Yeah, it was a pretty stellar session! I’m pretty proud to be an Oregonian right now (and for the first time in my voting history, things are going my way – and not just on energy, we passed a civil unions bill, expanded our bottle bill for the first time in 30 years, stopped a number of environmental rollbacks and closed several environmental loopholes, passed a ‘rainy day fund’ to make sure we have a reserve in times of budget shortfalls and even sent a reform of Measure 37 to the ballot this fall! And all that with a one vote Democratic majority in the House. Think what we could get done with a 5 or 10 vote majority next session!)

The greenhouse gas reduction goals in the Integration Act are now in law, but they are not binding on any parties. That is, they are now the official, codified goals of the state government, but they have not yet been translated into specific binding policies – like a cap and trade program on the electricity sector – to achieve those goals in major polluting sectors. Check out my last post on Hawaii and New Jersey’s binding legislation to see the difference.

A few states (Maine, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon) have greenhouse gas reduction goals in statute (in state law) but no mechanisms to achieve them (other then pro-clean energy bills which will help). All of those states passed the legislation codifying the goals this year, so 2007 has been a big year! Several other states have goals set by governor’s executive order, but these are less permanent, as a new governor can undo them with a stroke of a pen. Setting them in statute makes them more permanent.

Others like California and now New Jersey and Hawaii have actually passed laws that authorize the creation of binding mechanisms to reduce emissions to achieve the targets.

Oregon and Washington aren’t there yet, but hopefully will be soon. The environmental community will be pushing for a load-based cap and trade bill on the electricity sector next session in Oregon and it may even get some traction during next year’s special session (likely in February 2008). With most of our clean energy agenda out of the way after this session, the environmental community can focus almost solely on global warming in the coming sessions. I believe there are plans for Washington to examine cap and trade as well, and both states are participating in the Western Climate Action Initiative which is considering a regional cap and trade program (like RGGI in the Northeast).

The Commission established by the Integration Act will be charged with recommending the policies that will be needed to hit the goals now in statute. And yes, they are pretty aggressive, more aggressive than California, New Jersey or Hawaii’s (which all aim for 1990 levels by 2020). They are also based on what our scientists tell us we need to do: arrest growth as soon as possible, and then ratchet down to at least 80% below current levels by 2050, preferably sooner, and preferably lower than that. We’ll see if we can hit these goals, but with a number of policies already moving forward – renewable energy standard, clean cars tailpipe standard, lots of pro-clean energy incentives – we are on the right track. The main missing component is a cap and trade on the electricity sector.