CBIA's Greenhouse Gas Measure Advances To Senate
With deadlines looming for bills to advance, a bill intended to provide clear guidance for local lead agencies and project sponsors in determining whether a proposed project may have a significant effect on the environment due to greenhouse gas emissions moved to the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support.
AB 2313, sponsored by CBIA and authored by Assemblymember Joan Buchanan, D-San Ramon, has been the subject of extensive and ongoing negotiations with a wide variety of stakeholder groups and legislative leadership.
The legislation's purpose is to ensure a level of consistency with the state’s comprehensive climate change law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) and SB 375, by identifying a process by which individual projects would be expected to contribute their fair share toward achieving the state’s carbon-reduction goals.
Currently, there is a lack of guidance for both project sponsors and lead agencies as to what the appropriate standard or threshold of significance for greenhouse gas emissions for individual projects should be. As a result, many projects have been forced into court or must hope that the way they have addressed and mitigated for greenhouse gasses in their environmental document can withstand a challenge.
AB 2313 is intended to help restore some certainty and reduce potential litigation as California struggles to emerge from the economic recession.
For more information, contact Richard Lyon.
