Category: Carbon Markets

A bill, entitled the Greenhouse Gas Registry Act, introduced by Reps. Baldwin (D-WI), Inslee (D-WA), and Holt (D-NJ) would set up new requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a national greenhouse gas registry. The bill essentially mirrors the greenhouse gas registry requirements proposed in the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, including the requirement that the registry take into account the best practices of local, state, private, and international registry programs. As a result of this best management requirement, the Greenhouse Gas Registry Act, if enacted, could conflict with EPA’s ongoing efforts to establish a greenhouse gas registry.

Aside from this newly introduced bill, EPA is obligated under current law to create a final registry rule by July 1, 2009, and plans to release a proposed version of that rule in the near future. Early reports indicate that EPA’s proposed rule may allow regulated entities to “self-report” their greenhouse gas emissions instead of requiring regulated entities to obtain a third-party verification of their greenhouse gas emissions. This move would be in stark contrast with the prevailing standards of international registries and voluntary domestic registries like the California Action Registry, which all require third party verification. Arguably, then, third-party verification is a greenhouse gas registry best practice, and the Greenhouse Gas Registry Act may, therefore, require third-party verification. Consequently, if the Greenhouse Gas Registry Act becomes law and if EPA’s forthcoming proposed rules allow for self verification, then EPA’s current efforts to create a greenhouse gas registry may be in vain.

Timothy Gardner of The Guardian sees demand being thin for the first RGGI auction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7772440

A brief CNBC interview with Richard Sandor on carbon markets. Interestingly,  he compares the EU ‘carbon crop’ to the American ‘carbon crop’…to make the commodity analogy.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=743114591&play=1

Several of us in New England have been looking at the possibilities of small forest landowners (and even urban treeplanting projects) being able to receive carbon offset credits for certain forest management and treeplanting practices. The current Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) protocol only allows for afforestation projects….the New England states are heavily forested and therefore afforestation carbon credits have little utility.

A recent study by the Manomet Center in Maine and another study at the Harvard Forest both suggest that specific forest management practices could provide significant carbon sequestration….but caution that proper accounting protocols are critical to manage the issues of additionality and leakage.

Other conversations have also centered around the possible benefits of measuring other ecosystem services in terms of their carbon impacts…therefore creating a common currency for an entire set of ecosystem service benefits.

One of our colleagues, Kate Kilguss, is authoring a white paper that provides the basis to consider changes to the RGGI carbon offset protocol as well as explores how forest management (and soil management) carbon offsets might benefit New England farm and forest landowners.

This early release of materials provides information related to the auction schedule, the eligibility criteria for bidders, the auction format, and procedures for how potential bidders can become qualified to participate and indicate their intent to bid. Included in these materials is a detailed description of the information that will be included in the formal auction notice, scheduled to be released on July 24, the official start of the 60-day pre-auction process.

All materials are available through

http://www.rggi.org

Read the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Inc. (RGGI, Inc.) press release at http://www.rggi.org/ro.htm#press

The auction materials are available at

http://www.rggi.org/auctions