Senate Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications

Alright. We will call this republicanless hearing to order in thirty seconds. We good? Okay. Alright.

Let's call this hearing to order of the Senate Committee on Energy Utilities Communications. We ask our colleagues to please make their way down here, our vice Chair and others, so that we can start the long and arduous process toward a quorum. We've got 12 bills on today's agenda. A lot to do. I wanna just announce that I agenda item number seven, which is AB 2200 by Assemblymember Hart is on consent.

And so that will be voted on on the consent calendar. Let's go ahead and start with our agenda. We have Tasha Burner who's here to present AB 353. We appreciate your, here you are.

Alright. To present AB 353. This is item one in your packets' numbers.

Yes. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members. AB 353 is about good governance and transparency at the CPUC. AB 353 would recast the existing office of the internal audit services at the CPUC and create the Inspector General position to oversee that office.

The office is responsible for performing key audits or so audits of key financial management operation functions within the Commission. Although the CPUC does have an existing internal audit office which was established in 2017, these reports are regularly not made public. The Office of the Inspector General is modeled after independent Inspector Generals that exist at other state agencies like the Department of Transportation and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The CPUC has a massive impact on our constituents' lives.

We should ensure that the legislature and the CPUC are well informed about the commission strength and deficiencies and to ensure that the office can recommend ways to ensure that there are no inefficiencies, waste or areas improvement.

With that, I respectfully ask for an aye vote at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Assemblymember, you're Nope.

This is a Tasha P special. That's me.

Okay. Nobody in support or in opposition. It's a lonely, lonely bill. But so many people here to watch it. There might be

some Comments. Anyone wanna avoid in support of the bill or opposition? Okay. Okay. A couple of friends.

Or or enemies. I don't know. Enemies? I know. What are we gonna get? Will Abrams from the Utility Wildfire Survivor Coalition in support. Okay.

There you go. Friends. Friend, foe, what what are we gonna do? Makes me nervous.

Oh, yes. Yes. Well

Tasha Hunt with Political Solutions on behalf of the California Water Association, respectfully in opposition.

We're happy to work with the opposition. Okay. Alright. Alright.

How about you? What's going on?

We're we're just met with someone.

Sorry. Josh Gogger on behalf of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in support. Okay.

Alright. Well, this were a World Cup game, it'd be two to one. Okay. Well, great. I appreciate your commitment to work with the opposition.

Any questions from the members, thoughts? We will Not at this moment. We'll entertain a motion when appropriate, and

I appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Great. Alright. Let's go to the woman of the day, majority leader, Adi r Curry.

Lots of bills here. Lots of bills in judiciary that are that are causing a lot of lot of lot of funds. You want you can present that one as well here if you like.

Oh, that would

be helpful.

You're gonna present AB 1776. We have the Senate member Aghiar Curry. Seven zero six. Sorry. Seven zero six.

At this point, you know, who knows? Good morning, Mister Chair and members. I'm accepting the committee amendments. AB 706 addresses a growing problem I've been working on since I started the Assembly in 2016. When I was a new member, we had one of the worst years of wildfire ever.

I represented six counties. At one point, every county was on fire. So many of us know the feeling of trying to help our communities stay safe during a wildfire crisis and then taking on the hard work of helping people rebuild their lives after. Wildfire mitigation work is important to help prevent wildfires from threatening communities and California's state agencies have recommended that we take on these projects.

For example, the California Air Resources Board 2022 climate change scoping plan calls for forest thinning and management of 2,300,000 acres of forest a year to reduce wildfire risk and restore healthier and more resilient forests.

So we're not talking about healthy trees here. We're talking about a 150,000,000 dead and dying trees and small underbrush that fuels wildfire and leads to much more catastrophic fires. Some of this wildfire mitigation will be done with prescribed fire but a lot will have to be done mechanically and will generate tens of millions of tons of forest biomass waste. This work is absolutely critical so we must figure out sustainable ways to use forest biomass.

Without using this waste productively, it will be piled and or burned to or left to decay as kindling during fire season.

Either way, it releases greenhouse gases. AB 706 supports getting more energy connected to the grid without adding additional cost to rate players. This bill does not mandate a specific amount of forest treatment or the technologies used to process the waste. It creates a fund. A fund that supports projects that help us sustainably use forest biomass waste that is created from wildfire mitigation and wildfire prevention efforts.

Having this funding available will help support these projects without increasing energy costs for everyday Californians. This bill will help reduce future emissions related to open burning and natural decomposition of forest waste and ultimately it will help increase energy reliability and resiliency in communities at greatest risk of losing power when we could have a repeat blackout threats. With me to testify in support of the bill is Matt Dias from CalForest and Scott Wetch from the Coalition of California Utility Employees.

We welcome you to come to the mic.

Good morning. Matt Dias, president and CEO of California Forestry Association. I'm here to strongly support the measure. I am really simply here to provide any assistance on technical questions that may relate to the natural resource portion of the bill. This is a missing piece of the wildfire prevention strategy that the state has been implementing now for ten years.

The state has heartily invested in wildfire prevention and recovery, and the and the biomass remediation efforts that are needed to fully implement those project is clearly a missing piece in that strategy. So strongly support the measure and urge our vote.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members, Scott Wetch, on behalf of a coalition of 10 unions within the wood products industry as well as the California Coalition of Utility Employees. Kew has a little more than 6,000 tree trimmers and vegetation management specialists out there every single day doing wildfire mitigation and trimming around our power lines. We literally have cut hundreds of thousands of trees since 2017. And when you go out and you see these sites, they're just massive piles of wood waste that is creating huge fire fuel dangers.

But in addition to that, it's just rotting and sending tons of carbon into the atmosphere. We hear about this every day. It also creates a lot of potential workplace safety issues for our crews that are out there because this stuff clogs the right of way, because there's simply no place to put it. For those reasons, we would urge an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Alright. Other folks who wanna wait in support?

Morning, Chair and members. Matt Klopfenstein on behalf of the Bioenergy Association of California in support. Of California in support. Thank you.

Morning, Mr. Chair. Mark Fenstermaker for the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts in support.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair members. Hunter Stern with IBW 1245 in strong support.

Good morning. Sean McNeal with California Community Choice Association in support.

Hello. Good morning. Audra Hartman on behalf of the California Biomass Energy Alliance in support.

Good morning. Cassandra Marr on behalf of Pioneer Community Energy in support. Thank you.

Jordan Wells on behalf of the California State Association of Counties in support. Thank you.

John Anderson with Humboldt and Mendocino Redwood Company. Strong support.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members. Sara Fitzsimon on behalf of the Independent Energy Producers Association in strong support. Thank you.

Good morning. Makayla Bird on behalf of the Nature Conservancy in a supportive amended position. TNC thanks the committee and the author for their work on this bill. We have three issues we need resolved to move to support on AB 706. Committee amendments addressed one of them and we look forward to working with the author's office and sponsors on the other.

Thank you.

Alright. Opposition. Anyone who wants to raise concerns about the bill? Come on up.

Good morning, Chair and members. Christina Scaringe with the Center for Biological Diversity. While we really appreciate the thoughtful analysis and the committee amends, we remain in respectful opposition. Biomass electricity is one of the most polluting and expensive ways to produce electricity in the state. There are other ways to address forest waste.

There's other ways to address community wildfire protections with technology we currently have. So we can protect communities and produce affordable truly affordable energy without creating this highly emitting polluting energy system. It's a poor investment for the state. Thank you.

Thank you. Other concerns?

What?

I'm Jacob Evans with Sierra California in for opposition. Thank you.

Marquis King Mason with Natural Resource Defense Council in respect for opposition. Thank you.

Alright. Let's bring it back to the committee for questions, thoughts from members. I do appreciate you accepting the amendments and you know obviously there's some disagreement over

do you want me to do a little bit, please?

You don't have to do anything about that.

Okay. Over the efficacy of some of this biomass work, but I I feel comfortable where where we've gone and have to happy to have you support the bill today.

So Great. Thank you very much.

We'll we'll let you close if no one else has questions and

I respectfully ask for your aye vote and I also have been notified by the Senator that she would like to be a co author of the bill.

Okay.

Senator Allen.

Great. Alright. Well, the desk will note. Alright. Well, we'll take we'll take that up for a vote when when appropriate.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much, Senator.

Okay. Alright. Okay. Let's now go to Assemblymember Rogers, who's here. He's here to present a couple of bills.

We've got AB1761 followed by 2,369 to electricity bills. You may start when ready. We'll start with item three in your packet. That's AB1761.

Alright. Well, good morning, Mister Chair and members. Here today to present AB 1761. For folks who have been around the community choice aggregator world for a while, you'll know that one of the constants since its implementation was the PCIA, also known as the exit fee, wherein which the CCAs and community energy has to compensate the investor owned utilities for the loss of their user base.

It's to make sure that we don't have stranded assets, but there is very little transparency or visibility into the calculation of the PCIA, which sometimes creates complications or creates less opportunity for CCAs and others to have an extended runway for addressing possible rate increases on our user base.

This bill is very simple. It doesn't, change the PCIA. It just gives greater insight, for those who rely on it, into what the methodology is going to be and into the calculations so that they can do better planning and better calibrating for our constituents to keep rates as low as possible. With me today, we have two witnesses. We have Katy Morsony, who is the general counsel for Cal CCA, as well as Howard Chang, who is the CEO of Ava Community Energy.

