President Trump on Wednesday launched the

At a ceremony at a Detroit-area auto facility after meeting with auto executives, Trump declared his intention to pursue “fair” regulations that “protect and defend” jobs.

Before his remarks, Trump staffers gave background briefings to reporters on his plans to scrap mileage rules approved by President Obama’s EPA in his final weeks on the job. The new rules would require cars and small trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025, up from the present 36 miles per gallon.

Automakers were unhappy with the Obama administration’s speedy decision-making – new rules weren’t required until 2018. They believe the rules will require them to sell vehicles Americans don’t want to buy in an era in which gasoline prices are low and relatively stable because of a heavy increase in domestic oil production. Warning that the new rules would put more than 1 million jobs at risk, automakers have been lobbying Trump since they were enacted.

Brown administration officials have already filed a challenge to Trump’s directive, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Any weakening or delay of the national standards will result in increased harms to our natural resources, our economy, and our people,” the brief asserted.

13 states use California’s tougher standards

But while the president rattled state officials with his actions, he didn’t go as far as some environmentalists feared.

Under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, California was given the right to waive federal vehicle mileage rules in favor of stricter standards because of the state’s severe problems with smog and ozone pollution in Southern California. The waiver allows other states to follow California’s tougher standards. Thirteen do, and as a result about 40 percent of the nation’s residents who buy about 40 percent of vehicles do so under California’s stricter rules, irking automakers who don’t like to have to deal with what are essentially two national standards.

The Trump administration could have tried to end California’s waiver entirely or prevent other states from using the Golden State’s rules. Instead, Reuters reported the administration hopes to work with the state on a compromise.

But that is close to certain to be a nonstarter, given Brown’s and the California Legislature’s approval of a law requiring the state to have greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Achieving that goal appears close to impossible without sharply cutting emissions from the state’s transportation sector, which generates 36 percent of California’s carbon emissions, according to the most recent statistics.

Vehicle emissions rule a potent weapon for state regulators

Stanford environmental law professor Michael Wara said tough vehicle mileage standards have been the state’s strongest tool in combating greenhouse gas emissions.

“California is going to fight, to deploy every resource it has, to keep this stuff, because this is big,” Wara told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wednesday’s developments were foreshadowed by the January confirmation hearing of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, like Trump a climate change skeptic and longtime EPA critic. Under questioning by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-San Francisco, Pruitt refused to say whether the Trump administration supported allowing California to continue to waive federal air pollution rules in favor of tougher standards.

Given that California’s waiver is written into federal law, it is unclear whether the Trump administration could force the state to follow federal rules. In 2008, George W. Bush’s administration challenged new state rules, prompting a lawsuit from then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was joined by 15 other states. But no court decision was forthcoming before Barack Obama succeeded Bush the following year. The Obama administration quickly dropped the challenge.

But there was also some eye-rolling. How could a governor who will be out of office in January 2019 possibly impose binding conditions on future chief executives and Legislatures beyond those established in AB32 and other emission-focused legislation formally adopted by the Assembly and Senate?

Now it turns out that the Legislature’s top attorney — Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine — shares this skepticism. Last week, state Senate Minority Leader Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, released a letter by Boyer-Vine responding to her questions about whether Brown could change state law by fiat.

“We think the determination of a standard for the statewide (greenhouse gas) emissions limit is a fundamental policy decision that only the Legislature can make,” Boyer-Vine wrote. She noted that under state law, the Legislature couldn’t assign sole policy-making authority on the issue to the governor even if it wanted to.

The California Air Resources Board defended the legality of the governor’s order with a statement that didn’t address the specific legal points made by Boyer-Vine.

“While the 2020 limit is an important first step in measuring progress, climate change will not end in 2020 and AB32 explicitly states the intent to ‘maintain and continue reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases beyond 2020,’” a spokesman told the Sacramento Bee.

Echoes of D.C. fights — with one big difference

The emerging battle has crucial similarities to the fights over executive authority in Washington, where Republican lawmakers have backed lawsuits challenging President Obama’s orders on immigration, pollution and other issues. But one big difference is that the Sacramento scrum is over a policy area in which California’s legislative and executive branches are generally in sync: greenhouse gas reduction.

