Landmark California bill for 100% clean energy unexpectedly put on hold until next year

by Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun

California lawmakers will go home for the year without voting on a landmark renewable energy bill, in an unexpected setback for the state’s efforts to lead the world in fighting climate change.

The bill would have required California to get 60 percent of its electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2030, up from the current legal mandate of 50 percent. It also would have tasked state regulators with charting a path to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045, which could have included energy sources not considered “renewable,” like nuclear power, large hydropower plants and gas-fired power plants that capture their carbon emissions.

State senators approved the legislation by a 25-13 margin in May, and for months its eventual passage in the Assembly looked like a foregone conclusion. But the bill got held up after unexpectedly strong opposition from investor-owned utilities like Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, which argued it did not adequately protect their customers from potential increases in electricity costs. Unions also worked to kill the bill in the final week of session, after legislative leaders wouldn’t include provisions sought by organized labor.

Assembly member Chris Holden, a Pasadena Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s utilities and energy committee, said earlier this week he wouldn’t move the bill out of his committee because it didn’t have enough support to pass the chamber. He held to that stance as the legislative session came to a close Friday night, even as climate advocates urged him to advance the bill.

The bill’s failure was a major defeat for Gov. Jerry Brown and powerful Senate leader Kevin de León, a Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the legislation. It was also disheartening for climate and clean energy advocates, who have touted California as a global leader in the fight against climate change — an especially important role now that the Trump administration has backed out of the Paris climate agreement and is working to undo many Obama-era climate initiatives.

“We are determined to fight climate change and air pollution and one way to do that is to accelerate California’s transition to 100 percent clean energy,” said Kathryn Phillips, Director of Sierra Club California, in a statement. “The decision to not move the bill this year is disappointing. But we are committed to moving this policy next year. There’s no time to waste.”

The 100 percent bill wasn’t the only energy legislation that died in Sacramento this year. Brown also threw his weight behind a plan to unify the power grids of the western United States, which would have allowed California to import cheap wind power from Wyoming more easily and to export excess solar power to neighboring states. Brown and other supporters say a regional grid would bring down the cost to consumers of replacing fossil fuels with clean energy, but critics fear it would backfire, leading to higher energy prices and more coal-fired electricity in the West.

Brown’s deal-making to get the western grid bill passed may have contributed to the 100 percent clean energy legislation’s defeat. The governor tried to win labor’s support for both bills by adding a provision to the western grid bill to speed up the development of solar and wind farms over the next few years, creating additional union jobs. But in the end that wasn’t enough — labor wanted additional measures to ensure continued jobs building renewable energy plants.

Without those additional measures, unions ended up lobbying against both bills.
“There were many complex issues still unresolved, so it makes sense to press the pause button to be sure we get the whole package of energy issues properly resolved,” said Marc Joseph, an attorney who has represented the Coalition of California Utility Employees and the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California in regional grid discussions.

Matthew Freedman — a staff attorney at the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based ratepayer advocacy group — said the governor had miscalculated by effectively tying the fate of the popular 100 percent clean energy bill to the fate of the more controversial western grid bill.

“Unfortunately the governor has come to rely upon this strategy of last minute deal-making at the end of session as his preferred approach to enacting law,” said Freedman, whose group supported the 100 percent clean energy bill. “Time is very compressed in that situation, and it’s difficult to make sure the bills have broad support or are actually well crafted.”

But both bills are likely to be back next year. California law requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and state regulators have set a goal of 80 percent by 2050. Meeting those targets will require a massive transition away from fossil fuels, far beyond the 29 percent of electricity that came from renewable energy last year — not to mention a dramatic shift from gasoline-powered cars to cleaner forms of transportation.

Lawmakers also approved a bill Friday that directs $895 million in revenues from the state’s cap-and-trade program toward rebates to support cleaner cars, trucks, buses and port equipment.

source: http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/16/landmark-california-bill-100-clean-energy-unexpectedly-put-hold-until-next-year/670434001/

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.