Assembly Standing Committee on Natural Resources

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Assembly Natural Resource Committee hearing. Potentially our last one of the year. Potentially not. We have three measures on the agenda today. SB 219, Wiener, AB 457, Aguiar-Curry, and AB 1359, Papan. We have seven Members. We'll call the roll and establish a quorum. We can also start as a subcommittee. I see one of our authors is here. AB 457. And you can begin whenever you're ready. If you're not ready, we're happy to wait to...

I ask for an aye vote.

For the record, Assembly Member Bennett is not a Member of this Committee. And so we need two more Members for a quorum.

Now, if you'd like to tell us what the bill number is, you're more than welcome to and go through a presentation, or we can wait for one more and handle our business.

I'm more than happy to just give you the basic. I just want to thank you very much. The bill, 457, wine box deposits. And it just helps some of our small wineries by streamlining the number of reports they have to submit to CalRecycle and more parity with across the industry. So I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Absolutely. Madam Secretary, we have a quorum. Can we call the roll or establish the quorum?

[Roll Call] We have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Secretary. Motion by Mr. Kalra, second by Mr. Flora. Any persons in the hearing room who'd like to register their support for this measure?

Hi. Tim Schmelzer representing Wine Institute. Encouraging your support today.

Thank you so much.

Mr. Chair and Members. Kirk Kimmelshue on behalf of BeatBox Beverages, also in support.

Thank you, Kirk. Any persons in opposition who would like to register opposition to this measure? Seeing none. This enjoys a do pass from the Chair. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

The motion is that the Senate amendments be concurred in. [Roll Call]

That bill is out.

Thank you very much.

If your name is Diane Papan or Scott Wiener, please make your room, make your way to the Committee hearing room.

Senator Scott Wiener is here, everybody, for SB.

All right, y'all, SB 219, you can begin whenever you're ready.

Thank you. Thank you, Mister Chair. Thank you, colleagues. Presenting SB 219, joint authored by myself and Senator Stern. This makes several technical amendments to SB 253 and SB 261 from last year relating to corporate climate disclosures and climate risk disclosures.

As a reminder, this applies to all us based corporations doing business in California with annual gross revenues above 1 billion for SB 253 and above 500 million for SB 261. And these technical amendments were requested by the Administration.

In addition, the bill would provide CARB with an additional six months to issue its regulations implementing the law without delaying the actual disclosures. Respectfully asked for an aye vote with me today is Melissa Romero with California Environmental Voters and Kathryn Atkin with carbon accountable, two of the co sponsors of the original bills.

Thank you, Senator. Two minutes.

Thank you. Just power walked here, but I made it. Melissa Romero with California Environmental Voters, a proud sponsor of SB 253 and a strong supporter of SB 261, and happy to be here in support of SB 219 today alongside Senator Wiener.

Last year, when California passed SB 253 and 261 into law, it was clear that these were, in fact, globally significant laws. The world is looking at California. The Legislature has passed some of the most significant climate policies in history, inspiring replication worldwide.

SB 253 and 261 are now part of that legacy, and it's important that these laws are not unnecessarily delayed. Now is not the time to slow down. The climate crisis is accelerating, and California must charge ahead.

Any further delays to SB 253 while international governments implement their climate disclosure laws could signal uncertainty in whether or not California will implement these laws in a way that will cause a detrimental amount of uncertainty for companies who are preparing now and who largely are prepared to report their emissions with SB 253, we can't afford to send that message.

The context globally is that 20 countries, representing 55% of global gdp, are adopting the new international Sustainability standard, board's standard for reporting emissions and climate related risks. Do we want California story to be one of retreat or proudly standing firm? We would encourage the latter.

We think that this bill provides flexibility for the agency in a way that also maintains the core importance of the law, and for that, we for those reasons, we recommend an I vote. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. Catherine Atkin from Carbon Accountable, here to answer questions if necessary. Sounds like you're ready to go.

Awesome. And seeing nobody in opposition. You know, I definitely saw you. Yeah, I know. Two minutes, vintage.

Mister Chair Members Ben Golombek, on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce, here to express not opposition, but strong concern with SB 219. We all know the result here today.

So I'm not going to belabor the point, but considering the number of years that were spent on this effort, I do need to make a few points before this bill moves forward. One of the supporters before this hearing called it a dinky little cleanup bill, and I do think that describes it well.

Unfortunately, in the bill that it cleans up, SB 253 is anything but a dinky little Bill. I know a number of Members voted for SB 253 with the promise of cleanup legislation this year. This bill falls far short of the promises made last year.

The one provision in the bill about parent subsidiary cleanup is a positive step, but it does not address the numerous flaws with last year's legislation from delaying the implementation, addressing the problems with the solely focusing on the GhU protocol, dealing with the ambiguity around finance, the missions, this bill falls far, far short of what's needed in terms of cleanup legislation.

Since this bill passed, the Biden Administration and others in fact, have rejected the concept of reporting scope three emissions because they know it's simply not ready for prime time. The Senator mentioned that these amends were asked for by the Administration.

I would be remiss to note that the Administration, in fact, put out very different language into a trailer bill earlier this year on this topic. For those and other reasons, we are here in strong concern. Thank you, Mister Chair.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else in the hearing room who'd like to register their support or opposition?

