The “new” moment in this article was the fact that the company needed to change working processes on its utilities to complain to the Clean Air Act. The Georgia Power’s Bowem plant looked like a “unique” object. The plant was quite big with its ability to “produce enough power to serve the residential, commercial, and industrial demands of 1 million people” (Harvard business school, 1993, p. 1). However, it was quite clean and had fewer emissions than smaller objects; it was a unique feature because of plant’s size and age.
Amendments to the Clean Air Act were both “novel” and “good”. They changed the penalty scheme for companies for their emissions and created more motivations to decrease their levels. The Act gave organizations an opportunity to make an extra profit by selling allowances for the dioxide sulfur emissions or their distribution between inner objects. It was an innovation because firms were able to choose emissions levels, while “most previous regulations for air pollution control had specified a particular quantity of pollution that a facility could emit” (Harvard business school, 1993, p. 2).
While the Act was aimed to improve the environmental situation, it had its “bad” and “ugly” sides. The article shoved the Southern Company was mostly focused on the financial matter. All suggested decisions checked how much the company will spend for innovations. It was ready “to buy allowances from other plants” (Harvard business school, 1993, p. 2) for years, because it was more profitable than the serious reduction of emissions with the aid of new equipment’s installation. It looked ugly that the company worried about its profit more than the damage to the environment caused by its 266,550 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions per year (or 167,650 tons after switching to the low-sulfur coal).
Reference List
Harvard business school. (1993). Acid Rain: the Southern Company. PDF File.
