Climate Policy in the Western States

Climate Policy in the Western States

Session Moderator: Roel Hammerschlag, Stockholm Environment Institute

An overview of recent climate policy developments in the North American west is followed by three short descriptions of specific experiences, and a 30-minute roundtable discussion with audience participation.

Session Description

The Western Climate Initiative is a collaboration launched in February 2007 between the Governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington to meet regional challenges raised by climate change. Since the initial launch, the Governor of Utah and Premiers of British Columbia and Manitoba have also joined the Initiative. WCI is identifying, evaluating and implementing collective and cooperative ways to reduce greenhouse gases in the region. The partners have set a regional goal of achieving aggregate emissions reductions to reach 15% below 1990 levels by 2020. By August 2008 they will also complete design of a market-based mechanism to help achieve that reduction goal.
Over the coming year, design of the market-based mechanism will need to draw in part upon concepts of LCA; different designs will have different demands on those concepts. LCA may be required explicitly, as in the existing example of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard; LCA boundary-drawing exercises may appear implicitly when determining additionality and leakage associated with offsets generated outside of allowance markets; familiar but difficult choices surrounding resource allocation may appear in assignment of emissions rates to electricity. This session will be an attempt to explore and catalogue the experience the LCA community has to offer to the WCI process over the coming year.

Introduction to the Western Climate Initiative
Bill Drumheller – Oregon Department of Energy
(presentation)

Besides being a party to the Western Climate Initiative, the State of Oregon has had a greenhouse gas reduction strategy in place since April, 2005. Mr. Drumheller will review the WCI, providing an introduction to what it is, its origins, goals, and progress to date. He will outline the possible consequences it may have for state-level GHG regulation, GHG trading markets, and needs for life-cycle assessment.

Managing Climate Change in California
Alex Farrell – University of California, Berkeley
(presentation)

California’s Assembly Bill 32, signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger in September, 2006, requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop regulations and market mechanisms that will ultimately reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Those regulations will in turn spur specific responses by California citizens and industries, as well as additional government policies to assist in achieving the reduction goals. Professor Farrell will offer an overview of the various GHG-reduction actions likely to occur in California, and their relationships to LCA.

California Experience with Life-Cycle Assessment
Roland Hwang – Natural Resources Defense Council, San Francisco office

California policymakers have had over a decade experience in assessing vehicles and fuels on a lifecycle basis, starting with the California Zero Emission Vehicle program. It has institutionalized the use of LCA to evaluate vehicle and fuel pathways through the Assembly Bill 1007. The next, most ambitious phase of deploying this tool will be the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which requires fuel providers to reduce the GHGs associated with automotive fuels measured on a life-cycle basis. Mr. Hwang will review the triumphs and frustrations of the LCA community’s experience interfacing with regulatory programs and the challenges associated with successfully employing for a major piece of GHG regulation, the LCFS.

Lessons from the Open Market
Mike Burnett – Climate Trust

In 1997 the state of Oregon enacted the first law in the U.S. aimed at reducing greenhouse gas levels. This law requires new power plants built in Oregon to offset part of their emissions of carbon dioxide, and allows power plants to comply by paying mitigation funds to a non-profit organization that meets certain qualifications. The Climate Trust was chartered as such a qualified organization in 1997, and has since become one of the nation’s premier purchasers of project-related greenhouse gas offsets. Mr. Burnett will review the Trust’s experience with boundary-setting and other LCA issues arising from the purchase and resale of open-market GHG offsets.

Presenters

ALEX FARRELL is an Associate Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley and Director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center. He holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Ph.D. in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

BILL DRUMHELLER is a senior policy analyst in the Oregon Department of Energy.

ROLAND HWANG is a senior policy analyst in NRDC's energy program and works on transportation energy issues. Prior to joining NRDC, Roland was the director of the Transportation Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists in its Berkeley, California, office. He holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Davis, as well as a master's in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

MIKE BURNETT is the charter Executive Director of Climate Trust, located in Portland, OR, and serves on the Global Warming Advisory Group appointed by Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski. He earned an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida.

ROEL HAMMERSCHLAG (moderator) is an Associate Scientist in the U.S. Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute. He holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington, and a B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.