Good morning. My name is Katy Morsony. I'm Director of Policy at California Community Choice Association and a proud the proud sponsor of AB 1761. We thank Assemblymember Rogers for authoring this important transparency legislation. CCAs are nonprofit local government agencies that procure energy and capacity for their customers as an generation service provided by the IOUs.

There are 25 CCAs serving over 15,000,000 customers. The state law authorizing CCAs requires that customers departing IOU bundled service pay their fair share of legacy power cost and that bundled customers are not harmed by the departure of customers to CCAs. The PCIA charge is designed to ensure that this indifference is achieved. While CCA customers pay the PCIA charge, we do not have access to all of the data used to calculate the charge, including the market price benchmarks or MPBs developed by the CPUC. MPBs are a key input to the PCIA.

Additionally, in certain instances, the IOUs have opposed CCA requests for additional PCIA data. This limits the ability of CCA consultants to assess the impact on CCA customers of proposed changes to the PCIA, audit for potential errors, and forecast future rates. AB 1761 would ensure that CCAs and other customer advocates are able to access all data informing the PCIA and any proposed changes to the PCIA. In 2025, the CPUC adopted sudden and major methodological changes to the MPB.

The CPUC did not calculate the rate impacts of the change on customers, and the CCA consultants did not have access to the data needed to forecast the impact of these changes.

The result was a substantial increase in PCI rates on short notice. AB 1761 would have ensured the CCAs had information they needed to manage the potential rate shock of such changes in the future. Finally, I'll note that AB 1761 does not seek to change the CPUC's decision on PCI methodology or calculation. It also does not seek to change the CPUC's existing confidentiality practices and would continue to protect market sensitive information. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Yes, sir.

Good morning. Thank you, Assemblymember Rogers, for your leadership on this bill, and thank you, Chair Allen, members of the committee for allowing me the opportunity to speak today. My name is Howard Chang. I'm the CEO for Ava Community Energy, and we're the CCA that serves Alameda and San Joaquin Counties. We represent 18 municipal members across the East Bay and Central Valley and provide electricity generation services to over 2,000,000 Californians. I want to highlight three reasons why AB 1761 is important from my perspective.

Number one is, first, I acknowledge that PCI is a pretty wonky topic and not a topic that your everyday consumer really understands, but it is on the electric bill for over 30,000,000 Californians. So that's across all IOU and CCI customers. For Ava Community Energy customers, we've seen the PCI range from 5% to 40% of overall generation related costs. So the scale and the magnitude of PCI's impact is meaningful and therefore is important from an affordability perspective.

Number two, the process they had said in the PCI is quite opaque. The IUs have an annual cost recovery process. The CPUC sets the PCI and passes it on the rate payers and ultimately the underlying pricing inputs and data and calculations are oftentimes not well understood, and CCAs are left to go through a time intensive and costly process to seek that data, annually. Right now, as I stand before you, we have a Public Records Act request to the CPUC that's been outstanding for over five hundred days related to the PCIA proceeding from last year.

Lastly, I just want to share that transparency is really critical for a load serving entity like ours to be able to set and forecast costs going into the future. So, we really want to be able to advocate effectively for our customers.

We want to correct errors, which do occur time and time again due to the complexity and data driven nature of these various proceedings. We want to be out there to be able to manage these risks, hopefully mitigate these risks, and in turn, manage and mitigate costs effectively for our customers annually. So, in conclusion, just want to share that the PCI is a really important tool to ensure that all customers are treated fairly, both IOU and CCA customers.

And we believe that timely, consistent, and protected access to data is really critical. AB 1761 should help to enable that. So thank you for your time. I'm happy to take any questions directed to me.

Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Other folks want to wait in support of the bill?

Will Abrams with the Utility Wildfire Survivor Coalition in support. Thank you.

Craig Schuler on behalf of Clean Power Alliance in support.

Josh Gaugher on behalf of the boards of supervisors of the counties of Santa Clara, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz in support.

This is Cassandra Mar on behalf of Pioneer Community Energy in support. Thank you.

Jaelson Dantas on behalf of the San Diego Community Power in support.

Miles Horton with Sonoma Clean Power in strong support.

Alicia Priego on behalf of the City of San Jose and San Jose Clean Energy in support.

Vince Wiraatmadja with MCE in support.

Good morning. Marissa Hagerman with TrattenPrice Consulting registering support for Central Coast Community Energy 3CE in support.

Jordan Wells, on behalf of the California State Association of Counties, in support. Thank you.

Leila Romero, on behalf of the Rural County Representatives of California and League of California Cities, in strong support. Thank you.

Matt Klopfenstein on behalf of the Clean Energy Alliance in support. Thank you.

Isha Iyer on behalf of the City Of San Mateo, the City of Belmont, and the Town of Hillsborough in support.

Morning, Mister Chair. Mark Fenstermaker for Valley Clean Energy and for West Lake Energy, which was formerly known as Peninsula Clean Energy until just yesterday in support.

Hello. Allison Hilliard with the Climate Center in support.

Good morning. Cheryl Spradling, wildfire survivor in support.

Susan Estes, wildfire survivor in support.

Thank you. Alright. Let's go to opposition. Anyone who wants to raise concerns about the bill?

Good morning, Mister Chair and members. Brady Van Engelen here on behalf of Southern California Edison in opposition to to this bill. First, I just wanna clarify that this access is made available, a PUC decision did make this information available to all parties to all load serving entities. However, the catch there is that you have to come under PUC oversight when you access this information, which is something that apparently is not tenable to the proponents of this bill.

So what we think it's appropriate that that oversight be subject to PUC oversight, you know, that piece is not something that I guess is something going to be considered here.

You know, furthermore, the information itself that, you know, one of the key concerns we have here is that this information could put markets instead of data into the public realm. That markets instead of data is often what's used to inform our long term procurement contracts. If those long term procurement contracts are undermined, and we're not able to competitively bid for those contracts, it will actually drive up affordability for us as we're not able to procure energy at the best available rate.

So we do have a concern that this would actually negatively impact our ability to deliver the best rates possible for our customers. Thank you.

Okay. Yes, sir.

Morning, Mr. Chair and members, Joe Zanze with San Diego Gas and Electric. Just to align my comments with my colleague from Southern California and his opposition. Thank you.

Alright. Seeing no other comments from anyone else, let's bring the bill back to the committee for questions. We'll go to Senator Becker.

Thanks. I just want to thank the office, support transparency, like to add as co author at the appropriate time if it's possible and I appreciate your work on this.

Okay. We'll give you the opportunity to close. Oh, I'm sorry.

No. That's okay. No worries. Question. So the bill will make all data serving as a basis for a proposal or analysis of a calculation methodology for any charge imposing new customers of a load serving entity to recover specified cost available to LSCs and rate payer advocates.

What right now, what market sensitive information is of concern?

Are are you asking me which market?

If you can ask, yes. I can

Yeah.

The opposition is is talking about this data and I know you folks wanna make it completely available. So what what is what what market sensitive version is really of concern at this point? Because it says that it's readily available. They can request it except for the fact that there's been the gentleman spoke that the data has been there's been a public records request, but there's been over five hundred days of delayed in providing that information.

Yeah. I I actually I think you've just got directly back to the answer, which is there's a difference between being able to request and and a requirement to give. And you have folks who can request it. They get denied. You have folks that can request it, and then it takes five hundred days far beyond the useful period for trying to determine for your rate payers whether or not this has been appropriate, first of all.

And also, second of all, it's too delayed and too late to be able to use that for forecasting to try to actually lower rates for folks or to mitigate the impact of something that's coming. But I can also look to to some of our witnesses if you want some specifics on what types of information we're talking about.

I do, that's exactly what I'm looking for. So what exactly what what kind of data are we are we talking about that's sensitive?

So in in the particular example that I provided, this is related to resource adequacy data that was part of the PCI proceeding last year. The data that we actually requested was not market protected market market sensitive data. So it was older data that was historical data that is going beyond the protected timeframe. With that said, there is data that is within a protected timeframe that we are seeking as part of this process.

But as part of this bill, we are wanting to and seeking to address those concerns by ensuring that market sensitive data continues to remain protected.

There are current processes that ensure that's the case with confidential consultants that we may utilize and such. So we think we have addressed those concerns, but just specifically we are seeking data in many cases that is not market sensitive or protected and in some cases is and we want to make sure the right protections and controls are in place for for that that type of data.

So for a layman's person, you know, for the general public who is not familiar with the with the with this area of expertise, what example would be sensitive such as what? What?

In general, it would be recent data. So in some cases, if you're seeking data, let's say, older than three years, it's sort of historical and no longer sensitive to current market conditions. And in other cases, that energy data, whether it's renewable energy data or resource adequacy related data, If it's recent, it could be considered protected in that case.

Okay. So let me go to my next question. Maybe this might be helpful. Does the CPUC have existing privacy protections that could help shield that information? And how is this type of sensitive information handled in other areas?

Yeah. So the CPUC does have existing privacy protections. There was a proceeding, I believe it's D 606,066, that addressed confidentiality practices and the protection of market sensitive data, among other things. And in that process, there was adoption of a nondisclosure agreement, a model nondisclosure agreement between, the IOUs and, LSCs or others that are seeking that data as well as a process for how market sensitive data would be protected. That proceeding, established, a role known as a reviewing representative.

