[From Press Release]  …The 2010 TRI data show that 3.93 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the environment nationwide, a 16 percent increase from 2009. The increase is mainly due to changes in the metal mining sector, which typically involves large facilities handling large volumes of material. In this sector, even a small change in the chemical composition of the ore being mined — which EPA understands is one of the reasons for the increase in total reported releases — may lead to big changes in the amount of toxic chemicals reported nationally. Several other sectors also reported increases in toxic releases in 2010, including the chemical and primary metals industries.

Total air releases decreased 6 percent since 2009, continuing a trend seen over the past several years. Releases into surface water increased 9 percent and releases into land increased 28 percent since 2009, again due primarily to the metal mining sector…

TRI data is submitted annually to EPA and states by multiple industry sectors including manufacturing, metal mining, electric utilities, and commercial hazardous waste facilities. Facilities must report their toxic chemical releases to EPA under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) by July 1st of each year. The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 also requires information on waste management activities related to TRI chemicals.

[From a Climate Wire story by Joel Kirkland] “In general, global (rare earths) material supply has been slow to respond to the rise in demand over the past decade due to a lack of available capital, long lead times, trade policies and other factors,” says a report put out by the Department of Energy at the end of December…

The report says that part of the problem is “the market’s lack of transparency and small size,” making it tougher for rare earths to trade at fair prices.

DOE has scaled up work on rare earths issues, according to the report, including devoting new funding for research, bringing in international experts and developing a research plan.

[From a Greenwire story by Jeremy Jacobs]  U.S. EPA lacks an effective program to collect information and monitor the possible health risks posed by nanomaterials, according to a new report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General…

[From a story in the Suffolk News-Herald] Extensive government regulation of Chesapeake Bay pollution would create jobs, rather than kill them, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation claims in a new report…

In December 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the new pollution limits for the Chesapeake Bay to accelerate its cleanup. States in the watershed — including Virginia — must reduce pollution by 25 percent by 2025.

The new report states that the number of environmental clean-up and monitoring jobs in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia has risen 43 percent during the last two decades. Furthermore, about 11,751 new temporary jobs are expected during five years if Virginia and the federal government invest $804 million in farm runoff-control projects like planting trees and building fences along streams, according to a University of Virginia report…

[From an E&E Daily story by Paul Behr]  Utility executives and state regulators from 39 states will study three widely different scenarios for the future of the Eastern power grid, to determine how far and fast the high-voltage transmission network must expand…The Eastern Interconnection study’s first phase, released last month, chose the three future scenarios for the grid requirements between now and 2030. Those will be fleshed out with detailed modeling of transmission requirements, with conclusions due a year from now…

[From a Cleveland Plain Dealer article] The economic boon of shale gas — ballyhooed for months by Gov. John Kasich and the gas industry — is overblown, a team of Ohio State University economists concludes.

Their independent study asserts that the development of shale gas might create 20,000 jobs over the next four years – not the 200,000 jobs the industry forecast in a study in September, just before Kasich’s heralded energy summit…

In a modern economy, nearly all aspects of economic activity affect greenhouse gas – in particular, carbon dioxide (CO₂) – emissions, and hence the global climate.  To be effective, climate change policy must affect decisions regarding these activities.  This can be done in one of three ways:  (1) mandate businesses and individuals to change their behavior regarding technology choice and emissions; (2) subsidize businesses and individuals to invest in and use lower-emitting goods and services; or (3) price the greenhouse gas externality, so that decisions take account of this external cost…

…Our report offers analysis and recommendations designed to accelerate the pace at which better energy technologies are discovered, developed, and deployed, and is focused in four key areas:

• Designing an expanded portfolio of federal investments in energy research, development, demonstration (ERD&D), and complementary policies to catalyze the deployment of novel energy technologies;
• Increasing incentives for private-sector innovation and strengthening federal-private energy innovation partnerships;
• Improving the management of energy innovation institutions to maximize the results of federal investments; and

[Overview]   Geoengineering is a broad concept that encompasses a variety of approaches to counteract the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, including both techniques to limit how much sunlight reaches the earth (usually referred to as “solar radiation management” or SRM) as well techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (“carbon dioxide removal” or CDR). Although specifying a precise definition of geoengineering is difficult, the various geoengineering approaches under consideration have several common threads, identified more than a decade ago by Thomas Schelling. They are all:

• Large scale, capable of affecting the global temperature, as compared to more limited local weather modification techniques such as cloud seeding.
• Intentional, as opposed to the climate modification we are already engaged in as a result of our greenhouse gas emissions.
• “Unnatural” and novel, as opposed to natural, familiar processes such as growing more trees or practicing no-till agriculture.

Geoengineering is of interest to groups across the political spectrum. On the one hand, it is attractive to climate sceptics, since it reduces the need to take action now. If geoengineering were possible, then even if climate change predictions turned out to be true (which sceptics think unlikely), we could still respond through geoengineering. On the other hand, geoengineering is also of interest to environmentalists, as a means of averting catastrophic climate change, should efforts to reduce emissions fall short. Geoengineering could also prove attractive to politicians (although few have shown much interest thus far), because it allows them to avoid making difficult decisions now. And geoengineering is seductive to economists, because some geoengineering technologies appear astonishingly cheap—in particular, injecting sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere to block incoming sunlight. If geoengineering in fact proves to be effective in reducing the global temperature, then it might well be the most efficient way to address climate change—much cheaper than reducing emissions.

Geoengineering has an additional allure: its low costs and global effects give individual countries the ability—and potentially the incentive—to “solve” the climate change problem unilaterally. This feature, however, also renders governance of geoengineering challenging.

[Fuelfix.com]  The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday linked hydraulic fracturing with groundwater contamination in Wyoming _ a first-of-its-kind conclusion by the federal agency that could trigger new scrutiny of the practice used to extract oil and natural gas nationwide.

The EPA announced its findings as part of a three-year probe into possible groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo. In a draft report issued today, the agency said it had discovered synthetic chemicals — including glycols and alcohols — associated with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids inside deep water wells in the region.

Although the study is limited to a gas field in Wyoming and is only in a draft form, the EPA’s finding could be a game changer for the oil and gas industry, which has insisted that hydraulic fracturing is safe and should be regulated solely by state officials, rather than the federal government…