the American Chemistry Council, which declined to provide a statement this morning, wrote to EPA in December.
Oil and gas groups had called on EPA to hold off on revising the emissions factors until the refinery standards are finalized.
API, AFPM and at least one state -- Texas -- urged EPA to withdraw the emissions factors for flaring and specifically pointed to concerns in the data underlying the proposed NOx factor. The proposed NOx factor was based in part on flare testing at Flint Hills Resources Port Arthur LLC; they argued that the testing was not representative of normal flare performance.
The industry organizations also requested that EPA provide more guidance on how the new factors were to be used by operators in permitting decisions.
In its emailed statement, EPA noted that facilities were not required to use the factors to determine emissions. Other tools, such as monitoring and engineering judgment, were also available for estimating emissions.
EPA also said that the factors do not apply to oil and gas production, including flares, at drilling sites and other operations. As a result, the factors "would not be expected to have an impact on emission estimates for the oil and gas sector."
"While we are aware of the fact that people in the oil and gas production sector may use these factors at their own discretion," EPA added, "we do not recommend their use, as many of the flares in the oil and gas sector vary from the types of flares from which we collected data to develop the factors."
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Reliability Group: Utilities Need More Time for Climate Rule
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The organization responsible for electricity reliability said power utilities will need more time to comply with the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants.
In a Tuesday report, North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) took issue with the first round of carbon emissions targets that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed.
While the rule will fully take effect in 2030, the EPA has also proposed targets for 2020. NERC said that in order to ensure reliability, those targets should be pushed back.
“The time required for new facilities to be developed and placed in service may likely exceed the [plan’s] proposed compliance targets,” wrote NERC, a non-profit that has been designated by the federal government to oversee reliability.
“Because the industry will be implementing plans simultaneously, it is uncertain whether adequate equipment (e.g., generators, solar panels, wind facilities, transformers, and conductors) and resources (e.g., engineering, procurement, and construction) will be available to support those plans,” the group said.
NERC’s findings could empower Republicans who have long said that the Obama administration’s plan threatens access to affordable electricity and could lead to blackouts as coal-fired power plants are forced to retire.
The last NERC report on the rule, which came out in November, fed into Republicans’ objections.
NERC’s latest report said both power generation and transmission will need to be established as power plants are retired and new ones come online to comply with the regulation.
“While replacement capacity may be able to repower coal to gas generation, others will require greenfield development, which on average will take between four and five years,” the group said.
Transmission projects take six to 15 years to complete, NERC said.
The EPA defended the rule and said that reliability is one of its top priorities.
“We have a long-standing commitment to safeguard not only public health and the environment but also a reliable and affordable supply of electricity for all Americans,” spokeswoman Liz Purchia said in a statement.
She also criticized the report
“We appreciate NERC’s efforts to report on possible impacts of the proposed Clean Power Plan, however, the report is premature because EPA has yet to issue a final rule, and states are still in the early stages of planning for and developing implementation plans,” Purchia said, adding that the final rule will reflect extensive outreach to the public and various stakeholder groups.
Janet McCabe, head of the EPA’s air pollution office, has hinted in recent months that the EPA might try to make the 2020 targets easier for states in the final rule.
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Delay Needed for States to Comply with Clean Power Plan -- NERC
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Hannah Northey
The grid's federally appointed monitor said today that parts of the industry need more time to comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, but its latest analysis was unable to quantify how much delay is required.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., the federally designated grid reliability overseer, in an assessment of EPA's landmark proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants said the agency needs to make changes to its final rule to coordinate and adjust to an accelerated shift to natural gas and renewables and account for long lead times needed to build new generation, pipes and wires.
"We're at a point where we're looking out approximately four years until implementation, 2020, and we really don't have insights quite yet around conclusive reliability results around 'Can we maintain reliability?'" John Moura, NERC's director of Reliability Assessments, told reporters on a call today.
Moura said NERC did not find that the Clean Power Plan would trigger blackouts but noted the report reflects a growing need for new infrastructure, given a raft of expected plant retirements. He said he's hopeful EPA will include state relief or extensions for those regions facing tight construction and permitting timelines.
