For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “We’re flying blind into some pretty major questions.”
CA Trucking Assn. executive on the proposed ban of gas-powered big rig sales
- Newsom to Sign “Most Aggressive Climate Measures in History” Today; Gas-Powered Big Rigs Sales May Be Banned by 2040
- Legislators’ Campaign Season Opens
- Heat Wave Showed Strains on Renewable Power Plan
- “Wind Droughts” – Latest Climate Change Impact
- Feds Finding Offshore Wind Power in California is…Complicated
- Slow-Motion Catastrophe in the West: Colorado River Dries Up
- California Family Gives Away Their $3-Billion Company
- QUICK TAKES:
- Two-Thirds of San Franciscans Say Life is Getting Worse
- California Ports Still Buried in Cargo
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING SEPT. 16, 2022
CalMatters
Today, Gov. Gavin Newsom says he will sign a package of bills that a press release referred to as “some of the nation’s most aggressive climate measures in history.”
The signing ceremony in Solano County will be “clean energy-powered,” no less.
Among the bills Newsom is expected to sign are the four climate and energy bills that he pitched to the Legislature in the final weeks of the session this year.
- AB 1279 will put into state law the existing policy goal of reaching statewide “carbon neutrality” by 2045.
- SB 1020 will set benchmarks that the state electric grid has to hit before sourcing all of its power from renewable sources by 2045.
- SB 905 will require the Air Resources Board to come up with regulations for projects that capture, reuse and store carbon emissions.
- SB 1137 will ban the drilling of any new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, nursing homes and hospitals, effectively banning the activity from most developed areas in the state
You can keep tabs on the hot-button proposals that Newsom has and hasn’t signed here:
New big rigs and other trucks will have to be zero-emissions in 2040 — ending their decades-long reliance on high-polluting diesel — under a proposed regulation unveiled by the California Air Resources Board.
Under the proposal, manufacturers couldn’t sell new medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks fueled by diesel or gasoline that operate in California, instead turning to electric models. In addition, large trucking companies would have to gradually convert their existing fleets to zero-emission vehicles, buying more over time until all are zero emissions by 2042.
In another worldwide first, California aims to amp up its efforts to end the use of fossil fuels by setting requirements for clean-burning big rigs, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and other large trucks. Transportation is California’s largest contributor to climate-warming greenhouse gases as well as smog and other air pollutants.
Chris Shimoda, a senior vice president at the California Trucking Association, which represents truck drivers, said zero-emission truck technology has great possibilities, but truckers worry about “the practical unknowns,” such as the high cost of the trucks, a lack of charging stations and the limited range of the vehicles.
“We’re flying blind into some pretty major questions about the practicality of actually implementing this rule,” Shimoda said.
https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/09/california-phase-out-diesel-trucks-zero-emission/
Legislators’ Campaign Season Opens
Politico’s California Playbook
We’ve exited legislating time and entered the heart of election season. Staffers who spent their spare August hours shepherding bills will devote their weekends to volun-tolding for vulnerable incumbents. Independent expenditure committees with anodyne names will pack mailboxes in battleground districts. If you thought you were sick of seeing ads for sports betting ballot initiatives, just wait until you see what record spending will yield.
Both parties are pouring escalating amounts into key House and Legislature races, identifying the critical contest on both defense and offense. County Democratic parties in recent weeks have channeled $1.2 million to Democratic state Sen. Melissa Hurtado as she defends her Central Valley seat and $750,000 to Catherine Blakespear as she vies with Republican Matt Gunderson for an open Senate seat. The main California Democratic Party has directed cash lately to open-seat candidates Esmeralda Soria, Christy Holstege and Paula Villescaz; challengers Joseph Rocha, Kim Carr and Pilar Schiavo; and Assembly members Sabrina Cervantes, Brian Maeinschein, Eduardo Garcia and Jacqui Irwin.
