EPA Endangerment Finding: Certainty from the United States
So much remains to be resolved as the McKenna Long & Aldridge team heads to Copenhagen this week. There is much speculation regarding what Congress will do to move forward on climate change. Bottom-line positions from the Obama Administration at the Copenhagen negotiations remain to be seen. But one thing is certain: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
Continue Reading...A Moving Climate Storm on the Gulf Coast. Plaintiffs Move Forward, While Senate Deliberates
When the fury of Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, many saw this as a tipping point in US public perception towards the reality of climate change. Levees broke, people died, clean water was not available, valuable property flooded, buildings were left hazardous and roads were destroyed. As Chairman Edward Markey (D-MA), Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has stated, “Perhaps no weather disaster highlights our weakness to climate challenges than our inadequate response to Katrina, which still haunts us several years later.” Not coincidentally, President Obama took the opportunity in his recent trip to New Orleans to plead for bipartisan approaches to passing comprehensive energy and climate change legislation.
Continue Reading...Auto Mileage and Carbon Emissions Agreement: Harbinger of Good Things to Come?
This week, President Obama announced a plan to increase national automobile emissions and mileage standards for cars and trucks in the United States starting in 2012. If it survives a public review process, this agreement will create a single new national standard for the US car and light truck fleets that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today -- an average 35.5 miles per gallon (as reported in the NY Times).
The announcement resonates loudly in national climate change policy, because it marks the first federal regulatory standard for carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. It will also mean federal regulation of a sector (transportation) which accounts for a third of the nation’s carbon emissions.
The announcement also resonates in the energy community, since President Obama predicted that as result of the agreement, demand for oil would fall by 1.8 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold over the next five years.
It is also significant in the broader national quest for overall air quality improvements because per-mile-traveled particulate, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions will drop as well.
Continue Reading...Black Carbon Steps from the Shadows as a Major Climate Culprit Worldwide
You may have recently heard about “black carbon” and wondered if it was a climate epithet, a word reversal in a familiar product (carbon black), or simply redundant (carbon is black). But in fact “black” or elemental carbon is emerging as a particularly potent greenhouse agent that needs to be reckoned with on its own terms with special measures to prevent releases to the atmosphere. Recent studies suggest that black carbon emissions, which are not yet controlled by the Kyoto or Montreal Protocols, are the second largest contributor to global warming (after carbon dioxide) and that reducing them may be the fastest strategy for slowing climate change. Black carbon emissions are greatest from developing countries, a trend which is expected to increase, but the US and other developed nations can also do much more to address the problem. Reducing black carbon emissions offers a nearly instant return in lowering the greenhouse effect, because black carbon particles remain airborne for weeks while carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for more than a century (see footnote 24 of IGSD October 2008 Climate Briefing).
Continue Reading...The Addition of SF6 to DoD's Emerging Contaminants Action List
After years of controversy over the use of Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) in both the public and private sectors, the Department of Defense has added SF6 to its emerging contaminants action list – notably ahead of any potential domestic greenhouse gas regulation. DoD believes that it is necessary to develop risk management measures, such as replacement options and cleanup technologies, in order to ensure that they avoid future problems and expense.
SF6 has military uses in radar systems, such as Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS), helicopter rotor-blade leak tests, discharge testing in fire suppression systems, electrical switch gear, and propulsion systems. But, more importantly, the addition of SF6 to the DoD action list will likely result in reduced use and availability. Defense acquisitions, research, and development will bear the greatest burden.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), SF6 is the most potent of the six main greenhouse gases with a global warming potential (GWP) of 23,900 times that of CO2 over 100 years.* Although the concentration of SF6 in the atmosphere is lower than that of other GHGs, SF6 emissions are still a major problem because the GWP and atmospheric lifetime (3200 years) are so much higher. This means that that implementing new practices to reduce the use of one pound of SF6 is equivalent to retiring 11 tons of carbon.
