Western Climate Initiative
www.westernclimateinitiative.org
Overview
Additionality and Quantification Procedures
Overview
Type of Standard and Context
The Western Climate Initiative (WCI) is a multi-jurisdictional collaboration that seeks to develop regional strategies to address climate change in North America. As of July 2008, the WCI partners included 11 jurisdictions – Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington, in the US; and British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Other states and provinces in Canada, Mexico and the US have joined as observers.
On August 22, 2007, consistent with previously established state and provincial goals, the WCI partners announced its regional goal to collectively reduce emissions to 15% below 2005 levels by 2020.
In September 2008, Design Recommendations for the WCI Regional Cap-and-Trade Program were released. The recommended design for the WCI cap and trade program proposes regulating entities that exceed the emissions threshold of 25,000 mtCO2e from electricity generation, combustion at industrial and commercial facilities, and industrial process emission sources. At the start of the second compliance period, coverage of emissions from residential, commercial, industrial fuel combustion facilities, as well as transportation fuel combustion from gasoline and diesel, is recommended. Offsets and allowances from other trading systems will be used as a limited compliance mechanism under the WCI system and may make up no more than 49% of the total emission reductions from 2012-2020. WCI partner jurisdictions may independently further limit the use of offsets. Further development of the WCI offset program is ongoing, refer to the WCI website for the latest materials.
Standard Authority and Administrative Bodies
The WCI partners plan to create a regional administrative organization that will coordinate the regional allowance auctions, track emissions and market activity, coordinate the review and adoption of protocols for offsets, and coordinate the review and issuance of offset credits, among other tasks.
Regional Scope
The WCI partners currently include the 11 jurisdictions in the US and Canada noted above, which encompasses approximately 20% of the population of the US and nearly 75% of the population of Canada.
Recognition of Other Standards/ Linkage with Other Trading Systems
The WCI Partner jurisdictions will seek bilateral and multilateral linkages with other government-approved cap and trade systems in order to make allowances from all participating partner organizations fully fungible.
Market Size and Scope
Tradable Unit and Pricing Information
N/A
Participants/Buyers
N/A
Current Project Portfolio
N/A
Offset Project Eligibility
Project Types
The WCI partner’s jurisdictions have identified the following list of project types as a priority for investigation and potential participation in the offset program:
- Agriculture (soil sequestration and manure management);
- Forestry (afforestation/reforestation, forest management, forest preservation/conservation, forest products); and
- Waste management (landfill gas and wastewater management).
Project Locations
The WCI partner’s jurisdictions may approve, certify and issue offset credits for projects located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico where such projects are subject to comparably rigorous oversight, validation, verification and enforcement as those located within the WCI jurisdictions. They will not accept offset credits for GHG reductions in developed countries (Annex 1 countries in the UNFCCC) for projects that reduce, remove or avoid emissions from sources that within WCI Partner jurisdictions are covered by the cap and trade program. The WCI partner’s jurisdictions may accept offset credits from developing countries through, for example, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, and the WCI Partner jurisdictions may establish additional criteria to apply similar rigor to the WCI approved/certified offset projects or other requirements appropriate to enabling the use of these offset credits in the cap and trade program (WCI, 2008).
Project Size
To be determined.
Start Date
To be determined.
Crediting Period
To be determined.
Co-benefit Objectives and Requirements
To be determined.
Additionality and Quantification Procedures
Additionality Requirements
To be determined.
Quantification Protocols
To be determined.
Project Approval Process
Validation and Registration
To be determined.
Monitoring, Verification and Certification
To be determined.
Registries and Fees
Each of the WCI partners has joined the newly formed GHG registry The Climate Registry, “a nonprofit organization that provides meaningful information to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Registry establishes consistent, transparent standards throughout North America for businesses and governments to calculate, verify and publicly report their carbon footprints in a single, unified registry” (source: www.theclimateregistry.org/about.html). The Climate Registry will play an important role in establishing an accurate reporting mechanism and an accounting infrastructure on which the WCI cap and trade program could be based.
Selected Issues
Because the WCI is still in the process of being developed, there are no lessons to be learned to date.
References
Western Climate Initiative (2008). Western Climate Initiative.
Western Climate Initiative (2008). Design Recommendations for the WCI Regional Cap-and-Trade Program. September 23, 2008.