Is CARB staff blocking reform at California’s clean transport program?
This is the final installment of a three-part series examining the controversies and conflicts surrounding the future of the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Read Part 1 and Part 2. For years, environmental groups, community activists and climate scientists have warned the California Air Resources Board that the state’s support for biofuels is not only enabling harmful air and water pollution but also runs a serious risk of undermining its mission of combating climate change. Now, as the agency considers major changes to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is California’s premiere policy mechanism for rewarding those fuels, some of CARB’s board members have asked the agency’s staff to take these criticisms to heart. But according to critics, the CARB staff members in charge of the LCFS haven’t taken action on those concerns. Instead, they say, staff members appear to be withholding key information from the board and public alike ahead of a critical vote on the program’s future. In a December report that proposed major changes to the 15-year-old LCFS program, CARB staff provided only one policy choice for the board to adopt or reject. Critics say that, despite skepticism from some board members, this plan would simply lock in favorable treatment for renewable diesel fuel and dairy farm biogas — two of the primary beneficiaries of the billions of dollars per year the clean-fuels program raises from fossil fuels sold in the state — for decades to come. That’s money they say should be going instead to electric vehicles, the true path to decarbonizing transportation in the state. In the same December report, CARB staff rejected an alternative proposal from CARB’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, a group created to advise the board on environmental-justice issues. That proposal would curb the program’s reliance on renewable diesel and dairy biogas — a demand of communities bearing the health harms of living next door to polluting concentrated livestock operations and fuel refineries. As it stands, CARB plans to hold one more meeting of its full board to address the future of the LCFS program — a voting meeting at which board members would be asked to either approve or reject the staff proposal, with no opportunity to dissect its details or propose changes. But because the December proposal from CARB staff fails to adequately address the questions from board members, critics are pushing for another meeting that would give the board another chance to change or at least question the logic behind the staff’s proposal. “It feels like the shots are being called behind the scenes,” said Sasan Saadat, a senior research and policy analyst at nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice. “What we heard from the board was pretty unambiguously, ‘We’d like to see this tightened up.’ The CARB board’s pushback Saadat is referring to comments made by CARB board members during a September CARB meeting, which was held to provide all 16 members of the agency’s board an opportunity to discuss the complex issues underlying the effort to amend the LCFS. At that meeting, several board members questioned why the staff proposal excluded a cap on renewable diesel proposed by environmental-justice advocates. The concept of capping the growth of what’s become the primary fuel in the program was first proposed by CARB staff in 2022 as a means of preventing it from flooding the LCFS market. But along with this economic policy rationale, a growing body of research from nonprofit groups, universities and other sources indicates that renewable diesel, which can provide a climate benefit when produced from noncrop feedstocks like waste oils, will cause more climate harm than it solves if demand climbs too high. That’s because it can encourage higher production of soybean and palm oil, which can lead to deforestation in countries from Brazil to Indonesia. “I think we all should be very concerned and make sure that this LCFS program does not directly or indirectly, or in any way, shape or form, incentivize those activities in tropical forests, because that would really be cutting off our noses to spite our face,” board member Hector De La Torre said at the September meeting. De La Torre, one of the few current CARB board members who was involved in the launch of the LCFS program in 2009, also questioned why the staff has proposed to maintain the LCFS’ uniquely favorable treatment for methane captured from dairy herd manure lagoons through 2040. That “negative carbon intensity” structure makes biogas from that politically powerful industry far more valuable as an offset for fossil fuel producers and sellers in the state than any other alternative fuel. Critics of CARB’s treatment of dairy methane say the program is encouraging dairies to structure their operations in ways that increase methane emissions — such as concentrating manure in liquid lagoons that create more methane than other methods for managing animal waste — in a perverse response to the value that methane can bring them through the LCFS. “The [carbon-intensity measure] for avoided methane, I would like to see that tightened up,” De La Torre said. “I understand the logic of why we do what we do, but I still think it is too generous.” This treatment of dairy biogas is also increasingly untenable under current California law, said board member Gideon Kracov. SB 1383, a state law passed in 2016, mandates statewide methane emissions reductions of 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030. Importantly, that law gave CARB the authority, for the first time, to extend methane emissions limits that were already in place for landfills, wastewater treatment plants and the state’s oil and