Is Clean Air Really Too Expensive?

It seems that the cost of healthy air might be outwith the reach of many Americans, after a Supreme Court ruling found in favour of power plants against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Earlier this year, Barack Obama’s revisions to the Clean Air Act imposed regulations on the amount of harmful emissions allowed from factories and plants, including mercury. The legislation was an attempt to reduce the amount of mercury in the air that we breathe, thus reducing illnesses and deaths contracted from inhaling the toxic substance.

There are a range of options available to companies which can be utilised to curb their mercury emission levels, which are discussed in detail in the article Options for Compliance Mercury Monitoring at Coal-Fired Power and Cement Producing Plants. However, despite the new laws and the various avenues available to comply with it, Michigan-based power plants have managed to overturn the legislation in their favour due to spiralling and “unreasonable” costs.

A Difference of Opinion

The EPA had initially stated that it was not required to take the costs of making practices more environmentally-friendly into account when it imposed the regulations – but that it had done so anyway. It claimed that while the annual costs of up to $9.6 billion were sizable, the health benefits would be far, far greater. These would be achieved through the prevention of as many as 540,000 lost days of work through sickness, 4,700 non-fatal heart attacks and up to 11,000 deaths.

However, the actual figure placed on this prevention is a bone of contention. While the EPA estimated the total savings as anywhere between $37 billion and $90 billion, the Supreme Court took this figure to be much lower – a mere $6 billion. Obviously, this would result in almost a $4 billion loss for big business and the power generation industry.

The discrepancy arose because the figure quoted by the Supreme Court took into account only deaths, heart attacks and sick days caused directly by mercury, while the EPA factored in “co-benefits”, as well. These co-benefits included the positive consequences of a reduced PM2.5 level in the atmosphere, which is responsible for a great many ailments and illnesses, as well.

The Price of Clean Lungs?

The Court, chaired by Justice Scalia, found that the EPA had neglected to properly assess the expenses incurred in reducing mercury emissions in the first place and had, as such, made unreasonable demands on the power plants. In Justice Scalia’s own words:

“Our reasoning so far establishes that it was unreasonable for EPA to read §7412(n)(1)(A) to mean that cost is irrelevant to the initial decision to regulate power plants. The Agency must consider cost—including, most importantly, cost of compliance—before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary.”

While the case has been sent down to lower cases for further scrutiny, it appears that once again business – and the courts – have placed profit above the environment in the USA. While unreasonable expenses are clearly a factor in this debate, surely the biggest elephant in the room is the state of our planet… and perhaps more importantly, the state of the air our children will breathe.