CA's Defense to Trump’s Anti-Climate Protection Offense

How much harm the Trump Administration’s attacks on clean air protections, including clean energy, will inflict on California’s efforts to decarbonize its economy is not clear. To date, however, President Donald Trump’s bark has been worse than his bite, said speakers May 2 at an evening presentation at the University of California at Berkeley’s Energy Institute at the Hass Business School.

That is in no small part because of the administration’s legislative overreach, said Noah Horowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist, during the session organized by the Berkeley Energy Resource Collaborative.

The failure to date of the president’s proposed anti-environmental bills, however, is no cause for comfort.

The Trump Administration can cause significant damage particularly if its efforts to rework economic analyses in regulations are successful. The administration is working to change how the benefits of appliance energy efficiency standards are evaluated and how the social cost of carbon is calculated.

The appliance standard discount rate is being rejiggered to reduce the net present value benefits of financial savings from appliances that use less energy, Horowitz warned.

Changes in the “social cost of carbon” calculus, which the federal government has used to account for the impact of its actions on climate change in more than 150 regulatory measures, including vehicle fuel efficiency and appliance standards and power plant emissions rules, also could impact the state.

California is required by both state law (AB 916) and federal law to account for the social cost of carbon in its regulations, according to Emily Wimberger, California Air Resources Board chief economist. CARB has been using the Obama Administration’s formula developed over 10 years. But, the Trump Administration is moving to “tip the scales” to devalue carbon reductions, she warned.

Because of changes in the works to the social cost of carbon emissions formula, the Air Board is planning to switch to a new method being developed by Resources for the Future. This research group’s “ Social Cost of Carbon Initiative ” seeks to advance recommendations made by the National Academy of Sciences in a report released in January 2017.

Resources for the Future states its initiative seeks to provide a “comprehensive update of the social cost of carbon estimates, as well as enhance the capabilities of decision makers and analysts worldwide who use the social cost of carbon to measure the benefits of emissions reductions.”

Another of the Trump Administration’s serious threats to the Golden State is its challenge to California’s vehicle mileage and carbon emissions standards for 2022-25 model year vehicles. If successfully revoked, it would impact the number of electric and other zero emission cars on California’s roads and ultimately the state’s effort to reduce carbon emissions 40 percent below their 1990 levels by 2030.

The attack on California’s Clean Air Act waiver, which allows the state to set more stringent standards than those set by the federal government, led California officials to file suit earlier this week in federal court.

This is not the first challenge to California’s clean car waiver.

The Bush-Cheney Administration denied the state’s waiver, a decison later overturned by the Obama Administration. While the previous and current challenges are similar, the vehicle manufacturing groups this round are far better organized and potentially could be more effective, Wimberger noted.

This issue is representative of many of the challenges of linked federal and state regulations. State regulators are trying to figure out how California “can achieve our climate and environmental goals in a nested framework,” Wimberger noted.

To date, California has filed 37 lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s regulatory moves.

In addition, NRDC has sued the administration over its executive order seeking to require that two regulations be repealed for every new one implemented. The order also requires that the cost of new regulations in 2017, as determined by the White House’s Office of Management & Budget, be zero.

Trump Administration threats that turned out to be more bark than bite were the tariffs imposed on solar panels and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan,

The bluster about slapping huge tariffs on solar panels caused a lot of uncertainty and confusion in the industry. But, the actual tariff was less than feared, with solar developers and installers able to roll in the added costs into customer system's with much fallout, noted Will Mitchell, Recurrent Energy director of government affairs.

Also not as threatening as first feared is the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. Most utilities in and outside of California have developed resource plans that are more climate-friendly because wind and solar energy costs are low and coal is uneconomic, Mitchell and Wimberger said. — Elizabeth McCarthy

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CA’s Defense to Trump’s Anti-Climate Protection Offense

William J. Kelly

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