SACRAMENTO — California reaffirmed its commitment to combat global warming Wednesday when Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order that sets North America’s most ambitious goal: lowering the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below its 1990 levels by 2030.
The target expands on the landmark AB32 California Global Warming Solutions Act adopted by the Legislature in 2006 that made California a world leader in fighting climate change. Now, nine years later, the state is on track to meet the goal set in that law, which is to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
“If we don’t deal with it, before we know it, we will have passed a tipping point,” Brown said at a climate change conference Wednesday in Los Angeles. He said the new target puts the state in line with levels scientists have said are needed in the United States to limit global warming and avoid major climate disruptions, such as mega-droughts and rising sea levels.
AB32 required the state to determine what the 1990 greenhouse gas levels were and the California Air Resources Board set that level to the equivalent of 431 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide and sulfur hexafluoride and trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere near the Earth’s surface.
The state’s ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a target set by the 2005 executive order of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Brown’s order set an aggressive interim goal for 2030 in order to meet the reduction targets two decades after that. The new target is in line with a goal set in October by the European Union.
'A steeper path’
“People have talked about how to get from 2020 — which looks like we will reach — to 2050,” said David Roland-Holst, an economics professor at UC Berkeley who authored a study assessing various ways the state can reach the 2050 emissions goal. “You can do a straight line approach and hope that a silver bullet will come along and make it easier. The governor took a steeper path to get the innovation earlier.”
Brown’s order was widely praised by political and climate change leaders, as well as solar and wind energy industries. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. called the plan “bold, and with the right structures in place, attainable.”
Sierra Club California Director Kathryn Phillips said Brown “sent another strong and welcome signal that California remains committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”
State is on track
Since setting the emissions targets in 2006, California appears to be on track to get one-third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and the state has successfully launched a cap-and-trade program to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from factories, power plants and refineries, leading to optimism that the new 2030 goals are within reach.
Policies already in place will reduce petroleum use in cars and trucks by more than 20 percent in the next 15 years without additional efforts, according to the California Air Resources Board. The state has aggressive emission standards for vehicles and requires electric or hydrogen fuel cell cars to account for 15 percent of new vehicle sales by 2025, or 1.5 million zero emission vehicles.
Brown did not offer details for how the state would reach the new target, but in his State of the State address in January, the governor hinted at the new goals and said the state should focus on three areas:
- Increase from 33 percent to 50 percent the amount of electricity derived from renewable sources.
- Reduce reliance on petroleum products by 50 percent — largely by increasing use of electric and low-carbon vehicles.
- Raise building energy efficiency, partially by increasing use of rooftop solar panels.
In that address, Brown sketched out a vision of a California increasingly powered by rooftop solar panels and large-scale batteries, with millions of electric cars on the roads.
Brown’s framework was included in two Senate bills currently in the Legislature — SB32 and SB350 — which would extend the California Air Resources Board’s authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the 2050 goal.
'Accelerate innovation’
“Building on our existing climate programs, the 40 percent reduction will drive and accelerate innovation, generate new jobs, improve air quality and hasten California's transition to a clean energy economy,” said Mary Nichols, chair of the Air Resources Board, in a statement.
Policies already in place in California give the state a “running start” to meeting the 2030 goals, according to the Air Resources Board. The state has already seen significant reductions in greenhouse gases due to cleaner and fuel-efficient cars, zero emission vehicles, cleaner low-carbon fuels and energy efficiency upgrades in homes and businesses.
The Air Resources Board said the state will need to continue those efforts to reach the new 2030 targets while also focusing on technology that cuts or eliminates emissions from moving freight around the state, continuing to invest in rooftop solar and expanding transit options to get people out of their cars.
“AB32 is a big success,” said Louis Blumberg, director of the California Climate Change Program at the Nature Conservancy. “Emissions are declining, the economy is growing. California has demonstrated that you can fight climate change and grow the economy.”
Flexibility needed
Brown said the state would leave “flexibility to the private sector” to help drive the innovations needed to reach the new 2030 target.
Business groups expressed skepticism that the flexibility needed will be there. Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, said the new goals set by Brown are meaningless unless there is more emphasis on easing regulatory burdens.
“We need more emphasis on fast-tracking infill and transit-oriented development that can reduce our dependence on automobiles,” Wunderman said in a statement. “We also need to reform the California Environmental Quality Act to end rampant and unwarranted abuses of the law that delay or block everything from bicycle lanes to solar farms.”