California air regulators to vote on contentious climate program to cut emissions

California air regulators will vote Friday on changes to a key climate program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions from transportation fuels that has a wide swath of critics — from environmentalists to the oil industry.

The California Air Resources Board is set to decide on changes to the low carbon fuel standard, or LCFS, which requires the state to reduce the climate impact of transportation fuels by incentivizing producers to lower their emissions.

The proposal would increase the state’s emission reduction targets and fund charging infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles. It would also phase out incentives for capturing methane emissions from dairy farms to turn into fuel.

But environmental groups have criticized the program for stimulating the production of biofuels, which are derived from sources including plants and animal waste, when they say the state should focus more on supporting power for electric vehicles. They argue the proposal fails to adequately address those concerns.

The oil industry, state lawmakers and others have said the agency hasn’t been transparent about how the proposed updates could increase gas prices.

Agency staff released a cost-benefit analysis last year estimating that the initial proposal could have led to an increase in gas prices by 47 cents per gallon by 2025. But staff has not repeated the analysis since later updating the proposal, and the agency contends it cannot accurately predict gas prices.

“If you’re going to ask drivers to pay a lot, which is what this program proposal is going to do, I think you need to be able to make the case that it’s worth paying for,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist with the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.

Gas prices could increase by as high as 85 cents a gallon by 2030, and $1.50 per gallon by 2035 under the proposal, according to an estimate from Cullenward. Cullenward said his figures and the estimates initially released by board staff are not an apples-to-apples comparison, in part because his projection uses 2023 dollars and theirs used 2021 dollars.

Jodie Muller, chief operating officer for the Western States Petroleum Association, said the group supports the program overall but wants the agency to be more transparent about how it leads to an increase in gas prices.

The California Air Resources Board says the program will ultimately lower the cost of sustainable transportation fuels.

The agency first approved the low carbon fuel standard in 2009, and it was the first of its kind in the nation. It is part of California's overall plan to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. The state has passed policies in recent years to phase out the sale of new fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn mowers.

“The low carbon fuel standard has already successfully created lower-cost, lower-carbon alternatives, and the benefits of the proposal vastly outweigh those costs,” Steven Cliff, the agency’s executive officer, said at a news briefing last month.

The vote comes a day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called the state Legislature into a special session to protect some of California’s environmental and other liberal policies ahead of former President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

The Trump administration in 2019 revoked California’s ability to enforce its own tailpipe emissions standards. President Joe Biden later restored the state’s authority, which was upheld in federal court.

Future challenges from the Trump administration could lead to long court battles, said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“In the meantime, I think we still need something ... to enhance the development of electric vehicles and the electric vehicle infrastructure,” Pettit said. “The LCFS is a way that we might be able to do that.”

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Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @ sophieadanna