Better gas is state's 'race to the moon'
BYLINE: By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER
BERKELEY -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described California's push to make fuels powering our automobiles more environmentally friendly as "our race to the moon," saying efforts to strip climate-warming carbon from gasoline will serve as a model for the rest of the world, reduce dependence on foreign oil and provide drivers with "the best weapon" against rising fuel costs.
Schwarzenegger spoke Friday at an international low-carbon fuel symposium at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where more than 200 representatives of industry, government and nonprofit activist groups from around the world gathered to hear an update on the governor's proposed low-carbon fuel standard and how it fits with myriad efforts under way in Europe, the United States and the industry.
"These are steps that can literally change the world," Schwarzenegger said. "This is our race to the moon. We can meet strict targets, reduce our dependence on oil and be a model for the rest of the nation and world."
The standard, he vowed, will prompt energy companies to offer a variety of fuels to consumers as they vie to keep market share and meet California's requirements. Those different choices, the governor added, will "empower customers to say no to higher fuel prices, to say 'Hasta la vista, baby.'"
"This, of course, is the great appeal of the low-carbon fuel standard."
In January, the governor issued what has become one of the world's most promising and intriguing ways to rid automotive fuels of carbon. Carbon is a major component of fossil fuels and the essential element in heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
The order requires fuel companies to reduce the carbon content of gasoline and diesel by 10 percent by 2020. Experts almost universally agree that the order's brilliance is its agnostic approach to how fuel companies meet that target or what fuel they sell and its comprehensive accounting of energy's environmental impact.
"We've seen failure after failure after failure," said Daniel Sperling, founding director of the University of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies, who has spent 30 years studying fuels.
"This is the first time we've come across a framework that really can be effective."
The order is the first major attempt to meet the state's mandated greenhouse gas reductions -- 25 percent by 2020 -- signed by the governor last fall. It is by no means a panacea, many warned on Friday. But transportation accounts for 41 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in California, and the state represents perhaps the second- or third-largest fuel market in the world -- a market, noted California Environmental Protection Agency Undersecretary Dan Skopec, where 96 percent is dominated by one commodity: oil.
Regulators and university experts such as Sperling have struggled to work out the details in the months since the governor issued the edict. Friday's meeting offered a sneak peek at a final report due at the end of the month.
It will, they say, revolutionize driving, initially bringing alternative and renewable fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol and electricity to the market and then leaving it to marketplace innovation to meet ever-tightening standards in the future.
Experts who have spent months figuring out to make the mandate work are confident the state is on the path to reducing its global warming footprint. And that it will provide a model for other governments.
"This is just the beginning, this 10 percent by 2020," said Sperling, who co-directed the team ordered by Schwarzenegger to study the initiative and offer a road map.
"What we're putting in place is the framework to go well beyond that. ... We can make it work."
Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com or (510) 208-6425.