Energy Policy
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Ecology has become the political substitute for the word “motherhood.”
—Jesse Unruh, former Democratic leader of the California state assembly
We have met the enemy and he is us.
—Pogo
Environmental policy provides an example of policy success in California. Rich in both environmental resources and environmental problems, California has long battled environmental challenges. From its pristine coastal redwood forests in the north to the warm sandy beaches of the south, from the Sequoias in the Sierra Nevada to the desolate beauty of Joshua Tree, Mojave, and Death Valley, from the ruggedness of the Channel Islands to the windswept Monterey Peninsula, from the muddy Sacramento Delta to the fertility of the Central Valley, California overflows in natural beauty and biological diversity. Yet at the same time, California’s vast industrial and agricultural infrastructure, its massive urban areas and encroaching sprawl, its densely populated coastline, its military bases, and its transportation corridors, all present significant environmental challenges that the state is only now coming to terms with. California’s environmental dilemma is, at its core, a contest over scarce resources.
California has the largest population, the largest economy, and some of the most serious environmental problems of any state in the nation. These issues are, of course, interrelated. The challenge facing policymakers is how to accommodate an increasing population while maintaining healthy economic growth and simultaneously improving environmental quality. This discourse, not surprisingly, is extremely divisive, with different interests pushing in very different directions. This chapter explores California’s environmental and energy challenges and the policies that have succeeded—at least in part—in stemming the tide of environmental degradation.
Specific attention is paid to air pollution policy in Southern California, water quality in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Area, and evolving transportation policy in the greater Los Angeles area.
Air quality throughout the state differs widely. Los Angeles and its neighbors in the South Coast Basin experience the most degraded air quality in the nation after Houston. Yet a significant portion of the state remains out of compliance with Federal Air Quality Standards. As Figure 14.1 illustrates, ozone levels vary widely throughout the state. The Southern California basin is “extreme” in its nonattainment status, representing the most severe air pollution in the nation. But Northern and Central California are not smog free. The metropolitan Sacramento area, including Sacramento, Yolo, and Solano Counties, are designated “serious,” and California’s Central Valley is designated “serious.” San Bernardino and Riverside Counties are “severe”; Santa Barbara County and Ventura County are “moderate”; and San Diego, Butte, Yuba, and Imperial are “transitional.” The remaining areas are in compliance with federal ozone standards.1
Air pollution provides a challenging policy area because of ambient emissions travel. The San Francisco Bay Area tends to appear smog free, but this is in large measure due to its prevailing west winds. Emissions are extremely high in the Bay Area, with its 7.3 million residents. However, its ambient air quality tends to be quite good. Just as East Bay cities suffer through San Francisco’s smog contribution, Yolo and Solano Counties suffer through Bay Area emissions.
California’s smog problems are a result of two primary factors: its dense population with its reliance on individual automobile transit and its vast industrial and agricultural economy. Air pollution is caused by a variety of factors and carries severe health consequences. Carbon monoxide is emitted from vehicle and stationary source exhaust. It is an odorless gas that replaces oxygen in red blood cells. It can cause angina, impaired vision, poor coordination, and dizziness. While the earth releases CO naturally, the expansive release of industrial CO emissions contributes to the greenhouse effect, throwing off the equilibrium of the earth’s temperature (global warming).
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including reactive organic gases (ROGs), are released by the incomplete combustion of gasoline and evaporation from petroleum-based fuels, solvents, and paints. Hydrocarbons react in the sunlight with oxygen and nitrogen dioxide to form ozone, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), and other photochemical oxidants. Ozone, the main component of smog, irritates the mucous membranes (eyes, nasal passages, throat, lungs) causing coughing, choking, reduced lung capacity, as well as aggravating asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. Smog, containing hundreds of chemicals including ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate, damages trees, crops, and building materials.
FIGURE 14.1 AIR QUALITY ATTAINMENT DESIGNATIONS FOR
OZONE LEVELS IN CALIFORNIA
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.gov/region09/air/maps/images/r9_o3_8hr_md.jpg.
Lead was used as an anti-knock additive in some gasolines until 1980, as a stabilizing agent in household and industrial paints, and as a structural component of pipes and roofing. Nonferrous smelters and battery plants also emit lead into the atmosphere. Lead, like other heavy metals, accumulates in the fat, bone, and other soft tissues of the body. The most common symptoms of lead poisoning include nausea and severe stomach pains. Larger accumulations cause deterioration of blood-forming organs, kidneys, and, ultimately, the nervous system. In addition, lead has been tied to learning disabilities in young children.
