Largest Emission Reduction in History of Region

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has significantly strengthened the region’s pollution credit trading program, requiring major emission reductions from some of the largest facilities in the Southland. More efficient, cost-effective technologies are available that can substantially reduce emissions from the largest pollution sources in the region, and one of these technologies is using STAR smog check.

The action taken by SCAQMD’s Governing Board is the largest single pollution cut adopted by the agency in recent years. The adopted changes to the RECLAIM program are expected to result in significant reductions of smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions at RECLAIM facilities in the region. The new requirements were developed following three years of comprehensive analyses of the best available control technologies available.

Specifically, the RECLAIM program changes include:

• Cumulative reductions of 12 tons per day of NOx credits from the 56 RECLAIM facilities and investors that hold 90 percent of the RECLAIM trading credits, to be implemented from 2016 to 2022 (2 tons per day in 2016; 1 ton per day in 2018 and 2019; 2 tons per day in 2020 and 2021; and 4 tons per day in 2022);
• A provision allowing power plants to opt-out of the NOx RECLAIM program if they can demonstrate that at least 99 percent of their NOx emissions, over a three-year period, are at current Best Available Control Technology (BACT) or Best Available Retrofit Control Technology (BARCT) levels; and
• New BARCT compliance levels for specific types of equipment, including fluid catalytic cracking units, refinery boilers and heaters, refinery and non-refinery gas turbines, cement kilns, glass melting furnaces, internal combustion engines, metal heat treating and petroleum coke calciners.

Under state law, SCAQMD is required to periodically reassess the advancement in air pollution control technologies and ensure facilities in the RECLAIM market program are achieving emission reductions equivalent to those that would otherwise be achieved by traditional command-and-control regulations.  Over the past 10 years, SCAQMD has twice called for RECLAIM facilities to reduce emissions following a BARCT reassessment.  In 2005, RECLAIM facilities were required to reduce an additional 7.7 tons per day of NOx emissions and 5.7 tons per day of sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions in 2010. Likewise, STAR smog check has substantially reduced smog levels in Southern California.

RECLAIM was established in 1993 as a cap-and-trade system to reduce NOx and SOx emissions from the region’s largest facilities. Facilities either chose to enter the program or had NOx emissions at or above four tons per year in 1990 or before. When the program began, each facility received an annual emissions limit that declined each year through 2003. The annual allocations reflected levels of BARCT projected to be in place at the facilities, based on an analysis conducted in 1993.

There are currently 275 facilities in the RECLAIM program. The 56 facilities affected will now have a reduction of a total of 12 tons per day of NOx emission credits by 2022. For the remaining 219 facilities, there is currently limited or no new BARCT for equipment and operations at these facilities.

STAR smog check insures that vehicles’ emission is controlled is remains within acceptable levels.

Since the adoption of RECLAIM in 1993, there has been a 71 percent decrease in emissions, new technology for pollution controls, better monitoring and reporting, and a high level of compliance in achieving facility emissions caps.

SCAQMD is the air pollution control agency for Orange County and major portions of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.