But an Associated Press story about Boyer-Vine’s opinion hinted at why Brown prefers a unilateral approach to either deferring to or working with the Legislature on a measure expanding upon AB32 a decade after its passage:

Overturning the executive order would be a blow to Brown’s effort to establish a legacy and a global identity as a crusader against climate change. …

While Democrats maintain overwhelming control of the Legislature, Brown would face difficulty winning legislative approval for his emissions targets. A group of moderate Democrats in the Assembly has sided with business interests against efforts by Brown and conservation groups to create stronger environmental protections.

“The Legislature should not advance the cap-and-trade program under this dark legal cloud,” said Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

But there’s a twist to this story. Recent coverage suggests that PG&E might not put up a fight when its 40-year federal licenses for Diablo Canyon’s two Westinghouse-made nuclear reactors expire in 2024 and 2025. While PG&E’s website depicts a 20-year extension of the licenses as a no-brainer way to keep supplying clean, non-greenhouse-gas power to more than 3 million people, the company’s dithering on the regulatory front has caught environmentalists’ attention.

This is from a recent Los Angeles Times account:

Although PG&E has asserted that the plant’s continued operation would save its customers as much as $16 billion during the additional 20 years, the cost of bringing Diablo Canyon into compliance with environmental and seismic mandates may in fact not be worth the effort.

 

Energy regulators and advocates have few clues to whether PG&E’s goal is to seek Diablo Canyon’s renewal or find an easy excuse for shutting it down early. “They’re so cagey about the future that I can’t help thinking there’s a strategy here,” says Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney for the consumer watchdog group Turn.

 

Freedman believes the utility’s intention is to delay the renewal proceeding long enough to hamper any opposition. In 2007, the state Public Utilities Commission directed the utility to decide whether to seek renewal at least 10 years in advance of the license expirations, so energy planners would have time to figure out how to replace Diablo Canyon’s output if the plant went dark. Waiting much longer would be “reckless and gambling with the public interest,” the PUC said.

Utility: ‘We’ve got a lot on our plates’

A San Francisco Chronicle report, however, is less conspiratorial in its analysis, depicting PG&E leaders as more interested in other issues — starting with damage control with the utility’s reputation over its pending federal criminal trial:

Once eager to extend Diablo’s licenses, company executives now say they aren’t sure. Since the deadly 2010 explosion of a PG&E natural gas pipeline beneath San Bruno, their focus has been on reforming the company and repairing its image, not relicensing Diablo.

 

And any extension will involve a fight. The plant sits within a maze of earthquake faults, all of them discovered after construction began in 1968. Seismic safety fears have dogged the nuclear industry in California for more than 50 years, forcing PG&E to abandon plans for one of its first reactors.

 

“We’ve got a lot on our plates, and we just don’t need to take on another big public issue right now,” said Tony Earley, PG&E Corp.’s CEO.

 

If Diablo closes, no nuclear plant will take its place. California law forbids building more until federal officials come up with a permanent way to deal with the waste. Thirty-nine years after the law passed, that still hasn’t happened.

This aggravates nuclear power advocates, who thought the deep concerns many have about global warming would lead to a renaissance for nuclear power in California and elsewhere. Instead, Japan’s 2011 disaster at its Fukushima nuclear plant has blunted momentum.

Anti-nuclear activists have spent years comparing conditions at Diablo Canyon with those in Fukushima, suggesting its location on or near several seismic fault lines could lead to a Fukushima-style tragedy along the Central California coast. But the claims of close parallels have generally been discounted by conventional California media.

CAFNR / flickr

Legislators seek to establish a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which would be funded by the cap and trade program adopted by the California Air Resources Board under AB32, and appropriate those dollars to the California Energy Commission to subsidize biomass power generation in the state.

Assembly Bill 590, authored by Assemblymembers Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, and Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, passed the Assembly unanimously last month with bipartisan support. The bill aims to add incentives so that agriculture and forest waste can be used to create energy through biomass facilities.

“Biomass” describes multiple sources of fuel, such as trees, waste from construction, wood and agriculture (corn husks, rice hulls, peanut shells, etc.), fuel crops and even sewage sludge and manure. According to the EPA, since biomass deals with energy sources that would otherwise be considered waste, but will “continue to be produced by society,” it is considered a renewable resource.

California is home to some 132 biomass facilities with a total gross capacity of 985 MW. The California Energy Commission reported that, in 2014, “6,572 gigawatt hours of electricity in homes and businesses was produced from biomass” – that translates to 3.33 percent of the total electricity production in California.

In addition to energy conversion, biomass production helps prevent wildfires by removing forest waste and disposing it in a controlled facility.

During a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Assemblyman Dahle pointed to “catastrophic wildfires” that are “burning up and destroying our watersheds, our wildlife and emitting carbon.” Decayed forests also emit methane, another greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

But biomass plants are struggling to stay operative in California. The bill, according to Dahle, “sets a policy in place that biomass is very important to California and the energy industry” and brings state funding to help offset facility and treatment costs. He emphasized that AB590 is not about “opening up new plants” but “trying to keep the ones that we have available, running.”

Julie Malinowski-Ball, a spokeswoman for the California Biomass Energy Alliance, a sponsor of the bill, said it was vital to “ensure these facilities can operate long into the future.” She warned that without the biomass power, Californians “will see an increase in air quality degradation across the areas where these facilities are located.”

Sierra County Supervisor Lee Adams said during the hearing, “Not only is biomass energy a clean form of energy to reduce greenhouse gas, it’s also vital to the completion of forest management projects in California. …Without someone to address the biomass issue, forest management projects cannot move forward.”

Under current law, biomass is not subsidized like other forms of renewable energy. According to the bill’s supporters, the cost of removing woody material from the forest is often too expensive to keep up with the fuel treatment needed, and results in contributing to the recent influx of catastrophic wildfires. Biomass processing is also needed to dispose of uprooted almond and orange trees, often the target of blame in California’s record-setting drought.

But opponents allege that biomass incineration generally “increases rather than decreases GHG emissions when looked at from a life cycle approach.” Ingrid Bostrum, an attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, said during the hearing, “Using GHG reduction funds is especially inappropriate here,” based on the belief that the biomass industry “actually generally increases GHG emissions.

She also brought up the point that biomass incineration also increases the emissions of copollutants, particulate matter and smog, and exacerbates asthma and other ailments. “Many biomass facilities are located in the Central Valley,” she noted, “which is already incredibly over burdened with its air quality problems, high rates of asthma and high rates of vulnerable populations.”

Further opposition said that the “state should not subsidizing financially unsustainable industries, especially ones that are already receiving federal subsidies.”

But Assemblyman Salas pointed out that without biomass facilities, agricultural waste “would otherwise be burned in an open field that would cause more pollutants” would have a greater “detrimental effect on public health.”

“This is a measure that would help offset some of those air pollution risks, diverting waste to create renewable energy, which is what the state/Leg wants to incentivize,” he stated during the hearing.

Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, the chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications, said after public comment that without these facilities, Central Valley residents “would drive around and witness open fires and billowing smoke.” He said it was “unfortunate,” but incineration “goes hand-in-hand with agricultural development.”

In order to appease opposition concerns, an amendment was proposed to award funds only to specific projects that demonstrate a net reduction in greenhouse gases.

AB590 passed the committee unopposed and has since been referred to the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality.

Assembly Bill 464: Transaction and use taxes: maximum combined rate. Authored by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, this bill would:

• Raise the local sales and use tax limit from 2 percent to 3 percent

Senate Bill 3: Minimum Wage: adjustment. Authored by state Senator Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, this bill would:

• Increase the minimum wage to $13 per hour by July 1, 2017
• Require annual increases beginning July 1, 2019

Senate Bill 32: California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006: emissions limit. Authored by state Senator Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, this bill would:

• Extend the provisions of Assembly Bill 32 (2006) until 2050
• Increases the GHG (Green House Gas) reduction to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050

Senate Bill 350: Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015. Authored by state Senator Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, this bill would implement Governor Brown’s green energy plan (50-50-50) by mandating:

• 50 percent of all energy must come from select renewable sources by 2030
• 50 percent reduction in oil usage by vehicles by 2030
• 50 percent more energy efficiency in buildings by 2030

But we haven’t seen some crucial context about Brown’s latest energy policy and about how the state has done in meeting the primary original goal of AB 32, the landmark 2006 state law that dictates the use of a cap-and-trade system in which emission credits are bought and sold to try to limit the gases that are believed to contribute to global warming.

The first is that business groups listened to the governor’s speech last week and came away believing that as with fracking, he is signalling he’s not necessarily in sync with the National Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club. This is from a new story in the trade publication “Inside Cal EPA,” which is not available free online:

As the debate has begun, many industry groups are seeking to ensure that any new “second generation” climate and energy programs emphasize “affordable” energy, “achievable” goals, accountability for regulators and other similar approaches.