Oxides of nitrogen (NOX) are a product of industrial and vehicle exhaust. It attacks the lungs, causing cellular changes resulting in lowered resistance to respiratory infections. NOX is a main contributor to acid rain and, when mixed with hydrocarbons, creates ozone. Particulate matter is the smoke, dust, and soot emitted from industrial processes, heating boilers, gasoline and diesel engines, coal- and diesel-burning utilities, cigarette smoke, and both organic and synthetic dusts. Larger par-ticulates clog the lung sacs, causing bronchitis and more serious pneumoconioses (diseases related to inhalation of organic and inorganic dusts), irritate mucous membranes, and clog tear ducts, damaging the surface of the eye. Microscopic particulates pass into the bloodstream, introducing carcinogens and heavy metals. Sulfur oxides (SOX) are released in coal- and oil-burning processes. SOX is a corrosive, poisonous gas that is associated with coughing, colds, asthma, and bronchitis, and, like nitrogen dioxide, contributes to acid rain.2
While few would argue that California has solved its air problems, the California Air Resources Board reports that there has been meaningful improvement in California’s air over the past 25 years, as Table 14.1 illustrates. Between 1980 and 2005 the population has increased by 55 percent, and vehicle-miles traveled have increased by 146 percent. At the same time, NOX emissions have decreased by 37 percent, and emissions of ROGs have decreased by 63 percent. Particulate matter smaller than 10 microns (PM10) has increased by only 9 percent, and particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM25) has decreased by a small margin. And, carbon monoxide emissions (CO) have decreased by 64 percent. Ozone exposure remains a significant problem statewide. The areas of most significant improvement for ozone exposure include the San Francisco Bay and San Diego Air Basins, while the South Coast and Sacramento Metropolitan Air Basins have experienced only mild improvement. The San Joaquin Valley Air Basin has experienced the least improvement.3
TABLE 14.1 STATEWIDE AMBIENT AIR QUALITYTRENDS, 1975–2010
*Data for 2010 Estimated.
| Population | In millions |
| Avg Daily VMT | Average Daily Vehicle Miles Traveled (in millions) |
| NOX | Oxides of Nitrogen |
| ROG | Reactive Organic Gas |
| PM10 | Particulate Matter smaller than 10 microns |
| PM25 | Particulate Matter smaller than 2.5 microns |
| CO | Carbon Monoxide |
Like air quality, California’s water quality is a major concern as well. The same factors contributing to the poor air quality contribute to poor water quality. And as the largest farm state in the nation, California surface waters and aquifers must absorb millions of tons of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. California’s manufacturing industries dump millions of gallons of contaminated waste water, and California’s cities and suburbs pump out tens of millions of gallons of sewage and polluted runoff. In addition, in seeking to maximize arable land, California has lost more that 91 percent of its wet-lands.4 Wetlands are critical tidal zones that, when healthy, keep water clean by filtering out contaminants. Wetlands provide essential habitat for threatened and endangered plant and wildlife. Forty-five percent of the nation’s listed endangered animals and 26 percent of its endangered plants rely on wetlands to survive.5 California is among only seven states with this degree of loss, as Figure 14.2 illustrates.
California water quality is degraded through a variety of pollution sources. As sewer systems continue to age and deteriorate, growing populations produce increasing demands. The result is the seepage of raw sewage into aquifers. Improper discharge from septic tanks exacerbates the problem, making sewage the single largest polluter of drinking water. Waste disposal sites also pose special dangers.
Agriculture sprays millions of tons of fertilizers and pesticides on crops, which ultimately seep into water sources. Runoff from fields, feedlots, and barnyards carries potassium and nitrogen into ground and surface waters. Water diverted from rivers for irrigation is returned with excessive levels of salt and minerals, degrading drinking water sources. Colorado River water becomes increasingly sodium rich as it makes its way south, causing serious problems for communities such as Los Angeles, which rely heavily on the Colorado for drinking water. Mine runoff brings high levels of acid, iron, sulfates, copper, lead, uranium, and other hazardous materials into aquifers and streams.
