Climate panel at impasse over emissions standards

The state advisory group won't produce some marquee items, but there will be "continual adjustments" in the effort to curb global warming.

By BILL McAULIFFE, Star Tribune

Last update: January 13, 2008 - 8:41 PM

Three weeks before its deadline for submitting pollution-fighting measures to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group has acknowledged that it's deadlocked on vehicle efficiency standards and probably won't propose a statewide carbon emissions reduction strategy.

Those two items are widely viewed as central to any plan that attempts to turn down global warming. But the panel's proposed vehicle efficiency standards, while at the heart of a struggle between environmental and auto industry representatives, are also bogged down by litigation between 17 states -- including Minnesota -- and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

And a state carbon-trading scheme, though called for by recent Minnesota energy legislation, has fallen out of favor in the face of multistate markets, regarded as more effective.

Pawlenty helped lead a group of six Midwestern governors and the premier of Manitoba in November in agreeing to pursue a regional carbon emissions cap and trade program.

The state climate panel Thursday also backed away from a committee's recommendation that would limit emissions from any new coal-burning electricity generators in Minnesota to three-quarters of the current utility average. Two major proposed plants, including the Mesaba Project in northern Minnesota, wouldn't make that cut.

State Commerce Deputy Commissioner Edward Garvey, who will present the climate panel's recommendations to Pawlenty on Feb. 1, said those issues don't necessarily mean Minnesota's role in the battle against climate change has already been compromised.

"It's a long-term problem that takes long-term thinking. There will be continual adjustments," Garvey said, adding that he wouldn't be surprised to see another advisory panel assembled in the near future.

In something of a preseason workout on climate change issues, nearly two dozen legislators were briefed Friday on the advisory group's 10 months of work. Members of three House and Senate committees, who won't convene until Feb. 12, raised questions about whether Minnesotans will be compelled or cajoled into reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and whether some sectors, such as transportation or utilities, will be asked to carry a disproportionate load.

"This gives us a taste of how difficult this process is," said Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, who led the briefing.

The advisory group did affirm several proposals by its Transportation Committee on Thursday, including a policy calling for the metro area to develop at double the population density now called for by the Metropolitan Council.

The full climate group will meet one last time Jan. 24.

In a separate action, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed papers Wednesday seeking to preserve Minnesota's ability to enact vehicle emissions standards in line with the California Clean Car standard, a 30 percent reduction in automobile greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung indicated Friday that the governor would be "willing to consider" a standard tougher than that signed into law by President Bush in December: 35 miles-per-gallon average fuel efficiency by 2020. But until the litigation is resolved, states are barred from adopting the California standard.

Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646