Plans Across the Water: California and U.K. Strike Climate Deal

GreenBiz

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 1, 2006 - California and the U.K. government are preparing to create their own climate treaty that sidesteps the Bush administration's official climate policy to create a trans-Atlantic market for greenhouse gases.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and British prime minister Tony Blair on Monday announced their collaboration during their meeting in Los Angeles on Monday. They were joined by business leaders to announce the agreement under which Britain and California will collaborate on research into clean energy technologies and California will study the British experience of greenhouse gas emissions trading.

The European Union already operates such a system, issuing companies in energy-intensive industries with permits to produce a set amount of carbon dioxide.

Blair said the agreement with California "will allow us to explore how both of us ... can combine together in research, in technology, but also in trying to evolve market mechanisms that allow us to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."

Both sides will collaborate on reducing emissions from vehicle transportation, sharing knowledge gained through California’s "Hydrogen Highway" project to encourage use of hydrogen-fueled cars, and the UK’s experience of obliging oil companies to include a certain amount of biofuel in their gasoline and diesel fuels.

The California governor was quick to point out that the agreement is not an attempt to circumvent the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on climate that has been signed by dozens of countries including the U.K., but not the U.S. "This is an agreement to share ideas and information. It is not a treaty," said Adam Mendelsohn, Schwarzenegger's communications director. "Right now, all we are doing is talking about sharing ideas."

Blair said the agreement with California "will allow us to explore how both of us ... can combine together in research, in technology, but also in trying to evolve market mechanisms that allow us to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."

But environmentalists were not impressed. Craig Noble of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the pact had symbolic value, but "the time for talk is over." He urged passage of a proposal, pending in the state legislature, that would make California the first state to cap greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources. "The bottom line is, voluntary is not enough," Noble said.