NERC found in its reference case that about 33.5 gigawatts of generation capacity -- coal, oil, gas and nuclear -- is slated to retire through 2020, and an additional 7 GW will close through 2025. Although up to 22 GW of coal-fired generation will continue to operate through 2030, many of those units are considered "at risk" of retirement because of infrequent use, according to NERC.
Those retirements are expected to fuel the need for new infrastructure. Specifically, NERC foresees the need for about 7,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. New power lines can take up to 16 years to build, NERC said, and constructing a new combined-cycle gas turbine facility can average 64 months -- or just over five years, according to NERC. Building a utility-scale solar power project takes an average of 36 months, while wind projects take 39 months, according to NERC.
"If EPA wants certain reductions by a certain time, they need to kind of understand how long it takes to get to those reductions," Moura said.
Many states, like California and members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, don't require more time to comply with the EPA rule -- slated to be finalized in the summer of 2015 -- while other states need more time to build new infrastructure as the rule is accelerating a national shift from coal-fired generation to gas and renewables, Moura said. The timing requirements won't be well understood until states begin crafting and submitting their compliance plans, he added.
Much of what's driving NERC's concern is the Clean Power Plant's requirement for states to curb a bulk of their emissions by 2020.
"While we're not prescribing a specific timeline or specific date for compliance, we do say that 2020 interim goal to require that as a first set of targeted reduction is too soon for many to complete the necessary infrastructure projects that are needed to achieve those reductions," Moura said.
NERC officials said they have repeatedly met with EPA officials about their concerns, as well as with other federal and state regulators. They also said they have no concerns about their decision to hire energy consultant company Energy Ventures Analysis -- a firm that has publicly slammed the EPA rule -- to conduct the test (Greenwire, Dec. 17, 2014).
Green groups this morning began circulating points taking issue with NERC's findings.
Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president for policy and government affairs for Advanced Energy Economy, said NERC's assessment overstates the reliability issues tied to the rule, and many of the issues identified are already being addressed.
"The NERC assessment tells us very little about how to move forward other than to slow down," Woolf said. "We need NERC to be engaged on the subject of reliability, but in this assessment of the Clean Power Plan, it has made some of the same mistakes that marred its initial reliability review."
One sheet from the Climate Action Campaign called NERC's review "inaccurate and unreasonable, yielding unrealistic results" and faulted the organization for assuming limited growth of energy efficiency and renewables while assuming too large a number of coal plant retirements.
Marc Spitzer, a former FERC commissioner and now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, called NERC a credible and valuable voice and said it appears to be siding with the more conservative elements of the industry. Spitzer said the need for infrastructure is great, but building new projects in the United States is difficult and likely to become more challenging, given "not in my backyard" attitudes.
"If you take a step back, they're not really saying, 'We can't do it'; they're just saying, 'We need more time,'" Spitzer said.
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EPA Says NERC Reliability Report 'Premature'
Apr 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
EPA said today that NERC’sprediction that EPA’s carbon rules will cause reliability problems for power plants is “premature” because EPA has yet to issue a final rule, and the states are only planning out implementation efforts.
“The Clean Power Plan has benefitted from several years of extensive outreach and engagement with the public, industry, environmental groups, other federal agencies, and state and regional energy reliability officials. All have played a role in helping shape and inform the proposal, and the agency is now considering 4.3 million comments as we work toward a final rule.”
The final rule will give states and utilities "the time and flexibility needed" to implement the rule, the agency added.
EPA also criticized NERC's report for not taking into account all of the flexibility the CPP will give to states, and that it failed to fully consider trends like the increase in renewables or energy efficiency.
Utilities and grid operators have long proven they can maintain reliability, EPA said, and NERC is overstating concerns about the Clean Power Plan, as EPA says it did in the past with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard.
NERC officials acknowledged that details may change in the final rule, but said the report still provides crucial information on reliability issues.
Last fall, EPA also questioned NERC’s initial report on the matter. -
EPA Carbon Rule Would Boost Jobs Economywide -- Report
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Katherine Ling
U.S. EPA's proposed plan to regulate carbon emissions from power plants would result in an increase in jobs economywide -- mainly because of a drop in electricity prices over the long term, according to a new report from the University of Maryland and consulting firm Industrial Economics.
