California Air Resources Board

Four critical items should be changed to line with California state law and food, waste landfill diversion policy.

1. Landfill Capture Rate: Landfill capture rate of 75% (1997 EPA modeling study) must change to current value of 34% backed by latest and most accurate science (EPA 2023, Science, Nature, NASA/JPL).
Note: Canadian Fuel Regulations adopted a 36% landfill methane capture rate for Canadian clean fuel program.
Consequence: SB 1440 relies on negative CI to justify offtakes, inaccurate landfill capture rate hurts CI and hurts 1440 ability to accurately quantify GHG benefit to rate payers.
2. Food Scraps Definition: The definition of Food Scraps in CARB's tier 1 calculator must match Calrecycle definition of food waste. Should not exclude food waste generated from manufacturing, distribution facilities or any liquid form of food waste altogether.
Consequence: entire wastewater sector would be not be able to negative CI RNG even when taking food waste, thus not participate in LCFS or 1440.
Consequence: Generators that are regulated by 1383 won't benefit from low cost outlets to digesters because their feedstock has poor gas value (positive CI), like Amazon or Costco food distribution center.
3. Methane Avoidance: CARB should not arbitrarily eliminate methane avoidance for food waste by 2030. CARB should follow actual science of methane released form landfills and update capture rate to actual practice.
Consequence: eliminating methane avoidance immediately removes negative CI score even though landfills continue to emit methane, and kills food waste RNG projects with gas value so low projects fail economically.
4. Decouple Legal Requirement: Proposed text does not allow food waste to be considered landfill diverted if there is a law that says food waste must be diverted (even if food waste still goes to landfill). Remove this reference, and follow actual in-State destiny of food waste.
Consequence: in California food waste RNG will not be carbon negative because of the existence of SB 1383 law, irrespective if food waste continues to go to landfill.
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