Coastal resources: coastal development permits: blue carbon demonstration projects.

Boerner, joined by coauthors Bryan, Kalra, and Muratsuchi, advances a conditional framework to establish blue carbon demonstration projects within California’s coastal resources program, designed to quantify carbon sequestration and inform the state’s climate resilience strategies if funding is provided. The measure emphasizes restoration of historically occurring coastal habitats and native biodiversity as the core path to realizing potential blue carbon benefits, situating the effort alongside existing natural and working lands planning.

At the heart of the proposal is a new, definitional and programmatic structure. A blue carbon demonstration project is limited to restoring coastal wetland, subtidal, intertidal, or marine habitats that can take up and sequester carbon, with three constraints: projects must target ecologically appropriate locations where the habitat historically occurred and was degraded or removed; restoration aims to return the habitat to its historical state to provide ecosystem services and habitat values to the extent feasible; and diverse native species should be used. The California Coastal Commission would have authority to authorize such projects to demonstrate and quantify sequestration for informing state strategies, and it could require a blue carbon demonstration project as mitigation for certain nonresidential projects that affect coastal habitats. In developing the program, the commission would consult with the State Air Resources Board, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the State Coastal Conservancy, the State Lands Commission, and seek input from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Each project would be designed and monitored with sufficient data to demonstrate uptake and sequestration, include an evaluation of permanence, and have results presented at a public hearing. The entire program would become operative only upon an appropriation by the Legislature.

The measure delineates governance and process details to accompany the program’s development. It envisions interagency coordination across state entities and seeks federal input to shape the blue carbon demonstration project program. Data collection and reporting are emphasized, with the results to be shared publicly, and with an explicit emphasis on assessing permanence of sequestration. Penalties or civil enforcement mechanisms are not specified in the measure, and the mitigation option, if adopted, would depend on future implementation actions tied to funding. The bill expressly notes appropriations are a prerequisite for the operative effects, tying the program’s realization to legislative budgeting.

Contextual findings within the bill frame blue carbon as a potential tool to advance California’s carbon neutrality goals and climate resilience, citing targets for reductions below baseline years and the state’s broader climate strategy for natural and working lands. The authors assert that blue carbon could contribute to meeting these aims, while acknowledging data gaps that have limited inclusion in the current planning framework. The proposal positions blue carbon demonstration projects as a data-generating mechanism intended to inform ongoing policy and program design, rather than as an immediate, mandatory provision of state regulation absent funding.