온실가스 배출권거래제 관련 미국 연방입법의 방향

Public concern about the impacts of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continues to put pressure on the countries, international society to adopt emissions limits. Since Kyoto Protocol introduced the cap-and-trade program for reducing the emissions of the GHGs, countries are adopting, or consider to adopt the cap-and-trade system as the market-based, cost-effective way of reducing the GHGs. In the United States, states led by California passed their climate change legislation and enacted the GHG cap-and-trade programs as the centerpiece. States are also making efforts to form regional climate change initiative to help resolve the global warming effect with the states' combined forces. However, U.S. Congress failed to pass several bills presented for a number of years, which stems from the potential effect of the cap-and-trade program on the U.S. economy, and from the interests of states heavily dependent on coal power. This paper focuses on the cap-and-trade program of the Waxman-Markey bill which passed the House of Representatives and is in the Senate for dabate, and tries to introduce and analyse the important issues of the cap-and-trade program of the bill. Waxman-Markey bill specifically provides for the establishment of a federal GHG registry of upstream, downstream sources of substantial GHG emissions which enables to cover up more than 80% of U.S. GHG emissions. This is compared to coverage of the downstream sources only by the EU Emissions Trading System, which resulted in less than 50% of coverage. Waxman-Markey provides that about 80% of allowances are distributed at no cost during the period of 2012-2025 to ease the transition to a clean energy economy, phasing out the transition period beginning at 2026 raising the portion of auction to 70% by 2031. It specifies the distribution of allowances for three general purposes: consumer assistance to utility ratepayers; direct support of capped industries; and advancing certain public policy goals. One characteristic of the bill is the allocation of 15% of total allowances to the low-income consumers, which is designed to help them with the auction proceeds of the allowances. The bill incorporates offsets, a strategic reserve, and banking and borrowing to create flexibility in the carbon market. It also strives for reconciliation with existing federal, state and regional, and international regimes governing GHG emissions.