Business
L.A. needs clean energy. Hydrogen could be the answer — or gas industry greenwashing
Southern California runs on petroleum, with an extended historical past of oil drilling and a panorama dominated by vehicles and freeways.
However Angelenos are additionally deeply depending on one other soiled gas.
On daily basis, tens of millions of properties and hundreds of companies obtain greater than 15 billion gallons of pure gasoline, on common, from the nation’s largest gasoline utility, Southern California Gasoline Co. Households use the planet-warming gas to remain heat within the winter and prepare dinner dinner on gasoline stoves. Energy crops burn it to generate electrical energy that powers air conditioners on sizzling summer time days.
A lot of the gasoline flows in from different states by way of pipeline. Some is tucked away at native storage fields, together with Aliso Canyon, web site of a record-shattering methane leak. A few of it by no means reaches the Los Angeles Basin in any respect, leaking from wellheads or pipelines and rising into the ambiance, the place it traps warmth much more powerfully than the carbon dioxide emitted when it’s burned.
Scientists say there’s an pressing must part out fossil fuels and finish the unprecedented world heating that’s driving deadlier and extra damaging warmth waves, wildfires, droughts and floods. So how will Southern California clear up its pure gasoline downside?
SoCalGas says it has at the least a partial reply: hydrogen.
The Sempra Vitality subsidiary proposed final month to construct “the nation’s largest inexperienced hydrogen power infrastructure system.” Referred to as Angeles Hyperlink, it might embody lots of of miles of pipelines to deliver the clean-burning gas to energy crops, factories and the ports of L.A. and Lengthy Seaside. SoCalGas clients would bear the associated fee, which might quantity to billions of {dollars}.
“It permits California to dramatically advance its local weather and environmental objectives,” SoCalGas President Maryam Brown stated in an interview. “It creates a cornerstone for the California inexperienced hydrogen financial system, and the hydrogen financial system basically.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to agree. Requested about Angeles Hyperlink at a information convention, he known as it “a step in the fitting course.”
However is hydrogen a vital clear power answer, or a greenwashing boondoggle that might prop up the fossil gas business?
E-newsletter
Your information to our clear power future
Get our Boiling Level publication for the most recent on the ability sector, water wars and extra — and what they imply for California.
Chances are you’ll often obtain promotional content material from the Los Angeles Instances.
It’s a query driving fierce debate amongst environmentalists, elected officers and labor unions — in Southern California and world wide, as firms plan lots of of billions of {dollars} in investments that might launch the hydrogen period.
Los Angeles officers hope to play a number one position — however provided that they decide hydrogen will do extra good than hurt.
“Anyone who says inexperienced hydrogen goes to work for certain doesn’t but know what they’re speaking about,” Mayor Eric Garcetti stated in an interview. “Anyone who says inexperienced hydrogen received’t work for certain doesn’t know what they’re speaking about.”
Steam rises from Unit 5 at Scattergood Producing Station on the coast close to El Segundo, with the Hyperion wastewater therapy plant within the background.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
A clear gas with baggage
Hydrogen, the world’s lightest molecule, has lengthy been utilized in oil refining and fertilizer manufacturing. However there’s been a surge of curiosity the previous few years, with the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy rising as one of many gas’s largest boosters.
DWP has begun the method of changing the town’s largest electrical energy supply — Intermountain Energy Plant outdoors Delta, Utah — from coal to hydrogen. If the first-of-its-kind mission goes as deliberate, DWP hopes to retrofit 4 gas-fired energy crops within the L.A. Basin as properly, together with Valley Producing Station in Solar Valley and Scattergood Producing Station close to El Segundo.
The hydrogen pipelines proposed by SoCalGas would provide these crops, permitting DWP to generate electrical energy through the uncommon moments when photo voltaic panels, wind generators and batteries received’t be sufficient to energy the town. It’s the sort of dependable power useful resource Los Angeles might want to obtain its objective of 100% clear electrical energy by 2035, DWP Common Supervisor Marty Adams stated.
