Senate Standing Committee on Rules

I want to start out apologizing that we're starting a bit late. It has been. We are in our busy season here in the Capitol. You will see individuals who will leave the Committee, come back to Committee. There are multiple committees, either folks presenting or voting. So we want to send an apology early and often today.

Not trying to be disrespectful. And one of the reasons why I am late is because it's one of those days. And sincerely appreciate your patience and don't mean to be disrespectful. So what we'd like to be able to do is call the Senate Rules Committee to order.

Let's turn it over to Madam Secretary to be able to call the roll.

[Roll Call]

The quorum has been established. Senator Grove will be back. She is currently an agricultural Committee. We know that Senator Laird has committees that are going to be covered up. And Senator Laird, if you see the roadrunner dust behind him, hes run into his Committee.

So point of personal privilege, ID like to better turn it over to Senator Eggman. Senator Eggman, it is a big day today within the Eggman household and well deserved. So we'd like to be able to turn it over to Senator Eggman. About the honor that was just bestowed to Senator Eggman by the California National Guard, please.

Thank you.

I was awarded the Order of California, which is the highest, second to the highest. To the Medal of Freedom award by the California National Guard. So I'll be wearing this the rest of my time.

It really is a special honor. And especially as a veteran herself. So pretty amazing and an emotional day. So, congratulations and well deserved. Ladies and gentlemen, Committee, we would like to take up our administrative business here today. To the appointees who are in front of us. If you don't mind, we're going to spend about five minutes.

Taking up our administrative. Our housekeeping items. And we'll come right over to our first presentations. If there are no objections from the Committee, we'd like to be able to turn to Governor appointees not required to appear. We have items 2d through J. Items 2d through J. Is there a motion? So move.

We have a motion by Senator Laird. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] on call.

It's a 4 -0 vote. 4 - 0 vote. We're going to keep that on call for Madam Vice Chair. We're now going to be moving on to Bill referrals. This is item three reference of bills to committees. Do we have a motion to approve? We have a motion by Senator Laird. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

On call four to 40 on call 40 on call for Vice Chair Grove. We're now going to be advancing to floor. Acknowledgments, we'd like to take up items four through six. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Four to zero on call 4 - 0.

On call 40 on call for Senator Grove. All right, we're now going to be moving into our business today, and we welcome appointees.

First and foremost, we're going to start with item one and we are honored to be able to have Doctor Din Mcgraw to be able to come forward, please, from the California Medical Board, along with Doctor Yip. If you could please come forward as well. We're going to get started in 30 seconds. Have you get situated.

We're going to get you some water and we'll get started here momentarily. Doctors, we want to first and foremost welcome you to Committee and say thank you so much for your service to the State of California, to the people California, and in particular, serving those medical professionals who you oversee at the board.

What we'd like to be able to do is hear from you. We're going to offer you an opportunity to be able to provide any welcoming remarks up to two minutes. In your welcoming remarks, we encourage you to acknowledge any friends or family who may be here or watching online.

I'll give you a 32nd prompt as you get close to those two minutes. And then what we'll do is we're going to turn it over to the Committee for further discussion or debate. So why don't we start, Mister Doctor, with you. It's wonderful to see you. Thank you for your hard work, and the floor is yours.

So, good afternoon, Members of the Committee, and thank you for the opportunity today. And I want to thank Governor Gavin Newsom for considering me and appointing me to the board.

I will also take this opportunity to thank my family, especially my wife Meena, who's also a family medicine physician serving Indian health services in Clovis for the last 17 years and always supported me.

In last 27 years of my professional career, I have worked in different parts of the country, worked with the very diverse population, patient population, subset, mostly underserved. And last 17 years, being in Fresno, California, I'm very confident that my professional experience will help me in this role.

I was very fortunate to serve in different leadership roles, whether it is the chair of the Department, or the founding program Director for internal medicine at St. Agnes Hospital, or the leader of my own group for the last 10 years, which is 50 plus provider group now and serving the Central California, and currently being the chair of medical staff at the St. Agnes Hospital.

So today I want to commit to this Committee that I will work very diligently and sincerely and more importantly, cohesively with the my fellow colleagues on the board, the Executive staff of the Medical Board of California, and more importantly this Legislature to ensure and enhance the public safety in the State of California.

And thank you for your time and opportunity.

Mister board Member. Thank you so much for your opening remarks. Doctor, we're going to turn it over to you and say thank you for your service. You have two minutes and I'll give you a 32nd heads up. Thank you. Good afternoon, esteemed Members of the Senate. We're going to pull the microphone a little closer, sir.

I apologize about interrupting, Mister board Member. Thank you.

Good afternoon. You turned it off.

Oh, good afternoon. Yeah, good. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, esteemed Members of the Senate. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Gavin Newsom for this appointment and also the staff of the St. Louis Committee for arranging this.

I have the privilege of serving a multiethnic communities of Los Angeles since 1987, almost four decades serving the Medicaid, Medicare and HMO homeless population. It is an honor to serve them as a medical doctor and also coming to service there.

As a board Member of the medical board, I'm eager to contribute more towards enhancing public safety, integrity and equality of the medical profession. I truly hope that together we can build greater trust between the public and the medical community. The medical board faces numerous challenges ahead.

As a board Member, I'm honored to be part of the team committed to meeting the goals and ensuring the highest quality of care and healthcare for all in California. And again, thanks for the opportunity here. I'd also like to thank my wife for 44 years who had an Uber account so I can come here today.

And also Mister Aaron Bone, wonderful staff of the board to make me a more efficient board Member. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mister board member. We appreciate it.

What we'd like to be able to do is open it up for questions or comments from please from the Committee.

Senator Laird, thank you. And as the chair said, I apologize because I have to go present a Bill the minute I'm done asking these questions. Rest assured, Mister chair, I'll be back for you, but I will be back to vote. And I apologize for the in and out.

I want to start with Doctor Yip and maybe with an uncomfortable question, and that is, Senator Grove and I are the two still on the Committee. But we had medical board hearings that were 2 and 3 years ago that were really difficult.

The Los Angeles Times did an investigative story, and they found that 10 physicians that had committed fairly egregious errors that I won't describe here had been in front of the medical board, and nine of them were. It was revoking. Their license was not accepted, and they were allowed to come back.

And then four of them committed fairly egregious errors after the action of the medical board. Back with patients again. And we had a discussion here, and a very difficult one, and your colleagues did not get unanimous votes in moving out of the Committee.

And while you're coming back and I read everything and you're looking forward, I think we have to look back for a second because you were there when all that happened. So how do you reflect on the actions that the medical board did or didn't take at that time?

And do you have regrets, and how does it inform you wanting to come back now and serve again?

It's actually a very excellent question, and this is one of the reasons I want to come back after nine years. It is disturbing when we read those stories as a board member. But since I've been there for several years or nine years, we talked to different chief and talked to DAG, and how can we do better?

