The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy notified the Earth Observations community that a draft of the congressionally-mandated National Plan for Civil Earth Observations will be released for a short national review period in Summer 2023.
The Inflation Reduction Act and Federal Buy Clean Initiative have each inspired states and municipalities to regulate embodied carbon (Scope 3) using “Buy Clean” policies and legislation. Reducing embodied carbon has become mainstream, and environmental product declarations (EPDs) have surfaced as the tool. Are EPDs alone enough? Is the compliance timeline sufficient? On February 1, 2023, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts that provided an update on Buy Clean policy, green funding, the status of carbon emissions, and a primer on EPDs.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office expanded the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program to include innovations in any economic sector that are designed to make progress toward achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, increased the filing limitations for petitions under the program, and extended the duration of the program.
EPA proposed amendments to the new chemicals procedural regulations under TSCA; the amendments would reduce the need to redo all or part of the risk assessment by improving information initially submitted in new chemicals notices, as well as revise the regulations for low volume exemptions and low release and exposure exemptions, which include requiring EPA approval of an exemption notice prior to commencement of manufacture, making per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances categorically ineligible for these exemptions, and providing that certain persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic chemical substances are ineligible for these exemptions.
The U.S. Geological Survey announced that it, in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada and Mexico’s La Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, will undertake a two-year regional assessment of biodiversity and climate change, culminating in the first-ever assessment report addressing these two challenges together for the United States, Canada, Mexico, U.S. territories, and Freely Associated States.
DOJ, on behalf of DOI, entered into a proposed settlement agreement under OPA that requires the settling party to pay $400,000 for past assessment costs and implementation of natural resource restoration projects related to the January 23, 2010, discharge of sour crude oil into the Sabine-Neches Waterway in the city of Port Arthur, Texas, at or from the T/V Eagle Otome as a result of its collision with the towboat Dixie Vengeance.
EPA proposed measures to address the unreasonable risk of injury to human health presented by methylene chloride under its conditions of use as documented in the Agency's June 2020 Risk Evaluation and November 2022 revised risk determination prepared under TSCA.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on the Draft National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution to reduce plastic waste and other post-consumer materials in waterways and oceans, as directed by Congress in §301 of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act.
The National Credit Union Administration seeks public input on current and future climate and natural disaster risks to federally insured credit unions (FICUs), related entities, their members, and the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, and on the development of potential future guidance, regulation, reporting requirements, and/or supervisory approaches for FICUs’ management of climate-related financial risks.
United States v. LLOG Exploration Offshore, L.L.C., No. 2:23-cv-01301-WBV-KWR (E.D. La. Apr. 19, 2022). A settling OPA defendant must pay the United States $3.1 million in connection with a crude oil spill that occurred at the Mississippi Canyon Block 209 subsea oil production system in the Gulf of Mexico beginning on or about October 11, 2017.