Climate 411

Why accurate reporting of air pollution after Hurricane Harvey matters

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 23, 2018

By Matt Tresaugue. This post originally appeared in Texas Clean Air Matters.

Hartmann Park, Valero Refinery, Manchester County, Houston Texas.

In addition to dumping historic amounts of rain across southeast Texas, Hurricane Harvey triggered a wave of air pollution, with petrochemical plants and oil refineries releasing 8.3 million pounds of harmful chemicals that exceeded state limits. At least, that is what they told state officials.

Companies, however, reduced those estimates by 1.7 million pounds in later filings with the state, a new Environmental Defense Fund analysis found.

The steep drop suggests that some companies may not have accounted accurately for all Harvey-related pollution increases in their reporting to the state. As a result, people’s exposure to hazardous air pollutants, such as cancer-causing benzene and 1,3-butadiene, may be substantially underestimated.

Industry frequently justified the changes in emissions estimates by arguing that flexible state-issued permits, as well as Gov. Greg Abbott’s suspension of several environmental rules in advance of Harvey, made the pollution legal. Read More »

Posted in Extreme Weather, Health, News, Science / Read 1 Response

The Trump-Wheeler Polluting Power Plan: Five Key Takeaways

By Tomas Carbonell / Published: August 23, 2018

(Ben Levitan and Rama Zakaria co-authored this post)

The Trump Administration just released another proposal with a title that would floor George Orwell himself.

Less than a month after releasing the Safer and More Affordable Fuel Efficient Vehicles Rule to make our cars less safe and less fuel efficient, Trump and Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler unveiled the Affordable Clean Energy proposal – a plan that is neither clean nor affordable.

This new Trump-Wheeler proposal, ostensibly a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, is actually a major retreat from securing clean and affordable energy for Americans. It would subject our nation to more soot and smog and would vastly increase climate pollution – harming our health in the near term and exacerbating climate damage for generations to come.

Here are five things you should know:

1. The Trump-Wheeler plan would increase pollution and cost American lives.

EPA’s own numbers show the Trump-Wheeler proposal could lead to more than 1,000 annual premature deaths in 2030, compared to leaving the Clean Power Plan in place.

EPA map showing concentrations of additional premature deaths from soot and smog, compared to America under the Clean Power Plan. The areas in red will suffer most. See the Regulatory Impact Analysis, page 4-39.

It could also cause tens of thousands of childhood asthma attacks and more than 100,000 missed school and work days annually.

In 2030, the annual increase in health-harming pollution from the Trump-Wheeler proposal (compared to the Clean Power Plan) would be:

  • Up to 72,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to dangerous soot pollution
  • Up to 53,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, which play a major role in smog formation

Read More »

Posted in Clean Air Act, Clean Power Plan, Economics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, News, Policy / Read 1 Response

Western Climate Initiative: Stability reigns after Ontario exit as all current and future allowances sell

By Katelyn Roedner Sutter / Published: August 21, 2018
Golden Gate Bridge Shutterstock

Golden Gate Bridge. © CAN BALCIOGLU / Shutterstock Images.

“Stability” is the word of the day for California and Quebec’s joint August auction. All current and future allowances sold, indicating that despite last month’s abrupt de-linking with Ontario, the market can weather political turbulence and remain strong.

Auction quick takes

  • All 79,421,265 current allowances sold, clearing at USD $15.05, 52 cents above the $14.53 price floor and 40 cents higher than the May auction. The offered allowances include some that were previously unsold, but do not include any allowances from Ontario.
  • All of the 9,401,500 future vintage allowances offered sold at $14.90, 37 cents above the floor price. This is significantly higher than the volume sold at the May auction, due to a number of potential variables including the de-linking with Ontario. It also signals that there is high confidence in the California-Quebec auction past 2020 as these allowances aren’t available for use until 2021.
  • An estimated $798 million was raised for California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which will go to help improve habitat, clean up local air, and invest in frontline communities.
  • Quebec raised approximately $166 million USD to fund provincial climate investments.

