Comment Log Display

California Air Resources Board
P.O. Box 2815
Sacramento, CA  95812

RE:   California Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Dear Chairman Nichols and Board Members:

Sierra Club California believes reducing the carbon intensity of
transportation fuels should play an important part in cutting
overall greenhouse gas emissions. We compliment the Air Resources
Board for recognizing that we need to simultaneously green the
fuels used in our cars and trucks, improve vehicle technologies,
and reduce vehicle miles travelled.

Adoption of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard will protect California
from the dirtiest fuels. Production of high-carbon intensity fuels,
including those derived from Canadian and U.S. tar sands, oil
shale, and liquid coal, will emit as much as three to six times GHG
emissions as conventional oil, threatening to undermine
California’s many efforts to reduce transportation emissions. The
development of these ever-dirtier fossil-fuel sources to produce
transportation fuels has enormous consequences not only for our
climate, but the air we breathe, the water we drink, and our
wildlands and wildlife in North America.  We applaud CARB’s intent
to provide additional pathways that distinguish between both lower
carbon intensity fuels and higher carbon intensity fuels. Doing so
will help ensure accurate accounting of emissions and establish a
level playing field for all fuels. 

We urge the Board to approve an LCFS that reduces greenhouse gas
emissions from transportation fuels without damaging California’s
public lands, sensitive ecosystems, water or air quality.
Therefore, we ask the Board to: 

•	Include the impacts of using land to produce biofuels. For
California to be a global leader in reducing pollution from fuels,
the LCFS must account for all major sources of emissions.  For some
biofuels, emissions from indirect land use change (iLUC) are a
major source of pollution; California must include these emissions
for the LCFS to be credible.  We therefore appreciate that ARB has
accounted for iLUC in the proposed regulation. 
•	Include the water impacts of producing biofuels.  
The standard should factor in the costs of polluting groundwater
and the stress on our water supply from biofuels production. 
California must avoid repeating the mistake of MTBE, which was
added to gasoline to reduce air pollution but caused a tremendous
groundwater pollution problem. ARB could determine appropriate
costs for water impacts by using a probabilistic (insurance)
approach, or allow the insurance industry to make the calculations
and provide actual insurance to cover future groundwater cleanups. 


•	Ensure the LCFS provides real pollution reductions and ushers in
a new generation of ultra-low carbon fuels.  The LCFS must be a
platform for bringing ultra-low carbon fuels into the state’s
energy system, not just a mechanism to increase deployment of
modestly lower-carbon fuels. Therefore, we request that ARB include
ultra-low carbon fuel requirements. California must ensure that the
LCFS generates true reductions in global warming pollution beyond
current state and federal laws, and puts the state on a trajectory
towards meeting our long-term emission reduction goals.  If fuel
providers meet federal fuel requirements by merely shuffling low
carbon biofuels into California, no real carbon reductions will
result from the LCFS, and fuel providers may have little incentive
to develop ultra-low carbon alternatives.  
•	Remove Incentives for Landfilling Organic Wastes.  The landfill
gas to Compressed Natural Gas pathway fails to account for fugitive
landfill emissions and should be re-evaluated before being adopted
as a fuel pathway within the LCFS. We ask that additional technical
review and modifications to the landfill to fuels pathway be made
before final adoption of the pathway.

In addition, the approach to fuels developed from waste lacks
balance because it does not provide a pathway to produce fuel from
processes involving alternatives to landfilling organic materials.
To level the playing field, we ask that the Board give staff
direction to develop a fuel pathway for fuels from dedicated
anaerobic digesters. Development of the additional pathway will
provide an alternative path for waste to be used, in a manner that
reduces landfilling and that further supports the multiple
environmental objectives of ARB and AB 32.

•	Ensure minimum land safeguards.  The LCFS should include a
definition of renewable biomass to help prevent unintended
incentives for fuel production that result in ecological harm to
our federal lands, forests, and other sensitive native ecosystems.


•	Provide incentives for sustainable fuels.  The final regulation
should direct ARB staff to develop metrics to ensure the LCFS
provides incentives for the development of broadly sustainable
alternative fuels, while avoiding unintended support for fuels with
negative impacts on our forests, agricultural lands, water, and
other important natural resources. 
•	Protect air quality and public health. To avoid an unintended
worsening of air quality and threats to public health from new fuel
production or fueling infrastructure, the LCFS should include
requirements for state and local review to ensure that the
appropriate mitigation measures are taken. In addition, the LCFS
should require a comprehensive public health analysis, using
updated tools and data, of the fuels and infrastructure used to
comply with the regulation.

Thank you for your work to make California a leader in reducing
the pollution that causes global warming, and for your
consideration of these comments and suggestions.