Refiners question EPA finding on dangers of greenhouse gases

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said it questioned, on scientific and political grounds, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finding that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare.

The association said there was a ‘lack of scientific clarity” and that international politics were involved with the EPA’s Dec. 7 announcement, which came the same week as the United Nations Climate Change Conference opened in Copenhagen.

The NPRA, based in Washington, D.C., represents nearly 500 members, including virtually all U.S. refiners and petrochemical manufacturers.

The implications of the EPA’s action are ‘far-reaching,” Charles T. Drevna, president of NPRA, said. ‘Individual American consumers and businesses alike will be dramatically affected by this decision that, frankly, is based on selective science, a weak legal and policy foundation, and a failure to account for numerous uncertainties and assumptions in the models it relies on.  This is yet another example of federal policymakers failing to consider the long-term consequences of a regulatory action for consumers and the economy as a whole.

 ‘Given the remaining uncertainties over the extent to which China and India will meaningfully engage in the Copenhagen negotiations, it is hardly the time [to] risk the remainder of the U.S. industrial sector in an attempt to achieve a short-term international public relations victory.”

The EPA announced that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threatened the public health and welfare. EPA said it also found that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contributed to that threat. Here is the remainder of the EPA statement:

GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.

‘These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. ‘Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”

EPA’s final findings respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that GHGs fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. The findings do not in and of themselves impose any emission reduction requirements but rather allow EPA to finalize the GHG standards proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles as part of the joint rulemaking with the Department of Transportation.

On-road vehicles contribute more than 23 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions. EPA’s proposed GHG standards for light-duty vehicles, a subset of on-road vehicles, would reduce GHG emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.

EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases ‘ carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride ‘ that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world.

Scientific consensus shows that as a result of human activities, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, with the steepest increase in warming in recent decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change goes beyond observed increases in average surface temperatures; it includes melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide, changing precipitation patterns, and changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife.

Recent revelations from ‘Climategate” ‘ email and modeling code likely released by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit raise serious questions about the quality of the science the EPA and UN are basing their policies on, as well as the underlying structure of much of the ‘independent” studies that also use this data. Most recently, Russian officials have called into question an apparent selectivity in the CRU use of some of its raw data to produce those climate models.

President Obama and Administrator Jackson have publicly stated that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation. However, climate change is threatening public health and welfare, and it is critical that EPA fulfill its obligation to respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

EPA issued the proposed findings in April 2009 and held a 60-day public comment period. The agency received more than 380,000 comments, which were carefully reviewed and considered during the development of the final findings.