Climate 411

A Bad Neighbor Bill Hits the Senate Floor

By Steve Cochran / Published: November 9, 2011

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will take his “Bad Neighbor” bill to the Senate floor tomorrow morning.

Sen. Paul’s bill (S.J. Res. 27) would undo the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule – also known as the “Good Neighbor” rule.

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSPAR) would protect downwind states from getting their neighbors’ air pollution dumped on them. It could save up to 34,000 lives a year – if it’s not stopped by Sen. Paul’s bill.

EDF President Fred Krupp said this about Sen. Paul’s decision to push his anti-clean-air measure in the Senate:

Senator Paul’s attempt to block the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule takes anti-government ideology to an extreme.  His bill would stop a long-overdue rule to protect American families from smokestack pollution that drifts across state lines — and causes thousands of premature deaths each year.  If polluters are allowed to continue dumping their pollution in neighboring states, we will all be in serious trouble.

Of course, EDF is not the only group that’s opposed to Sen. Paul’s measure. A group of more than a dozen of America’s leading health organizations sent a letter to the Senate urging them to support CSPAR.

We’ve posted about CSPAR — and Rand Paul’s misguided attempts to undo it – before, but if you want to know more about the issue, check out our fact sheet.

Posted in Clean Air Act, Health, News, Policy / Read 1 Response

Power to the Polluters: Rand Paul Is Eroding States’ Right to Clean Air

By Steve Cochran / Published: November 3, 2011

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), in an attempt to forward his own narrow agenda, is attacking clean air and public health safeguards.

Sen. Paul has his sights set on the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, also called the “Good Neighbor” rule.  Undoing this rule would mean that one state can continue to dump its pollution into another state, sickening its neighbors. It would mean undoing downwind states’ ability to meet public health standards for their own citizens.

The current rule, the one that Sen. Paul seeks to stop, builds on progress made under the Bush Administration to rein in power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). This soot and smog pollution not only impacts the people living in the shadows of smokestacks, but also travels across the country — causing deaths in downwind states, as well as other serious adverse health impacts like heart attacks and severe asthma episodes.

The impacts from upwind air pollution fall hardest on children and the elderly, but they can affect everyone, including otherwise healthy adults.

This is part of the reason why the Bush Administration initiated the federal Clean Air Interstate Program (CAIR) in 2005. Although the Bush Administration approach was deemed inadequate by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, it at least made progress cleaning up the air while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) crafted a replacement.

In the summer of 2010, EPA proposed its replacement rule to address the Court’s concerns. Now, over a year later, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) is set to take effect in January.

In 2014, CSAPR will

  • save up to 34,000 lives
  • prevent 400,000 asthma attacks
  • avoid 15,000 heart attacks
  • improve air quality for over 240 million Americans.

The monetized value of the benefits from this rule is up to $280 billion per year, which greatly outweighs the costs of about $2.4 billion.

But Sen. Paul is trying to unravel this crucial public health safeguard. Paul’s Congressional Review Act (CRA) bill would throw out CSAPR and bar EPA from producing a substantially similar rule.

Some claim that the Bush-era CAIR rule would be left in place, but that assumption makes no sense and gambles with public health. CAIR has been deemed unlawful (indeed, fatally flawed) by the federal court of appeals, so you can bet that there will be no shortage of power company attorneys that seek to block any efforts to restore CAIR. Plus, whatever the ultimate legal outcome, American families need the new, better “Good Neighbor” rule to protect their health from out-of-state pollution.

Instead, the end result of Sen. Paul’s anti-clean air legislation will very likely be that we have no clean air protections in place across the eastern United States to limit the smokestack pollution that drifts across borders — and directly interferes with states’ power to restore healthy air for their citizens. Indeed, if Sen. Paul’s bill passes, some companies could decide to turn off already installed pollution control equipment, leading to an increase in emissions.

Sen. Paul’s action fails to consider some very important economic facts:

  • Many power plants already have pollution control technologies installed, or plans to install them.
  • This rule will provide up to $280 billion in benefits every year once in effect.
  • Undoing this rule will harm the many businesses that made investments in clean air technologies and cleaner generating sources.
  • Several companies are working hard to defend the “Good Neighbor” rule against legal attacks — most of which are being made by interests that have simply refused to make the sensible, long-term investments that the rule would require.