That is someone that is outside of the market participants. So in this case, the CCAs are the market participants. A reviewing representative is a lawyer or other consultant hired by the CCA that, has restrictions on the role that they can play. They cannot also be, representing other market participants. They also have to sign a fairly strict NDA on their use of the data.

That NDA, covers how the data can be used. It can also it also covers how it should be disposed of at the end of a proceeding. It also covers the potential violations of that NDA and what could occur if they did not represent and protect live up to the requirements of the NDA, and not protect the market sensitive data.

And so the CCAs themselves under this bill would not receive the market sensitive information, only these third party reviewing representatives who would be limited in how they can use that information and also in how they're representing that information back to their clients. It has to be sufficiently rolled up and masked so that they are not providing any market sensitive information.

I still don't understand what the sensitive data is, but I can try and address that as well. You know, the PCIA has a lot of inputs to determining that charge. Some of them are calculated by the CPUC, the market price benchmark, and that is market cost for resource adequacy as well as for the market cost of, RPS or renewable portfolio, products. Also, there's information related to, the different resources that are making up the fleet, run by the IOU.

So it could be procurement data related to what they've gone out to the market to procure and how those resources are performing.

I think the thing that I would note here that's, important to keep in mind is that the IOUs are passing cost of their procurement portfolio, for bundled customers onto you know, it was they're maintaining the indifference, but it's a charge on the LSCs, the CCAs and the ESPs. So it's IOU cost, being charged by or charged to the CCAs and ESPs. There's no cost going the other way. This is, you know, going back to the IOUs.

Okay. That's more helpful for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblyman, for bringing this forward. I I'm assuming that the outcry from the general public, rate payers, that they have no idea what's going on. And because they're always concerned about the the rising cost of services and concern is that light gonna be turned off. It's gonna be off for how long or whatever. But to zero in on why, and I think this is what we're talking about, transparency, disclosure.

And, is this the outcry that you received and that's why the purpose of, 1761?

Yeah. So I'll tell you, I've served on a board of directors for CCA for Stomach Clean Power when I was a city council member and a mayor. And that was a a frequent concern that we heard from folks, even folks who are supportive of moving in a cleaner energy direction, that they didn't understand what the PCIA was. And that actually having that show up on their bill created some confusion about, well, didn't I just opt into this other? Why am I paying this additional fee?

Right? And in fact, most of the CCAs that I've talked to go through pretty extensive lengths to try to educate the public on what that actually is. It's worth noting California, I think, is the only state that doesn't have an end date for the PCIA. We're not asking for that.

What we are asking for is more transparency so that when your local government officials who make up the board of directors for these CCAs do run into folks in the garbage area, excuse me, in in the grocery store that they have the ability to say that it's a transparent process, that they do have some level of oversight, that they are able to do better planning for what the future is going to bring rather than just having to be reactive when they're told what the PCIA is going to be.

I think the bill takes us in that realm of transparency and accountability. So I certainly appreciate it and I'll move it at appropriate time.

We still don't have a quorum, but we certainly are will entertain the motion. I'm happy to support it. So with that, we'd love to give you the chance to offer close.

Just I respectfully request, an aye vote, and I appreciate all of you for digging in on the policy.

Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Selena. Let's go on to your next bill.

That's AB 2369, which involves some of the same characters.

At least a little bit. Yeah. It's it's all, you know, a a friendly circle.

Yes.

Yeah. So, yeah.

In fact, there's no unfriendliness to this one, I suppose. It's true. Yeah.

So 2369, actually, I'll start with what the problem was that that we helped identify. And that's that particularly in rural communities, it's really hard to get the transmission planning approved because a lot of the process between CA ISO and the CPUC requires projects to have been proposed there. And if you are not - if you don't have the adequate infrastructure, nobody is going to propose a project in a region.

Creates this chicken in the egg where an area, that otherwise has been identified by the jobs first initiative as being able to do geothermal and offshore wind and other types of renewable energy, doesn't have the infrastructure to actually support it. And because you don't have proposed projects, you don't end up planning for the infrastructure to be able to support it either.

Part of that is because the deliverability of that energy needs to be able to meet peak load and get down to LA, frankly, at the right time of the year when you could have, as other states do, energy only assets that aren't deliverable in energy but could be used to, for instance, charge a battery.

So, what this bill does is it allows for the CPUC to start to begin the planning process for those energy only projects that could start to fix this problem around transmission planning and infrastructure planning. It's worth noting that there's nowhere North Of The Delta in the state of California that has adequate transmission to be able to do any renewable energy projects. And this bill would start to unwind that chicken and the egg.

With me to talk a little bit more about that is Miles Horton who is with Sonoma Clean Power.

You heard him on the last bill, but now he gets to talk for two minutes.

Thank you, Assemblymember, and thanks for your leadership on this bill. I think you pretty much said it. I'll just be very brief, but you'll see in the diorama that you have in your hands that this shows basically where new resources can interconnect to CA ISO. A new solar farm or battery or whatever can interconnect and have, like the Assemblymember said, deliverability. And basically, the entire state is functionally off limits to most new clean energy currently.

But these energy only resources can still interconnect virtually anywhere. And so we need to find ways to get more value out of energy only resources if we're gonna meet our climate goals and if we're gonna get cheaper, newer resources faster and if we're gonna maintain reliability. And that's what this bill is all about. So, thank you so much. Really appreciate your consideration.

Thank you. Okay. Other folks who wanna voice support. Hi there.

Good morning. Christina Scaringe with the Center for Biological Diversity and support.

Thank you.

Good morning. Graciela Castillo-Krings, here on behalf of the Abundance Network, in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jaelson Dentas, on behalf of San Diego Community Power, in strong support.

Sean McNeal with the California Community Choice Association in support.

Mikayla Bird, on behalf of the Nature Conservancy, in support. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Opposition: anyone who wants to raise concerns about the bill? Okay. We'll go to the committee.

Senator Becker.

Again, I wanna thank you for your work on this. I know this, and it's a section from bill I did a couple years ago, trying to work on this improving transmission planning. So, I'm hopeful I'll certainly be supporting the bill today. I'm hopeful that this be helpful. We certainly need to do whatever we can to to improve this process.

So, I thank you for your work. Please support. I'll move the bill when appropriate.

Okay. Other questions, thoughts from the members? Yeah. Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you. So, basically from my notes, I understand that the CPUC already has the authority to do this. Why do we need the bill to be able to pursue your intent?

So, I think similar to the last one, it goes back to what do they have the authority to do versus what are they actually doing. And for me, when I talk with my my district, I joke about this all the time with them, I have three blue counties, two State of Jefferson Counties, and the only thing that they agree on is that Sacramento doesn't care about them. And so whether the CPUC has the ability to, they still aren't.

And what we are trying to do is make sure that in rural communities that already feel left behind and continue to be feeling left behind by the way that the process is designed for infrastructure and transmission planning, that this compels the CPUC and CA ISO to actually account for what we can do in those communities and start to plan for a future that involves them in the state, being able to have those good jobs, have clean energy, because right now they're completely left out.

Okay. Do we do you know why the CPUC hasn't already done this?

Like, I think kind of as I explained, it seems to be from our understanding a chicken and the egg, where CA ISO really wants to put the limited transmission planning into the areas that have proposed projects. Totally get that. But if that's all you're doing is putting transmission in infrastructure in proposed projects, those are the areas that already have some level of transmission and infrastructure.

And so, therefore, nothing gets proposed elsewhere, and then you wouldn't plan for the infrastructure there if you're prioritizing based on where it's being proposed. This tries to break that cycle.

Got it. Now I get it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Any other final comments or questions? I'll let you close.

No. I think that that was basically a close. So, thank you so much for caring about rural communities and this forward.

Yep. Happy to support. Alright. We'll take that up for a vote when we have a quorum. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Let's go to Assemblymember Pacheco; they are here. Yeah. Come on up to present item six.

This is AB 2124. And you may present when ready.

Thank you. And good morning, Mister Chair and senators. I am here to present AB 2124, the Ratepayer Protection Act. I wanna thank the committee for their hard work on this bill, and I will be accepting the committee's amendments. Californians are feeling the squeeze of rising utility bills.

Electricity rates in California surged by about 47% from 2019 to 2023, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office, nearly three times the rate of inflation. For low income households, these increases aren't just numbers. They're kitchen table decisions about how to make ends meet. And right now, nearly 25% of every dollar Californians pay for energy goes to legislative mandates rather than their core energy service.

AB 2124 requires the California Council on Science and Technology to evaluate the efficacy, cost impacts, and overall effects of each proposed legislative mandate affecting electric and natural gas customers before a vote and legislative policy committees.

AB 2,124 gives the legislature the information needed to properly weigh policy proposals that affect California's utility bills. And with me to speak in support of the bill is Kent Koss, regional vice president of external relations for SoCalGas and SDG and E.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. Kent Kause on behalf of SDG and E and SoCalGas in support of AB 2124. We've been raising the issue of affordability for the last decade and appreciate the legislature's renewed interest in this topic in the last year or so. I'd point out about a year ago a well respected consulting firm issued a report indicating 37% of IOU rate payer rates are driven by mandates.

AB 2124 simply seeks to inform the legislature of the cost impacts for new policies that are under consideration. It does not in any way impact or slow down such proposals, but it just allows you as policymakers to be informed of the decisions you make and the impact on rates. Right now, the fiscal analysis only looks at the impact to state agencies to implement or regulate whatever the program is. Nothing is done to look at what the ratepayer impacts are.

