BILL ANALYSIS 1
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| SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND WATER |
| Senator Fran Pavley, Chair |
| 2009-2010 Regular Session |
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BILL NO: AB 1504 HEARING DATE: June 22, 2010
AUTHOR: Skinner URGENCY: No
VERSION: June 17, 2010 CONSULTANT: Bill Craven
DUAL REFERRAL: Environmental QualityFISCAL: Yes
SUBJECT: Forest resources: carbon sequestration.
BACKGROUND AND EXISTING LAW
1. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
(CDF) administers the Z'berg-Nejedly Forest Practice Act (Act)
of 1973 and implementing regulations adopted by the California
Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (BOF). The purpose of
these laws is to create and maintain a comprehensive system of
regulation of all timberlands to assure that, where feasible,
the productivity of timberlands is restored, enhanced, and
maintained. A central purpose of the act is to achieve the
maximum sustained yield of high-quality timber products while
giving consideration to values relating to recreation,
watershed, wildlife, range and forage, fisheries, regional
economic vitality, employment, and aesthetic enjoyment.
2. Pursuant to AB 32, the California Air Resources Board must
adopt a statewide GHG emissions limit equivalent to 1990 levels
by 2020 and adopt regulations to achieve maximum technologically
feasible and cost-effective GHG emission reductions. ARB is
required to adopt and update every five years a scoping plan for
achieving these reductions from sources or categories of
sources.
3. Senate Bill 97, enacted in 2007, amends the CEQA statute to
clearly establish that GHG emissions and the effects of GHG
emissions are appropriate subjects for CEQA analysis. It directs
OPR to develop CEQA guidelines "for the mitigation of greenhouse
gas emissions or the effects of greenhouse gas emissions" by
July 1, 2009 and directs the Resources Agency to certify and
adopt the CEQA guidelines by January 1, 2010. The guidelines
became effective on March 18, 2010.
4. The CEQA guidelines address the mitigation of GHG emissions
in section 15126.4(c) and requires mitigation where a project's
GHG emissions impacts are determined to be significant.
5. The guidelines also add several items to the checklist in
Appendix G of the guidelines for addressing GHG emissions from
forestry projects pertaining to: (1) direct loss of forest land
or conversion of forest land; (2) indirect loss of forest land
or conversion of forest land; and (3) compliance with forestry
state laws.
PROPOSED LAW
This bill adds, to the findings in the act, a declaration that
forest management goals of California should also include the
sequestration of carbon dioxide. In another section of the act,
the bill proposes a new finding that the sustained production of
timber should be achieved while considering the factors in
existing law and the proposed new factor of sequestration of
carbon dioxide.
The bill would also add a series of new findings and
declarations that acknowledge the important role forests and
harvesting activities have in contributing to carbon emissions
into the atmosphere as well as the important role forests play
in sequestering carbon as part of the growth cycle of forests.
Another finding notes that the Scoping Plan estimates that the
state forests sequester a net of five million metric tons of
carbon dioxide annually, and that the Scoping Plan proposes to
continue that rate of sequestration through 2020 by considering
changes in forest practices and regulations that will help
achieve that objective.
The bill would amend the 1973 act to direct the BOF to ensure
that its regulations, where applicable, consider the capacity of
California's forest resources, including above ground and
belowground biomass and soil, to sequester carbon dioxide
emissions sufficient to meet or exceed the state's greenhouse
gas reduction goals as delineated in the Scoping Plan adopted by
the ARB pursuant to AB 32.
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT
According to the author, the Forest Practices Act became law at
a time when the threat of climate change was essentially
non-existent. AB 1504 modernizes the Act by acknowledging the
critical and cost-effective role forests play in sequestering
GHGs and combating climate change, and the threat that climate
change can pose to this role. According to a 2007 report from
McKinsey and Co., after rising for 50 years, carbon absorption
by U.S. forests and agricultural lands is forecast to decline by
7 percent, from roughly 1.1 gigatons in 2005 to nearly 1.0
gigatons in 2030. This trend is due to fewer net additions to
forested lands and slower rates of carbon absorption in maturing
trees. Additionally, according to the USFS, "The national
forests in California will become net emitters of carbon by the
end of the century. For the next 4-6 decades, under a Business
as Usual (BAU) trajectory, the national forests will accumulate
carbon at a higher rate than carbon will be lost through
disturbances such as wildfire, pest mortality and inter-tree
competition. However, at some point in the mid-21st century,
losses from wildfire, disease and other disturbances will exceed
growth. National forest carbon sinks will become unstable and
unsustainable, under the BAU scenario."
