Gov. Gavin Newsom often touts California’s role as a global climate leader. Yet it’s hard to defend that claim as long as California remains one of the nation’s top oil-refining states, experts argued at a recent webinar calling for a phaseout of refineries.

The state has made major strides implementing policies to support the transition away from fossil fuels in the transportation and energy sectors, yet has largely ignored oil refineries.

This is an egregious oversight, policy experts and community advocates on the panel said, because refineries are the largest source of industrial fossil fuel pollution and one of the biggest threats to both health and the climate.

“There are significant acute and chronic public health and climate impacts from refiners,” said Woody Hastings, a policy expert at The Climate Center, a nonprofit that hosted the webinar and is working to rapidly reduce climate pollution. “There is no plan to phase them out.”

California can embrace its role as a global leader by charting a path to phasing out refineries that others can follow, as it’s done before, he said. When California passed a measure to cut vehicle tailpipe emissions in 2002, 13 other states followed suit. When it passed a 2018 law requiring that all electricity come from renewable sources by 2045, 10 other states and the federal government adopted the same goal, Hastings said.

The most recent climate Conference of the Parties, COP28 in Dubai, called for a transition away from fossil fuels and energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, Hastings said. “Let’s have California create the model for how to do it.”

All the other major fossil fuel sectors—electricity, transportation and oil drilling—have some form of phaseout requirements and plan to lower emissions, said Alicia Rivera, an organizer with the nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment who works in Wilmington, a Los Angeles neighborhood dominated by oil wells and refineries. “Refineries have none.”

The costs of inaction are clear, she said. Almost all the census tracts near refineries are communities of color forced to endure very high toxic releases and other health harms, Rivera said.

“People on the other side of the refinery cannot see the emissions because they are invisible,” she said. “But they are large and they are always there, nonstop.”

Refineries convert crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products like butane and propane. One refinery can cover thousands of acres, with massive heaters and boilers superheating the crude and separating the liquids that will become gas and other fuels. The refining process, storage tanks and flaring—the burning of excess hydrocarbons—all emit pollution and toxic gases like lung-damaging sulfur dioxides and cancer-causing benzene.

Oil refineries must report annual benzene emissions. But various studies have shown that many refineries underestimate emissions of volatile organic compounds, including benzene, understating the health risks. 

“We’ve seen places where California has found significant risk from benzene without including that massive underestimation,” said Julia May, senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment. “If you include the underestimation, that means the cancer risk is higher. It’s also a VOC that contributes to smog.”

Working Toward a Just Transition

California has failed to act partly because several cities benefit financially from contributing to the nearly 2 million barrels of crude oil refined a day in the state, May said, noting that regulators are under “severe pressure” to avoid phaseout requirements. 

But just two refinery products, gasoline and diesel, cause about half of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, she said. “You can’t solve the smog or climate disaster without phasing out oil refineries.” 

The state must start looking at ways to reduce refineries’ production on the road to a full shutdown, May urged. “We’re not talking about shutting down refineries tomorrow. All we’re asking for is, start a plan over the next two decades and start with gasoline and diesel.”

The oil industry and its allies, which were not part of the panel, believe such a plan is unnecessary.

California policy is headed toward no more oil production, which will significantly reduce refining capacity in the state, said Kevin Slagle, spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association, which represents oil extractors and refiners. “An EV mandate that limits the sale of internal combustion cars may not say, ‘Hey refinery, you have to reduce production by X amount,’” he told Inside Climate News. “But if you don’t have vehicles on the road that use that product, the refiners are probably not going to be here.”

Even without specific bills that mandate refinery reductions, Slagle said, California policy will lead to fewer refineries in the state, “probably quicker than folks expect.”

That phaseout needs to be managed in a way that doesn’t leave workers behind, the panelists argued. And that requires understanding that the phrase “just transition” means different things to different people, said Brian White, a longtime union leader and policy director for Eduardo Martinez, mayor of Richmond, home of the Chevron refinery, where a catastrophic fire and explosion in 2012 sent 15,000 people to the hospital.

White’s union, the United Steelworkers, coined the term “just transition,” he said. For refinery workers it means making sure they can shift to a job with dignity, benefits and pay. For environmentalists, he said, it’s moving from a dirty, dangerous industry to a cleaner, greener world. And for local governments, it means replacing revenue lost by closing refineries in order to continue providing the services communities need.

The different groups need to recognize that they’re working toward the same goals, White said. On that note, he added, the Richmond City Council recently voted to place a “polluters tax” on the November ballot. 

“Oil refining has negative impacts on the city, including environmental hazards, public health harms and stress on emergency services,” White said. The tax on oil refining—Chevron’s Richmond refinery is one of the biggest in the nation—aims to improve the city’s financial position and the quality of life for Richmond residents, he said, especially those most affected by the oil refinery.

How to coordinate policies designed to reduce demand for refinery products like gasoline and phase out refineries remains a major challenge, the panelists said.

One in every four new car sales in California is a zero-emission vehicle, said Siva Gunda, vice chair of the California Energy Commission. “We’ve crossed our peak demand of gasoline in California in 2017,” he said, noting a downward trend that he expects to continue. “Yet even if we are wildly successful with EVs, there will be some demand.”

For Gunda, it’s imperative to find ways to reduce demand for fossil fuel products while expanding access to zero-emission vehicles and renewable energy for all Californians, especially for fenceline communities where residents suffer from higher rates of respiratory problems like asthma attacks, heart disease and cancer.

Gunda saw firsthand the disproportionate burdens these communities endure when Rivera, the community organizer, took him on a tour of Wilmington. This predominantly Black and Latino community at Los Angeles’ southern edge sits atop the third-largest oil field in the country. Residents have such a distinctive way of clearing their throats it’s called the Wilmington cough. 

“It’s heartbreaking to imagine that some of us get to see our grandmothers a little bit longer than some of us, because of where we live,” Gunda said.

Yet the climate crisis will not affect only disadvantaged communities, the panelists warned.

Climate change is widespread and rapidly intensifying, May said. She pointed to a 2022 study from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that studies U.S. risks from climate change, which found that about a quarter of the country could be practically unlivable in 30 years, frequently reaching temperatures higher than 125 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s really quite frightening,” she said. 

“We need just-transition planning to phase out refineries,” May said. “We need to deal with replacing the taxes. We need to support the workers. We need to support the communities and we need to survive catastrophic climate change. We can do it.”