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Outside of California Carbon Share can apply to many efforts to address climate change taking place outside of California. A Federal GHG Cap: Lieberman-Warner or other legislation Congress has started to discuss a national cap on GHG emissions. The Lieberman-Warner bill is an example. Unfortunately, the bill gives billions of dollars in emission rights to fossil fuel companies, following the poor example of Europe's ETS. Carbon Share could improve these bills by distributing emission rights directly to Americans. Western Climate Initiative The Western U.S. States are discussing a possible cap and trade system to mirror the RGGI in the Northeast. It may focus on the electricity sector. CPC
Comment on WCI 11-29-07 (pdf) One interesting debate in the electricity sector is between a "load-based" system and "first seller" or "source-based" system. This is a complex issue. A load-based system regulates retail providers such as PG&E or Southern California Edison. A first seller system, which was proposed by the Market Advisory Committee, regulates the first entity to sell electricity in California. Generally, this would be further upstream than a load based system. It appears that the California Public Utilities Commission has switched from initially supporting load-based to now supporting first-seller. A report "State Efforts to Camp the Commons: Regulating Sources or Consumers" by Dallas Burtraw of Resources for the Future discusses the pros and cons of each system. The report states that a load-based system might conflict with California's upcoming day-ahead market with the ISO, and also be less transparent than a first-seller (and eventually source-based) system. Many consumer groups, for example in Oregon, are promoting load-based, but there may be reasons looking ahead to promote first-seller (or source-based) instead. The WCI could allocate allowances to states, which would use their state tax systems to offer consumers the choice of a cash dividend, tax rebate, or Carbon Share. This would return the revenues from an auction to consumers, protect low-income households, and prevent windfall profits in a giveaway system. RGGI- U.S. Northeast States The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative effort by Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to discuss the design of a regional cap-and-trade program initially covering carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the region. In the future, RGGI may be extended to include other sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and greenhouse gases other than CO2.
Currently, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont are participating in the RGGI effort. In addition, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, the Eastern Canadian Provinces and New Brunswick are observers in the process. Vermont
has decided to auction 100% of its greenhouse gas permits. New
York and several other states have announced support for auctioning
100% of permits. The states participating in RGGI could utilize Carbon Share in their allocation of emissions permits. Each state within RGGI could decide to distribute 50% of its permits directly to its citizens on a per capita basis. The other 50% would be auctioned directly to companies. Citizens would cash their shares at banks, and the banks would sell them to companies. Maryland considers Per capita Rebates Maryland
is part of RGGI and is auctioning 100% of its permits. In April
2008, the Maryland State Legislature is considering SB
268 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative - Maryland Strategic Energy
Investment Program, which specifies how to spend the auction
revenue. One scenario allocates the revenue as follows: o 23% direct rate relief administered by Maryland PSC on a per capita basis o 17% direct rate relief for low income community administered through EUSP program o 10.5% for renewable energy, energy education and climate change programs o 3.5%
for administrative purposes European Trading System (ETS) The ETS is Europe's program to use GHG emission permits to comply with the reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol. Though groundbreaking in its ambition, the ETS has several shortcomings. Learning from the European Trading System (ETS): The
ETS
Note: The per capita aspect of Carbon Share may be very important as a framework for a future international climate treaty. For more information, check out a per capita framework called Contraction & Convergence,developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. Here is a great graph that shows C&C in more detail.
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The
ETS is undergoing review prior to Phase II (2008-2012). The shortcomings
listed above could be remedied in part by adopting an allocation
scheme similar to Carbon Share. In fact, several European citizen
groups have been lobbying for this type of modification of the
ETS under the name |
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Carbon
Share works alongside the Climate
Protection Campaign.
For more information, contact Mike Sandler (707) 529-4620 or email mike [at] carbonshare.org. |