The state of Utah is pulling out of the cap-and-trade program planned by the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) for start in 2012.
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the state will maintain membership in the WCI, but will not participate in the cap-and-trade program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions among seven western US states and four Canadian provinces.
Republican governor Gary Herbert made the decision.
Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer made the same decision in February – the loss of the two states is undermines the strength of the trading scheme.
Utah’s previous governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr., signed on to the WCI, but he resigned to become US Ambassador to China. His successor, Herbert, says he doesn’t believe the scientific evidence on climate change.
Wisconsin Drops Clean Energy Legislation
Wisconsin’s state legislature concluded its session without voting on a bill that would have created a strong Renewable Energy Standard.
Democratic governor Jim Doyle worked with legislators for two years to craft a bill that would require 25% renewable energy supply for the state by 2025, but lawmakers got cold feet following reports that the measure would increase energy prices, according to an Associated Press report.
One of the bill’s sponsors says he hopes the governor will call a special session to take up the bill. Otherwise it will have to wait until next January’s session, after elections could shift control of the state back to Republicans.
"This bill epitomizes everything that’s wrong with lawmaking in modern-day America. Timid politicians, aggressive special interest groups, passive news media and a general unwillingness to do anything that could be controversial," Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political science professor, told the AP.
Nebraska Supports Wind Development
Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed into law legislation that eliminates barriers to wind power development in the state, after it passed through the state legislature with a 49-0 unanimous vote.
The legislation, which provides private renewable energy generators with a procedural route through the Nebraska Power Review Board’s regulatory process, allows private facilities to be certified as renewable energy exporters and exempts them from the Nebraska’s eminent domain law. The legislation also repeals the personal property taxation of wind turbines and replaces it with a nameplate capacity tax of $3,518/MW per year.
The law takes effect July 15, 2010.
Veterans of the public power industry called the bill the biggest change since the inception of Nebraska public power in the 1930s, when public power entities first brought electricity to a rural and sparsely populated state overlooked by private electric companies.
“It is now Nebraska policy, firmly placed within the state’s public power framework, to encourage the private development of wind generation,” said Rich Lombardi, American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) Nebraska representative. “This legislation removes tax and regulatory obstacles that have stymied wind development in Nebraska for quite some time. The market for tapping Nebraska winds is obviously great–in fact, we understand that the first applications for wind export projects are already being readied for submission.”
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