Comment Log Display

The CARB Board should direct staff to incorporate the policy
changes identified in the first resolution adopted by the permanent
Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. The EJAC carefully
considered the issues and invested its time, expertise, and energy
to provide thoughtful recommendations to address the environmental
injustice inflicted by the LCFS. Your leadership now is desperately
needed. CARB staff have been ignoring EJ organizations' credible
LCFS issues for two years now.  Prioritizing environmental justice
as CARB has proclaimed it does actually means far, far more than
giving EJ leaders a seat at the EJAC table while ignoring their
well-founded recommendations. As it stands, EJ communities are at
the table at EJAC and here today, but we are still on the menu. The
CARB Board must provide leadership and direct staff to incorporate
the EJAC's resolution into the proposed regulations. Otherwise, it
is clear that the LCFS will sacrifice environmental justice
communities for factory farm gas and hydrogen production. 

Factory farm gas is not clean. It is not clean to produce, it is
not clean to combust, and it does not produce clean hydrogen.
Factory farm gas production harms rural communities in the San
Joaquin Valley while SMR hydrogen that uses factory farm gas harms
communities near refineries.  

The LCFS is headed toward an environmental justice and economic
justice disaster. The CARB Board should direct staff to minimize
the pass-through cost by stopping the lavish avoided methane
crediting fiction and allowing generation of junk credits for
already-required methane reductions.  

There is no proof that digesters even do what they are supposed to
do. In fact, recent monitoring data show that digesters don't
measurably reduce methane emissions from dairy farms. Moreover, a
peer reviewed study showed that manure digestate increased nitrous
oxide emissions, largely canceling out any methane reductions. 

The SRIA does not reflect recommendations raised by the EJ
community with the exception of aviation fuel. The SRIA did not
analyze an EJ Alternative. A broad coalition of EJ groups submitted
comments after the November 9, 2022 workshop asking for policy
changes and those policy changes were not included as alternatives
in the SRIA. A Stanford study modeled the EJ Alternative and found
it effective and efficient, and CARB staff willfully ignored this
study in refusing to analyze the EJ Alternative. CARB staff should
acknowledge that they propose no policy changes to correct the
abuse of factory farm gas in the LCFS.   

CARB must end avoided methane crediting in 2024. Since 2018, the
LCFS has lavishly rewarded factory farm gas producers with "avoided
methane crediting." This fiction allows factory farm gas producers
to create massive amounts of credits because of absurdly negative
carbon intensity values for factory farm gas fuels.  A faulty
assumption is that liquefied manure emitting methane is an
unavoidable component of raising animals; the fact is that cry
manure management techniques allow manure to decompose naturally,
preventing the vast majority of methane production from manure in
the first place. Another way of saying this - CARB is rewarding
liquefied manure management by providing its most lavish financial
incentive to livestock operations that choose to use the most
polluting form of manure management and then purport to capture the
pollution they intentionally created when they choose liquefied
manure management. CDFA finds that dry manure management could
reduce methane emissions by more than 90 percent.1 But CARB has
failed to consider alternative manure management as a SB 1383
regulatory pathway to preventing and reducing methane emissions
from the state's dairy and livestock operations. CARB staff concede
that this assumption is faulty, and propose to phase out avoided
methane crediting between 2030 and 2040, 16 years from now. They
have argued that we need the long time-line to avoid stranded
assets. Won't more lavish subsidies lead to more "stranded assets?"
Is the real reason that staff wants to ensure a hefty profit to
those who have invested in this dirty fuel? The following are
absurd results: 1) factory farm gas - chemically equivalent to
conventional natural gas - is considered orders of magnitude
"cleaner" under the current LCFS than solar or wind.  2) CARB staff
plan to use factory farm gas for hydrogen production since it has
no future as a transportation fuel. CARB staff plan much of that
hydrogen for hard to decarbonize stationary sources and it makes no
sense for this transportation fuel program to serve that purpose.
3) Refineries buy the environmental attributes of factory farm gas
(i.e. it's purported carbon negativity) to make gray fossil
hydrogen production, which uses steam methane reformation (SMR),
look "greener." That hydrogen is considered much less
carbon-intense than solar-powered, zero combustion, electrolytic
hydrogen.  

The LCFS currently allows factory farm gas producers to sell junk
credits for reductions that have already happened. The LCFS allows
credits for methane reductions at factory farms even when those
factory farm gas projects have already been compensated for and /
or are already required to achieve those same reductions. This
needs to change!  

CARB has a duty and the regulatory authority under Senate Bill 1383
(Health & Safety Code § 39730.7(b)) to adopt regulations that
reduce methane emissions from liquified manure at industrial dairy
and swine operations, and CARB should start that regulatory process
now. SB 1383 requires CARB to reduce methane from manure management
by 40% from 2013 levels by 2030. It makes perfect sense why there
is no oil industry or dairy industry opposition here today. They
are getting a sweetheart deal when the dairy industry can sell
overvalued junk credits, the oil industry buys the credits and
keeps on selling their fossil fuels, and then the oil industry
passes on the full cost of all these credits to the public at the
gas pump. After 2030, that regressive pass-through cost will
average $1.15 per gallon borne disproportionately by low-income
Californians according to CARB's own data on pages 57-59 in the
SRIA. 

