New Mexico legislators are calling for a revision of the state’s Clean Transportation Fuel Standard to eliminate a loophole that could benefit large factory farms at the expense of small producers and environmental goals, reports Bioenergy Insight.
State Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Representative Tara Lujan announced plans to introduce a new bill aimed at strengthening the fuel standard by ensuring it prioritizes truly clean, renewable transportation fuels while limiting fossil fuel-based options.
In an opinion piece published in the Santa Fe New Mexican, the lawmakers highlighted a major flaw in the current policy. They warned that a provision known as “avoided methane crediting” allows factory farms to profit from capturing biogas—methane produced from animal waste like manure—by granting it a negative carbon intensity score. This designation treats biogas as cleaner than other renewable fuels, a characterization the legislators argue is misleading.
Under the policy, factory farms can generate credits for capturing methane and then sell those credits to polluting industries. The lawmakers said this creates a financial incentive for industrial-scale farms to expand.
“We are already seeing the effects of this in California, where the low carbon fuel standard has become the most profitable pollution trading program for factory farm biogas in the country,” they wrote.
Citing California’s experience, they pointed to rapid herd size growth in the San Joaquin Valley. Between 2012 and 2017, livestock numbers increased by 12%, but after methane crediting was added to California’s fuel standard, herd sizes surged by 42% between 2017 and 2022.
The legislators also raised concerns about the environmental impact of burning biogas, which releases harmful pollutants. Additionally, they noted that the Clean Transportation Fuel Standard does little to support small farms, making it ineffective as a climate policy.
“The good news is that New Mexico doesn’t yet have widespread biogas infrastructure, which means we still have the chance to fix this problem before it becomes a major issue,” they stated.
To address these concerns, Sedillo Lopez and Lujan have introduced the Methane Emissions Reduction Act, Senate Bill 99. They urged fellow lawmakers to support the measure, which aims to ensure New Mexico’s climate policies focus on truly clean energy and community protection.
“By closing the biogas loophole in the Clean Transportation Fuel Standard, we can avoid making the same mistakes that California has made,” they wrote. “New Mexico has the opportunity to lead the nation in rejecting harmful practices like this.”
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