What will the presidential election in November mean for U.S. environmental policy? Although we don’t yet know who the Republican candidate will be, we know all too well what will be on his environmental agenda. The endless televised debates have exposed what the New York Times called “the broken windows of the Republican idea factory.” It’s not a pretty sight.

The candidates all share the same approach to the environment. Ron Paul plans to govern primarily by abolishing things. His hit list includes America’s foreign wars, but also the Federal Reserve, most federal taxes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and all limits on offshore drilling and the use of coal and nuclear power. Rick Santorum agrees that energy companies must be entirely deregulated. Newt Gingrich will build a moon colony by 2020, and will replace the EPA with a new agency that “will operate on the premise that most environmental problems can and should be solved by states and local communities.” Mitt Romney promises to “eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration’s costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda,” and to slow down or block regulations in general whenever industry complains about their costs (i.e., always).

Do we really need to slow down the snail’s pace of current environmental regulation, and pay more attention to industry as it bemoans the cost of compliance? Consider the case of coal ash: produced in stupendous quantities by coal-burning power plants, it contains dangerous concentrations of arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxic metals. Improper disposal has led to contamination of groundwater in many communities, and to occasional disasters such as the billion-gallon sludge spill that inundated Kingston, Tennessee in 2008.

This looks like the poster child for hazardous waste regulation – except that the coal industry has consistently used its considerable political clout to win special treatment. Back in 1980, near the dawn of modern waste regulations, Congress directed EPA to study coal ash in detail before applying hazardous waste rules to it.

That process of study has already stretched over more than 30 years. Under the Obama administration, closure was finally in sight; in 2009, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she would complete regulation of coal ash that year. It turns out that the industry’s clout is undiminished, and the revised Obama plan is to punt until after the election. In January a coalition of environmental groups announced plans to sue EPA to force regulation of ash disposal.

Industry’s grumbling about regulatory costs has taken two forms. One is the claim of job losses: regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste, according to an industry-sponsored report, would eliminate more than 300,000 jobs a year. I re-examined their report and found it to be close to a complete fabrication; using standard methods of economic analysis, regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste would cause a net annual gain of 28,000 jobs.

A more exotic claim is that the stigma created by regulation of coal ash disposal would destroy the market for ash reuse. More than one-third of coal ash is recycled, often used in construction materials such as concrete, cement, and wallboard. Although EPA’s proposed rules explicitly exempt ash recycling, the industry claims that regulation of ash disposal as hazardous waste would stigmatize all uses of ash, including recycling.

If coal ash disposal bears a regulatory stigma, is it deserved? Nuclear waste is stigmatized as dangerous, which is a huge setback for any plans you might have to bury it in your backyard. No one, however, would count the lost income from your inability to open a backyard nuclear waste dump as a cost of regulation. Nor would we count the loss of income if sales dropped for a different product that was mistakenly stigmatized as nuclear waste. The latter is exactly parallel to the purported stigma effect on coal ash reuse.

Liz Stanton and I critiqued the stigma theory in testimony on ash disposal rules in 2010. At the time, the idea seemed purely hypothetical. Now the industry alleges that regulatory uncertainty and “toxic” publicity are already driving down recycling; after soaring under the previous administration, the ash recycling rate stalled in 2008-2009 and declined in 2010.

The industry has missed the obvious explanation for these trends. Coal ash is created by electricity generation; ash reuse often occurs in construction. In the economic boom before 2008, construction grew more rapidly than electricity generation, so markets for ash reuse expanded relative to the supply. In the crash after 2008, the reverse was true: construction declined more steeply than electricity generation, so reuse markets shrank relative to ash supply.

Is regulation too expensive because it calls hazardous materials hazardous, and clueless customers could accidentally extend the resulting stigma to other products? In rational debate in ordinary times, this notion would be greeted with derisive laughter, at best. Yet in a year when leading presidential candidates discuss statehood for a non-existent future moon colony, or plans to make immigrants engage in voluntary self-deportation, it’s hard to know what will count as serious.

The current administration’s environmental policies have frequently been a disappointment, but the choice in the November elections seems sure to be between disappointment and disaster.

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Coal in your stocking: Guide details North American coal-burning emissions.

It’s that time of year when people compile Top 10 lists—10 best of this, 10 worst of that, 10 best funny cat videos, 10 worst campaign ads (which presupposes the questionable assumption that there are any good campaign ads).

Just in time for the coffee table book season, the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation has published an online volume (Spanish and French versions also available) detailing the air emissions of some 3,000 power plants in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—the three parties to the NAFTA trade deal that has a lesser-known environmental side agreement that spawned the commission.

