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MMUA believes that effective climate change policy must: <br />• Be national in scope. <br />• Be economy-wide and apply to all industry sectors, including transportation and <br />manufacturing as well as electricity generation. <br />• Protect the ability of U.S. and Minnesota industries to compete in regional and <br />global markets and carefully consider the competitive impact on jobs. <br />• Develop a robust national greenhouse gas registry, such as the National Climate <br />Registry, to track and benchmark carbon contributions and mitigation actions. <br />• Allow credit for early actions taken to reduce greenhouse emissions. <br />• Maintain reliability, protect national security and avoid over-reliance on any <br />single fuel by recognizing the importance to the nation of preserving a diverse <br />mix of electricity generation fuels, including coal, nuclear, natural gas, and all <br />renewable energy sources including hydro. <br />• Pursue efficiency improvements for all types of energy uses. <br />• Ensure that tax-based or other incentives for the development and deployment of <br />renewable and clean energy facilities and programs are provided on a comparable <br />basis to the public power sector of the utility industry. <br />• Ensure that any cap-and-trade allowance allocations are available across all <br />electric industry sectors while demanding that consumers and the economy <br />remain protected during the transition to lower carbon emitting generation. Any <br />transition from allocations to auctions should include protection against <br />unanticipated impacts from runaway auction markets that would threaten <br />consumers and the economy. <br />• Recognize and address regional differences that can impact the fairness and <br />effectiveness of any program designed to address greenhouse gas emissions. <br />• Include additional and expanded federal support for research, development and <br />deployment of cost-effective technologies to reduce, capture, transform or <br />sequester greenhouse gases from emission sources throughout the national <br />economy. <br />~ Ensure that any generation portfolio requirements permit all low emission <br />technologies. <br />Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association <br />February 2008 <br />