The Northeast’s cap-and-trade system posted a record-high price on Friday for power plants to pollute.
But many of the program’s supporters breathed a sigh of relief: They had worried the price might be even higher.
The latest auction of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers electricity-sector emissions for 10 East Coast states, cleared at $35 per ton of carbon.
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That’s meaningfully more than March’s quarterly auction price of $25 — but not enough to have a huge impact on electricity bills at a time of unprecedented political scrutiny. It’s also far below the cost of allowances on the secondary market, where prices recently topped $50.
