A trio of essays by John Bartlit, Ph.D.
#1 — The Economics Story: A Round World
The popular picture of where dollars travel to clean the air and water looks much like a flat earth. That is, monies to pursue the noble end sail out to some certain edge, where they fall off into the abyss, never to be seen again. But as the years roll on, more and more ships come back to tell us that the world is round. The good word must be spread.
The popular look suggests a flat earth for one reason: Today’s media sound bites skip all talk about the return ships. The pollution control companies never say a word.
The monies expended on pollution controls go somewhere: they return to the same economy they leave from. New companies, their workers and stockholders earn the dollars shipped off to design, build and maintain pollution controls. The outgo from a pollution-emitting company is the income to a pollution-control company. The monies return, like ships upon a globe.
The idea may seem simple enough. Yet, it is so far from the talk of the times that the first word to put cleanup in a round world—half buyers and half sellers—strikes people as a fairy tale.
I take every opportunity to discuss the round world of cleanup with folks in the large club of elected officials who are successful business people. A typical response starts out roughly, “Hmmm, that’s odd. It’s not what I always hear.” Then there often follows a series of probing “buts,” aimed to root out the fault in the thinking.
I might hear: “But that is like saying we can break a bunch of store windows and someone can make money repairing them.”
I answer: “No, breaking windows is a bad thing. Cleaning the air is a good thing.”
Next might follow: “But pollution controls are driven by laws, which is bad.”
I answer: “Many perfectly good businesses are driven by laws. Traffic lights are driven by laws, but designing, making, installing, and maintaining traffic lights are perfectly fine businesses nonetheless.”
The parry might be: “But if we don’t have traffic lights, cars will run into each other.”
To which I answer: “And if we don’t have pollution controls, our air and water will be dirty.”
At this point, the true business person will say: “Let me think about this some more.” And they do, from which stir the first faint winds toward harbor.
The fact of economic return from cleanup is so hard to keep in mind because it is such a clash with the scary alarms about the outgo. No, a round world does not imply that our nation can simply spend itself rich on pollution controls. But it does mean that reasonable outlays for clean air and water—the billions of dollars spent each year in the U.S.—pour back into the nation’s economy all or nearly all the dollars they take from it, and perhaps more than that.
True, my metaphor is only a fair start toward the answers. What brings more answers by the fleetful is to use well-tested computer codes that model regional economies. Such codes exist. The models can be, and increasingly are, used to analyze the effect of pollution control costs on the economy and growth. I am for doing more of these studies, as fully as possible.
My comments up to here are only about spendings versus earnings... outgoes and incomes... buyers and sellers. Such words say nothing about the inherent value of the air and water. These gains are a separate matter. Whatever value clean air may have—in added health, property values, scenic views, tourism or family joy— adds benefits above and beyond the profits and jobs in the new cleanup industry that the models compute.
Proper studies speed us ahead. The first step is to know how the economy responds to cleanup costs overall. Then we can look further at localized economics—where the dollars hurt or boost an area more than in general—and then the clean-air benefits.
The economics world is more than a simple tale told of the outbound ships. The accounts of return ships make it a round affair. And so it is.
Originally published in the Los Alamos Monitor on September 19, 1999.
#2 — Preserving the West’s Grand Vistas: The Science and the Civics
Coauthored with Russell Huffman of the Public Service Company of New Mexico
Few will argue that the sweeping vistas of the West aren’t a treasure. Natives, newcomers and tourists prize the mountains, canyons, and colors equally. For good reason, license plates tell our identity in visual terms. “Grand Canyon state.” “Land of Enchantment.” “Big Sky.”
The enemy of clear visibility is haze. This sometimes murky concern is worth a closer look. Its aspects range from the scientific to civic, legal and economic.
First, a dab of science: Haze is caused by fine particles in the air. These are very small bits of solids or liquids, small enough to stay suspended in the air, that “scatter” the light. That is, they “knock it about,” so less light (and less color) gets from out there to your eye. The white sky light blots more color from out there. Out there are the prizes—things like the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Shiprock. The more particles in the air, the more haze.
Particles get into the air in many ways. Some are natural, such as fog, windblown dust, wildfire smoke, even sea salt. These events were a fact before the desert had people, but the peculiar dryness always made the Southwest’s native visibility close to the best on Earth.
