Did Someone Say … Housing Policy is (Still) Climate Policy?
Can infill housing reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help California achieve its climate goals?
In US urban land-use reform: a strategy for energy sufficiency, Terner Center associate research director Zack Subin and his coauthors argue that it can: by concentrating new housing growth in dense, walkable neighborhoods, California could reduce total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and avoid 8 million tons of climate pollution.
Key Takeaways:
- Concentrating California’s new housing construction in the lowest-VMT neighborhoods has the potential to meaningfully reduce overall statewide VMT.
- The reduction in driving would avoid up to 8 million tons of climate pollution annually by 2033.
- If we want to meet our climate goals, California should move rapidly to encourage infill housing construction in already-walkable neighborhoods.
Using estimates of California’s housing shortage and a separate data set of travel behavior by neighborhood, Subin and his colleagues looked at the potential emissions effects of building the estimated 1,800,000 new homes that California needs to solve its housing shortage in the most walkable areas of the state, where per-capita VMT is about 40% lower than average.
They found that this would reduce overall statewide VMT by 4.5%, and that the reduction in driving would directly prevent 3.4 million tons of carbon emissions in 2033. Including the indirect savings from things like reduced oil drilling would bring the total carbon reduction to roughly 8 million tons annually.
Housing, transportation, and climate have always been tightly interconnected issues; and this analysis lays out how bold action on ending our housing shortage would have significant benefits for the climate.