Carbon Control Is Coming

California aims to cut carbon emissions drastically over the next several decades. What part will San Diego play in that effort?

THE FUTURE OF THE AUTOMOBILE will be decided in:

a) Detroit

b) Tokyo

c) San Diego County

Don’t be surprised if the answer is c) San Diego County. While the Big Three U.S. automakers seek a bailout from Congress, tiny Aptera Motors is readying production of its first all-electric models, scheduled to roll off the line in Vista by year’s end. From Aptera’s headquarters in Carlsbad, company founder Steve Fambro and about 50 employees are tweaking their prototype design to squeeze as much mileage as possible from an overnight charge of electricity.

“It’s a regular 110-volt plug,” says Fambro. “You plug in it like you would a refrigerator or toaster. A charge of eight to 10 hours will allow you to drive about 120 miles, though there will be an optional charger that allows you to do the charge in two to three hours. I drive one of the cars home every day, and when I get home I just plug it in.”

The first Apteras will cost about $30,000, no more than a Detroit gas-guzzler. Fambro says he’s not in business to sell the technology elsewhere or farm out his R&D shop. “The first Apteras will be sold in Southern California, and there’s a migration plan to sell in Northern California. But we’re not looking to hand it off or sell the company,” he says. “We want to be in business to change people’s perceptions about transportation and efficiency and show them we’ve got unique, homegrown solutions that can solve a lot of problems.”

Companies like Aptera will be increasingly vital to the San Diego and California economies as the state embarks on an ambitious mission to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The legislative centerpiece of this first-in-the-nation effort is AB32, which directs the California Air Resource Board to collect emissions data and develop regulations to meet emission targets.

Since nothing this sweeping has ever been attempted to control carbon in the United States, no one knows exactly how it will work. If the regulations are written to meet the goals, however, AB32 will transform California’s economy and lifestyle. The broad strokes suggest that activities involving the burning of fossil fuels will be discouraged; activities involving conservation or clean technology will be encouraged; land use policies will turn 180 degrees from suburbia, exurbia and all growth associated with sprawl to mixed residential and business use along already-established transportation corridors.

AB32 not only will affect development and business in San Diego, the state and the nation but will have an international effect. Take globalization: Shipping goods around the globe for production is heavily carbon intensive; solutions that keep production and consumption as local as possible use less carbon and would be encouraged.

The upshot? Dairy farms may once again flourish in the valleys of San Diego County. In the meantime, experts are trying to wrap their arms around how carbon control will be achieved and what effect that will have on business and the economy.

“IT’S LIKELY THAT ANY WAY you reduce carbon is going to increase prices to some extent,” says Scott Anders, director of the Energy Policy Initiatives Center at the University of San Diego School of Law. “The question that is not often asked is what would be the consequences of not doing it; what is the potential damage if we don’t stabilize greenhouse gases?”

Anders says AB32 will create economic winners and losers. “The winners will be those companies using the best-available controls that have invested in efficiency and gotten their systems under control,” he says. “Other winners will be companies that can help others reduce their carbon footprint, the clean tech companies that sell the solar panels, the wind turbines, the efficient motors. The big losers will be utility companies and others that use coal in production. It’s going to be difficult for coal users to do well in a carbon-constrained world.”

Anders’ energy policy group is compiling a greenhouse-gas inventory for San Diego County. “We don’t know the emissions for refrigerated warehouses or for metal production or liquor stores, for example, and we could show the potential effect of carbon control on those industries, but we’re not anywhere near that yet,” he says. “For better or worse, San Diego County doesn’t have a lot of ‘heavy industries.’ We don’t have the big cement factories or oil refineries that will be hit hardest first.”

About 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from vehicles, electricity production and natural gas consumption, says Anders. Electricity and natural gas are state-regulated monopolies and therefore easy to control, while vehicle emissions presents a different challenge. California, however, can regulate the type of fuel cars burn; what it doesn’t yet regulate is how many miles people drive.

“Local land-use decisions have a lot to do with auto emissions,” says Marney Cox, chief economist for the San Diego Association of Governments. “The closer you put people to work, the more you give them in transportation alternatives besides the auto. All of those can reduce air emissions.”

Whether the public will support carbon control that could drive up the price of gas through refinery controls, special gas formulations and other regulation is an open question, he says.

“I assume it can’t be taking $4-a-gallon gas and making it higher, because I don’t think the public will sit still for that,” Cox says. “I think there is support for those programs, provided you can get the price of gas below $4. If the price of gas continues to slide to, say, $3.50, people might be willing to pay another 50 cents to bring it up to $4, and then the additional revenue would be used for carbon-reducing programs.”

HOUSING IS WHAT MOVES the San Diego economy. Global-warming initiatives that target polluting industry, auto use and land use can be expected to meet in the cost of housing, an industry already whipsawed by the mortgage meltdown and some of the least-affordable housing in the nation.

“We’re already at the point where you can’t build a house in most parts of the state and make a profit,” says Scott Molloy, public policy advocate for the San Diego chapter of the Building Industry Association. “It’s more expensive to build a house than what you can sell it for in many parts of San Diego — that’s why you’re seeing very little construction.”

A recent survey indicates Californians may not be warming to AB32 as much as governments would like. According to the survey, conducted by EMC Research, two-thirds of 1,000 registered California voters said the state would try to underestimate the true costs of implementing AB32; 77 percent said consumers would most likely end up paying the majority of the cost for implementing AB32. More than 70 percent said placing additional regulations on business will lead to higher prices for gas, electricity and food.

Beyond everyday economic considerations, carbon control challenges the basic desire for consumption. As Professor I. Herman Stern of Temple University once put it: “What do the American people want? They want more.”

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