Carbon Trading

Dividend and conquer

To get support for a climate bill, offer cash back to Americans, argues Rep. Chris Van Hollen 5
Posted 7 months ago
Rep. Chris Van Hollen thinks he's got the key to passing a climate bill this year: send every American a rebate.
Old dog, Newt tricks

Gore and Gingrich bump heads at House climate hearing 7
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
Debate on the House climate bill gets heated as Al Gore and Newt Gingrich jump into the fray.
What's in it for me?

Interest groups pile on with suggested changes to House climate bill 7
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
The third day of climate hearings in the House made it clear that even representatives and interest groups that nominally support the principles of the Markey-Waxman bill have a laundry list of changes they'd like to see made to the bill before they'll back it.
Hear, hear

As biz leaders call for a climate bill, Republicans claim it would kill the economy 8
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
Corporate leaders are asking Congress to put a cap on carbon, but leading House Republicans still argue that mandating emission reductions would be catastrophic for the economy.
Bipartisanship in action

McCain rails against Obama cap-and-trade plan 6
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
John McCain said he still wants a cap-and-trade bill to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but offered scathing criticism of the Obama administration's climate and energy plans, calling them "irresponsible, ill-conceived."
Waiver goodbye?

States left wondering about EPA’s greenhouse gas ruling 5
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
The EPA's greenhouse gas announcement explicitly tied motor vehicle emissions to climate change. But there was no mention of allowing California or more than a dozen other states to move forward promptly with their long languishing laws.
The bill formerly known as ...

Washington’s cap-and-trade legislation no longer involves cap and trade 0
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Washington state's cap-and-trade legislation is no more. Or rather, it has been so stripped of capping and trading that it is no longer worthy of that moniker.
A flawed strategy: Why environmental groups should not be chasing carbon dollars 4
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
The strategy of using carbon permit auctions to fund the green agenda is deeply mistaken, and it risks pushing serious action against climate change many more years into the future -- a delay we earthlings can ill afford.
Utility players

Beware utilities seeking free pollution permits 3
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
America's electric utilities are waging a no-holds-barred campaign to get 40% of carbon emission permits allocated for free. Why aren't Obama and Congressional Democrats fighting back?
Change by the back door

Energy portions of Waxman/Markey compensate (in part) for carbon weaknesses 2
Posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago
There are some gloomy reactions to the Waxman/Markey bill around the interwebs. I'm not going to claim the bill is perfect, but I think the pessimism is excessive.
Reid Between the Lines

Reid backs away from funding health care via cap-and-trade 1
Posted 8 months ago
Remember how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week opened the door to the possibility of using cap-and-trade revenues to fund a new health-care system?
Myth: Europe’s experience shows that cap-and-trade can’t work 1
Posted 8 months ago
It is now widely acknowledged that Europe's carbon trading program -- the ETS -- made several key mistakes in its initial trial period.
Stop the auction permits before they kill again

Waxman bill threatens children and elderly, says very concerned power industry 0
Posted 8 months ago
Reactions to the Waxman energy legislation are going to be pouring in over the coming days and weeks. On an early read, environmentalists are enthusiastic. But who is looking out for society's most vulnerable? Power companies, of course!
Cap, trade, and health care?

Reid says Dems might use carbon-credit revenues to fund health care 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
Could the revenue from auctioning off carbon credits be used to pay for a new health-care system?
Would you pay $2,000 per ton for your carbon footprint?

Cap-and-rebate is more robust in the face of carbon high prices 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
The other day, I used the fanciful example of $50,000-utility bills to illustrate how cap-and-rebate schemes can inspire energy efficiency and conservation. The numbers were deliberately exaggerated, but they highlight one of the features of cap-and-rebate that I like: the robustness of the system in the face of higher carbon prices.
Pep squad

Obama hypes the green aspects of his budget plan 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
President Obama is giving top billing to clean energy and green jobs as he promotes his $3.6 trillion budget plan.

Addressing a group of clean-tech entrepreneurs and researchers on Monday, the president noted that his proposed budget includes $150 billion over 10 years for direct investments in clean energy and efficiency, as well as $75 billion to make permanent a tax credit for research and experimentation. "At this moment of necessity we need you, we need inventiveness," he told the crowd.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy," Obama continued. "We can allow climate change to wreck unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America." The event was the first in a series of budget pep talks the president plans to give this week.
Obama's cap-and-trade plan

If sticks don’t work, try carrots 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
For an $80 billion program, President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade proposal is very short on specifics. His budget plan [PDF] provides only the briefest policy rationale for cap-and-trade, describing it as "a policy approach that dramatically reduced acid rain at much lower costs than the traditional government regulations and mandates of the past."
A fair bargain

Obama is right to return most carbon revenue to taxpayers 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
Gold that's put to use begets more gold

How cap-and-rebate brings about carbon reductions 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
Let's say I'm your utility, and I raise your energy prices so that, at present rate of consumption, your bill will rise to $50,000 per year. Pretend that energy here means everything: heating oil, electricity, natural gas, everything encompassed in a carbon cap. Then I hand you an annual rebate check for $50,000. You can do two things.
Sound and fury

How would rebating carbon revenue to taxpayers give anyone incentive to reduce emissions? 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago