Obama Moves Away From `Cap and Trade,' Seeks New Tools

Bloomberg
"Futures contracts in the U.S. Northeast’s carbon market fell to their lowest level in six weeks yesterday after Obama’s remarks.

Obama spoke the day after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and gained at least six seats in the Senate after a campaign in which Republican candidates and some Democrats denounced cap-and-trade as a disguised energy tax. A cap-and-trade bill backed by Obama passed the House last year, then stalled in the Senate this year.

Prospects for a U.S. carbon market are more remote than before the election because “the vast majority of Republicans have opposed cap-and-trade proposals to date,” Peter Shattuck, a carbon-markets policy analyst at Environment Northeast, an advocacy group based in Rockport, Maine, said in a telephone interview. "