On February 24, acting chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Allison Herren Lee, offered insight into the future direction of mandatory climate change disclosures and new ESG regulation, when she directed the Division of Corporation Finance to enhance its focus on climate related disclosure in public company filings. The Commission provided guidance in … Continue Reading
The Environmental Protection Agency’s has released the results of its 2020 enforcement and compliance efforts and those results offer significant insight that business can benefit from. In the first 5 months of fiscal year 2020, EPA was on track to significantly exceed traditional numeric metrics in many categories with more compliance monitoring activities in the … Continue Reading
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, H.R. 133, signed into law by President Trump on December 27th, extended the 45L energy efficient home $2,000 tax credit, which had been scheduled to expire last year, to cover qualified new energy efficient homes sold or leased through 2021. And yes, regular readers of this blog will notice that … Continue Reading
On page 4,872 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, H.R. 133, which passed both houses of Congress on December 21st and was signed into law by President Trump on December 27th, the 179D energy efficient commercial buildings federal tax deduction, which had been scheduled to expire at year end, was instead made permanent. At a … Continue Reading
Three weeks ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a regulation to finally resolve and codify the legal principal that an incidental bird take resulting from an otherwise lawful activity, for example a sparrows flies into a solar panel, is not prohibited under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service is … Continue Reading
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a draft National Recycling Strategy and is seeking public comment through December 4, 2020, with the goal of finalizing it in early 2021. Maybe not since Plato wrote about the value of reusing waste in the fourth century BC has recycling faced the challenges that we are seeing right now. … Continue Reading
Last Friday the U.S. Department of Energy issued a final rule effective November 30, 2020, that will once again permit American households to purchase dishwashers that actually clean dishes, as they had done for most of the machine’s 130 year history. The October 30 final rule does not force anyone to change their currently installed … Continue Reading
A final rule the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted on August 26, 2020 and effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register may be more significant for what is not in the rule. The rule is silent on ESG disclosures, including nary a mention of climate risk, but as described below the results … Continue Reading
Last Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed greenhouse gas emissions standards for airplanes used in commercial aviation and large business jets. “This standard is the first time the U.S. has ever proposed regulating greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft,” according to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. And as much as I have railed against more and regressive environmental … Continue Reading
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last Thursday retroactively beginning March 13, 2020, a temporary policy regarding EPA enforcement of environmental legal obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic. EPA’s admittedly unprecedented temporary “enforcement discretion policy” applies to civil violations during the COVID-19 outbreak as a response to the deleterious effect on a wide variety of businesses. … Continue Reading
The hottest environmental topic for business in 2020, as a result of an amendment to the Superfund law for the first time making clear that tenants can qualify as bona fide prospective purchasers, protected from cleanup costs from the presence of hazardous substances on a property, is prospective tenants are now ordering Phase l Environmental … Continue Reading
This past Friday night while aboard Air Force One the President signed legislation reviving the 179D energy efficient commercial buildings tax deduction, providing an enormous and much needed boost to domestic green building. Almost as compelling as the fictional undead being created through reanimation of a corpse, except here there were no zombies involved; it … Continue Reading
Businesses who generate renewable energy, say, by using solar panels, but sell the Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) for the renewable energy they generate shouldn’t claim they “use” renewable energy. The Federal Trade Commissions has advised that such a claim would be deceptive. The guidance from the FTC is not new, but as renewable energy becomes … Continue Reading
I review a large number of Phase I environmental site assessments, and year in, year out, the largest number of questions I field are about Historical Recognized Environmental Conditions. The environmental professionals who perform those assessment generally do not take heed of Eduardo Galeano’s quote, “History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘see you later.’” … Continue Reading
By way of a federal court order that became final last month, Truly Organic Inc. and its founder will pay $1.76 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission greenwashing complaint alleging that their nationally marketed bath and beauty products are neither “certified organic” nor “vegan” as falsely claimed. According to the FTC’s complaint, in this … Continue Reading
EPA is expected to publish this week in the Federal Register the first proposed regulatory revisions to the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for lead in more than 30 years. The United States has made tremendous progress in lowering children’s blood lead levels (.. children are a good data set analogous to the broader population). … Continue Reading
On September 20, 2019, the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4329, the ESG Disclosure Simplification Act of 2019. The bill would require all public companies to disclose “environmental, social, and governance [ESG] metrics” as material information about the company. Although there is little if any chance that the bill … Continue Reading
Last Thursday the EPA and Department of the Army announced that the agencies are repealing a 2015 rule that had proposed to expand the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. Despite claims from some activists that “the sky is falling” with this change in environmental regulation, the real impact … Continue Reading
In a criminal case that says significantly more about the prosecution than the indictment on its face, the Federal government is prosecuting a leading cannabis industry manufacturer and distributor for criminal transportation of hazardous waste. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) was enacted in 1976 to ensure that all hazardous waste generated in the … Continue Reading
It is widely accepted that the greenest building is one already built. So, why then on the 20th anniversary of many state brownfield programs, is there so little correlation between green buildings and brownfields? Green building ratings systems, standards and codes expend a great deal of verbiage on aims reducing embodied carbon, including the currently … Continue Reading
In a rare move, the EPA issued product cancellation orders for certain pesticides effective May 20, 2019. The pesticides contain neonicotinoids that, despite their widespread use have become controversial when laboratory studies reported a link between neonicotinoids and declining bee populations, although a link has not been replicated in field studies. Neonicotinoids are compounds in … Continue Reading
Section 436(h) of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires the General Services Administration’s Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings to complete a review of high performance building certification systems every 5 years. After the review, GSA recommends to the Secretary of Energy the building certification systems most likely to encourage a comprehensive approach … Continue Reading
It has been a year since the omnibus spending bill signed on March 23, 2018 amended the Superfund law, for first time making clear that tenants can qualify as bona fide prospective purchasers, protected from cleanup costs from the presence of hazardous substances on a property; but tenants are only now beginning to order Phase … Continue Reading
Use of lead is not new. Lead was one of the first metals discovered by man and was in use before 3000 BC. Beginning in 753 BC, the ancient Romans used lead for making water pipes and kitchen cookware. Today many believe lead poisoning was the culprit for the infertility of Julius Caesar (.. who … Continue Reading