“Inexperienced hydrogen is basically the way in which, until one thing comes up that isn’t invented but,” he stated.
The gas prices way over fossil gasoline, however it’s anticipated to get cheaper as know-how scales up. SoCalGas and DWP are working to slash inexperienced hydrogen prices from $5 per kilogram to $1.50 by 2030, and the Biden administration has set a fair decrease goal.
Environmental justice activists are skeptical.
They need L.A. officers to comply with by on their promise to close down gasoline crops — particularly Valley Producing Station, which is in a closely polluted, largely Latino group. Though hydrogen combustion doesn’t produce carbon dioxide, it does generate lung-damaging nitrogen oxide air pollution, or NOx — far more than fossil gasoline, at the least utilizing present know-how.
“On daily basis we have now another false answer coming at us,” stated Martha Dina Argüello, government director of Physicians for Social Accountability-Los Angeles. “The environmental justice issues that we dwell with are going to proceed and worsen.”
Help our journalism
Your assist helps us ship the information that issues most. Subscribe to the Los Angeles Instances.
Activists do see a task for hydrogen in preventing local weather change — however largely in “arduous to affect” industries the place switching from soiled fuels to electrical energy is anticipated to be prohibitively costly, comparable to transport, aviation, steelmaking and doubtlessly long-haul trucking. Their most well-liked know-how is hydrogen gas cells, which produce no air pollution and may energy heavy-duty vans.
Exterior these industries, although, activists fear about firms utilizing hydrogen as an excuse to maintain peddling oil and gasoline.
Pipes carry pure gasoline to Unit 4 at DWP’s Scattergood Producing Station, which is a part of a “mixed cycle” system. Unit 4 combusts pure gasoline to generate electrical energy, after which Unit 5 makes use of the waste warmth to supply extra energy.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
SoCalGas, for example, estimates Angeles Hyperlink might assist to displace 25% of the gasoline it delivers at this time — some, however removed from all. And though none of that hydrogen can be used for heating and cooking, SoCalGas has separate initiatives to check out “mixing” — mixing small quantities of hydrogen into the pipelines that serve properties, lowering however not eliminating heat-trapping emissions.
That’s a nonstarter for local weather advocates. They level to analysis discovering that changing gasoline home equipment with electrical warmth pumps and induction stoves is a much more efficient local weather technique, and also can scale back indoor air air pollution from cooking with gasoline.
However electrification threatens the gasoline utility enterprise mannequin, which is why SoCalGas and different firms have fought authorities insurance policies requiring new properties to be all-electric. An identical battle performed out on the ports of L.A. and Lengthy Seaside, the place an business commerce group whose members embody SoCalGas lobbied officers to prioritize biofuels over electrical vans to scrub up air air pollution.
Some environmentalists fear that hydrogen will develop into the gasoline business’s newest excuse to dam electrification.
“I don’t have a variety of belief that this isn’t one other method of getting the camel’s nostril beneath the tent,” Argüello stated.
Garcetti has an identical concern. He’s skeptical about utilizing hydrogen for house heating and cooking, saying the town needs to be “cautious to protect in opposition to folks throwing in somewhat little bit of supposed inexperienced hydrogen to greenwash gases which might be destroying the planet.”
DWP’s gas-fired Valley Producing Station in Solar Valley. Neighborhood activists are campaigning to shut the plant due to well being and environmental issues.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
However because the hydrogen financial system grows, Garcetti is hopeful the gas will help fight the local weather disaster and scale back air air pollution.
“We wish to be the coauthors of this new chapter. We’re not passive bystanders,” he stated.
A battle at Metropolis Corridor
A number of weeks after SoCalGas rolled out its Angeles Hyperlink initiative, a associated battle roiled L.A.’s halls of energy.
The bipartisan infrastructure invoice authorized by Congress in November included $9.5 billion to drive down hydrogen prices and set up regional hydrogen manufacturing hubs — cash the Biden administration is now planning to distribute. A number of Metropolis Council members launched a movement this month calling on DWP and the Port of L.A. to use for a few of these funds.
