The state Department of Environment announced that the Washington state government raised about $260 million through a special auction of greenhouse gas emissions rights held for the second time this year.
The Ministry of Environment explained that the reason the special auction was held last week was because there was fierce competition in the regular quarterly auction in August, with bid prices from polluting companies exceeding the government-announced price of $51.90.
The Ministry of Environment announced that so far this year, when the greenhouse gas emission rights auction system first began, a total of 31.9 million emission rights have been sold and more than $1.5 billion has been collected.
The greenhouse gas emission rights sales system is the core of the ‘Climate Promise Act’ enacted in 2021. The state is pressuring large corporations, the main culprits of air pollution, to reduce carbon emissions while selling emission rights as a form of indulgence.
Companies that purchase emission rights can emit 1 ton of carbon per unit. Through this system, the state plans to comply with the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to limit the increase in global temperature to within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) per year by eliminating Washington state’s carbon emissions by 2050.
In order to promote various projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air pollution over the next two years, the state legislature reflected approximately $2 billion in expected revenue through the auction of greenhouse gas emission rights in the new fiscal year budget.
Last week’s special auction attracted 30 qualified bidders. The Ministry of Environment said that among these were oil companies such as BP and Marathon, methane gas companies such as North American Natural Gas (NNG) and Cascade Natural Gas (CNG), and the University of Washington (UW) and Washington State University (WSU), which consume large amounts of energy.