Climate Change / Global Warming & Investing Implications

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EPA balks at recommended mercury reduction technology

November 17, 2004: The Environmental Protection Agency is saying "thanks, but no thanks" to a mercury emissions technology -- activated carbon injection -- that it views as an ineffective tool to deliver major pollution cuts from coal-burning power plants. The agency's main objection is that the technology will not be available to all plants until 2010. The Bush administration's preferred air pollution proposal, the Clear Skies initiative, relies on a "cap-and-trade" program that requires power plants to reduce their mercury emissions by 70 percent by 2018.

Critics point out that the EPA's own projections, however, show that mercury emissions in the air will not be reduced by that amount under Clear Skies until some time after 2025, due to industry's ability to exceed the cap by drawing upon "banked" pollution credits. They also take issue with the fact that the EPA's own mercury advisory panel recommended the ACI technology, which could reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent, if widely applied. Unfortunately, the EPA disbanded that panel and has refused to analyze the more protective clean-up scenarios recommended by all members of the panel. However, the EPA's own mercury proposal used verbatim language crafted by utility industry lobbyists, according to news accounts.

"Too bad the EPA is pushing for the plan that preserves the greatest profits for industry[\b] instead of one that provides the greatest protections for the American people," said John Walke, senior attorney with NRDC's clean air program.

More than 630,000 infants are born in the United States every year with unsafe mercury levels in their blood, according to the EPA. The agency is expected to finalize its mercury reduction rule by March 15, 2005.

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/health.asp