John Kerry

Organized competitive markets create an effective mechanism to stimulate technological innovations and achieve federal emissions reductions goals. Promoting innovative solutions and market approaches delivers economic and environmental benefits to consumers.

A proposal being developed in the U.S. Senate would use a market-based approach to limiting carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector. While drumming up support for the tri-partisan bill, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said that markets unleash “ingenuity” and send the proper price signals for investment. COMPETE couldn’t agree more, as outlined in a joint statement with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Markets unleash “ingenuity” and send the proper price signals for investment.  So says Senator John Kerry, D-MA, on the stump to drum up support for a tri-partisan climate change bill he is developing with Senators Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Joseph Lieberman, I-CT.  Kerry is a strong advocate of creating a market-based program to limit emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.  He pointed to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which created a similar market-based program to cost-effectively limit acid rain-producing emissions of sulfur dioxide from power plants. “It works,” Kerry said succinctly of such market-based environmental programs.

The COMPETE Coalition welcomes Senator Kerry’s pro-market commentary, and invites him and his staff to review a joint statement by COMPETE and the Environmental Defense Fund underscoring the importance of competitive electricity markets for electricity as a complement to any market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.