The document, which details top 10 lists for power plants in each of the three countries, is a treasure trove for pollution voyeurism, although the data is of 2005 vintage, the most recent year the commission could pull together information from across the continent. Being parochial, we’ll let our Canadian and Mexican readers explore the emissions profiles of their countries’ champion power plants. Here in the U.S., the winners, all of them coal-fired, are:

Carbon dioxide – Top spot belongs to the mammoth Scherer facility near Macon, Ga., a 3,520-megawatt plant owned by a group of Southeastern utilities. Scherer emitted more than 23.4 million tons of CO2 in ’05. Going full blast, Scherer burns nearly 1,300 tons of coal per hour. But Scherer’s CO2 emissions rate—tons per megawatt-hour—was not the highest. Within the top 10 for CO2, that honor goes to Westar Energy’s 1,857-megawatt Jeffrey Energy Center, a plant burning Powder River Basin coal north of Topeka, Kansas, that powered out 1,086 kilograms of CO2 per megawatt-hour.

Mercury – The top emitter was Luminant’s 1,880-megawatt Monticello plant in northeast Texas, which burns mostly lignite, a low-grade coal variety, but also throws some higher quality Powder River Basin coal into the mix. A total of 977 kilograms of mercury went out Monticello’s stacks in ’05.

Sulfur dioxide – Georgia Power’s 3,500-megawatt Bowen plant, north of Atlanta, released more than 169,000 tons of SO2, an acid precipitation and particulate precursor, back in 2005. Scrubbers went operational at Bowen three years later with the goal of knocking SO2 emissions down by 95 percent, so the commission’s numbers don’t reflect the better news coming out of Bowen.

Nitrogen oxides – The 2,040-megawatt Four Corners coal plant, located on Navajo land in northwestern New Mexico and owned by a consortium of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas utilities, released 37,870 tons of NOx, another acid precipitation and particulate precursor. Four Corners is the focus of a legal battle over its emissions; a coalition of tribal and environmental organizations filed suit two months ago under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review provision to force plant owners to install NOx controls.

There’s more data for numbers junkies to trawl through in an interactive database here. Meanwhile, I’m going Christmas shopping. Don’t think I’ll be buying any books about coal for the kids’ stockings, however.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/dirtiest-coal-plants-1211#ixzz1gUEWOpAU

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Remember way back, uh, two days ago when I wrote a post arguing that new EPA rules will not threaten electric system reliability? Well, just in the last day or so, more evidence has emerged to support that position. I enjoy being right, so I’m doing a follow-up post. Hopefully this will not be a daily thing.

First, as Inside EPA reports, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a trade group for investor-owned utilities, has done its own internal study on coal-plant shutdowns. Now, you have to keep in mind that EEI and other industry groups have, in public anyway, been making hysterical predictions about a huge wave of immediate plant shutdowns that will cast whole regions of the country into darkness. So what do they find when they study the matter internally?

• There will be far fewer shutdowns than industry shills are predicting — around 321 plants, or 48,000 megwatts’ worth (roughly 14 percent of current coal capacity, or 5 percent of total generation capacity).
• The shutdowns will take place over a much longer period of time than industry shills are predicting — over a decade rather than in the next two or three years.
• Most of the closures are happening for other reasons, unrelated to EPA rules — the plants are old, they’re uneconomic to run, they’re getting beat by cheap gas.

So the fear mongering of right-wingers and industry PR flacks is belied by the industry’s own estimates. For lots more on this, I recommend John Hanger’s blog posts here and here.

Second, the Dept. of Energy (DOE) has just released its own in-depth study [PDF] on the reliability question. It’s interesting because DOE deliberately analyzed a worst-case scenario, a “Stringent Test Case” that the agency acknowledges is more severe than what’s actually anticipated when the rules are implemented.

Even using that extreme case, DOE found that “the overall supply-demand balance for electric power in each region examined would be adequate,” and furthermore, that “mechanisms exist to address such reliability concerns or other extenuating circumstances on a plant-specific or more local basis.” This is more or less what other analysts have found as well.

In short, there’s a growing — at this point overwhelming — body of evidence that it is perfectly possible to shut down the nation’s dirtiest coal plants and still keep the lights on. This won’t stop industry shills from fear mongering, but it should fortify the spines of wishy-washy moderates in Congress.

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(Image: Flickr/pawpaw67)

 

Constellation Energy Group Inc. spent $885 million cleaning up pollution from its coal-fired power plant in Baltimore. Now it’s urging the White House to reject pleas from competitors that they can’t do the same before a 2015 deadline.

Constellation’s Brandon Shores spewed the most hazardous materials from its smokestacks of any U.S. power plant in 2008. Forced to act by a state law, the company reduced the emissions by more than 90 percent by 2010.

It designed and built a combination of chemical scrubbers and fabric filters in less than three years. That’s the deadline in a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that’s now awaiting approval by the White House. While rivals such as American Electric Power Co. are lobbying for a delay, Constellation is urging President Barack Obama to stick to the EPA’s plans.

