Acid Rain Essay Example for Free

Acid Rain Essay Situation: The acid rain provisions of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act were to being in 1995. Currently, it is 1992 and The Southern Company (a electric utilities holding company operating in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida) had to decide what actions they were going to take in order to comply with the new regulations. Before the Clean Air Act, firms did not have incentives to reduce emissions below the government specification. If a firm exceeded the amount, it would just simply pay a fine. Maximum limits were put into place and allowances could be bought and sold on the open market. This means that companies that were able to reduce their emissions, could make money off the allowances they sold. That provided firms incentive to reduce emissions to more appropriate levels. In contrast, a company that could not reduce would have to spend more money to buy additional allowances. The allowances would start at $250 per contract but increase by 10% each year. One of the Southern Company’s Georgia plant, Georgia Power’s Bowen a coal fired plant, had a couple options to choose from to abide by the new laws. The options included either adding scrubbers in order to drastically reduce their emissions and sell the extra allowances or spend more money to buy additional allowances. Either way, Bowen was looking to spend more money in the near future with the Clean Air Act. Question/ Decision: What is the lowest cost option for the plant? Knowing the plant will be extinct in 2016, what estimations can we assume from 1995 to 2016? What are the unknown factors? How long will it take to implement the scrubbers? Do we have the man power to handle the maintenance for the scrubbers? What is the best option for the company that still makes us look good to the public? Will allowance prices increase by more than 10%? Will there be enough allowance contracts on the open market for Bowen to purchase in order to maintain it’s current level of emissions? Hypothesis: Bowen had two main possibilities to comply with the new law: purchase allowances or sell allowances. Purchasing contracts appears to be the easy option but has the potential to get very costly especially in phase two (2000) since emissions will be reduced by almost 50%. Also, we have no idea if it will be possible to purchase all the contracts we need. If there are not enough contracts on the market, it could turn into a bidding war for the available contracts. In order to sell allowances, Bowen would have to drastically reduce their emissions. The most logical way to do this would be to install scrubbers that would remove sulfur dioxide from the exhaust gases of the generators. Installing the scrubbers was expensive but would reduce the emission by so much making it possible for Bowen to sell the extra allowances to on the open market for a profit. If the company plans to stay in business for longer than 2016, they should purchase the scrubbers to begin working in the second phase. This would help the company look better in the public’s eyes and will pay off more in the future. Since the company does not plan to stay in business, they should continue operating the way they do now and purchase the additional contracts. Even though it is the riskier option, this is the lowest cost option for the company. Proof of Action: The least cost alternative is to purchase additional allowances and continue operating as usual. The cost to the firm, if all estimations hold true, would be 267. Installing scrubbers could run up the costs to either 408 or 294 depending on when they are installed. Graph 1, PV of Cash Flows illustrates the cash flows for all high high-sulfer coal options. Option 1 offers almost no cost to the firm at the beginning stages, but increases in 2000. By 2005, the no scrubber option will be costing the firm more than the other two options. However, installing the scrubbers is much more costly at the beginning stages of the Clean Air Act. As time goes on though, the money made from selling the contracts and the costs of maintaining the scrubbers will offset each other. Installing the scrubbers to be ready for the second phase would reduce the costs to the firm much more throughout the 2000’s. Graph 1: PV of Cash Flows Option 1, no scrubbers, does not come without a lot of risk. The two main risk factors the company faces are government policies and the purchasing/selling of the allowances on the open market. a. The change in government policy. As the government becomes more and more concerned about pollution, there are possibilities that more policies or stimulus such as ecological taxation would be carried out. Although the current effective tax rate is 37. %, the company will save a portion of tax expense by installing scrubbers to control once a tax refund policy is implemented to low level pollutants emission companies. b. The change in allowance price. The company planners assume the price of allowances would be $250 per ton of sulfur dioxide in 1995 and would rise at 10% per year through 2010 and stay at that price since after. However, since the allowances could be traded in open market, their value is volatile. If the starting price of allowance rises to a certain level or the price increases at a higher rate, the PV cost of option 1 will be higher. graph 2 and 3). Graph 2: PV cost of option V. S. starting price of allowance Graph 3: The PV of option cost v. s. Allowance inflators Conclusion: In conclusion, according to the NPV of costs we should not install the scrubbers at this time. We should continue operating at our current levels and purchase contracts on the open market. This option is the riskier option but it is the lowest cost. If we are more concerned about risk, we should install the scrubbers to be ready for the second phase. The question becomes, how accurate do we think our estima tions are?

