CARB doubles down on LCFS Program and liquid transportation fuels.

By Joshua T. Bledsoe and Jennifer Garlock

On May 10, 2022, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released its Draft 2022 Scoping Plan Update (Draft Scoping Plan) for public review and comment. Assembly Bill (AB) 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), requires CARB to develop and update every five years a scoping plan that describes the approach California will take to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to achieve the goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Senate Bill (SB) 32 subsequently strengthened the state’s GHG emissions reductions target to at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Our first post in this series discusses CARB’s Proposed Scenario to achieve the state’s GHG targets, which adopts a carbon neutrality target for 2045. Our second post explores how the Cap-and-Trade Program features in the Draft Scoping Plan. In this third post, we examine how California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) Program factors into the state’s GHG reduction goals and how the LCFS Program may be amended in the near future. The Draft Scoping Plan states that CARB will initiate a rulemaking on the LCFS to ensure it continues to support low-carbon fuels that will displace petroleum fuels.[1]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a ruling stating that the Jones Act does not apply to several specific offshore wind activities, which permits those activities to be performed by foreign vessels.

One of the complicating factors to offshore wind development in the United States is the applicability of the Jones Act, and…

supreme court of the united states scotus

This article is an effort to hit the “reset” button on the frequently breathless commentary on the recently argued Supreme Court case (West Virginia et al v. EPA) addressing the scope of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing fossil-fuel powered power plaints.

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On May 19, 2022, the Brazilian Federal Government published Decree No. 11,075/2022 (“Decree”), which establishes the National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction System and the related procedures for the implementation of the Sectoral Plans for Climate Change Mitigation. The Brazilian National Policy on Climate Change (Federal Law No. 12,187/2009) mentions the implementation of such…

Pipelines: PHMSA Announces New Rulemaking for Carbon Dioxide Pipelines
On May 26, 2022, the U.S. Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced a new rulemaking to update standards for carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines. Additional new measures include an updated nationwide advisory bulletin and research solicitations to strengthen current pipeline safety. According to PHMSA, this…

On May 12, the Third District Court of Appeal belatedly ordered partially published an opinion it had filed on April 20, 2022, reversing the trial court’s judgment upholding the EIR for lead agency Siskiyou County’s approval of Crystal Geyser Water Company’s water bottling plant project.  We Advocate Through Environmental Review, et al. v. County of Siskiyou, et al. (Crystal Geyser Water Company, Real Party in Interest) (2022) ____ Cal.App.5th ______.  The decision followed close on the heels of the Court’s earlier decision in a related CEQA case brought by the same plaintiff and involving the same project in which it held that the City of Mount Shasta, acting as a responsible agency issuing a wastewater permit for the project, had violated CEQA by failing to make the required Public Resources Code § 21081 findings regarding potentially significant effects identified in the EIR.  (My May 16, 2022 post on that earlier case can be found here.)

On April 28, 2022, the California Attorney General launched an investigation into the “fossil fuel and petrochemical industries for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis.”  As a first step, the CA AG issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, “a major source of global plastic pollution, seeking information relating to the company’s…

The agencies regulating industrial chemical processes are taking a second look at modernizing regulations aimed at preventing chemical accidents in the near future.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) standard and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) rule were practically identical for processes containing threshold levels of…