OLYMPIA, Wash. – As a UN panel of experts releases a sobering report on climate change, a new law that ratchets down carbon emissions in Washington state is taking effect.
The Climate Commitment Act signed by Governor Jay Inslee creates a “cap-and-invest” program that caps emissions and auctions allowances to the state’s largest emitters.
Andrew Wineke with the Department of Ecology says that cap steadily shrinks.
“The law says by 2050 we need to reduce emissions by 95 percent and that remaining 5 percent emissions we have to find ways to offset it and capture the carbon represented by those emissions,” says Wineke. “So, yeah, that’s very aggressive.”
The “invest” part of the program allocates funds from the allowance auctions to programs aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change.
Wineke says California is the only other state with a program like it but the European Union and even China have adopted similar measures.