The O'Malley administration plans to move forward with efforts to combat global warming, despite the legislature's rejection of a high-profile bill that would have curbed Maryland's greenhouse gas emissions, officials said yesterday.
Secretary of the Environment Shari T. Wilson said that even without the bill mandating a 25 percent emissions reduction by 2020, Gov. Martin O'Malley secured enough of his energy policy priorities during the legislative session that ended Monday to make progress on climate change.
"We didn't get the umbrella, but we got the pieces of the engine to move forward," Wilson said. "All in all, we're in pretty good shape."
Lawmakers passed all five of the O'Malley administration's energy bills, including an ambitious plan for reducing energy use 15 percent by 2015, plus a doubling of renewable power, such as wind and solar, to be generated in the state by 2022.
Environmentalists, though disappointed by the failure of the Global Warming Solutions Act in the final hours of the 90-day legislative session, took heart in the energy legislation, which they say should advance the cause significantly.
"I think that the climate on balance was a really big winner during the 2008 Maryland session," said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. "The fact that the renewable electricity standard was doubled to 20 percent is by itself astonishing."
Environmentalists spent three years lobbying lawmakers to approve an initial goal of 7.5 percent from renewable energy sources, he said.
The global warming bill failed after a strong push by labor unions and industry and despite efforts by proponents, including the O'Malley administration, to mollify their objections. Members of the United Steelworkers, who represent 5,000 employees of steel, brick, cement, chemical and paper plants statewide, were a nearly constant presence in Annapolis at hearings and in the galleries to demonstrate their concern that pollution reductions required by the warming bill could cost them their jobs.
The bill's original long-range requirement of reducing greenhouse gases by 90 percent by 2050 - heralded by environmentalists as one of the most ambitious proposals in the nation - was downgraded to a goal. The bill passed the Senate, but with an amendment sought by manufacturers and unions that would require state environmental officials to get legislative approval of their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
