Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg and Exelon CEO Chris Crane may agree that a stiff penalty on carbon emitters is a good idea, but their motives differ a bit.
At first glance, Greta Thunberg and Christopher Crane don’t appear to have much in common.
But the 16-year-old Swedish environmentalist and the 60-year-old CEO of electricity giant Exelon share a powerful passion: curbing carbon emissions that are heating up the planet. While Thunberg was at the United Nations on Monday, berating political leaders for moving too slowly on global warming, the Wall Street Journal was publishing an op-ed by Crane calling for stiff penalties on carbon emitters.
Thunberg and Crane may agree on the goal, but their motives differ a bit. She’s hoping to save her own and future generations from the long-term ravages of rising temperatures. Such existential threats may trouble Crane, as well, but he has a more immediate concern: saving Chicago-based Exelon’s nuclear reactors.
“They’re doing this to help their nuclear power plants remain profitable,” says Edward Jones analyst Andy Smith of Exelon’s support for a tax on carbon emissions. Exelon is a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council, an organization formed by some big companies concerned about climate change. The group advocates a $40-per-ton tax on carbon emissions (they prefer to call it a “fee,” but when the government makes you fork over cash, it’s a tax) that would increase annually by 5 percent above the rate of inflation.
A tax of that magnitude would sting carbon-emitting natural gas plants that have been pummeling Exelon’s nuclear fleet, the largest in the nation. Gas-fired plants have had a cost advantage over nukes ever since hydraulic fracturing techniques opened up vast new gas reserves. Cheaper electricity from gas-burning plants drove down wholesale power prices, squeezing profits at nuclear plants, which cost more to operate.
Charging gas plants $40 for every ton of carbon they release into the atmosphere would drive up their costs significantly. Nuclear plants, which don’t emit carbon, wouldn’t have to pay the tax. The cost gap would shrink significantly, if not disappear altogether, boosting wholesale power prices and Exelon’s bottom line.
Smith says the effect “would be material. It would put them on a more even playing field” with natural gas plants.
The carbon tax proposal isn’t Exelon’s first attempt to push through federal climate legislation that would ease pressure on its nukes. Early in the Obama administration, Crane’s predecessor John Rowe unsuccessfully urged Congress to rein in carbon emissions through a “cap and trade” regime.
from Sustainability Topics https://ift.tt/2mxnvFA
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire