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Environment-friendly policies don’t always get results; SUVs and huge homes eat up power, contribute to current power shortage 

BERKELEY – You know the image of California as a tree-hugging, conservation-minded state. But how green, really, is our Silicon Valley — and the rest of the Golden State? 

Not very, say some. 

“California’s not green,” says Robert L. Thayer, professor of environmental design at the University of California, Davis. “While there’s quite a bit of technological innovation and quite a countercultural green movement, it doesn’t succeed very far in overcoming the momentum of business inertia.” 

California is a standard-bearer for environment-friendly policies, setting strict energy efficient standards for homes and workplaces. But it’s also the land of SUVs and starter-castles built on the far reaches of exurbia — energy intensive lifestyles that have become more conspicuous as power supplies falter. 

“Every day when I go to the gym, I’m sort of stunned at the population of big SUVs that nice suburban women are driving. We’re not talking about a little Jimmy or a Blazer. We’re talking about the big ’uns,” says V. John White, director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento. “People in California have assumed a right to a certain amount of comfort and mobility.” 

White and others note that California does require low-energy buildings and appliances, and low-emission automobiles. 

“We have a lot more renewable energy than any other state. We have much more efficient use of energy in our houses and our offices,” says Timothy Duane, a UC Berkeley professor serving as senior policy adviser to the state. 

Energy use per capita has been going up, but not dramatically. Californians used about 7,000 kilowatt hours per year in 1980, compared to about 7,700 kilowatt hours last year, according to California Energy Commission numbers crunched by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

In 1997, California ranked 47th of the 50 states in energy consumption per capita — only Rhode Island, New York and Hawaii were lower. However, California’s mostly temperate climate has to be taken into account. 

Still, there is the matter of those SUVs, which make up an estimated 30 percent of the California market. 

Last week, the state Air Resources Board scaled back, for the third time, a program to put electric vehicles on California roads. 

There’s also the shaky green power system; the power crunch has underscored the major utilities’ decision six years ago to block a proposal forcing them to contract with independent producers relying heavily on wind, solar and other renewable resources. 

California still has more renewable energy and green initiatives than other states. The problem is that’s not saying a lot, says Daniel Kammen, associate professor of energy and society in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. 

Meanwhile, a predilection for large, single-family homes has pushed development ever deeper into erstwhile farmland; two-hour, one-way commutes are not uncommon. 

“Urban sprawl and unplanned growth is, I think, the biggest single area where Californians have really demonstrated a brown thumb,” Kammen says. “No matter how efficient you are with putting a compact fluorescent light in your house or giving $10 a month to the Sierra Club, are you going to be able to offset the adverse effects of your commuting five days a week?” 

Putting energy efficient lights in a 5,000-square-foot home, Kammen notes, is on par with “going into McDonald’s and buying four Big Macs and a Diet Coke.” 

Why is it so hard being green? 

“Self-interest is a powerful force,” says Daniel McFadden, a Berkeley economist who shared a Nobel last year for his research developing theories on how people work and live. 

“People can feel very warmly about the environment and have very good intentions toward the environment, but when they’re confronted with their day-to-day economics they rarely have to face the choice that the SUV that they buy is going to mean a little more air pollution or a few less trees alive,” McFadden says. 

“If people were really as green as they say they are, they would be taking this extra income and putting it into the Nature Conservancy,” he says. “Instead, they go out and build a second home.”