2022 Scoping Plan for Achieving Carbon Neutrality

November 18, 2022

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(California Air Resources Board) This Scoping Plan lays out the sector-by-sector roadmap for California, the world’s fifth1 largest economy, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 or earlier, outlining a technologically feasible, cost-effective, and equity-focused path to achieve the state’s climate target. This is a challenging but necessary goal to minimize the impacts of climate change. There have been three previous Scoping Plans. Previous plans have focused on specific greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets for our industrial, energy, and
transportation sectors—first to meet 1990 levels by 2020, then to meet the more aggressive target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

This plan, addressing recent legislation and direction from Governor Newsom, extends and expands upon these earlier plans with a target of reducing anthropogenic emissions to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2045. This plan also takes the unprecedented step of adding carbon neutrality as a science-based guide and touchstone for California’s climate work. The plan outlines how carbon neutrality can be achieved by taking bold steps to reduce GHGs to meet the anthropogenic emissions target and by expanding actions to capture and store carbon through the state’s natural and working lands and using a variety of mechanical approaches.

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The major element of this unprecedented transformation is the aggressive reduction of fossil fuels wherever they are currently used in California, building on and accelerating carbon reduction programs that have been in place for a decade and a half. That means rapidly moving to zero-emission transportation; electrifying the cars, buses, trains, and trucks that now constitute California’s single largest source of planet-warming pollution. It also means phasing out the use of fossil gas used for heating our homes and buildings.

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It also means scaling up new options such as renewable hydrogen for hard-to-electrify end uses and biomethane where needed.

Successfully achieving the outcomes called for in this Scoping Plan would reduce demand for liquid petroleum by 94 percent and total fossil fuel by 86 percent in 2045 relative to 2022.2 Despite these world-leading efforts, some amount of residual emissions will remain from hard-to-abate industries such as cement, internal combustion vehicles still on the road, and other sources of GHGs, including high global warming chemicals used as refrigerants.

The plan addresses these remaining emissions by re-envisioning our natural and working lands—forests, shrublands/chaparral, croplands, wetlands, and other lands—to ensure they play as robust a role as possible in incorporating and storing more carbon in the trees, plants, soil, and wetlands that cover 90 percent of the state’s 105 million acres while also thriving as a healthy ecosystem. Modeling indicates that natural and working lands will not, on their own, provide enough sequestration and storage to address the residual emissions. For that reason, it is necessary to research, develop, and deploy additional methods of capturing CO2 that include pulling it from the smokestacks of
facilities, or drawing it out of the atmosphere itself and then safely and permanently utilizing and storing it, as called for in recent legislation. Carbon removal also will be necessary to achieve net negative emissions to address historical GHGs already in the atmosphere.

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Specifically, this plan:

• Identifies a path to keep California on track to meet its SB 32 GHG reduction target of at least 40 percent below 1990 emissions by 2030.
• Identifies a technologically feasible, cost-effective path to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and a reduction in anthropogenic emissions by 85 percent below 1990 levels.
• Focuses on strategies for reducing California’s dependency on petroleum to provide consumers with clean energy options that address climate change, improve air quality, and support economic growth and clean sector jobs.
• Integrates equity and protecting California’s most impacted communities as driving principles throughout the document.
• Incorporates the contribution of natural and working lands (NWL) to the state’s GHG emissions, as well as their role in achieving carbon neutrality.
• Relies on the most up-to-date science, including the need to deploy all viable tools to address the existential threat that climate change presents, including carbon capture and sequestration, as well as direct air capture.
• Evaluates the substantial health and economic benefits of taking action.
• Identifies key implementation actions to ensure success.

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One example of fruitful collaboration is California’s longstanding vehicle emissions standards programs, which have repeatedly been freely adopted by other states, consistent with the federal Clean Air Act. California’s programs frequently pioneer more rigorous standards or new technologies—such as the now-standard catalytic converter and the rules that led directly to the nation-leading numbers of zero-emission vehicles on our roads today. From initial standards for cars and trucks decades ago to the worldleading Advanced Clean Trucks program currently helping to electrify heavy-duty vehicles, this partnership continues to offer regulatory options and spread innovative technologies. A major example of future work is the Advanced Clean Cars II program, which lays out California’s legally binding path to achieving 100 percent zero emission vehicle (ZEV) sales in 2035. 10 The California Air Resources Board (CARB) continues to work closely with many other states that also see zero-emission vehicles as critical to their climate and public health goals and expects many states to choose to adopt this regulation as well. This partnership with other states also creates market certainty for
automakers, which in turn helps to ensure that California consumers have access to a variety of ZEVs at multiple price points.

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For the first time, new and cutting-edge modeling tools allow us to estimate the quantitative ability of our forests and other landscapes to remove and store carbon under different scenarios. These cutting-edge tools were developed through a stakeholder process and in coordination with other agencies for the purpose of this update and will continue to be refined over time and made available to others seeking to do similar work.

As recent data and Scoping Plan modeling shows, our NWL also can act as a source of emissions, principally in the form of wildfires.

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Over the past decade and a half, the state has undertaken a successful three-pronged approach to reducing GHGs: incentives, regulations, and carbon pricing. The 2017 Scoping Plan leveraged existing programs such as the Renewables Portfolio Standard,
Advanced Clean Cars, Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Short-lived Climate Pollutant Strategy, mobile source measures to achieve federal air quality targets, and a Cap-and-Trade Program, among others, to lay out a technologically feasible and cost-effective path to
achieve the 2030 GHG reduction target. When looking toward the 2045 climate goals and the deeper GHG reductions needed across the AB 32 GHG Inventory sectors, all of the existing programs must be evaluated and, as necessary, strengthened to support the rapid production and deployment of clean technology and energy, as well as the increased pace and scale of actions on our natural and working lands.

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1 In October 2022, California was poised to become the world’s fourth largest economy

2 See https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp-PATHWAYS-data-E3.xlsx for energy
demand reductions

10 Executive Department. State of California. Executive Order N-79-20. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2020/09/9.23.20-EO-N-79-20-Climate.pdf.

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