“Long timelines are the enemy of good results,” Paul Allen, chief environmental officer of the Baltimore-based company, told reporters Nov. 21. “It’s better to turn all of your energy to it, galvanize the workforce and get it over with.”

The divide in the electric industry contrasts with almost- unanimous opposition to other proposed regulations, such as standards for smog-producing ozone that Obama ended up scrapping in September. The split should make it easier politically for the White House to stand by the EPA’s proposal, according to Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group in Washington.

Southern Seeks Delay

Allen said he cited Brandon Shores as an example in a meeting with officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget on Nov. 17. “We are unapologetic that we would like to see a level playing field,” he said.

The so-called air toxics rule, which would mandate that coal-fired plants cut emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, would cost $11 billion in 2015, according to the EPA, making it one of the most expensive regulations weighed by the Obama administration. It’s scheduled to be issued in two weeks.

The EPA says that cutting those pollutants would save lives and create 9,000 more jobs than would be lost, as power producers install pollution-scrubbing systems or build new plants.

American Electric and Southern Co., the two biggest U.S. producers of electricity from coal, are pushing the administration to put off the new regulations or delay their deadline for implementation. Those companies say the EPA’s proposed deadline can’t be met.

‘Just Not Achievable’

“Three years is absolutely inadequate — at least six years are needed to comply,” Anthony Topazi, chief operating officer of Atlanta-based Southern, said in testimony to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 30. “We cannot err on the side of putting the reliability of the system at risk.”

American Electric, based in Columbus, Ohio, said in June that if a series of proposed EPA rules go forward it would close parts or all of 11 power plants, eliminating as many as 600 jobs.

“The timetable does not make sense,” Nick Akins, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview Nov. 2. “It’s just not achievable.”

Applying for Time

American Electric estimates that installing a required pollution scrubber and waste-water equipment can cost $520 million to $640 million for an 800-megawatt plant. That’s in line with the $885 million Constellation spent on Brandon Shores, a plant that can generate 1,300 megawatts, enough to power more than 1 million typical homes, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Constellation, which sells power in competitive markets, can move faster than largely regulated utilities such as American Electric, which must get approval from state regulators before taking on costly new capital projects, according to Melissa McHenry, an American Electric spokeswoman.

The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the EPA’s proposal and may change it. The EPA would let power producers apply for more time if they try and fail to meet the 2015 deadline, according to people familiar with its proposal. That stops short of the across-the-board delay sought by some power companies.

Constellation’s support for the EPA’s regulation and deadlines is backed by Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. producer of nuclear power, which has bid to purchase Constellation for about $7.9 billion in stock. Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., which spent $1.3 billion since 2007 to clean up two coal- fired New Jersey power plants, also opposes putting off the deadline.

Community Utilities

Among those lobbying for a delay are the nation’s community and state-owned utilities, which together have 200 coal-fired plants. They say they will need 77 months, or more than six years, to plan for upgrades, convene public meetings, obtain financing and build the control technologies.

“The sheer scale of the efforts will be enormous,” Mark Crisson, president of the American Public Power Association in Washington, representing such utilities, wrote in a letter to the budget office on Nov. 16.

A tight deadline for plants nationwide to install equipment such as scrubbers may create a shortage of the pollution-control devices and skilled workers, Southern’s Topazi said.

In Baltimore, Heather Lentz, Brandon Shores’ general supervisor, stood on the roof above the rumbling steam generators and pointed to a collection of buildings, on what had been an open field, where the plant’s emissions are cleaned.

Clouds of Steam

Exhaust from the 3,000-degree boilers had shot straight up a smokestack when the plant was built in 1984. It now goes through a structure called a baghouse to pull out the largest particles, and then a catalytic reducer to capture nitrogen oxide. After that it’s blown into the scrubber, where much of the remaining sulfur dioxide is removed by limestone-spiked water.

Billowing clouds of steam rise from the new smokestack. Fly ash, most of which is recycled into concrete, is pulled from the bottom.

In 2008, when the plant’s renovation was under way, it generated 18.6 million pounds of hazardous air pollution, making it the most polluting plant in the country, according to EPA data. By last year that had fallen to 1.6 million pounds, and the complex dropped to 41st of more than 500 plants nationwide.

Constellation says it met the state of Maryland’s pollution-control deadline of Jan. 1, 2010, without a hiccup in delivering electricity.

“It’s entirely possible to comply with these rules and remain a profitable company,” Allen said.

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2011 has been a big year for cleaner air in the Midwest, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken several long-overdue steps.

In October, the EPA finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, a Clean Air Act standard designed to prevent pollution from power plants in one state from crossing borders and harming health and air quality in downwind states. The result will protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness.

This December, EPA will put in place Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a second important effort to protect Midwesterners and all Americans from toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases from power plant smokestacks. While mercury is a neurotoxin that especially hurts women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, the other toxic metals can cause cancer.

Taken together, MATS and the Cross-State Rule launch the next phase in the Clean Air Act’s 40-year record of creating a healthier, more prosperous nation.

