Complete list of press releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tony Kreindler, EDF, 202-572-3378 or 202-210-5791 (cell)

(Washington — May 2, 2008) Ohio Senator George Voinovich today proposed to address the rapidly escalating threat of climate change by delaying meaningful federal action to control greenhouse gas emissions, obstructing existing state programs, and allowing U.S. global warming pollution to increase for decades to come.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sharyn Stein, sstein@edf.org, 202-572-3331

Richard Denison, rdenison@edf.org, 202 387-3500

(Washington, DC – May 2, 2008) – A set of mostly voluntary initiatives recently announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify and manage the risks of thousands of chemicals will provide far less protection than the more comprehensive approach taken under the European Union’s new REACH Regulation, according to Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). 

EDF is presenting its critique of EPA’s Chemical Assessment and Management Program (ChAMP) at a meeting being held today by EPA to receive input on its initiatives.

“ChAMP just doesn’t have the reach of REACH, despite EPA’s efforts to claim otherwise,” said Dr. Richard A. Denison, EDF Senior Scientist.  “It will yield far less data on far fewer chemicals.  In its haste to catch up with other global initiatives, EPA intends to make decisions about risk using incomplete or poor quality information, especially with respect to how chemicals are used and how people and the environment are exposed to them.”

EDF noted that many of ChAMP’s shortcomings can be directly traced to structural deficiencies in the authority EPA has been provided under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the main U.S. statute that governs how tens of thousands of chemicals are produced, used and disposed of.  “EPA’s ability to require data to be developed that are sufficient to conduct a robust assessment of a chemical’s risks is highly constrained under TSCA”, Denison said.  “That’s why it is now proposing yet more voluntary initiatives, even though EPA’s recent voluntary programs have received low marks.”

“EPA’s authority to take action to control a chemical found to be dangerous is even more constrained,” Denison added. “Perhaps that’s why under ChAMP, the next step EPA is proposing for chemicals it finds are high-concern risk priorities is merely to ‘encourage companies to provide available information on a voluntary and non-confidential basis.’   The limitations of ChAMP we’ve identified are a great illustration of why EPA needs much broader authority to identify and control dangerous chemicals.  EDF is calling for a major overhaul of TSCA, which has not been amended appreciably since its adoption 32 years ago. EPA should join in that call.”

EDF’s analysis identified a number of additional shortcomings of ChAMP:

• A lack of transparency in describing what information EPA possesses and relies on to judge the likelihood of exposure to the chemicals it is assessing;
• Failure to initiate steps to fill the gaps in safety data EPA has identified, and to compel testing of chemicals whose manufacturers have not volunteered to develop the needed data;
• Significantly overstating the number of high-volume chemicals for which EPA has data necessary to conduct screening-level hazard and risk characterizations; and
• Reliance on information provided by manufacturers on how a chemical is used even when other available information indicates additional uses that could cause greater exposure.

“While there are serious shortcomings in many of EPA’s initiatives, there are also some positive aspects,” said Denison.  “EPA’s proposal to screen medium production volume chemicals and prioritize them for further action based on their hazards is a welcome expansion of EPA’s efforts to date.  And the proposal to publicly identify chemicals EPA finds could pose a significant risk will help chemical users, workers, consumers and the public to demand safer alternatives.”

EDF’s full analysis of ChAMP and other recent analyses of chemicals policies in the U.S. and other jurisdictions are available here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(New York, NY - May 1, 2008) Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR) today announced a “Green Portfolio” partnership to measure and improve the environmental performance of companies within KKR’s U.S. portfolio. Building on their successful collaboration in the 2007 acquisition of TXU Corporation, the partnership is the first of its kind between a private equity firm and an environmental organization.

KKR has committed to work with EDF to develop a set of analytic tools by which companies can assess and track improvements on a series of environmental metrics. These tools will enable managers to cost-effectively improve efficiency, reduce waste and address environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, the use of toxic substances, waste generation or water consumption.

KKR and EDF expect that these actions will offer companies financial benefits, as well as improved environmental performance.

To prove this concept, over the next three to six months, EDF and KKR will conduct pilot projects within the KKR portfolio to develop analytic tools that can then be applied across a broader range of KKR portfolio companies over the next year. Results will be made public at the end of both phases. Once developed, EDF and KKR will make the processes, tools and results of their joint effort publicly available, with the mutual goal of having these tools implemented by other companies around the world.

Concurrently, KKR has committed to improving the energy efficiency of its own office operations, including by participating in EDF’s Climate Corps Program. As part of this commitment, KKR will undergo an energy audit of its offices, analyze the financial and environmental benefits of available energy efficiency improvements and implement those that are most cost-effective.

“The private equity industry is known for its focus on improving business performance and for the rigorous process it uses to set goals and track improvement in portfolio companies,” said Gwen Ruta, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships for EDF. “This groundbreaking new partnership between KKR and EDF will use the transformational power of private equity to achieve environmental goals. In addition, KKR’s commitment to EDF’s Climate Corps program indicates their willingness to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to their own environmental footprint.”