The Clean Power Plan would increase overall U.S. employment by 74,000 jobs in 2020 and up to 273,000 in 2040 -- or about a 0.2 percent increase in civilian employment, according to the report.
It "is an important feature for understanding how the rule's direct impacts for the electric power sector affect other industries," the report said. The study was funded by the Energy Foundation, an organization that provides grants to promote a transition to a "sustainable future by supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy."
EPA estimated the Clean Power Plan would result in a direct employment loss of 77,900 job years (one year of one job) on the supply side in 2025 and gains of 112,000 job years on the demand side.
The new report also concluded the proposed rule would have a negative effect on jobs in the electricity sector -- down 40,000 jobs by 2040 -- and the coal mining sector, which would see a decrease of 10,000 jobs, because of the drop in electricity demand and fuel switching to natural gas and renewable energy.
The main drivers of the report's findings are based on data that show lower electricity costs allows consumers to buy other goods and services with those savings, and that lower wholesale electricity prices and greater efficiency allow a more productive economy with greater output for less cost, according to Doug Meade, director of research at Inforum -- an organization affiliated with the University of Maryland, where Meade is also a lecturer, that works to improve business planning, government policy analysis and understanding of the economic environment.
"We are finding an increase in jobs, which are relatively small, but we are happy to say it is not negative," Meade said on a media call on the report.
The report's assessment relied upon Inforum's Long-term Interindustry Forecasting Tool (LIFT), a macroeconometric model that uses a 97-sector dynamic representation of the U.S. national economy.
It was calibrated using the U.S. Energy Information Administration's 2013 Annual Energy Outlook data. But the study also relies on inputs from EPA's Regulatory Impact Analysis and Integrated Planning Model (IPM) that forecasts the ability of industry and states to meet the CO2 emission cuts, which industry and other critics have challenged as inaccurate.
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 new study tried to incorporate a lot of different variables including, for example: efficiency gains of adding insulation to a hot water heater but also the cost of that insulation; changes in the prices of coal and natural gas; the changes in investments in generation capacity; job losses from early plant retirements; and a decrease in demand for air pollution control devices, according to Jason Price, a principal at Industrial Economics.
"We went to great lengths to capture the full range of influences of the Clean Power Plan," Price said on the call.
Reviewing EPA analysts' engineering data related to energy efficiency wasn't within the scope of the analysis, Price added in an email. "IPM, in particular, is well-known to likely consumers of our report, and in the interest of transparency and consistency we thought it would be helpful to use the IPM data as inputs for our analysis," he said.
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Former EPA Official Perciasepe, Colo.'s Rudolph Talk Power Plan Challenges, Multistate Options
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - TV
Are market-based approaches to complying with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan in line with the environmental goals established by the agency? During today's OnPoint, Bob Perciasepe, former deputy administrator of EPA and now president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and Martha Rudolph, director of environmental programs at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, discuss the options and challenges facing states as they work to prepare compliance plans for the Power Plan.Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello, and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today are Bob Perciasepe, former deputy administrator of EPA and now president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and Martha Rudolph, director of environmental programs at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Thank you both for joining me.
Bob Perciasepe: Great to be here, Monica.
Monica Trauzzi: Bob, a group of Democratic senators recently sent a letter to the National Governors Association pushing back against this increasingly popular idea of just saying no to EPA's Clean Power Plan. There's a lot of political and legal muscle behind this just say no idea. What would your advice to states be? States that are potentially considering this option, how would you advise them?
Bob Perciasepe: Well, first of all, it's unclear how much momentum there is behind this. There's certainly a lot of activity, and I think states always have this option on many things in the environmental laws to allow the federal government to do it for them, and I think that's the choice that states need to be thinking about. Do they want to sit down and think through their own plan and how they can best do it in their state or with partner states, or do they want to wait to see what the federal government will do? So I think that EPA is likely to put a model together of what they're likely to do, which will, I think, help people make that kind of a decision.
Monica Trauzzi: But some of the momentum surrounding just say no is based on this idea that the Clean Power Plan will not survive court challenges.
Bob Perciasepe: Yeah, well, again, I think that the track record of clean air litigation is pretty much in EPA's favor. Obviously no one knows what the courts will decide, and that's another thing. Do you want to play that roulette game, or do you want to sit down and chart your own -- your own destiny on clean power, and that is, I think, an essential decision, and I will venture that most states will do their own plan.