Even earlier than the movement was launched, it was the topic of livid behind-the-scenes lobbying.
Teams together with the California Environmental Justice Alliance and the Sierra Membership requested council members to permit solely “inexperienced” hydrogen, produced from water and clear power sources comparable to photo voltaic or wind. (A lot of the hydrogen in use at this time is produced from fossil fuels in a extremely polluting course of.) Environmentalists additionally urged the town to “make no investments associated to hydrogen combustion” at energy crops with out first addressing a number of issues, together with doubtlessly excessive ranges of native air air pollution.
“Buying and selling our local weather objectives for our well being objectives doesn’t make sense,” the Sierra Membership’s Monica Embrey stated.
The ultimate textual content of the Metropolis Council movement integrated these factors. However some clear power activists nonetheless weren’t happy.
Alex Nagy, California director of Meals & Water Watch, stated she’s “very uncomfortable with L.A. making use of to develop into a hydrogen hub.” She believes DWP hasn’t exhausted different choices to part out fossil gasoline, together with native photo voltaic installations, power effectivity and “demand response” applications that pay properties and companies to make use of much less electrical energy when the ability grid is careworn.
In the meantime, SoCalGas stands to make an enormous assured revenue if state officers approve its Angeles Hyperlink hydrogen mission.
“It’s this complete boon for them,” Nagy stated.
SoCalGas’ headquarters are within the Gasoline Firm Tower, heart, in downtown Los Angeles.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
Shortly after the L.A. hydrogen hub movement was launched, Council Member John Lee rolled out a separate decision calling for the town to assist the gasoline firm’s hydrogen mission. Lee was quoted in a SoCalGas information launch as saying Angeles Hyperlink “will assist us get one step nearer to attaining the town’s objective of 100% clear power by 2035 with out compromising reliability and hurting jobs.”
Jobs have been a political flashpoint in battles over the way forward for pure gasoline. When San Luis Obispo officers deliberate to vote on an all-electric buildings coverage early within the pandemic, for example, Eric Hofmann — president of a labor union representing hundreds of SoCalGas staff — threatened a “no social distancing” protest that he stated would “doubtlessly [add] to this pandemic.”
The promise of hydrogen infrastructure might ease these battles, providing a lifeline each to SoCalGas staff and to plumbers and pipefitters represented by the politically highly effective Los Angeles/Orange County Constructing and Building Trades Council.
Nonetheless, inexperienced hydrogen isn’t any panacea. Along with native air-pollution issues, producing the gas requires a number of water — a useful resource in ever-shorter provide because the Western U.S. endures its worst drought in at the least 1,200 years, fueled by world warming.
The nonprofit Environmental Protection Fund, in the meantime, simply launched a analysis paper — at the moment going by peer overview — discovering hydrogen can really worsen local weather change within the quick time period if an excessive amount of of it leaks from pipelines earlier than it’s burned.
Requested about that analysis, SoCalGas spokesperson Chris Gilbride stated leaks shouldn’t be a significant concern for Angeles Hyperlink.
“It is a new pipeline designed for hydrogen, so we’d not anticipate these issues,” he stated.
A SoCalGas pipeline generally known as Line 235, which brings pure gasoline by the desert towards the L.A. Basin, undergoes repairs after an October 2017 explosion.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
SoCalGas makes its play
Gasoline firm executives say Angeles Hyperlink would transport solely inexperienced hydrogen, not fossil gasoline. Along with native energy crops, the pipelines would provide the “arduous to affect” sectors the place local weather activists typically see hydrogen as a good suggestion.
However SoCalGas has in any other case provided few particulars on what Angeles Hyperlink may appear to be. A truth sheet on the utility’s web site initially instructed the mission might embody 200 to 750 miles of recent pipeline, though it was later edited to take away these numbers.
