California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Life Cycle Assessment Implications of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Special Session Coordinator: Heather L. MacLean, University of Toronto

Four brief presentations (15 min. each) and a 30 min. moderated roundtable discussion with audience participation. The session and discussion will be chaired by Prof. Heather MacLean, University of Toronto.

Session Description (Introductory slides)

The California Legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act on August 31, 2006 (AB 32 Núñez/Pavley). This law enacted economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goals of about 25% below business as usual by 2020. It authorizes the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to identify “discrete early action measures” that can be put into place by 2010. An Executive Order by Governor Schwarzenegger on January 18, 2007 established the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and set a statewide goal to reduce the carbon intensity of California’s transportation fuels at least 10% by 2020. The LCFS Executive Order instructed the University of California to study the policy and provide advice on how to implement the policy.

The California LCFS is one of the first policies that will be based on systematic life cycle assessment (LCA), following a similar regulation in the United Kingdom. To implement the regulation, the climate change impacts associated with a large set of different fuel production/vehicle pathways must be investigated though a comprehensive LCA framework. Lessons learned from the implementation of the LCFS will be key for stakeholders in many jurisdictions. Proposals to implement LCFS-type regulations are emerging in the U.S. federal government, several Western U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and in Europe. The presentations in this session discuss the University of California’s analyses of the LCFS, focusing on how LCA may be used in this regulatory context, as well as its potential impact on the field of LCA. A focus of several of the session presentations is the development and application of LCA models to evaluate biofuels and heavier fossil fuel feedstocks such as the Canadian oil sands. The potential impacts of California’s LCFS on the biofuels and oil sands industries are also addressed.

Comparison of Current Oil Sands Technologies Using Process-based LCA
Alex Charpentier and Heather L. MacLean – University of Toronto (presentation)

The transportation fuel market in North America increasingly relies on oil supply from the Canadian province of Alberta which possesses the second largest established reserves of oil in the world. Alberta’s oil sands consist of a very heavy and viscous bitumen whose development is both highly capital and energy intensive. The California LCFS and other upcoming regulations are increasing interest in inventorying the full set of energy and environmental impacts of this unconventional feedstock for transportation fuels. Process-based LCA is used to estimate the environmental implications of the production of transportation fuels through the two current mainstream oil sands extraction technologies: surface mining and steam-assisted in-situ recovery for shallow and deeper reservoirs, respectively. Life cycle energy use and GHG and air pollutant emissions are compared to results from literature and from two process-based LCA models of oil sands pathways. Finally, potential variation in the carbon intensity of the oil sands-to-gasoline pathway is analysed by examining scenarios such as natural gas substitution for recovering oil sands.

Comparison of Oil Sands Technologies Using Hybrid LCA
Joule Bergerson and David Keith – University of Calgary (presentation)

We apply a hybrid life cycle assessment model to investigate the implications of various oil sands operations. This hybrid approach combines the benefits of the process based framework (including process level data specific to oil sands operations in Alberta) and the economy wide Canadian economic input-output LCA model in order to address the economic and environmental impacts of oil sands operations. This paper presents results of industry surveys and the use of the hybrid LCA framework to demonstrate the magnitude and range of supply chain emissions and the impact the California LCFS will have on this industry. The results of these assessments are then compared to the results from the process model described in the previous talk.

Biomass-based mitigation options for liquid fuel CO₂ emissions within an LCA policy framework
James S. Rhodes and David W. Keith - University of Calgary (presentation)

Increasing biofuels development is a potentially important option for managing anthropogenic CO₂ emissions from liquid fuels. Policy instruments adopting life cycle analytic frameworks, including California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, are particularly suited to support this option due to the inherent ability of such frameworks to account for CO₂ uptake during biomass feedstock production. Similarly, LCA-based policy instruments could support bio-energy systems that integrate carbon capture and storage systems to produce useful energy products with negative net atmospheric carbon emissions. This presentation will discuss several bio-energy production pathways, each of which have been characterized with engineering-economic models. The relative merits of these pathways will be discussed in terms of their potential contributions toward proximate abatement targets and their likely mitigation costs. The implications of these results for proximate policy development will be discussed and several questions will be raised for consideration by both life cycle analysts and the broader policy community.

Implications of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
Alex Farrell – University of California, Berkeley (presentation)

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard is the first significant climate change policy designed specifically to regulate transportation fuels, which account for about a third of U.S. GHG emissions. As proposed, it relies heavily on LCA and will have significant implications for capital investment and technological innovation in the fuels sector. This talk will describe the basic features of the LCFS, what methodological questions it raises for the application of LCA in a regulatory context. The talk will conclude by posing several key questions to the audience based on the above presentations and the experience to date with the LCFS.

Presenters

Joule Bergerson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary.

Alex Charpentier is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto.

Alex Farrell is an Associate Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley and Director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center.

David Keith is the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary.

Heather MacLean is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto.

James Rhodes recently received a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently exploring post-doc opportunities. His research has focused on the engineering, economic, and policy issues associated with biomass-based strategies for mitigating anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.