Five western governors from the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state have agreed to develop a regional plan to lower greenhouse gases, called the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative. This decision was prompted by the severity of the recent droughts in the south west and accompanying bad fire seasons.
While the specific goals are still certain, the approach will be based on creating market-based programs. In California, governor Schwarzenegger is promoting a cap-and-trade program, which lets companies that cannot meet their emission reduction targets to buy credits from those that surpass their carbon dioxide reduction goals.
A similar approach is coming into place in a number of Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states where they plan to impose caps on power plant emissions and encourage trading of allowances among utilities.
In California, Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation imposing an emissions cap on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants, with a goal of cutting greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment