CNN N. H. Town Hall: on Energy & Oil

Deval Patrick: Cap-and-trade via Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

PATRICK: First of all, my plan is built on things we actually did and accomplished. We joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in this region, on the first day I was in office, which is a cap-and-trade system. We used all of those proceeds to invest in energy efficiency in Massachusetts, retrofits, you know, tighter windows and doors, insulation, subsidies in particular for working people, incredibly meaningful in terms of their costs and their comfort. It also helped catalyze a new industry, a whole bunch of jobs. We closed the remaining coal fire power plants. We set very ambitious--indeed, the most ambitious goals in terms of reducing emissions, the most of any other state. They were goals that we were meant to achieve in eight years. We achieved them in three.

Deval Patrick: Massachusetts met Paris Climate rules while he was Governor

We went from 900,000 megawatts of alternative energy generation to 4.7 million megawatts of alternative energy, most of it solar, some wind. And in the meanwhile, we created this whole new tech industry, clean tech industry, which was one of the fastest growing in the commonwealth, and one of the reasons why we came out recession faster than most other states.

The only thing we haven't done, and that I am open to, is a carbon tax. I'm open to it. That might be, and some have suggested that's a better idea than a cap-and-trade. But in my view, it works best if we take, just as in the example I offered of the cap-and-trade system, if we use all of the proceeds to plow them into moving us faster to a green future.

Tom Steyer: Cap-and-trade market-based approaches are ineffective

STEYER: [We need] to put in rules about how fast utilities have to move to clean energy, how fast car companies have to stop creating gasoline-fired cars, how fast businesses have to rebuild buildings to make them more energy-efficient. How effective is putting a price on carbon? And here's the answer. That isn't what really works. There has been a sense in this country that what works is somehow using the market. Let me say this. As somebody who was in the private sector for 30 years, who believes in a dynamic, competitive, effective private sector, a price on carbon, which we've had in California through our cap-and-trade system has been very marginally effective. So do I think it's bad? No, I don't think it's bad. I think it's marginally positive. But the way we're going to get out of this problem is not by trusting the market. We are going to get out of this problem by putting in rules and making corporations obey them.