Preview Newsletter
ACC AM May 27
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(ACC Blog) Senate Gives The Nod To Move TPA Bill To The Next Critical Phase
May 27, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters
By Michelle Orfei
The Senate has now joined the vast majority of Americans that say they would support passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation to broaden global market access for goods and services made right here in the USA. ACC has been an ardent supporter of the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015... http://blog.americanchemistry.com/ -
(ACC Mentioned) Us Chemical Activity Index Rises Sharply As Outlook For Business Improves
May 26, 2015 | Hydrocarbon Processing
The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), jumped 0.7% in May, as measured on a three-month moving average (3MMA). Reaching an index of 99.3, last seen in November 2007, the CAB remains up 3.3% over a year ago, and suggests gains in business activity now will... -
(ACC Mentioned) Icynene Introduces New 4 Hour Re-occupancy Allowances for Refined Low VOC Spray Foam Product Applications
May 26, 2015 | PR Web
Leading spray foam insulation manufacturer, Icynene, today introduced new 4 hour re-occupancy allowances for homeowners and trades in the United States for two of its high-performance spray foam innovations – light-density open cell Icynene Classic Max and medium-density closed cell Icynene ProSeal. -
(ACC Mentioned) April US Chemical Output For Pharma Down Says ACC; SOCMA Welcomes R&D Tax Credit Move
May 27, 2015 | in-Pharma
By Gareth MacDonald
US production of chemicals for the drug industry fell in April according to data released days after renewed calls for permanent tax breaks to help American manufacturers compete globally. The fall in pharma-focused US chemical manufacturing was announced by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) this week . -
Bill Would Ban Microbeads From Soaps And Body Washes
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to protect the Great Lakes from the small plastic microbeads used in body washes, soaps and other personal care products to exfoliate the skin. Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) unveiled the Microbeads Free Waters Act of 2015 on Tuesday, a bill to phase out the... -
Is That a Toxic Chemical in My Deodorant?
May 26, 2015 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Tracey Black
Did you know that every day you’re exposed to thousands of toxins and chemicals? There are over 10,000 chemical ingredients, some of them known or suspected carcinogens, in soaps, shampoos, lotions, make-up and beauty products, and other personal care products. -
European Parliament Considers Key Environmental Protection TTIP Amendments
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Kirwin
Demands for the European Union's more stringent requirements in chemical regulation, climate change and genetically modified crops to be included in a transatlantic trade agreement with the U.S. are among a range of environmental issues the European Parliament's trade committee is expected to consider May 28. -
Alert Advises Facilities How to Avoid, Report Chemical Releases During Extreme Weather
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued an alert to facility owners and operators on how to minimize the risks of accidental chemical releases and also how to properly report them if they occur. Released as hurricane season kicks off, the May 22 alert said facilities should reflect on lessons learned from previous extreme weather... -
Maryland Governor Mum on Fracking Bill Set to Take Effect Without His Signature
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kathy Lundy Springuel
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) took a back seat in the debate over hydraulic fracturing by announcing that he would allow a “fracking” bill passed by the General Assembly to take effect by default in October, with no action on his part. The bill (S.B. 409 and H.B. 449) instructs the Maryland Department of the Environment to adopt fracking regulations... -
Arctic Fossil Fuel Choices
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Branko Terzic
Last week, protestors in Seattle rallying against drilling for oil and gas in Arctic waters carried signs calling for, among other things, “Climate Justice.” The protests were aimed against a decision by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to grant conditional approval for exploratory drilling in Arctic waters to Shell. -
Drilling Tax Proposal Sparks Blowback
May 27, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The U.S. oil and gas industry is mounting an aggressive campaign to beat back a Pennsylvania proposal to impose a new tax on natural gas production in the state. To gas drillers, the plan by Gov. Tom Wolf (D) threatens to stop in its tracks the economic and employment gains of the last seven years, when the Keystone State added jobs amid... -
Oil Industry Investors Give Cold Shoulder To Resolutions With Environmental Focus
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll and Jim Polson
Investor resolutions urging corporate leaders to be more environmentally friendly in how they run their businesses are frequently being rolled out this year for the energy industry. Proposals meant to nudge Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. into nominating directors with environmental expertise, setting greenhouse gas targets, and compiling... -
EIA Report, NACAA 'Menu' Of Carbon-Cutting Options Spur More Cost, Reliability Fights
May 26, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
In a big news week for the Clean Power Plan, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies released its "menu of options" for states weighing carbon-cutting strategies, and the Energy Information Administration came out with an analysis that shows coal retirements could more than double if the draft rule is implemented. -
Senator Ups Ante In Bid To Prove EPA Lobbied Illegally For Rule
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Annie Snider
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) is requesting a trove of documents related to U.S. EPA's public outreach campaign for its controversial "Waters of the United States" rule following allegations that the agency may have violated federal lobbying laws. The document request -- one of many from congressional opponents of the water rule -- comes on ... -
Vitter Accuses EPA Of 'Colluding' With Environmental Groups
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Tim Devaney
A Republican senator is accusing the EPA of colluding with environmental groups to drum up public support for a controversial drinking water regulation. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) criticizes the agency for using taxpayer dollars to mount a lobbying campaign for the Waters of the United States... -
Inside the War On Coal
May 26, 2015 | Politico
By Michael Grunwald
The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate. -
Free-Market Group Urges Congress To Go Big On Energy
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
A free-market think tank with ties to the Koch brothers has issued an ambitious blueprint for lawmakers to consider as they put pen to paper for energy legislation. The wish list posted today by the American Energy Alliance says it is "paramount to focus on pursuing policies in a broad energy bill that promote free markets, expand domestic energy... development -
Colorado Governor Urges Interior To Complete New Assessments of Mine
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has urged the Interior Department to complete an adequate environmental review as directed by a federal court order so that the Colowyo Coal Mine can remain open. In a May 22 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the governor said the court's decision in a case involving the mine in northwest... -
Charles T. Drevna Joins IER
May 26, 2015 | Institute For Energy Research
By Chris Warren
Today, the Institute for Energy Research announced that Charles T. Drevna is joining the organization as a Distinguished Senior Fellow. Drevna will advise IER on a variety of energy topics, particularly fuel and refining issues. Drevna comes to IER with more than 40 years of experience in legislative, regulatory, and public policy... -
Former Refiners' Lobbyist Joins Energy Think Tank
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
Charles Drevna, the former president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, has joined the Institute for Energy Research. Drevna will be a distinguished senior fellow for the energy think tank, which is funded in part by industrialists Charles and David Koch. He will advise the group on several issues, including those dealing with fuel... -
EPA Says It Has Met Legal Obligations On Regulating Seven Hazardous Pollutants
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Environmental Protection Agency determined in a final rule that it has met its legal obligations to set emissions standards for industrial sectors that emit mercury and six other hazardous air pollutants. The EPA, in the rule signed May 22 by Administrator Gina McCarthy, said it has fulfilled its duty under Section... -
Court Rejects Kansas Appeal In EPA Air Pollution Case
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal court has rejected Kansas’ challenge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) disapproval of an air pollution plan from the state. Kansas filed the case in 2011 after the EPA decided Kansas did not go far enough in ensuring that its air pollution did not blow to neighboring states as part of the agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. -
Ruling Rejecting Kansas SIP Suit Gives Few Hints On Fate Of CSAPR Plans
May 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
A federal appeals court has rejected Kansas' suit over EPA's rejection of its “good neighbor” state implementation plan (SIP) to curb interstate air pollution that the agency replaced with its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), but the ruling offers few hints on how the court might rule on suits over dozens of other vetoed SIPs. -
Green Group Charts Path To U.S. To meet Climate Target
May 27, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The United States can meet — and maybe even surpass — its 2025 greenhouse gas emissions target without help from Congress, but it will have to go far beyond the policies in President Barack Obama’s climate change plan, according to a new report due out Wednesday. -
Surface Transportation Funding Extension Passed by Senate, Awaits Obama's Signature
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Senate May 23 passed by voice vote a two-month, $8.5 billion surface transportation funding extension that includes funds for hazardous material safety programs. Without the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2015 (H.R. 2353), surface transportation authorization would run out May 31. The bill to extend the funding authorization...
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(ACC Blog) Senate Gives The Nod To Move TPA Bill To The Next Critical Phase
May 27, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters
By Michelle Orfei
The Senate has now joined the vast majority of Americans that say they would support passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation to broaden global market access for goods and services made right here in the USA.
ACC has been an ardent supporter of the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (H.R.1890/S.995). First, we believe this TPA bill contains long-sought updates to negotiating objectives that direct U.S. negotiators to address growing challenges to the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers in overseas markets. Second, the legislation includes new process and transparency provisions to ensure that trade agreement negotiations proceed with full input from Congress, industry and other stakeholders.
Contrary to what some may claim, TPA is not about “special interests” – it’s about negotiating free trade agreements that are in America’s best interest. As the Business Roundtable writes:
With 95 percent of the world’s population and 80 percent of global purchasing power outside of the United States, America’s global competitiveness will increasingly depend on expanding U.S. trade and investment opportunities.
The U.S. business of chemistry has a huge role to play in supporting our country’s increased competitiveness. We are one of the nation’s leading export industries, surpassing $190 billion in chemical exports in 2014. We estimate that exports could expand nearly eight percent per year through 2019, to $282 billion. To realize this growth, we must gain access to important markets, and TPA is an important administrative and substantive step to facilitate access to trading partners around the world.
The U.S. is now pursuing an ambitious range of trade agreements – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). These agreements will create opportunities for U.S. businesses across a wide spectrum of industries, sectors, and communities. Without TPA in place, our negotiators will not have the tools needed to conclude the strongest possible trade agreements.
In our view, that makes TPA a necessity – to unleash the massive growth potential for U.S. chemical exports, to enable chemical manufacturers to drive job growth in the broader manufacturing sector, to eliminate costly barriers to chemicals trade, and to resolve 21st century trade issues limiting manufacturing growth in the U.S. and around the world.
ACC will continue to support negotiations on the TPP and the TTIP, and we urge the U.S House of Representatives to move expeditiously to approve TPA to ensure that these comprehensive and historic negotiations are finalized and American businesses and consumers can benefit from their outcomes. - See more at:
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(ACC Mentioned) Us Chemical Activity Index Rises Sharply As Outlook For Business Improves
May 26, 2015 | Hydrocarbon Processing
The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), jumped 0.7% in May, as measured on a three-month moving average (3MMA).
Reaching an index of 99.3, last seen in November 2007, the CAB remains up 3.3% over a year ago, and suggests gains in business activity now will continue into 2016.
The Chemical Activity Barometer has four primary components, each consisting of a variety of indicators: 1) production; 2) equity prices; 3) product prices; and 4) inventories and other indicators. Inventories, product prices, and equity prices all improved over last month.
The Chemical Activity Barometer is a leading economic indicator derived from a composite index of chemical industry activity, according to ACC officials. The chemical industry has been found to consistently lead the US economy’s business cycle given its early position in the supply chain, and this barometer can be used to determine turning points and likely trends in the wider economy.
Month-to-month movements can be volatile, so a three-month moving average of the barometer is provided. This provides a more consistent and illustrative picture of national economic trends.
Applying the CAB back to 1919, it has been shown to provide a lead of two to 14 months, with an average lead of eight months at cycle peaks as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The median lead was also eight months. At business cycle troughs, the CAB leads by one to seven months, with an average lead of four months. The median lead was three months.
The CAB is re-based to the average lead (in months) of an average 100 in the base year (the year 2007 was used) of a reference time series. The latter is the Federal Reserve’s Industrial Production Index.
The CAB comprises indicators relating to the production of chlorine and other alkalies, pigments, plastic resins and other selected basic industrial chemicals; chemical company stock data; hours worked in chemicals; publicly sourced, chemical price information; end-use (or customer) industry sales-to-inventories; and several broader leading economic measures (building permits and new orders). Each month, ACC provides a barometer number, which reflects activity data for the current month, as well as a three-month moving average. The CAB was developed by the economics department at the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
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May 26, 2015 | PR Web
Leading spray foam insulation manufacturer, Icynene, today introduced new 4 hour re-occupancy allowances for homeowners and trades in the United States for two of its high-performance spray foam innovations – light-density open cell Icynene Classic Max and medium-density closed cell Icynene ProSeal.
The 4 hour re-occupancy allowance follows many months of detailed research, testing and assessment of the refined Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal spray foam products based on protocols and procedures developed by the American Chemistry Council – Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (ACC-CPI).
“Through full scale testing and research reviewed by third party research chemists and toxicologists, on our low VOC formulations, re-occupancy times for homeowners can be significantly reduced--from 24 hours to four (4) hours. Refinements to our Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal spray foam, combined with the use of higher workplace ventilation rates of 40 Air Changes per Hour (ACH), have helped us reduce exposure risks to spray foam installers, non-spray foam trades and most especially for the homeowner,” said Icynene VP Engineering, Paul Duffy.
“This is great news for building owners of all kinds. The reduced re-occupancy allowances mean that homeowners no longer need to be displaced for multiple days when having spray foam insulation installed into their homes. They are able to re-occupy their home and enjoy the advantages of spray foam insulation almost immediately. Plus, the new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances present builders and general contractors with a tremendous opportunity to incorporate Icynene’s high-performance, low VOC spray foam innovations into their upcoming projects due to the minimal impact on construction schedules.” said Mr. Duffy.
The new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances for Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal are based on an active ventilation rate of 40.0 ACH. For certified spray foam installers, the low VOC Icynene Classic Max and ProSeal formulations also feature low odor properties a cleaner spray application for better sprayability and less clean-up and gun clogging.
The new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances are applicable only for installations of Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal in the United States.
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May 27, 2015 | in-Pharma
By Gareth MacDonald
US production of chemicals for the drug industry fell in April according to data released days after renewed calls for permanent tax breaks to help American manufacturers compete globally.
The fall in pharma-focused US chemical manufacturing was announced by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) this week .
The industry group said combined with lower fertilizer, acid, phosphate, sulphate and synthetic fibre output, the pharma decline had offset gains in consumer products, coatings, resins, rubber and organics.
The ACC attributed the fall in pharmaceutical chemical production to lower output from suppliers on the West Coast, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the US although it did not name any of the companies involved.
The organisation did not speculate on drivers for the decline in pharma chemical output when contacted by in-Pharmatechnologist.com.
Analysts at Zacks suggested that, across the entire chemical industry, the strength of the US dollar was putting pressure on “US manufacturers as it is making American-made products costlier in other nations.”
Permanent R&D tax credit
This idea would fit with comments made by the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) earlier this month, which said Government measures were important to helping US chemical producers compete on with supplier elsewhere.
SOCMA voiced support for permanent R&D tax credits after the US House of Representatives passed the American Research and Competitiveness Act last Wednesday, arguing that “By nature, specialty chemical manufacturing is innovative.
“Many SOCMA members rely on the R&D tax credit to help them remain competitive in the global marketplace” according to spokesman William Allmond, who said at some of the chemical firms the organisation represents 20% of staff work in research and development.
“We commend the House leadership for moving forward on this legislation that will remove the uncertainty and keep our SOCMA members at the forefront of innovation, which is the lifeblood of specialty chemical manufacturing” he added, urging the Senate to follow suit.
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Bill Would Ban Microbeads From Soaps And Body Washes
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to protect the Great Lakes from the small plastic microbeads used in body washes, soaps and other personal care products to exfoliate the skin.
Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) unveiled the Microbeads Free Waters Act of 2015 on Tuesday, a bill to phase out the manufacturing and sale of microbeads found in household products.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) introduced the bill earlier this month in the House. If passed, the legislation would amend the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to prohibit, starting Jan. 1, 2018, the distribution of a cosmetic that contains synthetic plastic microbeads.
In a news release Stabenow said these microbeads get through water treatment facilities and end up floating in the nation’s Great Lakes, where they build up as plastic pollution and are often mistaken by fish for food.
"Microbeads seem like a nice way to get extra ‘scrub' in your soap, but they pose a very real danger to our Great Lakes," the co-chair of the Senate Great Lakes Task Force said. "Researchers are finding these bits of plastic building up in our lakes, rivers and streams. When we see these kinds of things are threatening our Great Lakes and potentially threatening fish populations, we need to take swift action."
A report by the State University of New York in Fredonia found anywhere from 1,500 to 1.1 million microbeads per square mile in the Great Lakes, the world's largest source of freshwater.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill) are co-sponsoring the legislation.
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Is That a Toxic Chemical in My Deodorant?
May 26, 2015 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Tracey Black
Did you know that every day you’re exposed to thousands of toxins and chemicals? There are over 10,000 chemical ingredients, some of them known or suspected carcinogens, in soaps, shampoos, lotions, make-up and beauty products, and other personal care products.
One of the most harmful chemicals that both men and women put on their bodies is deodorant.
When you think about it, it makes sense. Deodorant is a product that inhibits your body’s natural secretion of toxins. An antiperspirant and deodorant will clog your skin follicles so that you’re not able to sweat as much as your body requires.
On top of inhibiting your body’s natural cleansing and detoxifying process, deodorants and antiperspirants also release tons of harmful chemicals into our bodies. 7 Toxins Lurking in Your Deodorant
Just look at the list of chemical ingredients in an average deodorant: Aluminum Compounds
Aluminum is the ingredient in antiperspirants that actually clogs your pores and prevents sweating. Aluminum exposure has been linked with the development of Alzheimer’s disease and interferes with your estrogen levels. When your body can’t process estrogen properly, there’s a higher risk for breast and prostrate cancer.1 Parabens
This chemical is used in a lot of products these days as a preservative, but it is possibly one of the most harmful additives of all. Sometimes parabens act as estrogen in your body, which disrupts hormonal balances and has been linked to breast cancer and prostate cancer.1 Steareths
These additives are the product of ethoxylation (weakening of harsh chemical in the manufacturing process), which simultaneously produces carcinogens and dioxanes.1 Triclosan
The FDA has classified triclosan as a pesticide, yet it is in the majority of brand name deodorants. It’s used to kill bacteria in the manufacturing process, as well as when it comes in contact with your skin. When triclosan is combined with water it can also create a carcinogenic gas called chloroform.1 Propylene Glycol
If used everyday, this chemical can cause damage to your central nervous system, heart and liver. It is also shown to irritate skin, especially if you have sensitive skin. Propylene glycol can be harmful at as small a percentage as 2%, yet deodorants generally have a high dose of 50% propylene glycol.2 TEA and DEA
Triethanolamine (TEA) and diethanolamine (DEA) are chemicals can seep into your skin and affect your liver and kidneys. In fact, they’re so harmful that these two chemicals have already been banned from products in Europe because they are known carcinogens.2 Artificial Colors
Some artificial colors and bleaches in deodorants can cause serious allergic reactions and are also known carcinogens.2 Labels Can Be Deceptive
It’s alarming to consider all of these toxins are used in conventional deodorants and antiperspirants, yet many are labeled or marketed as “fresh” or ”clean” scented. Even worse, many so-called natural deodorants contain these ingredients too.
Read the labels of deodorants and antiperspirants before buying. You can also check out the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Skin Deep Database to look up these ingredients and other chemicals to check for safety and health precautions.
So what can you use instead? Make your own non-toxic deodorant using ingredients you already have in your kitchen. Check out this easy DIY Natural Deodorant Solid recipe.
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European Parliament Considers Key Environmental Protection TTIP Amendments
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Kirwin
Demands for the European Union's more stringent requirements in chemical regulation, climate change and genetically modified crops to be included in a transatlantic trade agreement with the U.S. are among a range of environmental issues the European Parliament's trade committee is expected to consider May 28.
The Committee on International Trade is expected to vote on about 900 amendments to a resolution that is intended to serve as the European Parliament's negotiating mandate for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Several members of the Parliament have raised concerns about maintaining certain environmental standards they believe exceed those in the U.S., but Parliament officials said that there has been an intense lobbying battle over the amendments.
“The approach outlined by the environment committee report has met considerable resistance by some members of the trade committee,” a European Parliament official told Bloomberg BNA. “It seems that a lot of amendments from the environment committee could face a close vote or could be rejected.
“However, they are likely to be re-introduced in the plenary when the European Commission holds its overall vote in June,” the official said.
Based on European Parliament rules, amendments rejected in committee can be re-introduced before the General Assembly, which is expected to vote on an overall resolution June 10.
EU REACH for Chemicals
Among the issues expected to be raised May 28 is the EU's REACH (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals) regulatory program, about which the U.S. has complained in the World Trade Organization.
“The fact is that U.S. chemical regulation is from the stone age,” Bart Staes, a Green Party member from Belgium, said during a recent meeting of the Committee for the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. “There is absolutely no possibility that any kind of mutual recognition should be allowed as part of the regulatory cooperation in TTIP.”
A pending amendment states that “given the strongly diverging views on risk governance of chemicals and the fundamental and sustained opposition of the U.S. to REACH there are no benefits in cooperating on the implementation of these diverging laws all the more since implementation is far from being a merely technical or uncontroversial exercise.”
Substances Banned Still Used in U.S
Staes authored the European Parliament's environmental committee report that indicates that 82 active pesticide substances that are banned in the EU are still in use in the U.S.
He said that there is a “general pattern of lower amounts of pesticide residues allowed in food in the EU as compared with the U.S.” and that he wants language in the agreement that will ensure that the EU maintains its current standards.
The European Parliament trade committee also is expected to consider amendments focused on concerns about regulations to address climate change. Some members have said that they believe U.S. companies in the industrial and transport sectors—including aviation and shipping—have competitive advantages globally due to less stringent requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“In many areas such as climate and emissions control policies, the U.S. has lower regulatory standards than the EU, which results in higher production and regulatory compliance costs in the EU than the U.S. and hence the risk of carbon and emissions leakage,” one amendment scheduled to be considered said.
EU Demands on Oil, Gas Criticized
Meanwhile, some European Parliament political groups have criticized current EU demands during TTIP negotiations to have unlimited access to U.S. oil and natural gas imports.
“If the EU demands for the lifting of current U.S. restrictions on crude oil and gas exports go through, this would be an absolute disaster for our climate and environment,” said Natacha Cingotti, an official with Friends of Earth Europe. “While climate change is accelerating, such proposals would contribute to yet even higher [carbon dioxide] emissions while keeping Europe's high dependency on oil and gas imports.”
To date, the U.S. has rebuffed EU demands to include a separate energy chapter in the regulatory cooperation part of the TTIP. The Obama administration has said that the U.S. has approved more gas for export than the EU imports from Russia, which currently accounts for about 30 percent of its consumption, and that EU concerns can be addressed in other parts of the TTIP.
Genetically Modified Organisms Also of Concern
Several other amendments pending before the European Parliament committee would call for the TTIP to ensure that new EU legislation allowing EU member states to individually ban the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops remain untouched.
Both the European biotechnology industry and the EU branch of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce want the TTIP to address delays in the EU regulatory approval process and the use of non-scientific criteria when allowing GM crop restrictions.
Those concerns were heightened recently when the European Commission proposed giving EU member states the right to ban food and animal feed containing GM crops (78 DEN A-19, 4/23/15)
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Alert Advises Facilities How to Avoid, Report Chemical Releases During Extreme Weather
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued an alert to facility owners and operators on how to minimize the risks of accidental chemical releases and also how to properly report them if they occur.
Released as hurricane season kicks off, the May 22 alert said facilities should reflect on lessons learned from previous extreme weather events, update emergency contact information with local first responders and “immediately” report any release, spill or discharge that exceeds reportable quantities.
“EPA reminds owners/operators that various laws and regulations require that they minimize chemical releases during process shutdown operations; and if reportable releases occur, they must be reported immediately upon constructive knowledge of occurrence,” the alert said.
Risks of a release are especially acute during hurricane season because facility operators must follow unfamiliar conditions and deal with “numerous simultaneous activities and rapidly changing process conditions.” Nevertheless, facilities have been operated safely during challenging conditions, including 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the alert said.
Provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act dictate how accidental releases must be reported.
Reporting Requirements Outlined
Section 103 of CERCLA (42 U.S.C. §9603 et seq.) mandates that facilities immediately notify the National Response Center following any release of a hazardous substance above a “reportable quantity” for that material.
