Kyle Bagenstose reports for the Bucks County Courier-Times
During a Senate Environment and Public Works committee Thursday, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, of Delaware, and an EPA official went back and forth on the speed of the agency’s response to PFAS chemicals.
Department of Defense and Environmental Protection Agency officials faced scrutiny over their response to toxic chemicals during a Senate hearing Thursday morning, but repeated past assurances that their agencies were doing all they could to address growing contamination.
The subject of the two-hour Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing was per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a family of durable chemicals that have been used for decades in non-stick cookware, water-resistant clothing, firefighting foams used by the military, and other applications. Bucks and Montgomery counties are the site of one of the worst PFAS contaminations in the country, with at least 70,000 people previously exposed to dangerous amounts of the chemicals.
Citizens, towns and environmental groups nationwide have been critical of the military and EPA over the response to PFAS, saying they’ve been too slow to respond to a growing national health crisis. Committee minority leader Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, voiced such concerns Thursday, saying the EPA lacked a sense of urgency.
“I know it when I see it,” Carper said. “That’s not the case, at least so far.”
David Ross, assistant administrator in the EPA’s Office of Water, referred to the agency’s PFAS Action Plan, reiterating previous congressional testimony that the EPA has committed to considering a nationwide drinking water standard, listing some PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, creating groundwater recommendations, and other measures.
When Carper tried to pin Ross down on a precise date for setting a drinking water standard, Ross said the process didn’t allow for such a prediction.
“We are going to move as expeditiously as we can,” Ross said.
Asked by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, about how the EPA will support water suppliers and treatment operators hit by PFAS contamination costs, Ross referred to the agency’s consideration of a Superfund listing.
“If we list (PFAS) as hazardous substances … that helps in the cost recovery aspect,” Ross said.
A photovoltaic system on a single-family house in Germany. ENERIX
A growing number of homeowners in Germany are installing batteries to store solar power. As prices for energy storage systems drop, they are adopting a green vision: a solar panel on every roof, an EV in every garage, and a battery in every basement.
BY PAUL HOCKENOS reports for Yale 360 • MARCH 18, 2019
Stefan Paris is a 55-year-old radiologist living in Berlin’s outer suburbs. He, his partner, and their three-year-old daughter share a snug, two-story house with a pool. The Parises, who are expecting a second child, are neither wealthy nor environmental firebrands. Yet the couple opted to spend $36,000 for a home solar system consisting of 26 solar panels, freshly installed on the roof this month, and a smart battery — about the size of a small refrigerator — parked in the cellar.
On sunny days, the photovoltaic panels supply all of the Paris household’s electricity needs and charge their hybrid car’s electric battery, too. Once these basics are covered, the rooftop-generated power feeds into the stationary battery until it’s full — primed for nighttime energy demand and cloudy days. Then, when the battery is topped off, the unit’s digital control system automatically redirects any excess energy into Berlin’s power grid, for which the Parises will be compensated by the local grid operator.
“They convinced me it would pay off in ten years,” explains Paris, referring to Enerix, a Bavaria-based retailer offering solar systems and installation services. “After that, most of our electricity won’t cost us anything.” The investment, he says, is a hedge against rising energy costs. Moreover, the unit’s smart software enables the Parises to monitor the production, consumption, and storage of electricity, as well as track in real time the feed-in of power to the grid.
One out of every two orders for rooftop solar panels in Germany is now sold with a battery storage system.
The Parises are one of more than 120,000 German households and small-business owners — and an estimated 1 million people worldwide — who have dug deep into their pockets to invest in solar units with battery storage since lower-cost systems appeared on the market five years ago. “No one expected this kind of growth, so fast,” says Kai-Philipp Kairies, an expert on power generation and storage systems at the RWTH Aachen University in western Germany.
Today, one out of every two orders for rooftop solar panels in Germany is sold with a battery storage system. The home furnishing company Ikea even offers installed solar packages that include storage capacity. Battery prices have plummeted so dramatically that Germany’s development bank has now scratched the battery rebates — covering about 30 percent of the cost — that it offered from 2013 to 2018.
