Archive for September, 2008

RGGI's first sale

Written by Mike Pisauro on September 30th, 2008 in Global Warming | No Comments »

On Thursday, Sept. 25th, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) held their first sale of allowances.  RGGI is an interstate compact comprised of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont.  RGGI is a cap and trade system for greenhouse gases.  Overtime, the amount of allowances available for purchase will be reduced so that ultimately start reducing emissions from certain power plants by 2.5 percent between 2014 to 2018.

On Thursday, 12,565,387 allowances (or tons of CO2) were sold at a price of $3.07 per ton.  Interestingly there were was demand for more allowances than there were allowances available.    There will be a second auction in December.  Also of interest was that New Jersey was not part of the auction.  I hope to explain those reasons in a later post.

Governor does not veto Permit Extension Act

Written by Mike Pisauro on September 8th, 2008 in legislation | No Comments »

Unfortunately, the Governor did not listen to the call of environmentalists and signed the Permit Extension Act into law.  As I noted yesterday, this is bill is a mistake.

Enviros seek Governor's veto of Permit Extension Act

Written by Mike Pisauro on September 7th, 2008 in legislation | No Comments »

Last week, New Jersey’s environmental leaders called upon the Governor to conditionally veto the Permit Extension Act. Here is the Press Release on Permit Extension Act and a copy of the letter sent to the Governor. Letter to Governor. The Permit Extension Act was rushed through the legislature in short order and put on the Governors desk to sign at the end of June. See my previous posts here. and here and here. New Jersey’s Eastern Environmental Law Clinic released an analysis of the bill’s provisions that resurrects permits that have already expired and found that this provision may violate due process.   The Eastern Environmental Law Clinic also found that:

The retroactive nature of this clause has the potential to upset reasonable economic expectations, interfere with sound planning, result in anomalous outcomes breeding confusion and litigation, and could he illegal.  Eastern Environmental Law Clinic

So far the Governor has not signed the bill into law and that is a good thing, but he has not vetoed it either. If the bill is not vetoed than it becomes law by default.  It is a good thing because as I said in the press release:

“Sacrificing the environment for economics is a false choice that ends up hurting the economy, not improving it,” added Mike Pisauro of New Jersey Environmental Lobby. “The Permit Extension Act sacrifices the environment without providing any immediate economic help to those who need it. Government needs to protect our natural resources so that we have a healthy environment to live in and the economy has the natural resources it needs to develop and grow. The Permit Extension Act is not the answer.”

During all of the testimony that was presented in favor of the bill and all of the commentary that I have read about the bill, I have not seen once inch of explanation on how this bill will do anything to spur the economy in the short term. As I have said at the hearings on this bill, the problem is not that the permits expired but that the developers could not get funding for their projects before their permits expired. Extending those permits does not to provide funding for these projects now. If it does not to provide funding now, how does this bill help the economy now? How does this bill help men and women who are not working get back to work now? If the bill does not help the economy now is it worth the damage to the environment? I truly believe the answer is no.