California's ambitious greenhouse gas policies: Are they ambitious enough?

California's landmark AB 32 legislation, enacted in 2006, tasked the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with (1) ensuring that statewide greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 would not exceed the 1990 level, and (2) achieving the “maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”. CARB adopted a caps-and-standards framework for regulating emissions in energy sectors (electricity generation, industrial combustion, and transportation fuels). The regulations interpreted the statutory emissions limit in 2020 as a predetermined “target”, thus rendering the maximum-reduction mandate ineffectual. CARB's November 2022 Scoping Plan extends the same framework to implement California's new legislative directive (AB 1279) requiring achievement of “net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, but no later than 2045”. The plan continues CARB's reliance on Cap-and-Trade, which establishes the minimum statutory requirement as a “target” and disincentivizes overcompliance by nullifying the environmental benefits of supplemental climate actions (the “waterbed effect”). To put California on track toward decarbonization at the scale and pace required for global climate stabilization, the legislature should institute a regulatory policy paradigm that accommodates and supports local and individual climate action, and which gives meaning and effect to the mandate requiring maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective emissions reductions.