Challenging Issues

Abstract

Prior to implementation of California's cap-and-trade policy the U.S. had no compliance market for management and mitigation of GHG emissions featuring offsets as a significant mechanism for compliance. The ARB's offset program and protocols were developed based largely on lessons learned and methodologies developed in the Climate Action Reserve's voluntary market offset program. Although the ARB has successfully adapted these voluntary market mechanisms for use in California's compliance market, the transition from a voluntary market to a compliance-based market presents an opportunity to formalize a substantially increased role for forest-based biogenic carbon sequestration in GHG mitigation and management policies. Using the ARB's Forest Offset Protocol as a model, this chapter examines some alternative approaches to implementing forest-based carbon sequestration in a compliance market by focusing on achieving a balance between ensuring offset integrity and maximizing the potential benefits of forest-based sequestration in GHG mitiga-tion policies. The issues and alternatives explored in this chapter are often intertwined and do not necessarily lend themselves to a simple binary conclusion of correct or incorrect, but rather present questions of tradeoffs and alternative approaches in which achieving some particular program goal while sacrificing less of another desired objective may be possible. Within this framework, the examination of alternative approaches for handling fundamental aspects of the protocol and offset program are structured into three parts-project-and protocol-specific issues, offset program management and implementation, and strategic design opportunities with the alternatives discussed in each part becoming increasingly broad, complex, and involved were they to be pursued.