Sen. Paul’s colleagues in the Senate should also consider the job creation potential from CSAPR. Construction of a single wet scrubber to control SO2 emissions provides about 775 full-time jobs over the life of the project —  and Alstom, a global corporate leader in providing and transporting power, estimates that there will be around 100 such projects that result from CSAPR and the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule for power plants. This is not surprising given that implementing just the first phase of the earlier CAIR program led to an estimated 200,000 jobs in the air pollution control and measurement industry [PDF].

Incredibly, Sen. Paul’s own state would suffer the consequences of his bill. In addition to thousands of lives across the U.S., Sen. Paul’s bill would risk up to 1,404 Kentucky lives each year.

It’s clear that it is in the best interest of our health and the economy — both in Kentucky and across the eastern United States — to let CSAPR proceed as planned. The Senate should not yield to Sen. Paul’s extreme bill that puts polluters’ profit ahead of people’s health.

Posted in Clean Air Act, Health, News, Policy / Read 2 Responses

Broad Support for Cleaner Cars — Except from Some in Congress

By Peter Zalzal / Published: October 17, 2011

At a Congressional hearing last week, some members of Congress sought to undermine historic fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards that will save Americans money at the gas pump, help break our addiction to foreign oil, strengthen our economy, and reduce harmful pollution.   

 The shrill attacks on those historic standards were in sharp contrast to the broad support for cleaner cars, including support from the U.S. auto industry.

Automobile manufacturers have intervened to support the standards in the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.  In recent filings in federal court, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers have characterized these standards as:

valid, mandated by law, and non-controversial

(That’s from a D.C. Circuit Court filing from September 30, 2011 — Brief for Intervenors Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers, Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092) 

The State of Texas and its allies, along with an industry group representing coal mining interests, have sought to topple the landmark clean car standards.  The automakers — those directly regulated by the new standards –have forcefully countered that, if legal challenges are successful in overturning EPA’s clean car standards, it “would result in tremendous hardship to their companies” and that the associated costs would be “substantial.”

(Those two quotes above are both from court documents: the first is from the same brief I already cited, and the second is from a November 1, 2010 filing with the same D.C. Circuit Court: Intervenor Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers’ and Association of International Automobile Manufacturers’ Opposition to Motions for Stay, Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092).

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards govern greenhouse gas emissions, and not just fuel economy. That means EPA’s measures will create business opportunities throughout the vehicle supply chain.

Honeywell, a leading global manufacturer of air condition systems, filed an amicus brief in support of EPA’s standards, noting that :

technologies for reducing the United States’ carbon footprint have the potential to create the kind of ‘green jobs’ that are a priority for America in the 21st century

(That’s another quote from a D.C. Circuit court filing, this time from September 8,2011: Amicus Brief of Honeywell International, Inc., Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092). 

Honeywell recognized the possibility that innovative technologies spurred by these emission standards have the potential to spread throughout the global economy, creating business opportunities for companies at the forefront of this technological innovation.  The automobile industry developed the catalytic converter in response to clean air measures, and, through commonsense regulations like these vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards, the United States can remain at the forefront of technological innovation in the global automotive market.   

These benefits are echoed by members of the small business community — eventual purchasers of the new, more fuel efficient vehicles. 

In a press release, Small Business Majority founder and CEO John Arensmeyer emphasized the importance of strong emissions standards, stating that:

 [s]mall businesses understand that to survive in this tough economy they need to innovate, and that strong fuel efficiency standards will assist them in doing so by helping them save money in their own business and creating new market opportunities

In fact, in a recent survey, small business owners overwhelmingly supported stronger fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, with 87 percent stating that it was critical for the U.S. to take action now to increase fuel efficiency.

 The benefits to covered business are, of course, just a portion of the environmental and economic benefits associated with EPA’s clean vehicle rule:

  • More fuel efficient vehicles will save consumers money.  American families will save more than $3,000 on fuel costs over the lifetime of a model year 2016 vehicle, and, for families financing a vehicle, the savings will be immediate. 
  • The standards are projected to cut gasoline consumption by 75 billion gallons. 
  • The standards are also projected to cut harmful global warming pollution by over 20 percent, avoiding 960 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent

As a result of these myriad benefits, EPA’s vehicle standards have strong support from a diverse coalition, including auto manufacturers, states, environmental organizations, and veterans organizations.  Members of the veterans’ organization Operation Free testified at public hearings across the country about the vital importance of EPA’s clean vehicle rules in breaking our addiction to foreign oil. 