Section 304 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act requires owners and operators to immediately notify their proper State Emergency Response Commissions and Local Emergency Planning Committees following the release of a “reportable quantity” of a hazardous material.
Section 112(r)(1) of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. §7412(r)(1)) requires facilities to prevent accidental releases of hazardous substances and to minimize the consequences should such a release occur.
Facilities subject to national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants (40 C.F.R. Section 63.6 (e)(1)(i)) must at all times—including periods of startup, shutdown and malfunction—maintain operation in a manner consistent with safety and air pollution control practices to limit emissions of hazardous air pollutants.
Major Stationary Sources Subject to Requirements
Previously, the EPA had excluded refineries, chemical plants and other major stationary sources from emissions standards during times of startup, shutdown and malfunction, but in 2008 a federal appeals court concluded that exemption violated the Clean Air Act (Sierra Club v. EPA, 551 F.3d 1019, 68 ERC 1033, 2008 BL 282130 (D.C. Cir. 2008) ).
There are occasional release reporting exemptions applicable under the Clean Air Act, depending on an individual permit or control regulation, but the obligation rests with each individual facility to determine whether it's required to report a release.
“Owners/operators should at all times operate and maintain safe facilities,” the alert said.
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Maryland Governor Mum on Fracking Bill Set to Take Effect Without His Signature
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kathy Lundy Springuel
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) took a back seat in the debate over hydraulic fracturing by announcing that he would allow a “fracking” bill passed by the General Assembly to take effect by default in October, with no action on his part.
The bill (S.B. 409 and H.B. 449) instructs the Maryland Department of the Environment to adopt fracking regulations by Oct. 1, 2016, and put them into effect one year later, after which time the state's first-ever permits could be issued.
Under Maryland law, Hogan has until the end of May to sign or veto bills passed during the General Assembly's 2015 legislative session, including the fracking measure (70 DEN A-7, 4/13/15).
Hogan spokeswoman Erin Montgomery told Bloomberg BNA in a May 26 e-mail that the governor will exercise his option to let the bill take effect as scheduled Oct. 1 without his signature.
She said the governor had no further remarks on why he chose this route.
No fracking is being performed in Maryland because former Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) imposed a moratorium in 2011 while conducting a study that formed the basis for strict regulations proposed just before he left office (07 DEN A-8, 1/12/15).
At the time, O'Malley described those regulations as the “gold standard” in best management practices that would set detailed requirements for all aspects of natural gas development through fracking.
MDE Still Reviewing Comments
MDE spokesman Jay Apperson told Bloomberg BNA in a May 26 e-mail that the department still is reviewing the “significant number of comments” received earlier this year on O'Malley's proposal.
Because of its technical nature, “we knew that the review will take some time” and will “include consultation with experts” and observation of regional and national developments, he said.
Expectations are that the Hogan administration, generally more pro-business, may depart from what O'Malley proposed.
The legislation's call for regulations to be promulgated by Oct. 1, 2016, gives his team time to reexamine the matter.
As originally filed, S.B. 409/H.B. 499 would have imposed an eight-year moratorium on fracking, after which time it would have been allowed only subject to certain study findings.
Moratorium Cut Back to Two Years
The proposed moratorium was whittled down to three years, but eventually the companion bills were amended to establish a two-year time frame for adopting regulations in 2016 and moving toward permitting in 2017.
Another fracking bill (S.B. 458) that would have adopted a strict liability standard for drillers without the need to show negligence cleared the Senate but never reached final passage in the House before the close of the 2015 legislative session (57 DEN A-11, 3/25/15).
The bill would have increased insurance mandates, required drillers to disclose to a plaintiff the chemical constituents used in fracking and would have barred any contract that waived the right to bring an action against a permittee or reduced any liability for injury, death or loss to a person or property that was caused by fracking.
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May 26, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Branko Terzic
Last week, protestors in Seattle rallying against drilling for oil and gas in Arctic waters carried signs calling for, among other things, “Climate Justice.” The protests were aimed against a decision by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to grant conditional approval for exploratory drilling in Arctic waters to Shell. Frankly, it’s not clear how stopping drilling in the U.S. - jurisdictional Arctic territory would lead to “climate justice.” In fact it could even exacerbate global environmental problems.
First, the drilling permits are conditional; and secondly there is no guarantee that Shell will find adequate volumes of oil or natural gas which could be produced economically and sold competitively in global markets. Even if fossil fuels could be produced from U.S. Arctic waters, that future production would continue to be environmentally regulated by Alaska state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as by the BOEM.
But what if these future new fossil fuel supplies were not produced from U.S. Arctic waters? And what if global demand for fossil fuels continues to grow? There’s little disagreement among experts on the answer to that question. The International Energy Agency predicts that world primary energy demand will be 37 percent higher in 2040 than it was last year.
The U.S. Geological Survey indicates that the 21 million square miles of the Arctic Circle includes more than 400 oil and gas accumulations. Future oil and natural gas demand could be met by other suppliers from the Arctic area, such as the Russians (whose Arctic shelf is believed to hold half of the total Arctic reserves ) or from other stakeholders, such as those who own new global oil fields off the African coast, in China and other locations. Would there really be “climate justice” if new fossil fuel supplies came to the market from other sources, at the full volumes necessary to balance supply and demand, but without the stringent environmental rules and oversight of U.S. environmental regulators? Alaskan protestors in Seattle may have legitimate parochial reasons for opposing oil and gas production in their state. But global “climate justice” may be diminished and not advanced by their protests.
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Drilling Tax Proposal Sparks Blowback
May 27, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The U.S. oil and gas industry is mounting an aggressive campaign to beat back a Pennsylvania proposal to impose a new tax on natural gas production in the state.
To gas drillers, the plan by Gov. Tom Wolf (D) threatens to stop in its tracks the economic and employment gains of the last seven years, when the Keystone State added jobs amid a national recession.
The boom was largely due to hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional drilling techniques that propelled the state to becoming the No. 2 producer in volume, behind only Texas. Pennsylvania now produces more than an eighth of the country’s gas.“There’s a broad consensus that, during the period of time in the U.S. economy when both economic growth and employment growth were stressed, the natural gas industry was one of the bright spots in both job growth and economic growth,” said Frank Macchiarola, the top lobbyist for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, one of the national groups involved in the Pennsylvania fight.
“And to threaten that, it really doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Pennsylvania is historically a swing state in national elections, so the debate could play a role in the 2016 campaign, when presidential candidates will search for issues to edge out their competitors. Voters will also decide whether to reelect Sen. Pat Toomey (R), who has declined to take a position on the tax.
The plan unveiled in February reflected a campaign promise from Wolf, who beat then-Gov. Tom Corbett (R) last year by nearly 10 points, due in part to Corbett’s cuts to education.
Known as a severance tax, Wolf’s proposal would charge gas drillers 5 percent of the value of the gas they produce, plus 4.7 cents per 1,000 cubic feet as a backstop against low prices.
Wolf has tapped into Pennsylvanians’ anger about education cuts by planning to put the largest chunk of the expected $1 billion in added revenue from the tax into schools.
“Pennsylvania is the only gas-producing state in the country that doesn’t have a severance tax,” said Jeff Sheridan, Wolf’s spokesman. Currently, the state charges relatively low drilling fees that amount to less than 2 percent of the gas value and go mostly to the counties that host the wells.
“Oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania are not paying their fair share, and schools across Pennsylvania are really struggling after years of mass cuts,” Sheridan said.
“We’re only asking for a very reasonable severance tax.”
But drillers say it’s anything but reasonable.
The American Petroleum Institute commissioned a study earlier in May concluding that the tax threatens billions in investment dollars and thousands of jobs.
“In 2016 alone, more than 6,000 job losses could occur, not just in the oil and gas sector but also across a range of industries that are part of the gas industry supply chain and from service industries,” Stephanie Catarino Wissman, of the group’s Pennsylvania office, told reporters.
“By 2025, supported employment in the state could drop by nearly 18,000 relative to projected levels without the tax,” she said.
Lee Branstetter, a public policy and economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said national groups are paying attention because of the volume of gas produced in Pennsylvania, which exceeded 4 trillion cubic feet last year.
“You have to come to a place like Pennsylvania to get the resource,” he said. “As long as the fee is reasonable ... people are going to pay it.”
Susquehanna Polling Research has found that 70 percent of the state’s voters support a severance tax.
Branstetter predicted that the tax plan would play into the 2016 national races, both for president and Senate.
“We’re having a larger national debate over how much we want to try to address social problems with expenditures, and how we fund those expenditures,” he said.
In declining to take a position on the tax, Toomey said it is an issue best addressed by elected leaders in Pennsylvania.
“I’m going to leave that to the state legislators and the governor to work out,” he told The Hill.
Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D), who is running to unseat Toomey next year, said in a statement that he supports the tax, citing the federal research money that went into developing fracking.
“A 5 percent return on taxpayers’ investment is reasonable, and I support it,” he said.
Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Glenn Thompson and Tim Murphy, whose districts host a large portion of the state’s gas wells, blasted Wolf’s plan.
“I think it’s a ridiculous proposal,” Thompson said, citing the state’s high corporate tax rate.
“I don’t think Gov. Wolf will kill the golden goose, but he’ll cause it to relocate for a considerable amount of time. And with that, he’s going to take a lot of jobs,” he said.
Murphy said the proposal is especially poorly timed with the coal and steel industries that were once important to his southwestern Pennsylvania district on the decline.
“I don’t think it’s good at all,” he said. “I think we ought to be looking at ways to expand natural gas in our state, like natural gas export facilities in Philadelphia.”
While the gas industry groups are weighing in, national environmental groups have largely stayed out.
“They’re bringing a lot of money in, doing a lot of media, a big media push,” John Norbeck, president of environmental group PennFuture, said of the industry involvement.
“These large, national, DC-based lobby firms telling Pennsylvanians what’s best for them, I don’t think it flies,” he said.
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Oil Industry Investors Give Cold Shoulder To Resolutions With Environmental Focus
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll and Jim Polson
Investor resolutions urging corporate leaders to be more environmentally friendly in how they run their businesses are frequently being rolled out this year for the energy industry.
Proposals meant to nudge Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. into nominating directors with environmental expertise, setting greenhouse gas targets, and compiling reports on minimizing fracking risks are among seven such resolutions being voted on May 27 when the two biggest U.S. oil companies hold their shareholder meetings.
Institutional investors who control the biggest blocks of stock believe the proposals aren't needed because the companies already are motivated to minimize damage, said Vincent Piazza, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. Supporters as diverse as the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and the As You Sow Foundation say that just having them on the ballot can spur important dialog that can advance their movement.
“Success doesn't mean you have to get 50 percent of the vote,” said Timothy Smith, a senior vice president at Boston-based Walden Asset Management who supports the proposals. “The goal is to start a dialog, and that moves things forward.”
Exxon and Chevron's combined market value of more than half-a-trillion dollars eclipses the economies of about 90 percent of the world's nations. Exxon's gathering in Dallas will include three environmentally focused proposals; Chevron's meeting in San Ramon, California, will feature four. All are opposed by the companies’ management.
Declining Support
Smith, who helps oversee $3 billion in investments, said support for the resolution urging Exxon to set goals for cutting greenhouse gases probably will decline from the 20 percent it garnered last year. He attributed this to an about-face by Institutional Shareholder Services, an investor advisory service that supported the proposal last year but this year has urged a “no” vote after saying Exxon already discloses sufficient emissions data.
“I have to laugh when these guys say they want to put a guy on the board or change the way they run their business,” said John C. Kornitzer, who manages more than $1.3 billion, including Exxon and Chevron shares, as chief executive officer of Kornitzer Capital Management Inc. “Compiling a report isn't going to prevent an industrial accident.”
Redundant Effort
In communications sent directly to shareholders and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Exxon and Chevron encouraged “no” votes. They said the proposals would be redundant to existing corporate practices, that the sought-after data is already disclosed in other formats, and that the measures would hinder managers and directors in overseeing the business.
Richard Keil, an Exxon spokesman, and Chevron's Kurt Glaubitz declined to comment and referred a reporter's questions to the proxy filings.
