Lethal Heating: 08/20/17

20/08/2017

Australian Coal-Power Allowable Pollution Would Be Illegal In US, Europe And China – Report

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Environmental Justice Australia report says Australian coal-fired power plants regularly exceed lax limits imposed on them

A representative of Victoria’s Yallourn power plant, pictured, told the EPA it did not report when pollution levels were exceeded. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Australian coal-fired power stations are allowed to produce levels of toxic air pollution that would be illegal in the US, Europe and China, and may exceed even the lax limits imposed on them with few or no consequences, according to an investigation by Environmental Justice Australia.
The report reveals evidence that operators of coal power plants in Australia have been gaming the systems that monitor the deadly pollution, while others have reported figures the federal government says are not reliable.
EJA’s investigation reveals further cases of allegedly misleading behaviour. In Victoria, regulators are investigating one case in which a representative of a coal power plant allegedly said it regularly “simplifies” reporting during periods of excessive pollution by just reporting the figure allowed by its licence, rather than the actual amount.
Pollution from coal power plants kills hundreds of people each year in Australia. In Sydney alone, about 130 premature deaths are thought to be caused each year by coal-fired power stations, with worse impacts in regions near the stations.
Nationally, the health effects from the pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants are estimated to cost $2.6bn – a figure that would amount to $13.20 a megawatt hour if it were added to power costs.
Researchers at EJA collected the individual pollution limits allowed for 10 of Australia’s 17 commercially operating coal-fired power stations, chosen for their high levels of pollution and proximity to populated areas.
Standardising the limits for comparison and collating them with regulations in the US, Europe and China, they found that in almost all cases Australian coal power plants were allowed to emit more toxic pollution.
Mercury emissions compared particularly badly. Coal-fired power is the second biggest Australian source of mercury, which accumulates in the environment, causing significant harm to people.
Some coal-fired power plants in New South Wales were allowed to emit 666 times what would be allowed in the US, and 33 times what is allowed in the EU and China.
Fine particle pollution, which causes hundreds of premature deaths each year, also compared very badly. Every coal power station in Victoria is allowed to emit more particulate pollution than power stations in any of the other three jurisdictions examined, and all in NSW were allowed to emit more than the Chinese limit.

Australia has no national standard, with each power station having its own limits. But the EJA researchers found even those limits were poorly monitored, often exceeded and rarely enforced.
Many power stations were required to monitor their pollution levels only once or twice a year, the investigation found. Allegations uncovered by EJA, that one power station was gaming the system by putting less polluting coal into the generator when the levels were measured, sparked an inquiry by the NSW Environmental Protection Agency in May.
Levels of particulate pollution reported to the National Pollution Inventory revealed changes in pollution levels from year to year that the federal Department of the Environment and Energy said were “not reliable”.
One station, Mount Piper in NSW, recorded a fall in emissions of 90% between 2014 and 2015, which the department told Guardian Australia was “unlikely”.
EJA uncovered a previously unpublicised EPA investigation into the coal-fired power station at Yallourn in Victoria, operated by Energy Australia. A representative of the power plant told the EPA it did not report when pollution levels were exceeded, just that the plant emitted at the limit.
A spokeswoman for Energy Australia would not say how long the practice went on, or why the company did it. But in a statement to Guardian Australia, she said: “To be clear, the Yallourn power station is compliant with strict EPA Victoria requirements relating to air pollution monitoring and in addition establishes, monitors and meets its own internal targets to protect local ambient air quality.”

The investigation also attempted to clarify how many of Australia’s coal-fired power plants were using the best available technology to limit toxic emissions. The researchers asked the operators of all 10 power stations studied what technology they had in place. Partial information was received for just six of the power stations.
Between the responses and the actual pollution data, the researchers concluded that none of the 10 stations had the latest technology. That includes “wet scrubbers” that can remove 99% of sulfur pollution and “catalytic reduction methods” that can reduce nitrogen pollution.
“All power stations are emitting significantly more pollution than they would if they had these technologies installed,” the report concludes.
It notes that if the pollution limits in the power stations licences were reduced, they would be forced to use the technology.
“Australia’s air pollution laws are weak, outdated, poorly monitored and inadequately enforced,” said EJA lawyer Nicola Rivers, a co-author of the report.
The report also compared the toxic pollution from Australia’s old coal-fired stations to that of the newest “ultra supercritical plants,” finding that if current best technology were applied to the existing stations, new plants would not reduce pollution significantly.
The report called for urgent action to reduce deaths, including the introduction of binding national emission standards requiring international best practice, and emissions reduction programs run by the states for fine and coarse particle pollution, and sulfur and nitrogen pollution.

