Businesses push emissions-control program

ALBANY -- Supporters of a northeastern greenhouse gas control program that is being challenged by conservative activists have urged state governors in the region to stick with the 3-year-old Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

More than 200 businesses, many of them in the alternative energy field, sent a letter to governors in New York and the nine other states that are part of the initiative that controls carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The RGGI is the nation's first state-level greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. Under the program, power plants must buy enough state-issued permits to cover emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to climate change. The program provides a financial incentive for power plants to reduce the emissions.

The letter said that RGGI, which sells greenhouse gas emissions permits to power plants, encourages energy security and efficiency through projects supporting conservation, alternative energy and green jobs. For every dollar of RGGI proceeds spent on such programs, there is between $4 and $6 in economic activity, the letter said.

The letter was in response to a lawsuit filed last month in New York to kill the state's participation in RGGI. That lawsuit was filed by a group linked to conservative Kansas petrochemical billionaires who fund campaigns to deny man-made climate change.

Mike Rogers, vice president of GreenHome America, said his company signed the letter because "our country needs an energy policy, a combination of generation and efficiency. Some people sticking their heads in the sand does not change this." The Syracuse-headquartered company that upgrades homes with energy-efficient insulation and heating and cooling systems has locations on Long Island, New Jersey and Maine.

Other New York state groups that signed the letter include the utility National Grid, Alliance for Clean Energy New York, Plug Power and AWS Truepower.

"We need to keep the focus on controlling greenhouse gas emissions," said AWS President and founder Bruce Bailey, whose 110-employee company has consulted on alternative energy programs around the globe that are producing energy equivalent to 50 fossil fuel-fired power plants. "By taking steps backward, any state would be saying that climate change is not happening."

Bailey said RGGI has been subjected to "mischief" by climate change contrarians who are trying to get states to drop out, now that federal action on climate change legislation seems stymied.