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

Allen Bellas, Duane Finney and Ian Lange

Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 2013, vol. Volume 2, issue Number 2

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.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=52 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aen:eeepjl:2_2_a08

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.iaee.org/ ... ons/eeepjournal.aspx

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy from International Association for Energy Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Williams ().