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Comment 3 for Comment docket for March 29, 2022 workshop on dairies (dairywkshp220329-ws) - 1st Workshop.


First Name: Jonathan
Last Name: Kennedy
Email Address: kazakhs@sbcglobal.net
Affiliation: California citizen

Subject: Methane Reductions
Comment:

I live in the San Joaquin Valley of California and have been here for over 30 years and my whole life in California.  I like the progress that is being made to reduce emissions by capturing methane and replacing diesel and gasoline as a transportation fuel.  The LCFS credits structure has been a valuable tool to incentivize investment to build methane digesters not only in California, but accross the United States.  My concern is that the projects are so successful that they are starting to generate significant LCFS credits now that the projects are starting to produce gas and gettting their pathways in place.  Reviewing  the statistics on your website, the fossil natural gas has been displaced by landfill gas and the livestock gas over time.  Based upon the credit values, the trend will continue with the landfill gas to be displaced by the livestock gas going forward which will create more credits for the same level of diesel gallon equivalents being used.  We will see some organic growth as vehicles are converted to RNG from diesel in terms of the overall percentage.  The result is that between credits generated from renewable diesel and the livestock gas coming onboard with much from out of state, the number of credits are exceeding the deficits and LCFS credit prices are falling from over $200 to less than $120 over the past few months.  Much of the gas is from outside the state of California which do nothing towards reaching our goal to reduce methane emissions by 40% by 2030 in California.  These lower credit values may lead to less investment to cover capital costs and operating costs which may ultimately cause failure to meet the methane reductions requirements.  The question for you is how do we increase the conversion to to RNG from diesel and at the same time keep the incentive in place to capture livestock methane emissions with digester projects to continue to work towards that while not flooding the market of LCFS credits from landfill and livestock gas as well as other renewables coming in from outside of California.  They are getting the economic benefit from the credits, but not contributing towards better air quality in California.  I pay a premium in fuel prices to support these programs, but would also like them to benefit my air basin with better air quality rather than my funds going to out of state producers.   The export of credit values to RNG suppiers outside of California from people like me paying higher prices at the pump doesn't seem equitable.  I could see the 1% RNG changing suppliers with over all carbon intensity being reduced buy maybe not reducing methane and possibly no change in tailpipe emissions unless we mandate higher convertion to CNG vehicles from diesel/gasoline.

Thanks for your time and efforts.

Jonathan


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Date and Time Comment Was Submitted: 2022-03-31 14:33:36



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