Shaping the Climate Change Policy in Your State

Earlier this week I attended a meeting of the Utah Climate Change Stakeholders Task Force, which was created to provide policy recommendations to the Governor’s Blue-Ribbon Climate Change Commission.  Similar groups have been created in other states, including New Mexico, Arizona and California.  The Task Force is considering an extensive menu of policy options culled from a variety of state and federal initiatives, ranging from energy efficiency standards to tax incentives for conservation to emissions trading to mandatory reductions of greenhouse gases. 

Just as it took a long time and an almost infinite accumulation of human activities to raise the atmospheric CO2 to current levels, it will take a wide variety of different policy and legal initiatives to make any significant progress toward mitigation of greenhouse gases.

What we have seen in the last few years is an accelerated version of the evolution of the environmental movement in the United States, which once was the province of a few hirsute philosophers and mushy-headed activists (at least in the eye of the mainstream) and now, after several decades, has largely become mainstream itself.  With climate change, the evolution of public awareness has taken a few years, not decades.  The Utah Task Force cuts across the spectrum of industry, government, environment, and academic interests, all of whom are engaged in a serious effort to develop real policy options for the state to reduce manmade emissions of greenhouse gases.

Many states are well ahead of Utah in the development of state climate change programs.  California, New Mexico and Arizona are notable western examples.  Utah is also ahead of many states, some of which have no significant state resources devoted to the issue.  As a result, many companies with multistate operations are facing the prospect of differing and sometimes contradictory requirements to deal with their emissions.  The pressure is increasing on the federal government to develop a national program to address greenhouse emissions.  Such a program will likely preempt the bulk of mandatory state programs, but will also bring predictability and rationality to the methods used for inventorying, registering and reducing greenhouse gases.

It would well serve a company with any significant greenhouse gas issues, whether an energy producer or consumer, to get involved in state efforts to develop a climate change policy to assure that the resultant policy achieves state goals to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions without materially damaging the business.  The two objectives are by no means incompatible, and in fact there are opportunities for new business lurking in many of the policy options.  For example, energy efficiency may entail some additional up-front costs, but often will result in substantial savings that more than offset those costs, which can be reinvested in the business.

(Contributed by Jim Holtkamp, Environmental Compliance Attorney in the Salt Lake City Office)