British Columbia’s generally conservative Liberal Party premier, Gordon Campbell, earned my respect this winter when he banned new coal-fired power plants from releasing CO2 — in effect mandating the use of carbon sequestration (or, as my coverage at TechReview.com indicated, driving planned coal plants to instead burn renewable wood). Now Campbell has gone much further — at least on paper.

Campbell announced this past weekend that his government will propose legislation this fall to mandate a 33% cut in greenhouse gases from current levels by 2020; a still to be announced Climate Action Team representing environmental organizations, business, science and First Nations is to set binding midterm targets for 2012 and 2016 by July 31, 2008.

Here are a few of the measures BC intends to launch over the coming year to get there:

Setting hard caps on greenhouse gases to be used in an emissions cap and trade system under development by five Western U.S. states and BC.

Requiring all provincial entities, including the power utility BC Hydro, to be carbon neutral by 2010. Government agencies must purchase carbon offsets at $25 per ton of CO2 released or otherwise find a way to make their travel carbon neutral starting this year. The offsets cash will fund projects in B.C. that enhance energy efficiency, generate renewable energy or reforestation.

Building all new government buildings to green-building certification equivalent to at least Gold level LEED certification. 

Phasing in California’s strict tailpipe emission standards (still stymied by auto industry litigants in the U.S.) by 2016 and adopting California’s low carbon fuel standards.

Spending more on public transit.

“I could barely believe my ears,” is what one climate activist here in Victoria told me. Journalists like me will be busy tracking to see if Campbell and crew actually deliver on all this. But I’d say hope springs a bit more eternally this week thanks to his detailed promises. 

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When the U.S. Energy Department under an adminstration like Bush/Cheney tells you cleaning up our energy system is cheap, you know the walls are coming down. This summer Carbon-Nation made the case that Cleaning Up Coal is Cheap thanks to affordable technology for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide. Now the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) is projecting that the cleanest energy option available — renewable energy such as biofuels and wind power — should also fit nicely in our budgets. Ironically the EIA analysis responds to a request by Republican environment critic James Inhofe, a Senator from Oklahoma.

EIA’s analysis examines how mandating 25% renewable power and fuels by 2025 would change U.S. energy consumption and economic growth (see Energy and Economic Impacts of Implementing Both a 25-Percent Renewable Portfolio Standard and a 25-Percent Renewable Fuel Standard by 2025). They conclude that such a mandate would significantly cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions: In 2030 carbon dioxide emissions would be 14% lower than 2005 levels, with emissions from electricity production specifically dropping 22%.  drop in emissions from the electricity sector and a 14-percent decrease in the transportation sector.

Yet the cost is negligible: a projected GDP hit of one-eighth of one percent and a rise in expense to consumers of one-tenth of a percent. Plus EIA’s analysis assumes that the mandate would spur fairly modest improvements in energy technology, a highly conservative assumption that one can hope Will prove false.

Cause for even greater optimism: the U.S. Senate’s version of the energy bill currently being negotiated in Congress establishes a 25% renewables mandate by 2025 as a national energy goal. Renewable energy is not perfect — as our recent discussion of Wind Energy’s Problem Child in the Bay Area shows — but it sure beats the status quo.

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