Monica Trauzzi: Martha, Colorado has a 35 percent emissions reduction target in the draft Clean Power Plan. What are some of the biggest challenges facing Colorado on getting coal power plants to be more efficient?
Martha Rudolph: Well, we've got about 60 percent of our power in Colorado is generated from coal, 20 percent is gas, about 11 percent comes from wind energy. We've got also a variety of utilities that provide energy to our citizens. Again, a little over half of the -- or 60 percent of the power is generated by two investment-owned utilities. The rest is split between municipal utilities and rural electric associations.
So our challenge is just -- when you're looking at the power structure and the energy structure and the -- you know, who are the players at that table, quite diverse. Interests are very broad. So the challenges we have are going to bring them all together, figuring out what works for Colorado. The investor-owned utilities are regulated by our energy regulator, the Public Utility Commission, so they're going to play a big role as well in helping us build the plan. We're going to use them, the energy office. We've got a lot of players. And then beyond that, you've got a number of citizen groups and other entities.
So the challenge for us is to figure out what's the best mix for what we need to do. I think we've got some different opportunities out there. There's different mixes. What we're hoping to do is get the utilities to -- we're encouraging them to get together to look at what they can do and what they're willing to do and hopefully bring that to us. We're going to start our stakeholder process in the summer, once the rule comes out, and we're hoping to hit sort of the ground running at that point, but we're hoping that they can -- they can share with us what ideas they have.
Monica Trauzzi: So is it possible to get the 60 percent of coal that you mentioned, to bring all of those power plants to the efficiency standards that EPA would like to see while still maintaining reliability?
Martha Rudolph: I think it's going to be -- you're talking about Building Block 1, and I think it's going to be very difficult. I think a lot of the utilities in Colorado, like they are in many states, have already done a lot to achieve that -- those heat rates that are in Building Block 1, so I think we're going have to be looking at other ideas. Trading is an idea that actually I've been looking at on a more modest scale than what RGGI states have done and what California has done, but on a scale that would allow credits to be traded, either intrastate or interstate. I think those are the options that we're going to be looking at. Basically, as I've heard it described, it's the -- sort of the Chinese menu of options, and you can bet that we're going to be looking at all of them.
Monica Trauzzi: So, Bob, Colorado's sort of in the middle of the pack in terms of emissions reduction targets. The challenges for many other states are far greater, though. They have much higher targets to hit. What does EPA need to do to sort of level the playing field in its final rule?
Bob Perciasepe: Well, certainly the approach that was taken is prescribed by the law, that EPA defines the best system of emission reductions, what are the pieces of it. We -- everybody's been calling it building blocks, but what are the pieces of it, and then they apply it to the situation that's in that state. So since every state is different, when you apply that system of reductions, whether it's heat rate improvement, efficiency, renewable mixes, when you apply it to that state, you get these different numbers. I think, obviously, things have changed since they proposed the rule. They've gotten a lot of comment. They'll be looking at how they adjust those numbers.
Monica Trauzzi: And Martha mentioned this idea of trading and talking to other states, so there are some states, though, that say multistate options are not a good fit for them. Are there certain states where that multistate option is a better fit, and have you identified some states where it just wouldn't work?
Bob Perciasepe: I think multistate options are solid things that should be on the menu, as Martha said, that every state looks at. And I think one of the observations that I have is that this is not a binary choice where we don't do any kind of interstate work or we do all interstate work. There are many things in between, and this is what Martha was just talking about, and many states are now looking -- well, we already trade renewable emission credits across states. What if we start doing some of these other things? Not do the full thing, but do some of it so that you get some regional equalization and sharing of responsibility and accountability. I think there's a lot of fruit there. We had a forum today where we talked about these ideas with some of the power companies and with some of the state environmental directors, so there's a lot of opportunity for working together between business and states on that.
Monica Trauzzi: And, Martha, are market-based approaches in line with the environmental goals established by EPA?
Martha Rudolph: I think they definitely are. I mean, EPA, this is a pretty remarkable rule where EPA has allowed states immense flexibility to figure out what works for them, and I certainly think that market-based approaches is an option that has worked for many states in the past and likely will be chosen and work for states in the future.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, very interesting. Thank you both for joining me today.