Companies are increasingly willing to negotiate, said Gregory Elders, the Bloomberg Intelligence analyst who pointed to the pace of these proposals. One-fourth of all resolutions have been withdrawn as management agreed to address concerns, he said in an interview.
In 2014, Exxon persuaded activists to pull resolutions seeking reports on assets threatened by carbon caps and risks associated with fracking. In exchange, the company publicly released data on both themes.
“You've got to give the company credit; they are willing to talk to investors about these concerns,” said Walden Assets’ Smith.
Improving Disclosure
“The industry has done a lot to improve disclosure, to improve how it fracks and completes wells, and that's not taken into account in these resolutions,” added Piazza, Bloomberg Intelligence's senior analyst for U.S. oil and gas.
Kornitzer, who co-manages the Buffalo Flexible Income Fund from Shawnee Mission, Kansas, is voting against all seven of the proposals. Executive teams at the biggest oil companies have too much at stake to operate recklessly, he said.
“These CEOs all have skin in the game and it isn't $500,000 worth of stock awards at risk if they mess up, it's millions and millions,” Kornitzer said.
Even as green resolutions face almost certain defeat, energy investors have been more willing to embrace New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer's efforts to make it easier for climate-change activists to get on corporate boards. Stringer's proposal would open annual meeting ballots to director candidates nominated by shareholders.
The proposal, which is separate from the resolutions to add an environmental expert to the board, is on the ballots of 20 oil and gas companies this year. Shareholders at Occidental Petroleum Corp., ConocoPhillips and 10 other companies have approved the proposal, while two rejected it.
Exxon and Chevron shareholders will vote on it during the week of May 25. Both companies are urging ’no’ votes.
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EIA Report, NACAA 'Menu' Of Carbon-Cutting Options Spur More Cost, Reliability Fights
May 26, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
In a big news week for the Clean Power Plan, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies released its "menu of options" for states weighing carbon-cutting strategies, and the Energy Information Administration came out with an analysis that shows coal retirements could more than double if the draft rule is implemented.
EIA says the modeling it used is not suitable for assessing reliability, but that won't stop critics from using it to highlight that the regulation would cause a quick wave of coal retirements, 90 gigawatts mostly by 2020, Manuel Quiñones reports (Greenwire, May 22).
Opponents of the rule have said those rapid shifts and a swift build-up of natural gas and renewable energy use could overstress the electric grid (ClimateWire, May 22).
At the same time, an industry group -- the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council -- has already lashed out at NACAA's "menu of options" over similar concerns. ERCC said the air agencies' options may provide an extensive list of carbon-reducing measures, but it won't help regulators figure out how to keep electric costs down or avoid risking potential power outages (Greenwire, May 21).
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also sent its advice to EPA about how to ensure grid reliability. FERC's letter did not seem to be calling directly for a "reliability safety valve," to allow states and generators to break with compliance plans in emergency situations (Greenwire, May 18).
But FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller tells E&E's Hannah Northey that the letter demonstrates the agency's desire for a reliability safety valve if EPA chooses to move in that direction.
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Senator Ups Ante In Bid To Prove EPA Lobbied Illegally For Rule
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Annie Snider
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) is requesting a trove of documents related to U.S. EPA's public outreach campaign for its controversial "Waters of the United States" rule following allegations that the agency may have violated federal lobbying laws.
The document request -- one of many from congressional opponents of the water rule -- comes on the heels of a New York Times article last week highlighting critics' concerns. Industry opponents and their allies in Congress say the agency's social media campaign and coordination with outside groups may have crossed the legal line.
"The American public deserves to know the extent to which federal regulatory agencies are now lobbying for the President's political agenda, employing campaign tactics and operatives at the highest level of government to promote policies that could have disastrous impacts for the American people and economy," Vitter wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy today.
The documents he requested include: all communications among EPA employees about messaging and outreach around the rule; communications between EPA employees and people affiliated with Organizing for Action, a successor group to President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign; and a list of all environmental groups that EPA worked with on promotion of the rule.
EPA has defended its activities around the water rule, arguing that the campaign's goal was "to inform and educate" and was "well within the appropriate bounds" of the agency's mission. Officials have also said that they encouraged stakeholders from all perspectives to weigh in. [See blog at http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2015/05/the-importance-of-education-and-outreach/]
So far, that doesn't appear to have alleviated critics' concerns, though.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has said he will request a Government Accountability Office report on EPA's public relations campaign on the rule. And Vitter, who heads the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said last week that he plans to introduce and hold a vote on a sense of the Senate resolution condemning the fact that the administration did not conduct a small-business review panel on the water rule (E&E Daily, May 20).
This is not the first time that Vitter has accused EPA of improperly developing environmental policy. He has repeatedly tried to prove that the agency colluded with the Natural Resources Defense Council in developing its rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants (Greenwire, Feb. 18).
The Obama administration could unveil its final version of the water rule as soon as this week.
Meanwhile, opponents in Congress are moving forward with efforts to kill it. The House has passed two bills so far this year to scrap it. In the Senate, a measure from Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) to send the administration back to the drawing board is moving forward, and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is angling to block it through the appropriations process.
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Vitter Accuses EPA Of 'Colluding' With Environmental Groups
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Tim Devaney
A Republican senator is accusing the EPA of colluding with environmental groups to drum up public support for a controversial drinking water regulation.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) criticizes the agency for using taxpayer dollars to mount a lobbying campaign for the Waters of the United States rule it proposed last year.
Vitter, who is running to succeed Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), called it “outrageous.”
“This news offers yet another example of the EPA’s collusion with far-left environmental groups to promote a policy that would hurt small businesses and substantially harm the American economy,” Vitter wrote.
He specifically criticized the EPA for using social media to promote the rule, but the agency defended its use of social media in a recent blog post.
“Like almost every government, business or non-profit organization these days, we use social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to stay connected and to inform people across the country about our work,” the agency wrote.
“To ensure Americans had the facts directly from us about the proposed rule, the value of protecting streams and wetlands, and the need for clearly defined protections under the Clean Water Act, we used social media.”
This comes despite the Department of Justice’s longtime policy that advises federal agencies against lobbying in favor of their own rules, Vitter says.
The EPA already regulates large sources of water, but the rule would expand the agency’s jurisdiction to include smaller bodies of water like streams, ponds and ditches.
Farmers say this would make it difficult for them to operate under EPA jurisdiction.
“The fact that the EPA certified that the WOTUS rule will not harm small entities, while at the same time devoting itself to political advocacy on behalf of the White House, demonstrates that the EPA places a higher priority on the president’s environmental agenda than it does on protecting the interests of America’s small businesses, as required by law,” Vitter wrote.
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May 26, 2015 | Politico
By Michael Grunwald
The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate.
The industry and its supporters use “war on coal” as shorthand for a ferocious assault by a hostile White House, but the real war on coal is not primarily an Obama war, or even a Washington war. It’s a guerrilla war. The front lines are not at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Supreme Court. If you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots on the ground in the war on coal.
Beyond Coal is the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign in the Club’s 123-year history, and maybe the history of the environmental movement. It’s gone largely unnoticed amid the furor over the Keystone pipeline and President Barack Obama’s efforts to regulate carbon, but it’s helped retire more than one third of America’s coal plants since its launch in 2010, one dull hearing at a time. With a vast war chest donated by Michael Bloomberg, unlikely allies from the business world, and a strategy that relies more on economics than ecology, its team of nearly 200 litigators and organizers has won battles in the Midwestern and Appalachian coal belts, in the reddest of red states, in almost every state that burns coal.
“They’re sophisticated, they’re very active, and they’re better funded than we are,” says Mike Duncan, a former Republican National Committee chairman who now heads the industry-backed American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “I don’t like what they’re doing; we’re losing a lot of coal in this country. But they do show up.”
Coal still helps keep our lights on, generating nearly 40 percent of U.S. power. But it generated more than 50 percent just over a decade ago, and the big question now is how rapidly its decline will continue. Almost every watt of new generating capacity is coming from natural gas, wind or solar; the coal industry now employs fewer workers than the solar industry, which barely existed in 2010. Utilities no longer even bother to propose new coal plants to replace the old ones they retire. Coal industry stocks are tanking, and analysts are predicting a new wave of coal bankruptcies.
This is a big deal, because coal is America’s top source of greenhouse gases, and coal retirements are the main reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined 10 percent in a decade. Coal is also America’s top source of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other toxic air pollutants, so fewer coal plants also means less asthma and lung disease—not to mention fewer coal-ash spills and coal-mining disasters. The shift toward cleaner-burning gas and zero-emissions renewables is the most important change in our electricity mix in decades, and while Obama has been an ally in the war on coal—not always as aggressive an ally as the industry claims—the Sierra Club is in the trenches. The U.S. had 523 coal-fired power plants when Beyond Coal began targeting them; just last week, it celebrated the 190th retirement of its campaign in Asheville, N.C., culminating a three-year fight that had been featured in the climate documentary “Years of Living Dangerously.”
Beyond Coal isn’t the stereotypical Sierra Club campaign, tree-huggers shouting save-the-Earth slogans. Yes, it sometimes deploys its 2.4 million-member, grass-roots army to shutter plants with traditional not-in-my-back-yard organizing and right-to-breathe agitating. But it usually wins by arguing that ditching coal will save ratepayers money.Bloomberg has donated to the Sierra Club's vast war chest. | Getty
Behind that argument lies a revolution in the economics of power, changes few Americans think about when they flick their switches. Coal used to be the cheapest form of electricity by far, but it’s gotten pricier as it’s been forced to clean up more of its mess, while the costs of gas, wind and solar have plunged in recent years. Now retrofitting old coal plants with the pollution controls needed to comply with Obama’s limits on soot, sulfur and mercury is becoming cost-prohibitive—and the EPA is finalizing its new carbon rules as well as tougher ozone restrictions that should add to the burden. That’s why the Sierra Club finds itself in foxholes with big-box stores, manufacturers and other business interests, fighting coal upgrades that would jack up electricity bills, pushing for cheaper renewables and energy efficiency instead. In a case I watched in Oklahoma City, every stakeholder supported Beyond Coal’s push for a utility to buy more low-cost wind power—including a coalition of industrial customers that reportedly included a Koch Industries-owned paper mill.
“They’re not burning bras. They’re fighting dollar to dollar,” says attorney Jim Roth, who represented a group of hospitals on Beyond Coal’s side in the Oklahoma case. “They’ve become masters at bringing financial arguments to environmental questions.”
As the affordability case for coal has lost traction, the industry’s defenders have portrayed the war on coal as a war on reliability, an assault on 24-hour “baseload” plants that provide juice when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. They ask how the Sierra Club expects America to run its refrigerators around the clock—since it also opposes nuclear power and has a separate Beyond Gas campaign. Duncan’s group started a Twitter meme warning that Americans could end up #ColdInTheDark, and even Bloomberg suggested to me in a recent interview that the Club’s leaders seem to want Americans to wear loincloths and live in caves.
In fact, neither the decline of coal, nor the boom in renewables has blacked out the grid, and Beyond Coal’s leaders are confident electricity markets can handle much more intermittent power. In any case, they see coal as the lowest-hanging fruit in the struggle to stabilize the climate, not only our dirtiest fossil fuel but the one with the cheapest alternatives. In the long run, combating global warming will depend a multitude of factors, from electric vehicles to carbon releases from deforestation to methane releases from belching cows, but for the next decade, our climate progress depends mostly on reducing our reliance on the black stuff. Coal retirements have enabled Obama to pledge U.S. emissions cuts of up to 28 percent by 2025, which has, in turn, enabled him to strike a climate deal with China and pursue a global deal later this year in Paris.
“We’ve found the secret sauce to making progress in unlikely places,” says Bruce Nilles, who leads Beyond Coal from the Club’s San Francisco headquarters. “And every time we beat the coal boys, people say: ‘Whoa. It can be done.’”
Behind that argument lies a revolution in the economics of power, changes few Americans think about when they flick their switches. Coal used to be the cheapest form of electricity by far, but it’s gotten pricier as it’s been forced to clean up more of its mess, while the costs of gas, wind and solar have plunged in recent years. Now retrofitting old coal plants with the pollution controls needed to comply with Obama’s limits on soot, sulfur and mercury is becoming cost-prohibitive—and the EPA is finalizing its new carbon rules as well as tougher ozone restrictions that should add to the burden. That’s why the Sierra Club finds itself in foxholes with big-box stores, manufacturers and
The Sierra Club can’t claim full credit for the coal bust. It didn’t ratchet down the prices of gas, wind and solar or enact the flurry of EPA rules ratcheting up the price of coal, although its lobbyists and lawyers have pushed hard for government support for renewables while fighting in court over just about every coal-related regulation. It didn’t produce the energy efficiency boom that has reined in electricity demand, either. Still, a Bloomberg Philanthropies analysis found that at least 40 percent of U.S. coal retirements could not have happened without Beyond Coal’s advocacy. The status quo wields a lot of power in the heavily regulated power sector, where economics and mathematics don’t always beat politics and inertia. The case for change keeps getting stronger, but someone has to make the case.
When Mary Anne Hitt, Beyond Coal’s national director, first visited Indianapolis to fight an inner-city plant, the headline in the Star was: “Beyond Coal’s Director Faces Tough Sell in Indiana.” But after two years of door-knocking, phone-banking and educating officials on the new realities of electricity, the Sierra Club and its local partners helped shut down the plant. Hitt has seen the same kind of miracle in Chicago, in Omaha, alongside a Paiute tribe reservation in Nevada, even in coal strongholds like Kentucky. It’s starting to feel more like a pattern than a miracle.
“David is fighting Goliath every day, and David keeps winning,” Hitt says.
Energy analysts have a way of making Goliath’s new underdog status seem inevitable. Then again, it wasn’t long ago that their burning question about the U.S. coal industry was not how fast it would go away, but how fast it would grow.
Mike Duncan, a former RNC chairman who now heads the industry-backed American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity says of Beyond Coal: “I don’t like what they’re doing; we’re losing a lot of coal in this country. But they do show up.” | AP Photo
The story of coal is a rich vein in the American story, powering our industry, our railroads, our politics. For decades, the work of extracting coal after millions of years underground—so dangerous for some, so lucrative for others—was seen as God’s work. The alchemy of converting coal into valuable energy was seen as a fulfillment of America’s destiny to exploit nature for the benefit of mankind, even as the smog spewing out of coal smokestacks was seen as part of the dystopia of urban life.
These days, growing concerns about climate have heightened concerns about coal, which produces 75 percent of the power sector’s carbon, and more emissions than all our cars and trucks combined. But even at the dawn of the 21st century, the George W. Bush administration’s main concern about coal power and fossil energy in general was that the U.S. wasn’t producing enough of it. In 2001, an energy task force led by Dick Cheney, after a series of secret meetings with fossil-fuel executives, called for a new power-plant construction boom, warning that the alternative was a national reprise of the rolling blackouts that had just roiled California. Utilities quickly proposed about 200 new coal plants, and faced no organized national opposition. Coal plants have a useful lifespan of at least 40 years, so the U.S. was poised to lock in a new generation of dirty power. And all that new capacity was poised to destroy any incentive to develop clean wind or solar power.
That’s when the Sierra Club got into its first big coal fight over a proposed billion-dollar plant south of Chicago, a welcome-to-the-NFL episode. The Chicago area already had poor air quality—the coal plants around the Loop were known as the Ring of Fire—and local volunteers, led by an indefatigable German immigrant named Verena Owen, were desperate to block the project. Their cause seemed hopeless, but for Owen, who is now Beyond Coal’s lead volunteer, it was personal. Her best friend had struggled to breathe whenever the air was hazy and eventually died of lung disease, leaving behind a daughter in kindergarten. “I don’t know how many people we ended up saving, but I know one we didn’t,” Owen says.
The first time Nilles, at the time a lawyer for the Sierra Club’s Midwest office in Chicago, tried to attend a hearing about the plant, union members who supported the project came early and packed the hall while the Club was holding a news conference. Illinois regulators soon rubber-stamped the permit. Owen and Nilles can still recite the date and time of the news dump: Friday, Oct. 10, 2003, at 5:10 p.m., so the bureaucrats could ignore their calls and escape for the weekend. And the industry had an even easier time of it elsewhere. Nilles later reviewed the record for another billion-dollar plant that broke ground in Iowa about the same time, and discovered there hadn’t been a single public comment in opposition.
“Everything was going full speed in the wrong direction, and we had no capacity to fight,” he says. “We realized we needed a strategy. Fast.”
The strategy that Nilles devised was to fight every new plant from every conceivable environmental, economic and political angle. The Sierra Club began organizing boot camps to teach lawyers and volunteers around the region how to block coal permits. Demand for the seminars was so intense that, at one point, Nilles’ boss had to remind him that Texas was not part of the Midwest. But he figured Texans who breathed air and drank water had as much to lose from exposure to coal-fired pollutants as Midwesterners had. Some of the Club’s funders thought his fight-everything-everywhere approach was unrealistic during a national coal rush, but every proposed plant was in someone’s backyard, and the Club had members in every corner of the country. Nilles couldn’t imagine telling any of them their communities would have to be sacrificed for the greater tactical good.
Environmentalists have always been good at blocking stuff, and over the next few years, the kitchen-sink strategy produced some improbable victories. Nilles exploited threats to an endangered clover to delay the Chicago-area plant, and the utility eventually abandoned it. A local Sierra Club chapter stopped a massive plant in Kentucky coal country after a 63-day hearing, convincing regulators that the proposal had inadequate pollution controls, and that adequate controls would be exorbitant for ratepayers. These were shoestring crusades with expert witnesses crashing on the couches of volunteers, but the victories felt contagious, spreading hope to activists in other states who read about them on the Club’s coal listserv.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club was canvassing its members to develop a new long-term strategic plan. To the surprise of then-Director Carl Pope, they overwhelmingly wanted climate and energy to be the top priority, a major shift for a group that had emphasized wilderness conservation since its creation by the legendary outdoorsman John Muir. At a meeting in Tucson in early 2006, the Club’s board voted to build the fledgling Midwestern anti-coal effort into a national campaign. Climate activists are often accused of wasting energy on symbolic movement-building efforts with relatively limited impact on emissions, like their crusades to stop Keystone and get universities to divest from fossil fuels. Beyond Coal’s leaders do oppose the pipeline and support the divestment movement, but the rationale for the campaign was all about hunting where the ducks are.
“It was existential necessity: Look how many coal plants they want to build. Look how much carbon they’d produce. Well, it’s game over if we don’t stop them,” Pope recalls. “If we were going to focus on climate, we had to focus on coal.”
In a bow to political realism, the initial goal was to make sure coal was “mined responsibly, burned cleanly and disposed of safely.” But the campaigners didn’t really believe coal could be burned cleanly. The original mouthful of a mission soon evolved to “Move Beyond Coal,” then just “Beyond Coal.” It was a much simpler message, helping to unite a variety of activists—working for specific neighborhoods, Indian tribes, mountains targeted by mining outfits, public health, environmental justice, clean energy, and the climate—against a common enemy. The Sierra Club would be the one constant presence in the war on coal, but it began partnering with more than 100 local, regional and national groups in its battles around the country.
The campaign was remarkably successful. Nilles and his team scoured every permit application for vulnerabilities and managed to block all but 30 of the 200 plants proposed in the Bush era. The nice thing about fighting new plants was that they didn’t exist yet, so it only took one deal breaker—too much smog in a high-smog area, too close to a national park, too expensive for ratepayers, whatever—to break a deal. Some of the plants that did get built still haunt Nilles, but those defeats did not doom the decarbonization of America. The game was not over.
By 2008, with the economy crashing and power demand slumping, utilities had stopped pushing new coal plants. That’s when Nilles began plotting to go after old ones—an even tougher challenge, but a vital one to avoid the game-over scenario. He had moved to the liberal college town of Madison, and he was amazed that an old coal plant a mile from his home still had no pollution controls; it was way dirtier than the new plants he was fighting around the country. The nation’s fleet of existing coal plants was still emitting nearly 2 billion tons of carbon and causing an estimated 13,000 premature deaths every year. It felt good to stop projects that would have increased those numbers, but Nilles wanted to use the Club’s newfound expertise to reduce them.
“It’s a lot easier to throw ourselves in front of bulldozers to stop something than it is to shut something down that’s already part of the community, paying taxes, generating power, providing jobs,” Nilles says. “But that’s where the emissions are.”
That was also the year Obama won the presidency, creating hope for stricter EPA regulation of sulfur, soot and ozone, plus the first-ever regulations of mercury, coal ash and carbon. As difficult as it would be to kill plants that had been operating for decades—two-thirds of the coal fleet predated the Clean Air Act of 1970—Nilles thought the combination of top-down rules from Washington and bottom-up pressure at state and local hearings could force utilities to confront investment decisions they had been delaying all those decades. Most utilities would need approval from their financial and environmental regulators before they could install expensive pollution controls. And while the utilities might be happy to charge their customers tens of millions of dollars for upgrades in order to comply with one new rule—plus a tidy profit they’re usually guaranteed for capital improvements—utility commissions might not let them start down that road if they faced hundreds of millions of dollars in additional compliance costs from rules still to come.
Once again, the campaign produced some inspiring early wins, including the retirement of that antiquated plant near Nilles in Madison. He also filed a lawsuit against his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, to get it off coal. The Club quickly found that when it could stop investor-owned utilities from getting a blank check to charge ratepayers for coal upgrades, they would usually shut down the plants rather than risk shareholder dollars. That was even true in coal country, where homeowners, businesses and regulators were just as allergic to pricey upgrades—and utilities were just as reluctant to foot the bill themselves. As Nilles’ new deputy, Hitt, a West Virginia activist who had spent years trying to stop mining companies from blowing up mountains in Appalachia, found she could do more to protect the mountains by shutting down the plants that used their coal.
Beyond Coal had grown from three staffers to a 15-state operation, but it still lacked the scale to fight 523 plants all over the country. It needed to get a lot bigger. That’s when the combative billionaire who has financed his own wars on guns, tobacco and Big Gulps took an interest in the war on coal.
Beyond Coal’s pivotal moment came at a meeting in Gracie Mansion about, of all things, education reform. Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street savant-turned media mogul-turned New York City mayor, was looking for a new outlet for his private philanthropy. It quickly became clear that education reform would not be that outlet.
“It was a terrible meeting in every way, and Mike was angry,” recalls his longtime adviser, Kevin Sheekey. “I said: ‘Look, if you don’t like this idea, that’s fine. We’ll bring you another.’ He said: ‘No, I want another now.’”
As it happened, Sheekey had just eaten lunch with Carl Pope, who was starting a $50 million fundraising drive to expand Beyond Coal’s staff to 45 states. The cap-and-trade plan that Obama supported to cut carbon emissions had stalled in Congress, and the carbon tax that Bloomberg supported was going nowhere as well. Washington was gridlocked. But Pope had explained to Sheekey that shutting down coal plants at the state and local level could do even more for the climate—and have a huge impact on public health issues close to his boss’s heart.
“That’s a good idea,” Bloomberg told Sheekey. “We’ll just give Carl a check for the $50 million. Tell him to stop fundraising and get to work.”
Bloomberg had never thought of himself as a Sierra Club kind of guy. But he saw coal as a killer, as well as the main threat to the climate, and the Club was in the field doing something about it. His only demand was a more analytical approach to the war on coal, with measurable deliverables, complex predictive models for vulnerable plants, and KPI—Key Performance Indicators, as Pope later learned.
“The Sierra Club had never heard of KPI,” Pope says. “We just had a gut instinct for what would work. The mayor said: ‘Oh, no, no. This will be data-driven.’”
On a sweltering day in July 2011, Bloomberg announced his gift to the Club on a boat he had chartered on the Potomac River, in front of a 63-year-old coal plant he had always noticed on flights into Washington. He saw it as a perfect illustration of the city’s inability to get anything done.
“You’d think the politicians would at least care about the air they breathe themselves!” Bloomberg marveled to me in a recent interview.
