REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Confirmation on the Addition of New Actions to Achieve the Interim Target of 2035 for Climate Action Plan (CAP) Update
Report
COUNCIL PILLAR
Promote Sustainability and Environmental Protection
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the City Council meeting on March 2, 2021, staff presented the GHG emissions trends and forecasts for the City. Council confirmed the recommended GHG emissions reduction target of carbon neutrality no later than 2045 for the Climate Action Plan update and provided additional direction on specific items to include within the CAP. Of these, the direction to include an intermediate target of 80% reduction by 2035 and require a 25% VMT reduction from active Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures required further analysis.
Through discussions with the City's consultant and additional Green House Gas (GHG) modeling work, staff determined that up to a 79% reduction can be achieved if SVP provides 100% carbon-neutral electricity by 2035 and the City adopts an all-electric reach code.
For this, SVP would need to purchase a total of 130% of the energy it actually delivers with 100% of annual volume being carbon free and 30% not carbon free for reliability purposes. Although the actual energy delivered and used in Santa Clara would not be carbon free, through this approach SVP could claim carbon neutrality by "over purchasing" where the excess purchase is subsequently sold in the spot market, likely at a financial loss to the purchase price. As further discussed in Attachment 2, SVP has done a cursory examination of a simple procurement scenario to achieve the accelerated goal. The scenario does not factor in other costs such as:
* transmission upgrades
* resource adequacy
* grid stability
* future technology changes
* and other factors
The scenario is simply the resource procurement costs that are based on California's current carbon accounting requirements. This is the only realistic approach that can be taken wit...
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