Bay Area greenhouse gas emissions from cars are going down. But is that enough?

Supplementing or replacing two cars (A) with electric micromobility for local travel. B to D would result in big greenhouse emissions reductions. D assumes renting cars as needed.

As El Cerrito’s Green Happenings Newsletter this month reported, electric and hybrid vehicles are reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our area. In 2012, UC Berkeley Chemistry Professor Ronald Cohen began setting up a network of sensors to monitor emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants across the Bay Area. Between 2018 and 2022, his sensors recorded a small but steady decrease in CO2 emissions — about 1.8% annually. Cohen and graduate student Naomi Asimow concluded that the decrease was due to passenger vehicle electrification, resulting in 2.6% less CO2 per mile driven each year.

This is great news . . . to a point. While nearly 35,000 EVs were purchased in Contra Costa in 2024, we are still only halfway to the 3.7% yearly reduction in CO2 emissions that we need in order to meet our citywide and statewide goals of net zero emissions by 2045.

Although the atmosphere above the Bay Area might be heading in a positive direction, it is just one part of a global atmosphere that is not cleaning up so fast, so we can’t rest on our laurels. It is encouraging that 1 in 4 new car sales in California are electric (probably even more in our area): Nevertheless, we still need to complement our car driving with bicycles, scooters, other micromobility modes, and transit. Excessive use of cars of any kind is costly and thus inequitable. In January 2021 the average annual car insurance premium was about $1,500. The national average is now over $2,300 with California’s over $2,500. In the Bay Area, the average new car price is almost $53,000. Let’s start thinking about making local travel both clean and affordable. — Steve Price

Source: El Cerrito Green Happenings Newsletter (subscribe here).