On January 29, 2024, the New Jersey Senate introduced a bill to establish a Low-Carbon Transportation Fuel Standard (LCTFS) in the state. This standard will be designed to reduce gasoline and diesel's average carbon intensity (CI) to 10% below the 2019 baseline by 2030. If signed into law, the bill would establish the first clean fuel standard on the East Coast, joining similar programs in California, Oregon and Washington.
The bill, titled the , requires each refiner, wholesaler, importer of diesel or gasoline, as well as each producer of alternative fuel participating in the program, to ensure that the transportation fuel they produce refine, sell or import, meets the low carbon transportation standard annually.
Under the LCTFS, the evaluation of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) fuel emissions will be determined using the U.S. Department of Energy's Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET) model. Eligible fuels for the program include ethanol, biomass-based diesel, renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), electricity, biomethane, biogasoline, renewable natural gas (RNG), fuels from carbon capture and utilization, electrofuels and hydrogen, among others.
To date, 13 states have introduced legislation to enact a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS): Michigan, New Mexico, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, Vermont, and New Jersey