The Jungle :: essays research papers

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If you are or you know someone that is an immigrant to this country, then you know the struggles and hardships that one must face. Forget the language barrier, problems such as no money, no food or shelter, even no job are all brutal circumstances. All these problems are tough to surpass, and doing so is a task in itself. In The Jungle Upton Sinclair portrays all the problems that a Lithuanian family must encounter to survive. This novel reflects the time period, the conflicts around the country, and the conflicts of a family struggling to survive. A truly great novel in my opinion, The Jungle should be read by everyone for enjoyment, and even for knowledge.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The main characters in this novel are a immigrant family from Lithuania. The family consisting of Jurgis and Antanas Rudkus, Ona and Elizabeth Lukoszaite (with all six of her children), and many personal friends and enemies of the family. The Lukoszaite family have come to America to gain wealth after their recent death of their father. Jurgis who is madly in love with Ona comes along with his father to America. A family from the poor roots of Lithuania come oversees to seek great wealth and success in the United States, escaping the slums of their native country. The setting is in Chicago, in the town of Packingtown.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Escaping poverty in their native country, with a heartbreaking loss of a family member, the entire group packs up and heads for the highway so to speak to achieve wealth in America. The novel begins with a lovely wedding between Ona and Jurgis. The reception followed tradition, but the younger generation didn’t participate in the usual customs of a wedding. This just went to show how different the two countries really are. Struggling to pay the cost of the reception, everyone must leave early to go to work the next morning, including the wife and groom. Of all the family members, Jurgis is the most suited for the job because he is physically fit and has a workers attitude. The children are to go to school, and the women would have to find a job. With the help of Jonas, who is the brother of Elizabeth, the family finds a rotten apartment in a rat infested, run down building. Jurgis decides to spend the remaining of their money to buy a house because a

Transformational Learning

Transformational learning is the type of experience that its outcome can bring forth a level of new meaning in your life. This learning cycle of intricate tasks is broken down into four stages, recognizing a significant problem, confronting it intensely, finding a solution, and integrating a new perspective and a new set of assumptions into your life pattern. These four phases create the transformational process and requires extreme mental concentration and careful consideration. The intensity of this procedure is often painful and stressful, hence forth the old saying â€Å"no pain, no gain†.First, you must know what the problem is that you are facing and acknowledge it. Then, you must face the problem with an extreme effort. Once these steps are completed and only then, can you start finding a solution. The solution you find will give you a new view. Based upon this outcome, your newly acquired view must be integrated into your life pattern. Transformation on this level is o ften wanted but it does not come easy. These â€Å"before† and â€Å"after† states are the points that show us our personal growth. The most transformational learning experience in my life has been the discussion to go back to school.The fear of working, having a family, and making time to study and being successful in my studies presented a great problem to me. How to balance these three demanding dimensions of my life and still be the same person was puzzling. Through a trial and error process, I redefined my life pattern, taking bits of personal and casual time to maximize my effort of pursuing my goal. By putting all my focus through my spare time in my work week, it opened up extra time on my weekend to spend with my family. This new pattern I developed has brought harmony and balance to my life.

