Other key stories below: Wind Power Record Set in Texas — 15.2% of Demand; EPA Plans to Regulate Water from Fracking

California Becomes First State to Adopt Cap-and-Trade Program

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday unanimously adopted the nation’s first state-administered cap-and-trade regulations, a landmark set of air pollution controls to address climate change and help the state achieve its ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The complex market system for the first time puts a price on heat-trapping pollution by allowing California’s dirtiest industries to trade carbon credits. The rules have been years in the making, overcoming legal challenges and an aggressive oil industry-sponsored ballot initiative.

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A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) told members of a New Hampshire town hall last week, “I don’t think carbon is a pollutant in the sense of harming our bodies.” His campaign further explained his remarks, saying that “Gov. Romney does not think greenhouse gases are pollutants within the meaning of the Clean Air Act, and he does not believe that the EPA should be regulating them.”

Romney’s recent position not only contradicts that of the Obama administration, but that of his own administration when he served as governor.

While in office, Romney pushed state regulations aimed at enforcing emissions standards on power plants for four “pollutants,” including carbon dioxide. Here is an excerpt from the regulation, 310 CMR 7.29, as it stood in May of 2004, over a year after Romney took office:

The purpose of 310 CMR 7.29 is to control emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), mercury (Hg), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂) and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) (together “pollutants“) from affected facilities in Massachusetts. 310 CMR 7.29 accomplishes this by establishing output-based emission rates for NOx, SO₂ and CO₂ and establishing a cap on CO₂ and Hg emissions from affected facilities.

After the Department of Environment instigated the broader regulation 310 CMR 7.29 to clean up the state’s “Filthy Five” power plants in 2001, the Romney administration took the initiative on developing the emission limits and implementation schedule for carbon dioxide. Romney’s advisers included Harvard University professor John Holdren, now Obama’s top science adviser.

At a 2003 press conference at Pacific Gas and Electric’s power plant in Salem, Massachusetts, Romney publicly promised that he would “enforce without compromise” the emissions regulations. While announcing his decision to deny PGE’s request for more time to comply with the new standards, he attacked the power company for dragging its heels with regards to 310 CMR 7.29: “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people. And that plant kills people.”

In his 2004 Climate Protection Plan, Romney promoted his anti-pollution scheme:

With their strong advocacy and support, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to finalize four-pollutant (“4P”) regulations in 2001, requiring reductions in nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide for our older power plants.

In 2005, Romney proudly announced “strict state limitations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants” using a cap-and-trade plan:

Massachusetts continues to be committed to improving air quality for all our citizens. These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress in the battle to improve our environment. They help us accomplish our environmental goals while protecting jobs and the economy.”

After environmentalists criticized Romney for his stance on a wind farm project, former press secretary Julie Teer defended her boss’ environmental record in a 2005 email by citing “his aggressive enforcement of the Filthy Five regulations.”

Romney is now painting himself as a anti-regulation skeptic, but his record on carbon pollution is practically indistinguishable from Obama administration policy.

–Sarah Bufkin

by Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity

When faced with regulation, industry will generally choose the cheapest way to comply.  As long as they achieve stringent pollution goals, this is a good thing:  Economically efficient rules get less resistance and blowback than those that create unnecessarily heavy burdens on business.

So it makes sense for EPA to choose more flexibility whenever legally possible.  But in upcoming proposals to control greenhouse gases, some signs point to a political calculation that may steer the agency away from this tactic.

Using authority under the Clean Air Act, EPA is expected to propose greenhouse gas standards for power plants and refineries. Under the rules, new and existing sources will likely be required to achieve some kind of emissions reductions, but how, and how much, is still very much up in the air.

Legally, the government has wide legal latitude to use a range of flexibility mechanisms to keep costs down, and thereby set stronger standards.  Certain sections of the Clean Air Act state with considerable certainty that the agency may consider a range of options in setting standards, including economic incentives and market mechanisms.

In a recent study, several think tanks (including Policy Integrity) found a number of options to make the anticipated rule more flexible.  Programs like tradable performance standards or emissions budgets could most likely be used to regulate existing sources.  EPA and the states should also be able to allow trading between different regulated source types and utilize flexible tools like allowance banking and price floors.

EPA should take advantage of this considerable leeway to allow industry to reduce their pollution as cheaply as possible. Decades’ worth of research has shown that environmental regulations that allow for flexible compliance are most effective at keeping costs down and promoting innovation. And when costs come down, stronger environmental targets can be achieved.

Despite the no-brainer status of this decision, partisan politics seems to have gotten in the way.

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Yes, they call it something slightly different — and it has a very different goal than the original cap-and-trade:

The Cut, Cap and Balance bill, which President Barack Obama threatened to veto on Monday, would slash funding for government programs, implement spending caps that opponents and supporters have called “draconian” and condition a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling on congressional approval of a constitutional amendment requiring the federal government to balance its budget. The bill, introduced last Friday, didn’t go through a single legislative committee — a tactic Republicans vowed to avoid.

And that’s how the centrist Politico spins it.

In reality, the bill would permanently destroy the competitiveness of the country — forever gutting efforts to invest in clean energy, reducing oil dependence, R&D of any kind, infrastructure, education, and the like, just as we are struggling to come out of a deep recession.  The bill would make it incredibly difficult to respond to major crises or disasters in the future, like, say, Dust-Bowlification, increasingly devastating extreme weather events, sea level rise, the poisoning of our oceans, and the like.

Let’s call it cap-and-trade-away-the-country’s-future.

 

 

First, the bad news:

Facing continued litigation, California officials will delay enforcement of the state’s complex carbon trading program until 2013, state Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols announced Wednesday.

The delay in the cap-and-trade program, which was slated to take effect in January, is proposed, she said, because of the “need for all necessary elements to be in place and fully functional.”

Nichols testified that delay would not affect the state ability to return emissions of “planet-warming gases to 1990 levels by 2020.”  It’s worth noting that the cap-and-trade program accounts for only “a fifth of the planned cuts under the state’s 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.”

Derek Walker [of EDF] praised the delay as a prudent step that “will give the cap-and-trade program its best chance of success…. Cap-and-trade … cuts climate change pollution at the lowest possible cost. By getting this right, California will once again serve as a model that other states and countries can follow.”

On the other side ever warming planet, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon pollution is accelerating its cap-and-trade efforts:

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