Andrea Kissack

The author's EV gets "tanked up."

Just because an electric vehicle (EV) lacks a tail pipe, it doesn’t mean it’s always cleaner than other fuel efficient cars. According to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, where you live may determine how clean your electric car is.

The new report, called “State of Charge,” looks at the entire life cycle of EV emissions that includes energy inputs from start to finish, not just during drive time. In other words, what kind of emissions do EVs create from charging on an electric grid and how does the cost of that charging compare to filling up a gasoline-powered vehicle?

The nonprofit group of scientists has found that the greenhouse gases emitted from EVs depends on the sources of electricity. For example, California does not rely on coal fired power plants and the state has aggressive renewable energy goals. According to the report, charging (not driving) an all-electric car in the golden state results in global warming emissions equivalent to a car with a mileage rating of 80 mpg. But in several states, such as the mid-west, plug-in drivers charge their cars from electricity generated by burning coal or natural gas. There, the report has found that charging an EV may result in emissions similar to a car with a mileage rating between 31 and 40 MPG.

Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS map shows imputed GHG emissions of EV's by region. The abbreviations refer to the various part of the electrical grid.

Not surprisingly, the report finds that no matter where one lives in the United States, electric cars are a good choice for reducing global warming emissions and saving money on fueling up. The authors also note that projected increases in solar and wind on the grid will mean that the global warming emissions from electric vehicles in those areas will decrease over time. Also, what time of day you charge matters. Charging at night is not only cheaper, it has less of an impact on the grid. CNET has a condensed version of the UCS map at its site.

Andrea Kissack is a senior editor with KQED’s science unit. Read her entire EV journal on the QUEST site.

The California Air Resources Board has unanimously approved sweeping new rules designed to facilitate the transition from gasoline-powered to electric and hydrogen-powered cars. By 2025, automakers are now required to produce 1.4 million “zero-emission” vehicles for the California market, a number that would make clean cars 15 percent of  all new car and truck sales.

Josh Cassidy

A Nissan all-electric Leaf in San Francisco.

The rules also require automakers, by 2025, to halve greenhouse gas emissions emanating from vehicle tailpipes, compared to current levels. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering similar emissions rules, as well as a new fuel economy standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025.

State regulators hope the new rules will lead to the widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles, which they say is critical for meeting California’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. That goal was established by executive order by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger, and goes beyond the cuts mandated by California’s landmark  global warming law, AB 32.

According to the board’s calculations, zero-emission vehicles will have to make up nearly 100% of new car sales in 2040 and beyond to meet that goal. “Without [the transition from gasoline to clean cars], which may appear to be radical to people, you cannot lower CO2 emissions enough to stop the global climate change that’s occurring,” says Tom Cackette of the Air Resources Board.

The Air Resources Board estimates that the new rules will raise the average sticker price on 2025 model year cars by $1900. However, the board says, the savings in fuel costs over the life of the car will be three times that.

The new rules announced today include the following:

• Greenhouse gas emissions cuts
  The rules cut greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes 47% by 2025 compared to today’s new cars.
• Cuts in smog-forming emissions
  Today’s cars are 99% cleaner than cars were in the 1960s. But the new rules reduce smog-forming emissions from tailpipes a further 75% by 2025.
• Zero-emission vehicle mandate
  Beginning in 2018, automakers must sell increasing numbers of electric cars, hydrogen fuel-cell cars or other cars emitting little to no pollution. By 2025, zero-emission vehicles must make up 15% of new car sales. In the early years of the program, car companies can get credit for plug-in hybrid car sales or for going above and beyond requirements of the greenhouse gas rule.
• Hydrogen Fuel Stations
  The rules would require gas stations to install hydrogen fueling pumps based on the number of hydrogen fuel-cell cars in the state. The oil companies are negotiating with ARB on a Memorandum of Agreement that would allow them to avoid regulation if they build hydrogen stations with government or private funding.

