The Bush Administration mantra that "voluntary compliance" is a far better way to reduce pollution than "command and control" regulations received another setback this month with the release of a carefully documented study analyzing the volume of pollution from electric power plants.
Compiled by three organizations including New Jersey's largest utility, the Public Service Enterprise Group, Inc.; the Natural Resourcs Defense Council (NRDC); and the Coalition for Environmentlly Responsible Economies (CERES), the report studied the environmental records of the nation's 100 largest electricity companies.
The study analyzed utility-industry emissions of four pollutants -- nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and mercury -- using data collected by the U.S. EPA and the Energy Information Administration from 1991 to 2002.
The data revealed a marked overall decrease in emissions of pollutants subject to mandatory federal regulations: NOx fell by 28 percent over the period studied, and SO2 fell by 35 percent. Both pollutants, targeted by the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, contribute to acid rain and haze, and NOx is also a key ingredient in smog.
In sharp contrast, CO2, a greenhouse gas and major contributor to climate change, has been the subject of a range of hopeful government initiatives and pleas, none mandatory -- and emissions of the pollutant rose by 25 percent.
The report shows that "this notion that voluntary programs alone will work to address global warming in the utility sector is a farce," said Dan Lashof, science director of NRDC's Climate Center.
Perhaps more important is the finding that there is little correlation between the amount of electricity a utility generates, and the amount of pollution it generates. For example, the Southern Company generated four times more electricity than its smaller competitor Calpine, but Southern belched a staggering 6,300 times more SO2 than Calpine.
This means "the regulations aren't working uniformly," says David Gardiner, former assistant EPA administrator under Bill Clinton. "There's a major discrepancy between the way our federal regulations are being implemented among different companies and in different states. If we implement stronger regulations uniformly nationwide, we will see deep cuts in these emissions."
It would seem there is little time to waste. The EPA has estimated that NOx and SO2 emissions from power plants still cause some 30,000 premature deaths each year. And EPA announced this month that 474 counties across the nation do not meet the new health standards for ground-level ozone, directly linked to NOx emissions.
The good news, says Gardiner, now a senior adviser to CERES, is that "More and more polluting companies--and their shareholders especially--are beginning to realize that dirtier power plants face disprportionate financial and legal risks compared to their cleaner competitors." In the case of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, investors are starting to accept that emissions caps are inevitably coming, and they do not like the uncertainty of wondering when it will happen. Moreover, utilities and other industries that take measures to increase energy efficiency and reduce pollution are finding that both profits and productivity are improved.
Hence a growing number of shareholders are pushing their corporations for more disclosure of environmental data, a lowering of emissions, and even for more uniform federal enforcement of emission standards.
All this may come as news to Lynn Scarlett, the Bush Administration's assistant secretary of the Interior Department, who recently assured GRIST magazine, in an interview, that "Regulations tend to curtail creativity and innovation."
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This story was jointly produced by BushGreenwatch and Grist Magazine. For more on this story, visit Grist Magazine.