Martha Rudolph: You're welcome.
Bob Perciasepe: Great to be here. Thanks.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
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EPA Celebrates Victories Over Pollution
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is celebrating and taking credit for major reductions in pollutants that once harmed human and animal health.
In a post on the website Grist Tuesday, EPA head Gina McCarthy highlighted “4 big pollution problems EPA has (mostly) fixed already.”The post runs through a short history of acid rain, leaded gasoline, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and air pollution.
“The dangers they posed were real, but you probably haven’t heard about them in a while,” McCarthy wrote. “There’s a good reason for that: We put smart policies in place to fix them.”
The post was timed to precede Wednesday’s celebration of Earth Day.
But it also serves to back up the EPA’s argument that protecting the environment can go hand in hand with economic progress.
“Despite the doomsday warnings from some in the power industry that the regulations would cause electricity prices to spike and lead to blackouts, over the last 25 years, acid rain levels are down 60 percent — while electricity prices have stayed stable, and the lights have stayed on,” she wrote in the acid rain section.
McCarthy also took the opportunity to promote the EPA’s plan to cut the power sector’s carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.
“When we finalize our Clean Power Plan this summer, we’ll not only cut carbon pollution from power plants, our nation’s largest source, but we’ll also reduce those other dangerous pollutants and protect our families’ health,” she said. “When we act, we also help safeguard communities from the impacts of climate change — like more severe droughts, storms, fires, and floods.
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Moniz’s Energy Review Goes Bold
Apr 21, 2015 | PoliticPro
By Darius Dixon
The Obama administration called Tuesday for a multibillion-dollar effort to upgrade the nation’s aging energy network — including steps to replace aging natural gas pipelines, rein in greenhouse gas emissions and reflect the realities of a world where U.S. oil and gas production are surging while wind and solar power are on the rise.
President Barack Obama’s so-called Quadrennial Energy Review also calls for measures to make the electric grid more resilient, improve measurements of methane emissions from natural gas systems, boost coordination of crude oil and other products shipped by rail and rethink the release authorities of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Vice President Joe Biden, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Obama science adviser John Holdren are set to make the announcement official Tuesday afternoon in Philadelphia.
Among the review’s panoply of recommendations, the administration suggests that the Energy Department should create a competitive program to accelerate the replacement of pipelines and enhance maintenance programs for natural gas pipeline distribution systems. That effort, costing $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion over 10 years, should also “provide financial assistance to states to create incentives for cost-effective improvements,” the administration said.
As POLITICO reported Monday after a three-month investigation, spills, leaks and explosions from oil and gas pipelines caused a total of $5.5 billion in damage during the past 12 years, while efforts to prevent accidents have been hampered by weaknesses of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. It wasn’t immediately clear how far the steps outlined Tuesday would go toward addressing those problems.
The energy review also calls on DOE to coordinate with other federal agencies and states to create a reserve of electric transformers as a backup against losses of the equipment, which is highly specialized, expensive and difficult to manufacture.
The review is designed to bring some needed order to the energy sector’s piecemeal approach of tackling issues, in which various agencies, states and administrations and parts of the private sector handle challenges without necessarily taking into account how they may affect other industries. One case-in-point: the U.S. oil boom, which has shifted much of the nation’s oil production from the Gulf of Mexico to North Dakota’s Bakken shale formations, creating choke points across the rail network in the U.S. heartland and forcing crude oil to share limited space on the rails with agricultural shipments and coal deliveries.
To help address the congestion, the QER is pushing for a new grant program at the DOT dedicated to improving energy transportation infrastructure connectors. It’s called Actions to Support Shared Energy Transport Systems.
The administration would like to fund the program with up to $2.5 billion in 10 years, in the hopes of leveraging another $4 billion to $5 billion in non-federal money. Similarly, the QER calls on Congress to fund work at DOE’s Energy Information Administration to fill in the gaps in data that deal with the transportation of energy commodities.
Even so, the fact sheet says the nation needs to expand the definition of “energy security” to include a variety of fuels — not just oil, the fuel that has virtually defined the term since the energy crises of the 1970s. “It is clear… that energy security needs to be more broadly defined to cover not only oil but other sources of supply, and to be based not only on the ability to withstand shocks but also to be able to recover quickly from any shocks that do occur,” the sheet says.
