Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Permitting Reform

Hello, everyone.

Can you all hear me? Okay? Yes. Okay. I hear some nodding. Great. Okay. We have no gavel. Apparently you can't travel with a gavel, so. Bing, Bing. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Buffy Wicks. I'm an Assembly Member representing the beautiful East Bay, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond area.

I'm also chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform. Thank you for joining us for our fourth and final scheduled hearing for this Committee for this year.

Our first hearing was held in June in Sacramento, and it was a primer on the need for permitting reform necessary to address our housing and climate crisis here in the great State of California. Our second hearing was last month in San Francisco, and that was focused on permitting reform to facilitate climate resiliency.

We took a great tour of the bay, looking at sea level rise and the challenges that permitting plays in order to address our climate adaptation needs.

Your third hearing was in Los Angeles last week where we looked at housing and transit and uncovered some of the challenges that permitting reform plays with regard to those two issues and got some very concrete examples of things that we can do from a legislative point of view to fix some of those challenges.

And this hearing here is focused on permitting reform to facilitate clean energy. We'll have a panel on transmission, followed by one on the creation of storage and clean energy. We'll also have a standalone panel on environmental justice to ensure that Members of the EJ community have a chance to articulate their positions on permitting reform.

I'm going to repeat something I said last week, and that is that I'm something that I've got to say over a lot of the next two to four years as well. In a democracy, when the government fails to meet the people's needs, the people elect to go in a different direction.

And we really know that we need to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our constituents.

And we have a lot of work to do here in Gulf to ensure that we're building a modern, inclusive state that's welcoming of all people that reaches our climate change goals, which is so critical and also provides the necessary housing and public transportation that our communities not only need, but deserve.

So, on the energy issue this year, as everyone knows, energy costs a lot in California, the second highest rate in the nation after Hawaii. Most importantly, we can expect tremendous strain on our existing energy supplies in the state, given the needs of new technologies to power things like AI and increasingly hot summers.

So we have to adjust and adapt to this. Compounding that strain is our necessary shift away from fossil fuels through renewable energy sources. But if we don't manage that transition correctly, we are apt to see Runway utility bills, runaway utility bills that we've seen, as we've seen with runaway housing prices as well.

To address our demands and climate goals, we need to build and move a lot more clean energy quickly and cheaply. Again, it's something that our constituents deserve, and right now we're not doing that.

Possibly the most common refrain we've heard on our interviews on this topic is that it takes 10 to 12 years to build a new transmission line. That's a long time more trying to reach the goals that we've set forth as a body. And it's totally a timeframe that's incongruous with meeting, I think, our much urgent needs.

And I say this as a mom of four and a little girl who's going to be eight on Sunday. Actually, when I think about their future and what that looks like, we have to meet these climate change goals. It's very important.

So I'm looking forward to the hearing today and I'm honored to be joined by two of my colleagues who play a very important role in helping to address these issues. Assemblymember Hadi Pitrinoris, who is Chair of Energy and Utilities Commission, and Assemblymember Quirk-Silva, who is Chair of Budget Sub five State Administration.

So a budget person and a utilities energy person. So they have a lot of expertise in these spaces and obviously have worked with them over the years to address some of these fundamental needs. So before we get going with our first panel, I'd love to offer the opportunity for my colleagues to say some opening remarks.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you everyone for being here and being part of today's hearing. I'm Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, and as the Chair said, I chair our Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee.

As I said to some of you earlier, as we were taking a tour around the Palm Desert area, there is a really yawning chasm between the things that we, as California say are our priorities and the things that we're actually delivering. And that's true when you talk about housing.

That's true when you talk about the need for climate resilience. And that's definitely true when we talk about clean energy and when we just think about that within the context of our climate challenges and our climate goals. California has long been a leader in climate action. We have incredibly ambitious and incredibly important climate goals.

And while we have made tremendous progress, we are absolutely not going to be able to deliver on our 2045 goals. Unless we make some dramatic and fundamental changes in the way that we site permit and actually build clean energy infrastructure here in California, we've got to dramatically accelerate the pace that we're actually getting projects built.

I think, as we all know, we don't achieve our climate goals by giving speeches. We achieve our climate goals by actually building things. So we've got to get better at doing that.

And I'll just say, I think the good news for, for the folks that are participating in today's hearing and for other stakeholders who are very engaged on this topic, I think that by and large the Legislature recognizes what a critical need this is and what kind of a critical shortcoming this is.

We need your help in the months and the year ahead to get really specific so that we can take that General problem statement and kind of the General solution of we've got to move faster and you can help us turn that into really specific policy proposals that we can take forward, enact into law next year and actually start to transform the way that we get things done.

So really looking forward to today's conversation. Really appreciate the chair for convening the Select Committee and for the really thoughtful way that she has led.

Thank you. Next Ms. Quirk-Silva.

Good afternoon everybody. It's a pleasure and privilege to be here. I'm Assembly Member Sharon Quirk-Silva representing north Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, the 67th district. I want to thank our chair as she has been working tirelessly. This is my third permit hearing Select Committee. I was not able to get there last week, but my third.

We were up in the Bay a month ago. So certainly there is a lot to learn, there's a lot to implement, but it's really about the urgency. It's about saying we have these goals and how do we in essence move the barriers and implement.

And we do a lot of talking as politicians, but we know these are challenging issues. Many times there's multiple agencies that agencies that have to be worked with and these can take not just days or months, but years. And this simply is not going to get us to where we need to go.

So at the core of permitting reform, we have to ensure that every California has affordable, reliable, renewable energy. We know that we have to look through the lens of environmental justice. We have to be able to say everybody should have the shared responsible of energy in California, not just in certain areas.

And that's certainly an area that I'm very passionate about. We know that some communities have taken much more of a burden of energy needs throughout California and As we look at California as a whole, we need to do better. But with that, proud to be here and happy to hear from the panelists.

Thank you, Ms. Corksilva. So our first panel will be on permitting reform needed to facilitate new electric transmission investments. Each panelist will have five minutes to present and then we will ask questions. We would ask you to stick to five minutes.

And we are on a stage, so we might break out and jazz hands if, you know, go over the allotted time. But with that, and if folks could just go in order of the agenda, that would be great. And we will let Mr. Wara begin. He's got extra time. Okay.

He's at the setting, so he's setting the stage.

First two panels. Great. I didn't want you to freak out.

Yes, don't freak out. Yeah, no jazz hands here. Okay. The Professor gets to go. You have the floor.

Professor.

Is that. I think it's on there. I'll just move it closer. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you on the issue of transmission planning and siting. My name is Michael Wara. I direct the Climate and Energy Policy program at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

And I'll just say briefly that all the comments I make today reflect my personal opinions and not those of. For Stanford. As you said in your introductory remarks, California has staked out incredibly ambitious clean energy goals and we're making real progress. But we also face enormous challenges in achieving them over the next several decades.

Just to take a few examples. To put some numbers on this, the California independent system operator FISO anticipates the need to interconnect 70 gigawatts of generation and in order to do so, to construct as much as $30 billion in transmission investments over the next several decades.

Recent experience suggests that the real number, unless cost overruns and delays can be prevented and overcome, might be closer to 4 billion, $40 billion. To achieve this build out, we're on track with typical projects are 33% over budget in a recent analysis.

All of this, of course, is extremely challenging to achieve in a context where electricity rates are the highest in the nation, maybe the second highest. I think of Hawaii as a special case.

And energy affordability is an enormous concern for all Californians, but especially those that live in places like Palm Desert and who are Low or moderate income. We as a team at SEP are deeply concerned about Low income electricity customers in hot places and the public safety risks that the combination of high rates and a hot climate create.

I also think in the current Political Context it's important to make one thing clear about citing reform for transmission. We don't want to do this the China way. I meet people who say why can't we just get things done like they do in China?

And the way things happen in places like that in autocratic societies is by running over communities, ignoring the environmental impacts of major infrastructure projects and important to the American and the California context, worsening the legacy of structural racism that haunts so much of our energy infrastructure and the communities that have been forced to live adjacent to it.

That means we all of this means we need to make sure that the money we do spend has spent well and we should be looking for additional sources of money and I emphasize this from outside of race to try to reduce cost to electricity consumers.

We should also be looking for ways to connect communities and local stakeholders to the planning process in ways that accelerate rather than delay project development.

The big context for this is that we need to build generation pretty much everywhere on rooftops in the state, in at the utility scale and also in other states to achieve our SB100 goals. And we need to do it at a much faster pace than we have over the over the last decade.

At the highest level we need to move from a reactive to a proactive planning and siting process and we should be doing more programmatic review of this planning so that we can streamline siting of individual lines that's going to be needed after the projects make it out of the planning process.

Now I want to emphasize that the state is already doing a lot to make this process better. I'd note a few prominent examples. The MOU between the Puc, the Energy Commission and CISO coordinate within the existing planning process is paying real dividends.

We've seen major improvements in the past couple of years at the ISO in terms of long term planning. I think that long term planning is finally now integrating with the Integrated Resource planning at the PUC to help the whole thing work better together.

We've also seen major improvements in the last year in paiso's large generator interconnection agreement process that also is going to facilitate the faster build out of the generation, but also the transmission that we need to support the generation.

PAISO has always been a leader on interconnection or one of the leaders in the United States and I think they really staked out an important role there with the new interconnection rules in the tariff that have been accepted by FERC.

In addition, the three large IOUS and CAISO jointly are administering $600 million in funding from DOE to deploy advanced transmission technologies in California.

I think the most important one here to think about is dynamic line ratings, which is basically allows the transmission to be used more flexibly and not assume sort of worst case scenarios about the transmission we do have.

Finally, I would note passage of certain types of legislation and I'll just call out AB 2661 from last session, which allows Westlands to become a solar storage and most importantly a transmission developer.

I think we need to be thinking about how to connect local institutions, local government institutions to the work that we all need to do collectively as a state. Especially in places where there's broad agreement that large amounts of generation needs to be constructed.

We need to identify more wins like AB 2661 and then find ways to execute on them. I'd also add that the real work, I think in improving and fixing transmission planning and siting come from working better to address how transmission transmission planning occurs in the LGIA context, the large generation interconnection agreement context.

That after all, is where more than half of the money gets spent today on transmission. These are transmission upgrades that are required as a condition of interconnection for new power plants. We need to move towards a process where greater risk of curtailment deliverability is a norm and generation takes more of that responsibility.

In the first instance, folks in transmission planning context in the United States call this interconnect or connect and manage. I think that's an important direction to be heading in California. We have to do it gradually and carefully, but it's an important direction to be heading.

So I'm just going to provide a list of things that I think are important for you to consider in the session and and in your oversight of the multiple agencies that oversee transmission.

One is moving further and I'd say we're making progress, but moving further towards an approach that I frame as if you build it, they will come. That philosophy of transmission planning really needs to become the norm.

This would enable greater, also enable incidentally and very significantly greater use of programmatic environmental review, both at the federal and state levels. Depending on who's reviewing the proposal, either FERC or the Puc. We need to move further, and we are making progress here as well for its integration of transmission planning and interconnection planning.

These are really two sides of the same coin. And while we do so, we should strive to move away from a framework for transmission upgrades for new generation clusters that's focused on worst case reliability scenarios and the national context. This is referred to as invest and connect.

But you can think of it as, you know, the sequential planning that we do.

In some context we're doing better in California with cluster studies but and a set of assumptions that assume that the all generators have to be deliverable in the cluster on peak in the most stressful situation and moving away from that is something that Texas has done very successfully and has allowed Texas to really become the leader in siting both solar and storage across the country.

I would argue we should be welcoming local government entities into the process because having strong community engagement in the places where we want to build transmission is an important way to solve for siting challenges.

And I don't just mean giving them CBAs, making them part owners right can be an important way forward as we as was done for Westlands, we should be strengthening existing institutions that have the potential as vehicles for public finance or public private partnership finance of transmission.

I would note here that the IBANK has the capability to do this, but is generally under resourced both in terms of personnel to do the work and dollars to carry out the function. Finally, we need to be looking carefully at all possible resources to contribute to the effort. This is going to be expensive.

I suspect that some elements of the planning regime today are concerned about acceleration of siting and planning because of the impact it will have today on rates if we go faster. So we need to solve for both things at the same time.

My personal recommendation will be to take a hard look cap and trade resources as the Legislature begins consider consideration of reauthorization in the coming year. GGRF should be focused on the things that are likely to drive the biggest and most impactful changes to California greenhouse gas emissions and focused on making those changes affordable for Californians.

There's nothing that is higher impact than having the electricity system. We need to deliver affordable, reliable, clean electricity to the people and businesses across the state. We currently do not use cap and trade resources in this way. I think we need to consider it as we think about reauthorization of cap and trade for the next two decades.

Thank you for your time and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much. Following panelists will have five minutes each and you'll hear my alarm if you can shortly wrap up after you hear that. But I'm not going to cut you off completely, but just be aware. Thank you.

Thank you. Chair Wicks Good afternoon Chair and Members of the Select Committee. My name is Robert Pontel. I'm the Director and managing attorney for the Licensing and Land Use section. At Southern California Edison, I manage our proceedings related to the permitting of electrical infrastructure, including transmission infrastructure.

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in today's panel, especially because at sc, my company will be one of the primary entities responsible for constructing and operating the transmission pathways that are needed to bring clean energy and renewable energy to the end users in California.

As you noted, achieving the net zero goal of 2045 demands significant things like building electrification, greater reliance on clean energy, and, most importantly for my work, development of a massive amount of new and expanded transmission infrastructure at an incredibly accelerated pace.

In particular, SCE estimates that its transmission projects will need to be developed as much as four times faster than their historic rates and distribution grid projects as much as 10 times their historic rate. Achieving that remarkable and accelerated expansion of electricity electrical infrastructure will take a joint effort from everyone involved.

And currently, the process for planning, permitting and developing a new transmission project, as you mentioned earlier, takes about a decade. So with so much transmission infrastructure needed, there's simply no feasible way to achieve net zero by 2045.

Under that business as usual approach, we at SCE have initiated an internal review of our own procedures and what we can do to streamline things and make things go faster, but reforms in the governmental permitting space are critical. We commend the state's policymakers for also recognizing this need.

And for example, we appreciate the recent adoption of SB529AB 1373 to speed the CPUC process. And we also salute the CPUC itself for its ongoing rulemaking on GL131D which governs the infrastructure siting process. In fact, Edison was one of 18 parties that signed onto a proposed settlement agreement in that proceeding that is currently being considered.

Applicative Commission one of the most time consuming and inefficient components, however, of the transmission project permitting process is the CEQA and environmental review. We commend the state for recent amendments to CEQA such as SB149 expediting judicial review for infrastructure projects.

However, respectfully, the licensing and permitting distribute decision making process itself should be the focus of further reform efforts. In fact, we suggest two areas. First, reforming CEQA and Public Utilities Code permitting requirements to exempt or streamline the reviews of particular types of projects that support broader environmental policies and especially those that might have comparatively fewer environmental impacts.

And secondly, we suggest fostering greater cooperation and alignment between lead permitting agencies like the CPUC and other states, state, local and particularly federal agencies that have jurisdiction over some aspect of a project.

With respect to the first focus area, CEQA amendments and Transmission licensing reforms should recognize the unique benefits that transmission projects can provide when integrating more clean energy into the grid. We recognize the important public disclosure process. That disclosure function. I should say that CEQA serves.

However, the Legislature and the resources agency have already historically recognized that so some types of projects have particular environmental, social policy or economic benefits that warrant particular relief from burdensome CEQA review processes. Things like sports arenas, Olympic Games, urban infill developments have all been granted special CEQA status.

If California is serious about achieving its clean energy goals, we suggest that electrical transmission projects should in some instances be given similar relief to streamline the process for approving and permitting those types of projects. To that end, the IOUS have already tried working closely in a number of contexts with state policymakers on CEQA reform efforts.

In 2003, my company supported AB914, which would have provided a commonsensical, in our view, exemption from CEQA for construction of a new substation or short electrical transmission line less than two miles, for example, as long as those facilities are associated with either transportation electrification efforts or building electrification efforts or the interconnection of a green and renewable energy source.

That proposal might not have been adopted, but it, in our view recognizes the very type of reform needed to avert multiple years of CEQA review and uncertainty for the very types of projects we very much need today, especially ones with comparatively fewer environmental impacts.

Other CEQA based reforms could include stricter deadlines and page limits for environmental review processes like EIRS or, or as Mr. Warren mentioned, programmatic reviews of certain types of projects that contain very similar components and tend to have similar environmental impact.

And hearing the alarm, I will wrap up here, but the other suggestion would be greater collaboration and alignment with federal, state and local other agencies, particularly through the MOU process. We already heard about the MOU process having a successful result on the planning side.

We strongly recommend the same for the environmental side because we have so many agencies who find alternative reviews and impact analyses that do not see eye to eye with the Commission. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I think it's coming here. Okay. There we go. Yeah. And pull it a little closer to you. Yes.

Yeah. And I apologize for failing to follow directions. Well, I sat out of order with my colleague here to my left, so that's okay. She'll go next. I am Erica Martin. I'm the Director of Environmental Services at San Diego Gas and Electric Company. I'm happy to be here today to talk with you all about permit reform.

I share a lot and echo a lot of the comments that were made by Mr. Wara and Mr. Pontel about the need to address this topic.

We're very encouraged about the growing consensus that we need to Significantly accelerate the 2022 CARB scoping plan recognized that increased electrification means that the grid will need to grow at unprecedented rates, but also ensure reliability, affordability and resiliency. Such a. Such a tall order.

The CEC's 2023 IPER concluded that electric demand is expected to grow 25% from 2023 to 2040, and the growing forecasted demand from the electrification of our energy sources is a significant driver. In addition to the climate policy goals, we have to meet the needs of our customers.

As the Chair already mentioned, it's also a way that we can look at addressing electric rates when we increase the base of customers who are covering the revenue requirement that public or that IOUS and other utilities require. That's an important focus.

But we remain concerned that some stakeholders in the state express their understanding of these facts and this reality, and yet they fight to preserve the status quo. They oppose modest policy reforms that would accelerate the process, a fact that's evident in some of the failed measures that Mr.

Pontel just referenced, and including AB3238 from Assemblymember Garcia last session. We can no longer play lip service to these concepts. If our planet is facing an existential crisis, we really need to act like it. And I'll spend a little a minute focusing on the CPUC's process in that regard.

The existing process for approval to construct electric infrastructure, particularly at the CPUC, is lengthy. It's duplicative. It's costly. As an illustrative example, SDGE Sunrise Powerlink took 55 years for review and permitting and resulted in 70 permits from 28 different agencies. Again something underscored by what Mr. Pontel just described. And it was energized 12 years ago.

But there is no reason to believe that that would change today. Maybe it would be worse. There have not been streamlining efforts thus far that have improved the process, and that's why we're here. In fact, until SB 529, the CPUC's permitting process had not been revised for 30 years.

And so we again commend the CPUC for taking that up in the open proceeding currently before them the open rulemaking. But as it stands today, we're very concerned that it's simply not enough. By the time a transmission project comes to the CPUC for approval to build, it has already undergone years of regulatory Planning at the CEC.

Through the IRP. I'm sorry, through the IPER and at the CPUC through the IRP as well as CISO's transmission planning process. And yet when it comes to the CPUC, they pick up a project and relitigate many of the issues that have already been reviewed and analyzed as far as part of that transmission planning process.

So some of the areas that we would propose for reform are aimed at eliminating some of that duplication. For example, the CPUC spends considerable time and expense exploring infeasible project alternatives in its review, even when those projects would not meet the identified goal that CISO has approved in their transmission plan.

Again, going back to Sunrise Powerlink at SCG&E, that project had an 11,000 page EIR that analyzed 100 alternatives. This goes directly to the project's bottom line. If we can save time and expense in resources, in consultants, in employees at the state and staffing, that can reduce both the time and the expense of a project.

In addition, the current open proceeding at the CPUC, while it's still pending, there is a staff proposal that declined to take up any deadlines for the CPUC's review. Here's another place where we can all come to the table, project proponents and staff alike, and commit to reviewing things faster. AB3238 and also the settlement agreement that Mr.

Pontel referenced proposed a 270 day timeline for that review. It is so fast. It's fast for the project proponent to analyze and provide data. It's fast for the agency.

But again, if we, if we're serious about some real meaningful reforms that move the needle, that's one that we, we need to have the bravery and fortitude to take on. I think there's definitely more to say on this topic, but I'll, I'll conclude my testimony there and I welcome your questions on any of these topics.

Thank you very much.

And you don't have to stop immediately at 5. Just notice, sort of wrap it up. If you want to add another point or two, feel free.

Thanks. Actually, that would be great. I will take you up on that. In addition to the CPUC permitting process, which is for regulated utilities, a primary focus, I do want to note that it is not a silver bullet. There are many places where we need to identify the process review that we're undergoing.

There are some overarching state policy conflicts And I think Mr. Pontel hit on some of those with respect to CEQA and the environmental review process.

But there are also issues that come up for long linear electric projects that Cross many public lands, federal and state public lands, and where the existing land use designations would conflict with a utility use with a transmission or facility infrastructure, which makes it very difficult to site the project, it not only increases the time, but it can result in reroutes of projects many miles.

And when we're talking millions and millions of dollars per mile, that also goes directly to the bottom line of a project as well as the timeline of a project. And so this is something that the state and here I think the Legislature's leadership would be much needed. The state needs to resolve which policy goal controls.

Without a determination that addressing the climate crisis is a priority, it will be very difficult to obtain the necessary land rights to put the steel into the ground.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Great. You can begin when you're ready.

Can you guys hear me? Yeah.

Okay.

Good afternoon. And I want to thank, thank you all for the opportunity to be able to share some of the challenges that we have at LA Department of Water and Power. My name is Farhan AK Sarboz. I'm the senior manager overseeing the transmission planning and asset management in power system within LA DWP system.

As you may be familiar or not with how the DWP system is configured is that we have many of our generations that are coastal units and they are retiring and our goal is going to our 100% carbon free by 2035 which is actually in state.

It's a local city goal that we are adopting versus the states that is 2045. So as you see already we have set a goal that is way ahead of the state goals.

With that said, we do have and the way our system has been configured again most of the generations where they are, the traditional generations where they're located, they're normally are, they are feed, they're serving the load locally.

So if we do not have those generations which we are planning on retiring them by 2030 or change the the source of feeding those generations from natural gas to hydrogen or other renewables, we are going to need transmission corridors to bring renewables in which as I heard from other panel Members, there are challenges that LA is also experiencing similar to everybody else's.

Just giving an example like what was mentioned by everyone else that we have duplications on the requirements with SQL and NEPA where we have finished the process approval and once we get into the next step, the same requirements are again we have to start all over again.

Sometimes when we have, when we have approval from one state agency, we still have to go back and provide more documentation. For another agency and start the process all over again. As mentioned again here is that one of the other issues that when it takes a long time, it's a lengthy process.

There is no set fixed requirements from one agency to another. When we go from one BLM office to another BLM office, they have different set of requirements. Believe it or not.

One asks us for one set of requirements and they approve a piece of the project and the other BLM agency approves a different they ask for more requirements. So what the first ask from you guys is to come up with a uniform process that everybody across different agency follow.

And then the duplication that is now currently like requirements that different agencies are asking instead of asking for the same requirements, if they would ask for supplements that it can be add on and that would help, you know, expedite the process and you know, the lengthy timeline that we have to wait in addition to what the staffing that we've noticed that when we do reach out there are understaffed.

So it does take a long time. We've seen turnovers that every time we are talking to them, they are different staff that we have to start all over again and it doesn't help us moving forward. We have more than 47 transmission projects currently that are planned and staffed and they are in base and out of basin.

Out of those we do touch tqa, NEPA and other state and federal agencies.

And each one of them, and I can give you a few examples to share, is very similar to other Members I've experienced that we have a project that hasn't taken off after eight years because of the so many different permitting that is required for the project, for that same project within the same right of way to happen.

One of our other asks from you is that if the project happens within an existing right of way, do we need to actually and it's not disturbing anything else, why can that project progress as well, as long as we notify instead of starting permitting, after permitting and after permitting and that becomes that is the project that we've been dealing with since in 2019.

We are not in 2025, we're still in that permitting process. With that said, again, I echo all the other suggestions that I heard. I think we all feel the same challenges and collaboration and coordination would be the most important thing that needs to happen. Thank you. Thank you very much.

And our last panelists for this panel, Ms. Brand, you want to start?

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Select Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak at today's hearing. My name is Erica Brand, and I'm an associate Director of the Climate.

At the Nature Conservancy in California. I have over 20 years of experience in the utility, state government and nonprofit sectors balancing the development of energy infrastructure and protection of nature in California.

TNC the Nature Conservancy, is a science based conservation organization working in more than 70 countries in all 50 states to mitigate climate change and to protect the lands and waters on which all life depends.

Our research research on California's energy future has revealed multiple pathways to building out the generation and transmission needed to achieve 100% clean electricity while avoiding impact to wildlife and ecosystems. For those that like numbers, it has shown that we'll need over a million acres of land for new electricity infrastructure in California.

Transmission projects vary widely in scale, from simple upgrades to existing equipment, new lines that span hundreds of miles, requiring long lead times, permit and construct new scale, cost, potential impacts and complexity responsibly advancing transmission projects, transmission investments and projects requires a wide lens that considers improvements to planning, siting and permitting.

These factors are interconnected and each plays a role in the timely delivery of projects.

First, I'll share a few thoughts on planning coordinated, proactive and strategic transmission planning that considers environmental protection, land sparing approaches and includes early and meaningful engagement with California Native American tribes, communities and interested parties and support identifying priority corridors for upgrades to existing infrastructure or new transmission lines that reduce potential environmental impacts and conflicts, thereby facilitating quicker development.

Agreeing with something Mr. Ware raised earlier, your state needs to continue to proactively identify appropriate areas where renewable energy can be built at scale and expand the transmission capacity to those areas.

An example of this is the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, where hundreds of thousands of irrigated agricultural land are expected to come out of production to achieve graduates water sustainability, creating an opportunity to deploy solar as part of a suite of land repurposing strategies.

An important transmission planning advancement is the California independent system operators 20 year transmission outlook.

Now that we have this information, a 20 year look ahead at transmission needs, the state should continue to explore opportunities and supportive policies for how to make the most of Having this information will help us be able to cite and permit individual transmission projects more quickly in the future.

For example, information about transmission needs from the Outlook could be used to inform preliminary transmission corridor evaluations that help understand feasibility and constraints that may impact route selection and permitting of future projects.

Further, the information from the Outlook could inform meaningful and early engagement strategies, strategies and interested parties in advance of the selection of routes for the proposal of a transmission contract. My final point on planning is that Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan or DRAC is an example of how interagency planning beforehand has brought efficiency and predictability to.

Permitting energy projects and there hasn't been litigation of permits issued under the plan. Next, I'll speak to the state should fully examine opportunities to prioritize timely delivery of transmission projects on disturbed and degraded lands because minimizing conflicts with natural and cultural resources will reduce costs and delay.

And finally, I'll share a few thoughts on upgrading the existing system and permitting California should continue to create a supportive environment for upgrades to the existing transmission system, including advanced transmission technologies. These can be a lower impact alternative to expanding transmission capacity as compared to developing new greenfield transmission projects.

However, lower impact is not no impact and we need to ensure that protections are in place for threatened and endangered species and cultural resources as examples in utility rights of way. So some ideas related to that. The state should explore opportunities for the use of program permitting approaches for upgrades to the existing system.

There is precedence for the use of programmatic permits for electric transmission upgrades in California. Several of California's investor owned utilities have habitat conservation plans under the federal Endangered Species Act that include reconductoring as a covered activity.

The state could also explore pilot programs to accelerate permitting of upgrades to the existing system if a right of way meet certain criteria based on the condition of the site of the existing infrastructure.

Legislators might start by asking the state agencies to produce an environmental characterization of existing right of ways in California to assess opportunities to accelerate or prioritize projects that provide multiple benefits or that meet specific environmental criteria.

Finally, the Legislature can support timely permitting by ensuring that the responsible and trusted agencies have sufficient capacity to staff planning and permitting functions. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Before I ask my questions, I'll turn the floor to my colleagues. Would either of you like to comment your question? I figured that I knew Ms. Petrie Norris would have many questions, so feel. Free to have the floor for yeah. I'm gonna put start my time. I'm gonna set my timer on you.

Okay, so to start picking up on Ms. Brand's thing you said and Professor Wara, something that you said earlier in your comments that we need to be proactive instead of reactive. Several of you talked about the need for programmatic review, a programmatic EIR for transmission. But what is that? Folks have been talking about this for some time.

What does that actually look like? What would that look like in terms of necessary legislation? What would that look like in practice? And what would that look like for folks that are concerned that that would somehow how can we assuage concerns that were Somehow to cut corners.

If we are to do something like that, I guess what do we need to do to actually move the ball forward on this conversation around? Most recently in the California maid thing, Pro Tem Mcguire was talking about a programmatic review. And it was all very vague.

So help us turn that kind of very vague idea into something concrete that we can actually take forward.

I think that it begins with having a plan that is concrete enough to evaluate. And I think we're getting there. And that's an important piece of this. It would then, you know, we would have to move beyond what the ISO is doing to something more concrete about where potentially, you know, preliminary assessment of where lines might go.

You could imagine a set of concerns and impacts. The it could be evaluated for the project, taken as a whole, like the next 20 years of transmission development in California. And those would then be taken off the table for subsequent environmental reviews because they would have been fully considered at the programmatic level.

