Isramart :U.S. Northeast Carbon Falls as Federal CO2 Trading Bill Stalls

Isramart news:
Carbon dioxide permits in the U.S. Northeast’s cap-and-trade program for power plants fell to their lowest level this year on waning public concern over emissions that scientists blame for global warming.

Permits from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for December delivery fell 3 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $2.10 each on the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange. Each permit, also called an allowance, gives a power plant the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide. The state-run carbon trading program covers plants from Maryland to Maine.

Cap-and-trade legislation that passed the U.S. House last year has stalled in the Senate. Northeast carbon prices are influenced by events in Washington because the cap-and-trade legislation would exchange any unused state-issued permits for federal pollution rights.

Carbon permit prices in the regional program have fallen 11 percent since Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in a Jan. 19 special Senate election in Massachusetts. Brown, who campaigned against federal cap-and-trade legislation, could give Republicans the 41 votes they need to stop cap-and-trade legislation passing the Senate.

The effort in Congress “to move very rapidly on new climate-change laws looks like it has hit a stone wall,” said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.