This is our third attempt at this policy, and we respectfully ask for your support on AB 2124.

Okay. Thank you. Other folks want to weigh in support?

Mr. Chairman and member Scott Wych, on behalf the California Coalition of Utility Employees and the State Association of Electrical Workers in support. Thank you.

Good morning, Valerie Turella, Pacific Gas and Electric Company in strong support. Thank you.

Good morning. Lynn Trujillo with Southern California Edison in support.

Dylan Finley on behalf of the California Large Energy Consumers Association in support.

Great. Thank you. Folks wanna weigh in opposition, any concerns? No? We'll go to the committee for questions, thoughts.

Senator McNerney?

Well, I think the author and thank you for working with utilities and the committee. Just my question is a concern about the metrics that are going to be used in making this analysis. How much of that analysis actually prescribed or how much is it gonna be in the hands of the agency to decide how to measure the cost benefits or the cost of of these legislative proposals?

This version of the bill has the California Council on Science and Technology doing it, and they would figure out those ramifications. And it's also an issue that we're continuing to talk about in advance of this bill being heard in the probes hopefully in a couple of weeks. But right now, it's left open for them to figure out. But the the proposal is based on what is done on the CHBURB side where UC Berkeley does it, does the analysis.

But over the last couple of years discussing this, CCST has been the identified source for the new reporting.

So basically, it's it's an unanswered question at this point.

Yes.

And I mean, there are opportunities for bias one way or the other in the results.

Yeah. And that's why CCST was chosen because they're viewed as a non biased

CCST. That that's a good organization. Yeah. Alright. That was my question.

I'll I'll yield back to the Chair.

Great. Thank you all for tackling affordability. Just a couple of questions. What and certainly under you know, agree with you on trying to understand the important, you know, the the impact of bills that we're voting on. Does the CCST have the required expertise?

Why not you why not some entity like the PAO, that we already have?

I'll let my witness testify.

That was identified last year's version. We're really open to suggestions on who, which is the discussions led to CCST this year.

Okay. I guess the concern would be about the delay. I mean, could if there's a bill somebody doesn't like, could it get just stuck in endless delays? Like, how are we gonna get you know, these bills are obviously changing very quickly. We've had we have bills today that just changed last night.

How are we going to get the analysis back in time to vote on the bill?

So we're hoping that the process will be similar to the CHBRAB process, which so far has been successful. And that's why we're we're doing this bill similar to the CHBRAB process over in the health committee.

Okay. I'm not super familiar with that process. What what is that that process there?

The Chair of the committee would determine the analysis process. So if the Chair chose not to do one for that particular bill because of timelines or anything else that you're referring to, The Chair has that in their discretion.

Okay. And then this sort of similar idea has been vetoed a couple times before. What's what's different about this bill?

It has not been vetoed. It's been held on suspense.

Okay.

Twice. And we believe and it passed out of your committee last year. We believe that time is right given 37% of our rates today and people are talking about affordability, it should better inform policymakers. So it hasn't been clear to us why it's been held up in suspense. It's a very small dollar amount assigned to this analysis.

Okay.

Well, I I just And I'll

just clarify. It was held in Assembly approach year one. Last year, it was held in Senate approach. So it hasn't even been the same house where it's been held either.

Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I and I'm not on the preparation for me, so I I don't know why it was held, but I imagine it was served maybe some concerns about the implementation.

So I think that's just we got to think about how this would actually work in practice, but I think that's what we'll be thinking about today. So thank you. That's the end of the question. Thank you.

Yes, Senator Archuleta.

Thank you, Assemblymember for bringing the bill up. Obviously, we're we're obviously working towards affordability, accountability, and, but it also mentions that we, the legislators, will be able to be part of this, process to see why and when and how these things are happening. And do you see that as a process that was brought to you because it's necessary to go ahead and help the rate payers?

Yes. It would help the rate payers because the legislators can then make decisions based on all the information that they can obtain as to how legislation may impact the rate payer.

So it just wouldn't be the utilities. Correct. Just mandate we're gonna do this without us participating.

Without with with the legislators participating.

Another layer of protection.

Correct.

Very good. Very good. Thank you.

Senator Shobo.

Sorry. I just have to I love this. Thank you. And I think most members on our side of the aisle who love this. But I could see why this would be killed every single time in appropriations because the legislature does not ultimately want to say, hey, you know, let's face the facts and how costly this mandate will be to to the to the rate payers or to Californias and consumers as a whole.

And I think it's one of the things that as Republicans we've been barking on is a lot of this legislation does impact the cost of living overall. And so it's smart that we would have a Democrat carrying this bill because it really should be on our side since we don't have. We're the super minority and the majority always has the opportunity to pass any legislation that you folks really really value. And so I'm incredibly grateful for this with with this particular bill.

I would love to be added as a co author if possible and wish you the very best in appropriations.

Thank you. Alright. I'll

give you the chance to close.

Thank you and thank you for this opportunity to present this very important bill. As they say, third time's a charm and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Excellent. Alright. We will I'll have a vote when we have court.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Let's go to Assemblymember Schultz who's rushed over from Assembly Public Safety. How's it going on over there?

Yeah. Oh, we're going.

Okay. Alright. Thank you for making the trek from our

Of course.

Historic capital. You may proceed. We we've got a item 1787 sorry. Item 5AB1787.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Colleagues, today, I am pleased to present Assembly Bill 1787, and I'd like to thank the committee staff for their work on this bill. Before going any further, I will gladly note that we will be accepting all proposed committee amendments as described further on pages ten and eleven in the committee analysis, which was incredibly well written.

In summary, AB 1787 requires the California Public Utilities Commission to require the three investor owned utilities to offer a dynamic rate option to customers if the CPUC has approved upgrades to the IOU's smart meter infrastructure on or after January 1, 2027. Smart meters are, of course, the enabling technology for dynamic rates.

A dynamic rate option rewards customers who can be flexible with their electricity usage to reduce consumption during times of peak demand by shifting usage to times when renewable and low carbon resources are low cost and abundant. By making voluntary adjustments, customers on dynamic rates can reduce their own electricity bills and help all customers save money collectively by avoiding the high costs associated with meeting peak demand needs and help avert grid reliability events.

I will note that dynamic pricing is not a new or novel concept. Not only has the committee heard this before, and thank you for passing it out last year. I will note that dynamic rate pricing has also been implemented in the states of Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and the European Union. In the state of Illinois, dynamic pricing has been shown to reduce electricity bills even for low income customers.

And in The Netherlands, another jurisdiction that has dynamic rate pricing, price informed customers have been, have been able to be, have been paid to charge their electric vehicles, as noted in the Wall Street Journal. Under 1787, no one would be forced to be put on a dynamic rate. I wanna emphasize one more time. No one would be forced to go down this route and utilize a dynamic rate.

It would simply be an option that a customer, either residential or commercial, could elect to pursue. AB 1787 provides high level guidance to the CPUC to ensure a fair implementation of dynamic rates and to prevent cost shifts. Many of the details of the tariff would be developed by the CPUC in their rate design process. I hope that the committee amendments that I have agreed to today will address the concerns of the IOUs.

However, and I'd like to make this point clear, I will continue to work with opposition, should the bill move forward today, in hopes of resolving any outstanding or remaining concerns. With me today to speak in support of the bill is Tiffany Phan on behalf of the California Energy Demand Management Council, as well as Rebecca Lee on behalf of NRG Energy who can also provide technical assistance. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Morning, Chair and Members. Tiffany Phan on behalf of the California Efficiency and Demand Management Council, or CEDMC. CEDMC is a trade association representing a wide range of companies that provide energy efficiency and demand response services and products in California.

As the author noted, dynamic rates is not a new and novel issue. The Senate Office of Research documented back in 2001 in a memo that real time pricing is widely regarded by economists and energy experts as an essential long term solution to balancing hourly supply and demand for power in the state.

The mechanism is straightforward. Customers are metered for their actual hourly consumption and charged a rate that reflects the true wholesale cost of electricity at that hour. This gives customers a direct incentive to shift usage away from peak demand periods when power is most expensive and the grid is most strained. CEDMC urges your vote your aye vote on 1787. Thank you.

Thank you. Rebecca?

Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. Rebecca Lee on behalf of NRG Energy. As a retail provider, we offer hourly dynamic pricing to business retail customers in California today. And so for many years, since the rollout of the utilities first generation smart meters, we've seen medium and large businesses take advantage of hourly dynamic rates, and they're also known as market index rates. And it has helped them yield savings on their energy bills.

And so this bill would broaden that benefit and allow more customer types to take advantage. Now more than six month out of the year, because of the abundant renewable development in the state, we're seeing wholesale energy cost about 60 to 70% less for during the day during times of renewable over generation. So if that cost differential can be reflected on the retail rate structure, it provides a tremendous opportunity for customers to use that energy that would otherwise goes to waste. With that, urge your aye vote.

Alright. Anyone else who wants to weigh in support?

Good morning. Shant Apekian on behalf of the Alliance for Retail Energy Markets in support.

Jordan Wells on behalf of the California State Association of Counties in support. Thank you.

Brandon García with Advanced Energy United in support.

Jakob Evans with Sierra Club California in support. Thank you.