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'Staggering': NSW emissions rule to be tested in court for the first time

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

NSW planning rules that require greenhouse gas emissions be taken into account when approving major projects will be tested in court in a challenge to a coal mine extension near Mudgee.
In April, the Planning Assessment Commission approved a seven-year extension to the Wilpinjong mine.
The nod for the mine, which had an annual coal output of 13 million tonnes, came just one week after the PAC had received 284 objections to the project.

A farming property at the top of the Barigan Valley, near Bylong and Wollar. Most of the valley is owned by Peabody for its Wilpinjong mine. Photo: John Jakes

Environmental Defender's Office NSW will challenge the PAC's decision on behalf of the Wollar Progress Association. It will argue in the Land and Environment Court that the commission failed to consider the project's carbon emissions as required by the mining State Environmental Planning Policy.
Most of the output is earmarked for AGL's Liddell and Bayswater power stations in the Hunter Valley, and so most of the emissions from burning the coal will add to NSW's tally.
Sue Higginson, EDO's principal solicitor, said it would be the first time clause 14 of the mining SEPP – which required the consent authority to assess greenhouse gas emissions in line with state policies – had been tested. The government had set a net-zero emissions goal by 2050.
"Those laws must be followed by decision makers and, in this case, our client alleges they were not," Ms Higginson said.
The EDO was hoping to repeat its win in the Supreme Court earlier this month when judges ruled consent given to the Springvale coal mine extension near Lithgow was invalid.
In that case, the PAC was deemed to have failed to take into account the water SEPP requiring any project in Sydney's catchment had a neutral or positive effect on water quality. The mine had no waste water treatment facility and released contaminated fluid directly into the Coxs River.

Coal railway to the Wilpinjong mine, near Mudgee, north-west of Sydney. Photo: jparsons@fairfaxmedia.com.au

US-based Peabody, which owned the Wilpinjong mine, said the PAC's approval process involved "thorough public consultation and a detailed impact assessment".
The project extension would secure about 550 ongoing jobs and create as many as 75 additional ones, a Peabody spokesman said.
Fairfax Media sought comment from AGL and Planning Minister Anthony Roberts.
Bev Smiles, secretary of the Wollar Progress Association, said residents were opposed to the mine's expansion because a new open-cut pit would encroach within 1.5 kilometres of Wollar village.
"We are hoping the court will take note of [the Springvale] decision," Ms Smiles said. "It's the only legal opportunity we have to question the process was done properly in NSW."
NSW Greens environment spokesman Jeremy Buckingham said it was "staggering" the PAC had ignored emissions when the law clearly required it.
"The emissions from the total amount of coal to be mined in this extension application [from 2017 to 2033] is the equivalent to 60 per cent of Australia's total 2016-17 emissions," Mr Buckingham said, or 346.3 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent.

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Students, Cities And States Take The Climate Fight To Court

New York Times - John Schwartz

Serge Dedina, the mayor of Imperial Beach, Calif., at the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Imperial Beach has filed a suit in state court that accuses oil companies of knowing that their industry would cause catastrophic climate change and covering up the evidence. Credit Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

