FERC Carbon Pricing Policy Rewards Natural Gas Companies

For Immediate Release
 

Today the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved  a policy statement that essentially confirms that the agency would be willing to consider efforts by grid operators to incorporate state carbon prices. 

While the move was hailed as bipartisan, one goal would seem to impede aggressive regional or state efforts to move towards clean, renewable energy. 

Food & Water Action Policy Director Mitch Jones issued the following statement: 

“FERC has long been criticized as being a rubber stamp for the fossil fuel industry. While today’s policy statement might be heralded as a step forward for the growth of renewable energy, in practice it is likely to do the opposite. Fossil fuel corporations have repeatedly and emphatically embraced carbon prices as their favored climate 'solution' in large part because those taxes do little to change the dirty energy status quo. Instead of trying to find new ways to put the right ‘price’ on pollution, we need to get off fossil fuels altogether. Carbon price schemes only give fossil fuel interests new life.

“What’s more, FERC’s openness to accommodating state-based carbon prices is the exact opposite response to its efforts to smother state Renewable Portfolio Standards -- the number one cause of the growth of domestic renewable energy over the past decades.

“Once again we see FERC putting its thumb on the scale in favor of continued fossil fuel use, only this time it does so with a sheen of bipartisanship.”

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