The Climate Protection Program is intended to fight climate change. Instead it brings economic hardship with no environmental benefit.
Oregonians deserve a healthy environment with clean air, clean water, resilient forests, and balanced wildlife populations. Oregonians also deserve a robust economy with affordable groceries, cheap gas, low energy bills, and plentiful jobs.
These ideas are not in conflict. Yet, Oregon lawmakers often treat them as polar opposites, sacrificing economic prosperity on the altar of extreme climate policies. One policy demonstrating this stupefying ignorance is set to take effect in 2027. With it will come higher energy prices, less jobs, and no determinable benefit to the environment.
Governor Kate Brown’s Climate Protection Program (CPP)–now Governor Tina Kotek’s–is a worthless virtue signal created via executive fiat in 2020 after the legislature was unable to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Her executive order directs the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) to create a “cap-and-reduce” program, which caps emissions associated with gasoline, diesel, natural gas, propane, and other fossil fuels sold in Oregon.
Under the CPP, regulated companies receive emissions allowances called “compliance instruments.” Each compliance instrument permits one metric ton of emissions, roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide a car emits on a cross-country road trip. The state caps the total number of compliance instruments it issues, with the total number set to reduce over time. As the cap declines, companies receive fewer allowances and are forced to reduce fossil-fuel sales, offer lower-carbon alternatives, or buy compliance instruments from other suppliers. If these options aren’t feasible for the company, it can choose to make a “Community Climate Investment” by paying into state-approved climate projects.
The CPP poses a massive economic threat to Oregonians while providing no environmental benefit. The program targets fuel suppliers, meaning energy prices, already sky-high and rising, would go up even more. The benefit to the environment would be nonexistent. Meanwhile, everyday Oregonians suffer due to another state-produced affordability crisis.
But the CPP doesn’t need to be an unstoppable train. Governor Kotek can and should write a new executive order repealing the old one outright with no replacement. However, given her tendency toward climate extremism, that’s unlikely. In that case, the Legislature should address the problem by passing a statute eliminating the ability of the DEQ and the EQC to regulate carbon emissions and repeal current administrative rules relating to such regulation in the process.
No compromise “fix” should be accepted either. Proposals to replace the CPP with outright cap-and-trade would inflict the same damage. Yet, some lawmakers, backed by state industry groups, are determined to implement full cap-and-trade to mitigate the problems of the CPP. The economic consequences would be the same; the environmental benefits, nonexistent.
OFC believes ending the CPP outright without selling Oregonians out to cap-and-trade should be the highest priority for lawmakers in the 2027 legislative session. As we gear up for the fight, we are asking Oregonians to let us know they’re in–that they’re ready to partner with us to end the CPP once and for all. You can do so by adding your name to the growing list of Oregonians saying NO to the CPP and cap-and-trade.