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If a big polluter buys Renewable Energy Certificates, isn it just a way for them to avoid being punished for polluting?

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If a big polluter buys Renewable Energy Certificates, isn it just a way for them to avoid being punished for polluting?

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No. Many companies produce pollution in several ways. Energy use is generally a huge source of pollution, but many industries also produce other kinds of pollution during the manufacturing process. We must remember that the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates is a voluntary decision, while most of the familiar ‘pollution credit’ trading is based on a mandatory, federally regulated system in which there is an artificial “cap” on how much pollution is acceptable (subject to intense political lobbying, often by the polluters themselves). Companies that use green energy or Renewable Energy Certificates to run operations that produce other forms of pollution have the same claim to the green energy/certificates as companies that make environmentally neutral products. Both types of operations are objectively supporting renewable energy generators.

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