The news of Ontario’s impending withdrawal from the bi-national cap-and-trade program, after less than a year of partnership, has landed with a thud. The retreat of California’s largest emissions trading partner is a function of politics as much as policy, but the sting to the state’s ambitions is no less felt.
The incoming premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said he will move quickly to decouple the province from the trading program, calling a carbon tax a bad deal for Canadians.
As an indicator of wider interest in cap-and-trade programs, so central to California’s greenhouse gas reduction ambitions, Ontario’s defection is not ideal. It awkwardly comes just a couple of months before California is set to showcase its cap-and-trade program when it hosts an international climate summit in San Francisco. And as Brown continues to shop the alliance to other states and countries—and faces questions about its effectiveness at home—the development could cause potential partners to balk.
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