Environment DEC
From the May 2009 issue
New York and other RGGI States Receive EPA Award
The ten northeast and mid-Atlantic states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont) participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) recently received a Climate Protection Award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). This award recognizes RGGI as a model for federal climate legislation and honors each state as a global leader in protecting the climate. Winners of the awards were chosen on the basis of originality and public purpose, global perspective and implication and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The ten RGGI states were recognized by EPA for their model cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The EPA recognized the RGGI states for their leadership in building a model cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions. Each participating state has implemented rules to cap emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel-fired power plants. Together, the RGGI states auction more than 80 percent of allowances and dedicate the proceeds to consumer benefit programs. To date, the RGGI states have conducted three auctions that have generated more than $262 million for energy efficiency, energy conservation, clean energy development, and other consumer benefit programs throughout the region.
RGGI Program
The states participating in RGGI have designed the first market-based, mandatory cap-and-trade program in the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They have regulations in place to cap and then reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that power plants in the region are allowed to emit, limiting the region's total contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. Power sector CO2 emissions are capped at current levels through 2014. The cap will then be reduced by 2.5 percent in each of the four years 2015 through 2018, for a total reduction of 10 percent.
A CO2 allowance represents a limited authorization to emit one ton of CO2, as issued by a respective participating state. A regulated power plant must hold CO2 allowances equal to its emissions to demonstrate compliance at the end of each compliance period. Because CO2 allowances issued by any participating state are usable across all state programs, the ten individual state CO2 budget-trading programs, in aggregate, form one regional compliance market for CO2 emissions.
NYS RGGI Leaders
NY State Climate Protection Award recipients, left to right: Navis Bermudez, Director for Federal Policy, Office of Gov. David Paterson, DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis, Lois New, DEC's Office of Climate Change.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) staff have served in leadership roles since RGGI's inception. DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis chairs the RGGI Board of Directors. Lois New of DEC's Office of Climate Change is a co-chair of the RGGI Staff Working Group and Peter Iwanowicz, now serving as New York's Assistant Secretary for the Environment, served as chair of the RGGI Auction Committee. Additional DEC staff on the RGGI team include Jonathan Binder, Mark Lowery, Patricia Mastrianni, Kevin McGarry, Michael Sheehan and Jared Snyder.
