Sources of California greenhouse gas emissions

I'll note that California is a bit unusual, having imposed energy efficiency standards on buildings decades ago (much of the US didn't) and having actively taken steps to substitute solar, wind, and storage for fossil-fuel based electric generation

11 comments

Super interesting, I would assume California has a good amount of electric cars? But where are emissions from cattle / other farm animals / agriculture?
- Yeah, this report is designed with a transportation agenda in mind, so the graph only shows a select set of emission sources to make the tailpipe emissions look as bad as possible. Add in all other sources of emissions and the graph doesn't look quite as impressive for the point they're trying to make.
  Figure 1: In the 2019 statewide greenhouse gas emissions inventory, car tailpipes accounted for 119 MMTCO2e — roughly 28% of California’s overall emissions, and more than the emissions from the entire buildings sector and electricity sector combined.
- This is also 5 years old data. Would be interesting to see how things hold up nowadays
  
  It would be interesting. Anecdotally, many more EVs now, but also larger vehicles and people driving longer distances due to increased super-commuting.
  Not sure how it would shake out. Probably a bit lower because I suspect the EV effect is larger.
- Neat trick, if you import all your meat, it doesn't show up on the plot.
California really needs to get its car dependency in check. There are small movements in this direction in recent years but we’re decades behind many European countries at this point. Unlike other emissions categories where we’re close to the best performers among large economies.
- California at least has a law in place, which makes fossil fuel cars sales illegal. That does not solve car dependency, but at least it massivly helps with the oil problem. California HSR is also going to help a lot.
But the tail pipe emissions are coming from Oregon, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In California, you can breathe the exhaust from Amazon trucks right off the tail pipe.

11 comments