California’s transportation fuel policy is knee deep in cow poop, and it’s not a good look. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is considering amendments to its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) regulation, but indicated they have no plans to address the problems caused by counter-productive subsidies for manure biomethane. CARB’s use of the LCFS as a cash cow to fund manure digesters is bad transportation fuel policy and bad agricultural policy. Accounting gimmicks disguise a poorly run offset scheme as a magic carbon negative climate solution. CARB needs to phase out credits for “avoided methane pollution,” refocus the LCFS on transportation and get to work developing a more suitable regulation for pollution from dairies.
The immediate goal of the current LCFS rulemaking is to stabilize LCFS credit markets so that the policy can continue to provide much…
Read the full article originally published at blog.ucsusa.org.