Local actions within the United States to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector are becoming increasingly prevalent given that no definitive guidance has been provided by federal agencies in Washington, D.C. State climate change action plans not only have the potential to mitigate impacts of global warming, they also can save the economy billions of dollars and could greatly impact how governments and agencies plan transportation projects in the future. This article focuses on action plans in the Western states, examining where they have anticipated receiving the most GHG reductions while also highlighting some of the more cost effective GHG reducing strategies. The purpose is to highlight some of those states that have been in the lead, and to provide guidance to other states that are in the process of, or starting to embark on the process of creating state climate action plans. There is a strategic role to be played by transportation planners and engineers to assist states and other government agencies in developing recommendations for climate change action plans. Future actions may include interstate and regionalization of the plans and integration of surface transportation modes with aviation.
Local actions within the United States to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector are becoming increasingly prevalent given that no definitive guidance has been provided by federal agencies in Wash-ington, D.C. States are taking the initiative in reducing their share of GHG emissions through state climate change action plans, with comprehensive policy recommendations formed by a consensus-driven stakeholder process within each state for the respective governor’s consideration.
The types of policies recommended vary depending on the state’s needs, capabilities, and capacity. In general, the vast majority of these transportation-related mitigation measures can be roughly classified into five categories:
Location and land-use efficiency (i.e., smart growth and transit measures);
•
Transportation system efficiency [i.e., intermodal freight initiatives, pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) insurance, etc.]; and
•
Other.
Climate change action plans not only have the potential to mitigate impacts of global warming, they also can save the economy billions of dollars and could greatly impact how we plan transportation projects in the future. This article focuses on action plans in the Western states, examining where they have anticipated receiving the most GHG reductions while also highlighting some of the more cost-effective GHG-reducing strategies. The purpose is to highlight some of those states that have been in the lead, and to provide guidance to other states that are in the process, or starting to embark on the process, of creating state climate action plans.
State Action Plans
On average, transportation sources represent 27 percent of total emissions for the entire United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. Table 1 shows a summary of baseline projected GHG emissions from surface transportation sources for the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and Colorado. The baseline refers to the values that would be present without action plans. It also shows the levels of emissions with reductions from the forecast baseline year that would result from proposed action plans and the percent reduction from the baseline. GHG emissions quantities are commonly analyzed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). The values in Table 1 are in units of million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMtCO2e).
Table 1. GHG Inventory Forecasts and Potential Reductions, 2020
Item/parameter
AZ
NM
MT
CO
2020 Transportation emission baseline without action plan (MMtCO2e)
58.6
22.3
10.4
36.2
2020 Transportation reductions with action plan (MMtCO2e)
14.5
6.8
0.96
7.84
Transportation emission reduction with action plan (%)
25
30
9
22
The following analyses are drawn from the state climate action plans of Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and Colorado. They are presented as case studies to illustrate how each action plan was developed, and the particular strategies and implicit policies each state has proposed to adopt.
Arizona
On February 2, 2005, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano issued an executive order to create the Arizona Climate Change Advisory Group (CCAG). The stated goal of the order was to reduce GHG emissions in Arizona to year 2000 levels in 2020. The CCAG—instructed to develop a GHG emissions inventory, their sources, and a mitigation plan—consisted of thirty-six appointed members who represented eleven sectors in Arizona.
Arizona accounts for 1.2 percent of national GHG emissions, and Arizona’s emissions per capita are 36 percent lower than the national average. In 2000, Arizona’s total GHG emissions were . The transportation sector accounted for 39 percent of Arizona’s total GHG emissions, while transportation’s share of total GHG emissions for the nation as a whole was just 27 percent. The Arizona transportation sector’s share is slightly higher than the share of GHG emissions from electricity, which accounted for 38 percent of the state’s GHG emissions.
In 2000, the total GHG emissions from Arizona’s transportation sector were , and gasoline accounted for 65 percent of these emissions. While emissions from transportation are projected to grow to by 2020, gasoline’s contribution to transportation-sector GHG emissions in Arizona was projected to decrease from 65 percent in 2000 to 62 percent in 2020; but on-road diesel’s share was projected to increase from 19 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2020.
On June 22, 2006, the CCAG approved final GHG mitigation recommendations to be presented to Governor Napolitano. Stakeholders in the state of Arizona have recommended GHG mitigation policies for light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles that could reduce projected transportation-sector emissions in 2020 by 25 percent. Many of these policies, including those discussed in this paper, rely on technologies that are commercially available today. While certain aspects of specific policies are uncertain, the reductions projected for the Arizona state climate action plan are comparable to those in the climate change action plans of other states.
