The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (The '
Waxman-
Markey bill' (
summary)) includes provisions to use 13% of money from allowance auction revenues to support additional investments in clean energy and energy efficiency. Although protecting forest carbon isn't included in this list, a parallel piece of legislation attempts to fix this:
The Buy American Carbon Incentives Program of 2009. The aim of this bill is "to establish a carbon incentives program to achieve supplemental greenhouse gas emissions reductions on private agricultural and forestland of the United States, and for other purposes."
Funds would be delivered through climate mitigation contracts for activities that:
- "measurably increase carbon sequestration and storage over a designated contract period through management activities on eligible lands; and
- maintain carbon sequestration and storage and avoid future emissions through permanent avoided conversion agreements on eligible lands."
This scheme is complementary to offsets and projects/activities would not be eligible for both.
Any thoughts on this? Has this kind of thing been proposed in any other
jurisdictions? I certainly think it would be a great policy option for Canada's federal and provincial governments: finance forest carbon protection through the use of auction revenue set asides from cap-and-trade systems.
