• must know what the sources of pollution are
and how much pollution they emit
• must have standards that specify what level of
pollution is acceptable
• must provide incentives to get polluters to
comply with standards
Permitting
• “Permits are the legally binding terms that a control
authority imposes on a pollution sources as a
condition for building or operating the sources.
Permits are designed to reconcile what the source
emits with what standards allow. Permits are the
basis for compliance, the key to pollution control, the
nexus between the control authority and the
pollution sources.”
– Davies, Reforming Permitting, Resources for the Future
• talk about managerial discourse
Alcoa-Massena NY
Draft Permit For Alcoa Massena
Plants Modernization
• $600 million investment
• produce 144,000 Metric Tons of aluminum per year
• Replacing the existing Soderberg potline with a P-225
prebake potline
– greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 51 percent
– Hazardous Air Pollutants reduced 41%
– other pollutants 31%
• reduce wastewater by 61%
• Draft Permit
– http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/32249.html
• Reforming Permitting
• Resources for the Future
• Flexible Environmental
Regulation
• Institute for Law & Economics
A Joint Research Center of the
Law School, the Wharton
School, and the Department of
Economics in the School of
Arts and Sciences at the
University of Pennsylvania
Research Paper No. 12-03
Public Law and Legal Theory
University of Pennsylvania Law
School Research Paper No. 1205
Permitting Process
• Information/Heterogenity Critique
–
–
–
–
Expensive
Complex, Long
Many agencies,
Separate permit for each media
• CAA, Title V
• CWA
• RCRA
– Dynamic nature of process
• Bargaining
– Permits = Bargaining
– Consent of regulated Success
– New facilities versus Renewal
Info x Bargaing  Compliance?
• Bethlehem Steel, MD
– 48th biggest toxic metal
polluter
– CWA permit expires 1985
• Heterogeneity is the bane of the regulator.
Heterogeneity across space makes it difficult
to write a sensible one-size-fits-all rule (either
technology- or performance based).
Heterogeneity over time makes it difficult to
adapt to new technical possibilities and to
provide incentives to regulated parties to
create environmentally superior technologies.
– Daniel Lazyer
Bargaining Power!
• Administrative
Discretion = Power!
the initial
– Manchester Sewer
Overflow
– Permit requirements
are in “policy
guidance” to states
– No one sues, it is legal
•
•
•
•
8 pages, 1” margins
14 sources, 7 peer reviewed top journals
no more than 1 grammatical error per page
19 footnotes
• Too prescriptive
Tension
• Cost-saving flexibility would be exchanged for
quantifiable environment-saving practices
– or
• Experiment in allowing locally based holistic
management of environmental problems.
– failure is possible
Flexible Environmental Regulation II.
• perceived benefits of flexible environmental performance
standards.
– dynamic incentives to firms for technological innovation
– improving the cost-effectiveness
• “Regulators wanting to create more flexible regulation not only
need to consider different ways of designing regulation, but they
also need to understand the (often complex) causal chains that link
the behavior of the individuals and organizations they regulate to
the social and economic problems they seek to solve. Regulators
need to know how both those problems and the behavioral choices
available to individuals and organizations will be affected by a
regulation’s stringency, structure, specificity, and scope.”
Performance standards
•
•
•
•
•
do not mandate any particular action or
installation of technology, only the
attainment or avoidance of an end state
“
allow for innovation and technological
development
give flexibility to achieve in most cost
effective way
EPA should “specify performance
objectives, rather than specifying the
behavior or manner of compliance that
regulated entities must adopt” Clinton
1993
agencies “must” use performance
standards whenever feasible Obama
2011
Means standards
• direct targets to take or
refrain from actions,
• o sometimes called
technology, design, or
specification standards
• emissions control
technology
Performance Standards
• 50% reduction in emissions
Firm’s Response
• Change energy sources
(natural gas, solar, etc)
• Redesign product
• Adopt energy efficiency
• Create new scrubber
Challenges of Performance
• How to measure performance?
• thousands of pipes, emitters?
• Unintended consequences- building standards
commanded performance in terms of
durability and stability but not
weatherproofing = leaky building
• uneven abatment costs (ducks)
Quick Quiz
• Does Skidmore have performance standards or mean
standards for your liberal arts education?
• CTM– “promise to students that no matter what they
choose to study they will be active participants in an
academic and extracurricular environment that is richly
influenced by literature, arts, culture and ideas. What
they learn will be brought to life by Skidmore's historic
and highly prized "hand and mind" tradition that values
and rewards real-world actions and outcomes.”
Quick Quiz #2
EPA unveils first-ever regulations for coal ash
• “EPA sets structural integrity standards for all
existing and new disposal sites to reduce the
chances that they will leak or break. It also requires
that new coal ash ponds be lined and not located in
sensitive areas like wetlands and earthquake zones.
Existing ash ponds will be subject to new inspection
and monitoring standards in an attempt to prevent
leaks into groundwater and catastrophic spills, and
restrictions to reduce air pollution from ash sites.”
– Greens Pan EPA’s New Coal Ash Rule, Dec 19, 2014
Different Policy Targets
• (A) business decision
making that leads to
• (B) manufacturing
operations or other
behaviors that generate
• (C) emissions of pollutants
that ultimately lead to
• (D) cases of asthma
• B. Scrubber
• C. 30% reduction in PM
• D. inhalers for everyone
Tools
• Self regulation via industry
association
• Labelling
Nudge- theory of libertarian
paternalism
• positive reinforcement and
indirect suggestions better
influence behavior than do
laws and edicts.
• fruit by school checkout
• housefly into the men’s room
urinals
• Executive Order 13563, is to identify methods for
reducing unjustified burdens and costs
• EPA intends to seek ways to promote program
effectiveness and burden reduction through the
following broad initiatives: • Electronic reporting,
• Improved transparency, • Innovative
compliance approaches, and • Systems
approaches and integrated problem-solving.
Heterogeneity Problem
• “Due to the sheer number of regulated facilities, the
increasing contributions of large numbers of smaller
sources to important environmental problems, and
federal and state budget constraints, we can no longer
rely primarily on the traditional single facility
inspection and enforcement approach to ensure
compliance across the country. EPA needs to embed
innovative mechanisms in the structure of its rules to
do a better job of encouraging compliance on a wide
scale.”
– (aka need a Nudge-- adequate monitoring requirements,
public disclosure, information and reporting mechanisms)
John Hayes, CEO Ball Manufacturing
Disclosure
• My WATERS Mapper,
http://watersgeo.epa.gov/mwm/
•
• Facility Search – Enforcement and Compliance
Data- tracks polluters and
violaters http://echo.epa.gov/detailed-facilityreport
•
• TRI- measures toxic emissions by company
http://www2.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventorytri-program/tri-for-communities
2015 TRI University Challenge
• increase awareness of the TRI Program and data
within academic communities; expose students
to TRI data, tools, and analysis; and generate
innovative programs, activities,
recommendations, or research that improve the
accessibility, awareness, and use of TRI data.
• http://www2.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventorytri-program/2015-tri-university-challenge-0
• http://www.airnow.gov/
U.S. embassies are going to measure other countries’
air quality. Surprise: Some don’t like it much
Washington Post,