Friday, October 3rd, 2008

First US Cap-And-Trade Greenhouse Gas Auction

by Flickr user tboard

A consortium of Northeast states has completed the first US cap-and-trade greenhouse gas auction. The results of the auction, held by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, were released Monday. Under cap-and-trade, limits are set on emissions. Companies that do not use up their quota of emissions are able to sell their excess emission capacity to other companies, or to groups looking to take the emission credits off the market.

In the end, the auction sold emission credits at about $3.07 per allotted ton of emissions -- raising nearly $40 million. We'll talk with one of the organizers of the auction about how it went.