As Feds Move Away From Climate Change, Maine and New England Consider Stronger CO2 Caps

“All the evidence points to the fact that RGGI’s working well, it’s been a great success since its inception,” says Peter Shattuck, director of the Clean Energy Initiative at the Acadia Center, an an environmental policy group with offices in Maine and around the northeast.

“[Since RGGI’s 2009 startup] carbon pollution is down 40 percent, electricity prices are down 3 percent, and at the same time [the participating] states’ economies have grown by 25 percent,” he says.

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“This is an opportunity and a necessity to fill that void. And this is not uncharted territory for RGGI itself,” Shattuck says. “It was conceived during the 2000’s when the Bush administration was not acting on climate and a bipartisan group of governors came together and formed the program.”

Listen to the whole interview from Maine Things Considered on Maine Public Radio here.