350 Humboldt LookOut

350
Humboldt
LookOut

February
2022

A
coalition of ten local environmental groups,
including 350 Humboldt, responded
to the Draft Environmental Impact
Report
from Nordic Aquafarms. Nordic would like to build the
biggest-of-its-kind fish farm on Humboldt Bay. It would produce
25,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon per year. Nordic’s 1800-page-long DEIR,
released in December, furnished valuable information about its
proposed operation but also created a few mysteries.

The
biggest mystery–to focus only on the climate impacts–is how it’s
possible to use as much electricity as Eureka and Fortuna combined
but to claim no significant greenhouse gas emissions. The answer:
calculate carbon intensity based on an anomalous PG&E statistic
from 2019. This number is less than 1/70th of the carbon intensity of
electricity
in 2018.
It obviously cannot be mistaken for reality. More about that number
later.

Increasing
local energy production by almost
25% would be quite the challenge–particularly when decarbonizing our
grid is such a major priority. Using a hundred percent clean,
renewable energy would be the most desirable route for Nordic to
take. That would be an almost impossible goal for this decade if not
for the possibility of an offshore wind power project. Nordic may be
in luck, but it’s too soon to know yet.

More
greenhouse
gas emissions
would be
caused by
scouring the ocean to find enough fish to feed the salmon, plus
hauling and processing the catch into fish food; a lot of truck
traffic to haul product; and refrigeration–both mobile
and stationary.
The refrigeration component uses 25% of the projected electricity,
plus it involves refrigerants,
which could have
a global warming potential ranging
from
zero to 2800,
depending on the substance chosen.
350 Humboldt would like for Nordic to specify where on this scale
they plan to land.

For
more detail about the climate impacts of the proposed project and its
other environmental impacts, read the coalition’s response here.

About
that strange little number from 2019
that Nordic based its projected carbon intensity on: As it turns out,
the California Energy Commission has updated its Power Source
Disclosure rules in an effort to better analyze and quantify GHG
emissions, which are very complicated to track. In the long run these
new reporting rules will more accurately portray the carbon intensity
of California’s electricity grid, but the transition in 2019 from the
old accounting rules to new rules caused a distortion.

The
problem stems from when community choice aggregates such as Redwood
Coast Energy Authority took over much of PG&E’s customer base.
The investor-owned utility was left with long-term energy
procurements that exceeded demand. Danny Cullenward, PhD, Policy
Director at CarbonPlan, and co-author of technical articles on this
very topic, tried to help me understand what happened next. “To
make a long story short, utilities like PG&E that procured more
power than they need can choose to assign the cleanest parts of their
portfolio to their customers for this accounting calculation . . . .
PG&E is in the middle of transferring those contracts to the
CCAs. During this transitional period, the new methodology allows
PG&E to claim artificially low GHG emissions. ”

Dr.
Cullenward also pointed out that as impatient as climate activists
feel about the slow progress towards climate goals, PG&E’s
zero-emissions portfolio actually compares very well to other
utilities across the country.

The
San Francisco Chronicle reported last month on the dismal state of
aquaculture in California. The article claimed there had been no
new aquaculture projects approved in the state in the past 25 years.

The
Chronicle article must have hit a nerve because a February editorial
from CalMatters claims “there is no regulatory prohibition on
seaweed or shellfish aquaculture in California.” In the past
several years the California Coastal Commission has permitted seven
seaweed farms. And contrary to moans and complaints about the time
and cost of the applicant process, the cost has typically come in
under $5 grand, and processed in less than six months.

So
what’s going on here? A close reading of CalMatters’ short editorial reveals that it’s pretty much all about the California
Coastal Commission. It’s no wonder the author, Jack Ainsworth, seems
a little tetchy about the CCC’s reputation. He’s the executive
director. But the CCC is only one of the agencies that need to sign
off on aquaculture projects. This is the only thing he says about
California’s overall permitting process: “Moreover, the Ocean
Protection Council recently convened a partnership of seven state
agencies to develop and release a set of guiding principles for
aquaculture in California and is hard at work on a statewide
aquaculture plan to be released later this year.”

Splendid!
So how many permits has California issued for aquaculture in the last
25 years? He doesn’t say. I suspect zero just as the Chronicle article asserted.

