The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions' Jonas Monast and Christina Reichert write in the American Bar Association's publication Trends that tegulators implement climate policy based on the law Congress enacts, not the law they may wish Congress would enact. For the Obama Administration, that law is the existing Clean Air Act. More Clean Air Act-based climate policy is on its way. In October 2015, the White House announced forthcoming regulations limiting emissions of climate-forcing hydroflurocarbons, and the Clean Power Plan potentially sets the state for carbon dioxide limits for existing facilities and other sectors. Step-by-step, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing a broad strategy to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions using existing statutory authority.

Authors: Jonas Monast and Christina Reichert

Coastal wetlands conservation and restoration efforts aim to preserve biodiversity and generate benefits to local communities. A diverse portfolio of financing sources has been used for these efforts, including philanthropy, multi- and bilateral aid, in-country governmental funding, tourism-related and other usage fees, and fees and levies associated with wetlands-centric extractive industries. More recently, recognition of coastal wetlands as carbon sinks has opened the door for wetland managers to explore funding sources directed toward climate change mitigation. But finding appropriate funding sources to set up a coastal wetland carbon project or to develop a national carbon program (which includes or is solely focused on coastal wetlands) is often a challenge. Additionally, carbon finance alone often cannot support the necessary management activities. This report updates Keep It Fresh or Salty: An Introductory Guide to Financing Wetland Carbon Projects and Programs (2014). It uses revised guidance for program and project developers (governments, NGOs, local communities) and extends analysis to other finance avenues that can link and complement carbon activities with non-carbon-based financing sources such as debt-for-nature swaps. Rather than recommending one mechanism over any other, it encourages users to think holistically about the range of benefits provided by coastal wetlands conservation for climate mitigation and adaptation in order to optimize the full range of financial mechanisms.

In the absence of comprehensive federal climate policy, the task of climate change mitigation and adaptation will fall to a variety of actors, including homeowners, who can install energy-saving retrofits and take steps to reduce risk of losses from natural disasters. Importantly, the fundamental attributes of retrofit initiatives to reduce loss from climate change and weather events are similar to the attributes of increased energy efficiency retrofits. But the promotional language and incentive structures of energy efficiency initiatives and those of risk-reduction initiatives differ, suggesting a natural experiment that has been replicated through the recent proliferation of retrofit programs. This essay in Innovations in Home Energy: A Sourcebook for Behavior Change explores insights from this experiment for homeowner response well beyond the single-program or single-objective evaluations conducted in the past. These insights can inform complex trade-offs among adaptation and mitigation options as well as facilitate “future proofing”—activities that reduce risk associated with a host of possible future scenarios.

This paper reviews annual government spending on Canadian agriculture that attempts to stabilize and enhance farm incomes. Since 2010, two-thirds of the $3 billion spent on agriculture went into stabilization programs to support farm incomes. This level of support raises questions about the environmental consequences of enhanced agricultural production. Canadian government expenditures on environmental initiatives in agriculture, as a share of farm income, are more than 10 times smaller than those in the United States and the European Union. Canadian stabilization programs have modest impacts on production, but chemical and fertilizer input use may be higher than in the programs' absence. One possible course of action is to introduce cross-compliance between program payments and environmental objectives. However, there are no requirements that Canadian producers receiving support comply with environmental standards. Although cross-compliance could be considered in the Canadian context, policies that directly target specific environmental issues in agriculture may have greater impact.

The 2015 Aspen-Nicholas Water Forum, brought together a select group of water experts to explore water and big data to understand how the emergence of large, but dispersed, amounts of data in the water sector can best be utilized to improve the management and delivery of water for a more sustainable future. Understanding what water data we have, how we collect it, and how to standardize and integrate it may well be a prerequisite to taking action to address a wide range of water challenges. The report from the 2015 forum captures ideas and sentiments expressed by the group and concludes with five points: The rise of big data and new measurement technologies can transform the way that water is managed in the coming decades; However, water data must be synthesized more rapidly than government agencies’ current pace of analysis; A national water data policy is needed that standarizes data integration and storage for more effective water management across sectors; Overcoming privacy constraints would help to maximize the potential of water data; and Accurate assessments of water risk require better matched data sources and data analytics at the individual site level.

