State crafting plan to reduce gasses

The state Air Resources Board will launch into a yearlong planning effort today that it hopes will yield a workable plan for slashing California's annual greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million metric tons in just 12 years.

That goal – the equivalent of cutting the state's gasoline use almost 70 percent – represents most of the reductions mandated under Assembly Bill 32, passed last year. The specific regulations enacted to meet it likely will affect virtually every sector of the California economy, from how electricity is generated to how new communities are planned.

Many of the emissions reductions will be straightforward expansions of energy-efficiency programs that the state already has pursued for years. But others – like rules that could affect land use – will put the agency in unfamiliar regulatory territory.

At today's public meeting in Diamond Bar, the agency will consider how to divide the state's greenhouse-gas sources into six economic sectors: electricity; local initiatives and land use; transportation; business and industry; agriculture; and forestry.

"There are a lot of animals on this ark, and we have to examine each separately," said agency spokesman Stanley Young.

In two weeks, a workshop in Sacramento will begin to look at policy proposals within each sector. By June, the agency's climate-change team – which has grown from 75 to 200 staff members in the last year – is scheduled to produce a detailed draft of where and how to cut emissions.

The result is likely to be a suite of traditional regulatory mandates combined with an emissions-trading plan, whereby a pool of emissions allowances would be given out or auctioned off to certain industrial sectors and then traded between individual businesses.

The plan is expected to go before the agency's executive board in November 2008, with rules taking effect by 2012.

The state's current emissions now stand at the equivalent of 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Absent new regulations, population growth and economic expansion are expected to boost that total to 600 million tons by 2020. AB 32 requires the state to cut back to the 1990 emissions level of 427 million tons.

The air board already has identified ways to cut emissions by about 70 million tons a year by 2020. However, close to half of that total depends on the state winning the right to enforce a 2002 state law that calls for emissions reductions in new cars and trucks starting next year.

In some areas – like the electricity sector – the air board can draw on proven regulatory templates for squeezing emissions. That's not the case in other areas, notably land use and development.

The promotion of transit-oriented, high-density communities offers "a huge untapped opportunity" to reduce future driving miles and emissions, said Devra Wang, who directs the California energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments has estimated that such strategies would ultimately yield a 26 percent reduction in the region's per-capita driving.

But the promotion of so-called "smart growth" policies can be a contentious area, often running counter to the interests of developers, landowners, existing residents and local government.

Still, without a dramatic shift in growth patterns, the California Energy Commission estimates that the average number of vehicle miles driven each year by the typical Californian is likely to continue to increase.

Ideas to reverse that trend range from a statewide review of zoning rules to encourage high-density development to "location-efficient mortgages," designed to help sell homes in neighborhoods where residents might drive less.

Representatives of other sectors likely to bear much of the 100 million-ton cut said they are reserving judgment until more details of the air board's plan take shape.

Amisha Patel, policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, said the agency so far has been eager to collaborate with business groups.

"They've been listening to us," she said.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Jim Downing, (916) 321-1065.