CALIFORNIA: Air Resources Board tackles Global Warming

Now that the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act has been signed, it is time for the state legislature to pass bills that will enable AB32 to be implemented.

Who will execute the act's provisions? Turns out, it will fall primarily on the California Air Resources Board (with the appropriate acronym "CARB").

What industries will feel the heavy breath of CARB? According to Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraug:

The legislation does not limit the air board's discretion in deciding which industries and companies to target. But officials expect that, at least initially, most of the attention will be focused on five major sources of greenhouse gases: electricity generation, oil and gas extraction, oil and gas refineries, cement production and landfills.

Using a health analogy, California's entrenched waste management and wasted energy status quo is the disease - air polluton is the noxious symptom. Private enterprise and public utility deployment of clean biomass conversion technologies (CTs) offers a wealth of cures.

It is difficult to imagine that CARB will be able to levy and enforce fines on companies for failure to comply with their mandates if the target violators' willingness to deploy soutions has been straight-jacketed by outdated waste management regulations and permitting procedures.

Hopefully a motivated CARB will have success bringing some heat on the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee (NRC) within the next few years to free the deployment of biomass conversion technologies. Changing some of the most critical waste regulations has been the responsiblity of the NRC. The sad history of committee inertia over CTs (AB 1090 and AB 2118), which would have legitimized clean CTs in the state years ago, should frustrate CARB as it has the broad range of reform supporters throughout California.

Below are excerpts from Weintraub's excellent column describing the challenge ahead for CARB...

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Air board will do the real work on global warming
By Daniel Weintraub - Sacramento Bee Columnist

The legislation California enacted last month to seize for itself a leading role in the fight against global warming is only the beginning of what will likely be five years of intense, behind-the-scenes battles over just how to reduce greenhouse gases to the level emitted in 1990, when California's population and its economy were much smaller than they are today.

AB 32 was titled the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. But the bill does little more than establish the goal of reducing the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent below levels now projected for 2020. That's about 174 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which, by volume, is equivalent to filling 64 Empire State Buildings from the lobby to the tower above the observation deck.

Most of the heavy lifting will be done by the Air Resources Board, an 11-member panel that includes 10 citizen regulators and one full-time chairman appointed by the governor. The legislation grants the board extraordinary powers to set policies, draw up regulations, lead the enforcement effort and levy fees to finance it all and fines to punish violators.

The board's first comprehensive plan for how the state will meet that goal is due by January 2009. That document is supposed to spell out how much of the reduction will come from which industries. It will also describe how much of the reduction will be achieved through direct regulation of business practices and how much through a market in which companies can purchase the right to pollute from other firms that have reduced their emissions by more than the required amount.

Chuck Shulach, who is managing the greenhouse gas reduction program for the air board, said the 2009 plan will be a kind of bridge between the general legislation lawmakers adopted last month and the ultimate, detailed regulations that will force companies to change the way they do business.

"That plan is the place in which we will get very specific about which sources and sectors would be regulated in what fashion, and how many tons of reductions we expect to achieve," Shulach said.

The legislation does not limit the air board's discretion in deciding which industries and companies to target. But officials expect that, at least initially, most of the attention will be focused on five major sources of greenhouse gases: electricity generation, oil and gas extraction, oil and gas refineries, cement production and landfills.

The effect of the new rules will not end at the state's borders. The state's utilities, for example, will be held responsible for carbon dioxide emitted by coal plants elsewhere if those plants supply electricity to California. And California companies will probably be free to buy emission credits -- the right to pollute -- from other sources around the world.

These are revolutionary changes, breathtaking in their scope. The technical, legal and regulatory grind to come will represent one of the greatest social engineering projects ever undertaken by state government. It will deserve close scrutiny.



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