[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 14, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 2437-2441]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-00564]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0809; FRL-9905- 43-OAR]
Notice of Availability of the Environmental Protection Agency's
2018 Emissions Modeling Platform
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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ACTION: Notice of data availability (NODA).
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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is providing notice
that the 2018 Emissions Modeling Platform data are available for public
review and comment. The 2018 Emissions Modeling Platform consists of
emission inventory data, supporting data used to develop the 2018
emission inventories, and methods and data that are used to process
emission inventories representing the year 2018 into a form that can be
used for air quality modeling. The platform, or portions of the data
that make up the platform, may be used by the Office of Air and
Radiation in several contexts, including the development of rules
related to the transport of air pollution and the National Ambient Air
Quality Standards. The EPA is requesting comment on the 2018 Emissions
Modeling Platform, including the emission inventories, the supporting
data, and the methods used to develop and process the 2018 emission
inventories. A docket has been established to facilitate public review
of the data and to track comments.
DATES: Comments must be received on or before June 30, 2014. Please
refer to SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION for additional information on
submitting comments and on the provided data.
ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-
OAR-2013-0809, by one of the following methods:
www.regulations.gov. Follow the on-line instructions for
submitting comments.
Fax: (202) 566-9744. Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-
2013-0809.
Mail: EPA Docket Center, WJC West (Air Docket), Attention
Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0809, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Mailcode: 2822T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW., Washington, DC
20460. Please include a total of 2 copies.
Hand Delivery: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WJC
West (Air Docket), 1301 Constitution Avenue NW., Room 3334, Washington,
DC 20004, Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0809. Such deliveries
are only accepted during the Docket's normal hours of operation, and
special arrangements should be made for deliveries of boxed
information.
Instructions: Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-
2013-0809. The EPA's policy is that all comments received will be
included in the public docket without change and may be made available
online at www.regulations.gov, including any personal information
provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be
Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose
disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you
consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through www.regulations.gov
or email. The www.regulations.gov Web site is an ``anonymous access''
system, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact
information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you
send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through
www.regulations.gov, your email address will be automatically captured
and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket
and made available on the Internet. If you submit an electronic
comment, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other
contact information in the body of your comment and with any disk or
CD-ROM you submit. If the EPA cannot read your comment due to technical
difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, the EPA may not
be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use
of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any
defects or viruses. For additional information about the EPA's public
docket, visit the EPA Docket Center homepage at http://www.epa.gov/epahome/dockets.htm.
Docket: All documents in the docket are listed in the
www.regulations.gov index. Although listed in the index, some
information is not publicly available, e.g., CBI or other information
whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such
as copyrighted material, will be publicly available only in hard copy.
Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically
in www.regulations.gov or in hard copy at the Air and Radiation Docket
and Information Center, EPA/DC, WJC West Building Room 3334, 1301
Constitution Ave. NW., Washington, DC. The Public Reading Room is open
from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding legal
holidays. The telephone number for the Public Reading Room is (202)
566-1744, and the telephone number for the Air Docket is (202) 566-
1742.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For questions on the 2018 Emissions
Modeling Platform and on how to submit comments, contact Alison Eyth,
Air Quality Assessment Division, Environmental Protection Agency, C339-
02, 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709;
telephone number: (919) 541-2478; fax number: (919) 541-0684; email
address: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The EPA is requesting comment on the 2018
platform emission inventories; supporting ancillary files used to
allocate emissions temporally, spatially, and by species; and on the
emissions modeling methods used to develop the 2018 emission
inventories, including but not restricted to, the projection, control
and closure data, activity data, and model input databases used to
develop projected emission levels in 2018. Summaries of the emission
inventories and data are provided to aid in the review of the data, but
comments are sought on the actual inventories, model inputs, and data
used to develop the projected 2018 emissions.
I. Additional Information on Submitting Comments
A. What should I consider as I prepare my comments for EPA?
1. Submitting CBI. Do not submit this information to the EPA
through EDOCKET, www.regulations.gov, or email. Clearly mark the part
or all of the information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI information
in a disk or CD-ROM that you mail to the EPA docket office specified in
the Instructions, mark the outside of the disk or CD-ROM as CBI and
then identify electronically within the disk or CD-ROM the specific
information that is claimed as CBI. Information so marked will not be
disclosed except in accordance with procedures set forth in 40 CFR part
2. In addition to one complete version of the comment that includes
information claimed as CBI, a copy of the comment that does not contain
the information claimed as CBI must be submitted for inclusion in the
public docket.
