SACRAMENTO \u2014 California’s air quality officials soon may be adding a new phrase to their bureaucratic vocabulary: “le rechauffement climatique.”<\/p>\n
That’s French for global warming.<\/p>\n
The California Air Resources Board on Friday linked its program for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and curbing climate change with one in the French-speaking, Canadian province of Quebec. The merger starts Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
On April 8, Gov. Jerry Brown certified the two cap-and-trade systems as compatible. As a result, Quebec’s permits that let polluters emit carbon dioxide can be purchased and used by California oil refineries, food processors, cement plants and other facilities. And California-issued pollution permits will be valid in Quebec.<\/p>\n
The tradable credits earned by planting trees and other actions that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be used by California companies to help them meet a state obligation to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.<\/p>\n
Last fall, California emitters began purchasing the permits quarterly at state-supervised auctions. The free-market mechanism, authorized by the state’s landmark global-warming law, AB 32, puts a price on carbon-dioxide pollution. Expanding the program to Quebec creates a laboratory for broadening the trading system to other U.S. states, Canadian provinces and nations, said Dave Clegern, an Air Resources Board spokesman.<\/p>\n
But skeptics say they’re unimpressed with California’s program and its new partner.<\/p>\n
“In 2006 we passed AB 32 in order to lead the country and other states to join a viable climate change program,” said Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Assn. “That seven years later we have only Quebec, a distant Canadian province with no trade ties with California, as a partner for our cap-and-trade program should be a red flag for anyone who cares about manufacturing jobs and the success of AB 32.”<\/p>\n