Smith Dissents on Emission Regulations
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29–Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., the senior Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, took a clear stand yesterday in opposing the proposed Clean Energy Act that Sen. Jim Jeffords, Ind.-VT, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-CT, are sponsoring.
Smith spoke out at a Senate hearing of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands and Climate Change. Frank Alix, chief executive officer of the New Hampshire based corporation Powerspan, testified with others at the hearing on technological innovations in the past few years to slash air pollution, specifically the high levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and carbon emitted by power plants.
Alix, in his testimony, said his New Durham-based company’s multi-pollutant control technology would dramatically reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury for coal-fired electric generating plants.
He stressed the importance of clear federal legislation to reduce harmful emissions and to spur technological innovation in reaching those goals. “Environmental technology is driven entirely by environmental regulations·. If you don’t have the regulation, you’ll never have the technology,” Alix said.
Smith said he agreed that technological innovations would provide a more cost-effective approach to reducing emissions than older methods, but added that new regulations under the Clean Energy Act would be ineffective to reach these goals.
“Powerspan is making dramatic reductions in their pilot program in nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury,” Smith said, “and I think that when you’re talking 99 percent in sulfur dioxide and as much as 75 or 80 percent in nitrogen oxides and over 80 percent in mercury, those are dramatic reductions with technology which is half as expensive as the scrubbers of the 80s and 90s.”
“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to work together to give tax incentives for innovation to reduce these pollutants,” Smith added.
In place of the existing power plant regulations under the Clean Air Act, which he said he regards as neither effective nor efficient, Smith advocated a new non-legislative market-based emissions trading system known as “cap and trade,” in which policymakers would set a mandatory cap on emissions and allow businesses to trade rights, or allowances, to those emissions.
“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, dismissing the newest efforts at creating emissions-reduction legislation.
The Clean Energy Act of 1999, sponsored by Sen. Jim Jeffords, Independent-VT, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-CT, would slash air pollution from older polluting power plants currently grandfathered in under the Clean Air Act, maintain and increase investments in clean energy, and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Alix said he agreed with the regulatory scheme that the Jeffords-Lieberman bill proposes but suggested an extended deadline for lowering power-plant emissions.
“In terms of ultimate control levels for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury, we think they’re achievable, but we think the timing is a little bit too aggressive. We’d like to see a little more time and a little more of a stage for reduction,” Alix 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,” Alix added.
Smith, who is currently involved in securing funds to conserve 171,500 acres of International Paper Co. land in New Hampshire’s North Country, stressed the importance of conservation and environmental issues for the people of New Hampshire. “Without our natural resources, the state would not be the great state that it is,” he said.
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire
