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California legislators learned during a second annual update on greenhouse gas pollution that the state continues to struggle with increased emissions from driving. Another ongoing challenge is how to protect fragile forests that capture carbon.

Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said to expect “new and more aggressive strategies” to shift drivers toward the cleanest cars and trucks. The aim is to protect both the climate and those living with unhealthy levels of ozone and diesel pollution.

All new car sales need to be electric by 2035. By 2045, all vehicles on state roads need to be electricity fueled, if the state is to meet its commitment to emit no more carbon than it absorbs by 2045, Nichols said. She described the agency’s half century of work as diligent and incremental, crafted to allow for economic and population growth. “But we are never going to reach our goals at that pace.”

Communities preparing their carbon reduction plans under SB 375 can expect stricter review in the future, she said. The agency is also working on the “Clean Mile” rule to address the fact that Uber and Lyft vehicles drive with no passengers about a third of the time, according to agency data.

Nichols painted a picture of a California more alone than in the past. Not only is it at odds with the Trump Administration, which is methodically stripping its authority to clean up vehicles and create a carbon trading system, but it also finds fewer kindred countries than five years ago when the Paris climate accord was signed. “Our greatest hope,” she said, lies in building climate-proof communities and a transportation system that “simply don’t emit greenhouse gases at all.”

The price of allowances under California’s cap and trade system was questioned by Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), and by Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) Chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources Committee and Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel). Garcia chaired the meeting, as head of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies.

Stern asked whether the price reflects the true social cost of carbon. Nichols replied it does not, but defended the initial auction floor prices as a response to the skepticism prevalent when the state launched its market.

Garcia and Monning suggested a higher price would fund more needed pollution efforts. Nichols responded that people do not always respond as predicted to price and that such funding, while useful, was not the purpose of regulating carbon through a cap and trade system.

The hearing was the second annual climate update to the legislature under AB 197 passed in 2016 . It served not only to catalog successes and severe challenges, but as an introduction to negative emissions technologies.

Recently Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory released a report called Getting to Neutral that asks whether California could remove the 125 million tons of carbon dioxide still projected to be emitted in 2045, using sequestration and direct air capture technology that is known and available today. “The numbers were a pleasant surprise to us,” George Peridas, one of the authors, said. The state could do so at a cost of less than $10 billion per year, thanks in part to the fact that California is blessed by geology particularly well-suited to storage of carbon dioxide “safely and permanently” underground.

The largest share of these negative 125 million tons would be created by making transportation fuels out of trees thinned from the forests, with underground injection of their carbon. Several members of the public raised concerns about the number of trees cut from forests.

Garcia was skeptical of any biomass burning, recalling an earlier generation of power plants that continue to pollute communities with massive NOx and particulate levels today. Peridas responded that there would be an entirely new generation of incinerators. Julia Levin of the Bioenergy Association of California said the bioenergy production should be community-scale, and healthy trees should not be removed from the forest.

“Our forests cannot be treated as feed stock,” Gary Hughes of the organization Biofuelwatch, added.

Stern asked if removing carbon is so doable, why it is not yet being done. Peridas replied that although the steps, including injecting carbon dioxide underground, are known and understood, they have never been chained together in the way that the report suggests. And without a guaranteed source of biomass over the life of the wood-to-fuel plant, construction may not be financeable.

Mariela Ruacho of Releaf called it disappointing that the Livermore report ignored urban forestry, which she said can sequester significant carbon and bring many other kinds of relief in densely populated cities. She encouraged the committee to consider an additional hearing on urban forestry and greening.