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St. Louis Energy and Environment Conference Calls for Expanded Interagency Relationships November 14, 2000 TO: State Environmental Commissioners FROM: Robbie Roberts, Environment Council of the States (ECOS) RE: Follow-up on Energy and Environmental Officials
Conference-September 24-27, 2000, We are attaching summary materials from the recent meeting sponsored by NASEO, STAPPA/ALAPCO, NARUC and ECOS discussing ways in which energy and environmental officials can work more effectively together now and in the future. The groups generally agreed that the conference in St. Louis, "Energy and the Environment: The Second National Conference of Policy Makers Working Together," was a great success. Our groups committed to continue working together to build relationships among the agencies at the state level, to build mutual understanding on the linkages between energy and environmental programs and to educate each other on integrated approaches. The participants and organizational sponsors are moving forward to promote innovative state approaches recognizing the connections between energy and air emissions, electric industry restructuring, power supply options, etc. After you have had the opportunity to review these materials, please feel free to contact your respective organizations so that we can move this process forward. The primary contacts in each of the organizations are: 1) Steve Brown (ECOS) - 202-624-3667/ sbrown@sso.org; 2) Bill Becker (STAPPA/ALAPCO) - 202-624-7864/ bbecker@sso.org; 3) Jeff Genzer (NASEO Counsel) - 202-467-6370/ jcg@dwgp.com; and 4)Charles Gray (NARUC) - 202-898-2208/ cgray@naruc.org. Energy & the Environment: Introduction Over 250 local, state and national decision-makers from the energy, utility and environmental sectors convened in St. Louis, Missouri to discuss opportunities for establishing closer coordination on issues that cut across the areas of energy, environment and economic development. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored the meeting. It was hosted by four key national energy and environmental organizations - the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators/Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials (STAPPA/ALAPCO), the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) and the Environmental Council of States (ECOS). This conference was a follow-on to a March 2000 meeting in Washington DC, which laid a foundation for exploring where and how interagency cooperation can promote innovative, integrated approaches within the energy-environment nexus. The purpose of the conference was threefold:
The first 2-1/2 days comprised a series of presentations designed to provide a context in which the different agencies can work together on integrated, multi-purpose approaches. The conference began with primer sessions to give energy and environmental officials greater familiarity with their counterparts' areas of responsibility, language, terms and decision-making processes. The succeeding sessions covered a number of key energy and environmental issue areas that have interconnections, including:
The focus of the conference then moved into opportunities for developing policies, programs and regulatory approaches that address these crosscutting issues. Different states shared their experiences with initial forays into this area, usually from a single agency perspective, but occasionally in cooperation with one or more other agencies. They discussed successes and lessons learned, particularly in overcoming regulatory, jurisdictional, political and other barriers to taking actions that are responsive across agencies and address multiple goals, but are not adequately recognized for doing so. Building Energy-Air Partnerships The last day of the conference provided a closed session for energy and environmental policy makers to identify a cooperative path forward and begin to develop ideas for a plan of action to adopt integrated approaches to address energy and environmental problems. Nearly 90 state officials from the electricity, environmental and energy agencies stayed to participate in these roundtable discussions. Hank Habicht and Anna Garcia of the Global Environment and Technology Foundation (GETF), facilitated these sessions, drawing upon their extensive background in this area to focus the states' discussions and expand on the ideas they brought forth. States that have initiated preliminary or pilot programs that integrate their energy and environmental activities made presentations on their progress. These states included California, New York, Maryland, Utah, Georgia and Wisconsin. State representatives then broke into separate groups to identify areas in which they could take action in an integrated way in the next year. The day's meeting ended with round table discussions among the full group about the outcomes from the break out, and the development of an action agenda for moving forward. The state participants strongly agreed that there is a need for this effort to continue. The work that is proceeding with the pilot states (MD, UT, GA and WI) is anticipated to achieve some early successes on cooperation that can lead to expanding the effort to other states, depending on the level of interest and the financial resources that become available. There were several recurring themes coming out of the discussions and presentations that occurred during the conference. One is that the timing is right for integrated approaches, particularly because new air quality requirements are coming to bear at the same time as the restructuring of the electricity industry is occurring, which has the potential for adverse impacts on the environment. Collaboration within and across federal, state and local agencies with measurable results was recognized as critical to successfully achieving both energy and environmental goals. Another focus of attention