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How California's Carbon Market Actually Works
Lasrick writes: Almost 10 years ago, California's legislature passed Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. AB 32 set the most ambitious legally binding climate policy in the United States, requiring that California's greenhouse gas emissions return to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The centerpiece of the state's efforts — in rhetorical terms, if not practical ones — is a comprehensive carbon market, which California's leaders promote as a model policy for controlling carbon pollution. Over the course of the past 18 months, however, California quietly changed its approach to a critical rule affecting the carbon market's integrity. Under the new rule, utilities are rewarded for swapping contracts on the Western electricity grid, without actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Now that the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, many are looking to the Golden State for best climate policy practices. On that score, California's experience offers cautionary insights into the challenges of using carbon markets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
If you read the article, they are complaining that CA's system does not affect out-of-state emissions.
Duh.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I mean, really. Who thought that would never happen?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
They pass a law that gives people warm fuzzy feelings, but doesn't actually DO anything. Who knew?
The thing is, it seems from the paper like the cap-and-trade system California has works - it's just that other states don't have the same system and thus there isn't much of an impact. It would be interesting to see a group of neighboring states (perhaps New England) try this method and see how it works when they can't meet their emissions goals by offloading their emissions to states that don't have a cap-and-trade policy in place.
As other states follow California's lead, it will become more and more difficult for coal plants to stay in operation.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Or terrorists, whichever works better for this particular feel-good do-nothing PoS legislation.
CA makes fantasy laws that have to be papered over when the dates arrive. News at 11.
The ZEV (zero emissions vehicles) mandates they've been backpedaling on for twenty years are another fine example. Physics and CA voters frequently do not agree on reality. When that happens physics wins. Every time.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
"Almost 10 years ago" ... stoops .. bill was approved and filed late Sept 2006 ... should start with "Almost 8 years ago"
...if everyone in the process is at least partially corrupt, undiligent, or just plain out to lunch, and there's no hard accountability designed into the system, no measurement criteria, and no way to balance out abuses on both sides, then the whole things becomes just another talking point that someone can use in an election campaign?
What's new here? :P
Common people and engineers know you need real concrete steps and that it will follow almost thru every sector of the economy from home, to work, to government.
There is no single 'Western Electricity Grid' solution to the issues.
In the end, probably the only thing that will make huge differences is the reduced amount of Kw/Hrs of electricity used. Given the rise of electric cars, that seems speculative at best.
More efficient homes and businesses in countless ways seems to be the only way to reduce emissions.
You need to go to trolling school.. You're not pissing me off I feel sorry for you.
We try so hard to do the right thing, but are continually and perpetually at odds with lobbyists introducing corruption. I can't tell you how many good things have been made ultimately ineffective by the influence of lobbyists.
As a state we get accused of trying to do the impossible, but I can't stress that we really are trying, and we often get damn close. There's only so much you can do when your representatives are receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies heavily invested in oil and coal.
If you read the article, they are complaining that CA's system does not affect out-of-state emissions.
That is a legitimate complaint. CO2 knows no borders, so just shifting the emissions elsewhere accomplishes nothing, and is actually counter productive because it shifts jobs, economic growth and influence away from people that care. But we shouldn't put all the ridicule on California, since the EUs carbon trading scheme is also a fiasco.
CO2 emissions are declining in California, and in America as a whole. This is mostly because of the shale gas revolution, but also because of more efficient cars, and improving household energy efficiency. The carbon market has had no measurable effect. The big growth in CO2 emissions are in China, India, and Africa. Solutions that don't work there are not going to help much.
> legally binding climate policy in the United States, requiring that California's greenhouse gas emissions return to 1990 levels by the year 2020.
The passed a law declaring what the total greenhouse gas emissions will be? Is that like the Indiana bill declaring that pi is 4? If they can just pass a law and that'll make it so, why don't they pass a law that in 2020 California's unemployment rate will be as low as Texas, as opposed to more than 50% higher? Passing a law changes the facts, right?
Shanghai Bill. Never get tired of reading your constant posts on anything the heartland foundation needs some grassroots support. How much did you pay for the Slashdot uid?
Bingo. You hit the target. Local solutions are just window dressing, the problem is global and solution need to address the global scale and situation.
Cap & Trade and Carbon Markets are Frauds. They merely shuffle around the money doing little to nothing to really reduce pollution. It's a scam to get rich by the players.
The problem described in the OP is one of several reasons why setting a fee for each ton of carbon dioxide emission is a much better idea that a cap-and-trade scheme. There are numerous other reasons, but I will only highlight the most important.
The entire purpose of either a fee or cap-and-trade scheme is to get carbon consumers to change their behavior (either doing less of things that emit greenhouse gases or by reducing the carbon intensity of the same activities). But almost all the reasonable mitigation measures have long time horizons (years to decades). In cap-and-trade, it is very difficult to predict what the price signal will be at any time in the future. So how can I, as a consumer, decide if it is worth it to buy a more efficient or electric car if there is great uncertainty in how much the carbon control scheme is going to add to my gasoline cost?
