SB 1272: California Environmental Quality Act: program environmental impact report: clean energy infrastructure projects.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact report (EIR) on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment.

CEQA authorizes a lead agency for a later project, if a prior EIR has been prepared and certified for a program, plan, policy, or ordinance, commonly known as a program EIR, to examine significant effects of the later project upon the environment by using a tiered EIR and provides that the tiered EIR is not required to examine effects that meet certain requirements.

Existing law establishes a process for the certification of facilities related to clean energy infrastructure by the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission).

This bill would authorize the Energy Commission to prepare a program EIR to analyze the development of a class or classes of facility related to clean energy infrastructure, as provided. The bill would authorize a public agency considering the approval of a specific facility that is within a class or classes of facility described in the program EIR prepared under these provisions to tier from that program EIR.