These changes also will boost our economy. When the EPA rolls out the mercury rule in December, it will end more than two decades of delay and uncertainty utilities have faced since Congress directed the agency to set standards reducing toxic air emissions. Today, 44 percent of coal-powered plants don’t use modern pollution control technology.

The EPA’s rules will level the playing field for plants that have already installed or are planning to invest in air pollution controls to meet the updated clean air safeguards, thus closing a competitive gap and strengthening the market for cleaner electricity production.

EPA’s analysis shows that new jobs will be created as more power plants install modern pollution-control equipment. That technology — often designed and produced by American companies — will need to be installed, operated and maintained by American builders, workers and engineers. The EPA estimates that the power plant mercury and toxics standards will support 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

Beginning in 2012, the EPA will expand the Cross State Rule’s proven air-quality standards to Kansas and help our downwind neighbors better control pollution emitted by power companies in our area.

Farther east, utilities have been working toward the emission reductions goals envisioned in the rule by installing pollution-control equipment to meet previous market regulatory programs. Those efforts proved the technology and market do work.

Utilities serving more than 2 million Kansans have sued to block the EPA’s Cross-State rule. The utilities asked the EPA to retract our new rules before Jan. 1. If not, the power companies have threatened brownouts, rolling blackouts and targeted service interruptions to big industries.

Kansans also should know that in the EPA’s 40-year history, there have been no instances in which the Clean Air Act has contributed to electric grid reliability problems, and should any arise, the Clean Air Act gives us the tools to address them on a case-by-case basis.

EPA’s analysis and studies by other utility groups have indicated that it will be largely the oldest, dirtiest plans that shut down because they would no longer make economic sense to continue operations. Our analysis shows there is adequate power-generating capacity remaining.

For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act’s common-sense pollution controls have made our families healthier by promoting economic competition and innovation. With two important updates to the Clean Air Act in 2011, we are working to write the next chapter in that history of success.

By doing that, the EPA’s clean air work helps meet this generation’s responsibility to leave our kids a world as healthy and full of opportunity as the one we inherited from our parents.

Karl Brooks is administrator for the U.S. EPA’s Region 7 which includes Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and nine tribal nations.

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Release Date: 11/15/2011
Contact Information: EPA Press Office, press@epa.gov, 202-564-6794

As prepared for delivery.

Hello and thank you for having me here today. For an EPA Administrator, coming to Wisconsin is like coming back to the source of everything we do. It was the leadership of Gaylord Nelson and the people who supported him in this state that took a burgeoning environmental movement and translated it in the first Earth Day in 1970. And that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency – as well as many other changes. After the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act were all passed in quick succession.

That was amazing progress in a short amount of time. The Civil Rights movement had been a high-profile movement for almost two decades. The anti-war movement had also been going for years and would continue for many more years. By contrast, the modern environmental movement went from its Inauguration in the first Earth Day to a sweeping set of new environmental protections in about six years.

People were energized at an unprecedented level. The teach-in that Gaylord Nelson proposed in 1969 resulted in 20 million people – one on every 10 Americans in those days – standing up for their health and their environment. My staff and I have been at this for almost three years and I just recently passed 13,000 Facebook fans – and I think that’s pretty good.

That rapid pace of progress speaks to something that we need to remember today, and that I will talk about later: which is that environmental and health threats are unambiguous, nonpartisan concerns. They affect us whether we live in a red state or a blue state. Contrary to more divisive issues, people of all backgrounds want swift action when they see these threats in their communities. This movement got started when it became clear that the forces of the market were not going to be enough to stop Los Angeles from becoming the smog capital of the world, or prevent situations like the Santa Barbara oil spill and burning pollution the Cuyahoga River Fire.

The American people demanded a new mechanism for preventing pollution. The EPA was created and a suite of environmental laws was passed so that government could set and enforce standards. That was a bipartisan effort. The EPA was created by Richard Nixon – as everyone knows, a Republican. Its first Administrator was a Republican, and many of the great advances that have happened over the years have happened with bipartisan support.

When I came into this job in 2009, my ambition was – in the face of a new generation of environmental challenges – to facilitate advances like what we saw in the early 1970s. And to do so with the same kind of bipartisan support. I’m proud to be part of an EPA that has mobilized science and the law to create modern and innovative protections for the health of the American people. I’m also proud to be working for a president who has said that “we can’t wait” on these issues.

We came into office during a historic economic crisis. It would have been easy to tell the EPA to sit and wait. But President Obama knows that the choice between our economy and our environment is a false choice – and he directed us to hit the ground running.

