California’s Climate Policy – a Model?

California has clear lessons to offer the rest of the US and the world in energy efficiency achieved through persistent pressure on energy appliance standards and clever public regulation of its private energy companies. Energy efficiency is increasingly important if the task of de-carbonizing the power and transport systems of growing economies is not to become unmanageable. This OIES paper by David Buchan highlights California’s unusual combination of wealth technology natural resources and legal room for manoeuvre that enables the state to pursue a climate policy different from that of the US federal government but that is also probably hard to replicate elsewhere