SEN. MARC PACHECO wants to make clear that the energy bill the Senate passed on Thursday night did not include a carbon tax.
Under the state’s constitution, he said, the Senate is not permitted to introduce a so-called money bill; legislation that raises or lowers taxes must originate in the House. He said the Senate bill mandates the development of a “market-based compliance system,” which attempts to put a price on carbon but not a tax.
“It’s not a tax,” the Taunton Democrat said.
An example of a market-based compliance system is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which sets a cap on how much carbon power plants can emit by selling a limited number of emission allowances. Proceeds from the cap-and-trade system are passed along to the member states. The system, as it ratchets down the number of allowances, gives power plants a financial incentive to use less and less carbon or pay more and more for allowances.
The Senate bill, if approved by the House, would mandate the creation of a similar system covering fossil fuels used in transportation and the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors.
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Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
The Senate vote coincided with the release of a white paper by National Grid that also called for putting a price on carbon in all fuels. The tone of the overall report was that the Northeast (New England plus New York) must move quickly on a number of fronts if the region is going to have any chance of meeting its greenhouse gas emission goals for 2030 and 2050.
Marcy Reed, the Massachusetts president of National Grid, wrote an op-ed Sunday in which she called for a short delay – a seventh-inning stretch, she called it – before moving on to the next phase of the state’s energy policy. Reed’s focus was primarily on proposals mandating an increase in renewable energy deployment. The bill the Senate approved on Thursday called for the percentage of renewable energy that must be purchased by retail electric suppliers to increase 3 percent annually rather than the current 1 percent.
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