Economic optimal levels of control of sulfur dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels

The 1970 Amendments to the federal Clean Air Act direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate uniform standards governing the ambient concentrations of a number of air pollutants including sulfur dioxide. This statute suggests the question of what constitutes optimal levels of control of air pollutants and provides the direction for the study, the subject of which is economic optimal levels of control of sulfur dioxide emissions. In Chapter I the sources of sulfur dioxide concentrations, the effects of sulfur dioxide concentrations, and the technology of control of sulfur dioxide emissions are examined. The social control of sulfur dioxide emissions and concentrations is the subject of Chapter II. The literature on optimal levels of control of sulfur dioxide emissions and concentrations is the subject of Chapter III. Much of this work is directed toward numerical solutions. The result is that there is not in the literature a statement, rigorously derived, of optimal control policy criteria. Analytic solutions for optimal levels of control of sulfur dioxide emissions are derived in Chapter IV. The analysis proceeds within a static framework. The conditions under which the static solution for a series of instantaneous optima approaches the dynamic solution for the optimal path of control is the subject of Chapter VII. In Chapter V the implications of the analysis for a priori decision making are examined. Here rules which are operationally useful in making a priori judgements about optimal levels of control are derived. The use of the rules in a priori decision making is demonstrated. The numerical solution of the model is the subject of Chapter VI. Here the results of a case study of optimal rates of emission at the sources of sulfur dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are reported.