SAN FRANCISCO — Officials from California, Oregon and Washington lined up yesterday to urge U.S. EPA not to repeal the Clean Power Plan, even as they acknowledge that their efforts are likely futile.

Top California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown (D) are still hammering out language to extend the state's cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases in an effort to reach a deal by the end of next week.

The attorneys general of 16 states and the District of Columbia today vowed to protect U.S. EPA's regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from President Trump's directive on energy.

West Coast governors and mayors are pre-emptively opposing President Trump's actions to gut climate regulations.

Eleven years ago, as a Republican president did little to address climate change, the states of California, Oregon and Washington agreed to work together to fight carbon emissions. Yesterday, they agreed to do it again.

Oregon regulators are studying how to design an economywide carbon cap-and-trade system that would be able to link with other similar programs in neighboring states and provinces.

Oregon is kicking off a $230,000 study on how the state could use market-based tools to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions at the behest of lawmakers seeking aggressive action on climate change.

A Colorado-based organization this week released a modeling tool for 12 Western states considering how they might meet power-sector carbon reduction goals under U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan.

A group of 14 states is asking U.S. EPA for more information and technical assistance on the Clean Power Plan while a Supreme Court stay on implementing it is in effect.

An army of U.S. EPA allies stood behind the agency's landmark Clean Power Plan yesterday, fending off arguments from industry and states trying to trounce it.

Oregon lawmakers yesterday approved a bill to raise the state's share of renewable energy to 50 percent and quit its reliance on coal-fired power.

Oregon is continuing to pursue greenhouse gas emissions reductions from its power sector, but its timeline for coming up with a plan to meet federal climate change regulations is up in the air.

A Colorado-based group coordinating Clean Power Plan talks in the West yesterday released the first phase of a modeling tool for states and utilities.

As states and utilities across the country struggle with how to meet the demands of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, the states of the Pacific Northwest will clear their hurdles with relatively little effort, according to a new regional strategic document.

A growing list of complicated federal air regulations combined with funding shortfalls is complicating the work of state regulators.

Political foes are hurling sound-bite criticisms at U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan that could resonate with voters. Now they're honing a new argument -- that the regulation's disparate standards will serve as a "transfer of wealth" from the energy-producing heartland to left-leaning coastal states that have easier emission reduction targets.

Members of a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee today traded shots over whether U.S. EPA's final Clean Power Plan would have any impact on public health, at the first of what is sure to be many congressional hearings on the carbon rule.

When U.S. EPA released its long-awaited final Clean Power Plan last week, it was immediately clear that states would face vastly different obligations than they had been preparing for under the 2014 draft rule.

At least 41 states are in talks with neighbors about how they might cut power-sector carbon emissions under U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, despite appeals from Republicans in Congress for state officials to refuse to comply, according to regional coordinators.

Eleven states and environmental groups yesterday pushed back on assertions from challengers to U.S. EPA's proposed greenhouse gas power plant standards that recent comments by Administrator Gina McCarthy warrant blocking the rule from finalization.

Western states are deep in discussions about how they can coordinate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, despite their individual qualms with the proposal.

A platoon of U.S. EPA officials and three dozen stakeholders with skin in the game got together last week to figure out how an interstate trading market might aid compliance with the proposed Clean Power Plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

DENVER -- U.S. EPA proposed an unreasonable and costly deadline for states to begin reducing global warming emissions, according to utility officials and regulators in Western states who testified here yesterday before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

It is highly unlikely that there will be a consensus emerging from the upcoming winter meetings of the nation's utility regulators on the merits of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, believed by many to be the most complicated rule the agency has ever issued. But there is optimism that the five-day gathering of more than 1,400 stakeholders starting Saturday in Washington, D.C., might result in a clear-eyed understanding of what it would mean for states to comply -- or not -- should legal challenges fail to upend the proposed rule.

Public power and cooperative utilities in states with high electricity costs and a large percentage of generation from coal-fired power plants will be most challenged to preserve financial margins as they comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, according to a new index created by Fitch Ratings.

A group of Senate Democrats today called on U.S. EPA to strengthen its proposed power plant rule to achieve a greater reduction in carbon emissions.

A carbon tax in Oregon would have minimal effects on jobs and the economy, paving the way for the state's Legislature to pursue carbon pricing in 2015, according to an analysis by researchers at Portland State University's Northwest Economic Research Center (NERC).

Electric utilities, environmental advocates and a nonpartisan climate think tank all agree that they dislike the way U.S. EPA sets interim goals for states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a draft rule for the power sector. But in comments due yesterday, they diverged widely on how to make that portion of the proposal more workable.

Advocates of multi-state plans to comply with U.S. EPA's proposal to cut carbon emissions often make an example of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. But collaborative state implementation plans outside RGGI could be significantly more complicated and would likely encounter many political and practical obstacles along the way.

Months before U.S. EPA's proposed rule on power-sector carbon emissions becomes final, battle lines are already hardening between states that support the rule and those that would see it quashed.

If the late free-market economist Milton Friedman were alive today, he'd probably support pricing carbon. That was the argument made by two economists on a panel today at the University of Chicago, where Friedman taught for more than 30 years.

A coalition of states and cities today announced plans to fight a lawsuit aimed at killing U.S. EPA's proposed greenhouse gas rule for existing power plants.

SEATTLE -- Western state utility regulators may have to work together to comply with U.S. EPA's proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, but they're warning it's much easier said than done.

California has long said that it didn't want to go it alone running a cap-and-trade program to force down the carbon emissions blamed for climate change. Now there's renewed talk that it could have imitators or even partners.

States got a first look at U.S. EPA's proposed carbon dioxide regulations yesterday. At first blush, the phone book-sized rule gave them a puzzle with the potential of 50 different ways to lower their carbon emissions. It gave them a deadline with a final rule due next summer.