The Center for Forestry submitted both written and oral comments at the Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) Public Meeting on February 20, 2015 in Sacramento, CA. The The FCAT was established as part of the 2014 Climate Change Scoping Plan update to Assembly Bill 32 (California Global Warming Solutions Act) to develop a forest carbon plan for the state. The team is composed of individuals from state agencies, federal agencies, and local governments. It is led by CalFire Director Ken Pimlott.
The Center's comments covered these topics:
A recommendation that the FCAT incorporate a systems or life cycle approach that considers all carbon pools—live trees in the forest; live tree carbon that goes to dead trees and into soils; wood products; and the “saved” carbon when wood is substituted for cement, steel, and gasoline.
A suggestion that the FCAT examine the important role forests play in carbon planning in British Columbia. British Columbia's carbon offset program is closely tied with their forestry sector—both to achieve significant carbon advantages and to provide significant co-benefits that are often targeted at rural or disadvantaged communities. Valuable descriptions of some of their strategies can be found at:
A reflection that AB 1504 provides a legislative mandate for the Board of Forestry (BOF) to take a firm leadership role on ensuring that California's forests and forest products become a larger and larger part of California's overall strategy for climate change mitigation.
Part of our mandate at the Center is to learn how different forest practices affect carbon, rigorously document the processes, and disseminate what are “best practices.” The Center hopes to continue to work with FCAT, Board, and CALFIRE staff as they move forward in this process.
A copy of the Center's written comments can be found below.
Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) holds first public meeting Feb 20
Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) holds first public meeting Feb 20
Join us at the Richmond Field Station!
The State of California's Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) will hold its first public meeting this Friday (February 20) from 1-3 PM. The UC Woody Biomass Utilization Group will be hosting a satellite broadcast of the meeting at the Richmond Field Station in Building 445 (map). The meeting format allows questions/comments from attendees. We will be broadcasting the meeting and facilitating your questions/comments on a large screen.
In 2006, the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 32, the “California Global Warming Solutions Act”. Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law, requiring California to reduce greenhouse gas emission to 1990 levels by 2020. It has long been recognized that California forests will play a very important role in achieving AB 32 goals. Under the direction and leadership of Governor Jerry Brown, the Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) was assembled in August of 2014 with the primary purpose of developing a Forest Carbon Plan by the end of 2016. FCAT is comprised of Executive level members from many of the State's natural resources agencies, state and federal forest land managers, and other key partners directly or indirectly involved in California forestry. FCAT is under the leadership of CAL FIRE, Cal-EPA, and The Natural Resources Agency.
The State of California's Forest Climate Action Team (FCAT) will hold a series of public meetings in late February and early March to provide the public with information on the Team's proposed work, and to invite public comment. Established last year following recommendations made in the 2014 update to the Assembly Bill (AB) 32 Climate Change Scoping Plan, the FCAT is composed of a broad range of state and federal agencies with responsibilities for forests and related natural resources. Local governments also are represented on the FCAT. The Forest Climate Action Team is led by Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), with support from the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency. FCAT's primary role is to develop a “forest carbon plan,” as called for in the Scoping Plan update. The forest carbon plan will provide strategies and targets to ensure that California forests will be managed to maintain healthy forest conditions, and continue to grow and store carbon in the form of wood to offset the negative effects of climate change for future generations. The forest carbon plan will summarize and address historical challenges associated with forest resource management, including jurisdictional boundaries, carbon baseline establishment and monitoring, costs and benefits, and financing, among other issues. Development of the plan will give careful consideration to the entire range of environmental, economic, and social benefits provided by forests in the state. Through the development and adoption of the plan, the aim of the FCAT is to engage resource managers, experts from multiple jurisdictions, and the public to collaborate on collective goals and reach carbon sequestration targets. The Forest Climate Action Team looks forward to the opportunity to introduce its work to the public and to take comments and answer questions. The schedule for the public meetings is as follows:
Sacramento
February 20, 1-3 PM, Auditorium, State of CA Resources Building, 1416 Ninth Street.
