With the planet warming at an unsustainable rate, two large Bay Area oil refineries are switching to liquid biofuels production — a seemingly cleaner alternative than fossil fuels. But those plans instead have run afoul of environmental groups that have filed lawsuits to bring the transition to a halt.
If successful, the lawsuits would reverse the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors’ approval last month for Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 to overhaul their facilities in Martinez and Rodeo to begin producing a more renewable energy source that’s processed from vegetable oils and animal fats rather than petroleum diesel.
Biofuels production represents a major shift for the refineries, which once provided thousands of East Bay union jobs and produced a significant portion of California’s gasoline supply. The supervisors last month found that the companies had satisfied the county’s review of whether the transition would comply with the state’s rigorous environmental laws.
But rather than embrace the transition away from the production of fossil fuels, identical lawsuits filed last week against the companies by the Center for Biological Diversity and Communities for a Better Environment allege the county treated the review as “a mere exercise” to usher through the corporate-run project, one that the petitioners suggest could strain food supplies and create just as many carbon emissions as crude oil.
According to the lawsuits, large-scale processing of biofuels would require massive amounts of food crops, “which in turn require significant land dedicated to agriculture, fertilizer, pesticides, and other energy intensive resources.”
“There is broad (agreement) in scientific literature that increased demand for food crop biofuel feedstocks drives climate environmental harms and climate change,” the lawsuits state.
“I think what we’re seeing here in Contra Costa is that regulators are falling prey to the greenwashing of the (energy) industry,” Connie Cho of the Communities for a Better Environment, one of the lawsuits’ petitioners, said in an interview.
Bay Area environmental groups have long clashed with oil refineries — and lobbied for agencies to penalize them — over the hazards they pose to air quality and statewide carbon emissions.
The battles have intensified as environmental regulators across the region push to incentivize more electric vehicle use and fewer activities that pollute the air.
At one point, the Marathon refinery in Martinez produced 18% of the state’s gasoline supply. In late 2020, however, the company paused operations at the refinery and laid off 700 workers, citing a decline in demand for gasoline during the pandemic.
While gas prices are surging once again, California is phasing out its dependence on gas. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in 2020 that starting in 2035 the state will no longer sell new gas-powered cars and passenger trucks.
Already sales of electric, hybrid and alternative energy vehicles are soaring: In February, the Newsom administration announced that the state’s 1 millionth electric plug-in car had been sold.
To keep up with the changing times, Marathon and Phillips 66 are championing biofuels as a viable path forward for the oil corporations as California looks to drastically reduce its carbon emissions by 2030.
The two companies plan to hire hundreds of workers and churn tens of thousands of barrels of vegetable oils and animal fats each day into fuel that will be largely used in commercial trucks and heavy-duty vehicles.
Their efforts to win permits to make the transition relied on a California Air Resources Board finding that biofuels meet its standard for what constitutes low-carbon fuel, and that transporting and distributing the product creates far fewer carbon emissions than crude oil.
But the environmental groups allege that the companies’ promise of fewer emissions is dubious without more information about the kinds of feedstock that would be used or the amount of emissions created by transporting biofuels across large distances.
They argue that the board’s finding is too broad to be applied wholesale to the Martinez and Rodeo refineries’ projects, at least not without more specific analysis.
Due to agency policy, the state air board has not formally taken a position on the refineries’ biofuels proposal.
Richard Corey, the board’s executive officer, did say at last month’s hearing that biofuels generally create 30% less emissions than traditional petroleum diesel, but that certain feedstock blends are better than others.
At the same hearing, union workers showed up in large numbers to support the refineries’ proposal, urging the board to help transition their jobs to a climate-friendly economy.
But the environmental groups aren’t giving up. Cho said the county needs to reopen its environmental review and figure out if the types of feedstocks used and transportation involved in the biofuels project will actually cut emissions or create about the same amount.
“Workers and communities bear the same risk if these projects are not what the industry giants are saying that they are,” she said.
A Marathon representative declined to comment directly on the lawsuits but said in an email that the project’s environmental review was “researched, drafted and approved” under a rigorous process. The company plans to finish overhauling the Martinez plant and begin producing biofuels by the end of the year.
