PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Environmental Protection Agency moved Thursday to lift limits on potent greenhouse gas emissions from the drilling and transportation of natural gas, a major fuel source for electric power plants, heating systems and industrial processes. Not only would this be bad for the environment, but also it might well do more harm than good for the fossil-fuel industry.
The United States has enjoyed an energy revolution over the past decade as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal-drilling technologies unlocked huge amounts of domestically produced natural gas. The massive new supply of fuel has driven down gas prices and helped it displace coal, which is the worst environmental villain in the electricity sector. When natural gas is burned in power plants, it emits roughly half the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that burning coal produces and minuscule amounts of the noxious chemicals and particulates that sicken those living nearby.
But there is a very big catch. Natural gas is mostly methane. When allowed to waft into the atmosphere uncombusted, methane is an extremely potent greenhouse agent on its own. Though it lingers in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide, methane is some 80 times more capable a heat-trapper over a 20-year time span. If one takes seriously expert warnings about avoiding dangerous near-term climate tipping points, after which temperatures could enter an upward spiral, restraining methane emissions is a key climate goal.
So when methane leaks from natural gas wells, storage tanks or pipelines, the fuel’s environmental impact suddenly looks much worse. Researchers, industry groups and federal standard-setters have debated how big a problem methane leakage is and how much it detracts from the appeal of natural gas as a bridge fuel between fossil fuels and renewables. But substantial recentresearch suggests that the country’s methane leakage rate has been much higher than the federal estimates that had made natural gas look like an environmental and economic miracle. Natural gas producers could argue that breakneck coal-to-gas switching had driven down official power-sector emissions estimates over the past decade. But it was becoming harder to accept that the environmental benefits were as pronounced.
That is why the industry should have welcomed President Barack Obama’s moves to require methane emissions control in natural gas production and transportation, rules that came into force in 2016. In fact, several major fossil-fuel players have embraced the regulations. For relatively inexpensive upgrades and procedures that enable natural gas producers to capture and sell more product, the rules allowed the industry to argue that methane leakage across the industry would be minimized and that natural gas could be, at least for a time, part of a serious climate strategy.
Yet others opposed the new rules. This is no surprise, given recent research on methane leakage, which found massive leaks from relatively few “superemitters” in the business. The regulations would have hit bad actors hardest; the bad actors did not like that. And the Trump administration just sided with them.
The EPA’s proposal would substantially weaken the Obama-era rules and keep natural gas’s reputation tarnished — all to save the industry a mere $17 million to $19 million a year. It is counterproductive in every conceivable sense.
By John Herzfeld, Bloomberg Environment Staff Correspondent
A newly enacted New Jersey law updates the state’s system for cleaning up polluted sites—and more changes may be in the works in the next legislative session.
The law, passed by legislators in late June and signed Aug. 23 by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), makes the first major changes in a decade to the state’s Site Remediation Reform Act (SRRA). The new law is also known as SRRA 2.0.
Sponsors said the bill (S-3862/A-5293) is intended to build on experience implementing the original 2009 law, streamlining a process that has resulted in significant new site remediation efforts statewide. New Jersey has more contaminated sites than any other state—including 114 in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s federal Superfund program—underscoring the importance of the work to future land use.
“Updating this law will allow for more sites to be remediated at a more efficient rate,” state Sen. Linda Greenstein (D), vice-chair of the state Senate Environment and Energy Committee, said in a statement when the bill passed the legislature.
The changes stem from two years of discussion among interested groups about the law’s workings.
“You really don’t know a law until you’ve lived with it for a while,” Ray Cantor, vice president of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, said in an Aug. 29 interview. “Cleaning up a site involves a lot of detailed procedures. The new law fixes a lot of little things, and those add up to good process improvements.”
Another Look Next Year?
More changes may be in store in the next legislative session. The new bill represented an effort by organizations active in cleanups to tackle consensus items first and hold the “more contentious and more difficult issues” for later, he said. The association will be working with the business community to identify areas for wider reforms, Cantor said.
The legislature will begin a new term in January, after elections this November.
But Michael Novak, president of Atlantic Environmental Solutions Inc. in Hoboken, N.J., said he doesn’t expect further changes to the law at that point, “in either direction, whether you’d call it business-friendly or environment-friendly.”