In his inaugural address, Brown appeared to acknowledge the industry concerns. “How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution. It will require enormous innovation, research and investment. And we will need active collaboration at every stage with our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and officials at all levels,” he said.

‘Industry groups welcomed Brown’s note of caution’

“Inside Cal EPA” reported that the governor’s green-energy speech was seen as reassuring in what may seem as some unlikely corners.

Industry groups welcomed Brown’s note of caution, with California Manufacturers & Technology Association President Dorothy Rothrock underscoring Brown’s remarks by saying “our efforts to inspire technologies to reduce climate change emissions must do so without harming the vibrancy of our economy, so we must ensure that we control costs for manufacturers and not further increase the already highest electricity rates of any industrial state.”

 That’s not how the governor’s speech was described in newspaper accounts.

Meanwhile, the coverage of the speech outlining a policy billed as a follow-up to AB 32 didn’t provide much historical context for the original measure. It imposes the cap-and-trade system as part of a requirement that the state get one-third of its electricity from cleaner-but-costlier sources by 2020. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former state Senate President Darrell Steinberg, among many others, now consistently depict the law as having a primary intention of helping California develop green jobs and green industries.

But the first four “findings and declarations” in the text of the law don’t mention economic development as a goal at all. Sections 38501(a) and (b) outline the threat that global warming poses to California’s environment and core components of its economy.

AB 32 text: It will have ‘far-reaching effects’ on world

And the next two sections make explicit AB 32’s primary goal.

(c) California has long been a national and international leader on energy conservation and environmental stewardship efforts, including the areas of air quality protections, energy efficiency requirements, renewable energy standards, natural resource conservation, and greenhouse gas emission standards for passenger vehicles. The program established by this division will continue this tradition of environmental leadership by placing California at the forefront of national and international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

(d) National and international actions are necessary to fully address the issue of global warming. However, action taken by California to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will have far-reaching effects by encouraging other states, the federal government, and other countries to act.

The law did go on to say that AB 32 would help California’s tech economy by positioning the state to benefit from “national and international efforts to control greenhouse gases.”

But that hasn’t happened since 2006. Instead, as former Obama economics adviser Larry Summers wrote recently in The Washington Post, the rest of the world mostly gave up on a cap-and-trade approach as clunky and inefficient in reducing greenhouse gases. A simple carbon tax is viewed as a much smarter approach than the one California adopted with the stated intent of changing the world.

A compost experiment that began seven years ago on a Marin County ranch has uncovered a disarmingly simple and benign way to remove carbon dioxide from the air, holding the potential to turn the vast rangeland of California and the world into a weapon against climate change.

The concept grew out of a unique Bay Area alignment of a biotech fortune, a world-class research institution and progressive-minded Marin ranchers. It has captured the attention of the White House, the Brown administration, the city of San Francisco, officials in Brazil and China, and even House Republicans, who may not believe in climate change but like the idea that “carbon farming” could mean profits for ranchers.

Experiments on grazing lands in Marin County and the Sierra foothills of Yuba County by UC Berkeley bio-geochemist Whendee Silver showed that a one-time dusting of compost substantially boosted the soil’s carbon storage. The effect has persisted over six years, and Silver believes the carbon will remain stored for at least several decades.

The experiments were instigated by John Wick and his wife, Peggy, heiress to the Amgen biotech fortune, on a 540-acre ranch they bought in Nicasio. …

The research showed that if compost from green waste — everything from household food scraps to dairy manure — were applied over just 5 percent of the state’s grazing lands, the soil could capture a year’s worth of greenhouse gas emissions from California’s farm and forestry industries.

Project recognized by White House

This sounds almost too good to be true, but the article emphasizes the project’s bona fides and notes that it has already been recognized by the White House, among many other signs that it is legit. And there’s still more good news.

Unlike high-tech geo-engineering schemes to pull excess carbon dioxide from the air and stick it in old coal mines or under the ocean, applying compost is a simple way of creating what scientists call a positive feedback loop.

Plants pull carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis and transfer a portion of the carbon to the soil through their roots. Soil microorganisms then turn the carbon into a stable form commonly known as humus.

