Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy Levers to Ensure Climate and Community Benefits.

Please join us for the sixth and final installment in our Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) webinar series. This webinar will focus on policy levers that can help incentivize responsible CDR deployment to meet California’s net-zero goals. We will examine how to secure high-quality CDR projects while safeguarding communities and the environment. Experts will discuss important considerations for policymakers to ensure accountability while driving action, how to fund the work, and what policies or regulations will ensure CDR does not box out direct emission reductions. Additionally, we will consider how the state government and this nascent industry can collaborate to advance critical climate solutions.

During this webinar, we will hear from representatives from the environmental justice community, an independent policy research group, and a former Department of Energy researcher and academic. 

Speakers

Dr. Emily Grubert

Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy, and, concurrently, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame

Dr. Emily Grubert is Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy, and, concurrently, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. A civil engineer and environmental sociologist, her research focuses on justice-oriented deep decarbonization and decision support tools related to large infrastructure systems, with emphasis on evaluation of dynamic life cycle socioenvironmental impacts and the effects of different value systems on decision pathways. Grubert holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University.

Dan Ress

Senior Attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

Dan Ress, a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School, is a senior attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, where they provide technical and policy assistance to low-income communities of color in the San Joaquin Valley. Their work focuses on California state climate justice policy, especially oil and gas, carbon management, and carbon markets. Working in coalition, Dan helped pass SB 1137 (Gonzalez 2022), which will end neighborhood oil and gas drilling, and helped enact key legislative community protections for carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS), including a prohibition on using captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery, a moratorium on carbon pipelines, and a requirement for CARB to ensure that carbon capture and removal project operators minimize to the maximum extent technologically feasible all co-pollutant emissions. Dan is also advocating for legislative changes to CARB’s Cap-and-Trade program and Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Sabrina Ashjian

Project Director and Clinical Supervising Attorney·Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment

Sabrina Ashjian is a project director and clinical supervising attorney for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment and the California Environmental Legislation & Policy Clinic at UCLA School of Law. She previously was with the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law where she taught environmental justice and legislation courses. Prior to that she advanced animal welfare legislation as California State Director of the Humane Society of the United States. She has served as an environmental crimes prosecutor and began her career as a public defender.

Dr. Eric O’Rear

Associate Director, Rhodium Group

Eric O’Rear’s areas of expertise include energy/environmental policy analysis, energy system modeling, as well as building sustainability and resilience. Prior to joining Rhodium, Eric was a Lead Economist with the MITRE Corporation, where he conducted economic research for a wide range of federal sponsors. Before that, he worked as a Research Economist in the Applied Economics Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he assisted in the development of tools capable of gauging the sustainable performance of U.S. residential and commercial buildings. Eric has a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics with a specialty in Energy and Natural Resource Economics from Purdue University.