California air regulators voted to approve changes to a key climate program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions that has a wide swath of critics and could increase gas prices statewide.

The California Air Resources Board voted to make significant updates to the low carbon fuel standard, or LCFS, which requires the state to reduce the environmental impact of gas and other transportation fuels by incentivizing producers to cut emissions.

The plan approved late Friday at the end of a 12-hour meeting will increase the state’s emission reduction targets and fund charging infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles. It also will phase out incentives for capturing methane emissions from dairy farms to turn into fuel.

Environmental groups have criticized the program for stimulating the production of biofuels, which are derived from sources including plants and animal waste, when they say the state should focus more on supporting power for electric vehicles. They argue the proposal fails to adequately address those concerns.

The oil industry, state lawmakers and others have said the agency hasn’t been transparent about how the proposed updates could increase gas prices.

Agency staff released a cost-benefit analysis last year estimating the initial proposal could have led to an increase in gas prices by 47 cents per gallon by 2025. But the staff has not repeated the analysis since later updating the proposal and the agency contends it cannot accurately predict gas prices.

“If you’re going to ask drivers to pay a lot, which is what this program proposal is going to do, I think you need to be able to make the case that it’s worth paying for,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist with the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. “What concerns me most about this is I think a lot of the things that are being credited do not actually help the climate.”

Gas prices could increase by as high as 85 cents per gallon by 2030 and $1.50 per gallon by 2035 under the proposal, according to an estimate from Cullenward. Cullenward said his figures and the estimates initially released by board staff are not an apples-to-apples comparison, in part because his projection uses 2023 dollars and the board staff used 2021 dollars.

State Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican representing Palmdale in Southern California, said at the meeting that his constituents cannot afford an increase in gas prices.

“On behalf of the people of the 34th Assembly district, I ask you to not approve this rulemaking and find other alternatives that won’t cost us quite that much,” he said.

The California Air Resources Board says the program will ultimately lower the cost of sustainable transportation fuels.

The agency first approved the low carbon fuel standard in 2009, the first of its kind in the nation. It is part of California’s overall plan to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. The state has passed policies in recent years to phase out the sale of new fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn mowers.

“The low carbon fuel standard has already successfully created lower-cost, lower-carbon alternatives, and the benefits of the proposal vastly outweigh those costs,” Steven Cliff, the agency’s executive officer, said last month.

Suncheth Bhat, chief commercial officer for EV Realty, an electric vehicle infrastructure company, called the program “one of the most powerful, transformational policies” to speed up the transition to electric vehicles.

The vote comes a day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called the state Legislature into a special session to protect some of California’s environmental and other liberal policies ahead of former President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

“CARB’s justification for this version of the LCFS as a bridge for combustion fuels while we transition to zero-emissions needs to be reconsidered in light of the profoundly altered landscape we suddenly landed in this week,” Adrian Martinez, deputy managing attorney at environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said of Trump’s election win.

The Trump administration in 2019 revoked California’s ability to enforce its own tailpipe emissions standards. President Joe Biden later restored the state’s authority, which was upheld in federal court.

Future challenges from the Trump administration could lead to long court battles, said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“In the meantime, I think we still need something … to enhance the development of electric vehicles and the electric vehicle infrastructure,” Pettit said. “The LCFS is a way that we might be able to do that.”

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Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Hesperia, is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to grant a waiver that would allow the In-Use Locomotive Regulation to take effect.

In a letter co-signed by 74 congressmembers, Obernolte told EPA Administrator Michael Regan that the rule, adopted in April 2023 by the California Air Resources Board and set to start taking effect in 2030, is unnecessary and impossible to follow because the required technology doesn’t exist.

Trains account for just 0.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — which are responsible for climate change — and despite the industry taking steps to cut those emissions, the rule “has the potential to undermine the progress made by the railroads,” Obernolte’s letter read.

“Forcing the adoption of unproven technology could inadvertently move freight from the rail sector to (the) heavy-duty trucking sector,” which emits far more pollution, the letter added.

Obernolte, whose district includes cities in San Bernardino County’s High Desert as well as parts of Colton, Highland, Loma Linda, Redlands and San Bernardino, fears the rule will cause Burlington Northern Santa Fe to pull the plug on its $1.5 billion Barstow International Gateway project, killing 20,000 jobs, because the project would need all-electric locomotives that don’t exist.

Rail projects such as the Barstow gateway “would be canceled completely as development would become cost-prohibitive” if the rule were enacted, Burlington Northern spokesperson Lena Kent said via email.

Also, “thousands of existing and promised well-paying jobs would vanish” and “the cost of goods movement through California would increase to the point of being non-competitive, shifting cargo to other ports outside the state,” Kent said.

“Our national supply chain and West Coast port throughput would suffer without new rail projects that improve efficiency.”

The air resources board declined to comment on Obernolte’s letter. But according to information given by board spokesperson Lys Mendez, emissions from just one train exceed those from 400 heavy-duty trucks.

“The reduced nitrogen oxide and diesel particulate matter — of which there is no known safe level of exposure — will bring an estimated $32 billion in health savings by preventing 3,200 premature deaths and 1,500 emergency room visits and hospitalizations,” the statement provided by Mendez said.

“Cancer risk from exposure to air toxins within one mile of locomotive operations is expected to be reduced by 90%. Many rail operations, particularly in urban areas, tend to be located in places that are home to low-income residents and communities of color, who often bear a disproportionate burden from the impacts of air pollution,” the statement added.

Toxic exhaust from trucks and trains serving the logistics industry is a sensitive topic in the Inland Empire, where mega-warehouses stretching into the horizon support tens of thousands of jobs.

Environmental justice activists want the government to strictly limit or eradicate diesel emissions linked to cancer, asthma, heart attacks and other health problems. But logistics industry advocates warn the rules sought at the state and federal levels have unrealistic timelines and the industry is already taking steps to curb emissions.

Under the rule, by 2035, all locomotives operating in California will have to run in “zero-emission configuration” or in a way that doesn’t emit pollution.

“Presently, there are no commercially available freight locomotives that could comply with the (zero-emission) requirements of the regulation,” Obernolte’s letter states.

The rule also forces freight train companies to deposit money into a spending account that can only be used for zero-emission technology, with the amount deposited based on their trains’ emissions.

Burlington Northern and Union Pacific — the two Class I freight train companies operating in California — could each be forced to deposit up to $800 million a year, Obernolte’s letter read.

If the EPA adopts the rule, it could lead to a byzantine level of state-by-state locomotive regulations, disrupting a freight train industry that’s best regulated by the federal government, Obernolte said.

Responding to Obernolte’s questions at a Wednesday, May 15, House committee hearing, Regan said his agency is “going through a very thorough evaluation right now (of the rule) and we’ve got a lot of things to consider.”

“I have pledged, and so have my team members, to follow the science and follow the law. We have to be sure that any action that we take does both of those things, especially follow the law,” Regan said.

He did not provide a timeframe for when the EPA will decide whether to grant the rule a waiver.

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