By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – As noted previously the issue of carbon impact for DiSC is a little more tricky than opponents let on. What is true is that the DiSC project “would generate net new GHG emissions during operations. Because net emissions from the DISC project in the year 2035 would equal 37,992.07 MTCO2e/yr, the project would not meet the City’s target of net carbon neutrality by the year 2040.”
But there is of course a problem looking at global impact only from the Davis-level. A big part of the carbon impact of DiSC is the 4000 or so employees at buildout who need to get to work. Simply comparing the GHG impact of the fully built out site to the current agricultural uses of the field misses that fact that, absent this project, each of those 4000 or so people are still around, still working presumably and still likely need to commute to work.
The original project was calculated to generate around 309,000 VMT on a typical workday. The addendum to the EIR calculated “the reduced scale of the DiSC 2022 project would result in a 45 percent reduction in daily VMT when compared to the 
original DISC project.”
This creates an impact because, “The foregoing increases in daily VMT would have resulted in increased demand for gasoline, and to a lesser extent diesel, for traditionally fueled vehicles.”
The project attempts to deal with that through a TDM (transportation demand management) program and mitigation measures “to reduce external vehicle trips generated by the DISC project.”
But the EIR acknowledges “the effectiveness of the TDM strategies is not known and subsequent vehicle trip reduction effects could not be guaranteed.”
That’s all fair enough but it still misses an essential point—at no point have we actually evaluated what the real world impact of DiSC 2022 will be on the actual volume of CO2 gas in the global atmosphere. That is why I have pointed out before that measuring increases and reductions locally might not be the most helpful metric to understanding global impact.
Whatever the ultimate number DiSC generates is really a gross net added carbon impact. Because at no point has anyone attempted to offset how much GHG those 4000 employees would have produced, sans DiSC 2022.
The addendum does provide us with some tools to evaluate this a bit better.
First they note, “In general, however, the anticipated increases in VMT were not considered unique to the DISC project, as any project of such scale would result in increases in VMT.”
But perhaps the most important caveat is this one: “In addition, the VMT per service population for the project would have been slightly less than local per service population averages, as discussed in the SEIR.”
The EIR notes, “Implementation of a TDM Program and the promotion of active and public modes of transportation would ensure the energy demanded for the DiSC 2022-related vehicle trips is not wasteful or inefficient, despite the anticipated increase in VMT associated with the project.”
This chart illustrates this point. The projected VMT for the project is now 149,000 with the reduced size, and looking at it per person it becomes 36.24. That ends up being lower than the average person in Davis, lower than that of Davis and UC Davis combined and slightly lower than the entire SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) area.
It should be pointed out that the calculation of 149K is BEFORE the implementation of any TDMs, which means it doesn’t assume their implementation or that the TDM will reduce VMT. That’s a wise assumption, but also gets to the point that in fact it is not a crazy statement to make the claim that, despite the size of the project, the overall impact on global GHG is at worst about a wash.
With further reduction of VMT through an effective TDM, you could even reasonably argue that this project could result in a net reduction of global GHG emissions.
So, while it’s true it will make it a little harder for the city of Davis to reach its 2040 goals of carbon neutrality, the overall impact of this project on climate change figures to be negligible.
Oh God, my head is spinning after reading this article. Math is my strong suit but with all the back and forth I lost the ability to follow the numbers. So paving over farmland and building a business development with housing resulting in 12,000 vehicle trips per day “could result in a net reduction of global GHG emissions”? Ummm, okay?
And if that’s truly the case, Davis needs more of these types of projects in order to save the world.
You understand that each person who will work there, if they don’t work at this place, works somewhere else, right? So one way to calculate the carbon impact is to compare the VMT for the average person working at this location versus the city, university, and regional averages. That’s what was done here.
This isn’t math, it’s modeling (which involves math, lots of math). In this case vehicle miles and resultant pollutants modeling. It’s very complex stuff, and it’s based on assumptions. Change any one assumption, or multiple assumptions, you get completely different results. But of course consultant modeling results never seem to bend a bit towards the whim of the party that is paying them, no no!
Not if we kill them. Seriously, the solution to all of this is less people. The pandemic didn’t succeed in its intended purpose of reducing VMT, so more drastic steps need to be taken 😐
I am not of course advocating for SACOG hit squads, but the modeling numbers will greatly improve for the area if the modeling population levels are reduced for the area. Instead, what I’m reading is that Sacramento is the most popular region for outflow of population, and real estate price increases are proving that.
Another thing that should have improved VMT number drastically in ways and levels we couldn’t achieve any other way is masses of people working at home. Yet for some reason, even after this massive reduction in VMT, we are still concerned about mitigation measures. We just had a massive one. Hey Ozone Layer, how ya doing as a result?!
I agree with much of the more serious content here. My point was not necessarily that I think the model put forth is accurate, only that when estimate impacts you have to take into account that it’s a transfer of location more so than a creation of impacts. I would argue that the net effect is going to be modest – one way or the other.
Probably true on net impact compared to a similar project being build elsewhere. All the content was serious – I just used absurd examples (or are they?) to stress the points. With so little housing growth in Davis, however, a relatively greater percentage of employees may have to travel some a greater distance to get to work. If housing could be built on site and employees forced to live there, it would solve the problem. But instead a certain percentage will live there, and others living there will commute to Sacramento and the Bay Area.
About the stupidest idea being proposed in California is a per-mile road usage fee on vehicles, because gas tax revenues are decreasing with success of alternate-fuel vehicles. If you really want to discourage gasoline use, why not tie the tax amount to the loss of total revenue, thus ever-increasing the tax on gasoline, thus discouraging use. Instead, we are going to start taxing electric and other alternate fuel vehicles, and most of the proposed technologies to do so are scary invasive to privacy.
Are the extra GHG emissions for all the cars sitting and idling in the Mace Mess traffic jams included in the analysis?
Traffic clogs during peak hours pretty much anywhere in the region.
I doubt they’re on the same level as the Mace Mess. Take it from a guy that’s had to wait 20 minutes to get from the Mace curb to Guadalajara’s for a burrito, and that’s before this project.
It doesn’t really matter, main thing is you now understand the point I was making here. There is a reason why they have shifted from LOS to VMT.
What KO experienced was a lower LOS, and it’s no longer an impact, officially. Yet we know cars idling in traffic makes each VMT in such conditions more polluting. Yes, there’s a reason they changed it from LOS to VMT.
Wow! That’s like 300 feet of travel! Definitely a highly disastrous outcome… even if you came from the Mace curve…
Inconvenience to get a burrito is an obvious violation of one’s constitutional rights!
Will work on new lyrics, with the music for “Charlie and the MTA”… working title, “Keith O and the MTA (Mace Traffic Abomination)”… but we know Keith O will always return, and DiSC’s fate is still unknown… the revised lyrics will be a ‘work in progress’… he may wait forever on the pavement of Mace, but he’ll definitely return.
I don’t know why the Vanguard allows you to continually do these derisive types of comments while at the same time holding other’s feet to the fire?
The point wasn’t that it took me a long time to get my burrito, but that the traffic at the Mace Mess curb has often been backed up that much at that time and if I’m sitting in traffic so are hundreds to thousands of other cars sitting idling and spewing GHG emissions.
An old saying comes to mind here when talking about David’s discussion of GHGs produced by vehicular traffic at DiSC…”Garbage in, garbage out”
By this old saying it is meant that you can come up with any nonsensical result you want by basing it on supposedly quantitative calculation or algorithms by simply using flawed assumptions to start with. And that is just what is happening in the EIR and on which David is basing this illogical argument.
The fallacy in David’s argument is that the “thumb-on-the-scale” assumptions used by that old reliable, “give ’em what they ask for“, traffic consultant used by the City for the project, Fehr and Peers, are truly “garbage“.
For instance, Fehr and Peers’ estimates of daily VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) for the service population of the DiSC project are only 36.34 compared to a daily VMT estimate of 40.21 that is otherwise estimated for the combined UC Davis/Davis area and a daily VMT of 37.11 for the entire SACOG region . So how did the traffic engineers decide that VMTs for the DiSC project will actually be less than the estimates otherwise estimated for the UCD/Davis area and, indeed, less than estimates for the entire region.
The answer is simple, they used “garbage” for assumptions giving “garbage” for outputs This is how Fehr and Peers was able to estimate that the VMTs of the DiSC service population is about 2% less than VMTs for the entire SACOG region and 11% less than the VMTs estimated for UCD/Davis. But this assumption is completely incongruous with the admission otherwise clearly stated in the EIR that VMTs for the Davis area service population, as estimated by SACOG themselves, currently are actually 115 – 150% of that for the SACOG region as a whole.
If you otherwise assume that the VMTs of the project will instead be more equal to the VMT estimates of the UCD/Davis service population, then the net VMTs of the service population would actually increase by 11% from what is estimated for the project which in itself is dramatically lower than SACOG estimates of VMTs for the UCD/Davis area’s service population.
Since emissions from vehicular travel otherwise account for 78% of the project’s total carbon foot print, this means that the estimates of 50 million lbs per year of CO2e for the DiSC project are almost certainly low.