As for the response from the car industry, at a public meeting this week automakers asked for maximum flexibility in meeting the new sales mandate. They say success will ultimately depend on consumer adoption of the new technology, which includes cars like the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. Of the 10,000 Leafs sold in the US, almost 4,500 of them were sold in California.

“It’s a long, long bridge between here and 2025 to grow 15 percent of the market on a car that’s not price competitive, on a car that’s not performance competitive, on a car that will inevitably have infrastructure issues,” says Bill Reinert with Toyota’s Advanced Technology Group.

The board didn’t address electric charging infrastructure in these rules, but has committed to looking at the issue in 2014. Currently, there are about 1,200 public charging stations in California and funding exists for  several thousand more. Since electric vehicle owners charge their cars predominantly at home, regulators say they aren’t sure how many public charging stations will be needed.

The Air Resources Board says it’s committed to continuing financial incentives for advanced vehicles, though the program has proven so popular that they have been reduced. Today, consumers can get a $2500 rebate for purchasing a zero-emission vehicle and $1500 for a plug-in hybrid, down from $5000 originally. “We can’t give an assurance that [the funding] will last through the year, so we’re looking at other alternatives,” says Tom Cackette of ARB. (For more on what it’s like to buy and drive an electric car, check out QUEST’s blog series Life with the Leaf).

More from CARB:

• California’s Advanced clean cars program
• Fact sheet

Craig Miller

On Wednesday, just as the Obama Administration proposed strict new fuel efficiency standards for 2017-2025-model cars and light trucks, the California Air Resources Board leapfrogged Washington with its own package of regulations designed to further reduce emissions from passenger vehicles.

The proposed “Advanced Clean Cars” regulations package has four components, including a greenhouse gas emissions standard that matches the new federal one, which isn’t surprising since California played a key role in drafting the new federal proposal.

The other three prongs of the package are new smog-reduction rules, a program designed to spur the growth of zero-emissions vehicle production and sales, and the construction of new hydrogen fueling stations.

According to CARB, the Advanced Clean Cars regulations are designed to deliver:

• A 47% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, compared to today’s levels;
• A further 75% reduction in smog-forming emissions by 2025;
• One in seven new cars sold in 2025 (15.4 percent) be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle;
• A total of 1.4 million zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road in California by 2025;
• A reduction of 40 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2025, the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road; and,
• A savings of $5 billion in operating costs in 2025 for California drivers. This will rise to $10 billion in 2030 when more advanced cars are on the road.

Whew. CARB’s Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEV) program aims to have battery, fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles account for up to 15% of California’s new vehicle sales in 2025, which, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), means that dealers had better get moving and sell 1.4 million of these vehicles between 2018 and 2015.

UCS is urging an even more ambitious plan, however, arguing that in order for California to reach its climate and public health goals, the bar should be set higher, at 1.8 million ZEV sold by 2025.

Hear Krissy Clark’s companion radio feature from The California Report.

Craig Miller

Afternoon rush hour with a mostly-empty HOV lane

I’m a Bay Area native who has about evenly divided my adult life between San Francisco and Los Angeles. So, I have a schizophrenic relationship to driving. Which is to say, I have the same kind of relationship that California as a whole has to driving.

Here’s what I’ve learned during my intra-state sojourns: my transportation habits have very little to do with how environmentally conscious I am as a person, and have a lot to do with parking spots.

When I lived in San Francisco, my daily life was 90% car-free. I owned a car but aside from moving it on street sweeping days (or trying to remember to), I barely thought about the thing unless I was leaving for a weekend trip. My bike, my feet, the bus, BART and the transbay ferries were my chariots. Some of it had to do with the city’s human-scaled streets and efficient public transit. But mostly, it was just too damn time-consuming–or expensive–to find a parking spot most of the places I wanted to go. I couldn’t be bothered to drive.

