Viewpoints: Cap and trade should look to broader goals

Special to The Bee

Published Friday, Nov. 02, 2012

Elizabeth M. Bailey is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business and executive director of the Energy Institute at Haas. Frank Wolak is the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and director of the program on energy and sustainable development at Stanford University. Bailey and Wolak are members of the California Air Resource Board's emissions market assessment committee.

It is election season and no one is talking seriously about cap-and-trade programs for greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Congress has not touched this issue since the Waxman-Markey national cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases was killed in 2010.

President Barack Obama is pointing fingers at Republicans for originating the idea way back in the 1990s. And Mitt Romney now says he is opposed to it. Only the state of California is bucking this trend.

In a couple of weeks, California will hold its first auction for greenhouse gas allowances under the Global Warming Solutions Act, better known in California as AB 32. The goal of AB 32 is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California to 1990 levels by 2020. A potpourri of measures is being used to meet this goal, and one is a cap-and-trade program.

California has long been a leader in the design of environmental policies. It has the most stringent standards for gasoline in the United States, aggressive energy efficiency standards, and starting in January, will be the first state to require electricity suppliers, oil refineries, transportation fuel suppliers and other large consumers of fossil fuels to reduce their total greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade program.

To read the entire article go to: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/02/4956023/cap-and-trade-should-look-to.html

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