for many at the conference was electricity reliability and the problems associated with the potential for proliferation of distributed diesel generation, leading to negative impacts on air quality. This is an area that the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) is beginning to address on a regional basis, and each of the groups sponsoring the meeting indicated they would support further joint investigation of this issue. Another issue that received broad support is promotion of energy efficiency, renewable and clean technology options as mechanisms to reduce emissions. One of the critical concerns identified in this area is the need to work with EPA headquarters and regional offices to attempt to get credit for the pollutant reductions that result from these types of strategies. The Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP), which is jointly supported by the energy and air officials in the Grand Canyon Visibility Task Force region, has taken special interest in this issue. Finally, participants recognized the need to foster, model and replicate innovative multi-pollutant strategies in states and localities, to both effectively meet near-term capacity needs and to integrate pollution and carbon dioxide emission reduction goals with their economic growth vision. Several participants also expressed a desire to bring mobile source and transportation issues into the integrated framework. Others expressed the need to establish baseline inventories and for technical assistance. And a number of officials suggested the need for a harmonized, four-pollutant strategy. In addition, state officials identified a number of significant near-term and potential developments that will shape future policy making approaches as environmental requirements change and progress, and the electricity industry marches toward competition. In the regulatory arena, drivers for change and integration include the ozone transport SIP Call, performance track/facility planning, the proposed four-pollutant approach, the need for national interconnection standards, distributed generation standards, and regional/state specific priorities. And technology drivers, including federal programs like Energy Star and Rebuild America, long term wind contracts, tax credits and rebates for renewables, state trust and public benefits funds, renewable portfolio standards and interest from the investment community will help make new tools available. A summary of integrated initiatives by driver and type was developed and presented by GETF illustrating opportunities for different programs, policies and regulatory actions to be used to achieve multiple goals (Attachment 1 - 11KB PDF). Opportunities for Harmonized Action Discussions during the breakouts focused on two questions: (1) what three things a state could do in the next year regarding integrated approaches to address the energy/environmental issue areas discussed during the conference, and (2) what states would need to get those three things done. A variety of ideas were generated in the breakouts, with a consensus on the following four:
To accomplish these, the states identified resources as a basic need. Needed resources encompass not only direct support to allow states to develop internal expertise, but also for outside facilitation and technical assistance on projects, infrastructure development, education and training and web/peer exchange. In addition, the states identified EPA and DOE coordination, support and leadership at both the headquarters and regional levels as essential. Finally, continued coordination among the four state organizations - NASEO, STAPPA, ECOS and NARUC - is also a critical component for moving forward on integrated approaches. The group indicated that they want their national organizations to meet on a regular basis with the Administration, including not only EPA and DOE, but also the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the White House, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), with expansion in the future to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and other relevant agencies. Moving Forward At the end of the conference and workshop states agreed on two key items for immediate follow up. The first is to keep the flow of information and ideas moving. State and federal officials agreed on the need to establish the necessary connections and contact networks to continue this dialogue on a regular basis. The second is to develop concrete, replicable models focusing on the key issue and action areas identified during the conference and workshop sessions. The action agenda developed at the end of the workshop (Attachment 2 - 10KB PDF) outlines a general scope of future activities in the areas of state pilots, communications, and institutional infrastructure, as well as specific next steps and near term priorities. Officials from NASEO, STAPPA, NARUC, ECOS and NGA have already held their first post-conference meeting with a number of Administration officials and agencies. They discussed plans for future regional and national meetings, expanding opportunities for additional state pilots on integrated approaches and creating information exchange and communication networks. Plans for the next national/regional meetings, to occur within the next year, are also under discussion and are beginning to take shape. The group also discussed the possibility of developing one or more white papers on the concept and need for integrated energy and environmental approaches, and on specific themes and issues of concern at the state and local levels that were brought out during the conference. And they established task forces to focus on distributed generation and demand responsiveness. All parties agreed to and developed a proposed schedule of quarterly meetings to periodically review progress and next steps. < back to top > |
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