The Legislature's top climate power broker - POLITICO - POLITICO

The Legislature's top climate power broker - POLITICO

The Legislature’s top climate power broker

With help from Wes Venteicher

SURVEY SAYS — Who’s the biggest climate champion in the Legislature?

We’ve been bringing you the information; now it’s your turn to take our poll.

Coming off what’s shaping up to be a slightly more active session on climate policy than expected, we want to know who you think deserves the most credit.

Our list is heavy on legislative veterans with established track records. We have a write-in option for any newbies you think can hold a candle.

Without further ado, here are our candidates:

Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica): Allen, chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, got a major plastics-reduction bill through last year after several tries. (Plastics are largely made from fossil fuels, so it’s a climate issue.) He’s also sponsoring one of the climate bonds that are aiming for the November 2024 ballot.

Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park): Becker, still in his first term, got under the hood on state climate policy with bills to decarbonize buildings and tackle transmission and distribution delays on the grid. As chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy, he participated in negotiations with the governor’s office over an infrastructure-streamlining package in the state budget.

Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale): Friedman has focused on the intersection of transportation and climate as the chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee. She’s been instrumental in the push for wildlife crossings and aligning transportation spending with state climate goals (although this year’s AB 7, which would do just that, was turned into a two-year bill). She’s also passed bills addressing toxic chemicals and water conservation.

Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella): The Inland Empire Democrat has one of the Legislature’s longest climate records, including the 2016 deal to extend the state’s climate targets through 2030. Garcia is known as a policy wonk and an environmental justice champion. He’s currently lead author on the Assembly’s $16 billion climate bond proposal.

Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara): Limón has been a thorn in the side of the oil industry for most of the last decade, authoring bills to limit offshore drilling in federal waters off California and create setbacks between wells and neighborhoods.

Assemblymember Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood): The chair of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee has used her pulpit to advocate for policies focused on adapting communities to climate change, most recently leading the charge to create an extreme-heat-resilience grant program and heat wave ranking system.

Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley): Skinner has spearheaded the legislative push to grow California’s electric vehicle market, including bills to boost state EV purchases and to require Uber and Lyft to cut their emissions. She’s also authored carbon capture legislation and is a proponent of green hydrogen.

Sen. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks): Stern, a former aide to Sen. Fran Pavley (she of the landmark AB 32 emissions target-setting bill), is chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies. He’s carried bills to close Aliso Canyon, decarbonize buildings and boost low-carbon aviation, and his SB 261, to require big companies to disclose their exposure to climate risk, is awaiting an Assembly vote this week.

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco): Few lawmakers are more willing than Wiener to take on sacred political cows. He’s picked some of the biggest fights on behalf of climate, including polarizing housing bills and a corporate emissions-disclosure bill that just made it through the Assembly yesterday.

Polls open now! All readers vote who desire to vote.

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HOW THEY GOT TO 41 — The biggest climate bill of the session is now on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk after SB 253, which would require big companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions, cleared the Assembly yesterday(at 6:03 p.m. — one minute after we published!) and passed its concurrence vote in the Senate today.

It was the toughest fight of Sen. Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) legislative career, spokesperson Erik Mebust said. But in the end, the vote itself was relatively smooth. The bill got 41 votes in under a minute and got to 48 votes later on.

Mebust credited Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) for “providing strong leadership at the critical moment.”

That checks out: Among the moderate Democrats who voted for it this year but held off last year were Assemblymembers Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno), Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) and Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg). (There were more moderates who voted for it after it was safely over the threshold, but these are the ones who helped get it there.)

But the new class also pitched in. Thirteen freshmen voted for it, whom Mebust credited with “thoughtfulness and independence” in the face of strong lobbying from the California Chamber of Commerce and the Western States Petroleum Association.

Some intriguing “no” votes: Assemblymembers James Ramos (D-San Bernardino) and Jasmeet Bains (D-Bakersfield). Neither office responded to requests for comment.

WE HAVE A DEAL — Here’s another one that went down to the wire. Lawmakers reached an agreement Thursday on a big debate of the session— how much state funding to allocate towards hydrogen car fueling stations vis-à-vis electric vehicle infrastructure.

Negotiations around AB 241/AB 126, which will reauthorize the Clean Transportation Program, landed on a 15 percent carveout for hydrogen cars through 2030.

It’s a middle-of-the-road compromise: The existing program devotes 20 percent of the funding to light-duty hydrogen vehicles. Language earlier in the session, supported by environmentalists and some auto industry reps, would have cut it to 10 percent; oil companies, utilities and some hydrogen-friendly automakers and labor unions had been pushing for a 30 percent carveout. The Assembly floor vote will be Thursday.

THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK — California desperately needs more carbon-free power to meet its climate goals. Energy developers are eager to provide it. Between them stand yearslong permitting bottlenecks.

A preliminary proposal from the state’s grid operator would cut some of the red tape for a segment of the developers waiting in line. Some renewables developers are really into it: The California Wind Energy Association estimates the move could enable as much as 5 gigawatts of new generation capacity to be added to the grid within a couple of years.

California has about 35 gigawatts of clean energy on its grid now and needs to add more at the breakneck pace of 7 gigawatts per year for the next two decades to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, according to projections.

The California Independent System Operator pays the most for electricity that is reliable and deliverable, two designations sought by nearly every developer. Some developers, utilities and ratepayer advocates say CAISO’s requirements are too stringent, needlessly obstructing the addition of new carbon-free power to the grid. They want the operator to ease its standards — especially, because delays in building new transmission are making the standards even harder to meet.

CAISO’s proposal would temporarily lower the bar for those generators waiting on transmission. Some advocates want it to go further.

“It will help some generators get on the system, for sure,” CWEA’s director, Nancy Rader, said of the proposal. “They’re leaving a lot on the table in terms of our ability to use our transmission lines more efficiently.”

CAISO is due out with a more refined draft Oct. 9 and could vote on it this winter.

— Fires at the wildland urban interface can now happen, well, everywhere.

— A master of science fiction extols the climate benefits of cities.

— A new but very unsurprising study — improving California forest health can improve human health by reducing wildfire smoke.

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