For a complete list of the 135 bills we tracked in 2020, click HERE.

Endorse our Climate Safe California campaign HERE.

See our collected position letters HERE.

Assembly Bills

AB 326 (Muratsuchi) Supported – Would have made it legal for electric auto manufacturers to offer subscriptions for the use of electric vehicles directly to customers on a month to month basis with no dealer involvement. STATUS: Died in the Sen. floor process.

AB 345 (Muratsuchi) Supported – Read The Climate Center’s Letter of Support.  This bill would have established regulations to protect public health and safety near oil and gas extraction facilities, including a minimum setback distance from sensitive receptors such as schools, childcare facilities, playgrounds, etc. STATUS: Died in the Senate Natural Resources Committee. In depth story about AB 345. For a factsheet on AB 345, click HERE.

AB 740 (Burke) No Position – Late gut & amend that addressed microgrid size. STATUS: Died in the Senate Energy Committee.

AB 841 (Ting) Supported – Reallocates funds to help upgrade school HVAC systems and advance electric vehicle charging infrastructure.  STATUS: On the Governor’s desk awaiting signature.

AB 1001 (Ting) Supported – This bill would have established the School Disaster Resiliency Act. STATUS: Died in the Senate Education Committee.

AB 1720 (Carillo) No Position – This bill compels LSE procurement of long-duration energy storage, impinging on CCA procurement autonomy. STATUS: Died in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 1839 (Bonta) No Position – The “Green New Deal” bill would have created the California Green New Deal Council with a specified membership appointed by the Governor. STATUS: Died in Comm. on Natural Resources.

AB 1847 (Levine) No Position – This bill would have authorized the CPUC, contingent on the Commission finding that an electrical corporation is not complying with State law, to appoint a public administrator to the electrical corporation for a period not to exceed 180 days. STATUS: Died in the Assembly Utilities & Energy Committee.

AB 2145 (Ting) Supported – This bill would have helped ensure that by 2030 California will safely install enough EV charging ports to meet the demand through public and private investment. STATUS: Died in the Asm U&E committee.

AB 2621 (Mullin) Supported. This bill would have required the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, by June 1, 2021, to establish a grant program and guidelines for the development of regional climate adaptation plans by regional collaboratives. STATUS: Died in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 2689 (Kalra) Supported – This bill would have updated IOU confidentiality provisions to allow a broader range of market experts to participate in complex IOU cost recovery proceedings. The California Community Choice Association was a sponsor of this bill. STATUS: Died the Asm U&E committee.

AB 2789 (Kamlager) No Position – Would have appropriated $1.5M and required the CPUC to request the California Council on Science and Technology to undertake and complete a study on electrical grid outages and cost avoidance resulting from deployment of eligible renewable energy resources, battery storage systems, and demand response technologies. STATUS: Died in the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee.

AB 3014 (Muratsuchi) Supported – Would have created the Central Reliability Authority (CRA), a non-profit public benefit corporation, to purchase residual RA needed to meet state requirements while still allowing load-serving entities (LSEs), such as Community Choice Agencies (CCAs), to maintain their procurement autonomy. The California Community Choice Association was a sponsor of this bill. STATUS: Died in the Asm U&E committee.

AB 3021 (Ting) Supported – Read The Climate Center’s SUPPORT LETTER. This bill would have appropriated $300,000,000 per fiscal year in the 2020–21, 2021–22, and 2022–23 fiscal years from the General Fund to the California Energy Commission to administer a program to provide resiliency grant funding and technical assistance to local educational agencies for the installation of energy storage systems. STATUS: Died in the Asm. Education committee.

AB 3214 (Limón) – Supported. Read coalition Letter of Support that The Climate Center’s signed on to. This bill increases existing fines for oil spills. STATUS: On the Governor’s desk awaiting signature.

AB 3251 (Bauer-Kahan) No Position – Would have required that charging of energy storage systems be treated as load in calculations for demand response programs, and that capacity from energy storage systems installed on the customer side of the meter be allowed to be aggregated for purposes of determining resource adequacy capacity; and electricity exported to the grid from the customer side of the meter be allowed to count toward the capacity obligations of load-serving entities. STATUS: WITHDRAWN by author.