Can the courts fix climate change?
Several groups and individuals around the United States have gone to court to try to do what the Trump administration has so far declined to do: confront the causes and effects of global warming.
In California, two counties and a city recently sued 37 fossil fuel companies, seeking funds to cover the costs of dealing with a warming world. In Oregon, a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of young people is moving toward a February trial date, though the so-called children’s suit could be tossed out before that. And more than a dozen state attorneys general have sued to block Trump administration moves to roll back environmental regulations.
Efforts in the United States are part of a wave of litigation around the world, including a 2015 decision in which a court in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to toughen its climate policies; that case is under appeal. A 2017 report from the United Nations Environment Program found nearly 900 climate litigation suits in more than 20 countries. In Switzerland, a group of nearly 800 older women known as Senior Women for Climate Protection have sued their government over climate change. In New Zealand, a court recently heard a climate case brought by a law student, Sarah Lorraine Thomson; a decision is pending.
But in the United States, lawsuits to get American courts to take on the climate fight have until now gone nowhere. In 2011, the Supreme Court threw out a case filed by eight states and New York City against electric power producers. A lawsuit brought by inhabitants of Kivalina, Alaska, against fossil fuel companies over the diminished buffer of sea ice that had protected the town was dismissed by a federal judge in 2009. A federal appeals court and the Supreme Court declined to reinstate the case.
The new California cases resemble the state tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s, which argued that the industry knew and concealed the dangers of smoking, leaving the states with enormous health care bills. In the new suits, Marin and San Mateo Counties and the City of Imperial Beach are accusing the oil companies of knowing that their industry would cause catastrophic climate change and covering up the evidence.
Serge Dedina, the mayor of Imperial Beach, said his community was already dealing with coastal flooding and increasingly heavy rains, and sees more to come as the sea level rises.
“How do we make sure those responsible pay the costs so that residents of communities like mine don’t have to pay the costs?” he asked.
The supervisor for District 3 of Marin County, Kathrin Sears, said, “It’s time to hold these oil, gas and coal companies accountable for the damage they knew their products would cause.”
Vic Sher, the lawyer whose firm developed the California cases, said the earlier unsuccessful climate cases had relied on federal common law, which the courts decided could not be applied because common law on these issues was displaced by the Clean Air Act. His case, he noted, is grounded instead in state common law, which was unaffected by the prior rulings.
And California, he said, might be only the beginning of this litigation: “Filing these cases has led to a lot of interest in other communities.”
Kent Robertson, a spokesman for Chevron, one of the targets of the case, said that the company recognize d the threat of climate change, but that the new lawsuits were not the proper way to address the problem. “Chevron welcomes serious attempts to address the issue of climate change, but these suits do not do that,” he said.
Chevron opposes the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, as do most major fossil-fuel companies. Fighting climate change is a “global issue,” Mr. Robertson said, but suits filed by counties and cities “will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory and economic priorities.”
The case brought on behalf of young people by the group Our Children’s Trust has broader goals than the California cases: to force the federal government to fight climate change aggressively.
“These children’s lives and their security are threatened by what the government is doing,” said Julia Olson, one of the lead lawyers in the case.
The case began under the Obama administration, which the plaintiffs argue had not taken sufficient steps to avoid the effects of global warming.
“Even the minimal steps that were taken by, for example, the Obama administration are now being reversed by the Trump administration,” Ms. Olson said.
The case has so far survived efforts by the Obama and Trump administrations to have it dismissed, and the lawsuit’s progress led industry groups that had added themselves to the case, in order to oppose the children’s group, to quietly withdraw.
But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has now asked for new briefs from the parties after the Trump administration asked the court to step in and review decisions by the Federal District Court judge, Ann Aiken. Legal experts said that Judge Aiken’s 2016 decision to let the case move forward had been unexpected and that it was not surprising that the appeals court wanted to take a closer look.
One of the plaintiffs, 17-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, said, “I’m still confident it will make it to court in February.” The case, he added, “has a lot of opportunity and ability to create some tangible and long-lasting change.”

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez at his home in Colorado in 2016. Mr. Martinez is a plaintiff in a climate lawsuit against the federal government filed by Our Children’s Trust. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times

Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said of the California and Oregon cases: “They are both bold and ambitious litigation strategies that at first blush will raise eyebrows, and will encounter a certain degree of skepticism. But they both have a chance.”
The pressure of litigation could also lead companies to alter their practices or work with lawmakers on a deal, as the tobacco companies did to resolve their litigation.
Perhaps the most effective litigators in the fight against climate change could turn out to be state attorneys general. During the Obama administration, conservative attorneys general like Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt, who had a particularly close relationship with fossil fuel interests, fought environmental initiatives and often had p rivate-sector players as fellow plaintiffs.
Now Mr. Pruitt heads the Environmental Protection Agency, and progressive attorneys general, especially New York’s Eric T. Schneiderman, are suing just as enthusiastically, along with environmental groups, to counter the administration’s efforts to roll back climate change regulations. Mr. Schneiderman and Massachusetts’s attorney general, Maura Healey, are also spearheading an investigation of Exxon Mobil’s research and actions on climate change.
Their pushback could already be having an effect. Last week, the E.P.A. reversed itself on a one-year delay it had announced on enforcing a rule regarding ozone — one day after attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging the delay.

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