Stop a Factory Farm Biogas Bonanza in New Mexico!

New Mexico could be at risk for a factory farm biogas bonanza. The Clean Transportation Fuel Program is supposed to provide a pathway towards clean energy — but as the draft rule is currently written, a component called “avoided methane crediting” would incentivize factory farms to expand and pollute even more in New Mexico.

The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board is accepting public comments until October 1. Tell state regulators to support real clean energy, protect our food system, and close the factory farm biogas loophole!

Your Message

Administrator

Pamela

Jones

New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board

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I urge you to remove avoided methane crediting from the draft rule of the Clean Transportation Fuel Program and protect New Mexico from a dirty factory farm biogas boom. The current draft would reward polluters for generating factory farm biogas,, and it also includes a loophole that would import other states’ problematic accounting and bad policy to our state program.

Biogas production doesn’t eliminate or even reduce factory farm waste. It extracts methane that could have been avoided in the first place with better manure management practices, and still leaves behind concentrated solid waste. Allowing for avoided methane crediting in the CTFP to incentivize the buildout of this fuel just doesn’t make sense.

This is a huge oversight, and as a New Mexico resident, I am deeply concerned about the potential of creating a perverse incentive that will further entrench and encourage factory farms in our state. Factory farms already negatively impact our water, land, and climate and are primarily located in communities that are low-income or communities of color.

We’ve seen this play out in California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which led to factory farms across the country increasing herd sizes to capitalize on avoided methane crediting when it was passed in 2018, creating what the Wall Street Journal called “a goldrush in cow manure.” The 2017-2022 agricultural census saw the average herd size in San Joaquin Valley, home to 90 percent of California’s dairy cows, jump over 42 percent in those five years, a massive increase from 2012-2016’s growth rate of only 12 percent.

We cannot make the same mistakes in New Mexico. Allowing the CTFP to reward factory farm pollution will entrench factory farms at a time when we need to transition to a more sustainable and climate-friendly food system, and it will come at the expense of the development of truly renewable energy.

Please reject avoided methane crediting and remove this lucrative dirty energy loophole from the Clean Transportation Fuel Program.

Sincerely,
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Sincerely,
[First Name] [Last Name]
[Your Address]

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