These 22 good American jobs, dedicated to innovations that decontaminate wastewater, will pay $63,700 on average, plus benefits. As a whole, chemical industry employees earn approximately 46 percent more than the average manufacturing wage.

Gov. Jindal was joined in Garyville by Jim Seifert, executive vice president of Ecolab, which merged with Nalco late last year. In a news release, Seifert said:

The $18.7 million investment will expand Nalco’s production of best-in-class dry polymer chemistry, which is used to remove contaminants from wastewater. This treatment process increases production efficiency in the paper industry and helps to recover minerals in the mining industry, according to the release.

To learn more about how Nalco is helping American businesses enhance their environmental performance, visit Nalco.com.

According to Covanta, the technology has the ability to gasify unprocessed municipal solid waste (MSW) in a commercial setting, while reducing emissions and generating alternative energy. This would be a significant innovation.

Covanta says its new 300-ton-per-day modular system can be put in place in communities across the country to help reduce landfill volume and convert waste into energy.

In a press release, Covanta stated:

We agree. And, perhaps more importantly, we believe that recovering energy from waste should be a priority in both federal and state energy policies.

To put the opportunity in perspective, consider this: If all the municipal solid waste currently landfilled in the United States were diverted to gasification plants, we could potentially save enough energy to power 50MM+ to 100MM+ homes.

America needs a comprehensive energy policy that draws on our nation’s diverse energy supplies. A growing number of U.S. companies – including Covanta, Waste Management, Agilyx, JBI and others – are developing new energy recovery technologies that we think will transform the way Americans view waste, from something we pay to bury to a resource that can be harnessed as a valuable source of alternative energy.

To learn more about ACC’s proposal for a comprehensive energy policy, visit ChemistryToEnergy.com

Photo via renewbl.com

The EIBC study examined energy efficiency across building equipment, ventilation, air conditioning, heating and advanced lighting, and across four sub-sectors — wind, solar, biomass, and advanced energy storage.

For Michigan’s manufacturing sector, energy efficiency is an untapped market, says Ed Clemente, EIBC president:

What many don’t realize is that energy efficiency is also one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to achieve energy and cost savings across multiple sectors — residential, commercial and industrial.

This includes the adoption of the latest energy efficiency building codes and a more efficient generation of industrial energy using steam and electricity – or combined heat and power (CHP) – which can produce energy twice as efficiently as older coal burning electric utilities.

And improved energy efficiency across all of these platforms will continue to depend on the latest innovations and products made possible by chemistry.

Visit ChemistryToEnergy.com to learn more.

Risk Management, Accident Prevention

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required EPA to develop a program to address chemical accident prevention at facilities using extremely hazardous substances. The Risk Management Plan Rule (RMP Rule) required companies of all sizes that use certain flammable and toxic substances to develop a comprehensive Risk Management Program. This program encompasses hazard assessments, rapid responses to worst case scenarios, accident prevention and emergency response, and public notification procedures.

For years, the information provided by facilities to EPA has assisted local fire, police, and emergency response personnel to prepare for and respond to chemical accidents in a way that protects the communities in which they serve.

Anti-Terrorism Standards

After 9/11, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority to regulate chemical security in order to address the threat of a potential terrorist attack on a facility. The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) provides DHS with the full authority to fine or shut-down a facility that fails to act.

When it comes to CFATS, here’s what the New York Times really missed. Out of the initial group of more than 7,000 high risk chemical facilities identified by DHS, approximately 1,600 facilities are no longer deemed high risk under the CFATS regime because of the strong actions taken to enhance security at these facilities.

And CFATS is by no means the only program that addresses security at facilities that manufacture or utilize chemicals. In fact, there are several others that specifically address water systems and port facilities.

Further Legislation Remains Unnecessary

Despite this progress, it appears that others still think EPA should proceed by inappropriately using the Clean Air Act to create another program. That idea, as the editorial states, was floated once before.

However, at that time, the Department of Justice was opposed to the idea, the Department of Labor believed it was illegal, and even EPA staff conceded at the time that doing such raised a host of legal and policy issues that made pursuing this strategy inefficient and not worthwhile. Only the enactment and implementation of programs that specifically address security have been changed since then.

To help clarify these issues, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently sent a letter to the EPA outlining the legal challenges and pointing out that Congress has already enacted legislation to specifically address security at chemical facilities.

