The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday voted 3-2 to adopt a new Climate Action Plan that aims to steer development toward more urban communities and away from car-dependent exurbs and areas at a high risk for wildfires.
County staffers say fully implementing the plan will cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 44% by 2030, and by roughly 85% by 2045. The plan covers the county's unincorporated areas and county government buildings and operations.
Most of the early emissions reductions would come from the electrical grid by making buildings more energy efficient, increasing renewable energy and electrifying buildings that use natural gas. A smaller share of emissions reductions would come from reducing car travel, switching to electric vehicles, planting more trees and improving land management and agricultural practices to trap and store more carbon in the earth.
Implementing the Climate Action Plan will cost an estimated $650 million over the next five years, according to county staffers, but most of those costs are already budgeted for in existing programs.
In 2011, a Republican-led board of supervisors adopted the county's first Climate Action Plan. But the plan was invalidated by the courts for lacking any enforcement mechanisms. A 2018 climate plan was also thrown out in court due to an overreliance on "carbon offsets" — credits that developers can purchase to support climate initiatives in other parts of the world but which experts say are unregulated and impossible to verify.
The board's three Democrats — Nora Vargas, Monica Montgomery Steppe and Terra Lawson-Remer — all voted to adopt the Climate Action Plan's "fire safe and VMT efficient alternative." VMT stands for vehicle miles traveled, a metric used to measure car travel and greenhouse gas emissions.
"This alternative will direct development away from high and very high wildfire zones, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower air pollution, decrease traffic and preserve wildlands and endangered species — and perhaps make homeowners insurance possible, which we all know is either unavailable or enormously expensive in high-fire areas," said Lisa Ross, board chair of the Sierra Club San Diego Chapter.
Adopting the Climate Action Plan does not change any of the zoning or land use regulations in the county's unincorporated areas, but rather commits the county government to pursuing those changes in future actions. County staffers say they will work the climate strategies into a "Sustainable Land Use Framework" that is still in development.
The board's two Republicans — Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson — voted against the plan, arguing that the "fire safe and VMT efficient alternative" would stifle homebuilding in the unincorporated areas at a time when San Diego County desperately needs more housing.
"We have very, very few areas that are VMT efficient in the unincorporated areas, and then to say that they can't be in a high or very high fire risk (zone) narrows that down even further," Desmond said. "It's not smart growth, it's no growth."
Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe disagreed that the climate plan would make it harder to meet the county's housing production goals.
"I really want to build as much as we possibly can, I see talent leaving our region, there are a lot of things going on," Montgomery Steppe said. "I just believe that there's a way to do it in a very smart way."
Supervisor Vargas said her district, which includes Logan Heights, National City, Imperial Beach and San Ysidro, will experience some of the worst impacts of climate change and has been harmed by decades of environmental racism.
"We have had practices such as freeway construction through low-income communities, lack of transportation, green space and access to quality food that have led to prolonged unhealthy impacts," Vargas said. "We have an opportunity to address this historical disinvestment by filling a gap in the Climate Action Plan."
Vargas included in her motion a direction to staff to convene the county's Environmental Justice Workgroup no later than January 2025. The working group, which will advise the county on the climate plan's implementation, was established in January 2023 but has not yet held a meeting.
