EMISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (NY Gov Spitzer Plan To Force Power Plants To Buy "Credits" For Emitting CO2)

NY Post ^ | November 23, 2007

[lowbridge]

Gov. Spitzer's boast last week that power plants will soon have to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide is just the latest sign of his unseemly obeisance to over-the-top environmentalism.

Spitzer told Congress how New York has joined 10 northeastern states in a Kyoto-style project called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), meant to combat global warming.

In 2009, these states will force power plants to buy CO2 "allowances," which will be traded on the open market.

Plants will have to get one credit for each ton of CO2 they emit. The supply of credits, to start, will be capped at 64 million - the average annual power-plant emissions in New York from 2002 to 2004. The figure will then drop slightly each year, for a 10 percent cut by 2019.

The plan's flaw is its goal: It's designed to boost electricity costs - and even force some plants to close.

[foxfield]

The whole carbon credits idea is nothing but a socialist plot

You are absolutely right. Spitzer's scheme is nothing but a price fixing scheme and/or hidden tax wrapped in the language of free-market capitalism just to make it palatable to the unwary.

[Brilliant]

No sarcasm. I’m just saying the NY lib Dems ought to put their money where their mouth is. If anyone has got to pay for this, it should be them.

[murphE]

U.S. Electric Industry Residential Average Retail Price of Electricity by State, 2005 (Cents per kWh)

[VeniVidiVici]

Wow! Looks like the are already stiffing the Northeast! And they want to raise it higher with this CO2 BS.

Ah, ya get what you pay for in the politico dept.

[Uncle Hal]

Folks the customers of the utilities are going to have to pay for it one way or another. Thus their rates will go up. Thus it amounts to a tax.