Midwest leaders agree on plan to reduce CO2

A regional, market-based pollution strategy for carbon dioxide mirrors an earlier effort to reduce acid rain.

By Bill McAuliffe and Paul Walsh, Star Tribune

Last update: November 15, 2007 - 9:12 PM

Through a system of buying and selling rights to emit carbon dioxide, nine Midwestern states and the province of Manitoba will work together to reduce air pollution linked to global warming.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was joined by eight other governors and the premier of Manitoba in an agreement Thursday on a regional, market-based strategy for controlling carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and other facilities.

Pawlenty, chairman of the National Governors Association, stressed the need for collective action. "No one state can solve this problem by itself," he said. He also stressed that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can also bring economic opportunities that could make the region "the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy."

The Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, signed at the Midwestern Governors Association (MGA) Energy Security and Climate Change Summit in Milwaukee, would set targets for reducing pollution and follow up within 12 months with a regional "cap and trade" system. This arrangement, used in the past to reduce pollution linked to acid rain, would allow low-polluting enterprises to sell "credits" to big emitters, such as coal-burning electrical generators.

Combined with incentives to develop alternatives to fossil fuel energy, the aim would be to steadily reduce carbon dioxide pollution and to encourage big polluters to adopt cleaner technology.

Similar multistate compacts have already been established in the western United States and New England. Pawlenty said he believes a national agreement is likely to follow.

Seventy-one percent of Midwest electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, compared with a national average of 49 percent.

Also signing the accord were Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association, governors of Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, and Manitoba premier Gary Doer. Governors of Ohio, Indiana and South Dakota signed on as "observers," meaning they will evaluate whether to participate fully in the programs as they develop.

The agreement calls for a number of strategies on energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction and renewable energies. It will allow participating states to follow guidelines they may have already adopted.

Pawlenty signed a bill earlier this year that sets a goal of reducing Minnesota's greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent by 2050 in Minnesota. It also requires an increase in the number of ethanol-added fuel pumps in Minnesota from 300 to 1,800 in four years, and that utilities produce 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2015. The latter is considered one of the toughest requirements in the nation.

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