San Jose is falling behind its ambitious target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030

“That should be a wake-up call for all of us that our 2030 carbon neutrality goals are not just going to happen — that we’re going to have to keep working for them and find ways to push even further,” District 4 Councilmember David Cohen said during the Dec. 2 meeting.

The stalled progress comes as a disappointing reversal after the gains achieved in the first few years following the launch of the Climate Smart plan in 2018. Between the 2017 benchmark year and 2021, San Jose managed to cut its overall emissions by about 16%.

But as of 2023, the city’s greenhouse gas emissions stood at roughly 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to city data. That’s 0.2% higher than 2021 emissions.

The slowdown means the city is now significantly behind where it would need to be to reach carbon neutrality by 2030. City leaders first adopted that goal in 2021, a decision that set a significantly more ambitious timeline for San Jose than the targets first adopted by the program. Despite the slowdown, the city remains on track to reach those somewhat more modest original targets, officials said.

Linda Hutchins-Knowles, co-founder of local climate advocacy group Mothers Out Front Silicon Valley, called San Jose’s stagnating emission reductions “alarming.”

“I’m not surprised that we aren’t on track,” Hutchins-Knowles told San José Spotlight. “But what I am surprised about is that we’re actually going backwards.”

The city’s recent Climate Smart plan update noted San Jose has so far launched more than 40 initiatives intended to reduce emissions. They include a rebate program to support the transition to electric home appliances like heat pumps, an initiative deploying hundreds of e-bikes across the city and a pilot effort that has already installed dozens of charging stations for electric cars.

Perhaps most impactful, the city established San Jose Clean Energy in 2019, a city-run energy program that provides hundreds of thousands of customers with electricity generated from 95% carbon-free sources.

“I think the city has done a really good job at plucking that low-hanging fruit,” Hutchins-Knowles said. “Where we’re at now is having to really look at things that are not so easy to accomplish.”

The city faces an array of daunting targets if it wants to get back on track with its 2030 goal. As one example, San Jose’s emission reduction plan calls for boosting the use of electric vehicles in the city to a rate of 79%. But as of 2024, that figure stood at just 8%, according to city data.

“It was an ambitious target,” Energy Department Assistant Director Zachary Struyk told San Jose Spotlight. “No one else is doing carbon zero by 2030.”

Struyk, whose agency oversees the Climate Smart program, said a variety of factors have combined to make emission reduction efforts more challenging. He noted that electricity costs have risen substantially in recent years and the added price pressure has discouraged some residents from purchasing electric appliances or vehicles. In addition, Struyk also pointed to growing pains within the still nascent industries that support electrification work, as well as the decline in public transit ridership that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Energy Department is drawing up a list of proposals intended to speed up San Jose’s emission reduction efforts, Struyk said. Those proposals could go before council as soon as next summer.

But climate advocates see signs San Jose’s once urgent commitment to cutting emissions is now falling by the wayside.

Hutchins-Knowles pointed to a September council vote that scuttled a pair of climate measures. The proposals would have created new code requirements intended to hasten the adoption of electric heat pumps and the installation of electric-ready wiring in San Jose homes. But following warnings from some councilmembers that the requirements would create major financial burdens for homeowners, the proposals failed to pass on a 5-5 tie vote — District 6 Councilmember Michael Mulcahy was absent.

Calvin Sridhara, a 10th-grader at Leland High School and a member of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, also expressed alarm at the city’s slowing progress.

“As a young person, this plateau feels especially serious because we will live with the consequences the longest,” Sridhara told San Jose Spotlight. “City leadership needs to recognize that their current pace is no longer enough and be willing to reengage with this 2030 zero emissions goal. It’s the right thing to do, even if the next steps are politically harder than the initial steps they’ve been taking.”

This story was originally published by San Jose Spotlight and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.