SACRAMENTO, California — California air regulators on Tuesday proposed removing a third of the pollution permits they sell to industry through 2045 to get closer to meeting increasingly ambitious climate goals.
But they held back from proposing to remove even more pollution permits in the period before 2030, as some environmental groups had urged them to do in order to raise more money and cut more climate change-causing emissions.
What happened: The California Air Resources Board released its first new draft rules for its cap-and-trade program since Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a new law last year extending the program through 2045, AB 1207. The program caps the total amount of greenhouse gases that large industrial facilities can emit and allows them to buy and sell allowances under the cap. It also distributes the revenue to programs across the state, including electricity rebates and the state’s high-speed rail project.
The decision to aim for a 40 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 instead of a 48 percent cut — as regulators had considered previously — was driven by concerns about costs, staff said.
