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Introduction Pleasanton Climate Action Plan Update 3 ▪ Executive Order B-55-18 (2018), signed by former Governor Brown in 2018, expanded upon EO S- 3-05 by creating a Statewide GHG goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. EO S-55-18 identifies CARB as the lead agency to develop a framework for implementation and progress tracking toward this goal in the next Climate Change Scoping Plan Update. The State of California, via CARB, has issued several guidance documents concerning the establishment of GHG emissions reduction targets for local climate action plans to comply with legislated GHG emissions reductions goals and CEQA Guidelines Section 15183.5(b). In the first California Climate Change Scoping Plan,9 CARB encouraged local governments to adopt a reduction target for community emissions paralleling the State commitment to reduce GHG emissions. In 2016, the State adopted SB 32 mandating a reduction of GHG emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and in 2017 CARB published California’s 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan (hereafter referred to as the Scoping Plan Update) outlining the strategies the State will employ to reach these targets.10 With the release of the Scoping Plan Update, CARB recognized the need to balance population growth with emissions reductions and in doing so, provided a new methodology for proving consistency with State GHG reduction goals through the use of per capita efficiency targets. These targets are generated by dividing a jurisdiction’s GHG emissions for each horizon year by the jurisdiction’s total population for that target year and are discussed further in Section 5. 1.2 Baseline Inventory Greenhouse Gas Emissions The 2017 Pleasanton GHG emissions inventory serves as the inventory to inform development of future GHG emissions forecasts that will assist the City in setting GHG emissions targets that are consistent with State-level goals and the Pleasanton General Plan 2005-2025. In 2017, Pleasanton GHG emissions were estimated to be 588,553 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).11 Data was originally gathered by EBEW and then reviewed and updated by Rincon for consistency with the latest methodology available in the Community Protocol12 and California Supplement13. The updated 2005 GHG Inventory corrected a few typological errors in the water and wastewater inventory sectors and removed the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) emissions, because the City of Pleasanton does not have direct control over BART and is unable to reduce these emissions and because BART data was not available for the subsequent inventories. Emissions from nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) are included in this assessment. Each GHG has a different capability of trapping heat in the atmosphere, known as its global warming potential (GWP), which is normalized relative to CO2 and expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. The CO2e values for these gases are derived from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change GWP values for consistency with the yearly CARB GHG inventory, as shown in Table 1.14,15 9 California Air Resources Board. 2008. Climate Change Scoping Plan. Available: <https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/adopted_scoping_plan.pdf>. Accessed: April 14, 2020 10 California Air Resources Board. California’s 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan. Available: <https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/scoping_plan_2017.pdf>. Accessed: April 14, 2020 11 Carbon dioxide equivalent is a term for describing GHG emissions in a common unit, signifying for any GHG the amount of CO2 that would have the equivalent global warming impact. The equivalent amount of CO2 is calculated based on the GHG global warming potential value. 12 ICLEI. 2012. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Available: <https://icleiusa.org/publications/us-community-protocol/>. Accessed: April 14, 2020. 13 Association of Environmental Professionals. 2013. The California Supplement to the United States Communitywide GHG Protocol. Available: <https://califaep.org/docs/California_Supplement_to_the_National_Protocol.pdf>. Accessed: April 14, 2020. 14 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2014. Fifth Assessment Report: Climate Change. Direct Global Warming Potentials. 15 All calculations use Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report GWP values.