It's always easy just to say, well, this Doctor is no good. Let's shut him down. But we have a legal process to follow. We have the rules to follow. We advise to the DAG so that we can build a good case, so that we won't lose it because we act without the evidence.

During the years, we also tried to have the board to ask your help to get more legislative change so that we can have more power to supine the record, or easy to issue a suspension order so that we can protect the public more swiftly.

And that's one of the things that we try to work on more aggressively to change that.

And the difficulty of our hearings where we had family members testifying of people that had been in those circumstances, and it was very difficult. How do you feel if there have been any changes in the law, it empowers you to take action now that you might not have been able to take during your first time around on.

The medical board, as I put in my response to the questionnaire, and that's one of the suggestions I made several years ago to the tracking system, and I was the one that bought on, we should let the complainant and the family know where the case stands rather than like deep in the sea.

Nobody knows what's going on, and we work on that tracking system. Second, also, there is a complaint unit that we can talk to the complainer. What would the issue take? The statement, the impact statement doesn't change. I think we learned from the medical board we need to listen to the public more.

As I tell my staff, we see 50 patients a day, but the patient only see one Doctor that day. So to them, it's a big deal. And I think the board will bring a culture that we're more open to public and act on that and make changes, and hopefully with the help of the Legislature.

Okay. And then that. And I appreciate it. And just take our concern very seriously that, you know, we also represent the patients, and we want to make sure they have a reasonable expectation that the medical board hasn't returned somebody into practice that is not going to deal with them well.

But you teed up legislation and budget, and I thought that would just be my second question, and maybe I'll give you a well-earned rest and start with the other candidate. But the question is, there have been budget issues, and for a while, there was a massive backlog.

How do you think the medical board has been addressing those in a way to get at them?

Well, thank you for the question. I think I just started my. I just attended one board meeting, and what I learned, the sunset Bill has allowed us to increase the physician licensing fee from beginning of this year. And that second increase probably happened in 2027.

So that will give us a little financial help to hire the more staff. I think the backlog is not acceptable. It takes the complaint to adjudicate around three to four years. The problem is not just the staff, it is the experts, which we don't have.

And we need to find different ways to hire and give the competitive reimbursement for their expert review. And I think this SB, the sunset Bill, will help us to financially become more viable in terms of hiring all these staff. So that's one part of the story.

And the second part is the licensing process with the candidates is also backlogged. But it has improved significantly since this financial thing has happened. And now you are able to respond to the applicant within 20 to 30 days in the first application. So I think the process is much faster.

So in my opinion, whatever the increase has been done, it is going to help the medical board and you feel.

Comfortable letting us know if that's not going that way and there's necessary help you need from the Legislature, of course. And Doctor, let me give you a chance on that question.

It's actually a kind of complicated question in a way that we don't want to blame the COVID time. There's a time that people cannot do as usual have record meeting. But as Doctor Dhingra said, we're working on increase.

The expert reviewer I pursued involved in the training in April 1 coming in August and I reached out to the medical school Loma Linda, UCI and USC to encourage the academic but also communication to joint expert reviewer.

We also deal with online module hopefully that make more physician to join not only just for the money but also hopefully they share the passion of the integrity of the medical profession. You're a doctor not just because of the imbursement, you're a doctor also because of the care of the patient of the community.

The other thing we're working on is also to train the staff. Now we always hear we have vacancy in the investigation 15% 25%. So, our chief really worked on it. And I can tell you before I left the medical board turned 22 and now whenever I call my chief of enforcement or Aaron weekend 09:00 p.m. they respond.

They work to answer question. We had less staff but they work harder and I'm trying to. And they're trying to improve the morale of the whole medical board team.

Okay, thank you very much and I will be back to vote. Thank you for your response.

Thank you, Senator Laird, please Susan. Thank you. Good afternoon doctors. Nice to see you here.

I've served on the business and professions Committee since 2012, I think so in two houses and every year there's issues with the medical board that come through the Committee and a lot of controversy and we deal with, and I know the trailer Bill Language you referred to or the sunset Bill you referred to passed last year, I think and it will also include, in addition to increasing fines, bringing the families into the process, how do you anticipate that's going to be able to help you come to decisions?

I think it's the impact effect or the patient impact. I think the it is a very good idea and I think it should be encouraged. The medical board is working very diligently on it and we probably sent around 150 inquiries on that. The response is not very, very positive. There's only 10 people have responded.

But I think the medical board is committed towards that cause and we are very very for myself and as a part of the board I have observed they are very passionate about the patient care and families and we should continue to encourage that and find if these things are not working, why they're not working and try to implement it more effectively.

Same actually interesting statistics show we issue more than 19 - 20 impact statement and only nine response. Now certainly something as a matter we want to look at the people respond what were the quality or issue? Whereas the other one, maybe this is a minor complaint so they may skew the statistics, but nine response is nine response.

So we need to take it serious too, learn what is important. But at least the channel is that the patient and the family and caretaker has a way to express their concern.

And so you talked about the amount of inquiries that you put out and the few that came back. How long from the complaint were those letters issued?

As I understand those are being still going through the investigating process. Those are the first step to get the response.

But I know there was a backlog of years, so I'm thinking if you sent a letter to somebody from years ago, they may not respond right away.

I don't know the exact timing, but I'm definitely going to look into it and get back. If we can give that information back.

To the Committee, that would be great. And I guess just the privilege it is for doctors to have a medical board that police themselves. Basically a lot of other professions have other people looking at them. So how do you think about the responsibility that comes with that, both to society and to you or your profession?

To me it is just an extension of my hippocratic code that do not do any harm. And now you are enabled by the mandate or the appointment that you are able to do something more than that.

And to me this is very patient centric approach in my real life also, and as a part of the board also, I strongly believe in that, that now you have resources and some authority to implement your ideas which are patient centric and hopefully help the patient safety.

So I feel it is very, it's a great privilege and honor to be on the board as a medical professional, but also I want to be an effective Member of the board to make sure the mission of the board is accomplished in a positive way.

Thank you.

I think in the past after meeting medical may have been more on the passive side. Wait until the campaign come in and echo it. I think over the years we're changing, but I think we can change more. We need to be more aggressive. Outreach. And I talked to the President of the board and also the Director.

Each board Member can outreach to the society, ARP school students, talk to them, what being a Doctor is about, why the trust between the public and medical professors over the years? How can we build it up?

It's not easy, as you know, those comment about the new generation now, but hopefully we pick the Doctor who want to be a Doctor. They're different. And hopefully the medical board can help change that.

And that's why last board meeting, a number of board Members actually say, hey, we should work with the ED to be more outreach to this medical school or society or senior center, to educate a public that there's a channel for you to complain. Also educate a student, the resident, the fellow, the responsibility of being a physician.

Thank you.

I'm an LCSW, so every time I go in a situation, one of the questions I always ask when I was a Professor, the students like, who is your client? So I'd ask both of you, as in your role on the medical board, who is your client?

Who is my client? As the public.

The public. Okay. Thank you.

Absolutely. That goes with the mission of the medical board.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay.

Thank you. All right, doctors, thank you so much. Hearing no other discussion from the Committee at this time. What we'd like to be able to do is open up our public testimony portion. We're going to invite any individual who would like to be able to speak in support of the two board Members.

If you could please advance to the podium at this time, we're going to ask you to please provide your first and last name, the organization that you're representing. And we're going to have a 32nd time limit on that. Good afternoon and welcome. It's nice to see you.

Hi. Thank you. Nissette Short, representing St. Agnes Medical center here, urging your support for Doctor Dingra. He's an amazing health leader at St. Agnes, where he is also well known and valued for his encouragement and support for his colleagues, his profession, and his community. So we urge your support for his nomination. Thank you.

Thank you so much for attending.

We'd like to be able to see if there's anyone else who would like to be able to come up and speak in support. This is going to be our last call for those who may want to speak in support.

Seeing no one rise, we're now going to request any individual who would like to be able to speak in opposition. If you could please come forward to the podium at this time, state your first and last along with your organization.

All right, seeing no one rise, let's bring it back to Committee, see if there's any additional discussion or debate hearing. None.

Someone would like to be able to advance a motion for both. And I would be remiss if I didn't say I had outreach from physicians in my community about Doctor Dhingra and his fine support. And so, I'll move that we send both of these to the Senate Floor for full confirmation. Thank you so much.

We have a motion on the floor by Senator Eggman. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

That's a 3 - 0 vote on call for Senator Laird and Senator Grove. Doctors, thank you. Thank you. We'll be shutting this down here in just a few moments. We appreciate you being here, and again, truly appreciate your service to the State of California. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen here in the hearing room and those watching online, we're going to take a 32nd pause. We're going to have Mister chair, if you can please come forward. We're going to take a 32nd pause.

We're going to swap out the nameplates and get a fresh cup of water, and we'll get started here in just a moment.

Thank you so much.

All right, we're back. We want to welcome Mister Hochschild to the Rules Committee. Thank you so much, sir. It's wonderful to see you. Mister Hochschild, we want to say thank you for your work, your tenure, your steady hand with the California Energy Commission. What we're going to do a little bit of a run of show.

We'll have you provide the two minutes of welcoming remarks. At that time, we request that you acknowledge any family, friends that are here in the audience and or watching online. When you get close to that two minutes, I'll give you a 30 second warning.

And then what we're going to do is open it up for discussion and debate from the Committee after you have concluded your welcoming remarks. The floor is yours, sir, and it's good to see you.

Well, thank you so much. Pro Tem Mcguire, Senators and distinguished awardee. Good to be here. I'm David Hochschild, Chair of the California Energy Commission, and with your permission, I just want to first introduce my amazing wife, Cynthia Lee, who's here with me.

She's a Doctor, and when we married 21 years ago, I was in environment, clean energy, and she was in health. And we kind of thought of those as separate issues, and it's really become clear that they're inextricably intertwined, and that when we create a healthy environment, we are also passing on health to the next generation.

And I try to carry that sentiment with me in all my work. I want to just begin by thanking the incredible team at the Energy Commission. My Chief of Staff, Kat Robinson, our Executive Director, Drew Bohan, our wonderful Vice Chair, Siva Gunda, who I've tasked with leading us on grid reliability, SB 100 and SBX 12 work.

Commissioner Nomi Gallardo, who's leading us on Lithium Valley and on our equity work, and on all the fast track permitting, as well as Commissioner Andrew McAllister on building decarbonization, energy efficiency, and Commissioner Monahan on zero emission vehicles. An incredible team that really keeps me going.

I don't want to sugarcoat in any way the seriousness of the energy challenges that we face, because the hill ahead is very steep. Climate driven heat domes stressing the grid, wildfires that are creating very expensive utility undergrounding work that falls on ratepayers price volatility in the gasoline market that we've experienced.

But I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible progress that our state is making. We're at 61% clean energy on the grid. We're going to hit two thirds of our power in the next year, being clean energy, that is something people thought was impossible even a few years ago.

We've added in the last five years, 22 gigawatts of new power to the grid. 92 percent of that is clean. And of that, that's the most in any five year period in the state's history. And of that, 10 gigs is battery storage, which we did in five years. Unprecedented.

And when we're doing these things, we're creating market transformation. The next 10 gigs of batteries is going to come in 50% less. We're also operating an incredibly robust program around energy efficiency. California ranks number one in the United States on efficiency. And a lot of this is work at the CDC that is totally below the radar.

But we're saving in California $3.8 billion a year because of the CDC's lighting efficiency standard. Nearly $2 billion a year from our television efficiency standard, $700 million a year from computer standards. And again, this is work that's way below the radar, but hugely consequential.

And we're also operating the best clean energy research and development program in the world, supporting over 340 cleantech startups and innovators that are scaling. And I'll just wrap with this. Solar power is probably the single biggest energy legacy of the State of California. First utility scale solar project in the world, and rooftop systems deployed here.

And that built an industry that has spread around the country and the world. In 2004, it took a year globally to build a gigawatt of solar. In 2010, it took a month. In 2016, it took a week. In 2023, it took a day to build a gigawatt of solar. 2024, half a day.

The price of solar has come down 98% since 2000. And that's the kind of market transformation that we're able to support. It's happening with wind, it's happening with energy storage, it's happening with electric vehicles. And really, the R&D program and the policy program we have is driving that mainstream.

We're also going way upstream on things like lithium development. We have enough lithium in California to be sustainably produced to provide power, enough batteries for 375 million electric vehicles. And that's going to be produced entirely with clean electricity. So I'll wrap there. And I look forward to your questions.

Thank you so much, Mister Chair. We appreciate that. And again, we welcome you to Committee. We'd like to be able to see if there are any individuals who would like to be able to kick us off here, please, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Mister chair. My apologies to the individuals who were just confirmed or nominated to go to the floor from the medical board, as I am bouncing back and forth between committees. So I do apologize. Chairman. I appreciate you meeting with me yesterday. You know that I represent the oil industry and the energy industry.

You even made the comment that our county produces more solar and wind than any other county in the state combined. Actually, we do. Over 53% of the state's renewable energy transmission lines are an issue. And I appreciate the conversation that you had. I do have a question I want to ask you.

But when you brought up lithium, it made me think of the Otay Mesa situation that we have. We didn't really discuss it yesterday. It was just heavily in your comments, in your introduction. The Otay Mesa situation, the lithium batteries down there in that storage facility burned for almost three weeks.

You mentioned your beautiful wife that is here today in the health industry, and you talked a lot about the health effects of energy and why we need to make transitions. There's hydrogen fluoride in these uniquely dangerous, strong iron, organic, or inorganic lithium batteries.

And when they catch on fire, they could put upwards of 600 parts per million in the air of this hydrogen fluoride. And to put that in perspective, the iDLH, or, you know, definitely dangerous to health or dangerous to life and health concentrate, is 30 parts per million.

So we're like hundreds of parts per million above what they estimated came into the air, into that small community. That's a low socioeconomic, disadvantaged community. Average wage, $71,000 a year. Most poor black and brown people live in that area. And there's a lithium battery storage facility that is, like I said, on fire.

And to my knowledge, CAL FIRE couldn't put it out, because you can't put them out. You have to let them just burn out. Right. You have to try to keep the batteries cool, but let them burn out.

So, I guess, what's your thoughts on lithium battery storage, especially if we have this exposure to life and health, according to, and that's a good source. It comes from the Health Department. So, CDPH. So just what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so, totally fair question. And a couple updates on that. So, for one thing, there was a really big turning point in 2021 with NFPA new UL codes, which hugely improved safety. So it's everything from better telemetry to other safety measures.

We're typically seeing storage now go outside in an enclosed metal shipping container with spacing on a concrete foundation. And the fires we've had in California have been no injuries and no fatalities, but fire is absolutely unacceptable in any form.

And one of the things that is happening as well is there's two types of lithium chemistries, NMC and LFP. LFP is much less prone to thermal runaway, and the energy storage space has transitioned to that. So the instance we're seeing, the one you're referring to in Otay Mesa, was an NMC chemistry battery.

And in addition to that, we're engaging very closely with our partner states, New York as well, and the Public Utilities Commission on additional safety protocols, CAL FIRE as well. I will say one of the exciting things, looking at the. So we're very close to the battery energy ecosystem.

There's a bunch of innovation happening now that is hugely helpful in safety. So Sepion, Core, Shell, Sparks, Kuberg, liminal are some amazing companies. Better separators, better durability, better telemetry.

And if you think about even the fires that happened in the early version of the Chevy Bolt, which was LG Chem, that's a totally preventable thing, because there's a new process liminals developed that you do an ultrasound, tack it onto the manufacturing process, you can detect a flawed cell and take it out before it even gets to market.

So I would say big progress on technology. What I'm most concerned about are the legacy pre 21 projects. And so we're engaging with them. I just met with the project operator, and we're coming up with additional protocols on that.

And how many projects do we have like that in the state?

We have 10 gigawatts of battery storage in the state today.

Under the old process?

No, no, not all that. Most of that's been added most of the week. Most of that's come on in the last 2-3 years. The rate of battery storage has gone way up. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Yesterday, we talked about a conversation when we had our conversation about the Governor of Nevada. Governor Lombardo sent a letter to Governor Newsom voicing his concerns regarding the gas prices.

Since 88% of Nevada's gas comes from us here in California, in our California refineries, he raises concern about the cost increases for refineries because we have lack of capacity for refineries. But he also raised the concerns about, obviously, SBX 12 and a price market cap, which could create higher costs and increases.

And then we discussed that, I think in depth for the. I think you were in my office for almost an hour. I apologize for that. But in depth. So I guess the question is, like, what's the plan? What's the plan? So that we don't create higher gas prices. I know the whole.

And again, this is not anything against the CEC or you. I realize that you're the implement, you're the implementer. You and your team are the implementer of the policy that's passed out of this building, even if sometimes that policy may be impossible or near impossible to implement. So it's nothing.

But what is your thoughts and plans to eliminate price spikes, especially in the summertime when we're using a different fuel blend that costs more money. And what is your plan to make sure that we don't continually increase the cost of fuel for our constituents?

Yeah. So very much appreciate the question. And I've asked Vice Chair Sivigunda to lead our efforts in this space, and he and I have made a personal commit to visit every single operating refinery in the State of California. Today, there's nine of them.

We're going through that, and that's been really fruitful to get into the weeds of the issue. Prior to the special session last year, the Energy Commission's authorities on this were really just tracking the market. We had no regulatory role in the oil industry. We don't regulate refineries, we don't regulate oil production.

So this is a new authority that's been granted to us. We're doing our very best to support a scenario where we don't have price spikes. And I think a couple things. I really wanted to thank the Legislature for the visibility on data, and data transparency is hugely helpful for us.

One of the things, for example, that we worry about is maintenance cycles striking when demand is highest. So having visibility on that and 120 day notice is super helpful.

We never want to have all those maintenance cycles stacked when you know that we expect demand to really spike, which is late summer, early fall timeframe, and to really be able to plan effectively around that, and then we're in the process of doing a much more sort of detailed assessment.

Obviously, any action we take, we want to make sure we fully understand the consequences and we take that role really seriously. So, again, thank you for the new authorities, and we're doing our best to meet that need.

Thank you. You put the right man in charge, too. He is very intelligent, very problem solving, thinking outside the box. Love him. He's great. You mentioned scheduled maintenance, but yesterday, I just want to make sure that we have it on the record, too. Is that scheduled maintenance is monitored but not unscheduled or unplanned? ER, maintenance. Correct?

Correct. Yeah. Unplanned we can never plan. But I think one of the things about having a regular planned maintenance cycle. If you do that well, you reduce the risk of unplanned. And so we want to support that.

And I just want to acknowledge the lead time for these crews on planned maintenance cycle is quite long, can be a year and a half to two years. And so getting ahead of that and recognizing that reality, that's not something that's easily adjusted. And so we see the challenge there.

But the visibility for us is something we didn't have before, and now we're getting that. And that's actually really helpful to get ahead of this.

And I appreciate that. I appreciate that you recognize that because I think sometimes if you never been to a refinery, never operated a refinery, to think that you have to schedule a job about one and a half to two years away and make sure you keep that time.

And then if something has to change, it's very difficult to move those crews into this facility to do the maintenance that you need. The last question I have is how does the California Energy Commission envision hydrogen contributing to the state's future clean energy as a state's clean energy carrier?

And what strategies does the CEC advocate for supportive adoption of infrastructure development, particularly in transportation and industrial sectors?

Yeah. So two part question for the transportation space. The goal that has been set is not an electric goal, it's a zero emission vehicle goal. So as part of that, we were given direction by the Legislature to deploy hydrogen refueling stations. We spent almost $300 million on that. We're second only to Japan on a per capita basis.

What's happening in the hydrogen space, it's really moving increasingly towards heavy duty, and we're focused as well on supporting reliability in those stations. There's definitely been some issues with that. So we have about 65 stations up and operating. We're really locking in and make sure those operate successfully. We had had a more robust program in the budget.

Budget conditions have changed a bit. So to do more green hydrogen, there's other areas that I would say we really want to look towards clean hydrogen, areas that are hard to electrify, some of the industrial applications, but that's now pending future budget allocations.

Well, thank you for that. I asked that question because one of my constituents gave it to me because they are actually converting short term delivery planes in Mojave. They can go up to 300 miles just converting a fuel engine to hydrogen, and they just reuse the same water. And it's pretty interesting.

Is that universal? Yeah. But one thing I should say, Senator, I neglected to mention, I was talking about the Energy Commission budget. There is obviously the arches grant that came in that's not being managed by the Energy Commission. That's our sister agency, Gobiz and Tyson Eckerley on point for that. And that's 1.2 billion.