2. Tips for preparing your comments. When submitting comments,
remember to:
i. Identify the notification by docket number and other identifying
information (subject heading, Federal Register date and page number).
ii. Explain your comments, why you agree or disagree; suggest
alternatives and substitute data that reflect your requested changes.
iii. Describe any assumptions and provide any technical information
and/or data that you used.
iv. Provide specific examples to illustrate your concerns, and
suggest alternatives.
v. Explain your views as clearly as possible, avoiding the use of
profanity or personal threats.
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vi. Make sure to submit your comments by the comment period
deadline identified.
B. Instructions for Submitting Comments and Alternative Data
The EPA can most effectively use comments on data that provide
specific alternative values to those in the EPA data sets, and for
which accompanying documentation supports the alternative values.
Commenters should provide the alternative data at a level of detail
appropriate to the data set into which it will be incorporated, thereby
including all key fields needed to substitute the old data with the
new. For example, any data provided as an alternative to EPA's point
source emissions data should include all key fields used to identify
point source data such as facility, unit, release point, process, and
pollutant, along with alternative emissions values. If a commenter were
to provide a new set of county total emissions as an alternative to
detailed point source emissions data, the EPA would be unable to use
the new data. Commenters should also include documentation that
describes methods for development of any alternative values and
relevant references supporting the alternative approach.
Any alternative emission inventory or ancillary data provided
should be compatible with the formats used by the Sparse Matrix
Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) modeling system version 3.5.1, which
is used by the EPA to process emission inventories into a format that
can be used for air quality modeling. Formats are defined in the SMOKE
Version 3.5.1 User's Manual available from http://www.smoke-model.org.
Only the rows of data that have changed from those provided by the EPA
should be included in the alternative data sets. Alternative data that
are not an input to SMOKE, such as model input databases for mobile
source models, should be provided in a format in which it could be
directly input to the model.
To comment on inventory projection methods, submit comments to the
docket that describe an alternative approach to the existing methods,
along with documentation describing why that method is an improvement
over the existing method.
II. Information Available for Public Comment
The 2018 Emissions Modeling Platform consists of emission
inventories that represent projected emissions into the atmosphere of
criteria and some hazardous air pollutants in the year 2018, additional
ancillary data files that are used to convert the National Emissions
Inventory (NEI) emissions into a form that can be used for air quality
modeling, and methods used to prepare the air quality model inputs and
to develop projections of emissions in the year 2018. The platform
includes emission inventories for sources at specific locations called
point sources; emissions from fire events; and county-level emissions
of onroad mobile sources, nonroad mobile sources, and other nonpoint
sources.
In the modeling platform, emission sources are split into
categories called modeling sectors. For example, location-specific
point emission sources are split into peaking electric generating units
(EGUs), other EGUs, oil and gas point sources, and other point sources.
Nonpoint emission sources are split into agricultural ammonia sources,
residential wood sources, oil and gas nonpoint sources, and other
nonpoint sources.
The 2018 emissions modeling platform is named for the year of the
data that it represents. The emission inventories in the 2018 modeling
platform have been developed using projection methods that are specific
to the type of emission source. Emission projections for EGUs for 2018
are developed using the Integrated Planning Model (IPM), which is
further described below. Most non-EGU source emissions are projected
based on the EPA's 2011 emissions modeling platform, which the EPA has
also made available for public comment under a November 27, 2013,
Federal Register notice titled 2011 Emissions Modeling Platform;
Availability. The relevant 2011 data files are available in docket
number EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0743. Future emissions are projected from this
base case either by running models to estimate emissions in the future
year (i.e., EGUs, and onroad and nonroad mobile sources), or by
adjusting the base year emissions according to the best estimate of
changes expected to occur in the intervening years (i.e., non-EGU point
and nonpoint sources).
For some sectors, the same emissions are used in the base and
future years, such as biogenic emissions, point source fire emissions,
and Canadian emissions. For all other sectors, rules and specific legal
obligations that go into effect in the intervening years, along with
changes in activity for the sector, are considered when possible.
Documentation of the methods used for each sector is provided in the
Technical Support Document Preparation of Emissions Inventories for the
Version 6.0, 2011 Emissions Modeling Platform, which can be found in
the docket for this notice.
