California’s Climate Plan Snowball Starts Its Roll

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By John Geesman
Green Energy War

Wading into one of the most self-regarding political cultures on the planet, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, last week injected a small bit of perspective into California’s celebration of the release of the “Draft Scoping Plan” for implementation of its heralded “Global Climate Solutions Act.”

“It would be nice if California, one of the largest economies in the world, cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels,” he told a Sacramento gathering, “it would send a strong message to the rest of the US.” The Kyoto Protocol calls for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by an average 5.2% below 1990 levels in the 2008 - 2012 period. The assembled Californians remain focused on the political battles still to be fought to achieve the Global Warming Solutions Act’s target of bringing emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020.

Dr. Pachauri told them that the European Union is moving rapidly to reduce its emissions to 20% below 1990 levels in 2020. Still, the impact California’s efforts have already had in altering the American political landscape are widely recognized. As context, the White House Council on Environmental Quality chair, James Connaughton, lobbying India to commit to a longterm reduction target at next week’s Hokkaido summit of major economies, recently let slip that even if the US stabilizes emissions by 2025 as President Bush urged this April, it will stabilize at a level 16% above 1990’s.

Although vague on details, the direction outlined in the Draft Scoping Plan does not shrink from political challenge. With a targeted reduction of 169 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent, the Plan would derive 31.7 million tonnes from the well-publicized vehicle tailpipe standards blocked legally (or, illegally) by the Bush Administration; 26.4 million tonnes from tightened energy efficiency requirements, including a mandatory building retrofit requirement at time of sale; 21.2 million tonnes from raising the Renewable Portfolio Standard expected of utilities to 33%, up from 20%; and 16.5 million tonnes from a Low Carbon Fuel Standard that would alter the chemical content of gasoline and diesel.