Environment

Environmental Challenges

Seals at Port of Los Angeles

Environment provides the resources and services needed for both economic development and sustain life.
The world’s top environmental priorities include protecting water, reducing emissions, minimizing waste, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Balancing environmental challenges with economic demands have been progressively affecting businesses for years.
Fast-paced and more demanding advancements in environmental laws and regulations press for a constant chase when striving toward the environmental compliance.  

Green Ports

For years environmental challenges were stalling major harbor development projects in San Pedro Bay. The green ports idea, now a global trend, sprung from litigations and protests challenging environmental impact reports, particularly related to air pollution. Green Port Policies, adopted later, shifted environmental focus from compliance with existing regulations to long-term commitment to cleaner and greener port operations. One of the landmark measures enacted under the policy include the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP).

Environmental challenges

Emission Strategies

Controlling and reducing emissions is a large, complex, and potentially costly issue. Yet, the costs of uncontrolled global warming would lead to other significant losses. The total cost of all 188 U.S. Billion-dollar weather & climate disasters from 1980-2014 exceeded $1 trillion. There is no single solution. Strategies are being sought globally at all levels. While working on the development on new set of strategies, we will keep employing existing scientific and technological emission reduction strategies which will bring important near-term benefits in public health. Many economists agree that this approach would also stimulate the economy.

Next Generation Compliance

To address today’s pollution challenges, EPA introduced an integrated strategy, called Next Generation Compliance. The new approach to compliance is designed to bring together the best agency’s internal and external resources. It takes advantage of new tools and approaches while reinforcing enforcement of environmental laws. The Next Generation Compliance strategy consists of five interconnected components, such as Regulations and Permits Design; Advanced Monitoring; Electronic Reporting, Transparency; and Innovative Enforcement.

"Next Generation Compliance delivers the benefits of environmental laws."

 EPA 

Power Plants Closures

The need to comply with the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) regulations together with weak electricity demand growth and continued competition from generators fueled by natural gas have led several power producers to announce plans to retire coal-fired facilities. Other regulations causing these closures include the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), and the EPA regulation of CO2 emissions from existing power plants.

“Fossil fuel-fired electric generating units (EGUs) are, by far, the largest emitters of GHGs, primarily in the form of CO2, among stationary sources in the U.S.”

— EPA