For high intensity proton runs, emittance blow-up is often accompanied with nontrivial beam loss. It has been suggested [10] that the largest portion of the Booster to AGS (BTA) transfer loss is located in the AGS end. It was also found that the space charge tune spread, immediately after the bunched beam enters the AGS ring, is large enough for the envelope resonance and emittance blow-up [11]. It was decided, in 1997 high intensity proton run, to raise the BTA transfer kinetic energy from 1.54 GeV to 1.9 GeV. The transfer efficiency was increased, as expected. The beam emittance in the AGS ring did not increase, even the AGS acceptance was enlarged [12], which is probably because of the reduced space charge tune spread. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.