Leadership Others Might Emulate : Two energy powerhouses voluntarily do their bit to fight the greenhouse effect

Southern California’s two biggest producers of electric power are teaming up to give a stunning jolt to environmental debate.

While science, industry and many governments argue the very existence of global warming, Southern California Edison Co. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plan to throttle back their output of carbon dioxide--just in case. They’re under no court order or regulatory decree. They’re doing it because it’s right.

Carbon dioxide is an invisible byproduct of burning fossil fuel that some scientists warn has already formed a heat-trapping blanket around Earth. This planetary greenhouse effect could heat up the atmosphere by 9 degrees and make oceans rise two feet in the next century.

Others are less emphatic about the threat. But the National Academy of Science says that enough is known to make slowing down carbon dioxide emissions and speeding up research the prudent things to do.

What the companies will be following has come to be known as the “no regrets” policy on global warming. No matter what the ultimate scientific verdict is, their costs will be modest enough that they will never regret getting ahead of the verdict.

Edison and DWP say they will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% over the next 20 years. Only a handful of countries have plans to go that far. As Edison acknowledges, its present output of carbon dioxide is only about 0.1% of what pours out of the rest of the globe from uncontrolled smoke stacks in Eastern Europe, slash-and-burn operations in Third World rain forests and from smoking diesels and automobiles everywhere.

But parting company with most of American industry and with the White House--which thinks the warnings about global warming need more study before anybody does anything--may carry more weight than the 10 million tons of carbon dioxide that won’t be added to the greenhouse because of what these two Southern California utilities have in mind.

And it is almost beside the point that much of the reduction will result from actions the two utilities have already begun to take.

Edison, for example, burns more natural gas than most utilities, and gas produces 10% less carbon dioxide than oil and far less than coal. DWP will phase out all oil-fired boilers and use only gas.

Both companies have major programs to make their customer’s homes and shops more energy efficient to decrease the demand for power. Both will use more renewable energy sources, notably Edison’s recent breakthrough in converting the sun’s energy directly into electricity. Even their joint promotion of electric cars for Southern California will help. They are financing a plan to put 10,000 electric vehicles on the road within a few years.

But the most important contribution probably will be simply showing the world that if industrial nations try, they can not only limit but reduce greenhouse gases. That is the stunning part of their plan.