The California Republican Party recently made six-figure outlays to GOP staffers Joshua Hoover and Greg Wallis. Hoover seeks to unseat endangered Democratic Assembly member Ken Cooley — a top recipient of defensive cash from fellow Assembly Democrats — and Wallis is vying with Holstege for a D+6 seat that looks to be one of the cycle’s most competitive. The GOP also channeled sizable sums to incumbents Sen. Brian Jones, who is seeking to fend off Rocha, and Assembly member Suzette Valladares, whose redrawn district looks much bluer than the version Valladares flipped in 2020.
Interest groups are ramping up for Democrat-on-Democrat fights that will determine the ideological shape of the majority caucuses. A recent example: Healthcare players are spending big in a Democrat-on-Democrat Assembly race in the Central Valley. Medical interests have dropped into a PAC $750,000 (plus $150,000 from car dealers) to push Jasmeet Bains past Kern County Supervisor Leticia Perez in AD-35.
Heat Wave Showed Strains on California’s Renewable Power Plan
CalMatters commentary by Dan Walters
As California baked under record-high temperatures last week and the state’s residents turned up their air conditioners to cope, electricity consumption hit an all-time peak.
The record demand of more than 52,000 megawatts was experienced in the 80% of the state’s electric power system managed by the Independent System Operator and was a successful stress test for the grid.
Californians heeded pleas to minimize consumption in the all-important late afternoon and evening hours, thus averting rolling blackouts that grid managers had feared would be needed to avoid systemic collapse. Luck also played a role – no major power plant shutdowns – as did having a healthy amount of reserve generation.
By happenstance, Tuesday’s test of the power grid’s resilience came just a few days after the Legislature passed – at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s behest – legislation to speed up California’s conversion to a carbon-free electrical grid by 2045. So the day’s experience provided a graphic snapshot of what must to happen for that conversion to occur.
The legislation, Senate Bill 1020, requires that California get 90% of its power from renewable sources by 2035 – the same year the state is now scheduled to end sales of gasoline-powered cars – and 95% by 2040 while retaining the 2045 deadline for converting to a carbon-free electrical grid.
When power consumption peaked in the late afternoon, renewable sources, principally solar panels, supplied just over a quarter of ISO-managed juice, while plants powered by natural gas were producing nearly half. Later, as the sun began to set, solar arrays generated steadily less power, finally tapering off to zero, while the gas plants’ share of the load increased rapidly.
Climate scientists tell us that that Tuesday’s experience, including elevated demands on the grid, will become more common. Meanwhile, California theoretically will, in just 13 years, more than triple its proportion of renewable power production.
But there’s more. Power demand will not only increase due to climate change, but because California will be shifting everything it can from hydrocarbons to electricity.
Meeting ambitious goals for zero-emission cars – the vast majority of them powered by batteries – will require much more power to recharge them so that Californians can continue to drive almost a billion miles a day. Simultaneously, the state wants to phase out gas-powered home appliances and other devices, such as lawn mowers, and replace them with electric models.
The sharp decline in solar power in late afternoon and early evening hours also requires banking renewable juice when it’s available so that the grid can continue to meet overnight demand – such as recharging the 30 million or so battery-powered cars we will be compelled to buy.
The state now has a few battery banks to preserve solar power but scaling up will be enormously difficult and expensive and at the moment there are few alternatives.
Finally, the grid itself – the massive complex of high-voltage lines linking generators and importing power from other states – will need upgrading, not only to handle the conversion of power sources, but to meet rising demands and to prevent failures that cause wildfires.
Is California really up the task that the new legislation mandates, a very expensive, relatively rapid conversion and expansion of this immensely complicated and absolutely vital thing we call the grid?
Recent history is not reassuring. This is a state government that took a quarter-century to replace one third of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, has been futzing around with a bullet train project for 14 years with little progress, and has dozens of bollixed information technology projects.
Electric power transformation would be infinitely more difficult than any of those.
