State global warming task force OKs package

By Thomas Content
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A package to reduce Wisconsin's greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades won overwhelming support this afternoon from members of a state global warming task force.

With three of 29 members voting no, the task force adopted a compromise that calls for the state to bring down emissions linked to global warming by 22 percent by 2022.

The proposal also endorses a plan to reduce the state's global warming emissions by 70 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Among those voting in favor of the deal: the state's five investor-owned utilities, businesses including S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. and Johnson Controls, as well as environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Clean Wisconsin, the Nature Conservancy and 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.

Voting against the recommendations were three manufacturing firms, Ariens Co., NewPage Corp. and General Motors Corp.

Key elements of the package include recommendations to boost funding for energy efficiency and conservation, as well as mass transit. In addition, the proposal recommends that the state move to supply 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2013, and 25 percent by 2025. Finally, the recommendations would relax some of the restrictions currently in place against building.

The vote came after a series of wording changes designed to address concerns raised primarily by Clean Wisconsin, the Sierra Club and the Citizens' Utility Board, a utility customer advocacy group.

"I hope others in this room will join us to do everything we can to make recommendations that come out of this group a reality without delay, given the gravity of the issue," said Roy Thilly, co-chairman of the task force.

Technically, today's vote was not a final vote on the plan, but a vote on compromise language trying to resolve some of the most controversial elements of the platform. A final report is expected to be adopted and forwarded to Gov. Jim Doyle next month.

John Pearse, controller at the GM Janesville assembly plant, said the company supports the vast majority of the recommendations in the plan, but added that the company can't support the final proposal because the state plan endorses stricter vehicle-emission standards adopted by the state of California.

Tom Scharff of NewPage said he appreciated the fact that Thilly and Tia Nelson, who co-chairs the panel, included language designed to provide incentives and assistance in reducing emissions for energy-intensive industries facing global competition, such as the paper industry. But NewPage and other paper-makers are closing mills and scaling back production because of the economic downturn, he said.

"It's going to increase costs substantially, at a time when we are already shutting down equipment," Scharff said. "We can no longer afford more costs."

Rick Kuester, executive vice president of Wisconsin Energy Corp., said the utility supported the compromise package, though it doesn't support every policy proposed. The company, parent company of We Energies, is concerned that some of the policies will result in higher rates for customers, he said.

Aggressive investment in energy efficiency in the near term will help bring down costs for customers in and provide more ability to pay for more costly initiatives, said Susan Stratton, executive director of the Energy Center of Wisconsin.

Nelson said she became frustrated with efforts in Washington, D.C., to deal with global warming during the decade she spent working on climate issues at the Nature Conservancy. She said was proud of the Wisconsin panel's work over the past year.

"I find myself much more hopeful today than the day I left Washington," she said. "I really think the states have become the drivers of climate change policy and that Wisconsin is playing an important and unique role."