How new market-based regulations fit with today’s programs.
Sam Napolitano is director of the EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division. Beth Murray, Mary Shellabarger, and Sam Waltzer are senior staff in the division leading the CAIR and CAMR Implementation Team. Melanie LaCount is a senior advisor on communications and policy, and James O. Lee is a communications specialist. All of the authors can be reached via email at lastname.firstname@epa.gov.
The nationwide cap-and-trade program to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the power sector under the Acid Rain Program has earned widespread acclaim through dramatic SO2 emission reductions, far-ranging environmental and human health benefits, and far lower-than-expected costs. The similarly-modeled program to reduce ozone season nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions in the eastern United States, the NOX Budget Trading Program, has achieved comparable success on a regional scale (see sidebar “Emissions Trading: In the Beginning,”).
These programs serve as the model for the next generation of regulations controlling emissions from the power sector—the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) and the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR). Under CAIR and CAMR, four new trading programs will begin in 2009 and 2010. More than 300 units will be facing federal SO2 and NOX requirements for the first time under CAIR, and all of the approximately 1,300 units under CAMR will face their first federal mercury requirements.
Emissions monitoring and reporting requirements are the leading edge of both of these programs: NOX monitoring and reporting begins in 2008 for all units, and SO2 and mercury monitoring and reporting begins in 2009.