Anderson
March 2, 1-3 PM, Gaia Hotel, 4125 Riverside Place.
Arcadia
March 11, 1-3 PM, Training Center, Angeles National Forest Headquarters, 701 N. Santa Anita Avenue.
The February 20 meeting also will be Webcast live, and satellite locations where the public may gather to view the Webcast and ask questions or make comments have been set for:
Bishop
US Forest Service/Bureau of Land Management Offices, 351 Pacu Lane.
Eureka
UC Cooperative Extension, Humboldt County Office, 5630 South Broadway.
Fresno
CAL FIRE Office, 1234 East Shaw Avenue.
Richmond
UC Berkeley Richmond Field Station, Building 445 (map)
Sonora
Tuolumne County Emergency Services Center, 18440 Striker Court. More details on the meetings, including agenda, draft documents, locations, and how to access the Webcast may be found on the FCAT Website: http://www.fire.ca.gov/fcat/
California must continually increase its use of renewable fuels to meet mandated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The state's historic Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) requires that alternative fuels displace 6 percent of gasoline and diesel use now, and 9 percent by 2012. The number goes up to 11 percent in 2017 and 26 percent in 2022.
California has been meeting these goals by importing millions of gallons of ethanol: 80 percent of the supply is corn ethanol from the Midwest, 12 percent is sugarcane ethanol from Brazil, and the rest is ethanol from corn grown here. By 2012, demand for ethanol fuel will rise to 1.62 billion gallons per year. If California does not increase its production of corn for ethanol, it will need to import 95 percent of that amount.
In the second year of production, switchgrass in El centro yielded 17.6 tons per acre, and productivity tends to increase through the third and fourth years.
However, the overall cost of producing and transporting corn ethanol is significant, both in dollars and greenhouse gas emissions. Whether average corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions is a matter of dispute, as the GHG that result from its production and transportation to customers may cancel out the hoped-for reduction in carbon footprint.
In the search for a better alternative, scientists have been investigating conversion of cellulose to ethanol. Technical challenges remain, but cellulose offers a potentially abundant feedstock for biofuels.
One of the plants seen as a possible dedicated biofuel crop in the United States is switchgrass. It is about 40 percent cellulose and grows widely in the Midwest and the South. However, it is not native to California and has not been produced here.
Recent studies by UC Davis scientists are the first ever to report tests of different switchgrass ecotypes in California, - and are published in the current California Agriculture journal.
Scientists evaluated the productivity of the two main ecotypes of switchgrass, lowland and upland, under irrigated conditions across four diverse California ecozones — from Tulelake in the cool north to warm Imperial Valley in the south.
”It is important to know how much biomass can be produced in the state before deciding to pursue cellulosic ethanol," says UC Davis plant scientist Gabriel Pedroso. "California has very diverse climatic regions, which affect the adaptability and productivity of switchgrass.”
Because it is a deep-rooted perennial grass, switchgrass promotes soil conservation. It stores carbon in its root system, and makes efficient use of water by virtue of its C4 photorespiration.
Switchgrass requires an establishment year.
"In the second year of production, the lowland varieties grown in the warm San Joaquín and Imperial valleys yielded up to 17 tons per acre of biomass, roughly double the biomass yields of California rice or maize," Pedroso said.
Because of switchgrass' high biomass yields, it is considered a good candidate for dedicated energy crops.
Because it can be used both as forage and as a biofuel crop, switchgrass may be well suited to California, a state with a large livestock industry and higher ethanol consumption than any other.
While the field trial results are promising, commercial, large-scale conversion processes for cellulose to sugars and fuels are just beginning to be demonstrated.
Cellulose is a complex matrix of smaller sugar molecules and fibrous material in plant cell walls. It is the principal structural component of all plant material, including residues and organic materials in municipal solid waste. If it were possible to efficiently break it down into simple sugars, if would become a productive source of ethanol, and would significantly reduce GHG.
Read the bill. That was the first policy lesson that Linda Adams, Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, brought to the newly minted Ph.D.’s at the Graduate Research Symposium of UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) earlier this month, where she delivered the keynote address.
