California’s Cap-and-Trade Program is the centerpiece of the state’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) and has served as a model for national and subnational governments around the world since its launch in 2012. This three-hour workshop will cover the basics of California’s Cap-and-Trade Program. Speakers will discuss how the program fits into AB 32 and SB 32, what developments are in the works under AB 398, timeframes established under the program, compliance entities and their obligations, basic market structure and changes that will go into effect after 2020. The workshop is an excellent primer for people starting to learn about the program and a comprehensive refresher course for people wanting to brush up on their Cap-and-Trade Program knowledge.
Fee: $150

This workshop will showcase the innovative approach of ex-ante crediting and how companies can utilize it. Participants will learn how to incorporate forward crediting emission reduction projects as an offsite GHG mitigation strategy to meet CEQA requirements and secure local GHG reductions with multiple co-benefits. To illustrate this approach and use, the workshop will discuss several real-world examples, including the Reserve’s Climate Forward program. Speakers will share insights into the project development process, including project structure and costs, and how revenue from Climate Forward’s Forecasted Mitigation Units helped finance projects. The workshop will also discuss utilization of the ex-ante approach from the corporate and agency perspectives.

Agenda to be posted shortly on the Climate Action Reserve site.

The carbon and climate policy landscape on state, regional, national, and international levels continues to shift with developments both advancing and hindering climate action. On the U.S. federal level, the Trump administration continues to forge on with its work to undo and scale back environmental regulations. In contrast, on the state and local level, laws and regulations have been proposed and passed that raise standards for climate action. This workshop will assess the legal issues and mechanisms potentially reshaping carbon and climate policy. MCLE credits will be available.
Fee: $250

The Climate Action Reserve invites you to attend a workshop that will provide an introduction to the basics of California’s Compliance Offset Program, including an overview of the various Compliance Offset Protocols and verification of compliance offset projects. This workshop will also focus on updates to and expectations for California’s Compliance Offset Program. It will delve into requirements under AB 398, including offset usage limits and direct environmental benefits (DEBs). The workshop will also discuss offset supply forecasts and potential protocol types that could be adopted into the program. This workshop will be useful for consultants, compliance offset buyers, project developers, policymakers, and anyone interested in learning more about California’s compliance offset program.
Fee: $150

The North American carbon world continues to be a diverse and changing landscape. Across Canada, the US and Mexico, there are varying levels of leadership and approaches to addressing climate change on all jurisdictional levels. Canada has its Output-Based Pricing System in place as a backstop for provincial inaction and forges ahead with other climate initiatives like the Clean Fuel Standard. Mexico’s Emissions Trading System has launched in its pilot phase and stands as North America’s only national ETS. In the US, climate change initiatives remain in reverse on the federal level and states, counties and cities continue filling the void left by the federal government. In this session, speakers will engage in discussion about climate action, inaction and goals across the North American continent.

For decades, forests have been in the global spotlight as both a key contributor to the climate crisis and potentially a key solution. Human-induced fires have fundamentally changed landscapes around the world and, in recent years, forests have become a victim of climate change as more intense and frequent fires have scorched hundreds of thousands of acres of forests around the world. Yet investments in healthier forests also present one of the earliest-recognized impactful solutions for slowing the rate of climate change. In this session, speakers will engage in a wide-ranging discussion about the critical role forests play in both slowing and contributing to climate change.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

The two premier compliance credit markets in North America, the California-Quebec linked market and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), are experiencing major changes. In the California-Quebec linked market, new rules intended to help California meet its 2030 target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 begin in 2021, the Trump Administration has sued the state over its agreements with Quebec, and other states (e.g., Oregon) are considering their own cap-and-trade programs that may be linkage-eligible at some future point. RGGI has recently seen New Jersey re-joining the effort, with Pennsylvania and Virginia deliberating whether or not to join. This session will discuss recent developments in both markets, the challenges each is facing in the coming years, and what market participants need to know to take advantage of future opportunities.

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

COP26 in Glasgow is expected to be one of the most pivotal international gatherings ever on climate change. With the Paris Agreement nearing its fifth anniversary, the world is still trying to define the entire Paris rulebook while realizing the emission reductions promised in Paris are insufficient to avoid exacerbating an already too serious climate crisis. Negotiators failed at COP25 in Madrid to define the rules for Article 6, the market-based options for responding, and to significantly enhance global climate ambition. This session will bring together key experts to discuss what to expect at Glasgow, including key decisions about the use of CDM credits for any commitments moving forward, the nature of the rules for allowing international transfer of emission reductions, and the challenges around increasing global ambition to limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

Recent reports and studies have highlighted the importance of natural climate solutions, with reforestation among the most prominent featured. Although reforestation has long been recognized for its promise of drawing down massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, it is only now beginning to gather attention at a scale that could possibly approach that of its potential. With new initiatives being announced on a regular basis, now is a great time to take stock of how reforestation can contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. Speakers will discuss the opportunities and challenges around reforestation as well as how well carbon markets are currently set up to support reforestation projects.

