WRAP UP

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
4/5/13

IN CONGRESS

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing for the Obama Administration’s pick for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Gina McCarthy, next week. The hearing is set to be held on April 11 beginning at 10:30 a.m. McCarthy currently serves as EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation and during her four-year tenure has developed some of the Agency’s most significant and contentious regulations related to power plant emissions. McCarthy is expected to receive sharp questions from many of the Republicans on the committee who have previously spoken out against the Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who is not a member of the committee, has placed a hold on McCarthy’s nomination until the Obama Administration releases a timeline for moving forward with the regulatory review process for a controversial flood control project in Missouri.

A trio of Senate Republicans sent a letter to White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley this week requesting that she hold off on issuing expected guidance that would require all federal agencies to consider the impact of major projects on climate change under the National Environmental Policy Act. In particular, Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said an expected provision that would require agencies to take into account the greenhouse gas emissions of American exports that are released into the atmosphere outside of the U.S. would hurt job creation and the economy. “Automobiles, commercial aircraft and heavy equipment are among America’s top exports. However, these goods are also among the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions,” the three wrote. “Requiring federal agencies to consider the greenhouse gas emissions produced by exports after they leave our shores would be profoundly short-sighted. It would threaten billions of dollars in American export projects and put thousands of good-paying American jobs at risk.”

IN EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized technical changes to its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for future power plants late last week. EPA said March 29 that it tweaked the monitoring and testing requirements for mercury, particulate matter, SO2, acid gases and other metals emitted from new coal- and oil-fired power plants based on new information that was made available after the rule was finalized in late 2011. The agency said the changes will not affect the rule’s cost or public health benefits. “The updates continue to ensure that the rules will protect all Americans from dangerous pollutants such as mercury. The limits are achievable and are consistent with the requirements of the Clean Air Act,” EPA said in a fact sheet. The agency announced that it would be making the changes last summer after it received 20 petitions for reconsideration from stakeholder groups that said the standards were technically infeasible.

IN THE INDUSTRY

Fugitive methane emitted during the natural gas development process can undercut the climate advantage that gas has over coal, but deploying certain technologies and implementing existing state and federal-level policies can cut emissions by one-half to two-thirds, a World Resources Institute working paper argues. The report says that the average leakage rate for methane during upstream development generally spans 2 to 3 percent of total production, but that reducing that rate to 1 percent “ensures that switching from diesel or coal to natural gas provides a net climate benefit over any time horizon.” In order to get there, the paper suggests that developers use three emissions-control technologies on new and existing wells and equipment. “Using plunger lift systems, switching the existing stock of high-bleed pneumatic devices to low-bleed equivalents and using methane leak detection and repair technologies at processing plants and compressor stations can reduce emissions by 30 percent,” WRI said in a release. The paper adds that existing policies like the Environmental Protection Agency’s New Source Performance Standards for new gas development sites could also have the co-benefit of reducing fugitive methane emissions. It says the Clean Air Act also has tools available to limit the pollutant, which is 25 times more potent than CO2 when emitted into the atmosphere over a 100-year period.

KBR said this week that it will be performing off-site modularization and pipe fabrication work for Shell Canada’s Quest carbon capture and storage project in Alberta. The Houston-based engineering and construction firm said it will work at the Edmonton Module Facility to assemble pipe and equipment modules for the $1.35 billion retrofit to Shell’s Scotford oil sands upgrader. The materials will later by trucked to the project site, located outside Edmonton. The engineering firm will also provide support for off-site testing and commissioning services, it said.

Shell said it wants to invest “several hundred million dollars” over the next six to eight years in promising technologies that could help accelerate its business. The oil and gas giant said its corporate venturing arm, Shell Technology Ventures, will be focusing on the areas of enhanced oil recovery, geophysical imaging, chemical manufacturing and conversion and beyond, and is open to several other areas of development. “Ideas from outside the organization are critical to our open innovation approach to R&D. We want to enable the brightest and the best to develop their ideas, and benefit from Shell’s expertise and global reach, so that we can get these technologies up and running in our projects as fast as we can,” Shell Chief Technology Officer Gerald Schotman said in a statement this week.