EDF Praises Innovative Proposal to Cut Smog in 20 States

(10 October, 1997 — Washington) The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today saluted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for calling for new State Implementation Plans (SIPs) to reduce pollution in the Eastern half of the country. The EPA action requires more than 20 states in the Midwest, South and Northeast to reduce the long-distance transport of the pollutants that prevent cities throughout the East and Midwest from achieving the ozone smog standard under the Clean Air Act. Achieving these standards will lead to greater protection for the most vulnerable populations including children, the elderly and asthmatics. </P>
<P>In addition, EPA has offered to assist states to use highly successful policy tools, like emissions cap and trade programs, to minimize control costs while ensuring achievement of the needed pollution cuts. </P>
<P>”Today’s EPA action brightens the prospects that children and the elderly will breath cleaner air and that states will have low cost and effective ways to provide healthy air,” said EDF senior attorney Joe Goffman. “We are also pleased that EPA has provided ample opportunity for states to use programs that cap emissions while allowing companies that make more reductions than required to trade those reductions to other companies. Now, it is up to key states in the Northeast and Midwest to show the leadership needed to put these programs in place, so that their citizens will benefit from the full measure of pollution cuts needed to protect public health without being stuck with unnecessary costs.” </P>
<P>”The success of the cap and trade program currently being used to cut acid rain clearly demonstrates that market-based policy tools deliver powerful environmental and economic results. Because that program allows plants to trade emissions when they make more reductions than required, the program is achieving even more pollution cuts than required and at 40% of the cost originally predicted,” said EDF economic analyst Sarah Wade. “The affected states should follow the lead of the Clean Air Act’s acid rain program. If these states can work together to forge the same approach to controlling the long-distance transport of the pollutants that cause ozone smog, then they can achieve the same environmental and economic success.”</P>
<P>”Only by imposing explicit caps can EPA and the states guarantee that the full amount of needed emissions reductions will be achieved,” said Wade. “Emissions caps facilitate regional trading programs which allow sources to make reductions at the lowest possible cost. It is absolutely essential to expand the use of strategies like these if states are to make good on the promise of improved public health under current and new Clean Air Act standards. This opportunity will be lost, however, if states attempt to forego caps on total emissions and develop different control programs. Without these features, either trading will have to be restricted or prohibited, resulting in lost cost-savings, or emissions will inevitably rise above intended levels, continuing the threat to public health.”