This doesn't look like a particularly smart political move for Bush, but neither does it look like the sky-is-falling rhetoric provided by the environmentalists.
Of course, I'm a bit biased on against how the current grandfather rules for upgrades work. In theory, it's a good idea: force plants to update their facilities whenever they make any substantial upgrades to them. But in practice, the grandfather rules are not flexible enough. Often, costs for bringing plants into compliance can be prohibitive, dramatically adding to the cost of the upgrade which, in turn, adds to the cost of the energy.
Rather than take that kind of hit to their profits, energy companies have been ignoring upgrades to their facilities, meaning that the pollutants will continue to come out of entirely non-Clean Air Act plants, with much less efficiency.
IMHO, Bush needs to change the policy to allow companies to move into incremental compliance, in line with the 20% upgrades. This is the best of both worlds, because it allows the energy companies to come into compliance without having to take the compliance upgrade hit all at once. |
