Note: GHG emissions by scoping plan category in 2030 is based on the updated California PATHWAYS Model provided by E3.
Data Source: California Air Resources Board, California Greenhouse Gas Inventory - by Scoping Plan.
Analysis by CEC Economics
Highlights
- From 2007 (when emissions peaked) to 2023, California has reduced emissions by 117.2 MMTCO2e or 24.5%. California needs to reduce emissions by an additional 98.0 MMTCO2e to reach its SB 32 target by 2030, or 27.2% from its 2023 levels. The electric power sector is the only sector where emissions reductions are already greater than 40% relative to 1990.
- After a brief rebound in 2021, the three largest-emitting sectors (transportation, industrial, and electric power) continue to make steady progress in reducing emissions. From 2022 to 2023, emissions fell by 6.5 MMTCO2e (-4.6%) in the transportation sector, 3.4 MMTCO2e (-4.8%) in the industrial sector, and 2.5 MMTCO2e (-4.2%) in the electric power sector3.
Challenges
- Emissions from the high global warming potential (GWP) sector—which mainly consist of substitutes of ozone-depleting substances (SODS) for refrigeration and air conditioning—have been trending in the wrong direction for at least two decades.8 Emissions from the high GWP sector increased by 223% from 2000 (6.6 MMTCO2e) to 2023 (21.4 MMTCO2e). However, its rate of increase has slowed since 2020.
- Even excluding the use of SODS, emissions from the commercial and residential sectors rose 1.5 MMTCO2e (+3.6%) from 2022 to 2023. The increase primarily stemmed from increasing emissions from residential natural gas usage, in which emissions rose 1.7 MMTCO2e or 7.2% from 2022 to 2023. The increased natural gas usage in 2023 was likely due to a colder than usual winter, when California had an extreme snow year.9
8 Other scoping plan categories in the high global warming potential sector include semiconductor manufacturing and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) released from electricity transmission and distribution. Use of SODS is by far the largest GHG emitting high GWP category, making up 98% of the high GWP sector’s emissions in 2023, up from 84% in 2000.
9 Adrienne M. Marshall, John T. Abatzoglou, Stefan Rahimi, D.P. Lettenmaier, and Alex Hall (April 2024). California’s 2023 snow deluge: Contextualizing an extreme snow year against future climate change, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (20) e2320600121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2320600121
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