As it moves ahead to implement the bill certain issues start clearing up regarding that implementation, some surprising.
Trip without maps
State's plan to cut emissions faces world of challenges
By Jim Downing - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Thursday, March 8, 2007
As California looks to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of the next decade, it is attempting to do something that very few of the world's economies have managed to achieve.
So Wednesday, state regulators sought out their counterparts from around the world for advice.
But in the closing discussion at a three-day international meeting in Sacramento on ways for the state to quickly shrink its carbon footprint, a sobering message emerged: While emission-cutting successes in other nations can provide some guidance, California is definitely working without a template.
From 1990 to 2004, the United Nations estimates Germany and the United Kingdom cut greenhouse emissions by 17 and 14 percent, respectively. During the same period, California's rose 15.1 percent, according to the state's Energy Commission.
Germany and the United Kingdom are the only two major Western economies to have significantly trimmed their greenhouse gas emissions over that period, thanks in part to changes in vehicle fuel efficiency, cuts in household energy use and a shift in the fuels used to generate electricity.
But even those successes come with a caveat: Much of the change can be tied to major industrial and economic transitions -- the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany's case, a wrenching industrial sector decline in the United Kingdom's.
In Japan, by contrast, greenhouse emissions are up 6.5 percent since 1990, despite an aggressive national program initiated in 1978 that has led to substantially more efficient home appliances and new vehicle mileage standards of better than 46 miles per gallon.
Emissions keep climbing simply because people are driving more miles and using more appliances, said Kayo Hayai, who represented Japan's Energy Conservation Center at the meeting.
Wednesday's meeting at the California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters featured representatives from five countries as well as officials from industry groups and corporations watching closely as California crafts a climate change strategy mandated by last year's passage of Assembly Bill 32.
Carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are called greenhouse gases because they trap heat in the atmosphere. Since the Industrial Revolution, humankind has put massive and increasing amounts of these gases into the air by burning fossil fuels, deforestation and as a byproduct of other activities.
While California is a global leader in the efficient use of electricity and water, cutting greenhouse gas emissions poses a more complex challenge. Virtually every corner of the economy is tied to greenhouse emissions in some way. And while some emissions-producing activities -- fuel consumption, for example -- are relatively easy to monitor, others, such as changes in forest management, are not.
