This press release was originally sent out on September 18th, 2024.
LANSING — A coalition of environmental and animal protection organizations from around the state are meeting legislators in the capitol today to urge them to reject Michigan Senate Bill 275 (SB 275), the so-called “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” bill.
The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) bill is ostensibly part of efforts to encourage the use of cleaner fuels for cars and trucks that will do less damage to air quality and the climate in Michigan. However, the bill was created by and for massive oil and gas companies, huge agricultural producers, and large utilities (such as DTE and Consumers Energy). The bill will essentially create a pollution trading scheme through the buying and selling of carbon “offset” credits.
By incentivizing Big Oil and Big Ag to collaborate on massive biogas facilities, the bill will encourage these corporations to increase the number of massive dairy farms in the state (CAFOs) and their use of “anaerobic digesters” — huge lakes of cow manure that will pollute Michigan’s air and water.
“The impact of this bill is likely to be devastating for communities, the environment and animal welfare.” said Valerie Schey, spokesperson with Michiganders for a Just Farming System (MJFS). “It represents a huge corporate giveaway, masquerading as a piece of climate legislation.”
Michiganders for a Just Farming System has learned that the primary influence on the text of the bill was a group called “Clean Fuels Michigan” whose members are big biogas companies, oil companies like British Petroleum, utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy, and other big companies like Amazon and Delta Airlines.
The coalition opposing the bill includes:
SB 275 would establish Michigan’s first LCFS. Used in other states, a LCFS creates a market for buying and selling carbon credits (a.k.a. carbon offsets) for transportation fuels. Carbon offset programs have received an abundance of criticism from environmental policy experts for enabling companies to use shoddy and opaque accounting of their “offset credits” to greenwash their appearance to the public while doing little to nothing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As written, the bill instead incentivizes the production of energy sources that are not really clean, such as biogas derived from animal manure produced on factory farms. The amount of greenhouse gasses emitted from industrial animal agriculture will likely be more than the greenhouse gas emissions reduced by replacing fossil fuels with biogas. In the end, Michigan will end up with more animal waste, which pollutes the air, land, and groundwater.
“The pollution caused by burning fossil fuels is a real problem, and there are feasible solutions already out there,” Schey said. “But the carbon credit system that SB 275 would establish is a false solution for reducing these greenhouse gas emissions.”
Earlier this year, a survey exploring the policies proposed by SB 275 was conducted of 832 likely Michigan voters. The survey found that while there is strong support for climate legislation, the support is conditional. Voters across party lines said they would not trust climate legislation that was influenced by fossil fuel companies or utilities.
The coalition assembled today plans to communicate broadly with legislators throughout the session.