Dozens of California’s most influential lawmakers, environmentalists and policy experts gathered in Los Angeles this month to mark the 20th anniversary of the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act, which put the state on a science-driven path to address climate change.
Two decades after the passage of the nation-leading bill, California is not on track to meet its future targets, new data show.
When Assembly Bill 32 passed in 2006, it set in motion something never done before: a statewide effort to inventory and curb greenhouse gas emissions through legally mandated targets. It paved the way for the creation of California’s signature carbon market program, cap-and-invest.
It also mandated returning emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 — a target California met six years ahead of schedule. Annual emissions in 1990 were about 431 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
But the harder changes were always down the road, including the next target: cutting emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.
California is only about halfway there, with annual emissions down roughly 4% to 346 million metric tons in 2024, according to the state’s latest greenhouse gas emissions inventory, released in September. (Emissions data are published on a two-year time lag).
From there, it must cut an additional 86 million metric tons of carbon by 2030. At the current pace, that means California won’t hit the 2030 target until 2034, according to an analysis from the nonprofit Next 10, which publishes annual reports on the state’s progress.
The 2045 goal — cutting emissions to 85% below 1990 levels — is even further off track. It will require steep reductions of about 8.8% per year beginning in 2030, more than double the current pace, the group found.
State officials said the work could prove especially challenging in the current political climate, which is not yet reflected in the data.
Over the last two years, the Trump administration has ended federal rebates for electric vehicles, revoked stringent tailpipe rules and challenged California’s ambitious electric vehicle sales target, which would have in effect banned the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in 2035.
“The state has made strong progress and is on a positive trajectory with the latest inventory showing a nearly four percent drop in statewide emissions,” said Lindsay Buckley, spokeswoman for the California Air Resources Board, in an email. “But federal interference in California’s efforts to reduce transportation emissions threatens to derail that momentum since transportation remains the state’s largest source of climate and air pollution.”
Emissions reductions have not completely stalled.
The 3.9% cut in 2024 was an improvement from 3% in 2023, “so we are moving in the right direction,” said Next 10’s founder, F. Noel Perry. He said 2024 represented the largest annual reduction, save for the pandemic and recession years of 2020 and 2008, when energy use, transportation and economic activity were depressed.
The 2024 reduction was also way above the average of 1.2% per year from 2006 to 2016 and was driven largely by cleaner transportation, cleaner electricity and lower emissions from homes as the state added more electric vehicles and appliances, and more of its power came from renewable sources such as wind and solar, according to Stephanie Leonard, Next 10’s director of research. Major investments in battery energy storage, as well as a new state law legalizing plug-in solar, should also help move the needle.
The next targets will require even more progress in transportation, which still accounts for the largest share of emissions in California, as well as the industrial and commercial sectors that include factories, refineries, office buildings, shopping centers, schools and hospitals, Leonard said.
“We do have about 2.8 million [zero emission vehicles] on the road now, and that’s great, but we need a lot more, and we need a lot more people taking public transit,” she said.
Buckley said regulators are considering additional actions to ramp down transport emissions and “ensure we stay on track with our science and health-based targets.” That might include tougher regulations or new incentives targeting pollution from cars, trucks and other transportation sources.
She said the California Air Resources Board will further evaluate the effects of federal rollbacks on the state’s climate goals as part of next year’s scoping plan process.
In Los Angeles, recent gubernatorial candidate and clean energy investor Tom Steyer told The Times that the president’s actions will almost certainly affect the state’s trajectory.
“We’ve gone from government subsidizing new clean green technologies to the massive government subsidization of fossil fuels,” said Steyer, who spent $5 million to help defeat a fossil-fuel-funded ballot initiative to overturn AB 32 in 2010.
But there are also affordability issues at play, including the need for costly infrastructure upgrades to support the clean energy transition, and the fact that most of the state’s residents are still dependent on natural gas in their homes and gasoline in their cars.
“We need to figure out how to materially allow for a balance so that you can, over time, meet your goals and objectives and not be so aggressive that you leave people behind,” said Fabian Núñez, former speaker of the California Assembly who co-authored AB 32 with former state Sen. Fran Pavley in 2006.
“We still need to continue to be aggressive about combating climate change … but how you get there is really important, and who you help or hurt along the way,” Núñez said.
Susan Kennedy, former chair of the California Public Utilities Commission who also served as chief of staff to then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said affordability is “probably going to be the single biggest barrier to getting to the next level.”
The state’s grid operator has said it needs $62 billion in transmission upgrades over the next 10 years to meet the mandated climate goals, Kennedy said, and that’s on top of $50 billion in water infrastructure upgrades and other urgent needs.
“There’s an incredible need to treat it as an emergency today — how you’re going to make those investments over the next 10 years — or we won’t get to the next level,” she said.
State officials emphasized that California’s economy has continued to grow even as the state has slashed emissions, with gross domestic product up 40% since the passage of AB 32. That’s contrary to the “hysteria that came out of the oil lobby” when Schwarzenegger signed the bill, Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a recent economic conference in Long Beach.
“We were the [world’s] eighth-largest economy in ‘06, and we’re the fourth-largest economy today,” Newsom said. “We have no peers. We are dramatically changing the way we’re producing and consuming energy.”
He pointed to bipartisan collaboration as key to the passage of AB 32, and Schwarzenegger recalled environmentalists and business leaders celebrating together after the bill passed.
Schwarzenegger said California must not be deterred by external threats or the difficult challenges that lie ahead. Although there are no legal consequences for missing the state’s next target, it would require more reductions and aggressive action in later years to make up for it.
“It’s one thing to gain something and to accomplish something,” Schwarzenegger said. “It’s another thing to hold on to it.”
California remains at the forefront of state efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the nation as a whole is lagging. A damning United Nations report released Wednesday says the U.S. increased its emissions last year in large part due to President Trump’s policies — including withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and subsidizing the rebound of coal power generation — while all other members of the top 20 major economies reduced their carbon pollution or at least slowed their growth.
The world is now on track for 4.7 degrees of warming above preindustrial levels by 2100, far beyond the 2.7-degree target adopted by most world nations in the 2015 Paris climate pact, the report says.
The post Twenty years after California’s landmark climate law, the state is not on track to meet its targets appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
