MONEY FOR CARBON

This is the news that explains why California's fumbling on the solar initiative matters.

When Carbon Is Currency
Hannah Fairfield, May 6, 2007 (NY Times)

WHO
Environmental and energy regulatory agencies in 10 northeastern states from Maine to Maryland
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WHAT
The states have banded together in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to set caps on their greenhouse gas emissions.

WHEN
The movement began with an informal meeting in 2003. The Initiative has now been hammered out. Caps and trading credits take effect in 2009. The goal is to cut power plant emissions 10% by 2019.

WHERE
The 10 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. (Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and several Canadian provinces are observers.)

WHY
- This is a cap-and-trade system for power plants, aimed at incentivizing decreased greenhouse gas emissions. It is based on the broader-based EU trading system but is designed to correct shortcomings there:
- To avoid having increased costs passed on to consumers, the credits will not be assigned free to power companies but will be sold at auction, with proceeds going to improve state efficiency programs.
- To curb offset abuse, offsets will be limited to 5 categories (landfill gas capture, sulfur hexafluoride leak control, tree planting, waste methane projects, building efficiency) and plants can offset only 3.3% of emissions.
- California and western states are forming a similar alliance and studying the northeastern program.
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QUOTES
- Judith Enck, environment adviser to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer: “We’ve learned a lot from the Europeans…The way we distribute the allowances will be vastly different than the European experience.”
- Christopher Sherry, RGGI chairman/research scientist: “We saw what happened in Europe, so we limited the categories and set our criteria upfront…We did that so we would have assurance that the reductions actually take place.”
- Dale Bryk, Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer: “The idea is to see what everyone else has done, and learn from it…Let’s not start from scratch.”