Natural gas usage was up last year due to a lower level of available hydroelectric generation thanks to a "dry" year where rainfall and snow pack came in below normal levels, according to the California Air Resources Board, which tracks the state's emissions and designs policies to curtail them.
The loss of Southern California Edison's San Onofre nuclear power plant, which went offline in January 2012 and has since been decommissioned, also required more natural gas to be burnt to meet electricity demand.
Emissions from oil and gas production and cement plants also rose slightly over 2011 levels last year, the report said.
California has taken an aggressive policy approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including the launch of a carbon cap-and-trade program that seeks to roll back emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
While the state's increase in emissions from the power sector last year looks worrying, the carbon market is designed to allow power companies to save and trade emissions permits to account for years like 2012 where output is greater than expected, one environmentalist said.
"At first glance the 2012 emissions trends in California's power sector appear troubling for a state long recognized as a leader on climate and clean energy," said Alex Jackson, legal director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Digging deeper, however, reveals the state's policies are designed to prevent the very factors that precipitated the uptick in emissions in 2012 from altering the state's long-term downward trajectory," he said.
A separate report released Monday said that while California is on track to meet its 2020 emissions goal, bold new energy technologies and policies will be needed to meet its ambitious 2050 goal, which calls for an 80 percent reduction in emissions below 1990 levels.
Population growth that will boost energy demand between 2030 and 2050 will make it very difficult for the state to meet its midcentury target, according to Jeff Greenblatt, a researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who wrote the report.
"This is quite a stringent requirement, and even if we aggressively expand our policies and implement fledgling technologies that are not even on the marketplace now, our analysis shows that California will still not be able to get emissions to 85 metric tons of CO2-equivalent per year by 2050," he said.
The California Air Resources Board is currently working to update its plan to achieve the long-term greenhouse gas reductions, which will likely include an extension of the cap-and-trade program beyond 2020, when it is currently poised to end.
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