Fine particle contamination kills more people in Indiana or Illinois than in Massachusetts, and EPA's new and more protective ozone standard makes swaths of the Ohio Valley loom as ozone violation areas. Cutting edge forest research in the Southeast and Northeast has established that sulfate and nitrogen-related air pollution is likely leading to slow or zero growth in this important terrestrial system. And in the West, dirty uncontrolled coal plants, such as Southern California Edison's Mojave facility in Nevada, reduce visibility on the Colorado plateau and cause acid rain over the majestic Rocky Mountains. Finally, the magnitude of airborne mercury contamination of the Upper Great Lakes and Northwest water ecosystems has also been documented and publicized in recent years. Whichever air pollution issue we choose to examine, the heavy environmental footprint of big power system becomes more evident.
Policy needs to become better aligned with the ever-accelerating science.
The linkage is simple. Under the current Clean Air Act, older utility plants are allowed to pollute at emission levels 4 to 100 times the rate of levels that must be met by their new competitors. This state of affairs has obvious and perverse competitive consequences. Just at the moment when electricity markets are supposed to be opened up to robust competition from new technologies and new players, the incumbent players enjoy a formidable shield against new market entrants through historic entitlements allowing them to pollute at much higher rates. This price advantage is often the difference between viability and failure for cleaner technologies.