Preview Newsletter
ACC AM May 25
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(ACC Mentioned) Fast Track and the Filthy Rich
May 24, 2015 | Liberation News
By Jeff Bigelow
On May 22, after years of pressure by President Obama and big business, the U.S. Senate passed Fast Track authority authorizing the president to negotiate trade agreements. Fast Track means that any such agreement would be brought to Congress for a vote but without any possibility of amendment or filibuster. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Production Flat in April; Remains up Over a Year Ago
May 22, 2015 | Chem.Info
According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) was flat in April, as measured on a three-month moving average (3MMA). This followed an upwardly revised flat growth rate in March and a 0.2% gain in February. Also measured on a 3MMA basis... -
(ACC Mentioned) Senators From Great Lakes States Offer Bill to Ban Microbeads
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
A bipartisan group of senators from Great Lakes states introduced a companion bill to House legislation yesterday that would ban plastic microbeads in personal care products. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's bill -- co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Sens. Rob... -
(ACC Mentioned) Lobbyists Spent $190 Million for Bill That Protects Chemical Companies, Not Consumers
May 22, 2015 | AlterNet
What do you get when you let the chemical industry write a “chemical safety” bill? A bill that protects chemical companies, not consumers. The last time Congress passed a chemical safety bill — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — was in 1976. The TSCA “was broken from the start,” according to the Environmental Working Group... -
(ACC Mentioned) Eye On NY: Why Did Nozzolio Withdraw As Cosponsor Of Bill To Ban Chemicals In Kids Toys?
May 24, 2015 | Auburn Citizen
By Robert Harding
One day, state Sen. Michael Nozzolio was a cosponsor of a bill, the Child Safe Products Act, which would allow the state Department of Environmental Conservation to ban certain chemicals from being used in children's products. The next day, he wasn't. Why the sudden shift? Nozzolio, R-Fayette, says he's worried about a couple of provisions in... -
Stronger Regulation of Toxic Chemicals
May 25, 2015 | The New York Times
Both houses of Congress are moving to reform the notoriously weak Toxic Substances Control Act, which is supposed to ensure the safety of chemicals used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products. The measures under consideration have strong bipartisan support and are thus likely to provide the first significant reforms to the law... -
Fighting Pollution From Microbeads Used in Soaps and Creams
May 22, 2015 | The New York Times
By Rachel Abrams
Stiv Wilson is not much of an exfoliator. Mr. Wilson, a 42-year-old environmental advocate, lives on a sailboat, wears flip-flops and doesn’t care much for personal care products like fancy creams and moisturizers. But to the companies that make those products, some of the largest corporations in the world, Mr. Wilson tends to be more... -
In The News
May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has added bisphenol A to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals, known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity. The decision follows a determination made by OEHHA’s advisory panel, the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DART-IC), as the “state’s -
Senate Dems Demand OSHA Investigate Nail Salons
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Lydia Wheeler
Senate Democrats Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.) are calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate dangerous working conditions at nail salons in their states following a report in The New York Times earlier this month. -
Electronics: Nine Years of Greener Gadgets
May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Today, there are considerably more electronics products that are free from hazardous chemicals than there were in 2006. This is the result of both legislation and intense campaigning from environmental and consumer organisations, which have put the electronics industry under pressure to phase out certain chemicals. -
Best Practice in Developing GHS Conforming Labels
May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Gil Traverse
Developing and maintaining a compliant hazard communication system is challenging. Detailed knowledge of the regulatory landscape is essential to ensure conformance with the myriad of regulatory obligations impacting businesses today. Global companies, in particular, must have a comprehensive plan in place. -
PHMSA Orders Shutdown of Pipeline In Aftermath of California Crude Oil Spill
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Plains Pipeline LP must shut down its California pipeline whose failure led to the release of between 1,700 and 2,500 barrels of heavy crude oil in Santa Barbara County, Calif., according to a federal order. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will require the company to review and correct related ... -
After Spill, Markey Calls for Pipeline Safety Hearing
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee should hold a pipeline safety hearing soon, in light of a recent California pipeline spill and an upcoming law reauthorization, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said. The committee needs to understand the current state of domestic pipeline infrastructure and the effectiveness of the pipeline safety ... -
Feds Order Company Behind Calif. Oil Spill To Take Safety Steps
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Federal officials issued a “corrective action order” Friday, forcing the company responsible for this week’s crude oil pipeline spill in California to fix various problems. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is ordering Texas-based Plains Pipeline to make any necessary safety improvements on the Santa Barbara County... -
EPA Working on Several Waste Rules For Expected Release Later in 2015
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Proposed rules concerning research projects at landfills, the regulatory classification of various treated woods and the management of hazardous waste pharmaceuticals are expected to be released by the Environmental Protection Agency for public comment in the second half of 2015, according to the updated regulatory agenda. -
There’s a Major Oil Spill in California. So Where’s the Outrage in D.C.?
May 22, 2015 | National Journal
By Jason Plautz
Santa Barbara's Refugio Beach, normally a crowded spot heading into the summer, will be more or less barren this Memorial Day, thanks to an oil spill this week that poured more than 100,000 gallons of crude into the ocean and onto the coast. Greens have jumped on the oil spill, which came after a rupture... -
Pipeline in California Oil Spill Ordered Shut Down, Tested
May 22, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Alejandro Lazo and Erin Ailworth
A recent inspection of the failed California crude pipeline could give federal regulators clues about why as many as 105,000 gallons of oil were allowed to spill along the Pacific coastline. The inspection, which involves running a device through the line to measure and record irregularities, was conducted May 5, but results haven’t been provided... -
Feds Resist Push For New Pipelines
May 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Obama administration is resisting a congressional push to establish new natural gas pipelines on federal lands in the eastern United States. Lawmakers have introduced legislation to establish pathways for future pipelines. Supporters say it'll speed up the permitting process for natural gas pipelines, helping the industry get its product... -
Interior Should Halt Arctic Drilling Permits, Including Shell Plans, Senate Democrats Say
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Obama administration should halt the approval process to allow Royal Dutch Shell Plc to explore for oil this summer in Alaska's Chukchi Sea and all other oil and gas drilling permits in the Arctic region, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and 17 other Democrats wrote in a May 22 letter to the Interior Department. -
Pieridae Energy's LNG Export Terminal From U.S. to Canada Authorized by DOE
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Pieridae Energy Ltd. will be able to export liquefied natural gas from the U.S. to Canada and other free trade agreement countries under a long-term, multi-contract authorization granted by the Department of Energy. The authorization allows Pieridae Energy to export natural gas from the U.S. to Canada for end use in Canada and/or... -
Agencies Delay Rules In Regulatory Agenda
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
It’s been less than 24 hours since the White House released its semiannual regulatory roadmap, and groups are combing through the rule-making agenda for the federal agencies. The Center for Progressive Reform said Friday it found 16 important rules that have been delayed. Among them are the Environmental Protection Agency’s new to... -
Groups Debate Energy Costs in EIA's Analysis of Clean Power Plan
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Manuel Quiñones and Emily Holden
U.S. EPA said today it would consider the U.S. Energy Information Administration's new report on the Clean Power Plant's impact on the country's energy landscape as it finalizes the proposal. EIA's long-awaited analysis said many states and utilities would seek to comply with the carbon limits for existing power plants by switching from coal-fired... -
Proposed EPA Carbon Rules Will Mean Higher Bills and Fewer Coal Plants, New Report Says
May 22, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder
A new report released Friday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration is reinvigorating a common debate in Washington over how to calculate projected economic impacts of regulations. The report, written at the request of House Science and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas), concludes that a proposed Environmental ... -
Coal’s Worst Fear Affirmed in Analysis of Obama Climate Plan
May 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jim Snyder and Tim Loh
A new government analysis of President Barack Obama’s signature effort to fight climate change affirms what critics suspected: the proposal could further weaken an already battered coal industry. Electricity generation from the carbon-intensive fossil fuel would fall by 90 gigawatts, more than twice the decline government analysts had... -
Efficiency, Renewables Key to Compliance With Power Plan; Coal Use to Drop, EIA Says
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Energy efficiency and renewable energy generation will become the dominant compliance strategy for states to meet their Clean Power Plan targets, and coal-fired power plant retirements will more than double under the rule, the Energy Information Administration said in an analysis. -
Companies Urged to Set Emissions Targets Based on Cuts Recommended by Scientists
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrea Vittorio
A group of nongovernmental organizations is looking to recruit 100 companies to set greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that match up with the cuts scientists say are necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change. The majority of the world's largest companies already have emissions reduction goals by now, but only... -
Revised EPA Regulatory Agenda Sets August Target For Utility GHG Rules
May 22, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA's just-updated Unified Agenda of pending regulations sets an August target for issuing a controversial final package of greenhouse gas (GHG) rules for power plants, while other major rules -- including a perchlorate drinking water rule and revised air toxics standards for the oil and gas sector -- are facing significant new delays. -
EPA Rule Requires 36 States to Revise Plans To Disallow Affirmative Defense Provisions
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industries in 36 states will no longer be insulated from Clean Air Act fines for excess emissions when equipment is starting up, shutting down or malfunctioning, under a final rule the Environmental Protection Agency issued May 22. -
EPA Reg Rolls Backs Air Pollution Exemptions For Industry
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is telling states to crack down on air pollution from plants during startup, shutdown and malfunction periods. The regulation unveiled Friday rolls back exemptions that some states gave for decades to industrial facilities, allowing them to exceed pollution limits during the unusual stages without... -
Business Leaders See Growing Pressure From Shareholders Over Climate Risks
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tara Patel and Stefan Nicola
Energy companies are facing increased scrutiny over their carbon emissions as pension funds worth billions grow anxious about the risks posed by climate change. At a business and climate conference in Paris, Philippe Desfosses, chief executive officer of ERAFP, a pension fund for French civil servants, warned of the risks posed by rising sea... -
Senators Warn DOE on 'Social Cost of Carbon'
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss, Hannah Northey, Manuel Quiñones and Annie Snider
Senate appropriators are looking to put the brakes on the Department of Energy's use of a controversial metric for estimating the benefits of cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The report accompanying the fiscal 2016 energy-water spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday instructs DOE not to "promulgate any... -
EPA Poised To Issue Landmark Water Regulations
May 24, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration is about to unveil an ambitious — and hotly disputed — plan to strengthen its authority over minor water bodies like wetlands, streams and ponds. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “waters of the United States" regulation, expected to be issued in the coming days, has become one of the most controversial... -
Canada Finalizes Rail Tank Car Rules To Align With U.S. Safety Standards
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada has finalized regulatory amendments creating new safety standards for rail tank cars used to transport crude oil and other flammable liquids, changes that generally are consistent with new standards in the U.S., it announced May 20. The final amendments to the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations establish a new class of rail...
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(ACC Mentioned) Fast Track and the Filthy Rich
May 24, 2015 | Liberation News
By Jeff Bigelow
On May 22, after years of pressure by President Obama and big business, the U.S. Senate passed Fast Track authority authorizing the president to negotiate trade agreements. Fast Track means that any such agreement would be brought to Congress for a vote but without any possibility of amendment or filibuster. The House of Representatives has to pass the same Fast Track authority for it to become law.
It goes without saying that neither the President nor Congress are fast tracking legislation for jobs and a real living wage. Nor are they fast tracking for housing the people can afford or to make health care free or to make the environment clean. None of them have proposed fast track legislation to put killer cops in prison or to make racism a crime.
So why is this being fast-tracked? The answer lies in profits and power.
“Free Trade” agreements mean freedom for banks, financial institutions, big corporations and capital in general to ignore all national boundaries in their drive for profit. They can ignore many national laws and regulations that have been won to protect workers and the environment.
On the other hand free trade means mass layoffs for workers. It means accelerating the drive to push wages, benefits and rights lower and lower as weaker standards are used as a battering ram against higher standards.
Over 700,000 workers lost their jobs in the U.S. in the wake of NAFTA. Millions in Mexico were displaced and driven deeper into poverty. Canadian workers also suffered. The one winner was big business and the financial institutions that control them. The same trends have been seen in the many other “free trade” agreements from Korea to Colombia.
This Fast Track legislation is designed to clear a road for two anticipated trade agreements: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement. Negotiations for both are being carried out in secret.
Secrecy and negotiations
The fact that the negotiations are secret is a clue that there isn’t anything good in the deal. And the negative consequences must be huge because these trade negotiations are more secret than any in the past.
The Obama administration says that the terms will be released 60 days before he signs the agreement. But by then the negotiations will be over and no Congressional action can amend the terms.
President Obama like every other president tries to paint trade agreements as acts which will create desperately needed jobs. But if that were really the case then the process would be open and transparent for all to see.
Democracy for the rich
Looking at the mechanics of how the government carries out the negotiations exposes the type of democracy that we have.
The United States is represented in these negotiations by the Office of the Trade Representative. President Obama appointed Michael Froman to head the agency. He came to that job from Citigroup where he was a CEO of one of the bank’s divisions and managed their investment/exploitation strategy for “emerging markets” aka Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Joining him in the top leadership is his deputy, Robert Holleyman. For the 13 years prior to his Trade Office appointment, he was the president and CEO of the trade group representing the biggest software companies like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.
Should either of these two falter in pursing the interests of the capitalist class, there are over 500 advisers who have been appointed to keep them in line. Nearly all of them come from big business or serve as their representatives. Each as a committee assignment to oversee the interests of capital in particular industries.
Here is a representative list of industries and some of the many companies assigned to the committees Trade Policy: Chamber of CommerceAerospace: Boeing and LockheedAuto: Ford, GM and NavistarTelecom: VerizonGrain: Dow AgIntellectual Property Rights: GE and J&J (Johnson and Johnson)Pharma and Chemicals: Abbott Labs, FMC and theTobacco: Tobacco AssociatesSweeteners: US Sugar CorpEnergy: Haliburton and ADMSteel: US Steel and NucorTrade and the Environment: U.S. Council for International Business
Also participating in every committee are the business associations. For example the American Chemistry Council, representing nearly every chemical corporation, is on the Pharmaceutical and Chemical committee.
There are a handful of unions represented among the over 500 “advisers” but their numbers show their insignificance. Further their participation is likely to be used as a cover for saying that workers were at the table, when the fact is that the table is hidden, the papers on it are secret and labor has no real power in that arena.
Currency wars and the origin of Fast Track
One of the issues in the Senate debates was whether the Senate should require the negotiators to ban “currency manipulation” by other countries. That is a little ironic because the U.S. frequently manipulates the value of the dollar compared to other currencies- and manipulation was a big part of what the U.S. was doing in the period when Fast Track was first created.
Fast Track authority first came into being in a bill introduced in the House of Representatives on October 3, 1973. This was a period when President Richard Nixon was asserting the need to keep White House tapes secret using logic similar to that used by Obama today but for a different purpose. The tapes would later reveal his role in the Watergate break-in. This was the same period when Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after being exposed for his role in a kickback scheme. The Fast Track bill was eventually signed by the unelected President Gerald Ford in January 1974, several months after Nixon resigned.
These resignations were aspects of a larger political crisis for the ruling class. Mass mobilizations had shaken the system and various crises gave rise to plans by Nixon and others for eliminating many of the democratic rights that people were accustomed to. Those plans were not put into effect but they were a measure of how deep the crisis was. Among other things the mass protests forced the passage of a law limiting presidential power to go to war.
The political crisis was just one of several interrelated crises. Underlying the political crisis was a crisis in the economy, a crisis with significant roots in wars- military as well as trade and currency.
World War II ended with the major imperialist powers trying to figure out how they could avoid trade wars between them from escalating into military wars. Trade wars including the tactic of devaluing a currency to gain a temporary advantage had been a part of the history of class society for a long time. They came up with an agreement known as Bretton Woods which was meant to lessen the likelihood of an inter-imperialist war and which at the same time helped to consolidate the role of the United States as the supreme imperialist power.
Many rounds of trade negotiations took place after the war with no significant change until the Kennedy Round of General Trade GATT talks. The round was named after Senator Ted Kennedy because he had gotten Congress to pass a Trade Expansion Act which gave the president significantly wider negotiating authority than ever before. The U.S. and Britain, Japan and the European Community bargained over trade terms and finally came up with an agreement in 1967 just before the expiration of presidential authority. Congress passed the terms of the Trade Agreement but modified them. This was an embarrassment for the U.S. and in part gave rise to the Fast Track legislation in 1973.
The 1974 Trade Act was not just a “correction” meant to eliminate democratic procedures (like the ability to amend) for passing Trade Agreements.
The massive unproductive war expenditures from the Korean War and especially the Vietnam War, along other factors created stagflation- or an economy with very high inflation (especially in the necessities of life), very high unemployment and very low general economic growth.
Nixon and his class looked for a way to respond that would increase profits and give U.S. business owners an advantage. In August 1971, Nixon imposed a wage freeze that was not just a freeze on wages but was a wage cut given high inflation. It was also a cut in real terms. For example, when the port workers went on strike Nixon used the Taft Hartley Act to force them back to work and then used the Wage Board to cut a 72 cent increase that the companies agreed to- back to 32 cents. Nixon’s several phases of wage freezes lasted for years.
At the same time as the 1971 wage freeze, Nixon devalued the dollar against other currencies and took the U.S. off of the gold standard. The U.S. was experiencing its first trade deficit in 80 years. Nixon’s goal was to return to the days when everything was coming the way of the U.S., that is coming into the pockets of U.S. big business.
Other countries were outraged by this currency manipulation and demanded compensation and other actions. After months of tense negotiations, the U.S. was able to get the other powers to agree to a new set of rules based on the devalued U.S. dollar.
Manipulating currencies or clipping the value of coins is an old trick used to gain advantage over competitors. In the period of imperialism where trade and foreign investment are tied to the banks and to the military industrial complex, these actions have greater consequences.
With the quadrupling of oil prices in the fall of 1973, and the collapse of the Franklin National Bank of New York, with extremely high inflation and unemployment, big business wanted the executives of their government to have a freer hand in negotiating trade deals that would benefit them and at the same time limit any resistance to those deals. That is the origin of Fast Track.
Trade deals and corporate power
The many trade agreements that have been negotiated since WWII show a clear trend toward reducing the rights of workers and communities in every nation and increasing the power of multinational corporations. The agreements create incentives for “off shoring” of jobs.
Many people are familiar with the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United which made it possible for corporations to have all of the rights of people- in fact more rights than people.
These trade agreements give multinational corporations rights as if they were nations. They can file complaints as private corporations saying that their rights under a public treaty have been violated and that they should be compensated. Under these agreements, corporations claim that they don’t have to abide by the laws of nations. They say that they are above any national law and that they can use these trade agreements to batter down any national law that gets in their way.
If a corporation believes that a trade agreement has been violated, then they file a case with a tribunal staffed by private attorneys. These lawyers then have the power to order governments to pay the corporations if local/national labor or environmental laws violate their “rights” to exploit labor or the land anywhere covered by the trade agreement. This process already exists and will be used and likely expanded under the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement that they are pressing for now.
As an example of what can happen, in 2009 Chevron sued the government of Ecuador to counter an Ecuador Court order that Chevron pay billions due to environmental damage and violations of Ecuadorian law. The Tribunal has been siding with Chevron and in 2013 even decided that its interpretation of the Ecuador constitution would hold versus the interpretation by Ecuador’s own high court.
Click here to see data on the the results of some of these Investor-State Disputes. The data show that corporations “have already won more than $3.6 billion in taxpayer money, with $38 billion still pending in claims, all of which relate to environmental, energy, financial regulation, public health, land use and/or transportation policies.”
Trade and the Asia Pivot–targeting China
President Obama tells the popular press that Fast Track and the Trade deals are about jobs. But his real message is that this is part of an economic war against China. He says that if “we” don’t write the trade rules, “then China will”.
Of course “we” are not writing those rules. They are being written in secret by the corporate enemies of workers. Even the “advisers” have long records of fighting against workers here in the U.S.
The President’s current push for this fast tracked trade deal is a part of a larger strategy. On November 17, 2011 Obama made a speech in Australia announcing a major military and economic strategic policy, referred to now as the “Asia pivot”.
He announced that within a few years most of the United States military would be re-positioned to target China and North Korea. On a military level changes took place quickly with military bases, joint military exercises, training, etc.
On the economic level the President acted quickly to implement this policy. In the previous month he had just signed the Korea, Panama and Colombia free trade agreements despite mass protests. But with that done, he then gathered other Asian leaders and announced a general outline for the Trans-Pacific Partnership which was clearly targeting China.
So much propaganda is used against China to create the image that Chinese workers are stealing U.S. jobs! But this is only a diversion. It is U.S. corporations that are outsourcing.
More importantly this argument is used as an excuse to pass trade agreements that vastly increase corporate power against workers and communities here in the U.S. and abroad.
President Obama’s military and economic war plans against China will do nothing to bring workers a decent living wage, or respect on the job and union representation. They will do nothing to bring jobs to oppressed communities. In part that is why much of the organized labor movement is opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. And it is certainly why all of us should be involved in mobilizing against it.
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(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Production Flat in April; Remains up Over a Year Ago
May 22, 2015 | Chem.Info
According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) was flat in April, as measured on a three-month moving average (3MMA). This followed an upwardly revised flat growth rate in March and a 0.2% gain in February.
Also measured on a 3MMA basis, chemical production by segment was mixed. There were gains in the output of coatings, chlor-alkali, pesticides, adhesives, consumer products, other specialties, industrial gases, synthetic rubber, plastic resins, and organic chemicals. These gains were offset, however, by declines in the production of fertilizers, acids, phosphates, sulfates, synthetic fibers, and pharmaceuticals.
Nearly all manufactured goods are produced using chemistry in some form or another. Thus, manufacturing activity is an important indicator for chemical production. On a moving average basis, manufacturing activity was flat in April, following declines in February and March. Production expanded, however, in several chemistry-intensive manufacturing industries, including appliances, motor vehicles, aerospace, rubber products, printing, and textile products.
Compared to April 2014, total chemical production in all regions was ahead by 4.4 percent on a year-over-year basis, a slowing comparison. Chemical production remained ahead of year ago levels in all regions.
The chemistry industry is one of the largest industries in the United States, an $812 billion enterprise. The manufacturing sector is the largest consumer of chemical products, and 96 percent of manufactured goods are touched by chemistry. The U.S. CPRI was developed to track chemical production activity in seven regions of the United States. It is comparable to the U.S. industrial production index for chemicals published by the Federal Reserve. The U.S. CPRI is based on information from the Federal Reserve, and as such, includes monthly revisions as published by the Federal Reserve. To smooth month-to-month fluctuations, the U.S. CPRI is measured using a three-month moving average. Thus, the reading in April reflects production activity during February, March, and April.
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(ACC Mentioned) Senators From Great Lakes States Offer Bill to Ban Microbeads
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
A bipartisan group of senators from Great Lakes states introduced a companion bill to House legislation yesterday that would ban plastic microbeads in personal care products.
New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's bill -- co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois -- would amend the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act to ban the use of plastic microbeads in cosmetics by Jan. 1, 2018.
The bill struck the right balance of protecting the Great Lakes while not burdening businesses, Portman said in a statement.
"Lake Erie is not only one of our precious natural resources, it's also essential for Ohio jobs and tourism," Portman said, "and our legislation takes appropriate steps to protect this important asset for Ohio."
Earlier this month, a House committee took up its bill -- H.R. 1321, or the "Microbead-Free Waters Act" -- which is the same as the Senate legislation (E&ENews PM, May 1).
Industry groups support the proposed microbeads restrictions. Many companies are already moving away from the products.
Gillibrand introduced a similar proposal last year, but it lacked bipartisan support. It was the same story for Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), whose House bill attracted only Democrats (Greenwire, June 19, 2014).
The Senate legislation must be taken up by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who leads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
A spokeswoman for Alexander didn't respond by publication time to a request for comment on the senator's position on the issue. Calif. state legislation
Even as trade groups like the American Chemistry Council and the Personal Care Products Council support federal legislation on microbeads, the groups are opposing a California bill that would provide stricter restrictions on them.
The California Assembly easily passed legislation, 58-11, this morning by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D) that would add a new section to the state's public resources code. The legislation would declare that "plastic pollution is an environmental and human health hazard and a public nuisance."
In addition, the measure would apply to any "intentionally added solid plastic particle" that's 5 millimeters or less in width, a broader definition than what's included in congressional bills. Both the House and Senate bills apply only to "synthetic plastic microbeads" and do not define the term.
The California legislation still must be approved by the state Senate before going to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for his signature.
The legislation Gillibrand introduced last year included a rulemaking provision directing that the Food and Drug Administration complete a final rule defining the phrase "synthetic plastic microbead" and determining which cosmetics products would be subject to the restrictions.
However, the California legislation's broader definition would rope in biodegradable plastic particles if they are the same size as synthetic plastic microbeads.
At the House hearing this month, John Hurson, the executive vice president for government affairs at the Personal Care Products Council, testified that this broad definition was unacceptable to his group.
Rather, legislation must "carefully define" microbeads and must not prohibit the use of non-synthetic materials, he said. Under those conditions, Hurson said, companies will be able to phase out the compounds.
"It's obviously going to be difficult and takes time, but it's not something these companies can't do," Hurson said.
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May 22, 2015 | AlterNet
What do you get when you let the chemical industry write a “chemical safety” bill?
A bill that protects chemical companies, not consumers.
The last time Congress passed a chemical safety bill — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — was in 1976. The TSCA “was broken from the start,” according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), because it grandfathered in thousands of chemicals already on the market. It was so “broken and weak,” says EWG, that it didn’t even allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban asbestos, a known cause of cancer.
Now, 39 years later, tens of thousands of new chemicals have been introduced, the majority of which have never been safety tested by the EPA. These chemicals, more than 80,000 of them, are in the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the homes we live in.
It’s time for reform. But unfortunately, S.697 — which still doesn’t address asbestos — falls far short of accomplishing that. That could have something to do with the fact that the chemical industry has spent $190 million lobbying for this bill. Democratic Sponsor Tom Udall’s (D-N.M.) campaign received $49,050 from the Chemical industry in the 2014 cycle, plus $23,500 from lobbyists employed by the American Chemistry Council. Republican sponsor David Vitter’s (R-La.) campaign received $20,600 in the 2014 cycle, and $14,300 from American Chemistry Council lobbyists. We need your voice to stop this bill.
On April 27 (2015), the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a rewritten version of S.697, sending it to the Senate floor for a vote. The revised bill gave slightly more protection to state chemical safety laws, by changing the grandfathered date to Jan. 1, 2015, instead of Aug. 1, 2015. The new version also no longer allows federal chemical rules to preempt state clean water and clear air laws.
But the bill is still inadequate, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.):
"The legislation does nothing to ensure that terrifying disease clusters of children's cancers are addressed, and the killer of 10,000 Americans a year — asbestos — was entirely left out of the bill," Boxer said. "I will continue to call attention to the flaws of the bill and the improvements that are needed to protect our families."
Boxer and her colleague Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced an opposing bill, which they say offers far better protection than S. 697, which they say cripples state efforts to regulate toxic chemicals, while leaving the federal government without the resources needed to properly safety test them.
One of the bill’s biggest shortcomings is that it allows the EPA to review no more than 25 chemicals in the first three years. At that pace, it would take more than a century to address the backlog of chemicals in need of review. We already know that some chemicals, such as Bisphenol A (BPA), are hormone disrupters, yet BPA is still found in baby food containers. As for thousands of other unregulated chemicals, the effects are unknown.
In the absence of federal action, states have taken the lead in monitoring toxic chemicals and setting safety standards for industry — 33 states have passed laws to include some form of monitoring or restrictions to harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, mercury, asbestos and BPA. S.697, though it will grandfather in many of these state laws, will hinder states from taking stronger action in the future.
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May 24, 2015 | Auburn Citizen
By Robert Harding
One day, state Sen. Michael Nozzolio was a cosponsor of a bill, the Child Safe Products Act, which would allow the state Department of Environmental Conservation to ban certain chemicals from being used in children's products.
The next day, he wasn't.
Why the sudden shift? Nozzolio, R-Fayette, says he's worried about a couple of provisions in the bill.
"Certainly I support the intent of the legislation, and may support the final bill, but believe concerns regarding certain additional grants of authority to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation by the proposal, as well as questions about the status of federal preemption, must be answered before I could join as a permanent cosponsor," he said in a statement.
The Child Safe Products Act would require manufacturers to disclose whether products contain potentially harmful chemicals and prohibit certain chemicals from being used beginning in January 2018.
Supporters of the bill say it's needed because federal laws are outdated and manufacturers continue to use cancer-causing chemicals in children's toys.
The Environmental Advocates of New York, a proponent of the Child Safe Products Act, believes lobbyists who represent the chemical industry may have affected Nozzolio's view of the bill.
"By reneging on safer children's products, Senator Nozzolio has proven that despite the chaos, Albany remains a place where deep-pocketed industries have greater influence than moms and kids," Saima Anjam, EANY's environmental health director, said in a statement.
"By turning his back on this critical bill for kids, Senator Nozzolio is out of step with the vast majority of his colleagues, and he has some explaining to do to the parents he was elected to represent."
Records indicate that Nozzolio's decision to withdraw as a cosponsor was made some time in the past week. His name appeared on a list of cosponsors obtained from the Legislative Retrieval Service and published May 14 on the Sierra Club's website.
One major industry group, the American Chemistry Council, opposes the Child Safe Products Act. The group spent more than $150,000 on lobbyists last year, including $80,000 to lobby legislators on "chemicals in toy products."
The council has made campaign contributions to several legislators, including $1,000 to Nozzolio in July 2014.
Despite the opposition from groups like the American Chemistry Council, Anjam noted that the measure has strong bipartisan support.
The bill is sponsored by state Sen. Phil Boyle, a Long Island Republican. As of Friday, there are 39 cosponsors ranging from some of the Senate's most liberal members to upstate conservatives, including state Sen. Patty Ritchie of Heuvelton and state Sen. Cathy Young of Olean.
The Assembly passed the bill in April by a 112-29 vote. Advocates hope the Senate will vote on the measure before the legislative session ends in June.
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Stronger Regulation of Toxic Chemicals
May 25, 2015 | The New York Times
Both houses of Congress are moving to reform the notoriously weak Toxic Substances Control Act, which is supposed to ensure the safety of chemicals used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products. The measures under consideration have strong bipartisan support and are thus likely to provide the first significant reforms to the law since it was enacted nearly four decades ago.
The measures are a substantial improvement over the current abysmal lack of enforcement, but neither would provide the public with what it needs most: speedy evaluations of the most worrisome chemicals among tens of thousands that have never been tested for safety. The Environmental Protection Agency has been hindered from regulating them by adverse court decisions, a lack of resources and weak provisions in the law itself.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bipartisan bill on April 28 by a hefty 15-to-5 vote despite strenuous objections by Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, whose stronger bill gained no Republican support. The bill approved by the committee has attracted 40 co-sponsors, 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats, a remarkable feat in a Congress that is typically gridlocked by partisan warfare.
The bill, whose chief sponsors are Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, would allow the E.P.A., when assessing chemicals for safety, to consider only health and safety impacts, not the cost or burden for manufacturers, as current law requires. It would mandate special protections for vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, infants, the elderly and chemical workers. And it would impose a new fee on chemical companies to bear more of the cost of evaluating and regulating chemicals.