Chair and Members. Jael Dantas on behalf of the San Diego Community Power. We're moving to a neutral position. We really appreciate the author's office for working on that with us with some concerns related to preserving existing data pathways from the IOUs to CCAs. Thank you.

Sean MacNeil with California Community Choice Association. Also neutral position, but wanted to thank the author and the staff for the hard work in getting us to that spot. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Folks who want to raise concerns about the bill, opposition?

Good morning, Members of the Committee, Mr. Chairman. Valerie Turella with Pacific Gas and Electric Company. I wanna thank the author and his staff and the committee for the work on this bill. Oh, okay. Where do we begin? First of all, I want to talk about what is novel and what is not novel.

There are two components of our rates, generation and distribution. What is being, we believe, proposed here under a timeline is what the IOUs are piloting with partners of the CCAs of real time pricing or hourly pricing for both your generation and your distribution. That is what is being tested. So I want to try to... Maybe the bill doesn't pertain that way. We read it as such.

So we would also say that the tie in the bill to smart meter decisions we think is inappropriate. Smart meters are providing benefits in the technology today that are offering our customers these types of pilot options, and future decisions shouldn't be held to these rate offerings when smart meters, even in the next generation, would have benefits widely beyond these types of hourly pricing products. For those reasons, we are opposed. Thank you.

Good morning. Mr. Chair, members. Brady Van Engelen here on behalf of Southern California Edison in respectful opposition to the bill. First, I just want to thank the author for the work that, you know, as this bill's progressed along the way, the continued work we've had working with that office. One thing I just want to clarify right from the get go is that, you know, we aren't opposed to dynamic rates.

We've had a pilot in the field for a while. We totally get it and, you know, we're fully supportive of the notion of dynamic rates. However, the you know, as I say, the devil is in the details here. There is a provision in the bill.

I believe committee amendments may address this or the at least the committee analysis may address this, but there is a provision in the bill, Specifically, it talks about providing information from the smart meter directly to the customer, which creates a significant cybersecurity concern for SoCal Edison.

We can't have a third party device communicating directly with our system. It simply cannot happen. That creates a significant grid concern for us and an overarching concern that extends well beyond just that customer and the benefits that they may receive.

So to address that and to ameliorate that concern, we would have to effectively build a bespoke, communication network between that device and our system to kind of buffer and provide a layer of firewall, if you will, between our system and that third party system and our device. The language in the bill in print did note that this would come at no cost to the customer.

And again, I believe committee amendments may effectively address this concern, but that's kind of the textbook definition of a cost shift right there. When you provide a, you know, a benefit to a customer at no expense to them and it comes out that expensive the larger rate base, it creates a cost shift, which, you know, obviously is a concern for us, something we've been trying to address over the years through a variety of different measures.

But, you know, if we can do anything to address this here, that would be very much appreciated. You know, to that end, I guess I look forward to working with the author as this bill progresses but you know, hopefully that the cybersecurity concern can be addressed here. Thank you.

All right. Other folks want to raise concerns?

Mister Chair members, Joe Zanze with San Diego Gas and Electric, opposed the blueprint and currently are we'll look to review the amendments once we see them. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Other folks? Okay. Alright.

We'll come back to the committee. We'll go to Senator Archuleta.

Thank you, Assemblymember for bringing this forward. You know, the term knowledge is power. And I think with the smart meter, as I see it, gives the consumer the ability to ascertain how that new vehicle, one, the usage in the home is working. And how they would be able to participate along with utility to make the adjustments, not just utility blindly. So I think this is what this bill is doing.

The my question is the smart meter, is that a fee that will go to the consumer or is the utility going to provide it upon request?

Well, thank you very much, Senator. I echo many of the comments that you just shared about the the importance of the bill. I will answer your question, but I also wanna address some of what we heard from opposition testimony about the smart meter and why we are tying it in the way that we are to that technology.

For just a little bit of background, when the three IOUs proposed to upgrade their analog meters to digital meters, and this was between 2006 and 2009, those smart meters were proven to be not cost effective unless paired with programs like dynamic rates. Time of use rates, which is something we've heard discussed at great length by the IOUs, do not require digital smart meters.

The CPUC approved the first gen smart meters to eventually roll out more innovative programs like dynamic rates, and that's never happened. And I know there was a lot of discussion about pilot programs. Some of these pilot programs have been in effect since 2001, and yet we're still not making the leap that we really do in this era of affordability to give more knowledge and more information to consumers and to empower consumers.

The other thing I would say and perhaps more directly on point to your question is that the three IOUs right now are proposing to collect about $500 to $600 per customer for upgraded meters and associated IT infrastructure. So the reason why this bill is important is we need accountability on how customers can use this digital infrastructure when they make that investment.

So the customer will make that investment

They will.

Again, to see where they're at and to recoup the adjustment over the next five, six, seven years at $500 $300 dollars, whatever it is. I'm sure depending on the size of the home. But what is important to me is that we are talking about affordability. And if you're gonna make the adjustment, you have the power to do it yourself. And if you're gonna have the usage, so be it.

But at least know what you're doing. And I appreciate the bill, and I'll support it and move it at the appropriate time.

Thank you, Senator.

Senator Becker.

Well, thank the author for tackling this. A couple of clarifications, as you say, the rate options will only be available to applicable customer classes, is that right?

Both residential and commercial, correct.

Yeah. It's actually segments now. It's segments. Okay. Within 18 months is the time frame now with the amendments. Is that

I believe that's correct. And I will just mention, Senator, the opposition raised some very good points, and I can't convey enough how good I think the committee amendments are and how adequately I believe they address many of those concerns.

Yeah. I think that's important note around data sharing. There shouldn't be a problem, correct, with third party, third party devices receiving info from the meter as long as they cannot do anything to the meter itself. Correct?

That's correct. And again, Senator if you'll indulge me just in response to what I heard from the opposition witnesses, I would mention, because it actually has come up for conversations with me when I talk about this bill. We can't lose sight of the fact that, meter data access and privacy are currently protected under the CCP oh, sorry. CPPA.

And so when we talk about data privacy, those protections are available to consumers as well as requirements under new regulations adopted by the CPPA that the IOUs and third party providers have to conduct these cybersecurity audits of their data systems.

Yeah. And I think the important point here is this is, you know, if we're gonna be making investment as a state to rate base a bunch of, you know, a new smart meters, then we wanna make sure that customers and their suppliers have access to detailed meter data in real time.

Right. I think that's right. And to pair your comment with that of Senator Archuleta, I think the design of the bill is if this is an investment that you're going to ask your rate payers to make, then let's make sure they get the benefit of their bargain, and this is a way to accomplish that. But it still gives the IOUs that discretion to make the right determination for themselves whether to do the investment in the first place.

Yes, good. Well, I think this is smart policy. We want to build the two dynamic rates which have shown other parts of the country to be very effective as well as to protect non participating customers from any potential cost shifts. You've lots of lots of things in the bill to make sure that protection is in there, and that's why I'll be happy to support the bill here today.

Great. Thank you.

Alright. We'll go to Senator McNerney

I wanna thank the Chair. I thank the author. My first question is how prevalent are smart meters in California with the IOUs? I mean, we got our smart meter from PG&E in the Bay Area a good ten years ago.

I would argue they're pretty prevalent, but I'm happy to have one of my witnesses come up with a little bit more industry knowledge and expertise if you'd like, Sir.

Sure.

Sure.

Thank you for the question, Senator. So now they are fairly ubiquitous. In California, all three IOUs have collectively deployed about 12M, 13M smart meters. They're the first generation. And we are also seeing large municipal utilities like LADWP while on their way at their smart meter deployment.

So this is becoming very common.

Okay. Thank you. As I mentioned, PG&E installed a smart meter in my home years ago, and they instituted a time of day pricing. But the pricing differential was small enough that it didn't really add much incentive.

Right.

Is that gonna change?

That is what I'm sorry, Senator. Finish your question.

As a result of this if this bill gets signed into law, is that gonna change?

We believe so. That's why we're running it. And I would just hearken back to the first comment that I made in response to Senator Archuleta when I talked about the fact that there was this investment in the initial technology. And while they rolled out time of use rates, it's not cost effective. It is cost effective, and it can save customers real money if you pair that technology with dynamic rate tariffs.

So we believe this will lead to real savings for customers in their pockets.

So in the last issue I have is about data. If if customers allow the utilities to take their dynamic information, I mean, that's just a lot more data that we're handing over to somebody. And then there's a cyber security issue was raised, which is a big concern.

And I mean, I support the bill, but I'm very wary about the data, you know, implications here that we're gonna be seeing.

Absolutely, Senator. I won't repeat myself, but I would say, understanding the context of within which it sits, the applicability of the CPPA and some of the regulatory changes that are requiring the IOUs to conduct their their security audits. I would also mention that, as we've talked about, the smart meters are designed to transmit the data to the utility. And certainly, the utility should be doing everything it needs to do on the back end to prevent a leak.

What I would like with your permission, Senators, to bring up one of our witnesses if they have anything they'd like to add on the issue of data and privacy protection.

Thank you again, Senator for the question. When this body passed the California Consumer Privacy Act, it did not exempt energy usage data, which means that energy usage data from the meter enjoys all the protection under the Privacy Act. And that means with the new implementing regulation, it means that consumer have both not just the right to access, but the right to delete, right to correct, verify, etcetera.

