Policy News - December 11, 2003

States take lead on climate change laws

More than half of U.S. states and Puerto Rico are pushing ahead with programs to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the face of Bush Administration opposition to the regulation of carbon dioxide (CO₂) as a pollutant. Motivated by economic self-interest and a desire to get a head start on federal legislation that they say is inevitable, the states have successfully implemented measures that have proven controversial at the federal level, such as renewable portfolio standards and emissions reporting. Moreover, in order to leverage limited funds, clusters of states have banded together to create the next generation of climate change law, policy analysts say.

In an effort to budge the federal government, nearly a dozen states filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on October 23, asking the court to review the Bush Administration's August decision that the Clean Air Act does not give EPA the authority to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide.

“While federal politicians have been incapable of passing or reauthorizing any major environmental legislation for the last decade, the states have succeeded because they can emphasize the economic advantages of greenhouse laws and tailor them to meet the needs of their own state,” says Barry Rabe, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. The state action is strongly bipartisan and supported by widespread concerns over the impacts of global climate change—such as severe weather and crop loss—that some states are already experiencing, he says.

For example, at least 16 states have passed laws that require power plants to generate a certain percentage of their total electricity output from renewable resources such as wind and solar power, says Judy Greenwald, program director with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Known as “renewable portfolio standards”, similar goals have been proposed twice on the federal level but never became law, says Greenwald. “The renewable portfolio standards have been contentious on the federal level because sometimes renewable power sources can be more costly than fossil fuels,” she points out.

One significant example is Texas, where utilities support a standard that was enacted in 1999 by then-governor George W. Bush (R), which mandates that 3–4% of electricity must come from renewables by 2009, Greenwald says. Texans’ enthusiasm for renewables stems from a desire for energy self-sufficiency after the oil-rich state became a net energy importer in the early 1990s, she says. The program encourages utilities to buy and sell renewable energy credits. As a result, wind power has grown from 187 megawatts to more than 1000 megawatts since 1999, and the state now wants to boost development of wind power to become the nation’s largest renewable energy supplier, she adds.

A new trend in greenhouse gas policy has been clusters of states joining regional compacts, which, because they have an enormous economic and environmental base, draw significant advantages from acting together, Rabe adds. Recent examples include the 10 northeastern states that are forming a CO₂ cap-and-trade program; an agreement among California, Oregon, and Washington to cooperate in cutting greenhouse gas emissions; and the Climate Change Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 that the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers Conference is implementing.

On another front, 11 states have implemented or are developing CO₂ registries, two of which are mandatory, according to the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, an association of New England states. An additional 10 states in the northeast have agreed to join a CO₂ cap-and-trade program that will require an emissions reporting and reduction registry (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 351A). Meanwhile, the federal government has not moved beyond a voluntary CO₂ emissions registry, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Wisconsin has the longest experience with reporting—since 1993 the state has required all utilities to report their annual CO₂ releases. In 2003, the state launched a registry for utilities and any Wisconsin firm to voluntarily report reductions of CO₂ or any other greenhouse gas, according to officials with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Other state actions include creating tax incentives to build refueling sites for vehicles using alternative fuels, improving mass transit systems, and launching energy conservation programs for homes and businesses, according to a September 2003 report from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Through State and Local Transportation Planning (http://climate.volpe.dot.gov/papers.html). Air pollution policy being shaped at the state level first is nothing new; several clean air laws and the Toxics Release Inventory were first tried at the state level before Congress approved them, Greenwald says.

State initiatives are determining the next generation of climate change law. Although some federal oversight is needed for programs such as emissions monitoring and trading, it is hard to say whether the federal government will step in over the coming years, Rabe says. Nonetheless, this rush of innovation will be limited by the enormous fiscal crunch that states are facing, he adds. —JANET PELLEY