At the insistence of Senate Democrats, the bill would allow states to use their own employees to enforce federal standards within their boundaries, providing additional manpower to police the chemical industry. It would send $18 million in annual fees paid by the industry directly to the E.P.A., not to the Treasury, providing a hefty boost to the agency’s $54 million budget for these purposes. And it would allow states to avoid a so-called dead zone in which they are pre-empted from acting once E.P.A. starts to analyze a chemical, a process that can take years, by allowing states to apply for a waiver that is likely to be granted.
Its most disappointing feature is the slow pace of designating high-priority chemicals that require safety assessments and low-priority chemicals that can be left alone. Five years after enactment, at least 25 high-priority chemicals must have been listed, an average of five a year. Agency officials say that with the extra $18 million in funding they could review 20 high-priority chemicals a year, and those chemicals would be ones that the agency considered most worrisome, not those for which the industry wanted to get the agency’s seal of approval.
Meanwhile, the House is considering a “discussion draft” that is supposed to lead to legislation. The draft won unanimous bipartisan support, 21 to 0, in a subcommittee. The House draft shuns the prescriptive approach of the Senate bill, which specifies many actions that the E.P.A. must take and deadlines it must meet, and instead takes a minimalist approach and tries to duck issues that might provoke a court challenge. Various provisions make it likely that under the House bill the agency would spend almost all its time evaluating chemicals that the chemical companies want assessed at their own expense, perhaps to gain a competitive advantage or relief from conflicting state regulations, rather than chemicals the agency might regard as posing the highest risk.
The Senate bill is stronger than the House draft in pushing the agency to take action, but neither is sufficient. Legislators in both houses need to ensure that the E.P.A. evaluates at least 20 high-priority chemicals a year of its own choosing, or even a lot more if additional financing can be found.
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Fighting Pollution From Microbeads Used in Soaps and Creams
May 22, 2015 | The New York Times
By Rachel Abrams
Stiv Wilson is not much of an exfoliator.
Mr. Wilson, a 42-year-old environmental advocate, lives on a sailboat, wears flip-flops and doesn’t care much for personal care products like fancy creams and moisturizers. But to the companies that make those products, some of the largest corporations in the world, Mr. Wilson tends to be more abrasive than the scrubs they sell.
For more than two years, Mr. Wilson, director of campaigns at the nonprofit group The Story of Stuff Project, has helped lead the fight against microbeads, tiny plastic balls used in face washes, moisturizers and toothpaste, which activists say wind up in the nation’s lakes and rivers. On Friday, the California State Assembly approved a measure to outlaw the use of the particles in what could become the strictest ban in the country.
Microbeads look like tiny, colorful dots suspended in cleansers and other personal care items. Manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble advertise their exfoliating power, offering consumers a little luxury in the form of a D.I.Y. mini-facial.
But when the beads are rinsed off, they flow through pipes and drains and into the water. By the billions.
The effect is similar to grinding up plastic water bottles, other products of concern to environmentalists, and pumping them into oceans and lakes. But because microbeads are small enough to be ingested by fish and other marine life, they can carry other pollutants into the food chain.
“Kind of like the Trojan horse effect,” said Dave Andrews, a senior scientist with the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “You’re increasing the quantity that’s ending up in the lower organisms, and then they could make their way up the food chain.”
Water treatment plants cannot process the nearly 19 tons of microbeads that may be washing into New York’s wastewater every year, according to a recent report from the office of the state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman. The State Assembly has approved a proposal from Mr. Schneiderman’s office to ban microbeads, but the bill has stalled in the State Senate.
Four states — Illinois, Maine, New Jersey and Colorado — have enacted legislation to restrict the use of microbeads, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, while bills are pending in others, including Michigan, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon. If the California bill becomes law, the state would ban not only synthetic particles but the biodegradable ones that many companies have been developing as alternatives.
Environmentalists like Mr. Wilson say many of those bills do not go far enough, because they allow companies to come up with biodegradable, but insufficiently tested, alternatives. There is not enough evidence to show that these new microbeads dissolve in the natural marine ecosystem, they say.
One such alternative, polylactic acid, can degrade faster than other plastics, but only under extreme heat and other conditions not typically found in marine environments, environmental advocates say.
“Everything on earth is biodegradable on a geological time scale,” Mr. Wilson said. “It’s not biodegradable in a meaningful time frame.”Lisa Powers, a spokeswoman for the Personal Care Products Council, an industry trade group, said in an email, “There is considerable global, cutting-edge research efforts focused on developing biodegradable plastics in accordance with internationally accepted standards.”
The trade group removed its objections to the California proposal and has a “neutral” stance, Ms. Powers said.
The bill is Mr. Wilson’s second chance to win the war against microbeads in California. An earlier attempt passed the State Assembly but failed by one vote in the State Senate last year. The bill that passed in the Assembly this week contained concessions that supporters hope will improve its chances in the State Senate.
In March, Representatives Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan, and Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, introduced federal legislation to ban synthetic plastic microbeads effective in January 2018.
But environmental advocates may get their way even if only a few large states enact such bans. Consumer product companies cannot afford to make multiple versions of the same product and could decide to manufacture the version that will pass muster under the strictest state standard.
“The only way that federal legislation is going to pass is if the environmentalists, wastewater and industry all agree on a policy, and we haven’t gotten there yet,” said Mr. Wilson, who has helped draft similar legislation in a number of states. “You don’t need a federal solution to this on a global scale.”
Consumers have more outlets than ever to voice concerns about products, particularly online, where a whisper of danger can turn into a roar. Seeing the effect on their sales, manufacturers have increasingly faced pressure to respond to those concerns.
But reformulating products to remove objectionable ingredients can be time-consuming and expensive. And companies say they do not want microbead legislation that limits them further.
“We believe the current bill in California is overly restrictive, inhibits innovation and does not allow for current and future advancements in biodegradable exfoliate alternatives,” said Carol Goodrich, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson, in an email. In 2013, Johnson & Johnson pledged to remove polyethylene microbeads, the most common type of microbeads, from its personal care products by 2017.
Procter & Gamble, another global consumer products giant, has made a similar pledge. Unilever, the multinational consumer goods company, phased out the use of plastic microbeads from its Dove soaps and other products at the beginning of the year.
More than 3,000 products now contain polyethylene, according to the Environmental Working Group’s online database.
Mango Materials, a start-up based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is developing what it hopes is a promising, environmentally friendly microbead alternative. The new ingredient would be polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA, a naturally occurring plastic produced by mushrooms.
The PHAs could dissolve in many marine ecosystems within a month, said Molly Morse, chief executive and co-founder of Mango Materials.
But while she supports initiatives to make California safer, she is concerned that the proposed bill might ban her product, too.
“The wording of the bill makes me nervous,” Ms. Morse said in a phone interview. “I’m a small business with employees, and we love this application and we’re thoroughly motivated by the positive effects our product can have on the environment.”
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May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has added bisphenol A to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals, known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity. The decision follows a determination made by OEHHA’s advisory panel, the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DART-IC), as the “state’s qualified experts”, that “BPA was clearly shown through scientifically valid testing, according to generally accepted principles, to cause reproductive toxicity based on the female reproductive endpoint,” OEHHA said (CW 12 May 2015).
Instead of increasing uncertainty for business about which substances might be proposed for the REACH candidate list, EU General Court rulings issued two weeks ago actually boost predictability. This is the view of Echa on two court judgements that addressed the issue of how to decide which types of substances give rise to “an equivalent level of concern” to the types explicitly listed in REACH (Article 57) as qualifying for potential inclusion in the candidate list (CW 14 May 2015).
Lawyers say these two rulings by the EU’s General Court have “opened the door” for the inclusion in the candidate list of other classes of hazardous substances in addition to those explicitly listed in the REACH Regulation. The Regulation (Article 57(f)) says PBTs, vPvBs and category 1 CMRs can all qualify for the candidate list – but also substances for which there is scientific evidence of probable serious health or environmental effects, which give rise to “an equivalent level of concern” to the types explicitly listed (CW 6 May 2015).
A request by DEHP manufacturer Deza to suspend the phthalate’s identification on the candidate list as an “endocrine disruptor for the environment” has been rejected by a tribunal of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). DEHP is already listed on Annex XIV of REACH as a category 1B substance toxic for reproduction. However, Echa’s Member State Committee (MSC) last year agreed unanimously to also identify it as an environmental endocrine disruptor (CW 14 May 2015).
The House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy voted 21-0 on 14 May to send a revised draft of a bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act for full committee consideration. This marks another significant milestone in congressional efforts to modernise the decades-old law. All Democrats present at the markup of the TSCA Modernization Act of 2015 backed the bill, even though they noted it needed some more fixes before the full Energy and Commerce Committee takes it up for consideration. Several of them applauded subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Illinois), the bill’s author, for collaborating with the Democrats and considering their input in revising the original draft (CW 15 May 2015).
The bipartisan bill put forward by Senators Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been supported by two thirds (65%) of those responding to a Chemical Watch poll. A quarter prefer the Boxer-Markey bill, while 10% felt neither are better options for reform. We asked our readers in the global, expert community specialising in chemicals risk management if they prefer the Udall-Vitter bill, or the counter bill put forward by Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Edward Markey (CW 23 April 2015).
The UN’s Conventions on chemicals and waste must move “from science to action”, with parties accepting the scientific recommendations prepared for them, a top UN official has said. Addressing the Triple Conference of Parties to the UN Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, which kicked off on 4 May in Geneva, Rolph Payet, executive director of the three Conventions, said: “We cannot keep postponing issues which are of national and global importance. We cannot afford to wait more than two years to address issues agreed to by our three main subsidiary bodies – the Open-ended Working Group [Basel], the Chemical Review Committee [Rotterdam] and the POPs Review Committee [Stockholm]” (CW 6 May 2015).
The cosmetics and personal care products industry supports federal legislation on the phasing out of microbeads in its products that sets “a national uniform standard that provides certainty for both consumers and businesses”, the US Congress has been told. Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, last week, John Hurson, executive vice president of the Personal Care Products Council, said federal policy can lend such certainty by setting “appropriate and pragmatic phase-out dates, appropriate definitions of synthetic microbeads, and the inclusion of over the counter drugs containing plastic microbeads” (CW 6 May 2015).
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Senate Dems Demand OSHA Investigate Nail Salons
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Lydia Wheeler
Senate Democrats Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.) are calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate dangerous working conditions at nail salons in their states following a report in The New York Times earlier this month.
According to the Times, the majority of manicurists suffer serious health issues from prolonged exposure to the chemicals used in nail and beauty products, including having babies with low birth weights, miscarriages and cancer.
In a letter to Assistant Secretary of Labor David Michaels, Blumenthal and Schumer demanded OSHA update its standards for chemical, ergonomic and biological hazards, including specific permissible exposure limits, or PELs, for the toxic trio of chemicals commonly found in nail polish — formaldehyde, toluene and dibutyl phthalate.
The senators said OSHA has not updated PELs since they were created in the 1970s and even then some were based on outdated and possibly flawed science.
“Your agency has an immediate and urgent duty to protect workers at nails salons by imposing strong remedial measures where existing and ongoing conditions endanger health and safety,” they said in the letter. “Such conditions are intolerable, morally and legally, but effective enforcement can stop them.”
Blumenthal and Schumer gave OSHA 14 days to answer what authority it needs from Congress to updates its PELs, what recommendations can be given to nail salons on how to better protect workers and what remedies OSHA can provide manicurists who have suffered from exposure to chemicals.
The senators also asked OSHA to provide a detailed inspection plan for enforcing existing and future standards.
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Electronics: Nine Years of Greener Gadgets
May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Today, there are considerably more electronics products that are free from hazardous chemicals than there were in 2006. This is the result of both legislation and intense campaigning from environmental and consumer organisations, which have put the electronics industry under pressure to phase out certain chemicals.
In Europe, the leading NGO pressure comes from Greenpeace’s campaign for Greener Electronics. Since 2006, the campaign, and its accompanying Guides to Greener Electronics, have been pushing companies to eliminate the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Greenpeace advocates that manufacturers introduce phase out plans, to strict timelines, and face being publicly confronted with “penalty points” if they fail to keep to them; an approach that has seen some success.
According to Greenpeace’s report, Green gadgets: designing the future, which was published last year, 15 of the 20 commitments from the big electronics firms to phase out PVC and BFRs were considered credible, with reasonable timelines. Similar commitments were also made to eliminate other hazardous chemicals – antimony and compounds, beryllium and compounds and phthalates, on slightly later deadlines, Greenpeace says.
In 2014, more than 50% of the mobile phone market was represented by brands – led by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Apple – that have completely eliminated the use of PVC and BFRs in these products, according to the report. In 2006, by comparison, virtually all mobile phones contained these compounds.
However, progress varies between product classes. Televisions are the campaign’s main remaining concern. There is so far only one PVC/ BFR-free television available on the market, manufactured by Philips. Greenpeace says the only market leader with a credible plan for future phase out is LG Electronics.
The PC market still uses PVC in cables and other external components. But according to the report, over 50% of the market would be represented by companies whose products are virtually PVC/BFR-free if the PC market leaders completed the phase-out of PVC in power cables.
Perfect timing
It seems that Greenpeace’s campaign has successfully driven the industry towards greener goals; but a lot of this progress has been due to timing, says Markus Stutz, EU environmental affairs manager at Dell. After all, 2006 was also the year the EU Directive on the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) in electrical and electronic equipment took effect. With RoHS, 2006 was a good time for industry to commit, he says: “We were expecting at that point in time that the next version of RoHS would cover PVC and BFRs.”
Before 2006, Dell had already restricted PVC and BFRs in plastic parts. That year, the company began to focus on phasing out remaining substances in components such as motherboards and cables. “At that time, Dell committed to a timeline for having one product per line of business free of PVC and BFRs,” Mr Stutz explains. “The Greenpeace campaign drove us and the whole industry to committing to certain dates for having their products free of these substances.”
Dell now has certain product lines free of halogens, PVC and BFRs. Mr Stutz says most progress was made with laptops. However, issues still persist for PVC-free power cables because of safety requirements and higher production costs. The company is currently fifth in Greenpeace’s ranking of companies that have stuck to their commitments most successfully.
Hewlett Packard (HP) takes the silver medal in this ranking, coming second only to Indian electronics company, Wipro. But the company’s environmental affairs manager, Hans Wendschlag, says HP’s commitment to greener products is largely due to factors other than the Greenpeace campaign.
“Ecolabels and public procurement specifications have been the main drivers behind green commitments in the IT industry,” he says. “We follow Greenpeace’s activities, and we want to meet their campaign goals, but obviously there are other factors that will have a greater business impact.”
HP supports ecolabel and green procurement criteria that restrict the use of certain substances and materials from use when they are restricted by law, or scientifically proven to be a risk. They also kick in when a technically feasible alternative exists that has been shown to be safer for use and to have less impact on the environment throughout the product lifecycle. The company assesses alternative chemicals through use of the Green Screen methodology. Up until now, HP has, according to Mr Wendschlag, assessed more than 160 substances through the tool.
A greener supply chain
Along with other companies, Dell and HP have launched supply chain initiatives to obtain information from their suppliers about what is in their products. Greenpeace flags this up as a key priority in its report. It says the elimination of hazardous substances from the products themselves is only “the first step in addressing the wider problem of hazardous substance use across the supply chain”. The NGO calls on companies to implement a hazard-based approach to supply chain emissions, building on the phase-out of substances of concern from products.
