In a scathing, yet factually challenged, editorial, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution took issue with the Bush Administration’s proposal to reduce mercury emissions from power plants. The paper’s editorial writers were particularly unhinged that the Administration prefers a proven, market-based cap-and-trade approach to reduce mercury. Suffering from a common, yet unfortunate, misapprehension, the paper asserted that cap-and-trade, which has cut acid rain faster, deeper, and cheaper than command-and-control alternatives, is simply inappropriate for mercury, because, well, it’s different. Specifically, the paper relied on the hackneyed “hot spots” argument: “While that trading scheme works for pollutants that dissipate more readily, mercury concentrates in ‘hot spots’ that further threaten local populations living near the source of the emissions.” As is so often the case with the hot spots issue, the paper offered no proof or hard empirical evidence to support this assertion. Apparently, it was proof enough to note that the Administration preferred “the economic well-being of the patrons in the power industry” over, yes, the children.

 

FACT: A cap-and-trade program to reduce mercury emissions from power plants will not create hot spots, according to the most recent literature on the subject. As the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) explained, mercury hot spots, defined as unusually high values of mercury deposition, “are not found to have significant contribution from utility mercury emissions.” In fact, mercury hot spots from coal-fired power plants are virtually non-existent, as EPRI has shown: “When U.S. geographic locations are defined as ‘utility-influenced’ or ‘non-utility influenced’ based on whether 50 % or more of the mercury depositing there is emitted from utility stacks, the utility-influenced locations together make up only 0.4% of the U.S. land area [emphasis added],” and further that “essentially none of these areas are where the highest deposition occurs in the U.S.” In sum, according to EPRI, the “Cap & Trade rule produces greater mercury deposition reductions than does the MACT rule.” This is precisely what occurred under the Acid Rain Trading program. “Under the Acid Rain Cap and Trade Program,” EPA has concluded, “no ‘hot spots’ (areas of heavy, localized emissions) have occurred nor any geographical shifting of emissions. The highest emitting sources reduced by the greatest amount.”