Assembly Standing Committee on Utilities and Energy

Good afternoon. I am calling to order today's hearing of the Assembly's Committee on Utilities and Energy. We are here today for an oversight hearing to discuss progress in developing clean energy, specifically focused on how to ensure that projects that are currently in the development pipeline are able to fully realize expiring federal tax credits.

Before we begin, I have a couple of brief housekeeping announcements. First, public comment is welcome in person. We'll provide an opportunity for public comment at the end of today's hearing. You can also submit public comment online via the Committee website.

As is customary, we will not accept disruptive behavior and will apply Assembly rules to maintain order and run a fair hearing. With that, let's turn to the topic at hand. California's clean energy buildout is at a pivotal moment.

We have often in this Committee talked about the myriad challenges faced by clean energy developers as they look to build projects in California. We've also talked about the need to dramatically accelerate the pace of clean energy deployment across our state. Recent actions by the Federal Government have increased this urgency to a fevered pitch.

As part of HR1, the Federal Government significantly accelerated the phase out of federal clean energy tax credits. Originally established under the Inflation Reduction Act, this now puts billions of dollars at risk. We're in a race against time to get these projects cited, permitted, and built.

Recognizing the urgency of this issue, In August of 2025, Governor Newsom issued Executive Order N3325. This EO directs state agencies to accelerate siting, permitting, and construction of clean energy projects so that they qualify for expiring incentives.

The EO directs the Energy Working Group to submit a report within 90 days detailing actions taken by the agents, state agencies, program projects, progress toward accelerating projects, and recommendations for further steps.

So today's hearing provides an opportunity for the Committee to dig into these issues for us to understand what actions have been taken thus far, identify remaining bottlenecks, and determine what further action is needed. So with that, I am pleased to welcome our first panelist, Sara Fitzsimon, who is the Policy Director with the Independent Energy Producers Association.

And we've asked Ms. Fitzsimon to join us, really to set the stage on what actions at the federal level precipitated the Executive Order in August. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Here we go. My slides are up there. Great. Hello, chair and Members. I'm Sara Fitzsimon. I am the Policy Director at the Independent Energy Producers Association. It is California's oldest nonprofit trade association representing the interests of independent power producers in the state of California. So I'm very excited to be here.

One of my favorite things is to talk about the build out of clean energy and what's possible for that build out. So first I'll be going over some of the issues that we're facing due to, as you said, Chair's federal actions and activities, but then also what California has done in response and what we can do to ensure that we get these projects online and in time. Oh, I have the clicker. That's right.

All right, so we'll begin with the federal Administration's energy and climate policies. We'll focus on some of the Executive orders and the agency actions that relate to utility scale projects in particular. Next, we'll discuss the congressional activity that's happened in 2025 related to this issue.

As you mentioned, Chair, HR1 Legislation, otherwise known as the quote, one big beautiful Bill, and I will only be referring to it by its legislative introductory name, HR1. I will review California's response so far, focusing on Governor Newsom's Executive Order N3325.

And then finally, I will share activities since N3325 and what deadlines remain in order to meet those timeframes. So the federal administration's energy and climate policies and activities so far this term. I won't go over all the specifics. There were 21 Executive orders in particular that related to energy and climate policy.

But I will talk about a couple things that were of importance to this issue. First are the tariffs. Let's see, there have been multiple tariff centered EOs from February through today, and this has complicated things like material shortage shortages that were already at play due to the COVID 19 shortage.

This has complicated those material shortages in places like turbines, circuit breakers and transformers. Some of these pieces of, say, circuit breakers or transformers are specific to particular utilities and so the delay is even longer.

For that reason, as we involve tariffs, there's also been, due to these Executive orders, pullback in loans and grants that are meant for technologies like carbon capture, utilization and storage and hydrogen fuel cell technologies. And then within these EOs there are targets state climate policies like California's cap and invest and low carbon fuel standards.

Following those orders, the Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the EPA took many actions. And so following those actions, they did a couple things that have delayed the progress of clean energy projects. I'll only touch on one or two per agency as it relates to this issue.

So first is Department of Energy following the Executive orders that we just talked about. They directed FERC recently to start an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to standardize interconnections for large electrical loads that are over 20 megawatts. This is typically a state regulated activity and it's a rare directive to FERC.

Comments were due in December and this is still ongoing, but just something to keep watch. This follows an Executive order that stated there was a national energy emergency and the subsequent cancellation of 2,000 clean power projects totaling 266 gigawatts and six major transmission line projects within 2025.

At the DOI, there was the rescission of the public Lands rule that extended rights of way and leases for solar and wind projects. And there was a prioritization of permitting for energy projects that have high energy generation per acre and that would not, quote, denigrate the aesthetics of America's natural landscape.

Finally, at the EPA this month, the biggest thing that's happened there so far is that they rescinded its 2009 endangerment finding. The determination that greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health and is a legal basis for regulating those emissions under the Clean Air Act of 1970.

So let's just try just lays out basically the environment that we're in coming from the Federal Government. But that doesn't mean that we don't have opportunities here in California to build out and do our own thing.

So I just wanted to throw all of that out there so that now we can say, okay, California, what have we done and what can we do? zero, but before we get there, shoot, I forgot about this, this huge Bill. Sorry, I got too eager to talk about what California is doing. This is congressional activity.

So HR1, this is actually very detailed and I'm going to go into some detail to ensure that you all understand the deadlines that we're going to talk about here in a minute. So HR1 is in response to the passing of the Inflation Reduction act under the Biden Administration.

The central issue of this Bill is the premature phase out of production and investment tax credits for clean energy projects. HR1 removes tax credit eligibility for all projects that are not placed in service within four years of the start of construction.

Both of those terms I'll define here soon so you have a better understanding of what that means for wind and solar projects. If construction started prior to December 31, 2025 so just last year, then the project must be placed in service by December 31, 2029. That's four years later.

If construction starts after January 1 of this year, 2026, but before July 4 of this year, it has until Dec. Of 2030 to be placed in service four years later. However, there's one small piece. If construction starts after July 4 of 2026 this year, then it must be placed in service by December 31st of 2027 next year.

I know this is talked about a lot this 2027 timeline. However, there are very little if not any projects that really meet that because it's quite impossible to get a project started up construction and then placed in service within a year and a half. So we're really focusing on those 2029-2030 timelines. So what is the start of construction? Start of construction is also known as a safe harbor.

Prior to the new rules which started in August 2025, a taxpayer building a utility scale solar project or wind project can demonstrate that that project began by a statutory deadline by showing that at least 5% of the total project costs have been paid or incurred prior to that deadline, or that a significant amount of physical work on that project had started prior to that deadline.

Since August 2025, that 5% rule is now rescinded and so only the physical work test remains. So that is what startup construction means. The project then has four years to be placed in service, and placed in service means that the project is ready and fully capable of producing electricity.

The energy project has all required environmental permits, safety permits, easements and licenses to operate and is capable of delivering energy to the transmission grid. This means that the project has gone through interconnection processes which requires a study process that determines the potential impact that new generation will have on the transmission grid.

If upgrades are identified during that study process so that the transmission grid can carry and deliver that generation, then that upgrade must be complete for the project to be placed in service.

Those upgrades can be as much as a new high voltage transmission line or or it could be a substation, transformer or circuit breaker or as easy as implementing some grid enhancing technologies. These upgrades can be done by the transmission line owner like an electric utility, or by independent power producers through non discriminatory tariffs.

Okay, so California's response? I won't go through all the wonderful things that we were able to do last year, but they are on the screen. So there are a couple pieces of legislation and some lawsuits that California has joined and participated in, but the focus of this will be the EO N3325.

So this Executive order was made to designate the Energy Working Group of the Governor's Infrastructure Strike Team, the TED Strike Team, to track projects eligible for tax credits, the ones I mentioned earlier, and the state agency's actions to accelerate the clean energy project development.

It directs these agencies to expedite clean energy development and prioritize these actions to begin construction before that time. Those timelines that I just discussed.

So the activity since this Executive order, the TED Task Force has been in frequent contact with independent power producers about what projects are eligible for receiving the remaining Inflation Reduction Acts, PTC and ITC tax credits.

This has involved emails to trade associations or directly to developers asking for project names and at what stage they're at, and any possible delays that they're either experiencing currently or that they anticipate they could experience due to history or what they see on their timeline of their application.

Stakeholders were then asked to send in those project lists and ensure that their construction start line start time was before 7-4-2026. The TED task Force then got a joint meeting together with all the agencies that might come into contact with an eligible energy project application.

And this also included agencies like the CPUC, the CEC, GoBiz and the Independent power producers. This was a really helpful conversation and lots of information sharing was happened during that meeting. I think that it really moved the needle forward.

And although some projects express delays due to easement issues or maybe local jurisdictions or other project specific issues, there seem to be two really big issues that many projects were experiencing and that is the interconnection delay, interconnection process delays, and then also the environmental review delays.

And depending on what project that is, there are different aspects to those issues. Again, those are addressed project by project. But generally I think those are two things that kept popping up that were discussed during that meeting than have been identified as possible delays in the future.

So in response to interconnection concern, CPUC President Reynolds sent a letter to the investor owned utilities requesting information on their interconnection process and where they can identify delays due to staffing, budgeting, material shortages.

You know I talked about transmission or sorry, transformers, circuit breakers, et cetera, self built options or other delays and the IOUS did respond prior to this meeting. And I'm sure they will address those issues when they're up here. So I won't. I will not speak to that.