Well, thank you very much. Like I said, there's new technology every day in Kern County, and I just appreciate the opportunity to keep these new technologies moving, especially if they're going to help meet some goals that have been set by this Legislature. I look forward to your confirmation, sir. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much. Madam Vice Chair would like to ask you, please, Senator Eggman and Senator Joe.

Thank you. Good afternoon. How are you? I represent area in the Central Valley where it gets really hot. So I've heard, and I'm hoping there's not going to be any downtimes this year for everyone's air conditioning and power. And I know that a lot has to do with Hydro in our mix.

Can you talk a little bit about what we have and what's coming online for years when we do have a drought and we know we don't have the hydro power backup that we're going to have as a cushion for this year?

Yeah. So, first of all, our posture today for grid reliability hugely improved from what it was. I never want to say never outage, but I am much happier this June than it was last June.

And that's in large part a consequence of all the hard work that's gone to deploy all these new resources, in particular energy storage, in addition to that, because we had a really robust rain year, virtually every major reservoir in the state is full. And so that's super helpful.

It's extremely difficult to build new hydrocapacity, so there's not a whole lot around that that's happening. But I think I'm very supportive of sort of the intelligent use of existing hydrocapacity and making sure that we're integrating that successfully with storage so that we'll have that capacity when we need to.

And just, you know, to your point about increased heat, you know, we are concerned for the whole state, but also especially for Low income households. You know, we're already this year seeing fatalities from heat in California in June. That's happening, and so electricity, you know, is not an option. It's a necessity when we see it like water.

And so that is my number one charge is to keep the lights on in close collaboration with the PUC and the Caiso and others. And I will say, you know, we've only had one outage on the trunk ISO system since 2021. That was August 14 and 15th of 2020.

It affected 500,000 customers, lasted three and a half hours over two nights, and the posture is never again. And so we're doing everything we can, in addition to the storage, also just everything that connects to the grid to make it a good citizen of the grid.

And so to make use of the demand response capabilities, we have an authority. I mentioned earlier some of the efficiency standards. One of the most exciting ones was Senate Bill SB 49, Nancy Skinner, which gave us the ability to require load flex capabilities. We did our first one with pool pumps. That's 500 load.

And with that standard, you can ensure that when those pumps are operating, they're not going to be operating during peak. It's actually a fairly small number of hours of the year. We're really concerned about grid reliability, like 30 to 60 hours a year, July, August, September, 4 to nine. Then that's really our crunch time.

And so our efforts are really focused on reducing load in those periods.

Thank you so much, and Jones.

Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to kind of dig deeper a little bit on the hydrogen thing. I was at a conference recently, and then I have a second, unrelated question as well.

It seems like other states are kind of taking the lead on the hydrogen stuff, and I know that the Governor likes to talk about California taking the lead on energy, especially renewable energy and zero emissions and all of that.

So I think the number I heard was that South Carolina is investing or somebody, either the corporations or it's a private party partnership. I didn't get all the details on it. Somewhere upwards of $5 billion on their hydrogen hub wanted to kind of get your thoughts. You know, is California going to take the lead on hydrogen?

Are we going to allow other states to take the lead on this? And, you know, maybe I'm more asking like a generalized question, more than a specific question, like, what's the CEC's attitude towards hydrogen, and are we going to get there on it?

Yeah, as I said, we have deployed more hydrogen refueling infrastructure than just about any place, and I think I personally support the arches application.

We applied along with many other states, and we were fortunate to get one award, but we can only do what we have with the funds we have, and that was a limited federal opportunity right now. We had originally $100 million for clean hydrogen in the budget, and I know your budget circumstances have tightened considerably.

From my perspective, I'm very interested to see hydrogen fill the niches that can't be met with electrification. And so there are some of these end use applications that look at hydrogen home people talking about hydrogen water heating, that's not a good application. That's electric heat pump. Heavy duty transportation is a different kettle of fish.

And that's something right now that is more up for grabs. Senator Grove mentioned companies like universal doing hydrogen fuel for planes. Those are never going to be long range. Planes are not going to be electrified. So that is, I think, the puzzle piece there to fit it in an area of need that's otherwise really difficult to electrify.

There's a lot of heavy duty industry, steel manufacturing and so on. That's super difficult to decarbonize and very, very difficult to electrify where I think hydrogen. Okay.

And then a second topic that came up at that conference, I think you and I have chatted about this in passing in the past, is some states and European countries are starting to build small modular nuclear reactors, and they seem to be solving some zero emissions challenges for those areas.

And, you know, do you have some thoughts on that as CEC looked at that and, you know, is that a conversation that we're going to be able to have here in California, or is it a non starter from the beginning? And again, that's a generalized question, not necessarily a specific question. Sure.

No, very fair question. So California built and installed five nuclear plants. Humboldt, Rangel Seco, Vallisidos, Thananofria, and Diablo IV decommissioned. Diablo is the last. And under current statute, it's not legal to construct a new nuclear plant until you have a solution for the waste.

The waste for all of those facilities is still on site under strict security protocols. So that is not an option. I think what is an option is the extension of Diablo. And I think really, the way to think about. There are really two different categories. Extending an existing facility is a lighter lift than a new plan.

And certainly that's the only thing we could do in this space as long as that statute's in place. And so that just happened with the agreement between the Governor and the Legislature to help support our reliability needs. But right now, it's not new. Nuclear is not an option unless that statute changes.

All right, but I guess what I'm kind of driving towards is having the conversation. Yes. And I think that that's where Californians kind of need to get is. You know, maybe not a specific legislative proposal at this point in time, but I think California, if we're going to take serious getting to zero emissions and.

And green energy, that nuclear has to be a part of that portfolio. And we need to start having that conversation. So thank you. I appreciate your comments.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you so much, Mister leader. I'd like to advance just a few items, Mister chair, and appreciate the opportunity. I've spent some time with you over the last few weeks. I'd like to talk about gasoline storage and authority with the CEC. And I know, Mister Director, it's good to see you as well.

I think that while there was some preliminary legislation that was advanced by the Legislature, signed via Governor Newsom, I think the challenge that, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mister chair, the challenge right now where the CEC does not have authority is mandating additional storage for gasoline.

And where Vice Chair Grove was just talking about, I think we all are concerned in regards to, I'll say we'll see the seasonal price spikes, especially during heavy travel months, during the late spring, summer, and early fall. And then the second piece is actually having authority.

CEC having authority to be able to have a formal conversation with refineries about refineries coming offline or not notice is great, but truly there's not a lot of teeth to where the CEC can go at the moment, statutorily. So can you talk about the issue of storage and having authority to take a refinery?

Health and safety is number one priority. Emergency work is obviously absolutely critical, but if we're talking about stabilizing the market, it's guaranteeing that we have more storage in state and having some authority to be able to approve or not when it comes to taking refineries offline.

Yeah. So just for context, this problem is harder to solve than storage on the grid. Okay. The addition of 10 gigawatts of energy storage.

