In a partially published 102-page opinion filed June 26, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) resolved cross-appeals by affirming the trial court’s judgment invalidating Los Angeles County’s 2019 EIR certification and project approvals for the Centennial Specific Plan, a 12,323-acre development on the historic Tejon Ranch in the County’s Antelope Valley Area south of Kern County. Center for Biological Diversity v. County of Los Angeles (Centennial Founders, LLC, et al., Real Parties in Interest) (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 317. The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial court in all respects, holding the EIR’s GHG and off-site wildfire impacts analyses were deficient, while rejecting challenges to its analyses, discussion, and mitigation for wildlife movement corridors and native vegetation and to its alternatives analysis. (Per this blog’s standard practice, this post will discuss only the published portion of the opinion, which addressed only the GHG issues.)
The Centennial Project, EIR and Trial Court Litigation
The mixed-use project – which has evolved for over two decades – proposes 19,333 residential units on 40 percent of the site; business, commercial and industrial uses on 15 percent; and open space for the remaining 45 percent. This translates to 6,699 developed acres and 5,624 open space acres, and is a scaled-down version of the development originally proposed in 2003 that would have had approximately 23,000 residential units and 3,829 acres of open space. After notices of preparation issued in 2004 and 2015, County issued a DEIR in 2017, released final and consolidated final EIRs in 2018, and certified the EIR in 2019, adopting CEQA findings and a statement of overriding considerations in approving the project.
Petitioners Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and California Native Plant Society (CNPS) (collectively, the “Center”), and Climate Resolve each filed a writ petition challenging the project and EIR on CEQA and Planning and Zoning Law grounds. After briefing, argument, and much procedural wrangling, the full details which are irrelevant here, the trial court ultimately granted all the petitions “on two grounds: (1) the EIR’s discussion of greenhouse gas emissions improperly relied on state cap-and-trade regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions impacts below the level of significance, and (2) the EIR failed to analyze off-site wildfire impacts beyond the Centennial project site.” (In an interesting twist, Climate Resolve settled with real parties, the Tejon Ranch developers, in a settlement not involving the Center or the County, and ended up supporting the real party appellants as an amicus curiae on appeal.)
County did not appeal, but the Tejon Ranch developers (real parties) appealed from the GHG and wildfire portions of the judgment adverse to them, and the Center cross-appealed from the aforementioned wildlife and native plant impact issues that they lost on.
The Court of Appeal’s Opinion
In the opinion’s published portion, the Court of Appeal rejected Tejon’s contentions that County could apply the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce the project’s GHG emissions under the authority of Association of Irritated Residents v. Kern County Bd. Of Supervisors (2017) 17 Cal.App.5th 708 (“AIR”) (my December 1, 2017 post on which can be found here), and that the EIR’s analysis was not misleading because it was otherwise CEQA-compliant and did not claim “mitigation credit” for the assertedly offset emissions. Rather, the Court held AIR was not on point because, unlike the oil refinery whose modification was the project at issue there, the Centennial project is a land-use project that is not a “covered entity” under the cap-and-trade program, which “appl[ies] [only] to specified categories of industrial facilities and fuel and power suppliers.” (Citing 17 Cal. Code Regs., §§ 95801-96022.) Further, the Court found the CEQA Guidelines’ “additionality” requirement in Guideline § 15126.4(c)(3) foreclosed County’s application of the already legally required cap-and-trade compliance of different, “upstream” covered entities to offset the Centennial project’s estimated GHG emissions.
Cap-and-Trade Compliance Cannot Serve As Mitigation For Downstream
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