And so those are evolving regulation that all industry participants, including utilities and non utilities now have to abide by if there are in ever touches the customer data because now there is a liability to ensure proper data governance.

Right. And then that leads to the cybersecurity question that was proposed by the opposition. And you're working with the opposition to close that issue.

I believe so. I certainly won't report to speak for them, but I would say that though the IOUs remain opposed to the bill, we've had very productive conversations. We've taken several rounds of amendments along the way, which I do believe strengthen the bill. And we look forward to if it should advance out of committee, continuing those conversations and trying to address their concerns to the extent possible.

Alright. Well, thank you for your answers. And I yield back to the Chair.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. Alright. Other questions from the committee?

Okay. We'll give you the opportunity to close.

We don't quite have a forum a quorum yet, I think.

Just thank you for your time and attention. And at the appropriate time, Mister Chair, I'll respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Sir. Thank you.

Appreciate it very much.

Alright. Thank you. And we'll now turn to Assemblymember Zbur who's here, to present AB 2383.

We're all set. Great.

Thank you, Mister Chair, members. Thank you so much. I wanna first start out by thanking the committee staff, which spent so much time with our office over the last few days and just really grateful for their work as well as your focus and the focus of many a number of other members of the Senate and the conversations that we actually had yesterday to really try to align this bill with another bill that's coming out of the Senate.

And so I'm grateful, and we're taking a bunch of I've agreed to a bunch of amendments in order to do that. And so today, I'm proud to present AB 2383, which at its core is a step to advance affordability and reliability for Californians who face high electric bills. This bill will support California in preparing for new large loads on the electric grid, specifically by ensuring the data centers pay their fair share for electricity, preventing costs from being shifted to onto everyday rate payers.

Over the next few years, the state expects a significant amount of load growth as the California Energy Commission has projected the peak demand of California of the California independent system operator to increase by over 20 gigawatts through 2040. Notably, California being recognized globally for its leading footprint in the digital sector, technologies and demand have rapidly grown for greater cloud services, AI models and computing power.

This growth will require a substantial increase in energy usage by their associated data centers demanding approximately 6.7 gigawatts of the new 20 gigawatts forecasted throughout the grid to power the which is the amount of power equivalent to powering over 4,000,000 households. While the state has begun some planning for this new load growth, there remains a need to develop statewide long term planning to ensure protections for rate payers as these new large load customers interconnect with the electric grid.

Without proper guardrails, the cost of service to data centers can create significant risks and burdens for existing residential and commercial customers. Furthermore, California has committed to ambitious climate and energy goals in order for us to successfully meet our targets. We must ensure that electricity is affordable as that will be a fundamental as that is a fundamental to the state's transition to a clean energy economy.

AB2383 aims to address this by directing the CPUC to create a new electricity rate structure for data centers that will properly align cost. Specifically, it must be designed in a way that appropriately attributes cost of services, avoids cost shifts to other rate payers, and provides equitable contributions to grid efficiency and state programs.

Additionally, this bill provides guidelines to further mitigate against cautious by requiring service contracts between the data center and the load serving entity.

These are intended to avoid stranded assets such as unused procurement of large load or infrastructure investments in the electric grid. AB2383 will ensure timely and efficient planning as the state prepares for the emergence of unprecedented demand on the electric grid and will be critical in protecting rate payers and advancing system wide reliability.

With proper planning and strategies underway, we can move forward with an equity based transition in California. I do want to say something about some input that you got late on Friday night from Nate Soloff from the Net Zero Coal to California. Just so you all know, we have had an open door policy the entire time I've worked on this bill in the Assembly. Never heard from Net Zero California at all. Never came into my office.

And then, Mister Soloff sent emails to all of your staffs without putting a letter in, sharing any letter with me, or sharing the email. It was an underhanded attack on the bill. It is the kind of thing that we expect people with integrity to not do ever to blind sight to try to blind sight a legislator when it's coming before a committee. And so I just wanted to you know, many of the things that were in his letter, we've addressed in the bill already.

You know, he wasn't even giving us an opportunity to understand what he was saying, let alone putting it in an opposition letter.

So I just wanna say we've worked really carefully with the Committee Chair, with a number of other senators, with the committee staff. We believe that we've addressed many of the issues, and we're continuing we've made commitments to continue working with with this committee as the bill moves forward.

With that, I wanna ask for your support at the appropriate time. Today, we have with us Daniel Harris-McCoy with the Little Hoover Coalition and Scott Wish Scott Wetch with the California State Association of Electric Workers.

Good morning, Mister chairman and committee members. My name is Daniel Harris-McCoy, and I'm a Project Manager with the Little Hoover Commission. The commission is an independent bipartisan oversight agency charged with investigating state operations and developing recommendations to promote efficiency economy and improve service.

Earlier this year, we released a report that examined how the rapid growth of data centers may impact the state's electricity system and in particular how rates might be affected. As you know, experts are predicting significant growth in electricity demand from new data center facilities in the coming decade.

This growth has important implications for grid reliability, infrastructure planning, water use, and community impacts. Our report identified four key recommendations, Our report identified four key recommendations. First, make sure that any financial burden of data centers falls on the centers, not rate payers. Second, integrate data centers into the grid in a way that ensures the reliability of the system and does not add needless costs.

Maintain the state's commitment to its clean energy goals, and finally, ensure that California regulators have access to relevant information such as how much power is being used.

This bill addresses the first of these principles head on, ensuring that rate payers are not burdened with cost that data centers impose on the system. Our focus was less on the exact mechanism for achieving this goal and more on the principles that data centers developers should be on the hook to cover the cost they impose. However, we did recommend the method embodied in this bill, a special rate tier for data center facilities.

More specifically, we recommended requiring that large load facilities enter into long term contracts with provisions for minimum payment obligations, and this bill does exactly that. We also recommended a requirement that such facilities contribute to broader system costs such as wildfire mitigation, grid reliability, and climate programs, which this bill also does.

Given that the bill implements these recommendations, we are in support and respectfully request your aye vote.

Yes, sir.

Mister Chairman and member Scott Wetch, on behalf of the California State Pipe Trades Council, State Association of Electrical Workers, Western States Council of Sheet Metal Workers, and the California Coalition of Utility Employees, We think that this bill may be the most important bill to California's economy this session. You know going through the budget just recently how important data AI and data center development is to the state's economy, it is to our jobs.

This bill by eliminating any cost shift and making sure that all the cost of this of the grid and the transmission system is equitably distributed amongst ratepayers with data centers and other large energy users paying their share is a huge improvement over the existing system that we have and will actually put downward pressure on rates over time. We can't think of a more important bill at a more important time for California and we would urge your aye vote.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Matt. Come on up.

Others in support.

Others in support. Okay. Mister Broad.

Mister Chair, members. Matt Broad here on behalf of Engineers and Scientists of California in support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Victoria Rome with NRDC in support.

Thank you.

Good morning. Hunter Stern with IBW 1245 in support.

Thank you.

Good morning. Brandon Ebeck on behalf of Pacific Gas Electric. We have support on the bill in print. We are reviewing the amendments and particularly the exemptions from some customers paying their fair share. So we will review our position.

Thank you.

Melanie Law on behalf of E2 in support.

Good morning. Taneicia Herring on behalf of the NAACP California Hawaii Strong State Conference in strong support.

Okay. All right. We will go now to opposition witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Matt Freedman, on behalf of TURN. We respectfully oppose unless amended. The legislature has to take swift action to protect rate payers and ensure the addition of data centers is beneficial and not harmful to the achievement of the state's affordability and greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Unfortunately, AB 2383 falls short of the mark and just doesn't rise to the challenge of this moment. The bill largely restates much of the PUC's existing authority and does not address concerns that have been raised by turn. In April, this committee heard SB 886 by Senator Padilla that addresses the same topic, but does include far more significant requirements relating to rate payer protections and clean energy. The bill before you today, even with the committee amendments lacks many of these provisions.

Specifically, there's five missing pieces from the bill.

First, the bill only applies the requirements to new data centers built after 01/01/2027. All existing data centers in the state would be exempted from all of the provisions of this bill. Second, the bill does not establish meaningful requirements relating to new commitments by data centers to fund or prefund the development of incremental clean energy resources.

It appears to provide a voluntary option and requires data centers to pay generation rates for ten years. This legislature should require more. Earlier this year, the data centers and technology companies went to the White House. They made a pledge to President Trump that they would pay the entire cost of all generation needed to serve them.

This legislature should ask for at least that much. Third, there's no requirements for data centers to bear the full cost responsibility for all transmission facility upgrades triggered by their interconnection, specifically network upgrades that are upstream.

Fourth, the bill doesn't limit the annual refunds that data center customers can receive for prepaying their upfront transmission cost contribution.

Without these limits, these customers could pay zero transmission bills for many years. And finally, there are no requirements for these customers to participate in demand response programs that are critical to supporting load management across the state. Absent these changes, the provisions of AB 2383 are just insufficient to meet the various challenges posed by rising data center loads.

So we urge the committee, not to move the bill forward unless these issues are addressed, and we think that this is the time for the legislature to take a strong stand, on aggressive policy that will protect ratepayers and support our clean energy goals. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. My name is Sam Uden. I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director of Net Zero California. I want to apologize to the Assemblymember for what may have been a process issue, but certainly with this testimony, I'm just focusing on the policy in the bill. So I wanna echo the concerns raised by Matt and emphasize that this committee has already developed amendments and passed a nation leading data center bill in SB 886.

