Covering updates to California’s cap-and-trade program, Julie Cart of CALmatters spoke with Near Zero’s Danny Cullenward. Discussing the potential for oversupply in the cap-and-trade program to interfere with achieving California’s ambitious emission reductions goals, the article states:
The board previously dismissed such concerns as mistaken and misguided. But the criticism has intensified. Most recently the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee, established by the state Environmental Protection Agency to advise on the cap-and-trade program, concluded that the system’s design “needs to be addressed” by the air board.
Danny Cullenward, an economist with the climate-change think tank Near Zero and a member of the advisory board, said the air board’s position is based on a math error.
“The analytical integrity of what the staff has put forward does not meet the standard set by state law,” Cullenward said.
As the matter was coming to a vote on Thursday, Nichols acknowledged that the issue “sticks in the craw” of those who continue to question whether the board has sufficiently studied the issue.
“It hasn’t been put to rest; let’s put it that way,” she said.
Read the full article, “Big polluters get help from the state, renewing doubts about California’s climate goals” by Julie Cart, on the CALmatters website.