As a substitute, SoCalGas advised the California Public Utilities Fee it wish to spend an estimated $118 million in buyer cash to start learning and designing hydrogen infrastructure to serve the L.A. Basin. These funds would cowl the mission’s first two phases, with a 3rd part to comply with that might price “a number of lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}” extra — all earlier than development begins.
It’s some huge cash — however for an infrastructure mission of this measurement, “the order of magnitude is sensible,” stated Michael Colvin, a former Public Utilities Fee official who now leads the California power program on the Environmental Protection Fund.
Colvin stated he’s intrigued by Angeles Hyperlink, calling it “step one, by way of new devoted infrastructure, that’s been proposed like this wherever within the nation.” He stated his group will scrutinize the proposal because it’s thought-about by the utilities fee.
“That is the biggest gasoline firm within the nation attempting to determine how they go about decarbonizing their system,” he stated.
SoCalGas isn’t but asking for permission to cost clients for hydrogen-related prices — just for approval to open a “memo account” to trace spending, which might make it simpler for the corporate to get well these funds from clients later.
However Angeles Hyperlink won’t ever get constructed until the Public Utilities Fee finally lets SoCalGas invoice ratepayers for the prices.
A smokestack at Scattergood Producing Station close to El Segundo.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
The mission’s destiny might hinge on whether or not the utility can persuade state officers that hydrogen wouldn’t solely assist deal with the local weather disaster, but in addition restrict nitrogen oxides and different air pollution in low-income communities of colour. The gasoline firm acknowledges the environmental justice issues in its Angeles Hyperlink utility, saying it “doesn’t assist leisure of present NOx emissions requirements, and stands prepared to offer any technical help” on analysis that might result in decrease emissions.
On the identical time, the gasoline firm notes that hydrogen might dramatically scale back hazardous air air pollution from heavy-duty vans, estimating that Angeles Hyperlink might ship sufficient clean-burning gas to displace 3 million gallons of diesel every day.
DWP officers have made an identical case, saying hydrogen-fueled energy crops might play a task in lessening the area’s notorious smog by guaranteeing the dependable energy grid that’s wanted to gas electrical automobiles and ditch vehicles and vans that run on oil.
What’s extra, these hydrogen crops would function an vital however not often used backup on a grid dominated by photo voltaic and wind energy, that means they’d fireplace up far much less usually than at this time’s gasoline crops, stated Jason Rondou, DWP’s director of useful resource planning. Turbine producers, in the meantime, are engaged on know-how that might additional restrict air pollution from hydrogen combustion.
“We don’t wish to reduce the significance of lowering NOx. However we do wish to characterize the contribution as very, very low,” Rondou stated. “What strikes the needle on native air-quality enhancements is the decarbonization of the transportation sector.”
And therein lies the rub for local weather activists: They see hydrogen as a doubtlessly useful gizmo to slash emissions, in L.A. and globally. However they don’t essentially belief the fossil gas business to wield that instrument, given its lengthy historical past of local weather denial and obstruction.
An indication warns of high-voltage wires at DWP’s Scattergood Producing Station close to El Segundo.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
As if to underscore that time, simply final month SoCalGas was slapped with a $10-million state high quality for preventing local weather motion.
However SoCalGas appears to understand some course correction is required if it needs to safe political buy-in for its hydrogen plans. After years of preventing native gasoline bans, for example, the corporate just lately started suggesting it’s open to widespread adoption of electrical heating and cooking. It didn’t attraction the $10-million high quality. And it didn’t oppose ending subsidies for gasoline line extensions to new properties.
The utility additionally says Angeles Hyperlink could possibly be a part of “a complete method to facilitate the final word closure” of Aliso Canyon. That’s a chance SoCalGas had by no means beforehand proven a willingness to think about because it defended the profitable storage subject.
“Southern California Gasoline is an infrastructure firm. And we use that infrastructure to have the ability to meet clients’ wants,” stated Brown, the corporate’s president. “Prospects’ wants are altering. We see our clients needing cleaner and cleaner fuels.”
Each of the homes burned in the Los Angeles fires is its own individual calamity.
Collectively, the losses — whether in the hundreds or, as is far more likely, in the thousands — will weigh on the city’s already urgent housing shortage.
Fires are still raging, and with 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday morning, the degree of displacement in the city and its surrounding areas will take time to assess. For the time being, evacuees are holing up in public shelters in Los Angeles County, with friends or family members or in hotels.
But in the coming weeks and months, people whose homes are gone will have to find more stable accommodations while they rebuild. That will not be easy in a metro area that, as of 2022, already had a shortage of about 337,000 homes, according to data from Zillow. The number of homes on the market in Los Angeles was 26 percent below prepandemic norms as of December, according to Zillow.
“One of the biggest challenges ahead will be getting people who lost their homes into permanent, long-term housing,” Victor M. Gordo, the mayor of Pasadena, said on Wednesday. Pasadena, which is battling the Eaton fire, has already lost hundreds of homes.
The area’s tight rental market is likely to become further strained as many of the thousands of displaced residents turn to rental units, while figuring out their next move. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, as of Jan. 7, was more than $2,000, according to Zillow.
“You’re going to have a positive shock in demand, and a negative shock in supply, so this automatically means prices go up in the rental markets,” said Carles Vergara-Alert, a professor of finance at IESE Business School in Barcelona, who has studied the effects of wildfires on housing markets.
Any uptick in rental costs would affect tenants across the region, beyond those displaced by the fires, Dr. Vergara-Alert said.
Jonathan Zasloff, who lost his home in Pacific Palisades this week, teaches land use and urban policy at the University of California, Los Angeles law school, and is acutely aware of how his search for interim housing could affect the broader market.
Dr. Zasloff is staying with his brother for the time being, while a friend is putting up his wife and daughter. They evacuated their house, which they had lived in for almost 15 years, around noon on Tuesday, before the official evacuation order was issued for the area. That evening, Dr. Zasloff realized the severity of the crisis when he was watching television and saw a reporter standing on his fire-ravaged block.
His insurance agent told him it could take two to three years to rebuild his house. His family might try to find a rental in West Los Angeles near UCLA in the meantime, he said.
There aren’t many rentals in that part of the city, Dr. Zasloff said, so students and other renters could be displaced as he, and people like him who lost their homes, move in.
“It’s very possible that this event is going to cause a big increase in homelessness, even though the people who got pushed out of their homes are people of means,” he said.
California has been in the grip of an affordable housing crisis for a decade. Both state and local lawmakers have passed a raft of new laws that aim to make housing cheaper and more plentiful by making it easier to build. In Los Angeles, for instance, Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order that streamlines permitting for projects in which 100 percent of the units are affordable. In response to state housing reforms, there has been a boom of backyard homes — called accessory dwelling units, or A.D.U.s — that homeowners often rent out for extra income and that have added to the housing stock.
Still, both the city and state remain well behind their housing production goals, and affordability has only continued to erode. The number of apartment units approved by the city of Los Angeles, for example, dipped to a 10-year low in 2024, according to data from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety compiled by Crosstown LA, a news site. That downturn in building permitting has raised concern about roadblocks to new housing unit creation.
“This is a place that had massive affordability challenges last week, and after this week it’s going to be that much more challenging,” said Dave Rand, a land-use lawyer at Rand Paster & Nelson in Los Angeles, who also serves on the board of directors of a statewide affordable housing organization.
After the fires are extinguished and the recovery begins, Mr. Rand said, there is hope that the common cause of rebuilding can be a catalyst for tackling affordability challenges by continuing to make it easier to build housing, particularly affordable rental housing, at a faster pace.
“This is such a devastating event that hopefully it rocks the system to the point where we can get real reform,” he said.
The Los Angeles City Council has aimed to build nearly half a million new units by 2029. But many people trying to rebuild all at once after the fires could lead to higher costs, and slow down the overall production of housing, said Jason Ward, a co-director of the center on housing and homelessness at the RAND Corporation.
A longstanding construction labor shortage in Los Angeles does not help. Andy Howard, a general contractor who has worked across the city for three decades, including in the areas affected by the fires, said many of the subcontractors he work with in the past have left California since the pandemic. And there are not enough young people entering the industry.
The fires are “going to make it worse,” Mr. Howard said. “It’s going to drive the cost up, for sure.”
As the market for documentaries and other content slowed and work dried up in Hollywood, producer Kourtney Gleason was already worried about making the mortgage payments on the home she bought last year with her boyfriend.
Now, as raging fires have halted film and TV production in Southern California and many in the industry have lost homes, she’s terrified that the entertainment business will be set back yet again. Though she’s been in the industry for 12 years, Gleason is now reluctantly looking at restaurant jobs to get by.
“The industry in the town is so fragile that every little thing becomes a bigger bump in the road,” she said. “Another bump that will push things back from getting ramped up.”
The destruction of the fires only compounds the difficult lot for many of Hollywood’s workers. Still reeling from the pandemic, they faced financial hardship during the dual Hollywood labor strikes in 2023, then were hit with a sustained slowdown in film and TV production that has driven many to rethink their careers in the industry.
“A lot of the below-the-line workers were already under an incredible amount of pressure,” said Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken finance institute. “For Hollywood workers, it becomes one more blow.”
The sheer scope of the region’s multiple fires means that nearly every echelon of Hollywood has been hard hit.
The Palisades fire, which has burned more than 17,200 acres and destroyed numerous homes, businesses and longtime landmarks in the Pacific Palisades area, is home to many Hollywood stars, studio executives and producers. Actors such as Billy Crystal and Cary Elwes lost homes in the blaze.
Across the region, the Eaton fire has now burned at least 10,600 acres in the Pasadena and Altadena areas and destroyed many structures. The San Gabriel Valley is home to many of the industry’s more modest or middle-class workers, who were already financially harmed by the production slowdown and relocation of shoots to other states or countries.
The fires could rank as one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. A preliminary estimate calculated by AccuWeather, the weather forecasting service, put the damage and total economic loss at $52 billion to $57 billion, which could rise if the fires continue to spread. J.P. Morgan on Thursday raised its expectations of economic losses to close to $50 billion.
Many affected homeowners reported the insurers had dropped their policies, as some of the biggest insurers have stopped writing or renewing policies in high-risk coastal and wildfire areas. The complications with fire insurance, combined with the region’s problems with housing affordability and supply, will only be exacerbated by these fires, Klowden said, leading some to reconsider whether they can stay in California.
“It adds up,” he said. “How many more people decide they can’t afford to stay?”
Hollywood workers had been holding onto hope that 2025 would be a better year for work, perhaps closer to the levels they saw before the pandemic.
But with yet another disaster, “it feels like it’s just another weight that’s been placed,” said Jacques Gravett, a film editor who has primarily worked in television on such shows as “Power Book IV: Force” on Starz and “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix.
Gravett was out of work for 13 months between the pandemic and the strikes, and said he’s concerned about how already struggling workers will be able to absorb the financial blow from the fires.
“At least when you’re working and something happens, you have resources to get you by, and a lot of people don’t have the resources now,” said Gravett, who is co-chair of the Motion Picture Editors Guild’s African-American steering committee. “Now we’re faced with another tragedy for those who’ve been displaced. What do you do?”
The effect of the fires on industry workers could give lawmakers a push to approve Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed increase to the state’s film and TV tax credit program, which aims to lure production back to California and increase jobs in the Golden State, Klowden said.
“Right now, the industry desperately is waiting on the incentives to be expanded,” he said.
In the near term, discussions about new projects are already hitting a wall. Gary Lennon, showrunner of various “Power” spinoffs, including “Force,” said an agent told him there will likely be a temporary pause before anyone wants to talk about new ideas.