The timely interconnection of these energy projects is important to take advantage of these historical tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. But that is not the only reason why we're really emphasizing this build out. Right now. Independent power producers are seeking to be placed in service more efficiently. And that's due to two reasons.

One is that load growth is projected to be at historical levels. So reliability and the state's climate goals are on the line, all while needing to reduce costs on ratepayers electric bills. The CEC's biannual Integrated Energy Policy Report, also known as the IPER, recently updated its last projects with a 5 gigawatt increase by 2032.

And additionally the CPUC recently released a proposed decision in the Integrated Resources Planning proceeding, the irp. If you track those things, that requires load serving entities to procure a total of 6 gigawatts by 2032.

So you see, this is a huge load increase that we need to meet, not only for those tax credit reasons, also for reliability, keeping costs down and meeting climate goals. So finally, what deadlines remain? I actually can't see that, but the deadlines remain are for those projects.

From what I can remember on this screen, those projects that started construction prior to December 312025 must be placed in service in the next four years. So 2029, those projects that started after January 1st of this year, 2026, have until January 2030 to be placed in service.

And any projects that started after July 4th start of construction has until the 27th. Sorry, 2027. And again, those are probably quite minimal. So we're really focused on the 2029 and 2030 deadlines. I'm really looking forward to discussing how we can make that happen.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to come up here and talk about Clean Energy projects.

Director, thank you again for joining us and for helping set the stage. Are there any questions or comments from Committee Members? All right, I have a question. So you outlined some of that.

The activity that has taken place since the Governor issued his Executive order related to this, I think it's this slide you talked about, the stakeholder engagement, the agency coordination, I guess top line from your assessment. How is that process working?

I actually think it's been really fruitful in the sense that our developer companies are able to actually speak with agency leadership and ask for some more coordination on the issues at hand. It Seems like we're at the stage where we all agree that there are issues.

We all agree that maybe it's due to staffing or maybe it's due to not necessarily the number of folks on staff, but maybe the specialists that are on staff.

So in that space, maybe the environmental permitting side, that's been really fruitful because now we all are aware of the issues and we're seeking different ways in order to beef up that staffing, find certain folks to fulfill those needs. As it relates to maybe biologists or other concerns like that, that is going well.

We do hope that that next step is, is agreed upon soon. But I can't really speak to what that would mean for those agencies as relates to interconnection. We did see, as I said, President Reynolds sent out that letter requesting to understand what those interconnection delays possibly could be.

I do want to emphasize that I think the responses, they did focus in a good amount of detail on the 2027 timeline. And as I had stated before, there just aren't that many projects that are going to start construction after July 4th of this year that then need to be placed within a year and a half.

If we can make that happen, that'd be amazing. And I'm all for that. But the reality is that we're really looking at those 2029-2030 deadlines to make sure these projects are interconnected and ready to go to be placed in service.

And recognizing that, I'm sure, you know, you want to be diplomatic. Where are there areas for opportunity that you think the Committee needs to be aware of? And you know, we've got an opportunity to dig into some of those questions even as part of today's hearing.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's completely fine to mention that, you know, self built opportunities are there due to the tariffs that we have.

And so for independent power producers that are able to build certain upgrades, say at substations, maybe they have certain materials transformers or circuit circuit breakers that they could assist in these upgrades or even transmission lines. There are, we do have a couple Members that are capable of building out new transmission lines.

Having that opportunity be a little bit more transparent I think would be really helpful to understand. I know that the IUs had laid out potential reasons as to why they may or may not approve a self build request. Again, I'll let them speak to that because I don't know that process in detail.

But what I can say from the developer side is that there are many companies willing and able to do that. I just think there lacks a bit of information transparency and maybe next steps on what that can look like if a self build was approved. Thank you. That's helpful.

All right, seeing no other questions at this time, we'll go ahead and turn to our next panel. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you very much. All right, and at this time we are going to welcome our second panel.

We are being joined by Vivian Yang who is from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Gary Chen from Southern California Edison and Rachel McMahon from EDF Power Solutions, collectively offering an advocate and industry perspective. Thank you for being here and we'll go ahead and I think Ms. Yang, we can begin with you. Yes.

Good afternoon Chair Members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Vivian Yang. I'm an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS is a research and advocacy nonprofit that puts rigorous independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe and just future.

The focus of my work is California's electricity system and I'm here to provide a high level overview of the current issues straining our state's ability to move forward towards its clean energy goals. As noted earlier, the Federal Administration is aggressively derailing clean energy progress.

California has historically been a leader in the clean energy space and now more than ever, the state needs to remain steadfast in its goals. While California has managed to get significant clean energy online, anticipated increases in electricity demand from data centers and electrification call for an acceleration in the pace of the Clean Energy buildout.

With how things exist right now, the state is not meeting that accelerated pace. The expiring federal tax credits are acting as a forcing function for California's next moves. Significant money is at stake and actions are needed to help clean energy projects access the tax credits in time.

This urgency should also be seen as a launchpad for other reforms that are very much needed to shape the state's longer term ability to connect clean energy faster. The issues that have slowed down the buildout of clean energy are numerous and interconnected, which makes it difficult to single out and solve a specific barrier.

Broadly, the three big issues that continue to come up include insufficient transmission infrastructure, difficulties permitting and long Internet connection queue times. Insufficient transmission infrastructure is a major barrier to connecting more clean energy to the grid. UCS released a report last year assessing the significant delays by investor owned utilities in building transmission in California.

The report looked at large projects initiated since 2010 and found that on average, these projects had been delayed six years from their original estimated online date. For projects still in progress, the delays were averaging over nine years.

These delays in infrastructure ultimately cost California ratepayers through delayed benefits, including access to low cost clean energy, public health and environmental benefits from transitioning away from gas plants and a more reliable grid. The SB 1174 analysis showed that almost 13 gigawatts of resources are expected to be delayed from transmission delays.

While there are other bottlenecks acting concurrently to prevent clean energy projects from coming online, the transmission network is the backbone of a clean grid. We cannot allow these long delays to continue. Utilities and other players involved should be accountable to their responsibility of getting transmission infrastructure built when they say they will.

Bringing the conversation back to the expiring federal tax credits, it is critical that transmission upgrades are prioritized to allow clean energy projects to meet these new tax tax credit deadlines. This does not mean transmission is the only area where reforms are needed.

The second issue, permitting, is an area that could see improvement and is also rife with trade offs. The impacts to wildlife, community and tribal perspectives and direct benefits to local communities vary greatly depending on what type of infrastructure is being built and where.

Developers proactively working with communities Ensuring benefits flow directly to those local communities is critical to building a fair and fast permitting process. As more projects move through the CEC's opt in permitting, we will also soon have a better idea of how effectively it is working and how it can be refined.

A third area that has been considered a major barrier to clean energy is long wait times in the interconnection queue, the process by which new generating projects are approved to connect to the grid. CAISO recently implemented major reforms to manage the number of projects entering the queue and prioritize which projects move through the study phases.

This round of reforms has been rolled out with promising outcomes to queue management and much more predictable timelines for developers and other stakeholders. Without timely transmission upgrades, however, smoothing out the interconnection process will not fully yield the results we want. As you've heard many times, there is no silver bullet.

There are barriers on many fronts that have slowed down clean energy implementation. The interrelated nature of these issues means there must be a coordinated effort to address them all. There are themes that rise across the board. However, transparency is consistently an issue. Clearer information is valuable for helping all stakeholders make more informed and efficient decisions.

For example, as previously discussed, the delays in transmission infrastructure have slowed down the ability of new clean energy generation to connect and the state's ability to plan its resource portfolio.

More transparent information as to why these delays are happening and more standardized reporting across the utilities is can provide insights into where issues are arising and move us to fix them. Despite federal setbacks, California must stay committed to its mandated clean energy goals. The state has made major progress in planning and the beginning stages of implementation.

We must now invoke a sense of urgency to accelerate that pace by refining our processes and holding all parties accountable to the full build out to the build out of a clean grid. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you. All right, Mr. Chen.

Thank you. Chair Committee Members, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Gary Chen. I'm Director of Interconnection and Business Operations at Southern California Edison. At SCE, we fully support and understand the urgency behind the Governor's Executive order.

We know we have to interconnect and accelerate clean energy generator interconnection while maintaining reliability and affordability for Californians. To put the scale of this challenge in perspective, in the past six years we've interconnected roughly 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts of energy annually. In the next two years, we expect to double that 6,000 megawatts a year.

That increase reflects both a surge in interconnection requests and our ability to meet those requests. So how have we done that? Internally, we have improved our processes, deploying new digital tools, restructuring teams for operational efficiencies, updating procurement strategies, and revising interconnection tariffs to move projects more efficiently from application to operation.

And just as important, many of the most meaningful improvements have come through partnership partnerships. The CPUC has played a critical role in streamlining permitting. The recent updates to General Order 131 have already delivered real results. They've allowed projects to reduce timelines by months, if not years, saving customers millions of dollars.

And as these reforms continue to roll out, we expect even greater benefits. We have also worked closely with Akiso on tariff changes that allow utilities and developers to move forward with needed network upgrades sooner, helping critical infrastructure get built faster. That being said, we are not satisfied. Even with this progress, we know we can do better.

We've engaged to that end. We've engaged an independent third party to review our end to end process for developing and building major transmission projects. And we're now implementing additional changes and piloting new approaches to further accelerate clean energy interconnections. Finally, I want to underscore the importance of close coordination with project developers.

