Acid Rain Cuts Hold Important, Affordable Lessons For Global Warming

(13 Nov., 1997 ? Washington) The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today released More Clean Air for the Buck: Lessons from the Acid Rain Emissions Trading Program, a report detailing the unprecedented success, to date, of the Clean Air Act acid rain reduction program in cutting emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), a principal cause of acid rain. Highlighting the report is the finding that the program, which caps power plant SO2 emissions at reduced levels while permitting companies to trade any extra SO2 reductions they make, has resulted in about 1/3 more cuts in SO2 throughout the Eastern US than mandated by law.

The report also reveals that the highest-emitting plants in the Midwest have been foremost among those making the extra reductions. At the same time, the cost of the those cuts appears to be dramatically lower than predicted when Congress adopted the program in 1990. While analysts and industry put costs anywhere from $350 to $1,000 per ton, the price of extra reductions being traded actually ranges from $62 to $170 per ton.

“The market-based acid rain program has achieved dramatic and measurable clean-up faster and at a far lower cost than previous environmental programs,” said Dan Dudek, a senior EDF economist, and one of the acid rain control plan’s creators. “With governments meeting in December in Kyoto, Japan to strengthen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, this report demonstrates how a cap-and-trade system can help both our country and the rest of the world meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets, perhaps even ahead of schedule, at the lowest cost possible. Cap-and-trade programs reward industries that achieve early reductions with emissions credits which can be saved or sold. These incentives for companies to lower emissions quickly spur technologies and efficiencies that will strengthen the US economy while simultaneously improving our environment.”

“Once emitted, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap heat for a century or more, so early reductions are the key to stabilizing our planet’s climate, and keeping the impacts of uncontrolled climate change, like sea-level rise and coastal flooding, the spread of tropical diseases, and the loss of fragile ecosystems, in check,” said EDF atmospheric physicist Michael Oppenheimer. The administration’s stated intention to develop a greenhouse gas trading program along with an early reduction strategy gives the US a chance to repeat the success of the SO2 program in fighting climate change. In both cases, however, meaningful environmental objectives are a key to success.

“The acid rain cap-and-trade program is creating real environmental gains much more cheaply than ever before thought possible,” said EDF senior attorney Joseph Goffman, who co-authored the original proposal with Dudek. “The success of the SO2 program must spur Congress, the EPA, and the states to finish the job of cleaning up the other critical acid rain pollutant ? oxides of nitrogen (NOx)?and of cutting the pollution that keeps so many cities from reaching the health-based standard for ozone smog. There is simply no excuse now for ignoring the powerful cap-and-trade tool in tackling these urgent air quality problems.”