Oregon leading the way on climate-change policy (OPINION)

shepherd's.JPG

The Shepherd's Flat wind farm near Arlington, as seen in February 2013.

(File Photo)

By Angus Duncan

Welcome to summer, 2015.

Heat records in Portland are set one day and broken the next.  So are forest fire records: 2 million acres burning across the west already and another 5 million in Alaska, with weeks of fire season remaining.  Smoke envelopes Portland, visiting misery on asthma sufferers.  Last winter's meager snow pack is long gone, reservoirs are emptying out, drought is declared in 23 of Oregon's 36 counties.  July flows on the Columbia were the lowest ever recorded, while regional temperatures were 5 percent above normal.

Give the president and EPA credit then (or blame, according to your politics):  They're finally taking climate head on, while the Republican Congress and presidential candidates dither.  The president and EPA propose to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants (40 percent of U.S. emissions) and gas wellheads and pipelines, over the heated (sorry!) objections of Sen. Inhofe and the coal-made-rich Koch brothers.

Meanwhile here at home, the Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board continues to align itself with oil companies and Republican legislators railing against Oregon's modest clean fuels standard for vehicles (a program already successfully functioning in California, at demonstrably manageable consumer cost).

Oregon's program will bring vehicle greenhouse gas emissions down 10 percent over 10 years.  It will cost pennies on the gallon in early years but save money for Oregon drivers as more carbon efficient vehicles and fuels find footing in the marketplace (speaking of facing up to costs, California is staring at drought losses of nearly $3 billion this year; Oregon's losses haven't been toted up yet) (Oh, add another $2 billion nationally for fighting wildfires).

Summer, 2015.  Not your grandmother's, etc.

EPA's Clean Power Plan will roll back carbon emissions at the nation's coal and gas power plants, 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.  We're already halfway to that goal from coal plant closures in progress.

Oregon and Washington are likely already in compliance with their 2030 federal power plant emissions targets, although we're still way short of meeting our state reduction goals.  We acted to end coal-burning at in-state plants, some 2,000 megawatts combined in Boardman, Oregon, and Centralia, Washington.  We've upped the ante on energy efficiency, now the second largest electricity resource in the region (behind hydro; ahead of coal and gas), at a third the cost of new generation.  Oregon is producing reliable electric power from 3,000 megawatts of wind and solar.  While other states are facing difficult compliance choices, we've made most of ours already.

Oregonians are saving money and headaches by being ahead of this regulatory curve, as many argued when these commitments were put in place over the last 35 years.  But the rest of the country has to fall in step for our efforts to blunt the worst effects of climate change.

So Oregonians have to deal also with the emissions from coal-generated power we import through PacifiCorp and PGE to heat and cool and light our homes and businesses - an estimated 15 million tons of CO2.

The EPA rule may enable us to work out a deal: Import more mountain-state wind energy, which complements Oregon wind by being strongest at different times of the year.  The imported wind can back down more mountain-state coal burning, and do so earlier than federal law requires.  If the coal states need some upfront flexibility to make this transition, Oregon carbon credits could be swapped with them.  Our supplier states get new wind projects.  We get the wind power - and the stable energy costs that come with it - and real progress toward Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

That would be progress, indeed, measured against the insanity of waiting passively for this summer's heat, fires and drought to become the rule, not the exception.

Angus Duncan is chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission and president of Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which provides environmental products and consulting.

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