State rules to tackle climate issues: The air board is set to adopt the first part of its plan to reduce emissions

 

Jun 21 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jim Downing The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

The greenhouse gases are about to hit the fan.

In Los Angeles today, the state Air Resources Board is scheduled to adopt the first detailed emissions-cutting regulations under California's umbrella global warming law, Assembly Bill 32.

While AB 32 was signed into law with bipartisan fanfare last fall, the state's first steps in implementing it this spring have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum.

AB 32 requires the state to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That's equivalent to reducing gasoline consumption by an average of 800 million gallons a year, each year, for the next 13 years.

That's something no industrial economy has ever done, and many environmental groups say air board staff hasn't been aggressive enough with the "early action measures" up for a vote today.

These plans, to become law by, 2010, offer the first opportunity for tangible emissions cuts under AB 32. But state regulators have presented the air board's executive panel with proposals for just two new measures: additional controls on gases released by landfills, and a ban on the sale of automotive air-conditioning refrigerant to do-it-yourselfers.

In addition, the staff proposal endorses Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to reduce the carbon content of vehicle fuels 10 percent by 2020. A list of 36 other strategies is included on a lower-priority list.

These are the key measures scheduled to be voted on today.

Air board staff members have defended the short list of early action measures by noting that the board is moving forward on a wide variety of emissions-reduction strategies. The adoption of a short list of strategies today doesn't prohibit the board from putting other proposals on a fast track in the future, said spokeswoman Gennet Paauwe.

Still, many in the environmental community see the early action list as a missed opportunity.

"To have such modest recommendations just was a huge concern for us," said Diane Takvorian, executive director of Environmental Health Coalition, a grass-roots group based near San Diego.

In several public letters, national environmental groups have encouraged the board to add fuel-efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks and cement-industry emissions controls to the list.

Meanwhile, groups representing the refrigerant and landfill industries say they've been singled out unfairly for regulation.

And there's a twist: In the case of the retail air-conditioning refrigerant ban, industry has won the backing of the state environmental justice committee that advises the air board's executive body on climate-change issues.

"The proposal is very regressive," said Jane Williams, the committee's co-chair.

She said it would effectively ban low-income residents from doing their own maintenance on vehicle air-conditioners.

Refrigerants are greenhouse gases thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. State staff has cited the benefit of keeping drivers from endlessly refilling their leaky air conditioning systems (refrigerant will last forever unless the system is leaking).

Williams' committee recommended that the board focus on other measures that would not have a disproportionate impact on the poor, such as collecting refrigerant from scrapped cars and cutting leakage from refrigerated shipping containers.

The retail refrigerant industry plans to present a compromise to the board today in hopes of averting the proposed ban, spokesman Norm Plotkin said. A $2-a-can fee would fund a leakproof can design and a deposit program to give consumers an incentive to recycle used cans, which can contain significant amounts of refrigerant.

The outcome of today's deliberations will set the stage for future debates over how the state is going to meet the AB 32 targets.

Behind the scenes, positioning is well under way over the shape of a "cap and trade" system, which would create a market to trade rights to emit a set limit of greenhouse gases.

AB 32 does not require such a system, but the concept has many powerful supporters, including the Schwarzenegger administration.

But Williams and others argue that any market-based system is likely to have at least some serious flaws that will keep the state from meeting the emissions targets.

They had hoped that strong early action regulations would generate reductions even if a future market system fails.