Sen. Carper trying again for clean air bill

Sen. Carper trying again for clean air bill

Sen. Tom Carper, R-Del., plans to reintroduce legislation to limit air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants despite criticism from health and environmental groups that such a bill would undercut current law.

Carper will offer a new version of his Clean Air Planning Act later this year, the senator's spokesman Bill Ghent. "We've seen criticism from liberal environmental and conservative utility groups," he said. "Being attacked by both extremes helps reinforce our view that we are developing good moderate public policy."

Ghent said Carper's new bill will have adjusted caps and schedules to reflect the passage of time since its first introduction in 2003, but he declined to say what other changes may be in store.

Carper's bill, S. 843 - offered as an alternative to the Bush administration's "Clear Skies" proposal - called for national caps on coal-fired generating emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and carbon dioxide and allowed generating units to trade emission credits to comply. Compared with Clear Skies, which set up an emissions cap-and-trade program to cut SO2, NOx and mercury emissions up to 70% by 2018, Carper's proposal offered shorter deadlines and steeper caps and also included CO2 limits.

Neither bill advanced last year in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose leadership opposed Carper's bill and could not break a 9-9 vote on Clear Skies.

Recent analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency "helped inform us what is possible and what is achievable and what is affordable," said Ghent. "I think we can develop a bill stronger than what the president put forward. [And] we're not going to accept a bill that doesn't have CO2 in it."

At the request of Carper and others, EPA conducted and released last October an analysis of the senator's bill along with the administration's Clear Skies proposal. According to the EPA analysis, Carper's bill could provide about $30 billion more in quantified health benefits in 2015 than the latest version of Clear Skies considered by the Senate committee. Clear Skies is pegged to cost industry, which would have to install pollution control equipment and buy emission allowances to comply with the new emission restrictions, $4 billion in 2015 compared with the $7.8 billion of Carper's bill.

Still, a coalition of environmental and public health groups asked Carper to refrain from reintroducing his multi-pollutant legislation. The American Lung Assn., the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said that such a bill stands to weaken the existing Clean Air Act and could be used by utility industry supporters to further undercut current law.

"Regardless of the political dynamic, we cannot support legislation that weakens existing air quality and public health protections, as is the case with your bill," the groups told Carper. "The bill also fails to require any real reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants."

Among other things, the groups raised concerns about how Carper's bill allowed for emissions trading of mercury, a neurotoxin, and how it eliminated the Clean Air Act's New Source Review requirements for aging coal units to install pollution control equipment. The groups also said Carper's bill fails to reduce CO2 emissions because it would allow power companies to obtain an unlimited number of allowances.

"Given these provisions, the Clean Air Planning Act can no longer be defended as a 'step in the right direction,' even if it were the product of final congressional action," the groups wrote.

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