The review even studied the role of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the mammoth fuel-distribution network that the U.S. government manages to guard against interruptions to the international oil supply. The study calls on DOE to analyze the appropriate size and configuration of the reserve and make infrastructure investments to its distribution systems. It also says Congress should revisit the reserve’s fuel release authorities to “allow the SPR to be used more effectively to prevent serious economic harm to the United States in case of energy supply emergencies.”
The review, which tapped more than 20 federal agencies, officially kicked off in January 2014 with a presidential memo putting the Energy Department in charge of heading the analysis and setting a January 2015 deadline for DOE to hand the results to the White House. DOE turned its work over on time, and the administration spent the last 2 1/2 months finalizing the document.
For months, administration officials have tried to walk the fine line of ginning up interest while tempering expectations: DOE wanted high participation and input but also sought to clarify that it’s not attempting to write the Grand Unified Theory of energy policy that resolves all of the nation’s woes. Nor is the QER the comprehensive study many initially thought.
Last fall, Moniz’s longtime policy chief, Melanie Kenderdine, told POLITICO that her boss didn’t want a “comprehensive” energy review. What was needed was a narrow, actionable document, she said.
Moniz has a long history with the QER concept: He was part of the panel of scientists that suggested the idea to the Obama White House before he became energy secretary. Holdren has quipped that Moniz has played the quarterback to the QER as well as its receiver.
Unlike with the Quadrennial Defense Review that the Pentagon conducts every four years to plan for its long-term needs, the energy sector is largely locked up in private hands and overseen by states, making industry and local buy-in a critical piece of the QER’s fate (Also, unlike the defense review, the Obama White House plans to have a new QER next year). The review’s recommendations — such as the pipeline replacement program and a plan to modernize the electric grid with financial incentives to states — reflect what Kenderdine said the other goals were: Focus on the federal toolbox and how to help the states.
A large part of the QER rests with trying to imbue the process with some sense of longevity, and the well-seasoned analysts brought to DOE to execute the project have no interest in producing a report that effectively becomes a doorstop. One key to keeping the QER alive is to spend the final 20 months or so of the Obama administration getting states hooked onto at least a few of its ideas and hope they carry some of the momentum.
The other major hurdle, of course, will be to see if the review has any legs in a Congress, where both chambers are held by Republicans with their own ideas about energy policy.
One thing people will be watching for is whether any of the QER ideas get folded into the broad infrastructure legislation the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to craft this year.
So this front, like the discussions over Iran’s nuclear program, may also become another test of Moniz’s reputation on Capitol Hill, particularly with Republicans.
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Obama Wants Billions to ‘Modernize’ Energy Infrastructure
Apr 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration released a report Tuesday calling for billions of dollars to “modernize” and “transform” the nation’s energy infrastructure.
The plan comes from the findings in the first installment of the Energy Department’s “Quadrennial Energy Review,” which it hopes to write every four years.
The report describes a system of energy transportation, storage and distribution that is largely based on decades-old principles.
Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz are traveling to Philadelphia to speak at Peco Energy Co., a local utility, and promote the report and its recommendations.
Federal officials complain in the 348-page report that the energy infrastructure system does not fit into current needs regarding domestic energy production, renewable energy, resilience needs, climate change and international security, among other concerns.
The report highlights domestic energy changes, the moving balance of imports and exports, renewable energy shifts and greenhouse gas reduction as some of the top changes that have happened in the last decade regarding energy.
“The United States has the most advanced energy systems in the world, supplying the reliable, affordable and increasingly clean power and fuels that underpin every facet of our nation’s economy,” the White House said in unveiling the report.
“But our energy landscape is changing dramatically. Solar electricity generation has increased 20-fold since 2008, and electricity generation from wind energy has more than tripled,” it said. “During that period, the United States has also become the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas combined.”
The administration is asking in the report for billions of dollars to upgrade the “resilience, reliability, safety and security” of energy infrastructure.
It says it would cost up to $3.5 billion over 10 years to replace natural gas pipelines and improve maintenance.
The Energy Department also wants to spend up to $5 billion to support state “energy assurance” pipeline programs, to help them protect their energy infrastructure from various threats.
The administration calls for nearly $4 billion to modernize the electrical grid, as well as $2 billion to promote carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, along with pipelines to move the gas.
The billions in recommended upgrades would bolster infrastructure projects at the state and local level as well as in the private sector, White House energy and climate adviser Dan Utech said on a conference call. He cited natural gas distribution lines, which many states have begun overhauling on their own, as an example.
“We think there is an opportunity there, with federal funds, to really try to nudge that process in a new direction and really accelerate that work,” Utech said. “Most of the proposals we have for new spending are of that variety.”
House Republicans countered the White House proposal by noting their own work on energy infrastructure issues session, including approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, reforming natural gas pipeline permitting and expediting liquefied natural gas exports. The bills had varying degrees of bipartisan support, and a spokesman for Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called for Obama's support.
Utech said the administration would look for agreement with Congress on recommendations within the report, some of which were included in Obama’s 2016 budget request.
“We have a set of recommendations, some of those are things we can implement as an administration, others are proposals that are included in our [fiscal] ’16 budget, and others are proposals that go beyond what’s in our ’16 budget,” he said. “We are eager to engage with Congress and to see where we can find common ground. We think that this is a very important area for working together.”
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Biden Visits Philadelphia to Highlight Energy Plan
Apr 21, 2015 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The White House on Tuesday released a four-year energy plan designed to fight climate change, modernize power plants and find other ways to ensure the nation a steady supply of safe energy.
Vice President Joe Biden is planning to visit Peco Energy Co. in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the administration’s Quadrennial Energy Review.
The report said the U.S. has become the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas combined as its dependence on foreign oil declines.
The review also found that electricity from solar sources has increased 20-fold since 2008, while the amount of wind energy produced has tripled.
Administration officials have been meeting with major utility firms, experts and other stakeholders to assess the nation’s energy situation and analyze future needs.
“Responding to these trends and issues ... will require that we address the growing vulnerabilities posed by climate change, the evolving energy mix, cyber and physical threats, growing interdependencies, aging infrastructure, and workforce needs,” the White House said in a press release Tuesday accompanying the report.
Officials say the challenges ahead include protecting energy plants from cyber and physical threats; moving liquid fuels and electricity from supply regions to demand centers; and preparing workers for 21st century jobs in energy industries.
“Approximately 1 million people were employed in energy transmission, storage, and distribution jobs in 2013. By making smart investments, there is the potential to support 1.5 million additional energy sector jobs,” the White House said.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and John Holdren, policy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, plan to join Biden in Philadelphia.
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2 Democrats Want to Stop Fracking on Public Land
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Two Democratic House members want to stop hydraulic fracturing and some other drilling activities on federal land.
Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin are holding a press conference tomorrow to introduce a bill to ban fracking on future leases. Food and Water Watch calls the legislation "the strongest federal bill against fracking introduced in Congress to date."
The bill is unlikely to pass a Republican-controlled Congress. Even less restrictive bills failed to gain traction in Congress when it was controlled by Democrats.
Schakowsky and Pocan introduced the bill late last year during the lame-duck session. Aides said they are intending to make a more concerted effort this year.
If it were passed, it would prevent fracking, the use of fracking fluid or acidization (another form of well "stimulation") for oil and gas production on new federal leases.
It would not stop all future oil and gas drilling, just the methods involving hydraulic fracturing. But most modern oil and gas operations involve some sort of fracturing or other stimulation.
Tomorrow's press conference is to include representatives of Food and Water Watch, the American Sustainable Business Council, Progressive Democrats of America, and the Center for Biological Diversity.
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Okla. Science Agency Links Quakes to Oil
Apr 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Mike Soraghan
The state agency in charge of determining the cause of Oklahoma's earthquake swarms announced today that it is "very likely" that the shaking has been caused by oil and gas activity.
The statement posted this morning resolves contradictory statements by scientists at the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) (EnergyWire, April 20). It also comes as the survey, part of the University of Oklahoma, seeks to show that a leading donor did not sway its science (EnergyWire, April 15).
Oklahoma had 585 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater last year, and is on track to have more than 800 this year. Before 2009, it averaged one to three a year. OGS said the state is now averaging 2.5 such quakes each day.
