Your eyes on California Government

OCT. 25, 2011

By KATY GRIMES

Supporters of AB 32, California’s global warming and climate change law, have been busy planning their next move.

A hearing held Monday in the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee covered the long-term viability of available fuels needed to meet California’s increasing green energy demands — demands that are increasing because of laws passed by the state Legislature. But the discussion was not about all available fuels. In fact, petroleum-based fuels are even more unwelcome in California than trans fats.

Sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund, AB 32 requires California to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — “the equivalent of taking approximately 28 million cars off the nation’s roads,” according to the EDF. On Oct. 20, the California Air Resources Board voted to launch in 2012 a key part of AB 32, the “cap and trade” program for trading emissions.

The purpose stated for Monday’s hearing was to address California’s increasing transportation demands, which “reflect state policies on air quality and greenhouse gases.”

But the panel invited to provide the overview of transportation fuels sounded as if they had stepped right out of a global warming conference at the United Nations. Panelists included Mary Nichols, California Air Resources Board Director, Daniel Kammen, a Professor at University of California Berkeley and Dawn Manley, PhD, Sandia National Laboratories. They presented committee members with plans, charts and graphs for aggressively pushing even more clean-air goals by entirely changing the way Californians drive.

‘Accelerating” Goals

Nichols said that clean energy is the “linchpin” for reaching air quality and climate goals, and she planned on “accelerating” these goals because “the current fleet shackles us to petroleum.” Ethanol, E-85, natural gas, electricity and hydrogen, were the acceptable fuels Nichols identified for lower carbon output.

While Nichols agreed that zero-emissions vehicles are integral to meeting California’s climate change mandates, “87 percent of our vehicles will need to be fuel cell, hydrogen or bio fuel in 2050,” she said.

Each of the panelists stated concern with the economics involved in such massive change. “Commercial success of clean cars is directly related to California,” Nichols said. Which is why she said that the Air Resources Board is “ramping up” the mandates. “This needs to be accepted and welcomed by the public.”

Nichols said that CARB used a “soft start” to AB 32 implementation in order to avoid extreme costs and shocks to the California public. The air board has been “consulting with domestic and international experts” and believes that California is at a critical turning point in climate change implementation.

Attacking Cars

Having just returned from one year spent working with the World Bank on policy and investment, Professor Dan Kammen was even less shy about his disdain for the carbon footprint of the combustion automobile engine in California. He is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-directs the school’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center. ”Greenhouse gas targets economic responsibility and produces jobs,” Kammen said. And this can only be done if the total distance we travel, and the need for that travel, are reduced, he said.

Kammen’s department at Berkeley works closely with CARB, and California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission on their climate-change policies and mandates. Kammen said that the best way to ensure that California’s love affair with the auto is discouraged is to charge fees on cars that aren’t deemed clean and green in order “to send signals to purchasers of vehicles to use more bus and rapid transit.”

Kammen was critical of single-driver, single-auto trips, and said that it is not “equitable” for lower income groups. “We are much more mobile than those in Ghana,” Kammen said. “I would personally endorse a fee-based system, and use of IT resources to make recharging sites and BART schedules available.”

Kammen said that he advocates tracking the number of miles traveled by car owners, as well as how a vehicle is used.

He said that his department refers the CPUC, the CEC and CARB to an open source data system called Cool Climate, developed by his department at Berkeley, for calculations on assessing one’s carbon footprint.

Dawn Manley also spoke of being “shackled to petroleum,” and promoted studies done at UC Davis pushing Ethanol. Manley spoke extensively at the hearing about E10 and E85, abbreviations for an ethanol fuel blend of 10 percent up to 85 percent denatured ethanol fuel and gasoline, or other hydrocarbon by volume. Manley is the manager of the Systems Research and Analysis Department at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California

“We’re going to have to shift from petroleum to alternate fuels,” Manley said. “But plug-in hybrids rely on the combustion engine.”

The committee chairman, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said that getting the public to accept the plan will be difficult. “They love the freedom of their single vehicles.”

Tomorrow, Part ll: Panels discussing “Providing fuels of the future,” and “Impacts of the Fuels of the Future.”

Tags: AB 32, Daniel Lammen, Dawn Manley, Katy Grimes, Mary Nichols