Developing on the roughly 6,000 megawatts per year we expect to interconnect over the next two years requires alignment across engineering, permitting, financing, construction readiness, and final project design. When changes occur on the Developer side, they can require updates to interconnection agreements and schedules, which can affect our collective ability to meet that pace.

For example, in the last five years we've processed around 400 developer initiated material modification assessments for generation interconnection projects. Our focus is on working proactively with developers to navigate these challenges together, finding practical solutions, maintaining momentum, accelerating projects whenever readiness and system conditions allow. So if there's a problem, it's not a cookie cutter approach.

They can always call and my phone, I'm always ready to pick up the phone and listen and work on bespoke solutions. So strong alignment across utilities, developers and regulators is essential to achieving the scale and speed California is counting on.

I look forward to today's discussion to continue our partnership on how we can further accelerate the interconnection of clean, reliable resources to serve Californians.

Thank you and Ms. McMahon.

So good afternoon Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Rachel McMahon and I'm Director of Regulatory and Legislative affairs for Electricite De France EDF Power Solutions, headquartered in San Diego. So our company has been developing renewable energy projects in California since the 1980s.

And just like other renewable energy developers, primarily what we develop in the state today are solar and storage projects. So EDF has prioritized several projects in California for capture of the investment tax credit and the biggest timeline risks that we have across our entire portfolio.

So including and beyond these projects are interconnection and the timing of network upgrades necessary to support our projects. So I'll give a brief overview of how developers engage with the interconnection process. So we do enter the process early in the development cycle.

The first phase gives us important information as to the timeline of bringing on a project and at what cost. And this information helps the developer determine whether or not to move a project forward. And the process starts with an application to enter the interconnection queue.

And once our project meets the intake criteria and the application is deemed complete, it is then placed in a cluster with other projects. And clusters are studied on a specified timeline. After the cluster studies are complete, we are required to post letters of credit to cover the cost of network upgrades allocated to our projects.

And projects must also secure deliverability, which is necessary to have resource adequacy. Projects without deliverability are called energy only, if you ever hear that term. And they're far less viable for procurement because they don't have capacity associated with them.

And after that, projects move forward with their interconnection agreement, which was a three way agreement between the developer, the ISO and the utility, and then participation in utility requests for offers. So bidding for power purchase agreements generally starts kind of around this time frame.

And as the project progresses, the timelines for permitting, finalizing the interconnection agreement, and preparing to participate in the RFO securing the contract overlaps and also overlaps with the utility's process of permitting its network upgrades, doing final design, sorry, permitting its network upgrades and interconnection facilities and doing final design work, et cetera.

And this overlap does result in timeline risk. So there are milestones and provisions in both our power purchase agreements and interconnection agreements that we do have to meet. And we do whatever we can to not take the risk of missing milestones, because those do carry financial penalties for us.

And as Gary mentioned, sometimes developers do need to make changes to a project. As I mentioned, these processes are overlapping. We do whatever we can to avoid making major changes. And the vast majority of the changes that EDF makes are minor in nature and don't impact our interconnection agreement.

So there might be changes to like battery technology type, equipment supplier, that sort of thing. That said, sometimes we do have to adjust the capacity and we have to go through the material modification process. Now, the primary issues from our perspective are as follows.

So first, the permitting process for utility interconnection projects, pardon me, sometimes delays the completion of the permitting process for the entire project. So the developer is responsible for permitting the route of our gentile line to the utility substation, and these processes have to match.

So if there are delays in obtaining the preliminary engineering design or scope of work from the utility, the developer cannot complete submit a final environmental application installing the CEQA process. And as the utility finalizes its design, there are often changes to the interconnection facilities that require changes to the project, which then further stalls the process.

Again, overlapping processes. Second, timelines for network upgrades have been extended across the board due to supply chain delays, which I know this Committee has heard quite a bit about, primarily for breakers. So any significant delays negatively impact energy projects and the companies that develop them.

So if a network upgrade delay to support one of our projects is announced, the developer must suspend spending and request a later in service date.

And if we cannot obtain an agreement for later in service date, then our revenue is negatively impacted because not only do we have to adjust, basically we start making money off the project later because we energize it later, but also we pay liquidated damages and we have no control over the pace of network upgrades, and we do pass along those liquidated damages in our PPAs to ratepayers.

So ratepayers are getting that impact. Third, energy developers can alleviate delays, as has been already discussed here, by assisting utilities with procuring equipment. So EDF and many other developers are major international companies. We have relationships with the same suppliers of utility equipment and buy that same equipment for our own projects.

We do not need to hold this equipment or install it. We fully appreciate the security concerns of the utilities. And there's also the potential for us to alleviate delays, as Sarah mentioned, by constructing our interconnection facilities and network upgrades where possible.

And the ability to do this is constrained by a combination of legacy policy preference and just practice. And the fourth issue are uncertain timelines to work with non CAISO and non PUC jurisdictional balancing authorities. Systems may be affected. So this is an incredibly complex issue called the affected systems issue.

And basically because there are so many new resources have come online, because so many new resources may interconnect, we're finding that we may. Interconnecting those resources not only affects the transmission system of the utilities under CAISO control, but they may affect other systems like Metropolitan Water District, LADWP.

And there's no timeline, and we have to get their input and agreement in order to finalize their interconnection agreement. And there's no timeline for doing so. And of course, they're not jurisdictional to anybody in this room. But I thought I would bring it up because it is. It is a major issue.

So finally, just in closing, the development of energy projects and the transmission facilities that interconnect them is complex, interdependent, vast, and jurisdictionally complex. Each project is unique, its own snowflake, so to say.

And there's merit and independent oversight and the development of common equipment standards and policies and supporting collaboration on timelines, among other items would also help to streamline the process. So I very much support what Addison mentioned with regard to collaboration. I think a lot of this could be resolved through that. But thank you.

Thank you. Thanks to all of you for being here and being part of today's hearing questions from Committee Members for this panel. Right, seeing none, I have a couple, so. And actually, I think just as a.

As a reminder of kind of what's at stake, I think we didn't talk about the dollar of the federal, the dollar value of the tax credits that are hanging in the balance. Ms. Yang, do you want to. I think it's like $3.6 billion. Does that sound right?

I would really want to check the numbers before I Commit to anything.

All right. She's a scientist. I'm just, you know, I just throw numbers around. It is so it is in, it is in the billions of dollars value. And I think it's also, it's important for, you know, everybody, both in the room and also for our constituents to understand that we're not talking about, you know, dollars that are going to start and end with developers.

Like those costs are going to get passed on to all of our ratepayers in the same way that as Ms. McMahon explained, when you are charged a penalty, those costs get passed on to California ratepayers. So we talk, we often talk about the fact that time is money in this case. I mean, it's real money.

And so it's both a question of getting these projects in the ground to get the resources delivered, clean resources delivered to California. It's also an affordability conversation. So I just wanted to make sure that that context and frame was clear.

I do want to dig in a little bit to the topic that both Ms. Fitzsimon and Ms. McMahon mentioned related to self build and that conversation. And I don't know if Ms. Fitzsimon is still here. You want to come on, come on up.

So you mentioned that there's kind of a need for more transparency and clarity related to self billed requests. Can you just explain to us a little bit more what that sort of problem statement is? And then Mr. Chen, I'd love to ask you to respond and help us understand how that works, at least within se.

Yes. So for self builds, each utility has different rules as to how or why they may or may not approve a self build.

Again, I don't know the details of those, but sometimes it's assessed on a case by case basis or it's dependent on whether that utility has an agreement for certain materials that need to be used in order to make those upgrades.

I'm not really sure what the sharing of those materials or those agreements might be, but those are the instances that we just don't know enough about. I think as representing developers is what determines this case by case basis.

And at what point are these materials really strictly only for that utility or for that type of upgrade and how we can work around that, maybe the manufacturing side of things or maybe more coordination among those materials contracts and maybe getting developers more involved in that side.

That's the extent of what I know on it, so I don't want to speak further on it. But that is where we lack information and we're ready to coordinate and work on that.

Okay. Anything further you'd add?

I was going to add there is a lack of a consistent policy which I think has come out. So the utilities do have specifications. One thing that policymakers could discuss and also of course with the utilities, but this makes sense is to come up with like, you know, common equipment specifications.

You know, are there policies that can be put in place that you know, both address the concern of the utility and also allow the developer to do things like procure equipment consistently on utility's behalf? Which network upgrades can we construct? Which ones can't we? It is very much as Sarah mentioned, on a case by case basis currently.

And then Mr. Chen, before I turn it over to you, I will also acknowledge, as you did in your opening comments, that this is a truly herculean challenge. In the next 20 years, we need to increase generation capacity in the state of California by some 300%. Need to increase transmission capacity by some 350%.

This is, this is hard. But it does strike me that given just the scope and scale of that challenge, if we continue to just do what we've always been doing, that does not seem like a recipe for shared success.

So I guess I'd love you to respond and help us understand if there is an opportunity kind of to push more on the kind of self build side of things or respond to the comments shared by the other witnesses.

So I would. Can you hear me? I'd like to start off by saying I agree with all of you 100%. So it's not just generation and transmission, it's also load interconnections that we know we cannot do business as usual. That is a non starter. So 100 grade, 100% agree 100% that every project is different.

And that's why beyond saying, as you know, if you can do it safely and within our standards, then we will absolutely fully entertain or consider having self build. The problem with having one size fits all is because of the reason you just said every project is different. So you cannot give one standard for everything. Even between utilities.

Our systems are just built differently. So my understanding is it's very difficult to say, okay, everyone has standardized equipment and the developers don't have standardized equipment, so every setup is different.

