6WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG FEBRUARY 18, 2008

CONGRESS AND EPA are weighing their op-tions now that a federal appeals court has thrown out a rule to reduce mercury emissions

from coal-fired power plants.The Feb. 8 court decision overturned what the Bush

Administration empha-sizes was the world’s only nationwide control on mercury released by electricity generators. But the decision does not leave all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. off the hook. Many states are re-quiring these facilities to make significantly faster and deeper cuts in emis-sions of the neurotoxic metal than EPA’s rule did.

EPA’s regulation, favored by utilities, would reduce the 48 tons of mercury emitted by power plants annu-ally by 69% sometime after 2018, perhaps as late as 2025. Administration officials, however, acknowledged that electricity generators essentially had to do nothing to meet the rule’s first round of mercury reductions, which were to lower nationwide emissions to 38 tons per year by 2010. Instead, the coal-burning generators would capture mercury as a side effect of another regulation. That rule would curb emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides—which cause acid rain, particle pollu-tion, and smog—from power plants in 28 eastern states.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the over-turned rule was that it would allow power plants to buy and sell allowances to release mercury. Generators that cleaned up their emissions could sell excess allowances to dirtier facilities.

To pave the way for this cap-and-trade program, EPA removed utilities from a list of sources whose emissions must be tightly controlled under the Clean Air Act. It was that action that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined was unlawful.

Now, EPA could take a new regulatory approach on its own, or Congress could give the agency explicit instructions to act. Sources on Capitol Hill say a provi-sion on mercury could end up in climate-change legis-lation currently working its way through the Senate.

The case against EPA was brought by 17 states and several environmental groups.—CHERYL HOGUE

BASF, THE WORLD’S LARGEST chemical maker, says it is the world’s first company to conduct a full carbon analysis of its operations. The firm’s

surprising conclusion: Its products save three times more greenhouse gas emissions than are created during their manufacture and disposal.

BASF executives detailed the findings at a press con-ference in Berlin last week. The company calculated the greenhouse gases emitted during the production of raw materials and precursors it buys, emitted from its own manufacturing sites, and emitted in the disposal of its products at the end of their life. It also analyzed the greenhouse gas emissions savings achieved by custom-ers who use its products.

According to Harald Schwager, a member of BASF’s board of directors, it’s the extensive customer savings that allow the company to call itself greenhouse gas negative.

Using 2006 data, the company determined that 28 million metric tons per year of carbon dioxide equiva-lent were emitted during manufacture of the raw ma-terials it consumes, mostly naphtha and natural gas. Its own production activities spit out 25 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, and the eventual disposal of the products it made that year, assumed to be via incinera-tion, will emit 34 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

However, BASF looked at 90 key products and de-termined that customers saved more than 250 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by using them. In Berlin, Schwager gave examples such as insulation materials that lower the energy consumed in home heating, fuel additives and lightweight plastics that reduce auto fuel consumption, and catalysts that abate emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.

Derik Broekhoff, a senior member of the greenhouse gas protocol team at the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, commends BASF for tak-ing an inventory of its emissions. Although he hasn’t studied the analysis in detail, he says it appears to be the most complete he’s seen from a company.

Using insulation as an example, Broekhoff says he’d like to know more about what BASF is comparing itself to when it makes CO2 savings claims: Competing prod-ucts? Minimum regulatory requirements? No insula-tion at all? “It’s the details that really matter in these calculations,” he points out.—MICHAEL MCCOY

BASF says insulation materials such as its Neopor foam cut home energy consumption, thereby lowering CO2 emissions.

NEWS OF THE WEEK

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BASF MAKES BOLD CARBON CLAIM

BUSINESS: Chemical maker says its products save more greenhouse

gases than they generate

MERCURY RULE OVERTURNED

AIR POLLUTION: EPA, Congress consider alternatives after court

invalidates Administration’s approach

A federal court overturned EPA’s rule controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

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