Full Title: Valuing the Clean Air Act: How Do We Know How Much Clean Air is Worth?
Author(s): J. Scott Holladay
Publisher(s): Institute for Policy Integrity
Publication Date: July 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) released the Second Prospective Study of the impact of the Clean Air Act. This study, entitled The Costs and Benefits of the Clean Air Act from 1990-2020, detailed an exhaustive effort to calculate the impact of the Clean Air Act on human health, the economy and the environment. The study analyzed new regulations associated with the Clean Air Act Amendments passed by Congress in 1990. Specifically the study focuses on how polluters respond to the rules, how much these responses reduce pollution, and how those reductions in pollution affect ecological systems and human health.
The analysis finds that the Clean Air Act regulations will reduce in air pollution and create sizeable health benefits. The annual costs of the regulations analyzed in the study increase from $20 billion in the year 2000 to $65 billion by 2020. These costs are swamped by the projected benefits of the reduction in air pollution, starting at $770 billion in 2000 and rising to $12 trillion by 2020. The study projected the benefits of the Act would exceed the costs by a factor of 30 over the study period.