A new interactive map, released today by the national environmental group Food & Water Watch, paints a first-ever comprehensive picture of all factory farm biogas projects making money off of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The program is a primary driver of factory farm biogas development nationwide. By rewarding methane production on factory farms, the LCFS incentivizes factory farm expansion and pollution in communities nationwide.

Food & Water Watch, Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Center for Food Safety are suing Governor Newsom’s California Air Resources Board (CARB) over its failure to adequately address the biogas program’s health and environmental impacts.

Food & Water Watch analysis reveals that 196 digesters in 16 states make money off of California’s LCFS — out-of-state projects make up 45%. After California, the top five impacted states are:

1. Wisconsin – 20 digesters
2. Texas – 10 digesters
3. New York – 9 digesters
4. Missouri – 8 digesters
5. Idaho & Indiana – 7 digesters each

By paying factory farms to pollute, the LCFS is encouraging larger operations and more waste. Food & Water Watch found statistically significant herd expansion at California mega-dairies after their digesters were installed. Similar impacts have been recorded at factory farms in Wisconsin and Iowa. Today, the average number of cows feeding into a dairy LCFS project is over 7,900, and the average hog project uses manure from 78,700 swine.

Factory farm gas exacerbates the negative health impacts of factory farming, including mortality risks, kidney diseases, respiratory conditions, blood pressure elevation, and low birth weight. These impacts disproportionately fall on communities of color and low-income communities.

Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell issued the following statement:

“What California is claiming to be clean energy, frontline communities call pollution — pure and simple. By turning factory farms into gas refineries, the LCFS is taking a bad problem and making it worse. Through faulty accounting and willful ignorance, California is outsourcing its climate problems to other states, rewarding polluters and hurting people from coast to coast.

“Factory farm gas refineries don’t belong in anyone’s community. We’re taking Newsom to court to put a stop to California’s perverse incentives for factory farm pollution.”