In December 2015, we issued an AscentShare email providing initial thoughts on the California Supreme Court’s decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the potential pathways to compliance it offered to lead agencies. In the months since this decision, Ascent has developed and tested applications of quantitative and qualitative approaches intended to comply with the Court’s direction. An informational paper about greenhouse gas (GHG) analysis method choices has been prepared, as promised in December. We offer a practitioner’s view of the implications of the Court’s suggested compliance pathways on the practice of GHG analysis in CEQA documents.
In CBD v. CDFW, the Court overturned the Newhall Ranch EIR, because it lacked substantial evidence to support the conclusion that a specific development project’s achievement of the Scoping Plan’s statewide average reduction goal below business as usual (BAU) was sufficient to determine the individual project’s GHG emission to be less than significant. CEQA approaches for GHG analysis are rapidly evolving, because of this decision, recent executive orders, and policy updates. Analysis approaches are also being explored by others. A goal of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how CEQA practice would respond to this evolution.
