Social and Environmental Justice in Cap-and-Trade Emissions Programs: Connections Back to Research and Policy?

State and regional reactions to federal inactivity on regulating greenhouse gas emissions have led to free market-based approaches, such cap-and-trade systems. As an alternate form of environmental governance to governmental regulation, free market approaches raise questions about commodifying nature (having forests and oceans acting as carbon offset sinks), monitoring (who decides whether reductions have been made?), social or environmental injustice (what if power plants in underrepresented or poorer areas are allowed to pollute more than those in more represented or affluent areas?), and pollution rights (cap-and-trade systems require payments for allowances above a cap but not for the basic right to pollute, so that everything under a cap is considered legal emission of greenhouse gases – can the basic right to pollute be controlled?). Regarding the topic of this session, what of social or environmental injustice? Some believe emissions trading, which as a mechanism remains relatively immature (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – RGGI – in the northeastern U.S. perhaps being the longest running), will aggravate social or environmental injustice since a disproportionate number of the worst polluting point sources are located in low income areas and communities of color – that is, people in such areas will be exposed to more than their fair share of pollution because the dirtiest and oldest polluters will be the most expensive, and therefore possibly last, to be cleaned up, since those polluters can opt to trade credits or buy offsets (e.g., Bachram 2004). This concern was documented in southern California during the RECLAIM (Regional Clean Air Incentives Market) project in Los Angeles in which NOx, a reactive organic gas, and sulfur dioxide emissions, were traded (e.g., Goldenberg 1993). Pollution trading was found to unfairly concentrate pollution where factories purchased emissions credits rather than reduced actual emissions, producing toxic ‘hot spots’; for RECLAIM, it was found that localized pollution of the Latino communities near factories involved in the program continued unabated (e.g., Drury et al. 1999; Farber 2012; Fowlie et al. 2012). Fears are that for greenhouse gas emissions trading programs, reductions may not need to take place at the source, which would allow emitters to continue polluting locally. This question is important today because California enacted into law a statewide cap-and-trade system in 2013 for carbon emissions. The California Cap-and-Trade Program (CAT), administered by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) was a result of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (California Environmental Protection Agency 2014). CARB adopted cap-and-trade regulations in 2011 and created the CAT to set limits on GHG emissions, and the first auctions for the CAT were held in 2012, with the program going into full effect on 1 January 2013; it was recently extended to 2030 (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions 2017). Research and reports are already emerging on social and environmental justice questions regarding the new program (e.g., Kaswan 2017-18; Cushing et al. 2018; Burtraw et al. 2018). Novel ideas for addressing issues of social and environmental injustice include citizen stakeholder trusts that force polluters to pay a fee for the privilege of polluting at all. As an example, Peter Barnes’ Sky Trust would insist that the basic right to pollute would not be given away, but rather polluters would be forced to pay for the right, with the money placed in a citizens’ stakeholder trust that would be used to help reclaim common assets, giving citizens a voice in determining how market-based approaches are conducted and in theory encouraging consumer conservation and industry innovation (e.g., Barnes 2001; Bollier 2002). It is clear in cap-and-trade emissions programs that there is potential, despite any best intentions, for uneven geographic and economic, and thus social and environmental, consequences. This talk will briefly look back at RECLAIM and at ongoing California cap-and-trade questions concerning social and environmental justice and raise questions about how we as researchers might have a say in how our broad research results get used in just ways. [Citations available upon request.]