By Dan Johnson

This is pretty awesome. I'd like to know who the biggest carbon polluters are in Illinois to get an idea how much money we are wasting by letting these companies pollute for free.

Turns out the federal government keeps such a list.

The biggest polluter in Illinois is a huge coal power plant owned by a Texas utility Dynegy. The Baldwin Plant alone pollutes 12 million tons of carbon (out of a statewide total of 91 million). Most of the 91 million is from coal power plants. And we don't charge them anything for that pollution. 


The market price for a ton of carbon pollution is apparently about $12/ton. If Illinois decided to quit subsidizing these polluters and had them pay the market price for their pollution, we'd generate more than a billion dollars -- annually. (91 million tons times $12/ton). 


To put that in context, all the debate over lowering the state income tax from 5% to 3.75% will cost about $3 billion. We could lower the income tax even more down to 3.25% with the money we could raise from charging polluters a market price. 


Thanks to the feds compiling this data (which is only about half the total carbon emissions), we're in a place to sketch out what a fee on carbon pollution might actually generate. That's very helpful.

In most places, an oil refinery or a massive manufacturing plant that creates tens of thousands of metric tons of carbon pollution doesn't have to pay for that pollution. Since it's free to the company, they keep on spewing out the climate change causing carbon like dumping toxic sludge directly into a sewer: no filters, no caps, no nothing.

Some states are figuring out they ought to charge those companies a fee for their pollution to not only get them to figure out how to pollute less (since now it's getting expensive) but also to pay for other parts of the public sector. The latest initiative is from Washington Governor Jay Inslee - his cap-and-trade proposal would charge 130 or so big companies and generate about a billion dollars a year. 

Washington State could join California which has been charging carbon polluters in a quarterly auction to set the price for years. 

Illinois should do the same thing. If we charged our oil refineries and major manufacturers a fair price for their pollution, we'd not only quit subsidizing our polluters but we'd be able to help pay for the backbone of our low-pollution economy: the CTA and Metra. These trains carry 2 million people every day but the backlog for maintenance is far larger than what we're budgeted to pay for. Makes sense to pay for the maintenance (and expansion) of low-pollution public transportation by finally kicking the polluters off the free ride bus.

If Washington State could generate a billion and we're about twice their size....we might be able to solve our transit funding shortfalls in an elegant policy combination.