A new city analysis shows greenhouse gas emissions increased in San Diego in 2023 — despite a new climate action plan designed to substantially cut them and steer the city toward net zero emissions by 2035.
A landmark legal settlement reached last year with environmental groups forces the city to report each year on its progress on reducing emissions and to immediately take corrective action if it falls behind.
That settlement forced the city to reveal that annual greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2% from 2022 to 2023. Emissions had been expected to fall by 1.5%.
City officials are now scrambling to come up with some corrective actions and present them to the City Council by Dec. 31, as required under the settlement.
One plaintiff from the lawsuit, Climate Action Campaign, says the city is in danger of violating the terms of the agreement and could find itself back in court if swift action isn’t taken.
Climate Action Campaign says the city has refused to propose necessary new policies and actions and must present “a clear, actionable plan” to get back on track.
“The city continues to treat the climate action plan as an aspirational vision rather than a mandate for action,” said Nicole Capretz, the nonprofit’s chief executive. “That persistent gap between promises and progress is why we pursued legal action.”
City officials say they will meet the requirements of the settlement on time — including the corrective actions, which will be part of a revised implementation plan for the climate action plan.
They say they will announce the plan, meet with stakeholders to discuss it and then present it to the council — all by the end of the year.
While city officials acknowledge it’s alarming for emissions to go up when they are supposed to go down, they stressed that 2023 was the first full year under a new climate action plan the council approved the year prior.
“The results reflect the early stages of implementation,” Andrew Martin, the city’s chief sustainability officer, told the council’s Environment Committee on Nov. 13.
Martin said the rise in emissions was primarily the result of the number of miles driven going up by 3% when 2023 is compared to 2022, natural gas use rising 6% and electricity emissions up 6%.
He stressed that miles driven — known as vehicle miles traveled, or VMT — are down 14% compared to the plan’s benchmark year of 2019.
In 2023, the leading sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions were driving miles at 55%, natural gas used in buildings at 22% and electricity in buildings at 19%.
Martin noted that recent court decisions make it harder for cities to demand all new buildings be electric instead of gas, forcing the city to pivot to different strategies.
Council President Joe LaCava said the new data was concerning, but he stressed that it’s hard for the city to influence the actions of its 1.4 million residents.
“I always think of the challenge of, how do you change public behavior?” he said.
LaCava also blamed the city’s budget crisis, which has left fewer city workers focused on climate change, as well as new federal policies under the Trump administration.
“We’ve set ambitious goals,” LaCava said. “The challenge is for us to figure out — in this era of limited resources and lack of federal resources — how we’re going to achieve them.”
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera agreed that some of the drivers of the emissions data are outside the city’s control, such as shifts in the economy or President Donald Trump’s move to end federal subsidies for electric vehicles.
But Elo-Rivera said San Diego must prioritize its climate efforts lest the public start to think the city didn’t follow through on the climate action plan.
“I want to be sure we’re being as transparent as possible about the progress that we are and aren’t making,” he said.
Under San Diego’s climate action plan, the city is legally mandated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2035.
Climate Action Campaign says the setback in 2023 is making that first goal look awfully tough to achieve.
“The latest 2023 greenhouse gas inventory reveals emissions increased by 2% from 2022, reaching 8.52 million metric tons,” the nonprofit says. “To meet the 2030 target of 4.2 million metric tons, emissions must be cut in half within just four years.”
Heidi Vonblum, who oversees climate efforts as the city’s planning director, said the city must focus on reducing all areas of emissions.
“Focusing on one strategy alone is going to be insufficient to meet our goals,” she said.
But Vonblum also expressed concerns that some climate mandates force businesses to pass costs on to residents.
“With all of the actions we take on our climate, we are very intentionally looking at what that does to the average citizen in the city,” she said.
The city’s Climate Advisory Board expressed its own strong concerns about the new emissions data.
“It is critical the city take swift action to course-correct,” the board said in a recent letter to Mayor Todd Gloria.
The city has completed or is in the process of completing 75% of the 190 climate actions required under the 2022 climate action plan, which updated a previous version approved in 2015.
The local chapter of the Sierra Club said the 2023 emissions data is particularly troubling with so many efforts already underway.
“If emissions are rising while most actions are underway, this means the pace and flows of implementation are not yet aligned with the city’s legally binding climate action plan goals,” said the club’s Lucy Terry.