Report by University of California and CalEPA Featured CEE Faculty
Decarbonizing California Transportation by 2045
Report to State Outlines Policy Pathways to Meet the Zero-Carbon Time Crunch
UC Davis News and Media Relations recently highlighted the research contributions of department faculty members Austin Brown, Dan Sperling, and grad group member Susan Handy for their work on the "Driving California’s Transportation Emissions to Zero" report.
A sample of the article below:
A team of transportation and policy experts from the University of California released a report today to the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) outlining policy options to significantly reduce transportation-related fossil fuel demand and emissions. Those policy options, when combined, could lead to a zero-carbon transportation system by 2045, while also improving equity, health and the economy. A second study led by UC Santa Barbara was released simultaneously. It identifies strategies to reduce in-state petroleum production in parallel with reductions in demand.
The state funded the two studies through the 2019 Budget Act. The studies are designed to identify paths to slash transportation-related fossil fuel demand and emissions while also managing a strategic, responsible decline in transportation-related fossil fuel supply.
The University of California demand study was conducted by researchers from the UC Institute of Transportation Studies, a network with branches at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UCLA. The UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy coordinated the report’s policy management, and the UC Davis Center for Regional Change led the study’s equity and environmental justice research.
Bringing about a zero-carbon transportation future will be challenging, but not impossible, the report states. Doing so requires urgent actions and a long-term perspective. Importantly, a major upfront investment in clean transportation through incentives and new charging and hydrogen infrastructure will soon pay off in net economic savings to the California economy, with net savings within a decade growing to tens of billions of dollars per year by 2045.