Electrical prices tend to be regional so nothing you said alters my point: prices will go up for all electricity in a market.

It is possible that a national cap and trade could have the effect of subsidizing electrical prices for some regions at the expense of other regions where coal fired power generation is the only option. However, those regional effects only increase the economic pain inflicted by the cap and trade system.

I suspect you are grossly misinterpreting the EPA claims. Cap and trade cannot not make expensive electricity sources cheaper. All it can do increase prices to the point where the expensive electricity sources become economic

That’s a pretty deep pile of wishful thinking. Do you really think an IPP nat. gas plant owner is going to pass their savings onto the customers? It’s the same story we hear about solar PV. Manufacturing costs have dropped over the past 8 years. Yet customers are not seeing those cost reductions. Solar PV consumer prices have actually gone up over the same time period (until the most recent 4 months of recession).

The only way I can see to make cap and tax reduce fossil fuel use is by driving up its cost. Th only way I can see to protect consumers from gasoline price hikes is to legislate the price of gasoline. You can try to meet both objectives by legislating how much profit/loss the energy producers can obtain from running their businesses.

We have an excellent example of this approach in CA during the electricity deregulation fiasco of the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s. It bankrupted two major power utilities in less than 5 years. Fortunately, the speaker of the house, a CA rep, should have excellent hindsight and avoid repeating such a financial fiasco….right?

Electricity is the same no matter how it is generated and there can only be one market price for electricity. If the government taxes coal based electrical plants this will raise the price of the electricity across the board. The higher prices might make some non-emitting sources more viable but these sources are not used today because they are more expensive. This means that the consumer will not see any savings.

To make matters worse: if the cap and tax plan actually succeeds in encouraging people to spend money on more expensive energy soucres then the government will lose the carbon tax revenue. The government will then have to replace this revenue by taxing other things.

If CO2 is a problem then energy prices much go up and people must accept that everyone will be poorer as a result of the increased costs. This economic reality is unescapable.

Rodger provides that quote as if it matters. Contradicting one’s self is the very heart of politics. Every day that you get by without being pinned down is a success. If you keep it up until your time in office runs out, they put a statue of you in Washington.

Not necessarily. If fossil fuels become more expensive then the development of the huge reserves that are contained in tar sands and oil shales and EOR (enhanced oil recovery) and exploration in deep water and other inhospitable places become more attractive. So supply of fossil fuels will still be there to challenge the ever costly alternatives.