But if there are developers who want to self build and there are developers who have offered to self build and offer up their circuit breaker slots, we are absolutely willing to listen because we want to move faster. It's not like we benefit by slowing things down.

We want to move faster and we understand we cannot do Things business as usual, which we are not.

Okay. And do we think there's an opportunity at least to sort of establish some kind of a consistent policy.

At a high level? If you could, you know, I think the policy is if you could do it safely and reliability and within our specifications and, you know, within, like, you know, there's also.

You have to work around Caiso outages, and they face a lot of the same challenges they had to face with permitting and working with other affected systems like ladwp. One of the lines mentioned, the Lugo Victorville line was one of the lines mentioned that involves LADWP construction, working with the Caiso CPC and sce.

So there's a lot of coordination going on there, you know, so it's not always as easy, like, hey, a developer can just come in here and just do it faster because they'll face a lot of the same challenges.

Okay. And then before we wrap up this panel, Ms. Yang, I have a question for you. You mentioned the reforms to the Caiso interconnection queue. What is your assessment of those reforms? How is that working? Are there other opportunities?

Yeah, and I'm sure, I think Neil is in the next panel, so I speak to that a lot better. But I mean, initial results from cluster 15 study, I mean, there, it's a significant reduction in the number of projects going through.

And also from the developer side, I think just setting these processes is creating more certainty with just the timelines that they'll be expecting. And so I do think from an initial impression, it is. It seems promising.

Again, as kind of someone who likes a little more data and evidence, it will be interesting to see once we go through this initial study and these projects start kind of moving further along with the study phases, how that works. I think there are definitely, you know, I mentioned transparency earlier.

I think there were some issues where depending on the transmission constraint, projects with very high project scores were moving through in some areas. But like very low project scores in other areas we're still moving through. So maybe a little bit more clarity as to like, how competitive these different regions are.

And, you know, like, why are all these projects going to the same area? Just more information, I think is always helpful. I think something else that could be considered is just whether we are systematically disadvantaging certain projects, like especially those from tribal communities or those serving disadvantaged communities.

You know, like, a lot of these financial postings might be more difficult for a tribe that finances differently. So some considerations there.

Okay. And then you also said, made a comment about an issue around some of the lack of transparency about delays. Can you explain that a bit more?

Of course. So UCS had a report last year that just, you know, went through the Caiso transmission planning reports and kind of tracked all these projects when they initially said that they would be online and when they actually came online. And it was a very big difference.

I think a lot of them were like 200300% later than the expected amount of time. And the IOUS are now required to kind of start reporting reasons as to why these transmission delays are happening.

But the reasons aren't, you know, it's like very General permitting customer action, which is a good first step, but is still not kind of giving us a lot of insight into, I guess, how we can fix these issues.

And so I think just greater transparency there and also understanding that, yes, like, it's usually a lot of, you know, multiple reasons and so having, I guess a little more like qualitative data and understanding and having someone, you know, be able to actually talk through these projects, figure out where the delays are actually happening and seeing if there are solutions that can.

Okay, so a little bit more detail that would enable some root cause analysis so that we can start to resolve some of the core issues.

And I think a big part of that too is accountability in terms of just like these delays are happening and we do need to figure out why and hold these players accountable and hopefully fix these issues.

Yep, I'd like to respond to that. So we currently there's a transmission project review process and takes place twice a year and stakeholders have every opportunity to grill our SMEs on why projects are delayed and that sort of thing. So there is this forum out there for transparency.

Sorry, what is it?

It's called the transmission project review process. I think it's a FERC jurisdictional and it happens twice a year and we report out on all of our transmission projects status sorts of things and make our people available for data requests and also for live questioning as well.

And that was data that was used in our analysis too. But just kind of the reporting, I mean. And you know, to the point of, yes, standardization is important, but I think even between utilities, it's like one utility, what's, you know, they're calling permitting one thing versus another utility, which might be calling permitting something else.

Just the actual, you know, digging a little deeper and that was something. When we, you know, talk to agencies about it, there wasn't enough standardization or detail to get a lot of information from those. But yes, it is like a, that transmission Project review. Project review was used. Yes, ppr. Yes, I remember the acronym.

But the, you know, details are still lacking, I think.

Okay, thank you. All right, and then before we wrap up this panel, I think as you know, our next panel will be welcoming some representatives from our state energy related agencies. So is there any parting thought or comment or, you know, issue that you want to put on their radar as we begin that portion of our hearing? Anyone?

No, my thought would just be continued coordination and communication and meeting timelines of communication. Not that they haven't, but I think that it's been really helpful with this TED task force ensuring that the agencies, when they say they're going to do something, they have done it and they've requested feedback and they've had timelines.

And so ensuring that all those timelines are met and continued coordination will then develop a next step. So we're, as I said earlier, we're at that issue understanding stage and now we need to be at what's the next step stage and have action, really have, have teeth, really like have it matter.

So congratulating them on the good work so far and hoping that that'll continue so that we can really meet those 20292030 timelines.

And if I can understand when you say next step, it sounds like you're saying that there's a shared understanding of kind of the issue statement and the problem statement. The next step is how do we forge a resolution.

Yes, identifying solutions. Many solutions have been discussed within the TED Task force, stakeholders and agencies alike. So making decisions on maybe the first step of those solutions would be really helpful.

All right, thank you. I think that is an excellent transition to our next panel and thank you all once again for joining us. Okay, our next panel is focused on implementation Update from California Energy entities.

We will be welcoming Molly Sturkel from the cpuc, Neil Miller from CalISO, and Rahima Moli from the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. Thank you all for being here.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Could I ask for a little guidance on which order you would like us? Those are my slides, Ms. Sterkel. Yes, Director Sterkel, you can kick us off. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair. Good afternoon, Members. It's an honor to be with you today.

My name is Molly Sturkel and I'm an Energy Division Director at the California Public Utilities Commission overseeing the Office of Electricity Planning Costs and Rates. I just have a handful of slides for you today. So I'm going to start off today with some good news and I will go ahead and turn to the next slide.

So let's start off with some good news related to our incredible progress as a state Installing Clean Energy Resources in California to Serve California over the past several years the state has seen an unprecedented level of clean energy capacity come online to meet reliability, renewable portfolio standard goals and greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements for the second year in a row.

Last year in 2025, California brought on over 6 gigawatts 6,000 megawatts of new nameplate capacity to serve the CAISO territory. In 2025, the state brought online 6.8 gigawatts of new capacity which was a near tiebreaker with the prior year which was 6.9 gigawatts of new cap 2024. 2024 was a record breaking year itself.

It was the fourth year in a row of year over year growth for clean energy capacity in California. The years that you see on the chart in front of you are the largest years of clean energy capacity development in the history of California.

These projects represent over 450 new CAISO resource IDs, new resources that have gone through all of the processes that you've just been hearing about and these new resources are providing over 20 gigawatts of new net qualifying capacity which is the unit of measurement for reliability capacity in the state.

These new resources have helped California reach a milestone achievement of installing over 16,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity. Battery storage capacity helps the grid optimize the use of our abundant solar resources in non daylight hours. They reduce curtailment of variable resources and importantly they reduce the usage of fossil fuels throughout the year.

The accelerated deployment of clean energy over the past few years has firmly demonstrated the ability of California energy ecosystem to deliver critical energy projects.

Despite the challenges that were gathered here to discuss today, most of this procurement and these resources have come online to meet targets that have been set in the integrated resource planning proceeding as supported also by the Resource Adequacy Program and the Renewable Portfolio Standard Program. Each of those existing statutory mandates has ongoing as well as expanding requirements.

Looking ahead, the CPUC jurisdictional load serving entities are continuing to procure to meet ongoing and expected obligations. The right hand side of that chart after the vertical column shows what resources we expect to come online in the next four years.

Our load serving entities have already entered into firm commitment procurement contracts with over 20,000 megawatts of new nameplate capacity. These projects are under contract and are expected to achieve commercial operation between now and 2030. So next slide. So I'm going to just dive for a moment into the Integrated Resource Planning proceeding.

This proceeding, which is pursuant to SB350 from 2015 this proceeding has recently issued in mid January issued a proposed decision and that will continue the procurement requirements that have been foundational to driving the the clean energy growth we discussed on the prior slide.

The proposed decision would order 6 gigawatts of new net qualifying capacity to come online by 2032. The order will lead to, of course, more than 6 gigawatts when translated to nameplate capacity.

The proposed decision also is our annual decision in our transmission planning process where this decision supports the transmission development that occurs throughout the state by providing the CAISO the list of expected resources that are expected to come online in the next two decades.

The CPUC provides portfolios of energy resources that are likely to be built in the next 20 years so that the CAISO can plan for the transmission to interconnect those resources.

The figure to the right hand side shows that There are approximately 90 gigawatts of new resources expected to come online in the next 10 years, including over 60 gigawatts of solar, 25 gigawatts of wind and over 20 gigawatts of storage. Those numbers actually add up to more than 90.

That's because I was using some of the numbers farther to the right on the chart. Apologies for that math. Next slide. So lastly, I just want to touch on a few of the activities that are underway at the CPUC and in consultation with our with our other energy agencies to support clean energy development in California.

The first bullet talks about the continuing implementation of our procurement programs, Integrated Resource Planning Process, the Resource Adequacy Program, the RPS Program. These statutory programs really drive the demand for clean energy and provide the impetus for our load serving entities to enter into contracts and bring these projects online.

