The Overhead Wire Daily | March 19th, 2024 | Carbon Trading for Transit

As the announcement goes out that the Bay Area could have a ballot measure in 2026 to support transit improvements and provide $750M in funding, I’m sometimes struck by the funding options we don’t quite have yet nationally including transit agencies selling credits in carbon trading markets.

One of the things that was interesting to me from my interview with Paula DiPerna (audio | transcript) last year on her book Pricing the Priceless is her admission that her visit to China to help set up a carbon market like the one she started in Chicago led to proliferation of carbon markets in cities all over the country. All the young students in the room when she visited to share her experience are now running markets in different cities. Now most cities are benefiting from that experience including Chongqing.

So I wasn’t surprised to see that the Chongqing carbon market certified that sale of the local transit agencies emissions reductions (167K tons) for about $850,000. It was the first transit related transaction in the country and I would expect more to follow.

Some states have created markets and California does give some of its cap and trade money to transit and high speed rail, but there are likely lots of mechanisms for funding good transit service that are just sitting on the sidelines. As Paula mentioned on the show, the turning point between the two countries really was the Waxman/Markey bill which passed the House in 2009 but didn’t get a vote in the Senate that year. That climate bill included a cap and trade provision which could have created a national market for transit agencies to sell credits.

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