Bill Text: CA AB2944 | 2021-2022 | Regular Session | Amended

California Assembly Bill 2944 (Prior Session Legislation)

NOTE: There are more recent revisions of this legislation. Read Latest Draft

Bill Title: Greenhouse gases: carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)

Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2022-06-16 - Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on JUD. [AB2944 Detail]

Download: California-2021-AB2944-Amended.html

Amended IN Assembly March 24, 2022

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill

No. 2944

Introduced by Assembly Member Petrie-Norris

February 18, 2022

An act to add Section 39740.9 to the Health and Safety Code, relating to greenhouse gases.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

AB 2944, as amended, Petrie-Norris. Greenhouse gases: carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration.

Existing law, known as the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, designates the State Air Resources Board as the state agency responsible for monitoring and regulating sources emitting greenhouse gases. The act requires the state board to approve a statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit equivalent to the statewide greenhouse gas emissions level in 1990 to be achieved by 2020 and to ensure that statewide greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to at least 40% below the 1990 level by 2030. The act requires the state board to prepare and approve a scoping plan for achieving the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and to update the scoping plan at least once every 5 years.

This bill would express the intent of the Legislature to enact later legislation that would streamline the process to obtain a permit for building carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration projects in order to help meet the state’s climate change goals and would make related findings and declarations.
This bill would require the state board, beginning January 1, 2023, and annually thereafter, to include in a specified annual report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, an evaluation of how carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies are contributing to the state’s efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, as provided.

Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: NOYES Local Program: NO

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) The impacts of climate change in California include wildfire, drought, heat waves, and catastrophic weather events of increasing severity and unpredictability. These impacts pose significant threats to public health and safety, and to the economy in California.
(b) To address the impacts of climate change, California has established a number of ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goals, targets, and programs, including a target to cut GHG emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and a goal to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2045, consistent with science-based assessments to achieve global climate stabilization.
(c) To achieve its climate goals, California must deploy a range of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) and engineered carbon removal technologies. Numerous experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, Stanford University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles, have identified CCUS as a critical and necessary component of successful climate action strategies globally, nationally, and in California.
(d) The Biden Administration has identified deployment of CCUS technologies as a key priority in national decarbonization efforts, and there are billions of dollars in federal incentives available to support deployment of CCUS projects and infrastructure that California can benefit from.
(e) California is ideally positioned to take advantage of CCUS in ways that will provide significant climate, economic, and public health benefits. California industries possess a depth of technological capability and technical expertise to quickly and safely deploy CCUS. The state has one of most skilled workforces in the world to design, build, and operate CCUS projects and infrastructure. California has geological capacity to safely and permanently store hundreds of years’ worth of the state’s total carbon dioxide emissions. Deployment of CCUS in California can provide up to 60 million metric tons of GHG emission reductions annually across a range of economic sectors and industries, support hundreds of thousands of new and existing jobs, and support the development of new, advanced climate and clean energy technologies.
(f) The State Air Resources Board is required to provide the Joint Legislative Budget Committee with an annual report on the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Division 25.5 (commencing with Section 38500) of the Health and Safety Code), and provide updates on key climate programs, including recent developments and upcoming milestones.

SEC. 2.

Section 39740.9 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:

39740.9.
Beginning January 1, 2023, and annually thereafter, the state board, as a part of its annual report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee on the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Division 25.5 (commencing with Section 38500)), shall include in the program update an evaluation of how carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies are contributing to the state’s efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases pursuant to the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Division 25.5 (commencing with Section 38500)) and Executive Order No. B-55-18. The evaluation shall specifically describe how carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies contribute to emission reductions achieved by greenhouse gas emission reductions measures described in the report, including, but not limited to, the market-based compliance mechanism regulations (Article 5 (commencing with Section 95801) of Subchapter 10 of Chapter 1 of Division 3 of Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations) and the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard regulations (Subarticle 7 (commencing with Section 95480) of Article 4 of Subchapter 10 of Chapter 1 of Division 3 of Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations).

SECTION 1.
~~(a)The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:~~
(1)California has been a leader in the fight against climate change and has set ambitious goals to reduce the negative effects of climate change on the state. These negative effects include greater numbers of wildfires of increasing magnitude, longer periods of drought, sea level rise, and more unpredictable weather, and all of which pose serious threats to the safety of the state’s citizens and economy.
(2)In order to achieve these goals, the state has taken numerous steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The state has set goals of reducing carbon emissions to 40 percent under 1990 levels by 2030 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Subsequent actions have pushed the state to greater goals of carbon neutrality by 2045, with the Legislature directing the State Air Resources Board to develop a framework for implementation and to track these goals in concert with other state agencies.
(3)If California is to address the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, then a broad suite of solutions will be needed, including direct emission reductions, carbon capture and storage, carbon dioxide removal technologies, and nature-based climate solutions.
(4)Academic and scientific studies have found that California is unlikely to achieve its ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction goals without the deployment of carbon capture and storage, with both the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius” and the International Energy Agency’s report entitled “World Energy Outlook 2020” finding that reaching net negative emissions will require a significant amount of carbon removal.
(5)There has been a growing consensus in the scientific community that carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration and carbon dioxide removal can play an important role in world decarbonization efforts.
(6)The federal government has acknowledged the role of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration in national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most recently when President Joseph Biden signed the bipartisan $1.2 trillion ($1,200,000,000,000) Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684), which made tens of billions of dollars available to federal and state agencies to develop and deploy these technologies.
(7)Multiple carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration projects are operating successfully in the United States and across the globe, and the Biden Administration is fully committed to “accelerating the responsible development and deployment of CCUS to make it a widely available, increasingly cost-effective, and rapidly scalable climate solution across all industrial sectors.”
(8)California has an opportunity to become a global leader in the development and deployment of these technologies by leveraging these new federal dollars in its fight against climate change, as the state is uniquely positioned to deploy these technologies. The state has a strong, highly skilled industrial labor force that stands at the ready to build and maintain carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration projects around the state.
(9)The deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration in California has the potential to eliminate 60,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is approximately 15 percent of the state’s current overall emissions level and is the equivalent to over 13,000,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year, as well as the equivalent amount of carbon sequestered by over 73,000,000 acres of United States forests in one year.
(10)The deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies in California would accelerate decarbonization while reducing the cost to decarbonize. The deployment of these technologies would also direct federal funding to the state and deliver major air quality, economic, and jobs benefits.
(11)In order to bring this ready-to-go solution to reality and to remain a global climate leader, California needs to move quickly to implement a comprehensive policy, regulatory, and economic framework for carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration that will help the state meet the coming benchmarks in the state’s climate change goals.
(b)It is the intent of the Legislature to enact later legislation that would streamline the process to obtain a permit for building carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration projects in order to help meet the state’s climate change goals.