“Wind Droughts” – Latest Climate Change Impact
Yale e-360
There is a new climate change power impact – “wind droughts.” Europe experienced a six-month wind drought in 2021, with wind speeds slowing by 15 percent or more below the annual average, and researchers are forecasting that global wind speeds could drop by up to 10 percent by 2100. This wind “stilling” is being attributed to a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and a warming of the Earth’s poles. Scientists say the slowdown could impact wind energy production and plant distribution and growth, and might affect the Gulf Stream, which drives much of the world’s climate.
MORE:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/global-stilling-is-climate-change-slowing-the-worlds-wind
Feds Finding Offshore Wind Power in California is…Complicated
Wall Street Journal excerpt
As the Biden administration plans for the country’s first West Coast offshore wind turbines, interests ranging from commercial fishing fleets to powerful environmental groups are complicating the road ahead for the California projects.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management expects to hold a lease sale for two offshore regions by the end of the year, one north of Santa Barbara near Morro Bay and another more remote site off Humboldt County just south of the Oregon border. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently said the state “is home to one of the world’s best offshore wind resources in the world.”
The floating turbines in both regions would likely be more than 20 miles offshore, making them hard to see from the coast and resolving the common complaint that turbines are an eyesore. Together, the projects are aimed at augmenting California’s power supply, generating enough to run more than 1.5 million homes with more than 4.5 gigawatts of electricity, U.S. officials estimate. That input could help the state reach its goal of 100% zero-emission power sources by 2045.
Yet proponents recognize that California has a complex regulatory regime, and federal laws on environmental protection make it easy for even small groups to launch legal challenges that tie up major projects for years.
Interior Department officials say they are trying to head off the issues already bubbling up by weighing whether to redraw proposed lease boundaries or alter other bid requirements for the auction, such as the amount of money that would be dedicated to community initiatives.
Recent public comments submitted to the U.S. wind officials who are organizing the auction and formally solicited input as part of the regulatory process laid bare the logistical challenges for wind turbines that will have to share California’s coast with commercial fishing boats, the shipping industry, marine researchers, tourists and the U.S. military. Those include everything from worries about sea turtles and other marine life to obstacles such as shipping routes and underwater telecommunication cables.
The companies preparing to bid on the offshore regions are signing up for an engineering experiment. The coastal shelf drop-off into deep waters will require developers to build turbines on floating platforms attached to the seabed by cables, a type of technology used in Europe and Asia but that would be making its North American debut. Most offshore wind turbines are bolted to the ocean floor in shallower waters.
Miles of transmission cables on the ocean floor will have to carry power back to land across fragile coastal ecosystems, and nearby ports will need to expand to support the activity, industry officials said.
Some fishermen are worried about losing access to swaths of rich fishing grounds, where they would have to stop towing nets that could get caught on underwater cables.
Boats cluster in both proposed turbine regions to fish for albacore tuna and groundfish such as black cod, said Mike Conroy, executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.
Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, said offshore wind power projects threaten an industry that also must deal with depleted fish stocks and soaring coastal real-estate prices.
“We’re struggling to make sure that people understand that, just because you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not having an impact,” she said.
Ms. Steele said her members aren’t outright opposed to renewable projects but want government agencies and developers to move forward with the industry’s concerns in mind.
There is early discussion about creating fishing compensation funds, similar to ones created by East Coast projects for financial losses, “but the industry doesn’t want to be bought out,” she said.
U.S. officials also must contend with the shipping industry over how the wind turbine areas will intersect with their navigational routes. Another potential wrinkle: The projects must avoid interfering with two underwater telecommunication cables scheduled to be installed next year.
Meanwhile, some wind-power companies interested in the Morro Bay region are urging federal regulators to fix a logistical problem before auction. Commerce Department officials are working to designate a 7,000-square-mile section of seabed home to dwindling populations of leatherback sea turtles and humpback whales as a national marine sanctuary—a move that could block the path of transmission cables from the floating platforms to shore.