That plant on the Potomac is now closed. So is the Massachusetts plant that Mitt Romney once said “kills people,” a line Obama actually used against him in coal-state campaign ads in 2012. So are all of Chicago’s plants, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel boasted in his first campaign ad in 2015. Overall, the 190 plants that U.S. utilities have agreed to retire will eliminate about one fourth of America’s coal-fired capacity, a total of 79 gigawatts. And for every watt of coal capacity they’re taking out of commission, they’ve already installed a watt of wind or solar capacity. The Clean Air Task Force estimate of coal-fired premature deaths is down to about 7,500 a year, a decrease of 5,500 since Beyond Coal went national. And Bloomberg’s early support has helped attract more than $100 million from top foundations and wealthy individuals like the Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Steyer, the climate movement’s top political donor.
“It’s a reminder that you can do a lot with no help from Congress,” Bloomberg says. “I just wish we could point out the specific people who were saved.”
To coal backers, Beyond Coal is pure urban elitist lunacy, the kind of nightmare you get when a nanny-state mayor from New York hooks up with eco-radicals from San Francisco and a liberal president in Washington. Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma—chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, author of “The Greatest Hoax,” thrower of a Senate-floor snowball designed to highlight the folly of global-warming alarmism—told me it’s hard to believe some Americans actually want to keep our abundant energy resources in the ground.
“It’s a war on all fossil fuels, and coal is the No. 1 target,” Inhofe says. “You got a president who doesn’t care how many jobs it costs, and rich people who don’t care how much money they spend. They can do a lot of damage.”
I got to watch the war in Inhofe’s state, and the damage wasn’t getting done the way Inhofe imagined. The job creators were siding with the environmentalists. Economics was the most powerful weapon in the Sierra Club’s arsenal.
At a dry hearing in a drab courtroom in Oklahoma City, a methodical Beyond Coal attorney named Kristin Henry, whose bio identifies her as “one of the few environmentalists who would never be caught wearing Birkenstocks,” was pinning down an Oklahoma Gas & Electric executive with a barrage of wouldn’t-you-agrees, isn’t-it-trues, and would-it-be-fair-to-say’s. The power company was out of compliance with a federal air-quality rule called “regional haze,” so it was offering to convert one of its two coal plants into a natural gas plant. Henry knew she couldn’t stop that. But OG&E also wanted to install massive new scrubbers on the other plant so it could keep burning coal for decades to come. Henry was determined to stop that.
In the 90 minutes Henry spent cross-examining OG&E’s Joseph Rowlett in early March, she didn’t ask a single question about climate or public health. She focused exclusively on OG&E’s request for the largest rate increase in state history, a 15 percent hike to finance the utility’s $700 million compliance plan. Through her deadpan, leading questions, she portrayed OG&E as a company desperate to get its customers to foot the bill to prop up an inefficient plant, pursuing retrofits it would never consider if its own shareholders had to swallow the costs, operating in a dream world where regional haze was coal’s only challenge. At one point, she got Rowlett to admit his calculations assumed there would be no additional coal regulations for the next thirty years, even though the EPA intends to finalize at least four new coal regulations this year alone.
“Isn’t it true you’re assuming zero over the next 30 years?” Henry asked.
Rowlett paused a few seconds. “That’s right,” he replied.
The Sierra Club, even though it didn’t sound much like the Sierra Club, was clearly in hostile political territory. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a conservative Republican who has spearheaded a national campaign to protect fossil fuels from legal challenges, had joined OG&E in fighting the EPA haze rule all the way to the Supreme Court. Now he was supposed to be representing consumers at the OG&E hearing before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, but he hadn’t even filed a brief about the record rate hike. “That’s unheard of,” one commission official told me. Pruitt didn’t attend the hearing, either—the day it began, he was in Tulsa with Mike Huckabee raising money for his PAC—but one of his deputies who did attend occasionally raised objections when OG&E witnesses were asked uncomfortable questions.
But if the political deck seemed stacked against the Sierra Club, Henry held the economic cards. In Oklahoma, coal imported from Wyoming now costs more per kilowatt hour than the abundant gas under the ground or the wind that famously comes sweeping down the plain. In another recent haze case, the Sierra Club cut a deal requiring Oklahoma’s other major utility to phase out its only coal plant and buy 200 megawatts of wind—and the bids came in so low, the utility ended up buying 600 megawatts of wind. That’s why Walmart, the hospital group and the coalition of industrial ratepayers all supported Beyond Coal’s push for more wind in the OG&E case. Cheap electricity has a way of scrambling political alliances.
Henry and the lawyers for OG&E’s corporate customers formed a kind of tag team, taking turns blasting the company for refusing to even study new wind power. They repeatedly pointed out that in-state competitors as well as Florida and New Mexico utilities were buying Oklahoma wind for just 2 cents per kilowatt hour, even cheaper than coal without pollution controls, while OG&E hadn’t purchased new wind in four years—even though its ads boasted about its commitment to wind. When its witnesses claimed their transmission lines were too congested to add new wind, Henry produced internal documents suggesting the congestion could be fixed for about 3 percent of the cost of the new coal scrubbers. As she pointed out, other Oklahoma utilities have much higher percentages of wind power on their systems.
Closing coal plants can sound radical, but Henry framed it for the Republican utility commissioners as the conservative response to EPA rules, avoiding the risk of “stranded” investments in outdated plants that might have to be shut down anyway. The most economical way to meet haze limits, she suggested, would be to stop burning the coal that causes the haze. Al Armendariz, who was Obama’s Dallas-based regional EPA administrator and is now Beyond Coal’s Austin-based regional representative, says the Club’s victories in states like Georgia, Mississippi and Kentucky have helped normalize the idea of abandoning coal in Oklahoma.
“We get respect because of our track record,” Armendariz says. “When we say a utility isn’t acting prudently, people can’t just dismiss us as ‘Oh, of course the Sierra Club says that.’ They see how we keep winning. They see these big industrial customers agreeing with us. Then they look at the numbers and see we’re right.”
Still, there’s no denying the war on coal is leading America into uncharted territory. The Sierra Club wants to eliminate all coal power by 2030, but what will replace it? Wind and solar, despite their rapid Obama-era growth, still make up just 5 percent of U.S. power capacity. And while technologies to store renewable energy (such as Tesla’s newly announced battery packs) are getting cheaper, they’re still a rounding error on the grid. Beyond Coal’s leaders are content to push cleaner power and let utilities figure out how to deliver it, but as OG&E Vice President Paul Renfrow told me: “That’s easy for them to say. We have to keep the lights on.”
Inhofe thinks the Sierra Club is simply obsessed with rooting out fossil fuels, citing “the guy who wants to crucify people” as an example of its extremism. He meant Armendariz, who left the EPA after he was caught on tape suggesting that harsh sanctions for law-breaking oil and gas companies could scare others into compliance, just as public crucifixions helped keep the peace in Roman times.
“The Sierra Club wants to stop coal now?” Inhofe asked. “You’ll see, they’ll be after gas next.”
Long-term, he’s right. While the Club accepted some donations from natural gas interests under Pope, it is now formally committed to eliminating gas as well as coal by 2030, and it has helped block new gas plants in cities like Austin and Carlsbad, California. After its victory last week in Asheville, Beyond Coal vowed to keep fighting to overturn Duke Energy’s decision to build a new gas plant to replace its 50-year-old coal plant. Even Bloomberg thinks the Club’s opposition to the fracking boom that has helped replace so much domestic coal with domestic gas is silly.
That said, Beyond Coal’s leaders, including Armendariz, understand that Beyond Gas is more aspirational than practical for now. They deeply prefer renewables to gas, but they almost as deeply prefer gas to coal. In Oklahoma City, Henry grilled OG&E witnesses about why they wanted to spend $500 million on scrubbers for coal boilers that could be retrofitted to burn gas for just $70 million. She shredded the implausible assumptions OG&E had made in its economic models to make scrubbing coal look cheaper than converting to gas, forcing one witness to admit gas prices were already 25 percent lower than his low-cost scenario. I sat in on one friendly lunch the Club’s legal team had with lawyers for a Conoco Phillips front group; they all hoped to move OG&E beyond coal, and gas is clearly part of the short-term solution.
When Brune took over the Sierra Club in 2010, he halted the club’s gas-industry gifts. | Getty
“We want to be principled but pragmatic,” says Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who stopped the Club’s gas-industry gifts when he took over in 2010. “We’ve wrestled with this, and there’s a definite disagreement with Bloomberg. We don’t see gas as an environmental fix. But we acknowledge that we still need some gas.”
Coal is different. Bloomberg calls it “a dead man walking.” When he made his initial gift to the Sierra Club, the goal was to secure the retirements of one third of the coal fleet by 2015. The Club is only slightly behind schedule, and in April, Bloomberg came to Washington to announce another $30 million donation, with a new goal of retirement announcements for half of the fleet by 2017. “We’re doubling down on an incredibly successful strategy,” Bloomberg said.
The campaign’s leaders believe coal has already passed a tipping point toward oblivion. Coal giants like Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and Walter Energy are struggling to stay afloat. Just last week, in addition to the retirement announcement for the Asheville plant—as well as another for a Milwaukee plant that wasn’t official enough for Beyond Coal to count as #191—the insurance giant AXA announced that it will sell off more than $500 million worth of coal investments, the largest financial institution to flee the space to date, while the EPA announced it was closing a loophole that allowed virtually unlimited emissions from malfunctioning coal plants, a response to yet another Sierra Club lawsuit. And the more dirty plants get shut down, the more residents near other dirty plants are asking: Why not ours?
It’s hard to change the status quo, no matter how compelling the economic logic. Beyond Coal does not just deploy data. It organizes rallies and petitions and float-ins on kayaks; it shames utility executives on billboards and airplane banners; it mobilizes its members to show up at boring hearings where showing up can make a difference. If the Oklahoma City case displayed the war on coal as a numerical dispute, another hearing I watched south of Detroit was more like a street fight.
River Rouge is a depressed community at the city’s edge, a blightscape of boarded-up bungalows, overgrown lots and pawn shops. There’s no grocery store and virtually no medical services, but there is a nice little park where kids play at the playground and adults fish in the Detroit River. Unfortunately, the park smells like rotten eggs, thanks to sulfur dioxide from a DTE Energy coal plant overlooking the playground. Michigan health officials have called this area “the epicenter of the state’s asthma burden.” The fish aren’t safe to eat, either, though people eat them.
“It’s just an unhealthy situation,” says Alisha Winters, a local resident and mother of seven children, two with asthma. “They figure they can get away with dumping on us.”
The EPA has called out this area’s elevated sulfur dioxide levels, and last year Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s administration floated a compliance plan that would have required DTE to upgrade the coal-fired River Rouge Power Plant or (more likely) close it. But DTE proposed an alternative plan with no costly upgrades, and the state quietly accepted it. The Sierra Club has been mobilizing opposition ever since, drawing an unusual coalition of local whites, African-Americans, Latinos and Arab-Americans—as well as a busload of white liberals from Ann Arbor—for an environmental hearing in mid-March. The hearing had to be moved from City Hall to a school auditorium to accommodate the groundswell of protests, a far cry from that Chicago-area hearing over a decade ago where the Sierra Club got frozen out.
“We’re getting people to cross borders, physical and imaginary,” says Rhonda Anderson, a sharecropper’s daughter who is now an organizer for Beyond Coal.
Plants that Beyond Coal helped shutter. Top row, l-r: the Boardman plant, Oregon, scheduled to close in 2020; the Fisk Generating Station, in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood; the Harding Street power plant, Indiana. Middle Row: North Omaha Station, Nebraska; the American Electric Power plant in Ohio. Bottom row: the Centralia Steam Plant, Washington; the Reid-Gardner power station, Nevada; the Crawford Generating Station, Chicago. | AP and Getty Images
If the Oklahoma City hearing was financial, the River Rouge hearing was political, a multiracial show of force in “I Love Clean Air” T-shirts. Every speaker opposed the DTE plan, including an Indian-American medical student, an Arab-American law student, an African-American asthma educator, a Latina anti-poverty activist and a white nun. Ebony Elmore, a child care provider who lives a block from the plant, talked about her four siblings and three nieces with asthma, as well as her two parents with pulmonary disease. I happened to ask Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who was watching the testimony from the side of the hall, why she was there, just as another resident started telling a story about an 11-year-old local girl who died because she couldn’t get to her inhaler in time.