That's the theory of the case. I work a lot with CAL FIRE's programmatic EIR for fuels management projects. And it can be more complicated than that. Know you have to do this. Right. But I think there is a real opportunity to do that in a transmission context.

And also, you know, a programmatic review would create a context in which to make the kinds of clear statements about priorities that you know, in once and once and for all and have that conversation that would then facilitate project level consideration. You know, as individual components of the plan were built out.

That would be what I would favor. But the key step is having enough concreteness to the project to then evaluate some of these larger statewide impacts.

So the kind of missing piece right now is we've got the kind of CAISO 20 year outlook, but then we need to turn that into kind of an overall project plan.

Yeah, something like sort of 20 year transmission plan. Yep. That then, you know, things would veer underneath.

I would just add that even before you get to the step of doing programmatic review for permitting, you can do upfront environmental and engineering assessments to really understand, especially when it comes to new corridors where there might be things that would make development more feasible, make permitting more challenging, and then that can help narrow down the decision space.

And out where then do we want to evaluate in advance, thinking about future projects that might come along for individual permits.

Okay. And then, Professor Wara, something that you made a comment about. Written notes that now don't make a ton of sense.

But I want to clarify the point that you made about some things that some Good things happening in Texas and I think we were all taken aback over the course of the last two years when all of a sudden Texas has become. California is bringing like the most clean energy resources online this year.

So you talked a little bit about some of the things that they are doing that we could potentially do. Can you just go into a little more detail around that?

Sure. So the first thing to understand is that Texas has a fundamentally different approach to electricity market. It's an energy only market. So there's no resource adequacy requirement that load serving entities have to make a showing of.

So I just want to emphasize that moving in a Texas like direction requires some care in a context where we have much lower price cap in the energy market and very structured resource adequacy requirements to ensure reliability.

That being said, in Texas the approach that has allowed for this build out is really one that is colloquially called connect and manage. And the basic idea is that power plants can be built and connected to the system before the system is fully ready to manage to accomplish what we would frame as deliverability.

So typically plants in California tend to be proposed and transmission upgrades are required such that the full output of the plant can be delivered under grid stress conditions. And that kind of requires upgrades that are. Can be quite expensive and can create significant delay if you integrate the.

If you sort of allow for building the power plants first and then using the signals created by the market in the form of right congestion pricing, which is what the evidence of inadequate transmission that's created by the operation of the ISO day ahead market.

You can then go back and say we need to add transmission here, we need to add an upgrade there. And that's the approach that Texas has taken. It's been very successful. It really stands out across the United States as a way to get things done.

Anyone else have thoughts on that kind of model or approach or lessons that California can learn?

I just want to note that I think, I think the process for construction and siting is much different than it is in California. In Texas there's just less, there's less of it. I mean just overall. And so it's also much easier to move a project through the Texas Public Utilities Commission than it is the CPUC in California.

I think that's, you know, I don't have those facts on hand, but I think that's probably pretty easy research to determine that it's much less adversarial between the folks who are building the project and the entity that is approving the project.

So I think that's probably just a point for further research and digging in to see what those processes are that are working well and that are maybe streamlining the building of those projects and what's involved.

Ms. Martin, you also mentioned, and several of you did that there's all these examples where we just have duplicative processes happening across different agencies. And I know that's not happening in the energy space. Have you all, and you all gave some examples of that.

But again, kind of going from big picture problem to an actual, you know, piece of legislation. Have you all mapped out that process and put together, you know, a proposal for an alternative process that we could, you know, then use as a basis to have a conversation with agencies about specific changes that we think are necessary?

Well, if I'm a Assembly Member, one issue that I can say cite as an example that might be illustrative is NEPA regulations have been reformed and now codified to limit ages to 150 in a NEPA EIS. We have very, very, very large EIRs in California.

11,000 pages.

Exactly. And the chances of an EIR being complete under 150 pages is almost minuscule. Right.

So when we try to align the state CEQA process through the CPUC with our federal partners who might have an element jurisdiction over a project, it's almost impossible to get them to do a joint CEQA NEPA document like there would be in a lot of other contexts.

So to the extent that maybe we can whittle down the type of TQA, broad analysis or the depth of analysis, I'm absolutely all for analysis. But if it can be done on the federal side, there's only so many reasons to not do it on the state side. Right.

And if we can join those two documents together and get them aligned, it eliminates one aspect of that duplication.

Right. Well, and also listening to all of you kind of comment on all this duplicative work, I think folks often also point to staff shortages. It strikes me that perhaps we wouldn't have quite as many staff shortages if we didn't have people doing duplicative work across our agencies. Right.

I've got more questions, but I'm going to let you all go and then see if you have time. Ms. Quirk-Silva.

Just on that same topic, all of you mentioned in some way or another a uniform process or non, and we've heard this again under so many umbrellas, whether it's housing, whether it's broadband, so many areas where we are having multiple agencies engage and then the timeline just keeps growing. So when you say uniform process.

I think I'm understanding what you're saying. But what would be the specific. Like we were saying ask. That would be how do you take this big umbrella of all of these hurdles and steps and get it into a uniform process?

If I can start and then everybody else can chime in. What I really meant by uniform process is that take a look at different agencies. We work with BLM, we work with Forest Services. We do work on CEQA, NEPA and other state and federal agencies as needed.

Like I said, because in our experiences when we deal with different offices, we see not consistent requirements. What I would suggest is that maybe each agency should look at their own requirements to make sure they are uniform before anything else.

If one office is asking for one set of requirements, one through twin, the other one should be asking for the same thing and not more. And start from that. You know, different. Once different agencies are lined up themselves internally, then they can see if there is any overlapping requirements amongst the agencies.

That would help at least clarify, you know, why are we giving duplicate documents to one agency if the other agency already gave us an approval?

Like I said I mentioned about the supplement, maybe that's something to consider that we take a look and say if in addition to ceqa, NEPA requires more information, we can provide a supplemental that is not duplicate to ceqa, but not repeating the same, giving them the same documents that we provided earlier.

Just one last question on that. Are all of these partners that you're working with, is there the technology to link them together so that if you're working with one agency and they say well we still need this and that you can actually link it versus snail mail or whatever way you're doing it, is that already in place?

Is that how you work through these processes or the people who are evaluating them or how does it usually happen?

I don't personally have the first hand experience, but I'm assuming that if there was a system like this we probably wouldn't be in a situation of overlapping. But that's something that we can take back and come back with a feedback.

Anybody submitted any of these types of and know how it works.

I'm not aware of it. Unifying electronic process that bridges those gaps. One other thing in response to your earlier question about a plan to look at as a possible example, I know there's the Legislature passed AB205 a couple of years ago that streamlined some renewable energy projects at the CEC as the permitting authority.

I think that's a good example for some. There's some tightening of the process as well as placing it at the CEC for environmental review and permitting. The only thing to be careful of there is that we can't just repeat the onerous process that was covered by a bunch of agencies in one place.

There's some advantages to that, but it doesn't eliminate the problem. It needs to also be really a tightened process if we're going to go with a sort of single permitting authority.

And I think a single permitting authority for electric transmission is a great idea if we can figure out how to get those protections and review of the resources done at a single agency without having it be the resource agency. That's, that's a challenge because otherwise you're. Just sort of shifting delays you want to add on.

Yes, thank you. I would agree with what Ms. Martin said, but I would also recognize, like the state, to recognize that a lot of the challenges we face are federal as well.

And so part of the recommendation that we would like to make is that the state, maybe through the Legislature, direct its agencies to do a better job at exploring MOUs or working relationships with folks outside of the state like federal agencies.

Because oftentimes, even when we have a state process that works well, that's only half of the battle until we get to the federal side. And I know there's only so much we can do on the state side to actually ask our federal friends to go along with us.

But exploring those types of agreements and working relationships, I certainly think there's room to improve there.

Yeah. I think in the renewable energy space we've seen in California, success with interagency state and federal MOUs, the Renewable Energy Action Team was one that helped move projects forward as well as think about long term planning challenges.

Another sort of interagency MOU that bridges state and federal that helps think about transmission challenges, not just project by project, which is important, but also looking longer term at how the agencies work together to move projects forward, I think would be valuable. Great.

Any other questions? I have a couple. And then I think maybe closing us out on this. Many of you mentioned agency coordination, the sort of onerous, duplicative nature of a lot of this staffing issues. All very helpful. One thing I do want to note, when Ms.

Peter Norris asked if anyone has sort of alternative proposals, I would love for you all to submit those to us. If you have paper or information. We're actually putting together a white paper to outline tangible things the Legislature can do.

And we've been, we've conducted, I think, almost 100 interviews at this point, but we would love alternative proposals that we can. What we're looking for here is like really tangible things we can do in the Legislature. So that would be helpful.

But just going back to some of the challenges for your average transmission line, like how many permits are required?

Zero, sorry. It really depends on the project itself. It's really fact specific based on how, where it's located. Can you give us an example or a. Well, I think Sunrise required 28 permits from 28 agencies. 70 permits from 28 agencies. 28 agencies. Yeah. I mean that was, that's a long. That was a 120 mile transmission line.

But I think the Caiso transmission plan from 23 and 24 has some like 150 mile transmission lines in it. So you can imagine that those big projects would be probably similarly situated depending on where they are.

Right. And can the permitting for those 20 agencies, can it. Does it happen concurrently or can it happen currently or is it sequentially or does it depend?

It depends. A lot of it can happen concurrently. But if it's a utility that's building it, the CPUC is the primary process that needs to happen first before other processes can move forward. Yeah. And then depending on who your federal.

Agency is, and even if the CPU, even if the CPUC is the lead CEQA agency, the others would be responsible agencies which typically have to wait for the lead agency to certify a CEQA document before they can embark on those. Hopefully they won't have much more to do once the CPUC is done.

But typically it has to be sequential.

And then I assume at each different sort of hurdle here, there's a lot of different components that are required and you know, opportunities for things to get slowed down at every turn. Professor, you said 33% of the projects are, or sorry, projects are generally 33% over budget, is that right?

That's correct. From a study that was done in 23.

And is it your sense that a piece of the contributing additional cost is the permitting?

Absolutely.

And I don't know if you have the data off the top of your head, but if we are able to do, you know, uniform process or consolidate and streamlining effects, would that. How much do you think that would bring down the cost?

I would hesitate to say. I mean, I think the problem is that cost estimates made in call it 2024 may be somewhat out of date by the time you're actually moving dirt in 2034. Right. And so if we can shorten that timeframe, it's going to really increase the Projects.

Yeah. Okay, Great. Thank you, Ms. Peter Norris.

Okay, just so two follow ups and first picking up on Ms. Martin, you brought up AB 205, which the Legislature passed in 2022, created this opt in process, the CEC. The objective of that legislation was to provide faster timelines for clean energy deployment, particularly for projects that had run up against a block in local permitting.

So I think there's seven, if I remember, I think there's seven projects that are currently going through the first kind of round of this permitting process. I want to ask this question of the next panel too. From your perspective, how is that process going? How is it playing out? What are some things that are working?

What are some things that in your view still need to be improved upon?

Well, I am not an expert in this process since I have not had a project go through it. But I understand one of the challenges was the differences in the way that local jurisdictions underwent CEQA review versus the way that the CEC underwent CEQA review.

I think some of the challenges would be less if we were talking about state agency to state agency CEQA review process for an opt in. And so I think some of that is being resolved. They're learning how to overcome those hurdles so that hopefully in the future those projects will move more quickly through the CEC process.

But I also think some of the requirements of the legislation added a bunch of the existing review and certifications for resource protection and things like that at the Cec, which they're not the expert, they're not experts over managing the resources.

And so that maybe made the process longer because it just tried to take all of the buckets that existed elsewhere and put it all at the cec. And maybe that's a process that also will be fine tuned over time as more of the projects go through it.

But I think that's a challenge when we're trying to repeat all the existing processes and not streamlining, just putting it in one place.

Okay, so we haven't really, we haven't used this kind of consolidated process as an opportunity to kind of rationalize. Yes, the process. Right, exactly. Which we need to do. Exactly. Got it. Other thoughts on AB 205 implementation?

If I can piggyback and just add to it, I think it probably makes sense based on the discussion we're having now that maybe all agencies have to use the same platform and get into. Everybody gets into the same queue and the requirements are identified.

If some are exempt, let's say from nepa, then they just quickly pass through that step and then everybody else is visible to the whole process is visible. The requirements, the documents are there. Nobody needs to ask for duplications. And on top of it, it may actually help with the staffing too, once that system is established.

Okay, and then this is my last question. So when we've had previous hearings on this topic and heard from various state agencies, they've pointed to the creation of the infrastructure Strike team as the administration's current approach to try to some of these silos and make things operate more effectively.

Again in your how is that strike team working in practice?

I think Assemblymember, I think we're still waiting on to see any productive results from that strike team. I know some of the rationales for a couple of the vetoes on bills that were passed last year was the infrastructure Strike Team. Frankly, we have yet to see a lot of progress made from that.

We would like to see that happen or maybe revisit some of those pieces of legislation if the infrastructure tricing doesn't work. There are so many different agencies involved in this and maybe there needs to be a little bit more streamlining of that effort. But to date, I don't think we've seen much progress from that. Okay. Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. We will move on to panel two now.

Thank you.

And same rules apply for panel two. We'll have you self introduced. And if you could go in order of the agenda and we'll give you five to six minutes or so and the timer will go off at 5. Just so you know, you don't have to stop immediately.

I don't want to scare anyone, but just if you could sort of wrap up within, within a timely limit there, that would be great. Ms. Huber, I believe you are going first. And this story. This is the permitting reform panel number two, Permitting reform needed to facilitate clean energy generation. You got the pink memo. Okay, good.

And can you bring it a little closer to you? And if the green button is on that, that'll mean it's working, I don't think.

zero, there we go. There we go. There's a. Just for those in the next panel, there's a dark green and a light green and you want the light green.

So I don't know whether I should respond to responses that were given on the first panel for correcting, but I'm sure I'll have an opportunity later to get to it. So first I want to thank you chair and Assembly Select Committee Members for having me here today. I'm Elizabeth Huber. I'm representing the California Energy Commission.

As you know, the CEC is the state's primary energy policy and planning agency with several core responsibilities, including the permitting of specific types of energy infrastructure projects.

I lead the CEC Siting Transmission and Environmental Protection Division, what we fondly call step, which along with Transmission, offshore wind and land use planning activities, and oversight of the RPS certification and compliance activities.

My division is responsible for reviewing and preparing environmental reviews and other technical analyses of applications submitted to the CC by developers seeking a permit to develop certain types and sizes of power plants. For nearly 50 years. We've got some experience here.

For nearly 50 years, the step division has been the lead environmental permitting authority for all thermal power plants, that is geothermal, solar thermal, natural gas plants, 50 megawatts and greater that are proposed for construction in California.

This authority also covers the project's associated infrastructure, such as electric transmission lines, natural gas lines and water pipelines that are all connected within the project scope. This process, known as our AFC process, is the functional equivalent of a California Environmental Quality act in environmental impact review.

Issuance of the CC's license is in lieu of any certificate or similar document required by any state, local or regional or federal agency to the extent permitted by federal law. The CC can also exempt from its licensing authority thermal power plants that do not exceed 100 megawatts.

An environmental impact report is normally prepared to support a decision to exempt when the Legislature increased the statutory 2020 renewables portfolio standard or RPS from 20% to 33%, renewable energy capacity, especially onshore wind and large scale solar, grew significantly.

This trend continues with the statutory targets codified in recent years, which includes 60% RPS by 2030 and 90% of clean liquidity by 203595% then by 2040 and then of course 100% by 2045 pursuant to SB 100 of 2018.

A joint agency report released in March 2021 found that California will need a significant build out of clean energy generation over the next 25 years and based on modeling done by the 2021 report meeting, 20 the 2045100% clean electricity goal will require sustained record setting build rates through 2045.

Realizing that permitting is a critical component in developing renewable and clean energy resources to meet our climate goals, Governor Newsom signed AB205 in 2022, creating the Developer opt in state level expedited environmental review permitting process at the CC Authority for clean and renewable energy facilities including solar pv, onshore wind energy storage as well as facilities that manufacture and assemble clean energy or storage technologies or their components.

And then just a couple months ago signed into law was SB 1420 that added hydrogen gas production project as eligible for this permitting process. The CC permit through the permit through this process in lieu of any permit that would normally be required again by local land use authorities and most but not all state permits.

This opt in expedited permitting process requires the CEC to prepare to prepare an environmental impact report and make its decisions on the application within 270 days of receiving a complete application. Complete is key here.

The developer must also demonstrate they will be paying prevailing wage to a skilled and trained workfor they signed a community benefits agreement and the project provides an overall net positive economic benefit to the local government.

This process was purposely designed to thoughtfully accelerate the permitting process for certain clean energy projects while still ensuring that the appropriate activities are completed in collaboration with local state entities.

Currently, my team is conducting environmental assessments on 11 projects, four through our historic application for certification and seven you were right seven or through our opt in process which if approved will bring more than 7,000 megawatts online. We also are aware of another eight to 10 anticipated projects totaling a potential for another 10,000 megawatts.

Finally, I want to emphasize that the CEC license is known as a one stop shop because unlike the two or three points that you have to do at the local level. Our one license is equivalent to both a conditional use permit and a building permit.

As a result, CC is the Chief Building Official to ensure compliance of Title 20 during construction of any facility and continues that oversight of the facility for the life of the operation and eventual closure. If the facility wants to make any changes to its design, performance or operation, they must file a project change petition with us.

As an example, the Carbon Capture Utilization Storage Project that you're all familiar with at Sutter Energy center up in Yuba County. They cannot put a shovel in the ground and begins construction unless the CC approves it. That is a jurisdictional power plant and it's going through our petition to amend.

So that is an example of the additional work that we do with that I will close since the bell rang, but I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.

Well, if Elizabeth got the pink memo. I got the Stripes Memoir Good afternoon. My name is Corinne Lydo Bowen and I'm an Environmental Permitting Director at AES working on solar and storage projects across the western United States and onshore wind projects nationwide.

AES is the next generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping the world transition to clean renewable energy. And together with you and so many of the participants here today, we're leading the change in how the State of California.

As an energy environmental professional and lifelong California resident, I am so honored to speak with you today and I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity. The rapid deployment of utility scale renewable energy is a key component of how our state can meet a goal for 100% clean energy future and address climate change for all.

And while we are leading the nation in achieving these goals, it is more important now than ever to ensure that we can meet our affordability and reliability needs within the current backdrop of increased uncertainty for that clean energy future at the national level, we are running out of time to meet these crucial milestones and need to move as quickly as possible to focus on project level solutions to get us there.

To that end, I see so many. Opportunities for permitting reform as one of the many tools that will deployment of clean energy in quantities and at the time scale needed to meet or exceed our state's goals.

Some of our biggest challenges to permitting utility scale energy projects within California are centered around unpredictability in both the schedule and cost to development, permitting, construction and operation of these projects. New and future species listings are the. California Endangered Species Act or cisa.

Clean energy projects under construction right now statewide are experiencing considerable challenges to implement appropriate protections for burrowing owls since its candidacy and until take coverage can be authorized. The current regulations necessitate a delay between entering candidacy and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's ability to issue take coverage.

Secondly, there's increased conflicts between local land use decisions made by elected or appointed officials and state goals and directives, and these have created material permitting hurdles.

Nearly all utility scale renewable energy projects are subject to discretionary action by officials who, for political expediency, have made decisions based on the desires of the most well connected of their constituents, exacerbating the disproportionate impact of our energy infrastructure on historically disadvantaged communities and creating a significant roadblock to our statewide goals.

And finally, uncertainty in permitting schedules and costs, including for surveys and analysis, avoidance and minimization, mitigation, construction and operation of all hampered renewable energy development throughout the state throughout our lengthy permitting processes or clean energy projects are hit with the movement of goalposts for anything from survey requirements, increased demands for development agreements or community benefit agreements, and mitigation, whether it's for species, fallout, agricultural land or new infrastructure improvements.

Despite these challenges, the renewable energy industry, all levels of government officials, non governmental organization organizations, citizens and so many more stakeholders continue to work collaboratively to build a California not for the few, but for all.

To do so, we ask for your help and consideration in evaluating and implementing some potential opportunities that we've encountered largely in our work in other states across the country that we think California could employ.

Specific to cesa, we would look for the following Enhance the thresholds for species to enter candidacy to be commensurate with the level of protections afforded during candidacy. Currently, there is at least half a chance that if it were petitioned to be listed today, the mosquito would be granted candidacy under cesa.

We ask that you give CDFW additional tools for providing TAKE coverage as soon as candidacy is reached. CESA would benefit from revisions that mirror some federal Endangered Species Act tools, such as the ability to issue the equivalent of a conference opinion, first feature species prior to its listing or candidacy, or implement an effective date for that candidacy.

Either or both of these would reduce the uncertainty and material risk that any project under construction in California right now is currently going through, and with the expectation that there will be further actions to list other widespread species.

We continue to feel the as we continue to feel the increasingly urgent effects of climate change, these fixes will become even more important.

We also want to thank and acknowledge the Legislature's work on innovative solutions for the state's priority projects, such as the passage of AB205 and we are deeply appreciative of CEC staff's efforts on these important projects and participation today.

We would also like your consideration of some enhancements or clarifications to AB205 in order to fully maximize its utility, including the CEC's ability to include issuance of things like encroachment permits, lot split mergers, franchise agreements and Williamson act contract cancellations as part of their AB205 jurisdiction. We ask for stricter adherence to statutory timeframes for permitting under 8205.

As an example, under the alternative review process, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission allows for a single increase of three months from the statutory six months to their permitting schedule. Permitting schedules and costs could probably be an entire workshop in and of itself. But to additional quick suggestions based on our work across the country.

Currently, projects under the jurisdiction of the Wyoming Industrial Siding Council utilize a predetermined formula to assess their impacts to local jurisdictions and potentially impacted jurisdictions. Once a permit is approved, all of those potentially impacted jurisdictions distribute that impact fee amongst themselves under the guidance of the Siting Council.

And then in Virginia, the State Corporation Commission acts as the clearinghouse for all state agencies, gathers all comments and recommendations and implements those into their permitting efforts.

So in quick conclusion, as a lifelong California resident, I really believe that our state does not need to choose between protecting and enhancing our environment and leading the transition to clean renewable energy. And in fact we can and desperately need to do both. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Mitchell, I believe you're next.

Yes, thank you. Yep. Thanks for the opportunity to address the Committee today. I'm Marissa Mitchell. I'm Vice President and head of Environmental Permitting with Intersite Power. We are a clean infrastructure company and one of California's largest utility scale solar developers, owners and operators.

So I'm going to address first kind of 30,000 foot view the need for utility scale solar and battery energy storage in the state. We need 165 gigawatts of new utility scaled clean generation by 2045 to meet our RPS and decarbonization goals.

A whopping 72% of that more than 2/3 will be the lowest cost form of electricity in the state. Utility scale solar and battery energy storage not rooftop, not offshore wind, not geothermal.

Without utility scale solar and battery energy storage storage we cannot get to net zero without absolutely ensuring that 70 gigawatts of solar and 40 gigawatts of batteries can get online on time.

California cannot demonstrate to the nation and the world that this job can get done in time to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis and if California can't do it well.

So when we talk about permit reform, we should be talking first and foremost about facilitating utility skills, solar and batteries, because it's by far the largest and most critical piece of the pie.

And if we're not spending 72% of our energy, time and money and resources getting solar and battery storage across the finish line, we're not wisely allocating our limited resources to solve the climate crisis.

Very little new generation will be cited in the desert region as far as solar and battery storage goes by enabling new transmission capacity to the region. The CAISO plan for most of the new solar and battery generation in the state to be located in the San Joaquin Valley.

The CEC has modeled that lowest impact solar and battery development from a natural resources standpoint will be solar that is sited on retiring farmland. And what is interesting is that with SGMA groundwater retirements and ongoing surface water curtailments, somewhere between half a million and a million acres of irrigated agricultural lands are expected to be retired by 2040.

These coinciding convenient truths should set us up really nicely for land use and permitting success. But that can only be true of some important land use and permitting reforms. I'd like to bring to your attention today just the greatest impact, lowest hanging fruit of them all.

So existing requirements currently in CEQA require a CEQA lead agency to find that a summer project proposed on agricultural lands that have recently lost groundwater allocation in sufficient quantities to continue commercial activities even if they have been irrigated once in the last four years, lead agencies need to call that a significant conversion of agricultural lands, a significant impact to the environment that needs to be mitigated to a less than significant level.

This is the fact that up to 1 million acres of Sigma land retirements are going to be retired by 2014.

And in light of the requirement for up to 400,000 acres of lands in the San Joaquin Valley to be converted to large scale solar and Battery storage by 2045, CEQA should be helping match retiring ag lands with solar development rather than penalizing such projects for land conversion that is a result of state water policy.

In addition, the Williams SNAP program, a popular tax incentive designed to keep growers on the land, has begun to penalize landowners for losing water by preventing them from making the sensible conversion to utility scales.

Solar and battery development Given that the Williamson act contracts cannot be canceled without severe penalties, and they can only be canceled at the discretion of local elected officials with a diverse set of constituents, and they can only be canceled after CEQA is complete.

Onto permitting in California, it now takes on average about $100 million of capital to be invested per gigawatt of solar and battery storage generation in advance of receiving even the first of many land use and environmental permits.

It's a pretty untenable sum for developers to put at risk when facing a permitting process that has so many levels of discretionary decisions by state and local and sometimes federal agencies, all of whom have different mandates and objectives, none of which is solving the climate crisis.

We can't risk something as critical as demonstrating to the world that humanity is capable of solving this problem on our inability to create clarity and certainty for the private sector that we're ultimately relying upon to solve it. And I'll wrap by just adding that there are a lot of shiny objects out there.

I think there are a lot of compelling policy distractions drawing our attention away from getting this job done. We need leaders who can clearly and easily distinguish winning from losing this race, who understand that winning doesn't happen without solar and batteries, and to understand that losing is just not an option.

If there's more time at the end for questions, I'm happy to walk through a few of the distractions. I'm happy to walk through solar development and siting 101, but I wanted to keep it high level for the purposes of this commentary today. Thank you.

With 10 seconds to spare, you get the award today? I think we have. Let's see. Mr. Murtshaw, I think you are next.

Okay. All right, thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Members. My name is Scott Murtashaw and I am the Executive Director of the California Energy Storage alliance, or cisa.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss energy storage permitting issues with you and I feel especially honored to be able to provide the male perspective on the need for clean energy on this panel today. As you know, energy storage is critical to me, our climate and energy goals.

And while the state is making progress, we need to do more. Energy storage capacity has grown from about 770 megawatts to over 13,000 megawatts just since the start of 2020. This figure consists of approximately 11,000 megawatts utility scale capacity and 2,000 megawatts of customer siding capacity.

The remarkable success in deploying new storage capacity has made the difference between the rolling blackouts that we experienced in 2020 and managing the heat waves of 2024 pretty easily without a single call for customer conservation.

To support grid reliability, California has a goal of bringing 52,000 megawatts of energy storage online by 2045, which means we've done a good job, but we've only installed about 25% of the forecasting needed over the next 20 years. In the nearer term, there are other pressing concerns.

We need to bring a substantial amount of storage online to continue meeting SB100 goals and to help the state meet its deadline to retire nearly 3,700 megawatts of gas fired steam turbines once through cooling units and 2,200 megawatts of nuclear capacity by 2030.

The state needs to replace this lost capacity while also serving growing electrical demand driven by electrification for transportation buildings. This incredible acceleration of storage deployment has faced some permitting challenges. Five years ago there were only 17 utility scale installations energy storage installations in California, and Today there are 187.

As we're like the new kid on the block compared to wind and solar, most local jurisdictions have little to no experience permitting storage projects. As storage capacity has expanded rapidly, more projects are being cited in jurisdictions that haven't dealt with these applications before and whose zoning codes and plans do not contemplate this technology.

Our knowledge, only one jurisdiction in all of California, the City of Menife, has adopted a permitting ordinance tailored specifically to energy storage. Most jurisdictions currently evaluate and approve projects of the like use, relying on permitting processes for infrastructure like electrical substations. They're basically winging it.

The lack of familiarity with the technology has in some cases led to blaze as the planning departments or the fire departments grapple with how to evaluate these projects. Many jurisdictions, such as Solano, Los Angeles and San Diego counties have begun the process now of drafting permitting ordinances for energy storage.

But unfortunately, some of these jurisdictions have imposed moratoriums on energy storage development in some cases for up to two years as they work to update these codes and regulations. The proliferation of moratoriums threatens our ability to deploy enough energy storage to continue meeting greenhouse goals while maintaining reliable service.

The rationale for the moratoriums has been concerned about the impacts of energy storage fires and specifically air emissions, runoff, water contamination from firefighting efforts, and the possibility of the propagation of fires to adjacent properties. Safety events are rare. A recent report showed that per megawatta capacity deployed incidents have fallen by 97% from 2018 to 2023.

Globally, there have been a few instances of partial overheating or for or full thermal runaway in California, but ensuring that the public understands the numerous regulations and requirements that govern energy storage to ensure safety is a key priority. I want to be clear. Energy storage systems are safe in the U.S.

no deaths have occurred because of fires at utility scale storage facilities and the only instance of first responder injuries occurred in 2019 for the creation of the current design, facility design and firefighter training standards.

