Oregon begins work on market system for cutting greenhouse gases

Washington (Platts)--26Apr2005

Oregon is crafting a market system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from
its power plants, state officials and environmentalists said Tuesday. The
state's decision stems from a broader November 2004 agreement with California
and Washington, known as the West Coast Governors Global Warming Initiative,
to develop coordinated policies to curb GHG emissions from all major sources.

Sam Sadler, an Oregon Department of Energy spokesman, said his agency will
likely head a public effort to set up the program, which will involve
distributing allowances based on how much power plants generate. The state has
not set specific emissions limits, Sadler said, adding that the state has
refrained from calling it a cap-and-trade program because Oregon's favors
allocating allowances based on electricity load instead of the fuel input
approach used by the US Environmental Protection in its sulfur dioxide and
nitrogen oxide programs.

"We found it confuses people to call it cap-and-trade, even though that it
effectively is that," he said. Oregon has not developed a timeline to set up
the market program, but Sadler said his agency is coordinating the effort with
the governor's office. Angus Duncan, president of the Bonneville Environmental
Foundation, said a state advisory panel on implementing the global warming
initiative recommended to Gov Ted Kulongoski in December 2004 that a law
setting up the GHG market be passed in the 2007 session of the state
Legislature.

This story was originally published in Platts Electricity Alert
http://www.electricityalert.platts.com

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