No, I know, I know, for your time, but I'm just saying relatively, like, we were able to actually address that because it was possible to install 10 gigs in five years for refiners, which typically don't have very much storage. It's like one to two days of refined fuel storage on these sites.

It's very, very thin margin, and the build cycles for those can be seven plus years. And so, by the way, that's where these visits with the refiners have been really helpful to get calibrated around that. So that is part of the exposure is just. We don't have storage. The storage. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't want to opine on new authorities because we will do what you tell us to do through statute and with the tools that we have, we don't have, you know, right now, our authority is to require the notice on plan maintenance and so on, rather than like rearrange the cycles and so on.

So that is for the Governor and you to sort out what you'd like to have us do. But I will just frame the complexity of this. And the constraints are greater in the gasoline market than in the electric sector.

Yeah, no, 100%. And I also think the lead time. Right.

But the bottom line is this, and I know that I hear you in needing to be, and these are my terms, not yours, Mister Chair, I'm not trying to put you into an awkward position, by the way, that you need to play it safe on this and understand that this is an administrative call by the, the governor's office and if the Legislature is going to grant you additional authority.

Currently the CEC does not have authority. That's correct. To move on, mandating additional in state storage and approving, keeping a refinery online or offline.

We do not have authority to shut down a refinery or force it. Yeah, we're constrained on that.

All right, more to come on this answer.

Yeah, thank you.

Living the dream. So let's talk about the issue of regionalization. And I want to be 30,000 beat up on this one. I think the bottom line, this is more of a statement than a question, is that regionalization has been a hot topic in many western states and including right here in Sacramento.

Know that we'll keep in tight contact in regards to any regionalization discussions, efforts, whether it's within the shop of the CEC or Cal ISO. I think that is something that obviously there are varying opinions and I think a lot of interest on all sides regarding regionalization.

And it's going to be really important that we have continued conversations on that. And again, I'm keeping it 30,000ft.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, no, and I would just say Vice Chair gunda has been leading that effort. And again, we're an implementing agency. We will do what direction we get from you on statute. And the Governor and I know there's been a lot of discussion about this complex issue over many years.

So happy to continue to engage on that. Thank you so much.

I wanted to check in. Yeah, take it away, please.

Thank you. Mister Chair, just a follow up question. So you said two days storage roughly at these refineries. And is that a local issue? Like I heard that one refinery was waiting two years to increase storage capacity from a local issue, like from permit.

Yeah. To get the approvals and then to construct the tanks is what they told us. And there's just a lot of. There's a lot of permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. And so in the discussions, I mean, I'm just relaying what we heard from the refineries about their lead time to construct that.

It's, that's what I, and I have no reason to question that that was what they relayed when they had looked at.

And then one more question. When you said that, and by the way.

I just would add that that is also extra cost for them to carry that and to maintain it. And so I think they're interested to be able to turn the fuel quickly, get it to market. So I don't always know that the incentive is there for them to do that, yeah

My next question was the incentive to get them to put fuel on the market.

Basically, I look at it from a business person in the real world, I'm a business owner now, temporary staffing, but if I train safety, train drug test, give them safety equipment, put them through classes so that they know how to do welding, testing and all the stuff, and then I just let them sit in my safety room and I'm not making any money off of them.

It's the same concept with refineries. If they're required to refine and store fuel in a tank for days or months or whatever, they're not making money on that product when it goes to make it go out the door. So would there be additional legislation to force them to do that?

Because they're not required to do it now, correct?

Yeah. Again, I don't want to get over my pay grade on these things because some of these are policy calls for you to make. What I have emphasized and the Vice Chair has emphasized in every one of our meetings. We don't have to actually agree on all the issues.

We have to agree on no more gasoline price spikes. And that's the goal. And looking comprehensively at how do we solve that? We've had price spikes in three out of the last five Years 2019, 2022 and 2023.

And they place a huge burden on, particularly for low income families, where fuel costs are a much higher share of their household income. And we have just been laser focused on that. And there is, it's multidimensional, and I understand they're constrained, we have constraints, but that's been our main message.

And I think if you're asking would I appreciate having more storage in California for refined fuels, that would make me feel better, that there's more cushion. And I think that's what makes me feel more comfortable with, on the grid now with our posture, with outages, but that's where we are.

So with the supply chain in California is extensively long, like our supply chain for energy fuel, for either refined fuel or crude that comes from other countries. The supply chain.

Yeah, there's a lead time.

A lead time and a cost factor I mean, we could produce it in the Central Valley send it 200 miles south and eliminate a lot of the supply chain. But we don't do that. We get it from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador. That is a cost.

Shipping cost, transportation costs, labor costs at the port, offloading costs to our refineries to produce it, to go to the jobbers to go to market. Our supply chain is a significant cost. Would you agree or not?

I would observe that. Well, it is true. We do import when that's indicated. And there is a long lead time for that. So. That's true. Several weeks to get fuel from if you need refineries, career elsewhere.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mister chair, sir.

Thank you so much. Please. Senator Laird, welcome back. Senator Laird.

Yeah. I have the benefit of not hurting a thing that you said. No idea if I was. The one thing I know that didn't get said is grateful for you meeting. And when I interviewed him 13 years ago to get appointed to the Energy Commission, I pointed out that I knew one of his parents.

And his mother was my Women's Studies Professor at UC Santa Cruz.

Well, I just knew two In Colusa County in the Education Committee.

I just want to know, in a State of 39 million people, how is it possible for Laird to know everybody's parents? That's what I want to know.

No, but the bad part about it was he said, oh, that's right, I was born in Santa Cruz. Which meant he still 20 years younger than me, which was a punch to the gut. So let me ask. I am sure you talked about wind, but let me check to see.

The report on AB 525 has just been released. Can you comment on.

Yes, I did. We had a nearly, nearly four hour hearing on that this morning. We postponed the vote on that. So you to next month for a number of reasons. Well the final draft got released later than we would have liked. But we did take comment. We've been engaging extensively with all the stakeholders.

I've been talking to all the tribes, karuk, Hupa, Yurok, Big Lagoon, Blue Lake, Rancheria, Costa, Noaa, Estelin, all the EJ groups cause barley line defense, environmental groups, fisheries, other stakeholders. In the course of this process, we received over 500 pages of written public comments. We've done our very best to incorporate those.

I will just speak a little more broadly about offshore wind as a resource. What we're doing is 583 sq mi have been leased of federal waters. They're 20 miles offshore, both off the central coast Morro Bay that you represent and the north coast Senator McGuire represents. And these are for floating wind turbines.

The scale these projects is large, so one rotation of the turbine can power two houses for a day. The wind resource offshore is far superior to wind on land, so it's blowing more hours a day, and it's highly coincident with when our demand is highest.

So those late afternoons in the summer and really is going to allow us to retire more of the polluting facilities that are so controversial, the OTC plants on the coast that we've heard so much about. I want to just recognize some longtime folks in the environmental justice community, Josh and Eddie on, who-I'm from San Francisco.