Today, people add tiny particles in new ways. Chiefly, the particles form from gases—gases that come from vehicle tail pipes and industry smokestacks, gases with strange names like nitrogen oxides (NOX), sulfur oxides (SOX), and things called Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). As they spread out for a hundred miles or more, these gases react in the air to make fine particles—thus haze.
Besides spreading haze, these materials also get into lungs, where they can harm health—if in sufficient amounts for sufficient times, or in the weakest lungs. And therein is an essential story.
In general terms, it takes a smaller loading of particles in the air to cause widely troublesome haze than measurable health effects. Science can preach for days about why this is true. A simple way to think of it is that haze is made worse by all the particles out as far as the eye can see, whereas health is made worse only by the particles that make it into a person’s lungs.
Of course, health can be harmed also by materials that can’t be seen. Carbon monoxide and mercury are two such pollutants.
That is the science. Now the civics. Historically, the form of air quality rules was set by health effects. That is, the rules set a maximum level of a pollutant that could stay present for some length of time. Those three little words—length of time—have great import for visibility. In the main, clean air rules are not violated until a specified level of pollution is exceeded for a specified time. Often it must be for 8 or 24 hours straight.
Again, science can preach for days on the details, yet the picture is simple: Health can be okay if winds bring the bad gases from a smokestack to an area for a few hours, then turn and take the gases in some other direction for a while.
But the eye sees it all. The haze is obvious—whether blown in one direction or another—to spoil the view. Thus, the initial air rules did little to prevent haze.
In 1977, Congress recognized that fact and wrote into law the goal to eliminate all man-made impairment of visibility in national parks. The Clean Air Amendments of 1990 furthered the work.
Congress set up the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission (GCVTC) and gave it partial funding and guidance. The GCVTC was made up of state and federal agencies, native tribes, and industry and environmental groups. Its purpose was to find out the sources that degrade visibility on the Colorado Plateau and to propose remedies.
Its chief findings are: On different days, different sources cause the most haze in a given park. Vehicles and smokestacks are both significant, as are fires, natural and man-made.
SOX from smokestacks is the worst single cause, making a third of the overall haze. Since the 1970s, SOX has been reduced and the visibility improved, but further growth in emission sites requires further cuts.
NOX emissions are up since the 1970s, and need work. New forms of control offer more efficient, sometimes cheaper, emissions reductions. These tools include advanced controls, renewable energy, and legal options that limit total emissions and let the emitter choose where to cut (called “cap-and-trade”).
The visibility goal of Congress and the findings of the GCVTC worked together to shape a new kind of policy: the Regional Haze Rule. The Haze Rule stands out for many reasons. For one, it deals with haze. For another, it has provisions that come from the collaborations begun in the GCVTC.
The Haze Rule treats time and money in new ways. It requires emission cuts over decades, with a 2064 deadline to protect prize vistas. Further, any measures taken must first meet a test of economics to be sure the steps are wise. These features are new.
The vistas all of us enjoy—and many profit from—can be our legacy to coming generations. We have new tools for the task. With skill and persistence, we can apply them well, with an eye for the values that bind us together.
Originally published in the Los Alamos Monitor on November 21, 2001.
#3 — New Source Review: The Quest for Cleanup
Please note REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso's comments at the end of this article.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to revamp its New Source Review (NSR) process is being hotly debated in the media. Industrial interests and environmentalists each have major talking points, but few get told and fewer get heard. Both sides claim that their preferred approach to NSR will lead to lower emissions. How can this be?
Our piece here will be a good step forward if we do no more than lay out the issues. What is the story?
New Source Review is a complex program created by several provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. The purpose of the program is to ensure long-term air quality improvements as older pollution sources are replaced or rebuilt. It requires that owners of new power plants—and owners of existing plants that make “non-routine” changes to their facilities that increase emissions—install state-of-the-art pollution control equipment.
No one disagrees that new facilities should be built with state-of-the-art pollution controls. The debate is all about the part of NSR that deals with existing sources. Here, too, all agree that routine maintenance at existing plants should not trigger the need for new pollution controls. Where the agreement breaks down is over what constitutes “routine maintenance.”
Consider an analogy to your car. Nearly all would agree that replacing worn tires or an old timing belt are pieces of routine maintenance needed to keep your car operating safely and efficiently. But other activities—such as replacing a worn set of valves or installing a new set of rings and piston, or perhaps a new or improved engine block—are less black-and-white. Is this routine maintenance or a piece-by-piece engine overhaul that, over time and several “routine” projects, essentially gives you a new engine that will run another 100,000 miles?
