Tad Gage

Carbon Cap and Trade's Possible Winners

From what I can deduce, it has been a long and challenging road for Evergreen to make its coal "cleaning" process work. But from what I can gather, it's less about "clean" coal (which is kind of a bogus misnomer) than it is about a process that stabilizes coal and makes it less susceptible to eroding and absorbing moisture and such in transit. So it makes for a cleaner burning product for the end user, without paying for coal dust and waste. This seems to be reasonable economic sense.

As to the carbon credits, Hazel, you make a great point. Sustainability makes all the sense in the world, but taxation of carbon usage without some kind of trading or credit incentive seems like the stick without a carrot. What consumer is willing to pay 2x their current electricity bill because their utilities have no viable way to offset their carbon footprint taxation. Simply put, it's bad business.

What corporation is going to be incentivized by more taxation without some way to balance their losses? That mentality just runs contrary to good business sense, as nobody is dumb enough to be in net-positive polluting businesses, and get taxed for it, without some light at the end of the tunnel. That's why I think the carbon credit and trade makes sense. What do you guys think?