The EPA is amending the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule to implement technical corrections, clarifications and other amendments, including revisions to global warming potentials for certain greenhouse gases. The agency's action also establishes confidentiality determinations for the reporting of new or substantially revised data elements.
The UN's Clean Development Mechanism offset market will likely remain "in a coma" for years, project developers told Reuters. Investment under the $315 billion market has stalled after credit prices fell 95 percent over five years, to about €0.30. Prospects for the market look dim after countries meeting in Warsaw failed to strike a deal to stimulate demand.
South Carolina is threatening to fine the federal government $154 million for failing to keep cleanup to schedule at a former nuclear weapons plant, the New York Times reports. The Department of Energy started cleanup at the Savannah River Site in 1996 and said it would convert the liquid waste into a solid by 2023. But officials now say the DOE will not complete the work until the 2040s.
The UK is trying to limit airlines' inclusion in the European Emissions Trading System to just flights that begin and end in the EU, Bloomberg reports. France and Germany are seeking a similar restriction, Reuters says. The European Commission has proposed applying carbon charges to the portions of all flights - domestic or international - within European airspace.
General Electric and SI Group have agreed to conduct comprehensive studies of the contamination at the Dewey Loeffel Landfill Superfund site in Rensselaer County, N.Y. The companies will assess long-term cleanup options for the landfill and groundwater at an estimated cost of $1.5 million. GE will also assess options for impacted surface water, and the first phase of this investigation will cost an estimated $500,000 to $1 million.
EU ambassadors in Brussels have drawn up a proposal to raise, to 7 percent, a cap on the proportion of transportation fuels made from food crops. Current use in the bloc is about 5 percent, Reuters reports.
Business umbrella groups the Coalition for Energy Savings, the European Renewable Energy Council and the Climate Action Network argued in a letter to European Commission secretary-general Catherine Day that policymakers bent to industry pressure on emissions policy, without examining the possibility for deeper cuts. The commission is expected next month to propose a energy and environment policy framework running until 2030.
The DOE has granted Hussmann Corporation and Felix Storch waivers from its energy consumption test procedure for commercial freezers. Hussmann says some of its models cannot be tested in accordance with the procedure because they cannot operate at the specified temperature of 0 °F ± 2 °F; and Felix Storch says its ice cream freezers cannot operate at the specified temperature of -15 ± 2 °F.
The EPA has released a compilation of all federally-enforceable State Implementation Plans for the Clean Air Act, as it is required to do every three years. The compilation is available for review at regional EPA offices.
EU member states would have to meet quotas for publicly-available electric vehicle charging points and hydrogen and natural gas stations by 2020, under a draft directive endorsed by the European Parliament's Transport and Tourism Committee, Green Car Congress reports. The EU says that fast recharging stations should use "Combo 2" connectors, but can also use the CHAdeMO standard until the end of 2018.
Dodge Company, a supplier and former manufacturer of embalming chemicals, will pay a $400,000 penalty to address EPA charges that it failed to comply with chemical risk management planning requirements of the Clean Air Act at four facilities (Cambridge, Mass., Fort Worth, Texas, Batavia, Ill. and Fontana, Calif.), and failed to file chemical inventory reports required by the Emergency Planning and Right-to-Know-Act for its facilities in Texas, Illinois and California.
The EPA has selected a cleanup plan for the Scovill Industrial Landfill Superfund Site in Waterbury, Conn. The Scovill Manufacturing Company used the site from 1919 to the mid-1970s for disposal of ash, cinders, demolition debris, and other wastes generated by the company.
