Have state’s climate actions paid off?
California will need to make good on a number of earlier promises to reach its goals on electric cars.
It was the sort of bold, climate-focused initiative for which California has developed a reputation — an effective ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
But last month’s historic vote by the California Air Resources Board follows a number of sweeping state environmental actions that have met with varying degrees of success.
Now, as officials seek to fundamentally change California’s automotive culture — thereby reducing its largest source of planetwarming carbon emissions and air pollution — experts say those past initiatives may shed light on whether the nation-leading plan can work.
The dense smog that once smothered Los Angeles is regarded today as folklore. At its worst, between the 1950s and 1980s, the caustic haze was so thick that people could see only as far as a block. It irritated people’s throats and lungs and gave them bloodshot eyes. Back then, there were more than 200 days a year with unhealthy air, according to the Air Resources Board.
Since that time, there has been tremendous progress toward reducing smog and air pollution, much of it due to cleaner cars. The amount
of smog-forming nitrogen oxides has been slashed by more than 50% in the last two decades, substantially improving public health.
But California’s progress in fighting air pollution has stagnated in recent decades, and the state is still home to the worst air pollution in the nation. The South Coast air basin — Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and part of San Bernardino counties — has yet to meet any federal health standards for ozone levels, including the oldest measure, enacted in 1979.
“If you’re looking back 70 years, we’ve done a wonderful job,” said Joe Lyou, president and chief executive of the Coalition for Clean Air. “If you’re looking back over the last decade or two, not so good. And if you’re looking at the legal standards that demand that we provide healthy air for people to breathe, we’re not doing well at all.”
Global warming has exacerbated the problem by fueling wildfires and conditions that are conducive to smog formation.
“Hazardous air pollution days are off the charts because of growth in climate-driven wildfires,” said Will Barrett, national senior director for clean air advocacy for the American Lung Assn. “We also know ozone is formed when tailpipe emissions and other emissions mix in the atmosphere on hot, sunny days. We are seeing more heat, more extreme weather events, creating better conditions for the formation of ozone and threatening health on the ground. These are dual crises. They stem from the same sources: transportation sources.”
But it was the state’s ability to tackle and solve a major smog crisis that gives some experts hope that it can transform transportation.
“The Air Resources Board’s greatest claim to fame before the climate era was its role in creating and enforcing the adoption of catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce the emissions of smog-forming pollution, which was choking the major metropolitan centers in both the Bay Area and on the South Coast,” said Danny Cullenward, policy director at the nonprofit climate research organization CarbonPlan. “So the Air Resources Board as an institution really sort of cut its teeth and was extraordinarily successful in earlier decades in tackling just a massive problem that involved complicated technologies, powerful industries ... and issues that affected people’s everyday lives.”
Cap-and-trade program
One of California’s landmark climate initiatives, the cap-andtrade program was launched in 2006 with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It exceeded expectations and in fact reached the target four years ahead of time.
In 2017, the program was reauthorized with a much more ambitious goal: slashing greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. To get there, the program uses a system of pollution credits that essentially lets large carbon emitters buy and sell unused credits, with the aim of keeping everyone at or below a certain total.
Experts say it only partially worked. While the program has remained a key element of California’s climate strategy, emissions were down about 11% in 2020 — far from the 40% goal. What’s more, that number probably accounts for emissions reductions tied to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The evidence is pretty clear that we’re not on track for that target, and the reliance on this program is a big part of the reason why we’re not on track,” Cullenward said.
Air Resources Board spokesman David Clegern said via email that the state has the policies in place to meet its target, “but getting there means concerted action needs to happen on implementing policies to reduce transportation, short-lived climate pollutants, electricity and other emissions to achieve 2030.”
“The fact that the state achieved its 2020 goal four years early and the success of programs such as the Low Carbon Fuel Standard and the addition of new programs means the role of capand-trade may be smaller in the future, but that will be evaluated after release of the 2020 Scoping Plan later this year,” he said.
The scoping plan, a road map for achieving carbon neutrality in the state, is updated every five years.
Cullenward noted that the capand-trade program has clear parallels to the advanced clean cars rule, including its plan to provide credits to manufacturers who sell more electric vehicles than they’re required to. However, there are some key differences that make him more optimistic about the gas car ban’s prospects of success.
For one, he said, the Air Resources Board historically has had more strength as a regulator of mobile emission sources, such as cars, than of stationary ones, such as factories and power plants — as evidenced by its success with catalytic converters and smog reduction. What’s more, unlike the industries regulated by the cap-andtrade program — which are local, powerful and politically organized — combustion engine production lacks a presence in the state.
Fossil fuel production
Despite California’s green reputation, it remains the seventhhighest oil-producing state, extracting about 358,000 barrels per day, according to state data.
However, oil production has been declining for decades, and the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, reports that “more permits have been issued to plug and permanently seal existing wells than to drill new ones since 2019.” The agency issued 564 permits for new wells in 2021, down from 1,917 in 2020 and 2,665 in 2019.
Some experts say that’s not aggressive enough.
“This transition can’t happen too slowly, because there is a climate crisis, and there are significant public health impacts on front-line communities,” said Bahram Fazeli, director of research and policy at Communities for a Better Environment.
Although there are ambitions to phase out California’s oil and gas production completely — most recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom set his sights on 2045 — there has yet to be an official deadline such as the one for the ban on gas cars.
But the state has made efforts to control or reduce oil production, including a ban on new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and healthcare facilities. Newsom last summer also ordered a ban on new permits for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, beginning in 2024.
