I would like to thank Senator Inhofe for continuing to focus our attention on the important issue of improving the Clean Air Act.
I would like to thank the witnesses for taking the time to prepare statements and appear here today. The Committee will benefit from your insight.
I would also like to welcome Ken Colburn, the Air Quality Director from New Hampshire. Ken is doing a terrific job for the people of New Hampshire, and has been an invaluable resource for my staff.
The Clean Air Act is the most complex environmental statute on the books.
With it we have made tremendous strides in reducing emissions and improving air quality.
But the job of protecting air quality requires constant vigilance, and the Act itself requires regular maintenance as we learn more about which pollutants are most harmful and what sources need better controls.
The Act has initiated numerous innovative approaches to environmental management. We need to build on these successes as we try to determine the next step for the Act.
For Example:
State Role: The Clean Air Act was the first to establish a system that calls on the federal government to establish standards, but allow the States to determine how best to achieve those standards. We need to expand on this flexibility.
Market Driven Reductions: The most daring experiment of the 1990 Amendments was to include an emissions trading program in the Acid Rain Program. Relying on the market has proven an unmitigated success. Actual costs for implementation and compliance are a mere fraction of the lowest 1990 estimates for the program. Emission reductions have come faster and been deeper than required by law. Most importantly, the Acid Rain Program has an unprecedented 100 percent compliance record. Clearly, we need to figure out how to adapt this approach to other programs.
Lastly, I would like to point out that we need to build a better system for addressing emissions from the utility sector.
Outside of the Acid Rain controls, the few emission reductions we have achieved under current law for this sector have come only after countless rounds of regulation and litigation.
The resulting requirements are expensive and inefficient.
We need to reduce utility emissions in this country, but we want our economy to continue to grow.
Technology has made our economy more energy-intensive as more homes and offices acquire more electronic devices. The increasing power demand must be met at the same time as we drive overall utility emissions down.
The only way to manage this balance without damaging the economy is to build a system that rewards the power producers that can produce the greatest amount of power while emitting the least pollution.
The current law does not do this, and I believe it is the greatest challenge of reauthorization. CAA/restm