California Greenhouse Gas Auction: Policy and Prospects

  • November 27, 2012
  • 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
  • One Embarcadero Center, 30th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111
  • 0

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  • Non members can sign up starting 11/9/12!
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The Association of Women in Water, Energy and the Environment (AWWEE) invites you to join us in a lively and timely discussion about

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. California is on track to creating the world’s second-largest carbon market, behind the European Union’s emissions-trading system. The California Air Resources Board is scheduled to hold the first auction of allowances on Nov. 14, 2012, and the first compliance year for covered sources begins on January 1, 2013. Participants in the auction include “first deliverers” of electricity (including electric generators and importers), refineries, and large industrial facilities. The auctions are expected to eventually generate up to $1 billion in revenue.

The speakers will address the policy context, expected outcomes, and revenue applications for the first compliance year in the auction process, such as:

  • How do we balance the investment in clean technology, renewables, and energy efficiency versus fairness to utility ratepayers who have already paid for such programs? 
  • Should we make additional investments in clean technology using these revenues?
  • What steps is CARB taking to prevent manipulation in the allowance and offset markets?
  • How will current pending litigation affect the cap-and-trade program and low carbon fuel standard?
  • Should policymakers expect companies in California to bear the burden of compliance costs with cap and trade?

 

About the Speakers

 

Mary Nichols has served as the Chair of the California Air Resources Board since 2007. Nichols has devoted her entire career in public and nonprofit service to advocating for the environment and public health. In addition to her work at the Air Board, she has served as Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air and Radiation program under President Clinton, Secretary for California's Resources Agency from 1999 to 2003 and Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles.


Christine Hammond is an attorney at the California Public Utilities Commission, where she advises the CPUC’s Energy Division and decision makers on the Renewable Portfolio Standard, Emerging Procurement Strategies, Greenhouse Gases, Energy Efficiency, and transmission siting and CEQA matters.  Prior to joining the CPUC in 2011, she was a senior staff counsel at the California Energy Commission, where she was involved in numerous siting applications for utility-scale solar thermal and gas-fired power plants as well as the CEC’s water policy practice and development of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. Before moving to public service, Christine was an attorney in private practice representing investor-owned energy and water utilities, electric generators, energy producers, and commercial electric and gas customers before the CPUC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.