The 325,000 cars and trucks that Santa Barbarans use daily to get from here to there produce nearly half the greenhouse-gas emissions in the county. Only 3 percent are electric vehicles, or about 10,000 of them, said Garrett Wong — the county’s current goal targets 80,000 by 2030. Wong, the county’s climate program manager, explained these facts and more on Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors meeting on the energy and climate-change goals the county had established in 2015. Should the goals be reduced? he asked, given the inability to meet the targets by 2030. Or get more aggressive? The supervisors responded that the word had yet to reach the public of the many subsidies available for carbon-saving methods, like vehicles and sequestration.
The original Climate Action Plan set a goal of 15 percent below 2007 emission levels, but as technology improved and ever-more-dire facts emerged about climate change, in 2022 the supervisors set the goal to a 50 percent reduction from 2018 emission levels. But the county would be lucky to get to 40 percent reductions by 2030, Wong said. So the county could either lower the emission-reduction target percentage, or get more aggressive with some of the goals, or buy carbon credits. But first, Wong asked that the costs be studied — costs to government, community, and the economy and employment — before proceeding.
The Energy and Climate Action Plan (ECAP) has evolved over time and is actually in a public comment stage until July 27. It looks at housing and transportation, energy, water and trash, the low-carbon economy, and municipal operations. The hurdles to get to a 50 percent reduction in greenhouses gases (GHGs) are large. In addition to vehicle trips puffing out 49 percent of the county’s GHGs, 21 percent comes from natural gas and methane, which contains the carcinogen benzene; agriculture produces 14 percent from fertilizer, cow farts, and farm equipment — Supervisor Bob Nelson said he knew of one electric tractor so far — and 7 percent is due to how electricity is generated, something residents can choose through green, renewable energy programs.