Meetings and Webcasts for Climate Area Funders
Two more of EPRI’s series of meetings and webcasts for Climate Area funders have been held.  On Aug. 22, EPRI reprised its July 24 meeting on GHG cap-and-trade programs and allowance allocations in a webcast that involved more than 30 online participants.  The purpose of the meeting was to consider the enormous potential financial impacts of allowance allocations upon companies and their ratepayers, with amounts up to perhaps $100 million per company (even billions of dollars for some large companies) per year at stake.  Topics included the difficulties faced by the electric sector in capping emissions; differences between free allocation of allowances versus auctioned allowances; auction design and its implications; the effects of allowance allocation on electric sector costs; the advantages and disadvantages of a cap-and-trade system versus emissions taxes/fees; and distribution of impacts to customers and asset owners under rate regulation and competition.  On Sep. 13, 42 individuals participated in EPRI’s second Global Climate Policy Design Forum in Washington, DC, including EPRI staff, EPRI members, and GHG offset experts from organizations such as Environ, Natsource, the Natural Resources Defense Council, PointCarbon, Stanford University, and the World Resources Institute.  The GHG offset workshop focused on providing members with a better understanding of the potential role that GHG emissions offsets may play in evolving domestic and international climate policies.  Attendees reported that the workshop gave them a better understanding of the complexity surrounding inclusion of GHG emissions offsets and the views of different stakeholder groups on the potential role of offsets.  EPRI is now planning its Third Design Forum, which will likely deal with GHG allowance auction design and is tentatively scheduled to be delivered via webcast sometime in late October.  For more information, contact Vic Niemeyer, (650) 855-2744, niemeyer@epri.com; Adam Diamant, (510) 260-9105, adiamant@epri.com; or Tom Wilson, (650) 855-7928, twilson@epri.com.