The potential health effects of water pollution are serious. Nitrates from agricultural runoff can cause birth defects in infants and livestock. Chlorinated solvents from chemical degreasing agents, machinery maintenance, and chemical production are known carcinogens. Trihalomethanes, produced by chemical reactions with chlorinated water, may cause liver and kidney damage and are similarly carcinogenic. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are produced as waste from outmoded manufacturing facilities and may cause liver damage and possibly cancer. Lead etching from old piping and solder in water systems may cause nerve damage, learning disabilities, birth defects, and possibly cancer. Coliform and pathogenic bacteria and viruses from leaking sewers and septic tanks spread gastrointestinal illnesses.
California’s water quality is monitored by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). The SWRCB reports that discharges of contaminants is decreasing, the number of leaking underground storage tanks (USTs) is decreasing, and that fewer organic chemicals and pesticides are found in California’s drinking water.6 Although water quality issues vary throughout the state, as the point of estuarial destination for the state’s largest watershed, the greater San Francisco Bay-Delta Area provides a useful barometer to statewide water quality.
FIGURE 14.2 HISTORICAL WETLAND LOSS BY STATE
Source: US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water Fact Sheet Series, “Threats to Wetlands”. September 2001, www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/threats.pdf.
The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board tracks the water quality for rivers, streams, estuaries, and bays in the Bay Area. They report that fish populations have suffered serious declines in all areas, with major reductions of striped bass, delta smelt, splittail, longfin smelt, and salmon. This is due to spawning habitat losses in the Delta region.7 Bay sport fish have been impacted by chemical pollutants. White croaker, shiner surfperch, walleye surfperch, leopard sharks, brown smoothhound sharks, striped bass, sturgeon, and halibut have all tested high for PCBs, mercury, dieldrin, total DDT, total chlordane, and dioxin/furans, prompting the state to warn that Bay fish consumption should be limited. (Adults should consume no more than two Bay-caught fish meals per month; pregnant women and children no more than one.)8
Water and sediment is routinely tested around the Bay through the Regional Monitoring Program. During 2004 and 2005, 31 sites were tested for water toxicity, and 47 sites were tested for sediment toxicity. PCB concentrations exceeded safe levels at all sites. Pesticides DDT, dieldrin, and chlordane exceeded safe levels at several sites. Trace metals (copper, nickel, lead, mercury, and chromium) were above safe levels at many sites, particularly in the North Bay. On the positive side, the Regional Water Quality Control Board found no toxicity to fish and other aquatic organisms due to the water quality. Sediment toxicity is also widespread, even though there has been a decline in the concentrations of PCBs, pesticides, and trace metals in recent years.9 The control board also tests groundwater around the Bay Area. Pollution is widespread, primarily due to 7,500 known leaking underground fuel tanks. There are an additional 500 sites estimated where industrial solvents have leaked into aquifers.
The most significant water quality issue in the Bay Area is aquatic habitat loss. In 1850 there were about 545,000 acres of tidal wetlands in the Bay and Delta. Today there are about 45,000 acres.10 Historically, most of these lost wetlands were taken for agriculture. Increasingly, however, urban development is taking a serious toll, both as a consequence of habitat loss and the rise of urban creeks and non-point runoff. Urban runoff is responsible for carrying wastewater, chemical contaminants, and trash into riparian habitat, causing further water pollution and sediment problems.
Rural creeks in Marin and Sonoma Counties are polluted by dairy and agricultural runoff, bringing manure, fertilizers, and pesticides into rivers and other surface waters. Sediment “hotspots” have been created by heavy metals, solvents, pesticides, and toxic organics introduced into sediment around the Bay Area by waste water discharges and industrial runoff. The Water Control Board cautions that these hotspots may be directly toxic to any organisms in them, and the contaminants can “bioaccu-mulate,” becoming toxic to other animals higher up the food chain.11
California’s population increases about 1.1 percent per year, but its energy consumption increases 1.4 percent annually. Still, Californians consume less energy per capita than the nation as a whole. U.S. per capita energy consumption is just over 12,000 kWh per person, while California consumes approximately 7,300 kWh per person on an annual basis. This is up from 3,600 kWh/person in 1960, but California’s per capita use has remained generally the same since 1980. California imports 84 percent of its natural gas, 58 percent of its petroleum, and 23 percent of its electricity. And, while California ranks second in total energy used, the state ranks first in residential, commercial, and transportation energy use. And the state ranks third in its industrial energy use. California’s electricity is produced through several energy sources: natural gas (41 percent), coal (20 percent), hydroelectric (15 percent), nuclear (13 percent), and renewable (11 percent).12
California’s energy use places measurable strains on environmental quality. The state’s 28 million vehicles use more than 16 billion gallons of gasoline and 3 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually.13 On-road motor vehicles produce 32 percent of the state’s emissions of ROGs, 55.5 percent of CO emissions, and 47 percent of NOX emissions.14 The state emits an estimated 500 million tons of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent). Of this, 41 percent is generated by transportation, 23 percent by industrial facilities including petroleum refineries, 10 percent by in-state electricity production, and 10 percent by out-of-state electricity generation.15 As we discuss later in the chapter, the state’s reliance on motor vehicles is not by chance—it is the result of key transportation decisions made in the 1930s through 1960s—and the lack of any transportation decisions in the 1970s and 1980s.
California’s energy use and production have not been without problems. In the 1970s there were two oil crises. The first, in 1973, was a result of oil producing nations withholding supply from the United States as a result of U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The second, in 1979, was a result of market panic following the Iranian Revolution. In both cases, the nation’s dependence in foreign oil was brought into focus, but no long-term reductions in domestic petroleum use were sustained. California’s reliance on imported oil for its huge fleet of motor vehicles put it into a particularly difficult spot. In 1979 gasoline was rationed for the first time since World War II. But the greatest shock to California’s energy infrastructure was the state’s electricity crisis of 2000–2001. And while the oil crises of the 1970s may be attributed to the nation’s growing dependence on foreign oil and geo-politics, the electricity crisis was a result of domestic corporate greed and market failure.
California’s electricity crisis, also known as the Western energy crisis, exploded on June 14, 2000, as blackouts cut power to 97,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area during a heat wave. Between January and May 2001 several blackouts cut power to between several hundred thousand to a million and a half Californians with then Governor Gray Davis declared a state of emergency in January 2001. In examining the crisis, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that the Western energy market was dysfunctional, allowing energy trading corporations such as Enron to manipulate supply and demand. The dysfunction in the market began as early as 1996, as California began to deregulate the energy market in an attempt to increase competition. In so doing, the FERC concluded, California created inconsistent trading rules. As Californians suffered through blackouts, Enron earned profits exceeding $500 million in 2000 and 2001.16
Environmental policy responses in California are textbook illustrations of federalism in action. Like most other states, California only acted to improve environmental quality after the federal government required the state to do so. As a consequence, most of California’s environmental policy responses are state elements of federal programs. Responses to the policy areas of air quality, water quality and water quantity, and solid and hazardous waste follow.
California air policy is facilitated at the state level by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and addressed locally by 34 air pollution districts. As a consequence of the variation in air quality throughout the states, CARB and the EPA requires that regional air quality control districts create plans specifically designed for problems in their area. The local air pollution control districts set emission levels and grant emission permits for stationary sources, as well as managing transportation control measures for their respective regions. Each district develops its own air policy management plan to combat the unique air quality problems in its region. Depending on the level and type of airborne pollutants in a district, the local control board may regulate manufacturers, power plants, refineries, gasoline service stations, and auto body shops. If the Bay Area is the barometer for statewide water quality, the Los Angeles Basin is surely the barometer of air quality management in the state.
Like many other jurisdictions, California was slow to comply with the 1970 federal Clean Air Act Amendments. California’s State Implementation Plan (SIP), accepted by the EPA under the Reagan administration, argued that Southern California simply could not meet federal standards. Ironically, it was this weak SIP that initiated California’s evolution as the leader in innovative clean air policy. The acceptance of California’s SIP allowed environmentalists to challenge the EPA’s weak implementation of the Clean Air Act in court. Perhaps as a consequence of its growing urban density and increasingly degraded environment, California has emerged as a leader in creative environmental policymaking. This is especially true in Southern California’s air quality policy.
In 1987, after discussions with the EPA broke down, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the EPA to reject California’s 1984 SIP. Facing potential sanctions, including the loss of federal highway and sewer funds, and with prodding from Representative Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) created the initial Air Quality Management Plan for Southern California (SCAQMP) in 1989.
SCAQMP mandates specific controls to be in place by 2010. The first part of the plan (Tier I) includes 123 immediate controls that were to be implemented by the year 2000. These controls focused on immediate changes based on technologies available at the time, such as reformulating commercial and household paints and solvents to reduce hydrocarbon emissions, regulating charcoal broilers in restaurants, requiring emission control equipment for bakeries and dry cleaners, and more effectively inspecting motor vehicles. In addition, the SCAQMP requires large employers—those employing 100 people or more—to provide employees with incentives for carpooling and public transit use.
