California to cut GHGs by 40pc by 2030

Updates throughout with quotes from governor Jerry Brown

California governor Jerry Brown (D) today said the state will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40pc below 1990 levels by 2030.

Brown issued an executive order setting the target, which would be in line with one the EU set for itself last fall and would get the state halfway to its long-term goal of reducing emissions by 80pc by 2050. The state is already working to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, with a cap-and-trade program and other measures in place.

"We have a slow-rolling crisis in climate change," Brown said today in Los Angeles at the Navigating the American Carbon World conference. Fighting it "will be difficult and we will go about this carefully. This is not just a political statement, this is an operative set of instructions that will be spearheaded by the Air Resources Board [ARB]."

"Cap-and-trade is working, we are going to expand it and it is financing a lot of very important programs," Brown said. "We will need to get to around 260mn t per year [in 2030] from around 450mn t today."

Brown said on the sidelines of the conference that he is working with Oregon and Washington state and states in the northeast on these climate issues along with Canadian provinces. California has already linked its cap-and-trade program with the Canadian province of Quebec and Ontario is at work at creating its own program which will also join into the California-Quebec carbon market.

Brown issued the order ahead of a state Senate Environmental Quality Committee hearing today on SB 32, a bill that would give state regulators authority to set emissions targets out to 2050. The committee is also considering SB 350, which would codify energy policy goals proposed by Brown in January, including increasing the state's renewable portfolio to 50pc by 2030 and cutting petroleum use in half over the same period.

"A characteristic of the economy and the free market is that it responds to challenges in so many millions of decentralized ways. It is not a rigid system," Brown said. "So when the state sets a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, people respond."

State regulators say the legislation will be crucial to helping the state continue its climate policies. The state is "depending on you to push through some significant legislation that will carry California into the next decade and beyond" in terms of its environmental programs,ARB chairwoman Mary Nichols told state Senate president pro tempore Kevin de Leon (D) last night at a reception held ahead of the conference in Los Angeles.

SB 32 will "create real certainty for the market and continue to show California's leadership on the international stage," she said.

Brown's order directs ARB to determine the scope of measures needed to meet the 40pc goal. The agency is expected to kick off that effort this summer.

De Leon said the state needs to be "ambitious and we need to be bold in order to hit our climate targets" as any economy "based on fossil fuels is an economy based on shifting sands."

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