CO2 knows no borders
What you said is true, but obvious. Effectiveness on global CO2 levels aside, the CA program has been a success by other measures. They intended it to be a pilot program, and it looks like it has mostly worked out from a technical standpoint. They have demonstrated that the system is workable from an administrative and bureaucratic standpoint. Few people are silly enough to think that CO2 emissions can be handled on a local (or even national) level - but having what is effectively one of the largest economies in the world to use as an example is a pretty good start.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The only reason China has the largest emissions is because they have a ton of people that want the benefits of this modern age. If you compare carbon emissions to population, I believe(not sure if it's still true) that we in the US are the worst CO2 emitters. Also, if I'm not mistaken, China has put a ton of money into alternative energy research.
So...Despite the fact that China's the leading emitter, they're also the #1 leader in trying to solve the problem.
I keep voting agaist all this left-wing fantasy crap and it keeps getting implemented anyway (Thanks to the bubbleheads in the mega-cities of LA and SF) and then out-of-state friends and relatives ask what's wrong with me and my fellow Californians. There are plenty of normal people here, BUT we ignored a bunch of this stuff early-on (when it was having only a small impact) as part of "keeping the peace" with the huge pool of loonies who desperately wanted it. Eventually, however, we became outnumbered by a tidal wave of always-vote-for-Santa-Clause voters after the population granted amnesty in 1986 hit voting age; the state is permanently "blue" and will probably be so until it completely collapses.
"WE" are NOT always trying "so hard to do the right thing" - our evil corrupt leftist leaders are always working to fool their idiot supporters into supporting them and their evil policies (every one of which is designed to SOUND good but actually enable more corruption). IN EVERY CASE the evidence is there ahead of time that these policies will not work, but the airheads are like flat-earthers - they prefer the nonsense spouted by their dear leaders over objective reality and the lessons of history. With every one of these new policies, they seem not to notice that their deal leaders get richer and more-powerful while they themselves get a little poorer (they often pretend that this is ok by telling themselves that they are "saving the planet" and that this carries a necessary cost).
We normal voters keep warning about this stuff and pointing out that it will not work, but the leftists insist that we are lying and that each new policy will be GREAT. Every single time this stuff backfires, we hear complaints that it was a good idea that almost worked or should have worked and yet they refuse to repeal any of it. Left-wingers clearly do not understand basic human nature; There ARE no "right ways" and no "right people" to implement such policies. Every single one of these political ideas is subject to political corruption PRECISELY because they are political and are run by politicians ALL of whom are human beings with human weaknesses.
Every single one of these crazy policies does even more harm to the middle class, but the masses who depend on handouts vote for it because it they don't think it hurts them and the people who give them freebies are the ones implementing these policies. California is no longer "The Golden State"; It was once the home of a huge portion of the nation's aircraft manufacturing (Lockheed,Douglas,Northrop,Convair, etc all manufactured large planes here), spacecraft and launch vehicle manufacturing (The Apollo CM and SM, Rocketdyne engines, Saturn V S-IVB stage, Atlas rocket, Space Shuttles, etc) was home to the entire semiconductor industry, the computer industry, major ship builders were located here (NASSCO os still in San Diego, but much of the rest is reduced or gone) and even a chunk of the auto industry was here. After decades of ratcheted-up insanity like this, manufacturers have fled the state taking millions of middle-class jobs with them and if you set-aside the illegal immigrant population and their kids the population of the state is falling. NONE of this stops the uber-rich in LA and SF from pushing even MORE lunacy and they can depend on getting their way thanks to the votes of the fully-dependent masses. This is how great things get destroyed.
Obligatory Note: I said NOTHING about skin color (there are illegals of all ethnicities in the state from all over the world) so any leftwinger who is tempted to use the usual tactic of calling me a "racist", be on notice - YOU are the one who immediately looks to skin color.
www.climatedepot.com
There is no such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming. Changing its name to 'climate change' (laughable in itself) doesn't change anything.
Repeating the word "Carbon" "Carbon" "Carbon" over and over again doesn't change anything either.
When is this bullshit going to stop?
Germany called; they're very unhappy that you dissed them.
The big pain in the ass here is that AB32 trickles down to California businesses and state-run entities. Everyone has to do their part to reduce California emissions back to 1990s levels (NOT per capita... raw GHG tonnage per year). That's easy for some, but not so easy for others.
If your organization was a big time polluter with little employee growth since the 1990s, you can switch to plug-in hybrids for your fleet, swap out incandescent bulbs for fluorescent/LED, put in new thermostats, disallow hot water in the bathrooms, adopt roof-top solar, and, if necessary, buy bio-methane energy credits. Reaching your AB32 goals would be easy.
