Don’t overlook high-quality, project-based emissions reductions.
By Mike Burnett and Bjorn Fischer
Mike Burnett is executive director of the Climate Trust. Bjorn Fischer is business development manager at the Climate Trust. Contact Fischer at bfischer@climatetrust.org. The Climate Trust is a non-profit committed to providing high quality, project-based reductions and advancing the policies that support them. Its offices are located in Portland, Ore.
Project-based emissions reductions can help deliver a lower carbon power supply during the transition to the next generation of coal, and do so with environmental integrity. Since 2000, scientific evidence about the human impact on the climate has become more convincing and more concerning. Scientists now tell us that time is running out if we are to stabilize greenhouse-gas levels at a point where they will not overwhelm both nature and our economy. We must not delay any longer.
While federal greenhouse-gas regulations are lacking, states increasingly are establishing climate policy. The carbon predicament in California, where project-based reductions are a key tool for addressing the significant growth in coal-based emissions from power plants, can be considered a microcosm for the United States as a whole.