regional greenhouse gas initiative (rggi)

global carbon pricing

It’s ironic considering all the attention on the struggles of the EU Emissions Trading System, but today over 40 national and 20 sub-national jurisdictions have either implemented or are considering carbon pricing mechanisms.[read more]

RGGI's new cap rules

RGGI’s new cap not only falls short of creating real price pressures due to its closeness to baseline emissions, its excessive compensatory measures, and its failure to deal with leakage, but also runs the risk of locking in emissions.[read more]

Despite some modest steps forward, the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha was a reminder of the slow-paced nature of international negotiations. Progress is being made at the domestic level, however, and in many cases, the policy of choice is emissions trading.The European Union and Australia have announced plans to link their trading systems, and California and Quebec are working toward linking theirs.[read more]

Think the U.S. could use tens of billions of dollars of brand new revenue to address its budget and debt challenges? And do you think newly re-elected President Obama might take a run at a bonafide climate strategy as part of his legacy by 2016? If California's Cap-and-Trade system succeeds, the response to both of those questions might actually be 'yes'.[read more]

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The debate in Australia has now shifted to whether or not the selected price of $23 per tonne of CO2 in the first year, but later on shifting to a full cap-and-trade (probably around 2015), is the right one. Many argue that as the “prevailing global price” of carbon is much lower, then Australia is out of step and therefore undermining its own competitiveness.[read more]

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Cap and trade went nowhere in Congress early in the Obama administration, but that’s not the end of the emissions-limiting scheme’s story in the United States, not by a long shot.While Washington politicians fiddled on climate change legislation, 10 northeastern states embarked on their own scheme to reduce CO2 emissions, setting a total...[read more]

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Chris Christie removed New Jersey from the Northeast's Cap-and-Trade Initiative - will he now pay the price?[read more]

A three-year summary of America’s first carbon trading program was released yesterday. The news is pretty good for anyone who cares about reducing carbon emissions; it’s inconvenient for anyone hell-bent on preventing America from implementing a carbon pricing plan.According to the program administrator of the Regional Greenhouse Gas...[read more]

Various advocates have labeled the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the EU-ETS as near “the brink of failure” because of the recent trend of very low auction prices. Not true![read more]

Throughout the beginning of 2011, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) —the first mandatory carbon dioxide (CO2) cap-and-trade program in the United States—was successfully defended by state legislators in three states where attempts were made to remove those states from the program. In the second week of May, the states of...[read more]

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the United States' first market-based regulatory mechanism to reduce carbon emissions, has completed its 12th quarterly carbon credit auction. The auction [pdf] saw 12,537,000, or 30%, of the 42,034,184 available carbon allowances sold.  25 entities submitted successful bids to acquire...[read more]

“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”   If Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis were alive today, he might add “energy and environment”...[read more]

The northeastern United States remains a bastion of the clean energy economy, though global warming deniers are vying to take over leadership of the state governments.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story.  The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the carbon trading program of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine,...[read more]

In just a few days, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman will release their much-anticipated proposal for comprehensive climate and energy legislation – the best remaining shot at forging a bipartisan consensus on this issue in 2010.  Their proposal has many strengths, but there’s an issue brewing that could...[read more]