O'Malley Lends Support To Controls On Emissions

Business Groups Express Concern Over Expense

Maryland lawmakers began to consider a proposal yesterday for one of the nation's most ambitious sets of controls on carbon dioxide emissions, as the state seeks to be a leader in the effort to curb the gases that contribute to global warming.

Business executives expressed concern that regulations required by the global warming solutions bill would push up already high electricity prices and make Maryland less competitive. But Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) endorsed the bill yesterday, boosting its chances for passage during the General Assembly's 90-day session.

"There are some who wonder, 'Will we be able to adapt economically?' " the governor said, flanked by lawmakers and environmental leaders. "We really don't have a choice." Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said the bill would get serious consideration in their chambers.

The legislation would mandate that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars and trucks, factories and other energy consumers in the state's economy drop 25 percent from 2006 levels by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050.

California, New Jersey and Hawaii have set strict reduction goals in the last two years.

Maryland, with its thousands of miles of shoreline, is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change, said O'Malley and the bill's lead sponsors, Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George's) and House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve (D-Montgomery).

"Opponents say, 'Let's put this off,' " Pinsky told the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee. "That's what happened in New Orleans."

While the bill sets reduction goals, it does not specify how they would be met. Instead, the Maryland Department of the Environment would recommend strategies for how each industry would meet the targets.

Supporters say the state has begun to clear the path, starting with passage two years ago of a law mandating reductions in pollution from large coal-fired power plants. Last year, Maryland joined a group of states working to strengthen the effort through a mechanism for buying and selling pollution credits known as a cap and trade system.

Another law passed last year limits carbon dioxide emissions from car tailpipes; Maryland and other states are fighting the Bush administration in court in an effort to implement the law.

The bill now on the table would mandate carbon caps. The administration is recommending changes that would make such caps an option for some industries but not a requirement. Other strategies to reduce emissions would be voluntary or incentive-based, administration officials said -- those designed to coax homeowners to reduce their energy use, for example.

"Just these programs would get us close to the 2020 goal," Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson told lawmakers yesterday.

But business and labor groups said the lack of specifics about which industries would be required to cut emissions had convinced them that the proposal would jeopardize Maryland's dwindling manufacturing jobs.

"In order to make steel, you have to produce CO2," said Gene L. Burner of the Manufacturers' Alliance of Maryland, warning that the jobs of 2,500 steelworkers could disappear. "The only way to stop is not to make it."

Other critics said Maryland's contribution to global warming is so minor as to make regulatory action useless.

"If you totally eliminate all of Maryland's greenhouse gases, you won't see any difference in the climate-change issue," Michael Powell of the Maryland Industrial Technology Alliance, a manufacturing industry group, told the committee.

Others questioned the fairness of penalizing Maryland power plants when much of the state's pollution comes from outside the state.