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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