More Regional Cap & Trade on the Way?

If you don’t like regional carbon cap and trade schemes look out because there is another one on the way.  Ten northeastern coastal states created the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in 2007 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10% from electric generators.  Electric generators buy permits at auction and the cost is passed on in your electric bills.  So far, permits have added $28 million to Delaware electric bills and the bill could go as high as $100 million by 2018 when the program ends.  The same states, plus Pennsylvania, agreed in 2009 to develop a similar plan for liquid fuels including gasoline, diesel, and heating oil and one recent study estimates gasoline prices could double.

The sad thing about these programs is they don’t work to reduce greenhouse gases and the cost is just another tax with the revenue often wasted in poorly managed green energy programs.  Delaware has indeed reduced carbon dioxide emission from power plants by about 40% but it is all due to market forces such as plant closings and fuel switching for lower cost and has nothing to do with the cap and trade tax. 

The same thing is likely to happen with a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).  The federal government has already adopted a 54 mile per gallon fuel standard that will lower emissions.  Compressed natural gas can be used to replace gasoline right now at half the cost and with half the carbon footprint.  Fueling infrastructure is being built at a rapid pace to allow the use of natural gas by over-the-road truckers and passengers cars will probably follow.  This is why three states, New Jersey, Maine, and Pennsylvania, have already dropped out of the alliance and New Hampshire is considering legislation to drop out.  Governor Markell needs to remove Delaware from this expensive and useless program.

 

READ MORE:  http://www.caesarrodney.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=323