An annual discriminative and revenue-neutral auction is linked to the new Acid Rain Program which allows electric utilities all over the US to trade SO2 emission permits. This innovative SO2 auction distributes 2% of the permits in circulation and takes place at the Chicago Board of Trade. Early results showed that the auction generated a clearing price signal lower than the market price. Now the auction price seems to be determined by the outside market price. Still, in the important starting phase, a non-discriminative auction design would probably have generated better price signals since potential downward biases in buyer bids are due to the specific discriminative feature of the EPA auction.