Substance of CAP Panel Event

The report does not bring any new material to light. These are some of the same claims self-interested parts of the power sector have been making for some time. The power companies supporting the report 's findings gain directly from increasing the price of electricity for all consumers - regardless of how tenuous the benefits.

As former Administrator Browner flatly admitted, the importance of the rule is in addressing disputes among competitors in the power sector. Of course, that is not the purpose of the Clean Air Act and any rule based upon such a policy outcome would be illegal. Further, this supposed inequity argument does not take into account the billions spent in environmental compliance by the power sector already in all parts of the United States, and the substantial improvements in air quality already achieved.

New CAP Study on Utilities Already Implementing EPA 's Rule

The makers of air pollution control devices for mercury will not guarantee the types of reductions that the report's authors support. That said, coal-fired utilities have always maintained that they are willing to work with the Agency on sensible mercury controls.

The benefits associated with alleged mercury reductions in the proposed rule are tiny in comparison to costs. The EPA admits the rule is one of the most expensive ever - at least $11 billion - of which the American public can expect as little as a one-time benefit of $500,000, for a return of one dollar of mercury benefit for every $22,000 invested.

The number of power plants that are currently meeting the combination of all standards proposed is insufficient to prove the rule really works in practice - which is what the Clean Air Act requires. Indeed, when you place the utility MACT rule on top of all the other proposed requirements like ash, cooling towers, and transport rules, no coal-fired facility would be in compliance. That accounts for half of US electricity, meaning the EPA is jeopardizing millions of industrial jobs, and undermining the affordability of power at our schools, hospitals and small businesses. Despite claims to the contrary, such a result constitutes a frontal assault on reliability, as actual grid operators fear particularly in certain key areas of the United States.

Carol Browner's Return to the Spotlight

The event did feature former Administrator Carol Browner. One interesting point of note is that Browner led the Agency at the very time the initial mercury finding was made for the power sector. At that time, she noted that no additional public health benefits were likely to derive from controls on hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) other than mercury, such as acid gases. And yet, the current EPA proposal - without supplementing the administrative record - claims over its 98 percent of its benefits from non-mercury HAPs. This reflects a point we have raised all along - the current EPA is currently overestimating and double counting the benefits of the rule.

The Democrats' Letter

Today, EPA also received a letter from a hundred Democratic members of Congress in support of a speedy rule. This is despite the fact that the Agency has made material calculation errors in the proposal and hasn't even had enough time to analyze the data it requested at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. We think we know why. Less than ten percent of the signers of that letter represent constituents that depend on coal-fired power to run their homes, businesses, hospitals and schools. Of greater interest, therefore, may be the 26 Democrats - led by the longest serving Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee - that took notice of the rules expense and questioned the timing of the effort.