One of our earliest steps was to resume work on the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. This is the first administration to officially recognize that greenhouse gases pose a threat to our health and welfare, and to take action under the Clean Air Act to address that threat. We also took swift steps to institute national fuel economy standards that save drivers money and cut carbon pollution. President Obama called that “the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” It has also given clarity to the American auto industry, which can invest in the innovations – and workers – to build the most fuel-efficient vehicles in our history. Last year both Chrysler and General Motors announced plans to hire 1,000 workers – each – to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

We’ve also taken long overdue steps to limit mercury pollution from power plants; invested in water infrastructure and community cleanups; we’ve taken steps to support innovative products like biofuels that Great Lakes Bioenergy is working on, or the cutting edge water technology being developed not far from here in Milwaukee; and we’ve instituted historic efforts to protect America’s waters. That includes setting a new standard for care in the Great Lakes and ensuring a strong future for those vital waters.

Unfortunately, many of these advances, as well as many of our fundamental environmental protections, are under threat. Since the beginning of this year, Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has orchestrated 170 votes against environmental protection. That is almost a vote for every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation’s environmental laws. Much of this has happened in response to myths and misleading information.

One example is an assertion made by lobbying and industry groups that the EPA is putting forward a “train wreck” of regulations that will hobble our economy. That claim has been repeated in major news outlets and on the floor of Congress. In fact, one of the bills restricting clean air protections was named “The TRAIN Act.” The claim is founded on an American Legislative Executive Council report that details regulations the EPA never actually proposed.

You may have heard that EPA intends to triple its budget and add 230,000 new regulators to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sources like cows and backyard grills. In truth, we put forward a “Tailoring Rule” months ago – a commonsense plan to tailor greenhouse standards to exempt small sources, like local businesses, from regulations. A massive expansion was never a possibility – and the people citing the 230,000 figure know it. That number comes from an administration document explaining why the Tailoring Rule is necessary.

To be fair to my colleagues in Washington, they’re not getting a whole lot of help. Some of you may have seen not long ago a Wall St. Journal op-ed, written by a long-time climate denier who performed a comprehensive study on the data he cast doubt on. After years of denial and skepticism, he looked at the data. His conclusion was, and I quote, “Global warming is real.” Contrary to the “climategate” scandal over emails from a handful of researchers – which was covered often on major news networks – the conversion of a key climate-denier, and the affirmation of the science got most of its attention in a short segment on The Daily Show.

You begin to see why we are witnessing an unprecedented effort to rollback the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and our nation’s waste-disposal laws; to see why, less than three years after a coal ash spill that covered 300 acres of Tennessee country the House majority passed legislation preventing EPA from regulating coal ash. You see why, less than two years after the Deepwater Horizon BP spill, the best idea industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute have for creating jobs is to de-regulate drilling. And you see how, after the second-hottest summer on record, followed by a foot of late-October snow on the East Coast and the reversal of a leading climate skeptic, people are still working to stop the EPA from taking vital steps to cut carbon pollution.

We all remember “too big to fail”; this pseudo jobs plan to protect polluters might well be called “too dirty to fail.” How we respond will mean the difference between sickness and health — in some cases, life and death — for hundreds of thousands of people. That is not hyperbole. Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects brain development in unborn children and young people. Lead has similar effects. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds contribute to the ozone alert days when seniors, asthmatics and people with respiratory problems are at serious risk if they do nothing more dangerous than step outside and breathe the air.

“Too dirty to fail” puts our nation into what President Obama calls a “race to the bottom” for the weakest health protections and the most loopholes in our environmental policies. For those of you born after 1970, it would be the first time in your lives that the health and environmental protections you grew up with are not steadily improved, but deliberately weakened. The result will be more asthma, more respiratory illness and more premature deaths. What there won’t be is any clear path to new jobs.

We have seen 200 percent growth in our GDP over the 40 years of EPA’s existence. After all that time and all that growth, it is clear that we can have a clean environment and a growing economy. No credible economist links our current economic crisis – or any economic crisis – to clean-air and clean-water standards. Just last week, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrated that when ozone in the air was reduced by 10 parts per billion, outdoor farm workers increased their productivity by 4.2 percent. That kind of reduction nationwide could mean $1.1 billion in economic benefits for the agricultural sector of our economy.

A story in the Washington Post yesterday quoted economists who said that the effect of government regulations on jobs is minimal. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that is collected from business executives, only 0.3 percent of layoffs in 2010 were because of “government regulations/intervention.” That story even quoted the chief executive of American Electric Power Co – one of the largest coal-based utilities in the nation – saying that when regulations require pollution control technology, AEP has to hire plumbers, electricians and others. His words were, “Jobs are created in the process – no question about that.” An AEP plant in Conesville, Ohio employed 1,000 temporary workers installing pollution controls, and created 40 permanent jobs to operate and maintain that technology.