The new law was thoroughly discussed among interested groups and represents the best approach to “protecting the environment without being onerous to the regulated community,” said Novak, a longtime remediation consultant who participated in the discussions leading up to the bill’s passage.
Clarifies Reporting
The law didn’t attempt a wholesale revision to the program but just refined several provisions, with almost all the changes concerned with housekeeping matters or clarifying language, Novak said.
Among the process changes that will improve and speed cleanups are provisions clarifying the reporting responsibilities of licensed site remediation professionals (LSRPs), he said; Novak’s organization was one of the first LSRPs certified under the state program.
Any remediation project might have several such professionals working on a site, but before the new law, it wasn’t clear how one of them would report contamination found at a part of the site handled by another one. The new law clarifies the responsibilities of these professionals to report contamination to the person responsible for the cleanup and to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
SRRA 2.0 doesn’t have major statutory amendments, but does offer “some benefits to the public and the development community,” said Jeffrey W. Cappola, a shareholder with the law firm Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer P.A. in Woodbridge, N.J., who lectures on site remediation and has served on several state regulatory committees.
One such benefits is that the person responsible for the cleanup is required to give the municipality and county health department notice before a remedial investigation begins, which allows for more transparency, Cappola said in an Aug. 29 email. And the responsible person must respond in writing to public inquiries regarding the environmental condition of a site, he said.
Redevelopers Support, Activists Sour
“I think the best news for redevelopers is that the amendments do not seriously undercut any of the major provisions of the LSRP program,” said Bruce S. Katcher of the Cherry Hill, N.J., law firm Manko Gold Katcher & Fox LLP.
The LSRP program has sped up environmentally protective remediation projects by eliminating significant delays that marked a previous program, overseen by state case managers, Katcher said in an Aug. 29 email. The new law keeps the LSRP program intact and ensures it will continue to operate effectively, he said.
“Continuity breeds certainty, which is something of tremendous importance to developers as well as lenders and insurance companies—the latter two of which are also important players in the redevelopment process,” he added.
The public and the environment will benefit from a new section of the law that encourages green and sustainable practices in cleanups, said Geri L. Albin, counsel at the law firm Saiber LLC in Florham Park, N.J., in an Aug. 29 email.
“This could be the start to additional incentives,” she said.
But Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said the new law gives private consultants more authority, and undermines transparency and oversight.
“Our concerns with the original law have been magnified by these amendments,” he said in an Aug. 29 interview. He called the bill “a sellout to polluters and developers,” arguing that it will protect private contractors from being held responsible for accidents, spills, or mistakes.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
By John George – Senior Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
The Philadelphia region’s first medical marijuana grower/processor is on schedule to begin shipping product in October.
Agri-Kind’s indoor growing facility in Chester received operating approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Health in June and began growing its first plants in late July.
“We expect to have our first harvest in mid-October, and we are looking to start shipping by the end of that month,” said Jon Cohn, CEO of Agri-Kind.
Cohn said the first phase of construction for the nondescript complex on Broomall Street along the Chester Waterfront between Talen Energy Stadium and Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino and Racetrack is expected to be completed within the next few weeks. The company’s original plan was to wait until next year to begin the second phase to create additional capacity. But supply shortages statewide has led to work on the expansion beginning right away, Cohn said.
“Pittsburgh is dry right now and the Philadelphia-area dispensaries are in short supply,” he said.
Agri-Kind spent $18.2 million to get its facility operational. Cohn estimates the final cost for the 62,000-square-foot complex, when both phases are completed, at between $23 million and $25 million.
The company initially hoped to open for business in February but encountered some delays. Working through the local zoning approval process took longer than expected, as did tearing down a condemned city high department garage on its property after asbestos was found. The company also had to replace its initial construction manager and replace them with Philadelphia-based Palmer Construction.
“It’s been a challenging process,” Cohn said. “I can’t say enough good things about Palmer Construction.”
The medical marijuana facility has 20 employees now, and that number is expected to grow to about 85 when the complex is fully operational. The jobs being created include growers, trimmers, extractors, chemists, compliance staff and security.
“We are doing it in stages,” Cohn said. “We have 20 people now, but when the first harvest is ready we’ll have to bring in 15 trimmers right away.”