Air and water quality monitoring at incidents in California New York have consistently found no emissions exceeding exposure thresholds during these events and even in the case of the Ote Mesa event, California's largest energy storage fire readings were taken as close as 15ft from the incident did not detect any levels that exceeded exposure threshold.

Safety measures start at the various codes that apply individually to battery cells and modules and the ancillary equipment such as the H VAC Electrical Components Safety Systems. Additionally, the National Fire Protection Association has a rigorous standard, NFP 855 NFPA 855 that governs the overall design of energy storage facilities.

This standard is incorporated into the California Fire Code and another update will go into effect in 2026. Visa supported the passage of SB38 in 2023 which requires energy storage facilities to develop energy emergency response and evacuation plans with local jurisdictions.

Another layer of this the numerous ways that safety and energy storage facilities is ensured is that the PUC is in the process of finalizing operation and maintenance requirements for energy storage facilities and requirements that the CPUC will audit during site visits to these facilities.

All of these different codes, requirements and processes work to ensure that safety of the systems for any on site staff or first responders and the surrounding communities. But communicating this information to the public as well as local decision makers can be challenging.

Some of it is highly technical and we have found considerable amounts of misinformation circulating on the Internet.

The industry is working hard to translate this information to the public and additional statewide outreach and communication about the importance of energy storage to our grid to reliability and our climate goals, as well as the numerous ways that public safety is ensured to be helpful.

While we have been actively providing resources and education in many of the cities and counties currently in the process of updating their owning ordinances, other jurisdictions beginning the process are unfortunately repeating a lot of that work and in some cases replicating moratoriums resulting in costly delays for energy storage projects that were well along the in their path through the permitting pipeline.

Additional resources and guidance to local jurisdictions could be helpful. We also are grateful for the AB205 CEC opt in process that this process is new and untested and the development community is waiting to see the outcome of the first wave application.

Some developers have pulled applications from local jurisdictions due to delays or threatened moratoriums and have resubmitted them to the Energy Commission. But many developers would prefer to continue working with local jurisdictions. We're just concerned about the spread of moratoriums and ultimately the patchwork of requirements that may result from each local jurisdiction crafting its own bespoke permitting process.

I think one other action that the state could take is just to help educate local jurisdictions and facilitate the adoption of more uniform permitting requirements.

We have been in discussions with the Office of Business and Economic Development and the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation Innovation on the concept of crafting a model ordinance for California that could facilitate an expedite process of ordinance adoption by local jurisdictions.

Our sister organization at the national level, the American Clean Power Association, issued a model ordinance earlier this year. Their model ordinance mostly defers to the NFPA 855 standard for most requirements and makes some recommendations regarding which land use zone should allow energy storage by right and which should require conditional youth permitting. We support that model ordinance.

The State of New York has also adopted its own model ordinance that the Legislature could look at. But this would be one very concrete way that the state, through the Legislature and the Executive branch, think could help just provide the resources to the local jurisdictions to facilitate their work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Select Committee. My name is Laura Nguyen. I'm the Chief Zero Carbon Officer for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Thank you for your time today and for the opportunity to share SMUD's clean energy development goals, some permitting related challenges that we've encountered, and some proposed solutions. SMUD is a municipal utility.

We're located in Northern California. We serve a population of about 11/2 million people and we've got a peak load about 3,300 megawatts. We're currently governed by an elected board of directors. In 2020, that elected board of directors adopted a climate emergency declaration.

In response, our staff developed our Zero Carbon Plan, which aims to eliminate emissions from our power supply by 2030. That adopted by our board in April of 2021 and then we submitted it to the California Energy Commission as our updated Integrated Resource Plan. It's been over three years since the adoption of this plan.

So far added about 300 megawatts of new renewables and storage and we expect another 900 megawatts to come online by the end of 2026. We're also evaluating an additional 4,000 megawatts of new projects at this time. I would say that one of the biggest challenges for development of utility scale renewable projects is pertaining to permitting uncertainty.

When evaluating a potential project. It can become impossible to determine if a project will pencil out because there's too many potential hurdles. This uncertainty for us has been primarily driven by the local agency approval process. This can impact both timing and cost.

In regards to timing, the local agency process can take so long that agreements with project developers or contractors have schedule impacts. For instance, a wind repower project that we recently completed was delayed by over a year due to a land use plan that effectively excluded development of new wind repairing of existing wind in the wind resource area.

A local land use Commission established a policy of no new impact to a nearby Air Force base's radar and effectively asserted that any change in height or addition to turbines in the wind resource area is an impact.

Relying on that plan, the local airport land use Commission denied our approval, denied approval of our window, our project, and challenged our CEQA document, even though the base commander confirmed that there were no impacts to the radar or the base's operations and the release of the final environmental impact report was delayed by over a year to address those concerns.

In regards to cost, the local agency approval process can also include financial conditions that are unexpected and therefore can affect the project's financial viability and contracts with developers. An example occurred on the solar and battery project that required a zoning entitlement took over two years to get the local entitlements.

With local jurisdictions wanting to obtain funding from the project to support a local environmental program and to replace the lack of property tax dollars that they perceived they would get from development if there were no state tax exemption for new solar construction.

That delay led to the project to the project being significantly delayed and added to risk and higher costs for the project. Project matters even more complicated. There are jurisdictions that have prohibited certain types of clean energy projects.

For instance, a city within our service territory has adopted a zoning code that does not allow commercial solar in any part of the city. Another county outside of our service territory, but where we currently have access to transmission does not allow commercial solar on land zone for agriculture.

Smut is excited about the work that this Committee is doing and we looking to find mutually beneficial solutions for permitting delays and roadblock blocks. And we've developed some potential solutions that I can quickly highlight.

One of the potential solutions, for example with wind projects in particular would be to require local agencies to establish mitigation measures for each wind resource area. Utility farms are located within wind resource areas that are pretty well known.

The local agency responsible for those wind resource areas should work to identify permitting requirements ahead of project development, including mitigation measures similar to a habitat conservation plan. Developer follows the predetermined measures and then a project should be approved. This gives certainty to the project. This gives certainty of what it will take for a project to be approved.

Giving transparency to developers financial incentives to local jurisdictions can also help ease permitting delays they previously highlighted. One delay on a solar project is due to the county wanting to replace the lack of they perceive they would get from development new solar construction.

Tax exclusion, while it's beneficial to solar development is impacting local jurisdictions and their interest in moving forward with these types of projects. The state should consider an incentive program to replace that tax funding with potential solutions. Potential solution to this challenge.

Further to counteract cities and counties placing moratoriums on renewable development pro renewable development policies could reward earned incentivize counties and local jurisdictions funding to counteract the anti renewable policies that we are seeing. Thank you for your time and I look forward to answering any questions.

Perfect. Well, thank you very much. We will now turn it over to questions from my colleague who would like to go first.

Okay, Ms. Petrie-Norris, thank you. Well, thank you.

And I just, I'll say I really really appreciate you gave us a lot I think to take in and I really appreciate the numerous very specific suggestions and look forward to following up with all of you offline to see what we need to do to move some of those forward.

But I also think that as we consider new proposals and new ideas, I think it's also really important for us to make sure that legislation we enacted working and that things are living up to the hype, as it were. So I do want to dig a little bit into AB205 and Ms.

Cooper, you spoke a little bit about the implementation of that from the CEC side and. Sorry, who has a project that's going through this process right now? You do. Okay. All right. So I think we've heard that there are some opportunities for improvement. There's been some suggestions. Would love to just understand from you a couple of things.

I guess the first being do you think that there is an opportunity to rationalize? We heard from the last panel that the CEC has kind of taken all of the existing sort of hoops and now it's located those under one roof. Is there an opportunity for us to rationalize some of that?

Is that work that the CEC is undertaking? Are there places where you need statutory authority to do some of that rationalization?

Question and I just want to emphasize that we have six licensing and compliance programs that requires the CEQA team. So we have, we do have subject matter experts out that we contract with. We don't have a biologist that knows about the prince toes lizard that moves with the sand dunes as they move. So we contract out.

But we have scientists and engineers in house. So what we're being asked to do within OPT in, there's differences to our application for certification or AFC process because it's a functional equivalent. But we feel that there are things that we can do to improve the process.

But most of the functional pieces we do have because of the legislation you recently passed, but also because of the ability 1575, the Warren Alquist act that created us. Some of the things where we think that would be helpful in this process is one is education.

We feel if there are recommendations to the OPT in is that we need from the Legislature clear defined project descriptions so a developer knows exactly what we need when they do apply. Right now we look at Appendix B under CEQA that requires certain questions that we have to ask from 22 topic areas.

And some of those topic areas are sequential. So we can't look at the transportation coming in and some of the other components. We don't know what the description is for how they're going to get water in there. Right.

And we can't assess the facility design when we only get, you know, anywhere from a 10 to a 30% design completion. And a lot of times we're working directly with developers, architects as they're developing, you know, and sometimes even recommending maybe use this style piping or maybe it should be sized this way or that way.

So we're doing it in conjunction with them. The other piece that's important is site control. So one of the things that we have, you know, would like you to look at is that in our, in our 50 year history we've licensed over 285 projects as of 2022 and only 180 of them actually were built.

And a lot of it is because they didn't have the site control or the lease from the local agencies or they weren't able to purchase the land. So we're spending a lot of resources on projects that the odds are they're not going to come to fruition.

Another recommendation we would like to make is that under OPT in you clearly state the Legislature clearly stated that we have to do an environmental impact report. So there's other CEQA documents. As you know, with transmission permitting, 65% of them are actually go through a mitigated negative declaration. We have to do an EIR for everything.

So we would like you to take a look at that. I think that would help developers on a more efficient and Shorter timeline just by the process itself, even if you kept the 270 days.

And then the other piece that specific to the CC that we have in our application for certification process that we weren't given under the OPT in is the deem complete. And this is critical when we talk about licensing.

So the good news is the Darden Clean Energy project down in West Fresno county that Marissa is here speak, you know, speaking of, it's one of two they've submitted with us is deemed complete. And then of course Fountain Wind up in Shasta County. I want to emphasize to the first panel, I hope she's still here.

Everything we do has to be docketed and I and so I can speak to almost anything because it's in our, in our public docket.

And sometimes that as I think Marissa will speak to is sometimes it's easier just to sit and have the conversation once we make our initial complete list of determination and then where we can have some of these technical to technical staff conversations.

What's happening right now is the fact that these resources are having and this is the staff they're having to do data set requests and Everything has to be docketed. So, you know, so you're making sure you're dotting, you know, every I and crossing every T in that communication.

Now we have the ability to talk, and I and I do with my counterpart at Intersect Power. We meet regularly. We bring the management teams together, you know, when things are lost in translation. But if we could do more of that and spend more time doing that than spending time putting data sets into the docket.

Because once we deem it complete, that's when we actually start doing the data analysis, the modeling, the research of studies and assessment and where we start looking at what is significant, what's not significant.

And then if they are significant, we have to start looking at mitigation measures because a mitigation plan has to be put be developed, and then it becomes part of the conditions of their certification.

One of the benefits of the OPT in and the AFC process that our license is in lieu of other licenses, as we said, and that is what would be helpful is it requires us. So you don't have to go to CDFW to get a take permit. Incidental Take permit. We do that.

So we work on those beautiful little burrowing owls that we saw last month. And now that, now that that is going through the endangered species listing process. But we still have to do the permit. What would be nice if we could administratively hand over the application.

And then these agencies actually and local governments do those pieces of processing of the permit. So we still do all the paperwork. We just need them to administratively do that, because that takes time. But then I also, you know, I want to mention two more things that makes it challenging is the fact that the understanding.

And that's why when we talk about, you know, what do we need in order to do our EIR and under opt in, we have to ask every question upfront because once we deem it complete, unless we show good cause, we can't go back and say, zero, by the way, this or that.

We have more flexibility under our AFC process. And because of that, you know, I think these initial applications, we're being cautious and to ensure that we have everything that we need before we deem an application complete.

The other piece that happens is, and I know Marissa could speak to this, we get applications filed where they know a biological study won't be done until, you know, two or three months later. So they know they're going to get an incomplete determination.

But if we could have the authority to determine it incomplete and give them the time to do, because they can take as Long as they want. Right. Some take up to six months to respond back to our data requests.

But if we could do an initial incomplete determination so they have the time to do the studies without us having to do comprehensive analysis on other parts of that application in order to get those resources over to other projects. Because we're starting and stopping all the time because of all our different licensing and compliance programs.

And then one last thing that's a sidebar is because of supply chain and transformers being hard to order and infrastructure, City of Menife was mentioned. So one of the first things I did when I came to this division was do the decommissioning and closure of Inland Empire in the City of Menife.

And what we did was a cradle to cradle, I like to call it. And that's because we, as I said, we're the chief building official, so we have oversight through the life of a project. So what we did was we went to the commissioners and said we'd like to approve this decommissioning plan.

But what's unique about this plan is that we're going to keep the infrastructure. We're going to keep actually the building, the offices, administrative buildings. And so when Nextera sold it to Calpine Nova bank actually utilized the existing infrastructure so they didn't have to go find a transformer. The Transition network substation was all right there.

And from the time we decommissioned it in 2021, and it came online by the fall of the spring of 24, so in like 33 and a half years. So these are things that we are trying to look at from my division's perspective from land use planning and transmission planning.

But I wanted to bring that to your attention because I think it's a wonderful example of all these entities collaborating and to ensure a project can get online. And now we have 680 megawatts. Great. Well, and I appreciate the.

Yes. Thoughtful way that you're thinking about this initial rollout of AB205 and reflecting on opportunities to make it work better so that we can achieve our goals more quickly while not taking any shortcuts.

And we'd love, Mitchell, if you could just share a little bit more about your perspective on opportunities that we should be thinking about in terms of improving upon AB205, ensure that the implementation is in line with the Legislature.

Thank you. Yes. And. Zero, sorry. Thank you. So my company has two projects going through the process. We're still at sort of the beginning phases, so we. I don't really truly have an opinion on whether the process works yet or not. Two things that we've experienced so far.

Elizabeth mentioned that when you apply for certification under AB 205, you're also applying for a building permit equivalent. There is a reason why at the local level, building permits are ministerial and the land use permit is discretionary.

And especially for a 9,000 acre site, for example, and with a highly modular technology like solar, you want to maintain flexibility so that the CEQA process can can identify alternatives and mitigation measures to reduce and minimize impact.

If you're applying for a building permit at day one, before you even start ceqa, you're being asked to lock in that design way too early. So I think there should be a two step process. I think there should be an environmental review step and I think there should be a check the box ministerial.

Yes, you designed the facility in compliance with California building code, electrical code, et cetera, and in compliance with the environmental review. And that should also have timeframe. The other thing that I would offer is that some projects are really, really unable. None of the projects that we are working on are controversial in any way.

