Cap-and-trade program to offer 42.8M permits

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Northeast’s cap-and-trade program for power plants will offer 42.8 million carbon dioxide permits for sale at its eighth auction, to be held June 9, Bloomberg News reported last week.
The minimum bid for each permit will be $1.86, unchanged from earlier auctions, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative said in an e-mailed statement. Each permit gives a plant the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.
The June auction will offer 40.7 million permits for the cap-and-trade program’s first phase, or “control period,” which began in 2009 and runs through 2011. There will be a separate offering of 2.14 million permits from the program’s 2012-through-2014 control period.
The regional trading program, which aims to limit carbon dioxide produced by power plants from Maryland to Maine, has raised $582 million from quarterly permit auctions since September 2008. &#8226