In order to project future EGU emissions, the EPA uses the IPM. The
National Electric Energy Data System (NEEDS) database contains the
generation unit records used for the model plants that represent
existing and planned/committed units in the EPA modeling applications
of IPM. NEEDS includes basic geographic, operating, air emissions, and
other data on these generating units and was completely updated for the
EPA's new power sector modeling platform. The EGU emission projections
included in this 2018 emissions modeling platform are reported in an
air quality modeling-ready flat file taken from EPA Base Case v.5.13,
developed using IPM. 2018 EGU emission projections in the flat file
format, the corresponding NEEDS database, and user guides and
documentation are available in the docket for this notice, and they are
also available on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/powersectormodeling.
To project future emissions from onroad and nonroad mobile sources,
the EPA uses MOVES and the National Mobile Inventory Model (NMIM),
respectively. The 2018 projections were obtained by running these
models to represent the year 2018 using year-specific information about
fuel mixtures, activity data, and the impacts of national and state-
level rules and control programs. The mobile model input databases and
future year activity data are provided at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/emch/index.html#2011.
For non-EGU point and nonpoint sources, projections of 2018
emissions are developed by starting with the emissions inventories in
the 2011 emissions modeling platform and applying adjustments that
represent the impact of rules coming into effect in the years 2012
through 2018, along with the impacts of planned shutdowns, the
construction of new plants, specific information provided by states,
and specific legal obligations, such as consent decrees resolving
alleged environmental violations. Changes in activity are considered
for sectors such as oil and gas, residential wood combustion, cement
kilns, livestock, aircraft, commercial marine vessels and trains. Data
files used to represent the changes due to national, state and local
rules as well as other specific legal obligations, are provided along
with summaries that quantify the emission changes resulting from each
program at a state and national-level.
The 2018 Emissions Modeling Platform also includes 2006 emissions
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inventories for Canada and projected 2018 emissions inventories for
Mexico, along with ancillary data files used to allocate annual
emissions to the hourly, gridded emissions of chemical species used by
an air quality model (AQM). The types of ancillary data files include
temporal profiles that allocate annual and monthly emissions down to
days and hours, spatial surrogates that allocate county-level emissions
onto the grid cells used by an AQM, and speciation profiles that
allocate the pollutants in the NEI to the chemical species used by an
AQM. In addition, there are temporal, spatial, and speciation cross-
reference files that map the emission sources in the emission
inventories to the appropriate profiles based on their location,
emissions source classification code (SCC), and in some cases the
specific facility or unit. With the exception of some speciation
profiles, the ancillary data files are unchanged from the data files
associated with the 2011 emissions modeling platform. The EPA provided
an opportunity for comment on the data files for the 2011 platform in a
notice published on November 27, 2013, and those files are available in
docket number EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0743.
The 2018 emissions modeling platform, or portions of the data that
make up the platform, may be used by the Office of Air and Radiation in
several contexts including the development of rules related to the
transport of air pollution and the National Ambient Air Quality
Standards. Air quality modeling results that are based on the outputs
of the emissions modeling platform are typically used in support of
Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) and sometimes support other aspects
of rulemaking efforts.
The EPA has placed key information related to the 2018 Emissions
Modeling Platform into the electronic docket available at
www.regulations.gov. However, many of the detailed data files are too
large to be directly uploaded into the electronic docket and/or are not
in formats accepted by that docket. Therefore, the information placed
in the electronic docket, associated detailed data, and summaries to
help with interpretation of the data are available for public review on
the EPA's Clearinghouse for Inventories and Emissions Factors (CHIEF)
Web site at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/emch/index.html#2011.
The emissions inventories, along with many of the ancillary files,
are provided in the form of flat files that can be input to SMOKE. Flat
files are comma-separated value style text files with columns and rows
that can be loaded into spreadsheet or database software. The columns
of interest in the emission inventory files are specified in each
subsection below. The EPA requests comment on the following components
of the 2018 emissions modeling platform data:
Emissions values and supporting data for EGUs. The EPA
requests comment on the IPM version 5.13 input assumptions, NEEDS
database, 2018 unit-level parsed files, 2018 flat file inputs and
outputs, and cross references and matching between IPM and NEI. The EPA
also requests comment on the specific units that are expected to be
used as peaking units in the future year and on the nature of the
expected 2018 emissions from those units.
