At its current pace of emissions reductions, California could be 100 years too late in meeting its 2050 emissions target, as rising wildfires, transportation, and landfills emissions undermine progress in the state's climate goals, a new report from nonpartisan nonprofit Next 10 repared by Beacon Economics showed on Tuesday.
According to the eleventh annual California Green Innovation Index, California will only meet its climate target to reduce emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 in the year 2061, if the average rate of emissions reductions over the past few years holds. At the current pace of emissions reduction, the state could be 100 years late in achieving its 2050 climate goal, the report found.
While the electricity sector has made enormous progress in cutting emissions thanks to renewables, these gain masks enormous challenges in cutting emissions from the transportation sector, the industry, buildings, and wildfires, the report says.
The deadly wildfires in California in 2018 produced an estimated nine times more emissions than were reduced across the entire state's economy in 2017, according to the report. The wildfires in 2018 emitted an estimated 45.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, up by 24 percent from 2017. Related: Platts: OPEC Oil Production Falls Most In 17 Years After Saudi Oil Attacks
Wildfires, however, are just one challenge that California must overcome if it is to hit its climate goals, according to the report. Emissions in the transportation sector and landfill emissions are also on the rise. Transportation emissions hit a record high in 2017, reaching 41.1 percent of California's total emissions. Considering that passenger vehicles accounted for 28 percent of the state's total emissions and consumer preferences, even in California, have shifted toward less fuel-efficient vehicles, "increasing transportation emissions present the most considerable hurdle to achieving the next climate goals," according to the report.
Despite the fact that California has made enormous progress in cutting emissions in recent years, "this year's Index serves as a wake-up call-we're going to need major policy breakthroughs and deep structural changes if we're going to deliver the much steeper emissions reductions required in the years ahead," F. Noel Perry, businessman and founder of Next 10, said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More