Americas > Mexico eyes WCI link, accelerates partnership with California on climate

Mexico eyes WCI link, accelerates partnership with California on climate

Published 23:41 on April 30, 2015  /  Last updated at 23:46 on April 30, 2015  / Ben Garside /  Americas, Mexico, US

Mexico is aiming to establish a direct link with the WCI cap-and-trade system as a stepping stone to creating a North American carbon market, a senior official said Thursday.

Mexico is aiming to establish a direct link with the WCI cap-and-trade system as a stepping stone to creating a North American carbon market, a senior official said Thursday.

“We hope in two-to-three years we can talk about a carbon market of North America to tackle climate change,” said Rodolfo Lacy, undersecretary for environmental policy and planning in Mexico’s Secretariat of Environmental and Natural Resources.

“We will use markets to reach these (climate) goals. We are working very hard with other governments, with California, also with Quebec, perhaps with Ontario,” he told delegates at the Navigating the American Carbon World conference in Los Angeles.

Lacy said his country would look to use these links to help implement its INDC, which was published in March and sets a target of 25% below BAU levels by 2030, deepening to 40% if various conditions were met including an international carbon price.

He did not say whether Mexico linking to WCI or the creation of a North American carbon market would meet these conditions.

CARBON PRICING PARTNERSHIP

At the same event, Lacy and California official Matt Rodriquez announced the two administrations had agreed on an action plan to implement the memorandum of understanding the two had signed last summer to cooperate on developing carbon pricing systems.

Rodriquez, secretary for environmental protection at the California Environmental Protection Agency, said the plan would require them to work together in a number of areas over four years.

“This includes trading information on how to put a price on carbon, monitoring and reporting emissions, establishing an emissions trading programme, (and) collaborating on air pollution,” he said.

The action plan’s market-based deliverables include a possible aligning of Mexico’s emissions registry system with California’s annual greenhouse gas reporting system, and determining whether California could help develop interest in sub-national, regional linking within Mexican states, such as Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Jalisco, to import sectoral offsets into its market.

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com