Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California air regulators passed Friday sweeping auto emission standards that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025. The California Air Resources Board unanimously approved the new rules, which require that one-in-seven of new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. The plan also mandated a 75-percent reduction in smog-forming pollutants by 2025, and a 34 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over roughly the same time. Automakers worked with the board and federal regulators on the greenhouse gas mandates in...

Development review guidelines meant to cut air pollution, the first of their kind when approved in 2010, are in limbo after a judge ruled their adoption by the region's air board was flawed. One building industry leader predicted the ruling would force a rewrite of land-use guidelines that he said delay and add costs to "infill" development of homes and businesses from San Jose to Oakland and Walnut Creek. "The air district is going to have to rescind its entire action," said Paul Campos, an attorney for the California Building Industry Association, which sued over the guidelines. Bay Area air...

OAKLAND -- To the accompaniment of big rig cabs driving through downtown and honking their horns Tuesday afternoon, a handful of protesters gathered outside City Hall to say truckers are being unfairly treated despite their progress in reducing emissions. New state rules that took effect Jan. 1 required truckers hauling at California ports to either install expensive filters (estimated by protesters at $15,000 to $25,000 per vehicle) or upgrade their trucks to models from 2004 or newer. After speaking to a small crowd of onlookers outside City Hall, AB Trucking President Bill Aboudi said in an interview that a UC...

If developer Dan Johnson and his team finally earn approval to revitalize a derelict lumber mill's 240-acre company town on the shores of Humboldt County, they'll be building homes with first floors 32 feet above ground. The state's scientific advisers expect rising sea levels will hasten most of the California coastline's eastward push as it combines with storms or tsunamis. They say the few extra feet through 2100 will slowly make beaches of bluffs and marshes of beaches. From Crescent City to San Diego, state and local planning authorities have started telling developers to factor sea-level rise into project designs....

At a California Senate oversight hearing yesterday called by Senator Pavley, a joint author of the state's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), Air Resources Board Chairman Nichols reaffirmed her agency's commitment to proceed with implementation of a robust package of clean energy policies backed up with a cap-and-trade program to cut the state's emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Chairman Nichols also announced a major new addition to the AB 32 package - CARB will require that major industrial facilities in California, such as refineries and cement plants, implement cost-effective reduction measures that will provide significant greenhouse...

American Electric Power Chairman Michael Morris announced last week that his company would be forced to close five coal-fired power plants, spend an additional $8 billion refitting other plants, and lose 6,000 megawatts of its coal-generated capacity if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency follows through with its latest proposed regulation of coal power plants. That’s just fine with President Barack Obama and Lisa Jackson, his appointment as EPA administrator. Their goal is to put utilities out of the coal-fired generation business. Since the White House’s signature environmental policy, cap and trade, died in the Democrat-dominated 111th Congress in 2010, Obama...

Gov. Jerry Brown wants to eliminate dozens of state panels and commissions, a good idea and long overdue. But the governor needs to be more inclusive, and stalk bigger game. His list includes the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, a typical soft landing spot for ex-legislators. They meet about once a month but get paid $128,109 a year, more than they were paid as legislators, as the Sacramento Bee recently noted. Such ruling-class parasitism doesn’t help balance the budget. The governor also wants to eliminate the California Commission on the Status of Women, which began on the watch of his father,...

With voters headed to the polls Tuesday to decide the fate of California's climate change law, regulators are pressing ahead with a key part of the statute that puts limits on how much the state's companies can pollute. The California Air Resources Board today will unveil new rules and regulations for a cap-and-trade program. It will set a ceiling on the amount of carbon that refiners, power companies and major manufacturers can emit each year. While details of the regulations aren't yet available, ARB officials have already indicated that they plan to take a pro-business approach. They will initially give...