Tag Archives: rggi

The Northeast is chugging right along on climate change action.

by DebbraPaulson Posted on April 19, 2018

Rick Scott, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2011, hasn’t done much to protect his state against the effects of climate change — even though it’s being threatened by sea-level rise.

On Monday, eight youth filed a lawsuit against Scott, a slew of state agencies, and the state of Florida itself. The kids, ages 10 to 19, are trying to get their elected officials to recognize the threat climate change poses to their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

18-year-old Delaney Reynolds, a member of this year’s Grist 50 list, helped launch the lawsuit. She’s been a climate activist since the age of 14, when she started a youth-oriented activism nonprofit called The Sink or Swim Project. “No matter how young you are, even if you don’t have a vote, you have a voice in your government,” she says.

Reynolds and the other seven plaintiffs are asking for a “court-ordered, science-based Climate Recovery Plan” — one that transitions Florida away from a fossil fuel energy system.

This lawsuit is the latest in a wave of youth-led legal actions across the United States. Juliana v. United States, which was filed by 21 young plaintiffs in Oregon in 2015, just got confirmed for a trial date in October this year.

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The Northeast is chugging right along on climate change action.

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Tesla solar products are coming to a store near you.

by gosipmxsaj Posted on February 2, 2018

On Monday, newly minted Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state carbon trading program that aims to reduce greenhouse gases from the power sector.

New Jersey’s former governor (and bona fide bully) Chris Christie had pulled the state out in 2011, saying the initiative increased the tax burden for utilities and failed to adequately reduce greenhouse gases. Murphy said that Christie’s decision to withdraw had cost the state $279 million in revenue.

The state Department of Environmental Protection and the Board of Public Utilities will begin drawing up a game plan to re-enter the pact.

Nine eastern states already participate in RGGI: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Now, New Jersey is joining the fray, and Virginia may soon follow.

“With this executive order, New Jersey takes the first step toward restoring our place as a leader in the green economy,” Murphy said. Jersey shore knows what it’s doing!

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Tesla solar products are coming to a store near you.

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New York to EPA: Get a lawyer. Again.

by ElyseOgren Posted on February 2, 2018

On Monday, newly minted Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state carbon trading program that aims to reduce greenhouse gases from the power sector.

New Jersey’s former governor (and bona fide bully) Chris Christie had pulled the state out in 2011, saying the initiative increased the tax burden for utilities and failed to adequately reduce greenhouse gases. Murphy said that Christie’s decision to withdraw had cost the state $279 million in revenue.

The state Department of Environmental Protection and the Board of Public Utilities will begin drawing up a game plan to re-enter the pact.

Nine eastern states already participate in RGGI: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Now, New Jersey is joining the fray, and Virginia may soon follow.

“With this executive order, New Jersey takes the first step toward restoring our place as a leader in the green economy,” Murphy said. Jersey shore knows what it’s doing!

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New York to EPA: Get a lawyer. Again.

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While one Washington ignores climate change, the other, rainier one is killing it.

by GitaBlacklock Posted on January 31, 2018

On Monday, newly minted Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state carbon trading program that aims to reduce greenhouse gases from the power sector.

New Jersey’s former governor (and bona fide bully) Chris Christie had pulled the state out in 2011, saying the initiative increased the tax burden for utilities and failed to adequately reduce greenhouse gases. Murphy said that Christie’s decision to withdraw had cost the state $279 million in revenue.

The state Department of Environmental Protection and the Board of Public Utilities will begin drawing up a game plan to re-enter the pact.

Nine eastern states already participate in RGGI: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Now, New Jersey is joining the fray, and Virginia may soon follow.

“With this executive order, New Jersey takes the first step toward restoring our place as a leader in the green economy,” Murphy said. Jersey shore knows what it’s doing!

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While one Washington ignores climate change, the other, rainier one is killing it.

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Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

by AlejandYdp Posted on July 14, 2015

Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

By on 14 Jul 2015commentsShare

The Northeast’s cap-and-trade program generated $1.3 billion in economic benefits for participating states over the last three years. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) also created an estimated 14,200 years’ worth of full-time employment between 2012 and 2014, and it cut residents’ electricity and heating bills by a total of $460 million. That’s according to a new analysis by a group that is creatively named Analysis Group, one of the largest economic consulting firms in the country.

In addition to spurring the economy in the participating states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Chris Christie pulled New Jersey out) — the system is succeeding at its primary goal: fighting climate change. CO2 emissions in participating states have fallen by about a third since 2009, when the carbon-trading system went into effect

So much for the argument that cutting greenhouse gas emissions hurts the economy.

Here’s more from the report:

We found lower costs to electric consumers throughout the region, decreases in revenues to the owners of certain power plants, and positive economic impacts across all states, totaling approximately $1.3 billion in economic value added (in 2015 dollars) as a result of RGGI’s second three years (2012-2014). This is on top of what we found for the first three years (2009-2011) of the program: $1.6 billion of economic value added (in 2011 dollars). Thus, considering results found in both our studies, the first six years of RGGI program implementation has continuously generated significant economic value for the RGGI states, while achieving the region’s collective objectives in terms of reducing emissions of CO2.

This research comes out just as debate is heating up over Obama’s Clean Power Plan, to be finalized this summer, which will limit CO2 emissions from power plants around the country. The Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity claims Obama’s plan will cost $41 billion per year, while the Union of Concerned Scientists contends that it will have a net economic benefit of up to $50 billion per year by 2020. Considering the new figures about RGGI’s impact, the UCS analysis looks to be more on the mark.

“We hope regulators across the country — along with policy-makers, utilities, and other stakeholders — are able to draw useful lessons from this report, as they evaluate Clean Power Plan options in their individual states,” report coauthor Andrea Okie said.

So, Analysis Group has the numbers in the Northeast to prove that state lawmakers don’t have to approach the Clean Power Plan with dread. Other groups have similar numbers for the West Coast, where other carbon-pricing schemes are in place. Will these reports be enough to begin shifting the debate? We can hope, but maybe don’t hold your breath.

Source:
Cap & Trade Shows Its Economic Muscle in the Northeast, $1.3B in 3 Years

, InsideClimate News.

Carbon-Trading Program Generates $1.3 Billion in U.S. Northeast

, Bloomberg.

Study: Northeast states benefit economically from carbon cap program

, The Associated Press.

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Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

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Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

by HannahLombardo Posted on January 8, 2014

Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

By

L.E.MORMILE / Shutterstock

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t want carbon trading in his state, but he might not have a choice.

Last year was a good one for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon-trading program in nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. And on Wednesday, environmentalists will push forward with a bid to make 2014 an even better year — by dragging New Jersey back into the program.

RGGI, the first mandatory carbon-trading program in the U.S., caps the amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and allows those facilities to buy and exchange the rights to release the pollution. RGGI revenue, which could hit $2 billion by 2020, is poured back into clean energy programs – mostly into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

New Jersey was a participant in RGGI when it launched, but in 2011 Gov. Chris Christie (R) directed his administration to withdraw the state from the program – and it did so without calling for any kind of public comment or debate. Christie and other conservatives at the time lamented the costs to electricity ratepayers and said RGGI wasn’t performing as expected. “This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” Christie said. “It’s a failure.” The majority of state lawmakers today want New Jersey to rejoin RGGI, but they don’t have enough votes to overcome an inevitable Christie veto.

So attorneys with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environment New Jersey are rolling up their lawyerly sleeves and heading into an appellate court on Wednesday to battle it out against the state’s legal team. Here is NRDC’s Dale Bryk with an explanation of the groups’ lawsuit:

In court this week, we will be arguing that the state did not follow proper administrative procedure when, in 2011, it simply posted a statement on the Department of Environmental Protection’s website declaring an end to the rules requiring pollution reductions from power plants. Rather, according to New Jersey’s Administrative Procedure Act, the agency must give the public a chance to comment before taking such action. Had it done so, the state would have heard from the many businesses and residents who benefited from RGGI when the program was still in effect in New Jersey, and who see the program as a boon to the state’s burgeoning clean-energy economy.

