Bay Area Air Quality District, an agency for air pollution regulations in the San Francisco Bay area, decided Wednesday that companies that produce greenhouse gases as a side effect of their activity will pay 4.4 cents for every metric ton of carbon dioxide they release in the air.

The measure was voted 15-1 by the agency’s board of directors and is supposed to bring an income of over $1 million. The measure will be applied in the nine counties that form the Bay Area, and all the money that will be collected is going to be used to finance research on the effects of environmental gases and ways to fight against them.

While big companies will pay up to $200,000, the smaller ones will be charged less than $1 a year. The tax will be applied to all sorts of companies from supermarkets to power plants.

While some people consider the tax to be a good thing, others, mainly directors of big companies, think that the measure is unnecessary and that it could bring confusion. This could happen in case state regulations will interfere with the local ones. Even though the Bush administration has made an appeal to companies to become more environmentally conscious in what regards greenhouse gas emissions, no projects or regulations have been presented.

A spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality District has said that the agency feels very proud to be the first one in the United States to impose such a tax, and that it hopes and thinks that other similar agencies will follow in on its footsteps.