The so-called R20 coalition of some 100 regional, state and provincial governments, observer nations and corporations aim to use their joint economic heft to create industries and to make “subnational” deals to create low-carbon projects.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations meet in Cancun, Mexico, in December attempting to hammer out the outline of the next global climate change treaty. Hopes for a breakthrough are low after last year’s failure to reach a deal in Copenhagen, Denmark, but California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger optimistically saw regions forging ahead anyway.

“The green movement is going full steam ahead without an international agreement,” Schwarzenegger told the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, with representatives from states and other “subnational” regions of countries including China, the United States, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.

Schwarzenegger, facing term limits, will leave office next year, but Governor-elect Jerry Brown campaigned forcefully on continuing California’s green economy push.

Forest Conservation

Californians in November soundly rejected a ballot proposition to suspend its climate change law, in what Schwarzenegger saw as a text-book example of how California — and other local governments — could change the world.

“The power and influence we have in the rest of the world is like a whole continent,” he said of California, the biggest US state in terms of population and economy.

The R20 group will sign a charter framework on Tuesday to cooperate on projects that an economic adviser said could unite about 20 percent of the global economy by year’s end as new members join.

By agreeing on standards in areas like advanced street lighting, they could create markets on their own terms, for example by requiring some element of local production, adviser Terry Tamminen said.

California also will sign a memorandum of understanding to include credits for saving the tropical forests of Brazil’s Acre state and Mexico’s Chiapas state in its carbon trading market, due to open in 2012.

If the agreement is translated into policy it would be the first carbon market move into rainforest “offsets,” credits for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, which are seen as important for climate change but very complex to manage.

Globally the rainforest credits are known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD.

Outgoing Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm also said that California’s leadership on vehicle mileage standards had been taken up by US states, and the rules eventually became national standards and followed in Canada, as well.

But federal governments ultimately hold the money and the power — and the best ‘subnational’ leaders can do is spur their federal governments forward, she said.

“Without federal energy policy, these are states who are flailing,” Granholm said in an interview, ascribing part of Michigan’s success attracting auto battery makers to its bundling of state incentives with federal stimulus money.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking to the conference by satellite, agreed. He said there would be no binding agreement in Cancun and that states and nations could tempt skeptics into the fold.

“When other countries see the success of green growth and the green economy, even the laggards are going to say ‘Hold on a second, I want a piece of this,’” he said.

“But there are some difficult decisions that we have to take. In the end we’ve got to end up with an agreement that the world opts into, and that means the laggard countries as well.”