Next, I just want to mention, as was previously mentioned, the CPUC has adopted a new General Order 131e, which is our primary regulatory mechanism to permit transmission in California.

At the CPUC in January 2025, we adopted very important updates to the General Order and this General Order sets forth the rules for permitting and approving and building transmission lines, substations and generation facilities. The decision has provided a number of streamlining opportunities and we expect that it will continue to yield benefits in the years ahead.

Another activity I'd like to mention that the CPUC is involved in is the Tracking Energy Development Task Force to my left.

My colleague from GOPIZ is going to describe this effort in more detail, but I will just say here that I was personally involved in helping set this up five years ago in response to an Executive order that at the time asked all of the agencies to do whatever we could to accelerate the development of clean energy in regards to needing as much resources as possible to meet reliability needs.

Those efforts that we undertook five years ago to help set this up, those are yielding fruit today and they're going to continue to yield fruit in the years ahead.

An example of something that we have worked on are the interconnection letters that President Reynolds was able to send to the three investor owned utilities in the fourth quarter of last year.

These letters help focus the efforts of our utilities on the interconnection process and I think the prior speaker from Southern California Edison was able to speak to that directly. So I won't dwell on that further. The last bullet is I just want to mention three things that we're doing related to transmission data and transparency. The first is the transmission Project Review process.

This is a comprehensive data process that was established by the CPUC in 2022 via resolution E5252 and that under that resolution our three investor owned utilities are required to have a biannual process where they provide comprehensive data on all transmission projects that they have spent money on or will spend money on that cost more than $1 million.

So if they spent more than $1 million on anything in the past five years, it's in the data. And if they are expected to spend more than $1 million on anything in the next four years, it's in the data.

And then there's a series of stakeholder process where stakeholders can ask questions about all of the data and then also formal comments are submitted.

This data process is extremely important for the CPUC to represent ratepayers, California ratepayers at FERC to ensure that the investments that are being made on behalf of ratepayers are cost effective and meet our affordability goals. So we use that data to advocate on behalf of ratepayers at Ferc.

The second item I'd like to talk about in terms of transparency of Transmission data is SB 1174. This is SB 1174 data. This was a process undertaken by inspired by legislation in 2002 by Member Hertzberg. And this process has yielded data that is now reported annually in our legislative report on the RPS program.

And in this data we look at specifically at generation and storage projects that may be dependent on transmission. And we look specifically which projects they are, what transmission might be holding them up, if any, and so on and so forth.

So we've been able to provide that data and now we've been able to discuss the data in a variety of forums. Happy to talk about it here in more detail if you'd like. It did not include a slide on it, but we can talk about that some more as well.

And just the third thing I want to mention, and that I will I'm sure my colleague Neil Millar will talk about it more, is the Transmission Development Forum that the CAISO helps host twice a year.

It most recently was held in January, and it's an opportunity for all of the transmission developers to talk about any updates they have on the projects that are in development, and most crucially, the online dates, should they be modified, and so on and so forth.

So it happens twice a year, and that's been extraordinarily helpful in providing transparency into where we might see delays. And because although each developer has an opportunity to meet one on one with utilities when they're interconnecting, it is also great to have a global opportunity to see what projects might be delayed.

So I will pause there and turn it to my next speaker, unless you'd like questions. Thank you, that's great.

And we'll go ahead and hear from all three of our speakers before we open it up for questions. So Mr. Miller.

Thank you. Just a moment of drama while we were waiting to see whose slide popped up, but thank you. So, yes, I'm Neil Miller, Vice President of Transmission Planning and Infrastructure Development at the ISO.

I also have a few slides I'd just like to walk through, but I'm going to try to hit a few of the points, just address some of the points as we move through that already came up, rather than just kind of stick with original comments.

So first off, just there is 1.0 I really wanted to reinforce up front because we hear a lot about the ISO interconnection queue.

And I think, as you heard from Rachel earlier, people enter our queue as a first step to get their study results and then try to keep their project moving forward while they're pursuing a power purchase agreement and before they give us notice to proceed to actually move to construction for that project.

And that's a really important distinction because the queue is reflective of the amount of competition, not necessarily the number of projects that actually need to get built in a year.

And on the chart on this little picture here, you can see that for many years we were running this annual study process, studying around 100 projects a year that were 20 to 30 gigawatts of total capacity.

That took off and exploded on us back in 2021 when we had 373 projects or 145megawatts supply for interconnection in a single cycle. That's almost three times our all time peak. Lo, it did take a bit of extra time to get those study results out to people.

We reopened the queue and then had that turned out to be a small number. We then had seven times our peak load apply in the next window.

That was where we did have to make these process improvements so that we could focus on studying the most viable projects, focusing on the advancement of the project itself, the commercial interest, and if those projects were meeting a local need, that we really needed them in that specific area.

So that process improvement has really helped us focus on the most viable projects, making sure they get studied first and don't get hamstrung by a larger number of applications of projects that are actually less likely to ever move forward.

And like I said, the Q reflects the amount of competition, not the 5 to 7 gigawatts that we actually need to build each year. Now, just building on that, Molly already mentioned that over the last number of years we've been very successful at getting new projects onboarded. Roughly 31 gigawatts of new nameplate capacity since 2020.

And I won't go through the annual statistics there again, but there are a few other numbers I wanted to point out. One is that our current interconnection queue holds almost 190 gigawatts of capacity of nameplate capacity that has applied for interconnection. Of that about 98 gigawatts actually have executed interconnection agreements with us. And they are keeping those.

The developers are keeping those agreements alive as they shop for a power purchase agreement. And before they would actually give us notice to proceed to move forward with construction. Now out of those we have about 60 gigawatts where the transmission that those projects need is either, in service or under construction.

The transmission they need has been triggered or initiated by someone, either by us through our transmission planning process, by the developer or by a different developer. So there's a pretty hefty inventory of projects there that are looking, they're shopping for power purchase agreements and ready to move forward.

Now out of that, our understanding is that right now there's about 20 gigawatts that actually have power purchase agreements and those are the people that will give us notice and that we work with the transmission utility to start building the project.

So those are really important distinctions for us because sometimes we hear about the volumes in the queue and perhaps delays in the queue, but whether or not it's actually affecting a project that's ready to finance and move forward to construction, there's a big difference there.

The last thing I wanted to touch on though is also about the coordination with the state agencies. You've already heard a bit about some of the other processes, but I just wanted to make a few points in particular.

One is that the overall coordinated transmission planning has been very effective at helping us move on the large upgrades into overall areas. But the local upgrades depend on which specific projects actually trigger moving forward to construction.

So that's always a challenge is we can take care of the big projects into a development area, but when you get to the local requirements, you need to know who's actually moving forward.

The other part is that on moving within the timelines, I mentioned the cluster 14 a few years ago, really taking off our process normally required that no one could move forward in an area, from a given cluster, until everyone could.

And that was a barrier just because we had so many projects that were applying in that cycle. So what we did do is introduce what we called an intra cluster prioritization process where we would allow the best situated projects to move forward even if we couldn't serve everyone.

That applied in that cycle, and that's helped with almost 4,000 megawatts of generation be able to advance. Molly also referred to the Transmission Development Forum. Unlike the other process under E5252, the Transmission Development Forum focuses exclusively on schedule.

So every transmission developer, not just the regulated utilities, but also the independent transmission developers that are moving projects through our competitive process, all give updates. And for any project that has experienced the delay since the previous meeting, there's a specific presentation and people are invited to ask questions and get comments on those projects.

So we really think that was a voluntary process established working with the utilities a number of years ago. And we think it's been very effective at letting developers ask the questions about the projects that they're specifically concerned about.

We're also supporting the TED Task Force there that that's being led by our colleagues to the right, but we're participating in that as well. So I'll wrap up there and look forward to your questions. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. All right, Ms. Moly.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee, Rahima Molly, with the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. I'll provide an overview of GO-Biz and then talk about TED or TED Task Force, the Energy Working Group and some of the actions that GO-Biz has taken to support the Executive Order. So just quickly an overview.

GO-Biz is the state's leader for economic development and growth here. There are many multiple units within GO-Biz that helps businesses to come to California and help them stay here. The Energy Units, which was created in 2021 with the first hire in 2022, was created to help, you know, advance critical infrastructure to reach our sustainability goals.

So we're not a regulatory agency. We're more of a facilitator and convener. And so, you know, we are participation in some of the working groups that I'll go through. That is mostly the function that we serve.

So in the TED, the Energy Working Group of the Strike Team, you know, in pulling together the clean energy permitting playbook and toolkit for to advance local permitting of clean energy projects and how we are helping to support and execute the Executive Order.

So the Tracking Energy development task force, aka TED, you know, as my colleague Ms. Sterkel mentioned earlier, it was came out of the Executive proclamation from 2021 that directed the inter agencies to coordinate more closely to increase supply to meet some of the extreme conditions that we are experiencing from climate change.

And so out of that came TED and GO-Biz jumped in and joined. And so it's an interagency staff task force. And what we do is that we track a lot of the generation projects under development to and monitor them and understand their progress, what issues that they are experiencing and try to help if we can.

So a lot of the projects under development, the list that we get come from the PUC, we take that and we organize regular meetings with the developers and, and other stakeholders to understand changes and what are some of the pain points and challenges and barriers that they are experiencing.

So, and from that information, a lot of it is qualitative and changes because during energy deployment it takes about four to five years from, you know, from the initiation of the project to it coming online, or sometimes longer, a lot of things may change.

