Taking Steps on Energy Conservation: Leaders to Address Strategy for Midwest

By Thomas Content, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jan. 10–Regional and state plans to tackle global warming emissions will take another step next month, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

A meeting in Chicago on Feb. 11-12 will mark the next step toward enacting a Midwestern strategy to boost renewable energy and tackle global warming, the governors of Wisconsin and Minnesota said Wednesday.

At the meeting, “not only government leaders but also people from private businesses and nonprofits will be asked to work with us and to talk with us about how we can move toward sharply reducing our carbon emissions in the coming years,” Doyle said.

The meeting is a follow-up to an energy and climate summit held in Milwaukee in November.

During a news conference in St. Paul with Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Doyle also said he expects a report from his Wisconsin climate change task force by the end of February.

At the November meeting, governors from Minnesota, Wisconsin and four other Midwest states signed an accord that would set up a trading system to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by as much as 80% by 2050.

Doyle said he will soon end his term as chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association, but added he and Pawlenty will continue to collaborate as leaders in the global warming and renewable energy initiative launched in Milwaukee in November.

The goals are in line with targets set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when it issued its latest report on global warming last year.

Since the November meeting, staffs of several states have been meeting to refine proposals for initiatives, such as:

–Beefing up the Midwest’s network of transmission lines to allow more renewable power to be transported from Iowa and Minnesota to states that aren’t as windy,

–Setting up a network of gas stations selling the E85 blend of ethanol along the Midwest’s interstate highway system.

State employees are working on the Midwest initiative at the same time that a task force appointed by Doyle is developing recommendations for Wisconsin to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.

Doyle originally sought a report from the task force by the end of 2007. An interim report with some recommendations is now expected to be issued by the end of February.

At a meeting last week, task force co-chairman Roy Thilly said the group’s interim report would likely include proposals that Wisconsin could move ahead with right away, such as plans to increase funding and targets for energy efficiency that would cut emissions, and a call to change the way electric utilities earn profit.

Such a change would no longer link utility profits with sales, which makes utilities less inclined to embrace energy efficiency.

Other proposals that could be in the interim report, Thilly said, include calls for detailed studies on issues such as wind generation in the Great Lakes and the potential for storing carbon dioxide underground in Wisconsin.

The Midwestern governors’ plan calls for setting up a regional carbon trading system by 2010. That system would yield emission reductions over time, whether by making coal-fired power plants more costly or boosting financial incentives for renewable power and energy efficiency.

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