Petroleum Industry Investment in Environmental Risk Mitigation11 1994: >$10 billion $9,096 billion in ongoing environmental expenditures - operations, maintenance, R&D, capital investment $1.177 billion for spills and cleanup. Projected Cost of New/Potential Cost of Environmental Regulation12 API estimates $17-25 billion annually by 1999. Regulatory domain Annualized costs avg. of estimates Air $9,320 46.7% Waste $1,618 8.1% Water $4,294 21.5% Spills $4,554 22.8% Other $0,170 0.9% Expenditures at these levels yield results: the petroleum industry as a whole has reduced releases of TRI chemicals by 24 percent since 1988, and the frequency of large spills (defined as 10,000 gallons or more) has declined by 57 percent since 199013. These costs also reflect a fundamental change in risk management, which has, since the 1989 Valdez spill, become increasingly integrated into ongoing operations - rather than an add-on line item Considerations for Commercialization Taken together, these findings yield some specific actions for consideration by the community of government and industry experts concerned with the commercial viability of power from space. These include: 1 ) Life Cycle R&D. Long-range environmental and health consequences of SSP should be studied and factored into early design. 2 ) Integrated risk management. The question of SSP risk, and its mitigation, should be fully integrated into early discussions of operations design, regulatory compliance, and economic impact. 11 Source: Petroleum Industry Environmental Performance, Fourth Annual Report; API, May 1996 12 Data derived from API Discussion Paper #070R, October 1993; simple averages calculated in expenditure categories for which API estimates appear as ranges 13 Source: ibid.
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