We didn't flee the local process because we didn't feel that we would get approvals. We did want to make sure we got the ELDP certification, which you can get at the local level through SB 149. Although I will offer that.

Local jurisdictions are pretty confused by that and it is cumbersome for them and they could use better guidance from OPR on that. But the Cec, to my knowledge, does not have eminent domain authority, which means they cannot override something like A. An.

Easement that you might need from a local government where you need to cross a county maintained road, for example, or encroach upon a county maintained road to enter a substation. Many, many substations in California are surrounded by county maintained road.

So this is a little bit of a gap where you could do everything else right, but still have that pathway closed off to. So those are the two things we've noticed so far. Okay, thank you, that's helpful.

I want to add to that one of the things at the state level that every state agency has, State Lands Commission, California Public Utilities Commission is in our when we do environmental assessments eirs, we also have to look at what we all fondly call our lors laws, ordinance, regulations and standards.

So you'll have an entity, a developer that went through the local process and then they may come to you and say, well, the local government only saw found four things that needed to be mitigated but the CC or the CPC is finding six. Well, usually those other two is because we have to look at the local ordinance.

So if there is an ordinance in place for no large wind or it's a timber zoning and not for, you know, development of clean or renewable energy, we have to mitigate those ordinances. And those are things at the local level they don't have to do.

So in addition to the easement issues, we also, you know, are, you know, having to do overrides or overriding considerations.

Understood. Thank you, Ms. Quirk-Silva

Well done.

I would love to get just the perspective of those of you that have clean energy generation in other states. If you could just draw some comparisons of what it is like in other states versus California, that would be helpful.

During possibly New York. California by far is the hardest, most expensive, most risky to get our permits. The length of time, the amount of analysis needed, studies performed, uncertainty throughout the process is really unmatched.

Does that lead a company like yours or others potentially to potentially not do as much projects here because of the uncertainty?

Yeah, I think it's certainly a potential, you know, when we're, you know, especially with some increased uncertainty at the national level, when we're having to make our decisions with where we put our development dollars, you know, we need to look at what is going to have the most, you know, likelihood to return and to be successful.

And when we're, you know, looking at a 5710 year process and just unimaginable amount of Upfront Capital Dollars, it's, it's, it's increasingly hard to say, yes, this is where we should build.

Okay, I appreciate that. I think, I mean those are the kinds of things that I think that we want to unearth here.

And I would also just recommend, as we've discussed in the last panel, there's concrete proposals and I know many of you have suggested some of those here in this hearing, but in writing to, you know, I think us, and I think others in the Legislature want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure that we are actually building and transmitting the renewable energy that we know we need to meet our climate change goals.

Particularly as we also look at the fact that we're going to need to build 2.5 million homes. We have AI with data centers, we've got a lot of energy needs beyond just our current ones. And then just the last thing I'll say is we all do bills, we think we're geniuses.

But then when the bills go out into the wild, AB 205 or other things, you know, there's often needs to come back, clean that up, to refine things, to make things work better, ensure that the intent of what we're doing is actually being implemented the right way.

And so just again, active participation and ensuring that as we do bills with the intent of streamlining, that we work in partnership, think through, how do we make that actually better? Anything else that you'd like to add, either of you?

Just on the CEC ask, and it's been asked indirectly, is what would you change to streamline the processes through your purview, through the agency that you're operating?

Because it still sounds like even with AB205 and there's work to be done on it or challenges, I mean, what would you do?

What would you be your number one thing that you would say, like, if I could make the decision today, I'm going to do this because I know it would make it a lot easier to get some of these processes or permit approvals through.

Again, this would be Elizabeth Hubert and not necessarily, you know, the feeling of working then. I have worked at Del Monte in AT&T, so I understand how to how it is on the other side. I think if there was clear direction at, you know, we, we passed bills for, you know, like the 49er Stadium.

You're looking at bills right now for streamlining for the olympics coming in 2028. What are the things within. What's working in CEQA is that it does address questions, but what are the questions we really need to address when we are doing an environmental impact report, we feel like we're proud of the work we're doing.

I'm proud of the team that I work with and call my colleagues. But it is a lot of work and it's a lot of frustration from the developers because we keep asking for more and more information in order to, you know, to feel comfortable in moving things to a less than significant impact.

So if we had clear, you know, direction as to what do you really want us to look at when we're looking at the air quality topic, the, you know, the wildfire topic, the land use, you know, topic.

And then, and then what is, you know, the priority, you know, with the legislative guidance, you know, we get feedback that, you know, this was created because we do want to deploy all this, but our interpretation is, yes, we want to deploy this within the timeframe given, but we also have the understanding that we want to also follow CEQA to the law and not make decisions based on what our, you know, our goals are, but how can they complement our goals?

But if you gave us parameters of, you know, siding scale that, zero, you would accept this, you know, not that it would give us more guidelines in what we would make in recommendations of approval or not approving a project. I don't know if that was helpful.

No, that's very helpful for me because I've been working in the space of housing mostly. So on energy. Of course we vote on it as a whole body, but I haven't been on the energy Committee or utilities. And I think you hit it right there, which is we have a lot of competing goals.

I mean, we have the Governor talking about whether it's electric vehicles, all of the things we're going to do in the energy sphere. And then on the other hand, we have ceqa. And there are a lot of conflicts between that. There's a lot.

And it puts legislators in the position of, of I want to protect the environment and do all these things, but I also want my constituents housed or I want to make sure energy is affordable for them, their utility bills. And so they're very much in conflict.

And this is myself entering my last term, so a decade now at the state. And I've been right there in the middle where I've heard both sides and I think it has bogged us down. I think that we can, can be paralyzed with this. And you mentioned two of the projects, or at least one.

I think I've been there for three projects that Golden Arena 2012, SoFi, and now we're talking about the Olympics. So when we say something like that and we want it, it gets done right. But all these other processes, we want streamlined. We want to bring these transmissions on to provide the energy we know we need.

But are we saying two different things at the same time? And I think that that's very difficult when people are trying to do business in California. Thank you, though.

Great. Well, with that, thank you for the panel today. Appreciate it. And we'll move on to our third panel of the day. And this is a bit of a broader topic. It's permitting reform and the environmental justice considerations.

It.

And again we'll let folks if you could start in the order of the agenda and self introduce and folks will have five to six minutes but we'll be a little loosey goosey but you know when you hear the alarm start to try to wrap it up a little bit and you can begin when you're ready.

Hello. So I'm up first. Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Escobilo Garcia, you can call me Natalie. I'm here to provide comments on behalf of Leadership Council Just an accountability thank you for having us today and thank you Assemblymember Wicks for including an EJ panel during the hearing. We're all gathered here today because we share one goal.

We want California to be able to withstand and handle the ever growing impacts of climate change. To reach this goal, California has a lot of infrastructure to build in a short period of time. Because of this, California has been pursuing streamlining efforts for the last two years. This can me to be an extension of those efforts.

While we appreciate the Committee's commitment to enhancing critical infrastructure like water and housing and the urgency around meeting our state's climate goals, we do have reservations about pursuing further streamlining and for whom this will be pursued. Frontline communities often lack access to basic infrastructure like roads, lighting, drainage, adequate water and energy infrastructure.

This is particularly pressing in rural areas of the state. We're in the Coachella Valley today where communities in the eastern part of the valley often suffer from multi day power outages due to our outdated energy infrastructure, major windstorms and dilapidated housing.

In order to be able to withstand the impact of climate change, frontline communities like those in the eastern Coachella Valley will first need to access this basic infrastructure before we can even begin to protect them to withstand our extreme climate.

In prior hearings, topics such as recharge and safe drinking water have been raised in regards to both of these issues. We have concerns about whether permitting reform will effectively achieve objectives such as drought and flood resilience. We believe that further streamlining for projects like recharge is currently unnecessary.

SB122 has already established an efficient process to capture flood risk for recharge needs. Additionally, we are not convinced that promoting delays are preventing access to safe drinking water. We worked on over a dozen drinking water consolidation and wastewater extension projects and in my experience experience delays in permitting has not been an issue.

Not been the issue in moving forward these projects or refining more as a consistent obstacle is affordability. Rural communities often have to pay for water twice, once paying water rates for water that they cannot drink and then paying for bottled water to supplement non potable water in their homes.

While we have funding like the Safe and Affordable Fund for Equity and Resilience that is providing much needed funding for upgrades to water infrastructure frontline communities, this funding does not cover the long term operations and maintenance costs that customers will inevitably inevitably need to take on, as stated in our letter.

The letter we submitted to the Committee alongside over a dozen EJ partners, we welcome a conversation about speeding up planning, design and construction of projects that will directly connect communities to critical infrastructure and projects that will provide meaningful and direct benefits to disadvantaged communities in the context of water and energy infrastructure.

We have presented two definitions of what a project that meaningfully and directly benefits frontline communities must include, but I do want to stress that those definitions incorporate meaningful community engagement and support along with effective environmental protection to prevent harm to already over polluted communities and bedrock principles that cannot be compromised in the name of permitting.

Permit Streamlining the Committee is open to exploring permit spring limits streamlining on a project. By project basis, we offer the following recommendations on how the project can provide meaningful and direct benefits to frontline communities.

A project that provides a meaningful and direct benefit to a disadvantaged, disadvantaged, unincorporated, severely disadvantaged and or vulnerable communities is considered meaningful and direct if it meets the following requirements. It provides a concrete, substantial, particularized and meaningful benefit to residents of these communities.

The benefit is direct and assured, which means that the benefit is not incidental, indirect or speculative. There must be a high degree of certainty that residents of the of the frontline communities will receive a direct benefit that is different in kind or to a substantial degree from the project from the project being built out.

Primary objective of the project must be to provide set benefit to Members of one or more disadvantaged communities, disadvantaged, unincorporated, severely disadvantaged and or vulnerable communities. Often completion of this project the resulting benefits of the communities would not have occurred.

Project will not negatively impact or degrade other resources or quality of life in these communities included but not limited to air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, loss of fisheries or other negative impacts identified by benefiting community.

The project proponent affirmatively demonstrates that the disadvantaged community disadvantaged and incorporated community, severely disadvantaged and or vulnerable communities were engaged in developing as agency over and supports the project. Additionally, the project's benefits directly address the disadvantaged community, disadvantaged unincorporated community, severely disadvantaged or vulnerable communities needs which have our expression directly by the community.

We agree that resources and legislative support legislative efforts should be dedicated to ensuring a just climate transition for all Californians and to build climate resilience. We also believe these goals can be achieved without slowing down projects and without undermining environmental justice communities ability to weigh in and propose a project.

However, because of the nuance in these different permitting processes that have been raised in this Committee, we believe there are still more conversations that need to be had, especially directly with frontline communities, before we pursue any permitting reform. Thank you for your time and welcome questions you may have.

Thank you very much, Mr. Gaytan. You can go. Thank you.

That better? Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you. Chair Wicks. My name is Fernando Gaytan. I'm an attorney with Justice. Fercus is a national 501-C3 nonprofit Public interest law organization that centers our work on protecting public people's health, preserving wildlife and natural spaces, and advancing clean energy, as well as combating climate change.

But I'm part of the California Regional office and I focus primarily on the impact of air pollution from freight and logistics industries on communities throughout California.

But more specifically, my recent work focuses on working with coalitions that include environmental justice organizations looking for health protective regulations at local air districts and the California Resources Board to really address pollution from ports, rail yards and warehouses as well as distribution centers and other freight infrastructure.

And so I'm very grateful for the Select Committee for inviting me today to address the important topic of the impact of environmental justice communities from permitting and permit reform. This is the last panel and you're spotlighting an issue that impacts potential impacts on environmental justice communities. But it's important to put things into context.

I'm going to take a slightly different approach here and try to put things into a broader context in terms of discussing the unique role that the California Environmental Quality act, or CEQA specifically, when it comes to safeguarding environmental justice communities and offer them protection.

And so in doing that, I'm going to echo a lot of the comments that my colleague Sean Hetch said. He's managing attorney of the California Regional Office for Earth justice and gave testimony at the Legislature's Milton Marks Little Hoover Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy earlier this year.

His comments focus in large part on the critical gaps that CEQA covers in promoting environmental justice by offering what is often the primary effective legal tool available to disadvantaged communities to protect themselves from pollution related health harms.

And so if you'd like, if you think it's helpful, I do have a copy of his written testimony that I can submit to the record. As you know, CEQA has long been the cornerstone of California's environmental protections, requiring government agencies to evaluate and disclose environmental impacts of projects and mitigate the significant harm.

But for communities already disproportionately burdened by pollution. CEQA actually is often the only law that ensures their voices are heard when harmful projects are proposed in their neighborhoods. CEQA is not just about protecting natural resources or places. It's about protecting people and especially the most vulnerable among us.

Environmental justice communities often already face disproportionate health risks due to proximity to industrial facilities, highways, and other polluting sources. In many cases, no other state or federal laws provide quite the same procedural safeguards to ensure that they are not harmed or marginalized in a process that ignores the harms that might be embedded in a project.

And so the toll disproportionately paid by environmental justice communities is quite strong when you dig into the statistics. Take, for example, as we heard earlier, we're in this region of Southern California that includes the Imperial Valley, and most of the Imperial Valley communities surrounding the Salton Sea are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of air pollution.

According to the California Environmental Protection Agency's PalinViroScreen, this mapping tool shows that the Imperial county to our south falls in the bottom 2% when it comes to health community conditions statewide.

The census tract also in these communities have overall high scores on McAlambara street that include up to 98 out of 100 for poverty, 98 for asthma, 100 for impaired waters, and 98 for population.

Other population Characteristics these communities in the Imperial Valley are predominantly Latino and many of the households living in communities like Nyland, Califatria, Raleigh and surrounding communities suffer from baseline poor air quality. Imperial county has more than double the state's General rate of asthma related emergency room visits and hospitalizations for children.

The asthma rate for Graysmith Elementary School in Island, for example, is nearly double. Asthma rate is nearly double the national average. Neighbor activities include thermal power generation, which produces emissions of non condensable gases such as hydrogen sulfide and dust associated with the continuing shrinkage of the Salton Sea. And industrial waste and soil contamination are also of concerns.

In the Imperial Valley we have seen a history of spills and of arsenic and lead containing waste associated with pipe corrosion and other factors. The county's residents also suffer from poor water quality, as we heard earlier, due to the contamination of water from canals of the Colorado River.

So within this backdrop we have to pause and ask what additional sacrifices do we want this community to make and what projects to line up and the role that CEQA plays in protecting these communities?

When it comes down to really analyzing what additional projects are going to come into their community, I want to highlight areas where CEQAs actually help spur innovation and really change the dynamic when it comes to projects and how they're carried out.

And two in particular come to mind where environmental justice communities, environmental organizations and residents stepped in to analyze projects that would have had a tremendous impact. One is a mega warehouse operation that is being created in Moreno Valley. It is the size of two, sorry, nearly three central parks. It's the world's largest master plan warehouse development.