But what if you were one of the model organizations in the 1990s that was at the forefront green tech but have since doubled in size? Ya, you may still have a fantastic per capita GHG emissions rating, but you've doubled in size! That means you have to cut your per capita in HALF to get back to your 1990 emissions level. Organizations with this problem are actually going back through their numbers and hoping to INCREASE their back-casting GHG emissions. They want to be seen as having been bigger polluters than they were because, with AB32, if you weren't a big polluter, you're going to have to invest beyond the diminishing returns curve to get anywhere near your state-mandated goals.
If AB32 could be amended to require going back to 1990 PER CAPITA emissions, my organization would be sitting pretty. Hell, we'd be able to sell off the credits from our being BELOW our 1990 per capita emissions. But that's not the case... so we, as one of the lowest per capita polluters in the nation for our industry, will end up paying more in cap-and-trade fees and offsets than actual big polluters.
California has chased away so much industry I don't see how they can miss.
selling "carbon credits". It's like the Pope selling indulgences.
He does a world class job of advertising too.
Of course anyone who could actually predict climate could be a multi-billionaire with ease.
Instead they apparently sell carbon credits.
Nope. Those are radically different continents and cultures. To expect a single global solution to rule them all is a recipe for doing nothing. What's needed are different solutions targeted at the different cultures in those places. Put another way, look how effective the U.N. is in getting global cooperation on anything.
They will succeed in reducing California emissions. It's easy to do when you drive and real industry out. :)
"When California’s .. carbon market took effect in 2013 .. A few months later .. [Edison] sold its interest in the coal plant to an Arizona utility .. The coal plant will keep emitting pollution just as before—only now it serves customers in Arizona, not California." ref
Acording to jaxa data Australia and South America are actually a carbon sink and North America is the lowest of the net emitters even Europe has higher net emmission. I'm quite anxious for the OCO-2 data to start coming in.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In the end its just another government tax to increase prices so people can feel good they are fixing an imaginary problem.
As other states follow California's lead, more and more rolling blackouts will follow.
... but a legalized pyramid scheme that does absolutely NOTHING to control carbon emissions and actually legalizes (by payment) the violation of environmental laws.
Notice that fthe big idea is to get California back to 1990 levels of CO2 emission with a target date of 2020. Twenty four years are past, and there are only six years left, In other words, 80% of the budgeted time is gone.
The process of deducing that the CAP and Trade system has leakages... is triggering evasive offshore manufacturing... all of these facts take three reporting periods from the reporting organizations. Lets assume companies like PG&E electric file quarterly CO2 emissions equivalent tonnage reports. That means the scientists writing this report had to wait at least 9 months or three reporting intervals to begin to spot patterns in the reports. It means years are passing with the hoped for ground truth not changing fast enough.
I have a CO2 meter sitting on the desk reading 593 PPM CO2... it just dropped to 590.... The rate at which information reaches the regulatory system is the cybernetic limiting factor for the Cap and Trade system to actually drive real physical change. Cap and Trade has a fundamental limit as a social system. I am going to throw in a social story here: The wolld is like a whole bunch of people on the Titanic and the captain has three day old weather reports mentioning icebergs. The problem for us is: how fast can you slow down the boat and turn it south-east?
It turns out the California Air Resources Board does not routinely measure and report CO2 concentrations in California air. I think they should start doing that right away. As a society we need to do more work using near real time data. While the CO2 meter I have is rated +/- 52 ppm, the sensor updates every 12 seconds.
Yesterday I searched the PG&E website (northern California utilty company) looking for their rate of CO2 generation per kilowatt hour of electricity sold. I needed that number to decide if an electric car is less polluting than my old van. That number is nowhere to be found on the electric company website. Does the company omit revealing the number because there is a carbon gap between their share of the cap and the amount of CO2 equivalent tons they emit?
Electrostatic precipitators, scrubbers and even bag filters have gone into those things which is why the USA was able to point the finger at the air quality in Beijing without the finger getting pointed back.
They don't do anything at all to carbon dioxide though.
Actually zero emissions makes sense for many vehicles in Los Angeles, Santiago and other places where the air can be trapped for weeks filling the place up with smog. If you can get the pollution shifted to the top of a smokestack on the other side of a mountain range you win. Of course the sensible thing would be a lot of trains, trams or some other way to move a lot of people about instead of getting the consumers to put up a big capital cost for personal electric vehicles, but that would cut into the cocaine budget or whatever it is that they have Californian legislators on.
Ah - Hawaii solar boy! Didn't I debunk your silly example about how the horrible electricity consumers in Hawaii were cheating the electricity company out of their hard earned money by going solar? Oh woe - a former monopoly getting exposed to the cold winds of capitalism and losing money - how terrible.
Now you've got another bunch of numbers pulled from somewhere. Are you going to pull out another graph from before 1920 just like the last time and pretend your made up number is related to it or is does it actually have a relationship to reality this time? Either way, 100% electric is a pointless strawman that is never going to happen just like 100% solar.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016