The Nature of Death in Emily Dickinsons Poems Essay

Emily Dickinson once said, â€Å"Dying is a wild night and a new road.† Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)†, â€Å"I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)â€Å" and â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death—(712)†. Emily Dickinson, who achieved more fame after her death, is said to be one of the greatest American poets of all time. Dickinson communicated through letters and notes and according to Amy Paulson Herstek, author of†¦show more content†¦Dickinson’s poems provide that secret gateway to the supernatural that Ferlazzo is referring to. In the poem â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† Emily Dickinson uses symbolism to convey some sort of mental funeral that the speaker is experiencing. The funeral image that Dickinson depicts in the first line of the poem: â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† does not literally represent a funeral, but it is used to symbolism a mental breakdown and agony that the speaker is going through. By using this symbolism, the speaker is imagining the death of old ways of thought. Dickinson writes that when the funeral service was â€Å"like a Drum—â€Å" (Dickinson 43) and that it â€Å"Kept beating—beating—till I thought My Mind was going numb—â€Å" (43), leaving readers believing that the speaker is going mad. By depicting this image, Dickinson reveals that with the death of old thought; there is some sort of numbness or pain that is necessary to â€Å"progress to a better state† (Goldfarb 2). By repeating the beating sound two times , along with the rhyming sequence in the previous lines of the poem, Dickinson is stressing the numbness and the importance of it. Dickinson uses ambiguity to stress the difficulty of knowing and understanding certain experiences and thoughts to the reader. By being deliberately elusive, Dickinson makes the speaker out to be some sort of hero. In a critical essay of â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† Sheldon GoldfarbShow MoreRelatedEmily Dickinson: An American Poet1793 Words   |  7 PagesEmily Dickinson is one of the most influential American authors, whose works transformed the way people view poetry and female authors. Her exceedingly complex life has proved a tremendous influence on her instrumental poetry, creating its originality and distinguishing her from other great poets of the nineteenth century. As well, her use of symbolism and imagery has continued to make her work celebrated. Although Emily Dickinson lived a private and reclusive life, full of death among many closeRead MoreSolitude Of A Poet By Emily Dickinson1545 Words   |  7 Pagesmost recognized and widely studied poet today. Bo rn in December 10, 1886 in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson was one of three children to Edward Dickinson and his wife, Emily Dickinson. According to Pettinger, Dickinson’s roots trace back to her Puritan ancestors from England in the 17th century, who later immigrated to America to freely exercise their religion (Pettinger, The Biography of Emily Dickinson). Dickinson was a quiet, intelligent individual, excelling in Amherst Academy, a schoolRead MoreEmily Dickinson Research Paper984 Words   |  4 PagesMichael Salvucci Mrs. Comeau English 10 Honors Death, Pain, and the Pursuit of Peace Although Emily Dickinson’s poetry is profoundly insightful, her poems have a very confinedpan of subjects and themes. Most likely due to her early life and social reclusion, Dickinson’s poetry is limited to three major subjects: death, pain, and on a somewhat lighter note, nature. Dickinson’s poetry is greatly influenced by her early life as she led an extre mely secluded and pessimisticlife. In her early adultRead MoreEmily Dickinson s Emily And The English Specking World Essay1744 Words   |  7 Pages Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson is a very well-known poet. Emily wrote many poems. She has written 1700-2000 poems (4) According to Nicolas Tredell, there was â€Å"only eleven poems published during her lifetime.† (4) She did not know about most of them being published. Dickinson’s sister found the poems and turned them in to be published. Emily did not want her poems to be seen. Dickinson is one of the great poets. Her poems were produced by America and the English-specking world (1). 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Her grandfather had a prominent position inRead More Emily Dickinson - Her Life and Poetry Essay627 Words   |  3 PagesEmily Dickinson - Her Life and Poetry Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, into an influential family in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father helped found Amherst College, where Emily later attended between 1840 and 1846. She never married and died in the house where she was born on May 15, 1886. Emily Dickinson’s reclusive life was arguably a result of her proposed bi-polar disorder. This life and disorder unduly influenced the themes of her poetry. She chose not