Last month, I wrote about the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) big changes to the state’s cap-and-invest program. The changes largely weakened the program, but CARB argues this is necessary to fight the rising cost of living. In the blog, I noted that climate activists criticized these amendments. Now, at least one climate activist group is taking CARB to court. The plaintiffs allege that CARB failed to follow appropriate administrative procedure and that its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was deficient, stating in their Complaint:
“The Final EIA fails to adequately disclose or analyze the Project’s impacts on the environment, including but not limited to, the Project’s impacts on human health, greenhouse gases, air quality, utilities and service systems, and energy use. Much of the Final EIA’s analysis is highly generalized. Yet in discussions of certain impacts, such as Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the Final EIA makes numeric predictions and assessments without any revision addressing the changes to the MDI.”
The chief concern of the plaintiffs is the addition of carbon allowances into the cap-and-invest system. While the initial CARB changes sought to remove 118 million carbon allowances, the agency added back 118 million allowances through its “Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive” (MDI). Plaintiffs believe that this is the wrong kind of “net-zero” approach and that CARB did not adequately assess the impact of adding back the allowances. Ultimately, it’s in the hands of the courts to determine if the plaintiff’s case has merit. With climate ambitions being scaled back at the state level, we can likely expect more lawsuits attempting to hold states to their original climate ambitions.
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