Elfin Forest Harmony Grove Town Council v. County of San Diego

The California Court of Appeal ruled that greenhouse gas mitigation measures imposed by San Diego County for a 111-acre mixed-use development lacked objective performance criteria to ensure their effectiveness and that they improperly deferred mitigation. The court found that the mitigation measures—which required the project applicant to purchase and retire carbon credits to offset the project’s construction and operations emissions—shared some of the same deficiencies that the Court of Appeals identified in a <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/sierra-club-v-county-of-san-diego-2/">case</a> in which it invalidated mitigation measures provided for in the County’s Climate Action Plan. In particular, the court said the absence of protocols to ensure that carbon offsets were real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable was a “fatal deficiency.” Because the measures did not provide reasonable assurance that emissions reductions would occur, the court found they were invalid under the California Environmental Quality Act.