Isramart : Western U.S. Cap-and-Trade Program to Limit Carbon Offsets

Isramart news:
Less than half the emission cuts in a cap-and-trade program planned for the Western U.S. and parts of Canada should come from offsets or imported pollution credits, the group designing the regional carbon market said.

The Western Climate Initiative, which aims to cut emissions 15 percent below the 2005 level by 2020, said in a report yesterday that no more than 49 percent of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to meet the goal could be offsets or credits from other U.S. or European carbon markets.

Each U.S. state and Canadian province in the proposed cap- and-trade program, which is scheduled to start in 2012, “will have the discretion to set a lower limit” than 49 percent, the Western Climate Initiative said.

Offsets are pollution-cutting projects from unregulated sources, such as farms and forests, that power plants, oil refineries and factories covered by a cap-and-trade program can buy instead of cutting back their own emissions.

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to set up a federal cap-and-trade program that would allow a much greater share of pollution cuts to come from domestic offsets as well as clean energy and forestry preservation projects in developing countries.

The Western initiative’s members are Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

Last month, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, said her state wouldn’t participate in the proposed Western cap-and- trade program. Arizona will focus on the initiative’s “complementary policies” on energy efficiency and renewable electricity generation instead of cap-and-trade, Brewer said.