As for the notion that eliminating regulation equals a plan for job creation, a former economist from the Reagan White House recently said of that idea – and I quote – “It’s just nonsense. It’s just made up.” A strategy to grow our economy by simply doing less is not sufficient to the challenges we face. President Obama has directed federal agencies to review regulations to eliminate unnecessary burdens for businesses and ensure that vital health protections remain intact. But that is not the beginning and end of our plan. The President also sent the American Jobs Act to congress, proposing investments in teachers and first responders. That bill also contains provisions for an Infrastructure Bank that would put $10 billion into transportation, energy and water infrastructure – creating jobs that strengthen the foundations of our economy.

We also know that smart regulations can lead to new jobs. As the CEO of AEP indicated in the Washington Post, we can put Americans to work retrofitting outdated, dirty plants with updated pollution control technology. There are about 1,100 coal-fired units across the country, and more than 40 percent do not use pollution controls to limit emissions. The nation’s first-ever standards for mercury and other pollutants from power plants – that EPA will finalize no later than December 16 – are estimated to create 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term jobs through modernizing power plants. Those jobs come with health benefits estimated as high as $140 billion per year by 2016.

Looking back 20 years after the first Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson wrote in a letter to The Wilderness Society that, quote, “The purpose of Earth Day was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and, finally, force this issue permanently into the political arena.”

Today we need that same nationwide concern mobilized to pull these issues out of the political gridlock of the day. We saw a glimmer of hope last week when the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to stop EPA from implementing a rule that will protect more than 200 million Americans. They affirmed that protecting health is nonpartisan – something that unites us across our divisions.

But there are still two visions competing right now for the future of our environment and our economy. One says that we can rely on science, the law and innovation to protect our health and the environment and grow a clean, sustainable economy. The alternative vision says that moving forward requires rolling back standards for clean air and clean water. It says we have to increase protection for big polluters while reducing safeguards for the rest of us.

After 40 years of progress, the American people still believe in the first vision. A majority of Americans believe the economic and health benefits of clean air rules outweigh costs. More than half of Republican voters recently said they oppose a Congressional proposal to stop the EPA from enacting new limits on air pollution from power plants. More than three-quarters of Americans support new EPA standards for mercury and air toxics.

Just like back in 1970, we need your help. Students, parents, educators and young people have always driven the environmental movement. You can once again answer those who claim that our success is served by eliminating longstanding health protections and turning our future over to big polluters. It is time to stop politicizing our air and water and put an end to “Too Dirty to Fail.” We are going to continue to count on talented, dedicated people from places like this University to be part of that effort. Thank you very much.

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For Republicans, the EPA ranks up there with the IRS as one of the most-reviled agencies in Washington, calling it a ‘jobs killer.’ The record of the Obama EPA, though, is more nuanced.

Newt Gingrich and Michele Bach­mann want to abolish it. Rick Perry vows that he would declare a moratorium on all its activities the moment he becomes president. Herman Cain wants it replaced by an independent commission.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), clearly, is not on many Republicans’ Christmas card list. In their debates and in speeches, the GOP presidential candidates have crystallized conservatives’ charge against the agency: Its regulations kill jobs.

Under a Democratic president – and at a time of economic turbulence – the EPA faces harsh criticism from the political right for being heavy-handed. But unraveling its actual impact on the economy suggests that its influence is more nuanced, according to several economic analyses.

To be sure, President Obama’s EPA has undertaken several key environmental initiatives, such as ozone and greenhouse-gas regulation. But attempts to paint these new rules as economic game changers often overstate their importance, say several independent economists.

“There’s certainly a lot of use of this phrase that ‘new environmental regulations are job killers’ or the flip side: We can ‘grow the economy by focusing on green jobs,’ ” says Wayne Gray, an economist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “But either perspective misses the scale of the cost of environmental regulations, which just are not a very large scale of costs for most in the economy.”

Among the moves by the Obama EPA that businesses say are most damaging:

•It proposed in January 2010 to tighten standards for smog-forming ozone, though Mr. Obamabacked off on Sept. 3, bowing to the “importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” The proposal could be reimplemented in 2013 if Obama is reelected.

•It is expected to unveil next month a “toxics rule” under the Clean Air Act that would require power plant operators to filter out mercury and other pollutants.

•Its studies found that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health, meaning that it must regulate them, according to a US Supreme Court ruling.

•It revised a rule put in place by the George W. Bush EPA but overturned by the courts that reduces permissible smokestack emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in Eastern states. The rules are scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2012.

Scores of power plants and as many as 1.6 million jobs would be lost between 2012 and 2020 if the EPA proceeds with air- and water-quality regulations, according to a recent study by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

“In the area of energy, EPA has been very, very aggressive, much of this based on their global-warming campaign, and the effect is troubling on the energy sector,” says Diane Katz, a research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation. “If coal plants are closing down because they can’t meet standards EPA is setting, well, those are jobs lost.”

That could be true, some economists say. But others say that industry-paid studies (as is the one cited above) often include questionable assumptions and economic models not validated by broad peer review. They also note that jobs could also be created, not just destroyed, by regulation. The EPA’s rules are required to undergo a transparent cost-benefit analysis that is peer reviewed by others. But business groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, say the EPA analysis is flawed.