“Today’s announcement is a direct result of our work with EDF and other environmental leaders during the TXU acquisition last year. That historic transaction was a significant step forward in incorporating environmental considerations into investment decisions as it set a new standard for conservation and efficiency in the energy industry. Building on that success, we and EDF agreed to pursue an innovative, cost-effective approach to using the private equity model to bring about improvements in environmental performance for a variety of companies, including our own internal operations. We believe this initiative will ultimately help our portfolio companies build upon their own environmental efforts while providing a workable example that may encourage other companies to make similar progress,” said Marc Lipschultz, Member of KKR.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

• 7.36 million tons carbon dioxide emission reductions from increased use of wood, energy crops, crop residues and ethanol as biofuels, for an offset value of $147 million per year;
• Of the biofuels counted above, 3.23 million metric tons would come from crop and logging residue not currently utilized. If landowners can receive $10 per dry ton of biomass (with most of the delivered price paying for collection and transport) landowners would receive $49 million per year in new revenues;
• $19.2 million in reducing current methane emissions from manure and reducing emissions by replacing natural gas with biogas from manure.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The survey, included in the report Are We Ready? Preparing for the Public Health Challenges of Climate Change, is the first national one of its kind that assesses the perceptions and activities of local public health directors regarding climate change and public health. 

• Nearly 70% believed that climate change had already occurred in their jurisdictions;
• 78% believed their jurisdictions would experience climate changes over the next 20 years;
• 60% said that their local populations would experience one or more serious public health problems over the next 20 years as a result of climate change;
• More than 50% felt that climate change was an “important priority,” but only 19% of respondents indicated that climate change was among their departments’ top 10 current priorities;
• 82% felt they lacked the expertise to craft adaptation plans;
• 77% said that additional resources would improve their departments’ ability to deal with climate change as a public health issue.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tony Kreindler, EDF, 202-572-3378 or 202-210-5791 (cell)

(Washington – April 28, 2008) A groundbreaking new study released today by Environmental Defense Fund finds a clear consensus among leading economic models that a cap-and-trade policy to cut global warming pollution is consistent with long-term economic growth. The anticipated cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the U.S. economy is small, even difficult to measure against projected economic growth, the study finds.

“We can afford an ambitious climate policy for just pennies on the dollar. It’s a small investment that will pay off in cleaner air, new jobs, and a safer world,” said Nathaniel Keohane, PhD, director of economic policy and analysis at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and a former associate professor of economics at the Yale School of Management. “Not acting now just means paying a heavier price later as we try to manage the consequences of unchecked climate change.”

The study, What Will it Cost to Protect Ourselves From Global Warming?, is the first comprehensive analysis of the leading economic modeling of cap and trade legislation to combat climate change. Key findings of the analysis, online at http://www.edf.org/climatecosts, include:

• The overall cost of capping greenhouse gases for the average American family will amount to less than 1% of household budgets over the next two decades.
• The total number of jobs impacted by climate policy in the manufacturing sector over 20 years is substantially below the number of jobs created and destroyed in the sector every three months.
• Household electricity and natural gas bills rise by only a few dollars a month over the next few decades – well within the rise and fall homeowners already experience.

The U.S. economy has grown nearly three percent per year on average in the post-war period, and that growth is projected to continue. If the U.S. capped its greenhouse gas emissions, the projected median impact of that cap on growth would be three one-hundredths of one percent (0.03%), the analysis finds.

“Put another way, our gross domestic product is projected to reach $26 trillion in January 2030. If we capped greenhouse gases, according to these studies, the economy would hit that same mark by April,” Keohane said.

The study highlights the fact that none of the models takes into account the high costs of inaction. Each looks only at one side of the ledger: the costs of reducing emissions, rather than the benefits of avoiding the consequences of unchecked climate change.

“It’s important to keep in mind that these forecasting models compare climate policy to a business-as-usual case that doesn’t take the costs of climate change into account,” said Keohane. “If we fail to take action on global warming, the future will be anything but ‘business as usual.’ The most expensive policy by far is to do nothing at all.” According to a recent study by the University of Maryland, runaway global warming will impact every economic sector and every region of the country, straining public budgets and impacting jobs and competitiveness.

The EDF study focuses on cap-and-trade programs that would cut U.S. emissions by 60% or more below current levels by the year 2050 – including the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) currently before the Senate. The analyses surveyed were performed by five of the most highly respected economic modeling groups in government and academia, at the Energy Information Agency, Research Triangle Institute, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.

A key feature of the report is its broad scope. “The cardinal rule about economic models is: Never trust any single number,” Keohane said. “No one model alone is a useful guide to the future, because they all make different assumptions about the factors that drive the economy.” Indeed, the EDF study finds that the models vary in their “business-as-usual” forecasts for the year 2030 by 10 percent — an order of magnitude greater than the projected impact of climate policy in that year. “In that sense, the projected impact of climate policy is well within the margin of error,” said Keohane. “The models don’t agree on much about what the future will look like, but they do agree that the impact of climate policy will be small.”

An appendix to the report offers a detailed “Consumer’s Guide to Economic Models,” discussing the strengths and limitations of the economic models surveyed, as well as the key assumptions behind them.

The new Environmental Defense Fund analysis is available online at http://www.edf.org/climatecosts.

Contact:
Sharyn Stein, Environmental Defense Fund, (202) 572-3396, sstein@edf.org 
Garrett Russo, American Rivers,202-243-7073, grusso@americanrivers.org

(Vicksburg, MS - April 17, 2008) – Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and American Rivers experts testified in favor of blocking the Yazoo Backwater Area Project at a public hearing tonight, with EDF’s expert calling the planned pumping station “bad for fish and wildlife, bad for water quality, and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.”

The Campaign for New York’s Future is an unprecedented coalition of more than 150 environmental, public health, civic, labor, community and business organizations from across all five boroughs that have joined in support of PlaNYC. For more information about the Campaign, please visit: www.CampaignForNewYork.org.

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