“That’s why I’m here,” Dingell whispered.
A few days later, Governor Snyder—whose top campaign supporters included one Michael Bloomberg—announced a new effort to cut Michigan’s reliance on coal. That would have been a huge political burden for Snyder if he had run for president in a GOP primary, where “anti-coal” will be an epithet like “anti-gun” or “anti-freedom,” but he decided not to run, and coal is becoming a huge economic burden for his industrial state.
The already frenetic national pace of plant retirements will have to double for Beyond Coal to meet its 2017 goal, but utilities will face daunting investment decisions over the next two years. The EPA recently settled a sulfur lawsuit with the Sierra Club that could replicate the River Rouge dilemma across the nation. The agency has also imposed regional haze plans that already are replicating the Oklahoma dilemma in Arizona, Arkansas and Texas. Today, Beyond Coal has more than 100 legal cases pending over power supply. Meanwhile, it’s pursuing a new strategy on the power demand side, pushing blue states like Oregon to stop importing coal-fired electricity, which could shutter plants in red states like Montana. Even inside Texas, the Club has worked with relatively progressive cities like Austin, San Antonio and El Paso to replace their coal power with renewables.
Beyond Coal is also continuing to lobby and litigate in Washington, pushing Obama to drop his “all-of-the-above” approach to energy and formally enlist in the war on coal. Obama has not been as maniacally anti-coal as the industry suggests, punting on ozone rules in his first term to avoid alienating voters in Ohio, issuing relatively weak restrictions on coal ash, taking a lenient approach to mining on public land, floating carbon rules with mild targets for the most coal-reliant states. Still, when you add up all he’s done and all he’s doing, you get a tremendously uncertain regulatory environment. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—whose wife, Elaine Chao, recently quit the Bloomberg Philanthropies board over coal—has urged states to defy the Clean Power Plan, but utilities with fiduciary responsibilities don’t engage in much civil disobedience. They have already shut down dozens of plants to comply with mercury rules the Supreme Court could still strike down, and they’re starting to think about carbon, too.
Some coal advocates still hold out hope that the decline can be reversed if Republicans can win the presidency and keep Congress. “We’ve got a Congress that’s sympathetic, but we’ve still got a bureaucracy running amok,” says Mike Duncan, the RNC chairman-turned-coal advocate. “That will play in 2016. Obviously, anytime you elect a leader, it’s important to this industry.”
If the EPA stands down under the next president, the pace of retirements could slow. But it probably won’t stop. The trends are too strong. Nilles recently met with leaders of the utility Southern Company, which has slashed its dependence on coal in half over the past five years. Its executives rejected his vision of a coal-free America by 2030, but some of them suggested 2050 could be realistic. In any case, the Sierra Club won a lot of coal fights during the pro-coal Bush administration, because they were ultimately local fights over local air.
The fights also have a global context. The Earth is already getting hotter, and the death of American coal would not avert a climate catastrophe if the rest of the world did not follow our lead. But the decline of American coal emissions will help U.S. negotiators insist that other countries do their part in the global negotiations in Paris. And while critics of climate action often grumble that it would be foolish for the U.S. to make sacrifices when China is still building a new coal plant every week, that’s no longer true. China actually decreased its coal use last year, and is shuttering all four plants in smog-shrouded Beijing. The trends killing coal in America—cheap gas, wind and solar; more energy efficiency; stricter regulations—are trending abroad as well. Cash-strapped U.S. mining firms are desperate to solve their domestic problems by selling more coal in foreign markets, but the Sierra Club has helped lead the fight to block six proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest, which will help keep even more coal in the ground.
There will be no formal surrender in the war on coal, no battleship treaty to mark the end. But Beyond Coal’s leaders believe they can finish most of their work setting the U.S. electric sector on a greener path over the next five years. The next phase of the war on carbon would be to try to electrify everything else—cars and trains that use oil-derived gasoline and diesel, as well as homes and businesses that rely on natural gas and heating oil. Nilles hopes power companies like OG&E and DTE that Beyond Coal has spent the last decade fighting with—but then cutting deals with—can become allies in Phase Two. And allies will be vital, because if King Coal seems like a rich and powerful enemy, it’s a pushover compared to Big Oil.“Once we’ve taken out coal, we’ll need to take on oil, and who better to help than our new friends in the utility sector who can make money from electrification?” Nilles says with a grin. “It’s a long fight. This is how we win.
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Free-Market Group Urges Congress To Go Big On Energy
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
A free-market think tank with ties to the Koch brothers has issued an ambitious blueprint for lawmakers to consider as they put pen to paper for energy legislation.
The wish list posted today by the American Energy Alliance says it is "paramount to focus on pursuing policies in a broad energy bill that promote free markets, expand domestic energy development, and reform broken regulatory schemes."
Some of the group's recommendations dovetail nicely with the policy preferences of key House and Senate Republicans, including expanding oil and gas production on public lands, reversing the prohibition on crude oil exports, and expediting the export of liquefied natural gas.
But the blueprint also calls for Congress to tackle more controversial issues, including overhauling the Clean Air Act, repealing the federal renewable fuel standard and putting states in charge of managing leasing on federal lands. While there's plenty of appetite among Republicans for taking on these issues, there's also recognition that pushing the legislative scope too far will endanger the effort.
AEA spokesman Chris Warren said the blueprint responds to the tenor of the ongoing discussions on Capitol Hill. "We think there's a lot of issues that aren't necessarily being addressed the way they should," he said.
While AEA's recommendations are unlikely to be fully adopted into the emerging House and Senate energy packages, they're notable given the group's clout with conservatives. For instance, AEA's opposition to the renewable production tax credit has been a thorn in the side of the wind industry as it's struggled to maintain its main federal incentive. Congress late last year approved a one-year retroactive extension of the PTC, which again lapsed Jan. 1.
AEA's blueprint also serves as a reminder of the challenges that lie ahead for House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who are trying to craft legislation capable of winning bipartisan support that the president would sign into law.
The pair are working independently to assemble bills that address infrastructure, supply and "accountability," but have shown little appetite for taking on sweeping reforms to the Clean Air Act or scrapping the RFS.
The group cites the last two major energy laws -- which were enacted in 2005 and 2007 and respectively created and expanded the RFS -- as an example of "what can happen when lawmakers care more about burnishing their legacies than doing what's best for the country."
On the air law, AEA wants states to be in charge of setting all standards, including national ambient air quality standards. In a nod to GOP complaints about U.S. EPA's use of "secret science" in setting such standards, the group says "all science used by EPA needs to be open, reviewable by the public, and reproducible."
Additionally, it calls for barring EPA and other agencies from using the social cost of carbon metric when writing regulations.
It also recommends streamlining the permitting process for cross-border energy projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline by automatically issuing permits if a specific deadline, such as one year, is not met. The Obama administration has taken a dim view of such automatic approvals in the past.
AEA also wants Congress to impose time and page limits for documents assembled under the National Environmental Policy Act -- an area that Republicans have made clear they'd like to see addressed in energy legislation.
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Colorado Governor Urges Interior To Complete New Assessments of Mine
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has urged the Interior Department to complete an adequate environmental review as directed by a federal court order so that the Colowyo Coal Mine can remain open.
In a May 22 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the governor said the court's decision in a case involving the mine in northwest Colorado will void an approval for the mine's expansion issued by the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) if the agency doesn't supplement the environmental analysis for the expansion and issue a new decision.
“Such a result would effectively shut down the Colowyo Coal Mine,” resulting in the layoff of the 220 employees working there, impacting hundreds of families and businesses in Rio Blanco and Moffat counties and eliminating the principal source of coal for the Craig Station Power Plant near Craig Colo., the governor said.
On May 8, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled the OSM, a branch of the Interior Department, failed to properly consider environmental impacts in approving the expansion of the Colowyo and Trapper coal mines (WildEarth Guardians v. OSM, D. Colo., No. 13-CV-518, 5/8/15).
The court ruled the OSM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to notify the public and involve them in the preparation of the environmental assessments for the mines.
Additionally, the OSM violated NEPA by failing to notify the public once the assessments had been completed and findings of no significant impact had been issued, the court said.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, WildEarth Guardians, said the 1,300-megawatt power plant annually emits 12,000 tons of haze-forming nitrogen oxides, equal to the amount released every year from 1.3 million passenger vehicles.
Should Appeal if Appropriate
Hickenlooper said the state has pledged to work with the OSM as a cooperating agency as it works to complete the new environmental assessment. Additionally, he said, the OSM should appeal the district court's order if appropriate, “given potential adverse impacts on mines in Colorado and other federal permitting decisions.”
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May 26, 2015 | Institute For Energy Research
By Chris Warren
Today, the Institute for Energy Research announced that Charles T. Drevna is joining the organization as a Distinguished Senior Fellow. Drevna will advise IER on a variety of energy topics, particularly fuel and refining issues.
Drevna comes to IER with more than 40 years of experience in legislative, regulatory, and public policy issues involving energy and the environment. Most recently, he served as President of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the national trade association representing 98 percent of U.S. refining capacity, a position he had held since 2007.
Drevna released the following statement:
"I’m excited to be working with IER to advance free market energy policies. America is in the midst of an energy renaissance, but government policies threaten to prevent us from reaching our full energy potential. The Renewable Fuel Standard is just one example of a broken government policy that is holding the country back. We need the American people to stand up to Washington bureaucrats and demand solutions that embrace affordable, reliable, and abundant energy."
IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement:
"Charlie has spent his career on the front lines in the fight for energy prosperity. He’s a strong voice for free markets whose decades of experience will prove an invaluable addition to the IER team as we spread the message that markets, not mandates, offer the best opportunities for growth and prosperity. We’re lucky to have him and ready to get to work."
Drevna is available for further comment.
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Former Refiners' Lobbyist Joins Energy Think Tank
May 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
Charles Drevna, the former president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, has joined the Institute for Energy Research.
Drevna will be a distinguished senior fellow for the energy think tank, which is funded in part by industrialists Charles and David Koch. He will advise the group on several issues, including those dealing with fuel and refining.
"Charlie has spent his career on the front lines in the fight for energy prosperity. He's a strong voice for free markets whose decades of experience will prove an invaluable addition to the IER team as we spread the message that markets, not mandates, offer the best opportunities for growth and prosperity," said Thomas Pyle, IER's president, in a statement.
Drevna said he was looking forward to joining the group.
"I'm excited to be working with IER to advance free-market energy policies," Drevna said. "The renewable fuel standard is just one example of a broken government policy that is holding the country back. We need the American people to stand up to Washington bureaucrats and demand solutions that embrace affordable, reliable and abundant energy."
Drevna was president of AFPM from 2007 until stepping down earlier this month, when Chet Thompson took over the trade association (Greenwire, April 1).
IER advocates for free-market energy policies and has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration's proposed energy and environmental regulations.
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EPA Says It Has Met Legal Obligations On Regulating Seven Hazardous Pollutants
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Environmental Protection Agency determined in a final rule that it has met its legal obligations to set emissions standards for industrial sectors that emit mercury and six other hazardous air pollutants.
The EPA, in the rule signed May 22 by Administrator Gina McCarthy, said it has fulfilled its duty under Section 112(c)(6) of the Clean Air Act to ensure that the source categories responsible for at least 90 percent of the aggregate emissions of the seven air toxics are subject to federal emissions standards.
The seven pollutants listed under that section of the Clean Air Act are alkylated lead compounds, polycyclic organic matter, hexachlorobenzene, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofurans and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin.
The rulemaking (RIN 2060-AS42), which won't go into effect until it's published in the Federal Register, established that the EPA met the Section 112(c)(6) requirements as of February 2011 and identified various promulgated emissions standards that collectively met that 90 percent threshold.
The final rule includes a lengthy summary and response to comments filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club, which argued that the proposed determination issued by the EPA in December would prove unlawful if made final. In those comments, the Sierra Club argued that the EPA hasn't set standards for individual pollutants identified in Section 112(c)(6) and unlawfully used surrogate pollutants (37 DEN A-18, 2/25/15)
Challenged Substance of Rules
The EPA said those comments challenged the substance of many previously issued EPA rules, which the agency said are outside the scope of the determination at issue. The agency said the determination rule didn't reopen any previously promulgated emissions standards and doesn't support a “belated, backdoor attack” on those rules, some of which were issued in the 1990s.
James Pew, an attorney with Earthjustice, told Bloomberg BNA May 26 that at the time many of the rules were promulgated, the EPA did not mention the specific hazardous air pollutants or Section 112(c)(6) of the Clean Air Act. It would have taken a “crystal ball gazer” to know that the EPA was taking action to regulate pollutants that the agency did not mention in the actual rules under a section of the Clean Air Act not referenced in the rules, Pew said.
The EPA said it provided notice of its expectations to meet its Section 112(c)(6) obligations in a 1998 listing notice, which identified the source categories that were responsible for 90 percent of the aggregate emissions of each of the seven pollutants. If the Sierra Club had concerns that emissions standards for the source categories identified in that notice or the use of surrogate pollutants, the organization should have raised those concerns at the time the standards were issued, the EPA said.
Agency Didn't Refute Substance of Arguments
Pew, who said he is still reviewing the EPA final rule and supporting documents, said the agency's response didn't refute the substance of the arguments raised in the Sierra Club's comments. Pew told Bloomberg BNA in December that the determination probably would be challenged in federal appeals court unless the EPA changed its approach.
Pew did not comment on the possibility of litigation now that the rule is final but was critical of the EPA's decision, which he said represents the EPA “abdicating its obligations” to protect public health.
“The statute couldn't be any clearer; Congress wanted standards for these pollutants,” he said. “Just one thing after another shows this agency simply decided to ignore its obligation to protect people from some of the worst pollutants out there.”
The EPA final rule will be reviewable by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Any petition for review must be filed within 60 days of the final rule's publication in the Federal Register, which has not yet been scheduled.
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Court Rejects Kansas Appeal In EPA Air Pollution Case
May 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal court has rejected Kansas’ challenge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) disapproval of an air pollution plan from the state.
Kansas filed the case in 2011 after the EPA decided Kansas did not go far enough in ensuring that its air pollution did not blow to neighboring states as part of the agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. The EPA had rejected Kansas’ state implementation plan for the so-called “good neighbor” rule, which requires that states account for cross-state winds when deciding how to comply with federal air rules.
“EPA acted well within the bounds of its delegated authority when it disapproved of
Kansas’s proposed SIP,” the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Tuesday in a brief decision.
The regulation requires that state plans “must include ‘adequate provisions’ prohibiting in-state sources from contributing significantly to downwind nonattainment,” the court said. “EPA has the authority to determine whether SIPs comply with the statutory requirements.”
Kansas had only submitted a one-page document to the EPA saying that its compliance plan followed the “good neighbor” provision, causing the agency to reject it.
Kansas and Westar Energy Inc., a utility, had brought the court challenge to the EPA’s rejection.
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Ruling Rejecting Kansas SIP Suit Gives Few Hints On Fate Of CSAPR Plans
May 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
A federal appeals court has rejected Kansas' suit over EPA's rejection of its “good neighbor” state implementation plan (SIP) to curb interstate air pollution that the agency replaced with its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), but the ruling offers few hints on how the court might rule on suits over dozens of other vetoed SIPs.
In a unanimous unpublished judgment issued May 26, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says that Kansas failed to provide adequate justification to defend its SIP as satisfying the Clean Air Act's good neighbor provision. The law requires states to curb air pollution that crosses state borders and prevents other states from complying with EPA's national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS).
The panel of Judges Merrick Garland, David Tatel and David Sentelle in their brief judgment in Westar Energy Inc., et al. v. EPA, decided without oral argument, defer to EPA's technical judgment over Kansas' plan. The panel says that, “EPA acted well within the bounds of its delegated authority when it disapproved of Kansas’s proposed SIP” in 2011, and then immediately imposed its CSAPR air trading program on Kansas and 27 other states.
Unpublished opinions are of lesser public interest than published opinions, do not present novel legal issues and do not offer new interpretations or significant clarification of previous ones, among other differences, according to the D.C. Circuit's rules as referenced in the Westar judgment. According to one legal source, litigants in other cases may cite to an unpublished opinion, but such opinions are not considered precedential by the court.
Kansas submitted its good neighbor plan to EPA for approval before its inclusion as a state covered by the CSAPR emissions trading program, at a time when it was exempt from CSAPR's predecessor trading rule, the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). Both programs aimed to reduce interstate emissions from power plants by reducing nitrogen oxides that lead to ozone formation and sulfur dioxide that forms particulate matter.
Kansas and electric utility Westar Energy argued in the case that EPA never seriously considered the state's independent good neighbor submission separate from developing CSAPR, instead opting to fold the state into the CSAPR program that set limits on emissions from Kansas utilities such as Westar.
They cited as evidence EPA's final disapproval of the Kansas submission immediately before the agency issued federal implementation plans (FIPs) implementing CSAPR in Kansas and other states.
The state argued that under the air law's system of cooperative federalism, Kansas' analysis of interstate emissions to justify its SIP was due deference, especially in the absence of a decision from EPA defining the “significant contribution” of Kansas power plants to NAAQS attainment problems in downwind states.
However, the court notes that EPA provided guidance for states on how to craft good neighbor SIPs prior to creating CSAPR, and that the agency was within its rights to find Kansas' submission inadequate.
Court's Judgment
“The discussion of interstate transport in Kansas’s SIP was only one page long and failed to provide any analysis at all of the downwind effect of its in-state emissions,” the court writes.
The court says that to show compliance with its obligations under the good neighbor provision, Kansas relies on its plan for compliance with the regional haze program, a different air law program designed to restore visibility in national parks and wilderness areas to natural conditions. “But Kansas’s good neighbor obligations are not coextensive with its obligations under the Regional Haze program,” which “is directed at different ends,” involves different areas, “and involves the consideration of different factors,” the court says.
The court finds that several of the petitioners' arguments are unconvincing, for example the state's claim that it does not contribute to certain downwind NAAQS attainment problems, which the court says was never included in the original SIP submission. “Kansas never said that its conclusion was based on the fact that it did not contribute significantly to downwind nonattainment of the 1997 [fine particulate] NAAQS,” the court says.
Nor does the court agree with petitioners' “principal complaint that EPA failed to promulgate a rule defining their SIP obligations in advance,” finding this argument “identical” to that rejected by the Supreme Court in its 2014 ruling upholding CSAPR in EME Homer City Generation, L.P, v. EPA. The D.C. Circuit in a 2-1 ruling issued in 2012 vacated the trading program as unlawful, but the justices' ruling reversed that.
However, neither the 2012 ruling or 2014 decision by the high court addressed a slew of technical challenges and other fights over CSAPR, which are now being heard in EME Homer City. The court held arguments in the suit Feb. 25, hearing fights over issues including whether EPA acted within the law when disapproving the good neighbor SIPs of many states in order to replace them with FIPs under CSAPR.
CSAPR Litigation
The judgment in Westar offers few hints or guidelines for how the court might decide EME Homer City, now awaiting a ruling by a different panel of Judges Brett Kavanaugh, Judith Rogers and Thomas Griffith.
A central issue in Homer City is whether EPA was correct to disapprove or invalidate existing SIPs that were based on CAIR, when that rule was at the time remanded by the D.C Circuit for various legal failings. The D.C. Circuit initially vacated CAIR, then remanded the rule while EPA crafted CSAPR as the replacement rule. The court then in 2012 vacated CSAPR, leaving CAIR in effect despite its legal defects.
At oral arguments in Homer City Feb. 25, states opposed to CSAPR argued that EPA could not invalidate SIPs simply because they were based on CAIR, because that rule was still in effect, while Department of Justice lawyers on EPA's behalf argued the opposite.
The court also heard arguments from CSAPR's opponents that EPA was wrong to invoke an air law “error correction” mechanism to withdraw its approval for some SIPs it already approved. These issues did not arise in Westar, however, limiting the significance of that case for Homer City. According to the legal source, “I doubt that it has any direct relation/significance” for Homer City, because “that is a different panel, and the issues are different -- EME's a challenge to the overall rule, whereas today's decision was a far narrower challenge to one state's transport plan.”
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Green Group Charts Path To U.S. To meet Climate Target
May 27, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The United States can meet — and maybe even surpass — its 2025 greenhouse gas emissions target without help from Congress, but it will have to go far beyond the policies in President Barack Obama’s climate change plan, according to a new report due out Wednesday.
The report, from the World Resources Institute, says the United States must strengthen existing rules and impose new policies that expand the emissions cuts beyond the power sector to other parts of the economy in order to meet the Obama administration’s target of cutting emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
“The Clean Power Plan alone doesn’t get you there,” Karl Hausker, a senior fellow at WRI and lead author of the report, said in an interview. “You can’t coast forward on those policies and hit your 26 percent. You need to aggressively move on to pretty much every sector of the economy.”
The WRI report is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis to date of how the United States can meet its climate change target. It also offers the latest evidence that the U.S. cannot meet the target without sustained, ambitious action by both Obama and the next president.
Obama hopes to put in place much of his climate change agenda before he leaves office, making it more difficult for a potential Republican president to undo key greenhouse gas rules. But it’s unlikely that a GOP president would seek to build on those climate regulations with new measures that WRI says are needed to meet the target.
In addition to the EPA’s climate change regulations for power plants (which are expected to be finalized this summer), the report says the United States will also have to impose stronger energy efficiency standards for appliances and fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles and truck. And the country will need tighter emissions rules for new and existing natural gas systems and measures that shrink hydrofluorocarbon pollution just to reach a 26 percent emissions cut — the low end of the administration’s target. Those policies would put the U.S. on track toward reaching a 34 percent emissions cut by 2030, according to the report.
Still, the U.S. could achieve cuts of up to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 if it strengthens EPA’s climate regulation for existing power plants in a way that encourages states to deploy renewable energy and improve energy efficiency, the report says.
Even if the power plant rules are not expanded, the U.S. can achieve 30-percent emission cuts by “pushing the envelope” by improving vehicle efficiency, reducing travel demand and boosting industrial and building energy efficiency, according to the report.
The Obama administration’s 26 percent to 28 percent emissions cut target is the foundation of the domestic climate change plan the United States submitted to the United Nations in March. International negotiators hope to use countries’ plans as the basis of a new international climate change agreement set to be finalized in Paris later this year. Obama sees clinching a deal in Paris as a top second-term priority and a crucial part of his legacy as president.
Administration officials have long maintained that their 2025 target is ambitious and achievable, and they say the U.S. is already on a path toward meeting Obama’s earlier target of cutting emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
Meeting the 2025 goal will require an additional reduction of of 9 to 11 percent beyond the 2020 target, which would necessitate an “approximate doubling” of the 2005-through-2020 annual pace of emissions reductions, the U.S. said in the plan it filed to the United Nations in March.
The administration has said it hopes to make even deeper cuts in the coming decades, possibly as much as an economy-wide emissions cut of 80 percent or more by 2050 in the United States. A series of recent analyses have warned that the planet must reach net zero carbon emissions in the coming decades, perhaps as early as 2050, in order to prevent disaster.
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Surface Transportation Funding Extension Passed by Senate, Awaits Obama's Signature
May 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The Senate May 23 passed by voice vote a two-month, $8.5 billion surface transportation funding extension that includes funds for hazardous material safety programs.
Without the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2015 (H.R. 2353), surface transportation authorization would run out May 31. The bill to extend the funding authorization, including $11.8 million for hazmat programs, through July 31 was awaiting President Barack Obama's signature.
H.R. 2353 extends authorization of Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) (Pub. L. No. 112-141), on top of last year's eight-month extension of the same law. There have been 12 temporary patches for the surface transportation bill during the past six years, according to a statement by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), while lawmakers have debated passage of a long-term surface transportation bill (149 DEN A-5, 8/4/14).
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced May 19 the Obama administration's GROW AMERICA Act (H.R. 2410), a $478 billion, six-year authorization of surface transportation programs that includes authorization of Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hazardous materials programs.
Reps. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) May 15 introduced H.R. 2353, the most recent two-month extension proposal. The House passed the bill by a 387-35-1 vote on May 19.
A White House spokesman didn't respond to Bloomberg BNA's message asking when the president plans to sign the bill into law.
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