And it’s exceptionally well written on top of that. Thanks for sharing.

That said, if it was a norm to occasionally challenge these things we might find some of those bills do indeed have affirmative supermajority support. So I agree with you, with the caveat that there's a chicken-and-egg situation in some cases. How many? Who knows.

Agreed. There are a fair number of (smaller) bills that get near-unanimous support on the floor. My read is that these are often treated as low-controversy and moved through quickly, rather than bills with affirmative supermajority support.

Seems so. And it's self-reinforcing. If the legislature never overrides a veto, it takes a huge push to make it happen. If the legislature did it on the regular, some vetos might not even happen in the first place.

Hope your tenure talk went great!

Dave's thread is fantastic, as always. Here's a useful writeup from CalMatters for more.

So I'm much less concerned that this project is greenwashing (by taking a policy incentive that is limited to problematic applications).

I'm much more concerned that this project will be used to sustain policy greenwashing (through the false implication that most LCFS $$ go to good technologies).

Appreciate the exchange as always.

One more thought. I've already seen messages from lobbyists who argue that this project proves the LCFS is doing great work as is and shouldn't be reformed.

Agreed. To me, this illustrates key problems with California's policy instruments, rather than a concern intrinsic to Rondo or a bad choice their leadership made. I think the technology is great. I bet they would deploy it in other sectors if the policy incentives weren't limited to oil offsets!

Both of which provide tradeable credits that buyers can use to offset their fossil fuel emissions.

It doesn't matter to me whether one calls one tCO2e-denominated unit an "ARB Offset Credit" and another an "LCFS credit"; they have the same function in each program

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which, to my point, provides tradeable credits to facilities like this one that can be sold to buyers to offset those buyers' fossil fuel emissions.

That's exactly what I want to push back on. Offsets are everywhere. The problems are the same. It's a mistake to draw a distinction between "offsetting" and "Offsets" in policy.

The irony here, for me, is if that this project was eligible for oil offsets through the LCFS, when it would make just as much technical sense as a straight industrial decarbonization project without any of the moral hazard concerns.

But it only gets offsets through the LCFS for oil.

I take your points, but FWIW this is definitely an "offset" — the LCFS is effectively a bunch offsets dressed up in a trenchcoat, and many of the failures of the LCFS are identical to the failures of offset markets more generally.

Two other important details:

1. Verra hasn't released its calculations.

* * Why not?

2. Verra hasn't said why too many credits were issued.

* * So did the project developer or its auditor break Verra's rules? Or were the rules too lax, as academics have argued?

The underlying problem of over-crediting is well documented and far too common, but before this development I don't recall a registry acknowledging a major problem and calling for a remedy (however incomplete).

It took a massive scandal to get here — see Heidi Blake's reporting in The New Yorker.

Last week Jim Giles also covered the issue for Trellis. trellis.net/article/verr...

California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard gives LCFS credits for using renewable energy, rather than natural gas, to make steam to produce oil.

I expect this technology would work just as well in e.g. food manufacturing, but the LCFS only subsidizes transportation fuels. It's a policy choice.