Episode 9: Without National Climate Action, How Can US States Put a Price on Carbon?
A look into RGGI, TCI, and Washington's Climate Commitment Act
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
How can the US decarbonize in the absence of federal climate policy? State-level programs offer one answer. In this episode, we compare three US state and regional carbon cap-and-trade programs: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act, and the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI). How do these programs get started—or fail to start? How are they designed for equitable outcomes? And how important should carbon pricing be in a states’ broader climate policy suite?
We speak with Paula Sardinas (Washington State’s Build Back Black Alliance), Commissioner Katie Dykes (CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection), Nicole Wong (Former Campaign Manager, Green for All), Commissioner Martin Suuberg (RGGI Board of Directors Chair, MA Department of Environmental Protection), Rob Klee (Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment), and Iliana Paul (Senior Policy Analyst at Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law).
Notable quotes:
On the importance of local and regional governance:
Rob Klee: “When you start thinking about states, cities, regions, linking arms and working together to solve these problems, they actually start getting that sort of size and a heft to them that could really make a difference…We're talking about the local action where I still think there are functioning democracies and functioning parties and functioning two party systems.”
Why coalition building is so important:
Paula Sardinas: Around the table of the conversation were just a bunch of old white guys. There weren't a lot of women. There weren't a lot of people of color, even though from all of the stuff that you see with the EPA and all of the studies, we bore the greatest disproportionate impact. And so when you look across the United States, it was one of the main reasons why you weren't passing these policies…Well, you hadn't invited the grassroots to the table. So we started doing in Washington as we had begun having those conversations, building grassroots movements. Every type of affinity group, every group, we were talking about environmental justice as a civil rights issue.
On the differences between pricing carbon in the electricity sector and the transportation sector:
Iliana Paul: I think people are enough divorced from electricity that changes in price don't really affect us, which can be good or bad depending on sort of like the policy of others you're interested in, but with something like transportation, people can just have a more visceral reaction and political will, sometimes, in some ways, is really reliant on public opinion.
Further reading on today’s episode:
Searching for a New Deal on Climate? Look to the States, Clean Energy Finance Forum (a five-part series by Rob Klee, one of our guests)
State Climate Policy Dashboard, Climate XChange
Washington state now has the nation's most ambitious climate policy, the Volts Newsletter
A Plan by Eastern States to Cap Tailpipe Emissions Gets Off to a Slow Start, The New York Times
How Did RGGI Do It? Political Economy and Emissions Auctions, Ecology Law Quarterly [paywall]
Cover Photo by Mado El Khouly on Unsplash