Gov. Jerry Brown signs clean energy pact with two states, Canadian province

SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new pact Monday to formally align California's clean energy policies with those of Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia.

The agreement commits all four governments to work toward ways to put a price on carbon pollution, require the use of lower-carbon gasoline and set goals for reducing greenhouse gases across the region.

The nonbinding blueprint also sets new targets for electric vehicles — aiming for 10% of all new cars and trucks in the region to be emission-free by 2016 — and calls for the construction of a bullet-train system from Canada to California.

"These are modest steps," Brown told about 100 people at the San Francisco offices of computer hardware maker Cisco Systems, with sweeping views of the bay behind him. "We have to take action."

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat elected last year after 12 years in Congress, said he hoped the accord would send a message to the nation's capital, where Democrats and Republicans have been unable to agree on sweeping environmental legislation.

"Congress has ground to a halt because of climate deniers," he said. "I hope this can restart a national conversation, and hopefully action, on climate change."

This is not the first time California has sought cooperation with regional governments on environmental policy. All four participants in the new pact were members of the Western Climate Initiative, a 2007 regional accord intended to create a joint carbon-trading market.

Efforts to establish that market, which would have set a common levy on carbon emissions and established regional pollution caps, stalled in the Oregon and Washington legislatures.

Monday's agreement could face similar obstacles, but it gives the states more leeway to devise their own ways of charging polluters.

California has a carbon market that allows large polluters to buy the right to emit greenhouse gases. British Columbia has had a carbon-pollution tax since 2008. Either method would be permissible under the new blueprint.

Oregon Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber said his state has not yet decided which policy to pursue.

In California, business groups that have voiced opposition to the state's emission targets said Monday's announcement was a positive step.

"We have always believed that we need a broad market that includes not only other states but other countries, in order for it to function efficiently," said Shelly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the AB 32 Implementation Group, a business organization that has opposed state pollution controls.

The group is named for the 2006 law requiring California to reduce its greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

"We have long argued that a state-only approach would crush the state economy," Sullivan said.

Brown has made climate change policy a centerpiece of his administration, vowing not to wait for it to come from Washington, D.C., where President Obama's plans to tighten controls on pollution have been stuck in a deadlocked Congress.

Earlier this year, Brown traveled to China and has signed agreements with that country to work toward slowing pollution that leads to global warming.

California has taken a leading role in efforts to cut carbon emissions. It has established a market to set a price that companies must pay to pollute. The state plans to link its market with one in the Canadian province of Quebec next year.

Although the agreement signed Monday is not legally binding, environmentalists in California are hopeful that it could serve as a road map for the next wave of state policy.

"It sends a signal to the Legislature," said Dan Jacobson, legislative director for Environment California, an advocacy organization, "to start introducing the bills to put these goals into law."

anthony.york@latimes.com

via http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-brown-climate-20131029,0,140122.story#axzz2j3QS5Rql

Gov. Jerry Brown Works to Spread California's Green Doctrine

 When Gov. Jerry Brown called on his fellow governors at a conference in Washington last week to embrace a California-style pursuit of cleaner air, he was doing more than reinforcing the state's image as an environmental trailblazer. He was trying to protect its economy.

Brown needs other states and the federal government to adopt key elements of California's environmental agenda, such as reaping more energy from renewable sources and capping greenhouse gas emissions, if those programs are to be successful here.

The state's aggressive pursuit of environmental goals has provided a new impetus for green jobs and federal subsidies. But the programs are costly to businesses, raising the price of their energy and forcing them to upgrade to cleaner manufacturing technologies.

If others don't go green, California could become an outlier, saddling businesses with costly new power while neighboring states continue to use traditional, cheaper energy, experts say. If the efforts under way in California spread to become the new normal, however, all will benefit from economies of scale.

If more states order power companies to limit their use of fossil fuels, for example, the incentive will grow nationwide for firms to develop cheaper alternatives, leaving California consumers less exposed to spikes in electricity rates.

Likewise, if greenhouse gas caps are widely implemented, the state's landmark climate change law is more likely to be successful. Cleansing the air is "clearly not something California can do on its own," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute.

The authors of California's emissions law said as much in its text: The ultimate goal is "encouraging other states, the federal government and other countries to act."

Brown has vowed to keep pushing to "decarbonize the economy." He wants to advance the state's mandate for renewable energy — already the most ambitious in the nation — further so California will receive as much as half its power from renewable sources within 20 years. In the courts, his administration is defending a state law, challenged by some oil and ethanol companies, that requires gasoline to contain 10% less carbon by the end of the decade.

In Washington, Brown pushed for others to join in. "We can't do it alone," he told state leaders gathered for the National Governors Assn. meeting. "We need other states.... We need China. We need India."

Many elements of California's environmental blueprint have already become a national model as other states and the federal government have adopted some version of them over the past several decades.

Using its leverage as the largest automobile market in the nation, California in 1975 required the use of catalytic converters to help reduce pollution from cars. Six years later, the federal government required them in all cars sold in the U.S.

A California law that passed more than 10 years ago limiting tailpipe emissions was the basis for a federal standard imposed by the Obama administration in 2010.

The state's global warming law, called AB 32 and passed in 2006, has been partly imitated elsewhere.

It was a model for federal legislation to curb greenhouse gas limits in 2010. President Obama failed to get the measure through Congress, but the Environmental Protection Agency created new rules to roll back emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The California law was grounded in the creation of a market that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Owners of power plants and factories buy and sell permits to release the gases into the atmosphere.

The system, called "cap and trade," limits the volume of air pollutants that may be released in California each year but permits high polluters to buy the right to emit more.

Many business interests say cap-and-trade is too costly, though they may have fewer objections if that market grows large enough.

"The current system amounts to a tax to continue doing business in the state," said Shelly Sullivan, executive director of the AB 32 Implementation Group, a coalition of California businesses that has opposed many of the state's environmental regulations. "A broader system would create a larger market and, depending on how it's constructed, could address some of our concerns."

A limited number of cap-and-trade markets are in place in other parts of the country, although their scope is more modest than California's. Nine northeastern states, for example, have a carbon market aimed at reducing only power plant emissions.

Another landmark California environmental law requires power companies to generate more electricity from wind, solar and other "renewable" sources. Under a bill signed by Brown in 2011, California utilities must generate one-third of their power that way by 2020 — the most ambitious such standard in the nation.

The California Public Utilities Commission estimates that reaching that goal could propel energy costs to nearly 11% above what they would be from gas-fired energy plants.

While 30 other states have also set requirements for power companies to utilize more renewable energy, their mandates are far more modest. Obama has been unsuccessful in his efforts to persuade Congress to pass a national mandate, and the prospects for Washington embracing more California-style energy policies is unclear.

via LA Times