Balance Costs Against Clean-Air Gains

The Maryland Senate and House are grappling with legislation to reduce emissions that contribute to smog and mercury pollution. Most of the regulatory requirements of the proposed Healthy Air Act (S.B. 154, H.B. 189) focus on emissions from electric power plants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. But one provision addresses greenhouse gases and requires Maryland to join the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that is proposed by seven states.

The administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has put forward its own rules to reduce emissions, and amendments to the act recently approved by a Senate committee move the bill closer to the governor's proposal. Unlike the Healthy Air Act, however, the governor's regulations would not force Maryland to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. There is wisdom in this course.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers are facing a 72 percent electricity rate increase in their bills as rate caps expire, and the costs of any new emission controls certainly would increase monthly electric bills even further.

The Northeast climate agreement covers seven states that have little in common with Maryland. The participants are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island have bailed out of the agreement out of concern about its likely effect on electric rates and economic development. The agreement requires participating states to freeze emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from electric utilities at current levels by 2009 and to reduce emissions by 10 percent beginning in 2015. In Maryland, participation in the Northeast climate pact would mean buying more electricity from other states and less use of lower-cost coal generation.

The states participating in the agreement rely on coal for just 15 percent of their electricity generation, while Maryland generates more than half of its electric power from coal. These differences are reflected in electric rates. New York, for example, has the highest electricity rates of any of the lower 48 states. Maryland's average retail electricity rate in 2004, about 7 cents per kilowatt hour, was in line with the national average. Like Maryland, most of the nation relies on coal to generate about half its electricity.

Reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides will help clean up Maryland's air and create jobs in the pollution-control field. But reducing emissions of carbon dioxide in Maryland, New York or New England won't stop global climate change. A recent study concluded that the Northeast climate agreement would slow the projected increase of global temperatures by .0003 of one degree Celsius 100 years from now. It would have no measurable effect on global sea levels or on the Chesapeake Bay. Climate change is a global problem, and piecemeal state or regional action does little more than raise energy prices with no measurable environmental benefit.

The Maryland General Assembly can find middle ground in the clean-air debate by confining the Healthy Air Act to emissions reductions that will benefit public health. The governor's proposed regulations are significantly more stringent than Environmental Protection Agency emissions rules issued last year.

Most legislators seem to accept increased electricity rates as an inevitable consequence of more stringent state emission standards, but striking a balance between higher energy costs and environmental gains will be easier if Maryland avoids entanglement with the New England climate pact.

-- Eugene M. Trisko