Edison offers 8 projects to reduce gases

Southern California Edison on Friday proposed $23 million in projects to reduce greenhouse gases by powering California cars, forklifts and agricultural pumps with electricity, and by taking a series of other steps, including cutting harmful emissions in Brazil.

The eight projects, which would be funded by the utility’s customers, could cut the equivalent of 3.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, an amount comparable to taking 800,000 cars off the road, the utility said.

Rosemead-based Edison said it would ask the state Air Resources Board to clear the voluntary projects and would seek approval from the state Public Utilities Commission to add the cost into electricity rates.

The utility, a subsidiary of Edison International, serves 4.8 million homes and businesses in central, coastal and Southern California.

John Fielder, president of the utility, said such voluntary actions were encouraged by regulators as part of California’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction act.

Formal rules implementing the law won’t be ready until 2012, and the state doesn’t want companies to wait until then to start cutting emissions, he said.

“I like the fact that they’re getting on with the deployment of these zero-emission and renewable technologies instead of just waiting,” said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.

“But there is the question of whether this is a good use of ratepayer funds,” White said. “It would be nice if the shareholders would be matching these funds so they could do more.”

Fielder said the increase for ratepayers would be “minuscule.”

The projects outlined by Edison would add 1,000 electrified parking spots at truck stops, so drivers could get power without running their engines; convert methane emissions from animal waste into power; convert forklifts to use electricity instead of fuel; offer consumer rebates for plug-in hybrid vehicles; and plant 70,000 new trees in urban areas across 15 counties.

The company also would convert agricultural pumps to electricity in California, convert methane from abandoned Utah mines into fuel and cut emissions of sulfur hexafluoride gas in Brazil. That gas is used as an insulator in high-voltage equipment, and it can escape into the atmosphere as the equipment ages. Edison said it had kept a lid on its equipment and planned to help Brazil do the same.

Why should Edison customers pay for projects in Utah and Brazil?

“A ton of greenhouse gas reduced in Utah or the Philippines or Nevada has the same benefit from a global warming standpoint as a ton reduced in California,” Fielder said. “This is low-hanging fruit and it is cheaper.”

Edison is counting on being able to get credits -- possibly ones it could bank or sell -- for reducing emissions anywhere, including outside of California. The state has not yet said whether it would set up such a trading system.

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elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com