Continue Reading...Water Agencies Seek Inclusion in Climate Legislation
For some time we have been hearing about changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and other various ways that climate change will severely impact our nation’s hydrologic systems. In the debate over climate legislation water groups are advocating for congressional funds to assist with mitigating the effects on water supplies of a changing climate. Although water groups are pleased to have been included in funding proposed in the most recent version of Lieberman-Warner, the amendment offered up by Senator Boxer is not specific about what portion of the $136 billion in funding that drinking, waste, storm-water utilities would be eligible for under the energy block grant program. In the last few weeks, water groups have stepped up their efforts and sent letters to Senator Boxer and Congress pushing for assistance and inclusion in a cap and trade program.
Continue Reading...Climate Change and Aviation Fuel: A Tough Problem to Solve
Large aircraft require high energy fuel, and lots of it. But jet fuel is very difficult to clean up to satisfy climate protection imperatives, which has led to a major dispute in the US over the role coal-to-liquids and other alternative aviation fuels may play. Congress, the US Air Force, the major airlines, the US Environmental Protection Agency, its Federal Aviation Administration, a special Defense Department task force, coal-state senators, and many, many others are getting into the dogfight, which may go on for a long time.
Continue Reading...Climate Change Tort Suits: Hot or Cold?
Kivalina, Alaska, a village located eighty miles north of the Arctic Circle on a barrier island, is falling into the sea.
Since the early 1980s, sea ice ‑ which offers seasonal protection from storm surges ‑ has been forming later and melting earlier. As a result, the village is exposed to more winter storms of increasing severity.
In 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers (“CoE”) concluded that the situation in Kivalina had become “dire” and that the entire town would have to be relocated within six years. A group of 400 Kivalina residents have filed suit against twenty petroleum producers, coal-burning utilities, and other energy companies, asserting that their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions create a public nuisance and that they conspired to mislead the public about climate change.
Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. et al., CV 08-1138 (N.D. Cal., Filed Feb. 26, 2008). Citing a report by the CoE, the Kivalina villagers allege that environmental changes associated with global warming have exacerbated flooding and erosion threats to Kivalina and other coastal villages in the Arctic.
They seek recovery of the estimated $400 million cost to relocate their village, which they claim is a result of the defendants’ climate-changing activities.
Who's in the Driver's Seat? Washington vs the States, Agency vs Agency
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently dealt a blow to both EPA and the states by proposing preemptive federal fuel economy standards (corporate average fuel economy or CAFE standards) that not only negate the states’ efforts to regulate fuel economy and vehicle greenhouse emissions but also directly challenge EPA’s leading role in regulating vehicle emissions. Will the courts, Congress, or a presidential administration sort out the traffic jam over authority to reduce vehicle greenhouse emissions? At this writing, the governors of twelve states are weighing in against what they view as a “cynical” power grab by the NHTSA, but resolution is nowhere in sight. [summary]
Continue Reading...The US's Existing Climate Protection Laws: Will They Work?
Obtaining GHG Credits Through Managing Water Supply Systems
Most recent climate-oriented discussions of water supply and quality have focused on the potential for altered precipitation, stream flows, groundwater recharge, and other impacts of regional climate change. These impacts are more likely than not to be severe in some locales, and thought is being given to the development of new infrastructure to address these changes (see related item on climate adaptation). But in addition to these obvious impacts on water supply and quality, it is now apparent that "non-trivial" greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the treatment of drinking water and sewage. [summary]
Continue Reading...Global Climate Change Under NEPA
Increasingly, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is being seen as a vehicle for ensuring that the federal government considers the impact of its actions on global climate change. Relying on a string of judicial decisions that require agency NEPA impact statements specifically to address the climate consequences of agency actions, environmental organizations have petitioned the President’s Council on Environmental Quality to conform its NEPA guidelines to the requirements of these cases. Climate will clearly figure prominently in future federal impact statements, and non-federal stakeholders, who often are the real parties in interest in NEPA compliance, would be wise to address climate early and often when developing their NEPA compliance strategies. [summary]
Continue Reading...