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Multi-Pollutant Planning
What is multi-pollutant planning?
Multi-pollutant planning involves designing and engaging in planning activities that address more than one pollutant at a time. NESCAUM's goal is to assist states in integrating their planning efforts for global warming emissions, criteria pollutants, regional haze, and air toxics simultaneously.
Why do multi-pollutant planning?
Under the federal Clean Air Act, states have been required to prepare their plans and programs to mitigate each air pollutant problem discretely. This has encouraged a single pollutant planning mindset. As today's environmental and public health challenges become more complex, the NESCAUM states recognize the limits of the existing air quality management framework and the importance of moving to a more integrated, multi-pollutant, economy-wide approach.
Integrated multi-pollutant planning has the potential to be a more cost-effective way to address environmental and public health issues. By looking at multiple air quality goals concurrently and by identifying potential control approaches and their environmental, public health, energy, and economic impacts together, a more complex set of policy questions emerges that can then be addressed. Multi-pollutant planning can identify tradeoffs of implementing one strategy over another, help set priorities and appropriate planning horizons, allow for more informed decisions, and ultimately provide more regulatory certainty. It can help assess unintended consequences of various control approaches and identify the best mix of policies and controls, given the mandate to protect public health and the environment.
In June 2007, the federal Clean Air Act Advisory Committee recommended to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that governments adopt a comprehensive statewide air quality planning process and move from a single to a multiple pollutant approach to managing air quality. EPA has initiated pilots with three jurisdictions to develop statewide, multi-pollutant air quality management plans: New York, North Carolina, and St. Louis MO/IL.
How can regulators begin to link climate change planning with air quality planning?
- 1. Lead with energy.
- Energy is an excellent place to begin linking these two efforts. Many energy efficiency programs have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide, mercury and other toxic metals, diesel, and black carbon. Programs targeted at the power and transportation sectors programs are most likely to result in significant co-benefits.
- 2.Consider trade-offs.
- Regulators need to be acutely aware that there are interactions and trade-offs that must be considered between pollutants and between programs. A program that may be designed to reduce greenhouse gases may in fact increase ozone precursor emissions. Biofuels is a good case in point: introducing biodiesel blends for transportation fuel may reduce net carbon emissions, but may also increase NOx emissions. In the Northeast, even small increases in NOx emissions could adversely affect states' efforts to meet the ozone standard. A multi-pollutant planning framework could help evaluate both the climate and air quality implications of various biofuels options.
- 3. Don't be afraid to change the planning paradigm.
- Moving to a multi-pollutant approach requires changing the way agencies currently problem-solve and interact with one another, and takes considerable time, effort, and support. A rigorous multi-pollutant approach makes the up-front planning process more complex, but can render longer-term, more effective responses.
What is NESCAUM's role in promoting multi-pollutant planning?
NESCAUM has developed a Multi-pollutant Policy Analysis Framework. It is currently piloting the framework with a three states in the Northeast.
What is NESCAUM's Multi-pollutant Policy Analysis Framework (MPAF)?
NESCAUM's framework, depicted in Figure 1, brings together and uses a group of models to integrate energy, climate, and air quality planning. Some of these models have been used by states to develop their State Implementation Plans (SIPs); others have been used by U.S. EPA and other entities for regulatory impact and other assessments. All of the models have been used on a regional, national, or international basis, but have not been linked together in this particular configuration for state-level use.
The framework contains models that deal with: energy economics - the Northeast Market Allocation model (NE-MARKAL); regional economic impacts - the Regional Economic Modeling, Inc. (REMI); air quality and acid deposition - the Community Multi-Scale Air Quality Modeling System (CMAQ); and health effects - the Benefits Mapping and Analysis (BenMAP) or Co-Benefits Risk Assessment Model (COBRA).
The centerpiece of NESCAUM's framework is the NE-MARKAL model. NE-MARKAL is a model that simulates least-cost approaches to achieving pollution reductions by changing energy technology. The model covers 11 northeastern states and the District of Columbia, and characterizes electricity generation, transportation, and the industrial, residential and commercial building sectors over a 30 year time horizon.