Despite these significant benefits and the strong, broad-based support for vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards, some in Congress are attempting to topple these common-sense rules on the theory that doing so would ease burdensome regulation.  Ironically, overturning these regulations would have precisely the opposite effect – constraining business innovation, burdening cash-strapped consumers, and harming the environment. That’s a result that would benefit no one.

 

Posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Policy / Comments are closed

Let’s Clear the Air: EPA Pollution Standards Will Create New Jobs While Protecting Public Health

By Jackie Roberts / Published: September 30, 2011

Opponents of the Clean Air Act have been yelling that this law’s life-saving health protections are “job killers.”

Just for a moment, let’s ignore the fact that these regulations improve public health and safety and save our lives. It is untrue that these regulations kill jobs.

In fact, just two small parts of the Clean Air Act — EPA’s Cross-state Air Pollution and Mercury and Air Toxics rules — would together create nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years driven by new investments.

EPA’s new air pollution standards would limit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and other unhealthy pollutants that are in the air we breathe. Meeting the new standards, and lowering our air pollution levels, will result in investments in new pollution control equipment and power plants. It will also result in jobs for skilled professionals to do the work of installing and operating that equipment. That means jobs for electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, boilermakers, millwrights, iron workers and engineers – among others.

Among the economic beneficiaries would be the American companies that make pollution control equipment like scrubbers, dry sorbent injectors, and selective catalytic reducers. Take a look at this map:

Pollution Abatement Materials Companies

 

Click to view full-size map

The map is  by no means comprehensive, but it shows some of the companies in the eastern half of the U.S. that are poised to benefit under EPA’s rules.

A Case Study in Job Creation from Installing Pollution Control Equipment

Alstom Power’s James Yann testified before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Clean Air and Jobs in March of this year.

He described some of the jobs created from just one example of a pollution control technology – a wet flue gas desulfurization “scrubber” that is commonly used to remove sulfur and other air pollutants.

Dependent on the number of scrubbers ultimately installed, Alstom estimates that these clean air regulations will create a total of more than 150,000 jobs over the next five to six years of compliance work. That’s just for direct jobs. In addition, tens of thousands of additional jobs would be created along the supply chain.

Here’s more details to show how it works: 

  • Scrubbers consist of a large number of components including pumps, electrical equipment and wiring, controls, and emission monitors (among many others). Almost all of this equipment can be procured from sources in the United States.
  • Erecting a typical scrubber requires more than 2,000 tons of fabricated steel delivered to the site. This steel represents more than 40,000 man-hours of production.
  • Assembly of the scrubber requires the most man power and a wide variety of trade crafts, typically lasting up to 30 months and employing an average of 700 craft people during that period.
  • In total, a typical wet flue gas desulfurization project will provide the equivalent of about 775 full time jobs over the life of the installation project, not including jobs provided for all the equipment suppliers and delivery services involved in delivering materials and equipment to the site.
  • Scrubber systems require ongoing supplies to operate including ammonia, lime, limestone and activated carbon. Companies making these supplies will need to create additional jobs to meet the increased demand as a result of EPA’s clean air rules.
Posted in Clean Air Act, Economics, Energy, Jobs / Comments are closed

How Inhofe Turns Balloon Animals into ‘News’

By Eric Pooley / Published: September 30, 2011

The professional deniers are at it again. Every chance they get, the people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about climate change take some minor report or news event, fill it with hot air and twist it up like a balloon animal, then try to persuade everyone that it is alive and kicking—that it “proves” that the planet isn’t warming or human activities aren’t the big reason why.

This time, the professional deniers are seizing on a report from the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general.

In reality, the IG’s report upholds EPA’s efforts to address climate change, affirming that the agency followed the law when it determined that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

But Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who says he thinks global warming is a hoax, and his team of professional deniers have been trying to pretend that their latest balloon animal is living, breathing proof that the EPA process was faulty and the underlying science flawed. And some news organizations fell for it — again.

To make his claim, Inhofe had to ignore the crystal-clear opening sentence of the IG’s report, which concludes that EPA “met statutory requirements for rulemaking” when it issued its endangerment finding, the scientific basis for action under the Clean Air Act. The IG’s report takes issue with some bureaucratic minutiae—EPA procedures that have nothing to do with the validity of the agency’s conclusions. These procedures were created by the federal Office of Management and Budget, and OMB agrees with the way EPA followed them, not with the IG’s minor criticisms.

It’s one agency squabbling with another over which boxes got checked.

Here’s how my colleague Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, put it yesterday. “Let’s be clear on what this report does not do: it does not call into question any of the underlying science. And the report affirmed that EPA complied with the law when making the endangerment finding.”

EPA’s endangerment finding is based on assessments by the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program–assessments that considered tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles and involved thousands of scientists.

Inhofe is peddling another balloon animal. No surprise there. But let’s pull back the curtain and see how a balloon animal gets treated like news.

Step One. It all starts when Inhofe himself demands that the IG look into the endangerment finding. “This evaluation was initiated based on a request from Senator James M. Inhofe,” the IG report says—and to carry it out, “the estimated direct labor and travel costs for this report are $297,385.” So Inhofe, a putative champion of small government and enemy of bureaucratic waste, triggered almost $300,000 in unnecessary spending for the report. That’s an expensive balloon.

Step Two. Inhofe breaks the IG’s embargo by putting out an overheated press release claiming that the report “calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.” In fact, it does nothing of the kind.

Step Three. Inhofe’s former communications director, Marc Morano, who runs a climate denier web site, trumpets the false charges, conservative outlets pick up the drum beat, and mainstream news organizations like The Washington Post and Politico quote Inhofe’s specious charges. Headlines announce that EPA “cut corners” and “needed more data before ruling.” Other journalists begin weighing in on the “wide-reaching political implications.”

Now, an IG report is news, no doubt about that. But reporters should know better than to believe that Inhofe’s balloon animal is real. Anyone who looks at it can tell it’s just a balloon. Can’t they?

This was originally posted on Eric Pooley’s blog The Climate War.

Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Policy / Comments are closed

House Votes for TRAIN Act – and Against Cleaner, Healthier Air

By Fred Krupp / Published: September 23, 2011

Today was an exceptionally bad day in the history of environmental legislation.

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401) by a vote of 249 to 169.

The TRAIN Act is a sweeping anti-clean air bill that blocks many critical public health safeguards. Among its worst offenses is that it indefinitely delays two important and long-awaited air pollution standards – the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

The TRAIN Act would delay those two standards until 2018 at the earliest, and cost about 125,000 American lives.

And as I mentioned earlier, the delay could be indefinite.

This was no less than a fight about the integrity of the Clean Air Act, and clean air lost.

The air pollution standards in question would reduce the amount of smog, soot, mercury and acid gases that are in the air we all breathe.

Opponents of these common-sense rules make the patently false argument that we can’t have both clean air and a strong economy. Actually, analysis has shown that the economic benefits of enforcing the Clean Air Act outweigh the costs 30 to 1. The same protections that the TRAIN Act strips have been widely supported by responsible corporations. Companies across the country are eagerly waiting to supply the equipment to achieve these new clean air goals – and create jobs in the process — while utilities are sitting on billions in cash that could be put to work

But today, the House showed that it has bought the false argument that we need to choose between protecting lives and creating jobs. House members made a stark choice, and put pollution over children’s health.

Some of the House members voting against healthy air today may really believe the misleading notion that public health protections kill jobs. But many are old enough to know better – because they voted in favor of these same common-sense environmental rules two decades ago. And they saw that smart regulations cut pollution ahead of schedule and at a fraction of the estimated cost – and create jobs in the process. Yet these same members are now voting against the successful regulations they championed in 1990.

Now it is up to the Senate to stop this destructive bill. Hopefully, our Senators will understand that clean air saves American lives.

But just in case, you should call your Senators and remind them how much clean air means to you.

Posted in Clean Air Act, News, Policy / Read 2 Responses