Toxic Release Inventory Excitement!

Byoliveridley

Environmental Protection Agency – EPA Press Release: EPA Report Shows Decrease in Toxic Chemicals Released

(Washington, D.C. – April 12, 2006) The amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment decreased four percent from 2003 to 2004 according to the Environmental Protections Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) released today.

“Today’s report demonstrates that economic growth and effective environmental protection can go hand-in-hand,” said Linda Travers, acting assistant administrator for the Office of Environmental Information. “We are encouraged to see a continued reduction in the overall amount of toxic chemicals being released into the environment.”

Significant decreases were seen in some of the most toxic chemicals from 2003-2004.

· Dioxin and dioxin compounds, which decreased by 58 percent,
· mercury and mercury compounds, which were cut by 16 percent and
· polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) went down 92 percent.

Why, that is positively great news, especially on the dioxin and PCB front. Since pictures are nicer and data from the last 5 years provides a little more context, why don’t we use the Toxics Release Inventory Explorer to pull some information together…

pic.png

No drastic decreases, dioxin releases during 2004 are close to those during 2000. Wow, seems like 2003 was an especially bad year, the PCB release is off the charts. One landfill facility was responsible for more than 80% of the release. Kinda useless to point to trends caused by single data points, but I guess that’s what press releases are for, pick on some fortuitous piece of data and hope that the media is lazy enough to not spend a little time looking into the story.

The grist picks (up) on this release as well.

Meanwhile, the EPA is considering a loosening of regulation in this regard, read this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article for more details.

The EPA inventory “keeps that pressure on to keep those emissions down,” Hansen said. That’s the purpose of this kind of public information or “right-to-know” program.

The EPA has not made a final decision on the changes it has proposed — namely, requiring emissions reports every two years instead of annually and raising the volume of chemicals that have to be released before a report is required.

“The jury is still out,” said Brook Madrone, TRI program manager for the regional EPA office.

Information is power (always end on a cliche!)

Similar Posts

Pothole power for cars

Byoliveridley

Via the TNR E&E blog comes this story of capturing some of the energy wasted when a vehicle moves over bumps and potholes on the road. Indian drivers are waiting with bated breath for this prototype to become a reality! The takeaway messages are that most of the mechanical devices we use today have many points where waste energy can be captured and put to use.

A team of MIT undergraduate students has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers.

Best Primer to Climate Change ever

Byoliveridley

The Beeb does it again. Best use of simple graphics to clearly explain science.

Gulf Stream

  1. Surface currents carry warm, salty water from the tropics.
  2. The water cools, its density increases and it sinks to the deep ocean.
  3. The cold water flows back to the equator, driving the “ocean conveyor” which in turn contributes to the Gulf Stream that warms northern Europe.
  4. As ice melts, freshwater dilutes the warm salty water from the tropics.
  5. The water becomes less dense so does not sink as fast, weakening the “conveyor” and therefore possibly disrupting the Gulf Stream.

Gulf Stream

Dramatic temperature shifts have happened in the past, driven partly by changes in a major ocean currents.

A “great ocean conveyor” helps transport heat around the globe via surface and deep-sea movements of water.

Scientists are exploring whether global warming might slow or shut it down – a scenario considered “low probability, high impact”.

This could disrupt mostly wind-driven surface currents such as the Gulf Stream, which brings milder weather to Northern Europe.

Low Probability, High impact indeed, aka the “Hell Freezes Over” Scenario. The Gulf Stream example is one of my favorites, check all the other animation out, it is great.

Oil refineries underestimate release of emissions, study says

Byoliveridley

A study by the Alberta Research Council that investigated the plume of contaminants emanating from a Canadian oil refinery using high-tech sniffing equipment found the facility dramatically underestimated its releases of dangerous air pollutants.The refinery, which wasn’t identified but is believed to be in Alberta, released 19 times more cancer-causing benzene than it reported under Environment Canada disclosure regulations, about 15 times more smog-causing volatile organic compounds, and nine times more methane, a greenhouse gas, according to the study.The testing is believed to be the first at a North American refinery using the sophisticated technology relying on lasers, and is considered state-of-the art. The technology, developed by British Petroleum, has been in widespread use in Europe for nearly two decades.

globeandmail.com: Oil refineries underestimate release of emissions, study says

Serious stuff, this. As the report points out, this is old news, here’s a workshop report from the EPA last year about this very issue (no, don’t read it, 303 pages long). Volatile organic compounds are inputs into air pollution models that measure ozone levels. When your local agency tells you that Tuesday is going to be a code orange ozone day, they rely on ozone models such as CMAQ. Now, without proper inputs, you are going to make some serious errors in prediction. These errors are somewhat mitigated by the tuning of these models with measured concentrations. So, there is some error compensation going on within the model.

