Environmental News - American Chemical Society

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Environmental ▼News States take lead on climate change laws

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Judy Greenwald, program director with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Known as “renewable portfolio standards”, similar goals have been proposed twice on the federal level but never became law, says Greenwald. “The renewable portfolio standards have been contentious on the federal level because sometimes renewable power sources can be more costly than fossil fuels,” she points out. One significant example is Texas, where utilities support a standard that was enacted in 1999 by thengovernor George W. Bush (R), which mandates that 3–4% of electricity must come from renewables by 2009, Greenwald says. Texans’ enthusiasm for renewables stems from a desire for energy self-sufficiency after the oil-rich state became a net energy importer in the early 1990s, she says. The program encourages utilities to buy and sell renewable energy credits. As a result, wind power has grown from 187 megawatts to more than 1000 megawatts since 1999, and the state now wants to boost development of wind power to become the nation’s

largest renewable energy supplier, she adds. A new trend in greenhouse gas policy has been clusters of states joining regional compacts, which, because they have an enormous economic and environmental base, draw significant advantages from acting together, Rabe adds. Recent examples include the 10 northeastern states that are forming a CO2 cap-and-trade program; an agreement among California, Oregon, and Washington to cooperate in cutting greenhouse gas emissions; and the Climate Change Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 that the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers Conference is implementing. On another front, 11 states have implemented or are developing CO2 registries, two of which are mandatory, according to the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, an association of New England states. An additional 10 states in the northeast have agreed to join a CO2 cap-and-trade program that will require an emis-

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New Hampshire Montana

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Wisconsin South Dakota

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Wyoming Pennsylvania

Iowa Nebraska Illinois

Nevada Utah California

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Rhode Island Connecticut New Jersey Delaware

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Mississippi Georgia Alabama Texas

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Hawaii Alaska Puerto Rico

U.S. states marked in dark green along with Puerto Rico are moving ahead with their own programs to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

30A ■ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / JANUARY 15, 2004

© 2004 American Chemical Society

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

ore than half of U.S. states along with Puerto Rico are pushing ahead with programs to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the face of Bush Administration opposition to the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant. Motivated by economic self-interest and a desire to get a head start on federal legislation that they say is inevitable, the states have successfully implemented measures that have proven controversial at the federal level, such as renewable portfolio standards and emissions reporting. Moreover, in order to leverage limited funds, clusters of states have banded together to create the next generation of climate change law, policy analysts say. In an effort to budge the federal government, nearly a dozen states filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on October 23, asking the court to review the Bush Administration’s August decision that the Clean Air Act does not give EPA the authority to regulate emissions of CO2. “While federal politicians have been incapable of passing or reauthorizing any major environmental legislation for the last decade, the states have succeeded because they can emphasize the economic advantages of greenhouse laws and tailor them to meet the needs of their own state,” says Barry Rabe, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. The state action is strongly bipartisan and supported by widespread concerns over the impacts of global climate change— such as severe weather and crop loss—that some states are already experiencing, he says. For example, at least 16 states have passed laws that require power plants to generate a certain percentage of their total electricity output from renewable resources such as wind and solar power, says

sions reporting and reduction registry (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 351A). Meanwhile, the federal government has not moved beyond a voluntary CO2 emissions registry, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy. Wisconsin has the longest experience with reporting—since 1993 the state has required all utilities to report their annual CO2 releases. In 2003, the state launched a registry for utilities and any Wisconsin firm to voluntarily report reductions of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas, according to officials with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Other state actions include creating tax incentives to build refueling sites for vehicles using alternative fuels, improving mass transit systems, and launching energy conservation programs for homes and businesses, according

to a September 2003 report from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Through State and Local Transportation Planning (http://climate. volpe.dot.gov/papers.html). Air pollution policy being shaped at the state level first is nothing new; several clean air laws and the Toxics Release Inventory were first tried at the state level before Congress approved them, Greenwald says. State initiatives are determining the next generation of climate change law. Although some federal oversight is needed for programs such as emissions monitoring and trading, it is hard to say whether the federal government will step in over the coming years, Rabe says. Nonetheless, this rush of innovation will be limited by the enormous fiscal crunch that states are facing, he adds. —JANET PELLEY

Data reveal pulses of banned POPs Mysterious sources of banned compounds, such as PCBs, are causing peaks in air concentrations over the Great Lakes every six years, according to a novel analysis of long-term air quality data in this issue of Environmental Science & Technology (pp 414–422). The study, conducted by Stephanie Buehler, Ilora Basu, and Ron Hites from Indiana University, raises questions about whether more effort is needed to stop PCBs from escaping into the environment. Buehler and colleagues used data collected by the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (IADN), a joint U.S.–Canadian venture on the Great Lakes (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2002, 36, 354A–359A). An earlier study with these data showed that PCB concentrations in the air around the Great Lakes were declining and that the amount of pollutants deposited in the lakes was less than the amount that

volatilized into the atmosphere. “But we could still see periodicity in the data and were curious about other effects that could cause the air concentrations to change,” Hites says. The new work focused on fluctuating air concentrations of pesticides and PCBs determined from 1990 to 2001 by the IADN. Examining a longterm air quality data set from the network, the Indiana scientists were the first to apply a statistical method— autocorrelation analysis—to damp out the “noise” arising from the variable air concentrations of persistent organic pollutants over time, which helped researchers tease out subtle changes that had remained hidden until now. Autocorrelation provided a rigorous way to look at periodicity in long-term data sets, Hites explains. The analysis showed that both PCBs and the banned fungicide hexachlorobenzene have peak concen-

News Briefs Water policy lacking Few European countries effectively manage their water resources to protect against excess water consumption and pollution, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF’s Water and Wetland Index: Critical Issues in Water Policy across Europe assesses the water policies of 23 countries. Finland, Switzerland, and Belgium scored the highest, while Italy, Greece, and Spain ranked the lowest across a range of water issues. A big part of the problem, WWF finds, is the lack of integrated water management in related policy sectors, such as agriculture and land-use planning. In fact, most of the countries surveyed will be hard pressed to comply with the EU’s Water Framework Directive, which was designed to improve the management of freshwater rivers, lakes, and wetlands and must be implemented by 2004. To view the report, go to www.panda.org/ downloads/europe/wwireport.pdf.

Voluntary programs work More than 1 million products that meet Energy Star’s efficiency criteria have been sold to date, according to the U.S. EPA’s most recent annual report on voluntary programs, which addresses accomplishments for 2002. Among the achievements, noncarbon dioxide greenhouse gases—including methane, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—were reduced by 18 million carbon equivalents between 2001 and 2002, and the agency’s Green Power Partnership generated more than 500,000 megawatt hours of electricity from renewable sources in 2002. Change for the Better: Energy Star and Other Voluntary Programs is available at www.epa.gov/ appdstar/pdf/cppdann02.pdf.

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