Changes to clean-air law proposed by the Bush administration – known as the “Clear Skies” initiative – would reduce less power plant pollution than aggressive enforcement of the current law, according to a new study by the National Academy of Sciences.
The utility industry supports the Bush legislation because it would replace a plant-by-plant cleanup strategy favored by the Clinton administration with a broad emissions trading program that industry officials say would give companies flexibility while achieving at least comparable environmental benefits.
Democrats and environmentalists, however, contend the bill would weaken the existing Clean Air Act, and they favor other bills such as the Clean Power Act, drafted by Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., which would reduce twice as much pollution as Clear Skies and limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The Clinton administration in 1998 had begun an aggressive enforcement initiative against the utility industry, suing individual utilities for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review provisions, which prohibit plants from making certain changes without installing clean-air technology.
The Bush administration, however, has largely rejected this approach. Bush officials have instead pushed a new interpretation of New Source Review that would allow companies more latitude to modify their plants without being required to install pollution control devices.
The administration has also, so far with little success, pushed its Clear Skies bill in Congress, which would effectively end New Source Review and legislatively establish emissions allowance trading programs for smog-forming pollutants and mercury that would reduce these emissions 70% by 2018. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the end of 2004 was set to issue a regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, that would implement parts of Clear Skies administratively, but officials decided to delay so the rule in the hopes that Congress would pass Clear Skies.
The Academy’s finding comes as part of a preliminary report on the administration’s changes to the New Source Review program. The Academy’s report says that without a vigorous NSR program, neither Clear Skies or its regulatory equivalent would achieve comparable pollution reductions at individual power plants.
“In general, NSR provides more stringent emission limits for new and modified major sources than do the programs listed here,” the report said of Clear Skies and the Clean Air Interstate Rule.
Some industry lobbyists refuted this conclusion. The success of an emission allowance trading program for sulfur dioxide “shows us that a well-functioning cap and trade program operates more efficiently, effectively and less costly without the enforcement delays of the current program,” said Frank Maisano of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an electric utility lobbying group.
The administration and congressional Republicans are gearing up to push the Clear Skies proposal in the upcoming session. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate environment committee, has scheduled hearings and votes on the bill for January and February.
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