9 Midwestern governors and the Premier of Manitoba yesterday signed an historic greenhouse gas accord.  This has powerful implications not just for state and regional progress, but for global warming policy nationwide.

In addition, it lays out a detailed road map of supporting policies and regional partnerships to acheive the following, amongst other things:

• 25 by 25 in renewable energy and fuels (25% by 2025).

• 2% energy from efficiency by 2015 and 2% per year thereafter.
  

• Carbon pipeline sited and permitted and carbon storage regs by 2012, all new coal plants to capture and store CO2 by 2020.

Six governors, the premier of Manitoba, and the UK minister of environment attended in person, as did a who's who of state, industry and NGO energy players.  

The full signers of the accord are:  MN, WI, IL, MI, IA, KS, and Manitoba with OH, IN and SD signing on as observers.  There was a strong bipartisan message, and a strong message particularly from IA governor Culver about how important it was for Presidential candidates to address this issue.