Trimmers are people trained to properly trim and prune cannabis flowers to maximize the parts of the plants that produce medical compounds cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
Cohn wants to hire as many local qualified people as possible. The company has already held two job fairs the meet with potential employees.
As for production, Cohn said Agri-Kind’s approach was to plant seeds for 300 different strains of medical marijuana with a goal of finding about 80 that are best suited for this area to clone and make part of its product offerings.
“You really have to grow in your environment to know what you’re dealing with,” he said. “We know not everything we are working with now will make it.… Certain plants, for example, do better with certain lighting. We are using LED lighting so we need to figure out which do best with that.”
The company is aiming to have a variety of products to meet the different needs and preferences of customers.
“Some strains are better for pain and some are better for anxiety,” Cohn said. “We want to have five to seven strains for each indication (for which the use of medical marijuana is approved in Pennsylvania) across the board. There’s also the flavor profile. Some may have a berry flavor and other a more earthy flavor. We want to have a broad array.”
In the Southeastern Pennsylvania region for Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program — which includes Philadelphia and its surrounding four suburban counties plus Berks, Schuylkill and Lancaster counties — the other medical marijuana grower/processors to receives licenses are: Prime Wellness in Sinking Spring, Berks County; Franklin Labs in Reading, Berks County; and DocHouse of Pottsville, Schuylkill County.
Prime Wellness is the only grower in the region currently shipping product, according to a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
The five-county Philadelphia region got its 20th medical marijuana dispensary earlier this week when Beyond/Hello, which is owned by Jushi Holdings of Boca Raton, Florida, opened its third local dispensary at 475 N. 5th St. in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. St. Beyond/Hello also has dispensaries at 12th and Sansom streets in Center City and in Bristol, Bucks County.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced a sweeping climate platform last week characterizing climate change as a “global emergency” and pledging $16.3 trillion to address the crisis – including via multiple waste and recycling initiatives.
The plan, which builds on the Green New Deal, calls for the establishment of a nationwide recycling program as well as a $160 billion investment in food waste reduction and composting programs.
It would also enact a national right-to-repair policy for farm equipment and make “massive” R&D investments, including in chemical recycling for plastics. The plan seeks to ensure a “just transition” for communities and workers impacted or displaced by the closure of incinerators, hazardous waste sites and other polluting facilities; landfills are not mentioned specifically.
Unveiled last Thursday in the wildfire-devastated town of Paradise, California, Sanders’s platform is described by media outlets and political commentators as the “boldest,” most aggressive climate plan yet released by a 2020 Democratic candidate.
“The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future,” the plan stresses, “But we must act immediately.”
The plan aims to reach 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050. It also outlines several elements pertaining to the waste and recycling industries, including:
A nationwide materials recycling program. Sanders’s platform promises extensive R&D for renewable technologies — which, in order to prevent an “outsized” environmental impact from harvesting raw materials, requires the use of “as many recycled materials as possible.” The proposal seeks to establish an extended producer responsibility program requiring large corporations to pay to take back used goods from consumers – which will be processed in a national recycling program and used to “build the renewable energy equipment needed to transform our energy system.”
A just transition for frontline communities. The plan shines a spotlight on communities “at the frontlines of the climate emergency,” citing a New School report revealing that nearly 80% of U.S. incinerators are located in poor communities and/or communities of color. It seeks to advance environmental justice principles by expanding EPA investigations into environmental racism, updating permitting rules for polluting facilities, and proposing tighter regulations on hazardous waste sites, chemical and industrial plants, and decaying infrastructure. Sanders also aims to make Green New Deal jobs and training resources – including for cleaner manufacturing and recycling – available to disadvantaged and/or displaced workers.
Expanded organics and sustainable agriculture infrastructure. The plan calls for a $410 billion investment in transitioning farms to “ecologically regenerative agricultural practices,” including carbon sequestration and a national right-to-repair law for farm equipment (the latter of which was previously proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass). Moreover, it pledges a $160 billion investment in food waste reduction and composting programs.
Neil Seldman, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, praised many aspects of the Sanders plan – particularly its provision of a just transition for workers displaced by the shift away from certain industries. While the proposal emphasizes fossil fuel workers, Seldman noted to Waste Dive that it is “particularly important for the waste industry, where citizens are winning battles to shut down incinerators.”
