MVTG and MVTG's ERC market carbon capture and trading values:
One of the best kept secrets that has been buried by the political debates in recent years, is that carbon trading has been going on for a while already in the USA.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative this month alone generated $102.5 million to invest into green projects
Last updated on 24 September 2013, 10:41 am
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative this month alone generated $102.5 million to invest into green projects
The Obama administration is reputed to be looking to implement a nation-wide RGGI scheme. (Pic: Jesse Lee)
By Nilima Choudhury
An ambitious cap and trade scheme is celebrating its fifth birthday in nine north-eastern and mid-Atlantic US states.
Critics wrote the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) off when it started trading in 2008, but the USA’s first market-based regulatory programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions shows little sign of collapse.
Its 21st auction of CO2 allowances earlier this month generated $102.5 million for reinvestment towards energy efficiency, renewable energy, direct bill assistance, and greenhouse gas abatement programmes.
Bids for the CO2 allowances ranged from $1.98 to $12.85 and 100% were sold. Cumulative proceeds from all RGGI CO2 allowance auctions currently total $1.4 billion dollars.
The nine states involved with the scheme are Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware and Maryland. Between 2010-2012 they cut emissions by more than 30% compared to 2005.
The scheme has also been credited with creating 16,000 cleantech jobs in that time region-wide.
So far, California has been the only other state in the US to mimic RGGI.
In May, the state raised more than $280 million from its auctions to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy, sustainable communities and clean transportation, natural resource preservation and waste diversion.
Margulies said California has taken its cap and trade scheme one step further from RGGI.
“We don’t want to limit it at just the power generation – that’s kind of an inefficient way of going about regulating – because emissions are not limited to power.
“In California you have a huge percentage – I think it’s somewhere in the 40% range – that are due to vehicles. And power is actually a lower percentage of emissions in California than it is in the rest of the US.”
Between RGGI and the California programme, a quarter of US residents now live in states that control greenhouse gas emissions through market mechanisms.
Next year, RGGI will take a step forward, lowering the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide that power plants can emit, from 165 tons to 91 tons in the region, and from 64 tons to 35 tons in New York State. -
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