Berkeley Plans New Strategy To Eliminate Methane

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Earlier immediately, we reported on a novel association between the town of Richmond, California, and Chevron that can put $550 million into the town’s coffers over the subsequent 10 years to compensate for the environmental hurt to the residents of Richmond by the aged oil refinery that has been working inside the metropolis for over a century. That settlement resulted from a singular concept by the town to tax every barrel of oil delivered to the refinery for processing over the subsequent 50 years. That proposal, if enacted, would have price Chevron as much as $90 million a yr. Multiply that by 50 and you’re speaking about some severe cash. Now the town of Berkeley, California, has latched on to the ability of that taxation plan and intends to make use of it to push its agenda of eliminating methane gas from the residences, factories, and eating places inside its metropolis limits.

Berkeley pursued a plan to ban methane for years, however the concept was deemed unlawful by the courts. Undaunted, Berkeley thinks it has discovered a brand new lever to maneuver its agenda ahead. Methane might burn extra cleanly that coal, nevertheless it nonetheless produces pollution which can be damaging to human respiratory and circulatory techniques, particularly in younger youngsters. As well as, methane itself is a greenhouse gasoline that’s 80 occasions extra highly effective than carbon dioxide. It leaks from wells, it leaks from pipelines and pumping stations, it leaks from distribution techniques, and it leaks inside houses and industrial buildings, typically to the purpose of inflicting explosions. Regardless of the way you slice it, methane is unhealthy stuff and the earlier “we the people” cease utilizing it, the higher for all people and for the Earth.

Berkeley Poll Measure

On November 5, residents of Berkeley will vote on a poll measure that proposes taxing the homeowners of buildings of 15,000 sq. toes or bigger primarily based on the quantity of pure gasoline consumed annually. If handed, authorized consultants say this is able to be the primary tax within the nation to focus on using a particular gas supply for buildings. Metropolis officers estimate that the tax would apply to over 600 buildings in Berkeley and generate $26.7 million throughout its first yr, an quantity bigger than the town’s annual gross sales tax income. Of these funds, 90% would go towards retrofitting houses and buildings within the metropolis with electrical HVAC and home equipment, and 10% would go towards metropolis administrative prices.

Some CleanTechnica readers have argued that the plan put collectively by the town of Richmond is flawed as a result of the funds from Chevron will turn into a part of the town’s common fund as a substitute of being earmarked for addressing the impacts of local weather change, and that could be a cogent objection. The Berkeley plan is far more targeted on mitigation.

5 years in the past, Berkeley launched the nation’s first ban on methane gas hookups in new development. Praised as an revolutionary technique to lower carbon emissions and scale back air air pollution by environmental advocates, Berkeley’s gasoline ban impressed related legal guidelines in dozens of California cities and kicked off a surge of constructing electrification insurance policies in additional than 100 native governments nationwide. However in 2023, the coverage was struck down by the US Courtroom of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit following a lawsuit from the California restaurant trade. In January, the identical courtroom declined to revisit its choice, dealing a last blow to the town’s effort.

Regardless of these authorized woes, local weather organizers say the town stays undeterred. “People look to Berkeley as a bellwether for progressive climate action as well as an incubator of ideas,” Daniel Tahara, one of many lead organizers for Fossil Free Berkeley, informed Canary Media. ​“Someone needs to be putting ideas out there, and we think that has been and can continue to be Berkeley.” He and others from Fossil Free Berkeley say that this yr’s poll measure was partly motivated by the defeat of the town’s gasoline ban, which was lastly repealed in March. ​“A lot of momentum was lost statewide,” he stated, as cities throughout California and different Western states rolled again their very own gasoline bans in response.

Group members gathered greater than 4,500 signatures to get the proposed gasoline tax on the poll, which formally certified on the finish of Could. The tax would cost giant constructing homeowners $2.96 for each 100 cubic toes or 100,000 BTUs of pure gasoline used, a price primarily based on the social price of carbon, which estimates the damages induced to society by extra greenhouse gasoline emissions. Residents in low revenue communities can be among the many first to obtain funding from the taxes to improve and electrify older buildings, and union labor can be prioritized for constructing retrofit work funded by the tax. If authorised, the coverage would take impact January 1, 2025, and expire on the finish of 2050.

