Below I report a new announcement posted to the California Air Resources Board Webpage discussing how a small group of academic economists will be playing a new role in designing the AB32 Cap & Trade program.  Here is the announcement.

My bottom line is that ARB has hired a Dream Team.  Forget Lebron James and Kevin Durant and Kobe, the set of four economists named Borenstein, Bushnell, Bailey and Wolak can really play!    The public (and that includes everyone) can rest assured that this team is a group of prominent, even tempered thinkers who will not play political games but instead will seek to achieve economic efficiency.  In English, this means that they will seek to achieve the goals of AB32 at minimum economic cost to California.

“ARB entered into an agreement with the University of California Energy Institute to obtain expert analysis and advice on the Cap-and-Trade market design, operation, and monitoring.

The Emissions Market Assessment Committee, (EMAC), will hold public meetings at ARB headquarters in Sacramento to give stakeholders an opportunity to identify market issues of concern.  When public meetings are scheduled, stakeholders will be invited to bring market issues to the attention of EMAC through e-mail.  ...

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