We
commend Senators Carper (D-DE), Chafee (R-RI), Alexander (R-TN), and
Gregg (R-NH) for substantially improving the air quality provisions in
their bill (“The Clean Air Planning Act”), which the senators
reintroduced today. Old, outdated power plants are the nation’s largest
industrial source of air pollution. Nearly three-quarters of all power
plant boilers are over 30 years old and most continue to operate
without modern pollution control technology. These aging plants release
99% of the sulfur dioxide, 98% of nitrogen oxides, and the majority of
mercury from power plants, contributing to respiratory and
cardiovascular problems, learning disabilities in children, and tens of
thousands of premature deaths each year in the U.S. The Clean Air
Planning Act would require power plants to significantly reduce these
emissions over the next 10 years. Unlike the Bush administration’s
“Clear Skies” legislation, this new bill does not weaken Clean Air Act
protections that require individual power plants to clean up.
However,
power plants also are the nation’s single largest source of carbon
dioxide emissions, the primary global warming pollutant. Unfortunately,
the bill would allow plant owners to avoid real global warming emission
reductions by offsetting them with reductions in other sectors. This
loophole allows the nation’s largest global warming polluters off the
hook for reducing their share of global warming emissions. Offsets also
reduce the certainty of achieving real emission reductions since they
are difficult to verify, there is the potential for the shifting of
pollution with no actual reductions, and there is a great risk that
emission reductions that would have occurred anyway are given credit.
In
addition, the bill would create windfall profits for power companies by
giving carbon dioxide emission allowances away for free and includes an
additional windfall for “incremental nuclear generation” since 1990,
despite nuclear power’s intractable waste and safety problems.
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U.S.
PIRG is the national advocacy office for the Environment Colorado and
the state Public Interest Research Groups. The State PIRGs are
nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest and environmental advocacy
organizations.