Taxing Polluters — What A Nice Concept!

Amy Turner, director of the Cities Local weather Legislation Initiative at Columbia College’s Sabin Heart for Local weather Change Legislation, stated that Berkeley’s proposed tax is a novel strategy. Current insurance policies, equivalent to constructing efficiency requirements in New York Metropolis, Boston, and Seattle, require buildings to decrease emissions over time and may high-quality property homeowners for failing to conform. However they are typically ​“fuel neutral,” which means they don’t explicitly goal a particular power supply like fossil gasoline. ​“We haven’t seen a fee or a payment of any kind be connected directly to the kind of fuel that a building is using,” she stated.

Some commerce teams, just like the county’s constructing and development trades council, have criticized the measure for levying further prices on native companies in an space with taxes that already larger than common. Whereas the regulation explicitly prohibits property homeowners from passing on prices to renters, a metropolis report expressed issues that the tax may nonetheless end in larger rental prices ​“either at the time of lease renewal or, for price-controlled units, adjustments during times of vacancy.” The report additionally acknowledged the initiative would probably enhance job alternatives for contractors and incentivize all-electric new development of huge buildings in Berkeley.

Berkeley’s proposed tax requires a easy majority to move, however that isn’t the one hurdle. The measure may also have to resist the identical authorized scrutiny confronted by the town’s earlier gasoline ban. In April 2023, the Ninth Circuit Courtroom dominated that the federal Power Coverage and Conservation Act, a regulation that units nationwide power effectivity requirements, preempted Berkeley’s ban, stating that the coverage would in impact forestall using gasoline home equipment that meet these nationwide requirements.

Fossil Free Berkeley organizers level out that the courtroom’s choice explicitly allowed for the potential of a carbon tax just like the one on the November poll, making the brand new measure secure from authorized challenges primarily based on the Power Coverage and Conservation Act. Turner likewise famous that the town’s new strategy — a tax quite than a ban — is considerably completely different from the one tossed out by courts. “Certainly there are incentives of all kinds for buildings to be built or be operated in certain ways, and those are not subject to EPCA preemption,” she stated.

“Sin Taxes” In America

There’s a lengthy historical past in the US of imposing taxes on gadgets which can be deemed probably dangerous to people. Recognized colloquially as “sin taxes,” they apply to alcoholic drinks, tobacco merchandise, playing, and the like. The courts have persistently upheld such taxes even when they’re so excessive they threaten to make individuals give up shopping for whiskey or cigarettes. Ask anybody you already know what these taxes are like in Canada, the place immediately a pack of cigarettes might price as much as $12 due to federal, provincial, and native taxes.

Methane accounts for a few third of Berkeley’s greenhouse gasoline emissions. The proposed tax would assist scale back these emissions and put together the town for an power transition that’s already underway, Tahara stated. In March of 2023, the Bay Space Air High quality Administration District, which governs air air pollution in Berkeley and different close by cities, handed rules to part out the sale of home equipment that use methane gasoline by 2027. However the regulation ​“left a lot of the thorny implementation issues to local municipalities,” equivalent to the way to make it reasonably priced for houses and companies to make the change, Tahara stated.

The Takeaway

The wrestle between fossil gas advocates and opponents will probably be ongoing for the foreseeable future. The courts have been tilted strongly towards so-called conservative positions since 2016, when a failed former president did the whole lot in his energy to pack them with ideologues who help the concept that liberty means freedom from authorities oversight for firms. To conservatives, liberty means poisoning the Earth to the purpose that people can not survive. That such a distorted viewpoint ought to be held by so many is a supply of nice consternation to many local weather justice advocates.

Taxing polluters makes a lot sense, it’s a marvel nobody considered this sooner. However we will make sure that if this plan will get authorised, loads of different cities and cities will probably be trying to borrow a web page from the Berkeley playbook.