AB 2383 has multiple policy gaps compared to SB 886, creating a risk of potentially significant cost shifts to rate payers. The result is that California would have learned nothing from the carnage we're seeing in other states. With my testimony, I wanna emphasize how much California voters care about this issue and have strong preferences for how it's handled.

Polling shows that Californians oppose data centers, but shift to support with key guardrails set in law, including the data centers pay for their grid connection costs, participate in demand response programs, are held financially responsible if they cancel their projects, and buy or bring their own generation. So this is the key point.

This set of policies is the floor. It is not a wish list of what advocates might want. It is by definition the set of things you need to address potential avenues to cost shifting. This has now been validated in multiple studies. AB 283 as of yesterday did not include any of these policies and the version imprint today takes on a couple of them only, but there are issues to language and there are key gaps.

Notably, no requirements for the demand response or load shifting. So data center driven load growth is the most consequential energy issue facing the nation. We urge the committee not to backtrack on the good standards that it's already set and not move forward the bill at least in its current form. Thank you.

Okay. Other folks wanna raise that position. Concerns.

Leslie, concerned citizen that is opposed to redundancy and special interest. Thank you.

Audra Hartman on behalf of CLECA, California Large Energy Consumers Association. These are large California manufacturers. We have an opposed unless amended position on the bill. We're reviewing the amendments. They appear to address our concerns, but we will take a change our position officially once we see it in print.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sarah Bridge on behalf of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association. I'd like to just kinda echo CLECA's concerns. We appreciate the amendments and the the committee's, work on this bill along with the author, but we would like to see the language in print and review that before we actually change our position. Thank you.

Hey. Adria Tinnan here on behalf of Climate Action Campaign. Oppose unless amended.

Good morning. Daniella Garcia Hernandez with the Western States Petroleum Association. We want to just appreciate the author's work. We have an opposing unless amended position, but we look forward to reevaluating our position once we see the amendments in print. Thank you.

Good morning. John Kenrick from the California Chamber of Commerce. I have an oppose on the bill in print, but looking forward to reviewing with our members. Thank you.

Jenna Roper from Central California Asthma Collaborative, respectfully in opposition unless amended.

Chloe Ames on behalf of NextGen California. While we haven't written a formal position yet letter, we would like to strongly encourage the author to adopt amendments for clean energy procurement requirements and other amendments, and we look forward to working with you on this. Thank you.

Mister Chair, Mark Fenstermaker for Valley Clean Energy. We had an opposed position on the version of the bill coming out of the Assembly. But thanks to the amendments from last week, we are now neutral and submitted that letter to the portal. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Any other folks who wanna weigh in?

Alright. Lots has been moving on this bill, and I know a lot of people are basing their positions on where things were before.

Let's turn it over to Senator Becker, who was very involved in these conversations and love to give you the opportunity to speak.

Sure. First of all, thank you for engaging conversations. I know there's been a lot of work done even the last 24 hours on this bill.

So just say at the outset, this is critical topic to get right and we did do a lot of work with Senator Padilla's bill and I think as we said there, for me some of the key factors are, again making sure that we fully pay upfront and that the number of hours, the limited hours of a year that the grid is really constrained that we have a way to address that because we do have massive excess capacity most of the time in California.

So for those periods of time getting more use across our fixed costs could lower cost for everyone, but we really have to get this right. So I appreciate you're trying to get this right.

Just a couple pieces I want to clarify. So first, this is only focused on new data centers, which makes sense for all the provisions that focus on new costs. There are some provisions that bill that might make sense to apply to existing data centers. For example, is there any reason we shouldn't require existing data centers to pay a reasonable share of wildfire costs that are usually collected from distribution connected customers?

Yes. So I think we've as I mentioned yesterday, we're committed to looking at that and frankly are inclined to move in that direction and obviously would be consulting with you on that. The reason why we hit a limit we had limited the bill to new facilities in the Assembly was because it was broader before than what it is now. So we have agreed to limit this to data centers.

And so because it was applied to more than data centers before the you know, there were other large load users that were not data centers that we were trying to address their concerns by having it be perspective.

So I think with the limitation to data centers now, we can address those concerns and actually look at including some of the existing data centers as well. So that's something that I think would be good policy and we're committed to continuing to work on.

Okay. Great. That's great to hear. A couple of points. The bill there's differences in the bill.

So this bill defines cost of serving in a way that seems to exclude the cost of upgrading transmission and distribution to meet the needs of new data centers. But isn't that a big part of the cost that we wanna make sure data centers are paying for?

So I think I mean, one some of the thing that's happening is that there's a bit of a difference of philosophy between the two bills. I believe that our my bill requires that, but it basically it's handing more of that the determinations of what's included and not included to the PC as part of the process. And I think there's more specificity, but we're, you know, it's our intention to do that.

And I think as we mentioned yesterday, we're gonna look at language to try to tighten that up and make sure that my goal is to make sure that they pay their fair share, that it's done in an equitable way, that we're not shifting costs, you know, these costs to other rate payers. So clearly more specificity is something that we're agreeable to.

Okay. I appreciate that. I'd certainly like to see that clarified before the bill eventually passes. So I appreciate that. Just two more points.

The bill requires data centers and this kind of relates to last point too, but I think the bill requires data centers to prefund transmission interconnection costs and any distribution costs required to energize them. Is it your intent? I think you just said that that those costs would include upstream transmission upgrade costs as well that are linked to serving the new data center?

Yes.

Okay. Great. That is very helpful. Let me just great. The last piece, I guess on the, on the piece around clean energy, right? That's been a big discussion point.

I know and I didn't follow 886 all the way through the Assembly energy and I know there's more discussions there as well. I think the intention was to allow data centers to have behind the meter energy storage to again help enable that kind of cost shift. And I think it was certainly the intent of Senator Padilla to prohibit these fossil fuel generation behind the meter to meet that demand.

Again, I'm not fully sure what sort of happened over there in the with that bill of when we moved to Assembly. But does that make sense to you?

Is that sort of your intention as well? Would you like to see that any behind the meter energy storage or generation used to meet those that flexibility to be fossil fuel free?

Yeah. I mean, I think that's an important goal that this bill was not was intended to look at affordability, and so that that was not a focus of this bill. And I know that was part of the focus of Senator Padilla's bill. This obviously, we would encourage behind the meter clean energy as part of the as part of that. But I think that's a pretty complicated issue that the philosophy of the bills in the Assembly was that we were each taking pieces of it.

This was supposed to be the bill related to affordability and cost shift. I do think that, the back the issue of backup generation is an important set of issues that I know that I recognize Senator Padilla's bill addresses and that mine does not.

But we're obviously I don't think there's anything in the bill that prevents that and obviously to the extent that we could have as the as part of sort of the regulatory process of focus on asking the PUC to deal with these complicated issues. You know, that's something that I'm supportive of because I do think that's a real issue.

Okay. Well, I'll turn it over to my colleagues. I appreciate discussion. I appreciate all the work on it. I have to review and see if I can, you know, support the bill today, but I appreciate your answers here today and all your work on it.

Okay. Other folks with questions? Definitely encourage those who have not had the chance to review all the work that's happened over the last 24 hours to engage with the committee and get whatever clarity you need. We will there's still very much a work in progress. This was very complicated.

A lot of issues that you just that have been raised through the course of this process including from folks who are raising concerns just now that have I think been largely addressed but still a number of things that have to be further clarified. So to not spirit, then I'm happy to recommend that we move forward with the bill as amended.

I just, you know, I don't know if I.

Yeah. Please.

You know, I just wanna say I'm relatively frustrated by the way the process has worked and not and not with this committee at all. I mean, I think the committee has made a good faith effort. But frankly, we worked very, very hard in the Assembly, worked with everyone who came to us.

When we let when we left the Assembly, we're at a place where the bill had virtually no opposition. The TURN never communicated with my office, never met with us. They knew the bill was moving forward and never raised a single issue. And of course, at the last minute, we get these issues as this is coming in.

And, frankly, I think a lot of the things in the bill in our bill currently are addressed in the letter and is and based on the conversations we had yesterday, some of the things that are in the letter we've discussed and we're willing to continue working with the committee to address.

Well, as you know, we're two houses. There's another bill in this space and and I've actually I would only respect I don't I have no idea about all the all that you've just said on the process side, but I but certainly, I think that their input helped to inform the conversation yesterday that I think got us to a place.

Right. But it would have been yesterday that I think got us to a place.

Right. But it would have been respectful for the they that input. The bill has been in print in various iterations, and they know that we've been working. We were you know, we had issues with other large load energy users. We had issues with the CCAs.

We had issues with pretty much and we have an open door policy. We work with everyone. We had issues with labor. We've addressed all of those. It's just, you know, they're a sponsor of one bill.

I would also point out that my bill is stronger. I mean, in some cases, in some places, we address those issues. We just happen to be less specific, and we've had a philosophy of turning some of the more complicated issues over to the PUC where we actually have regulatory input and the ability for stakeholders to engage.

In other cases, we have things in the bill that if we started going through that in my bill, they're much stronger than it than on the other bill. You know, this can't the process is one where I'm asking you to look at the bill for what its goals are, and we've made a good faith attempt to address the concerns.