The second section of the plan (Tier II) depended on the development of new technologies and was to be implemented over a 15-year period. This portion of the plan mandates that 40 percent of private vehicles and 70 percent of commercial trucks and buses were required to run on nonpetroleum fuels, such as methanol, by 1999. Two percent of all cars sold in 1998, and 10 percent sold in 2003, had to meet zero-emission standards. With available technology, only electric vehicles are able to meet that standard. The plan also includes the construction of housing hubs closer to job centers and improved mass transit and carpooling.
The final portion of the plan (Tier III) requires the further evolution of new technologies and therefore focuses on research and development; it includes the establishment of the Office of Technology Assessment. The specific controls in this section of the plan include the conversion of motor vehicles to “extremely low-emitting” engines, which may preclude the use of the internal combustion engine.
By 1991 the SCAQMD adopted a revised SCAQMP. The 1991 plan maintains the basic structure of the 1989 plan but establishes several new control measures that include the application of more advanced technologies, such as the Phase 2 reformulated fuels program, for reducing stationary and mobile emissions. In addition, the 1991 plan includes eight specific measures for controlling transportation-related emissions by reducing government-related vehicle miles and vehicle trips. In 1994 the plan was redesigned to fulfill the requirements of federal Clean Air Act Amendments (1990) and the California Clean Air Act (1988). Structurally, the 1994 plan is similar to the earlier versions. Tier I measures are now divided into “short-term” and “medium-term” measures (which were to be implemented between 1994 and 2005). Tier II and III measures are now consolidated as “long-term” measures. Control changes are a little more substantial. In addition to the controls mentioned, the plan imposes more stringent emissions and fuel quality standards, accommodating the California Air Resources Board—the statewide agency—low-emission-vehicle (LEV) and clean fuels regulations. Stationary sources require greater application of “technologically feasible” control equipment. The plan also requires the adoption of new technologies that “may reasonably be expected to be utilized by the year 2010.”17
Ships, trains, aircraft, and farming and construction equipment continue to be regulated primarily by the federal EPA and CARB. The EPA released a court-ordered federal implementation plan in February 1994, requiring greater federal air quality standards. The standards were adopted by the new SCAQMP. Although the FIP was ultimately withdrawn as a concession to the new Republican Congress, the SCAQMP continues to require additional measures for non-road sources, including recreational boats and vehicles to meet these standards. In addition, several new implementation strategies were included in the 1994 plan, including increased use of market incentives, greater use of permitting, greater education programs, equipment standards, and greater communication between the local agency (the SCAQMD) and state (CARB) and federal (EPA) agencies. Several market incentives have been written into the plan. The plan expands the RECLAIM (Regional Clean Air Incentives Market) program, a “bubble” policy requiring aggregate control of a facility’s emissions rather than command and control of specific emissions within the facility. RECLAIM also creates a pollution permit market where participants can sell unused pollution rights. Further, the plan establishes a wider program of tax credits for companies that reduce vehicle emissions. Perhaps most creative is the plan to develop a model of emission-based registration fees and sales taxes to encourage financial incentives for emissions reduction.
Educational outreach programs are utilized to help bring newly regulated small source categories (e.g., dry cleaners, bakeries) into compliance. Because the district is attempting to create a better working relationship with the business community in the South Coast Basin, information on alternative products, cleaner processes, and equipment modifications is being distributed so as to encourage greater emissions reductions. In addition, the plan encourages public education campaigns in order to encourage environmentally friendly behavior changes, including maximizing mass transportation use and minimizing residential emissions such as BBQs and fireplaces. The most recent version, adopted in 1997, scales back the innovative approaches that characterized the earlier versions. Placing a greater emphasis on “flexible, alternative approaches,” the 1997 version backs off from some standards (e.g., ozone) and replaces remaining command and control structures with incentive-based regulations. On the positive side, the new version accommodates the new federal requirements for particulate matter (PM10). In 2003 and again in 2007 the Air Quality Management Plan was updated, making small changes that align California’s ozone and PM10 standards with the federal standards. Similarly, the updates incorporate state and federal planning requirements into the AQMP.
Southern California’s South Coast Air Quality Management Plan (SCAQMP) leaves the federal air quality model and institutes a stringent 20-year plan to reduce smog. The commitment of the South Coast Basin to reduce emissions through a four-point plan involving conservation, alternative fuels, mass transit, and a shift in residential and economic social patterns makes the plan the strongest clean air program in the world.
