Clear Skies and Illinois Coal
ArchPundit
Rich also points out an editorial that challenges Barack Obama to support the President’s Clean Skies Initiative.
This is probably the dumbest editorial I’ve read in years. I’m not exaggerating either. The Southern’s editorial board doesn’t seem to grasp even the most basic issues present in the proposal.
The Editorial suggests Obama push for the plan because it’ll help the coal industry, and by implication Southern Illinois.
It will help the coal industry, but not he Southern Illinois coal industry and much of this follows along the same lines of Glenn Poshard’s opposition to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
The most basic issue comes down to what happens when a tradeable permit system goes into place for SO2–sulfur dioxide. Coal from the region is high in sulfur and so any effort to reduce sulfur content other than specific scrubber types that remove sulfur down to a certain level pretty much makes the market move away from high sulfur coal.
The advantages of a tradeable permit system is that it allows the market to reach a level of air quality by using market forces to encourage the most efficient way to get to that level. A specific amount of emssions is allowed, permits are issues/auctioned, and then one can buy permits if they need more or sell them if they don’t need to emit as much.
Those that can reduce pollution the cheapest can sell off permits and those that cannot reduce it cheaply can buy permits to a point where a wall is reached.
But if the goal of Clear Skies is to reduce SO2 emmissions by over 50%, the incentive will be to use the cleanest coal with fewest technological costs. High sulfur coal requires expensive scrubbing equipment to reduce the sulfur that simply switching to western coal can avoid. If you are economically rational, you utilize the least expensive method to reduce emissions and that is easily switching to coal that is low in sulfur. further disadvantaging coal mined in Illinois.
It’s so mindboggling simple, that it’s hard to imagine that even the Southern’s editorial board doesn’t understand that Clean Skies privileges low sulfur coal.
Mind you, there are a bunch of policy reasons you might do that, but if your goal is, as the Southern’s ed board’s goal is, to increase the market for Southern Illinois coal, forget it.
I posted a story in comments about Obama’s position over at the Capitol Fax for more background.
If you want people to use high sulfur coal mandating scrubbers that essentially reduce the amount of sulfur regardless of the type of coal burned is the best strategy as Glenn Poshard long argued. He voted against the 1990 CAA because it privileged low sulfur coal (thanks to clever tactics by Daschle). That the Southern Illinoisan doesn’t understand that is a severe indictment of any claim they have to speak for that region in an intelligent way.
UPDATE: More detail in comments. Also a good point in Capitol Fax’s comments about the issue of the wet scrubber initial cost being a barrier even though in the long run, it would probably make economic and environmental sense.
UPATE 2: Even more on the Clean Skies Act and why the administration’s claims are not just economically illiterate, but logically inconsistent.
