Posted by:Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@inhofe.senate.gov (202)224-9797   

    

EPW Policy Beat: THE ACID RAIN MYTH 

 

 

As the Senate debates the merits of using budget reconciliation to advance climate change legislation, EPW Policy Beat found an enlightening article discussing the frequently invoked, yet inapt, comparison between cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases and the 1990 cap-and-trade program to reduce acid rain.  Authors Laurie Williams and Allen Zabel, career employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who support instituting a carbon fee to address climate change, examine what they call the “Acid Rain Myth.”  As the authors explain, “those who champion using cap-and-trade to address climate change claim that it has been ‘proven’ to work in the U.S. Acid Rain program.  However, this assertion ignores crucial distinctions between the challenges we faced in 1990 with Acid Rain and the challenges we face today with global warming.”  The Williams and Zabel study on this apples-and-oranges comparison, and the flaws of applying cap and trade to address climate change, can be found here: Link 

As the following highlights from the study make abundantly clear, the experience of the Acid Rain program simply cannot be compared to cap and trade for GHG:   

• “Most importantly, the success of the Acid Rain program did not depend on replacing the vast majority of our existing energy infrastructure with new infrastructure in a relatively short time.”

 

• “Nor did it depend on spurring major innovation. Rather, the Acid Rain program was successful as a mechanism to guide existing facilities to undertake a fuel switch to a readily available substitute, the low sulfur coal in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.”

 

• “Existing facilities needed only the addition of a few new railway lines, burner modifications to accommodate lower sulfur fuel, and, in some cases, new or more efficient scrubbers. Little new technology or infrastructure was needed and little was created.”

 

• “The goal of the Acid Rain program was to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, while keeping the cost of energy from coal low. To be effective, climate change legislation must do the opposite; it must gradually increase the relative price of energy from coal and other fossil fuels to create the appropriate incentives for both conservation and the scale-up of clean energy.”

 

• “Further, the Acid Rain program did not allow any outside offsets and so provides no basis for the widespread assumption that an offset program will help with climate change. In addition, the success of the program was aided by the low, competitive price of low-sulfur coal.”

 

• “According to Professor Don Munton, author of ‘Dispelling the Myths of the Acid Rain Story’ the impact of the program has been overstated: The potential for a massive switch to low sulfur coal was no secret. Such coal was cheap and available, and it became cheaper and more available throughout the 1980s. Indeed, low-sulfur coal became very competitive with high-sulfur supplied well before the Clean Air Act became law.”

 

Another essential difference is the size of the two programs—for Acid Rain, cap-and-trade covered a limited number of sources only in the utility sector, while under a GHG cap, according to Bill Fang of EEI, “you are talking about literally millions of sources.”  Link

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