Scrub Hub: How do carbon fee policies work, and do Hoosier lawmakers support them?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : Currently, more than 50% of Indiana's electric power comes from coal, the third highest rate of any state in the country.
58% : Advocates of plans like these say they will increase the speed of a transition toward clean power that is already taking place.
56% : That, inherently, makes clean energy sources such as solar and wind power more attractive and less expensive.
56% : Jonathan Levenshus, director of federal campaigns for the organization's Beyond Coal Campaign, said this plan would impose direct payments or penalties to utilities, depending on how much clean energy they add to their portfolio: If they add a certain amount of clean energy, they get rewarded.
55% : Conversely, wind power provides just 7% of the state's electricity while solar, biomass and hydropower combined provides for less than 2%.
54% : "It is the right mechanism to ensure utilities don't fall behind in this transition to clean power," Levenshus said.
53% : Council Executive Director Jesse Kharbanda said his group supports this type of policy in particular because the method of the dividend -- a payment that would go directly to American families to help shoulder increased energy costs -- can provide support for low-income families that may otherwise not be able to afford clean energy.
52% : Several other countries have put in place national carbon pricing, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, and all countries in the European Union.
49% : "The intent of that is simply to make fossil fuel energy a more expensive alternative than clean energy," said Jim Grimes, Indiana leader of Citizens' Climate Lobby, an organization that advocates for this specific plan.
42% : Carbon fee and dividends plans differ, but both work to de-incentivize carbon-intensive fuels such as coal and natural gas by making them more expensive.
39% : This apocalyptic vision is driven in large part by the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil that produce dangerous greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

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