Elias: California fuel standards shouldn’t be changed right now

At every level of government, there are times when the left hand seems to have no clue what the right hand is doing. Nov. 8 might become one of those confounding times.

That’s the date — just three days after the presidential election — reserved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for a decision about whether to toughen state rules on the carbon intensity of fuels. The fuel of concern here is gasoline.

The more carbon oil refineries bake into the gas they produce, the more greenhouse gas emissions most car engines will create, thus increasing smog. CARB’s fervent mission since the 1960s has been to reduce smog in California’s air. That function is even enshrined in the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon.

The problem is that toughening up California’s low carbon fuel standard will make gasoline more expensive. No one knows just how much more expensive, though, and CARB says it is not equipped to analyze what the effect will be on retail gasoline prices.

Most estimates, however, suggest a 65-cent-per-gallon increase if the low carbon fuel standard is made a lot stricter as proposed. That would come on top of California’s already high gas prices, which consistently run about $1.20 above the national average.

Nobody wants this, especially as California and the nation recover from a strong bout of general inflation. At the very same time, the special legislative session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom this fall to counter gasoline price gouging by refiners has about finished its work.

Newsom, not incidentally, appoints all CARB board members and can fire them anytime. As he supposedly seeks to lower prices with one hand at the legislative level, though, an agency he can absolutely control may adopt a tactic guaranteed to increase prices. If that’s not a confused contradiction, it’s hard to see what else might be.

Newsom has taken heat from several members of Congress from both parties and from the governors of Nevada and Arizona (one Republican, one Democrat), for his plan — passed by the state Assembly and Senate — that forces refineries to maintain significant new reserves of gasoline for use at times when they shut down for maintenance or occasional emergencies.

Nevada and Arizona get most of their gas from California refineries, and their governors fear creating a large reserve will drive up pump prices in those states, which are both now home to populations of California emigres.

They’re probably wrong, because the reserve would not appear instantly, but gradually. Gas would be pumped into it at times of surplus, not when supplies are tight. While the other governors’ concern is probably groundless, the new reserves are proving politically useful for some in this era of fearmongering politicos.

Meanwhile, there is no doubt whatever that a severely lowered low carbon fuel standard would raise prices. So it’s high time Newsom tells his appointees to hold off on a stricter fuel standard.

Since he appoints the board members scheduled to vote on this, he can easily and properly tell them at least to delay their action until they know exactly how much it will cost consumers. It’s true that CARB does not usually worry about consumer costs, as it is supposed to deal almost solely with air quality and not what it costs. However, for CARB to raise gas prices at the very moment Newsom seeks to steady them legislatively makes no sense at all.

Besides, there is no great urgency, no public pressure, to lower the low carbon fuel standard just now, at least nothing like the urgency of the 1960s and 1970s, when banks of smoggy brown air hung over entire regions like Southern California, the Central Valley and (to a lesser degree) the San Francisco Bay Area.

California’s mbient air is cleaner now. Electric cars produce no smog, hybrids produce only a little, and even gasoline engines spew much less than they once did, causing the browned clouds to become much more rare.

So Newsom should stay his left hand while his right works on preventing gasoline price gouging. To proceed as now scheduled borders on insanity.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.