Below I report a new announcement posted to the California Air Resources Board Webpage discussing how a small group of academic economists will be playing a new role in designing the AB32 Cap & Trade program. Here is the announcement.
My bottom line is that ARB has hired a Dream Team. Forget Lebron James and Kevin Durant and Kobe, the set of four economists named Borenstein, Bushnell, Bailey and Wolak can really play! The public (and that includes everyone) can rest assured that this team is a group of prominent, even tempered thinkers who will not play political games but instead will seek to achieve economic efficiency. In English, this means that they will seek to achieve the goals of AB32 at minimum economic cost to California.
“ARB entered into an agreement with the University of California Energy Institute to obtain expert analysis and advice on the Cap-and-Trade market design, operation, and monitoring.
The Emissions Market Assessment Committee, (EMAC), will hold public meetings at ARB headquarters in Sacramento to give stakeholders an opportunity to identify market issues of concern. When public meetings are scheduled, stakeholders will be invited to bring market issues to the attention of EMAC through e-mail. The EMAC will review stakeholder concerns and prioritize them for economic analysis. The EMAC may respond to the issues through presentations at public EMAC meetings, written analyses, or through consultations with and advice for ARB staff. The form of communication may depend on whether the issues can be addressed publicly, since the analyses may involve confidential market information. The EMAC will also conduct meetings with ARB staff on market issues that involve confidential market information. These meetings will be closed to the public.