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An essay is presented on the California's environmental leadership capabilities with special focus on climate policy related to greenhouse gas emissions. It informs that a state's regulatory expertise to implement its environmental policies lead to environmental leadership, which in turn solidify and ameliorate regulatory expertise. The author set forth the policy's cap-and-trade program that regulates large industrial and renewable energy sources to emphasize breadth of the regulatory effort.

An advantage of cap-and-trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible. However, when markets (versus regulators) determine where emissions occur, it becomes more difficult to assure that mandated emissions reductions are equitably achieved. We investigate these issues in the context of Southern California's RECLAIM program by matching facilities in RECLAIM with similar California facilities also in nonattainment areas. Our results indicate that average emissions fell 20 percent at RECLAIM facilities relative to our counterfactual. Furthermore, observed changes in emissions do not vary significantly with neighborhood demographic characteristics. (JEL H23, L51, Q53, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author addresses the issues facing California with regard to its regional cap-and-trade market linkage. The author highlights the benefits and costs of cap-and-trade linkage. On the other hand, she offers recommendations to protect California from damaging linkage without violating the Dormant Commerce Clause.

The article discusses the role of state enforcement in addressing the greenhouse gas emissions and climate change issues in California. It highlights the effort of California in reducing the greenhouse gas emission It explores the challenges and risks posed by the enforcement of the cap-and-trade program.

Examines the political obstacles that affected the implementation of the REgional CLean AIr Market (RECLAIM) in Los Angeles, California. History of the RECLAIM emission program; Analysis of the decisions concerning RECLAIM; Political barriers presented by consumer groups.

This article documents the methodology used to compare policy alternatives considered for RECLAIM, an emissions trading program for Los Angeles which commenced January 1994. RECLAIM reduces NOx and SOx emissions from stationary sources with declining emissions credit allocations. The emissions trading model (ETM) includes credit supply and demand, spatial restrictions, and opportunity costs of owning credits. The ETM solves interactively with a regional model that estimates economic impacts. Predicted emissions distributions are input into airshed and exposure models. The models predict similar improvements in air quality and public health as command and control regulations, but with lower costs and employment impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]