In the annals of Connecticut’s legislative brawls, this one has the makings of tolls 2.0.
The new transportation effort that is grazing the guardrails is the Transportation and Climate Initiative, TCI. It’s a climate change-combatting concept that seeks to replicate through the motor vehicle sector what the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) accomplished through the electric power sector — cutting greenhouse gases and other emissions while raising money to cycle funds back into related climate-change programs. In the case of TCI, it could also cycle funds into the state’s dwindling transportation fund.
TCI is envisioned as a cap-and-invest program for motor vehicles, just like RGGI is for power plants. Both essentially put a price on carbon pollution to incentivize using less of whatever is producing that pollution. In RGGI, for the right to pollute above a set cap that goes down over time, power plant owners buy emission allowances from their states through quarterly auctions. The states get the money, most of which is supposed to be invested in consumer benefits such as energy efficiency programs that help lower energy use further.