California’s Final 2022 Scoping Plan Adds New Climate Strategies

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) released its 2022 Scoping Plan for Achieving Carbon Neutrality, which updated state policies on achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. The five-year Scoping Plan includes Governor Gavin Newsom’s request for more aggressive climate change and clean energy measures. The final plan has ambitious targets than those released in the draft scoping plan in May. CARB board will vote on the plan in December.

With the goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, the plan proposes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 85% below 1990 levels, reduce air pollution by 71%, and reduce fossil fuel consumption by 94%.

More Ambitious Climate Agenda

The Scoping Plan reflects the targets set in a number of climate and energy bills Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in September. The bills followed much of the enhanced climate program that Newsom presented to the state legislature in August. The bills implement an ambitious climate policy that sets a more aggressive net-zero GHG emissions target, sets interim goals on the course to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2045, establishes a carbon removal and storage program, and establishes natural carbon removal targets. (see California Implements More Ambitious Climate Agenda.) Newsom earlier outlined this climate policy in a letter to the Chair of CARB and presented the state legislature with a set of proposals to address climate change. The carbon removal projects remain the most controversial aspect of the GHG reduction strategy, as no projects currently exist in California.

Key Changes in the Scoping Plan

There are several key changes to the final scoping plan that were implemented in response to Newsom’s letter.

1. More ambitious targets for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions that align with Alternative 1 (near complete phase-out of internal combustion engines).

2. Electricity sector changes, including no new natural gas plant capacity for reliability needs and an offshore wind target of 20 GW by 2045 (see also Offshore Wind Makes Initial Advancements in California).

3. Community Vulnerability Metric to indicate how climate change will impact frontline communities. The social cost of carbon is a general metric on climate damages, but not all communities have the same resiliency in the face of climate change.

4. Table of household impacts by income level brackets and race, if possible

5. Climate ready buildings. 3 million all electric ready homes by 2030 and 7 million by 2035

6. 6 million heat pumps deployed by 2030

7. Increase the aviation clean fuel targets from 10% non-combustion to 20% in 2045

8. Increased stringency for Low Carbon Fuel Standards (LCFS)

9. Delay start of any carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in modeling until 2028 and continue to not apply to enhanced oil recovery. Add text on safety needs around pipelines, injection sites, CCS technology 

10. Carbon removal target of 20 million metric tons in 2030 and 100 million metric tons in 2045, with focus on natural and working lands first

Scoping Plan Updates

AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, requires CARB to update the scoping plan at least every five years. In 2018, Governor Jerry Brown issued Executive Order B-55-18, which set a new target for the state to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and ordered future scoping plans “identify and recommend measures to achieve the carbon neutrality goal.”

The 2022 draft is the third update since the initial 2008 Scoping Plan, which provided the first economy-wide approach to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The 2014 update measured progress toward the 2020 goal. The 2017 update also assessed progress toward the 2020 goal and provided an approach to achieving the goal of SB 32 to reduce GHG emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The state met its initial target of reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 in 2016.