Daily Score Blog

Earlier this year, Governor Gregoire set an ambitious goal (pdf link) for Washington state: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 10 million tons by 2020. That would put the state's emissions back to about where they were in 1990 -- roughly an 11 percent decline, all told, from today's levels.

Of course, that's only a start. Real climate leadership will require reductions on the order of 80 to 90 percent by the middle of this century. Still, a 10 million ton reduction in annual CO2 emissions seems like a tall order -- especially since the US Census Bureau projects that the state's population will grow by 20 percent between now and 2020. Measured per person, Washingtonians' greenhouse emissions will have to fall by about one quarter by 2020 to meet the goal.

The Washington Department of Ecology recently asked us what it would take to meet that 10 million ton goal. Based on emissions data compiled by the state (pdf link), here's what we came up with:

• Closing Washington's sole coal-fired power plant, in Centralia Washington -- and replacing the lost electricity by ramping up efficiency, conservation, and new renewable power -- would reduce emissions by just over 10 million tons per year. (Of course, all other emissions in the state would have to remain flat -- which, allowing for population growth, would still mean a 17 percent per-capita reduction outside the electricity sector.)
  

The weekend before Halloween, my car-less family got a loaner plug-in hybrid electric car to try. You see, the City of Seattle and some other local public agencies are testing the conversion of some existing hybrids to plug-ins to accelerate the spread of these near-zero-emissions vehicles. As a favor and, perhaps, for some publicity (this post), the city’s program manager offered me four days’ use of the prototype—previously driven by actor Rob Lowe.

Enthusiasm about plug-in hybrids--like their now-almost-mainstream siblings the gas-electric hybrids--has been running high of late. For example, the California Air Resources Board is among the toughest air quality regulators in the world. When the members of board’s expert panel reviewed the evidence on plug-in hybrids, they issued a boosterish report predicting widespread adoption and fast market penetration. The Western Governors’ Association is similarly smitten (MSWord doc). The tone of some popular press reports makes it seem that the vehicular second coming may be at hand.

For this auto (pictured in our back yard, with our Flexcar visible out front), I wondered, would my family give up its car-less ways? Would the joy of these 100+ mpg wheels cause us to end our 21 months of car-free-ness, emulate Rob, and buy our own plug-in?

The short answer? No. Plug-in hybrid-electric cars hold great promise, as long as we can fix the laws. And the technology. Oh, and the price.

None of those fixes are “gimmes.” Without the first—and specifically, without a legal cap on greenhouse gases—plug-ins could actually do more harm than good. And without the second two fixes—working technology and competitive prices—plug-ins won’t spread beyond the Hollywood set. (Echoes of this point are in Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest article in the New Yorker.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.