We are happy to have Matt Barth, Yeager Families Chair, and CE-CERT Director as our guest blogger today. Matt brings insight to the changing policies in California and what they will mean to the transportation industry:
California has its hands full: it is still struggling with some of the most polluted and toxic air in the country, it is dealing with global climate change issues, and energy supplies are still uncertain. As a result, the state is rapidly implementing policies to deal with both pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions, diversifying energy supplies, and moving towards more efficient and cleaner transportation systems. One of the key initiatives that address all of these issues is the broad goal of introducing hybrid and all-electric transport options to many of our urban areas. The California of the future will be powered by more solar, wind, and recycled waste products, all of which need to be seamlessly and efficiently integrated to power our homes, vehicles and buildings. CE-CERT is excited to be a part of inventing this future California.
We have spent the last year heavily investing in our laboratories and expertise in critical areas that address this transition, including: • Renewable fuel development and use– creating energy from renewable sources and measuring its environmental and health impacts when used in our homes, industries and vehicles. • Advanced electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles – understanding how best to design and efficiently use them in all kinds of applications, from school buses to commuter vehicles to heavy duty port drayage operations, as well as understanding and mitigating the potential air and toxic impacts of these new technologies. • Smartgrid technologies – developing a research testbed that will allow us to study how best to combine solar energy generation, energy storage, and electric drive transportation, and bring it to our utility provider in a manner that does not disturb our delicate grid infrastructure through load leveling and storage techniques.
Tackling the complexity of implementing such novel technologies in the real-world will require more than ever before strong partnerships from industry, government and academia. This last year CE-CERT has expanded its collaborations with other UC campuses, industries, and state and local government agencies. A key example of this is positioning ourselves to be part of two university transportation centers, one dealing with economic competitiveness, and another focusing on sustainable transportation on a national scale. We are also leveraging our newest UCR resources – our colleagues in the School of Medicine and the School of Public Policy – to tie in the perspective of the health and social impacts of these technologies. Finally, we have embraced our role in helping carry out the new UC initiative to be net zero energy user by 2025.
It is an inspirational and influential time to be involved in the transition towards a sustainable California. Thank you to our researchers, CE-CERT and UCR staff, our Board, community supporters, sponsors and industry partners for our continued success!
Interesting work and fitting it takes place in Riverside. Grew up in that city in the 60’s through the 70’s and experienced the terrible air quality. It is better, but left Riverside for the SF Bay Area in 1979 because I would not raise my children in such polluted air. Been in Heavy Civil Engineering for over 35 years now and have worked together (an sometimes against) CARB since 2008. CARB diesel rules are going to destroy the local and regional contractor by 2021. The ramping down is too steep and expensive for the California only based companies to survive. I hope the study understand this. I’ll be in Sacramento at the CARB meeting on “Vision 2.0” this Monday. Hope common sense is balanced with vision.
The California regulatory community is in their own bubble, and does not recognize what is going on it the rest of the country. California does everything it can be to less competitive and drive business from the state, ignoring the obvious.
California now has air that is much, much cleaner than ever before. We say that California struggles with cleaner air, yet CARB ignores one of the major sources of pollution – in use vehicles which pollute. The Smog Check program has high fraud rates, everyone knows this and yet no one will deal with it. All of the focus is always to spend lots of money on new technologies for future vehicles. These vehicles will not replace the older, higher emitting vehicles because California is not an island and older higher polluting vehicles which are less expensive and less complex will continue to be imported from other states.
I have yet to understand why CA is “dealing with GLOBAL climate change issues”. California dealing with a global issue is destroying the CA economy. Look at current CA gasoline prices compared to other states right now (yes, there was a refinery fire which caused part of this increase). The carbon tax on gasoline fuel which other states do not pay is making California less competitive. Schwarzenegger had this idea that if California led on reducing CO2 emissions other would follow. A few states did but no one else will. CARBs own estimates are that all of the Green House Gas programs we have implemented will have no impact on global CO2 levels (oh, and increase criteria pollutants), so why all the cost with no benefit? Anyone notice that the global temperatures have not changed in over 15 years and even the IPPC is now starting to recognize this? But yet California will go out of its way to reduce CO2 emissions without looking outside out borders to see what is actually happening in the world.
What do you mean by “energy supplies are still uncertain”. What is uncertain about the fact that there is a glut of crude oil, crude prices are less than half of what they were a year ago – there will be adequate supply into the future and prices will stay low for a very, very long time. Fossil fuels are plentiful and here to stay. (for some common sense on this read http://www.wsj.com/articles/fossil-fuels-will-save-the-world-really-1426282420).