Mister Chairman Dave Jones, former insurance Commissioner in support. This bill provides a technical amendment sought by CARB, as well as providing additional CARB to time to CARB to accomplish the regulations. As a former agency head, there's no question that CARB can accomplish this in the time provided. Ask for your aye vote.

Kim Stone. Stone Advocacy for Persephone in support thank you

Evan Menton with Voices for Progress and strong support.

Mark Fenstermaker, on behalf of Earth justice and support.

Samantha Samuelson, on behalf of Series in support.

Thank you so much. Any questions, comments from Members of the Committee? Miss Bauer-Kahan?

I know me asking a question brings Mister Chair, joy, so here I go. I guess I'm a little confused I'll be honest. I assume that the delay, maybe I'm wrong, Mister Golombek, but I assume everyone agrees the delay is necessary. Is that not the opposition's opinion? The concern? I shouldn't call opposition because he said concern.

Yeah, no, a delay is definitely necessary. I mean, again, the Administration put into a trailer bill a two year delay. This has a six month delay in terms of, you know, CARB sort of starting the regulations. And so we just think that falls far short. Okay. Especially with everything else that CARB is managing at this time.

And as we mentioned, obviously, California is the only entity, certainly in the country doing scope three, requiring scope three emissions. And so we're gonna become sort of the national reporter.

I understand that. I just, I assume, based on your previous comments, that six months, although fall far short, is still superior to this bill not passing. So therefore, that's why I thought you were concerned. So I just wanted to clarify that. But I think I understand that correctly.

Yes, six months is definitely better than zero months. It is not nearly enough time. Yes, you did a good job conveying that.

And I'm going to ask a question, so I'll ask my question and then I'll turn it to the Senator. So I think I was one of the people who was concerned about the ability for folks to comply.

As a former regulatory lawyer that made compliance programs, I know when it is impossible to comply, lawyers say, well, let's do our best and see how this goes. And I don't think that leads to the best outcomes.

So, although I've always agreed with the goal of this, I think it needs to be implementable in a meaningful way that gets us meaningful information. I did think there was going to be more meaningful cleanup than this when it passed last year.

I will speak for myself to make sure that the information we were getting was meaningful to us. And so I will say that I'm going to support this today, but I do think it should be an ongoing conversation, and with that, I'll turn it back over to you.

Senator, just to be clear, I understand that this was a very, very hard fought bill, and the opposition to the bill has never quite gotten over that. The bill passed and was signed into law. And so I understand that the chamber would like to see all sorts of changes to SB 253.

They want to have long delays to all the deadlines, including disclosure, which, if this Legislature were to do that, would send a profoundly toxic message that the bill was never actually going to be implemented, because in two years, we would get another request for delay and another request.

They also would like us, instead of requiring the actual gold standard of disclosure, to literally let companies decide what disclosure they want to do, what standard they want to use, you can only imagine the problems that that would create. But I also want to be clear. When we. When.

When this bill was pending in the Senate and the Assembly, at no point did I say, I promise we're going to do cleanup. If cleanup is necessary on any law, we do it. That was not a commitment that I made, that we're going to change this all later.

What happened was, when the Governor signed the law, he said at the time, the Bill needs cleanup. That's what the Governor said. And so we immediately said, okay, tell us the cleanup you want. And they eventually came to us with some technical changes, which we've included in this Bill.

Even though CARB could have started with its regulatory process last fall, when the Governor signed it, they could have at least started putting stuff in place. Here we are a year later, and they're due on January 1.

We're now asking for another six months, but longer than that would absolutely delay the actual disclosures, which would be very bad. I respectfully, I think that this bill is. This law is fully implementable.

The Biden Administration went to hell and back the SEC did, in trying to come up with a rule on this, and the business community was very, very effective in beating that back. And so they ended up not using scope three. Scope three is 90% of carbon emissions for many companies.

So I am so grateful to this Committee for passing SB 253 last year. Thank you. And to the Assembly and the Senate for passing, and the Governor for signing it. And what we have before us today is some, I think, very smart cleanup. And I. And I won't ask for an aye vote yet, because we're not done.

I think you should ask for an aye vote. Any other comments from Committee Members? Would you like that to be your close, Senator? Yes. And those might be your last comments on this Committee. We will miss you, Mister Mathis. Madam Secretary, can we open the roll?

The motion is due. Pass. [Roll Call]

Thank you, Senator. We'll see. Thank you so much, colleagues. Assembly Member Papan, come on and close us out. AB 1359, there is a motion and a second on the table.

With that I'll be very brief. This Bill will Jumpstart Geothermal. Geothermal energy production by allowing locals to be the lead agency for exploratory permits. Well, exploratory well permits. I do have a witness here who promises that she will be very brief as well. From Sonoma clean power, it's my honor to introduce Kate Brandenburg.

Hi, Kate Brandenburg, representing Sonoma Clean Power. Sponsors of the Bill appreciate your support.

Thank you so much. Any persons in the hearing room who would like to register their support or opposition to this measure?

Yeah. Thank you, Mister chair Mark Fenstermaker for Peninsula Clean Energy in strong support.

Thank you, Mark. Committee Members, anybody have any questions, comments, concerns? Seeing none. Miss Papan, would you like to close?

Respectfully request an aye vote

Seeing a motion in a second. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

[Roll Call]

That Bill is out. This Committee is adjourned. Oh, let's do add ons. I apologize. Hold on. The gavel didn't go down. Can we do add ons?

[Roll Call]

Now this meeting is officially adjourned.