An economic analysis of the “toxics rule” by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that studies policy effects on low- and middle-income workers, suggests that it “would have a modest positive net impact on overall employment, likely leading to the creation of 28,000 to 158,000 jobs between now and 2015.”

A February report by University of Massachusettseconomists came to similar conclusions. Investments driven by the EPA’s new air-quality rules on ozone and toxics “will create nearly 1.5 million jobs, or nearly 300,000 jobs a year on average, over the next five years.”

Some business executives acknowledge that regulations can spur hiring. “We have to hire plumbers, electricians, painters, folks who do that kind of work when you retrofit a plant. Jobs are created in the process – no question about that,” Mike Morris, chief executive officer of American Electric Power, recently told The Washington Post.

But most business leaders reject the notion that EPA regulations have benefits. John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, said that “establishing these new ozone standards would be tantamount to putting ‘not open for business’ signs in counties across the country at precisely the wrong moment, when unemployment is high and on the rise.”

Republicans in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives agree, seeking to undo the actions of the Obama EPA. Since 2010, the House has weighed 17 measures to reduce or restrict environmental controls, approving 10, according to the League of Conservation Voters.

Most will have no effect because the Senate won’t pass them. But the trend shows Republican fervor. In the Senate on Nov. 10, a resolution to roll back the EPA’s smokestack emissions regulations failed, 41 to 56. Its sponsor was Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, whose state produces a lot of coal. The EPA, he argued, was issuing “radical, extremist regulations” that kill jobs.

Many economists reject such language as overstatement. Though environmental regulation has become more stringent, US manufacturers have faced only a moderate increase in their spending on pollution controls, says Dr. Gray of Clark University. Those costs, for instance, have risen from roughly 0.3 percent of total manufacturing shipments in 1973 to 0.4 percent in 2005.

Some highly polluting and highly regulated industries do face higher pollution-control costs. But even oil refining spent only about 1 percent of its shipments to comply with environmental regulations in 2005, Gray explains.

The numbers aren’t big enough to cause serious economic hardship. “The idea that environmental regulations would wipe out an industry or have a serious impact is implausible,” Gray says. “Early estimates of cleanup costs are invariably wildly overstated.”

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Publications and Reports

Public Support for Climate & Energy Policies in November 2011

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Scott Allegrucci, a founding board member and executive director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy (GPACE), will become the Beyond Coal Senior Campaign Representative covering Missouri, Nebraska as well as Kansas, bringing regional coordination and focus to the push for clean energy choices.

“While Scott’s role in Kansas will necessarily change, we’re very excited that his new assignment with Sierra Club can bring regional leverage to our state efforts,” said Kim Hanson, GPACE Board Chair. “Regional advocacy makes sense since coal plant pollution and electrical power distribution don’t stop at state lines. Kansas will benefit from Scott’s move because our state is very rich in cleaner and renewable energy sources.”

The Beyond Coal Campaign is the Sierra Club’s national effort to clean the air, end the coal era, and accelerate the transition to cleaner, cost-effective energy sources. Started as a three-person campaign in 2002, the Beyond Coal campaign has quickly grown into a powerhouse effort that is changing the way America produces energy.

“The GPACE mission to support a clean, secure, prosperous energy economy benefiting Kansas and all future Kansans can be advanced by a collaborative regional effort,” Allegrucci said. “With regional strategy and organization, we’ll be better able to advocate for Kansas actions that can enable clean energy, create new jobs and jump-start the American economy.”

Allegrucci said the achievements of GPACE prove that Kansans are ready to capitalize on the state’s native energy resources to create more higher-paying jobs; a resilient economy; and a healthy environment for our children and grandchildren.

“The stage is set because Kansas has a surplus of cleaner and renewable electricity fuel sources,” Allegrucci said. “The region will benefit if the kind of progress and cooperation GPACE and Sierra Club have realized in Kansas can be coordinated with similar efforts in Missouri and Nebraska.”

Allegrucci led GPACE in the successful 2008 and 2009 Kansas legislative fights that stopped Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association’s proposal to add two, huge coal-burning plants at Sunflower Electric’s Holcomb Station.

He also led GPACE’s efforts against the Tri-State and Sunflower 2010 proposal to add one plant at Holcomb. A permit was granted, but the matter was tainted by reports of political pressure and collusion between Kansas regulators and Sunflower Electric representatives. Sierra Club and Earthjustice have mounted legal challenges to the proposed expansion and to the permit granted by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

“Coal-burning power plants are the single largest source of global warming, mercury pollution and asthma attacks in children and adults,” Allegrucci said. “It’s a public health and economic issue that must be addressed on a regional and national basis as well as within individual states.”

Hanson said Allegrucci’s move is logical because GPACE and the Sierra Club have fought side by side on a number of activities in Kansas during this period.

