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US Appeals Court Says California Can Set its Own Low Carbon Fuel Standard:
Late last week, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit published an opinion (PDF) stating that California's regulation of fuel sales based on a lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions did not violate federal commerce rules.
Since 2011, California has had a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program, which requires fuel sellers to reduce their fuel's carbon intensity by certain deadlines. If oil, ethanol, or other fuel sellers can't meet those deadlines, they can buy credits from companies that have complied with the standard.
California measures "fuel intensity" over the lifecycle of the fuel, so oil extracted from tar sands (which might require a lot of processing) would be penalized more than lighter oil that requires minimal processing. Ethanol made with coal would struggle to meet its carbon intensity goals more than ethanol made from gas.
Plaintiffs representing the ethanol and oil industries have challenged these rules in the court system. Most recently, they challenged California's 2015 version of the rules. (In September 2018, the state's Air Resources Board announced new amendments to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard rules, but those are not discussed in the 9th Circuit's most recent opinion.)
[...] The opinion noted:
The California legislature is rightly concerned with the health and welfare of humans living in the State of California... These persons may be subjected, for example, to crumbling or swamped coastlines, rising water, or more intense forest fires caused by higher temperatures and related droughts, all of which many in the scientific communities believe are caused or intensified by the volume of greenhouse gas emissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @12:26AM
Of course business don't run away from profit. They do run away from losses, though. At some point, the successive layer of regulation makes doing business, in a location or an industry, no longer profitable. At that point, the business simply stops. It can move, stop doing the regulated activity, or go bankrupt.
Perhaps this regulation will not stop the fuel producers. It probably won't. Nor will the next one. Probably not even the one after that. But there is a point at which it will no longer be profitable to produce a particular blend demanded by California -- and they will have to stop producing it.
But I'm sure they'll have all the solar panels and windmills they need by then. Won't be a problem. Don't worry about it.