This February, one of Oregon Democrats’ key goals will be passing a new cap-and-trade policy aimed at reducing private industries’ carbon emissions. But as the details of that policy come into focus, a division between the state’s environmental groups is raising questions about whether policymakers and advocates are betting on the most effective climate policy.
Under a cap-and-trade framework, which is already employed in California and is being pushed in several other parts of the US, the state government places a limit on how much carbon large corporations can emit into the atmosphere each year. The framework also establishes a marketplace of credits, or “allowances,” that companies can purchase in order to emit more carbon than their designated limit.
This year’s session won’t be state lawmakers’ first stab at passing cap-and-trade legislation. Oregon Democrats have been working on cap-and-trade policy since at least 2016, and came nail-bitingly close to passing it last year in the form of House Bill 2020—until state Republicans, citing worries that the bill would affect the timber industry, fled the state to avoid voting on it and effectively killed the bill.
But now Senate Democrats, led by Senate President Peter Courtney, are prepared to commit to a new cap-and-trade bill that’s similar to HB2020—and one that, in an effort to win bipartisan support, gives more allowances to private industries.
