{"id":24447,"date":"2012-09-27T12:19:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T19:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=24447"},"modified":"2018-02-01T22:17:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T22:17:01","slug":"reality-check-californias-ultra-low-greenhouse-gas-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/09\/27\/reality-check-californias-ultra-low-greenhouse-gas-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality Check: California’s Ultra-Low-Greenhouse Gas Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

What will it really take to meet the state’s aggressive carbon reduction goals?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"As the centerpiece of California’s climate strategy, the law known as AB 32 gets all the attention. But a little-known component of the state\u2019s plan to mitigate climate change, Executive Order S-3-05, is even more ambitious. A new report from the independent California Council on Science and Technology (CCST)<\/a> takes aim at its aggressive greenhouse-gas-reduction goal for 2050, and shows just how difficult it will be to reach it.<\/p>\n

Signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in June 2005, EO S-3-05 calls for the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels<\/a> by 2020 (a target also written into AB 32 and passed the following year), and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 \u2014 effectively a 90% per-capita decrease when population growth is factored in. The 2020 goal sounds easy enough \u2014 especially if a third of our electricity generation is renewable by then \u2014 but existing efforts, including cap-and-trade, still won\u2019t be enough<\/a>. In other words, the state has got to come up with even more reductions in the next eight years.<\/p>\n

What happens when we project all the way out to 2050? A business-as-usual scenario would put our emissions at double the 1990 level. But the new report \u2014 coauthored by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory\u2019s Jeffery Greenblatt<\/a> \u2014 found that with existing technologies (that means currently commercially available or in demonstration) and for \u201creasonable\u201d rates and costs, we could reduce our emissions to 60% below 1990 levels. This equates to about 170 million metric tons in total emissions: a considerable achievement, but still double the 85 million-metric-ton limit established by the 80% goal.<\/p>\n

Reducing emissions to 60% below 1990 levels hinges on continued advances in energy efficiency and widespread electrification of all energy sectors, including light-duty vehicles, trucks, buses, trains, buildings, and industrial-process heating, the researchers found. To meet our future electricity needs and still keep emissions down, a variety of energy mixes could work.<\/p>\n

A technology-neutral \u201cmedian case,\u201d for example, posits that we could get there with roughly:<\/p>\n