Category Archives: Air Quality

Air Quality, Benicia Climate Action Plan, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Cap-and-trade, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Greenhouse gas emissions, Oil spill, Rail accidents, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail, Valero Energy Corporation

VALLEJO TIMES-HERALD LETTER: Valero is NOT good neighbor!

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald

Valero is NOT a good neighbor!

By Rebekah Ramos, September 25, 2015

Valero’s self-proclaimed “Good Neighbor” status is laughable when you begin to peel back the onion and remove the layers of misinformation (or missing information) and reveal the same flavor of corporate propaganda and fearmongering that is used to hold small communities hostage.

There are hidden costs to having Valero as a neighbor that you may not be aware of.

Valero says the City of Benicia is losing more than $360K per year in revenue because of delays in approving their crude by rail project, which could get us 4 new police officers.

Valero DOESN’T say…

    • CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) is a law that requires due diligence to properly evaluate environmental impacts and most importantly, inform the public of those impacts. City staff initially attempted to push this project through, under the radar, and without LITTLE public notification – skirting the law. Had it not been for a group of alert citizens bringing this to the public’s attention Valero would have gotten away with implementing a project that would have enormous ramifications to our health, safety, and economic viability, not only in our community, but every community along the rails.
    • Our personal safety is NOT at risk because we are short on police officers, it’s at risk because transporting highly volatile crude oil by rail is extremely risky business. More than 17 major oil train accidents have occurred in the last 24 months resulting in explosions, spills, and derailments.

Valero says they contribute 25% to Benicia’s general fund.

Valero DOESN’T say…

  • That number is actually 20% AND it doesn’t reflect the millions that Valero has taken away from the city’s coffers in recent years.
  • The City of Benicia was forced to pay Valero $2.3 million because Valero filed an appeal for a reduction in its property value from $1.02 billion to $230 million and $964 million to $100 million in 2012 and 2013 respectively despite climbing profits and gas prices since 2010. Benicia loses $2.3 million AND any on-going revenue generated from Valero’s property taxes. How many police officers do you think $2.3 million get us?

Valero says the crude by rail project will reduce air emissions and decrease greenhouse gases. In addition, they say they are entitled to $57million in emission reduction credits because of improvements made to the refinery.

Valero DOESN’T say…

  • The recirculated EIR for their crude by rail project specifically states that there will be significant increases in air emissions and greenhouse gases.
  • Valero has received dozens of notices of emissions violations nearly every single month of 2014 and 2015 including a violation for Benzene.
  • Valero has failed to install any publically accessible emissions monitoring equipment despite their pledge to do so since 2008.
  • Emission reduction credits would allow Valero to increase their emissions for new projects, sell or trade their credits to other polluters. Because of Cap and Trade legislation, big polluters in our own backyards get to pollute even more.
  • According to the EPA, Valero is the biggest polluter in Solano County, contributing 82% of all toxic releases in 2013. Data for 2014 and 15 is not available.

Valero is desperate to turn a profit and will use whatever means is necessary – squeeze money from the city coffers, pollute our environment, and put our lives at risk – to satisfy the short-term interests of their shareholders. They even threaten to lay people off or sell the refinery if the city doesn’t comply.

We can’t let one business keep our community in such an economically vulnerable situation. The City of Benicia has adopted a Climate Action Plan, but can’t seem to address THE REAL CLIMATE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, which is Valero. It’s time that serious action be taken to seek out and invite other, more sustainable industries to our city because Valero is NOT a Good Neighbor!

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Cap-and-trade, Carbon emissions, Emissions caps, Greenhouse gas emissions, Local Regulation, Public Health, San Francisco Bay Area

Letter to the Bay Area Air District: require strict emissions caps on refineries

Posted with permission

Benicia Resident Marilyn Bardet’s letter to the Chair of the Board, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)

Direct staff to require numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissons
By Marilyn Bardet, Sept 16, 2015

Dear Chair Groom,

Marilyn Bardet
Marilyn Bardet, Benicia CA

In response to the overwhelming testimony the District has received from all corners of the Bay Area, as chair of the BAAQMD board of directors, you, with your board, have the authority to direct District staff to revise DRAFT Rules 12-15 and 12-16 as currently released, to require strict numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissions, including GHG.

By all means of public testimony over a two-year period, you have heard from concerned and affected members of the public, respected regional and national organizations (including Sierra Club, NRDC, CBE, 350 Bay Area, APEN, Sunflower Alliance) and other experts in the field who have recommended and put forward well-defined revisions that would impose strict numerical emissions caps on refinery emissions tied to current emissions baselines for TAC, VOCs, heavy metals and PM2.5, including GHG.

You know that oil companies in the region aim to acquire and process the most dangerously polluting crude in the world — tar sands. Refineries processing changed crude slates whose blends have increasing amounts of heavy crude, unconventional crudes such as Bakken oil, and/or tar sands will adversely impact regional and local air quality, especially affecting front-line communities and those “downwind communities.” Allowing emissions to “go up to” long ago established permitting levels (Valero Benicia’s permit was established in 2003) is tantamount to the District “giving in” to benefit the oil industries’ profit, not public health.

The District’s mandate is to clean up the air for the benefit of public health, and, in accordance with state mandates, to protect the climate by drastically reducing GHG. Oil refining is the biggest industrial source of GHG. Carbon trading by refineries will simply send “pollution credits” elsewhere and keep toxic emissions “at home” that kill thousands of people in the Bay Area each year. GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion threaten to destroy our global climate and way of life.

Strong refinery rules that set numerical limits on toxic emissions tied to current baselines and limit GHGs are our best chance to protect public health and protect the climate.

We need your leadership more than ever now! I am writing to ask that you make it clear to your directors that the “highest good” must be done by BAAQMD in the name of public health and climate protection, such that, until revisions to Rules 12-15 and 12-16 are adopted that set refinery emission caps at today’s levels, including for GHG, the agency will suspend permitting for refinery projects.

This is a bold request, but these are very uncertain times that require every precaution and concerted action by leadership to create policies that protect people and the planet.

Thank you for your public service, and for you attention to my comments.

Respectfully,

Marilyn Bardet
Benicia
Air Quality, Particulate pollution, Public Health

Air pollution kills 3.3 million worldwide, may double, study says

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor:  Significant quote: “Air pollution kills more than HIV and malaria combined.”  Also: “The United States, with 54,905 deaths in 2010 from soot and smog….”  – RS]

Air pollution kills 3.3 million worldwide, may double, study says

Associated Press, September 16, 2015
A man covers his nose during a hazy day in Singapore. A new study notes that farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations. Photo: Ng Han Guan, Associated Press
A man covers his nose during a hazy day in Singapore. A new study notes that farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations. Photo: Ng Han Guan, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Air pollution is killing 3.3 million people a year worldwide, according to a new study that includes this surprise: Farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations.

Scientists in Germany, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Harvard University calculated the most detailed estimates yet of the toll of air pollution, looking at what caused it. The study also projects that if trends don’t change, the yearly death total will double to about 6.6 million by 2050.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, used health statistics and computer models. About three quarters of the deaths are from strokes and heart attacks, said lead author Jos Lelieveld at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany.

The findings are similar to other less detailed pollution death estimates, outside experts said.

“About 6 percent of all global deaths each occur prematurely due to exposure to ambient air pollution. This number is higher than most experts would have expected, say, 10 years ago,” said Jason West, a University of North Carolina environmental sciences professor who wasn’t part of the study but praised it.

Air pollution kills more than HIV and malaria combined, Lelieveld said.

With nearly 1.4 million deaths a year, China has the most air pollution fatalities, followed by India with 645,000 and Pakistan with 110,000.

The United States, with 54,905 deaths in 2010 from soot and smog, ranks seventh highest for air pollution deaths. What’s unusual is that the study says that agriculture caused 16,221 of those deaths, second only to 16,929 deaths blamed on power plants.

In the U.S. Northeast, all of Europe, Russia, Japan and South Korea, agriculture is the No. 1 cause of the soot and smog deaths, according to the study. Worldwide, agriculture is the No. 2 cause with 664,100 deaths, behind the more than 1 million deaths from in-home heating and cooking done with wood and other biofuels in developing world.

The problem with farms is ammonia from fertilizer and animal waste, Lelieveld said. That ammonia then combines with sulfates from coal-fired power plants and nitrates from car exhaust to form the soot particles that are the big air pollution killers, he said. In London, for example, the pollution from traffic takes time to be converted into soot, and then it is mixed with ammonia and transported downwind to the next city, he said.

“We were very surprised, but in the end it makes sense,” Lelieveld said. He said the scientists had assumed that traffic and power plants would be the biggest cause of deadly soot and smog.

Air Quality, Climate Change, Renewable energy

Cost of not acting on climate change $44 trillion by 2060

Repost from CNBC
[Editor:  See the source, Citigroup Report.  – RS]

Cost of not acting on climate change $44 trillion: Citi

By Anmar Frangoul, 18 Aug 2015 | 7:05 AM ET

Up to $44 trillion could be going up in smoke if the world does not act on climate change, according to the latest piece of research from U.S. banking giant Citigroup.

The report – Energy Darwinism II: Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth — has forecast that spending on energy will hit around $200 trillion in the next 25 years.

The study then examines two scenarios: one that Citi describe as an “‘inaction’ on climate change scenario”, and another that looks at what could happen if a low carbon, “different energy mix” is pursued.

Luiz Filipe Castro | Moment | Getty Images

“What we’re trying to do is to take an objective view at the economics of this situation and actually look at what the costs of not acting are, if the scientists are right,” Jason Channell, Global Head of Alternative Energy and Cleantech Research at Citi, told CNBC Tuesday.

“And those are rather alarming numbers in themselves,” he added. “I mean, the central case we have in the report is that the costs in terms of lost (gross domestic product) GDP from not acting on climate change can be $44 trillion dollars by the time we get to 2060.”

“So it’s not a sort of a zero sum game, there is a cost to not doing this, and although there is a cost to acting, what we’re trying to do is to actually weigh up the different costs here.”

However, lower oil prices have dampened current desire for greater investment in renewables and energy efficiency.

“Low oil prices make it… perhaps less attractive to invest in renewables now,” Channell admitted.

“But there is a flipside of looking at this, which is to say that… oil either acts as a boost or a brake on the global economy, and historically it’s been about 3 and 10 percent of global GDP, the total cost of energy,” he added.

Channell went on to say that lower energy prices arguably gave more space to spend money on energy efficiency and different types of energy, “without slowing the global economy.”

The Citi report comes a few months before December’s crucial United Nations COP21 meeting in Paris. The meeting is seen as hugely significant, with the aim of reaching an agreement to keep global warming below two degrees centigrade.

Channell said he had high hopes for the summit. “What’s so exciting about Paris this year is that it’s the first time that all of the players are arriving with positively aligned intentions, including the big emitters: the US and China, who’ve obviously got their own accord between the two of them.”

He added that there seemed to be “an intention to do something against a backdrop of – certainly post crisis – a broadly improving global economy and public opinion broadly supportive, so I think there’s high hopes.”