When I moved to L.A., nothing about my core being changed (despite what my Bay Area friends feared), but now my daily life is about 90% car-full. I drive to work alone, where I park in the free parking space my company provides me. (Even though my partner works in the same office as I do, I confess we do not carpool.) I drive to the grocery store, where I park in the free parking space the shopping center provides me. I drive to my exercise class and, yes, park in the free lot out back. I drive pretty much everyplace except one: the airport. Parking costs too much at LAX, so I take the city shuttle.

My Jekyll & Hyde habits come as no surprise to UCLA Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking.  Ample, free parking works like a “fertility drug for cars,” he argues. “Driving becomes the natural way to get anywhere” in a place like Los Angeles. When he looks at a traffic jam in L.A., “I think, how many of these people are driving to a free parking space?” Count me as one of them.

It turns out my different lives in L.A. and San Francisco, and my different parking options, are no accident. They’re based on different approaches the places take to parking. According to a RAND study from 2007, in San Francisco there is “a deliberate effort by planners to reduce private vehicle use” which “limits the number of parking spaces that may be included in a new development.” In contrast, across most of L.A., developers are required to provide a certain number of parking spaces, “ensuring that parking will remain cheap and abundant and reinforcing auto-dependency.”

How cities deal with parking is one of those invisible choices that change the way we live. For those of us who use cars a lot, which now includes me, our habits are often described in psychological terms. Love affair. Dependence. Addiction. But that gives cars too much power, argues Harvey Molotch, a professor at NYU (who splits his time in Santa Barbara, so he, too gets a glimpse of life on both sides of the transportation spectrum). We’re not addicted to cars he says, “We’re addicted to going home.” It’s about the inertia of life, he says. Filling a tank with gas is interconnected “with all the other things we do in our lives… going to work, going to school, and all the rest.” And how much time, or money, it will cost to park influences those micro-decisions we make.

A few weeks ago, my partner’s car broke down, and we’ve been sharing mine ever since. We keep different work schedules, so sometimes one of us spends the day carless, and I’ve discovered the bus is actually a pretty convenient way to work (Despite LA’s reputation, the city has a pretty extensive public bus system). And though there are no bike lanes, it’s only 20-minute ride on my bicycle. These are discoveries I didn’t need to make until now–with all the free parking, I never needed to.

See and hear our entire series, Miles to Go, on the many challenges to reducing our transportation footprint.

Coming to a showroom near you: a new fuel economy sticker for an electric vehicle. (Photo: Lauren Sommer)

Buy a gas guzzler and you might discover a new form of “sticker shock.”

Cars and trucks sitting on dealership lots will soon have a new fuel economy sticker in the window. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency released newly-designed labels that emphasize environmental performance for conventional and electric cars.

The label might seem familiar to California drivers. In 2008, the state released its own environmental impact sticker for new cars. It rates a car’s smog and greenhouse gas emissions on a scale of one to ten.

The new national label follows California’s lead and incorporates the same rating system. But for the first time, it will also display the annual fuel cost for a vehicle, comparing it to an average vehicle over five years.

EPA regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld announced the new labels in the Silicon Valley showroom of electric car maker Tesla. He says as plug-in hybrid and electric cars started appearing on the market, it became clear that the old sticker wouldn’t cut it. “This label really allows a consumer to compare a gasoline vehicle to an electric vehicle for the first time.”

Blumenfeld says he expects the labels to make a difference in areas populated by early adopters of EVs. “Los Angeles and San Francisco are in the top three of hybrid purchases in the nation. People are already starting to buy these alternative vehicles in large numbers.”

Since electric cars don’t use gas, their energy use is displayed in “miles per gallon equivalent”, which the government calculates by assuming a gallon of gasoline is equal to 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

For Tesla’s Roadster sports car, that pencils out to 119 miles per “gallon” and a $9,900 fuel savings over five years, compared to an average car.

A new label for a gas guzzler. (Photo: Lauren Sommer)

Of course, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, electric cars are only as clean as the electricity they use. Electric cars in coal states are responsible for more emissions than in states that generate a lot of renewable power.

To estimate greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA took an average of the energy source mix across the country. But in a press conference, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson emphasized a new tool that consumers could use to “drill down” to their part of the country.

