Climate Change Policies at the U.S. State Level : Evidence, Complexity, and Challenges to Comprehensive Strategies

During the past decade, there has been a significant change in the discourse and approaches to the problem of global climate change in the United States and internationally. While at the federal level the United States has not produced a comprehensive national policy, but rather focused on research and pubic-private partnerships, many U.S. states and regions have introduced a variety of steps that contribute to the overall green-house-gases intensity reduction goal. Forty two states created Emission Inventories; twenty-nine states developed Climate Action Plans; and twenty-three states have Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards. Yet, only four states have a Power Plant carbon dioxide Emission Cap and only one state, California, has a Statewide GHG Emission Cap. This paper analyzes factors affecting U.S. states’ responses to mitigating global climate change. It addresses the following questions: What are the driving forces for the introduction of sub-national climate strategies? What explains different trajectories of climate change strategies among the U.S. states?, and Why might or might not these initiatives serve as an inducement for national policy? In contrast to multiple accounts in the literature that merely commend state-level efforts, this paper claims that several distinct and competing principles vie for dominance in the U.S. climate policy. It argues that notwithstanding states’ leadership and initiative there is a lack of a coherent strategy among the states due to 1) legal constraints, such as the distribution of rights and competencies in the federal system, and authority in international agreements, 2) resource limitations, which can jeopardize long-term climate policy efforts; and 3) political constraints, such as the lack of the political grounding, acceptance in the constituencies, and competing priorities for launching policy innovation. The paper concludes by examining a range of drivers that may contribute to an increase of influence at a federal level to adopt a nationwide policy. Among them are increasing uncertainty, which creates costs among consumers and producers with regard to long term investment; diffusion of policy strategies, which may reduce the problems associated with spillover effects across jurisdictions caused by environmental legislation; and the emergence of interests, which promote demonstration of innovations to reduce the heterogeneity of standards across the country