Project Summary
The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is a key element of California’s climate policies, it incentivizes the use of lower carbon fuels, and supports innovative transportation technologies. The LCFS has attracted criticism from equity and environmental justice groups, largely due to its support for biomethane from anaerobic digesters at livestock facilities; this issue has dominated discussion around the LCFS over the last three years. The credits received by livestock digesters are determined by a formula specified in the LCFS, quantifying these credits requires making certain assumptions about whether they are “additional” to what would have occurred without the LCFS. The current test of additionality struggles to adequately consider the wide range of factors that impact a project’s GHG emissions. This research project will build on previous work done by Policy Institute researchers to develop new criteria for additionality determination that will more appropriately align LCFS credits with real-world emissions benefits. We anticipate that applying the criteria developed in this project to the LCFS would result in reduced credit generation by livestock digester projects, which aligns with calls for action from the EJ community. We will also discuss how the new framework(s) for additionality could be applied to other project categories in the LCFS.