This not only sequesters the carbon but improves the soil’s fertility, boosting plant growth and capturing more carbon while also improving the soil’s ability to absorb and retain water. …

Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University … considers it essential to restore carbon to the world’s soils, regardless of whether it combats climate change. “The other reasons are much more pressing,” he said. “Food security, water quality, biodiversity, other environmental issues are related to soil. And in addition to all that, it does also offset some of the carbon emitted by fossil fuel combustion.”

Will greens obstruct promising technology?

What’s interesting here is how greens will react if this approach is remotely as promising as it looks.

If they really are driven just by a goal of protecting the natural environment, they will embrace this as an obvious, easy way to contain the problems posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

But if they are the greens who sometimes seem to see environmentalism as akin to a religion in which fossil fuels are the devil, they won’t like this at all — because it will take away their key arguments against fossil fuels.

And if it really does work, between compost spreading and fracking, the 21st century will be as defined by fossil fuels as the 21st century.

The Economist has become the latest publication to document how the newly refined and improved energy exploration technique using precisely aimed underground water cannons works not just to free up previously inaccessible oil and natural gas but for climate-friendly geothermal resources as well.

Depending on your point of view, hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — is either the future of clean, natural gas or an environmental apocalypse. Fracking liberates gas trapped underground by drilling sideways from vertical well-shafts into horizontal layers of shale rock. Millions of gallons of a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals are injected into the horizontal wells at high pressure, fracturing the shale, releasing the gas — and causing violent protests in Europe and parts of America.

Geothermal energy, by contrast, has yet to stir much controversy. Most geothermal plants are located where water has seeped down into the Earth’s crust, been heated and forced back up through permeable rock. Drill a well to between 3,000 and 12,000 feet, and the searing water and steam can be released to drive generators.

Geothermal is a minnow among power sources. America has the world’s highest installed capacity of geothermal generating plants—3.4 gigawatts’ worth at last count (see first chart) — but they generate only 0.4% of its electricity (see second chart). New “enhanced geothermal systems” (EGS), however, look set to make geothermal a bigger contributor — and potentially as controversial as shale.

The industry may dislike the comparison, but EGS is geothermal fracking. Millions of gallons of water and chemicals are injected into mostly vertical wells at relatively high pressure, and the combination of cold-meets-hot, pressure and chemistry shears the deep, hot rock. This creates new “fracture networks” through which water can be pumped, heated and sent back to the surface to generate power. Conventional geothermal wells cost at least $5m to develop, and about half fail. The new technique can reduce the failure rate and extend the size and life of existing geothermal fields. In time, think EGS fans, it will allow geothermal fields to be established wherever there is suitable hot rock.

Who knew? CA has world’s largest geothermal plant

This is much bigger news for California than you may think. While the fact is not well known, the state has the world’s largest commercial geothermal operation at The Geysers in Lake and Sonoma counties northeast of San Francisco.

California also has one of the nation’s largest potential geothermal resources, centered in the Salton Sea area, and the Legislature is now considering a push to force the state to essentially subsidize development there:

California’s poorest county wants a bigger share of the state’s $16-billion wholesale electricity market.

Imperial County, which stretches east of San Diego County to Arizona, is seeking a special deal from the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown that would require electric utilities, such as Southern California Edison Co., to buy extra alternative energy from geothermal power plants that are run by naturally occurring steam from deep in the earth.

The steam already is used to drive turbines that make electricity near the Salton Sea.

“Geothermal is the most reliable energy source out there,” said state Sen. Ben Hueso (D-San Diego), whose district includes Imperial County. He is the author of the bill requiring utilities to contract to buy up to 500 megawatts of electricity by 2024.

The purchases would spur investments that could inject as much as $3 billion into the Imperial County economy over the next 30 years, Hueso predicted.

Imperial County companies already produce about 600 megawatts of geothermal power, and they have the potential to more than quadruple that output, local boosters say.

Let’s save the planet, but with conditions

That’s from the Aug. 10 L.A. Times.

What’s funny/intriguing/sad about geothermal is how it illustrates the flippancy and unseriousness of the environmental movement. If reducing greenhouse gases to prevent a climate apocalypse is the most important issue in the world, then of course geothermal should be enthusiastically embraced; it’s already the fourth-largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. and could be far bigger with aggressive development.

But unlike wind or solar power plants, geothermal energy plants have a gritty industrial feel. They also often smell. When I went to college in Hawaii in the 1980s, the plant on the Big Island was notorious for stinking up a beautiful corner of rain forest in Puna. It still is.

