Volume I, No. 7

December 18, 2008

CARB Approves Scoping Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, School Bus Regulations

On Thursday December 11, the Air Resources Board approved California's plan to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. 

Development of this “Scoping Plan” is a requirement of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, authored by then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Assembly Member Fran Pavley.  Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law in September 2006.

The plan is the product of an 18-month-long public process with scores of workshops and public meetings and hundreds of people testifying in person before the board.  

Representatives from businesses and manufacturing sectors testified as to the economic impacts the new rules might bring at a time of fiscal uncertainty.  Local government’s role and the role of other public sector entities such schools remain to be decided.

Also of concern to schools are school bus rules that require diesel retrofits to be placed on those vehicles manufactured before 1987 and requiring that those school buses be replaced by 2018.

"This plan is California's prospectus for a more secure and sustainable economy," said ARB Chairman Mary Nichols. "It will guide capital investments into energy efficiency to save us money, into renewable energy to break our dependence on oil, and promote a new generation of green jobs for hundreds of thousands of Californians."

The plan is built on the principle that a balanced mix of strategies is the best way to cut emissions by approximately 30 percent and grow the economy in a clean and sustainable direction.

The goal is to not only reduce the carbon footprint of those “emitters” that help create global warming, but to create a market for those who take steps to reduce their emissions.  An important component of the plan is a cap-and-trade program covering 85 percent of the state's emissions and create a regional carbon market.

Additional key recommendations of the plan include strategies to enhance and expand proven cost-saving energy efficiency programs; implementation of California's clean cars standards; increases in the amount of clean and renewable energy used to power the state; and implementation of a low-carbon fuel standard that will make the fuels used in the state cleaner.

The ARB will begin developing detailed strategies to implement all of the recommended measures that must be in place by 2012.

~Anna Ferrera

aferrera@m-w-h.com