County’s emission down to 2007 levels

Greenhouse gas report encouraging, but still too many cars, say officials|

The new way of life in California is conservation.

Gov. Jerry Brown this winter issued a state of emergency for the drought, and mandated immediate cutbacks on water use statewide. But what doesn’t get much attention is his stance on air quality. The governor has also signed into effect a mandate that by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions need to be 25 percent below 1990 levels.

But is Sonoma County doing its part to meet that seemingly impossible goal?

The Sonoma County Center for Climate Protection, an emmissions monitoring agency set up in 2008, last week issued a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report for 2014 which said that compared to 2007, the county reduced its emissions by 14 percent, from 4.2 million tons to 3.6 million tons.

2007 was a peak year for emissions in California, and data from the center shows the numbers are going down each year, but 2014 is the lowest level to date.

So where does the county find the greenhouse gas savings? Water, for instance, is easily tracked by individual homeowners and their water agency, but few individuals can accurately measure their own carbon footprint.

Transportation, which comprises 65 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, is the largest block of individual-contributed greenhouse gases. While the electric and hybrid automobile market is rising, alternative energy cars are still the minority while diesel and petroleum engines continue to cover the roads, albeit with more strict emissions standards.

“Expanding low carbon and zero emission travel is one of our top priorities,” said Suzanne Wilford Smith, executive director of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority. “We aim to do this by re-imagining public transportation, looking at new policies like user-based road use fees, launching SMART and implementing a car-share program.”

Geof Syphers, CEO of Sonoma Clean Power, agrees that the key to meeting the target emission standards for 2015 lies in transportation. “The electric and hybrid car market is a good step in the right direction to lowering those emission levels,” Syphers said. Launched in 2014 as the county’s own community choice power aggregator, Sonoma Clean Power is developing charging stations running on renewable solar, geothermal and wind power.

Public transportation, a method of transportation too-often ignored by suburban car owners, is also growing as a more popular way to get around cheaply. Santa Rosa recently purchased a fleet of hybrid and clean-burn diesel buses to replace its aging, smoke-belching predecessors; the city is also promoting a cleaner, more modern bus environment with free on-board wifi. It’s all part of a campaign to get the public to consider an alternative to taking their own cars.

Beyond cutting back on cars, community members have helped the air quality situation by using an alternative power source to power their homes.

In 2013, the city of Sonoma was among four others in the county to partner with Sonoma Clean Power. By December 2014, other cities had all followed suit. Sonoma Clean Power uses geothermal, solar, wind and hydro-power to compliment its own fossil fuel power generators, purchasing a mix of 33 percent renewable and 64 percent non-renewable for its standard program, or 100 percent geothermal power with its EverGreen program. The Sonoma Clean Power website advertises its power is 30 percent below PG&E in terms of greenhouse emissions and offers power at competitive prices, generally slightly underneath PG&E. Sonoma Clean Power uses PG&E’s existing infrastructure, such as substations and power lines, to deliver its energy alternatives to more than 150,000 households and commercial business county wide. Sonoma Clean Power says it generates 2.4 billion kilowatt/hours of energy annually.

The Sonoma County Water Agency also does its part to spare the air by generating no carbon emissions. Called Carbon-Free Water, the agency uses renewable sources to generate 100 percent of its electricity.

The agency procures geothermal energy from Sonoma Clean Power’s EverGreen program to fuel five percent of its energy consumption needs. The agency owns its own solar panels and photo-voltaic cells to provide six percent of its power through solar energy. The rest of SCWA’s power needs are satisfied through Sonoma County’s Landfill Gas to Energy Project, Lake Sonoma Warm Springs Dam Hydropower and a few non-local renewable sources in the Sierra Nevada.

But despite these advances in cutting back greenhouse emissions, the Center for Climate Protection said it is unlikely the county will accomplish its ambitious 2015 emissions goal of meeting Brown’s 2030 requirement by this year.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” said Ann Hancock, executive director of the center. “We have to work a lot harder to move a lot faster.”

All nine cities in the county pledged to reduce their greenhouse emissions to the target level of 2.8 million tons by 2015. The target is known as atmospheric carbon stabilization, a term used for a balanced level of greenhouse gasses conducive to sustaining life.

While the county will not meet that level this year, Hancock said by spreading the word and staying at this pace of emission reduction this level can be met by Brown’s proposed date.

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.