Southern California Edison strives to meet state’s ambitious emissions reduction guidelines
WASHINGTON – A Southern California Edison (SCE) official said this week that the utility is poised to meet California’s ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Tammy Tumbling, SCE director of government relations for local affairs, said the utility is taking active steps to meet California’s goal to reduce GHG emissions by 40 percent of 1990 levels in 2020. SCE is also working to comply with the state’s other goals to reduce GHG emissions by 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2030 and be completely carbon free by 2045.
“California has made it clear that we are transitioning to a clean energy future. And what that means for [SCE] is, we want to make sure that we support the goal that the state has set for us, but we want to make sure that its practical and affordable for our customers,” Tumbling said at a Feb. 27 panel sponsored by the American Association of Blacks in Energy. The panel focused on the future of electric vehicles (EVs) and the transportation infrastructure to support EVs.
To comply with California’s guidelines and the state’s goal to have 5 million EVs on the road by 2030, SCE has installed about 1,000 charging stations for EVs, with 10 percent of those stations located in underserved communities. That installation was part of an SCE pilot program. Now the utility is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $760 million over four years to install and support 48,000 charging stations throughout SCE’s service territory. The request aligns with the company’s goal to put 7 million EVs on the road by 2030.
Other SCE initiatives to meet California’s GHG emissions reduction goals include supporting electrification programs for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, transit buses, port equipment and other industrial vehicles since transportation is California’s largest source of GHG emissions, according to Tumbling.
“We’re going to have to do something bold” to meet California’s goals, Tumbling said.
Although California is taking steps to incentivize citizens towards using EVs, nationwide efforts to promote the use of EVs are stymied by municipal constraints and infrastructure limitations, according to fellow panelist Cooper Martin, program director for the Sustainable Cities Institute, a program of the National League of Cities aimed at addressing climate change at the municipal level.
In addition to supply issues with car manufacturers for EVs and concerns about charging station availability, “the added wrinkle is just the sheer number of cities out there” that would need to prepare for increased EV adoption, Martin said.
“We really do need the assistance, the policy regimes, from the state level and from the federal level,” as well as partnerships between customers and the automotive and utilities sectors, to support millions of new EVs on the road, he said.
Stakeholders will need to educate the broader public on how using EVs can potentially lower their electricity costs, panelists said. For instance, widespread adoption of EVs could create a “tremendous opportunity” for energy storage because those EVs will be connected to the power grid, Tumbling said.
But to achieve greater adoption of EVs, stakeholders will also need to address concerns about vehicle affordability and charging infrastructure, as well as range concerns, according to David Schwietert, vice president of federal government relations and public policy for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
“When we’re talking about the future, we’re talking about how long it takes to get there” since EVs represent only 0.25%-1% of all vehicles on the road in the U.S., Schwietert said.
Despite the current low numbers of EV ownership, stakeholders should account for alternative transportation modes such as ridesharing and public transit when considering how to frame target goals for the consumer adoption of EVs, Martin said.
“I don’t think individual ownership is the goal” if we are talking about how increasing consumer adoption of EVs can address climate change, Martin said.
