Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said western states are considering a regional program to comply with a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule to slash power plant emissions.
“The western governors are now looking at how we can all work together,” Hickenlooper, who is up for re-election, said Tuesday at a Westminster, Colo., event hosted by the Colorado Business Roundtable.
The EPA has said regional programs, such as a cap-and-trade system, would be the easiest and most cost-effective way to comply with its proposal, which aims to cut power-sector emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Hickenlooper said he agreed that pooling the strengths of each state would make meeting the EPA targets easier, though he didn’t specifically endorse a cap-and-trade scheme.
While cap-and-trade has become a politically charged term nationally since a sweeping bill that would have created such a program passed the House but cratered in the Senate in 2010, some parts of the country have pushed ahead with them.
Nine states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system that started in 2009. Some say it could soon grow to 11 states by adding New Jersey, which left the initiative in 2011, and Pennsylvania, where gubernatorial front-runner Democrat Tom Wolf has said he would join the program.
California’s cap-and-trade system officially took off last year. That could expand to Oregon and Washington, where states have talked about collaborating with British Columbia in a West Coast carbon market.
While the Pacific Coast is already laying the groundwork for a potential carbon market, interior Western states also have a history of working together on energy and climate issues.
The Western Governors Association, for example, has worked with federal agencies to address drought, wildfire and flooding that are linked to climate change. An older collaboration of western states and Canadian provinces that began in 2007 also sought to develop a market-based system to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists blame for exacerbating climate change.
Colorado, Hickenlooper said, would be in good shape to meet EPA’s proposed rule regardless of whether a regional effort emerges.
“We’ve probably done pretty much everything they’re asking to be done anyway,” Hickenlooper said.
