“Air pollution” by 24Novembers
Cap & Trade has been renamed “Cap & Invest” and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is making changes that invest that money into massive giveaways to industry instead of going towards credits on electricity bills or community investment programs for cleaner air and water, safe housing, and accessible transit. CARB’s changes also fail to get Californian’s the emissions reductions we need to reach our climate goals and improve air quality.
by Lauren Gallagher, Associate Attorney
Record breaking temperatures in March across California are a sharp reminder that climate change has impacts. Scientists are saying this hot March isn’t just a blip, it’s a result of decades of emissions causing climate change. But California’s Cap and Trade program is faltering.
California is no stranger to the dangers of climate impacts like extreme heat and wildfires, and for decades environmental justice advocates across the state have been calling for real measures to work on climate change solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their hazardous co-pollutants.
Climate justice is environmental justice.
High temperatures aren’t just miserably uncomfortable; they have real health impacts that can result in death. In fact, heat related deaths are expected to triple in urban centers as temperatures continue to rise. Folks, especially vulnerable low-income communities of color or “disadvantaged communities” who live in apartments are often most likely to have limited or no access to cooling and alternative spaces. Heat waves like this exceptional March one also increase the chance of wildfires two-fold by potentially extending the dry season and lowering essential reserves of water to fight fires.
At almost every stage of Cap and Trade, environmental justice advocates have raised serious concerns over its effectiveness—we called on the state to do more with the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 also known as AB 32, opposed the California Air Resources Board’s first draft of the program introduced in 2011, and similarly opposed the Legislature’s first review of the program in 2017.
Last year the legislature again reauthorized the program, and despite calls for real pollution reducing action by CBE and our EJ allies, the legislature, with the blessings of industry, left a lot on the table for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to decide. Governor Newsom’s flashy rebrand to “Cap and Invest” speaks to newly emerging “abundance” priorities of the Democratic Party, but we cannot forget the main mission of this initiative: emission reductions.
In the 15 years that the program has been in place, many of our concerns about the program have come true: there hasn’t been significant progress in reducing emissions disparities for communities with the worst air quality, the state is too reliant on the money generated from the program, industry continues to have outsize power in the process, and CARB is faltering on making the program stronger. The program is well past its infancy, and yet CARB still hasn’t given it teeth.
Right now, CARB is deliberating changes to the program proposed on January 20, 2026. We called out CARB’s changes for failing to go far enough and are calling on CARB to:
- Create tangible emissions reductions benefits for Californians by reducing allowances (aka increase program stringency);
- Protect Californians by requiring direct environmental benefits to Californians;
- Better price protections for ratepayers;
- Reject benefits for dangerous false solutions like dairy methane and carbon capture and sequestration; and
- Honor the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee’s (EJAC) recommendations and heed their calls.
On April 14, 2026, CARB released additional changes to the program with even more handouts for industry after months of intense industry pressure and continued big spending. CARB’s proposed changes add massive handouts for industry, which will reduce the benefits of the program and impact many programs such as Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Program, Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program, Community Air Protection Program (AB 617), and transit programs funded by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and California Climate Credit’s ratepayer benefits. All the while environmental justice asks have been increasingly disregarded by CARB, as the still EJAC hasn’t been convened throughout this process.
The choices that CARB makes to adjust the program are paramount to achieving the fundamental goal that environmental justice advocates have been calling for all along – reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dangerous co-pollutants. Relying on Cap and Trade alone was never going to be enough, and a Cap and Trade program that is weak on emissions reductions will not get us there.
CARB leadership and California lawmakers need to continue to reckon with the importance of holding multiple priorities – increasing air quality and addressing affordability. While industry screams about killing emissions reducing programs across the board, the burden of air pollution will continue to affect low-income Californians.
One strategy was never going to cut it. We need new ways to think and act, rooted in resilience that create meaningful change and emissions reductions in environmental justice communities.
Industry is using this moment to roll everything back – spending millions of dollars to co-opt legitimate concerns about affordability all the while making record profits and increasing costs to everyday people. Gas price increases are really rooted in global dynamics.
The bottom line for our communities is we need emissions reductions yesterday, and if not yesterday, today. CARB has the power to steer the statewide Cap and Invest market and jumpstart motivation to reduce emissions. And the legislature should continue to consider more direct options to get at the concentration of polluting sources in environmental justice communities.
Submit public comment on the 15-Day Changes on or before the deadline on May 4, 2025.
In your comment, tell CARB to:
(1) Make the “cap” lower to lower emissions and meet California’s climate goals;
(2) reduce give aways to the oil and gas industry especially by eliminating the new “manufacturing decarbonization incentive”; and
(3) increase electricity bill credits.
The California Air Resources Board plans to vote on the proposed changes to the program on May 28, 2026.