“Buyers and meetings for pitches being sold will take a hit for a moment,” Lennon said. “People are focused on what is immediately happening in front of them.”
Even before the fires, he said he was already getting two to three calls a week from production designers, editors, costume designers and others looking for work.
But once the industry is ready to ramp back, he said he thinks it will move quickly.
“So much has happened recently, I think production will start right away again because people do need to work,” Lennon said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Paul F. Oreffice, who as the pugnacious head of Dow Chemical grew and diversified the company at the same time that he rebuffed Vietnam veterans over Agent Orange, argued that the chemical dioxin was harmless and oversaw the manufacturing of silicone breast implants that were known to leak, died on Dec. 26 at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 97.
His family confirmed his death.
Mr. Oreffice (pronounced like orifice) spoke in staccato, fast-paced sentences, and they were often deployed in pushing back against environmentalists, politicians and journalists during an era, the 1970s and ’80s, when the environmental movement was gaining force by focusing on toxic chemicals in the air and water.
Under his 17-year leadership, which included the titles of president, chief executive and chairman, Mr. Oreffice weathered intense controversies.
His public relations instinct was for confrontation, not conciliation. He had an intense dislike for what he perceived as government meddling in business, which he traced to his having grown up in Italy under Mussolini. “I’ve seen what overgoverning can do,” he told The New York Times in 1987. “I was born under a Fascist dictatorship, and my father was jailed by it.”
Mr. Oreffice took the reins of the Dow USA division in 1975, when its public image was tainted from campus protests of the 1960s that had vilified the company as a maker of the incendiary agent napalm, which was widely used in Vietnam.
When Dow pulled out of apartheid South Africa in 1987 under pressure from shareholders, Mr. Oreffice said: “I’m not proud of it. I think we should have stayed and fought.”
In 1977, when Jane Fonda lacerated Dow in a speech at Central Michigan University, not far from Dow headquarters, in Midland, Mich., Mr. Oreffice canceled the company’s donations to the school, writing its president that he could not support Ms. Fonda’s “venom against free enterprise.”
Instead, Mr. Oreffice financed the campaigns of anti-regulation politicians. And he sued the Environmental Protection Agency for surveilling Dow’s sprawling Midland plants from the air when the company refused an on-site inspection.
The case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in 1986 ruled against the company, at the time the No. 2 American chemical maker after DuPont. (The companies merged in 2017, then split into three companies.)
In 1983, Rep. James H. Scheuer, Democrat of New York, disclosed that Dow had been allowed to edit an E.P.A. report on the leakage of dioxin, one of the most toxic substances ever manufactured, from the Midland plants into the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and Saginaw Bay.
E.P.A. regional officials told Congress that their superiors in the Reagan administration ordered the changes to comply with demands made by Dow. Mr. Oreffice, appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, offered a sweeping dismissal.
“There is absolutely no evidence of dioxin doing any damage to humans except for causing something called chloracne,” he said. “It’s a rash.”
His statement brushed aside evidence that dioxin was extremely hazardous to laboratory animals and had been shown in some research to be linked with a rare soft-tissue cancer in humans.
One former Dow president, Herbert Dow Doan, a grandson of the company founder, told a public relations publication, Provoke Media, in 1990 that Mr. Oreffice’s style was not one fine-tuned to mollify critics. “The reason is part ego, part pride,” he said. “Paul is inclined to push his line to the point where some people say he is arrogant.”
There is no question that Mr. Oreffice’s strength of will also uplifted Dow’s businesses, which through the 1970s were overly dependent on basic chemicals like chlorine. When a glut of low-priced petrochemicals flooded the global market in the early 80s, he aggressively reshaped Dow by diversifying into consumer products, such as shampoos and the cleaning fluid Fantastik, and by moving into foreign markets. By 1987, Dow posted a record profit of $1.3 billion (about $3.5 billion in today’s currency).