Crunch some numbers and the differences are pretty stark. A Nissan Leaf that’s charged in San Francisco produces 120 grams of CO2 per mile, according to the calculator. That same Nissan Leaf in Indianapolis, Indiana generates 270 grams of CO2 per mile.

One more number to note: in the US, consumers are accustomed to seeing miles per gallon. For the first time, the new labels also include gallons per 100 miles. Research has shown that “gallons per mile” is a much easier to understand when it comes to fuel economy.

One example: You might assume the difference between a 40-mpg and 30-mpg car is about the same as the difference between 30-and-20-mpg. Flip those numbers around to gallons used per 10,000 miles and the picture becomes a little clearer. A 40-mpg ride saves 83 gallons over one that gets 30 mpg. But the difference between 30-and 20-mpg is 167 gallons.

The new stickers will appear on model-year 2013 cars and trucks.

Report says driving needs to be more costly to get us out of our cars

By Marie C. Baca

Drivers now pay $6 to cross the San Francisco Bay Bridge during peak traffic hours. "Peak pricing" is one strategy to push commuters to alternative transit. (Photo: Craig Miller)

California faces significant obstacles in complying with a 2008 state law aimed at reducing passenger vehicle usage, according to a report by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

The report points to unrealized rail transit investments and resistance to pricing tools like fuel taxes as factors that have slowed reduction in car usage.

The two-year-old SB 375 mandates that California’s major metropolitan areas reduce per capita emissions from driving by 7 percent by 2020 and by 15 percent in 2035. While the primary focus of the bill is a reduction in the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, the legislation places a special emphasis on addressing traffic and public health concerns by reducing the number of miles residents drive.

In a prepared statement, Ellen Hanak, a senior fellow at the institute, summarized the findings, which were based on interviews with government officials and city planners as well as data from the state:

The law encourages an integrated approach to reducing emissions – changing land use patterns to reduce the need to drive, investing in mass transit and other alternatives to driving, and increasing the cost of driving and parking to encourage the use of these alternatives. But it will be up to regional and local leaders to turn the vision into reality,

The report lauds California officials for encouraging public transportation ridership, but outlines several issues that must be addressed before the state can meet the 2020 and 2035 targets:

* The number of jobs per square mile in California is lower than the national average and declining, so local governments need to find ways to encourage the growth of jobs near public transit.
* SB 375 encourages residential instead of commercial development near transit; this should be amended.
* Local governments need to improve access to areas surrounding major transit hubs by providing feeder bus services.
* Officials should consider mileage fees, which are used in other countries and are extremely effective at reducing vehicle usage.

Read all posts and hear companion radio reports in our series, Miles to Go: Building a More Sustainable California.

The US already has more than a million hybrid-electric vehicles on the road. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Continuing an exercise I started in yesterday’s post, I’ve asked a few experts to weigh in on two national goals laid out by President Obama in this week’s State of the Union address. The experts seemed split on the viability of getting 80% of the nation’s electricity from “clean energy” by 2035. Today they address Obama’s call for one million electric vehicles “on the road” by 2015 (less than five years from now):

Dan Kammen, renewable energy “czar” at the World Bank:

This will be seen as a real challenge given the global demand for EVs and the low current production levels.  However, some individual states are already formulating [goals for  more than] 100,000 EV by 2015, so while a true, true stretch, [needing] a strong support platform of production and market pull, this is a worthy goal, if not a challenging and exiting one.  China internally is pursuing similar targets.

