Oregon’s Climate Report Card

By Angus Duncan of Portland, OR. Angus is the president at Bonneville Environmental Foundation and the chair of Oregon Global Warming Commission.

The Oregon Global Warming Commission is charged with tracking the state’s progress toward its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals and reporting every two years to the Legislature. Our 2013 Report looks distressingly like my sixth grade report card: lots of “C’s”, precious few “A’s” and one grade I wish I didn’t have to show my parents.

Oregon is bringing home about a C+ average when we should be doing nothing less than “A” work. If we were grading on a “pass/fail” basis, we’d be failing.

That, in the end, is how Mother Nature grades.

The following teachers’ notes reflect the mixed term we’ve had as a state:

• 2010 Goal: Even without a recession effect, Oregon met its first Legislatively-directed 2010 goal to flatten the historic annual growth of GHG emissions and bend the line back downwards. Over the last three years tracked (2008-2010), we’re even on the trajectory needed to reach the 2020 and 2050 goals; but those three years almost surely reflect recession effect more than they do durable policy and behavioral responses. Absent such durable responses, we have to expect the emissions line to bend back upwards as economic activity recovers.

• Ending Coal Burning at Boardman: Portland General Electric came to an agreement with its regulators and important stakeholders to terminate coal combustion at its Boardman power plant – and Oregon’s only in-state coal plant – by the end of 2020, some two decades earlier than the utility’s alternative plan. The agreement influenced similar resolutions, for similar plants, in states as close as Washington, and as distant as New Mexico and Oklahoma. On the other hand, in 2021 PGE will still meet about 9% of its load with coal, and possibly as much as 53% from gas combustion (up from about 33% today). For Oregon’s other large electric utility, PacifiCorp, two-thirds of the power it supplies to Oregon customers is coal-generated; and there is no indication the company is planning to draw down its reliance on coal in any significant degree.

• Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Oregonians are driving fewer overall miles despite population gains (in Oregon, 6% fewer miles since 2005 while adding some 250,000 new inhabitants). While national VMT counts have been leveling off since 2003, Oregon VMT have been declining since 1996; and have been doing so across the state, not just in urban areas and not just correlated with higher gasoline prices. This VMT effect, combined with expected improvements in vehicle fuel economy and continued success in maintaining urban growth boundaries, creates for Oregon a real opportunity for substantial and growing reductions in transportation carbon emissions. In 2011, per capita use of gasoline by Oregonians fell to its lowest level since 1962. In long-haul trucking and air travel, emissions reductions are more elusive as miles-traveled numbers grow, but there are some promising fuel and technology leads.

The good news notwithstanding, Oregon is not on track.

“On track” would mean a GHG reduction trajectory that reduced emissions some 20% by 2020 (only seven years away) net of emissions growth from a recovering economy .

While GHG emissions from electricity generation will dip in 2020 when Boardman ends coal burning there, emissions growth in utilities will resume if: (a) PGE relies largely on gas to fill its needs (including backfilling Boardman); and, (b) PacifiCorp does not reduce its dependence – and ours – on coal.

Oregon industrial emissions are down since 2000, but most of that resulted from aluminum leaving the region ; further reductions must come from efficiency gains.

Only in transportation do we see downward-trending emissions curves that look sustainable, and these are still not dropping sharply enough to track Oregon’s goals. Tri-Met’s 2012 service reductions were a step backward, coming when further emissions reductions depend in important part on increasing transit service levels faster than the rate of population growth . Improving transit, bike, pedestrian and car-share modes are essential to our region’s economic and equity goals as well as our environmental ones.

Still No Carbon Signal

In 2009 the Commission adopted Resolution 2009-3-012, calling upon Congress to adopt a carbon emissions reduction mechanism that would be “sound, equitable and timely.” But the Congress has failed to perform even as states and communities like ours have stepped up our games. We can credit the Obama Administration with acting to boost new car fuel economy standards, imposing GHG limitations on new power plants, and now proposing to limit GHG emissions from existing power plants.. But only an economy-wide signal – a carbon cap or carbon tax – will truly change the rules of the game in meaningful ways; not only ramping down vehicle and power plant emissions in predictable, scheduled, systematic and non-disruptive ways, but also – and more importantly – releasing the creative genius of American inventors, businesses and yes, even our financial wizards, onto the problem. When we do this as a country, there is little we cannot accomplish, whether winning WWII or defeating AIDs and cancer. The kind of ingenuity a clear carbon signal would unleash would do so at a cost far lower than we can guess at today. With collateral benefits we can’t yet know.

We just have to decide to do it.

Read the Commission’s full Report here.

Oct. 25, 2013 Posted in guest column.