Cap and trade would mean lights out for South Carolina

This summer, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that could drive up the cost of energy, hurt family businesses and leave thousands of South Carolinians out of work.

We can't let it pass the Senate, too.

The bill, which could come up for a vote in the Senate as early as this month, is known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill after its sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

It's being sold as a plan to help clean the environment, but it's really just a massive tax on energy.

Waxman-Markey would create a new program called 'cap and trade.'

Basically, it would let Washington place a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Companies would buy credits to offset their emissions. As they reduce emissions, they could sell any extra credits to companies that are exceeding their own caps.

This trade in energy credits, which has a lot of supporters in the Senate, will mean higher prices across the board. Barack Obama said so himself last year when he was running for president.

'Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,' he told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money,' and power companies will pass the cost onto their customers—people like you and me.

What would it mean for South Carolina?

The Heritage Foundation estimates that cap and trade will raise the cost of electricity here an average of $706 a year per household between 2012, the year the program would begin, and 2035.

Cap and trade will diminish the value of all goods and services produced in the state an average of $3.5 billion a year, add 60 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline and reduce the number of jobs in South Carolina on average of 18,572 a year.

It is also going to place a tremendous burden on small businesses, which account for 97 percent of all employers in South Carolina.

Small businesses generally don't have big profits even in the best of times, but in this economy, many are doing well to keep the doors open. A big jump in the cost of electricity and gasoline is going to drive up the cost of everything from the light bill to office supplies — even as customers cut spending to make up for their own higher energy bills at home. If cap and trade becomes law, the financial pressure it creates could put many family businesses out of business.

We can't afford that, especially when we're struggling to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Instead, we need an energy reform bill that gets it right. We need reform that supports investing in readily available renewable energy sources, like nuclear power, certain hydropower and coal gasification.

For these reasons, we should thank Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham for opposing the Waxman-Markey bill in its current form and for promising to vote in support of South Carolina's families and small businesses.

Everyone wants a cleaner environment, but cap and trade would mean lights out for South Carolina.

J.J. Darby is the South Carolina state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, the state's leading small business association. He can be reached at jj.darby@NFIB.org.