James Sweeney, Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford:

One million electric vehicles on the the road by 2015 is very aggressive and is unlikely to occur unless the US very heavily subsidizes their purchase.  New auto sales in the U.S. is currently about 6 million passenger cars and about an equal number of light duty trucks, such as SUVs and pickups.  It is unlikely that the light duty vehicles will be electric (hybrids are not considered electric in this discussion because the primary source of energy is a liquid fuel.) Thus over the four year time period “by 2015″, there may be 25 million sales if sales do not increase, and maybe 30 million with some growth. It is unlikely in that time that the market share could be as large as 3% even by the end of the time period. Thus the average over that time period is unlikely to be as large as 1.5% of the sales.  Remember, it took many years for hybrid electrics to reach 3% market share.  And they did not require any difference in infrastructure and had as great a range as conventional vehicles, neither of which is likely to be the case with electric vehicles.  If the average were 1.5% of market share, then there would be fewer than 1/2 a million on the road by 2015.

Even with a large subsidy, it would be very hard to move to such a large market share that quickly.  Of course, with a large enough government expenditure through subsidizing car purchases — e.g. a tax write off of 90% of the car cost — you could induce many electric vehicle purchases.

As Sweeney points out, assessing both goals runs into the same trouble with definitions:

Finally, President Obama did not define the concept of “electric vehicles.”  If he actually was including tiny electrically propelled vehicles — golf carts or the equivalent — then all bets are off.  However, I assume that he meant vehicles that the normal person would call cars or trucks.

There are already more than a million gas-electric hybrids on US roads. Presumably the President was referring to “all-electric” vehicles.

I’ll post additional replies as they come in.

Just as delegates from 193 nations agreed to a voluntary moratorium on geoengineering research last week at the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, the US House Science and Technology Committee issued a report outlining how federal geoengineering research could be pursued in the United States. The international agreement to ban the research does not apply to the US, which has not ratified the CBD. (More from The Washington Post and Climate Central.)

$9.6 Million for Alternative Fuel and Car Technologies

The California Energy Commission just announced $9.6 million for eight projects focused on electric cars and alternative fuel technologies. The largest grant is nearly $3 million to Leyden Energy of Fremont, CA, for the production of lithium ion cells for electric car batteries. The company and its partner, Green Vehicles of Salinas, provided matching funds for the project. (Full CEC press release)

Another Solar Project Gets Federal Approval

Federal land managers approved another solar thermal project in California, this time in Riverside County. The 250-megawatt Genesis Solar Energy Project now joins the 400-MW Ivanpah Project, the 700-MW Ocotillo Project, and and a smaller photovoltaic (PV) project by San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., that have already been cleared to break ground by the Bureau of Land Management.  (More from the LA Times)

New Mexico Panel Approves Cap-and-Trade, with Conditions

This week, the New Mexico state Environmental Improvement Board approved moving forward with a cap-and-trade strategy as long as other members of the Western Climate Initiative, such as California, also commit to cap and trade (New Mexico’s governor-elect is opposed to a carbon cap.)  The California Air Resources Board announced a plan last week for a carbon-trading program that would regulate 400 metric tons of emissions by 2015.  (More from Bloomberg)

Photo: Craig Miller

California’s regional planning authorities need to find new ways to get people to leave their cars at home.

Passenger vehicles are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in California, comprising one third of all the state’s emissions.  Senate Bill 375, passed in 2008, is designed to chip away at those emissions by curbing sprawl and encouraging infrastructure that gets Californians to drive less — or at least, not as far.

This week the state Air Resources Board met a milestone (so to speak) in the implementation of the law by sending to California’s 18 regional planning organizations, greenhouse gas reduction targets for cars and light trucks .  Now it will be up to the regions to create their own strategies for linking land use and transportation planning in ways that lure Californians out of their cars.

Mike McKeever  is chair of the committee that advised CARB on the targets. He is also executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), the metropolitan planning organization for the region.  He says that SB 375 requires regions to get more “purposeful” about development.

McKeever said the central question that local planners are asking is: “Can you alter your future growth patterns, your urban settlement pattern in a way that reduces the length of auto trips and makes it easier for people to take some of their trips on transit or walking or bicycling or car pooling?”

Planners in Sacramento, San Diego and the Bay Area have some of the most aggressive targets: a seven percent reduction per capita by 2020 and 13-16% by 2035 (compared to 2005 levels). South Coast communities are shooting for an eight percent reduction by 2020, and 13% by 2035.