And if anyone is otherwise thinking that the analysis of DiSC’s future projected traffic usage and VMTs by Fehr & Peers is probably correct because, “Well, they are certified traffic engineers, they must know what they are doing, right?“, just remember that Fehr and Peers are the folks who designed the modifications of the “Mace Mess” and the City told everyone then that traffic flow on Mace Blvd. will actually improve after the modification. Well we all know how that has turned out.
Like the old adage says, “Garbage in, garbage out“!
Let’s say this is true: “The fallacy in David’s argument is that the “thumb-on-the-scale” assumptions used by that old reliable, “give ’em what they ask for“, traffic consultant used by the City for the project, Fehr and Peers, are truly “garbage“. For instance, Fehr and Peers’ estimates of daily VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) for the service population of the DiSC project are only 36.34 compared to a daily VMT estimate of 40.21 that is otherwise estimated for the combined UC Davis/Davis area and a daily VMT of 37.11 for the entire SACOG region . So how did the traffic engineers decide that VMTs for the DiSC project will actually be less than the estimates otherwise estimated for the UCD/Davis area and, indeed, less than estimates for the entire region.”
You still present the raw GHG estimates without offsetting the fact that DiSC will merely move people from one place to another, so the 50 million figure you are constantly throwing out is also as you put it, garbage or as I would put it, a fake number or the use of a gross figure rather than a net impact.
David – I realize your strengths are not in quantitative analyis of EIRs. So let me help you out a little here
Actually the GHG emissions you quote are from the old EIR =>
37,992.07 metric tons CO2e/year x 2,679 lbs/metric ton = 101,780,000 lbs of CO2e/year
The new addendum to the EIR states that Unmitigated GHG Emissions for the Existing Plus Project Conditions for DISC Project & Mace Triangle are 21,489 metric tons CO2e/year.
21,4897 metric tons CO2e/year x 2,679 lbs/metric ton = 57,575,158 lbs of CO2e/year.
My earlier estimates of greater than 50,000,000 lbs per year were low because I only looked only at the DiSC project itself without the Triangle. Thank you for pointing out my error and my comments about GHG emissions in the future will reflect this higher amount for the entire project.
As to your comment that people will just produce the same VMTs if they drive to DiSC as if they were driving to anyplace else in the region, that is a completely unsubstantiated speculation on your part. And it flys in the face of SACOG’s own admission otherwise, as admitted in the EIR, that the service population of the Davis area produces VMTs approximately 15 – 50% higher than the regional average.
Since 78% of the emissions of the project are due to mobile emissions produced by commuters to the project and SACOG says that VMTs of the service population in Davis are 15 – 50% higher than in the SACOG region as a hole, it is completely unfounded for you to continue to say that building DiSC anyplace else but in Davis will produce a higher GHG emissions. That is simply parroting a talking point by the developers but it is not acknowledged anywhere in the EIR. In other words, it is just made up out of thin air.
If you otherwise have any other quantitative data to support that self-serving assertion, please provide it.
You are still failing to acknowledge that there is an offset between what people are driving now and what they would be driving at a potential future DISC site. It’s not zero now. You are correct that Davis drives slightly more on average than the SACOG average, but DISC is projected slightly below that. I agree – it’s speculation – but so is the entire exercise – that’s what modeling is – projections based on a set of assumptions. You continue to deny there is an offset here and continue to print the gross number as though it were net, that’s not honest.
Well the EIR itself characterizes the missions as “new” emissions and analyzes the net GHG impacts based on that characterization…so I am just parroting what the EIR states.
The whole idea that if it is not built in Davis it will just be built elsewhere producing offset emissions is a developer-constructed argument not stated anywhere in the EIR.
I have to think that if that argument had any merit and any verifiable evidence to support that assertion that that it would have certainly been raised and evaluated quantitatively in the EIR since the EIR is supposed to disclose and weigh all of the environemntal impacts of the project. But I just can’t seem to find it. Can you otherwise point me to that analyses in the EIR?
Some of the point is that it will be somewhere else. For example, when Mori Seiki moved to Davis, they picked Davis over another location.
But the other point is that each of the 4100 people working at DiSC are going to work somewhere, probably drive to work somewhere else, and thus have an impact and therefore, if you want to be honest about impacts, that must be factored into the equation.
So, Alan P, as you are a numbers guy, how many lbs/yrs of CO2 does the average person contribute via respiration, fecal matter, etc.? To put things in perspective… or, a cow?
Some info here: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-ton-carbon-dioxide
Well I won’t get into the respiratory or scatalogical emission references if that’s really where you want to go with this thread (…and what’s with that anyways?)
But since you asked – The average annual household, travel, and food-related emissions of my wife and I are less than 3 metric tons per year (per the EPA calculator referenced by Don) vs between 16 and 20 tons per year for the average 2-person household in Davis (according to who you believe).
This is because my wife and I collectively drive less than 5, 000 mi per year in a 12-year old Prius hybrid with battery BU, about 1,000 mi/year in a 32-year old Toyota truck (mostly used for dump runs I do for ourselves, family members, and our neighbors), and about 1,500 miles per year local travel in an 19-year old, 100% electrical-powered GEM car (it was a cast-off from the City of Davis via Tree Davis). We never fly anywhere anymore and have not been on an airplane in the last 20 years because of the GHG emission concerns.
We’ve had solar PV and DHW on our house for the last 18 years and keep the thermostat below 68 in the winter and above 80 in the summer so our average monthly energy bill is always well less than $30/month. It used to be $0 but we now use excess electricity we used to to give to PG&E every month for our Gem and Prius Hybrid battery packs and (yes, I admit it) a hot-tub we occasionally turn on to use up some of the electricity we otherwise gave to PG&E before we got electic vehicles.
We organically grow almost all of our own fruit and vegetables and corn and are prolific canners, dryers, and freezers of food for eating during the off-season. And we give away lots of produce to our neighbors, family members, and various low-income food providers in town. Plus we raise raise hens for eggs and fertilizer (oops, back to the scatalogical references…sorry) but otherwise hardly ever eat meat or dairy products anymore (well, my wife does really like cream in her morning coffee).
In other words, we try really, really hard to minimize our carbon footprint in the world and almost have it down to third-world average per person emission levels…since you asked.
So, how about your household carbon footprint (please not including resiratory and fecal matter) ? How are you doing?
Put something like DiSC in one of the no-longer needed commercial spaces in San Francisco. People generally don’t drive to work, there.
If I’m not mistaken, UCSF does “research” in San Francisco.
Obviously, a development that is “designed” to be driven-to WILL be driven-to. There’s no reason that this type of development “needs” to be a freeway-oriented parking lot.
Or, in one of the other spaces that are no longer needed in the Bay Area. After all, “something else” would occupy those spaces, if something like DiSC doesn’t.
Of course, the region doesn’t need another DiSC in the first place. There’s one in Woodland on the horizon, for fans of this type of thing.
Take away the housing (at either proposal), and watch how fast they fold.
California isn’t growing. Hence, there’s no need to “make it” do so.
Fully agree, but for different reasons…
Generally, pavement life, maintenance is based on axle-loads (repetitions of weight, exacerbated by suspensions, individual wheel loads)… ironically, buses are the most devastating to most pavements, even compared to large semi-trucks, even filled to the brim.
Bike ped travel is least impactful as to condition of pavements, but the most sensitive to pavement condition.
So, tying fees to VMT is bogus, if one wants to be fair (if anyone still believes that ‘fair’ is real)… tying it all to gas/diesel/NG consumption is somewhat suspect, as well… much electricity can be tied back, directly or indirectly to CO2 generating sources. So EV’s can cause roadway distress/deterioration but how is it “right” to give those a ‘free ride’.
The manufacture, parts, maintenance of bicycles is not “carbon-free”…
A**, gas, grass, no one should ride free…
As to how to apportion costs, I don’t have an answer, but it should be proportional to pavement and environmental impact (my opinion)… beyond my pay grade, but know a simplistic answer would be very wrong… if gas taxes were increased to $10/gallon (extreme example) those most likely impacted are the working poor, the elderly and/or those who can’t choose to walk or use bicycle… those most likely to benefit are those who can afford EV’s… even tho’ they contribute to impacts…
‘Tis a puzzlement”…
Any analysis that DiSC will result in a NET increase in miles driven is incorrect.
My experience is that there are only two reasons why companies come to Davis. They are either retail / service businesses who want to locate near their customers in Davis, or they are R&D / scientific businesses who want to locate here because their talent base is already here.
Either way, nobody is going to base their business in Davis because the land is cheap – it wont be. The only reason to pay a premium to be in Davis is because they want to be CLOSE to their talent or their customers.
look at origin materials…. Just went public with a valuation over a Billion dollars. Company was founded here, founders and employees mostly live here. But they set up operations in West Sac because Davis consistently refuses to grow. So all those car trips across the causeway… a waste.
Disc isn’t going to create a SINGLE company that wouldnt otherwise exist. And there are NO companies who will want to set up at Disc who dont want to be there already.
This is just like the facts of spring lake…. Davis nimbys argued that we shouldnt be “pulling up farmland to plant housing”. So what happened? WOODLAND pulled up farmland to plant housing, and now those same people HAVE to get in a car to get to their Davis-based jobs.
we REALLY need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot…. Its gotten really old.