New Durham CEO Testifies Before Senate About Pollutant-Controlling Legislation
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29–New Durham-based Powerspan’s CEO Frank Alix touted his firm’s pollution-control technology Tuesday at a hearing by a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee. Sitting across from Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), the committee’s senior Republican, Alix testified that federal legislation is needed to spur technology like that of his company’s that reduces harmful emissions from coal-fired electric generating plants.
“Environmental technology is driven entirely by environmental regulations,” said Alix, one of more than 30 New Hampshire constituents Smith has invited to testify before the committee during the past two years. “If you don’t have the regulation, you’ll never have the technology.”
Alix explained how Powerspan’s electro-catalytic oxidation technology, a multi-pollutant control process that replaces commonly used single-pollutant systems, reduces emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and fine-particulate matter.
“By implementing a multi-pollutant approach, Congress can provide certainty to both the electric generating industry and the environmental technology community to ensure the deployment of the most advanced, cost-effective pollution control technologies,” Alix said in a statement.
The Clean Air, Wetlands and Climate Change Subcommittee received testimony from Alix and executives from seven other energy-related organizations, including the U.S. Energy Department. They discussed new technologies that help power plants comply with emissions standards proposed in the Clean Power Act of 2001, which are more stringent than those in the existing Clean Air Act.
The new bill, sponsored by Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), would cut power plant emissions and end “grandfathered” exemptions older plants enjoy under the Clean Air Act.
Smith, for his part, opposes the Clean Power Act, calling the proposed regulations ineffective. He has also long complained that the current law’s power plant regulations have created an inefficient regulatory maze.
An advocate of free markets, Smith favors a “cap and trade” system that allows power generators to exceed the mandatory emissions cap through “trades” with other companies that are under the cap.
“I know there’s some critics on the left and the right, but we have the system, we have the Clean Air Act, and nobody’s going to repeal it anytime soon; so we need to be working within that act,” Smith said.
Smith contends that the cap and trade system would reduce emissions sooner because of its market incentives.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to work together to give tax incentives for innovation to reduce these pollutants,” he said.
Powerspan’s Alix, however, thinks the Jeffords-Lieberman bill’s regulatory scheme could work if a more lenient deadline for lowering power-plant emissions is allowed.
“We’d like to see a little more time and a little more of a stage for reduction,” he said. “It looks like there’s a critical mass forming around the issue which is quite likely to result in legislation this year, which would help us.”
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
