[Scott] Next on "Energy Switch," we'll investigate the air quality in America.

- Since 1970, when the Clean Air Act really got its plan together, the economy has nearly tripled, the miles we drive have doubled, and yet the emissions that contribute to these pollutants have gone down by about 80%.

- It's an excellent point.

- Oh, wow.

- At this point, we have done such a good job that the low hanging fruit is gone.

We can push on technology to reduce emissions, but at the same time, there is always a cost associated with that, and how far are we gonna drive emission reductions if the cost is very high.

- Coming up, the benefits and trade-offs of securing better air quality.

[Narrator] Major funding for this program was provided by Arizona State University.

Shaping global leaders, driving innovation, and transforming the future.

Arizona State, The New American University.

[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

In 1970, the US enacted the Clean Air Act with an aim to reduce six air pollutants, particulate matter, particles suspended in air, lead, and gases like ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxides.

The Act ushered in new capture technologies that are commonplace today, like catalytic converters that have improved air quality and health across the country at a cost that has been born by the U.S.

economy.

We'll discuss with Tracey Holloway.

She's a Professor at University of Wisconsin, Chair of the University's Energy Analysis and Policy Program, and Team Leader for the NASA Health and Air Quality Team.

Emily Schilling is a lawyer specializing in air quality legal issues.

She's a Partner and Practice Group Leader for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources at Holland & Hart.

On this episode of "Energy Switch," we'll look at air quality in America.

Well, Emily and Tracey, glad to have you.

It may seem obvious, but why should our listening audience really care about air quality?

- I think in the big picture, air quality is a great success story, and I think when it comes to environmental problem-solving, it's often doom and gloom, and what a big problem, and people don't realize that the Clean Air Act from 1970 has really made a difference, we're breathing cleaner air, we're living longer, and it's been viewed through the lens of other environmental problems and around the world as really a exemplar of how to tackle even complex challenges.

- Well, at this point, we've done such a good job that the areas of control that are remaining are difficult to account for, and difficult to control, and it's, particularly as the West, for example, dries, you have many more wildfires, those lead to areas not attaining standards, but the local emissions have dropped significantly.

How does the locality control for pollution that results from a wildfire in California, or from air pollution that comes across our borders from China.

So we're seeing now that we've had, there's so many success stories with respect to the Clean Air Act, now we're butting up against the more difficult questions about how do we meet health-based standards when the low hanging fruit is gone.

- Yeah.

So what are we worried about in the U.S.

particularly now?

What are the local air pollutants that we worry about here?

- Public enemy number one is fine particulate matter, which is often called PM 2.5, because it's so small, 2.5 microns and smaller, that it can penetrate deep into the lungs, it can get into your bloodstream, and it's associated with so many negative health effects.

It's associated with respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, so much.

- Gosh.

- And that's just one of the pollutants that we consider when we're thinking about air quality challenges.

- Okay, particulate matter, 2.5 microns?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- That's any liquid or solid suspended in air.

- Ah.

- There are also a lot of gases that we care about that are all invisible, so we can't see them with our eye, but when we breathe them in, they can inflame our respiratory tubes, they can damage cells, and there's a lot of, you know, negative health outcomes that kind of follow on from that kind of damage.

- What are the top several of those?

- Ozone is the biggest gas challenge across the United States.

And when we talk about ozone, we're not talking about the natural ozone layer.

But what makes it interesting is that it is cooked up in the atmosphere through two ingredients.

And one of the ingredients is nitrogen oxides, NO2 and NO, and the other ingredient is called volatile organic compounds.

It's a family of chemicals that are one of the main ingredients for ground-level ozone.

- Interesting.

What can you add to that?

- While PM 2.5 are fine particulate, and ozone are two of the primary pollutants that are continue to be a problem today, we should look back at the 1970 Clean Air Act that addressed six common pollutants.

- Okay.

- It includes carbon monoxide.

- Oh.

- Lead, nitrogen oxides, which are also a precursor to ozone, so still of concern, but as a pollutant themselves is much less of a concern.

- Okay.

- And sulfur dioxide, and again, those four pollutants have been very well-controlled by the Clean Air Act over the last 40-plus years.

- So CO, lead, NOx and SOx.

- Yep.

- Okay.

- And in fact, you know, we've done such a good job that since 1970 when the Clean Air Act really got its plan together, the economy has nearly tripled, the miles we drive have doubled, and yet the emissions that contribute to these pollutants have gone down by about 80%.

- It's an excellent point.

- Oh, wow.

- Yeah.

- So that's real success.

- Absolutely.

And some have gone down by 99%, but 80% is an average.

- Other success stories of cleaning up air in the U.S.. - The other success story certainly is sulfur dioxide, that was a pretty damaging pollutant in the 1970s, both with respect to our public health, but also to environmental indicators.