This shouldn’t matter to a noble environmentalist trying to save the planet. But it does.

By Katy Grimes

The California Air Resources Board just named the American Carbon Registry and the Climate Action Reserve as California’s two new “carbon overseers” for the state’s cap-and-trade program. The “carbon overseers” phrase commonly is used for them at CARB hearings.

Being named as the “offset project registries” allows these groups to oversee and scrutinize projects aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. They also could benefit financially because becoming a carbon overseer will allows them to expand their operation significantly.

The registries’ role is to vet the clean energy projects, CARB spokesman Dave Clegern said in a press release.

And if that is not daunting enough, CARB has also hired a team of 60 inspectors to oversee projects.

Climate Action Reserve is the largest offsets registry in North America, with nearly 500 offset projects in four U.S. states and Mexico, and has certified more than 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emission reductions. But according to an environmental consultant who asked to remain anonymous, Climate Action Reserve is an organization largely grown as a result of the passage and implementation of AB 32. Climate Action Reserve was steadily and quietly built up since 2006 to pounce on cap-and-trade implementation, according to the environmental consultant.

At a hearing in May about AB 32 implementation, Gary Gero of Climate Action Reserve called for even more radical caps and environmental policies including forest protocols, livestock protocols and ozone protocols.  Gero said the group is looking to be “the largest liquid North American carbon market.”

It appears their wish is about to come true.

Adding to California’s regulatory burden

The cap-and-trade regulation includes an arbitrary but enforceable greenhouse gas emission “cap” on businesses, whose level will be dropped every year. CARB will distribute allowances, also known as carbon permits or carbon credits, equal to the emission allowed under the cap. Businesses are required to purchase these permits or credits in order to continue doing business in California.

But businesses which exceed this emission cap will end up paying hefty penalties to the state.

CARB describes cap-and-trade acts as an “economy-wide backstop,” built on the promise to work with other greenhouse gas emission markets and trade allowances. However, CARB sets all of the carbon allowances. It’s like being both the banker and real estate broker in the game of Monopoly.

Businesses in the state have tried to get CARB to explain how cap-and-trade will impact them as they suddenly are being forced to implement the new regulatory programs. But CARB merely plays down any impacts, and has insisted that the impacts will be minimal.

Whom will CA trade with?

California’s cap-and-trade program was supposed to be an integral part of a larger system called the Western Climate Initiative, made up of many states.

But last year, New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Utah all pulled out of the Western Climate Initiative, leaving only California and three Canadian provinces. Despite the U.S. exodus, California formally launched its own cap-and-trade system on Jan. 1, 2012, with a very ambitious target of carbon emissions reductions of 80 percent by 2050.

California’s only remaining official partner in the Western Climate Initiative is the Canadian province of Quebec. The province is working to launch its own scheme in 2013, and recently formally announced plans to link with California for carbon trading.

Serious flaws in trading

If California’s carbon trading partners offer more carbon allowances to their businesses and industries than California does, it will hurt our competitive advantage, just as higher in-state taxes already hurt California businesses competing against businesses in other states.

And it is very important to note that the California-Quebec relationship is not trading apples-to-apples. Quebec gets 97 percent of its energy from hydroelectric sources. Conversely, California is trying to reduce traditional electricity production, including hydroelectric power, and instead replace it with as much “renewable” energy as possible from wind and solar, algae and ethanol.

But the renewable energy sources are unreliable, and very expensive. Ironically, California will have to maintain a full backup system of coal-powered electricity because of the unreliable alternative energy.

Energy experts have been saying in recent months that California’s energy demand is too much for the alternative energy and lower usage standards.

Additionally, Quebec, population 8 million, has only 80 regulated industries under its cap-and-trade program; California, population 38 million, regulates more than 300 industries.

 What is CARB selling?

Businesses, legislators and the public have repeatedly asked CARB several important questions:

* What are California’s businesses actually being asked to buy with the mandatory purchases of carbon credits?

* What about the economic consequences of forcing California businesses to buy nothing? And are these consequences intended or not?

* What does CARB really want? What are they trying to accomplish? If the goal really is to lower carbon emissions in California then clean hydroelectric power and natural gas will do it.

Members of the California Air Resources Board refuse to answer these questions, and instead continue stubbornly to push for cap-and-trade.