A workshop on the county’s new “decarbonization playbook” — the final public assembly earlier than supervisors vote on the doc — underscored the challenges of quickly slicing carbon emissions with out getting mired in political disputes or sparking exorbitant electrical charges.
College students, enterprise officers and different San Diego residents weighed in Tuesday on the report, which affords pointers to slicing native carbon emissions.
It’s half an effort over the previous two years to map out steps towards web carbon zero, the purpose at which carbon faraway from the environment equals the quantity of carbon emitted. To succeed in that objective by mid-century and avert the worst impacts of local weather change, officers stated, the county, cities, universities and companies should be a part of forces to chop fossil gasoline air pollution.
“This wants a scale of effort that we all know that none of us can obtain on our personal,” stated Murtaza Baxamusa, county program supervisor for regional sustainability. “This specific decade may be very essential so far as whether or not we flip issues round.”
The Tuesday occasion at Mission Bay Excessive College was the ultimate session in a sequence of workshops held in every supervisorial district to supply info and search touch upon the playbook, launched final month.
Whereas some audio system raised questions on particular sensible issues, comparable to sourcing constructing supplies or speaking the plan to the general public, a bunch of UC San Diego college students made a broader coverage argument, urging county officers to prioritize city and rooftop photo voltaic initiatives over large-scale utility photo voltaic farms.
“We would like issues to be honest for constituents, and we would like them to have the choice to have their very own rooftop photo voltaic slightly than pushing it into the backcountry, which may result in land disputes and probably decelerate decarbonization,” stated UCSD pupil Lizzie Spencer, who attended with classmates from a category on the psychology of local weather change.
She stated she fearful the price of constructing transmission traces for photo voltaic farms would outweigh any potential financial savings, and that finding them within the backcountry would power rural communities to bear the impacts of producing energy for city areas. Because the assembly ended, her classmates held up a sequence of indicators with the message: “Let’s decarbonize justly and never how SDG&E needs.”
In a latest replace to the technical experiences on decarbonization, county planners added extra choices for rooftop, infill and “brownfield” photo voltaic in city neighborhoods and areas already affected by air pollution.
Crystal Crawford, a former Del Mar Metropolis Council member, argued for group schooling in regards to the plan, together with solutions to sensible questions, comparable to: “How do I take advantage of this in my life, and what distinction does it make for my life and the well being of the group? … How do I pay for that?”
The stakes for slicing carbon emissions are excessive, well being specialists stated.
Local weather change already threatens public well being by way of extra extreme wildfires, excessive warmth occasions, and invasive mosquitoes with the potential to unfold dozens of unique illnesses, County Public Well being Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten stated. Wildfires have develop into key important drivers of air air pollution in California, and the fantastic particles in smoke are much more poisonous than these from automobiles due to the intense warmth that produces them, stated Tarik Benmarhnia, a public well being professor at UC San Diego.
The county started creating its “decarbonization framework” in 2021, recognizing that local weather motion plans for particular person jurisdictions wouldn’t minimize fossil gasoline air pollution rapidly sufficient to sluggish local weather change. The framework examines methods to remove carbon emissions from 5 sectors: vitality, buildings, transportation, land use and pure sources, and meals techniques and recycling.
Whereas earlier experiences analyzed broad, countywide methods for lowering local weather air pollution, the playbook is extra of a how-to information, presenting detailed recommendations to assist organizations, communities and regional governments rapidly transition from fossil fuels to renewable vitality.
“The playbook is a menu of choices that reveals us the way in which these reductions will be achieved in every of these sectors,” Baxamusa stated.
For example, a set of suggestions for organizations searching for to cut back automobile emissions advised slicing the variety of miles pushed by putting in bike amenities or shopping for e-bikes for worker use; these had been ranked as low-impact actions.
One potential moderate-impact motion can be adopting a telecommuting program, whereas swapping out a fleet of gas-powered automobiles for low- or zero-emission ones would have a excessive affect, based on the playbook.
On the group stage, native jurisdictions may dedicate land for bike trails or assemble pedestrian and bike networks to attain modest emissions reductions — or may convert college bus fleets to electrical buses for an even bigger affect.
The playbook doesn’t cite particular prices for particular person actions or estimate how massive a dent they may make in carbon emissions. However Baxamusa stated county planners may calculate such figures sooner or later if group members and the board request them, and stated customers also can use on-line carbon calculators to estimate results of the measures.
The playbook is meant to be an interactive doc, and can finally embrace a search operate that may let customers seek for sorts of actions on the dimensions they select.
Public touch upon the decarbonization playbook will probably be open by way of March 31 and will be submitted on the county web site: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content material/sdc/sustainability/regional-decarbonization.html
The Board of Supervisors will contemplate the doc in April.