AB 3256 (Eduardo Garcia, et al) – This bill would have placed a General Obligation Bond on the November 2020 ballot. This bill would enact the Wildfire Prevention, Safe Drinking Water, Drought Preparation, and Flood Protection Bond Act of 2020, which, if approved by the voters, would authorize the issuance of bonds in the amount of $6.9B to finance projects for a wildfire prevention, safe drinking water, climate resilience, drought preparation, and flood protection program. STATUS: Died in Asm. Rules Comm.

Senate Bills

SB 1215 (Stern) Supported – Would have required the CPUC to create a database of critical facilities and critical infrastructure, and related critical circuits that are located in high fire-threat districts served by electrical corporations, and identify with respect to each whether it serves a low-income and disadvantaged community. The bill would have required LSEs to collaborate with local governments within its service area to identify critical circuits and microgrid projects. The Climate Center has supported this bill in the past but is evaluating recent amendments. STATUS: Died in the Asm U&E Committee.

SB 1258 (Stern) Supported – Would have created the California Climate Technology and Infrastructure Financing Act that would have required the California Infrastructure Bank (IBank) to administer the Climate Catalyst Revolving Fund, which the bill would establish to provide financial assistance to eligible climate catalyst projects. STATUS: Died in Sen. Approps.

SB 45 (Allen, et al) Supported – Dubbed the “Wildfire Prevention, Safe Drinking Water, Drought Preparation, and Flood Protection Bond Act of 2020.” This was a proposed $5.51 billion general obligation bond to be placed on the November 3, 2020 ballot. Would have included $570M for climate resiliency initiatives including microgrids, distributed generation, storage systems, in-home backup power, and community resiliency centers. STATUS: Died in the Assembly.

SB 808 (Mitchell) – Budget Bill. See this June 22 CalMatters Article for details. STATUS: Died in the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.

SB 774 (Stern) No Position – SB 774 would have required IOUs to collaborate with the State’s Office of Emergency of Services and others to identify where back-up electricity sources may provide increased electrical distribution grid resiliency and would allow the IOUs to file applications with the CPUC to invest in, and deploy, microgrids to increase resiliency. STATUS: Died in the Assembly U&E Committee.

SB 1240 (Skinner) Sponsored. The Climate Center was a sponsor of this bill. This bill was withdrawn by the author due to the covid crisis. The author is committed to re-introducing a similar bill in the 2021 session. It would require the California Energy Commission to identify and evaluate options for transforming the electrical corporations’ (Investor Owned Utilities’) distribution grids into more open access platforms that would allow local governments and other third parties like CCAs to participate more easily in grid activities.

SB 1314 (Dodd) Sponsored. The Climate Center was a sponsor of this bill. This bill was withdrawn by the author due to the covid crisis. The author is committed to re-introducing a similar bill in the 2021 session. This bill would have required the Strategic Growth Council to develop and implement a grant program for local governments to develop community energy resilience plans.

Please send suggestions and corrections to woody@theclimatecenter.org

Additional updates…

On October 12, the Assembly Utilities & Energy Committee held a special hearing to receive and discuss the “Preliminary Root Cause Analysis on the Mid-August 2020 Heat Storm.” Click HERE for the recording of the hearing.

Heads of the three major energy agencies in the state were in attendance to present the analysis. This included Steve Berberich of the California Independent System Operator, David Hochschild of the California Energy Commission, and Maribel Batjer, President of the California Public Utilities Commission. For a quick summary of the Root Cause Analysis see the October 6 News Release from CAISO.

Sen. Jerry Hill, San Mateo, poses questions to utility representatives

On October 13, the Senate Energy, Utilities Committee held a hearing on the ten year anniversary of the San Bruno gas line explosion on gas, electric, and transportation safety. For the recording of the hearing, click HERE. Representatives of PG&E, So Cal Gas and others were in attendance to address safety issues.

For a complete list of the 135 bills we tracked in 2020, click HERE.

See our collected position letters HERE.

Endorse our Climate-Safe California platform HERE.