Buildings in the energy transition

Team: Adam Brandt, Inês Azevedo, Chris Field, Michael Mastrandrea, Deborah Sivas, Michael Wara
Mid-range (Developing)

Originally, this project aimed to work with environmental justice (EJ) partners on policy solutions to barriers and inequalities affecting low- and moderate-income households in the context of building electrification (e.g., adoption of heat pumps). However, about six months into the project the team concluded that near-term policy solutions were blocked, mostly because of the entrenched opposition to building electrification from gas utilities in California. 

By that time, the team had built strong relationships with its EJ partners, who instead were requesting assistance in evaluating the impacts of proposed amendments to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) under development by the Air Resources Board (ARB). This policy was initially designed to spur innovation for low-carbon fuels. More recently, however, it was viewed by the EJ community and some analysts to be leading to negative outcomes through sizable subsidies for certain types of biofuels (e.g., biomethane from dairies with impacts on surrounding communities, crop-based renewable diesel that displaces land use for food production and potentially impacts food security and deforestation).

The team pivoted to a series of model-based assessments of LCFS scenarios and EJ proposals that ARB staff had originally declined to analyze but ultimately incorporated into its regulatory evaluation. As a result of this work, the team achieved a major policy win that heads off the lock-in of biofuel subsidies to 2045 in California. They are now being asked by ARB to design limits on biofuels that would be incorporated into regulations that help mitigate negative outcomes both for California and global greenhouse gas emissions. The limits will likely be adopted by all the states that have or are in the process of implementing Low Carbon Fuel Standard policies. 

Thanks to the flexibility of the Sustainability Accelerator funding, what initially seemed like a failure turned into a significant success.