Critical Review – Multi-pollutant Air Quality

Management

John Kinsman Sr. Director, EnvironmentEdison Electric Institute

Washington, D.C.

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Critical Review – Challenges (1)

Risk analysis is largely meaningless without advance knowledge about health and ecological risks and relative severity of response: o This type of information is incomplete for listed

single pollutants and virtually nonexistent for exposure to multi-pollutant mixtures.

o Accounting for synergisms or antagonisms in multi-pollutant responses is rare in the literature.

Epidemiology challenges include access to health data, monitoring data for one or few sites representing the community as a whole, and distinguishing between indoor, outdoor and personal exposure.

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Critical Review – Challenges (2)

Measurement needs: e.g., VOCs and organic carbon species in particles; HAPs such as trace metals, mercury, aromatic compounds and aldehydes.

o In practice it is not possible to measure multi-pollutant mixtures with a spatial and temporal density required for detailed exposure characterization.

Typically, evaluation of air quality model performance compared with measurements indicates that models can estimate concentration fields to a factor of 2 or better, depending on the specie of interest and averaging.

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Critical Review – Challenges (3)

The most critical technical deficiency is the knowledge of human health and ecosystems effects arising from exposure to mixtures: o Would require an aggressive research program

well beyond current research plans and funding levels.

The second area of technical weakness lies in the ability to characterize exposures at the local or neighborhood level.

Unless knowledge in these two areas is significantly improved, a multi-pollutant, risk-based concept is illusory.

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Observations

EPA and Congress may be further down the road toward Level 2 (increased attention to co-benefits attainable with single pollutant attainment) multi-pollutant management than implied.

The power sector anticipates a fair degree of Level 2 air quality management, linking SO2, NOx, mercury and other HAP emission reduction strategies:

o Failed Clear Skies Act which led to the linked Clean Air Interstate Rule-Clean Air Mercury Rule final rules of 2005.

o Senator Carper’s Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010.

o Soon-to-be proposed replacement rule for CAIR plus March 2011 proposed MACT standards and NSPS.

Upcoming joint SOx-NOx secondary NAAQS review focusing on acidification.

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Observations (2)

Risk-based multi-pollutant air quality management is not available to inform monumental EPA decision-making during 2010-11; e.g.:

o Four new NAAQS.

o Numerous MACT decisions (power generators, industrial boilers, etc.) proceeding despite scant health and ecosystem effects information.

“We have chosen as a bureaucracy to divide what we do in ways that make absolutely no sense from a science perspective,” McCarthy said, arguing that tackling pollutants individually is irrational.

[Inside EPA, April 30 reporting on an April 26 presentation to Health Effects Institute by EPA AA for Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy]

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Concerns Issue: The regulated community is principally concerned with simplifyingthe bureaucratic hierarchy of pollutant management and to createefficiencies in addressing current regulation.

Response: The regulated community is concerned with EPA decisions on NAAQS-setting,

implementation plus attainability and cost impacts; e.g.:o Interpretation of health study information.o Extreme tightening of the ozone and PM standards which would cause many

areas to fail.o New source modeling for 1-hour SO2 and NO2 standards.

o EPA’s new 1-hour SO2 standard requiring refined dispersion modeling proof that an area attains the standard.

o High costs of implementation.o PM reduction “co-benefits” driving cost-benefit for SO2 and ozone standards.

(continued)

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Concerns (2)

Issue: Accountability analysis should be used tocorrect or modify management actions.

Response: The regulated community would be quite concerned

with some approaches to correct or modify management actions based on accountability analysis.

Once a facility puts controls on or modifies a process, it expects not to have to make another investment for the same purpose for some length of time.

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Concerns (3)

Issue: Develop a framework for grouping pollutant mixtures within common sources.

Response: Difficult for power plants, which use different fuels,

boilers and pollution control technology. This combination of these and other factors leads to a

wide range of emissions characteristics. The universe of these factors is constantly changing in

the fleet as we are moving to meet the long list of air pollution regulatory requirements.

Perhaps less of a challenge in a decade.

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ECOS Resolution re: Multi-pollutant Strategies

Resolution on Multi-Pollutant Strategies for the Control of Air Pollution,March 2010, *

“…in pursuing a multi-pollutant strategy, the U.S. Congress, U.S. EPA, and the States should proceed in a manner that protects the public health and environment, promotes efficient expenditures of resources, provides adequate and reliable energy, is scientifically sound and technically feasible and minimizes government impediments to the achievement of these goals and cost savings while significantly reducing environmental impacts and providing industry with the ability to plan for the future.”

* ECOS is the national non-profit, non-partisan association of state and territorialEnvironmental agency leaders.

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Reasons to Amend CAA

Require multi-pollutant air quality management.

Require risk-based air quality management.

Require research on pollutant mixtures, modeling, monitoring, etc.

Updated reviews of health impacts of individual HAPs.

Address NAAQS, MACT and NSR challenges.

Address landslide of EPA regulations – create a more coordinated and efficient transition to the future, addressing environment, energy and the economy.

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Regulatory Landslide

New air quality regulations affecting electric power sector:

o 1-hour NO2 NAAQS – finalized February 2010

o 1-hour SO2 NAAQS – finalized June 2010

o Reconsidered 8-hour ozone NAAQS – to be finalized August 2010

o Transport Rule (replacing CAIR) – to be finalized Spring-Summer 2011

o Remanded PM2.5 NAAQS – to be finalized October 2011

o MACT – to be finalized November 2011

o SO2, NOx & PM NSPS – to be finalized November 2011

o GHG regulation, including NSPS

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Amending the CAA?

The Clean Air Act has not been amended since 1990.

That entailed a several year battle. Few lawmakers remain who went through that

process. Concerns about opening the floodgates. As stated in the Critical Review, the CAA’s

regulatory framework, administered by EPA and the federal land managers, is the result of over 40 years of statutory and case law and is embodied in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, supplemented by numerous state and local regulations.

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In Appreciation

The National Research Council panel for its 2004 report – Air Quality Management in the United States”.

EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee (CAAAC), for two reports advising EPA on how to implement the NRC report.

EPA, which has started down the path of multi-pollutant management (e.g., Detroit multi-pollutant project; pilots in New York, North Carolina and St. Louis; developing tools; etc.).

NARSTO, for its report on the needs to support a multi-pollutant air quality management paradigm for North America

oDrs. Hidy and Pennell who co-chaired the NARSTO assessment and co-authored this Critical Review.

The AWMA Critical Review Committee and Chair Dr. Chow.

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