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In 1998 and 1999, at least 16 states passed legislative
resolutions criticizing international calls for mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. Since then, however, growing concern about climate change has
prompted many more states to control emissions.
By 2006, 21 states had enacted mandatory “renewable portfolio
standards” requiring a portion of electrical power to be generated from
renewable sources. And by this year, 30 states plus the District of Columbia
had adopted mandatory standards and another five states had set “goals” for
renewable use.
“Up to now, the biggest push for energy efficiency and renewable
energy has come from states,” says Victor Flatt, a professor of environmental
law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
The most visible state efforts involve groups of states, along
with some Canadian provinces, which have launched regional cap-and-trade
groups. Such alliances “attempt to level the playing field,” explains Ron
Ezekiel, an energy lawyer in Vancouver. Otherwise, a state or province acting
on its own to cap emissions could drive businesses into neighboring states
without such restrictions. States and provinces in cap-and-trade alliances
agree that the region as a whole will reduce its GHG emissions by a certain
percentage over time. Emitting industries must either cut their carbon
emissions by that amount or buy emissions “credits” or “offsets” from others
whose emissions are below the agreed-upon targets.
Established in 2005, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
(RGGI) in the Northeast was the first group. RGGI's cap-and-trade market
was launched last September, when six of the states auctioned the first
emission permits issued under the trading system. Electrical utility companies
bought the permits for about $40 million, which the states will spend mainly on
developing renewable energy and electricity demand-reduction
programs.
The Western Climate Initiative (WCI), the second group to form,
includes Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and
the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. Now
nine Midwestern states — Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Michigan, Kansas, Ohio and South Dakota — and Manitoba have agreed to develop a
third cap-and-trade market.
Within the groups, states are moving at different rates, wrote
Ezekiel and Ivan Gold, an energy attorney in Portland, Ore. In the WCI, for
example, California and British Columbia have already enacted legislation
authorizing cap and trade, while Washington and Oregon have not.
The state groups “plugged along until Obama got elected, but
then, with the strong possibility of a federal cap-and-trade scheme on the
horizon, everything ground to a halt,” says Ezekiel. States “were worried that
the federal program would preempt” regionally set targets and trading rules, he
says.
Some expect that U.S. climate legislation would preempt state
standards initially but then allow states to pursue more aggressive goals on
their own, if they chose. If a federal law is enacted requiring preemption of
state standards, the states in the WCI and the Midwestern group “would spend
their effort on the national plan,” says Ezekiel.
If the states pull out of regional schemes, efforts to set
significant emissions cuts in Canada could be adversely affected. Several
provinces are taking “strong climate measures,” wrote Liz Barrett-Brown, a
senior attorney for the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense
Council. However, in Alberta carbon-based fuel extracted from tar sands — sand
or clay saturated with dense petroleum — has become a valuable economic
commodity.
Canada's federal government and Alberta have made it clear
that protecting tar sands development “is more important than stemming global
warming pollution,” Barrett-Brown said. Indeed, “It's so important that
Canada has repeatedly meddled in U.S. efforts to reduce” its own carbon
emissions, such as by opposing California's low carbon-fuel standard
regulations.”
While regional carbon-trading schemes may be the highest-profile
initiatives, some states and localities have undertaken many other energy-use
programs. Some states and cities have hired “sustainability managers” to make
government power use more efficient, for example. In 2007, the Supreme Court
ruled, 5-4, in favor of 12 states that had jointly sued the federal
Environmental Protection Agency to get the agency to regulate GHG emissions.
The court ordered the EPA to review whether greenhouse gases threaten public
health and therefore fall under its regulatory purview. California has also sought a waiver from the EPA to regulate
tailpipe emissions on its own, which the Obama administration granted on June
30.
Not all states have advanced equally, however, says Suzanne
Watson, policy director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient
Economy. In general, the Northeast, the Northwest and California have taken the
lead, and the Southeast has been slowest to adopt energy-efficiency
measures.
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