Emission values for non-EGU sources. The EPA requests
comment on the criteria air pollutant (CAP) 2018 emission projections
in the modeling inventories, with the focus on ozone and particulate
matter precursors such as nitrogen oxides (NOX), sulfur
dioxide (SO2), particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers
(PM2.5), particulate matter less than 10 micrometers
(PM10), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and ammonia
(NH3). The EPA will also accept comments on 2018 projections
of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), as they are included in the outputs
of models used to develop 2018 emission projections, but HAPs are not
the focus of this effort. The annual emissions values are located in
the ANN--VALUE column of emission inventory files in the Flat File 2010
(FF10) format. Some emission inventories (e.g., nonroad) may also have
values filled in to the monthly value columns (e.g., JAN--VALUE, FEB--
VALUE, . . ., DEC--VALUE). The EPA requests comment on both the annual
and monthly emissions values, where applicable. Summaries of emissions
by state and county are provided to aid in the review of emissions
values.
Model inputs and activity data used to develop mobile
source emission inventories. The EPA requests comment on the mobile
source model input data used to develop the projected future mobile
source emission inventories. These include both the databases used to
create emission factors and the vehicle miles traveled and vehicle
population activity data used to compute the emissions. Of particular
interest are county total vehicle miles traveled, the mixture of
vehicle types in 2018, and changes to the inspection and maintenance
programs. Alternative activity data may be provided in the form of
MOVES county databases or in SMOKE FF10 activity data format.
Projection data and methods. The EPA seeks comment on the
data used to project point and nonpoint source emissions from 2011 to
2018, and on the methods and assumptions used to implement the
projections. In this context, nonpoint source emissions are inclusive
of commercial marine vessel, railroad, and other nonpoint emissions. In
particular, the EPA seeks comment on its assumptions regarding the
manner in which specific consent decrees and state- or locality-
specific control programs will be implemented. Summaries are provided
to illustrate the EPA's current assumptions regarding the
implementation of consent decrees and other programs.
Existing control techniques. The emission inventories
include information on emissions control techniques listed in terms of
control codes submitted to the EIS. These are listed in the CONTROL--
IDS and CONTROL--MEASURES columns in the emission inventory flat files,
with levels of reduction in the ANN--PCT--RED column. Projection of
non-EGU point source emissions to future years is dependent on this
information. The EPA seeks comment on whether information on existing
controls given in the inventory flat files is incomplete or erroneous.
The flat files must be consulted for details of control techniques by
pollutant.
Emissions modeling methods. The EPA is using the SMOKE
version 3.5.1 to prepare data for air quality modeling. The EPA
requests comment on the methods by which SMOKE is used to develop air
quality model-ready emissions, as illustrated in the scripts provided
with the modeling platform and as described in the Technical Support
Document Preparation of Emissions Inventories for the Version 6.0, 2011
Emissions Modeling Platform.
Temporal allocation. Annual emission inventories must be
allocated to hourly values prior to air quality modeling. This may be
done with temporal profiles in several steps, such as annual-to-month,
month-to-day, and day-to-hour. The exact method used depends on the
type of emissions being processed. The EPA seeks comment on the
allocation of the emission inventories to month, day, and hour for all
types of emission processes. In particular, the EPA seeks information
that could help improve the temporal allocation in 2018 of emissions
from EGUs, nonroad mobile sources, residential wood combustion sources,
and the temporal allocation of vehicle miles traveled needed to model
onroad sources. The EPA seeks local- and region-specific data that can
be used to
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improve the temporal allocation of emissions data.
Spatial surrogates. Spatial surrogates are used to
allocate county-level emissions to the grid cells used for air quality
modeling. The EPA requests comment on the spatial surrogates used in
the 2018 Emissions Modeling Platform. The same spatial surrogates are
used in the base and future years.
Chemical speciation. Prior to air quality modeling, the
pollutants in the emission inventories must be converted into the
chemical species used by the air quality model using speciation
profiles. The speciation profiles in the 2018 emissions modeling
platform are consistent with version 4.3 of the SPECIATE database. The
EPA requests comment on the speciation profiles used in the 2018
modeling platform, as well as any information that could help improve
the speciation of oil and gas emissions in both the eastern and western
United States in 2018. Oil and gas speciation information, along with
VOC to TOG adjustment factors that are used to compute methane
emissions, would be of the most use at the county or oil/gas basin
level of detail and also for each distinct process at oil and gas
drilling/production facilities (e.g., glycol dehydrators).
To aid in the interpretation of the provided data files and how
they relate to the aspects of the data on which the EPA is requesting
comment, the EPA has provided in the docket a document describing the
information included in the data files.
Dated: January 8, 2014.
Mary E. Henigin,
Director, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.
[FR Doc. 2014-00564 Filed 1-13-14; 8:45 am]
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