The California Air Resources Board’s draft of its proposal to fight climate change makes a bold commitment to eliminate 91% of oil used in the state by 2045
packed with strategies for tackling the climate crisis. But it falls short on a key component: the role that its signature environmental policy — cap and trade — will have in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
In their earlier version of the plan, adopted in 2017, air board officials had estimated about 38% of gas reductions would come from the state’s emissions-trading program, called cap and trade. According to the new plan, cap and trade will play a smaller role in meeting the state’s goals as it transitions to renewable energy.
In order to meet its goals, the state needs 27% less emissions reductions from cap and trade than what was initially expected in 2017, according to the plan. “We need additional data — potentially another years-worth of data — into this new program before we go into that level of detail,” Rajinder Sahota, the board’s deputy executive officer of climate change and research, said in response to a CalMatters question during a press conference on Tuesday. “That also means that the scoping plan is not meant to be a design or a change to an existing program, it is meant to be a high-level planning document that serves as a guidepost.
The goal is to incentivize companies to reduce their carbon footprint. But one big problem stands in the way — the oversupply of allowances. For years, companies have been stockpiling allowances that environmental justice groups say undermines the notion that a price on pollution could reduce planet-warming emissions.
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