California Approves Roadmap To Carbon Neutrality By 2045

California’s authorities this week approved a roadmap for achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 that involves reducing oil demand by 86 percent.

The AP reports that among the other measures included in the roadmap to carbon neutrality are deep reforms in energy, transportation, and agriculture, although the report also notes that critics believe this is not enough to combat climate change.

In the years until 2045, the plan, which was approved by California’s Air Resources Board, the state will aim to increase the amount of wind and solar power generation capacity in its energy mix fourfold and reduce the use of liquid oil fuels by 94 percent.

The plan also envisages the end of gas for residential and commercial buildings, which in the future will only be powered and heated with electricity.

Criticism of the plan, from climate activists, focused most on the inclusion of carbon capture and storage but it wasn’t the only criticism. The oil industry also had something to say about California’s ambitions in cutting oil demand.

“CARB’s latest draft of the Scoping Plan has acknowledged what dozens of studies have confirmed — that a complete phase-out of oil and gas is unrealistic,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, in a statement quoted by the AP. “A plan that isn’t realistic isn’t really a plan at all.”

California is the most emission-ambitious state in the country, having approved a ban on the sales of new gasoline-powered cars from 2035 and one of the largest solar power capacities in the U.S.

Critics have targeted this capacity as responsible for what has in recent years become regular blackout warnings and energy conservation calls by the authorities but the state’s government is sticking to emission reduction as its number-one goal over both the short and long term.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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