Lawmakers need to try yet again to restore some sense to the spending of New Hamphire’s share of the revenue earned by making electric utilities pay a price for pollution.
In 2008, New Hampshire joined with seven other states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Operating as a cooperative, RGGI caps the amount of carbon dioxide that the region’s power plants can emit and holds auctions to sell utilities what are essentially permits to pollute. At the last auction the cost of a credit to emit one ton of CO2 went for $5.20.
To be truly effective at combating climate change, the credit should be 10 or 15 times higher and should apply to the transportation sector as well. Nonetheless, the auctions raise a lot of money. Earlier this month the cooperative issued a state-by-state report on how that money was spent in 2017. New Hampshire wasted most of its share.
We understand that some will disagree with that characterization, but while every other state in the compact used all or nearly all of its revenue from the auctions to fund energy-efficiency programs New Hampshire did not. The state, the RGGI report said, received $11.1 million from the 2017 auctions. It put $3 million in the state’s energy efficiency fund to pay for conservation measures like insulating municipal buildings and low-income homes. It gave $7.8 million back to utility customers in the form of “direct bill assistance.”
That assistance doesn’t, as far as we could find, show up on customers’ monthly bills. It amounts to pennies per month. Pretty much no one knows that they received the money so it does nothing to alter behavior by say, replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. Direct bill assistance using RGGI money, save for programs to assist low-income customers, should be scrapped.
RGGI was designed to combat climate change on two fronts. Charge utilities to pollute and they’ll be more likely to invest to limit their emissions. Spend the money raised on energy efficiency. That reduces the amount of electricity that needs to be generated and greenhouse gas emissions. It was a two-fer, but in 2012, with Republican ideologues and Tea Party zealots in control of the Legislature, a move to force the state to leave RGGI looked like it could succeed.
In a compromise to keep New Hampshire in the compact, lawmakers agreed that only the first $1 of the auction price would go to conservation; the rest had to be returned to customers.
Two more states, Pennsylvania and Virginia, appear likely to join the compact and New Jersey, which dropped out when Chris Christie was governor, is poised to rejoin. Those states should not make New Hampshire’s mistake.
Gov. Sununu vetoed last session’s attempt to direct more RGGI money to energy-efficiency programs. He twanged the old saw and said “what about the retired woman teacher living on a fixed income in Manchester. She can use the rebate.” Maybe, but what that teacher and many others could really use is help from a program that insulates their drafty home or helps them replace an old energy hog of a refrigerator.
That kind of RGGI fund spending saves hundreds of dollars per year, not pennies.