To paraphrase the frog, it ain’t easy bein’ green.
Take, for instance, the unanimous vote (8-0) by the City Council to support Senate Bill 696, currently being proposed in Sacramento by State Sen. Roderick Wright.
To understand what SB 696 is all about, you have to understand a little about the process of how big construction projects are built, say for example a new power plant in town.
At the start of such a project, the power company would have to complete an Environmental Impact Review to move forward with the project. Within the review, the power company would have to detail all the potential impacts that both the construction and the future operation of the project might have on the environment. Now if the EIR determined that the project, once in operation, would create more of a certain type of air pollution than before the project was built, then the power company would have to offset this new pollution by getting what are called emission reduction credits. These credits come from, theoretically, other sources that have reduced their emissions. For example, if existing Power Plant A installed some equipment that reduced the smog-forming oxides of nitrogen, or NOx, the reduced amount would represent a reduction and could be sold to proposed Power Plant B as an emission reduction credit.
The ultimate goal in all of this is to get a sign-off from the state in the form of a construction permit.
And not just big mega-infrastructure projects require these permits. Some “mom-and-pop” businesses that might contribute a good deal of air pollution also have to offset any new air pollution – small businesses like auto body shops, printers, and service stations.
Until recently, there were two places you could get these credits: directly from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, otherwise known as the Southern California air regulators, or you could purchase them on the open market.
Yup, you heard me. There is a lucrative market in selling these credits. Power Plant A has a credit to sell and they go to a credit broker which hooks the plant up to those people wanting to build Power Plant B that need the credit. Of course the broker walks away with a commission on the deal.
As you can imagine, the credits have become outrageously expensive on the open market–up to $600,000 for a single credit. This can add up for a big project that might need many, many credits to offset increased pollution.
Now if you managed to get the emission credits from the pool maintained by SCAQMD, they were cheaper. The problem is, the SCAQMD gave a lot of credits to big projects like power plants and essentially ran the well dry. They ran out of credits for other projects like installing backup generators at hospitals or fire stations and all those “mom-and-pops” that can’t afford $600,000 per credit.
So SCAQMD thought up a way out of it. They looked back at all the small businesses that created pollution that had gone out of businesses since 1990 and reasoned, well, because they are out of businesses, we can take the resulting drop in pollution and refill the agency’s bank of emission reduction credits. So with a stroke of the pen they planned to invalidate all of the pollution reductions for nearly two decades by providing these reductions as credits to big polluters.
However, a State Supreme Court ruling late last year over a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council invalidated the way SCAQMD was formulating these “orphan” credits. This caused SCAQMD in November of last year to suspend issuing “Permits to Construct” that rely on emission credits from the banked credit reserve and also for those projects that sought exemptions from needing credits.
According to the SCAQMD, at least 1,100 construction permits across the state have been tied up, essentially putting these projects in limbo.
Proponents of Senate Bill 696 claim the number is much higher. These supporters of SB696 claim that thousands of public service projects like hospitals, schools, police stations, landfills and sewage treatment plants are being held up by the moratorium.
The bill’s author wants to simply legislate an end run around the court decision. S.B. 696 would essentially allow SCAQMD to being issuing permits just as before, using the “orphan” credits, instead of fixing the problems with the emission credit banking system. Why? Well, according to the bill’s supporters, to save all those thousands of construction and small business jobs tied to the stalled projects.
Groups like various Chambers of Commerce, numerous city governments, building trade groups and heavy-industry trade groups are among the supporters of the bill.
Opponents of the bill include the NRDC and other environmental groups who believe the bill essentially does away with needed limits on polluters.
The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday, by a vote of 8-0, decided to draft a resolution in support of the bill, citing many of the same reasons that other supporters have stated.
The problem is, the whole issue with the bill is simply a way for SCAQMD to get around the court decision. It is also an effort by SCAQMD to turn these non-existent “orphan” credits into a serious revenue stream (estimates of what the agency could get from them range as high as $400 million).
As is so typical of the Council, their support of this bill is shockingly superficial in the level of thought put into the decision. While certainly there are numerous projects in Long Beach being held up because a court found that SCAQMD violated the law, the Council has decided to support a purely political effort to avoid addressing the root cause of SCAQMD failings, and get around that whole “rule of law” thing in the name of expediency.
More surprising, SCAQMD itself admits that it can solve the entire situation by simply enacting rules that do not violate the law and which do not create more pollution.
The huge irony is that during earlier in Tuesday’s Council meeting, the members behind the dais also approved an ordinance adopting green building codes in the city, claiming that it would help lead Long Beach down the road to being “sustainable.”
It can’t be both ways. You can’t be green on the one hand while supporting legislation that for all intents and purposes increases air pollution.
Perhaps instead of focusing on being green, shooting for simply being consistent would be a good first step.
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