Earth Equity News

Could Western States Band Together to Comply With Clean Power Plan? By Natasha Geiling, Climate Progress, 8/5/2015. "According to both private and government sources that spoke with ThinkProgress, it’s unlikely that the Clean Power Plan will immediately inspire Western states — mainly California, Oregon, and Washington, but also potentially Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — to join into any sort of formal RGGI-like pact. But that doesn’t mean that those states — and the utilities that operate there — aren’t looking at each state’s Clean Power Plan as a chance to build some kind of regional energy market across the West.

“There has been a lot of discussion particularly in the West, where states are more loosely connected across the electricity grid, about an arrangement where states could adopt some common elements, and thereby allow the compliance entities in that state to trade among states that might not have submitted a joint plan but still have common elements in their plans,” Colin McConnaha, greenhouse gas specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, told ThinkProgress.