This should be one of the main priorities in our pursuit of greener electronics now, agrees Wayne Rifer, director of research and solutions at the Green Electronics Council. “Most manufacturers do not know what is in their products, because the supply chain is not set up to provide that kind of information,” says Mr Rifer. “Often we are dealing with substances we really know nothing about. We need to achieve more transparency, by establishing systems whereby the right choices about materials can be made.”
Mr Rifer says that campaigns like Greenpeace’s have, indeed, made a great impact on the industry, by “writing the agenda that major, and more proactive, manufacturers are pursuing”. On the flipside, the priorities set by the environmental community are not strictly based on scientific evidence, he notes. Individual environmental organisations, like Greenpeace, have used time-based commitments from manufacturers as a vehicle for moving forward, while major manufacturers insist that any substance restriction is based on sound science.
Additionally, he says, it is unquestionable that “manufacturers face massive trade-offs every time they pursue an environmental goal.” Mr Stutz agrees: “Products with alternative substances usually come with a significantly higher price tag. That’s one of the issues that is hindering substance replacement across the industry.”
Meanwhile, Greenpeace says its campaign has yet to gain traction in Asia, where an ever expanding market for smartphones is led by manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Micromax (GBB April 2015). Huawei has 7% of the global smartphone market, and newcomers Xiaomi and Micromax have seen huge growth in China and India respectively, taking over Samsung’s market leader position during the second quarter of 2014 in the world’s biggest smartphone markets.
With their market share on the rise, it is critical that these manufacturers introduce their own phase out plans, or compromise progress seen over the last few years, Greenpeace says; but since the release of the report little progress had been made by the Chinese consumer electronics companies, according to the NGO.
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Best Practice in Developing GHS Conforming Labels
May 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Gil Traverse
Developing and maintaining a compliant hazard communication system is challenging. Detailed knowledge of the regulatory landscape is essential to ensure conformance with the myriad of regulatory obligations impacting businesses today.
Global companies, in particular, must have a comprehensive plan in place. They must be privy to all changes in country requirements and meet these head-on in order to maintain compliance while doing business on an international scale.
Particular attention must be paid to the UN Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). While the initial premise behind GHS was to create harmonisation, countries are increasingly customising their adoption of the system. Additionally, many countries have set specific safety data sheet (SDS) and label template requirements, which means that the format of documents and labels takes careful research and planning to ensure that all specifications are followed.
Many countries’ GHS adaptations feature comprehensive and stringent labelling requirements, aimed at improving employees’ understanding of relevant hazard information. If workers properly understand the hazards and the required precautionary measures relating to the substances and mixtures they handle, exposure and accidents can be prevented.
These requirements, however, are inconsistent across country-specific GHS adaptations.
Labelling for GHS on a global basis
At a minimum, all GHS labels will have the following data elements: signal word;hazard statements;pictograms;precautionary statements;product identifier; andsupplier information.
However, there is significant diversity when comparing GHS labels around the world. The difference among labelling requirements can be illustrated by comparing several specific adaptations, for example, the US, the EU, South Korea and China.
Notable labelling requirements in the US
With the promulgation of HazCom 2012 adopting GHS, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) labelling requirements are very similar to the minimum GHS requirements, with a few notable exceptions. Osha requires a section on supplementary information that must identify the percentage of ingredients of unknown acute toxicity, when they are present in a concentration of equal to or above 1%. This section may also contain information on hazards not otherwise classified (Hnoc) or information on personal protective equipment (PPE). While there is no standard on how this section should appear on a label, it is essential that it does not contradict or detract from the required information.
A key change in the transition from previous hazard communication systems is the use of GHS red-bordered pictograms, which has presented a problem for suppliers without colour printing. With previous hazard communication systems, it was often possible to meet all the label requirements using traditional black-only ink, toner, or black thermal printers. A common strategy was to purchase label stock with pre-printed red borders and simply print the applicable black pictogram inside and leave any other red borders blank. However, Osha’s adaptation of GHS forbids the use of empty red borders on the GHS label, forcing suppliers to find alternative colour labelling solutions.
Since the initial release of HazCom 2012, Osha has refused to allow exceptions for labels for small containers (commonly in sizes 50ml or less), like Canada’s Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) and the EU’s CLP do. Osha insists that shipped container labels must show all the required elements no matter the size of the packaging. Instead, Osha kept what is known as the “practical accommodation approach”, which to many companies seems confusing, unclear and impractical. In order to show all the required labelling information under HazCom 2012, companies have been utilising expensive pull-out labels, fold back labels and tags for small containers. However, the fact remains that there are situations where these solutions are still too large for the container or simply not cost-effective.
In the autumn of 2014, Osha released a letter of interpretation providing guidelines on what workplace small container labels can look like.
It stated: “As a practical accommodation, where the manufacturer can show that it is not feasible to use pull-out labels, fold back labels, or tags, containing the full HCS 2012 required information,” the actual immediate container label must have, at minimum, the following: product identifier;appropriate pictograms;manufacturer’s name and phone number;signal word; anda statement indicating the full label information for the chemical is provided on the outside package.
Then the outside packaging of the small bottles or vials must contain at minimum:
all the applicable label elements, as defined in standard 29 CFR 1910.1200(f)(1);
it must be clearly marked to ensure all label elements are visible and it must clearly inform users that the small container must be stored in the outer bearing the complete label. The complete label must be maintained on the outer package (for example, it should not be torn, defaced or destroyed); and
the manufacturer must ensure that any alternative labelling used does not conflict with any other standards. As such, the outside packaging must not present a hazard while the material is being stored.
EU minimum label size requirements
In Europe, labelling and packaging requirements are set out in Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008, known as the Regulation on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures (CLP). They impact suppliers who manufacture, import, use or distribute chemical substances and mixtures.
While they align with GHS, the CLP requirements include some of the labelling concepts of the previous legislation, the dangerous substances Directive 67/548/EEC (DSD) and the dangerous preparations Directive 1999/45/EC (DPD), such as the small packaging exemptions.
Most notable in the EU, however, is the strict and somewhat confusing size requirements. Section 1.2 of Annex I to CLP defines the minimum required label size, based on the volume of the container, with the pictogram size being linked to these minimum dimensions. Nevertheless, the label should be large enough to contain all the elements defined by CLP while remaining legible. As a result, it may need to be larger than the minimum area specified; however, if a larger label is used, the pictograms only need meet the minimum required size for the container and do not have to scale with the actual label size.
The EU’s CLP also limits the use of P-statements to six, meaning that “not more than six precautionary statements shall appear on the label, unless necessary to reflect the nature and the severity of the hazards.”
South Korea has unique pictogram limitations
In Korea, article 5 of the Standard for Classification and Labelling of Chemical Substances and Material Safety Data Sheets requires manufacturers or importers of hazardous chemicals to attach or print a label in Korean, clearly showing hazard information on the container and package.
Article 6 outlines label content requirements, which should include a pictogram, signal word, hazard statement and precautionary statement. There are, however, many notable exceptions including for a container or a package for hazardous chemicals with a volume equal to or less than 100ml. In this instance, the package or container may be labelled with the chemical’s name, pictogram, and signal word and an indication that the material safety data sheet should be consulted for other information. However, a label should include supplier information if it is not on the container or package.
Korea also has unique pictogram requirements, stating that if a hazardous substance has more than four hazard or risk classifications, only four pictograms and statements may be indicated in the order of priority.
China label formating and small package exemptions
In China, the General Rule for Preparation of Precautionary Label for Chemicals (GB 15258 – 2009) outlines labelling requirements. Label elements consist of chemical identification, pictograms, signal words, hazard statements, precautionary statements, emergency phone numbers, supplier identification and reference consulting guiding words, among others.
The label should be inside a black border frame 1mm thick. The spacing outside the border frame should be 3mm in breadth. Another important requirement is that the emergency telephone number on the label must be within China and operational 24hours a day.
Chemical identification is the chemical name of a substance or its common name marked clearly in Chinese and English respectively. With regard to the pictograms, there is no minimum required size and the use of a black frame is acceptable for domestic use. Additionally China provides a simplified label format for containers with a volume of less than 0.1l.
BOX: Best practice in labelling
It is important that all containers should be appropriately labelled. As you move a product from its primary to a secondary container, replace shipping labels and include GHS information accordingly.
Keep abreast of regulatory reporting needs for all products. Regulations never stop evolving. The dynamic nature of law, mixed with changing product classifications, requires an extra stringent eye to ensure compliance with all regulatory responsibilities.
Carefully review the processes used for making labels available to workers and how updates to the labels are managed. Evaluate these processes to ensure that workers cannot accidentally access out-of-date labels and mislabel products.
Colour label printing solutions need to consider colour label requirements in conjuction with differences in pictogram size.
With previous hazard communication labelling, it was easy to have many different label templates. However, to manage the complex global requirements effectively, many companies are consolidating as much as possible and reducing the number that need to be managed for compliance.
Finally, every labelling process should be designed with a focus on business continuity. Disruptions to it can have severe production and shipping implications as well as present serious risks to workers so it is important to have a backup process in place in case of software or hardware failure.
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PHMSA Orders Shutdown of Pipeline In Aftermath of California Crude Oil Spill
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Plains Pipeline LP must shut down its California pipeline whose failure led to the release of between 1,700 and 2,500 barrels of heavy crude oil in Santa Barbara County, Calif., according to a federal order.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will require the company to review and correct related problems by efforts such as conducting pipeline tests during the next several months, PHMSA said in the corrective action order signed May 21.
Additionally, Plains Pipeline must submit plans related to remediation of the affected sites and restarting of its pipe and must assess the effectiveness and potentially update its emergency response and training plans.
PHMSA's order aims to protect the public, property and environment from possible hazards associated with the recent Plains' pipeline failure, with the “affected pipeline” identified as roughly 10.6 miles of 24-inch diameter line that moves crude oil from Exxon Mobil's breakout storage tanks in Las Flores Canyon to Plains' Gaviota Pump Station.
PHMSA also declared in its order that the company initially would only be allowed to operate the affected pipe at roughly 80 percent of the actual operating pressure used before the May 19 incident. That restriction can be removed by the director for the Western Region of PHMSA's Office of Pipeline Safety after certain prevention and mitigation measures are met.
The company is also expected to meet certain reporting and approval requirements, and is requested but not required to document costs related to implementation of the order.
PHMSA may identify other corrective actions the company must take stemming from this incident. The pipeline company has 10 days to contest the order.
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After Spill, Markey Calls for Pipeline Safety Hearing
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee should hold a pipeline safety hearing soon, in light of a recent California pipeline spill and an upcoming law reauthorization, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said. The committee needs to understand the current state of domestic pipeline infrastructure and the effectiveness of the pipeline safety agency in overseeing it, as well as what tools the agency still needs, Markey told Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in a May 21 letter. Thune and Nelson are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate committee. The committee has oversight over pipeline safety issues, issues that Markey says affect the environment, property, public health and the use of revenues. The Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (Pub. L. 112-90) is set to expire Sept. 30, 2015. The letter is available at http://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2015-05-21=Commerce-Committee-CA-Oilspill.pdf.
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Feds Order Company Behind Calif. Oil Spill To Take Safety Steps
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Federal officials issued a “corrective action order” Friday, forcing the company responsible for this week’s crude oil pipeline spill in California to fix various problems.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is ordering Texas-based Plains Pipeline to make any necessary safety improvements on the Santa Barbara County pipeline that was breached and submit an in-depth analysis of what contributed to the spill before resuming operation of the line.The action is not considered a disciplinary enforcement. But it will require Plains Pipeline to analyze the root cause of the breach and any contributing factors to it.
“PHMSA is requiring Plains Pipeline, LP to take a number of actions to assess the current condition of the pipeline, identify the factors that led to the crude oil release, and to address any potential future risks to people or the environment,” PHMSA Deputy Administrator Tim Butters said in a statement.
PHMSA, a part of the Department of Transportation, is responsible for overseeing the safety of all of the nation’s pipelines.
The breach caused about 105,000 gallons of crude to spill, and much of it entered the Pacific Ocean about 20 miles west of Santa Barbara.
From there, it has formed a 9-mile-long sheen and washed up onto beaches, including San Refugio State Beach, which remains closed for the popular Memorial Day weekend.
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EPA Working on Several Waste Rules For Expected Release Later in 2015
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Proposed rules concerning research projects at landfills, the regulatory classification of various treated woods and the management of hazardous waste pharmaceuticals are expected to be released by the Environmental Protection Agency for public comment in the second half of 2015, according to the updated regulatory agenda.
In addition, the EPA expects to propose revisions (RIN 2050-AG82) to its risk management program regulations by September as the first regulation to emerge from the work of a multi-agency chemical safety working group established following the catastrophic ammonium nitrate explosion at a fertilizer distributor in West, Texas, in April 2013.
The agency also expects to shortly release a final rule (RIN 2050-AG46) revising underground storage tank requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act after the White House concluded its review of the regulation in late April (84 DEN A-17, 5/1/15).
None of the rules currently under development by the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response is considered as high-profile or controversial as the final rules on coal ash management and the definition of solid waste, which were both finalized earlier in 2015.
Landfills Research Project
The new landfills initiative from the EPA will be to remove a 12-year time limit on research, development, and demonstration permits. Those permits can be issued to allow the testing and development of innovative technologies at landfills provided granting them would not present an increased risk to human health and the environment.
States, however, say the current 12-year limit “discourages long-term research and shortens the investment period needed to recoup costs because the lag time from design to operation can be as much as three years” and the majority of them have urged the agency to remove the cap.
The EPA expects to issue the proposed rule (RIN 2050-AG75) in December, according to the regulatory agenda.
Classification of Treated Woods
The agency plans to take action on how various treated wood products can be treated under its nonhazardous secondary materials rule, which exempts certain materials from stricter air pollution requirements when burned in boilers or solid waste incinerators.
The Treated Wood Council has petitioned the agency to exclude various treated woods from the stricter air requirements—as it has for many other materials such as scrap tires and certain coal refuse products—and the EPA now anticipates a decision on that request in July (RIN 2050-AG83).
Back in March 2014, the EPA proposed conditionally excluding construction and demolition wood, paper recycling residuals and creosote-treated railroad ties from the stricter Clean Air Act requirements. The agency expects to finalize that separate rule (RIN 2050-AG74) shortly, though the White House Office of Management and Budget has not begun its review.
Any new conditional exclusions would add to those included by the agency in its February 2013 final rule (78 Fed. Reg. 9112).
Challenges to that regulation are now pending before a federal appeals court (91 DEN A-1, 5/12/15).
Hazardous Waste Pharmaceuticals Rule
The agency now says it will publish a proposed rule in July establishing “health-care facility-specific regulations for the management of hazardous waste pharmaceuticals in order to provide a regulatory scheme that is adapted to the unique issues that hospitals, pharmacies and other health-related facilities face.”
Many companies and healthcare facilities say existing RCRA hazardous waste regulations are ill-suited for their industry and hope the forthcoming proposed rule (RIN 2050-AG39) will create a consistent national framework for disposing of hazardous waste pharmaceutical products (94 DEN A-11, 5/15/15).
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There’s a Major Oil Spill in California. So Where’s the Outrage in D.C.?
May 22, 2015 | National Journal
By Jason Plautz
Santa Barbara's Refugio Beach, normally a crowded spot heading into the summer, will be more or less barren this Memorial Day, thanks to an oil spill this week that poured more than 100,000 gallons of crude into the ocean and onto the coast.
Greens have jumped on the oil spill, which came after a rupture of an underground oil pipeline controlled by Plains All American. Coming just a week after the White House approved Royal Dutch Shell's plan to drill off of Alaska's coast, environmentalists say the leak is more evidence that the nation needs to move away from fossil fuels, or at the very least take steps to put the onus on companies to make it safe.
But in Washington, the response has been muted.
