California dairy farmers are battling proposed state regulations on methane emissions they say are fundamentally flawed and unachievable and will set them up for failure.
They say the state Air Resources Control Board has lost sight of reality in its Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy to reduce total methane emissions 40 percent by 2030 — including a 75 percent reduction in dairy manure emissions.
While the board’s draft strategy, which also includes reducing black carbon (soot) and fluorinated gases, is not regulation, the reductions have made their way into legislation. SB 1383, awaiting a vote in the state Assembly, calls for a 40 percent reduction in methane, a 40 percent reduction in hydrofluorocarbon gases and a 50 percent reduction in black carbon by 2030.
The majority of the methane reductions in ARB’s strategy are aimed at dairy manure and dairy and livestock emissions but also address landfills, the oil and gas sectors and wastewater.
Rob Vandenheuvel, manager of the Milk Producers Council, said the Legislature is proposing “pie-in-the-sky” goals that target the dairy industry with no viable strategy to reduce methane and no financial assistance.
By the dairy industry’s calculations, ARB’s strategy would require about 500 methane digesters, hundreds of miles of new pipe and new infrastructure, he said.
“How do you get there when digesters aren’t even a slam dunk on any individual dairy?” he asked.
Only 14 California dairies currently have operating methane digesters, built during the last 10 to 15 years. The cost a digester is more than $2 million, and there’s no guarantee of success.
The proposed mandate is simply unrealistic and will drive more dairy families out of business, according to flyers circulated in the Legislature by the Milk Producers Council, Western United Dairymen and the California Dairy Campaign.
The coalition points out California dairy farms have reduced the carbon footprint of a glass of milk by 63 percent since World War II and contends ARB’s “draconian requirements” for a 75 percent reduction in dairy methane emissions are not achievable.
Setting unrealistic goals and offering an incentive-based program is one thing, but when the state sets a goal and tells dairymen they have to meet the regulations when the technology might not even be effective is another, Vandenheuvel said.
The only digesters operating now are on a voluntary basis and funded by grant money. Once the state requires methane reduction, that grant money will cease to exist, he said.
It’s an unachievable goal. There’s no efficient way to do it, and it’s not economically feasible for dairies to install digesters without assistance, he said.
ARB’s strategy states methane emissions may be significantly reduced by switching from flush water lagoon systems without methane capture to dry or slurry manure management practices.
In addition, anaerobic digesters can be installed to capture and utilize manure methane and can be used with flush, dry or slurry practices.
The use of dry manure systems could allow for easier transport and storage to offsite digester systems and improve economies of scale, biogas production efficiencies and nutrient management on the dairy. Captured biogas could be used on or off the farm, and anaerobic digestion on dairies could lead to billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, ARB stated.
“There could be substantial economic upside to most of these” actions, said Dave Clegern, ARB public information officer.
As for digesters, there are other ways to handle methane — especially to avoid it — without the need for a digester. The strategy sees a need for more than 100 but doesn’t envision 500, he said.
ARB’s strategy recognizes the barriers and calls for collaboration between state agencies, dairy farmers and other stakeholders; financial incentives; support for research, infrastructure and market development; and regulatory action.
SB 1383 meets the recommendation for regulatory action and provides for fees, penalties and rate increases but provides no incentives for dairymen.
“The state wants the ability to say, ‘You have to do it and we’re not going to give you incentive to do it,’” Vandenheuvel said.
The dairy industry would prefer the state hold off on regulation and try a partnership approach with an incentive-based structure first to see what can be developed, he said.
“There’s a big gap between liberal legislators and the dairy industry. I don’t know if we can bridge that gap with the state,” he said.
The draft strategy notes the need for further incentives.
However, SB 1613 calls for about $55 million in cap-and-trade money to be designated for this kind of incentive program, Clegern said.
“In addition, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard already exists and would provide a big incentive to get this type of methane into the transportation fuel chain. The cap-and-trade program also has an offset program to incentivize methane digesters,” he said.
The California Public Utilities Commission also has some incentive programs for this type of effort, he said.
“At this point, there’s no actual ARB regulation to plug these programs into, but there are a number of existing incentives which can be made available,” he said.
The dairy industry has plenty of opportunity to weigh in, he said.
Short-lived climate pollutants are chemicals with global warming potential far beyond carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for a century or more, these chemicals remain for periods as short as a decade or so, but because they have such intense heat-trapping capacity they can do substantial harm in a relatively brief period of time, Clegern said.
Methane is the most plentiful of the SLCPs and has a global warming potential about 72 times more intense than carbon dioxide. In California, it makes up about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is responsible for approximately 60 percent of those SLCP emissions and dairies are responsible for about 45 percent of the total SLCPs, he said.
“Controlling emissions from these chemicals will give a considerable boost to our efforts to reduce GHGs more quickly. They can provide much more rapid reductions than we can get from CO2 and buy us some time to work on reducing the CO2 emissions, which are a much larger challenge — about 85 percent of all GHGs,” he said.
Another issue is the state’s “go-it-alone” approach to climate-change regulations. The regulation doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country, Vandenheuvel said.
“If the whole country is doing it, it might be foolish but the U.S. is a big country. Methane is a global gas. China’s not doing it; are we just driving business elsewhere?” he asked.
California has already lost 600 dairies in the last 10 years. Such a mandate would only exacerbate the decline, as dairymen could relocate to another part of the country where such regulations don’t exist, he said.
The bill passed in the Senate with a minimum vote, and will likely be voted on in the Assembly before the session closes on Aug. 31, he said.
