California's climate incentive program pays cattle farmers to convert manure methane into natural gas, becoming wildly popular due to lucrative subsidies. However, research reveals the program overstates actual emissions reductions by trading short-term warming cuts for long-term warming increases.

The state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires transportation fuels to lower carbon intensity, allowing petroleum companies to buy LCFS credits from farmers with anaerobic digesters. California assumes methane is 25 times more powerful than CO2 over 100 years, but methane breaks down within decades while CO2 accumulates for centuries.

This creates a perverse incentive: capturing methane today avoids temporary warming, but permits additional CO2 emissions that persist for millennia. One biogas vehicle can offset 26 gasoline vehicles through credits, yet the net atmospheric impact worsens long-term warming.

California regulators extended the program beyond 2050 in 2024 despite these findings. The fundamental flaw reveals how offset schemes let industries pay others to reduce emissions rather than cutting pollution directly at source.