The Eastern Regional Technical Advisory Committee (ERTAC) is a collaborative effort among the Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic, Southeastern, and Lake Michigan area states, other member states, industry representatives, and multi-jurisdictional organization (MJO) representatives to improve emission inventories. These inventories make up the foundation of air pollution control strategies that allow for the cost-effective implementation of the Clean Air Act. 

In response to a need for Electric Generating Unit (EGU) generation and emissions projections suited to state air quality modeling, planning, and inventory development, ERTAC developed the ERTAC EGU Tool.  The Tool projects activity and emissions for EGUs and industrial units located in the continental United States (CONUS) that report emissions to US EPA’s Clean Air and Power Division (CAPD) under 40 CFR Part 75 Continuous Emission Monitoring.  Part 75 data provides unit-specific hourly NOx and SO2 emissions that the ERTAC Tool uses with fuel- and region-specific growth rates and state-provided information such as retirements and controls to estimate hourly future year generation and emissions.

The ERTAC EGU workgroups maintain and distribute reference runs for the contiguous United States (CONUS).  Input and output files for each reference run, as well as the base year (BY) and future year (FY) hourly data are available upon request. The enhanced summary files provide NOx and SO2 criteria pollutant data for annual and ozone season time periods.

Please send questions or comments regarding the ERTAC EGU Projection Tool, including how to get involved in the ERTAC EGU workgroups and/or how to access and install the Tool software, to Susan McCusker at smccusker@marama.org and Alexandra Garsteck at agarsteck@marama.org.