It is clear that CARB staff want to keep dirty factory farm gas in
the LCFS to promote its development and future use for hydrogen
production. The CARB board should ensure that hydrogen production
does not rely on or benefit from dirty factory farm gas or other
dirty fuels that exacerbate environmental harms.   

Staff appears more concerned with protecting profits for producers
of and investors in factory farm gas than achieving actual and
substantial environmental benefits through the LCFS. Our flagship
climate and transportation programs should be solely focused on
improving air quality, greenhouse gas reductions, and environmental
justice. Ensuring a return on investments and protecting lavish
subsidies is not and should not be part of CARB's mission.
Unfortunately it seems to be in this program.  

The false assumption that hydrogen produced from factory farm
biogas is "carbon negative" is kneecapping the market for truly
clean hydrogen because it allows hydrogen producers who use
biomethane to get much bigger subsidies than companies that produce
zero-emission hydrogen from solar and wind. It's outrageous that
the LCFS gives the biggest hydrogen subsidies to industries that
pollute California's disadvantaged communities. Unfortunately CARB
staff proposes using the LCFS - and the falsely claimed negative
carbon biomethane - to subsidize the growth of dirty hydrogen
beyond uses of transportation fuel.   

Residents living near bio-fuel refineries suffer from significant
air, water, and soil pollution, as well as odors. The communities
that have borne the brunt of oil refinery pollution for decades
should not have to suffer from a buildout of new biofuel refining
infrastructure. Even if you thought increasing production of
biofuels would be a good thing, it's not clear the LCFS is even
accomplishing that goal. In recent years, sales of biodiesel and
renewable diesel have surged in California, with commensurate
declines in other states. This suggests that the oil companies are
just moving biofuels to California that the federal Renewable Fuel
Standard required them to sell anyway - a strategy that boosts the
oil companies' profits while providing zero climate benefit. 

Direct air capture (DAC) is not a transportation fuel, and it has
no place in the LCFS. CARB staff proposed in the SRIA to include
DAC crediting for any DAC project in the U.S. For most of the LCFS,
only materials that directly impact transportation fuels in
California are included; this exception for DAC does not make
sense.  

The only argument in favor of expensive and inefficient DAC is that
we will struggle to get to net zero without carbon removal to
offset the hardest to decarbonize industries. Transportation fuels
are relatively easy to decarbonize, so DAC has no place in this
sector. 

If DAC is credited under LCFS, then it is essentially allowing
carbon removal to be used as a means of reducing our ambition on
direct emission reductions because it would generate credits to
support the combustion of fossil fuels. 

DAC is very expensive, energy intensive, and inefficient. It is far
more efficient to stop burning fossil fuels and replace them with
electricity from clean renewable energy. Including DAC in the LCFS
is an utter waste of carbon removal. 

DAC has a great deal of uncertainty and risk. Storage may fail.
Studies of geologic storage have asked the wrong questions and
leave great uncertainty about leaks. The industry's shining
examples of success in Norway's Sleipner and Snøhvit facilities are
actually cautionary tales, as a recent report demonstrated. The
report's topline conclusions were:
 
Sleipner and Snøhvit demonstrate carbon capture and storage is not
without material ongoing risks that may ultimately negate some or
all the benefits it seeks to create. 

Every project site has unique geology, so field operators must
expect the unexpected, make detailed plans, update the plans and
prepare for contingencies. 

Ensuring storage is securely maintained implies a high level of
proactive regulatory oversight, activities for which governments
may not be adequately equipped. 

Sleipner and Snøhvit cast doubt on whether the world has the
technical prowess, strength of regulatory oversight, and unwavering
multi-decade commitment of capital and resources needed to keep
carbon dioxide sequestered below the sea - as the Earth needs -
permanently. 

Leaked carbon forms carbonic acid in the presence of water.
Carbonic acid infiltrating groundwater and surface water does not
present direct drinking water risks, but it does risk spoiling
irrigation because plants tend to suffer when bathed in acid. DAC
in California will be paired with geologic carbon storage in the
nation's most productive agricultural lands, lands which are
already parched under the strains of poor water management and
climate change. We cannot responsibly risk acidifying the water and
adding to the drought. 

Carbonic acid carries heavy metals like arsenic and risks spoiling
groundwater and surface water for drinking water in addition to
risking irrigation supplies. Arsenic and other heavy metals are
potent poisons. 

Insofar as DAC facilities rely on or incorporate carbon pipelines,
they present risks of mass fatality events when a pipeline ruptures
because carbon dioxide is a toxic asphyxiant that, when
concentrated for transport, is heavier than air and has a tendency
to sit where it is leaked to create a poisonous cloud that is
deadly within minutes of exposure and that repels first responders
dependent on gas-powered vehicles like ambulances. 

If DAC relies on carbon-intensive energy sources, it is a net
source of carbon. If it is a net source of carbon, it is the worst
sort of boondoggle. 

If DAC relies on solar or wind energy with storage, it risks
depriving the grid of those energy supplies. Considering how
inefficient DAC is, DAC must only rely on clean renewable energy
with storage behind the meter to prevent that result.