The California State Air Resources Board has released its initial plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions 30% by the year 2020. There is praise for the effort, but critics say the devil's in the details. From Sacramento, Jenny O'Mara reports.
The plan focuses largely on transportation and energy. It requires utilities to get around 1/3 of their energy from renewable resources such as wind and solar. Currently, it's around 12%. The plan also puts in place a controversial "cap and trade" system, allowing bigger polluters to buy credits from other companies under the emissions cap. Bruce McLaughlin with the California Municipal Utilities Association says the cap and trade should be voluntary.
McLaughlin: "There's about 50 public power providers in the state varying from 5 megawatts to 6000 megawatts and so they can't have a one size fits all program, there's going to be various responses at each local utility to achieve it."
Another plan is to reduce the amount of carbon in transportation fuels by at least 10% by 2020. Air regulators emphasize this is just the first draft and they'll spend the rest of the summer fleshing out details, particularly in the cap and trade system.