They may experience a permitting issue at the beginning when they're trying to permit and site their project. And then there are other parallel processes that they are working on at the same time. For example, interconnection. So sometimes an interconnection problem may come up or it's a supply chain or it's transmission.

So depending on what problem we will, the TED Task Force will discuss internally and assign quote, unquote here to the agency that has the most authority or can be the most impactful in helping, you know, solve this problem.

So these are some of the ongoing activities that help us to monitor progress of these energy projects getting onto the grid. As you can see, some of it is ongoing. For example, the TED, regular meetings and ad hoc meetings with developers and stakeholders.

The monthly compilation that the public utilities work on pulling together the energy projects, what's come online and what's still under Progress. Also, as Mr. Millar and Ms. Durkel mentioned, there's the Biannual Transmission Development Forum that happens to review and provide updates and more transparency on transmission projects.

And a lot of the information that the TED collect through our engagement with stakeholders. A high level summary is provided in the SB846 quarterly report joint Reliability Report that is put out by the Energy Commission.

So we summarize what we've seen, what we're seeing, what the developers are reporting to us, as well as any hot topics or issues of concern that arise. For example, most recently its battery storage projects, large scale and fire safety. So the TED is somewhat different.

The makeup of the group is different than the Energy Working group of the Infrastructure Strike Team. So the Strike Team was created in 2023 and this was to an all agency work to help leverage federal funding through IRA and IIJA at that time to work more Closely together to help projects get those Funding.

And within the infrastructure Strike Team there are smaller working groups and energy is one of them.

So our task was to look at, you know, track federal funding available federal funding, share it with colleagues or state, other state agencies and also track what other projects, you know, outside of the state who are applying for these and how we can help support them either through support letters and other ways.

And through that we were also tracking generation projects, large scale projects to see where they are because these were relying on federal funding as well. And the makeup somewhat different, but very similar to the TED Task Force. The Energy Working Group includes the PUC, the Energy Commission, CAISO, GO-Biz as well as the Natural Resources Agency.

And the Governor's office also participates as well. Oops. So some of the actions, activities that we have taken since issuance of the Executive order, in compiling the eligible project list, we looked at everything, you know, based on the treasury guidance.

So anything one and a half megawatts or higher that will either be in construction or come online by 2027 or have been safe harbored, you know, we included all of those projects into the list. So anything that's going to come online between now and 2030. So far we have more than 200 projects on that list.

Some are contracted with PPAs and some are not. And many of them are in various stages of development, some are already in construction and some, you know, are still in the permitting process.

We have also conducted outreach as provided earlier by IEP convenings with the developers to understand more about their challenges and barriers and particular pain points in bringing these projects online.

Some of the things that we heard, you know, we've also collected through the TED Task Force in terms of, you know, it is permitting and siting approvals, it is interconnection problems, sometimes it's transmission capacity and you know, going forward we will continue to hold additional convenings with stakeholders to drill down further on some of these solutions or proposed solutions and see what is actually workable and what can be done now and what is more like a longer term solution and coordinate with the TED and the Energy Working Group and stakeholders to update that list.

Again, that list is dynamic. You know, we have categorized them in like medium and short term needs and once those needs are rectified or the problem goes away, it just, it goes onto our monitor list.

So we are still watching to see if there's anything else that happens and to make sure that it still comes online, but there is no immediate need. So then we can help service like the next item.

So the Executive order called out the GO-Biz to work more closely with local entities through our Clean Energy permitting initiative to explore additional ways that we can help local permitting processes.

Because a lot of these projects either go through the local permitting process or they go through the state opt in process, which is an alternative pathway for developers to permit their projects. When we started developing this, the opt in was just created.

And so what we recognized was that permitting was cited again and again through the TED task force. And that it was, that it was sometimes can cause a big delay in projects meeting their CODs.

And what GO-Biz did was initiate the permitting initiative to understand what are the pain points at the local level and talk to local planners about, you know, what opportunities do they see to help them streamline or improve their permitting of large scale projects, clean energy projects. And so we sent out some surveys.

I think we engaged through our surveys, focus groups, one on ones about 800 individuals, local planners, developers and community stakeholders as well to get an understanding of what they know about the process and how much more they want to know and how much and how do they want to engage in the process going forward and what are some of the things, if they had a wish list of they could what can help them improve their processes.

So from these findings we developed the Playbook, which is just a report out on what we did and what we had heard. And some of our survey results and the toolkit are some resources developed for local planners to help them improve their processes.

So I mentioned earlier that battery energy storage and safety was a big concern around, you know, for communities because of the fire that happened. A lot of the communities, what we saw were passing moratoriums on new builds.

And if you look at what we are expecting to bring online in the next few years, half of the state's portfolio consists of battery storage projects.

So if the cities are banning these projects and the state needs more of it for grid reliability, we looked at how can we help locals understand and get more comfortable with these types of projects. And also with evolving technology, there was also a big learning curve about how the technology works.

And so we developed model ordinances because we recognized that some of the localities didn't have an ordinance around battery storage build. And they were looking to develop one to help guide them, like what to look for. And so we pulled together a model ordinance for battery, solar and onshore projects.

We put together a checklist of what other counties that are a little bit more experienced in some of these areas, what they are looking for so that some of the counties who are now just starting to see these projects, they have a guide that they're not starting, you know, from scratch and other types of resources that they said would be helpful for them.

So going forward in response, what GO-Biz is planning to do to increase education and training and awareness at the local level to help permit these projects is we are going to be setting up the California Permitting Academy. So this is an intensive training program for local governments to apply and be a part of.

And not only is it increasing their education and awareness for these types of projects and other projects as well, but it is also to help them redesign some of their workflows and identify like real measurable reductions of how they can streamline and improve their processes.

And what we also recognize from some of the findings is that for large scale projects, I think a lot of time is spent in the application, the pre application. When an applicant is submitting their application to be reviewed by the planners, there's sometimes missing info or not enough and the back and forth takes a really long time.

And sometimes these gets, you know, they get rejected, they have to be reworked. And so what we're doing is that looking at possible ways to help shorten that timeline and, and, and help with the, the capacity issue at the local level.

Because some of these planners, they're not just looking at energy projects, but they're also looking at housing development and other type of new build as well.

So if we can help them shorten that time frame and, and help the developer file a more complete application so that when a human person comes to look at it, you know, they don't have to say this is incomplete, they can, you know, continue with it.

So we are partnering with the Governor Innovation Fellows to develop a knowledge bank of some of these like CEQA and mitigation measures and previous documents. So when they are submitting an application there is a library of resource that they can refer to and most recent ones and it's easier to find.

So that's one step and then the other is a, like a pre check application tool to help them, you know, using AI possibly to help scan that the application is complete before it goes to the planner for review to help shorten that timeline, thus reducing costs and savings time as well.

All right, well, thank you. Questions from Committee, some of em Members of her.

So one of the my big takeaways, which I think I sort of knew a bit about this already was just the risks that the state is facing in the elimination of tax credits and these deadlines that are coming up.

Very grateful to the governor's efforts and work to try to track this and help the state obtain, you know, the, the benefits of what is remaining before the Federal Government. I think the Governor described as taking a wrecking ball to our clean energy programs. I'm wondering if there's a, if you, if there's a way of understanding what.

The. Impact is to rate payers of the potential loss of some of this federal funding if we don't meet it. Is there, has that been captured any place? I know that's a difficult, it's a. Difficult. It'S a difficult question to answer because it's the way we regulate is in so many different places.

But I'm wondering if there's been any, any attempt to capture sort of the, what the state is risking losing and how that translates into affordability for ratepayers.

I can try to answer that. So the short answer is no, we have not done sort of a summary statistic for you which is I think what you're looking at. I can share with you that anecdotally we know that projects that are unable to avail themselves of the federal tax credit are going to be more expensive.

And when I say, and when I say that anecdotally the CPUC oversees the procurement of our investor owned utilities. So what we call the bundled ratepayers in a quite detailed manner. So we participate in reviewing the contracts for those bundled rate pairs.

So we do know that in the bid stacks that we see from developers, those who are able to receive the tax credits, you know, they're able to bid lower.

We also know that over the course of history when there is a situation like this where there's a potential tax change that usually that tax change risk is written into the contract between the developer and the off taker.

So you know, if at any time, you know, a tax credit goes away then the contract states what will happen if that's not to, you know, available.

So we do know that all of our loads having entities are trying to sign the contracts the best they can with all of the projects that are available that are still eligible for the federal tax credit. So those projects are definitely trying to come online within the dates that were mentioned by the earlier speaker.

And I think that the procurement orders of the CPUC are continuing to keep our load serving entities very interested in ensuring that they capture every project they can that has that advantage, that economic advantage at this time.

I guess one other question, and I apologize for asking questions that are so, so difficult to answer, do you have a sense of how on track the projects that are eligible for the tax credits that are expiring, they have these deadlines coming up, whether they're generally on track or are we falling behind?

Do we risk losing a lot of these projects being upended midway in the project because they're behind and they won't go online before 2029 and 2030, these deadlines?

I mean, I think that the developers are all keenly interested in keeping these projects moving forward, which is why Molly's phone never stops ringing. They're going to take every opportunity they can to talk to me, talk to her, talk to anyone who will listen to say, what can we do to keep these, these projects going?

And I know they're working hard at that. I mean, there are probably some number of projects that can fill in behind them. If certain projects just reach irreconcilable moments in their project development path, it's hard to estimate exactly how many those are.

There is a closing window of opportunity currently, as was described by the speaker earlier, if projects haven't started at a certain point, they won't be able to.