"I'm frustrated that we don't seem to be learning the lessons of these spills," said Collin O'Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation. "These aren't one-off incidents. I don't understand why there's not more focus on at least tightening existing law."
California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer issued a statement this week saying the "tragic" spill "highlights the dangers posed by these pipelines and underscores why I have spent decades fighting against oil drilling off the California coast." Boxer and fellow Californian Dianne Feinstein were among 10 Democrats who signed a letter Thursday to President Obama calling on him to appoint a permanent director of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which has been without one for seven months.
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Pipeline in California Oil Spill Ordered Shut Down, Tested
May 22, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Alejandro Lazo and Erin Ailworth
A recent inspection of the failed California crude pipeline could give federal regulators clues about why as many as 105,000 gallons of oil were allowed to spill along the Pacific coastline.
The inspection, which involves running a device through the line to measure and record irregularities, was conducted May 5, but results haven’t been provided to the pipeline’s operator, Plains All American Pipeline LP, or the company’s federal regulator, officials said Friday.
“We intend to find out what those results did say, and what was known about the pipe prior to the failure,” said Linda Daugherty, an official with the U.S. Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. A third-party vendor conducted the inspection.
PHMSA has ordered the pipeline, known as Line 901, shut down and tests and analyses carried out to determine the spill’s cause. Plains must fulfill all of the requirements of the corrective order, issued Thursday and made public Friday, before the line can restart pumping oil.
Responding to the PHMSA order, Plains said Friday it has more than doubled its safety and training staff since 2008, and spent $300 million on maintenance and integrity in 2014, adding that it had exceeded federal regulatory requirements by inspecting the Santa Barbara County line twice in the past three years. “We are part of the Santa Barbara community and we deeply regret that this release has happened,” the company said in a statement.
The order requires the company to determine the cause of the spill and to test a 10.6-mile stretch of line for any conditions similar to the cause of the rupture. To do so, Plains All American must empty and purge the pipeline and conduct a physical and analytical review that includes inspections of various engineering records and company data, among other materials.
The order sets out specific deadlines—from 45 to 90 days—by which these tests and analyses must be conducted. No fine was issued in the order.
While a cause of the spill wasn’t determined, PHMSA said in-line inspections on the line in 2007 and 2012 found anomalies mostly caused by external corrosion at the site of some welds.
On Tuesday, the day of the spill, the controller of the ruptured line was working on an issue at a pump station about 25 miles downstream from where oil was released, and noticed some pressure variations when restarting the facility, a Plains spokeswoman said. The spill was discovered hours later.
Once the root cause of the spill is determined, the company must submit a restart plan that includes modifications to its operations and maintenance procedures, which must to be approved by PHMSA.
County officials have raised concerns about how well the pipeline was being monitored for safety. Because of a 1988 lawsuit settlement reached with the pipeline’s original owners, Line 901 isn’t overseen for safety issues by county inspectors, said Kevin Drude, a Santa Barbara County official who regulates and permits pipelines in the county.
The lawsuit had argued that Santa Barbara County had no jurisdiction over a pipeline running outside the state of California. The pipeline once stretched to Texas but now ends in California, according to federal and local officials.
“We’re going to have to wait and see what caused it. That’s going to be huge,” Mr. Drude said. “If it was simple mechanical failure, accidents happen. But if it was the result of negligence, well, that’s not going to go over well with the community.”
PHMSA has primary authority over pipeline safety, but under federal statute it can delegate some of that responsibility to state inspectors. Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for CAL FIRE, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said California had carried out inspections on behalf of the federal government but relinquished that responsibility and authority in 2013.
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Feds Resist Push For New Pipelines
May 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Obama administration is resisting a congressional push to establish new natural gas pipelines on federal lands in the eastern United States.
Lawmakers have introduced legislation to establish pathways for future pipelines. Supporters say it'll speed up the permitting process for natural gas pipelines, helping the industry get its product to market more quickly and reducing energy prices for consumers.
“I think we need to make use of our God-given natural resources, and we need to do it in an environmentally-sound way,” said Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), who is cosponsoring the measure with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.).“I think the best way to do it is to predetermine where we’re going to allow pipelines to go.”
But the Interior Department says it opposes the bill, arguing that it would limit public input on new pipeline projects, and calling its timelines too constricting.
MacArthur’s bill calls for establishing at least 10 “energy corridors,” swatches of land on which energy transmission lines would be set up, in the eastern United States within two years. It would also speed up the permitting process and environmental reviews.
In testimony to a House subcommittee this week, Timothy Spisak, a Bureau of Land Management official, said that is “too short a timeline to adequately coordinate with states, tribes, and other federal partners, and the public.”
“The department is committed to providing full environmental review and public involvement opportunities ... on proposals for the use of the nation’s public lands,” he said.
Environmental groups are standing with the administration.
“I think that corridors across federal lands make sense, but they have to be designed in an inclusive process that draws heavily on input from the public,” Greg Buppert, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told the committee. “What this bill does is it cuts the public out of that process.”
There’s also the matter of how little federal land there is in the eastern U.S.
The federal government owns only 4.8 percent of the land east of Colorado or Wyoming, compared to up to 50 percent in western states,
Critics say there is no reason to tap public lands when there is so much private land for establishing energy transmission lines in the east.
Spisak said the Interior Department “has a significantly different role [in the east] than in the western United States.”
MacArthur’s bill has its origins in a 2005 law that directed the Interior Department to plan a series of energy corridors around the country.
The department followed through in the 11 western-most states, eventually creating a 6,000-mile system of corridors there. But in the eastern U.S., where the law only required advanced planning for potential corridors, none ever got off the ground.
In 2008, officials solicited comments on potential eastern U.S. corridors, but “there were relatively few and minor responses by the public, state and local government officials and interested stakeholders,” according to a 2011 Department of Energy report. Because of “the very limited public and/or stakeholder response,” the government decided not to pursue corridors in those states.
The natural gas industry, though, has changed since the 2008 review. Production is up, especially in the eastern U.S., and industry officials said there would be more demand for establishing energy corridors on public land now than six years ago.
Martin Edwards, the vice president of legislative affairs at the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said there would be a higher demand for pipeline capacity east of the Mississippi River, where production is growing.
“While we’re fortunate in this country that we already have a lot of gas pipeline infrastructure that’s been built over a period of 70 years or so," he said, "that doesn’t mean that the pipelines are everywhere they need to be in order to adjust to this new supply reality we’re facing now."
In a letter to lawmakers last week, America’s Natural Gas Alliance said it supports “legislative efforts to provide greater certainty to the siting and permitting of energy infrastructure projects in a timely and cost-effective manner while maintaining a complete and appropriate opportunity for public engagement.”
Republican leaders say they intend to include the bill in a comprehensive energy package later this year, but disputes over pipeline placement — and other administration concerns about who approves those pipelines — would need to be resolved to move the package.
MacArthur said he’s willing to negotiate ways to improve the bill, be it in the amount of corridors established or the amount of time needed to approve them.
“I set a minimum of 10. There’s no magic to the number,” he said of the number of corridors.
“I keep my mind open for productive suggestions,” he said. “If they can demonstrate where a little more time would be helpful, then we’ll talk about it.
MacArthur remains optimistic about the bill.
"Directionally, it’s the right thing to do, to get the corridors identified and designated,” he said.
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Interior Should Halt Arctic Drilling Permits, Including Shell Plans, Senate Democrats Say
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Obama administration should halt the approval process to allow Royal Dutch Shell Plc to explore for oil this summer in Alaska's Chukchi Sea and all other oil and gas drilling permits in the Arctic region, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and 17 other Democrats wrote in a May 22 letter to the Interior Department.
The letter, addressed to Secretary Sally Jewell, said the Interior Department did not fully account for the likelihood of oil spills and the ensuing environmental impact when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a conditional approval earlier in May. BOEM is part of the Interior Department.
“Your agency's own analysis of Sale 193 estimated a 75 percent chance of large oil spill if the Chukchi leases are developed,” they wrote.
“The oil and gas industry has demonstrated inadequacies in oil spill prevention and response in challenging Arctic waters, and the region lacks the infrastructure to support either drilling operations or clean up response with adequate safety or effectiveness,” the senators wrote.
They added that Shell “put numerous lives at risk” during the 2012 drilling season when the company was towing the drillship Kulluk back toward Seattle and a towing line broke, with the Kulluk running aground just off an island on the southern side of Alaska.
Contradicts Climate Plan
“Opening development on a new fossil fuel reservoir in the Arctic not only puts the natural resources, ecosystems and the dependent communities at risk, it also contradicts the President's Climate Action Plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reduce climate change,” they wrote. “It is an unacceptable and irresponsible decision.”
Shell still must obtain permits from other federal agencies, including a drilling permit from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, as well as state regulatory clearance (91 DEN A-2, 5/12/15).
The company's plan is to drill as many as six exploration wells at the Burger prospect in the Chukchi Sea, where the open-water drilling season runs approximately from July 1 to Oct. 31.
The Obama administration's draft five-year oil and gas leasing plan for sales occurring between 2017 and 2022 calls for three potential new lease sales off the Alaska coast—one each in the Chukchi Sea, Beaufort Sea and Cook Inlet—but analysts have questioned the likelihood they will occur in the high-cost area given the slumping cost of oil.
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Pieridae Energy's LNG Export Terminal From U.S. to Canada Authorized by DOE
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Pieridae Energy Ltd. will be able to export liquefied natural gas from the U.S. to Canada and other free trade agreement countries under a long-term, multi-contract authorization granted by the Department of Energy.
The authorization allows Pieridae Energy to export natural gas from the U.S. to Canada for end use in Canada and/or, after liquefaction in Canada, by vessel from the company's Goldboro LNG project, which will be located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to other free trade agreement (FTA) countries, the May 22 DOE order said.
The order authorizes up to the equivalent of 292 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas for a 20-year term, beginning on the date of the first export, or seven years from the authorization date, whichever comes first.
A Nova Scotia environmental assessment panel recommended approval of the Goldboro LNG terminal in March 2014 (46 DEN A-13, 3/10/14).
Pieridae Energy's application seeking authorization to export U.S.-sourced natural gas to non-FTA and/or to FTA countries for end use in non-FTA countries remains pending, DOE said in the order.
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Agencies Delay Rules In Regulatory Agenda
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
It’s been less than 24 hours since the White House released its semiannual regulatory roadmap, and groups are combing through the rule-making agenda for the federal agencies.
The Center for Progressive Reform said Friday it found 16 important rules that have been delayed.
Among them are the Environmental Protection Agency’s new to limits on greenhouse gas emissions for new power plants. The rule, which was expected in January, will now be out in August.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was expected to update and modernize its reporting system to better track workplace injuries in a final rule-making in August, but the agency has delayed that rule until September. OSHA was also expected to propose new rules in January to protect steel workers from exposure to beryllium, a brittle, steel-gray metal linked to serious illnesses. That notice of public rule-making is now expected this month.
Meanwhile, the Mine Safety and Health Administration pushed back new rules to better protect metal and nonmetal miners from exposure to silica dust, which can cause an irreversible lung disease known as silicosis. The final rules, originally due out in October, will be finalized in April 2016.
The Center for Progressive reform said it's still parsing through the report, and there are likely to be more than 16 rules that are delayed.
“A lot of people call this a regulatory agenda, but from my perspective, it’s just a catalogue of new regulatory delays,” said James Goodwin, the center's senior policy analyst.
Year after year, from one unified agenda to another, Goodwin said rules are pushed back by be as much as six, eight or 12 months.
“For me, it’s disappointing because it suggests that agencies aren’t making as much progress on these rules as they should be or could be,” he said. “The real shame is, these rules aren’t being created for no reason. They’re going to deliver benefits for public heath, safety and the environment.”
Take the EPA’s promise to regulate perchlorate in drinking water, for example.
Goodwin said the agency started to draft rules for the harmful chemical, which is used in rocket fuel, during the George W. Bush administration but later dropped the rules.
“In 2011, Obama committed to doing something about it, and now we’re still sitting here waiting for him to do anything,” he said.
In the fall, the EPA said it would release its proposed rule by February 2016. That deadline has been pushed to March 2017 with a final rule due out in September 2018.
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Groups Debate Energy Costs in EIA's Analysis of Clean Power Plan
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Manuel Quiñones and Emily Holden
U.S. EPA said today it would consider the U.S. Energy Information Administration's new report on the Clean Power Plant's impact on the country's energy landscape as it finalizes the proposal.
EIA's long-awaited analysis said many states and utilities would seek to comply with the carbon limits for existing power plants by switching from coal-fired generation to natural gas and renewables.
And if the agency tweaks its proposal to treat nuclear power like renewable sources, the country could see more generation from nuclear sources (EnergyWire, May 22).
"EPA appreciates EIA's work to develop this assessment based on the agency's proposed Clean Power Plan," EPA said in a statement this morning, "and the agency will be reviewing the assessment as we work to develop the final rule."
The National Mining Association, one of the power plant proposal's top foes, seized on the report's conclusions that the Clean Power Plan would more than double coal-fired power plant retirements and bump up power prices. Mining would also drop, particularly in Appalachia.
"The EIA report released today should be read by every governor," said NMA CEO Hal Quinn. The group, along with other EPA critics on Capitol Hill, is urging states to turn away from the proposal.
"It contradicts claims by the Environmental Protection Agency that its Clean Power Plan will help the economy," Quinn said. "And it confirms that this costly power plan will 'lock-in' a more expensive and risky energy future for their citizens."
EIA's report makes clear that it doesn't take sides in the debate on whether the proposal will jeopardize energy reliability. EIA says the country's power infrastructure would need "significant investment" to handle more wind, power and other renewable sources of energy.
Electricity prices would increase by between 3 and 7 percent between 2020 and 2025 compared to a no-rule scenario, according to EIA estimates. They would be 4 percent higher by 2030 and 2.6 percent higher by 2040.
Natural gas prices would also go up. But because of an increased demand for renewable power over the long run, natural gas use and prices would recede.
"Early headlines about the EIA's report on the Clean Power Plan don't tell the whole story. The analysis actually shows that the Clean Power Plan is affordable," said Steve Clemmer, director of energy research and analysis at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Clemmer said Congress can help with the Clean Power Plan's implementation by extending renewable energy tax credits. He said EIA showed states could meet EPA's proposed carbon cuts, and even exceed them, particularly through regional collaboration.
"States can keep rate increases to a minimum and help avoid an overreliance on natural gas by implementing or strengthening policies to ramp up renewables and efficiency," Clemmer said, "including proven policies such as renewable electricity standards, energy efficiency standards and carbon caps."
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Proposed EPA Carbon Rules Will Mean Higher Bills and Fewer Coal Plants, New Report Says
May 22, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder
A new report released Friday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration is reinvigorating a common debate in Washington over how to calculate projected economic impacts of regulations.
The report, written at the request of House Science and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas), concludes that a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule cutting carbon emissions from power plants will, by 2020, cause electricity prices to go up by 4.9% and drive more than double the amount of coal-fired electricity to go offline than what EIA predicts would occur without the rule.
That sounds a lot like the criticism coming from congressional Republicans and the energy industry, both of whom are fighting the rule and are pointing to EIA’s report as evidence it will hurt the economy.
Looking closely at the numbers shows a more complicated picture.
First, the basics of the rule: Proposed in June 2014 and expected to become final in August, the draft EPA rule calls for a 30% cut in power-plant carbon emissions by 2030 based on emissions levels in 2005. It’s the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s efforts to address climate change, which he hopes to leaves as a legacy of his time in the White House.
The two agencies agree that electricity prices—how much you pay per kilowatt hour on your electricity bill—will go up under the rule. The two agencies diverge over how much energy efficiency and lower electricity demand will affect electricity bills, which is the number of kilowatt hours you use times the retail electricity price and represents ultimately how much you pay.