Larry
Oetker of Humboldt Bay Harbor District says it takes $100,000 and
two years to get a seaweed or shellfish aquaculture project permitted
in California. But not in Humboldt Bay. A handful of towns on
California’s coast had the foresight to reserve local permitting to
itself, and that includes HBHD. 21 acres of bay have been
pre-permitted for small-scale aquaculture–Manila Clam, Kumamto and
Pacific Oyster, Red Algae, and kelp. A little over ten acres is
unreserved as of now. Another six acres has a pending application for
an oyster grow. The rest is occupied by three seaweed farms,
including HSU’s enterprise that grows both red dulse and kelp.

Shellfish
and seaweed aquaculture situates itself farther down on the food
chain than farming fish,
especially salmon, for instance. This type of aquaculture uses very
little energy, sequesters carbon, and cleans the water besides.

Nichole Bohner from Pixabay

EaRTH
Center is coming to Eureka. The Eureka City Council unanimously
voted on Feb. 10 to roll forward with plans for the Eureka
Regional Transit and Housing Center. It will serve not only as a hub
for Redwood Transit, Eureka Transit, and longer-distance buses, but
also provide active transportation amenities and apartments and
retail spaces.

Most
members of the public at the city council meeting expressed support
for the hub and the housing element. However, the development would
displace two parking lots, which figured highly on critics’ list of
priorities, including some local business owners. But reducing
emissions of vehicular traffic is one of the project’s goals. The
city and Humboldt Transit Authority are talking about a free shuttle
service around Old Town, downtown, and the waterfront, stopping at
parking lots in the area.

Colin
Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities
expressed enthusiasm for the multimodal features of the hub that
would include “carshare and bikeshare hubs, secure bike parking
areas, and car rental facilities, all of which will allow last-mile
access to and from transit without the need for a personal vehicle.”

Connie Stewart is
another enthusiast. The executive director of initiatives for Cal
Poly Humboldt said that the EaRTH Center would open doors for the
university to invest more of its economic development power in
Eureka. The transit plan includes express routes to the university.
Make the buses ZEVs as planned, and we’re talking about a city
investing in the clean energy future.

Site of future transit hub.

Dana Utman

HCAOG
shoulders a lot of responsibility for creating the County’s
transportation priorities. Activists worked last year with Humboldt County Association of Governments to go beyond automobiles
to develop Safe and Sustainable Transportation Targets as part of the
Regional Transportation Plan. The result was an ambitious list of ten objectives ranging from reducing GHG emissions in
our air district to active transportation education. Each objective
listed specific targets–such as increasing the percentage of trips
made by walking, biking, micro-mobility and mass transit by at least
40% by 2040. Metrics were spelled out for how to assess progress
towards each target.

This
impressive on-paper progress soon encountered objections from the
Technical Advisory Committee [TAC]. The committee aired concerns that
funding for the sustainable transportation targets might take
precedence over road repair projects–a priority called fix-it-first.
Also, the TAC expressed fear of losing its own “collaborative”
procedures for deciding on the funding priorities.

At
the HCAOG board meeting on 1/20 it was decided that staff would
develop an evaluation tool that could help decide which projects
qualify for discretionary funding. No related issues were discussed
at the February meeting.

Disgruntled
California senators quizzed top regulators on
February 23 about how effective the state’s cap and trade program
is
at reducing GHG
emissions.
A recent report from
the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee [IEMAC] gave
them ample cause for alarm. Apparently, the state has issued so many
emission allowances that polluters don’t actually
need
to reduce their emissions.
Chief
among these polluters are oil and gas companies who received 80% of
the free allowances in 2021.

The
performance
of the carbon
offsets program–a limited but crucial tool for cap and trade
and voluntary markets as well–is
part of the
dismal picture.
Research
has shown that forest
offset credits are
linked to
increased
emissions. One
IEMAC
researcher
warned that the current state of affairs could go on for a decade
without any emissions
reductions
at
all attributable
to the cap and trade system.

Various
adjustments
and reforms recommended
by IEMAC would
likely solve the problem.
The European Union’s cap and trade program faced and fixed problems
quite similar to California’s.
But the top regulators present at the hearing,
including the Air Resources Board,
said that the proposed changes couldn’t take place for at least two
years if they took place at all. They
said more data analysis is necessary and
expressed confidence that cap and trade will yield its most crucial
reductions in the long run. Too
stringent regulation at this point
could
send California industries packing to other jurisdictions where they
would be less regulated or perhaps not regulated at all.