The CCAG’s recommended transportation policies included strategies for vehicle technology and improvements, transportation system efficiency, location and land use efficiency, low-carbon fuel alternatives, and others. Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from the aviation sector were not included in the set of priority policy options.
Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of transportation GHG reductions for year 2020. The most significant emissions reductions were anticipated to be achieved through vehicle technology and improvements.
It is worth noting that although many of these options have synergistic effects, a large proportion of the vehicle technology measures achieve higher tonnage reductions through increased energy efficiency and fuel savings. Vehicle technologies and improvements recommended by the CCAG included a light-duty vehicle (LDV) GHG emissions standard, fuel efficient replacement tires, hybrid promotions and incentives, alternative fuel standards, biodiesel implementation, and retirement of high-emitting diesel fleets. Overall, a large portion of Arizona’s GHG emissions reductions will be obtained from energy efficient transportation solutions in passenger fleet vehicles.
Policies that targeted primarily LDVs accounted for about 89 percent of the estimated GHG emission reductions, while policies targeting primarily heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) accounted for only about 11 percent of estimated GHG emission reductions. Aside from state-specific and stakeholder-specific conditions, one possible explanation for this difference is that the policies that targeted HDVs were newer and more uncertain, while the policies targeting LDVs were backed by more scientific and policy research as well as more empirical evidence. While all of the policies for both LDVs and HDVs are uncertain and difficult to quantify—smart growth options, in particular, should be characterized this way—more of the policies targeting HDVs were not quantified in the analyses.
In each of the states analyzed, the recommended policy options for LDVs can be grouped into two categories—those that are effective because they reduce the tons of GHG emitted per mile and those that are effective because they reduce vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). Each of these strategies contributed almost equally to the reductions from LDVs. It is worth noting that in Arizona, for example, the potential estimates of the GHG emission reduction for the smart growth and transit bundle were in the range of 0.7 to in 2020. Thus a less optimistic analysis of the effectiveness of smart growth would suggest that the tons-per-mile strategies contributed an even larger share of the estimated reductions.
Overall, the recommended policies for Arizona are estimated to reduce the projected GHG emissions from the transportation sector in 2020 from to , a savings of or about 25 percent (see Table 1). These estimated GHG reductions are comparable to those estimated in climate change action plans from other states such as New York (18 percent), Colorado (22 percent), California (23–33 percent), and New Mexico (30 percent).
New Mexico
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed Executive Order 05-033 on June 5, 2005, establishing the Climate Change Advisory Group (CCAG) to prepare a report in coordination with a broad group of stakeholders, state agencies, and the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS). This report included a historical inventory and forecast of GHG emissions and proposals for reduction of New Mexico’s total GHG emissions to 2000 levels by the year 2012, 10 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 75 percent by 2050.
In an inventory and projections report conducted by the CCS, substantial emissions growth are expected to increase as much as 65 percent over a thirty-year span of time. New Mexico’s GHG emissions are projected to increase from in 1990 to in 2020.
In comparison to the national average, New Mexico produces nearly twice the GHG emissions (45 vs. 25 tCO2e per person) and consumes more gasoline and diesel fuel—producing more transportation-related GHG emissions than the average American on a per capita basis. The transportation sector is a major source of GHG emissions in New Mexico, currently accounting for about 18 percent of the state’s gross GHG emissions as documented in the 2006 final report of the New Mexico state climate change action plan. Key determinants of those emissions are transportation technologies, fuels, population, economic growth, and various land-use policies that all affect the demand for transportation services.
Emissions from the transportation sector are estimated to increase from in 1990 to in 2020. The fifteen transportation and land-use policy options recommended by the CCAG, however, total a savings of in 2020 resulting in a 30 percent reduction in emissions for the state’s transportation sector.
Compared to other climate change action plans in the West, New Mexico’s sources and solutions for emission reductions are spread slightly more among vehicle technology, low-carbon fuels, location efficiency, and transportation system efficiency. About one-third of the expected emissions reductions are achieved through vehicle technology improvements, followed by low-carbon fuels accounting for 21 percent of sector reductions (see Figure 2).
Fig. 2. New Mexico transportation GHG emission reductions, 2020
Vehicle Improvements and Encouraging Low Carbon Fuels
Executive Order 05-049 assisted in the development of the procurement of low GHG-emitting vehicles in the state fleet by specifically requiring the following: “By 2020, 15 percent of fuel used in state vehicles must be biofuels . . . immediately, 75 percent of all vehicles must be flex-fuel or hybrid, and new vehicles must have the highest fuel economy for the intended use” (New Mexico Climate Change Advisory Group 2006).
