Sulphur dioxide emissions cause smog and acid rain.
If they want to stimulate technological innovation, governments must do more than pour money into research, according to a new study. They should legislate in favour of the goal, it suggests.
Regulation spurs technological development, say Margaret Taylor and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania1.
Their patent audit shows that techniques for controlling the emission of poisonous sulphur dioxide from fossil-fuel burning might have evolved more slowly without US government restrictions on emission levels. Preliminary data on the control of nitrogen oxide emissions from vehicle exhausts support the idea.
The findings might have a bearing on the US government's much-vaunted drive towards a hydrogen economy, in which hydrogen would be used as a clean fuel. The Bush administration has pledged $1.7 billion to develop a non-polluting hydrogen vehicle. That objective might be reached sooner if the commitment is accompanied by legislation that penalizes the use of fossil fuels.
The audit could also be important for policy decisions concerning climate change. "The demand for various types of pollution-control equipment is almost inseparable from the details of environmental legislation," the researchers conclude.
Burning issue
Sulphur dioxide (SO2) causes acid rain, urban smog and breathing irritation. The main source of emissions in developed countries is coal-burning at power plants. In 1979, the US government ruled that all new plants built after 1978 should contain systems for reducing SO2 emissions by 70-90%.
Today, one in three US power plants is fitted with a scrubber system that extracts SO2 from flue gases. Early scrubbers were inefficient, but the technology has improved significantly since the 1970s.
Taylor's team shows that this is because the power industry was forced to comply with regulations. Analysing the number of patents granted each year for the scrubbing technology, they find that activity leapt after the prescription, in 1970-71, of SO2-related air-quality standards and maximum emission rates.
In other words, government regulation created a market for scrubbing technologies. Market forces then drove innovation because the company that sold the best system had a competitive advantage.
Peaks in patent activity occurred in 1978 and 1988. These were probably motivated either by regulation or by an anticipation of it. The heightened awareness of the causes and consequences of acid rain in the mid-to-late 1980s, for example, created an expectation of further regulation. Indeed, there was a serious but unsuccessful attempt by the US Senate to overhaul the Clean Air Act during the Reagan administration in 1987.
The researchers also argue that the government-sponsored annual SO2 symposia, which ran from 1973 to 1995, played a crucial role in encouraging the diffusion of knowledge that was necessary for scrubbing technologies to improve.
References
Taylor, M. R., Rubin, E. S. & Hounshell, D. A. Effect of government actions on technological innovation for SO2 control. Environmental Science and Technology,
source: http://www.nature.com/nsu/030915/030915-4.html 17sep03
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