NE-MARKAL represents all energy production, transfer, and consumer processes as one interconnected network. It examines specific types of energy or emission control technologies, and selects preferred technologies based on life-cycle costs. Overall, it helps the user understand the interactions between technologies and fuels, and air quality and energy goals.
| Figure 1. NESCAUM's Multi-pollutant Policy Analysis Framework |
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NE-MARKAL can examine a host of policy options, for example, greenhouse gas emission constraints, or changes to the energy distribution infrastructure, or financial incentives for specific technology deployment. It provides implications of those options in terms of total energy system costs, and total emissions of greenhouse gases and some of the criteria pollutants and their precursors.
All of this is done at the state level. This means that states can identify specific program design and implementation mechanisms, and design appropriate incentives to achieve their goals. For example, the model could determine exactly how many light duty cars of what efficiency might be needed to achieve particular air quality and climate goals. Or it can identify what fraction of diesel fuel would need to be offset by biofuels and what the PM implications are of doing that. This is critical information that allows state regulators to understand the implications of program changes from a multi-pollutant perspective.
The framework provides a range of outputs. In addition to assessing potential emissions reductions from NE-MARKAL, it allows the user to input those data into the other models, thus providing data on subsequent improvements in ambient air quality, monetized health benefits, and economic metrics such as gross state product, jobs, and household disposable income. These types of indicators are important for states to garner support for prospective regulatory programs.
How is NESCAUM's approach different from approaches that states currently use?
The most important thing is that we are using models in a new way and in a new context. We are not using them in a deterministic manner, but rather, to provide information about certain scenarios as policy guidance. Part of the approach is to iteratively examine different technologies and their results, and then ask the policymakers whether these scenarios comport with the current political landscape and economic realities in their state. By design, we are using this framework to foster iterative integrated multi-pollutant policy analyses.
This process informs, and does not supplant, current air quality, climate, and energy planning. It requires more complex policy deliberation throughout. NESCAUM's goal is to help states use the framework so they can come up with some program configurations that can meet both their climate and air quality goals.
What are NESCAUM's pilot projects?
The goals of these pilots are to see how useful the framework is, as currently configured, and assess the types of institutional and capacity building changes that are needed for states to use it on their own.
- 1. Massachusetts Energy and Air Quality Integration Project
- NESCAUM is working with the Massachusetts Departments of Energy Resources and Environmental Protection on a one-year project, funded by U.S. Department of Energy. Using emission reductions targets as indicators for ozone, PM-fine, acid deposition and climate change, and some qualitative indicators for air toxics and regional haze, NESCAUM is using the NE-MARKAL energy model to assess a suite of renewable energy and energy efficiency opportunities to achieve Massachusetts' air quality goals. NESCAUM will monetize the associated public health benefits using the COBRA model. The findings will be used to help decision-makers choose the appropriate mix of programs for their air, energy, and climate programs. End date: Spring 2009
- 2. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Air Quality Management Pilot Project
- NESCAUM is partnering with New York on an 18-month project funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). For this project, NESCAUM is working with the Department of Environmental Conservation, conducting a comprehensive and detailed application of the framework using the NE-MARKAL energy model, as well as CMAQ, the REMI regional economic model, and BenMAP. The goals are to build institutional capacity for NY to engage in rigorous multi-pollutant planning activities as well as provide the technical foundation for NY's statewide Air Quality Management Plan (which is part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pilot project to develop statewide air quality plans that address multiple pollutants). End date: September 2009
- 3. Maryland Climate and Air Quality Planning Project
- With funding from the Maryland Department of Environment, NESCAUM is developing Maryland-specific scenarios for use in the NE-MARKAL energy model. This effort is intended to serve as the basis for more detailed multi-pollutant co-benefits analyses in the future. The initial steps involve tailoring the NE-MARKAL reference scenario to reflect Maryland-specific regulations, economic assumptions, and policy constraints. NESCAUM will conduct a limited number of scenario analyses, based on two or three identified policies, and monetize associated public health benefits using the COBRA model. End date: Phase I -- December 2008
For more information:
John Graham: jgraham [at] nescaum.org
Leah Weiss: lweiss [at] nescaum.org
Michelle Manion: mmanion [at] nescaum.org