Clear Skies Act of 2003

The Clear Skies Act of 2003 proposed a significant overhaul of the Clean Air Act by establishing a "cap-and-trade" system for power plant emissions. The bill aimed to set national limits on the total amount of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury that power plants could release, while allowing companies to buy and sell emission permits to meet those targets.

For citizens, this legislation was designed to reduce air pollution and acid rain over time by incentivizing power plants to adopt cleaner technologies. While the bill sought to provide more regulatory certainty for the energy industry and lower the costs of compliance, it also proposed exempting certain facilities from older, site-specific clean air requirements in favor of the new national standards. Although the bill was a major environmental initiative of the era, it did not pass out of committee and never became law.