Impacts of the Acid Rain Program on Coal Industry Employment

摘要

This report addresses the impacts of the Acid Rain Program (created under TitleIV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990) on coal mining employment. It revisits the results of a study that was originally conducted in 1990, which compared the economic impacts of the acid rain provisions of several legislative scenarios being considered at the time. The earlier study projected that Title IV could have a substantial effect on coal mining employment. It predicted a gross loss of 13,000-16,000 coal miner job slots 1 by the year 2001 as a result of Title IV. The current study revisits the original 1990 analysis and the differences in the results are quite substantial. The 2000 report projects that by the year 2010, Title IV of the Clean Air Act could result in a gross loss of approximately 7,700 job slots, or about half the loss projected by the 1990 study. The net loss would be only 4,100 coal miner job slots because 3,600 new job slots would be created. The extent to which Title IV affects coal mining employment, specifically job slots, is the focus of this paper.