The SWRCB was established in 1967, with the mission of ensuring the “highest reasonable quality of waters of the state, while allocating those waters to achieve the optimum balance of beneficial uses.”18 The board is made up of five full-time members, appointed to four-year terms by the governor and confirmed by the senate.
The state board shares authority with the nine regional water quality control boards. The regional boards are responsible for developing and enforcing water quality basin plans consistent with the state’s water policies and objectives, and addressing the local differences in climate, topography, geology, and hydrology. The regional boards each have nine part-time members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate. The regional boards have specific authority to “issue waste discharge requirements, take enforcement action against violators, and monitor water quality.”19 Water quality problems throughout the state necessitate strong policy, but the state requires that these policies balance the need to improve quality with the needs of industry, agriculture, and municipal districts.
State water agencies are currently implementing several programs aimed at specific problems. The federal Clean Water Act (1987) provides the standards and framework through which the state must operate. The Clean Water Act requires the state to improve waste treatment facilities, manage and treat non-point runoff (urban runoff), and develop estuary management programs. In addition, the state has developed an aggressive watershed management program, an underground storage tank cleanup program, and through the California Coastal Act and the resulting Coastal Commission, an aggressive coastal management program.
Californians generate over 37 million tons of municipal solid waste every year, about 90 percent of which is buried in the state’s 670 landfills. Waste policy has traditionally been seen as a local issue, resulting in widespread landfills and incinerators. This has created serious problems over time: Toxic leachate percolates from landfills, posing serious groundwater threats; escaping gases have been shown to contain toxic contaminants and noxious odors. Most existing landfills are in violation of state and federal operating requirements. All of this is exacerbated by California’s increasingly dense population, making open spaces more and more rare. As a result, the state has stepped in and taken charge of solid waste policy.
The Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 (IWMA, also referred to as AB 939) identifies five components to an integrated waste management program for the state: source reduction; recycling; composting; waste to energy; and continued land-filling, albeit at lower volumes. The law required cities and counties to divert at least 25 percent of their waste by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000, relative to the 1990 waste stream. IWMA establishes source reduction, recycling, and composting as policy priorities over landfilling and incineration. The statute replaces the old industry-oriented waste management board with six full-time members. The governor is required to appoint one member representing the solid waste industry, one member representing the environmental community, and two “public” members; the speaker of the assembly and the Senate Rules Committee each have one discretionary appointment. The new Integrated Waste Management Board holds greater authority to enforce compliance through punitive fines of as much as $10,000 per day to non-compliant jurisdictions.
The rate of waste diversion in 1989 was 12.5 percent. Most counties were able to exceed the 25 percent reduction by 1995. By January 2000 the statewide rate of diversion was 33 percent, short of the 50 percent goal but well above the 27 percent national average.20 By 2005, however, the statewide diversion rate was 52 percent.21 As counties have come into compliance, municipal recycling centers have increased by 155 percent. But, this may be the easy part. Reducing incoming waste remains a major challenge. Creating markets for recovered materials continues to be a major effort for the board.
As in so many other areas of policy, California has emerged as a leader in energy policy responses. The state was one of the first to leave the federal model and begin developing its own path to energy sustainability. Following the electricity crisis of 2001, it became clear that energy sustainability was an area that would require state leadership. While federal models continue to focus on fossil fuel production and importation, California’s experience demonstrated that while maintaining a steady flow of traditional energy resources was necessary, increasing the efficiency of our energy use and expanding our use of renewable energy resources were critical components of the state’s energy and environmental demands. In 2003 California’s three energy agencies—the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Power Authority (CPA), and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)—created the California Energy Action Plan (EAP), which articulated explicit energy goals with a related six-point action plan to achieve those goals.
The primary Energy Action Plan goal is to “ensure that adequate, reliable, and reasonably-priced electrical power and natural gas supplies, including prudent reserves, are achieved and provided through policies, strategies, and actions that are cost-effective and environmentally sound for California’s consumers and taxpayers.”22 The plan includes six subsidiary goals:
1. Meet California’s energy growth needs while optimizing energy conservation and resource efficiency and reducing per capita electricity demand.
2. Ensure reliable, affordable, and high-quality power supply for all who need it in all regions of the state by building sufficient new generation.
3. Accelerate the state’s goal for renewable resource generation to 2010.
4. Upgrade and expand the electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure and reduce the time before needed facilities are brought online.
