Berkeley Plans New Strategy To Eliminate Methane – CleanTechnica

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Earlier today, we reported on a novel arrangement between the city of Richmond, California, and Chevron that will put $550 million into the city’s coffers over the next 10 years to compensate for the environmental harm to the citizens of Richmond by the aged oil refinery that has been operating within the city for over a century. That agreement resulted from a unique idea by the city to tax each barrel of oil delivered to the refinery for processing over the next 50 years. That proposal, if enacted, would have cost Chevron up to $90 million a year. Multiply that by 50 and you are talking about some serious money. Now the city of Berkeley, California, has latched on to the power of that taxation plan and intends to use it to push its agenda of eliminating methane gas from the residences, factories, and restaurants within its city limits.

Berkeley pursued a plan to ban methane for years, but the idea was deemed illegal by the courts. Undaunted, Berkeley thinks it has found a new lever to move its agenda forward. Methane may burn more cleanly that coal, but it still produces pollutants that are damaging to human respiratory and circulatory systems, especially in young children. In addition, methane itself is a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It leaks from wells, it leaks from pipelines and pumping stations, it leaks from distribution systems, and it leaks inside homes and commercial buildings, sometimes to the point of causing explosions. No matter how you slice it, methane is bad stuff and the sooner “we the people” stop using it, the better for all humans and for the Earth.

Berkeley Ballot Measure

On November 5, residents of Berkeley will vote on a ballot measure that proposes taxing the owners of buildings of 15,000 square feet or larger based on the amount of natural gas consumed each year. If passed, legal experts say this would be the first tax in the country to target the use of a specific fuel source for buildings. City officials estimate that the tax would apply to over 600 buildings in Berkeley and generate $26.7 million during its first year, an amount larger than the city’s annual sales tax revenue. Of those funds, 90% would go toward retrofitting homes and buildings in the city with electric HVAC and appliances, and 10% would go toward city administrative costs.

Some CleanTechnica readers have argued that the plan put together by the city of Richmond is flawed because the payments from Chevron will become part of the city’s general fund instead of being earmarked for addressing the impacts of climate change, and that is a cogent objection. The Berkeley plan is much more focused on mitigation.

Five years ago, Berkeley introduced the nation’s first ban on methane gas hookups in new construction. Praised as an innovative way to cut carbon emissions and reduce air pollution by environmental advocates, Berkeley’s gas ban inspired similar laws in dozens of California cities and kicked off a surge of building electrification policies in more than 100 local governments nationwide. But in 2023, the policy was struck down by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit following a lawsuit from the California restaurant industry. In January, the same court declined to revisit its decision, dealing a final blow to the city’s effort.

Despite those legal woes, climate organizers say the city remains undeterred. “People look to Berkeley as a bellwether for progressive climate action as well as an incubator of ideas,” Daniel Tahara, one of the lead organizers for Fossil Free Berkeley, told Canary Media. ​“Someone needs to be putting ideas out there, and we think that has been and can continue to be Berkeley.” He and others from Fossil Free Berkeley say that this year’s ballot measure was in part motivated by the defeat of the city’s gas ban, which was finally repealed in March. ​“A lot of momentum was lost statewide,” he said, as cities across California and other Western states rolled back their own gas bans in response.

Community members gathered more than 4,500 signatures to get the proposed gas tax on the ballot, which officially qualified at the end of May. The tax would charge large building owners $2.96 for every 100 cubic feet or 100,000 BTUs of natural gas used, a value based on the social cost of carbon, which estimates the damages caused to society by excess greenhouse gas emissions. Residents in low income communities would be among the first to receive funding from the taxes to upgrade and electrify older buildings, and union labor would be prioritized for building retrofit work funded by the tax. If approved, the policy would take effect January 1, 2025, and expire at the end of 2050.

Taxing Polluters — What A Great Idea!

Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said that Berkeley’s proposed tax is a novel approach. Existing policies, such as building performance standards in New York City, Boston, and Seattle, require buildings to lower emissions over time and can fine property owners for failing to comply. But they tend to be ​“fuel neutral,” meaning they don’t explicitly target a specific energy source like fossil gas. ​“We haven’t seen a fee or a payment of any kind be connected directly to the kind of fuel that a building is using,” she said.

Some trade groups, like the county’s building and construction trades council, have criticized the measure for levying additional costs on local businesses in an area with taxes that already higher than average. While the law explicitly prohibits property owners from passing on costs to renters, a city report expressed concerns that the tax could still result in higher rental costs ​“either at the time of lease renewal or, for price-controlled units, adjustments during times of vacancy.” The report also stated the initiative would likely increase job opportunities for contractors and incentivize all-electric new construction of large buildings in Berkeley.

Berkeley’s proposed tax requires a simple majority to pass, but that is not the only hurdle. The measure will also have to withstand the same legal scrutiny faced by the city’s previous gas ban. In April 2023, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act, a law that sets national energy efficiency standards, preempted Berkeley’s ban, stating that the policy would in effect prevent the use of gas appliances that meet those national standards.

Fossil Free Berkeley organizers point out that the court’s decision explicitly allowed for the possibility of a carbon tax similar to the one on the November ballot, making the new measure safe from legal challenges based on the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Turner likewise noted that the city’s new approach — a tax rather than a ban — is substantially different from the one tossed out by courts. “Certainly there are incentives of all kinds for buildings to be built or be operated in certain ways, and those are not subject to EPCA preemption,” she said.

“Sin Taxes” In America

There is a long history in the United States of imposing taxes on items that are deemed potentially harmful to humans. Known colloquially as “sin taxes,” they apply to alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, gambling, and the like. The courts have consistently upheld such taxes even when they are so high they threaten to make people quit buying whiskey or cigarettes. Ask anyone you know what those taxes are like in Canada, where today a pack of cigarettes may cost up to $12 because of federal, provincial, and local taxes.

Methane accounts for about a third of Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed tax would help reduce those emissions and prepare the city for an energy transition that is already underway, Tahara said. In March of 2023, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which governs air pollution in Berkeley and other nearby cities, passed regulations to phase out the sale of appliances that use methane gas by 2027. But the regulation ​“left a lot of the thorny implementation issues to local municipalities,” such as how to make it affordable for homes and businesses to make the switch, Tahara said.

The Takeaway

The struggle between fossil fuel advocates and opponents will be ongoing for the foreseeable future. The courts have been tilted strongly toward so-called conservative positions since 2016, when a failed former president did everything in his power to pack them with ideologues who support the idea that liberty means freedom from government oversight for corporations. To conservatives, liberty means poisoning the Earth to the point that humans can no longer survive. That such a distorted viewpoint should be held by so many is a source of great consternation to many climate justice advocates.

Taxing polluters makes so much sense, it is a wonder no one thought of this sooner. But we can be sure that if this plan gets approved, plenty of other cities and towns will be looking to borrow a page from the Berkeley playbook.