The Bay Area Air Quality Management District will hold four public workshops on proposed refinery emission rules at the end of March, including two in the frontline communities of Richmond and Benicia. Our network of climate, labor, and environmental justice groups (which has been lobbying for strong refinery emission regulations for many years) will present and table at the meetings in Richmond and Benicia. We are asking you to turn out to these workshops!
Public Workshops:
- Cupertino: March 27, 4:30 – 6 pm, Cupertino Community Hall, 10350 Torre Ave.
- Benicia: March 28, 6 – 7:30 pm, Benicia Public Library, Dona Room, 150 East L St.
- Hayward: March 29, 4:30 – 6 pm, Weeks Community Center, 27182 Patrick Ave.
- Richmond: March 30, 6:30 – 8 pm, Richmond Memorial Auditorium, Bermuda Room, 2533 Nevin Ave.
The general format of the workshops will be BAAQMD staff presentations, with question-and-answer periods and time for public comment. There will be tables set up at which to engage Air District staff in further discussion. We need to show Air District staff and board members that there’s strong community support for proposed Rule 12-16, which would place fixed, numeric caps on refinery emissions. We also want to challenge expected attacks on this proposal.
The forums will focus on three proposed rules:
- Rule 12-16: caps at today’s levels on refinery emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases and some of the most toxic refinery pollutants: particulate matter, sulphur oxides, and nitrogen oxides);
- Rule 11-18: Health Risk Assessments, or detailed analyses of all industrial sources of pollution in the Bay Area (read more here about HRAs); and
- Newly introduced Rule 13-1: a cap on emissions per barrel
Once again, Air District is failing to meet scheduled commitments for Rule 12-16. We are already two weeks behind in release of the draft Environmental Impact Report, final Rule 12-16 language, and socio-economic impact analysis. Deadlines have been pushed back repeatedly, unnecessarily extending the time in which refineries have had no facility-wide emission limits. The question now is: will the Air District staff release these reports in a timely enough manner for review prior to the public workshops on the refinery emission rules? Any further delays may push back the long-promised May 17th vote on Rule 12-16.
Where’s the State?
Putting in place local regulation of refinery emissions has been an uphill battle, even here in the Bay Area. For this reason we are counting on the support of Governor Brown and other state-level climate regulators. We have heard Governor Brown’s promises to defend California’s climate policies and programs against the encroachments of Trump’s administration. What will be his stand on rulemaking at our local Air District?
In December, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Brown declared, “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight.” Also in December, the Governor’s office and the state Air Resources Board (CARB) committed to producing a public letter affirming the authority of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to adopt Rule 12-16, and stating that there are absolutely no conflicts between Rule 12-16 and California cap-and-trade and other climate programs (an argument put forward by the oil industry). But this letter is now long delayed. It is urgently needed prior to the community workshops on refinery rules at the end of March. Will CARB and the Governor’s office come through?
The Skinny on the Newest Rule: 13-1
Air District staff has introduced a concept paper for a new approach in Rule 13-1, a cap on refinery greenhouse gases based on emission intensity: the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide emitted per barrel of oil processed. Although staff presented a timeline for August 2017 adoption of the rule, the concept paper states that the rule would only include a methodology for calculating the emission intensity. Actual cap values would come at some unspecified point in 2018.
In concept, an emission intensity limit could prevent refineries from transitioning to more energy intensive and polluting tar sands for their crude supply. Given the complete lack of any detail for the emission intensity approach and the vagueness of its timeline, however, it is difficult to make a thorough assessment of the value of such an approach. Again, a key issue remains instituting a cap on emissions as quickly as possible, in order to set a baseline on emissions today. The longer we wait to establish a baseline, the more time refineries have to complete high-value, large-scale infrastructure projects required to process tar sands. Delays on setting a baseline will lock in these projects for decades, setting the course for higher emission baselines once a cap is actually implemented.
It must also be noted that Rule 13-1 only addresses greenhouse gas emissions; it does not place any restrictions on particulate matter or toxic (sulfur and nitrogen oxides) emissions. Thus it relies on using greenhouse gas restrictions as a stand-in to limit increases in other emissions that have a direct and immediate local health impact on frontline communities.
Air District Staff briefly raised the prospect of pursuing an emissions intensity cap last year, then abruptly dropped the idea due to the refineries’ refusal to release “proprietary” data on what’s called “throughput”: the capacity for refining crude oil over a given period of time. Any consideration of such an approach now must include complete public transparency on all refinery throughput data used in any calculation of emission intensity values.
A Combined Approach
A combination of the two approaches proposed as 12-16 and 13-1 might be the strongest way to prevent future increases in greenhouse gases, particulate matter, and toxic emissions by refineries. Refineries could theoretically comply with emission caps as required by Rule 12-16 while still moving to a higher-emissions-per-barrel crude like tar sands. On the other hand, a per-barrel emissions intensity cap (as in Rule 13-1) restricts the transition to dirtier crudes like tar sands, independent of the amount of oil being processed by the refineries overall; Even as California’s demand for fossil fuels falls in the future, under Rule 13-1 alone, refineries could maintain or increase total oil exports, making California the “gas station for the Pacific.” Thus, the ideal situation may be some combination of the two approaches.
Our Demands
As the May 17th deadline for a vote on Rule 12-16 approaches, the March community forums are as the next critical step in our campaign. Our demands of the Air District are simple:
- Stop delaying action to close the loophole that allows refining of the dirtiest crudes to increase emissions;
- Meet all timeline commitments for release of Rule 12-16, which would cap facility-wide emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants at current levels; and
- Bring Rule 12-16 to a vote as expeditiously as possible.
Click here to send this message to your representatives on the Air District board!
We are now in the final push to end this four-year campaign for refinery emissions caps. Ongoing work to expand community support and educate newly elected Board members will be critical in coming months. If we succeed, we can send a message to the entire nation: whatever fantasies the Trump administration has about expanding coal and tar sands production, these dirty fossil fuels will not come into California refineries and ports.
This article first appeared on the Sunflower Alliance blog.
Photo: the Phillips 66 Rodeo refinery in Contra Costa County, courtesy Thomas Hawk via Flickr Creative Commons.