Comment Log Display

Comments on the California Air Resources Board’s Potential
Performance Standards and Measures, December 9, 2008:


Addressing global climate change impacts through CEQA should
require lead agencies to evaluate how a project and land uses fit
in with overall GHG reduction goals rather than an approach that
requires quantification and comparison of emissions to a stringent
threshold. Residential and commercial developments and associated
emissions are a directly correlated with population growth;
therefore significance thresholds developed need to have some
built-in flexibility to evaluate how a project affects the state’s
efforts to reduce GHG emissions. 

The performance standards suggested are more equivalent to
thresholds than performance standards pursuant to the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The following are specific
comments on the draft performance standards:

Energy Efficiency:  Requiring all new projects to achieve the
California Energy Commission’s (CEC) Tier II Energy Efficiency
standard may result in pseudo-regulation if all projects have to
exceed existing regulations by a certain percentage or meet a
certain quantified performance criteria. To meet the Tier II Energy
Efficiency standards would require developers to achieve a 30
percent reduction in the residential building’s combined space
heating, cooling, and water heating energy compared to the 2008
Title 24 Standards. The 2008 Building and Energy Efficiency
Standards (adopted 2008 and required for all buildings constructed
after August 1, 2009) are approximately 15 percent more energy
efficient than the 2005 Building and Energy Efficiency Standards.
Increases in energy efficiency of new building construction were
anticipated in the Scoping Plan. Consequently, continually
requiring that projects be more energy efficient that the current
standards may, at some point in the future, not be feasible as the
Building and Energy Standards may require all new buildings to be
as energy efficient as technically possible. In addition, no data
was made available concerning why CEC’s Tier II Energy Efficiency
standard was chosen.  

Water: Performance standards for water efficiency should be
consistent with the Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance
adopted by the California Department of Water Resources. 
Residential Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Currently no
methodologies or standards are available that estimate VMT by
density and/or proximity to services. A conscious effort will need
to be undertaken to develop protocols and methodologies so that
meaningful thresholds and/or performance standards are developed. 
CARB’s currently proposed performance standard of 14,000 VMT per
household per year is based on studies conducted in the 1990s on
vehicle miles traveled in the state by type of development (second
workshop comments). The information used to develop this standard
should be made available to the general public. Furthermore,
methodology to estimate VMT for different project types should be
made available. The URBEMIS model does not currently provide annual
VMT but daily VMT, which is based on a worst-case day.  Using
default URBEMIS2007 computer model for the South Coast Air Basin, a
residential development with a density of 3 units per acre would
travel 30,864 miles per year (based on one single-family
residential unit on 0.33 acre for year 2010 with pass-by trips
turned on and assuming VMT per day is the same every day of the
year), and would have to be 50 units to the acre or higher in order
to be consistent with this performance standard. SB375 identifies a
minimum housing density of 10 units to the acre within an
identified Sustainable Community Strategy area to qualify for
exemptions under CEQA. However, density in-of-itself does not
determine VMT, because a high-density housing project in a
greenfield development is likely to have higher annual household
VMT rates than a similar high density housing project within an
infill development. In general, SB375 requires the regional
Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify land use strategies
to reduce VMT. Performance standards should instead be based
proximity to transit stops, walk-ability, bike-ability, and other
design measures so that alternative modes of transportations are
available in new developments. Alternative performance standards
could also include an evaluation of a project’s impact on
job-housing balance within the sub-region.



In the second workshop on the preliminary performance standards
for GHG emissions, CARB staff indicated the possibility of allowing
projects that could not achieve the performance standards to
identify mitigation measures that achieve emissions reductions
equivalent to the performance standards. CARB indicated in the
slideshow presented at the second workshop that the performance
standards would reduce emissions associated with residential
project by 20 to 50 percent and commercial projects by 7 to 15
percent. However, it is not clear what this reduction was compared
to (business as usual?). 
In the revisions to the draft preliminary performance standards,
CARB will need to make clear what "equivalent mitigation" is, and
if projects have to achieve the upper, mid, or lower range of the
assumed emissions reductions cited above.  For example, would
projects have to show equivalent GHG emissions reductions for each
performance standard not met, is it more pertinent to meet the
total reductions of all the performance standards combined?
Furthermore, for mixed-use projects that contain both a residential
and commercial component, which standard applies? Lastly, it is
likely that equivalent emissions reductions can only be measured by
quantifying emissions reductions from the individual performance
standards. Consequently, methodology and assumptions would need to
be developed for emissions reductions from individual performance
standards in order to estimate what equivalent emissions reductions
are necessary for mitigation.  As an alternative, a number of air
pollution control districts are implementing offset fees for GHG
emissions for developments that are unable to achieve the emissions
reductions of the performance standards.  


Nicole Vermilion
Associate Environmental Planner
The Planning Center
1580 Metro Drive | Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Phone: (714) 966-9220 ext 344 | Fax: (714) 966-9221