Enviro Groups Call on CARB to Reject Dangerous Carbon Capture
Today, impacted community members and climate and environmental justice organizations called on the California Air Resources Board to reject carbon capture, use and storage projects (CCUS) at its board meeting. CARB is expected to finalize California’s first CCUS Program charged with evaluating and regulating CCUS in the state by the end of the year.
Advocates released the following statements:
“You cannot call it climate progress if the people living next to these facilities are still breathing toxic, dirty air. Carbon capture leaves communities with the pollution that makes people sick, while the fossil fuel industry continues to profit. CARB needs to ask what SB 905 means for people’s health, not just how much carbon a project claims to capture. We need to remember: the goal is to stop creating pollution in the first place.”
“LADWP’s Scattergood boondoggle is a dark chapter for the City’s environmental leadership and fiscal management. Once the champion of Sustainability among the cities of the world innovating with real clean green and affordable energy solutions, now, the City’s Environmental Impact Report turns a blind eye to public safety, air pollution, and water impacts let alone its own climate targets. LADWP has chosen to pursue this so called “hydrogen-ready” project that will be nothing more than a brand new fossil fuel plant constructed five-years before LA is supposed to be carbon-free,” said Theo Caretto, Staff Attorney at Communities for a Better Environment.
“Los Angeles’s decision to double down on retrofitting Scattergood based on the false promise of hydrogen flies in the face of its commitment to make the city 100% carbon-free by 2035,” said Food & Water Watch Senior Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Retrofitting Scattergood will not get Los Angeles closer to reaching its climate goals and instead will keep the city dependent on dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”
“LADWP’s environmental analysis of the Scattergood project is riddled with flaws that tilt the analysis in favor of a massive investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Sierra Club’s Western Beyond Coal Campaign Manager Zack Waterman. “This is the wrong direction for the city, and we want to see those errors in the analysis corrected before Angelenos otherwise pay for a false climate solution.”
The Center for Biological Diversity has also sued LADWP over the Scattergood project.
Press Contact: Madeline Bove mbove@fwwatch.org