We're willing to work with your committee, and as, you know, yesterday, we spent hours yesterday working through these issues, and we've I thought we had reached agreement. So, you know, we're this is a good bill that's important to address the cost shifts and the risk that rate payers may are experiencing and, you know, respectfully ask for an aye vote when, you know, when you're taking action on this.

Yeah. Well, for our discussions yesterday, I'm very happy to recommend an aye vote today and, you know, recognizing that this and some of the other work in this space continue to involve some work and certainly hope that we encourage robust dialogue far in advance from all the stakeholders. So your your point is taken. So we'll take it up for about when

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Let's now go to Madam Chair.

Welcome to this side of the house. And we'll we Cottie Petrie Norris is here to present AB 2493.

Well, good morning, Mister Chair and Senators. Pleased to join you this morning to present AB 2493. As you well know, California has incredibly ambitious and incredibly important clean energy goals. Over the course of the next 20 years, we need to grow California's transmission capacity by more than 300% and California generation capacity by more than 300%. We truly have a monumental challenge before us.

And while our clean energy future depends on connecting new power to the grid quickly and affordably, Today, lengthy interconnection delays are preventing shovel ready projects from coming online. I think we've all heard horror stories from clean energy developers about delays that last years and years and years.

This isn't just putting our clean energy future at risk, it's because we know time is money, it's also increasing costs for California rate payers.

So the goal of this bill really is to create accountability with [inaudible] for interconnection timelines and AB 2493 does that in by deploying four complementary accountability mechanisms, including permitting initiation deadlines, independent audits, mandatory remedial action, and return on equity consequences. Happy to accept the committee amendments and appreciate the engagement of the Chair and committee staff.

With that, I am happy to welcome my witnesses, Alex Jackson who is joining us from American Clean Power, and Daniel Barad who is joining us from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Good morning, senators. Alex Jackson with ACP. We represent a diverse set of clean energy technologies, but this is consistently the main bottleneck we hear in terms of preventing clean energy projects from getting online. We are now up to 22 gigawatts of clean energy that is dependent on upgrades that have been delayed, as the Chair mentioned, often by many years.

My fellow cosponsor is going to walk through some of the specifics of the bill, but I wanted to address some issues that were raised in the analysis and by the opposition regarding why we're proposing a legislative approach and why it's focused on enhanced oversight over the IOUs when there are other factors that contribute to project delays.

First, I just want to note that while this issue has received some attention at the PUC, we have seen very little come out of it. We have not seen any substantive policy or meaningful reform since President Reynolds first sent the IOUs a letter back in 2022 raising concerns about these delays and asking for a progress report. In fact, she sent a similar letter just three years ago. In the interim, the delays continue to pile up. So we've documented the problem.

Now with billions of dollars of tax credits on the line, we really urgently need to pivot to solutions, and that's what this bill is about. However, it is not trying to take a one size fits all approach. There's no prescriptive mandates. It's fundamentally about accountability and establishing generator interconnection as a priority. And the reason why we need more accountability in this space is that we don't have the benefit of competition to discipline performance.

For most of these network upgrades, they are assigned to the IOUs. Under federal law, they're the only entity authorized to construct these projects. And as a result, we tend to see far less attentiveness to performance and outcomes.

For the small number of competitive transmission projects, we have a much different outcome where competitors have to compete, they put forward incentives to make their bids more attractive, such as taking a reduction on their profit margin for every month a project is late.

But in the absence of competition, we are left with regulatory tools, and as you'll hear, we think relying on the IOU's self reporting for the reasons behind these delays has not been sufficient to drive outcomes. And while we agree we need to be sensitive to costs, relative to the cost of these delays to rate payers, investing in a little bit more oversight, we think, is well worth it.

Finally, I just want to note that while we agree the IOUs are not solely culpable for delays, they are not on a level playing field with other parties that have a stake in the outcome. Developers pay steep penalties when they miss CODs, often liquidated damages.

The IOUs really face no consequence, and that's the imbalance this bill is trying to solve for. So fundamentally, these delays are keeping a lot of clean energy on the sidelines when we urgently need it, and we respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Good morning. Michele Canales on behalf of Union of Concerned Scientists, cosponsor of AB 2493. California's clean energy goals will require adding significant amounts of new clean energy to the grid, and the state should urgently prioritize interconnecting these projects. UCS recently released a report analyzing the time it takes for IOUs to build certain infrastructure projects. The findings revealed that the delays are widespread and lengthy.

It found the self reported data from the utilities provided limited information about why these delays were occurring and what actions were being taken to address them. AB 2493 takes a multi pronged approach to ensure grid upgrades are built on time.

First, the bill sets a one year deadline for the large IOUs to initiate permitting for major grid upgrades. If we're building at the speed and scale needed to achieve our climate goals, it cannot take three years on average to file an application as it does today.

Second, it provides for independent oversight of the root causes driving these delays by requiring the IOUs to retain a third party auditor.

Our existing processes rely on the IOU self reporting, which has not produced actionable information. The last two years, for example, the CPUC determined SDG&E's data was incomplete and inaccurate. Third, it requires the large IOUs to develop solutions aligned with the auditors findings.

These solutions may include facilitating advanced equipment procurement to mitigate supply chain constraints, expanding opportunities for entities other than the large IOUs to complete certain upgrades or implementing a prioritization framework to fast track upgrades that affect 100 megawatts or more of clean energy capacity.

Finally, AB 2493 includes financial incentives to drive improvements by making the IOU's progress a factor in determining their return on equity.

UCS is proud to cosponsor this bill and respectfully request your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We'll now continue with any members of the public who would like to express their support for AB 2493. Please come to the microphone. State your name, your organization, and your position on the bill.

Hello, Vice Chair and members. Sara Fitzsimon for the Independent Energy Producers Association in strong support of this bill. Thank you.

Marquis King Mason, Natural Resource Defense Council in support. Thank you.

McKinley Thompson Morley, on behalf of the Solar Energy Industries Association, in support.

Brandon Garcia with Advanced Energy United in support.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. Scott Cox, on behalf of Series here, in strong support. Thank you.

Good morning. Grishina Mohavir, California Environmental Voters, and on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund, in support. Thank you.

Jay O'Dentes, on behalf of San Diego Community Power, in support.

Good morning. Mollie Corcoran, on behalf of Fluence Energy, in support. Thank you.

Good morning. David Ramirez, on behalf of ENGIE North America, in support.

Cara Martinson, on behalf of the Large Scale Solar Association, in support.

Jacob Evans with Sierra California in support. Thank you.

Thank you. You all look so excited coming up and testifying in support. Feeling the excitement. Alright. We'll continue with any lead, witnesses in opposition to 2493.

Please come to the microphone. You have two minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members. Joe Zanze with San Diego Gas Electric. Having a opposed position on the bill. Appreciate the work of the author on this issue and the committee analysis that laid out kind of a lot of our our issues with the bill. We do want to engage with the author.

We've worked with her staff and and and sent quite a few amendments proposals over to; hopefully, strengthen the bill and make it more targeted. One of the issues around, you know, having the IOUs provide their own auditors is cost. We're already providing a lot of information to the PUC.

I think there's at least six different, oversight, reports, and mechanisms, including the transmission project review, the transmission development forum, SB 1174 reporting the TED task force, CA ISO has an interconnection process reform, and then there's also the annual RPS report. So, we think, you know, if we're gonna look at all the information, make it, you know, in house and at the PUC where they can, you know, maybe if there's more information that's that's warranted, then we could provide that information.

But another audit would just take resources away from getting projects online. Another thing on the on the permitting, G-0131 recently had some updates that actually encouraged more front end work on the application. That way, there there's coordination amongst, you know, different stakeholders, engineering, all that sort of stuff. So, when the application was filed, then that process would go through there and actually speed that process up. So, it's kind of trying to, you know, coordinate in the front end might take a little bit longer, but in in turn, it speeds things up on the back end through the through the actual through the permit process. And then, one last thing just to mention for SDG, I know there's a mention of incomplete data reporting.

We after that was was made or identified, we did a deep analysis of our generation air connection agreements and found that, you know, in our letter to the former Commissioner Reynolds back in January that we didn't have any delays on our behalf, and everything was on track to meet those contracts.

So, with that, look forward to continue with working with the author and respectfully oppose. Thank you.

Good morning. Brandon Ebeck on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric and aligned with San Diego in opposition. We still wanna continue working with the author and her staff. We, as mentioned, we had provided amendments a couple months ago that we would like to review and discuss and get to the bottom of this. We are very much interested in getting these projects online, both the safe harbor tax credit projects for customer affordability.

Also, these are capital projects that we're constantly being accused in this committee and others of prioritizing. So, it's - we have a very strong interest in getting these projects built in a timely manner. As Joe mentioned, there are improvements that could definitely be made to reporting so that we're talking squarely and not talking past each other about different causes of delays, making sure that we have a full picture of what is driving delays.

A lot of the reforms that would need to happen to bring these projects online run counter to other state policy goals, whether it's environmental protection or land rights. We know that there's a lot that can happen with, probably some financial support for even the developer community where there's financing hurdles.

We've had projects fall out because developers lose their financing that then comes together later. So, there's there's a litany of different solutions here. There's no silver bullet, but we were happy to be part of the solution. But for now, we're opposed to build in print. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else wanna raise concerns? Alright. Let's go to, oh, here we are.