THE NET-ZERO BLOG
Climate policy analysis and updates from Sacramento
State and federal agencies release first-of-its-kind biomass utilization strategy
Biomass management has been a neglected climate problem in California. That is, until recently – when the 2022 Scoping Plan identified both the significant scale of the biomass challenge and importance of mobilizing organic waste to provide clean fuels and carbon dioxide removal in a net-zero economy. In this blog post we briefly recap California’s biomass challenge before summarizing the top-five recommendations from the state’s newest draft wood utilization strategy from the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force.
How California can lead the world in decarbonizing aviation
As the United States seeks to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize will be aviation. Aviation makes up nearly 7% of the total U.S. transportation sector emissions. As planes are expected to remain reliant on liquid fuels for the foreseeable future, commercializing non-fossil, low-carbon alternatives is a critical need. In this blog post, we explore opportunities and recommendations for California to lead on sustainable aviation fuel development.
Op-ed: How forest thinning waste could fund California wildfire prevention
Op-ed announcement: CSG’s Director of Climate and Energy Policy, Sam Uden in partnership with the Sierra Business Council, had an op-ed published in CalMatters that describes how a forest products strategy could help reduce megafires in California.
CARB's opportunity on low-carbon fuels
The California Air Resources Board will soon initiate a series of regulatory proceedings on different programs to cement the ambitions of the 2022 Scoping Plan into state policy. One of the first – and perhaps the most consequential – will be the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. In this blog post, we highlight gaps in the upcoming LCFS rulemaking.
Publication: Policy Options for Deep Decarbonization and Wood Utilization in California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard
California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is one of the most important policies to develop and deploy low-carbon and carbon-negative fuels. Yet, because the LCFS is designed to deliver the lowest-cost carbon intensity reductions possible in the transportation fuel system, it may fail to deliver technologies that would be poised to offer deeper decarbonization or other ancillary benefits to California's people and environment. This publication from Frontiers in Climate explores administrative changes to the LCFS which would further stimulate the commercialization of promising low-carbon and carbon-negative fuels.