5. Promote customer- and utility-owned distributed generation.
6. Ensure a reliable supply of reasonably priced natural gas.
The related actions the agencies committed to include:
1. Optimize energy conservation and resource efficiency.
2. Accelerate the state’s goal for renewable generation.
3. Ensure reliable, affordable electricity generation.
4. Upgrade and expand the electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure.
5. Promote customer- and utility-owned distributed generation.
6. Ensure reliable supply of reasonably priced natural gas.
The Energy Action Plan is designed to be the philosophical core of the state’s emerging package of energy policies. These policies are further refined in the second Energy Action Plan (EAP II), released in September 2005. EAP II calls for coordinated action from all state agencies in an effort to develop a long-term solution to the state’s energy needs. EAP II defines its purpose as follows:
Our overarching goal is for California’s energy to be adequate, affordable, technologically advanced, and environmentally-sound. Energy must be reliable—provided when and where needed and with minimal environmental risks and impacts. Energy must be affordable to households, businesses and industry, and motorists—and in particular to disadvantaged customers who rely on us to ensure that they can afford this fundamental commodity. Our actions must be taken with clear recognition of cost considerations and trade-offs to ensure reasonably priced energy for all Californians. We need to develop and tap advanced technologies to achieve these goals of reliability, affordability and an environmentally-sound energy future. These goals affirm the original objectives of EAP I.23
In order to achieve this, EAP II establishes the following nine action areas, in order of priority:
1. Increase energy efficiency in all sectors.
2. Increase efficiency in assessing and responding to variation in electricity demand.
3. Develop renewable energy resources.
4. Improve the capacity and reliability of the electricity infrastructure.
5. Promote affordable and environmentally responsible wholesale and retail electricity markets with sound market rules.
6. Reduce demand for natural gas to ensure sustainable and affordable supply.
7. Take steps to build an efficient, multi-fuel transportation market to serve the state’s future transportation needs.
8. Encourage research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) projects in technologies that will allow California to achieve its policies to make energy efficiency, demand response, and renewable resources more effective and cost-competitive.
9. Clearly establish California’s leadership in and commitment to the fight against climate change.
These actions frame several of Governor Schwarzenegger’s executive orders and establish a blueprint for legislative action. Whether the state can achieve all of the benchmarks of EAP and EAP II is yet to be seen. However, California’s energy vision is robust and likely to establish a model for other states to follow.
| The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology |
Barry Commoner |
The environment has just been rediscovered by the people who live in it. In the United States the event was celebrated in April 1970, during Earth Week. It was a sudden, noisy awakening. School children cleaned up rubbish; college students organized huge demonstrations; determined citizens recaptured the streets from the automobile, at least for a day. Everyone seemed to be aroused to the environmental danger and eager to do something about it.
They were offered lots of advice. Almost every writer, almost every speaker, on the college campuses, in the streets and on television and radio broadcasts, was ready to fix the blame and pronounce a cure for the environmental crisis. Some regarded the environmental issue as politically innocuous:
Ecology has become the political substitute for the word “motherhood.”
—Jesse Unruh, Democratic Leader of the State of California Assembly
Some blamed pollution on the rising population:
The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste…. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded…. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.
—Garrett Hardin, Biologist
The causal chain of the deterioration [of the environment] is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide-all can be traced easily to too many people.
—Paul R. Ehrlich, Biologist
Some blamed affluence:
The affluent society has become an effluent society. The 6 percent of the world’s population in the United States produces 70 percent or more of the world’s solid wastes.
—Walter S. Howard, Biologist
Some blamed man’s innate aggressiveness:
The first problem, then, is people…. The second problem, a most fundamental one, lies within us—our basic aggressions…. As Anthony Storr has said: “The sombre fact is that we’re the cruelest and most ruthless species that has ever walked the earth.”
—William Roth, Director, Pacific Life Assurance Company
A minister blamed profits:
Environmental rape is a fact of our national life only because it is more profitable than responsible stewardship of earth’s limited resources.
—Channing E. Phillips, Congregationalist Minister
While a historian blamed religion:
Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt…. We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.
—Lynn White, Historian
A politician blamed technology:
A runaway technology, whose only law is profit, has for years poisoned our air, ravaged our soil, stripped our forests bare, and corrupted our water resources.
