(NEW YORK) New Hampshire officials are auctioning off 1.82 million carbon allowances in June. RGGI Inc. today announced that the 16th Quarterly Auction will take place on June 4th. The nine states remaining in the program are offering 364. million RGGI allowances, each of which allows a covered fossil-fuel power plant to emit a ton of carbon dioxide over the next three years.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative began operation in 2009 as a ten-state cooperative under which certain coal and natural gas power plants would have to buy allowances in order to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Total emissions from these covered sources in capped, and will decline over time. New Jersey withdrew from the agreement at the end of the program’s first three-year compliance period in January.

The RGGI auction will maintain a Reserve Price of $1.93 per ton, below which bids will not be accepted. RGGI credit price have remained at the reserve floor for the past two and half year. A slow economy has reduced demand for electricity, keeping regional emissions below the cap set in 2009. If all of this auction RGGI credits are sold, New Hampshire would receive $3.5 million. That revenue could increase if RGGI auction prices rise, or decrease if bidders do not buy all the credits offered, which has happened in six of the last seven quarterly auctions.

New Hampshire netted $2 million in the first quarterly auction on 2012, generating enough revenue to pay off promised grants issued in 2010. Proceeds from June’s auction will go into the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Fund, which the Public Utilities Commission uses to award grants for projects aimed at improving energy efficiency or replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources. Since 2009, the PUC has handed out nearly $37 million in grants funded through RGGI.