California Looks To Cut One of Its Most Effective Climate Tools
The California Air Resources Board is reopening its rulemaking on the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, sparking new debate over the role of dairy digesters in combating climate change. Environmental justice advocates have pushed the board to drop its credits for digesters, calling the incentives a subsidy for industrial farms that allow them to grow larger and pollute disadvantaged communities.
At the cost of more than $500,000 a year, CARB has made permanent its Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC). Led by prominent environmental interest groups, the committee last week handed CARB a list of requests for the LCFS proceedings. It hopes to rapidly phase out crop-based feedstocks like ethanol. Yet the issue that gained the most debate during an EJAC workshop was a request to eliminate methane credits for digesters next year, along with any other potential pathways for dairy and livestock producers to gain credits…
Michael Boccadoro, who leads industry efforts on methane as the executive director of Dairy Cares, cautioned that the role of biomethane from cows in LCFS is “a tiny, tiny, tiny slice of the supply mix in California,” though it is a huge part of the state’s effort to cut methane emissions.