“Sierra Club’s growing national capacity and Scott’s experience building effective partnerships on the ground mean GPACE’s mission and objectives will continue to be well served,” Hanson said.

Among the major supporters of the Beyond Coal campaign is Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has committed $50 million to the campaign.

“I can’t imagine a more effective way for Sierra Club to use some of the Bloomberg money in Kansas than to engage Scott Allegrucci on a regional basis,” said GPACE Board Member Dan Nagengast.

Under the guidance of its Board of Directors, GPACE remains engaged with national, regional, and state partners regarding efforts to fund and coordinate clean energy and clean air advocacy not only in Kansas, but also in the Great Plains region, particularly the Southwest Power Pool and EPA Region 7.  Strategic planning is under way, Allegrucci said.

Hanson added: “We expect to know in early 2012 the full impact that regional efforts, led by Scott, will have in Kansas. At that point we’ll determine what level of resources and staffing GPACE requires in order to continue to be effective in our state.”

Allegrucci begins his work with the Beyond Coal Campaign November 28^th.  His work as a Senior Campaign Representative will cover the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.

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But Companies Have Ample Cash Reserves to Cushion Reductions

Download complete list of ACCCE companies’ cash reserves (.xls)

By December 16 the Environmental Protection Agency will promulgate its final rule requiring coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions of mercury, arsenic, acid gases, and other toxic chemicals. The EPA notes that these safeguards will reduce premature deaths by 17,000 people annually as well as prevent 12,000 hospital visits and 120,000 cases of aggravated asthma. The economic benefits could outweigh the costs by up to $14-to-$1.

Yet a concerted cadre of big dirty utilities and coal companies are doing everything in their power to scuttle or delay these essential safeguards 21 years after the Clean Air Act required them.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, or ACCCE, is a coal industry coalition leading the charge to block the mercury and air toxics reduction rules. These efforts includespending $35 million on misleading television ads. Its members include major utilities such as Southern Company and DTE Energy. Huge coal companies are also major ACCCE supporters, including Arch Coal and Peabody. Other members include railroads that haul coal.

ACCCE is a vocal opponent of the air toxics rule for utilities. They even have a “countdown clock” for the days until the safeguards are issued. Its members are primarily concerned that the air toxics rule “is the most expensive rule the EPA has ever written for coal-fueled power plants.”

But this claim ignores the fact that the 22 ACCCE companies have nearly $18 billion in cash reserves, which should substantially ease their ability to withstand any economic impact of cleanup.

A Federal Reserve report released this month documented the massive cash reserves held by American corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Corporations have a higher share of cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly half a century, as businesses build up buffers rather than invest in new plants or hiring.

The ACCCE companies are part of this cash-rich phenomenon. An analysis of the ACCCE member companies’ 10K forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission determined that they had $17.8 billion in “cash and cash equivalents” on hand at the end of the last reporting period on September 30, 2011. (Two companies’ last reports were from earlier dates.)

The nine ACCCE utilities that would have to reduce their emission of mercury, arsenic, and other cancer-causing pollutants have combined cash reserves of nearly $7 billion. The cash reserves of these nine companies is not much less than the $11 billion that the EPA estimates that all coal-fired power plants will spend to meet these new pollution-reduction standards. Seven of these companies are just a small portion of the 220 investor-owned utilities that produce nearly three-quarters of America’s electricity. The other two companies are cooperatives.

Companies hold cash for various purposes. But whatever the reason these companies hold large reserves, they strongly suggest that the utilities possess ample financial resources available to invest in pollution-reduction equipment essential to protect public health.

And investing cash in pollution control will create jobs. An analysis by the University of Massachusetts determined that the air toxics utility rule combined with reductions of acid rain and smog pollutants from power plants under the cross-state air pollution rule would create 1.5 million jobs over five years.

Coal producers and railroads, too, are sitting on mountains of cash reserves to cushion any dip in coal consumption as some utilities rely more on cleaner fuels after the mercury rules take effect. Our analysis found that the ACCCE companies in these industries held a total of $5.4 billion and $5 billion in cash reserves, respectively. These resources are from seven coal companies and four railroads.

Coal-fired power plants are one of the largest sources of uncontrolled harmful air pollution in the United States. The EPA determined that:

Power plants are the largest source of several harmful pollutants. They are responsible for 50 percent of mercury emissions, over 50 percent of acid gas emissions, and about 25 percent of toxic metal emissions in the United States.

Yet ACCCE’s member companies want to continue jeopardizing the public’s health with this unfettered pollution. They have ample cash reserves to easily withstand any economic impact of pollution reductions. ACCCE and its companies are furiously pressuring Congress to block or delay the air toxics reduction rules. Congress must ignore their pleadings and allow these long-overdue health protections to take effect next month.

Download complete list of ACCCE companies’ cash reserves (.xls)

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy and Matthew Kasper is an Energy intern at American Progress.

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