I mean, one thing we can say from the chart that I led with is that the momentum is very strong and the workforce here in California has been working very hard at a very high volume of projects for many years.

And so we definitely have the capacity to continue building a large amount of capacity in the short term, as if we were starting from zero, it would be much harder to predict success. But I think what I'm trying to say is we've had a good run rate head start. Thanks.

Well, I just want to close by thanking the governor's focus and all of your focus on trying to capture as much benefit for the state of California as we can. And I guess the last thing I'll ask is, is there anything in particular that we should be.

I mean, is there any additional authority that we should be focusing on coming from the states Legislature that would enhance our ability to capture this, capture the benefit of the funding that's being eliminated?

I'm not prepared with a suggestion today, but I can get back to you if we think of something. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. And, and I do want to say thank you to Ms. Sterkel for reminding us of the tremendous progress that we have made. I think it's important to remind ourselves of that as we confront the challenges that lay before us. So.

Okay, so the Executive order directed the Energy Working Group to submit a report within 90 days detailing the actions taken by the agencies, progress toward accelerating projects and recommendations for further steps. So when we were planning this hearing, I just assumed that report was what we were going to be reviewing.

I'm a little confused that that report has not been completed. So what's the deal with that?

Yeah, I'm happy to take that one. So on behalf of my colleagues, I can say that that report is in development, in review, and we hope to be able to share it with you shortly.

Okay. I believe, Ms. Molly, you said that there are about 200 projects that are on the list of projects that you're tracking, Is that correct?

There are more than 200 projects that we have identified as eligible. So pretty much anything within those parameters, anything that is one and a half megawatts and above.

So there are a lot of small projects and anything, any project that is going to COD, which is become commercially operable from now until 2030 because of the safe harbor you have that extra four years. And so within that universe, we've identified about 200 plus projects.

And do you know the total value of the tax credit?

We do not ask for that data point from developers. So a lot of this information comes from developers and that is something I think really difficult to pinpoint.

Okay. All right. And I guess I want to first acknowledge that I recognize that this is a shared priority and a shared area of focus, but I have a lot of concern about.

It feels like we've had the infrastructure Strike Team that's been working on this for five years, the TED Task Force, and now we have the Energy Working Group.

And my team actually reminded me that one of the first hearings that we held, you know, two years ago when I was chair of this Committee, I think the topic of it was who's on first? Like who's in charge? And I feel like that is a really important question for us to ask ourselves here.

So who is in charge of this Energy Working Group?

It's a joint effort between the agencies. So I think one of the differences between TED and the Energy Working Group is that TED is more of a staff level working group and Energy Working Group is more senior leadership and principals.

So the Governor's office, the senior Advisor for Energy, also participates on the Energy Working Group and provides, helps guide and provide direction to on priorities.

And I think again, I think my concern about sort of this kind of ownership by Committee and problem solving by Committee is that if everybody's in charge, nobody's in charge. And that is just kind of like Management 101. Somebody needs, if we're going to do something.

Somebody needs to wake up in the morning every morning and say, this is my job, and I am focused on making sure that this set of things happen. So maybe let me frame it another way. If there's disagreement amongst the energy working group participants, all of whom, as you say, are principals, who wins? Who makes that call?

Well, maybe.

Go ahead.

You know, I, I, I—a lot of what we have been doing is, you know, monitoring and overseeing progress on certain things.

And so, if there is an issue that needs to, that rises to the level of principles, then that gets, you know, worked out, you know, and, and discussed, like what is the best way to go about handling this bigger issue that staff has not been able to handle.

So, you know, going back to, you know, what I think Ted does sometimes, you know, in, in our regular engagement with the IOUs or developers and stakeholders is provide some accountability.

So, when a developer comes to us about an issue, we check in with the other side to understand like what's going on over there and back and forth and be that go between so making sure that this issue is not, you know, dropped.

But when there is sometimes a bigger issue, it is, you know, maybe that's not what you want to hear. Like there's not one person that says this is what we're going to focus on. But it is, you know, more of a discussion amongst, you know, principals about how do we best handle this and solve this problem.

Because it is a lot of times with energy, project development is just not one entity that has jurisdiction. It's the Caiso, it's the PUC, it's the Energy Commission. And so, I, I think sometimes, you know, governing in that way, sometimes it's, it's better to have everyone moving in the same direction.

It's...here, if I could maybe just chime in and add just one other aspect to that is that while a lot of this is done, I'll say with, through a Committee structure, we all have our own specific roles to play. So, the teamwork is effective when people are, I'll say, playing their positions.

We are definitely the ones responsible leading the transmission planning and interconnection process. So, if the issue falls there, that's elevated, that's causing a problem.

You know, people turn to us when it's the resource planning issue and about the portfolio development and what the targets are for the amount we're to connect, we turn to the CPUC. So, while there are these Committee structures, people are playing their positions on those committees and representing their responsibilities.

So, I, you know, I do hear what you're saying, but I also did just want to clarify that there are specific roles and responsibilities for the organizations there. Everyone isn't offering their opinion across the board on all, on all the issues.

Yes, and I will not, I won't, I promise I won't belabor the point, but I will note that 100% on a team, everybody has a role to play, but if you don't have a quarterback, you're not going to be very successful at moving the ball down the field.

And that, I just, I think, I feel very strongly like somebody needs to have a whiteboard with like these projects listed and like the key issues that are getting confronted like on a monthly basis and wake up thinking that that's their job to resolve them. I think Assemblymembers Zbur asked how much of this stuff is at risk?

I haven't seen the project list, so I don't know.

But based on the fact that we've had the TED Task Force, you know, created and operational for five years now, and we continue to hear report after report of years long delays and projects that are taking twice, more than twice as long as they were supposed to, I think we should all be very concerned about the risks attendant in this.

And like I said, this is not some abstract, oh, developers aren't going to get tax credits. This means like our ratepayers are going to be the ones that are shouldering the impact if we don't get this right.

So, I would just respectfully request to, you know, whoever's like, you know, making the call on this, like, I think you need to have somebody who's in charge of this and somebody who's able not just to convene people and bring people together, but be the arbiter and say, nope, this is the direction we're moving in.

So, that's, I'll, I'll leave it at that. Okay. Any other questions? Let's see. I think I have a couple of other unrelated questions. Oh, okay, let's see. Oh, yes, okay. I did have a follow up question, Ms. Sterkel.

Okay, so, the IOU responses to President Reynolds's letters on interconnection do reveal some progress, but also, I think reveal that there's quite a lot of work to do. So, beyond transparency, what are the next steps for the PUC, on that front?

Thanks very much and I appreciate your concern from your earlier remarks. So, the interconnection processes that we're discussing here today are subject to large generator interconnection agreements. These are for jurisdictional interconnection agreements.

But in recognition of the significant affordability impacts to California repairs, the CPUC has been convening our interconnecting utilities on a regular, I'll say even monthly, basis to discuss individual specific projects with each of our interconnecting utilities and ask them, you know—well, I will say we do not ask about every single project every month.

But we do look at key projects, projects that have experienced significant delays, that are at risk for delays, or projects that have come to us and said, hey, I might be at risk of a delay.

So, one of the key things that we're going to do in response to those letters is we're going to keep working in close collaboration with the utilities and continuing to look at the micro level at each project that may be experiencing an interconnection delay and discussing with the utility what they can do about it.

These utilities are—these projects, as everybody knows, they're big, they're complex. The utility portion of it is lengthy and long and it's really important that our utilities stay focused on being able to deliver that service, which the representative from Southern California Edison was describing that they understand is so important for them to be able to deliver.

And so, I think we have a—our role can be to continue to convene and support the utilities in delivering those services. Now, one of the benefits of staying in close contact with them about the micro level is that sometimes it does reveal like a macro level issue.

And those macro level issues might be something like the discussion you were having earlier about whether or not there can be self builds. Right? And so, that's a discussion that we have been having for several years, both on a project specific basis and then on a broader basis with utilities.

And I think where you see that conversation today is a lot more open to the idea than it had been several years ago. And now, we do have some occasional examples of where it can work.

But the idea is that it takes a lot of conversations to move things like that forward, and that that's just one example of self-build.

But it's also things like staffing levels, making sure that they have financing levels, making sure that their processes are working, but making sure they're sharing information with each other about the internal process improvements that they're, that they're making, so that they can learn best practices from each other, whether it be for specific technical standards or just even plain, you know, programmatic approaches to being able to do things faster, quicker, and more efficiently.

So, those are some of the things that we hope to do with those letters. And in providing the letters publicly, it gives you kind of a state of affairs. Those are the types of nitty gritty that we're working on. Thanks.

And just quick follow up. So, I think either explicitly or implicitly, and sometimes from the Legislature, we've told the IOUs to prioritize, you know, wildfire mitigation efforts and energization. Do you see there being a role for the PUC to also push for additional prioritization and recognizing everybody has way too many things to do as we race to achieve these truly amazing, incredible goals.

Do you see the PUC having a role to play in helping the IOUs also prioritize these very high priority interconnections?

I mean I think that we do have a role to support the utilities in making sure that they're doing—providing all of the services to provide safe and reliable electric service. And for sure, the utilities need to be able to do interconnection and energization and wildfire and safe delivery of everyday service.

So, I agree with you that they can do it all and that we should be there watching to make sure that they are.

Thank you. And then, just one final question, Ms. Molly. When we heard from Ms. McMahon and Ms. Fitzsimon, I think they both acknowledged the value that has come out of the working group and the value of the collaboration.