This policy device would enable the state to lead by example, ensuring that its own fleets of vehicles are meeting higher standards than the state as a whole, aiming at both fuel efficiency and use of alternative fuels. Additionally, the CCAG recommended a renewable fuels standard and target to replace 20 percent of gasoline and diesel with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel, respectively) by year 2020.
Smart Growth and Transit
New Mexico’s smart growth strategies to reduce vehicle travel account for 16 percent of GHG reductions in 2020. The estimated GHG reductions from smart growth and transit strategies are comparable to estimations in climate change action plans in the Western states of Colorado (17 percent) and Arizona (25 percent). These strategies include infill and brownfield redevelopment, transit-oriented development, “smart growth” planning and modeling, multimodal plans, promotion of leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) for neighborhood development, and targeted open space and cropland protection.
In total, the sixteen policy measures recommended to Governor Richardson have the potential to produce a cumulative emissions savings of about from 2007 to 2020. In year 2020, these recommendations will have reduced transportation emissions from to , resulting in a 30 percent savings in emissions from the transportation sector alone.
Montana
On December 13, 2005, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer issued a letter directing the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) to establish the Climate Change Advisory Committee (CCAC). Under this initiative, the CCAC was charged with evaluating state-level GHG reduction strategies in various sectors of the state’s economy that would “save money, conserve energy, and bolster the Montana economy” (“Montana climate change action plan” 2007).
The transportation sector is a major source of GHG emissions in Montana, accounting for about 20 percent of the state’s gross GHG emissions. Factors contributing to the state’s transportation demand include population, economic growth, various land-use policies, technologies, and fuels. Emissions from the transportation are expected to grow significantly from 1990 to 2020, with annual state projections for vehicle-miles traveled growth at about 1.92 percent and a relatively higher growth in freight vehicle-miles traveled. In 2020, Montana’s transportation emissions are projected to increase to , higher than 1990 levels.
Understanding the effects of the state’s growth in transportation emissions, the CCAC developed thirteen recommendations for the transportation and land use sector for the governor’s approval. These recommendations, included in the climate change action plan completed in November 2007, estimated a 9 percent emissions savings in 2020 and a cumulative savings of from 2006 through 2020 to the state’s transportation sector.
In comparison to other Western states, Montana’s transportation and land use strategies to reduce GHG emissions is significantly comprised of vehicle technology improvements. In fact, improvements in vehicle efficiency account for 61 percent of the state’s transportation GHG reductions in 2020 (see Figure 3). Principal means of reaching this reduction include the Clean Car Program, a fuel-efficient replacement tire program, and HDV emissions standards and retrofit incentives.
Other strategies analyzed and recommended include:
•
Consumer information programs;
•
Financial and market incentives for low GHG vehicle ownership and use;
•
Growth and development strategies;
•
Low-carbon fuels;
•
Procurement of efficient fleet vehicles and reduced emissions from off-road vehicles and aviation;
•
HDV and locomotive idle reduction;
•
Transportation system management; and
•
Intermodal freight transportation.
Colorado
In Colorado, the transportation sector currently accounts for about 24 percent of the state’s gross GHG emissions. In 2005, the transportation and land use sector totaled and is estimated to grow to in 2020 (nearly doubling from the state’s 1990 levels). Growth in vehicle-miles traveled account for a significant portion of this increase while the vehicle-miles traveled from gasoline-powered vehicles is projected to grow by 34 percent between 2005 and 2020, and the VMT from diesel vehicles is projected to grow by 68 percent, as a result of anticipated growth in freight movement.
Colorado’s process in developing recommendations to the governor is unique in that the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) undertook the Colorado Climate Project to bring Coloradans together to reduce the state’s contribution and vulnerability to climate change. RMCO appointed a blue-ribbon Climate Action Panel (CAP) charged with developing recommendations that could be adopted in Colorado by the state government, local governments, public and private sector, and individuals to reduce the state’s GHG emissions.
The CAP recommended a set of eleven transportation-related policy recommendations to Governor Bill Ritter, saving Colorado from years 2007 to 2020 (about per year). Principal means of reducing Colorado’s transportation emissions include improving vehicle technology, substituting gasoline and diesel with lower-carbon fuels, and reducing vehicle travel while improving the efficiency of transportation system operations throughout the state. Figure 4 illustrates the distribution of total (2020) transportation-related emissions reductions.