To be sure, 120,000 households and small businesses represent only a tiny fraction of Germany’s 81 million people. But analysts say this recent growth demonstrates the strong appeal of a green vision for the future: a solar array on every roof, an electric vehicle in every garage, and a battery in every basement. Analysts see the embrace of home batteries as an important step toward a future in which low-carbon economies rely on increasingly decentralized and fluctuating renewable energy supplies. To date, electricity storage has lagged far behind advances in solar power, but as batteries become cheaper and more powerful, they will increasingly store the uneven output of wind and solar power, contributing to the kind of flexibility that a weather-dependent source will require.
A lithium-iron-phosphate battery, which allows homeowners with photovoltaic panels to store excess solar electricity for later use. SONNEN
The budding popularity of solar panel and battery systems, driven by a drop in lithium-ion battery prices, has thrown a lifeline to Germany’s moribund solar sector, which has been reeling in recent years, in part because of low-cost production of solar panels in China. The progressive decline of feed-in tariffs — guaranteed remuneration for consumers supplying energy to the grid — also led to a sharp drop in solar energy deployment.
But against all odds, companies like Enerix, Sonnen, and Solarwatt have gotten back on their feet thanks to home energy storage systems. In 2012, Enerix had to shut down eight of its 15 affiliates in Germany and Austria. But since the battery boom, it has been reopening old shops and starting new ones, today boasting 54 outlets that sell panels, batteries, and energy optimization systems. Germany now has some 44 manufacturers of home energy storage systems. Germans have installed solar-panel arrays on more than 1 million buildings, but most of them lacked storage units. Now, a growing number of those homeowners are buying batteries. German electricity storage units also are being sold in France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, as well as Australia and South Korea.
The price tag of a home storage system depends on the size of the house or business, the owner’s energy needs, the building’s access to sun, and the quality of the panels, batteries, and management systems. For a small house with just 20 panels, one can expect to pay about $8,000 to $11,000 for the PV array and roughly the same amount for the battery and DC/AC power inverter. The largest home batteries go for around $34,000. And for an extra $500, advanced devices connect the system to household appliances and optimize energy use, as well as regulating feed-in to the grid. With such top-of-the-line technology and lots of sunlight, an owner might save as much as 80 percent on electricity bills, according to Solarwatt, a Dresden-based outfit manufacturing smart tech.
But the economics of battery storage aren’t the only, or even the main, motivation of most battery system buyers, says Matthias Schulnick of Enerix Berlin. “More and more people want to be independent of the power companies and rising prices,” he says. “And they want a green footprint, to do something for the future.”
One of New Jersey’s top Democratic elected officials is pushing for a proposal that would merge school employees’ health plans with the less costly state worker health plan, as costs for health care for public workers rise year over year.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney speaks at the Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association conference in Monroe on March 29.2019.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, said the proposal to merge the plans – called the School Employee Health Benefits Plan and the State Health Benefits Plan – would save the state roughly $300 million a year.
The legislation, according to a Senate aide, is being drafted and will likely be released in April as part of a package of recommendations from a workgroup convened by Sweeney which released the “Path to Progress” report in August, outlining how to lower the state’s pension and health care obligations.
Currently, 61,000 school employees and 107,000 retirees are enrolled in the School Employees Health Benefits Program, which combined with their beneficiaries, totals about 270,000 enrollees, the aide said.
The proposed SEHBP-State Health Benefits Program plan would save teachers roughly $60 million and another $240 million for the school districts, the aide said.
Many of those districts lost school funding because of changes to the school funding formula approved last year as part of the 2019 budget, and the savings could more than make up for that lost money.
“There’s no excuse for teachers and taxpayers to be paying $37,905 for a family plan under the SEHBP when state workers and taxpayers are saving money and getting superb coverage for just $27,2690 under the new SHBP,” Sweeney said in his prepared remarks Friday at the Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association conference Friday morning in Monroe.