—Vance Hartke, Senator from Indiana
While an environmentalist blamed politicians:
There is a peculiar paralysis in our political branches of government, which are primarily responsible for legislating and executing the policies environmentalists are urging…. Industries who profit by the rape of our environment see to it that legislators friendly to their attitudes are elected, and that bureaucrats of similar attitude are appointed.
—Roderick A. Cameron, Environmental Defense Fund
And one keen observer blamed everyone:
We have met the enemy and he is us.
—Pogo
Earth Week convinced me of the urgency of a deeper public understanding of the origins of the environmental crisis…. [They] can be organized into a kind of informal set of “laws of ecology….”
The First Law of Ecology: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else …
The Second Law of Ecology: Everything Must Go Somewhere …
The Third Law of Ecology: Nature Knows Best…
The Fourth Law of Ecology: There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch …
Source: Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle. Copyright © 1971 by Barry Commoner. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Perhaps as a consequence of the state’s poor environmental quality, California has developed innovative approaches in a variety of areas. The regional clean air and clean water plans, as well as the statewide solid waste plan, are promising innovations. Most innovative, perhaps, is the state’s response to air pollution. The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s plan for bringing Southern California into compliance with federal standards is widely recognized as the most aggressive approach in the nation. Unlike the federal air quality model, it institutes a stringent 20-year plan to reduce smog through a four-point plan of conservation, alternative fuels, mass transit, and a shift in residential and economic social patterns. Urbanized states across the nation are watching California’s air policy approach to see whether it provides a model worth emulating. And, the state’s EAP and EAP II define an aggressive approach to achieving energy sustainability.
California’s environmental and energy future will depend on the success of its current generation of environmental policy responses. The degree to which California’s aggressive policy approaches can withstand political opposition will determine statewide environmental quality over the next 30 years. As a community of diverse interests, the benefits of environmental improvement—and the costs of that improvement—will be experienced differentially by different sectors. This is the basis of politics, and in a state as contentious as California it would be foolhardy to predict the future direction of any policy area. California’s environmental and energy future may in large measure depend on the ability of the state’s environmental constituency to persuade rank and file Californians that cleaner air and water are more to their benefit than an unrestrained, market-driven economy.
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, PM-10 Non-attainment State/Area/County Report, http://134.67.104.12/e-drive/CAAA/TL1/bgilbert/1996.
2. Matthew Cahn, Environmental Deceptions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
3. Paul Cox, Martin Johnson, and Janelle Auyeung, The California Almanac of Emissions and Air Quality, 2006 Edition (Sacramento: California Air Resources Board, 2006).
4. California Coastal Commission, The 2006 Updated Assessment of the California Coastal Management Program, www.coastal.ca.gov/fedcd/ccmp2006assessment.pdf.
5. World Resources Institute, The 1993 Information Please Environmental Almanac (NewYork: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992).
6. Cal-EPA, Environmental Indicators Report, www.oehha.ca.gov/multimedia/epic/ index.html.
7. San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb2/.
8. Ibid.
9. San Francisco Estuary Institute, The Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in the San Francisco Estuary, 2006, www.sfei.org/rmp/2004to05/AMR_2004–2005_FullReport_f.pdf
10. San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Habitat Loss, www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb2/.
11. San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Sediment Hotspots, www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb2/.
12. Martha Krebs, Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) Report (California Energy Commission, 2006).
13. Ibid.
14. California Air Resources Board, On Road Emission Inventory 2006, www.arb.ca.gov/ msei/onroad/onroad.htm.
15. Martha Krebs, Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) Report.
16. FERC, Staff Report: Price Manipulation in the Western Markets (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, March 26, 2003).
17. South Coast Air Quality Management District, South Coast Air Quality Management Plan. (SCAQMP), 1994.
18. California State Water Resources Control Board, “On Road Emission Inventory,” July 5, 1997, www.arb.ca.gov/msei/onroad/onroad.htm.
19. Ibid.
20. California Integrated Waste Management Board (IWMB), Publication #530–99–007, January 2000.
21. Integrated Waste Management Board, California’s 2005 Statewide Diversion Rate Estimate, 2006.
22. Consumer Power and Conservation Financing Authority, Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, Public Utilities Commission, Energy Action Plan (adopted April 2003), www.cpuc.ca.gov/word_pdf/REPORT/28715.pdf.
23. California Energy Commission, Public Utilities Commission, Energy Action Plan II: Implementation Roadmap for Energy Policies (adopted September 2005), www.energy.ca.gov/energy_action_plan/2005–09-21_EAP2_FINAL.PDF.