"The OGS considers it very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those in central and north-central Oklahoma are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells," the agency's statement said.
In response, the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (OIPA) conceded a "possible relationship" between earthquakes and the industry.
"We are confident that the cooperation between public and private entities will offer a rational and reasonable response to seismic activity concerns," said Kim Hatfield, chairman of the Regulatory Committee for OIPA, the state's main oil and gas trade group, in a statement.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency in charge of regulating oil and gas in the state, said the facts in today's statement have already been incorporated into its decisionmaking on new disposal wells (EnergyWire, March 9).
"There will no doubt be more steps to take, and all options available to the Commission are on the table," said the statement from the three-member elected commission. "There is no issue that has a higher priority for this agency, and the continuing work and commitment of OGS is central to this effort."
Corporation Commission officials, though, have said some aspects of the situation are beyond their control and in the hands of the state Legislature. Legislators, though, have not acted. No legislation related to man-made earthquakes or disposal wells was introduced this year, though it has moved to protect industry from municipal ordinances.
The cause of the quakes has been a tricky subject for both scientists and politicians in Oklahoma, where petroleum production is woven into the social and economic fabric. The state Capitol grounds sport a working oil well, and state officials estimate 1 in 5 jobs is tied to the oil and gas business.
Earlier this year, Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said she believed most of the earthquakes are natural.
"We know a lot of it's just natural earthquakes that have occurred since the beginning of the earth," Fallin told the Tulsa World, "but there has been some question about disposal wells."
But in conjunction with today's announcement, the Fallin administration today rolled out a new "Earthquakes in Oklahoma" website that cites the new OGS position.
"Seismologists have documented the relationship between wastewater disposal and triggered seismic activity," the website states.
Today's statement from State Seismologist Austin Holland and interim OGS Director Richard Andrews was careful to stress that it is not attributing the surge in shaking to hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
"The primary suspected source of triggered seismicity is not from hydraulic fracturing, but from the injection, disposal of water associated with oil and gas production," the statement said. Fracking can be a source of wastewater, the statement said, but "this volume represents a small percentage of the total volume of wastewater injected in disposal wells in Oklahoma."
Seismologists have made a stronger connection to a practice called "de-watering," in which huge volumes of water are sucked from old oil fields. In the process, perfected by New Dominion LLC, the oil is separated out and the water gets injected back deep underground.
But fracking is a key part of production in the Mississippi Lime play, which straddles a section of the Oklahoma-Kansas border where earthquakes have become common. Production in the Mississippi Lime also produces much more waste fluid than conventional drilling.
OGS officials made no mention of the state's largest recorded earthquake, a magnitude-5.7 temblor in November 2011 near Prague, Okla., that injured two people and damaged hundreds of buildings. The U.S. Geological Survey and numerous academic seismologists have attributed it to injection wells, but OGS has rejected those findings.
The statement replaces a "Position Statement on Triggered or Induced Seismicity" from 2012 pointing toward natural causes as the reason for the surge in shaking.
"While we are studying the possibility that some of this activity could be related to oil and gas operations, it is unlikely that all of the earthquakes can be attributed to human activities," the statement says.
That statement had been cited at times by OIPA when questions were raised about disposal wells and earthquakes.Shifts at agency
Today's statement was not entirely unexpected. In interviews and appearances, Holland has been pointing in recent weeks toward the position that the surge in quakes is linked to oil and gas activity.
"It appears quite likely most of the seismicity we're seeing in northern and north-central Oklahoma is most likely due to this wastewater disposal," Holland said at a televised forum on earthquakes in Oklahoma City last month. "It's hard to explain this as a natural variation."
He had also been a co-author on studies that linked quakes to oil and gas activity.
But when Holland and the survey endorsed a similar position in 2013, he was called into a "coffee" meeting with Continental Resources Inc. founder Harold Hamm, a major donor to the university that houses OGS. At the time, Continental had made it known to Holland that company executives did not like "induced seismicity" being discussed (EnergyWire, March 3).
The change in position comes amid other key shifts at OGS. Randy Keller, who served as director of the survey as the number of earthquakes surged, retired at the end of last year. Larry Grillot, dean of the OU college that houses OGS, will retire when the school year ends. Their successors have not been announced.
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