More importantly, by underestimating fugitive emissions, refineries can reduce their leak monitoring, reporting and mitigation costs. There is also the issue of conflict of interest here. The current technique was developed by the American Petroleum Institute!

Do we expect measurement based techniques to start being used in the US and Canada? One would hope so, but, don’t hold your breath!

BC Carbon Tax regressive?

Byoliveridley

British Columbians with low incomes will benefit from the carbon tax in its first year, but will pay more by the scheme’s third year, a new study concludes.

The impact of the tax and its offsetting income tax cuts will become increasingly unequal unless the provincial government increases payments to low-income earners, the study says.

The study, by Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and Toby Sanger, senior economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, takes a detailed look at the fairness of the controversial tax.

via Carbon Tax Whacks the Poor, Later :: News :: thetyee.ca

The report makes some good points. Revenue neutrality (the offsetting of carbon taxes with income/corporate tax cuts) has nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions. If I were to redesign this tax, I would do as the report says, increase rebates to lower income people, reduce corporate tax cuts so that the resulting revenue can be used to fund more transit infrastructure, energy efficiency infrastructure and the building of a low carbon economy.

A carbon tax in itself is not sufficient to reduce emissions. It does its part, but building an energy efficient, low carbon infrastructure will do a lot more and the money’s there, just use it.

You can read the whole report here.

Canada's Budget – FAIL on Renewables

Byoliveridley

Canada's Conservative government released a federal budget last week that would kill off the country's main program for developing renewables and channel most of the money from a new “Green Infrastructure Fund” into carbon capture and storage CCS technology, or so-called “clean” coal.

Of course, the carbon capture is not aimed at coal here specifically, but at the oil sands. More bad news –

The new pro-coal budget effectively killed all support for the nation’s ecoENERGY Program for Renewable Energy (equivalent to America’s Production Tax Credit for renewables). The program was the nation’s main support mechanism for developing renewable energy. The Pembina Institute, a Canada-based sustainable energy think tank, reacts to the budget defeat:

“The federal government’s failure to renew and expand this program has jeopardized at least 1,500 megawatts of “shovel read” wind energy projects across the country, while putting the brakes on billions of dollars of potential future investment.”

The renewable energy industry had hoped for a five-year extension of the program in the budget, which would have spurred over $6 billion of private investment in the Canadian economy and created 8,000 jobs, according to the Institute.

Note that this is not just the Conservatives. The Liberals are supporting this budget, and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has spoken glowingly about the oil sands industry.

At this point, we do not control our own environmental future. The Conservatives are an Alberta centred party and their motivation is not surprising. The Liberals clearly want back in power and do not have the money to fight another election next month. Canadians seem to not favour the most logical option, a coalition government of the left leaning parties which make up a majority of seats and voting percentages in parliament, so the Liberals have to support the Conservative budget or face an election soon.

With Ignatieff leading the Liberals, they know that all they need a little time to get money and reverse their losses from the previous election. His personal popularity advantage over previous Liberal leader Stephane Dion will most probably lead to better election results, especially if the Canadian economy continues to tank. A Liberal budget would have not killed the renewables, but would have not done anything to make the oil sands projects pay for all their externalities either.

With the two main parties objectively in favour of unproven boondoggles and greenwashing, only firm decisive action by the US administration to institute some kind of carbon controls will change the game in Canada. My fear is that by killing money support at a critical time, you kill the renewables industry and disperse its people elsewhere, and no reversing course in 3 years will get those people and companies back.

Carbon Trends 2007

Byoliveridley

Emissions increased from 6.2 PgC per year in 1990 to 8.5 PgC in 2007, a 38% increase from the Kyoto reference year 1990. The growth rate of emissions was 3.5% per year for the period of 2000-2007, an almost four fold increase from 0.9% per year in 1990-1999. The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios IPCC-SRES. This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario. Fossil fuel and cement emissions released approximately 348 PgC to the atmosphere from 1850 to 2007.

Carbon Trends 2007.

This is very scary news, and there’s more in the carbon budget for the last 7 years released here. It shows a total lack of leadership from the US, Canada, and Europe, countries responsible for over 80% of the historical anthropogenic contribution.