Posts Tagged: arb

Opinion

Future uncertain over cap-and-trade auctions

A powerplant at sunset. (Photo: David Crockett)

OPINION: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently released the latest quarterly allowance auction results for California’s cap-and-trade program. While demand rose compared to the previous auction in May, a majority of allowances still went unsold due to uncertainty over the program’s future past 2020 – suggesting policymakers should take action, not solace, from better August auction results.

Opinion

The attack of the super-pollutants

A powerplant at sunset. (Photo: David Crockett)

OPINION: As Hollywood brings a new crop of super-hero movies to our theaters, state policymakers are considering action against a group of particularly nefarious villains known as “super-pollutants.” These contaminants, including black carbon and methane, are both rapidly warming our planet and also damaging human health.

News

Economy up, greenhouse gas down

A California industrial complex in action. (Photo: Tom Grundy, via Shutterstock)

California’s greenhouse gases declined even as the state’s economy expanded, according to state and federal agencies tracking the numbers. State air-quality regulators reported that carbon emissions fell by 1.5 million metric tons in 2013, while the economy experienced 2 percent growth, greater than the national average.

News

Major new cuts eyed for greenhouse gases

The power plant in El Segundo, Calif. (Photo: Don Solomon, via Shutterstock)

Nearly a decade after California’s landmark law curbing greenhouse gases was signed, a key author of AB 32 wants to dramatically boost the crackdown on climate-changing carbon emissions over the next 35 years.

Opinion

Indirect land use change: ARB needs evidence, not theory

OPINION: When the Greek philosopher Aristotle presented fellow scholars with empirical evidence and scientific proof that the world was round—not flat—around 330 BC, he was called a lunatic and a charlatan. More than two millennia later, Sacramento has its own version of the Flat Earth Society — the California Air Resources Board (ARB). Only this time, the debate isn’t over the shape of the Earth; it’s over an obscure regulatory concept known as Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), a component of the state’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS).

News

Senate leader: No delay in cap-and-trade plan

A motorist pumps gas at a Costco station in South San Francisco. ((Photo: Broken Sphere)

An attempt to delay inclusion of transportation fuels in California’s program to fight greenhouse gases has been blocked by the leader of the Senate, who said any delays would harm the public’s health and diminish air quality. Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said the bill, AB 69 by Assemblyman Henry Perea, D-Fresno, would not receive a hearing before the legislative session adjourns on Aug. 31, a move that virtually assures the measure’s demise.

Opinion

The fallacy of forest ‘offsets’

Banana trees in the forest at Agua Azul waterfall, Chiapas, Mexico. (Photo: Elisa Loco)

OPINION: When it comes to reducing California’s climate emissions, should we allow companies to pollute our local communities, while paying our neighbors in Mexico to clean up the carbon? Should we gamble our climate policies on saving trees in other countries that can easily be destroyed by forest fires, just so that we can indulge in our own emissions instead of reducing them responsibly?

News

ARB, Tesla at odds over rebate cuts for electric vehicles

New Teslas at the company's factory in Fremont. Photo: Steve Jurvetson

Electric vehicles costing more than $60,000 may be eliminated from a major rebate program and the rebates themselves would be reduced to a fifth of their current level – moves that would cut popular Tesla Motors’ models from the rebates.

Opinion

Cap-and-trade cost increases on hold

Many large employers in California were scheduled for massive greenhouse gas (GHG) “cap-and-trade” cost increases starting in 2015.  Now state regulators propose to delay any increase until 2018 at the earliest.   This is good news for manufacturers and thousands of California workers with high wage manufacturing jobs.  Food processors, consumer products firms, aerospace, chemical and

News

ARB fines nine companies under greenhouse gas law

State officials have fined nine companies for violating California’s greenhouse gas law, which requires facilities to annually report their emissions.

The fines totaled $285,000, with the largest single penalty, $120,000, levied against ExxonMobil, the Air Resources Board announced.

“Accurate reporting of greenhouse gas emissions is the foundation of our efforts to reduce carbon pollution from

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