Like the other Western states, the highest level of transportation emissions reductions is anticipated to come from vehicle technology improvements, totaling about 40 percent of all transportation emissions reductions. Substituting gasoline and diesel with lower-carbon fuels is expected to generate about 26 percent of the state’s total transportation emissions reductions. Smart growth and transit measures and transportation system efficiency strategies (i.e., variable priced insurance, parking management, and commuter benefits) each account for 17 percent of total state transportation reductions. Other policy recommendations contributed smaller shares. Together, these policy recommendations are estimated to reduce projected GHG emissions in 2020 from to , totaling a savings in emissions of 22 percent.
Action Plans in Progress
According to the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, about 25 states have completed state climate change action plans and at least ten more are currently underway or under revision. Several states are developing different strategies in accordance with their specific situations.
For example, in Washington state the transportation sector accounts for 45 percent of GHG emissions, which is higher than the United States average of 27 percent. While Washington’s climate change action plan has not yet been adopted, its current transportation-related recommendations focus largely on improving transit service and infrastructure. It also proposes including GHG and VMT reduction standards in long-range transportation planning.
Should these recommendations be approved and implemented, Washington’s would be the first state climate change action plan to directly influence a state’s transportation funding process. It could dramatically change the way transportation planning is done in Washington, and it could change the types of transportation projects that will move forward over the coming decades.
In 2008, there are a number of new states developing climate change action plans. Some of these states include Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, and Michigan.
Future Directions
Interstate Collaboration
Individual states that have developed state climate change action plans are already embarking on interstate collaboration actions through regional climate initiatives. Regional climate initiatives have already broken ground in the West [Western Climate Initiative (WCI)], Northeastern United States [New England Governors’ Conference and the Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG-ECP) and Regional GHG Initiative (RGGI)], and most recently in the Midwest (the Midwestern Regional GHG Reduction Accord).
Some of the regional climate actions include “observer” states and “member” states. For example, member states in the WCI are required to have: (1) an economy-wide GHG reduction goal; (2) has developed a comprehensive multisector state climate change action plan to achieve that goal; (3) committed to adopt GHG tailpipe standards for passenger vehicles; and (4) participated in the climate registry. Observer states, on the other hand, may be in the process of developing a state climate change action plan and are monitoring the process prior to considering full membership.
Together, the WCI member states work together to achieve a regional goal of 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 with the development of a multistate cap and trade program. These regional partnerships increase the effectiveness and consistency of transportation policy goals by strengthening local actions through organized regional and future national efforts to reduce GHG emissions and the nation’s vulnerability to climate change impacts.
Integration with Aviation and Other Modes of Travel
This paper has focused on surface transportation, but there may be an important integration in the future with air transportation GHG reduction efforts. GHG emissions, forecasts, and mitigation strategies are currently under further research and development at the national level. Although some aircraft and ground equipment technologies (i.e., reduced vertical separation minimums, electrification of gates, etc.) have been identified to reduce emissions, benefits of integrating surface transportation mitigation actions with aviation may include increased intermodal efficiency, decreased air traffic, and improved health and safety.
Strategic Planning and Engineering Role
There is a strategic role to be played by transportation planners and engineers to assist states and other government agencies in developing recommendations for climate change action plans. These include:
•
Facilitating meetings with and soliciting input from various stakeholders;
•
Providing information about cutting edge transportation practices and policies;
•
Playing a role in cost-benefit analyses;
•
Helping to develop estimates of emissions-reduction potential for several of the proposed mitigation measures; and
•
Designing and constructing the infrastructure improvements and modifications to implement the action plans.
The role of engineers and planners are becoming increasingly important as climate change and sustainability issues move closer to the forefront of state agendas, increasing the demand for emissions-sensitive transportation planning, and subsequent design and construction of infrastructure components to meet these policy and strategic goals.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the following individuals and organizations for their sponsorship, contributions, and support of the work and analysis presented in this paper: Thomas Peterson, Karl Hausker, Will Schrooer, Jeffrey Ang-Olson, Maureen Mullens, Carolyn McAndrews, Lisa Thompson, the Center for Climate Strategies, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, New Mexico Environment Department, Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, and Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
Lewison Lem and Tiffany Batac work in the Planning and Environment Service Line at Parsons Brinckerhoff. They can be reached, respectively, at [email protected] and at [email protected].
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
1532-6748(2008)8:3(124)/asset/f25a8a31-a76e-4f8e-b37e-6539b6eed2ed/assets/images/large/1.jpg)
1532-6748(2008)8:3(124)/asset/22778c46-574f-4cd7-9c57-4543d784faaf/assets/images/large/2.jpg)
1532-6748(2008)8:3(124)/asset/8767f39d-5562-4cb4-922a-3de240c5c13e/assets/images/large/3.jpg)
1532-6748(2008)8:3(124)/asset/3d13aa3c-8f50-4d72-a9f6-6228f4dfdd79/assets/images/large/4.jpg)