We had a big fight years ago in San Francisco for two polluting peaker power plants and low income African American communities. And we have to remember there are justice issues associated with energy. And to build a healthy future and to get to 100% clean energy requires a lot of different actions, including new resources like this.

But even this is presenting new complexities. And so.

So did the report today lay out a roadmap.

The report lays out a roadmap, and for all the agencies

A brief, high level, description of what that is.

So it's principally about how the agencies work together. And just to give you some sense, just within our mothership agency, which is the California Natural Resources Agency, we are working directly on this issue with the Lands Commission, which is going to do CEQA, the Ocean Protection Council, the Fish and Wildlife Coastal Commission.

And then there's a CNRA, deputy secretary for equity. CNRA deputy secretary for tribal, CNA deputy secretary for equity. Everybody's engaged. Plus we're dealing with BOEM, PUC and others. So hugely complex process, and it is decentralized. We don't permit at the Energy Commission, offshore wind, we don't permit transmission. We have more of a coordination role.

The report that I was describing today is the final of four reports that were mandated under AB 525 by David Chu. And there's two additional reports that you've sent to us from AB three, Assemblyman Zbur. That will require really focusing more on the industrial side of it.

How do we do this with manufacturing that benefits the state, keeping those jobs here as we manufacture the towers, the blades and the nacelles. So this strategic plan kind of represents how those pieces fit together and what the key stakeholders are saying, what they care about.

There's a lot of concerned on the tribal side, making sure they're at the table and have their voice heard and have a chance to weigh in on all the key decisions. And then some, I think, very fair questions about what are the impacts of offshore wind on existing ecosystems. Fisheries and so forth.

I have had the chance in the course of my work to travel and see floating wind projects in Portland, Scotland, Norway. Norway just installed the largest floating wind project, so.

I recall you got incredibly soaked.

I did. I got on the front of the boat, and as soon as we got to the thing, a huge wave crashed over me. So a memorable first visit. But we have a lot to learn from our European partners. Denmark has been doing offshore wind for 35 years. They have 500 turbines offshore.

And so while we've been leading on all these other things, offshore wind is one where we have a lot to learn from other countries. So we've been focused on that. I just, in closing, want to really thank our terrific new offshore wind advisor who's been helping lead all this.

And that Janet Gagnon, that was appointed by the Governor a few months ago. But we look forward to adopting the strategic plan, hopefully at the next business meeting in July.

That's really helpful. I'll leave it at that. Although I can just tell you Senator Grove loved the Natural Resources Agency being referred to as the mothership. And I suspect that is not the last time we're going to hear about that. Thank you for. I would ask about other things.

But I was satisfied in our meeting, and I'm sure they've been talked about. And so thank you for your willingness to continue to serve.

Okay. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you so much. Senator Laird would like to be to see if there's any additional questions or comments from the Committee before we open it up to those in attendance. Seeing none, what we'd like to better do is open up our public comment portion under Mister chair.

We're going to ask folks to please step forward. If you could please state your first and last name, the organization that you're with. We're going to keep each individual comment to 30 seconds or less. We welcome you. Please. It's nice to see you. Welcome.

Thank you for receiving our comments. My name is Dan Sugar, founder, Chief Executive Officer of Nextracker. We're a California company with 500, approximately employees in the state, shipping products around the country and around the world, including manufacturing in California, with tens of millions of dollars of product being made in the state being shipped out.

I'd like to, on behalf of our company, provide our strongest endorsement for Commissioner Hochschild.

His work, having worked in renewable energy for 36 years and being a global company, I can say based on our experience, he's the top public energy policy person globally that we've ever worked with and has done more to advance renewable energy than anybody I know and has helped California advance its role in clean energy here for our citizens and also create a very strong economic base for companies like Nextracker to continue to serve both California, the country and the rest of the world.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you so much Mister Shugar, grateful you're here. Good afternoon.

Welcome Mister Chair and Members. Jim Hulley. I'm at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the national laboratory managed by the University of California, in strong support. And I'll clarify my remarks on my own.

Do not represent official views of the lab or the Department of Energy, but I want to say that Chair Hochschild leadership is an instrumental in establishing the state as a global leader in the research, development and deployment of new clean energy technologies.

He's worked incredibly effectively to support the innovations and entrepreneurship needed to develop new clean energy solutions to make sure that state investments are equitably made to create high road jobs across the state.

In particular, his stewardship has positioned the state to win substantial federal investment for clean energy in areas such as water reuse, green hydrogen, and many other areas. So pleased to support.

Thank you so much. Thanks for coming in today. Hi, good afternoon.

Hi. Good afternoon Mister chair and Members, I'm Sara Fitzsimon. I'm here on behalf of Calpine and Independent Energy Producers Association and we're here to offer our strong support for confirmation. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Good to see you.

Hey, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Tiffany Fan, on behalf of the California Efficiency and Demand Management Council, in support. Also on behalf of Intersect Power, in support. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Good afternoon. Welcome.

Hi, Samantha Samuelson on behalf of the Building Decarbonization Coalition here in support of the chair and very appreciative of all of his leadership on building decarbonization.

Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you.

Hey, good afternoon. Hi, Emily Pappas for Nehemiah Pappas and Associates on behalf of our client MCE in support.

Good to see you Pappas. Thank you. Hey, good afternoon.

Hello. Molly Croll with American Clean Power Association in strong support. Chair Hochschild has been a tireless leader in advancing California as a global clean energy hub. So thank you. And also wanted to express support for Cal WIA who couldn't be here, but also wanted to support. Thank you.

Thank you Mrs. Crolla. Good to see you. Thank you. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Aaron Coons with California advisors on behalf of the Solar Energy Industry Association, Golden State Wind, Energy Source Minerals, the Center for Sustainable Energy, SMUD, MP materials, Antora, EDF Renewables, EDP Renewables, Hydrostor, and Scale Microgrids, all in support of the chair's confirmation.

Here we go. Thank you so much. Thank you. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Thank you for allowing me to be here. Erin Grizardwith invenergy. I'm the Vice President of government affairs. And congratulations to Senator Eggman on her award today as well. Wanted to express our support for the chairs reappointment. Clearly, as the discussion has illustrated today, he doesn't shy away from complexity and meaningful engagement.

And for those reasons, we're really in strong support of his reappointment. So thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. Welcome. Good afternoon, Eddie.

Good afternoon. Eddie Ahn, Executive Director of Brightline Defense organization, forged by environmental justice struggles that Trevor Hochschild mentioned earlier, anything ranging from power plant, you know, siding to Low income, you know, households getting solar. For us, we really care about the nexus of jobs and clean energy and equity.

And with that, like that understanding of policy and politics, I think is extremely rare. And I think with this Commission appointment, you'll get exactly that. And most of all, the empathy for communities is even rarer. So with that in full support. Thank you.

Very nice. Thank you so much. Hey, hey.

Hello. Michelle Canales, on behalf of Union of Concerned Scientists in strong support of David Hochschild's reappointment as chair of the Energy Commission.

