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Solar Power World | Kelsey Misbrener | Jan. 24, 2025Lightsource bp announced it has completed the 187-MW Peacock solar project, located in San Patricio County, Texas, that will provide power directly to Gulf Coast Growth Venture’s nearby manufacturing complex. |
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas | Jan. 27, 2025Texas factory activity picked up notably in January, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rose seven points to 12.2. |
Plastics News | Frank Esposito | Jan. 30, 2025Materials giant Dow Inc. will cut 1,500 jobs worldwide as part of a $1 billion cost reduction plan. In a Jan. 30 interview with Plastics News, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Tate said Midland, Mich.-based Dow "recognizes the macroeconomic environment has been challenging, not just for Dow, but across the industry." |
Plastics News | Steve Toloken | Jan. 29, 2025Plastics companies and environmentalists converged on the New York legislature Jan. 28 as lawmakers restarted a debate on recycling and plastics waste that could be the industry's biggest challenge in statehouses this year. At issue is a bill that would set up an extended producer responsibility system for packaging and try to force a reduction in plastics packaging use by 30 percent over 12 years. |
AP | Michelle Chapman | Jan. 28, 2025Energy company Chevron is partnering with Engine No. 1 and GE Vernova to create natural gas power plants in the United States that will be linked to data centers in order to support increased demand for electricity at these centers, particularly for the development of artificial intelligence. |
Tech Xplore | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | Jan. 28, 2025Separating and purifying closely related mixtures of molecules can be some of the most energy-intensive processes in the chemical industry, and contributes to its globally significant carbon footprint. In many cases, traditional industrial separation protocols could be replaced using the latest energy-efficient nanofiltration membranes—but testing the best separation technology for each industrial use case is slow and expensive. |
Plastics News | Steve Toloken | Jan. 28, 2025With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, they're now showing interest in revising toxic chemical safety rules that they say are holding back U.S. companies. But Democrats in Congress, at a Jan. 22 hearing, were more focused on changes in the Toxic Substances Control Act to better limit risks to the public and workers from chemical exposure. |
Plastics News | Steve Toloken | Jan. 28, 2025Fourteen companies in the polystyrene industry are forming an alliance to try to increase recycling and get their material a coveted "widely recyclable" status on labels. In a Jan. 28 announcement, the Polystyrene Recycling Alliance (PSRA) said it would work to expand access to recycling for both rigid PS and expanded PS foam, boost recycling rates, strengthen end markets for recycled material, and set up an education and investment fund. |
Financial Regulation News | Dave Kovaleski | Jan. 28, 2025A bill that would repeal the Biden-era Superfund Tax targeting chemical manufacturers was introduced last week by House Republicans. The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the excise taxes on taxable chemicals and taxable substances. It was introduced on Jan. 22 by bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX). U.S. Reps. Carol Miller (R-WV), Darin LaHood (R-IL), and Mike Carey (R-OH) cosponsored the legislation. |
Michigan Public | Rachel Mintz | Jan. 27, 2025President Donald Trump withdrew plans for the Environmental Protection Agency to set new effluent limits on PFAS. The Biden administration plans aimed to set discharge limits on six types of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. |
Dallas Morning News | Karen Brooks Harper | Jan. 29, 2025Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick named school choice, property tax cuts, religion in schools and banning hemp-derived THC products among the top Senate priorities for the legislative session Wednesday. “Over the last four years, the Texas Senate held the line, fighting back against President Biden’s disastrous agenda,” Patrick, a Republican, said in a statement. “Now, with President Trump back in office, Texas has a friend in the White House. The Texas Senate will continue to lead as the preeminent legislative body in America by passing our bold, conservative agenda, helping President Trump deliver on his promise of making America great again.” |
Packaging Dive | Maria Rachal | Jan. 28, 2025The structure of anticipated tariffs is front of mind for some packaging and material organizations. They’re also gearing up for more mature EPR and deposit return policy negotiations this year. With a stark change in power in the nation’s capital, this year brings some major landscape shifts for organizations navigating packaging and adjacent policy and regulation. 2025 is also expected to feature more EPR negotiations at the state level, at a time when companies are gearing up for extended producer responsibility programs to go live in Oregon and Colorado. |
Houston Chronicle | Caroline Ghisolfi and Rebekah F. Ward | Jan. 28, 2025The Houston Chronicle collected, manually labeled and analyzed nearly a decade’s worth of monitoring reports to create a first-of-its-kind database of contamination events in Texas. Our interactive map locates and contextualizes each spill with information about contaminants’ potential health effects, offering a starting point for Texans concerned about groundwater pollution near their homes or businesses. |
Houston Chronicle | Isaac Yu | Jan. 28, 2025Republican state lawmakers are doubling down on their failed effort last session to bar certain foreign citizens and companies from owning land in Texas. The proposals this year range from outright bans to creating a database of purchases, all aimed at stemming the influence of China and other countries seen as hostile to the U.S. Civil rights and Asian American groups denounced similar measures in 2023 as racist and xenophobic, saying that even longtime residents would be barred from purchasing homes or businesses. |
Houston Chronicle | Liz Tietz | Jan. 27, 2025Their plan — which would use funds from Deepwater Horizon settlement — includes projects in Matagorda, Calhoun and Aransas counties. State and federal agencies want to spend $40 million from Deepwater Horizon restoration funds on seven rehabilitation projects to rebuild wetland habitats on the Texas coast. The projects call for using dredged material from waterways and canals and other sources, ultimately restoring up to 1,927 acres of marsh along the coast. |
ICIS | Al Greenwood | Jan. 24, 2025ExxonMobil may build an ethane cracker and polyethylene (PE) plant near Corpus Christi, Texas, the company said in an application for a tax break. If ExxonMobil proceeds with the project, it would be built in Calhoun county, which is north of Corpus Christi, the application said. Construction could start in 2025 and finish at the end of 2030. Production could start in 2031, the application said. |
Houston Chronicle | Ralph Green, Catherine Dominguez | Jan. 24, 2025Emergency crews were continuing to work Friday to contain a sulfur dioxide spill after the driver of an 18-wheeler lost control of the truck and overturned in San Jacinto County, prompting evacuations. |
Houston Chronicle | Amanda Drane | Jan. 24, 2025Workers among the roughly 1,000 employed at one of the Houston area’s largest refineries began receiving layoff notices Thursday, a union representative said. The facility’s owner, chemical giant LyondellBasell, is preparing to start shutting down the refinery permanently within the week as it seeks to reposition itself in a world expected to burn fewer fossil fuels. |
The Wall Street Journal | Barton Swaim | Jan. 27, 2025Voters have concluded that the private jet-flying alarmists don’t really believe their own claims. That climate ideology was alarmist and in no way settled should have been obvious. For many, it was. The conclusions of genuine scientific inquiry rarely reinforce the social and political biases of power brokers and influencers, but climate science, like some of the softer social sciences, did exactly that. It purported to discover foreboding trends in inscrutable data and assured us that the only way to arrest them was to do what America’s liberal cultural elite wanted to do anyway— amass political and economic power in the hands of credentialed technocrats, supposedly for the good of all. |
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