The Cost of Developing Site-Specific Environmental Regulations: Evidence from EPA's Project XL |
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Authors: | ALLEN BLACKMAN JANICE MAZUREK |
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Institution: | (1) Quality of the Environment Division, Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA, US |
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Abstract: | The flagship of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory reinvention initiative, Project XL has been touted as a regulatory
blueprint for a site-specific, performance-based pollution-control system, but widespread complaints about the costs of the
program beg the question of whether the costs of tailoring regulations to individual facilities are manageable. To address
this question, this paper presents original survey data on a sample of 11 XL projects. We find that the fixed costs of putting
in place XL agreements are substantial, averaging over $450,000 per firm. While stakeholder negotiations are widely cited
as the principal source for these costs, we find that they actually arise mainly from interaction between participating facilities
and the EPA. Moreover, EPA management problems are perceived by our survey respondents as having inflated project development
costs. Finally, we find that the key factors that explains differences in costs across XL projects are the scope and complexity
of the project proposal. These findings suggest that Project XL favors large firms that can afford to pay significant project
development costs, that EPA management problems must be resolved to reduce costs, and that there may be a significant economic
bias against complex and innovative proposals—precisely the type of proposals that Project XL was designed to foster in order
to improve the efficiency of the regulatory system. |
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Keywords: | : Project XL Transactions costs voluntary regulation tailored regulation Regulatory reinvention Site-specific regulation |
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