As you are aware the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is moving full speed ahead on their “zero emissions” goals for California, including replacing all combustion vehicles and equipment by replacing them with electric or hydrogen vehicles or equipment. This includes all trucks and forklifts. The Association is convinced the infrastructure to meet such demand simply isn’t there. Up until a meeting last year hosted by the Association last year in Modesto, CARB and the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) were convinced there would be no problem meeting the demand. But after that meeting, CARB, CEC and the CPUC admitted they did not know how much demand would be from agriculture, nor did they know when it would be needed or where. At that same meeting the utilities, PG&E and SCE, also admitted they did not know, and they were already having “system-wide constraints”. In response, CARB and the CEC have contracted Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to work with agriculture to conduct a comprehensive survey of agricultural operations (farms, packing houses, cotton gins, nut hullers and processors, etc.) to see how much electricity demand would be needed to comply with these new regulations, when it would be need by, and to the zip code level where it would be needed.
The survey is anonymous and only to zip code level. Your company or farm name and address is never entered or revealed. We are working with several agricultural organizations on this survey to demonstrate what the true demand and need would be to meet these regulations. Without this data, CARB will move forward on all regulations as planned. Should you have any questions, please contact our office. We encourage you to participate. Here is the survey: