Are we falling behind on our greenhouse gas targets? The inventory's out. Then a look at the Polis Administration's spin on same.
Are we falling behind on our greenhouse gas targets?
SB19-096 (linked first below) requires a report every two years which takes a full statewide greenhouse gas inventory.
This inventory is an aid for the state to establish where it is in terms of meeting the mandated greenhouse gas reductions (most recently updated and made stricter with a 2023 bill).
The below gets kind of dense, so if you're in a hurry, I copied the summary at the end and will put it here:
**This flawed inventory report will likely be taken as gospel truth by policy makers in this state.
**This gospel truth will lead them to pat themselves on the back for their foresight and for reducing greenhouse gases. It will also lead them to conclude that, as you can easily see by the fact we won't hit their targets, more work needs to be done.
**This more work needing to be done will be more costly policy, rules, and regulations and it will be the extension of same to industries heretofore untouched (agriculture, I'm looking in your direction).
**If you're not paying attention and advocating on air quality bills, if you're not contacting your legislator, start.
On to a deeper look.
The site which houses all the information on the inventories is linked second below, but I excerpted the most recent report out as the third link below for convenience.
First, as is often the case, a statement from the report's authors about the validity and limitations of their work. You'll find that in screenshot 1 taken from the report.
A concern here is the wording about uncertainties. Let me emphasize what I mean by repeating a quote from the report/screenshot:
"An inherent challenge with the communication of all inventories is that the discrete values presented here are estimates with unquantified uncertainties. Some uncertainties are known to be well-constrained (Electric Power), while others are significant (Agriculture and Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF)). The Division has not had the resources to conduct formal uncertainty analyses, and so exact uncertainties are unknown."
Compare this with other studies I've posted on. Uncertainties which are (to use the author's words) "well-constrained" give one confidence in the pattern of the numbers, if not the exact number. If I've written in the past that the patterns in the data were valid but not the exact numbers, this is what I mean. You may not know down to the molecule how much carbon a power plant puts out, but it's not going to be swinging wildly and it won't be a wild-ass guess.
The unconstrained estimates here are just that in my view. They are wild guesses, and the authors here acknowledge that they can't quantify for us how wild they are.
Even at that, however, I am willing to bet that this report (see below) will be used in the coming and future legislative sessions to drive all kinds of costly regulation and policy, absent any talk of uncertainty of course.
I will leave it to you to read through the details of the report as much as you'd like. I do want to touch on toplines because that will be a big part of the discussion in the post that follows this one.
So, according to our state's own inventory, how are we doing at reducing our greenhouse gases in Colorado?
First, a look at the requirements that CO's Democrats have set over the last four years. That's attached at screenshot 2.
The graphic can be tough to read, so let me give you an example. Statewide greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced by 50% from their 2005 estimates by the year 2030. To put in round numbers, if in 2005, in total across all human activity, our state had 100 units of greenhouse gases emitted, by 2030, we can only emit half of that (and still somehow hope to keep a similar standard of living).
So, according to this estimate, how is Colorado doing? Again, sticking with summaries, take a look at screenshot 3.
As before, let me help you unpack this to better understand it. The people at CDPHE ran two different modeling scenarios to forecast how well we would do at meeting the greenhouse gas limits in I put up before. The first scenario (labeled A in the screenshot) is the oft-seen "business as usual" scenario. "If we don't change anything, what will happen?"
The second (labeled B in the screenshot) is what they call "near term action" a scenario where the state takes the actions proposed by Polis in his latest version of the greenhouse gas roadmap--put in more regulation and restrictions than we have now.
The salient and common features to both?
1. We will hit some of the legally-mandated targets, at least by this (flawed) measure.
2. We will not hit the legally-mandated targets, at least by this (flawed) measure. We are at least a year late in both cases.
Let's put this all together and wrap up.
This flawed report will likely be taken as gospel truth by policy makers in this state.
This gospel truth will lead them to pat themselves on the back for their foresight and for reducing greenhouse gases. It will also lead them to conclude that, as you can easily see by the fact we won't hit their targets, more work needs to be done.
This more work needing to be done will be more costly policy, rules, and regulations and it will be the extension of same to industries heretofore untouched (agriculture, I'm looking in your direction).
If you're not paying attention and advocating on air quality bills, if you're not contacting your legislator, start.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-096
https://cdphe.colorado.gov/environment/air-pollution/climate-change/GHG-inventory
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RZDFFhL_HCJfk-6TVni1hr_6-65BfcOA/view?usp=sharing
The spin on Colorado's greenhouse gas inventory.
The post prior to this one was about the Colorado's recent greenhouse gas inventory (a report done out of CDPHE that supposedly provides a statewide inventory on the amounts and sources of greenhouse gas).
The earlier post is a look at the report, this one's about the spin by our government and media.
The relevant details that you need from the previous post to understand this one are in brief ...
--According to the inventory, our state is behind on its Democrat-mandated greenhouse gas emissions goals: we are set to emit more greenhouse gases than the targets set by law.
--According to the report, this will happen if we continue on with the already-heavy regulations we have, but interestingly, it will also happen (albeit we won't be as far from the mandates) if we tighten down yet more on regulations.
I myself am not worried for a few reasons. I think the report is deeply flawed and figure its conclusions are not reliable. In general, I'm also not too worried about curbing Colorado's emissions. I'm more concerned with two things: curbing the raging emissions from India and China, and solving problems that are currently killing millions which we have the ability to fix, right now today.
Nonetheless, there are plenty in this state who are worried. The spin we'll talk about below is for them. Colorado Democrats have done a good job of keeping some of the more fractious environmentalists from disrupting their plans. I don't know details, but I'm sure that part of the bargain relates to promises on climate change. Thus, a report showing we're not on target is bad news. Somehow those in power need to soften the blow.
The spin starts right away with the screenshot from the Twitter account of Bennet, who is echoing Will Toor (Polis' head of the Colorado Energy Office). If you have ever read or heard me say that what Mr. Toor says needs to be taken with a grain of salt, his statement about the report ought to tell you why.
Nothing like highlighting the positive in such a way as to ignore reality. Nothing Mr. Toor says is on its face wrong, but he (like his boss Polis) knows how to weave the words together to accomplish what he wants: giving the impression that they're keeping us all right on track regarding climate change.
There's more though. I included links to three different articles by three different outlets below, the Post, The Sun, and CPR.
I did this for a couple reasons. One, so you could (if you'd a mind to) read across the outlets to note the differences in how they all cover the same exact news, noting how each spin the story in their own way. Two, so you could read the statements by various people in power.
There's plenty there which I'll leave to you to dig in on, but a couple of things stand out.
Note the effort to tie the "success" here to not only past policy, but more recent efforts about, for example, how many parking spaces buildings have to allocate.** I'm sure that things like this will fix the problem.
Then note the absurdity of the first paragraph out of the Post's column, a masterpiece of spin in its own right. Polis and Toor couldn't have hoped for better.
"Colorado is projected to fall short of its benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next five years, but a new look at progress shows that, like a person trying to lose weight for a class reunion, the state has shaved off a few more pounds than expected even if it won’t shed it all before the deadline."
It's good to see friends supporting each other, you know?
**Incidentally, if you read my first post on this topic, you will have noted that some of the skepticism about the conclusions made by the report's authors revolved around the incentives to make the greenhouse gas emissions outlook better so that their bosses looked better. This is exactly what I was talking about.
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/11/08/colorado-greenhouse-gas-inventory-2024-clean-energy-carbon-dioxide-methane-reductions/#content
https://coloradosun.com/2024/11/13/colorado-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/12/colorado-climate-goals-updated-data/