2019 amendments

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This post is Part Two of our blog series on the 2019 amendments to the CEQA Guidelines.  This post focuses on amendments in the areas of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions, energy, and wildfire impacts, as well as a discussion of OPR’s draft CEQA and Climate Change Advisory.

GHG Impacts and Draft CEQA and Climate Change Advisory

The amendments to the CEQA Guidelines are designed to improve the analysis of impacts from GHG emissions in CEQA documents.  These amendments clarify the manner in which the significance of a project’s GHG emissions is determined, and give the lead agency discretion to select a model or methodology to estimate GHG emissions.  Several of these amendments were made to ensure consistency with recent appellate case law dealing with GHG emissions, cumulative impacts, and significance determinations, including Center for Biological Diversity v. Dept. of Fish & Wildlife (2015) 62 Cal.4th 204 and Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Assn. of Governments (2017) 3 Cal.5th 497.

On January 3, 2019 the Natural Resources Agency (“Agency”) announced that the long awaited comprehensive amendments to the CEQA Guidelines are now in effect.  The last major update to the Guidelines was in the late 1990s.  As a result, the Agency and the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) had a significant amount of material to synthesize in preparing these amendments, including several legislative changes and over two decades of CEQA case law.

The amendments include two new sections and revisions to 29 existing sections and three appendices.  Many of the revisions merely reflect holdings from previous case law and will not generate new requirements in preparing CEQA documents.  Some revisions, however, do constitute substantive changes in impact analysis and it will be important for public agency staff, environmental consultants, and attorneys to review these amendments carefully.  To access a complete copy of the revised CEQA Guidelines click here.