News from NACW

Navigating the American Carbon World conference is a major carbon policy event in California and is hosted by the Climate Action Reserve which is celebrating 10 years of work to create standards, verify emissions reductions and issue and track credits associated with carbon offset projects all over the US and in Mexico. Obadiah may also share his impressions of the NACW event that we attended with our colleague Bud Beebe this week, but here is my quick summary.  

• There was much discussion related to the planned November launch of California's Cap and Trade program, mandated as part of AB32 (The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006), and speculation about the potential for litigation which could delay the launch.  The comments of a panel of lawyers assembled to discuss this topic seemed to suggest that litigation was possible, but that the outcome would likely derail specific components of the Cap and Trade program as opposed to the program in its entirety.  A lawsuit related to the use of carbon offsets was filed at the end of March, but at this point it isn't clear if it is a credible challenge.
• Lots of talk also about plans for the revenue that will be generated by Cap and Trade, which is estimated to be in the neighborhood of one billion dollars (yes, you read that right!) in the first year alone.  There are many folks finally realizing that there is big money involved here - the interplay with Proposition 26 and its mandate that "fees" must be spent to mitigate the harm they are enacted to address will be interesting, but you can bet there will be some creative explanations for how certain spending proposals relate to carbon reduction.
• Adaptation was a big focus at the conference as well, and we came away even more convinced that our plan to begin developing an adaptation strategy for SMUD this year is very timely.  I was impressed by the comments of William K. Reilly, who served as the head of U.S. EPA under President George H. W. Bush, and considers focus on adaptation to be a practical, non-idealogical way for governments at all levels to get on with the prudent infrastructure planning that climate change necessitates.

• Finally, Joel Pett, the editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and a very funny guy, gave SMUD some special recognition while he was lambasting the sometimes indeciperable acronyms that crop up in this arena.  After knocking the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) for sounding like a terrorist organization he gave SMUD a shout out for sounding like a combination of smut and crud.The cartoon above is one of his most famous, used with the kind permission of Mr. Pett.

- KA