Read More »

Posted in California, Carbon Markets / Comments are closed

Wheeler expected to weaken the Clean Power Plan even as pollution reduction costs are dropping

By Rama Zakaria / Published: August 17, 2018

EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler is reportedly taking steps to nix the Clean Power Plan– America’s only national limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants – in favor of a weak substitute that does almost nothing to protect us from climate change and would increase harmful pollution that contributes to soot and smog.

There are many reasons why rolling back these life-saving protections makes no sense, but chief among them is that the opportunities to reduce carbon pollution are even greater – and cheaper – now than when the Clean Power Plan was finalized in 2015.

EPA is required to determine the “best system of emission reduction” when regulating pollution under the Clean Air Act, and select an approach that reflects the maximum feasible level of control. A look at the evidence overwhelmingly shows that a legitimate Clean Power Plan replacement would adopt emission reduction targets more ambitious than those in the Clean Power Plan, not less.

Here’s why:

1. Power sector trends have made the Clean Power Plan even more achievable and cost-effective than originally estimated

Read More »

Posted in Clean Air Act, Clean Power Plan, Economics, Policy / Comments are closed

EPA Administrator Wheeler prepares to gut Clean Power Plan, increasing pollution and harming health

By Ben Levitan / Published: August 15, 2018

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is reportedly planning to all but abolish one of America’s most important climate protections: the Clean Power Plan, our only nation-wide limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.

Though Wheeler might claim that he is offering a Clean Power Plan “replacement,” his reported plan would forfeit the tremendous benefits of the Clean Power Plan—and instead provide little to no reduction in climate pollution.

Even as impacts of climate change are ravaging our nation and world, the reported proposal would exacerbate the harms our families are facing—harms like severe heat waves, deadly wildfires, coastal flooding, and violent storms.

Astoundingly, Wheeler might issue this new proposal just weeks after his proposal to roll back America’s Clean Car Standards—a disastrous action that would increase climate pollution by over two billion tons through 2040, and cause owners of cars and trucks to pay as much as $8,000 more for gas over the lifetime of their vehicles.

If Wheeler finalizes these proposals, he would leave our families and communities more vulnerable than ever to the harmful impacts of climate change. And he would flout EPA’s clear legal obligation—upheld three times by the Supreme Court—to protect Americans from dangerous climate pollution.  Read More »

Posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Policy / Read 1 Response

Administration Cooks the Books to Justify Rollback of the Clean Car Standards

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 7, 2018

This post was written by EDF consultant Chester France, who served as a Senior Executive at EPA and led the development of vehicle standards at the agency

 

The Trump administration is now trying to roll back the Clean Car Standards – a proven American success story created with a mountain of evidence to support it.

From 2009 through 2016, the U.S. government published 10,000 pages of information proving that the Clean Car standards are feasible and cost effective. That’s the most comprehensive and rigorous U.S. automotive technology analysis ever conducted.

Rather than building on that massive technical record, the proposal released on Thursday indicates that the Trump administration has embraced shoddy and biased analysis to support its desired eight-year freeze of the Clean Car Standards at essentially 2018 levels through 2026.

The analysis attempting to justify the proposed rollback is a stunning 180-degree reversal of what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) had found over the last decade. For instance:

  • As recently as 2016, EPA and DOT found that the standards through 2025 would have net societal benefits of almost $100 billion.
  • Now, the administration wants us to believe the same standards will have net societal costs of $200 billion.

That’s a change of almost $300 billion.

The only way to achieve such a massive analytical flip-flop is to “cook the books” – by manipulating design elements and input assumptions in the modeling tool – until the Trump administration arrived at the answers that it wants.

And it’s clear the Trump administration had answers it wanted from the beginning. EDF uncovered an email proving that a long-standing climate denier within the Trump administration had – at the urging of the White House – directed EPA staff to immediately roll back the Clean Car Standards on February 7, 2017. That email reflects a purely political decision within weeks of the President’s inauguration in 2017 – before anyone could have conducted any analysis of the benefits of the program. The facts had no bearing then, and clearly still do not now.

Our experts have identified scores of changes improperly biased in the direction of weakening the standards and making them appear less cost effective. Here are just a few of the most egregious examples:

Read More »

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