Global Solutions Act

So in case you haven't heard the exciting news, Governor O'Malley is trying to decrease
Maryland's carbon footprint by proposing the Global Solutions Bill!

Here's a link to official press release:
http://www.governor.maryland.gov/pressreleases/080219b.html

Here's a copy of the proposed bill:
http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/billfile/sb0309.htm

This is my interpretation of the bill:

The purpose of this bill is to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the
state of Maryland.

This is to create grants and programs to support local government in
implementing this policy. This creates the Office of Climate Change under
the Maryland Environment Department. Its duties include: making sure
that the companies maintain the low emission practices, enforcing the
limits, and keeping all the records public. They are also charge with
public relations. I'm assuming this means promoting what they are doing.

They get their their funding through RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative (http://www.rggi.org/). Basically RGGI establishes a
cap-and-trade policy with polluting companies. A cap-and-trade policy is
where the government issues a certain number of permits that allow a
company to pollute. The companies are free to trade these permits with
each other. This allows for some companies, that are already green, to
perhaps have more permits to sell to another company who isn't as
green-saavy. But the objective here is that with the limited amount of
permits, one can control the amount of pollution, without giving a huge
financial burden on the companies straight away.

If the state cannot make enough money to support the new office with these
funds, they will implement a fee of four cents/ton of CO2 emitted. Still
unsure of the amount of that MD produces, hard to find on internet...
either way, with the new Climate Change Taskforce on campus, UMBC will
soon have numbers stating the amount that we emit, and in that way, UMBC
is most definitely affected.

The last important note to mention is the power of the Governor to declare
an Energy Emergency. If he does this, he is permitted (with the approval
of a committee) to delay the requirements of greenhouse gas emissions by
1 calendar year.

The numbers are as follows:

By 2012- 10% reduction in GHG according to 2006 levels
2015- 15%
2020- 25%
2050- 90%

If you have any questions, please email me (or comment here) at lipinsk1@umbc.edu