By Courtney Kirkby

Global warming continues to clamour to the top of the public agenda. Trying to discern the level of confidence surrounding both the Canadian and US federal governments’ current plans for action on the issue is not a difficult task. Google the words “Harper” and “climate change”. The first four hits that came up for me read as follows: ‘Harper government given failing grade on climate change’, ‘Federal report scorns Harper's climate-change plan’, ‘Bush, Harper evade climate-change action’, and ‘Harper climate change plan nothing more than hot air’. Do the same for “Bush” and “climate change”, the third hit reads, “Bush covers up climate research.” In the article From Bali: moving beyond Kyoto…, Stefan Seum reported on the attempts made by Canada and the US to actually derail Kyoto negotiation talks to avoid agreeing to stricter enforcements. This information becomes more unsettling when we consider the United States and Canada rank first and seventh respectively in terms of overall carbon emissions and the myriad of negative impacts climate change is projected to have on our health, coastal settlements, migration, ecosystems, extreme weather events, water supply and economies. Fortunately, 2009 holds a glimmer of hope for North America as all US presidential candidates are committed to a cap-and-trade program, likewise it is expected that Canada will quickly follow suit. In the interim, in spite of federal governments that seem more determined to ignore climate change than to ward it off, more and more decentralized attempts to take action are sprouting up across the continent.

The Western Climate Initiative (WCI) is one of these attempts. The WCI crosses national boundaries, bringing together states and provinces in the US and Canada under one framework. It began in February 2007 when governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington came together to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Shortly after, the initiative announced it would set targets in line with scientific estimates that call for reductions to the tune of 50 to 85 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions from current levels by 2050. A broad-based cap-and-trade program was chosen as the primary mechanism for achieving that goal.

As time marched on, a number of new partners joined the initiative, including the provinces of British Colombia, Quebec and Manitoba, and the Governors of Montana and Utah. Beyond the WCI partners there are an increasing number of observers, including the states of Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, and Wyoming, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan, and the Mexican border states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, and Tamaulipas.

The WCI Partners came together again this March and created a list of draft recommendations for the following topics: regional cap-and-trade program, regulations, incentive programs, fee and tax programs and voluntary programs currently under way or planned in the region. The partners also plan to promote clean and renewable energy in region, stimulate economic investment and new jobs and reward innovations. The initiative is connected through the Climate Registry, a nonprofit North American partnership dedicated to providing an accurate, complete and transparent emissions reporting protocol. The Climate Registry will be the backbone of the imminent cap-and-trade program.

The WCI plans to commence trading within the next few years, in the meantime they are working out a number of details including how offsets will be incorporated into the trading scheme and at which point electricity transactions between members of the WCI and non-members should be regulated to avoid ‘leakage’. Energy Advantage newsletter took the opportunity to get three unique geographical perspectives on WCI. We spoke with Janice Adair, the Chair of the WCI, based in Olympia, Washington, with Andrea Merredew, Acting Executive Director and Juliane Schaible, Industry Consultant, the Climate and Green Initiatives Branch, Manitoba government and finally, Jean-Yves Benoit, an Economist from the Department of Climate Change, Quebec government.