Wednesday, February 14, 2007

B.C. Green Plan announcement includes regional emissions trading

From today's National Post, the BC Liberal's throne speech apparently focused on climate change initiatives, including a commitment to build "a sensible, efficient system for registering, trading and purchasing carbon offsets and carbon credits in co-operation with the federal government and the U.S. states of California, Oregon, Alaska and Washington." It isn't clear to me if they are just talking about voluntary carbon offsets - of which there are supposedly a glut of unregulated offerings on the market - or something regional.

Link to NP article
Link to BC Liberals press release on throne speech
Link to Wikipedia article on carbon offsets, including regulation issues
Link to New Internationalist article critiquing offset schemes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The recently released BC budget also includes surcharges on natural gas and electricity that offer a glimmer of hope for carbon taxes in the mainstream political arena. If there's a politician gutsy enough to pull it off, it might be Gordon Campbell.

See: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/02/21/surcharge.html

Jurgen Hissen
Port Moody, BC

Jeff_in_Montreal said...

Thanks for the link - looks interesting. One problem I see with his surcharge is that it isn't linked to GHG emissions - hydroelectricity also gets charged.