The California Climate Action Registry

Summary form only given. California has passed legislation, Senate Bills 1771 and 527, that establish a voluntary State Climate Action Registry (Registry). The Registry has already been set up as a nonprofit corporation, the first Board appointed by the Governor, and a timetable for implementing the program outlined. The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is working to develop supporting data and methods that can be used at the option of the Board for attaching greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions to historic patterns of customer energy usage. Energy consumers can voluntarily participate in the Registry by providing details of their energy usage, and a carbon burden can be attached to this energy consumption in a manner officially approved by the State. If customers are able to show reductions in energy use or improved energy efficiency of their operations, a credit has been effectively established that could subsequently be potentially counted against future carbon emission reduction requirements or as a tradable credit. The baseline year for emissions is the Kyoto base year, 1990, and all GHG are covered by the legislation. However, this presentation focuses on the electricity consumption, and the most important GHG emission from the power sector is, of course, carbon. Establishing a carbon equivalence for historical electricity consumption presents many difficult challenges that are well known to power engineers.