I mean, it really burns plant material.

So the Clean Air Act incented technological advancement.

- Right.

- And now, every power plant, every industrial facility has what's referred to as scrubbers on them, which essentially shoot limestone into the airstream, and pull out the SO2, so you're talking about, you know, 99%, 98, 99% reductions, and SO2 is coming out of the stacks.

- Okay.

- So if you look across the country at the number of areas that are not attaining standards, there are, I mean, there are so many fewer of them now than there were in the 70s, and that really is due entirely to technology advances and air pollution control.

- Wow.

And the source of the sulfur is organic coal, oil?

- Yep.

- And these are natural sources of sulfur, but when you burn it-- - Combustion really is a substantial driver of all air pollutants, but certainly of SO2.

- Yeah, really anything that burns, anything that evaporates, and anywhere there's sort of windblown dust that can be kicked up are all sources.

And because there's so many different things that burn, and there's a lot of different control strategies, so scrubbers and catalytic converters, these are some of the headliners, but even paving a road-- - Sure.

- To prevent windblown dust is another type of air pollution control.

- Sure.

- I think it's important though, on the dust side, as we talk about air pollution and the Clean Air Act, that the Clean Air Act really focuses primarily on sort of direct sources of emissions, tailpipes-- - Human-- - Smoke stacks.

- Human direct sources.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- There is very little consideration in the Act for natural sources, and we call that background in Clean Air Act parlance, so that might mean, for example, there is in the West a phenomenon, in which stratospheric ozone, there's an incursion, and it drops down into lower levels, that's considered sort of a naturally occurring ozone episode-- - So dying from that's okay, it's natural.

- That is right.

- Natural gas.

- But the issue is that how much can we really control.

- So there are technologies to limit these targeted pollutants.

What are some of the things we're doing?

- I'll talk a little bit about PM 2.5, so that is in large part controlled through what are called bag houses, which are like giant vacuum cleaners that go at the end of industrial processes.

That pull, there's sort of a suction that pulls the airstream through the control device, and the particulates adhere to the bags-- - Right.

- As the airstream moves through.

- Okay.

- And in large part, that is how we control basically everything between two microns and 10 microns.

- Okay.

- Is called coarse PM.

- So giant vacuum bags.

- Yeah that's the way-- - I'm thinking my Eureka or my Uber to only-- - Yeah.

Only really big.

- A lot bigger.

I saw a cartoon not long ago of our ancestor cave people cooking over fire indoors, and one was saying, "Fire is dangerous.

I think we need to eliminate it."

Okay, well, okay.

I mean, everything you bolt onto a facility has an energy penalty and a cost penalty, but the ultimate cost is not being healthy.

- Right.

- It's a struggle, because we take for granted the lifestyle that we live, every time you pick up your phone, know that you are holding a device that is manufactured through many processes, and going back to sort of mining metal deposits.

Right?

- Right.

- We have to recognize that there are trade-offs that we can push on technology to reduce emissions, but at the same time, there is always a cost associated with that, and how far are we gonna drive emission reductions if the cost is very high.

[Scott] Right, yeah.

- And there's been more and more of a drive in regulation towards considering a cost-benefit analysis, the Clean Air Act itself doesn't really contemplate cost-benefit analysis.

- Right.

- Well... it's true that you're not allowed to use a cost-benefit analysis when setting that health-based standard-- - Okay.

- But there have been many cost-benefit assessments of the Clean Air Act.

- Okay.

- And they typically come in that there are huge benefits for every dollar spent on air pollution control.

It is very expensive.

- But we get, the midterm range is about $30 in benefits for every dollar that we spend on pollution control.

- Okay.

- And, you know, there's uncertainty there, but even at the lowest range, it's a three to one.

- Okay.

- And the way that we put this number on it is really economists who look at, "What are people willing to pay to live longer?"

And if you think about what are people willing to pay for a heart transplant, or for major surgery, or for, you know, expensive care for a disease, and if you translate those costs into like, "Okay, well if we're willing to pay a lot to live longer, then it's really, we're getting a huge return on investment, because making a city's air cleaner means that millions of people are going to live longer."

- Clean air standards, how do they address air quality?

- It's a system that we refer to as cooperative federalism, in which EPA through work with experts in the field, they have their own advisory committee called the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee.

- Okay.

- On what safe levels are of a particular pollutant.

And then EPA, at the federal level, sets those standards.

And then, the actual compliance and the implementation of those standards is handled at the state level.

- States can go stricter, but not less strict?

- No, yes, there is actually a provision that states that the states can be more stringent, but they cannot be less stringent.

- Got it.

- Like Emily said, the federal EPA sets a standard, and these grades are based on ground monitors, little instruments that are located around the United States.

These monitors take measurements every hour, every day.

- Huh.