gas industry to the state’s agricultural sector as well. “We regulate every major source of methane and GHG emissions,” Kracov said. “But not the dairies. Instead, consumers pay them” through the costs that fuel refiners and sellers in the state must pay for LCFS credits that are added to the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel sold in the state. SB 1383 gives CARB the authority to start regulating the agricultural sector in 2024. Kracov said he would like the board to issue a resolution directing staff to undertake that regulatory work this year. But CARB executive officer Steven Cliff said in the September meeting that the agency doesn’t “currently have a rule planned for 2024” to regulate the dairy industry’s methane emissions. Board member Diane Takvorian also highlighted the potential conflict between SB 1383’s 2030 deadline for reducing methane emissions and the CARB staff’s proposal to lock in the existing dairy biogas treatment through 2040. “I’m concerned about the responsibility of sending the signal that we want to continue that crediting for another 17 years and increase the economic dependence on this system,” she said. “We’ve talked about the need to phase it out, [and it] seems like there’s agreement there. It’s just about timing and how that would happen.” Takvorian also said she’s “very concerned in terms of the impact on human health,” pointing to the well-documented problems of air and water pollution caused by the state’s increasingly large-scale dairy herds and manure lagoons. A manure lagoon on a dairy farm (Fertnig/iStock.com) The particulate matter, methane and nitrogen oxide air pollution from concentrated livestock operations have been linked to higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Most of the dairies earning LCFS credits are in California’s Central Valley, a region with high levels of poverty and some of the worst air quality in the state. “Dairy digesters are a small portion of the LCFS, but it definitely has a large impact on communities struggling for clean air [and] communities of color,” board member Davina Hurt said. In that September meeting, Takvorian pressed CARB staff for assurance that the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee’s alternative proposal would be placed on an equal footing with the staff’s proposal for options the board would be considering to amend the LCFS program. “Will that be a clear alternative?” she asked. Matt Botill, division chief for CARB’s industrial strategies division, replied, “Yes.” Expectations vs. reality Despite Botill’s assurance, that’s not what happened when the CARB staff released its proposal in December, critics say.
This is the final installment of a three-part series examining the controversies and conflicts surrounding the future of the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Read Part 1 and Part 2 . For years, environmental groups, community activists and climate scientists have warned the California Air…
This is the final installment of a three-part series examining the controversies and conflicts surrounding the future of the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
For years, environmental groups, community activists and climate scientists have warned the California Air Resources Board that the state’s support for biofuels is not only enabling harmful air and water pollution but also runs a serious risk of undermining its mission of combating climate change.
Now, as the agency considers major changes to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is California’s premiere policy mechanism for rewarding those fuels, some of CARB’s board members have asked the agency’s staff to take these criticisms to heart.
But according to critics, the CARB staff members in charge of the LCFS haven’t taken action on those concerns. Instead, they say, staff members appear to be withholding key information from the board and public alike ahead of a critical vote on the program’s future.
In a December report that proposed major changes to the 15-year-old LCFS program, CARB staff provided only one policy choice for the board to adopt or reject. Critics say that, despite skepticism from some board members, this plan would simply lock in favorable treatment for renewable diesel fuel and dairy farm biogas — two of the primary beneficiaries of the billions of dollars per year the clean-fuels program raises from fossil fuels sold in the state — for decades to come. That’s money they say should be going instead to electric vehicles, the true path to decarbonizing transportation in the state.
In the same December report, CARB staff rejected an alternative proposal from CARB’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, a group created to advise the board on environmental-justice issues. That proposal would curb the program’s reliance on renewable diesel and dairy biogas — a demand of communities bearing the health harms of living next door to polluting concentrated livestock operations and fuel refineries.
As it stands, CARB plans to hold one more meeting of its full board to address the future of the LCFS program — a voting meeting at which board members would be asked to either approve or reject the staff proposal, with no opportunity to dissect its details or propose changes.
But because the December proposal from CARB staff fails to adequately address the questions from board members, critics are pushing for another meeting that would give the board another chance to change or at least question the logic behind the staff’s proposal.
“It feels like the shots are being called behind the scenes,” said Sasan Saadat, a senior research and policy analyst at nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice. “What we heard from the board was pretty unambiguously, ‘We’d like to see this tightened up.’
The CARB board’s pushback
Saadat is referring to comments made by CARB board members during a September CARB meeting, which was held to provide all 16 members of the agency’s board an opportunity to discuss the complex issues underlying the effort to amend the LCFS.
At that meeting, several board members questioned why the staff proposal excluded a cap on renewable diesel proposed by environmental-justice advocates. The concept of capping the growth of what’s become the primary fuel in the program was first proposed by CARB staff in 2022 as a means of preventing it from flooding the LCFS market.
But along with this economic policy rationale, a growing body of research from nonprofit groups, universities and other sources indicates that renewable diesel, which can provide a climate benefit when produced from noncrop feedstocks like waste oils, will cause more climate harm than it solves if demand climbs too high. That’s because it can encourage higher production of soybean and palm oil, which can lead to deforestation in countries from Brazil to Indonesia.
“I think we all should be very concerned and make sure that this LCFS program does not directly or indirectly, or in any way, shape or form, incentivize those activities in tropical forests, because that would really be cutting off our noses to spite our face,” board member Hector De La Torre said at the September meeting.
De La Torre, one of the few current CARB board members who was involved in the launch of the LCFS program in 2009, also questioned why the staff has proposed to maintain the LCFS’ uniquely favorable treatment for methane captured from dairy herd manure lagoons through 2040.
That “negative carbon intensity” structure makes biogas from that politically powerful industry far more valuable as an offset for fossil fuel producers and sellers in the state than any other alternative fuel.
Critics of CARB’s treatment of dairy methane say the program is encouraging dairies to structure their operations in ways that increase methane emissions — such as concentrating manure in liquid lagoons that create more methane than other methods for managing animal waste — in a perverse response to the value that methane can bring them through the LCFS.
“The [carbon-intensity measure] for avoided methane, I would like to see that tightened up,” De La Torre said. “I understand the logic of why we do what we do, but I still think it is too generous.”
This treatment of dairy biogas is also increasingly untenable under current California law, said board member Gideon Kracov. SB 1383, a state law passed in 2016, mandates statewide methane emissions reductions of 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030. Importantly, that law gave CARB the authority, for the first time, to extend methane emissions limits that were already in place for landfills, wastewater treatment plants and the state’s oil and gas industry to the state’s agricultural sector as well.
“We regulate every major source of methane and GHG emissions,” Kracov said. “But not the dairies. Instead, consumers pay them” through the costs that fuel refiners and sellers in the state must pay for LCFS credits that are added to the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel sold in the state.
SB 1383 gives CARB the authority to start regulating the agricultural sector in 2024. Kracov said he would like the board to issue a resolution directing staff to undertake that regulatory work this year. But CARB executive officer Steven Cliff said in the September meeting that the agency doesn’t “currently have a rule planned for 2024” to regulate the dairy industry’s methane emissions.
Board member Diane Takvorian also highlighted the potential conflict between SB 1383’s 2030 deadline for reducing methane emissions and the CARB staff’s proposal to lock in the existing dairy biogas treatment through 2040.
“I’m concerned about the responsibility of sending the signal that we want to continue that crediting for another 17 years and increase the economic dependence on this system,” she said. “We’ve talked about the need to phase it out, [and it] seems like there’s agreement there. It’s just about timing and how that would happen.”
Takvorian also said she’s “very concerned in terms of the impact on human health,” pointing to the well-documented problems of air and water pollution caused by the state’s increasingly large-scale dairy herds and manure lagoons.
The particulate matter, methane and nitrogen oxide air pollution from concentrated livestock operations have been linked to higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Most of the dairies earning LCFS credits are in California’s Central Valley, a region with high levels of poverty and some of the worst air quality in the state.
“Dairy digesters are a small portion of the LCFS, but it definitely has a large impact on communities struggling for clean air [and] communities of color,” board member Davina Hurt said.
In that September meeting, Takvorian pressed CARB staff for assurance that the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee’s alternative proposal would be placed on an equal footing with the staff’s proposal for options the board would be considering to amend the LCFS program.
“Will that be a clear alternative?” she asked.
Matt Botill, division chief for CARB’s industrial strategies division, replied, “Yes.”
Expectations vs. reality
Despite Botill’s assurance, that’s not what happened when the CARB staff released its proposal in December, critics say.