Global Warming News

As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this news release.

TRENTON—According to environmental groups in the region, a preliminary proposal from the region’s governors to cap global warming pollution from electric power industry falls short of what is necessary to begin making progress on pollution reductions from the power plants themselves.

“The plan that is on the table needs improvement,” said Dena Mottola of NJPIRG Law and Policy Center. “There are loopholes in it that will keep the governors from achieving their stated goal of reducing pollution from power plants.”

A report released today by a coalition of northeast environmental groups, "Cracks in the Cap: How the Offsets Loophole Undermines the Control of Global Warming Pollution from Power Plants", pointed to a pollution trading loophole that advocates say would let power plant owners off the hook by allowing tree planting, or reductions in other sectors not regulated by the program as a means of getting their reductions, rather than requiring pollution reductions at the power plants themselves..

“We need to set up a system that can solidly account for real reductions from the oldest and most inefficient power plant,” said Mottola. “This program must give the public confidence that pollution is really being reduced, rather than getting reductions off the balance sheets.”

At the outset of negotiations on the power sector carbon cap in 2004, the states agreed to initially limit the program to reducing global warming pollution from the electric power generators in the northeast. However, negotiators are now revisiting that principle and considering five categories of pollution trading—pollution reductions outside the regional electricity sector that would offset excess pollution from power plants. The report concludes that so-called pollution “offsets” are likely to erode the integrity of the proposed cap-and-trade program.

“The governors are only a few steps away from creating a program that will cut pollution and shift the region toward a cleaner energy future,” said Mottola. “But so far they appear reluctant to take those steps, and are at risk of creating a weak carbon cap that will do little or nothing to solve global warming.”

Environmentalists have also criticized the governors for failing to adequately embrace energy efficiency measures that would enable greater pollution reductions at lower cost.