EIA predicts that under the rule, retail electricity prices will go up by 4.9% by 2020 and 4% by 2030. That’s a little lower than what EPA projects will happen in an economic analysis it released alongside the proposed rule in June. It said then that electricity prices would go up by between 3.6% and 6.5% by 2020 and between 2.7% and 3.1% by 2030.
EPA predicts that electricity bills that households must ultimately pay will rise between 1.1% and 3.2% by 2020 but ultimately decrease by up to 8.7% by 2030, driven by energy efficiency and lower electricity demand.
EIA, on the other hand, predicts electricity bills will rise by 3% by 2030 even considering energy efficiency and lower electricity demand.
“The issue is how much demand reduction occurs because of energy efficiency programs,” said Howard Gruenspecht, deputy administrator of EIA, on Friday. “In our framework, we let the modeling drive that and we just didn’t get that much of a reduction in residential and commercial energy demand as EPA did.”
The other headline-catching statistic was about how many coal-fired power plants will be retired, a common point of contention that gets at the heart of what congressional Republicans decry as Mr. Obama’s “war on coal.”
The EIA report found that under EPA’s proposed rule, projected retirements of coal-fired electricity between now and 2040 would be 90 gigawatts, with most of that going offline by 2020. EIA currently estimates that 40 gigawatts of coal electricity will retire by 2040 without EPA’s rule, driven by cheap natural gas prices and other EPA rules.
In its analysis released last year, EPA predicted that between 46 and 49 gigawatts of coal electricity would be retired under its carbon rule by 2030, which would be on top of the retirements already expected under the business-as-usual scenario laid out by EIA, which is the 40 gigawatts of retiring coal.
In other words, EPA predicts that between 86 and 89 gigawatts of coal will be retired over the next several years under its climate rule, which is nearly identical to what EIA predicted in its report Friday.
For context, the total capacity of the U.S. electricity system in February was approximately 1,000 gigawatts, according to EIA data, so we’re talking about 9% of the electricity grid.
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Coal’s Worst Fear Affirmed in Analysis of Obama Climate Plan
May 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jim Snyder and Tim Loh
A new government analysis of President Barack Obama’s signature effort to fight climate change affirms what critics suspected: the proposal could further weaken an already battered coal industry.
Electricity generation from the carbon-intensive fossil fuel would fall by 90 gigawatts, more than twice the decline government analysts had predicted as recently as April, according to a report released Friday by the Energy Information Administration. There were about 292 gigawatts of coal-fired generation capacity in 2014, according to EIA.
Most of the coal-plant closures would occur by 2020, when the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions would kick in. Consumers may also take a hit as electricity prices would increase as much as 7 percent on average by 2025, partly because of the costs of building new power plants.
“In short, EIA confirms EPA’s rule is all pain, no gain -- a symbolic gesture that continues the administration’s policy path for destroying high wage jobs for generations,” said Hal Quinn, chief executive officer of the National Mining Association, a lobbying group that represents companies including Peabody Energy Corp.
Coal, which has served as the backbone of U.S. electricity generation for decades, is in a steep downturn amid competition from lower-cost natural gas and pressure to meet tougher emissions standards. Economic Benefit
The Obama administration’s proposal, released in June, is not final. Supporters, including Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, said the EIA projected the plan would cut carbon emissions from all U.S. power plants 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
“As proposed, the Clean Power Plan will significantly reduce carbon pollution that will deliver climate and health benefits of up to $93 billion,” said Liz Purchia, a spokeswoman for the EPA.
The EIA analysis doesn’t consider possible health and environmental benefits. It predicts a minor impact on the U.S. economy overall. Gross domestic production could fall as much as 0.25 percent by 2040, assuming emissions are further restricted after 2030, the EIA said.
Purchia said the EPA is reviewing more than 4 million public comments and working to ensure the plan is affordable. Coal’s Decline
The EIA analysis found that coal production will decline 20 percent by 2020 and 32 percent by 2035, from a business-as-usual case.
Coal use has already been dropping, generating 37 percent of the country’s electricity in February -– down from over 50 percent in 2007, according to the EIA.
The market capitalization of the publicly traded U.S. coal companies has shrunk to about $19.4 billion from $78 billion in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Patriot Coal Corp. filed for bankruptcy last week for the second time in three years, joining at least a half dozen other coal producers that have sought protection amid the downturn.
Murray Energy Corp., the closely held miner that’s rapidly expanded amid the downturn, is now planning to lay off a quarter of its staff -- about 1,800 people -- at nine locations, according to a person familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified Thursday because the information isn’t public.
Peabody spokesman Chris Curran said the U.S. should rely on technology “not closures” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Natural Gas
Natural-gas use initially would replace lost coal, with wind power and other renewable energy sources taking a greater share of U.S. electricity production in later years, the EIA said.
Natural gas generation in April and May is predicted to have almost reached the level of coal use for the first time since April 2012, the EIA said in a short-term energy outlook on May 12.
While retail electricity prices are projected to increase as much as 7 percent on average from 2020 to 2025, in some regions the costs begin to recede to the EIA’s baseline levels by 2030. Electricity costs in the Southwest and Southeast may remain higher than without the EPA rule, according to the report.
Steve Clemmer, director of energy research at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based environmental group, said the analysis shows the cost impacts from the rule to be modest.
“The increase in natural gas use in early years followed by a big shift to less polluting renewable energy enables the country to continue the transition away from coal,” Clemmer said in a statement.
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and critic of the EPA, requested the analysis from EIA.
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Efficiency, Renewables Key to Compliance With Power Plan; Coal Use to Drop, EIA Says
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Energy efficiency and renewable energy generation will become the dominant compliance strategy for states to meet their Clean Power Plan targets, and coal-fired power plant retirements will more than double under the rule, the Energy Information Administration said in an analysis.
The surge in renewable power and energy efficiency will follow an initial rush by states to shift electricity generation from coal-fired units to natural gas plants, the EIA said in its analysis released May 22. The rule is also projected to drive permanent increases in retail electricity prices in many Southern and Western states, but reduced demand for electricity is expected to blunt some of those costs.
“In the early years of compliance, re-dispatch from coal-fired generation to natural gas-fired generation is the main strategy to achieve emission performance goals,” the EIA said. “In the longer term, growth in renewable generation provides a dominant share of compliance, reflecting both increasingly attractive costs and the design of the formula used to calculate compliance.”
The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33) would set a unique carbon dioxide emissions rate for the power sector in each state. State regulators would be tasked with determining how best to achieve their emissions reductions targets using a combination of heat rate improvements at existing units, greater use of natural gas capacity, investment in new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. The final rule is expected in August (99 DEN A-21, 5/22/15).
The proposal is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by between 484 million metric tons and 625 million metric tons, a reduction of between 29 percent and 36 percent from 2005 levels, the EIA said.
Coal Retirements to Reach 90 Gigawatts
An estimated 40 gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity is already expected to retire between 2014 and 2040, but retirements would grow to 90 gigawatts of generating capacity under the Clean Power Plan, the EIA said in its analysis.
That is in line with the EPA's own projections. In its regulatory impact analysis of the proposed rule, the EPA predicted that between 30 gigawatts and 49 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity would retire.
The remaining coal-fired power plants are predicted to reach peak efficiency in 2023, with 1.9 percent improvement in heat rate efficiency at those units.
The National Mining Association decried the proposal's impact on the coal industry.
“In a possible foreshadowing of what to expect, more than 30,000 coal miners have lost their jobs since 2011, when EPA issued earlier power plant rules,” Hal Quinn, president and chief executive officer of the association, said in a May 22 statement. “With four additional jobs supported by each coal mining job, more than 150,000 high-wage jobs have been lost or impaired by unbalanced policies over the past three years.”
Natural Gas Use to Peak
The EIA analysis predicts that using natural gas to generate electricity will peak in 2020—the year the proposed Clean Power Plan would take effect—and afterward energy efficiency and renewable power generation would play a much larger role in state compliance strategies.
Natural gas consumption for electricity generation will increase “substantially” through the early 2020s but return to baseline levels by 2030. Despite that increase, the utilization factor of gas-fired plants is expected to peak at 57 percent in 2020 before falling to 45 percent in 2040.
Amy Farrell, vice president of market development at America's Natural Gas Alliance, said the existing natural gas pipeline network is designed to meet peak demand during winter months. That provides additional capacity throughout the year to expand use of natural gas-fired generation, she said.
“We have seen that natural gas will be one of the cost-effective compliance mechanisms that states will use and that's borne out in EIA's analysis,” Farrell told Bloomberg BNA May 22.
Efficiency, Renewables to Grow
The analysis projects the U.S. will add 174 gigawatts of new renewable energy generating capacity by 2040, a 160 percent increase, displacing some natural gas generation.
Energy efficiency programs will also help blunt energy demand under the EPA Clean Power Plan, but the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a nonprofit that promotes energy conservation, said the EIA model does not account for all energy efficiency options.
The EIA forecast predicts that residential and commercial demand for power could fall by 2.6 percent in 2030 through a combination of rebates and other initiatives. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy in a 2014 report predicted efficiency programs could reduce electricity demand by as much as 26 percent by that year (84 DEN A-24, 5/1/14).
“They only included programs and rebates for a few specific products,” Lowell Ungar, senior policy adviser for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, told Bloomberg BNA May 22. “What they find from efficiency is great, but they didn't find very much because they didn't include very much.”
Rate Increases Predicted
Compliance with the proposed rule also will drive electricity rate increases for consumers, at least initially, the analysis said. Retail electricity prices are expected to increase between 3 percent and 7 percent on average between 2020 and 2025 but decrease throughout the rule's compliance period for many regions. Florida, the Southeast, Southwest and eastern Wisconsin are all projected to have retail electricity prices approximately 10 percent greater than they would without the regulation by 2030.
However, the report also said the energy efficiency programs will help demand for electricity, which will contain some of the cost increases.
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Companies Urged to Set Emissions Targets Based on Cuts Recommended by Scientists
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrea Vittorio
A group of nongovernmental organizations is looking to recruit 100 companies to set greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that match up with the cuts scientists say are necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
The majority of the world's largest companies already have emissions reduction goals by now, but only a few of them, including Mars Inc. and NRG Energy, actually align their targets with an internationally agreed-upon goal to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
The rest have been deemed not ambitious enough, or they follow what has been called an “out-of-thin-air” approach to target-setting.
The World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the United Nations Global Compact want to change that. They have come up with their own methodology for helping energy-intensive companies establish emissions targets in line with their sector's projected level of economic activity and potential for emissions reductions.
A final version of this Sectoral Decarbonization Approach and a tool for implementing it were launched May 20 in Paris after about a year of work. It is one of many how-to guides companies can choose from when they want to go about setting a science-based target.
The launch was part of a week-long series of business-focused events meant to build momentum for a year-end UN summit on climate change being held in the same city (97 DEN A-11, 5/20/15)(97 DEN A-11, 5/20/15).
Showing What's Possible
As policy makers grapple with getting more than 190 countries to agree on a climate accord, businesses are trying to show that the emissions cuts outlined by scientists are in fact possible to achieve.
Kevin Rabinovitch, global director of sustainability at Mars Inc., said that in talking to different employees at factories, utilities and elsewhere, he has found “the closer you are to the actual equipment, the better you understand what's possible.”
International negotiators, on the other hand, aren't spending their time on the ground with industry, “so they're reliant on other experts to give them a sense of what is possible and what is not,” he said.
“I think that's an important role that we can play—we and many of our peers—to say this is not science fiction, this is not economic fiction,” Rabinovitch said in an interview before the launch event. “This is possible, this is doable, we're doing it.”
Where Companies Stand Now
To get a sense of how many companies are doing it, the CDP looked at a sample of the world's largest publicly listed corporate emitters across the aluminum, cement, chemicals and electric utility sectors. Of the 70 companies sampled, less than half have set emissions reduction targets that align with the 2-degree Celsius goal, according to a report the CDP released at the event.
About a third of the companies have no emissions targets at all, while the remainder have targets that either don't meet the 2-degree Celsius mark or don't cover a meaningful percentage of the company's emissions.
There were, however, five standouts in the CDP research: Hong Kong-based utility CLP; Italian power company ENEL and its subsidiary Endesa; NRG Energy, the largest independent power producer in the U.S.; Austrian utility Verbund and Swiss cement company Holcim. These companies have set science-based targets for cutting emissions that go out past 2020 and, in some cases, to 2050.
Why Science-Based Target?
Steve Corneli, NRG senior vice president for policy and strategy, said there are three reasons why the company—which has been focusing on utility-scale and distributed renewables as its conventional fossil-fuel power business faces declining demand growth—set a science-based goal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 90 percent by 2050.
“First, we know it takes 30 or 40 years to transform a system with assets that have such long lives,” Corneli said in an e-mailed statement. “Without the right long-term goals in this industry, we're not likely to achieve the right results.”
NRG also thinks they can be met profitably, “but only if we really focus on the right goals and make the effort to achieve them in ways that will increase the value we offer our customers and our shareholders,” he said.
“Third, we think they are the right targets—not just because we pay attention to science, but also because we pay attention to our customers,” Corneli said. “And increasingly, we see our customers demanding cleaner power as part of their energy solutions.”
Planning for Long-Term
What makes the targets of NRG and the other four companies stand out is that they are not only science-based but they are long-term.
Why does the long term matter? Part of it is because climate change is a long-term issue by nature, but it also has to do with companies’ investment horizons.
Companies’ investments today could have an impact on their emissions over the next three to four decades, Pedro Faria, CDP technical director and lead author of the report, told Bloomberg BNA. So companies should start planning now for a low-carbon future, he said.
In the meantime, companies also need interim targets, which Faria said “are more operational,” to hold themselves accountable toward their long-term goal.
“This is the reason why we strongly believe that the long-term vision is really important,” he said.
What Science Says
One company that has both a long-term target and a short-term check point is Mars.
When Mars started developing its corporate emissions target in 2008, the company saw “an opportunity here to try and build a sustainability program around fundamentally what is right … with a capital R,” Rabinovitch told Bloomberg BNA.
“In climate science, fortunately, there's pretty clear indications of what's necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” he said. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had warned at the time that global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut approximately 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 to stay within the 2-degree Celsius threshold (184 DEN A-3, 9/23/08).
So Mars took that 80 percent goal and turned it up a notch: the company pledged to eliminate emissions from its factories and offices by 2040. Having a more ambitious goal is meant to make up for the fact that it only covers direct emissions, which account for about one-seventh of the company's total footprint. Mars eventually plans to bring in the rest of its supply chain emissions.
Achieving ‘Stretch Target.’
Until then, the company has been working toward an interim target to cut operational emissions 25 percent by 2015, from a 2007 baseline.
But achieving that target hasn't been easy. The company's emissions have fallen 5 percent as of the end of 2013, “which is frankly a little disappointing to us,” Rabinovitch said. “We had hoped and intended to be further.”
He said Mars made some progress on efficiency, but those gains were counteracted by other factors, so to offset it, the company is ramping up its renewable energy commitments. With the help of a huge wind farm in Texas, Mars is now back on track to meet the 25 percent goal in 2015.
Rabinovitch said one of the lessons he's learned in having a science-based target is that while they are “stretch targets,” they still are grounded in something meaningful—trying to minimize the consequences of climate change for future generations—so that makes it easier to motivate people to solve the problem.
‘Out-of-Thin-Air Approach.'
Otherwise, corporate climate targets can be hard to justify.
When Brown-Forman Corp., maker of Jack Daniel's and other spirits and wines, set its first greenhouse gas targets in 2010, it did not use a science-based approach.
“We used the out-of-thin-air approach, which was, you know, we sat around, we looked at it, and we said, ‘Okay we know we're growing. What number do we think sounds good?' ” Andy Battjes, Brown-Forman's director of environmental health and safety, said at the annual Climate Leadership Conference in February. The company developed an intensity target: a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions per unit of production by 2020.
But without basing it on science, “when you get challenged either internally or externally … you really have no basis for why you chose that,” Battjes said.
‘Not Trying Hard Enough.’
So after its first goal was achieved eight years ahead of schedule, which Battjes said was perhaps an indication of “not trying hard enough,” Brown-Forman went back to the drawing board.
This time, the company aligned its new target—an absolute 15 percent reduction in emissions between 2012 and 2022—with climate science, using a method developed by WWF and CDP called The 3% Solution.
The 3% Solution is based on the idea that U.S. corporations should cut their carbon emissions by about 3 percent each year to achieve the 2020 carbon reductions scientists say are needed. In the process, companies could save up to $190 billion in 2020, according to their research.
“So as we looked at it, we said, ‘Well, if we are concerned that climate change impacts are risks to our business, and there's science out there that says the scale of reductions that are necessary to help reduce those impacts, then why don't we set our targets in accordance with that science?' ” Battjes said.
Signing on Before Paris
For science-based emissions targets to really matter, more companies will need to sign on.
CDP, WRI and their partners want 100 companies to announce science-based goals by the end of 2015. By 2020, they want 250 companies with science-based targets.
So far, 41 global brands—including Honda Motor Co., H&M, Kellogg Co. and Unilever Plc—have made a commitment to science-based targets as part of a parallel Road to Paris effort organized by the CDP and the We Mean Business coalition. Some of those companies already have science-based targets.
“The challenge with science-based targets is if you really believe climate science, like we do, and only Mars is setting targets that look like that and delivering on them, it doesn't work, right? It's not good enough,” Rabinovitch said.
He said Mars wants to help make other companies believe in it, too, or at least act like they do, “because otherwise we still suffer the consequences, and everyone else still suffers the consequences.”
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Revised EPA Regulatory Agenda Sets August Target For Utility GHG Rules
May 22, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA's just-updated Unified Agenda of pending regulations sets an August target for issuing a controversial final package of greenhouse gas (GHG) rules for power plants, while other major rules -- including a perchlorate drinking water rule and revised air toxics standards for the oil and gas sector -- are facing significant new delays.
The spring 2015 Unified Agenda of rulemaking actions, which sets expected targets for nearly all of EPA's planned and pending rules, was released May 22 and includes updated deadlines for many high-profile regulations. Some of the deadlines in the agenda are legally binding as the result of court rulings or settlement agreements, while others are discretionary and could be revised again in the future to either shorten or extend the target dates.
Among the most significant of the pending rules is EPA's package of climate regulations for power plants. It includes new source performance standards (NSPS) to cut GHGs from newly constructed facilities; an existing source performance standard (ESPS) setting guidelines for states to craft plans to reduce GHGs from existing power plants; and a rule outlining how EPA would impose a federal ESPS plan on states that fail to comply with the rule.
The deadline for EPA's power plant rules is a shift from the fall 2014 agenda, when the agency planned to release the NSPS in June while the ESPS was expected later in summer. But the final rules are guaranteed to face legal challenges, would could potentially complicate the timing for implementation of the policies.
Opponents of the power plant rules are already pushing legislation that would block or modify EPA's proposals, and the agency is also fighting a novel lawsuit where states and energy firms are asking courts to invoke little-used judicial authority they say allows them to block a proposed rather than final rule.
Other climate rulemakings on the agenda include a second round of fuel economy and GHG standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and a finding on whether aircraft GHG emissions endanger public health and welfare, both slated for June. An affirmative endangerment finding for aircraft GHGs would trigger a Clean Air Act mandate for the agency to write GHG rules for aircraft.
EPA is also planning to propose its NSPS to set first-time limits on the GHG methane from new oil and gas operations in August, a key part of President Obama's plan to tackle climate change.
Emissions Rules
Also in August, the agency intends to issue a proposal for clarifying how major source determinations ought to be made for Clean Air Act permitting for dispersed sources within the oil and gas sector. The rulemaking on combining, or “aggregating,” emissions follows a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit decision in 2012 that vacated portion of its three-tiered policy for determining whether to aggregate emissions in such determinations.
For conventional pollutants, EPA intends to meet its Oct. 1 settlement agreement to issue a final rule on revising its 2008 ozone standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb) down to between 65 and 70 ppb.
The agency is also planning to propose a rule governing attempts to reduce interstate air pollution under the existing 75 ppb standard -- a policy that industry sources have predicted as a successor to the agency's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which is going back into effect after a lengthy legal fight.
Stakeholders have called on the agency to base its CSAPR successor on the next NAAQS rather than the current standard, because of the higher difficulty in complying with a stricter limit.
For other air rulemakings, the agenda says that EPA is planning a proposed rule in June to revise its Clean Air Act regional consistency regulations to allow an exception for judicial decisions that occur that would apply in one jurisdiction but not others. That regulation attempts to respond to a D.C. Circuit decision that said the agency's consistency rules require it to apply many air law rulings nationwide.
EPA's reconsideration of some provisions of its national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants from the oil and gas sector appears to face a delay under the updated agenda. The fall agenda had slated the rule this May, with a final rule in May 2016. The new agenda says June 2016 for a proposal and June 2017 for a final rule.
Water Regulations
Meanwhile, the agency is pledging to finalize the controversial final rule to define CWA jurisdiction in May, leaving at press time just five business days when the rule could be issued to meet that goal.
Observers say that in the final weeks before release, regulators appear to have prioritized steps to clarify key regulatory definitions that stakeholders have said are vague or otherwise unclear.
CWA rule critics are readying legislation to block the rule, although pending bills are aimed at forcing the agency to withdraw and re-propose the rule rather than scrapping the regulation altogether.
The agency is also signaling that it will soon take final action on its rule updating CWA requirements for states' water quality standards, targeting a June release -- just one month delayed from the previous May deadline. States have sought increased flexibility in the rule while industry groups are opposing such discretion and urging the agency to scale back the proposed rule's requirements for antidegradation programs, among others.
The agenda meanwhile sets a new August 2016 target for finalizing EPA's proposed rule setting a zero discharge pretreatment standard for shale gas wastewater discharged to publicly owned treatment works. EPA released the proposal April 7 and is taking public comment through June 8.
But at least one water rule -- national drinking water regulations for the chemical perchlorate -- is now delayed to May 2017 for a proposed rule compared to the fall agenda's February 2016 goal.
Waste Policies
In the Unified Agenda, EPA says it expects to finalize a rule this month on whether to add construction and demolition wood processed according to best management practices, paper recycling residuals and creosote-treated railroad ties to the categorical list of non-hazardous secondary materials (NHSM). Materials classed as NHSM can be burned for fuel in lightly regulated boilers rather than more strictly regulated incinerators. The treated wood industry in 2013 petitioned EPA for the relaxed measure.
In a related action, EPA is preparing to propose a rule in July on other types of treated wood that industry has sought categorical exclusions for as NHSM. The agency in the Unified Agenda also says it expects to release a notice of proposed rulemaking in July addressing a petition, also by the Treated Wood Council, to add other types of treated wood to the NHSM list.
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EPA Rule Requires 36 States to Revise Plans To Disallow Affirmative Defense Provisions
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industries in 36 states will no longer be insulated from Clean Air Act fines for excess emissions when equipment is starting up, shutting down or malfunctioning, under a final rule the Environmental Protection Agency issued May 22.
The rule (RIN 2060-AR68) gives the 36 states until Nov. 22, 2016, to revise their state implementation plans to disallow affirmative defense provisions that prevent industry from being fined for excess emissions.
The EPA is issuing the rule in response to a 2011 Sierra Club petition request, which sought to rescind portions of the agency's startup, shutdown and malfunction policy. The Sierra Club objected to the EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act to allow affirmative defense provisions in state implementation plans.
The affirmative defense provisions in question insulate industry from being subject to civil penalties for Clean Air Act violations that occur due to unavoidable equipment malfunctions.
The rule amends 40 C.F.R. pt. 52.
No Costs Involved
The EPA estimates the final rule will not impose costs on industry because it affects states that have to revise their SIPs.
The agency issued the final rule under Clean Air Act Section 110(k)(5), which provides a mechanism commonly known as a “SIP call” for correcting state implementation plans. The Sierra Club had sought a “SIP call” for 38 states that allowed the affirmative defense provision. The EPA said it was issuing it for only 36 states, which include Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, West Virginia and California.
However, the EPA in the final rule issued the SIP call for 36 states, saying Wyoming and Kentucky already had revised their SIPs between the time the rule was proposed and finalized.
Responding to Court Decision
The EPA proposed the rule in February 2013, and supplemented the proposed rule in September 2014 (174 DEN A-10, 9/9/14).
The supplemental rule followed the April 2014 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit over an air toxics rule challenge. The court struck down the affirmative action provision that EPA had promulgated hazardous air emissions standards for Portland Cement in NRDC v. EPA (749 F.3d 1055, 78 ERC 1369, 2014 BL 108218 (D.C. 2014);76 DEN A-1, 4/21/14).
The underlying proposed rule by the EPA would have allowed states to provide an affirmative defense for excess emissions during equipment malfunctions, but not during startup and shutdown operations, when emissions tend to be higher than during normal operations.
Affirmative Defense ‘Not Appropriate.'
In doing away with the affirmative defense provision, the EPA acknowledged that affirmative defense provisions are not appropriate under the Clean Air Act, “no matter what type of event they apply to, what criteria they contain or what forms of remedy they purport to limit or eliminate.”
The EPA in the final rule made it clear that the lack of affirmative defense provisions in SIPs does not alter the legal rights of industrial sources under the Clean Air Act. “In the event of an enforcement action for an exceedance of a SIP emission limitation, a source can elect to assert any common law or statutory defenses that it determines are supported, based upon the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged violation,” the EPA said.
The Sierra Club and Earthjustice were pleased with the final air rule.
“This is a strong rule, very solid on environmental justice,” Terry McGuire, Washington representative of the Sierra Club, told Bloomberg BNA May 22.
Significant Impact in 36 States
McGuire said the rule would have a significant impact in the 36 affected states, despite the fact that there will be a period of implementation.
Seth Johnson, an Earthjustice attorney, said in a May 22 statement that the final rule will close Clean Air Act loopholes that refineries and power plants have used to avoid compliance, and fines for violations.
“Communities depend on meaningful, enforceable standards to protect them against harmful air pollution,” Johnson said. “By taking action to close illegal loopholes in state plans, EPA's taken an important step toward protecting communities’ health and bolstering their important right to protect themselves against the noxious air pollution that burdens them.”
Johnson told Bloomberg BNA May 22 that the final rule was a positive step, but the EPA needs to promulgate a national rule eliminating the exemptions for emissions released by industries during startup, shutdown and malfunction of equipment. He said coke ovens and municipal waste combustors remain exempt, while paper mills continue to utilize the affirmative defense provision.
Speaking on behalf of the industry, Richard Alonso, a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP and a former official with the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said the final rule opens the door to more litigation of industry by environmental groups.
Open Door to Litigation
“What this does is allow environmental groups to sue industry for not meeting limits that during certain times are infeasible to meet,” Alonso said. He also noted that the agency has reversed its startup and shutdown policy that has been in place since the 1970s.
“This is EPA imposing a lot of more burden on states, telling states they have been implementing Clean Air Act incorrectly for the last 30 or 40 years. I expect states to be upset and will likely litigate on this,” Alonso said.
The environmental justice community also was pleased with the final EPA rule even though the agency said it cannot geographically locate or quantify the resulting source-specific emissions. “Nevertheless, the EPA believes this action will provide environmental protection for all areas of the country,” the agency said in the final rule. “Members of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change have been awaiting this final decision from the EPA to close loopholes and hold polluters responsible for these fugitive emissions that have gone unaccounted for too long,” said Jalonne L. White-Newsome, a spokeswoman for the leadership forum, in a May 22 statement.
She said the rule is “a step in the right direction to protect low-income and communities of color that continue to be inundated with multiple sources of pollution.”
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EPA Reg Rolls Backs Air Pollution Exemptions For Industry
May 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is telling states to crack down on air pollution from plants during startup, shutdown and malfunction periods.
The regulation unveiled Friday rolls back exemptions that some states gave for decades to industrial facilities, allowing them to exceed pollution limits during the unusual stages without fines or other penalties.The EPA is formally telling 36 states to change their plans implementing air pollution standards in order to prohibit the spikes in emissions of substances like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.
“The called-for changes to state plans will provide necessary environmental protection and will give industry and the public more certainty about requirements that apply during these periods,” the agency said in a statement.
The move represents a victor for environmentalists, who long decried what they said was a major gap in the protections afforded under the Clean Air Act.
Greens say minority communities were disproportionately affected by the pollution, since they often live closest to manufacturers, fuel refiners and other industrial facilities.
“For too long, neighborhoods adjacent to dirty oil refineries, coal plants, and other sources of pollution have been left with little recourse to protect their families from toxic pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and soot,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement applauding the Obama administration's new rule.
“More often than not, the communities that face the worst of this pollution are low-income communities or communities of color,” he said.
The Sierra Club petitioned the EPA to make the change in 2011, arguing that the 36 states allowing the exemptions created an “affirmative defense” that is not allowed under the Clean Air Act.
The states with exemptions have until November 2016 to change them.
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Business Leaders See Growing Pressure From Shareholders Over Climate Risks
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tara Patel and Stefan Nicola
Energy companies are facing increased scrutiny over their carbon emissions as pension funds worth billions grow anxious about the risks posed by climate change.
At a business and climate conference in Paris, Philippe Desfosses, chief executive officer of ERAFP, a pension fund for French civil servants, warned of the risks posed by rising sea levels and warming temperatures.
“There is a legal risk that is coming,” Desfosses said. “If there is a carbon risk for a business, how can CEOs of pension funds justify that they don't give a damn and won't mitigate it?”
Business leaders met over two days to try to hammer out common positions on environmental policies. Their decisions on issues such as the production and use of coal, the most carbon- emitting fossil fuel, could lead some investors to shun their shares.
The discussions come as negotiators work toward an accord to limit carbon emissions blamed for climate change that would bind both developed and developing nations. The talks are expected to conclude at a meeting in Paris in December.
A growing number of energy companies have seen shareholder resolutions this year aimed at forcing management to identify risks associated with climate change, according to Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors with more than $13 trillion in assets.
“Pension funds are saying they are very concerned about this,” Colin Melvin, chief executive officer of the biggest pension fund adviser Hermes Equity Ownership Services Ltd, said in an interview. “They're under pressure about climate from their beneficiaries. They recognize the world is warming and this will damage their own livelihoods and governments aren't able to deal with it.”
With 40 funds in 10 countries worth $230 billion as clients, Melvin said investors have already begun to weigh in on the climate debate.
Fiduciary Responsibility
“There is a bit of a movement emerging to divest the most carbon intensive holdings, particularly coal,” he said. “It's on the rise globally. The focus is on oil and gas companies. This will shift to utilities.”
Engie, formerly known as GDF Suez SA, and Electricite de France SA, two French utilities, faced questions about their coal investments this year at annual shareholders' meetings in Paris. Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Total SA, Chevron Corp. and Eni SpA are among the major oil companies targeted by shareholder actions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The data tells us that investors are looking at less carbon intensive investments,” Jose Lopez, executive vice president responsible for operations at Nestle SA, said in an interview. “They are shining the light on some companies.”
Failing to examine the climate impacts of some investments could be seen as negligence of the fiduciary responsibility of fund managers, Desfosses said.
To be sure, some executives said shareholders' top priorities still aren't the environment.
