The Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a coallition of seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces, yesterday officially proposed their comprehensive plan to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The initiative aims to create a carbon cap-and-trade within participating territories to reduce emissions 15% below a baseline level set in 2005, by the year 2020.
What's not clear at this point is how tough the cap-and-trade program will be, and whether or not the WCI will receive approval by state and provincial legislatures.
Environmental groups have been urging the WCI to auction more emission permits than they give away to polluting industries, such as power plants and manufacturers. But industry leaders have been lobbying the WCI to hold off on a cap-and-trade program all together, to allow the federal governments time to create a single system.
Industry lobbyists might have enough support in participating state assemblies to block approval of WCI or skew the program to provide the majority of emissions permits for free--a practice that undermined the effectiveness of the European emissions trading scheme in its first few years.
The WCI plan was drafted by Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, and by the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
Read the Associated Press coverage.
