Exempting Old Power Plants from Clean Air Act Hurts Clean Energy Industries

For further information, contact:
Scott Sklar, The Stella Group, Ltd.
Phone: 202-347-2214
E-mail: solarsklar@aol.com

Washington, D.C. (August 24, 2003) – The announcement by the Acting EPA Administrator that she will sign new regulations that waive new source review regulations for the nation’s dirtiest power plants will directly deter use of cleaner energy generation technologies, asserted Scott Sklar, President of The Stella Group, Ltd.

Sklar said, “This is just another act that distorts the marketplace to sustain and promote dirtier, outdated generation technologies which already get billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, lavish regulatory treatment, and federal liability protection”. Sklar stated further, “Exempting these dirty plants from ever complying with the Clean Air Act whose health effects are much worse than tobacco, will stifle innovation in the marketplace and deter growth of emerging renewable and clean energy technologies.”

Policymakers have watered down and “yet to finalize” tax incentives, national renewable energy portfolio standards, and guarantees to interconnection into the electric grid for renewable energy (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind) as well as waste heat (including combined heat and power) and fuel cells.

The Stella Group, Ltd. President stated, “The EPA’s announced action to allow yet another loophole for unhealthy and unsafe technologies, relegates clean energy generation to ‘no longer a national priority’”. Said Sklar, “It’s like mandating dial telephones or steam locomotives, and such interference in the marketplace will have dire consequences increasing US reliance on older, less reliable technologies.”

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The Stella Group, Ltd. is a strategic marketing and policy firm advancing the utilization of clean, distributed energy applications such as advanced batteries and controls, energy efficiency, fuel cells, heat engines, microhydropower, minigeneration (natural gas), modular biomass, photovoltaics, small wind and solar thermal (air-conditioning, water and industrial process heat, and power generation); with blended financing and customer facilitation. Scott Sklar, the Group's founder and president, lives in a solar home in Arlington, Virginia and his coauthored book, A Consumer Guide to Solar Energy, was just re-released in 2003 for its third printing.