California’s landmark cap-and-trade program for controlling greenhouse gases gets underway this year, with the state’s first public auction slated for August 2012. The state still faces crucial questions, however, about how to spend revenues derived from its cap-and-trade auctions. The amounts of money at stake are significant, with the auctions expected to generate on the order of a billion dollars in the program’s first year and even more revenue thereafter.

This legislative season, industry stakeholders, community advocates, environmental groups, legislators and others are developing and advancing positions about how these monies should be spent.

Our symposium will look at a set of key questions surrounding revenue allocation decisions, with panels addressing the following sets of issues: (1) What values and goals should the state prioritize in developing a revenue-allocation strategy? (2) What legal constraints is the state under in allocating these revenues, and what are the best ways to address these constraints? And (3) What strategies and processes are the most useful, going forward, for resolving these questions and making decisions about revenue allocation that serve multiple communities and goals?