“Investors will first ask about earnings per share, ebitda and all that and when they are finished with that they will ask about environmental policy,” said Rudolf Staudigl, CEO of Wacker Chemie AG, a German chemical maker.
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Senators Warn DOE on 'Social Cost of Carbon'
May 22, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss, Hannah Northey, Manuel Quiñones and Annie Snider
Senate appropriators are looking to put the brakes on the Department of Energy's use of a controversial metric for estimating the benefits of cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
The report accompanying the fiscal 2016 energy-water spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday instructs DOE not to "promulgate any regulations in fiscal year 2016 using the May 2013 estimates for the social cost of carbon until a new working group is convened."
The report also details appropriators' intentions on a wide array of other issues, including electric reliability, nuclear regulation, fossil fuel research and drought.
Critics have accused the Obama administration of flouting transparency in developing the complex social cost of carbon (SCC) formula, which estimates the per-ton costs of releasing man-made carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. U.S. EPA and DOE both use the formula to justify the economic benefits of regulations, and the Bureau of Land Management is currently drafting guidance on calculating the SCC of extracting fossil fuels from public lands (Greenwire, April 15).
An outcry from Republicans over a 2013 SCC revision that hiked the cost of CO2 to $38 a metric ton for 2015 -- up from $24 a ton in the 2010 estimate -- prompted the administration to solicit comments on the revisions, but agencies have shown no sign of backing down on its use.
The Senate appropriators' instructions mirror language contained in the House report accompanying its energy-water spending bill (H.R. 2028), which passed last month.
Both provisions would direct the new working group to "include the relevant agencies and affected stakeholders, re-examine the social cost of carbon using the best available science, and revise the estimate using an accurate discount rate and domestic estimate in accordance with Executive Order 12866 and OMB Circular A-4." The instructions also call for another round of public comments before finalizing any updates.
Republicans have targeted the SCC previously, but will have more leverage now that they control the Senate. At least one House bill (H.R. 340) would bar agencies from using the SCC. Cuts for reliability
The Senate bill would make a deep cut in funding for electric reliability, providing the Energy Department about $152 million to shore up new grid technology aimed at delivery and reliability, a decrease of almost $118 million from President Obama's spending request.
About $27 million of the appropriated funds should be used for program direction, the committee report said, and the secretary of Energy should provide regular updates on the status of energy infrastructure and the energy sector's concerns.
The report says that the private sector -- not the federal government -- should take the lead in deploying new technologies on the U.S. electric grid. "New technologies must be driven by private market acceptance, and not forced on industry," it said.
The proposed cut comes even as fervor grows on Capitol Hill to tackle electric reliability in a comprehensive energy bill and as EPA's Clean Power Plan takes effect. The Obama administration in its recent Quadrennial Energy Review noted the country needs more transmission to firm up the grid, yet pointed out that siting is a complex and lengthy process.
Senate appropriators also called on DOE to establish -- should the secretary deem it appropriate -- a national center for operating technologies like energy storage above 2 megawatts to support grid modernization. NRC
Separately, the Senate spending bill would also cut funding for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The measure includes $990 million for fiscal 2016, a dip of about $30 million from the president's spending request.
Appropriators did, however, include a provision that would allow the NRC to reallocate up to $20 million in unobligated carryover funds to supplement the 2016 spending level, while warning that the agency should no longer carry over large amounts.
"The committee notes that between fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2016 projections, the [NRC] will have carried over more than $50,000,000 in unobligated balances," the report said. "The committee directs the commission to discontinue its practice of carrying over such significant sums from prior fiscal years, which is largely derived from revenues."
Senators made clear in the report they want to accelerate the NRC's recently announced intention to slim down, since an expected surge of new nuclear units never materialized.
The commission is proceeding with a staff plan to streamline the agency to 2005 levels to reflect a lighter workload since projections of a wave of new reactor proposals fizzled. The NRC's Project Aim 2020 envisions a 10 percent smaller workforce in five years with 3,400 full-time employees, compared with 3,677 employees proposed in the fiscal 2015 budget request (E&ENews PM, Feb. 18).
But the report notes that the NRC has not yet formally adopted a staff report laying out the path for downsizing the agency, nor is the administration's fiscal 2016 budget request fully informed by those recommendations.
Moving forward without making cuts now would be irresponsible to taxpayers and trigger steeper cuts in coming years, appropriators said.
"If the committee were simply to adopt the commission's fiscal year 2016 budget as proposed, significant time would be lost in implementing the recommendations, resulting in a need for a steep decline in resources over the next three fiscal years," appropriators wrote. "Further, fully funding the commission's budget request with the understanding that such funds would exceed the Commission's actual requirements would not be consistent with the Committee's responsibility to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely."
The Senate language appears to give the agency more flexibility to address its staffing and budget issues than the fiscal 2016 spending measure the House passed, according to one agency observer. Fossil research, uranium
The bill includes $610 million for fossil energy research and development, significantly more than Obama's request and a slight increase from the House spending bill.
Within fossil energy, the report recommends setting aside more than $400 million for carbon capture and sequestration and other power development. That's in line with what industry advocates say is necessary.
The committee's report on the bill includes language urging DOE to boost the transparency of uranium stockpile release reviews, including developing recommendations and updating lawmakers.
DOE has for years bartered stockpiles not necessary for nuclear weapons in exchange for cleanup of the Piketon, Ohio, gaseous diffusion plant and the down-blending of highly enriched uranium in Erwin, Tenn.
Uranium releases have been controversial because they benefit Centrus Energy Corp. And while uranium-mining interests don't oppose all barters, companies say DOE has flouted federal law hurting the market through the releases. Just yesterday, industry backers introduced legislation to restrict them. Drought
The report also underscores lawmakers' concerns about the record-setting drought gripping large swaths of the West.
During markup of the measure yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) spoke at length about the issue, outlining its impact not just in her state, but in others around the region where parched conditions are spreading.
Feinstein secured an additional $50 million for drought response in the spending bill, although she said the Bureau of Reclamation has indicated it could use $100 million.
"The Committee recognizes that drought is a difficult condition to address while it is occurring. However, there are many things that can be done to stretch available water supplies," the report states. "Reclamation and the Department of the Interior are encouraged to use all of the flexibility and tools at their disposal to mitigate the impacts of this drought."
However, even as the committee praised the administration's work on water conservation and drought planning, it argued that additional infrastructure and increased efficiencies are the only long-term solutions.
"The Committee believes that the only answer to these chronic droughts is a combination of additional storage, improved conveyance, and increased efficiencies in the uses of water both for agriculture and potable purposes," the report says.
The appropriations language comes as Feinstein continues work on drought relief legislation and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) Energy and Natural Resources Committee prepares for a hearing on the parched conditions gripping the West (E&E Daily, May 21).
Increased water storage capacity, in particular, is apt to figure into any broader drought legislation. Army Corps, flood risk
The report also lays out the Senate's proposal for key Army Corps of Engineers budget lines.
The corps' investigations account, which funds studies on new projects under consideration, would see a $12 million boost from the Obama administration's budget request under the Senate's bill, although it would be $13 million less than fiscal 2015 enacted levels.
The Senate bill would boost the corps' all-important construction account by $469 million over the president's request -- $10 million higher than the House's bill. And the agency would receive $2.9 billion for operations and maintenance of ongoing projects under the Senate's bill, $200 million over the president's budget but nearly $150 million less than the House proposed.
The Senate joined the House in denying the Obama administration's request for a $5 million boost to the corps' regulatory program, which Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy had said was for implementation of the agency's "Waters of the United States" rule aimed at clarifying which streams and wetlands fall under the Clean Water Act's permitting programs.
The bill would also block the administration from changing the definition of fill material under the Clean Water Act, which could restrict strip mining. While such a change is not officially in the works, companies have said they don't want to take any chances.
The rider has become a staple of recent spending compromises on Capitol Hill. But it's the first time Senate appropriators follow their House counterparts by including the measure in their initial proposal.
Among the handful of policy riders that made it into the Senate bill is a provision to halt the Obama administration's new Federal Flood Risk Management Standard.
The standard, issued by executive order in January, tells federal agencies to account for rising seas and stronger storms when making grants and building infrastructure. But critics including Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) argue that it could have sweeping implications for communities and businesses near rivers, coasts and lakes, and that stakeholders were cut out of a key portion of its development (Greenwire, May 8).
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EPA Poised To Issue Landmark Water Regulations
May 24, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration is about to unveil an ambitious — and hotly disputed — plan to strengthen its authority over minor water bodies like wetlands, streams and ponds.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “waters of the United States" regulation, expected to be issued in the coming days, has become one of the most controversial environmental regulations of the Obama presidency, with some of the strongest lobbying forces in Washington staking out positions.
The rule dubbed WOTUS in environmental and business circles could indelibly change how the federal government fights pollution and protects water for drinking, navigation, wildlife and other uses under the 1972 Clean Water Act.
At the center of the debate among regulators, Congress, industry and green groups is how far upstream — and into the lives of people and operations of businesses — the EPA can and should go to keep safe and clean the nation’s prized waterways.
There is also sharp disagreement over what the EPA’s proposed rule, unveiled last March, would actually do.
The EPA, Democrats and their supporters frame it as a clarification that would only add 3 percent to the area of its jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the agency would protect important wetlands, headwaters and other water bodies whose statuses have become unclear after a pair of convoluted Supreme Court decisions.
Republicans, farmers, developers, miners, paper manufacturers and their allies have labeled it a massive federal land grab so vaguely written — at least in a draft version — that it would expand the EPA’s jurisdiction to ditches, dry creekbeds, puddles, soggy ground and industrial ponds.
That would make those areas subject to federal water quality standards and potentially require permits for any activity that would change or harm them, cementing central federal control over all matter of private business, opponents say.
More than four decades after Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire and spurred a nationwide push for water safeguards, everybody involved says that they appreciate clean water and support efforts to protect it. But the argument over WOTUS has forced policymakers to decide how far those efforts should go.
“We believe the result of this rulemaking will be to improve the process for making jurisdictional determinations under the Clean Water Act by minimizing delays and costs to make protections of the nation’s clean waters more effective and to improve predictability and consistency for landowners,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a massive joint House-Senate hearing on the rule in February.
“The foundation of the agency’s rulemaking effort to clarify protections under the Clean Water Act is the goal of providing clean and safe water for all Americans.”
Greens have been helping the administration make its case for the rule in recent months.
“We obviously strongly support it,” said Jon Devine, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney specializing in water.
“The primary reason being that it restores guaranteed protections to a vast number of waters that today are in this legal limbo about whether they’re in or out, and at least gave a fighting chance for certain waters that today are being ignored,” he said. “That was a significant step forward in our view, and if the final rule reflects that, that’s certainly what we’ll be saying about it.”
But business groups have not been put at ease by the massive public relations campaigns from the EPA and greens assuring them that the rule would not be detrimental to them.
“Our members are scared to death of it, because their property is their business in many cases,” said Jack Mozloom, a spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
“They’re accustomed to dealing with their respective state environmental enforcement agencies, and this adds an entirely new and disturbing layer of federal bureaucracy on top of all that.”
The EPA, for its part, says it’s listening.
In April, McCarthy wrote a blog post outlining the outreach she and her staff have conducted on the rule, including more than 400 meetings and reading more than a million public comments submitted to them.
“The input helped us understand the genuine concerns and interests of a wide range of stakeholders and think through options to address them,” she wrote.
“In the final rule, people will see that we made changes based on those comments, consistent with the law and the science. We’ve worked hard to reach a final version that works for everyone — while protecting clean water,” McCarthy said.
She said in November that she was “surprised” at the kind of criticisms lodged against the EPA over the rule.
“It became a communications challenge, but we remain very confident that the comments that we’re receiving are consistent with the way in which we need to head … and that we’ll be able to get this rule over the finish line,” she said.
One of the loudest voices against the rule has been agriculture. Farmers and ranchers said that the rule could make filling ditches, spraying fertilizer or other common farming practices subject to federal regulation.
But McCarthy has repeatedly said that agricultural exemptions that have long existed for water rules will continue.
Congress also acted to stop the water rule.
The House voted earlier in May to overturn it, and a bipartisan group of senators has sponsored a bill that would overturn it and give the EPA specific instructions and a deadline for rewriting it. -
Canada Finalizes Rail Tank Car Rules To Align With U.S. Safety Standards
May 25, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada has finalized regulatory amendments creating new safety standards for rail tank cars used to transport crude oil and other flammable liquids, changes that generally are consistent with new standards in the U.S., it announced May 20.
The final amendments to the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations establish a new class of rail tank car, TC/DOT 117, that will be required for transport of flammable liquid dangerous goods such as crude oil, ethanol, gasoline and aviation fuel, Transport Canada said in a regulatory impact analysis accompanying publication of the changes in the May 20 issue of the Canada Gazette, Part II.
The regulations also establish retrofit requirements for older TC/DOT 111 tank cars and implement a plan announced last year to phase out or retrofit TC/DOT 111 tank cars and retrofit TP14877/CPC 1232 tank cars (79 DEN A-3, 4/24/14).
Canada's regulatory amendments correspond closely to a U.S. Transportation Department final rule announced May 1 (85 DEN A-14, 5/4/15).
Requirements for enhanced safety features for tank cars, including thicker steel, full head protection, increased thermal protection, top-fitting protection and new bottom outlet requirements, grew out of recommendations of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada in response to the July 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster (81 DEN A-5, 4/28/15).
U.S.–Canada Border Realities
“The Transportation Safety Board has publicly indicated that TC/DOT 111 tank cars, in addition to the newly adopted TP14877/CPC 1232 standard in Canada, are not sufficiently crash resistant and/or robust to withstand the forces in an accident, which leads to a significant risk of tank car failure and release of dangerous goods during an incident,” the department said.
“The principal benefit associated with the TC/DOT 117 tank car is the reduced risk of tank car failure associated with an incident during the transport of flammable liquids by rail. The new tank car standard significantly increases the forces that the tank car can withstand both during transport, as well as during an incident reducing significantly the loss [spill] of flammable liquid dangerous goods during transport,” it added.
The U.S. and Canada worked together to address tank car requirements and phaseouts as trains carrying combustible liquids frequently travel across national borders.
Paying for Prevention
Implementation of the new standards is expected to cost the industry C$1 billion ($820 million) during a 20-year period, but a typical derailment costs an estimated C$13.2 million ($10.8 million) so only 3.8 incidents a year would have to be prevented for the benefits of the regulations to equal the estimated costs, Transport Canada said. There were 11 incidents reported in 2014 and seven in 2013, it said.
“In the case of a catastrophic incident, like the Lac-Megantic tragedy, preventing one such incident would equal the costs for these regulations,” the department said.
Comments from affected stakeholders after the proposed requirements were posted last July were generally supportive, but some modifications were made in response to comments provided by industry, Transport Canada said. But in the U.S., the changes have sparked to litigation from all sides (97 DEN A-20, 5/20/15).
The regulatory amendments require removal from service of non-jacketed DOT 111 tank cars for carrying crude oil by April 30, 2017; jacketed DOT 111 cars carrying crude oil by Feb. 28, 2018; non-jacketed CPC 1232 cars carrying crude oil by March 31, 2020; non-jacketed or jacketed DOT 111 cars carrying ethanol by April 30, 2023; non-jacketed CPC 1232 cars carrying ethanol by June 30, 2023; and jacketed CPC 1232 cars carrying crude oil, ethanol and all remaining flammable liquids and all remaining jacketed DOT 111 cars by April 30, 2025.
The July 6, 2013, Lac-Megantic rail disaster involved a runaway train carrying crude oil that derailed in the tiny Quebec community, exploding and killing 47 people and causing extensive environmental and property damage. (211 DEN A-5, 10/31/14).
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