The department, for its part, is arguing that it followed the proper procedures when it posted information about the state’s withdrawal on its website.

Environmentalists point out that the litigation could be avoided if Christie would wake up to the growing benefits of the carbon-trading market and agree to rejoin. Again from Bryk:

As part of President Obama’s important climate plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue carbon pollution standards for existing power plants this June, and states will be required to develop proposals to meet those standards by 2016. If they don’t, the EPA will develop a plan for them. In all likelihood the EPA will consider RGGI to be an appropriate compliance mechanism.

That means that if New Jersey rejoins RGGI, it can meet the forthcoming federal regulatory requirements, while reaping all of RGGI’s benefits: consumer energy savings; new and much-needed jobs for the Garden State; and a reduction in the kind of pollution that turbocharges our weather, making extreme events like like Hurricane Sandy more common. Not a bad bargain, if you ask me.

The 2014 cap for CO2 pollution under RGGI was lowered from from 165 million to 91 million tons, a reduction of 45 percent, which will help the region keep shrinking its carbon footprint. The move also “spurred a recovery after years of undersubscribed auctions clearing at the price floor and illiquid secondary market trading,” wrote Thomson Reuters Point Carbon in a recent analysis of worldwide carbon markets. This is one reason why carbon markets are flourishing in North America while more established programs flounder elsewhere.

RGGIThe shaded states are members of RGGI. Click to embiggen.

See also: Chris Christie is no moderate on the environment


Source
As Court Reviews NJ’s Repeal of Power Plant Rules, State Should Rejoin Regional Climate Change Program, NRDC
Court to re-consider New Jersey’s exit from U.S. carbon market, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

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As emissions drop, Northeast tightens its cap-and-trade system

by donseoo Posted on February 8, 2013

As emissions drop, Northeast tightens its cap-and-trade system

By Philip Bump

Congratulations to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie,” like Archie Andrews’ obnoxious friend) on effectively reducing carbon pollution! Kind of!

RGGI, long-time readers may recall, is a marketplace for carbon emissions in the Northeast. It’s cap-and-trade, explained more fully here. A price is determined for a set amount of carbon allowances and fossil-fuel power plants buy those allowances. Because of a big drop in emissions from participating states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont – the total amount of allowed emissions will be reduced next year.

vincent desjardins

The Ravenswood plant in Queens.

From The New York Times:

The regional group proposed a 45 percent reduction next year in the total carbon dioxide emissions allowed. …

The reduction from 165 million tons is expected to raise the price of compliance, and further reductions of 2.5 percent annually were likely to increase the value of the allowances that utilities must submit for every ton of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent, that they emit.

If the proposal goes into effect, the analysis done by the group, which is a collaboration of nine states to cut carbon emissions, indicates that by 2020, allowances that are now trading at $1.93 could trade as high as $10. That would be roughly at the level where allowances for California’s new economy-wide cap-and-trade system were auctioned last fall.

Carbon dioxide emissions in participating states have been dropping, but not so much because of RGGI. Rather, it’s for the same reason they’re dropping everywhere in the U.S.: transition from coal to natural gas and increased use of renewables.

Cap-and-trade is all about supply and demand. If RGGI allows far more pollution credits than are needed, prices for those credits plummet and polluters don’t need to worry about emissions. Reducing the number of credits constrains pollution.

But, of course, conservatives are complaining. From the Union-Leader:

“It’s time to remove our state from this failed cap-and-trade program and take away this burden from New Hampshire individuals and small businesses,” said Corey R. Lewandowski, state director of Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire, in a statement.

“Today’s proposal to significantly reduce the number of permits available demonstrates the failure of the RGGI program.”

And that statement demonstrates the failure of Americans for Prosperity — a group with deep ties to the fossil-fuel-loving Koch brothers — to have any understanding of basic economics. In the Archie universe, AFP would be Moose.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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As emissions drop, Northeast tightens its cap-and-trade system

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