And yet because of the engagement through CEQA process and the engagement with community folks and the settlement that resulted, it is going to be one of the State of the art zero missions. Nearly fully electrified operations in one State of the art when it comes to zero emissions for warehouse operation.

Another example is the i710 corridor, a project that Caltrans and LA Metro wanted to push forward to widening widen freeways in the southeastern communities of Los Angeles County, communities that are already heavily impacted by freight traffic, the ports, rail yards and other industrial activities.

That process led to secret review comments from the public and others, including government agencies, and ultimately resulted in the decision makers deciding to reanalyze the project and vote on a no build alternatives instead.

The alternative that's come out of that is an investment plan that will really work with do outreach to the communities, work with communication to develop a plan for investments to improve the portal rather than doing freeway widening.

And as a result of that, the coalition that I'm a part of, the Coalition of Health and Environmental justice, teamed up with the Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator project to develop a facilitated dialogue to co design charging infrastructure planning with impact communities to look at the optimal routes and that would minimize disruptions to the community and allow the community to benefit from these improvements.

So to close, I'd like to offer you three points that I'd like to make. One is we need to be very careful of the unintended consequences of streamlining and permit reform.

Even with projects that on our face may seem benign but are intended to address the state's climate and energy crisis, but that can have unintended consequences already overburdened communities. We need to be mindful of not creating sacrifice zone in the name of advancing climate solutions.

And we need to provide more participation, not less, for communities that have been historically marginalized with embedding community education projects, early outreach to facilitate meaningful participation in dialogue and also language access, which is going to be really critically important in all communities.

But we currently lack a process to really incorporate that into the CEQA process in a meaningful way and a uniform way across the state. And lastly, as we consider the future of ceqa, we have to remember that it's critical that in advancing equity and protecting our most vulnerable communities.

Have to think about whether weakening CEQA would not only harm our environment, but also deepen social injustices. Instead, we should strengthen its implementation and ensure it continues to serve as a beacon of fairness and accountability. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Gracia Roscoe and I'm a Staff Attorney with the center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, a community based organization in Delano that provides local organizing, technical legal assistance to grassroots groups in Current and Tulare counties.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to share us perspective on permit streamlining and to an extent, CEQA streamlining.

I'd like to start with a little bit of background from the San Joaquin Valley, which is where we are based in the San Joaquin Valley Air Basin ranks among the worst air quality in the entire country from oil and gas industries, agriculture, heavy duty truck pollution, diesel powered locomotives, pollution from dairies, pollution from nearby hazardous waste facilities, and more.

Our communities have historically been targeted and impacted by harmful land uses and we agree that we need a just transition away from fossil fuels to meet our climate goals. But now areas in the San Joaquin Valley are targeted to house clean energy infrastructure projects such as carbon capture, sequestration, bioenergy and biomass.

And these projects pose serious safety and health risks of increased pollution in the same areas that are already harmed by other industries. Time and time again we see that these top down approach solutions fail to include meaningful avenues for public engagement and participation.

And we have seen that these models only encourage the extension of life of fossil fuel industries and do not provide meaningful and direct benefits to communities. Tools for public engagement, meaningful public notice are vital for our communities to stay informed. And CEQA is an important example as to what can provide communities protection.

But we need to go beyond CEQA for that protection. And facilitating buy right permitting of certain projects would only further reduce opportunities for communities to actually meaningfully engage in local government when they're facing these projects. And we need to keep in mind, as my colleague has stated, that CEQA does help make projects better.

One particular concern that I'll touch upon today is carbon capture sequestration, which was touched upon in the first panel and sprinkled throughout some of these discussions. CCS is a technology that has not yet been implemented at the large scale that it's being proposed today, and it has not been tested in California.

And the risks of quickly rolling out this unproven technology in our neighborhoods is so enormous. In Satarshire, Mississippi, for example, a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured, led to dozens of hospitalizations. Recently, EPA policy 02 injections at a facility in Illinois due to detective beats that went unreported for months.

And today we're facing a project in Kern county by the California Resources Corporation that one of our that it's a project that our communities are seriously concerned about due to the lack of an adequate project description.

Where not all carbon sources are listed for the project would require the building of new carbon sources that would not exist if not for that project. Byrne County did not exercise its authority in approving that project.

And the scariest part is, is that this corporation is using this project as a means to extend their facility at the Elk Hill oil fill.

When we're trying to transition away from oil and gas, we need to find a way for our decision makers to define that these types of projects cannot extend the life of oil and gas. And we need to make sure that the public process is there to mitigate the harms of these types of projects.

CCS is ripe for reform and we need to ensure that they do not create increased pollution. They touch upon so many different things. Groundwater supply, drinking water supply by air quality, seismicity, carbon pipelines, biodiversity. Respective agencies need to provide input to ensure that these projects are safe.

And we need to ensure that our legislators know they cannot create additional harms already on these overburdened communities. We have similar concerns with bioenergy and biomass. These industries are labeled as renewable energy, but they actually have increased risk of methane emissions and nitrous oxide emissions.

Most biomass facilities would require old biomass facilities that have existed in the past, many in recent memory. When these plants were in operation, they were the worst point sources for particulate matter pollution, and one in Delano that we are aware of in very recent memory.

Our community Members know that constant nausea and headaches and health impacts from that facility caused by that operation should not occur again. Even the San Joaquin Valley Air pollution control district has found that pollution created by power plants burning ag waste is comparable to that of coal powered power plants.

But we also need strong regulations there to avoid increased emissions, increased pollutions if we really want to meet our climate goals. So what are some solutions? We wish to emphasize that there shouldn't be streamlining for projects that would increase pollution that would extend the life of fossil fuel industries.

We need to clearly define clear clean energy infrastructure projects to make sure that these projects do not spend the life of polluting industries. And we need additional resources for environmental justice communities to provide input and make these projects better. We cannot use these communities as sacrifice zones for untested technologies.

So what streamlining might result in direct benefits to communities. As my colleague alluded to, small rural cities and unincorporated communities need better local infrastructure for sidewalks, stormwater drains, pedestrian walkways, bike lanes. We don't have a lot of infrastructure for clean bus and public transit investments that run on clean renewable energy.

But we need to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. And it's imperative for communities to have a seat at the table and to develop these projects along with developers and local government. If communities are included in the process, if they provide valid consent, then that seems reasonable.

Projects and investments with affordable, resilient electrification, ecosystem protections, clean water and drinking water, consolidation and open spaces that receive that community consent, meaningful consent where they understand what is going on can be other examples. Remediation of polluted land such as brownfields are also an opportunity that is ripe to be discussed.

As long as these cleanups are done thoroughly and the community is providing consent and input in the entire process, that is something that we can discuss. And lastly, agencies need more capacity. As we have seen in the last panel last week, there needs to be more staff and more funding.

If permits are taking long, we need to ensure that agencies have that staff to do that review. Agency just need more funding to hire their own experts and not rely entirely on consultants. And this should reduce the concerns about timing. Thank you for your time and I'm looking forward to any more questions. Thank you.

Appreciate all of your testimony. I want to ask my colleagues if they'd like to ask some questions.

Thank you to all three. And I think you did an excellent job in kind of as I ended with the last panel saying that kind of conflict between you want to say our climate goals, you want to say our residents or constituents needs, whether it's clean water, housing, all of these infrastructure needs, how do you balance that?

And as you say, not adding additional harm. And that is the big question of not only today, but for future generations is how do we move forward and progress and meet goals, but not impact already impacted communities. So I thought you did a great job. Thank you.

And thank you all for being here. So, a couple of questions. So I think all of you in your comments kind of opened by articulating the myriad ways in which California's most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities have been the ones that have been most adversely impacted by the health and environmental impacts of our fossil fuel.

So it then seems that these are the communities who have the most to gain effectively as we are making our clean energy transition and building our clean energy future. And I guess I would just maybe I'm gonna. Is that correct? You agree with that top line premise as a starting point?

I think as a starting point we agree with that premise.

However, what we find most often, especially when we're in these types of transition in the example of solar, most of the communities we work with, even if, let's say we're able to get up to the grid capacity and solar capacity we need, it will likely be decades away from actually being able to access that clean energy.

The Darden project was brought up earlier, so we work with the communities of Cantua Creek and El Porvenir. We just submitted comments under notice of preparation. And one of the things that our Staff Attorney flagged was that while their project recognizes that it's south of these two communities, it failed to even recognize the proximity.

They're within three miles of those two communities. I'm sorry, can you remind us of the Garden project? What? It's a solar energy project in the West Fresno region. Thank you. Okay. And we were seeing different solar projects popping up in the West Fresno region.

And right now it's unclear whether those projects will actually be able to directly benefit those communities, even though the projects will be right next to them too. And Pulvenido are only two examples of communities that will be right up against solar. And, you know, we submitted that as part of that nop.

But the nice part about CEQA is that, you know, Darden will then be able to analyze potential impacts to those communities, if any.

And then this allows the community to actually have the time to sit with the project and see if it's something that they're okay with having in their backyard and give us time to see if there's any avenue to be able to have some kind of benefit for them.

But all of this is only possible because of things like ceqa. So, yes, I agree with the premise that we need to transition clean energy, but realistically and unfortunately, most of the communities that we work with in rural California will be the absolute last to be able to benefit from that transition.

I think. So in the case of utility scale solar, which I think, you know, as our previous panelists testified, is 70% of our additional capacity. 70% of the new clean energy generation that we need per 2045 pools currently outlined in the scoping plan is utility scale solar. And that benefits everyone because it is our cheapest energy source.

So the way that we build a clean energy economy while rates actually come down and it's a clean, proven technology. So I think that is kind of the sort of theoretical benefit for everyone.

Yeah, and I see what you're saying, but that's almost like a version of trickle down economics. The thought is that eventually the benefit will come to those communities. But one, it's unclear if it will actually make it there and then two, how long it will take to make it there.

Like I mentioned, most of the communities we work with are lacking just the absolute basic infrastructure. If you visit any of the mobile home parks in the eastern part of the Coachella Valley, most of them don't even have roads to get in and out of those parks.

So I don't know how we would eventually somehow get them proper energy if we don't even have proper roads to get infrastructure in and out of there.

And I would add, and thank you for the question, it's a great question. And I think it was framed as, you know, disadvantaged communities having the most to get gain, but I would say have the most repair. And so, you know, the fact that these communities have already overburdened with so many multiple, multiple factors, multiple pollutants.

If we're talking about permitting and the siting of infrastructure, the siding of the infrastructure that will facilitate that transition to clean energy, then I think we need to pause and really think about like, how do we incorporate those communities to become co designers of that.

Citing that, as my fellow panelists mentioned, how do we create, allow communities to have a voice, a seat at the table to ensure that we don't have the consequence of putting out infrastructure that creates further harm. Division separates communities or instills exacerbates existing harms.

And one other thing to kind of think about is that some attempts at streamlining have been broad enough. Even though they're framed as being within this clean energy rubric, they've been broad enough to encompass things that are potentially environmentally harmful. And we've seen that from past iterations of proposals, including the buy right that was mentioned earlier.

And that causes us, because it not only broadens sort of the scope of these reforms, it starts to encroach in those protections that I talked about earlier. Those essential protections don't exist anywhere else in the law.

When you think about the Clean Air Act, for example, the Clean Air Act is a very important law, has definitely helped to improve air quality in some cases, but hasn't done that uniformly. So we're thinking about Clean Air Act.

It's about a regional approach to air quality where in fact you see folks that live near the port suffering from higher levels of diesel particulate matter, higher levels of NOX emission and ozone pollution. And so and as a consequence, higher levels of asthma, heart conditions, respiratory illness, Shorter life expectancies, all of that.

So when we really think about what CEQA does, it actually allows us to zero in on those acute problems that communities are facing.

So that's the piece that I think as we think about permanent reform, not forgetting that opportunity that we have through CEQA to really analyze those impacts, those cumulative impacts on communities that are already suffering the harms.

I'd like to touch again, as you phrase the question, these communities have the most to gain from clean energy infrastructure. That is something that is really up to debate with my point on defining what clean energy infrastructure is.

If that definition includes these harmful problems, projects that have the ability to exacerbate pollution, then we're only regressing when they have the most to catch up to the rest of the California State due to the amount of harms that they've already faced. So we really need to be mindful about those unintended consequences.

And we're thinking about don't they have the most to gain and it's imperative that we don't think about what's best for these communities without speaking to them and giving them that seat at the table to the fake and co design these types of projects that will benefit them.

What do they want to see as a clean energy infrastructure? We can't foist upon these new technologies that have been untested and tell them that though it's clean now, when they have to deal with all this other infrastructure that's already there, actually picking up on that.

And I know all of you in your testimony also said that we need to ensure that we have additional conversation with our environmental justice communities, that our frontline communities have a seat at the table. So I guess two questions related to that. Number one, what does that look like, you know, for us as policymakers and legislators?

Also, I'd love to understand what process of your organization is as you do community outreach and then, you know, represent the views of the community. How do you ensure that you have a pulse on the priorities for the community so that as you come to advocate for us, you're reflecting.

Yeah, I can, I can start. So I think as much as the protections that CEQA does provide, there are some things that lacks, as my co panelists mentioned, that a lot of notices and information is very, is not translated and there's no requirement for that to be translated.

So a lot of our work is really digging into these documents, these notices to keep our communities informed in the language that they are mostly used to speaking, mostly Spanish speaking communities in my regard. So doing that and then community education is clear, is very needed.

We welcome more discussions on having community based organization and grassroots groups to be involved in the co design of these projects so that we can do more outreach to community Members who lack the time to be able to come to panels such as this. Because many of our communities are working communities. In the Central Valley.

We have a lot of agriculture, farm worker communities, and, you know, the public process that CEQA provides, yes, you can have a hearing, but not everyone can attend if it's going to be at 9 in the morning on a Monday when people have to go to work. So there are still some barriers to access that.

That's where our groups come in to help and provide the information needed. And we would like to see those gaps filled so that we can ensure better public participation, to really ensure that these projects mitigate harms and actually can be better than what they were originally supposed to be.

And we engage community in a couple of different ways. On the local level, we usually have monthly or more frequent community meetings, depending on what's going on locally.

So for the example of the projects that we're seeing in near Cantoac and El Porvenir, our lead meets with Cantoacrique and the Porvenir residents usually at least once a month, if not more. They just had a meeting actually last week.

On the legislative side, we actually just had a policy summit with leaders from the communities that work with across the San Valley and eastern Quakella Valley.

And we actually spent the entire summit talking about legislation for the upcoming year, what happened in the budget process this past year, and what we anticipate to see in the legislative process the following year. That way they can actually steer our work towards the issues that are most pressing to them.