“As we move to swiftly decarbonize our transportation sector and create a healthier future for our children, I’ve made it clear I don’t see a role for fracking in that future and, similarly, believe that California needs to move beyond oil,” the governor said at the time.
Fazeli noted that a recent study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that achieving that transition by 2045 is feasible in California, though it would require a significant investment: about $138 billion per year. But the fossil fuel industry is, by nature, opposed to such an existential threat, Fazeli said, and even passing “common sense” legislation such as the 3,200-foot buffer zone has proved challenging.
“California’s economy is not different from other economies — the economy is a fossil fuel economy,” he said. “So California is going through this growing pain of, how do we become a clean energy economy? How do we transition from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy and also provide good paying jobs? That’s a key part of the puzzle.”
Another part of the puzzle is balance, according to Kyle Meng, an associate professor of environmental economics at UC Santa Barbara.
“When it comes to gasoline, you really need policies to deal with both the demand side — like the new car ban and subsidies for EVs — as well as the supply side, which is the production of oil,” he said. “One without the other would lead to unexpected, adverse consequences.”
For example, reducing demand without supply could mean California ends up exporting its excess oil, Meng said, while reducing supply too quickly could leave communities that rely on the industry in bad shape. In Kern County, one of the state’s top producing regions, oil and gas extraction provide as much as 20% of property tax revenue.
As in other sectors, equity remains a major concern, especially when it comes to the communities suffering the worst effects of oil and gas drilling, Meng said. But when considering the state’s climate efforts thus far, there has been good progress, he said.
“If you were to tell me [back in 2005] that California would hit the state’s 2020 greenhouse gas goals ... I wouldn’t have believed it. But California did it,” he said. “However, looking forward, the task for this decade is even more ambitious. The big open question is not just whether California can meet its 2030 greenhouse gas goals but whether those goals are met in a way that doesn’t exacerbate existing inequities across the state.”
Vehicle miles traveled
Although phasing out gas-powered cars is one of the greatest priorities, that alone won’t be enough. Driving habits must change too if the state expects to achieve carbon neutrality.
The climate plan depends on motorists driving at least 12% fewer miles by 2030 and 22% fewer by 2045.
Since the advent of the automobile and the construction of the highway system, large cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco have become car-centric.
Today, around 75% of daily commuting trips consist of one person driving with no passengers — the primary mode of transportation in California.
“Highway building and sprawl go hand in hand,” said Susan Handy, a researcher at UC Davis who has studied strategies to reduce automobile dependence. “That’s true in California, and it’s also true everywhere else. When we built highways, it made it possible to develop farther from city centers than ever before. And now we’re in a situation where we’ve got these sprawling development patterns, and it makes it very hard to get around by means other than the car.”
As the state’s population has increased and more cars are on the road, officials have funded highway construction and expansion to ease congestion; this, ironically, has fostered more driving.
The only major significant decreases in miles driven occur during economic downturns and, in a recent example, with the 2020 onset of the pandemic, as more people worked remotely. However, driving has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
Public policy strategy to reduce driving has historically included gas tax hikes or tolls, which could serve as a deterrent. But the state could do better at investments and incentives for other forms of transportation, such as biking and mass transit, Handy said.
Much of California’s plans have depended on providing financial incentives to trade in gas-powered cars for zero-emission vehicles. But some officials have requested that California look into how driving behaviors might change if the state invests more in mass transit.
“I think it’s tough, because we’re a car culture, right?” Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph said at a meeting in June. “We know how to help people buy cars. What we don’t know is how to help people change the culture so that they are able to ride public transit in a way that’s economical and equitable and efficient for them to get to work and to school and wherever they need to go.”
Infrastructure needs
Infrastructure will play a huge role in California’s transition away from gas cars, experts said. Charging stations will be needed to power electric vehicles, and electricity will be needed to power the charging stations, among myriad considerations.
So far, the state has established goals to help get there, including plans to construct at least 250,000 public vehicle charging stations by the middle of the decade; 10,000 of them should be fast chargers, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. The state also plans to require landlords of multifamily housing units to provide residents with a means to charge electric cars; those details are still being worked out.
And it’s not only personal vehicles that will need the stations but the heavy-duty trucks that transport goods throughout the state every day. The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have the goal of being serviced exclusively by zero-emission trucks by 2035, but they have a long way to go: Only 35 of the 22,000 trucks that serve the ports are “electric,” “battery electric” or “hydrogen fuel cell,” according to data from the complex’s clean truck program.
Though the state has made efforts to streamline the permit process for charging stations, mapping tools show huge gaps in their locations, particularly in inland Central California and far Northern California.
“We’re nowhere close to where we need to be on infrastructure, especially charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, electric trucks, electric buses, electric off-road equipment,” said the Coalition for Clean Air’s Lyou. “And it’s emerged as the most challenging thing we have to do.”
Another problem is that recharging the batteries of electric cars and trucks could lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions, depending on where that energy comes from.
“If you’re talking about California trying to move its emissions from gasoline cars into EVs, you’re talking about probably doubling the amount of electricity demand on the grid,” said UC Santa Barbara’s Meng.
“Where’s that going to come from? You could imagine large, utility-scale solar in places like Kern County, but with the laws as they’re written now, it’s [harder] for Kern County to get property tax benefits from a solar farm than it could from oil drilling.”
‘If you’re looking back 70 years, we’ve done a wonderful job . ... If you’re looking at the legal standards that demand that we provide healthy air for people to breathe, we’re not doing well at all.’
— JOE LYOU, president and chief executive of Coalition for Clean Air