Washington’s first cap-and-trade Allowance Price Containment Reserve (APCR) auction raised almost $62.5 million, the state’s Ecology Department said Wednesday.
The auction held last week put up 1,054,809 carbon emissions allowances for bid. Half were offered at a Tier 1 price of $51.90 and the other half at a Tier 2 price of $66.68, which reflects a benchmark set by the open market. The auction was open only to entities that need to cover direct emissions and was closed to financial traders of allowances.
The state was required to hold the cap-and-trade program’s first APCR auction, a mechanism designed to keep carbon prices in check, after prices in the May quarterly auction broke through a soft cap that triggers a requirement to tap the reserve. (See Wash. Auctions Reserve Carbon Allowances to Relieve Price Pressure.)
The list of eligible bidders included eight oil and gasoline companies. The cap-and-trade program has been blamed all summer for the state’s high gasoline prices, hovering around $5 per gallon. Throughout the summer, Washington and California have been swapping first and second place for the nation’s highest gas prices. (See Cap-and-trade Driving up Washington Gasoline Prices, Critics Say.)
Washington does not reveal the bidders’ or winners’ identities or the number of allowances awarded to individual entities to prevent market manipulation.
Washington has raised almost $920 million in the first seven months of the cap-and trade program, with two quarterly auctions left this fiscal year.
During the May 31 auction, the state sold 8.585 million allowances, for a clearing price of $56.01, exceeding the $51.90 soft cap price triggering the APCR auction. Half of those allowances were to be sold for $51.90 per share and half for $66.68 per share.
