Despite making some recent gains on their climate change goals, Palo Alto officials are now confronting a harsh reality: their aim of reducing emissions by 80% by 2030 may hinge on technologies that don't yet exist.

The City Council received this message during its annual discussion of the Sustainability/Climate Action Plan, a strategic document that is guiding the city's effort to curb emissions. Having adopted climate change as one of its goals for the year, the council is now preparing a detailed action plan aimed at realizing the "80x30 goal" that it had adopted in 2016 and which uses 1990 as a baseline.

Some progress has already been made. The city's reduction currently stands about 50.6% below 1990 levels, according to sustainability coordinator Christine Luong. The biggest factor to date has been the city's conversion to carbon-free electricity, a policy that accounts for about 47% of the reduction. Another 24% can be attributed to declines in transportation emissions, a function of both the city's high rate of electric vehicles and a sharp decline in commuting in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city also saw a 15% reduction in natural gas consumption, primarily in the commercial and industrial sectors, and a 12% drop in solid waste emissions, a function of the city shutting down its sludge-burning incinerators in 2019.

Luong said that without the pandemic, the city's emissions cuts would be around 42% lower than in 1990.

Though the city continues to see a yawning gap between its track record and its aspirations, Luong suggested that the 2016 goal remains possible. Renewable energy has become much more affordable since 2010, with the cost of solar panels and lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles plunging by 85% and the cost of wind energy dropping by more than a half, she said. Over the next year, the city plans to capitalize on this trend by launching new programs aimed at encouraging residents to switch from gas appliances to ones powered by clean electricity.

"We know how to shift from fossil fuel for electricity and transportation, which are two of the largest sources of emissions caused by human activity," Luong said. "We also know how to use less energy.

"What we don't know is how to do some of the hardest things, but there's plenty of actions we can take immediately while we develop solutions for some of the more difficult problems."

To meet its goals, the city will need to reduce its emissions from the 2020 level of 387,287 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to about 156,000 metric tons. The biggest contributors to emissions are transportation, which accounts for about 62% of the emissions, and natural gas, which accounts for another 35%.

But even if the council succeeds in converting residents to electric appliances and accelerating their switch to electric vehicles, Palo Alto would still fall about 10% shy of the 80x30 goal, according to Public Works Director Brad Eggleston.

"The 70% reduction is where we end up if we successfully implement everything we're talking about now," Eggleston said. "We still need to look at some additional reductions beyond that that may come from other technologies."

Eggleston noted, however, that the 80x30 goal remains possible and that the city is preparing a work plan with a road map to getting there. The council last year established a Sustainability/Climate Action Plan Committee that is working with community stakeholders to explore new technologies and create strategies for engaging residents and financing the new programs.

Mayor Pat Burt, who sits on the committee, said one promising method for getting residents to switch to electric appliances is "on-bill financing," a mechanism in which the city pays for the cost difference between a new gas appliance and an electric one. Residents would then pay off that subsidy on their utility bills. The local advocacy group Carbon Free Palo Alto has long championed this method as a way to accelerate the city's electrification effort.

"If you have to replace a hot water heater, you pay for the normal cost of a gas water heater from your pocket, the rest gets financed on the water bill," Burt said. "It doesn't cost you anymore because the savings on hot water heaters exceed the amount of payment that you'd have to make per month for a heat pump hot-water heater."

Palo Alto is also exploring ways to improve its infamously lengthy permitting process for solar projects. Luong said that the city launched last week a pilot program with SolarAPP+, a system that allows residents who want to install solar panels on their roofs to get swift approval through a plan-review software. Five companies are participating in the pilot project and the city is expecting to add between four and six solar projects very soon, she said.

The city is also exploring ways to upgrade its aged electric grid, much of which was built about 50 years ago and cannot support a massive switch to electrification. The city's Utilities Advisory Commission will be working with the Utilities Department staff over the coming months to create a plan for the necessary upgrades.

Council member Alison Cormack, who sits on the Sustainability/Climate Action Plan Committee, said that the effort to upgrade the transformer system so that it can support the planned electrification projects will be "a really heavy lift" for the city.

"I think we had thought (electrification) was a lot about convincing people to make changes, but we're also as a city going to have to make changes in our utility," Cormack said.