posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 9:52 AM by Gunnar Birgisson

States Pursue Cleaner, Sustainable Energy, but not Too Quickly

While climate change legislative proposals and potential energy legislation continue  to muddle in the halls of Congress, individual states keep on creating their own requirements for checking green-house gas emissions and requiring greater use of renewable energy within their borders.  Whether this will lead to a mosaic of disparate standards and obligations or eventual standardization across state lines remains to be seen.

Despite relatively limited renewable energy production potential and a sharply growing population in Florida, Governor Charlie Crist (R) recently issued several executive orders intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase renewable energy use.  The orders direct the state’s public service commission to initiate a rulemaking intended to achieve a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 20%; call for capping utility greenhouse gas emissions at their 2000 level by 2017, reducing them to their 1990 level by 2025, and to 20% of their 1990 level by 2050; and implement other measures such as new interconnection standards, net metering, and requiring state agencies to take additional energy efficiency measures.

Hawaii already has an RPS, and its legislature recently added climate change legislation.  Its objective is to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the state to 1990 levels by 2020.  New Jersey – a densely populous state with limited renewable energy production – also added climate change legislation to its existing RPS requirements.  Under the new law, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced approximately 15% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. 

California and Washington already have both an RPS and climate change legislation.  While the mandates of all these states vary, they all push far into the future – 2050 – the most severe level of cuts, a move that may be reflect the technological challenges, but also resonates like a promise to start a diet tomorrow, or later.