The fact is sensible federal regulation to control risks at chemical facilities is already in place. The “clear and present danger” that may still exist comes from the severe economic impacts that would result from duplicative and unnecessary regulations.

Visiting the facility was a great opportunity for engineers, policymakers and other waste management experts to see firsthand how these different technologies can work together to minimize waste going to landfills.

Ecomaine’s recycling facility is the largest in Maine. It processes paper, plastics (#1-#7), metal (tin, aluminum, steel), and glass. During the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Ecomaine recycled 35,550 tons of materials.

This facility is also an important example that illustrates the potential of energy recovery. The waste-to-energy plant processes about 175,000 tons of trash per year, producing enough electricity annually to serve all the homes in both South Portland and Gorham. Ecomaine’s revenue from the sale of electric power in 2009 alone was $6.2 million.

Currently, there are 86 waste-to-energy facilities operating in the United States. Just think: What if we had more facilities that could convert waste into energy? How could they help reduce America’s dependency on foreign energy sources? Not to mention the revenue and jobs these facilities could help bring to these areas.

Communities around the nation could learn a lot from Ecomaine and other companies that are using traditional and emerging technologies to recover energy from waste. Like many of these companies, this facility shows how recycling and waste-to-energy can complement each other and potentially provide a revenue stream.

Our nation’s energy policy should harness all of America’s viable energy sources, including recovering energy from waste, in order to fuel innovation, job growth and a sustainable economy. Ecomaine is one model that illustrates how energy recovery can make an important contribution.

Photo via nawtec.org

A good writer, but not a science reporter, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, before all else, failed even to define “endocrine disruptor.” This is important because the term is one of the most widely misused to describe the phenomenon the reporter makes a poor attempt to explain.

The Institute of Population Health at the University of Ottawa – in Canada, a country whose regulatory approach Kristof favors – breaks the issue down quite well:

It is not simply a matter of “wreak[ing] havoc with the endocrine system that governs hormones,” as Kristof reduces it, and overstates it. It is much more nuanced and scientifically complex.

More accurately put, an endocrine disruptor is “an exogenous substance or mixture that alters function(s) of the endocrine system and consequently causes adverse health effects in an intact organism, or its progeny, or (sub)populations.” And that’s according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Programme on Chemical Safety.

Furthermore, the NYT article gives the impression that the science behind endocrine disruption is a new development. It isn’t. The phenomenon has received years of thoughtful attention from independent panels of scientists and government regulatory bodies.

And in contrast to Kristof’s assertion, the U.S. EPA – not its European or Canadian counterparts – has taken the lead to develop a testing program to determine, for a fact, whether a substance interacts with the endocrine system and causes an adverse effect through an endocrine mechanism. That program is underway today.

It is unfortunate that Kristoff has decided to uncritically accept the alarms of some in the scientific community, and to amplify them through his own uninformed endorsement, without first asking whether there is broad scientific consensus in support of these claims. If Kristof had dug a bit deeper, he would have discovered that there is not.

The fact is that changes to the endocrine system are happening all the time. It’s called “endocrine modulation.” It occurs while you sleep, when you eat, and while you exercise. It reacts to stress. It works to regulate various levels of nutrients and hormones circulating through your body.

Modulation is required for all these essential bodily functions. But based on the non-scientific definition Kristof gives us, even these healthy functions would qualify as “endocrine disruption.” The University of Ottawa explains:

Why does endocrine modulation matter to discussions of endocrine disruption? Because some well-known assessments of endocrine disruption do not differentiate between “disruption” and “modulation.” In other words, what they are calling disruption could very well be a natural, healthy, essential modulation of our endocrine systems in response to our environment.

Journalism of this caliber and reach does not serve the public if it ignores the tough questions that science is debating, and opts instead to repeat claims whose only impact is to spread fear and worry, not understanding.

Through participation in Responsible Care®, the chemistry industry’s world-class performance initiative, leading companies make strides annually toward enhancing their environmental, health, safety and security performance around the country and within the communities in which they operate.

The Responsible Care award for energy efficiency is part of a series of performance awards presented to ACC member companies during the annual Responsible Care Conference and Expo, taking place this year in Hollywood, Fla.

The 19 energy-efficiency award winners received a total of 67 awards from the following five categories:

Implementing solutions that empower Americans and American businesses to improve energy efficiency is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to make our nation’s energy supplies go further while lowering energy costs.