According to ARB's AB 32 Scoping Plan, California's forests
currently sequester approximately 5 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide annually. This means that the atmospheric uptake
and sequestration of carbon from forest growth is greater than
emissions from fires, harvesting, land conversion, and
decomposition. There were significant limitations (e.g.,
temporal, spatial, and methodological), however, to the study
that formed the basis for the above sequestration rate so ARB is
planning on updating its assessment next year. Nonetheless, the
Scoping Plan tasks CDF and BOF with evaluating how its current
regulations and programs will continue to achieve the 5 MMT
target by 2020.
The major proposed new provision in AB 1504 directs the agencies
to ensure that this sequestration rate is maintained or exceeded
through its forest practices rules that govern the harvesting of
commercial tree species. Pursuant to its responsibilities under
the California Environmental Quality Act, CDF is already
requiring certain large landowners to analyze the GHG impacts of
their preferred timber harvest management regimes across their
entire ownership. AB 1504 essentially codifies this requirement
by directing THP filers to submit an estimate of carbon
emissions from timber operations.
Three nonprofit organizations support the bill and agree with
the concerns of the United States Forest Service that
California's forests are at risk to become a net emitter of
carbon.
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION
The California Licensed Foresters Association opposed the
earlier version of the bill. It supported the intent of adding
sequestration references into the intent sections of the Forest
Practices Act, although it did not endorse the precise language
chosen by the author. It specifically opposed provisions of the
bill that have been deleted. It is not known what their position
is on the newly amended provisions of this bill.
COMMENTS
1. Rather than imposing a requirement on landowners to
calculate the net emissions of carbon dioxide from timber
harvesting operations, it would be a simpler calculation to
ask that they estimate simply the emissions of carbon
dioxide without undertaking the calculations of what the
"net" emissions would be. In the proposed amendment, staff
recommends deletion of the word "net." This suggestion is
consistent with the CEQA guidelines, section 15064.4, which
urges lead agencies to quantify the greenhouse gas
emissions of proposed projects where possible.
2. As drafted, the bill applies only to timber harvest
plans and does not extend the greenhouse gas emission
reporting provision to smaller landowners who operate
through different provisions of the Forest Practice Act and
the regulations of the BOF through what are called
"non-industrial timber harvest plans" on 2500 acres or
less. The exclusion of NTMPs seems clear enough, but if the
bill moves forward, the author may want to consider an
explicit exclusion that would make it clear that NTMPs are
not included.
3. CDF concluded in a memorandum last year that it believes
its existing authorities, while not specifically targeted
to addressing GHG relationships, will support the emission
targets for the forest sector identified in the Scoping
Plan.
4. To implement the provisions of SB 97 and the new CEQA
guidelines, CDF has been directing large timberland
landowners (those with more than 50,000 acres) to quantify
their greenhouse emissions on an ownership scale. Existing
regulations require these landowners to demonstrate maximum
sustained production either through implementation of a
"sustained yield plan" or what the forestry rules call an
"option a" agreement. The department has determined that
either agreement may result in management practices that
over the 100-year time frame of such an agreement, enough
trees would grow back on the company's lands to render the
logging carbon neutral. An open question that is currently
pending in the courts is whether CEQA and its guidelines
are satisfied with an ownership-wide analysis or whether a
project analysis is required that would be triggered when a
landowner files for approval of a timber harvest plan. This
bill does not force an answer to this question but instead
directs the department manage its regulatory
responsibilities comprehensively in a way that will achieve
the emissions reduction goal that has been adopted by the
ARB and for landowners to provide an estimate of greenhouse
gas emissions from their timber operations.
5. Through photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is absorbed from
the atmosphere and stored aboveground (in trees, understory
vegetation, lying dead wood, litter, duff) and belowground
(soil, roots). Older trees inherently store more carbon
than younger trees. Carbon stored in soils is a large,
stable pool, accounting for 50-60 percent of total forest
carbon in temperate forests, according to the author, which
is why the bill references both aboveground and belowground
carbon. When trees or understory plants die, some carbon is
stored as dead biomass or transformed to soil carbon via
decomposition. Soil carbon itself decomposes slowly and
can accumulate at high rates.
6. A disturbance to this system, whether caused by humans
or nature, influences this carbon balance in
several respects. A wildfire, for example, directly
releases carbon to the atmosphere while also converting
living biomass to dead biomass. When trees are harvested,
carbon (roughly 20-33 percent) is transferred to wood
products, emitted from decaying stumps and slash (branches,
leaf litter, etc.), soil, and combustion from burning the
site or slash in preparation for re-planting. Some carbon
also remains on-site. A disturbance temporarily reduces
photosynthesis because of the time it takes to restore the
photosynthetic capacity of forests, typically many years,
if not decades.
7. SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS
AMENDMENT 1
Page 7 , line 16, delete "net"
SUPPORT
Forests Forever
Sierra Club California
EPIC
OPPOSITION
California Licensed Foresters Association (previous version)