California climate action registry a big draw

By Bernie Woodall

SANTA BARBARA, California (Reuters) - Hoping to get a head start for the day when accounting for carbon and other greenhouse gases becomes mandatory, companies, cities and other organizations flocked to the California Climate Action Registry in overflow numbers this week.

The annual event used to be a cozy gathering of a few pioneers, but that was before landmark legislation, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, mandated a cut to 1990 emission levels by 2020 -- a cut of 25 percent.

Part of the new law requires greenhouse gas rules and may create a market for trading carbon and other greenhouse gases by 2012.

There's money to be made and regulations to be met, and that is why -- according to Diane Wittenberg, president of the first U.S. registry of greenhouse gas emissions -- the nonprofit group's fifth annual conference on Tuesday and Wednesday was attended by 600 and at least another 100 had to be turned away.

That more than doubled last year's attendance as companies and organizations public and private seek to join the registry to get a head start on cutting carbon greenhouse gas output. At the registry's first conference, 80 attended.

"I guess our intimate gatherings are in the past," Wittenberg said as she addressed the "Navigating the New Carbon World" conference in Santa Barbara.

Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said the 242-member registry attempts to create "a safe walk between voluntary and mandatory reporting."

From the time the California law passed last summer to the end of 2007, membership doubled and new members are joining at a rate of about 15 per month, said Wittenberg.

Companies, cities, universities and other organizations operating in California join the registry to begin counting their emissions on a voluntary basis so when the accounting becomes mandatory, they will be better able to take advantage of cap-and-trade opportunities, said Wittenberg.

The carbon trade -- centered now among the 27-member European Union -- topped 20 billion euros last year ($26 billion) last year, which doubled the previous year's trade.

California companies will be required to report emissions by January 1, 2008. Emissions trade "may" begin in 2012, the new California law says, and it looks as if such a market will be instituted, said Winston Hickox, chairman of the California Market Advisory Committee. There is much uncertainty what California's requirements, to be decided by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), will be.

And it's not known where any trades -- likely to be over-the-counter at least in the start -- will clear or be reported.

California is not the only place in the United States where momentum is gathering for a carbon trading system.

The California registry is to be a benchmark for the establishment of The Climate Registry, which has so far attracted informal interest from 33 states and will have a founding meeting in Chicago on May 23.

Environmental advocate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore went to Congress on Wednesday to propose a cut of 90 percent of carbon emissions by 2050. Gore said a national cap-and-trade program as well as a carbon tax should be enacted.

"It's a new world, a world of carbon constraints, and there's no turning back," Andrei Marcu, president of the International Emissions Trading Association, told the conference.