By Beth Daley, September 15, 2006
Almost a year after he pulled out of a landmark regional agreement to limit emissions of a greenhouse gas from the state’s power plants, Governor Mitt Romney yesterday released the final version of his controversial substitute plan.
The rule, which takes effect Oct. 6, will allow the state’s six dirtiest power plants to buy credits, possibly from around the world, to compensate for their carbon dioxide emissions.
For example, a coal-burning power plant could pay to plant a forest in Brazil if those trees absorb the amount of carbon dioxide the plant must reduce from its smokestacks.
“This regulation provides real and vital environmental benefits, with a flexibility that is essential in this new and volatile energy market,” Romney said.
Businesses praised the plan yesterday, but environmentalists said it was full of loopholes designed to allow power plants to avoid meaningful reductions.
“We’re talking aggressive reductions…but it protects us from unknown price impacts,” said Robert Rio, VP of government affairs for Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which represents Massachusetts businesses. “It’s a good balance.”
Critics of the plan say the state will not be able to police projects in far-off countries.
“It’s a shameful legacy in the final days of [Romney’s] administration,” said Cindy Luppi of Clean Water Action, an environmental advocacy group. “Hundreds of people came out to oppose the loopholes and he turned a deaf ear.”
In 2004, the state slowed on implementing its plan to reduce power plants’ emission of carbon dioxide — which traps heat in the atmosphere and warms the earth — to help lead a more ambitious effort among nine Northeast and mid-Atlantic states to bypass the Bush administration’s refusal to limit the gas. Other states moved forward with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2009 and uses a market-based system to reduce power plant carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2020.
Romney, who originally called the regional plan “good business,” reversed his position last fall. He pulled out of the agreement late last year, saying his plan would accomplish strict reductions yet not overly burden businesses. Romney’s plan is filled with triggers to ease the impact on businesses.
Massachusetts Environmental Affairs Secretary Robert W. Golledge Jr. said the program will cost more than $750,000 a year and that monitoring will probably be contracted to a private company. He said the state needs to make sure the projects are verifiable because otherwise they “would undermine the whole program.”
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