Common Resources

Auction Day in California

The first allowance auction for California’s carbon cap-and-trade program is set for today. This will be the first economy-wide carbon allowance auction in the US, and is the product of a long policy (and legal) process. California’s carbon market will be the world’s second-largest (after the EU ETS). RFF’s Dallas Burtraw participated in the program’s […]

Keeping the Copenhagen Pledge - Barely

Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations has commented on our new discussion paper “US Status on Climate Change Mitigation” where we find, somewhat surprisingly, that the country is on course to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions commensurate with President Obama’s pledge in Copenhagen. That pledge called for reductions in the range of […]

Cap-and-Trade, Carbon Taxes, and My Neighbor’s Lovely Lawn

This post originally appeared on Robert Stavins’s blog, An Economic View of the Environment. The recent demise of serious political consideration of an economy-wide U.S. CO2 cap-and-trade system and the even more recent resurgence in interest among policy wonks in a U.S. carbon tax should prompt reflection on where we’ve been, where we are, and […]

Senate Stares Down Europe on Aviation Carbon

Early last Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate stepped squarely into the debate over global aviation emissions, unanimously passing a bill that would give the Secretary of Transportation the power to prohibit U.S. airlines from complying with a new European law that require all airlines flying to or from Europe to participate in the European cap-and-trade […]

Regulating in the Dark

20 years ago, bipartisan effort in Washington created possibly the most ambitious environmental program in US history - a trading market for sulfur dioxide emissions, intended to end the threat of acid rain. The program was astonishingly successful, achieving benefits that far exceeded its costs. But it is now moribund, without a functioning market. A […]

The Democratic Platform: Green Jobs - Really?

This is part of a series of short posts in which RFF scholars will analyze the environmental plank of the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. This week we’re looking at the Democratic platform. Previous posts analyzed the Republican platform. As with all posts on Common Resources, this and other posts in this series reflect the opinions of the […]

The Republican Platform: Rolling the Dice on Climate

This is part of a series of short posts in which RFF scholars will analyze the environmental plank of the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. This week we’re looking at the Republican platform. Watch next week for a similar series of posts looking at the Democratic platform’s environmental agenda. As with all posts on Common […]

Linking EU-Australia Carbon Markets Offers New Beginning and Challenges for Global Carbon Pricing

The EU’s announcement that it would link emissions markets with Australia beginning in 2015 brings a breath of fresh air to the prospect of a global price on carbon. In July, Australia introduced a tax that will transition into a cap and trade program in 2015. Currently the policy is under intense political attack. The […]

RFF Policy Commentary - Cap-and-Trade in California: An Introduction to Offset Buyer Liability

In this week’s commentary, Danny Morris and Harrison Fell discuss California’s approach to a simple problem—what happens when carbon offsets go bad (that is, when they don’t deliver promised emissions reductions)? California’s solution under its new cap-and-trade program is buyer liability: firms holding an invalidated offset have to replace it to stay in compliance. This […]

California’s New Gold (recap)

Dallas Burtraw and Blair Beasley posted on Wednesday, pointing out the big decision California must make soon about how to spend the auction revenues from its cap-and-trade program. Yesterday, Burtraw testified before the California Air Resources Board, offering his view on this decision. You can read his testimony here; but here are the key points: