scholarly journals U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act notice of construction for spent nuclear fuel project - hot conditioning system annex, project W-484

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.K., Westinghouse Hanford Baker
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Nuclear Fuel ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Spent Nuclear Fuel ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Clean Air

scholarly journals What Do Economists Have to Say about the Clean Air Act 50 Years after the Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency?

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Currie ◽  
Reed Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
The Past ◽  
Clean Air

Air quality in the United States has improved dramatically over the past 50 years in large part due to the introduction of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce it. This article is a reflection on the 50-year anniversary of the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, describing what economic research says about the ways in which the Clean Air Act has shaped our society—in terms of costs, benefits, and important distributional concerns. We conclude with a discussion of how recent changes to both policy and technology present new opportunities for researchers in this area.

Valuing Clean Air

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Monetary Approach ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
Roll Back

The passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 marked a sweeping transformation in American politics. In a few short years, the environmental movement pushed Republican and Democratic elected officials to articulate a right to clean air as part of a bevy of new federal guarantees. Charged with delivering on those promises, the EPA represented a bold assertion that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the environment, the authority to command private business to reduce their pollution, and the capacity to dictate how they did so. But revolutions are always contested and the starburst of environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations, elected officials from both parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. Pushing on, the EPA adopted a monetized approach to environmental value that sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights but provided a critical shield for the agency’s rulemaking, as environmental protection came to serve as a key battleground in larger debates over markets, government, and public welfare. The EPA’s success and the potential limits of its monetary approach are evident in the very air we breathe today—far cleaner and healthier as a result of the EPA’s actions, but holding new threats in a rapidly changing climate.

scholarly journals Thirty Years of Economics at the Environmental Protection Agency

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Al McGartland
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Cost Analysis ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
Benefit Cost ◽  
Over Time

When the modern era of environmental policy began with creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, economists and economics were little used. Over time, economics became a major contributor to formation of environmental policy. Executive Order 12291 pushed economics into the policy process but also rendered benefit-cost analysis controversial. I report on economics’ role in the policy process over time and examine contributions by economists to environmental policymaking. Advancing benefit-cost analysis is an obvious contribution. I describe other areas in which economists have contributed and highlight milestones for economics at EPA.

Principals, Bureaucrats, and Responsiveness in Clean Air Enforcements

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Dan Wood
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Implementation Outcomes ◽  
Hierarchy Model ◽  
Clean Air

A principal-agent perspective has been employed in recent studies to rediscover the importance of democratic hierarchies in shaping public bureaucratic outputs. I test the robustness of the hierarchy model for explaining outputs from an agency that has often been cast in the image of bureaucratic independence, the Environmental Protection Agency. Examining the effect of the Reagan presidency on EPA outputs for clean air, Box-Tiao models are constructed to explain shifts in the vigor of air pollution enforcements between 1977 and 1985. The analysis shows that the influence of elected institutions is limited when an agency has substantial bureaucratic resources and a zeal for their use. Moreover, under these conditions, bureaucracy can even move outputs in directions completely opposite from what a model of hierarchy would predict. The implication is that for some agencies it is necessary to give greater consideration to the agent in explaining implementation outcomes through time.

Markets for Bads

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Acid Rain ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
New Model ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Clean Air

By the mid-1980s, as the nation confronted new problems such as the ozone hole and long-standing issues such as acid rain, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faced reduced political support for direct mandate interventions. Harnessing growing support for market-based strategies among environmental advocates, the EPA increasingly turned to incentives, tradable allowances, and other market-based policies in the 1980s. This shift culminated in the development of the nation’s first cap-and-trade program to address the problem of acid rain in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. As the nation looked forward to new concerns including global warming, an era of direct mandates informed by natural rights to clean air and a healthy environment seemed to be at a close, supplanted by a new environmentalism that held out market-based policies and a monetary conceptualization of environmental value as a new model for governance.

scholarly journals Corporate Political Connections and Favorable Environmental Regulatory Enforcement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Heitz ◽  
Youan Wang ◽  
Zigan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Pollutant Emissions ◽  
Political Connections ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Regulatory Enforcement ◽  
Clean Air

We examine whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uniformly enforces the Clean Air Act for politically connected and unconnected firms using a close election setting. We find no difference in regulated pollutant emissions or EPA investigations between the two groups, although connected firms experience less regulatory enforcement and lower penalties. These results are more pronounced for firms connected to politicians capable of influencing regulatory bureaucrats and for connected firms that are more important to their supported politicians. Taken together, our results show that campaign contributions can indirectly benefit firms by way of reduced environmental regulatory enforcement and penalties. This paper was accepted by Colin Mayer for the Special Issue of Management Science: Business and Climate Change.

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