North America’s largest ETS is about to become even more ambitious

Last year, California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulators initiated a program reform process to better position its ETS to help achieve the state’s more ambitious GHG reduction targets adopted in the 2022 Scoping Plan. The scoping plan amped up California’s GHG reduction goal for 2030 from 40% to 48% below 1990 levels as well as set a carbon neutrality goal for 2045. Covering nearly 80% of jurisdictional emissions, regulators are looking to its ETS as a major tool in helping achieve these targets. Its WCI counterpart, Quebec, has also initiated its own process to strengthen its ETS to better reflect the province’s decarbonization goals – which, like California, will prioritize reducing future supply as a means of addressing the vast oversupply of allowances in the market.