Cal. HSC § 39740 — California Code / Code hsc / Division 26 / Part 2 / Chapter 4.3 / Article 1 / Section 39740
Section 39740
Status: in_force

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Climate change is causing historic droughts, devastating wildfires, storms, extreme heat, the death of millions of trees, billions of dollars in property damage, and is threatening human health and food supplies.

(b) California has set ambitious targets to reduce the effects of climate change by reducing carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

(c) In 2018, Governor Brown established Executive Order No. B-55-18, creating a state goal to reach carbon neutrality by no later than 2045 and to maintain net negative greenhouse gas emissions thereafter, and directing the state board to work with relevant state agencies to develop a framework for implementation and accounting that tracks progress toward these goals.

(d) In 2019, Governor Newsom established Executive Order No. N-19-19, directing that every aspect of state government redouble its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change while building a sustainable, inclusive economy.

(e) In 2020, Governor Newsom established Executive Order No. N-82-20, directing state agencies to identify and implement near- and long-term actions to accelerate natural removal of carbon and build climate resilience through climate action on natural and working lands in the state and directing the Natural Resources Agency to develop a Natural and Working Lands Climate Smart Strategy that serves as a framework to advance the state’s carbon neutrality goal and build climate resilience. In that executive order, Governor Newsom also directed the State Air Resources Board to consider this strategy and science-based data to update the target for the natural and working lands sector in achieving the state’s carbon neutrality goal.

(f) The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial times will require not only a swift cut in global carbon emissions from human sources, but also the employment of land use practices and technology that directly remove heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The IPCC’s special report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius,” issued October 6, 2018, suggests global carbon removals of as much as six gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year will be needed by 2030 to meet the goal.

(g) Natural and working lands can have significant positive benefits in helping California’s communities be resilient in the face of climate change. Forestry management, healthy soils, wetlands restoration, mountain meadows restoration, and other nature-based climate solutions can deliver greenhouse gas reductions, carbon sequestration benefits, and help limit local community risk to the impacts of climate change, such as wildfire, sea level rise, temperature increases, and changes in global weather patterns.

(h) Technological carbon removal strategies, such as direct air capture, direct water capture, and carbon capture utilization and sequestration technologies, are still relatively new, but according to the IPCC the successful deployment of these technologies, in addition to dramatic emissions reductions, will be crucial to successfully averting the worst impacts of climate change. These technologies offer the potential to create entirely new industries around recycling carbon dioxide emissions into useful products such as clean fuels or materials, and offer the potential to create entirely new clean industrial hubs in resource-rich parts of California, including the Central Valley, Imperial Valley, Inland Empire, Sierra Nevada, and coastal regions.

(i) Carbon capture and mineralization is a process that permanently stores carbon dioxide by direct conversion to carbonate rock, most commonly limestone. Limestone is widely used in concrete, the world’s most common building material, and therefore carbon capture and mineralization provides another promising medium for capturing and storing large quantities of carbon dioxide.

(j) A recent report released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showed that, even without buying offsets from out of state and by just using technology in existence today, California can sequester or remove on the order of 125,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere by 2045 while creating local jobs and local industries at a cost of less than 0.4 percent of the state’s annual gross domestic product. The study further found that California has over 17 billion tons of safe storage in just two areas in the Central Valley, and over 200 billion tons of storage capacity may be available in geologic formations in California to permanently store carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.