CARBON CAPTURE HOT POTATO — For a technology that doesn’t exist at commercial scale in California, carbon capture and storage is getting a lot of attention lately.

Long advocated for by oil companies who say it can help them reduce their emissions, and largely opposed by environmental justice groups who see it as a way to extend the life of polluting facilities, the technology has recently been thrust into the national spotlight.

President Joe Biden set aside billions for pipelines and storage in the Inflation Reduction Act and included CCS as an option for power plants to reduce their emissions under new EPA rules; California has already seen dozens of projects proposed.

Now, a lobbying firm is ruffling feathers in the state with a new CCS campaign.

Rodriguez Strategies, a Los Angeles-based firm, emailed environmental groups earlier this month to ask them to advocate for CCS to state lawmakers. The emails cited other environmentalists’ support for the technology and said they were part of a “coalition” that had also reached out to lawmakers.

Not so, say the enviros.

“We have a position on carbon capture, but it is not reflected in what Rodriguez Strategies is telling people,” said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, Environmental Defense Fund’s California director.

The emails from Rodriguez’s deputy director of public affairs, Ana Kassar, listed EDF, the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the California Air Resources Board, Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Center, Eden Youth and Family Center and more as “CCS supporters.”

The firm also circulated a flyer with pro-CCS quotes from NRDC, EDF, EPA, Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, Clean Air Task Force and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.

Rodriguez CEO Matt Rodriguez, a former Democratic congressional and campaign staffer who previously campaigned against last year’s Prop 30 ballot initiative to raise taxes on high earners to fund electric vehicle infrastructure, didn’t say who his client is or what legislative vehicle they’re hoping to influence.

But he said the flyer “cites publicly available information” and wasn’t intended to imply those groups support the lobbying effort. “The included quotes … were selected to show wide-ranging support for CCS,” he said.

CARB envisions that CCS and direct air capture will account for about 15 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas reductions by 2045. But it’s just getting started on the nitty gritty — where, how much and on which facilities it should be deployed.

“We are not in touch with this group and know nothing about this,” said CARB spokesperson David Clegern. On CCS, he said, “I would say that we’re not opposed to it; we’re looking at it.”

As for Clean Air Task Force, which has long been a vocal CCS supporter, “[our] position is pretty clear,” said Conrad Schneider, the group’s senior director. “Rodriguez Strategies should not use our organization’s logos in its campaign on behalf of unnamed clients without our consent.”

Roedner Sutter said EDF’s position on carbon capture is nuanced — the group acknowledges that it will “likely be necessary” to hit net-zero targets, but that it needs to be limited. EDF, NRDC and CATF wrote an Aug. 18 letter to lawmakers denouncing the campaign.

“Saying that we are a supporter, just blanket, is not at all an accurate description of our position,” she said. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s a very technical issue and the details really matter.”

The details will get hammered out over the next year at CARB, through its rulemaking under last year’s SB 905, which set targets for the technology and mandated community protection guidelines. The agency has to adopt CCS rules by January 2024 and come up with a unified permit process by 2025.

RIVAS STAFFING UP — Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) is fleshing out his environmental policy shop.

Keith Cialino will start as an environmental adviser next week, three people with knowledge of the hire told our Alex Nieves today.

Cialino comes to Rivas from the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee and is Rivas’s second energy/environment hire after Chase Hopkins, who was working for the legislative Democratic Caucus and spent time as a chief of staff and legislative director for Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena).

Cialino and Hopkins will fill the vacuum left by the departures of Alf Brandt and Marie Liu, longtime advisers to former Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) who left when Rivas assumed the speakership in June. We’re hearing one more hire may be imminent — stay tuned.

ALISO VOTE LOOMS — A group of eleven lawmakers sent a letter to California Public Utilities Commissioner Alice Reynolds today arguing against a proposal to expand the Aliso Canyon gas facility in Porter Ranch, returning it to maximum capacity.

The letter from Sens. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks) and Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) and Assemblymembers Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth), Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and others pushed back against arguments that the storage expansion is necessary to keep gas prices stable, noting that “natural gas markets are inherently volatile, complex and susceptible to market manipulation.” They also said the move would fly in the face of California’s climate and energy goals.

The letter comes as the CPUC faces an Aug. 31 vote on Southern California Gas Company’s application to increase the Aliso Canyon storage limits. Newsom has in the past called for closing the facility, which in 2015 had a massive gas blowout that poisoned thousands, by 2027, but hasn’t weighed in recently.

Stern and Schiavo will also join a rally in LA this evening with community members and advocates to demand that the PUC shut down the facility.

WEEKS LEAVES CEC — After almost six years at the Energy Commission, Terra Weeks, senior adviser to Commission Chair David Hochschild, is leaving her post. She’ll take a few months of sabbatical and is looking for climate tech roles, per her LinkedIn.

She’ll be missed: “I dropped off my daughter at college yesterday, and I lost Terra the same week,” Hochschild said at a workshop today on getting to 100 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2045. “It’s really one of those weeks.”

WILLIAMS OFF FISH AND GAME — A former top aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom is leaving the Fish and Game Commission.

Anthony Williams, Amazon’s director of public policy and also a member of the High-Speed Rail Authority, is stepping down because of “serious family obligations and … ongoing work,” he told POLITICO. He’d served since October 2022, and before that from 2015-19. — Camille von Kaenel

— Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is taking a pause on his proposed $1.50 increase to Bay Area bridge tolls.

— More on the fraught relationship between environmental justice and carbon capture.

— California’s hazardous waste facilities are running on fumes, leading to pollution in disadvantaged communities.