Trading credits for air pollution reduction just went online. The EPA has set up its emissions trading system on the Internet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
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Trading credits for air pollution reduction just went on-line. The EPA has set up its emissions trading system on the Internet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
The EPA’s 20-billion dollar emissions trading market has been around for awhile. It allows companies that reduce pollution below mandated levels to sell the remainder of their allowances to other companies that have not met mandated reductions. But trading has been paperwork intensive. Forms have had to be sent into the EPA for processing, delaying the trade by days. Now the EPA has harnessed the Internet, allowing the more than two thousand companies enrolled to trade online. Brian McLean is the Director of the EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division.
“It speeds up the trading process which therefore saves on the cost of buying and selling and moving these allowances and the more we can take advantage of lower cost emission reductions.”
The EPA says the trading system helps companies meet the goal set by Congress in 1980 to cut overall emissions in half by 2010.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium I’m Lester Graham.