He also commended the inclusion of right to repair — while expressing hopes that the proposal of a nationwide policy might be expanded to include other industries.
Sanders’s platform, while one of the highest-profile climate commitments to emerge since the 2020 race kicked off, isn’t the only plan that explicitly touches on waste issues.
Andrew Yang’s climate plan, revealed this week in a detailed blog post, promises $4.87 trillion in climate-related spending over two decades — a portion of which will go toward tripling annual mandatory funding for biogas to $200 million. Yang also proposes establishing an e-waste recycling program to account for rapidly developing battery technology, noting that sustainability “means designing products with their disposal in mind.”
The campaign proposals come at a time of heightened federal attention on waste. The latest Farm Bill allocates a collective $125 million for food waste reduction and composting programs, and a new federal bill (H.R. 3744) is proposing the creation of a new 30% investment tax credit for qualifying biogas and nutrient recovery projects.
WILMINGTON — On Thursday, PDE’s Board of Directors announced that Kathy Klein is the permanent head of the non-profit organization that hosts the Delaware Estuary Program. Klein has served as PDE’s interim executive director since mid-March, following the departure of Jennifer Adkins.
Kathy Klein
Although some of the faces are new, the lead role at PDE is a familiar one for Klein, who was PDE’s executive director from 1997 to 2007. She rejoined the organization’s staff in September 2018 as the director of donor relations.
“This place feels like home to me,” Klein said of her return to the Partnership. “Coming back here last year brought me out of semi-retirement. Every day, I come to work with an incredible group of smart and accomplished individuals who work to improve the environment and make the world a better place. I am looking forward to the years ahead of collaborating with our staff, PDE’s Board, and our fantastic partners to make our waterways cleaner, habitats healthier, and communities stronger.”
Klein has worked for 30 years to improve environmental quality in the Delaware River Watershed. She has been a leader in the development, strategic planning, and programmatic design and implementation efforts of several regional organizations. Before returning to PDE, she was executive director of the Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin. PDE leads science-based and collaborative efforts to improve the tidal Delaware River and Bay, which spans Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“Throughout her impressive career, Kathy has been a tireless advocate for clean water initiatives in our valuable watershed,” said PDE Board President Joseph Tarsavage. “To say we’re fortunate to have her would be an understatement, and I speak for our entire board in telling you that we look forward to the next phase of PDE’s development under her leadership.”
Klein has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She resides in Wilmington with her family and dog, Kai.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it plans to loosen federal rules on methane by allowing oil and gas operators to largely police themselves when it comes to preventing the powerful greenhouse gas from leaking out of new wells, pipelines and other infrastructure.
It also challenges the notion, championed under the Obama administration, that the federal government has the authority to regulate methane without first making a detailed determination that it qualifies as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
If successful, that change could hamper future administrations from enacting tougher restrictions on methane. Already, the Trump administration has taken several steps to limit the government’s ability to regulate other greenhouse gases in the future, including in a recently finalized rule on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement Thursday that the latest proposal removes “unnecessary and duplicative” regulatory burdens. “The Trump administration recognizes that methane is valuable, and the industry has an incentive to minimize leaks and maximize its use.”
The move is the latest in a series of Trump administration actions aimed at undoing previous efforts to combat climate change in the interest of unburdening companies from regulation and reducing their costs. Thursday’s proposal, like some others before it, faced mixed reaction from the oil and gas industries meant to benefit from it.
BP President Susan Dio said in a statement that the EPA should regulate methane emissions. “It’s not only the right thing to do for the environment, there is also a clear business case for doing this,” she said. “The more gas we keep in our pipes and equipment, the more we can provide to the market — and the faster we can all move toward a lower-carbon future.”
Smaller operators, however, had lobbied the administration to lift the requirements. Lee Fuller, a vice president at the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said in an interview that the Obama rule had “made it really onerous on small businesses.”
Methane is a significant contributor to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide, though it doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere, nor is it emitted on the same scale.
Scientists have projected that the world needs to cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by mid-century to avert catastrophic effects from global warming. According to the EPA, methane accounted for more than 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities as recently as 2017. Nearly a third of those emissions were generated by the natural gas and petroleum industry.
Several Democratic presidential candidates seized on the news to argue that President Trump should be ousted, underscoring the sharp divide between the two parties on the issue.
“With the Amazon burning, farms under water, and hurricanes looming, Trump has decided to lift regulations on methane — one of the most dangerous greenhouse gases. Even oil and gas companies think this is too far. We need a President who will act on climate, not make it worse,” tweeted former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke.
Anne Idsal, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said the administration is confident that methane emissions will continue to decline over time, even without the current regulations.
“Methane is a valuable resource,” Idsal told reporters in a call Thursday. “There’s every incentive for industry to minimize any type of fugitive methane emissions, capture it, use it and sell it down the road.”
David McCabe, a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, noted that the biggest cuts in methane emissions from the gas and oil sector have happened during exploration. Emissions dropped sharply in 2012 and 2016, respectively, after new federal requirements for pollution controls took effect.
“The best information we have is that the emissions dropped because of regulations,” McCabe said.
The EPA estimates that the proposed changes, which will be subject to public comment for 60 days after they are published, would save the oil and natural gas industry $17 million to $19 million a year. That is a small fraction of the industry’s annual revenue, which exceeds $100 billion annually.
Several of the world’s biggest fossil-fuel companies, including Exxon, Shell and BP, have opposed the rollback and urged the Trump administration to keep the standards in place. Collectively, these firms account for 11 percent of the nation’s natural gas output. In a statement Thursday, Shell U.S. President Gretchen Watkins noted that the company has pledged to reduce its methane leaks from its global operations to less than 0.2 percent by 2025.
Asked about that support for methane regulation, Idsal said each company must decide its own path. “We don’t preclude anybody from going above and beyond, if they think that’s what they need to do from a business and a compliance standpoint,” she said.
Large oil companies are not the only industry to push back against some of the White House’s attempts to scale back environmental regulations.
Last month, four major automakers struck a deal with California to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles in coming years, undercutting one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive climate policy rollbacks. And some electric utilities opposed weakening limits on toxic mercury pollution that were put in place under the Obama administration.
Erik Milito, a vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, said in an interview that oil and gas firms have adopted different policy positions in part because some operate globally instead of just in the United States. But he said the EPA was right to question the legal justification for the Obama-era standard.
“What they’re tackling is whether methane can lawfully be a regulatory pollutant,” he said. “We have a strong consensus that federal agencies need to follow the letter of the law. They did not do that, and they are going back and correcting that.”
Jody Freeman, a climate adviser to President Barack Obama who now teaches at Harvard Law School, said the Trump administration’s rollback will slow down any future administration that wants to aggressively rein in methane emissions.
“The practical impact is that a new administration would have to start again,” she said in an email. “It hampers a new administration by adding delay.”
Idsal said the agency will continue to require oil and gas companies to limit the release of what are known as “volatile organic compounds,” which include methane, but only during drilling and processing. Milito noted that by 2023, 90 percent of oil and gas facilities will have to install technology curbing volatile organic compounds.
Still, the EPA acknowledged that its proposed rollback could have public health implications. The fact that more volatile organic compounds could be released, the agency wrote in its proposal, “will degrade air quality and are likely to adversely affect health and welfare” due to more air pollution. But, the agency added, “we are unable to quantify these effects at this time.”
In September, the Interior Department eased requirements that oil and gas firms operating on federal and tribal land capture the release of methane.
Environmentalists threatened to fight the Trump administration’s latest move in court.
Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, called the proposal reckless, saying it shows “complete contempt for our climate.” She said that even the Obama administration’s efforts to limit methane emissions were modest, given the significant amount that escapes into the atmosphere each year.
“The Obama rule was like a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” Siegel said. “The Trump administration is so fanatical that they couldn’t even live with the Band-Aid. They had to rip off the Band-Aid.”
The Obama administration’s push to impose the first limits on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in 2016 came shortly after the EPA found that emissions were on an upswing at a time when booming U.S. shale oil and gas drilling had dramatically driven down the prices of domestic natural gas and global oil alike.
Ben Ratner, a senior director at the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview that rolling back the regulations could reward bad actors in the industry. Given that many major players had embraced limits on methane, Ratner added, Thursday’s proposal suggests that the Trump administration opposes regulating greenhouse gases on principle.
“It’s more of an ideological reaction to regulation of any climate pollutant by the federal government,” he said.