And I think they felt like there'd been—you had reached a shared understanding of the kind of issues and the problem statement. In their view, the next step is kind of move into solutions. Can you speak to that? What is—how do we get from a shared understanding of the problem statement to being able to actually move to solutions and help reach resolution?

We are planning to hold additional convenings and meetings on just to drill down on what are the possible solutions.

I think one of the things that kept coming up today is the self-build and so, you know, we have regular meetings with IOUS as well and we have brought this up with them and letting them know that we would like to have a deeper conversation about what this would take, you know, whether that is standardizing certain things or not.

But being able to explore that option because, you know, with this confluence of events, supply chain, everybody trying to electrify, if we don't find some relief or options now or solutions now in terms of the supply chain and this is just one aspect of it, then we're going to be continually in this problem, you know, having this problem long term.

So, you know, there, as the gentleman from SCE said earlier, every project's a little bit different. The IOUS, you know, their standards, reliability standards and safety standards are a little bit different. And so, it—and there is also liability concerns here if you are to take a third party, you know, equipment and put it in.

And so, those are some of the things that I think we can have a deeper and discussion and explore further about what the art of the possible here.

All right, well, thank you. Seeing no additional questions or comments from Committee Members, we will thank you so much for your time, for being part of today's discussion, and more importantly, for your work on this really, really critical issue for the state of California. Thank you. With that, we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment.

So, anyone who wants to provide public comment, please approach the microphone at this point. Please state your name and organization and then each witness will be given two minutes to speak. Thank you.

Is this on? Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Alex Jackson with the American Clean Power Association. You know, I don't envy the folks on this Committee. I think you hear from developers a lot about the challenges and barriers to deployment. I think we hear from the agencies about our incredible progress.

And I just want to try to marry those two together. I think both are true. We certainly venerate and celebrate the progress California has made. 30 gigawatts in the last five years is very impressive. No other region can really say the same. And yet, the scale of the challenge demands that we do a lot more.

And I think really now the timing and the urgency of these expiring federal tax credits should be a spur to help the state try to get out of its own way on some of these long standing challenges.

Assemblyman Zbur is no longer with us, but we ran some analysis on just how much ratepayer money is on the line with these tax credits expiring and it's upwards of $650 million per gigawatt. The PUC has a proposed decision on the street right now for 6 gigawatts of an additional procurement in that relevant time frame.

So, we're talking about a lot of money on the line and in the face of other cost drivers. You know, interest rates are not where they once were. Solar's going to start paying property taxes. So, this is really urgent and I think this is encouraging.

I welcome the sense of partnership to challenge to solve these issues, but we need to move past just reporting and transparency and monitoring. I think really prioritization matters, accountability matters. Yes, all these projects are their own snowflake, but the state has a lot to do with setting the terms of the weather and where the winds are blowing.

And we need to move towards deployment. So, I think there is additional role beyond just informational hearing if we're going to meet these timelines. Thank you.

Hi, Will Abrams with the Utility Wildfire Survivor Coalition. Thank you very much. Just wanted to pick up on an important point that Chair Petrie-Norris made earlier about sort of who's on first.

The thing that is sort of across the board associated with these projects, both the interconnection points as well as the battery stations, are these are high risk pieces of infrastructure where there's generally a diffusion of responsibility in terms of who's managing what and also from the regulatory standpoint, in terms of who's overseeing.

So, I just wanted to stress that point that really making sure that wildfire mitigation plans are integrated and that there's oversight regarding that so that we aren't having a point of failure that may start a fire. The 2019 Kincade Fire is an example of where transmission infrastructure can cause a fire.

And we've seen this over and over again. And when these fires occur, there's generally a who did it, well, it wasn't me, who's responsible.

So, I just wanted to emphasize the point that you made earlier that understanding who's got what on these different things and who's in charge is very, very important, both from a financing standpoint in terms of ratepayers and what they're going to be on the hook for, but also from a wildfire mitigation standpoint so that we make sure our communities are safe.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. Melissa Cortese on behalf of the California Wind Energy Association. I want to thank you for this hearing and thank your staff for the very thoughtful background paper which does notice the significant reduction of wind in the PUC's draft resource plan because of the elimination of the Federal Wind Tax Credit.

The PUC is assuming, contrary to 30 years of history, that the tax credit will never come back. And as a result, it's essentially locking wind out of the portfolio for the next decade. Instead, we've asked the PUC to factor in the strong possibility that the tax credits will be restored under a new Administration.

And if we don't plan for that possible future, we won't be able to access that, leaving—essentially leaving money on the table and raising costs for the state.

So, as this Committee looks to address some of the challenges in the future, we ask that you look for a more diverse portfolio, one that would include more in-state wind.

Excuse me. Madam Chair, Members, Mike Monaghan on behalf of the State Building Trades. Want to thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this hearing. Also thank your very competent staff for their work that went into this hearing. Madam Chair, we appreciate you're remaining committed to capturing these renewable projects as well as the tax credits for California. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Keith Dunn here. Always a pleasure to follow Mr. Monaghan. I'm here to speak on behalf of the District Council of Ironworkers. We have a lot of opportunities to talk about energy in our state. We appreciate this hearing. We spend time talking about supporting renewables.

We appreciate your efforts to make sure that we're capturing those benefits. You know, we have refineries here that are facing challenges. We want to make sure that we're keeping those open as well. A big part of that is this renewable portfolio, and we have to do everything we can to ensure that they have every opportunity to proceed.

We need all the energy we can get. We appreciate your leadership.

Good afternoon, Chair Petrie-Norris, Members. John Kendrick from the California Chamber of Commerce. Always a pleasure to follow up Mr. Dunn as well. So, you know, really appreciate this conversation because California's clean energy challenge today is less about goals and more about getting projects financed and built on real timelines.

We're in a race to commence construction, achieve operation to qualify for these federal tax credits. They're worth billions of dollars. As the Chair noted, those incentives materially lower project costs. So, whether a project meets that timeline directly affects consumer electricity rates. Permitting uncertainty and financing risk plague these projects right now.

Lenders and investors ask whether a project can predictably reach operation on a known schedule. Today in California, that's unclear. A project can secure a power contract and still face years of uncertainty navigating land use, CEQA review, interconnection, transmission upgrades across multiple agencies and jurisdictions.

Because these processes are interdependent, delay in any one step can halt financing for the entire project. When timelines cannot be forecast, investors price that as risk, which ultimately either kills the project or it leads to higher rates when the project is eventually developed. Cal Chamber has its ballot initiative "Building an Affordable California."

I think that can play a significant role in providing timeline clarity for project financing purposes. But also, the Legislature should take steps to improve predictability. That's clearer permitting timelines. That's better interagency coordination and alignment between planning and infrastructure delivery. So, California's energy transition depends on whether projects planned today can actually be constructed by the late 19—by the late 2020s, sorry, not 1920s. We appreciate the committee's focus on implementation and look forward to working on practical solutions. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Thank you so much for this hearing and the really thoughtful questions. Meredith Alexander, on behalf of the Coalition of Large Energy Users.

I just wanted to highlight, I thought there was a fantastic question from Member Zbur and from yourself about sort of the ratepayer impacts more broadly, about both the loss of the tax credits and new procurement that may need to happen in the midterm.

And I just wanted to highlight, since I know that most of you do not have the luxury of pouring through materials at the PUC on their proceedings, that some of us, many people in this room, have been very active in the proceeding that may culminate next Thursday in the Commission's decision to authorize new procurement.

And some of us, such as our coalition, have been requesting more analysis, both on ratepayer costs and trade-offs, and that there really has been a lot of robust stakeholder feedback on the procurement post 2030.

And so, again, just letting you know that that is, that that is there and also thanking you for your questions and for the hearing. Thanks so much.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Lillian Mirviss with the Large Scale Solar Association. We appreciate how this hearing brings to light the barriers that clean energy development is facing currently, especially for those ITC qualified projects. There's a really tight timeline for meeting those credits.

While interconnection is a focus of this hearing, it's important to note how much environmental permitting issues can delay project development.

I know it came up briefly today, but we just really want to make clear that even if an ITC project is on schedule to meet its place in service deadline, any new species petitioned under the California Endangered Species Act can delay a project.

A species could become a candidate under CISA in the 11th hour of the development for ITC projects, stalling construction and risking product ability to meet HR 1 deadlines. As we know, this translates directly to energy affordability.

We truly appreciate Chair Petrie-Norris's leadership on this topic and we're looking forward to digging into permitting and species issues in a future hearing. Thank you.

Thank you. So, I just want to thank everyone, once again, who participated in today's hearing. And before we wrap up, I think particularly in the face of what is truly an unprecedented federal assault on climate action and clean energy across the nation, I think it's very important for us to remind ourselves why we're doing this.

We have incredibly ambitious climate goals here in California. This is not a nice to have or the result of some legislative whimsy. This is a must have. And the reason for that is that the cost of climate inaction is incredibly expensive. So, climate disasters are dangerous. They're also incredibly expensive.

That's why California has long been a leader in building a clean energy future, because it's the smart thing to do for the planet. It's the smart thing to do for California's economy. It's also the smart thing to do for California ratepayers as we invest and clean energy sources to drive down costs across the state.

So, the stakes are incredibly high, and I think we all recognize that we don't deliver on these ambitious and important climate goals by talking about them. We deliver on them by getting steel in the ground and getting projects built.

So, once again, thank you to all of our panelists and look forward to continuing to work with all of you to ensure the success of these projects and many more to come. With that, we are adjourned.