“Internal combustion engine vehicles will remain on our roads for some time. So we need to have low-carbon fuels available for both zero-emission and combustion vehicles in order to successfully replace fossil fuels,” Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), said at the start of the agency’s board meeting Friday, which ran more than 12 hours and received public comment from hundreds of attendees.
By 2030, 79 percent of vehicles in California, or about 20 million cars, will still be combustion vehicles according to CARB’s analysis. By 2040, only 31 percent are expected to be combustion vehicles, and that number is expected to further decline to 14 percent by 2045.
CARB approved amendments to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) aimed at combatting air pollution and the effects of climate-warming emissions, and fostering the kinds of market forces needed to stimulate development of industries around cleaner fuels and electrified transportation. Enacted in 2009, the LCFS was considered a groundbreaking piece of public policy.
The policies to transition vehicles to zero-emission or low-carbon fuels are structured largely around credits earned from using these lower carbon energy sources, which can then be sold to users of higher-carbon energy.
As a result of the LCFS, California has increased alternative fuel volumes from 5 percent of total transportation fuels used in 2006 to 23 percent in 2023, CARB officials said. The program has generated about $4 billion annually in private-sector investment in cleaner transportation fuels and options.
The amendments to the LCFS will provide new incentives for the development of high-speed charging stations near the state’s ports, as well as along truck corridors. These incentives are essential to adequately move the trucking industry away from fossil fuels, state officials and industry leaders said.
“It’s fundamental. It’s critical. It is absolutely needed,” said Suncheth Bhat, chief commercial officer at EV Realty, which is developing heavy-duty vehicle charging infrastructure across the state.
“We really need all of the support of policy in place to advance this segment of vehicles that is proportionally contributing to emissions in the state,” Bhat told Government Technology. “All of these policies will help to get more and more vehicles on the road, which is ultimately what we need.”
The amendments CARB approved Friday “will both accelerate the deployment of low-carbon fuel options and establish long-term policy and market signals to support the large-scale energy transition,” Randolph said.
The timing of updates to the LCFS, just after the Nov. 5 presidential contest re-electing former President Donald Trump — who has been skeptical of the causes of human-caused climate change and pledged numerous regulatory rollbacks — was not lost on anyone.
“And let’s be realistic, the tools in our toolbox may become much more limited going forward,” Randolph told her board. “While we will do everything we can to protect our authority in California, and our existing programs that we have to clean the air, we know that we must do all we can to use our existing state authority to bring clean fuels to California.”
Environmental groups opposed the steps taken by CARB, saying the amendments did not go far enough. Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist and director of fuels policy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the proposals “too little too late.”
“CARB missed an important opportunity to strengthen the LCFS,” Martin said in some of his public comments.
During the meeting, Hector De la Torre, a CARB board member and executive director of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a joint powers authority of 27 cities and several unincorporated communities in southeast Los Angeles County, called the LCFS and the policy steps taken by CARB not perfect, “but it’s a hell of a lot better than fossils.”