During his tenure, we have seen him advance the deployment of zero emission vehicles and infrastructure, battery manufacturing technology and sourcing, establish necessary and ambitious offshore wind goals and plan for the clean grid of the future.

Given our clean transportation and energy goals amid a worsening climate crisis, we are confident in his ability to continue to successfully fully lead the Energy Commission. Thank you.

Thanks, Michelle. Appreciate you being here. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Chair Members of the Committee, Lillian Marvis with the Large Scale Solar Association, Chair Hochschild has shown exemplary leadership with helping California meet its SB 100 goals, and we are pleased to provide our support. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Brian White here. On behalf of Offshore Wind California, we are in support of Chair Hochschild's confirmation. I got to tell you, I've known Chair Hochschild for over 10 years, and he's just as passionate today as he was back then working in the solar industry.

And now I get to work on just about every issue that his agency is working on, whether it's hydrogen, lithium, offshore wind and solar. So I will tell you that you're not going to find a better professional than Chair Hoekstra so we wholeheartedly support his confirmation.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Hi, good afternoon.

Hi, Senator McGuire, Committee Members, Joshua Arce with the Northern California Laborers Union.

I want to say on a personal level, having worked with the Commission President David Hochschild for 17 years now, I've always found him to be a lifelong, committed advocate for clean energy and environmental justice when it comes to 30,000 Members of our union in Northern California and 70,000 labor's union Members statewide who work in infrastructure, particularly helping build the climate infrastructure that you're advancing and that he leads at the Commission.

He's never lost sight of labor standards. He's never sought sight of the quality of jobs and working with unions to help build out this infrastructure and cognizant of the need for a just transition, because we still do have thousands of union Members working in legacy industries.

He's always looked out for us in making that transition into the clean energy future, just like you all.

Hey, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here today. It's good to see you. Hi. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Chairman, Chairperson and members of the Committee. I'm Sanjeev. I'm the founder and CEO of LFP battery company called Sparks, and we are setting up what will possibly be the first and the largest battery grade production facility outside China, here, not too far from here, for LFP batteries.

And it's all because of Chairman David Hochschild . We were going to set it up in a state called Tennessee, and he convinced me to bring the manufacturing to California.

So he shared his vision of the lithium Valley, which includes domestic manufacturing, domestic supply chain, and we are very proud to say that this will be our first factory and the second one is coming up, or is going to come up in Salton Sea. So it's all about his vision.

It's to a great extent his tenacity, his perseverance and his hands on approach. So we are very fortunate as private sector to have somebody like him in the California Energy Commission. Thank you.

Thank you. We also don't have tornadoes here. Hey, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mister pro tem and Committee, Kelly Boyd with Equinor and Atlas offshore wind. That's our California name here to support chair Hochschild for his reappointment. He's quite a visionary, and he's a visionary who can implement at the same time.

He missed a boat ride with us in Norway last year because he went home for his daughter's high school graduation. I think those say great things about him, he was all over the country led to an MOU that was signed recently between the Governor and the country of Norway.

So the global span here for California, a lot of that resides with the chair and his ability to bring all of these various technologies, products, everything together to address climate and clean energy. So we strongly support his reappointment.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon,

Good Afternoon. Mister pro tem and members, Silvio Ferrari, on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, Renew home formerly Ohm Connect and Rewiring America for all the reasons others have already said, in very, very strong support of your reappointment. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Good to see you. Hey, good afternoon.

Good to see you. Megan Mekelburg here, on behalf of CALstart today, really, really grateful for your leadership in the Zev transition in particular. Obviously, they run quite a few programs here at CEC and very supportive of the work that you're doing. Also, just wanted to put in support for the EV Charging Association.

Thank you so much, Megan. Glad you're here. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Chris Rose, on behalf of NRDC Action Fund, in strong support of the chairs appointment.

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. We'd like to do a last call. If there's anyone else who'd like to be able to please come forward. Anyone else who would like to be able to speak in support. All right, we're now going to see if there's anyone who would like to be able to speak in opposition.

If you could just come forward at this time here. Im seeing no one, we're going to bring it back to Committee to be able to see if an individual would like to be able to advance a motion for approval. Madam Vice Chair puts a motion on the floor to advance the nomination to the Senate Floor.

Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

That's a 4-0 vote. That measure will be on call. Mister chair, thank you so much for your incredible work on behalf of people of California. And I'm sure that Senator Laird is going to be there with you as well. So. But I'll do early congratulations. We'll see you on the Senate Floor. Thank you so much.

All right, so, ladies and gentlemen of Committee, what we'd like to be able to do is, before we go into our Executive session, which we're going to be going into an Executive session momentarily, we'd like to be able to catch some folks up on votes, and then we'll go into Executive session that allow time for individuals to be able to leave the hearing room.

And we appreciate everyone being here today. So why don't we do this? Why don't we start with Governor appointees required to appear.

We have- I'm going to start with required to appear, which are two medical boards appointees. That's currently a 3-0 vote. Madam Secretary, can you please call the Absent Members.

Grove.

Aye

Grove aye. Four to zero.

That's 4-0 vote. We're going to keep that on call. We're now going to go to Governor appointees not required to appear. Madam Secretary, can you please call the Absent Members.

[Absent Roll Call] 5-0

5-0. We are going to shut down Governor appointees not required to appear. With a five vote. We're now going to go to Bill referrals. Madam Secretary, can you please call the absent Members.

[Absent Roll Call] Five to zero.

That's a 5-0 vote final vote. We're going to shut that down as well.

We're now going to be going to floor. Acknowledgments this motion is to approve these items. The current vote is 4-0. Secretary, can you please call the Absent Member?

[Absent Roll Call] five to zero.

That is a 5-0 vote, final vote. And we're going to shut that down. We're now going to be moving. That's it, actually, until we come back to our Chair, Hochschild item that is currently on call. So what we're going to do now, ladies and gentlemen, is that we're going to recess.

We're going to recess into Executive session, and we'll come back, back and into regular session on call, waiting for Senator Laird, who is currently voting in the labor Committee. So we're going to be going into Executive session. If we can have folks please clear the hearing room.

All right, we're going to bring the Rules Committee back out of Executive session, coming back into regular session. We have one outstanding item that we'd like to add a member to, and that is to Chair Hochschild. Two. Yes, we do. We have two.

We have our two members of the medical board, along with chair Hochschild, with the California Energy Commission. So why don't we open the roll for absent Members for items 1A and 1B? Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Absent Roll Call] 5-0

5-0. Those two items are out. We're going to close the roll. We're now going to be moving on to item one c, California Energy Commission. Current vote is 40. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to Zero.

5-0 vote. That item is out, and we're closing the roll. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are down to Madam Secretary. Two meetings. Three meetings.

Three.

Three meetings. And we are going to make Senator Laird's dream come true for 4th of July. We're having a July 3 meeting.

This is one of many dreams, AC.

There we go. Exactly. So he's going to wear his patriotic sunglasses and ready to go. This Senate Rules Committee is adjourned. Thank you.