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Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Tracy M. Turner / The report examines the extent to which the United States market for tradable pollution permits has been an efficient way to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants. To do so, this report first provides background information on the effects of SO2 emissions on the environment in the United States. It discusses the initial attempt with the 1970 Clean Air Act to reduce these emissions and its degree of success. The details of the 1990 Amendments are then given. The economic theory behind the different methods of pollution control (quantity regulation, technology mandate, taxation, and emissions restriction through tradable permits) is explained and their efficiency regarding consumer and producer surplus is contrasted. The report then reviews published articles regarding the topic at hand. The U.S. Acid Rain Program has been found to be very efficient in its ability to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at a low cost to the producers.

In the early 1990s many scientists claimed that there was a scientific consensus that the anthropogenic production of greenhouse gases was causing global warming. Carbon dioxide is produced in far greater quantities than other greenhouse gases. Over 80 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants. If global warming is a threat to the welfare and survival of future generations, the United States, as one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases,has an obligation to reduce its production of these gases. In order to determine the most effective way to reduce the production of greenhouse gases in the United States, this study examines recent efforts by the Clinton and Obama administrations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.The Clinton and Obama administrations were selected for this study because both administrations were Democratic, and both had avowed political agendas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the first two years each administration enjoyed the support of Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, and they had similar political support for the remainder of their time in office. This study will show that President Obama’s executive approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants has been more effective than the legislative approach of the Clinton administration. The study will indicate that a scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming and the political will to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants did not exist during the 1990s. The study also shows that, despite the effectiveness of the Obama administration in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, there are many problems with the executive approach to the problem. The study suggests that the Clean Air Act has ceded to much legislative power to the Executive branch of government, and that success in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants is too dependent on the will of the Executive.

This paper is a study to determine whether the Title V program, as implemented in Texas, fulfills one of the goals of the Clean Air Act. That goal is to provide an effective compliance tool for particular sources (major sources of air contaminants). The study will include a description of elements that are a direct or indirect result of the Title V program including regulations, programs, permit and related documents, enforcement cases and violation data, etc. that will result in measurements or logical arguments to support the claim that the program is an effective compliance tool as compared to any system in place before it. I discuss Title V program elements that appear to detract from the compliance effectiveness, and explore the impact of these elements on compliance determination. / text

Environmental regulatory policy in the U.S. is a mixture of federal, state, and local activity and impacts. This is true of air quality regulations, which are governed at the federal level by the Clean Air Act. This dissertation analyzes both the political economy of federal environmental regulations and the empirical effects of ozone regulations under the Clean Air Act.A political economy model is developed that offers a motivation for political support of national environmental policy that regulates strictly local pollution. Altering local environmental policies in other jurisdictions will cause capital migration, which may increase local welfare. Thus, individuals have an incentive to influence local policies in other jurisdictions. National environmental policy then becomes a potential tool for inter-jurisdictional competition.The empirical impacts of ground-level ozone regulations under the Clean Air Act are also analyzed. The Clean Air Act established minimum air quality standards; localities failing to meet the established standards are classified as nonattainment areas and are subject to additional environmental regulations. These new regulations have a direct impact on polluting industries, and therefore also an indirect impact on the revenues and expenditures of local governments.First, nonattainment status is seen to alter regional industrial geography. Overall economic activity declines in both nonattainment areas and the surrounding jurisdictions. Gaining attainment status partially mitigates these impacts, although to some extent theeconomic impacts in both nonattainment areas and the surrounding jurisdictions do permanently persist. I also find evidence that manufacturing activity relocates from nonattainment areas to surrounding areas that face more lenient air quality regulations.Ozone nonattainment status is also seen to produce fiscal effects for local governments as changes in industrial geography alter local tax bases. Revenues and expenditures decline in regulated population centers, while they increase in surrounding areas. These increases diminish with distance from the urban center. Also, the fiscal impacts persist even after attainment status has been gained.

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Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments established a market-based incentive approach to pollution control through the use of tradable allowances for sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions by electric utilities. Many researchers have theorized that this approach will be compromised by state regulatory policies that create incentives for utilities to invest in costly pollution control equipment, inhibiting the formation of a free and competitive allowance market. The pUrpose of this research is to investigate the impact of state regulatory policies on the development of the SO₂ allowance market. More specifically, this research examines whether the geographic distribution of traded SO₂ allowances (as determined by an analysis of EPA Allowance Tracking System data) has been affected by the actions of state regulators. The research also investigates the effect of Title IV on the Virginia coal industry. Several trends in the allowance market are identified in this study, including the declining price of allowances, over compliance at Phase I units, and the geographic patterns of trading. This research only partially supports earlier predictions that states with regulatory policies biased towards costly capital investments in flue gas desulfurization (scrubber) retrofits would become net allowance sellers in the national market. However, the research finds that these state policies, along with several other factors (including the Phase I Extension program, the tax treatment of allowances, and the risk-averse nature of utilities) have contributed to the slow growth in the allowance market. The research also concludes that Virginia low-sulfur coal producers are not benefiting from Title IV implementation. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

In 1970, the United States Congress and President Richard Nixon created a federal regulatory regime to meet public demands for improved environmental quality. As it happened, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the enactment of the first national environmental standards coincided with the disruption of the postwar prosperity that had helped fuel the environmental movement. Valuing the Air provides the first sustained historical study of policy making at EPA during the formative period between 1970 and 1990, when the embattled agency preserved its original mission to protect Americans’ right to clean air. To justify strong regulations in an era of rising inflation and unemployment, EPA officials turned to the new field of environmental economics, funding pioneering research that concluded that the benefits of environmental protection outweighed the costs. Such pecuniary evidence allowed EPA to shield its regulatory interventions from business lobbying and to rebut rhetorical campaigns in which corporate executives threatened communities across the country with the loss of industrial jobs if they supported strong environmental health regulations. While this dollars and cents valuation proved persuasive to policy makers, it ran contrary to environmentalist notions of priceless nature and environmental advocates fought doggedly to prevent EPA from fully adopting a cost/benefit approach to policymaking. As environmentalists recognized, EPA’s embrace of economic measurement elevated the stature of economists at the agency, raising the possibility that recently established natural rights to clean air and water might be undercut by a dehumanized pricing of externalities. Regulatory reforms enacted by the Carter administration, such as emissions trading and the bubble policy, signaled a new willingness among liberals to use economic incentives and markets approaches in place of direct regulations – a development that environmentalists regarded warily. In 1981, the Reagan administration upset a bipartisan consensus for market based reforms with the announcement of drastic budget and staffing cuts at EPA. Reagan’s attack on EPA marked the ascent of a new conservative ideology that held unrestrained free enterprise to be the greatest social good, irrespective of the actual economics of regulatory interventions. Finding environmental economics to be a powerful, if imperfect, ally against such assaults, many environmental organizations softened their critiques of economic valuation and began to borrow the language and logic of economics to make their case. With this growing support from environmental organizations, EPA ushered in the commodification of pollution rights in the era of cap and trade. The inflection of contemporary environmental advocacy with economic measurement and value demonstrates the political utility of economics while also underscoring the foreclosure of an earlier environmentalism’s more radical questioning of the desirability of an unbounded market economy. At the same time, EPA continues to resist economists’ efforts to derive public preferences from market exchange, insisting that fundamental choices about underlying environmental value be made through the democratic process.