At the same time, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 20,000 Vietnam veterans and their families against Dow and other makers of Agent Orange was further tarnishing the company’s image. The suit, filed in 1979, charged that dioxin in Agent Orange led to cancer in combat veterans and genetic defects in their children.
Dow argued that it had made Agent Orange at the request of the government and was not responsible for how it was used. But in 1984, the company and other makers of Agent Orange, without admitting liability, settled the lawsuit for $180 million, with the proceeds going to veterans and their families.
In another controversy, Dow Corning, a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning Inc., released documents in February 1992 showing that it had known since 1971 that silicone gel could leak from breast implants it made.
Tens of thousands of women had sued the company, claiming their implants had given them breast cancer and autoimmune diseases. Dow Corning agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement after the company had been driven to file for bankruptcy protection.
In 1999, an independent review by an arm of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that silicone implants do not cause major diseases.
Paul Fausto Orrefice was born Nov. 29, 1927, in Venice. His parents, Max and Elena (Friedenberg) Oreffice, moved the family to Ecuador in 1940 as Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Paul came to the U.S. in 1945, entering Purdue University with fewer than 50 words of English at his command.
He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1949, became a naturalized citizen, and after two years in the Army went to work for Dow in 1953.
“When I walked into Midland, Mich., this was ‘WASP’ country, and I was a ‘W’ but I wasn’t an ‘ASP,’” he told The Washington Post in 1986. “I spoke with an accent and combed my hair straight back, which just wasn’t done.”
Mr. Oreffice represented Dow in Switzerland, Italy, Brazil and Spain before being called back to the Midland headquarters in 1969 and appointed the company’s financial vice president. He became president of Dow Chemical U.S.A. in 1975 and was then promoted to president and chief executive of the parent Dow Chemical Company in 1978. In 1986, he added the title of chairman.
To the astonishment of many observers, Dow poured millions of dollars in the mid-1980s into a public-relations campaign to improve its image, including a new slogan, “Dow let’s you do great things.”
Under company rules, when he reached age 60, Mr. Oreffice stepped down as president and chief executive in 1987. He retired as chairman in 1992.
He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Jo Ann Pepper Oreffice, his children Laura Jennison and Andy Oreffice, six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
In retirement, Mr. Oreffice pursued a passion for thoroughbred racehorses, investing in Kentucky Derby starters and spending summers at a home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was a partner in a Preakness Stakes winner, Summer Squall, and a Belmont Stakes winner, Palace Malice.
In 2006, he published a memoir about rising from an immigrant with little English to a corporate titan, titling it “Only in America.”
Northeast Ohio natives living in California give their account of the impact of the California wildfires
The 89th Texas Legislature opens on Tuesday
Lane leads North Alabama against Stetson after 22-point outing
Fatal vehicle collision left one dead, two injured at mile 91 of Seward Highway, APD says
Minnesota Vikings vs Los Angeles Rams tickets in Arizona: How to buy NFL playoff seats
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
Mapping the Damage From the Palisades Fire
Appeals court will not block partial release of special counsel Jack Smith's Trump report
‘Much more persecution’: Venezuela braces for Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration
Mondale and Ford’s eulogies written for Carter read by sons at funeral
Elon Musk Downplays the Role of Climate in L.A. Fires, Scientists Say
-
Business1 week agoThese are the top 7 issues facing the struggling restaurant industry in 2025
-
Culture1 week agoThe 25 worst losses in college football history, including Baylor’s 2024 entry at Colorado
-
Sports1 week agoThe top out-of-contract players available as free transfers: Kimmich, De Bruyne, Van Dijk…
-
Politics1 week agoNew Orleans attacker had 'remote detonator' for explosives in French Quarter, Biden says
-
Politics1 week agoCarter's judicial picks reshaped the federal bench across the country
-
Politics5 days agoWho Are the Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
-
Health4 days agoOzempic ‘microdosing’ is the new weight-loss trend: Should you try it?
-
World1 week agoIvory Coast says French troops to leave country after decades