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The Week in Germany: Business and Technology April 13, 2007 "California Green Rush": US Lawmakers Hope to Learn from European Emissions Trading Experience At its spring summit in March, the European Council cemented its role at the vanguard of efforts to prevent global climate change with a historic commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. On the heels of a landmark Supreme Court decision that regulators do have the authority to cap greenhouse gas emissions, state and federal policy makers are studying Europe’s experience as they craft their own climate protection legislation. About 10 officials from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration recently completed a fact finding mission that brought them to Brussels, Bonn, and London. The delegation, which included California’s top environmental official, Linda Adams, met with European policymakers, parliamentarians, and business leaders to learn about the mechanisms Europe is using to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Last fall, California adopted the first climate protection legislation in the US and pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill gives the California Air Resources Board the authority to set up an emissions trading system, which would create incentives for companies to cut their emissions by issuing limited permits for CO2 emissions and allowing companies to buy and sell their permits. An EU-wide emissions trading system has been in place since 2005, and the California delegation hoped to gather information about the launch of the EU program as it considers implementing its own emissions trading scheme with four other western states. In fact, “cap and trade” systems are something of an American export. While Adams declared in her blog that the European Union is “more than a decade ahead of us on a carbon trading system”, she said that her European conversation partners pointed out that emissions trading was pioneered in America. The reauthorized 1990 Clean Air Act included a successful program to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by issuing limited permits and creating a market for them. Emissions trading is back on the agenda of federal lawmakers as well. As a recent Washington Post article pointed out, at least five Senate proposals call for a cap and trade approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and the Senate Energy and National Energy Resources committee recently heard testimony from European officials and business leaders on Europe’s experience in launching emissions trading. Links: California Environment Secretary Linda Adam’s Blog European Council: Historic Agreement on Climate Protection EU Pins Hopes on US States to Act on Climate Change Europe’s
Problems Color U.S. Plans to Curb Carbon Gases
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