In some ways, Europe's program has been a success. It covers 45 percent of the continent's emissions, 10,000 companies and 27 European Union countries. It has built registries that list carbon dioxide emissions for every major plant.
In other ways, the approach has been a bureaucratic morass with a host of unexpected and costly side effects and a much smaller effect on carbon emissions than planned. And many companies complain that it is unfair.
Consider the plight of Kollo Holding's factory in the Netherlands, which makes silicon carbide, a material used as an industrial abrasive and lining for high-temperature furnaces and kilns. Its managers like to think of their plant as an ecological standout: They use waste gases to generate energy and have installed the latest pollution-control equipment.
But Europe's program has driven electricity prices so high that the facility routinely shuts down for part of the day to save money on power. Although demand for its products is strong, the plant has laid off 40 of its 130 employees and trimmed production. Two customers have turned to cheaper imports from China, which is not covered by Europe's costly regulations
However, because of lobbying by well-connected companies, the E.U.'s limits on emissions ended up being higher than the actual emissions. As a result, fewer companies than expected had to buy emissions this year, and the price of carbon allowances, which had topped $30 per ton of carbon about a year ago, crashed to about $1 a ton. That eased some of the pressure on electricity rates, but prices for next year, after tighter E.U. limits take effect, are still about $20 a ton.
Europe's Problems Color U.S. Plans to Curb Carbon Gases
If anyone thinks that cap and trade will result in anything but a similar mess then they will very disappointed. In fact if cap and trade were such a boon as proposed then make it voluntary and give tax breaks to those that participate in the program to reduce carbon emissions. I submit that this bill has turned a debate that should be about how to best meet our nations energy needs in the future in a safe and environmentally friendly way to one that debates if man made global warming is real or not and while we are doing so and writing bills along those lines the only people who stand to gain from it are companies that are in that business and not those who need it most and that's our nation as a whole. Let me put it this way, if everyone all of the sudden started driving EV car's then the makers of automobiles would be in the business of making them. Our Govt. should be in the business of providing an atmosphere that promotes those kinds of incentives rather than enriching a select few. A cap and trade bill is not the answer, in fact I submit rather than spending almost a Trillion dollars to start this ponzi scheme, think about how many wind farms, solar farms, nuclear plants you could build for a Trillion dollars.
Duke energy estimated the cost of one nuclear plant to be 10 billion dollars that generates 1,117 megawatts so taking that into consideration let's say we build 20 reactors across the nation at 200 billion dollars we have added an additional 20GW of cap. enough to power 24 million homes. Further during the construction phase of these plants it is estimated by the NRC that in real terms your looking at between 4 to 6000 jobs created driectly in the construction of these plants. Thats 120,000 real jobs and 20,000 perm. jobs needed to staff those plants.
Now in 2007 T. Boone Picken planned to build a wind farm that could generate 4 GW of power using 2000 wind turbines over 200,000 acres at a cost of 6 billion dollars. Lets say we fund that as part of an overall energy program and 5 more like it. Thats an addional 20 GW of power that is not static mind you but will be part of an overall plan. We now have raise our overall energy output capacity by almost 50GW aenough to reach almost 70 million homes and done so by spending a 1/4 of what cap and trade will do and employed countless thousands of people.
Further we can add funding for residential solar, funding for grants to clean coal, natural gas, etc, as part of an overall energy plan and spend less that half of what cap and trade will ever spend and not only that, will generate revenue as well as create real jobs as well as be safe for the environment. None of this can be done however, if people do not set aside their narrow views and work together to solve this energy mess once and for all, so we can finally tell OPEC and their ilk no thank you we have our own.
