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Fears of Energy Price Increase Delay 9-State Greenhouse Gas Pollution

With delegates from all over the world meeting in Montreal on an international treaty to cut greenhouse gases, negotiations for a separate pact among nine Northeastern states have been prolonged by worries that controls on emissions could drive up the price of energy. The nine states had planned to announce a final agreement on the plan this week, coinciding with the meeting in Montreal. But Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, one of the nine states, has pushed the discussions past that deadline. He said he was concerned that the plan to cap carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the region, and then reduce them by 10 percent, would raise the cost of electricity too much and hurt businesses and customers. Governor Romney said that he supported some of the plan’s provisions, and that he was committed to reducing the state’s reliance on foreign oil. But he insisted that the plan have price controls on what power plant operators would pay to exceed their pollution allowances under the agreement, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to check rapidly rising energy costs. “We’re seeing huge rate increases now in the cost of energy,” Governor Romney said in a telephone interview yesterday. […]

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SC Johnson Partners with EPA to Develop Environmentally Responsible Products

SC Johnson announced today it has entered into a voluntary partnership with The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the agency’s Design for the Environment (DfE) Program. SC Johnson is the first major consumer packaged goods company to partner with EPA on the program that promotes chemical products, technologies, and practices that benefit human health and the environment. This partnership makes provisions for the company to work with EPA chemists, environmental scientists and risk reduction staff in investigating materials that can further improve the health and environmental profiles of the company’s products. The partnership also designates two SC Johnson products — Scrubbing Bubbles Trigger Bathroom Cleaner and Shower Shine Daily Shower Cleaner by Scrubbing Bubbles — as “partnership products,” that have a more positive health and environmental profile than those typically found in many conventional cleaning products. Accordingly, packaging for these products will be able to display the Design for the Environment logo and the words, “Formulated in Partnership with the Design for the Environment Program.” The DfE Program is one of EPA’s premier partnership programs, working with individual companies and industry sectors to compare and improve the performance and human health and environmental risks and costs of existing […]

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