Overall, products of chemistry help save up to 10.9 quadrillion BTUs of energy annually, enough to power, heat and cool up to 56 million households, or run up to 135 million vehicles each year. For every unit of CO2 emitted while creating the these products, two units are saved, largely through the energy savings they enable.

That’s why the domestic chemistry industry, which has reduced its own energy consumption by more than half since 1974, will continue to support strong policies and creative, economically sound approaches that will support further efficiency gains and enable a more sustainable future for our country.

Northern Exposure

We agree with Stier that chemical management regimes in other major countries like Europe and Canada can help inform our efforts to enhance public, industry and government confidence in how chemicals are assessed and regulated here at home.

It has become clear, most recently from a report from Indiana University, that REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), as it is written and implemented in Europe, is “much more complex and burdensome than the program needs to be” and would not perform well in the United States.

The Canadian chemicals management program, however, does have some real merits, especially when it comes to reviewing the science behind chemical risk assessments.

According to Stier:

Canadian law includes a provision that allows industry to request that an independent board of scientists take another look at the science, especially if new, more accurate data has become available that could better inform the assessment. As Stier explains:

Getting the Science Right

As science evolves and methodologies improve, there ought to be opportunities in the regulatory process to incorporate new data — not default assumptions and uncertainty factors — and to base assessments on our current understanding of how chemicals interact with our bodies and our environment.

Yet, federal organizations like EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program continue to rely on very conservative and precautionary assumptions. These practices have been criticized time and again by such review panels as the National Academy of Sciences, for lack of transparency, inconsistency and failing to use reliable evaluation procedures to integrate data across studies to arrive at determinations of cause and effect for environmentally relevant exposures.

Getting the science right behind these assessments is critical because chemical assessments drive so many other important policy decisions that can have a major impact on jobs and the economy.

That is why ACC and our members continue push for science-based improvements to IRIS and other assessment programs to ensure our nation’s chemical management system delivers sound public health decisions, while at the same time encourages innovation and economic growth.

During the conference, ACC released the results of a new study showing that emerging technologies designed to convert waste into fuels or raw materials could offer communities environmental benefits and cost savings over landfill disposal (also see our press release). The study quantifies the energy and costs savings generated through current gasification and pyrolysis technologies.

Key conference presentations highlighted a 3,000 ton-per-day waste-to-energy facility in Palm Beach County, Florida; current developments in using gasification to address wastes; and the rapid growth of waste-to-energy across the globe.

The world’s 900 waste-to-energy facilities currently process 180 million tons of garbage annually, but that figure is expected to grow significantly as nations realize the value of converting waste into energy, feedstock materials and other resources, and more plants are constructed. Greg Wilkinson, a consultant to the plastics industry, presented many of the technical studies on energy recovery technologies commissioned by ACC’s Plastics Division.

Keynote speaker Michael Brennan, mayor of Portland, Maine, highlighted the urgency for comprehensive policies and greater public awareness of the potential benefits from recovering more energy from waste. “Waste, energy and how we manage these issues are critically important,” Brennan told participants.

Maine is a leading user of waste-to-energy technology in the United States. As explained by Mayor Brennan, “Out of 87 waste to energy facilities in the U.S., four are in Maine. We are doing a good job.” These four facilities process 840,000 tons of waste per year generating 500 MwH of electricity. Maine ranks second in the nation in converting its waste into energy (behind only Connecticut).

Another interesting fact noted repeatedly during the conference was that countries with the highest numbers of waste-to-energy plants also have the highest rates of recycling.

From traditional waste-to-energy facilities to a number of emerging technologies that convert waste into fuels and/or feedstocks, NAWTEC was a great opportunity to see firsthand how energy recovery is helping develop an energy future that’s strong, secure and sustainable.

“Shale Gas: A Game Changer” will be moderated by Chemical Engineering’s Rebekkah Marshall and will feature ACC economist Martha Moore and Dow Chemical Company government affairs director Keith Belton.

The session is intended to help policy makers, businesses, engineers and other industry professionals to understand:

• The U.S. position on the global ethylene supply curve and what it means for global competitiveness
• Current activities in each major shale region/play and the current market drivers
• Potential job creation, capital investment and economic output resulting from increased supply of natural gas from shale
• Innovations stimulating the development of shale gas reserves
• The economic impact for downstream industries

To register, please visit http://www.che.com/shalewebinar.