On August 3, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the first national greenhouse gas regulations for fossil fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act. The regulations comprise separate rules for new and existing sources. The rule for existing sources, called the Clean Power Plan, requires states to develop plans and implement performance standards that reflect rate-based (pounds of CO₂ per megawatt hour of generation) or mass-based (total tons of CO₂ from covered sources) emissions guidelines established by the EPA. For states considering mass-based plans, whether to cover emissions from new units that are also subject to the new source standards is a threshold question. For any state that elects to cover new sources, the EPA provides a presumptively approvable additional emissions budget—or “new source complement.” This policy brief explores the implications of including or excluding new sources in mass-based state plans. It considers factors such as expected load growth, whether the choice to include or exclude new units affects the generation mix between new and existing units, and the corresponding requirement to address the risk that emissions could shift from existing sources to new sources—so-called leakage—in a state plan that covers only existing units. The brief concludes that states may face a tradeoff in their decision to include or exclude new sources—a finding based on three factors. First, covering new sources may make it harder or easier to comply, depending on assumptions about future electricity demand and the resources that will meet that demand. Second, covering new sources would provide a consistent economic signal to existing and new sources with a similar emissions profile. In contrast, excluding new sources may lead to power market distortions. Third, covering new sources would improve the environmental integrity of the program by eliminating the risk of leakage.

On August 3, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized carbon dioxide (CO2) emission guidelines for two categories of existing power plants under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. The final rule, referred to as the Clean Power Plan, requires each state to develop its own plan that applies equivalent standards of performance to affected units. If a state fails to submit an adequate plan, the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to develop and implement a federal plan for the state. In a separate action, the EPA proposed mass- and rate-based versions of a federal plan as well as mass- and rate-based model rules, which states could choose to adopt or to adapt by substituting their own provisions subject to EPA approval. The proposed model rules are similar to but more flexible than the federal plan proposals. This article in the Environmental Law Reporter summarizes the final Clean Power Plan rule, describes the mass- and rate-based proposed federal plans, identifies areas in which the model rules differ, highlights key issues for states and other stakeholders as they evaluate the tradeoffs between plan pathways, and discusses the EPA’s timeline for finalizing the federal plan and model rules.

The availability of practical mechanisms for comparing domestic efforts aimed at mitigating global climate change is important for the stability, equity, and efficiency of international climate agreements. This article examines a variety of metrics that could be used to compare countries’ climate change mitigation efforts and to illustrate their potential application to large developed and developing countries. Because there is no single, comprehensive, measurable metric that could be applied to all countries, it suggests using a set of indicators to characterize and compare mitigation effort, akin to using a set of economic statistics to indicate the health of the macroeconomy. Given the iterative pledge-and-review approach that is emerging in current climate change negotiations, these statistics could enhance participation, commitment, and compliance if they can show that all parties are doing their “fair share,” both prospectively and retrospectively. The analysis highlights the need for a well-functioning policy surveillance regime.

In 2008, British Columbia implemented the first comprehensive and substantial carbon tax in North America. By 2012, the tax had reached a level of C$30/t CO₂, and it covered about three-quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions in the province. This article reviews existing evidence on the effect of the tax on greenhouse emissions, the economy, and the distribution of income, and it provides new evidence on public perceptions of the tax. Empirical and simulation models suggest that the tax has reduced emissions in the province by between 5 percent and 15 percent since being implemented. At the same time, models show that the tax has had negligible effects on the aggregate economy, despite some evidence that certain emissions-intensive sectors face challenges. Studies differ on the effects of the policy on the distribution of income; however, all studies agree that the effects are relatively small in this dimension. Finally, polling data show that the tax was initially opposed by the majority of the public but that three years post-implementation, the public generally supported the carbon tax.

The substitution of biogas, an energy source derived from biological feedstock, for fossil natural gas (NG) can mitigate the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, making it an attractive renewable energy source in a carbon-constrained future. Although upgraded, pipeline-quality biogas can augment the NG market supply in the United States, researchers and energy industry experts have little studied its long-term potential. This article estimates (1) levelized costs of energy for biogas production facilities operating with landfill waste, animal manure, wastewater sludge, and biomass residue feedstocks; (2) feedstock and technology pathway-specific biogas supply functions; and (3) the aggregate national biogas supply potential for the United States by 2040. Under a range of specified assumptions, generation of biogas could be expanded to approximately 3–5 percent of the total domestic NG market at projected prices of $5–6/MMBtu; the largest potential source comes from thermal gasification of agriculture and forest residues and biomass. As market signals have not spurred widespread adoption of biogas in the United States, policy incentives similar to those used in the European Union may be necessary to increase its production and use. Bioenergy policy in the European Union and the resulting market penetration achieved there provides important lessons for how biogas markets in the United States can overcome barriers to market expansion and, in doing so, provide substantial climate mitigation benefits.