Tampa Electric announced in January 2008 that it had successfully completed its Chicago Climate Exchange Phase I greenhouse gas reduction commitment of 4 percent below the average of the years 1998-2001.
As a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange through its parent company, TECO Energy, Tampa Electric is recognized by the organization as complying with the most rigorous standards for greenhouse gas emissions available in North America today. The company joined Chicago Climate Exchange in 2004.
Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), launched in 2003, is the world’s first and North America’s only active voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six major greenhouse gases (GHGs), with offset projects worldwide.
CCX Members are leaders in greenhouse gas (GHG) management and represent all sectors of the global economy, as well as public sector innovators. Reductions achieved through CCX are the only reductions made in North America through a legally binding compliance regime, providing independent, third party verification by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA, formerly NASD). The founder, Chairman and CEO of CCX is economist and financial innovator Dr. Richard L. Sandor, who was named a Hero of the Planet by Time Magazine in 2002 for founding CCX, and in 2007 as the "father of carbon trading."
CCX emitting Members make a voluntary but legally binding commitment to meet annual GHG emission reduction targets. Those who reduce below the targets have surplus allowances to sell or bank; those who emit above the targets comply by purchasing CCX Carbon Financial Instrument® (CFI™) contracts.
In a letter to Tampa Electric, Chicago Climate Exchange Chairman and CEO Richard Sandor said, “Upon enrolling in Chicago Climate Exchange, Tampa Electric took bold and practical action to help build an international carbon reduction market at a time when leadership in this area was rare.”
Sandor commended the company’s leadership in promoting best practices in greenhouse gas emissions management and corporate sustainability.
Since it embarked on a 10-year, $1.2 billion environmental improvement plan in 1998, the company has reduced its system’s carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent, while at the same time achieving reductions in pollutants like sulfur dioxide or SO2 (91 percent), nitrogen oxide or NOx (80 percent; 90 percent by 2010); mercury (greater than 70 percent) and particulate matter (75 percent), all compared with 1998 levels.
Few coal-fired plants, including in Florida, have made this level of reductions.
