Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Issues CO2 Report

Today RGGI, Inc. released a report on CO2 emissions from electricity generation and imports in the 10-State RGGI region. The report, "CO2 Emissions from Electricity Generation and Imports in the 10-State Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative: 2009 Monitoring Report," is the first in a series of annual monitoring reports, called for in the 2005 RGGI Memorandum of Understanding.

This report, the first report in a series of annual monitoring reports, summarizes data for electricity generation, electricity imports, and related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the ten-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) region1 for the period from 2005 through 2009. These monitoring reports were called for in the 2005 RGGI Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in response to expressed concerns about the potential for the RGGI CO2 Budget Trading Program to result in “emissions leakage2”.3

In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, CO2 emissions from the regional electric power sector are a function of a highly dynamic wholesale electricity markets. The cost of compliance with the RGGI CO2 Budget Trading Program is only one of several factors that influence the dispatch of electric generation, and resulting CO2 emissions, through the operation of these markets. As a result, this report presents data without assigning causality to any one of the factors influencing observed trends.

The observed trends in electricity demand, net electricity imports, electricity generation from multiple categories of generation sources (including electricity imports), show there has been no increase in CO2 emissions or the CO2 emission rate (pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour or lb CO2/MWh) from non-RGGI electric generation serving load in the ten-state RGGI region in the first year of the RGGI program operation, 2009.