IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/eeepjl/2_2_a08.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technological Advance in Cooling Systems at U.S. Power Plants

Author

Listed:
  • Allen Bellas
  • Duane Finney
  • Ian Lange

Abstract

Prior to adoption of the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) most U.S. power plants used once-through cooling water systems that discharged large quantities of warm water. This resulted in significant amounts of thermal pollution in neighboring bodies of water. The CWA essentially mandated recirculating systems for new facilities. This paper investigates whether there was technological advance in cooling systems, which we define as reductions in performance-adjusted costs, and how these advances are related to imposition of the CWA. Results suggest that the performance-adjusted cost of installing a recirculating cooling system was falling prior to implementation of the CWA but rose thereafter. This is consistent with the theoretical work suggesting that command and control regulation offers poor incentives for advances in pollution control technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Allen Bellas & Duane Finney & Ian Lange, 2013. "Technological Advance in Cooling Systems at U.S. Power Plants," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:eeepjl:2_2_a08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=52
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maia David & Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné, 2005. "Environmental Regulation and the Eco-Industry," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 141-155, September.
    2. Adam Jaffe & Richard Newell & Robert Stavins, 2002. "Environmental Policy and Technological Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(1), pages 41-70, June.
    3. Grischa Perino, 2010. "Price Discrimination Based on Downstream Regulation: Evidence from the Market for SO2 Scrubbers," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2010-09, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    4. Allen Bellas & Ian Lange, 2010. "Technological progress in particulate removal equipment at U.S. coal burning power plants," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 180-192, October.
    5. Ivan Haščič & Frans de Vries & Nick Johnstone & Neelakshi Medhi, 2009. "Effects of environmental policy on the type of innovation: The case of automotive emission-control technologies," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2009(1), pages 1-18.
    6. Requate, Till & Unold, Wolfram, 2003. "Environmental policy incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology:: Will the true ranking please stand up?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 125-146, February.
    7. Requate, Till, 2005. "Dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments--a survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 175-195, August.
    8. Bellas, Allen S., 1998. "Empirical evidence of advances in scrubber technology," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 327-343, December.
    9. Ian Lange & Allen Bellas, 2005. "Technological Change for Sulfur Dioxide Scrubbers under Market-Based Regulation," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 81(4).
    10. Milliman, Scott R. & Prince, Raymond, 1989. "Firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 247-265, November.
    11. Downing, Paul B. & White, Lawrence J., 1986. "Innovation in pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 18-29, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dechezleprêtre, Antoine & Kozluk, Tomasz & Kruse, Tobias & Nachtigall, Daniel & de Serres, Alain, 2019. "Do Environmental and Economic Performance Go Together? A Review of Micro-level Empirical Evidence from the Past Decade or So," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 13(1-2), pages 1-118, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Allen Bellas & Ian Lange, 2010. "Technological progress in particulate removal equipment at U.S. coal burning power plants," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 180-192, October.
    2. Mehdi Fadaee & Luca Lambertini, 2015. "Non-tradeable pollution permits as green R&D incentives," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 17(1), pages 27-42, January.
    3. Arguedas, Carmen & van Soest, Daan P., 2009. "On reducing the windfall profits in environmental subsidy programs," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 192-205, September.
    4. Ekundayo Shittu & Geoffrey Parker & Xiaoyue Jiang, 2015. "Energy technology investments in competitive and regulatory environments," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 453-471, December.
    5. Martin Larsson, 2017. "EU Emissions Trading: Policy-Induced Innovation, or Business as Usual? Findings from Company Case Studies in the Republic of Croatia," Working Papers 1705, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb.
    6. Hattori, Keisuke, 2011. "Optimal Environmental Policy under Monopolistic Provision of Clean Technologies," MPRA Paper 28837, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Hattori, Keisuke, 2010. "Firm Incentives for Environmental R&D under Non-cooperative and Cooperative Policies," MPRA Paper 24754, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Krysiak, Frank C., 2011. "Environmental regulation, technological diversity, and the dynamics of technological change," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 528-544, April.
    9. Jessica Coria & Magnus Hennlock, 2012. "Taxes, permits and costly policy response to technological change," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 14(1), pages 35-60, January.
    10. Shoji Haruna & Rajeev K. Goel, 2019. "Optimal pollution control in a mixed oligopoly with research spillovers," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 21-40, March.
    11. Idrissa Sibailly, 2013. "On licensing and diffusion of clean technologies in oligopoly," Working Papers hal-00911453, HAL.
    12. Maria J. Gil-Molto & Bouwe Dijkstra, 2011. "Strictness of Environmental Policy and Investment in Abatement," Discussion Papers in Economics 11/35, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    13. repec:bla:germec:v:11:y:2010:i::p:86-107 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Zhang, Hui & Cao, Libin & Zhang, Bing, 2017. "Emissions trading and technology adoption: An adaptive agent-based analysis of thermal power plants in China," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 23-32.
    15. Perino, Grischa & Requate, Till, 2012. "Does more stringent environmental regulation induce or reduce technology adoption? When the rate of technology adoption is inverted U-shaped," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 456-467.
    16. Kemp, René & Pontoglio, Serena, 2011. "The innovation effects of environmental policy instruments — A typical case of the blind men and the elephant?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 28-36.
    17. Grischa Perino, 2010. "Price Discrimination Based on Downstream Regulation: Evidence from the Market for SO2 Scrubbers," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2010-09, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    18. Adam B. Jaffe & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2004. "Technology Policy for Energy and the Environment," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 4, pages 35-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Eva Camacho-Cuena & Till Requate & Israel Waichman, 2012. "Investment Incentives Under Emission Trading: An Experimental Study," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 53(2), pages 229-249, October.
    20. Bouwe R. Dijkstra & Maria J. Gil‐Moltó, 2018. "Is emission intensity or output U‐shaped in the strictness of environmental policy?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(2), pages 177-201, April.
    21. Dagmar Nelissen & Till Requate, 2007. "Pollution-reducing and resource-saving technological progress," International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 5-44.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:eeepjl:2_2_a08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.