California held its first-ever auction of carbon emissions allowances today, but state officials offered no details about how the sale went.
The California Air Resource Board, which oversaw the historic auction, plans to release a host of details next Monday about pricing and sales volume. But until then, agency officials said little beyond confirming that the auction lasted three hours as scheduled.
"It opened at 10 and closed at 1," said agency spokesman Stanley Young.
The auction kicked off California's "cap-and-trade" market, designed to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. It's the key element of AB 32, the state's climate-change law.
Under the law, more than 400 of the state's largest industrial polluters are subject to a ceiling on carbon emissions. The state gave them tens of millions of allowances - each one good for one ton of emissions per year - but is auctioning off the rest. Companies that pollute too much can either buy more credits or find a way to reduce their emissions.
Some 62 million credits were up for auction today. Another auction is set for February, and additional sales will be held in future years.
Some experts wondered whether today's bidding was dampened by a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the California Chamber of Commerce, which is challenging the validity of the auction. The chamber wants all of the emissions credits to be allotted for free and says the cost of buying credits at auction represents an unconstitutional tax.
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