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

Developing a no/low carbon transportation sector is critical to successfully addressing the climate crisis. A popular perception is that heavy-duty transport may be the last segment of the sector to develop viable alternatives, but how accurate is this assessment? This session will examine developments in the heavy-duty transport sector, including technological advances for trucks and commercial buses, incremental costs for investing in cleaner alternatives, and market drivers (e.g., environmental justice concerns) encouraging uptake of cleaner heavy-duty alternatives.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

In January 2020, Mexico became the first country in North America to launch a national Emissions Trading Scheme. The three-year pilot phase will run from 2020 to 2023, including a transition year, and will be followed by the compliance period. Speakers in this session will discuss how the program is operating, what it is expected to achieve, and how it fits within North American carbon markets.

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

Cross-sector integration or “sector-coupling” will be key to meeting California’s climate goals and providing reliable and affordable energy. In this session, top researchers will discuss their recent studies, which shed light on the need for a diverse portfolio of energy resources to provide needed reliability and meet California’s climate goals.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

Carbon markets have been slow to incorporate carbon credits generated by sequestration in natural working lands, in large part because the state of science and technology made carbon projects on such lands cost prohibitive. Cutting edge developments in technology, such as remote sensing and machine learning, have begun to change the narrative. This panel will discuss the ways technological innovations are changing the equation to enable natural working lands solutions.

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

Transportation emissions account for 23 percent of global CO2 emissions and have surpassed the electric power industry as the greatest emissions source in the US. While it is a leading contributor to the climate crisis, the transportation sector also has immense opportunity to provide much needed solutions. Speakers will discuss developing programs within the transportation sector that aim to have significant impact on addressing climate change. These programs include the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), Canada’s Clean Fuel Standard and US state initiatives.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

Canada continues to assess the most appropriate pathways forward for addressing climate change. At the federal level, a backstop carbon pricing policy, the Output-Based Pricing Sytem (OBPS), provides a fallback option for any province not instituting its own strategy. Cap-and-trade is in place in Quebec, with other provinces like Nova Scotia and News Brunswick seriously considering their own programs. Other provinces have their own strategies, while Ontario continues to challenge whether any action is required at all. Participants in this session will hear from a range of Canadian voices articulating current policies, the challenges around determining policy approaches that allow for differentiated but equitable strategies across provinces and territories, and next steps as Canadians forge an integrated yet differentiated climate strategy.  

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

Carbon markets have been very successful at driving investment and innovation in some sectors. However, other sectors have been left out of the equation due to unfavorable investment profiles, despite having significant potential for climate benefit. This session will focus on how ex-ante or forward crediting can drive capital investment and scale into important climate solutions.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

In the voluntary market, there continues to be a preferred interest in “charismatic carbon” credits compared to other options (often industrial sources). Charismatic carbon credits can cover a range of source categories but often focus on natural working land solutions that can offer other co-benefits. This session will explore the reasons for these market preferences, including which buyers tend to prefer certain credit types, their reasons for doing so, how these preferences may drive credit investment in the future and pricing differences among credit types, among other factors.

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

A new major market opportunity opens up next year when the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) goes into effect. Under this initiative, international aviation has agreed to offset its growth in emissions above 2020 levels. The International Civil Aeronautics Organization (ICAO) estimates demand of 2.5 billion tonnes through 2035, while other estimates are as high as 5 billion tonnes. This session will examine how different airlines are likely to address their need for offsets, the potential impact of CDM credits on this market, the types of credits most likely to be preferred, and other key drivers.

One of the most critical sources of emissions is transportation, with global emissions continuing to rise and mitigation efforts often running into stubborn obstacles. This session will explore cutting-edge solutions that are beginning to come to market and development efforts that offer the potential to be game-changers in the fight to bring more sustainable transportation solutions to market. In addition to technological developments, key public policy issues needed to foster more aggressive development and deployment will be highlighted.

The lack of progress at COP25 in Madrid only highlights the ongoing failure of national and international leadership to light the way to a more sustainable future. Into this void states, provinces, counties, and cities have stepped in to provide much needed leadership about policies and other solutions that can seriously address the climate crisis. This session will bring together key leaders at the state and provincial level to tout important initiatives underway to address the climate crisis, new policies under consideration to accelerate climate ambition, and the cooperative actions critical to ensuring success in the coming years. Important challenges will also be discussed, including how aggressive action on climate can not only avoid limiting economic growth, but create a more sustainable, robust economy over time.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

Offsets in both the compliance and voluntary markets play critical roles in addressing climate change and have for many years. Now, use of offsets in both markets is expanding as more companies and individuals look to voluntarily balance what they can’t reduce through high quality offsets, and compliance markets continue to develop in North America and around the world. This session will look at this growing use of offsets, the strict standards in place to ensure high quality offsets are used and new types of offsets that are expected to bring significant potential in emissions reductions.