This is the heart of the debate. The utility industry believes that the power plant modifications they are making are the routine maintenance equivalent of a timing belt replacement. The environmental community believes that, in many cases, these modifications are effectively a piece-by-piece engine overhaul, greatly extending the life of an outdated facility.
The stakes are large. New controls cost big money—and installing them also makes a big difference to the air. For example, installing sulfur scrubbers on an old plant can cost upwards of $200 million for the scrubber parts such as big pumps, pipes, tanks and valves, and for the wages paid to the workers who erect them. The new scrubbers can cut sulfur dioxide emissions by tenfold, perhaps from 30,000 tons per year down to 3,000 tons. If costs were recovered in full, the amount on a home electric bill might rise between 70 cents and a dollar per month.
Electric companies fear that they may have major pollution control upgrades forced upon them simply by virtue of their doing the routine work needed to keep their plant equipment operating safely and efficiently. The risk of facing major new outlays for pollution control equipment discourages doing the work. The result, they argue, is lower plant efficiency, less electrical output, and more emissions than if they’d performed the repairs.
Greens worry that, under the utilities’ interpretation of routine maintenance, these plants will operate indefinitely, without ever having to install new pollution controls. They point out that if the controls on the older plants were upgraded, as they believe NSR provisions require, plant emissions would be dramatically lower.
There, in a nutshell, are the arguments. You see how both sides’ claims to lower emissions are right as far as they go. You also get a feel for how the issue under the current rule hinges on a definition of “routine maintenance.”
Perhaps a better way to go forward can be found. The goal of clean air interests, and the goal of the current NSR provision, is to get newer pollution controls installed on the older power plants within a reasonable time.
Many utilities will agree that pollution controls should be upgraded on old plants that run on and on. Yet even the companies who would agree do not want to be forced to do a major upgrade simply by their doing work to maintain or improve plant efficiency.
Many environmentalists will agree that old plants should be maintained so that they operate as efficiently as possible. Yet those who will agree do not want to forestall the installation of new, more effective pollution controls. A possible solution might be for all older plants to agree to upgrade their pollution controls by the time they reach a certain age.
Plants then could receive the maintenance they need and pollution controls could be modernized to make the big cuts in emissions on a known, fixed schedule.
This article expresses the combined views of the American Lung Association of Arizona and New Mexico, Arizona Public Service Company at the Four Corners Power Plant, Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water, and Public Service Company of New Mexico at the San Juan Generating Station.
Originally published in the Los Alamos Monitor on July 28, 2002.
REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso’s comment on Dr. Bartlit’s third essay:
REP believes that in the absence of clean air policy reforms, consistent enforcement of New Source Review is essential. Consistent enforcement is necessary to protect public health and eliminate an undue competitive advantage from accruing to older industrial facilities exempted from clean air standards that new facilities must meet.
When the Clean Air Act was adopted in 1970, many older power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities were exempted—or “grandfathered”— from meeting clean air standards. At the time, Congress believed that such facilities would be rapidly phased out in favor of newer, cleaner facilities. However, many older facilities are still operating.
New Source Review is a policy that was added to the Clean Air Act in 1977. The policy requires older industrial facilities to install modern pollution controls if plant improvements result in increased air emissions. Critics claim that New Source Review is a bureaucratic policy that stifles improvements which would improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Supporters respond that there is little evidence to support the critics’ arguments.
REP believes that the best long-term solution for protecting air quality and treating all industrial facilities fairly is new legislation. The legislation should set strong emissions reduction standards for four pollutants —carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. In addition, the legislation should provide appropriate market-based incentives to encourage pollution reduction at the least cost, and set a firm deadline for all facilities forty years and older to meet current emissions standards.
Dr. John Bartlit—a REP member since 1998—has an extremely impressive resume. He earned his B.S in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University; his M.S. in Engineering from Princeton, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Yale.
From 1962 to 1993, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a research engineer and technical manager. He continues to work there part time.
An active volunteer in his community, Dr. Bartlit served as a member and state chairman of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water. The previous GOP governor of New Mexico appointed him Public Representative to the New Mexico Mining Commission. He volunteered at the National Coal Policy Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown Univ. in Washington D.C.
Since 1971, Dr. Bartlit has written a biweekly environmental column for the Los Alamos Monitor. The ideas expressed in these articles are his personal views and do not represent those of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
