Communities for a Better Environment v. California Air Resources Board

Two lawsuits were filed challenging the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) approval of amendments to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. One lawsuit, brought by Communities for a Better Environment, alleged that the amendments would “lock in decades of subsidies for polluting fuels without the required analysis and mitigation of their wide-ranging environmental harms.” The petition alleged that CARB “brushed aside” evidence of significant harms from crop-based biofuels, production of which would increase under the amendments. The petition also alleged that the amendments would expand production of hydrogen produced from methane, “despite the evidence that such production emits GHGs and other air pollutants and undermines the production of cleaner hydrogen alternatives,” and that the amendments would subsidize “unlimited growth of direct air capture” to remove carbon from the atmosphere, which CARB’s modeling allegedly showed would become more cost-effective than reducing fossil fuels, “perversely prolonging fossil fuel use in California.” The petition asserted violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and asked the court to set aside the approval of deficient provisions of the amendments. The second <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/defensores-del-valley-central-para-el-aire-agua-limpio-v-california-air-resources-board/">petition</a> also asserted that CARB failed to comply with CEQA and focused on CARB’s alleged failure to consider the environmental impacts of factory farm expansion that the amendments would cause by increasing incentives for “avoided methane crediting.”