news
Summary
- California Air Resources Board withdraws proposal to mandate low-carbon jet fuel
- Political pressure from aviation industry and fear of lawsuits contributed to decision
- California still has legal leeway to regulate jet fuel under Clean Air Act and Airline Deregulation Act
- Promoting sustainable aviation fuel is crucial for decarbonizing the hardest-to-decarbonize sector
California regulators had an opportunity this year to be a global leader on requiring airplanes to use low-carbon jet fuel. But the Air Resources Board announced earlier this month that it will back off from its earlier proposal to require jet fuel providers to decarbonize, through the agency’s landmark low carbon fuel standard program.
Why the change? The agency’s official explanation was a head scratcher, noting that jet fuel suppliers could avoid having to actually provide low-carbon fuel to airplanes by buying credits from an entity with surplus credits to sell. But that is the whole point of this market-based program: regulated entities can either reduce the carbon in their products or pay someone else to do it. Either way, the mandate is in effect and the higher cost of carbon becomes a disincentive to pay to burn it.
So what’s really going on? The potential subtext of the agency’s decision (besides the political pressure from the aviation industry against any such mandate) is fear over lawsuits. Specifically, the airline industry has asserted that California is wholly preempted by various federal laws from mandating any sort of decarbonization of jet fuel.
Read the full post at Legal Planet.
