Mayor Larry Agran called a special Council meeting on April 8th to discuss the City’s draft Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP), a package containing nearly 200 proposed actions and programs, both large and small, to make Irvine carbon-neutral by 2040.
Although the CAAP has been nearly four years in the making — with more than half of the action items already completed or currently underway — there is still no firm estimate of the plan’s cost or a cost-benefit analysis of its various pieces.
That analysis is now being done with a City consultant and should be completed in the coming weeks, said Luis Estevez, the acting Director of Public Works and Sustainability.
When pressed for a ballpark estimate, Estevez noted the CAAP calls for the conversion of some 70,000 residential and commercial buildings to all-electric power, which he said could run into the billions of dollars in combined public and private investment.
Estevez noted that the CAAP is not a policy document, but “recommendations” for action, and its various expenditures would each be subject to City Council review and approval as the plan is implemented.
In addition to requiring a full financial analysis, Agran called for the CAAP to be reviewed by the City’s Finance Commission, Sustainability Commission, and Transportation Commission.
Agran took the opportunity during the meeting to lay out his top three priorities for action: expansion of the Irvine Connect transit system that has garnered significant ridership in the first two years of its initial line along Barranca Parkway; a major tree-planting program to create an “urban forest”; and a City loan program to incentivize thousands of Irvine homeowners to install rooftop solar & battery storage systems that will dramatically cut monthly electricity bills.
Those, Agran said, are “three large-scale projects that I think we need to pursue aggressively.”
Estevez agreed that Agran’s proposals “hold a lot of promise,” and Councilmembers mentioned them favorably.
A flashpoint among the Councilmembers was the CAAP’s reliance on the allegedly “green” electricity of the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040. That OCPA claim is considered dubious by many, including Agran.
Estevez noted that the City’s move in December from OCPA’s “100% renewable” tier to its basic 47% renewable tier scrambles the calculations so that the 2040 goal could be compromised. He also said that state regulations on electrical utilities mandate 100% renewable power from all providers by 2045, which would fulfill the City’s carbon-neutral goal at that time.
“I’ll be blunt,” said Agran. “One of the things we should be getting is not just 100% renewables, but some of that cash back that OCPA has on hand, so that we can make the capital investments in rooftop solar and carbon sequestration.” Agran added: “What are we getting back now? We have to be clear-eyed about that. It drives me nuts that OCPA is sitting on our ratepayers’ cash to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and we’ve gotten nothing back in the way of green projects from them.”
The Council ended up directing staff to complete cost-benefit analyses and run the CAAP through the commissions, with an eye toward having a draft before the Council for a vote by early summer.