And then in terms of how, you know, you can have more interface with community. And it's just through the comments that I already made. We also definitely welcome you all to join us in the summer community.

We're always more than welcome to introduce you all to the folks that we work with, set up meetings with the folks that we work with in district. Obviously we would love to be able to bring folks Sacramento, but for a lot of folks that not only is that an entire day travel, that's pretty long travel.

And at that point you're asking folks to take time off from work, which could be pretty difficult for folks that, you know, are on tight incomes.

Yeah, and I agree wholeheartedly with my colleagues and our environmental justice partners often provide a really great framework. And that's a great question too. A really great framework for how to engage communities in a meaningful way.

Some observations that I've made from comments submitted to decision makers Is, you know, really doing that outreach early and often and making sure that community has the information in a way that they can understand. It is very complex, I'll agree. I mean, CEQA is a complex thing. These projects are complex.

The thousands of pages that you see in a CEQA EIR are there because sometimes the projects call for it. I mean, they're very complex projects. And so really having that early outreach and really providing the information in a way that's digestible and can be student in the person's language. So translation needs an issue.

Language access can be an issue. We have Civil Code 1632 for credit card contracts, for consumer loans, for mortgages that create an obligation to provide language translation. Why not have that for land use decisions that are going to impact people's health and life expectancy and community well being. So that's one component.

And then I've also heard that, you know, having these frequent meetings to provide the information at times that are also accessible to people that work so in the evenings, making sure that people make them available at weekends, perhaps with childcare, so that folks in these communities can actually engage and participate and understand what's being shared well.

And I would that would increase our participation in government for communities all across the state, frontline and otherwise. Okay, I just have one additional question. So am I saying that right? Dayton, Perfect.

So you gave a couple of examples of where there's been projects that the fact that CEQA existed in the way that it exists really caused those to become much better projects. But the examples that you gave were a warehouse project and a freeway widening project.

I would, I would assert that we need to think about how to make CEQA fit for purpose for some of these projects. And I know the definition of clean energy sounds like it might be controversial.

So let me just say like a solar project, I would say that a purpose built solution for CEQA for a solar project, that that process should look different than a CEQA process for a three way widening project or a warehouse project. Would you agree with that or disagree with that?

I actually share with you that some of the innovation that I saw that had very little to do with actual freeway widening. Because if you recall in the example of the 710 that ended up not being a freeway widening project and instead converted into zero emissions qualified corridor, creating zero emissions corridor.

And the project there then beat morphed from being a harmful community dividing, community harming, freeway expansion, plane additions and all that to one that really looked at how do we create the infrastructure charge zero emissions trucks so that we remove the pollution from the freight. Freight.

And so in that process, it again, it went from a harmful project to one where community was engaged to talk about where do we site these charging stations, how do we route the traffic in a way that makes sense as a solution.

It was because of ceqa, because the community was engaged in that process and was able to really understand the initial proposal enough to be able to offer these solutions and become co designers, as we've been saying.

So I would say there's a lot in SQL already that allows us to provide that innovation and that community engagement that will allow for good, meaningful projects, if you will. Or we might define it.

But as my fellow panel said, there are projects perhaps that would benefit the community, but it's how we define them and what process we have for informing the public about what they actually entail.

Thank you. Thank you for presenting. I have a couple questions as well. And I would also, with the other panelists, ask if you have, you know, concrete suggestions like some of the ones you've raised, that you submit those in writing and otherwise.

And you know, we're trying to be a center of gravity around this conversation, want all points of view and would love to have some of that, those concrete proposals in writing. I guess one question and whoever wants to tackle this, feel free.

But are there circumstances where you do see a need for permitting reform to streamline and expedite and have things move more quickly through the process? And if so, what would those be?

Or is it your sense that sort of the status quo is actually the place where you think it should be in terms of timeliness for projects, you know, housing, renewable energy projects, et cetera.

Well, I would start by saying that we don't have status quo. We've already seen a substantial number of bills go through the Legislature that focus on just that, on streamlining CEQA specifically for housing and in some cases for other projects.

So we have a lot of these bills out there, some of them that which were discussed at the last panel. So from our perspective, it's like it's time to kind of take a look at, you know, what else are we going to ask frontline communities to do when it comes to ceqa?

And that's what causes us to want to say, let's look, we need to pause and actually look at how do we strengthen the protections that exist for environmental justice communities and how do we ensure that meaningful participation continues, Although on.

The housing example in particular, you know, if you look at ceqa, it gets weaponized, right? And I'll be blunt. There's like white wealthy communities that use CEQA to stop housing for Low income, often frontline folks who need the housing the most, you know, Now I don't think that means we throw CEQA out.

I think there's been a lot of value to ceqa. Right. And I think that's the crux of the conversation here is how do you, how do we ensure that we are creating a regulatory environment where we, in my opinion, we need to fast track housing, particularly Low income housing. We have.

We need to build 1 million homes for Low income folks. Right. How do we fast track renewable energy projects so that we can reduce our fossil fuel and reach our climate change goals?

How do we do those things in a way that ensures frontline communities that you're representing do have a seat at the table while still inferring that these processes don't get weaponized to stop projects writ large? And I think that's the, like, the crux of some of the tension here.

And so what I'm looking for is like, is there a place from a public policy point of view that we can agree that A, we share those goals and then B, what are those policies that we want to put in place?

I mean, some of the things I heard in the other panelists were, you know, better agency coordination? You know, I mean, that seems like something we could all agree to, right? There's better agency coordination to make this more quick. Right.

To ensure that we're going through the necessary steps, but we're doing, in a way government's working better by having more coordination. You know, there's been a, you know, what was raised before, this sort of sense of duplicative requirements.

You know, is there a way to streamline some of the permitting process, not bypass it or get rid of it, but just make government work better so that we can reach these goals.

And I guess those are the places I'm trying to see if we can find some commonality so that if we put forth some proposals, I can still honor, I think, the important voice that you all are representing while allowing us to meet the modern needs of California.

So that's the kind of place I'm trying to look for some type of commonality.

Yeah, if I can jump in, there's a couple of points to unpack there. So if I go out of order, please, I apologize. But first, on the point that CEQA is weaponized, I really need to push back on that.

Only about 0.3% of CEQA issues ever result in lawsuits and Again, as my co panelists stated, a lot of the times, CEQA is a way for our communities to make projects better.

Especially if on the issues of affordable housing where we're looking to expand sprawl for new buildings, for housing, we really need to be mindful about unintended consequences.

We want to avoid building housing on areas that are unsafe, where land has been polluted, where there has been, you know, maybe there was a previous spill there and we need to remediate that soil to ensure that groundwater and drinking water is safe there.

And without the process CEQA provides community Members, A wouldn't know about it and B wouldn't be able to provide that input to ensure that that is adequately cleaned and safe for human living. On the issues about affordable housing, I think there's plenty of things that our policymakers can do to really advance that.

We have a lot of failing infrastructure for affordable housing in the state. In terms of the lack of preservation of affordable housing that we do have in Los Angeles, I believe there are plenty of affordable housing housing units that are at risk of losing affordable housing status. And we need to find ways to extend that.

And not only that, but of the affordable housing that is currently available, we need to ensure that that is livable. There are declining infrastructure, there's not a lot of, there's a lot of repairs that need to be done. And we need to make sure that people are living in dignified spaces even though they are Low income.

And if you are, a lot of the times when we see these discussions about streamlining CEQA for housing, we see developers there that are clearly not affordable housing developers that are trying to opt in on this opportunity to disbuild.

And a lot of housing that we've been seeing built in the San Jose Valley has not been affordable, is actually more expensive and is a driving force for displacement, which also needs to be considered when having these discussions.

So again, back to the point about having community to the table, because I don't think anyone here is against affordable housing. In fact, our communities do need it. But we need to preserve what we have. We need to make sure what we have is safe.

We need to make sure that new developments are safe, which is done through CEQA or more protections for public engagement to make projects better. And we need to ensure that it's actually affordable. What can we do to make sure that our developers are not trying to price gouge for citizens here?

If I can add to that, you know, we've seen the development of many statewide and local pools to streamline CEQA review, especially in the context of housing.

SB35s, complete CEQA exemption for qualified housing projects, SB33, Housing Crisis act, amendments to the Housing Accountability Act, SB9, SB10 and many local laws and local ordinances like Los Angeles Transit Oriented Communities Program and these laws appear to be working, at least on the optics of it.

Anecdotally, I can say I live in Los Angeles and even as these laws pass in the most recent legislative session, we're starting to see more housing being created. Thousands of units in fact built near, mostly near transit and without CEQA incident. So we've got a lot of things in there that are already moving forward.

But I understand that we are definitely in a housing crisis. And as Grecia mentioned, you know, from, from our perspective, it's that preservation I think that is really critical, a critical piece that I think the Legislature is starting to look at rightfully so.

You know, it's a place where those displacement pressures that Low income families face, you know, that does more to harm our climate goals than anything else.

To have people leave their communities and have to go to far flung excerpts where there's no jobs, you know, where there's fewer jobs and fewer access to services does a disservice to our goal.

I would argue that they're being displaced because we're not building enough housing right in their communities. But yeah, I mean we could have a whole. We have had panels on this. I'd love to keep talking about the housing stuff. I would argue we need housing at all and that we have made it difficult to build.

But I want to set that aside for a second and just go back to my original question around is there a place in permitting reform that you all see that there's a place where we could land of. I guess the question is do you think things need to be expedited or not?

And if so, like how would you do that in a way that is. That still honors the work that I think that the important work that you are doing in representing the vulnerable communities.

I actually think there's some work we could do on the back end.

I think one thing that we saw recently that was really exciting in the recharge context and on the topic of agencies coordinating better right now, the Department of Water Resources working with the State Water Resource Control Board to essentially map where best sites from recharge and in being able to do that mapping, we've also provided a lot of comments around incorporating groundwater quality.

So we can also map where we can do it safely. So there I think there are options on, like, the back end to be able to address some of those slowdowns that we sometimes see.

One issue that my counterpart in housing, Jovana and I, have discussed really often, but we haven't seen too much coordination at the state level on, is that in rural communities, a lot of times we can't necessarily build out affordable housing because you don't have basic water and wastewater infrastructure.

So are there ways in which the State Water Board and Hope City can work together to even just map out where there's a lack of infrastructure and where there's a need for affordable housing to be able to then couple these different state programs that we have in place?

Because we do definitely have schools, I think sometimes where, you know, we definitely could do a better job is in even just discussion between different agencies that have tools that haven't necessarily thought about using those tools together. So I think there are.

There is room to do things on the back end before we get to the permitting point.

Okay, great. Zero, sorry. Did you want to add anything else?

Yeah, I'd like to add, just to reiterate, if what we previously said, with meaningful community engagement in communities, especially rural communities or unincorporated communities that lack a lot of that local infrastructure, I'm sure that discussions can be had about expediting those because they would provide those direct benefits to community Members.

But again, there just needs to be processes in place to make sure there's no unintended consequences and that they are actually informed about them. You know, projects about affordable, resilient electrification, stormwater drainage, sidewalks, things that will improve the community, especially with climate change. Climate resiliency centers are something that I've. Heard talked about a lot.

We need to be able to ensure that we protect ourselves against the harms of, you know, increased heat and sea level rise. But again, these things are so important for communities to be involved with because we do not want to put them in the position of further harm because they've already faced the far.

Yeah. And I think we saw that on the second panel. Right. That even these climate resiliency projects are taking a long time in the permitting process. And it's been a challenge. Right.

And so how do we figure out how we move forward with, I think, the goals that we all share around ensuring our communities are safe on climate resiliency projects, that we have the housing we need, that we're reaching our renewable energy goals to do so in a way that is, you know, ensuring that our vulnerable communities have a seat at the table, and that's.

That's the crux. I don't know if we're going to find all the answers today, but I would welcome further conversation as we embark on this process. And I just appreciate all of you being here today and providing testimony. So sorry, did you have anything else you wanted to add, either of you?

I would just say finally I really, like I said, appreciate not only you being here but also being the last panel. I think it gives us a lot of context to really contemplate some of the actions that either individually as legislators or a state that we've been moving forward. But certainly preservation and prevention in housing.

I did have a Bill last year that and we, and sometimes you may not even hear about it, that we do work on these things and then they don't get signed or they don't get out of appropriations.

But one was in fact to rehab our current affordable housing because we know some of those units have been there for 2030 years and need that. But it did not get out.

But I think I understand what you're saying about this community engagement in the sense that I came from City Council and that is all about the work of noticing. But certainly if we don't have meetings that are at time that is convenient for working families, we don't have meetings that are noticed in different languages.

They're certainly going to not be the participation. But well just to end with my in laws live in Huntington Park and your family. So you know those direct impacts and they certainly they're in their 80s now and some of these health impacts are real from them living in these communities for now well over 50 years.

So it's serious when we talk about these and I know that we will I will take back your comments and really think about some of the information we've had today. But thank you so much.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

And on the issue of preservation, if I may, there's also sequel link to that, you know, because in some cases at least, you know, I've shared this before, there are cases where communities speak out and there are projects that could demolish existing units and so that, you know, there's a role that SQL plays there too.

So let's not forget that. And I would like to submit the written comments.

That'd be great. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for being here today. That will include our third panel and we now have public comment. Is there a mic for public zero coming up right here. And if folks would like to step up to the mic, we're asking for one minute of Public comment.

Ideally, you just got to look when I announced that. Huh? Are you our only public commenter? You can get two.

Thank you for doing this hearing. I'm John White with the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies and we work a lot on transmission and in fact run a biweekly zoom call that has all the developers and NGOs that work on transmission and we.

First of all, I just want to say thank you to the Legislature for paying attention because you all have done some really good work. Carapanoris has done some really important work on lowering the cost of transmission, which is a significant issue. But one of the issues I wanted to highlight is the duplication and the existing process.

At the PC where we have, and this is what San Diego was referring to the earlier witness. We have two independent environmental review process. One is presented by the developer or the utility. The other is done by a consultant hired by the PUC staff. So you're duplicating the environmental review and it serves no real point.

The second problem is the Pucci hasn't built or approved new transmission in a really long time. For the last 10 years there was none from 202011 to 2021. And they tend to want take extra time and use all of their authority, retain all their discretion.

And even though the Legislature has pushed them, they have pushed back and basically said we have to do it our way and we have to use CEQA to do alternative analysis even though the Cal ISO has already done the alternative analysis.

So we need to keep the pressure on and we're grateful for your work and your leadership and we will help and we'll provide some specific recommendations.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Gretchen Gutierrez. I'm the CEO of the Desert Valley Builders Association here in the Coachella Valley. Our area encompasses all of Imperial County, west eastern Riverside County and southern San Bernardino. County. We are engaged with over 100 agencies at the local, state and federal level.

We're part of the National Association of Homebuilders. You're probably familiar with our office in Sacramento, the California Building Industry Association. We partner with them.