The bill Adams was referring to was AB 32, the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, on which she was the lead negotiator. She told a harrowing tale of the legislative pipeline.
“When Governor Schwarzenegger appointed me in 2006… I was just vaguely aware of AB 32, which was actually very close to his desk,” Adams said. “Being a good former legislative staffer, the first thing I did was read the bill. And much to my horror, what the governor wanted — a market-based approach to reducing emissions — was not only not in the bill but actually prohibited.”
Adams’ discovery resulted in a fight for a comprehensive approach to reducing emissions that California businesses would support, including a cap-and-trade program and complementary measures such as low-emissions vehicles, renewable energy, and increased energy efficiency. The bill that ultimately passed was the nation’s first major climate-change legislation, and was what the California Air Resources Board refers to as the “first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases.”
Her achievements resonated with the audience; environment and climate-change related work is the one common thread among the diverse lines of scientific inquiry pursued at ESPM. Research presented by the graduating Ph.D. students included modeling the impact of climate change on a Bay Area redwood forest, studying changes bird populations in the Sierrra Nevada, analyzing the politics of chemical monitoring, and studying the growth of eco-labels and sustainability ratings—so-called “green” products and services.
Putting the science in government
This broad spectrum of inquiry meshed well with the key theme of Adam’s talk: Science matters.
“Every policy regulation we make here at Cal EPA is based on science,” Adams said. “We rely on our experts when developing policies and… we depend on the accuracy, the timeliness, the relevance, and the needed answers they can supply,” she said.
To the delight of a room filled with fresh job-seeking Ph.D.'s, Adams said that Cal EPA employs hundreds of scientists in various areas of expertise.
What do they do? As an example, Adams cited an agency-wide investigation into a spike in birth defects in the small town of Kettleman City.
“It involved scientists from each department looking into potential links to water, soil, air, and/or pesticide pollution,” she said. “The Department of Pesticide Regulation provided models of pesticide activity in the formative months of pregnancy; the Air Resources Board (ARB) monitored the air in the area; the Water Board tested the tap water and canal for arsenic and other pollutants; and the Department of Toxic Substances Control tested the soil for contamination.
The role of forests
The new world of AB 32 will generate the need for new areas of scientific expertise at Cal EPA. In additional to a full spectrum of chemical and environmental monitoring, there will be growing demand for forestry and reforestation knowledge.
In the legislative negotiations, businesses asked for, and won, the market-based cap-and trade-program. They were not so keen on the “cap” part, according to Adams, but the “trade” part gave them the ability to purchase offsets. This means that not all their reductions have to come at their factory or refinery location; a limited portion can from areas outside their actual area of operation.
That translates to forests. Of the four offset protocols adopted by the ARB, two were forestry protocols: one for urban forestry and one for U.S. forest reforestation and forest management projects.
“We already have over 100 forestation and forest management projects submitted for approval as offsets all over the United States,” Adams said. Cal EPA is also exploring the international market for carbon reduction, through cutting-edge pilot forest redevelopment programs in Chiapas, Mexico, and Acre, Brazil.
Calling to account
As the state begins to implement AB 32 and build a national and international accounting framework, Adams said science will be especially important.
“We need to ensure that all reductions achieved are real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable, and we rely on the science to provide reduction and emission calculation methods, to identify procedures for project monitoring, reporting parameters, and verification,” she said. “We need the scientific backing to reinforce the policy outcomes we seek, and the research to determine if those sought-after outcomes are possible.… It’s all one continuous cycle.”
In addition to the keynote address, the May 6 Berkeley symposium, dubbed “Gradfest,” also had 15 research presentations, two poster sessions, and a career panel and to help usher ESPM graduates into the various professional arenas of academia, government, nonprofit, and the private sector.
Pictured above, left to right: Alex Harmon-Threatt, Graham Bullock, Mike Wasserman, Secretary Linda S. Adams, Pauline Kamath, Morgan Tingley, and Ben Ramage