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Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Scholarly orks Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2013 How Did RGGI Do It? Political Economy and Emissions Auctions Bruce R . Huber Notre Dame Law School, bhuber@ Follow this and additional works at : /law_faculty_scholarship Part of the Environmental Law Commons Recommended Citation Huber, Bruce R ., How Did RGGI Do It? Political Economy and Emissions Auctions (2013). Scholarly Works. Paper 473. /law_faculty_scholarship/473 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly orks by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact lawdr@. How Did RGGI Do It? Political Economy and Emissions Auctions Bruce R. Huber* Among the major emissions trading schemes in operation around the world, the Regional Greenhouse GasInitiative (RGGI)stands alone: this CO 2 states is the only such scheme program among nine northeastern cap-and-trade to relyprimarily on auctions to distribute emissions allowances. The standard forfree on the basis ofhistoricalemissions- allowances practice-distributing from some regulatedemitters. elicits begrudgingbutpolitically crucialsupport Like carbon taxation, allowance auctioning has long been considered economically superiorto its alternatives butpolitically infeasible. How did the RGGI states manage to defy conventional wisdom and instituteaprogram so relianton auctions?Existing analyses ofRGGIs origins credit entrepreneurialstate-