http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jun30.html

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EPA Withholds Air Pollution Analysis
Senate Plan Found More Effective, Slightly More Costly Than Bush Proposal

By Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 1, 2003; Page A03


The Environmental Protection Agency for months has withheld key findings of
its analysis showing that a Senate plan to combat air pollution would be
more effective in reducing harmful pollutants -- and only marginally more
expensive -- than would President Bush's Clear Skies initiative for power
plant emissions.

The Clear Skies proposal is designed to reduce power plant emissions over
the next 20 years. A centerpiece of Bush's environmental policy, its passage
could burnish his 2004 reelection credentials. But the president's plan does
not address carbon dioxide emissions, which many scientists consider an
important greenhouse gas that may contribute to the Earth's warming.

Bush's stand has drawn sharp criticism on several fronts, and a bipartisan
group of senators has proposed an alternative bill that would limit carbon
dioxide emissions. Unreleased information from an EPA internal analysis
concludes that the competing bill would provide health benefits
substantially superior to those envisioned under Clear Skies.

Because leaked copies of the analysis have circulated among interest groups,
some environmentalists have criticized the EPA for not releasing all of it.
Withholding some of the findings is "a real outrage," said David G. Hawkins,
director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center and a
former assistant EPA administrator. "They're playing dodge ball with
Congress to push the [Clear Skies] bill."

EPA Associate Administrator Edward D. Krenik, however, said the agency has
released pertinent information where it was needed. Sen. Thomas R. Carper
(D-Del.), author of the competing bill, has been given "all the information
that we garnered from his bill" regarding carbon dioxide and three other
pollutants, Krenik said. "He has all the information."

A PowerPoint presentation on Carper's bill prepared last fall by the EPA for
Jeffrey R. Holmstead, assistant administrator for air and radiation, had
more information than Carper was given months later. The Washington Post
examined a leaked copy of the presentation.

EPA gave Carper information showing that his bill would cut power plant
emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury earlier and by
larger amounts than would the president's bill. Not provided to Carper,
however, was the conclusion that these cuts could be achieved while
increasing electricity prices by two-tenths of a cent per kilowatt hour more
than the Clear Skies initiative would require.

The PowerPoint presentation also said the Carper bill, co-sponsored by
Republican Sens. Judd Gregg (N.H.) and Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), has a
carbon dioxide-reduction plan that can be carried out at "negligible" cost
to industry. The presentation also said Carper's bill by 2020 would result
in 17,800 fewer premature deaths from power plant air pollution than would
Clear Skies. That would save $140 billion a year in health benefits -- about
$50 billion more than Clear Skies.

At an April Senate hearing, Carper asked then-EPA Administrator Christine
Todd Whitman for the missing information. Last month he joined Gregg and
Chaffee in renewing the request.

"All we're interested in is having a full and honest debate so we can make a
well-informed decision," Carper said in an interview. "I don't believe
that's too much to ask."

The administration and its industry allies are lobbying aggressively on
behalf of Clear Skies, and today EPA plans to release an updated estimate of
its costs and benefits. The administration has lined up support from a range
of government and labor groups, but manufacturers and the utility industry
are far from united. James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House
Council on Environmental Quality, said Clear Skies "is very important for
the president, and you will see a very strong push."

The administration has refused to consider signing a power plant emissions
bill with carbon dioxide caps, and therefore opposes Carper's bill and a
version championed by Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.).

Bush disavowed a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,
saying such regulations would hurt the economy and consumers by proving too
costly to the power industry.

The Clear Skies bill would use mandatory caps and a pollution credit-trading
program to reduce overall power plant pollutants -- including mercury,
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide -- by 70 percent over the next 15 years.

The earliest version of Carper's bill, now called the Clean Air Planning
Act, was introduced in July 2002, and the EPA analyzed it in the fall,
according to documents Krenik provided to Carper.

The EPA months later sent Carper in two installments its analysis of sulfur
dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide controls, but it has
withheld its information on health benefits and details of its analysis of
costs associated with the proposal.

Carper portrayed his bill as a compromise between Clear Skies -- which
environmentalists call a rollback of current EPA air pollution
requirements -- and the Jeffords bill, opposed by industry as imposing
unattainable standards. The EPA analysis shows that the Carper bill fits
between these two alternatives, setting emissions ceilings for sulfur
dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury between 2008 and 2020 that either match
or surpass Clear Skies targets, and do it sooner.

On sulfur dioxide, for example, the EPA analysis shows that under the Carper
bill, power plant emissions would drop to 4.5 million tons in 2008 and to
2.25 million tons in 2015. Clear Skies would reduce sulfur dioxide to 4.5
million tons in 2010, and 3 million tons in 2018.

Environmental groups generally support the Jeffords bill. But the Defense
Council's Hawkins said that while "we have several differences" with the
Carper plan, "these are areas where we think people of good faith could
reach agreement. The Carper bill is in the ballpark."

Regarding carbon dioxide, Carper's bill envisions an EPA-run program whereby
power plants would compensate for emissions either by switching to
cleaner-burning fuels or technologies, or by buying offsets in other
sectors. For example, a power company could balance its emissions by
planting a carbon dioxide-eating forest or subsidizing agriculture producers
to change tillage procedures or use carbon dioxide-lowering technologies in
feed lots. The EPA analysis said the availability of cheap offsets made the
plan's costs "negligible."

Much of industry opposes carbon dioxide caps, holding that no technology
exists to attain them. "The only option is to switch from coal to natural
gas," said Dan Riedinger, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which
represents 70 percent of publicly owned electric generation companies. "Our
concern is that imposing a cap on one sector of the U.S. economy will raise
energy prices, but do nothing to alleviate greenhouse gas."

Still, some utilities support Carper's plan because it covers all major
pollutants at once. "One way to achieve business certainty is to have some
sort of agreement on greenhouse gas," said Michael J. Bradley, executive
director of the Clean Energy Group, composed of nine utilities. "It's going
to come down the road sometime, so you might as well take care of it now ."

The EPA has not publicly criticized the Carper plan except to dispute the
senator's interpretation of its likely costs. The EPA analysis estimates
that industry would spend $103.4 billion to generate electricity in 2020
under the Carper bill. Carper, Gregg and Chafee, in a letter to the EPA,
described those costs as only "marginally higher" than the $100.9 billion
envisioned under Clear Skies.

The EPA's Krenik said in an interview the senators' interpretation was "not
an accurate reflection" of the costs. He said the EPA always calculates the
price of legislation alone, without reference to the costs of raw materials,
labor, capital equipment and operations. In this context, he said, Carper's
bill would cost about $8.7 billion in 2020 as opposed to $6.5 billion for
Clear Skies.

Clean Energy's Bradley dismissed this view as bureaucratic hairsplitting.
The EPA analysis, he noted, showed that retail prices for electricity under
the Carper bill would be only two-tenths of a cent per kilowatt higher than
prices under Clear Skies.

"To suggest that the incremental costs of the legislation are high, like the
EPA does," Bradley said, "is inconsistent with this information."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company



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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

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---Theodore Roosevelt

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