Cap and Trade by Many Names
CAP AND TRADE BY MANY NAMES: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration is still exploring how to implement the East Coast’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, with an eye to moderating costs to consumers while satisfying major concerns from environmental justice advocates about localized pollution impacts of the proposal. NY Renews, the broad coalition which spearheaded the push for what became the state’s landmark climate law, has now dubbed the program — which Hochul officials have started shortening from New York “cap and invest” to “NYCI” (pronounced, that’s right, “Nicky”) — “cap-trade-and-invest.” (The term has been used before, including by environmental justice groups to describe the ill-fated framework for a multi-state cap-and-trade program for transportation emissions.)