CARB Chief Nichols: Yes on Federal Cap-and-Trade, No on Preempting State, Regional Efforts

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of California's Air Resources Board, supports the federal carbon cap-and-trade legislation working its way through Congress - but she doesn't want it to the brakes on state and regional efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

But that's what the current version of the House energy and climate bill would do, at least between 2012 and 2017.

So CARB and other groups involved in state and regional climate change efforts are lobbying to have that provision removed, Nichols said Thursday in San Francisco.

"The federal legislation that's moving forward looks as though it would preempt state cap and trade systems," Nichols told an audience at the California Public Utilities Commission. "We do not support that... we think state and national programs can work together."

Leaving states and regional efforts free to work within a federal program is particularly important given that Congress is likely to be less stringent than those efforts, she said (see House Energy Bill Draft: Cap-and-Trade Included).

Any federal program "will have to have some form of, in effect, subsidy for those parts of the country that will have a harder time" reducing their dependence on big greenhouse gas emitters like coal-fired power plants, she said.

Recent changes to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 that would give away a portion of carbon credits to emitters underscores that point  (see Come and Get 'Em: Gov't Plans to Give Freebies Under Cap-and-Trade). 

But, "If there's a more stringent state program, it will just require a state to make a decision that it wants to move faster than the national program, and that could have an impact on other states," she said.

California has its own law - AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 - that calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020. That's led to the state taking a number of steps that could serve as models for the rest of the nation (see California Approves Climate Change Master Plan and California Adopts Low Carbon Fuel Standard).

And regional efforts like the The Western Climate Initiative and the The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative should be able to move forward while a federal cap and trade program is set up, she said (see RGGI Generates $38.58M in Carbon-Permit Sale).

Instead of preemption, Nichols said the federal government could align its policy with states, as President Barack Obama has done with a proposed set of car fuel economy and tailpipe emission standards that closely match those developed by California (see Obama Proposes Higher Fuel Standards, Appeases California and Auto Industry).

Of course, all of this is based on the idea that Congress will indeed pass carbon cap and trade legislation, which is far from certain.