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This section of the site contains information for the media, along with tools for you to keep in touch with developments in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
RGGI in the News
Sen. Snowe Is Working Quietly to Find 'Consensus' on Capping Utility Emissions
New York Times
Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe expressed support yesterday for making electric utilities pay fees for releasing carbon dioxide, giving Senate Democrats a critical Republican supporter in their stalled pursuit of climate legislation. Snowe is highlighting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state program capping emissions from 233 power plants from Maine to Maryland, as a "template" that could be adopted at the national level...
NH Issues First-Year Review of Climate Plan
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
More than 700 people in the state have been trained in energy efficiency and more than 185 buildings have received energy audits, according to a review of the New Hampshire's climate action plan. More than 500 energy efficiency projects have been completed or are under way. They were funded by grants following greenhouse gas auctions by New Hampshire and other states...
The Proof is in the Pudding: Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Shows Pollution Pricing Works
Center for American Progress
As Congress looks for a way to price global warming pollution at the federal level, 10 Northeastern states have already put in place a market-based carbon emissions reduction program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which just completed its seventh successful auction of pollution permits. While opponents of clean energy reform falsely claim that a cap-and-trade system would harm the economy, RGGI provides a working model and active case study of how reducing pollution can actually drive economic growth...
US Climate Bill Weak for N.E., Critics Say
Boston Globe
Groups of state environmental chiefs, attorneys general, and US senators wrote the drafters of the federal bill in recent weeks, expressing concern that it could undo gains made under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state pact that puts a price on carbon emissions from power plants and devotes a majority of the proceeds to improving energy efficiency...
Up to 1,000 Maine Jobs Linked to Carbon Trading
Kennebec Journal
The nation's first mandatory carbon trading scheme is being credited with potentially creating nearly 1,000 jobs while promoting energy efficiency projects in industries located across Maine. Sixteen projects were awarded $8.9 million...
Cap-and-Trade Emissions Reduction Programs Catch On: MD Raises Millions for Energy Efficiency
Baltimore Sun
In a little more than a year, a regional push to cap greenhouse gases has raised millions for Maryland energy programs, with supporters calling it a model for easing climate change on a national or even global scale...
RGGI: Mandatory Scheme Makes Modest Gains in Northeast
Financial Times
For much of this year, the US Congress has grappled with the thorny issue of a national cap-and-trade regime for greenhouse gas emissions. Yet at the same time, one-fifth of the country’s states are already signed up to a mandatory carbon pollution regime. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – RGGI, or “Reggie” – unites 10 north-eastern US states in a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants by 10 per cent by 2018...
Ambitious Actions by the States Push U.S. Toward Climate Goals
Yale Environment 360
With little fanfare, many U.S. states — the largest of which have economies bigger than most nations, and carbon footprints to match — have been quietly making serious commitments to slash emissions…Ten northeastern and mid-Atlantic states have formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and together comprise the seventh-largest economy in the world. RGGI now operates a cap-and-trade system in the U.S. that is committed to reducing emissions from its power sector 10 percent by 2018…
RGGI: Quietly Setting a Standard
SeacoastOnline
Though the Sept. 9 auction had the lowest sale return at $68.5 million of the five auctions, with each "allowance" sold equaling one ton of CO2 emitted, the ground-breaking market approach to tackle global climate change through regional cooperation has raised $432.7 million for the 10 RGGI states - money that has already been recycled from Maine to Maryland in the form of grants for weatherization and energy efficiency grants...
Green States Line up behind U.S. Climate Bill
Reuters
States that have set the U.S. agenda on addressing greenhouse gas emissions are lining up behind a federal climate bill, fearing signs of dissent would weaken a plan with several hurdles left to jump. Nearly half the U.S. states have moved toward curbing greenhouse gas emissions and want the federal government to learn from their experience in creating systems to cap emissions and trade pollution credits...
What a National Cap-and-Trade Program Might Look Like
Christian Science Monitor
Just after 9 on a recent morning, Bob Kasle sat down at his computer and glimpsed what could be the future of the climate bill the US House approved Friday. It was, in the end, rather routine. It took the International Power employee about 20 minutes to complete his part in an online auction of more than 30 million carbon credits...
Cap and Trade Program Creates Green Jobs
Scientific American
Scott Newman was laid off in February from his job repairing home oil heaters, a victim of the dismal economy. Today, he sits in a class with a new job, learning how to sleuth out wasted energy in homes. Newman is in the vanguard of a green-collar corps created by the nation's first carbon cap-and-trade program, operating in 10 northeastern states...
