Urgency seemed to be on everyone's lips Wednesday morning during a series of presentations about what carbon capture and storage might mean to Kern County's economy and California's ambitious goal of reaching net carbon neutrality by 2045.
It continued so until right after lunch, when the tone suddenly reversed inside the Grand Ballroom of the Bakersfield Marriott at the Convention Center.
That's when three environmental justice advocates took the stage to share their hesitations about CCS and why they suspect existing technology for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere will end up posing new risks to rural communities that have long suffered from profitable but unsafe land-use decisions.
Then, as if to underline their concerns, Kern County civil rights icon Dolores Huerta made a surprise appearance in her familiar, straw-colored fedora. After emphasizing that the transition from petroleum to clean energy "is going to take everybody," she led Wednesday's audience in a lively call-and-response session emphasizing "people power."
When asked immediately afterward by The Californian if she thought CCS should be taken off the table in Kern, Huerta responded, "Yes. Yes."
It's an expensive and unproven technology, she said, requiring more research by experts before it can be rolled out locally. The technology may be a big job generator during construction, "but afterward, it's not," she said, adding that there should be a closer look at green energy.
With that, local realities overtook the discussion of how to transition Kern's economy away from its dependence on oil production and toward a different activity sponsored largely by oil industry players.
A scientist and a state official spent the early hours of day two of Kern Community College District's California Economic Pre-Summit Institute explaining there's no time to waste deploying carbon management techniques like CCS. The technology aims to pull greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere, or from an existing smokestack, and bury it deep underground.
With financial and verbal support from the Biden and Newsom administrations, CCS has attracted substantial interest in Kern because of the county's geology, existing infrastructure and workforce expertise. Among recent signs of local enthusiasm was an announcement in August by Kern oil producer California Resources Corp. that a Canadian asset management firm had pledged half a billion dollars to partner with the company on CCS.
It's unclear whether the advocacy groups that spoke against CCS Wednesday might be persuaded to change their minds. Some said an important next step will be to engage with local residents rather than assume their approval.
Events inside the ballroom spoke to significant challenges for planners looking to steer the county, its employers and workforce through what's called a "just transition" away from petroleum production toward a cleaner and more equitable future.
Achieving California's goal of net carbon neutrality by 2045 is projected to require more than shifting away from internal combustion engines. Director Kimberly Budil of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told the audience Wednesday morning it will also take technologies such as CCS deployed on a large scale.
"If we stopped emitting carbon today," she said, "it would not be enough."
California Deputy Secretary of Energy Le-Quyen Nguyen emphasized a "need to move quickly." Streamlining the CCS permitting process will be necessary, she said. That won't mean cutting corners in environmental reviews, she added, but it may involve working groups assessing multiple projects at the same time.
Nguyen said community outreach needs to be part of that.
"I think participation in community from individuals is so, so important," she said, "… to make sure we're not overlooking community concerns."
Meanwhile, companies proposing CCS locally, including but not limited to CRC, are moving forward.
During a panel discussion inside the ballroom, CRC President and CEO Mark A. "Mac" McFarland made note of cooperative efforts to begin work on CCS projects in Kern, including the assembly of a consortium to apply for close to $1 billion in a project for pulling carbon dioxide directly out of the air.
Speaking within minutes of Huerta's appearance, McFarland acknowledged the concerns of local communities, even as he said they stem partly from a misunderstanding of CCS.
"Do the communities understand? No," he said. "Do we need to do a better job of educating the community in what we want to do? Absolutely."
One of the three environmental justice advocates who raised objections Wednesday, staff attorney Dan Ress with the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, called CCS "incredibly expensive" and a taxpayer "boondoggle."
Saying CCS has the potential to backfire and leak carbon dioxide in a way that could asphyxiate entire communities, he said the billions proposed to fund CCS should instead be spent helping communities more directly.
"There are leak pathways all under the ground everywhere," he said.
Others on stage with him were also dismissive but perhaps not irretrievably so. Civic Engagement Director Lori Pesante with the Dolores Huerta Foundation said proponents of CCS should come have a conversation with local communities, perhaps by knocking on doors along with her organization.
"It is not OK for us not to include everybody and care about everybody," she said, adding that making a presentation to a community should not be mistaken for assent.
The event's emcee, Director Nicole Parra, of KCCD's California Renewable Energy Laboratory, allowed room for compromise in an email sent following the conclusion of this week's conference.
"The common denominator that we all share is a commitment to move forward an equitable, economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable plan of action for the future and to create good jobs in the process," she wrote.
"Our future and the future of Central Valley families requires us," she continued, "to continue working together toward this vision."
