Washington is required by law to eliminate or offset all of its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. But generous exemptions for more than 40 of the state’s biggest polluters in a forthcoming carbon market could push that goal beyond reach.
The provisional draft accelerates how often countries would need to ramp up emissions-reduction targets and makes direct reference to phasing-out coal.
Big energy trading houses, long focused on deep, volatile markets such as oil and natural gas, are now bulking up their carbon-trading operations as governments around the world push to expand the market for trading carbon emissions.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative could raise electric rates, but only by about $43 per year. Pa. could raise $3.5 billion through RGGI over 9 years.
New research shows that California’s climate policy created up to 39 million carbon credits that aren’t achieving real carbon savings. But companies can buy these forest offsets to justify polluting more anyway.
David Dodwell: Raging wildfires call into question carbon trading’s role in climate change fight
Carbon trading has been called ‘a false solution to the climate crisis’, while forest offset schemes in the West are in peril as wildfires rampage.