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

One of the most discussed options for climate mitigation revolves around carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Significant capital has been invested into various CCS options, with a number of notable advances potentially offering credible solutions for carbon mitigation. This session will explore the latest technological developments in the CCS arena, the applications that seem to have the best potential for commercialization, challenges that still need to be resolved and the latest on the economics of CCS, among other issues.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

Research and markets are both pointing to regenerative agriculture as a potential powerhouse climate change solution that would deliver a significant impact to emissions reductions while generating more benefits for the agriculture sector, food supply and soil health. Regenerative agriculture, a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to use farms and working lands as a means to enhance entire ecosystems, brings together the experience and expertise of scientists, carbon accountants, environmental advocates and farmers, who have always stood as some of the strongest stewards of the land. In this session, attendees will hear these different voices discuss where we seek to explore some key challenges, opportunities, lessons learned, and what’s coming next in the regenerative agriculture space.  

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

In North America, the only operational LCFS programs are in California and Oregon, with California’s implemented in 2011 and Oregon’s implemented in 2016. This session will provide an update on both of these complex programs, results that have been generated and how they are influencing the creation of LCFS programs in other states.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an interconnected collection of 17 global goals intended to serve as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” Momentum is building to integrate evaluations of the impacts on these SDGs into carbon crediting programs. This session will discuss the current state of the intersection of SDGs and carbon credits, as well as how further developments around this concept may affect carbon markets in the future.

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program is just one tool the state is using to meet its emissions reduction goal of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2045. The state has several other initiatives under different state agencies that are working towards reducing emissions, protecting the environment and strengthening communities. Some of these programs have been put in the spotlight on the national and international stages and some have very publicly generated ire from the Trump Administration. This session will provide an update on leading California environmental policies.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

Although global efforts at preventing the loss and degradation of tropical forests has been ongoing for decades, the ability of tropical forests to contribute both positively and negatively to the climate crisis has accelerated the urgency of such efforts. Yet, as past struggles attest, the conservation of such forests is not a straightforward and simple solution. Despite its potential to help reduce global CO2 emissions and lower atmospheric concentrations, a host of issues are tied to how we can bring about meaningful and durable mitigation from tropical forestry. The discussion by this panel will focus on the opportunities and challenges presented by tropical forestry as a climate change mitigation tool, including concerns about the environmental integrity of such efforts and the implications around environmental justice. An update on the California Air Resources Board’s support via its Tropical Forestry Standard will also be provided.

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

Transit agencies are responsible for the development and operation of public transportation options within metropolitan regions and, therefore, have an enormous role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Transit agencies can have a positive impact on climate change through initiatives to create expanded transportation networks, increase ridership, green their fleets, and reduce the footprint of their operations. In this session, speakers will describe the climate initiatives currently underway at their respective transit agencies and future initiatives to come.

Path 1: Carbon Markets

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program is not limited to the purchase and surrender of allowances and credits. So far, billions of dollars generated from the program have been put to work reducing more emissions, strengthening the economy and improving public health and the environment with a focus on disadvantaged communities. This session will discuss California Climate Investments program, the initiative overseeing distribution of funds, and what work has been happening under the initiative.

Path 2: Policies and Innovative Solutions

As the Trump Administration has worked to roll back environmental protections in the US, we have found the federal government pitted against state-level government. This session will discuss just three of the issues states and the federal government are battling over: the roll back of clean car standards, achieving the US’s commitments under the Paris Agreement without support on the federal level and the attempt to challenge the California-Quebec linked market.

Path 3: Natural Working Lands

Path 4: Transportation/LCFS

Technological advancements are revolutionizing and disrupting the ways of every day life in all sectors. In particular, innovations in transportation are offering a sneak peek into the future of mobility, from self driving cars to electric buses and from a fleet of robotaxis to the proliferation of micromobility solutions such as e-scooters. This session will examine the innovative developments within the transportation sector and how those developments might provide solutions to climate change.

This tour will give participants an inside look at climate leadership happening at Stanford and Google. At Stanford, participants will visit the university’s Central Energy Facility. The CEF includes three large water tanks for thermal energy storage, a high-voltage substation that receives electricity from the grid and an innovative heat recovery system that takes advantage of Stanford’s overlap in heating and cooling needs. Tour participants will also visit labs at the university and hear from faculty members about leading climate research and work being done from Stanford. After Stanford, the tour will head to Google for a look at sustainable planning on the company’s own campus at the 1212 Bordeaux building. Embodying Google’s design principles of beauty and simplicity, 1212 Bordeaux is designed to inspire and empower Google employees, while supporting the long-term health and vitality of the community and environment. The result is Google’s first completed ground-up building: an adaptable high-performance “living lab” workplace, which achieved LEED Platinum certification.

Fee: $60

California Climate Investments is a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy and improving public health and the environment—particularly in disadvantaged communities. This tour will showcase some of the diverse projects that have been given funding through a selection of over forty California Climate Investments programs and demonstrate how these funds are supporting local and State efforts to build healthy and sustainable communities. The diverse projects represent transit-oriented, transportation and waste investments.

Fee: $60