Doctoral Dissertation Research: Environmental Governance in the Carbon Economy: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in California's Cap-and-Trade Market

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This doctoral dissertation project examines the geographical principles, practices, and relationships used to create a new financial market that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study's focus is on the creation of California's carbon market, the largest carbon market in the United States, and second largest in the world. The research is informed by existing research in neo-classical economics, the political ecology of environmental markets, and work in the social studies of finance. The project specifically seeks to determine how a market for credits in greenhouse gas emissions is designed, implemented, and regulated. The project asks three research questions addressing how social relationships between regulators, regulated industries, and financiers impact the design and function of a carbon market, the physical spaces where those relationships are enacted, and the types of ideologies that are communicated in those physical spaces between market actors. In order to answer these questions, the student will take a mixed-methods approach, including interviews with key regulatory and market personnel, participant observation of regulatory hearings, and archival work to uncover how rule making has changed over the six year regulatory process that has led to the opening of California's carbon market. The success or failure of California's carbon market will significantly contribute to future debates about the role of government in reducing emissions. The California market may be linked to similar emissions trading programs in Canada, Australia, and the European Union. The data generated by this project, as well as publications that result from the work, will be of use to policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and greenhouse gas emitting industries. The impacted organizations will benefit from data generated by the project regarding what types of relationships, places, and arguments are most important or effective in designing markets in environmental goods and their regulation once these markets commence. This research is an opportunity to observe the principles and practices of the creation and implementation in a new type of financial market in real-time, and these observations will help researchers and policy makers who are dealing with an ever-shifting financial and environmental landscape. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising student to pursue an active career in socially relevant research.