CARB Postpones Release of Revised Draft Recommendations on GHG Thresholds under CEQA; Gives More Time for Public Comments
On December 19, 2008, the California Air Resources Board ("CARB") announced that it would postpone the release of the revised draft of the CARB staff's Recommended Approaches for Setting Interim Significance Thresholds for Greenhouse Gases under the California Environmental Quality Act ("Preliminary Draft"). Instead, CARB is continuing to accept public comments on the Preliminary Draft through January 9, 2009.
Pursuant to Senate Bill 97 (Chapter 185, 2007), Greenhouse Gases ("GHGs") and the effects of GHG emissions are subject to CEQA, and the Governor's Office of Planning and Research ("OPR") is required to develop guidelines for the feasible mitigation of GHG emissions. Such guidelines must be presented to the Resources Agency by July 1, 2009 and adopted by the Resource Agency by January 1, 2010. In June 2008, OPR released a "Technical Advisory," providing some interim guidance to assist lead agencies in addressing climate change in CEQA documents. In that Technical Advisory, OPR asked CARB to make recommendations for GHG significance thresholds.
On October 24, 2008 CARB released its Preliminary Draft, which sets forth a general conceptual framework for GHG significance thresholds, and illustrates CARB's belief that a "zero threshold" is not mandated. A "zero threshold" would mean that any contribution of GHGs to the atmosphere should be deemed significant given the need for urgent action to reverse the trend towards dangerous climate change. The Preliminary Draft proposed a sector-by-sector approach, with one threshold applicable to industrial projects, and another to residential and commercial projects.<
For commercial and residential projects, the CARB framework relies, in part, on projects meeting performance standards. However, these performance standards and other details were not provided in the Preliminary Draft, which was very much a work in progress. CARB specifically requested public and stakeholder input, which began with a public workshop on October 27, 2008. On December 9, 2008 CARB conducted a second public workshop.
At the second workshop the CARB staff released and presented drafts of the staff's proposed performance standards for residential and commercial projects, which was missing from the Preliminary Draft. CARB's original schedule required comments on the draft performance standards to be submitted by December 16th. However, now CARB will continue to accept public comments on the Preliminary Draft and the draft performance standards through January 9, 2009 and plans to release a revised draft framework shortly thereafter. Subsequent to the release of the revised framework, CARB staff will request an additional round of comments and anticipates presenting its proposed recommendations to the CARB board for review at the February 26-27 Board Meeting.
The Preliminary Draft can be found here.
The presentation from the December 9 workshop, with the draft performance standards can be found here.
For further information, please contact Bram Hanono at (858) 720-7461.
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