ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and Western Climate Initiative (WCI)have developed linking mechanisms with each other and with other authorities that favor compliance, as well as how similar the policies and their instruments need to be to deliver outcomes. WCI has a more compact approach, where the jurisdictions are more autonomous and link with other climate policies only to create markets; RGGI has a more centralized approach, where jurisdictions share the design of market institutions. In RGGI and WCI, policy instruments are divided into three main areas: climate change, electricity and transportation. RGGI is institutionally robust and efficient, but WCI, although efficient, has not been able to manage change and external factors, and has lost robustness. The chapter explained earlier, RGGI is interconnected physically with a network of transmission lines and a variety of pipelines. RGGI and WCI have developed institutions precisely for harmonization purposes.