- And then these are used to calculate the grade that determines whether a county is passing or failing.

And for the counties that are failing, this is what's called being a non-attainment with that standard.

- Okay.

- And if a county is in non-attainment, then the businesses in that county and the car owners in that county are subject to additional controls.

And when a state puts forward a plan to try to bring emissions lower to become in the passing zone, this is called a state implementation plan, and so it really is this example of cooperative federalism, where the federal government sets a standard, and then it's really up to the states to figure out how to achieve that standard.

- Got it, interesting.

- And I just wanna add on in terms of what a non-attainment area means, what non-attainment means, certainly, for your viewers, would be addressing going to do inspection and maintenance on your car, but for industry that may employ your viewers, it's a huge burden to be in a non-attainment area, because everything is stricter in terms of, for example, the state has to impose more stringent technologies, where you will have lower limits on the amount that can be emitted into the air.

There are some provisions that Clean Air Act that actually, that trigger percentage reductions in a particular pollutant once you get to various levels of non-attainment, so it is very difficult for industry to grow, or new industry to come in to areas that are non-attainment areas-- - Gotcha.

- And that does create this tension between growth-- - Economic growth.

- Yeah, economic growth in places that are not attaining the air quality standards.

And another tension that I do wanna raise is between the fact that, over time, all of these studies that Tracey talks about, there are more and more studies that indicate, particularly with respect to ozone and PM 2.5, that the levels of exposure perhaps need to be dropped, sort of to lower standards, right?

So an example is for PM 2.5, the standard was 13 micrograms, it's now nine micrograms per cubic meter, and in those cases, the lower the standard, the harder it is -- - The harder, sure.

- To meet, and as we look at, as the fact the low hanging fruit is gone, now we're dealing with incoming emissions from China, that a local state, when they do their state implementation plan, they have a very hard time accounting for that -- They can't control it.

- Yeah, they can't.

- The other issue are wildfires.

Wildfires, we see the monitors along in Salt Lake City, they light up every summer, because of the wildfire smoke that comes from California.

- Got it.

Interesting.

- They can't control that.

- I mean, what does it cost each year to do this, to do these air standards, or what are we looking at for the U.S.?

- Sixty-five billion dollars a year is the cost.

- Okay.

- But that money isn't disappearing, that money is going into these control technologies, and into the jobs of the people that are making those, you know, I visited a coal-fired power plant in Central Wisconsin a number of years ago, and the pollution control devices took up about as much space as the power plant itself.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, these are creating jobs even at the power plants directly.

- Right.

- And so the cost is going into our economy to make people live longer, and, you know, and then you can figure out what's the benefit.

- I think that doesn't sound like that much given what we spend on so many other things.

- That's right.

That's right.

- You know?

- Yeah, you know, I think that there's sometimes, this setup that it's jobs or the environment, but that's just not true.

- Right.

- These emission control technology producers, like the kind of companies that make a catalytic converter, these companies employ 1.6 million jobs in the United States.

- Wow.

- We already export about $50 billion in air pollution controls to other countries.

- Wow.

- And that's really only projected to grow.

- That's a big deal.

We haven't talked about another molecule that's been labeled a pollutant, carbon dioxide.

I think it was labeled a pollutant, I don't know, it might have been end of Bush Administration, Supreme Court, but Obama Administration actually had an endangerment finding around it.

Talk about that.

What's going on?

- In 2009, EPA made the determination that that group of pollutants, which we can refer to as just greenhouse gases are reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and the environment.

And that is critical, because without that finding, all of the regulatory programs that now govern emissions of greenhouse gas would fall, because really, if you go back to 1970, and the Clean Air Act has only been amended a couple of times, there was not a clear program within the Act for the regulation of greenhouse gases.

You talked about these other pollutants, those come out of a stack, we can pull them out of a stack through technology, they're much easier to control.

Greenhouse gases are sort of everywhere and very difficult to manage from a historic pollution control perspective.

- Okay.

- So it makes it really complicated to regulate.

- Is it a pollutant?

I mean, is that the word that's an issue here?

I mean, could we not regulate the greenhouse gases in some way without also labeling them pollutant?

Are we conflating two things here?

The word pollutant is the thing that I think people that I know get caught up with, right?

- Yeah, I mean, and I think that that was in dispute in the early 2000s.

- Right.

- And that's why it went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled that yes, it is a pollutant.

- Okay.

- It's a byproduct of combustion, it comes from the same sources that we've been talking about in the context of air quality.

- Okay.

- Cars and trucks, power plants, industry, and there are solutions, there are different solutions than we've been talking about for clean air issues that are reactive.

And that's really the difference between these two categories.

Greenhouse gases, especially CO2, are not reactive.

So they stay in the atmosphere for a very long time, but because they're not reactive, we can't just spray limestone on them.

