In this interview, Busch discusses the results from the recent California allowance auction and the future of the state’s cap-and-trade program. “The selling of the full amount of current vintage allowances that were offered was the outstanding feature of the results… The price floor has had a significant effect in rebalancing supply and demand. I would say it is safe to assume we are not going to see a return to the very low sales of the last year.”

Suniva and SolarWorld want the government to take action against foreign companies — primarily Chinese companies — they say are exporting too many solar panel parts to the U.S.. Most likely, that action would be tariffs, which would in turn raise the prices of solar for businesses and homeowners.

California’s market-based program for fighting climate change had struggled badly over the past year. On Wednesday, it bounced back sharply. “It’s a validation of the overall program,” said Chris Busch, who tracks the California carbon market for San Francisco think tank Energy Innovation.

State regulators announced strong results from California’s cap-and-trade program on Wednesday. That’s a shift from other recent auctions, where most of the permits went unsold. But rules governing how the market for permits operates are helping to stabilize the system, said Chris Busch, research director at Energy Innovation. He called it “a triumph of policy design.”

Demand for California pollution permits rebounded in the first quarterly auction since an appeals court upheld the program. The California Air Resources Board reported that it sold out of permits to release greenhouse gases during 2017 or later. The demand exceeded the total supply for the first time since 2015, pushing prices above the minimum.

California’s latest carbon allowance auction could be up to 80% subscribed, a pair of analysts predicted, bucking the trend of weak bidder demand seen for much of the past year.

California’s carbon market should receive a boost when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) releases its latest quarterly auction results on Wednesday, May 24th. Despite these headwinds, we expect 50-65 million allowances (or between 67- 80%) of the 75 million current vintage offered will have sold at auction.

Reactions at FERC’s technical conference in early May show electricity generators are concerned about falling revenues making their power plants uneconomic and are looking for market modifications to remedy this situation. In the first part of a three-part guest post series Robbie Orvis explores why generator revenues are shrinking and how the decline isn’t a problem for reliability.