During the public comment period before the Air Board’s decision, many stepped forward to voice concerns that the targets were too aggressive, and would cause local and regional planners to give up before they even start.  Others expressed fears that the targets would stifle new development and that they would trigger pricing strategies that would increase transportation costs for families.

Danny Curtin, who directs the California Conference of Carpenters says the targets could hobble employment in an already-suffering sector of the economy.

“It’s beginning to look like a ‘smart-growth’ strategy is becoming a no-growth strategy,” said Curtin. “And we’re deeply mired in an unemployment situation. So, at this time, that makes absolutely no sense.”

But advocates of the targets say that they are not designed to stop growth at all, but are designed to motivate regions to be more focused about the kinds of growth they encourage. Regions are charged with creating their own unique “Sustainable Communities Strategies” for meeting the targets in coordination with local governments which, regulators insist, retain control over land-use decisions.

Proponents of the targets cite the public health and environmental benefits to be gained from reducing driving in California, by building affordable communities that are more “walkable” and closer to good public transit, services,  and job centers.

“If we’re serious about climate change, we have to figure out ways for more people to live and work in places where their overall environmental impact is smaller,” said Egon Terplan, regional planning director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

“That means that what we spend money on as a region, can’t be on things that encourage driving.  Every time we expand a freeway, we in fact are making it easier for someone to drive.”

The Sustainable Communities Strategy is a new element in the Regional Transportation Plan that each region already updates every four or five years.   It requires the region to identify general locations recommended for growth and development, while also considering land use, transportation, and emissions reductions.  San Diego’s updated plan is scheduled for July of next year, so it will be the first region to apply the new standards under SB 375. Sacramento follows in December of 2011.

(Photo: Mark Strozier)

Transportation is the top source of greenhouse gas emissions in California. So in a state where car culture rules, what will it take to get us out of our cars?

That’s the goal behind SB 375, a bill passed in 2008 that links greenhouse gases to urban sprawl. Under this first-in-the-nation policy, the state’s 18 regional planning organizations must reduce the emissions coming from vehicles through land use and transportation planning. This week, the Air Resources Board is expected to release the draft emission reduction targets that the agencies must meet by 2020 and 2035.

While the chances of getting Californians out of their cars completely are slim, the idea is to reduce the number of miles traveled through more public transit, more “walkable” communities and denser development. (Learn more about that in this Quest story about transit villages).

According to a report released today, that development approach can have some dramatic benefits, considering how California is expected to grow. By 2050, some projections put the population at 60 million, adding seven million new households.

The planning firm Calthorpe Associates looked at those housing needs and ran a number of growth scenarios, in a study funded by the California Strategic Growth Council and California High Speed Rail Authority. They compared a business-as-usual approach of low-density suburbs (30% urban and compact growth) to a “growing smart” scenario with more urban in-fill and transit-oriented development (90% urban and compact growth). While that last scenario may sound like the land of endless condos, according to Peter Calthorpe, it would still be 53% single family homes. Calthorpe calls it “a shift back to what California used to build–bungalows.”

Here are some of the benefits they found for the scenario by 2050:

• Reduces the number of vehicle miles traveled  by nearly 3.7 trillion
• Saves more than $194 billion in capital infrastructure costs
• Saves 19 million acre-feet of water
• Prevents the release of 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 25% less than business-as-usual
• Saves California households $6,400 per year in auto-related costs and utility bills.

In-fill development can often cost more than low-density development and this report doesn’t take housing prices into account. Indeed, costs may be one of the biggest challenges for SB 375, since both the state and cities are facing budget crises  and a lull in the housing market.

Under the bill, state transportation funding will be prioritized for projects that meet the SB 375 goals. But according to Hasan Ikhrata, Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Governments (one of the regional organizations doing the planning), financial incentives will be key to reaching the goals. “I think the biggest challenge is to find incentives to help cities, because cities want to do this, but they don’t have the resources to do it without help,” he said.