Nova Scotia is now officially a cap-and-trade province, but what carbon pricing will cost Nova Scotians remains a mystery.

Legislation that was passed in October came into effect on Thursday. On Friday, Environment Minister Iain Rankin detailed another step along the road toward a January 2019 start for the program.

His department has released what it is calling the "quantification, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions regulations."

These are the first set of rules needed to further the program, including determining the figure that will serve as the cap on emissions and how the province will be monitor compliance with the law.

Those new regulations set out which companies will need to report emissions, including:

Facilities generating at least 50,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

Oil and gas suppliers that import or produce 200 litres of fuel or more for consumption in Nova Scotia.

Natural gas distributors whose fuel, when burned, produces 10,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gas emissions per year

The Lafarge Canada cement plant in Brookfield is one of the companies that will fall under the legislation. (Robert Short/CBC)

The province estimates there are about two dozen companies that will fall under those three participant categories.

Large emitters include all of Nova Scotia Power's fuel-fired generating stations, the Lafarge cement plant in Brookfield, the ExxonMobil gas plant in Goldboro and the Northern Pulp paper plant in Pictou County.

Petroleum suppliers may include companies such as Imperial, Irving and Wilsons. Natural gas distributors are likely to include Heritage Gas and Irving.

'Demonstrating progress'

Jason Hollett, executive director of climate change with the Nova Scotia Environment Department, said it would be up to the companies to report emissions figures and have an independent company audit them.

"We can't craft a system without really good information and that's what we're here today to talk about," he told reporters during a briefing.

"You know cap-and-trade is a complex program. There are many steps that we need to go on, and you know we've done consultation on the program design. We've done consultation on these regulations. This is the next step of regulation," Hollett said.

"I think what we're doing today is demonstrating progress."

Costs to be passed to consumers

Companies will be expected to pay for this work themselves. Those costs, along with whatever they may have to pay for exceeding the yet-to-be-determined emission limits, will then be passed along to consumers.

But what that will mean to Nova Scotian families is unclear — and an answer to that question may still be months away.

"We need to find our baseline, we need to set caps and then we'll be able to have a discussion of what the impact will be," said Rankin.