Energeia is helping the Accelerate to Zero Emissions (A2Z) Collaborative, formed in 2019, develop a roadmap to position the San Diego region as a national leader in transportation electrification through an EV Strategy document. The Collaborative involves San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the County of San Diego, San Diego Air Pollution Control District (SDAPCD), and the City of San Diego. 

Background

Gas-fueled internal combustion vehicles are the largest contributor to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the San Diego region and throughout the state of California. California has gained national recognition for its achievements in reducing emissions and promoting the adoption of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) through innovative state-level programs, policies, and legislative bills. The A2Z Collaborative stresses the importance of regional collaboration in order to leverage statewide momentum, attract necessary investments, and address specific local concerns and priorities. 

The EV Strategy builds upon the San Diego Regional Gap Analysis released in July 2021, which modeled ZEV trends and identified barriers to adoption.  

Services

Energeia completed a full review of existing conditions surrounding federal and statewide policies, regional plans and strategies, ZEV best practices and strategies published by other utilities and governments, and evaluating the 2021 Gap Analysis for its impact on developing A2Z strategies. 

Federal and statewide requirements and funding opportunities were brought into Energeia’s bottom-up EV Uptake Model, which found that the San Diego region is on track to achieve its share of state targets for ZEV adoption, but will still be 229,000 vehicles below the Gap Analysis target of 771,000 vehicles by 2030. Energeia collaborated with AECOM and the A2Z team to decide the key determinants for ZEV adoption that could be configured in the EV Uptake Model, and then modeled each of the High Impact Strategies that the Project Team developed to close the gap between current Baseline forecasts and the Gap Analysis Target.  

Results

Energeia’s modeling results show that applying the 10 final Strategies results in a 189,210 increase in cumulative ZEVs in 2035, as compared to the Baseline forecast. The final Strategies include increasing the percentage of zero-emission vehicle miles traveled (VMT), installing ZEV chargers equitably across rural areas and Communities of Concern, providing equitable and accessible opportunities to learn about ZEVs and ZEV infrastructure, providing ZEV workforce training opportunities, accelerating publicly accessible ZE infrastructure, lowering policy and financial adoption barriers, updating building codes and streamlining ZE infrastructure permitting, ensuring sufficient local grid capacity, encouraging fleet transition, and supporting innovative pilots to transition cars, trucks, and buses to zero emission. 

The most impactful strategies were found to be those that accelerate the deployment of public charging infrastructure, employ demand response and managed charging programs to control customers’ energy usage and take advantage of incentives, and develop optimized electricity rates for Level 2 chargers to allow customers to take advantage of lower rates during off-peak hours.  

Outcome

The A2Z Collaboration is in process of developing and finalizing the EV Strategy document, but draft strategies have been posted on the A2Z website.  

The United States is moving towards a net zero carbon future, with key sectors needing targeted actions to achieve that vision. As the combustion of natural gas creates a significant share of domestic emissions, reaching net zero necessitates decarbonizing the natural gas system and its end uses.

The following sections summarize Energeia’s recent research into natural gas decarbonization pathways, including how those pathways would impact the economy and reshape energy markets and bulk system needs. Read on to learn more about the techniques we have developed to optimize natural gas decarbonization from a whole-of-system perspective.

Gas Sector Contributors in United States’ Emissions

The United States rejoined the Paris Agreement in 2021. The federal government also developed a net-zero goal by 2050 via executive order,^[1] though this target was not included in its 2021 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a climate action plan every country must submit every five years as part of the Paris Agreement.

Figure 1 presents the United States’ emission projections by economic sector under business as usual.

Background

Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) is accelerating California’s transition to clean energy by providing customers with clean alternatives to PG&E electricity generation. As part of this mission, SVCE conducts annual Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions accounting, modeling, and forecasting to measure and track the golden state’s progress toward GHG reduction goals.

SVCE engaged Energeia among others to conduct a review of SVCE’s current GHG accounting and forecasting methods and transition their reporting from an annual to an hourly measure.

Services/Results

As part of this process, Energeia reviewed SVCE’s existing GHG accounting and forecasting methodologies and identified areas of improvement for key sectors and model inputs. Energeia also engaged with stakeholders and subject matter experts at SVCE to gain a deeper understanding of the desired use cases and outputs of an updated model.  

Energeia validated these findings through best practice research of third-party GHG accounting and forecasting models to identify a comprehensive list of GHG sectors, subsectors, and abatement options that align with SVCE’s use. Energeia recommended improvements to SVCE’s transport, building, and electricity sector forecasting methodologies allowing SVCE to transition from annual to hourly reporting. These improvements would provide higher accuracy and add an avoided costs and emissions component to their model for further optimization.

Outcome

SVCE is currently in the process of developing new GHG accounting and forecasting models in line with Energeia and AECOM’s recommendations.