Skip to content
SHP Snow Day

Pier Pressure

June 25, 2012

Pollution Credits A Smoke Screen?

 

Government: Business rips ‘cap and trade’ as $1 billion tax.

 

Los Angeles — (Los Angeles Business Journal) — 06/25/12In an effort to curb air pollution, Signal Hill Petroleum Inc. built a clean generator for its local oil field a few years ago. But the plant still produces carbon emissions, so company executives might have to buy at least $500,000 worth of pollution credits at auction this fall as part of the state’s greenhouse gas “cap and trade” program.

 

“We’re going to be penalized immediately just to keep operating the way we are now, with one of the cleanest generators in the business,” said David Slater, executive vice president with Signal Hill. “it’s going to be devastating for us.”

 

So Signal Hill and dozens of other L.A.-area companies have joined a statewide business coalition in a new last-minute drive to get the Legislature to scrape this fall’s cap-and-trade auction, calling it a $1 billion tax on state companies. They want the California Air Resources Board to come up with a program that’s less costly.

 

The coalition, called Californians Against Higher Taxes, has sponsored a petition drive aimed at key state legislators and has scheduled a full-page ad in the Sacramento Bee urging lawmakers to stop in and block the auction, now set for November.

 

Click here to read more