We have to do something different.

And I think, I mean, the good news is that there are a lot of opportunities from energy efficiency initiatives, to moving away from internal combustion engines to renewable electricity sources, so they're different solutions, but the solutions are there.

- Interesting.

- And from my perspective, however, the solutions that you articulated are solutions that are moving away from a particular industry.

For example, moving away from combustion cars.

I think the problem there is is that the Clean Air Act didn't anticipate that entire industries would fall off as a result of the regulation under the Act, so while there are limited options for reducing them, for example, carbon capture and sequestration, so that is actually a means of reducing the CO2 from a particular gas stream.

So there are some technologies for some of these pollutants, but they are much more in their infancy than what we saw in the 1970s, and just simply more difficult to manage.

- Well, you know, I think that industries are evolving.

The world today is different than the world in 1970.

- Yeah.

- And auto manufacturers have been changing their technology for decades.

Power companies are diversifying their portfolio of generation for decades.

So, sure, some new technologies are coming online, other technologies may be phased out, but I think that this is the cycle of any new technology, and you know, we don't travel by railroad across the United States anymore either.

I think that things are changing, and they're changing to achieve goals that we want as a society.

- Yeah.

It's interesting.

I think this is a real big topic, and it's very divisive.

- It is a divisive topic.

- I'd love to... I don't think we're there, but I'd love for us to figure out how to do energy and environment.

- Yeah.

- Are there anything in your heads that could be easier or cheaper to implement, and get the same benefits, quality benefits that we're getting today?

- You know, I think that there are these opportunities to address multiple pollutants at one time, and I think, you know, electric vehicles are one way for, as an example to, you know, if you move away from internal combustion engines, you take that NOx off the road, the hydrocarbons that are coming out, the carbon monoxide, and vehicles, on-road vehicles are the biggest contributor to fine particulate matter.

Now, I do not drive an electric vehicle personally, I'm not saying they're for everybody, but I'd say it's an example of a technology that is moving forward, and offers a multiple control, including carbon dioxide.

- Yeah.

- And I think from the perspective of public health, and this idea that it's not just how much pollutant is emitted, but where it's emitted, when you have buses, and cars, and trucks, right?

Driving down the street next to where you're walking with your kid, you're breathing that in.

- Yeah.

- And when you shift that into a power plant, those power plants are much more efficient, they're typically located further away-- - To charge the battery, you mean?

- Well, yeah.

I mean, just to generate the electricity, whether it's for the battery, and I think this is sort of where this idea of growing electrification can be a push toward, you know, cleaner home heating and cooking, cleaner transportation systems, and not necessarily all or nothing.

- Sure.

- But it's a way of reducing multiple pollutants in one swoop.

- I do think we need to get a little bit more creative.

I reiterate again that the Clean Air Act has not been amended in a meaningful way since 1990.

So things have changed since then, both in terms of the way that we manage air quality, the improvements in air quality since 1990, so the low hanging fruit is gone, I think in large part, and therefore, if you're looking at different categories, like what we call area sources, which are not the big point sources, like power plants or factories, but they're maybe dry cleaners.

There is a whole host of sources that economically we can't impose substantial cost on, there are a lot of smaller businesses, but at this point in much of the areas of the U.S.

that are not attaining the standards, it is those-- it is the cars and the trucks, and it is these air, is these other sources.

- Got you.

- So can we get creative about how we support emission reductions for those other sources?

States are on the ground are starting to do it, because that's the only way they can demonstrate that they're gonna meet their plans, but I think at a federal level, being a little more creative about how we support them in reducing air contaminants and air pollution is important.

- I'm sure it's psychosomatic, but my eyes have just started to itch throughout this dialogue.

[laughing] Well, this has been a fantastic discussion.

Thanks for being with us.

- Thank you so much.

- Enjoying your visit, Tracey and Emily, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Scott Tinker, "Energy Switch."

By almost all measures, the Clean Air Act has been a success.

To meet its standards, energy and industrial companies invested in bag houses to trap PM 2.5 particulate air pollution.

They installed scrubbers to capture sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides, both precursors to ground-level ozone, a lung irritant, and catalytic converters to capture lead.

Those costs have largely been born by consumers, but we're small enough, we've hardly noticed.

With a benefit that U.S.

air quality is 80% cleaner than 1970, reducing or eliminating respiratory impacts for millions of Americans.

But going further may be a challenge.

Particulate pollution from wildfires, dust storms, or factories in other countries may make it impossible for U.S.

industries to meet stricter standards in their areas.

And regulating CO2 with the Act would be far more expensive.

Still, studies show that clean air investments already made have returned many times their value.

Something to celebrate.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Major funding provided by Arizona State University.

Home to the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, addressing critical challenges toward a future in which all living things thrive.

Arizona State, The New American University.