Greenhouse Gas Auction Nets $104 Million for 10 States
CNBC
The fourth quarterly auction of carbon allowances raised more than $104 million for 10 Northeastern states to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. Officials announced Friday that all 30.8 million allowances offered on June 17 were sold for $3.23 each...
Cap and Trade Program Creates Green Jobs
Scientific American
Scott Newman was laid off in February from his job repairing home oil heaters, a victim of the dismal economy. Today, he sits in a class with a new job, learning how to sleuth out wasted energy in homes. Newman is in the vanguard of a green-collar corps created by the nation's first carbon cap-and-trade program, operating in 10 northeastern states...
Northeast Compact Inspired Climate Change Bill
Boston Globe
A groundbreaking climate change bill unveiled yesterday by leading House Democrats takes some inspiration from a pact among 10 Northeastern states that was the first in the United States to place a mandatory cap on carbon emissions and begin trading pollution allowances. The bill would set strict new limits on greenhouse gases, cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 85 percent by 2050...
Sensible Climate Legislation
Boston Globe
Despite our wounded economy, President-elect Obama is determined to address the problem of climate change early in his first term. Congressional leaders seem anxious to accommodate him by enacting legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions. But many members of Congress...
U.S. Venture Capitalists Optimistic on Carbon Market
Reuters
U.S. venture capitalists say they see a bright spot amid the international economic gloom: a potential trillion-dollar market in carbon spurred by new regulations and a growing awareness of climate change. The growth areas are less in traditional "green" businesses like solar panels and windmills and more in new infrastructure, such as a "smart" grid that would get alternative energy from where it's generated to where the customers are...
RGGI Carbon Emissions Auction Raises $107m
Reuters
Permits for the right to emit carbon dioxide from power plants in the U.S. Northeast sold for the clearing price of $3.38 per ton in the second U.S. greenhouse gas emissions auction, states in the region said on Friday. The amount was 31 cents more than the first quarterly auction...
Air-Pollution Market Debut Tests Cap-and-Trade Model (Update1)
Bloomberg.com
Ten Northeastern states will open the first U.S. market for trading greenhouse-gas permits this week, a $1.1 billion pilot project whose success may serve as a nationwide model to stem global warming ...
States Aim to Cut Gases by Making Polluters Pay
New York Times
Ten states from Maryland to Maine are about to undertake the nation's most serious effort yet to tackle climate change, putting limits on carbon dioxide emissions from utilities and making them pay for each ton of pollutants...
Carbon Goes to Market
Governing.com
The feds have been talking about cap-and-trade. The states are doing it. Late this month, 10 Northeastern states will conclude an auction like no other in American history. What's up for grabs is not art or property. It's carbon - or more specifically, the right to emit carbon dioxide from a power plant. As anyone familiar with what's causing global warming knows, carbon has a cost. Soon, in Baltimore, Boston and Buffalo, carbon also will have a price...
Carbon Trading to Become a $1 trillion market?
Colorado Energy News
The New York Mercantile Ex-change, a subsidiary of Nymex Holdings Inc. of New York, and the Chicago Climate Exchange, owned by Climate Exchange PLC of London, both launched RGGI carbon futures contracts in August...
New York Joins Carbon Trading Initiative
Online Financial News
New York has approved state-wide regulations that will bring "cap-and-trade" controls to carbon dioxide emissions for power plants and will pave the way for a secondary market for trading emission allowances...
Want To Buy Some Pollution?
New York Times
Later this year, Massachusetts and other Northeastern states will hold the nation's first auction of greenhouse gas emissions permits. Congress should take note: this market-based, technology-neutral auction is a model for how to encourage power generators to limit their emissions. And it could provide the foundation for a federal-state partnership to revolutionize energy use...
Making Carbon Markets, Two: The RGGI Bar
Wall Street Journal Online
Putting a price on emissions of greenhouse gases when no national market exists is more akin to a crapshoot. Some states are ready to roll the dice. Take the 10 states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI, the first mandatory scheme to limit carbon emissions in the U.S. to become operational, announced today it will sell the first batch of emissions permits on Sept.10, formally launching the much-awaited program that many see as a possible template for future federal action ...
Carbon Market North America
Point Carbon News
Last week the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) flipped the switch to start its first auction, marking the transition from five years of planning among 10 northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to full implementation of RGGI's auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances. ..
Environmental Services Commissioner Tom Burack Talks with NH Public Radio
New Hampshire Public Radio
Audio from Commissioner Burack's interview on New Hampshire Public Radio is available from the link above ...
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