“It’s everyone’s benefit,” Sweeney added. “We’re dealing with some things that have to be addressed. We can’t ignore them anymore. It’s to the point where if we don’t address these problems, it’s going to become unfixable.”
Sweeney said he would back off of his proposal to have school health plan retirees pay for their health care as a percentage of their salaries.
Legislators were hashing out the details, but the agreement was expected to be enshrined in the state budget, which lawmakers aim to pass by April 1.
The measure would likely take effect next year to give stores time to prepare, said Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D–LI), a sponsor of the plan.
In its current form, the proposal bars retailers from handing out plastic bags but does not outlaw newspaper-delivery bags, dry-cleaner garment bags or the kind of baggies dog-owners use to clean up after their pooches.
Cities and counties can opt into the paper-bag fee. If they do, they would take 40 percent of the revenues, while the remaining 60 percent would got to the state’s Environmental Protection Fund.
Localities must use the revenue to offset the impact on low-income communities by disseminating reusable bags, Albany officials said, adding that food-stamp recipients would be exempt from the fee.
Reactions from shoppers were a mixed bag.
“I have two thoughts: It’s obviously environmentally sound. And it’s just another tax. This money will just go to the economic black hole. Next thing, there will be a tax on breathing,” Shane McAteer, 54, groused as he lugged an armful of plastic bags out of a Key Foods on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside Thursday.
Another shopper, who gave her name as Esther and said she was 100 years old, gasped at the plan.
“They better not!” she said as she hauled two double-bagged plastic bags out of an Upper East Side Gristedes. “I know [plastic bags are] a problem, but we have to worry about the present as well as the future.”
New York Association of Convenience Stores President Jim Calvin said, “If someone needs ice but there’s no plastic bags offered, either they’re going to drip all the home, or they will skip that purchase.”
Others cheered the plan.
“I’m from Poland. In my country, they charge me like $1 per plastic bag. Now everybody uses the reusable bags. Its a very good idea,” said Gristedes shopper Anna Sufflo, 44.
Seattle imposed a similar measure in 2011, and the volume of plastic bags in the waste stream fell 78 percent, a city report said.
Mayor de Blasio sought a plastic-bag ban in 2017 but was stymied by a Republican-controlled state Legislature. His office was reserving judgment on the latest effort.
“We’ll take a close look at whatever the final details are. I’ll decline to comment beyond that,” said mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips.
One of New Jersey’s top Democratic elected officials is pushing for a proposal that would merge school employees’ health plans with the less costly state worker health plan, as costs for health care for public workers rise year over year.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney speaks at the the Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association conference in Monroe on March 29.2019.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, said the proposal to merge the plans – called the School Employee Health Benefits Plan and the State Health Benefits Plan – would save the state roughly $300 million a year.
The legislation, according to a Senate aide, is being drafted and will likely be released in April as part of a package of recommendations from a workgroup convened by Sweeney which released the “Path to Progress” report in August, outlining how to lower the state’s pension and health care obligations.
Currently 61,000 school employees and 107,000 retirees are enrolled in the School Employees Health Benefits Program, which combined with their beneficiaries, totals about 270,000 enrollees, the aide said.
The proposed SEHBP-State Health Benefits Program plan would save teachers roughly $60 million and another $240 million for the school districts, the aide said.
Many of those districts lost school funding because of changes to the school funding formula approved last year as part of the 2019 budget, and the savings could more than make up for that lost money.
“There’s no excuse for teachers and taxpayers to be paying $37,905 for a family plan under the SEHBP when state workers and taxpayers are saving money and getting superb coverage for just $27,2690 under the new SHBP,” Sweeney said in his prepared remarks Friday at the Jersey Principals and Supervisors Associationconference Friday morning in Monroe.
“It’s everyone’s benefit,” Sweeney added. “We’re dealing with some things that have to be addressed. We can’t ignore them anymore. It’s to the point where if we don’t address these problems, it’s going to become unfixable.”
Sweeney said he would back off of his proposal to have school health plan retirees pay for their health care as a percentage of their salaries.