Several potential turbine project bidders, including Equinor Wind US LLC and BP America Inc., asked Interior officials to clarify the process for routing cables through the potential sanctuary before the auction, saying that doing so would lower “the likelihood that future projects fail to mature.”
Environmental groups want more upfront protections to avoid harm to coastal and marine wildlife. Other groups asked for requirements that developers stop the blades during high-risk periods for migratory birds.
Slow-Motion Catastrophe in the West: Colorado River Dries Up
Associated Press
The intensifying crisis facing the Colorado River amounts to what is fundamentally a math problem.
The 40 million people who depend on the river to fill up a glass of water at the dinner table or wash their clothes or grow food across millions of acres use significantly more each year than actually flows through the banks of the Colorado.
In fact, first sliced up 100 years ago in a document known as the Colorado River Compact, the calculation of what gets what amount of that water may never been balanced.
“The framers of the compact – and water leaders sine the – have always either known or had access to the information that the allocations they were making were more than what the river could supply,” said Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a collaborative series on the Colorado River as the 100th anniversary of the historic Colorado River Compact approaches. The Assoicated Press, The Colorado Sun, The Albuquerque Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Arizona Daily Star and The Nevada Independent are working together to explore the pressures on the river in 2022.
During the past two decades, however, the situation on the Colorado River has become significantly more unbalanced, more dire.
A drought scientists now believe is the driest 22-year stretch in the past 1,200 years has gripped the southwestern U.S., zapping flows in the river.
What’s more, people continue to move to this part of the country. Arizona, Utah, and Nevada all rank among the top 10 fastest growing states, according to U.S. Census data.
While Wyoming and New Mexico aren’t growing as quickly, residents watch as two key reservoirs – popular recreation destinations – are drawn down to prop up Lake Powell.,
Meanwhile, southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District uses more water than Arizona and Nevada combined, but stresses their essential role providing cattle feed and winter produce to the nation.
Until recently, water managers and politicians whose constituents rely on the river have avoided the most difficult questions about how to rebalance a system in which demand far outpaces supply. Instead, water managers have drained the country’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead, and Lake Powell, faster than Mother Nature refills them.
In 2000, both reservoirs were about 95% full. Today, Mead and Powell are each about 27% full – once-healthy savings accounts now dangerously low.
The reservoirs are now so low that this summer Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee that between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet would need to be cut next year to prevent the system from reaching “critically low water levels,” threatening
reservoir infrastructure and hydropower production.
The commissioner set an August deadline for the basin states to come up with options for potential water cuts. The Upper Basin states – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming – submitted a plan. The Lower Basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – did not submit a combined plan.
The bureau threatened unilateral action in lieu of a basin-wide plan. When the 60-day deadline arrived, however, it did not announce any new water cuts. Instead, the bureau announced that predetermined water cuts for Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico had kicked in the gave the states more time to come up with a basin-wide agreement.
California Family Gives Away Their $3-Billion Company
NY Times
A half century after founding the outdoor apparel maker Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, the eccentric rock climber who became a reluctant billionaire with his unconventional spin on capitalism, has given the company away.
Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.
The unusual move comes at a moment of growing scrutiny for billionaires and corporations, whose rhetoric about making the world a better place is often overshadowed by their contributions to the very problems they claim to want to solve.
At the same time, Mr. Chouinard’s relinquishment of the family fortune is in keeping with his longstanding disregard for business norms, and his lifelong love for the environment.
“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Mr. Chouinard, 83, said in an exclusive interview. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”
Patagonia will continue to operate as a private, for-profit corporation based in Ventura, Calif., selling more than $1 billion worth of jackets, hats and ski pants each year. But the Chouinards, who controlled Patagonia until last month, no longer own the company.
MORE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html
QUICK TAKES:
Two-Thirds of San Franciscans Say Life is Getting Worse
SF Chronicle
A new survey of San Franciscans finds the city deeply unhappy, with roughly one-third of respondents saying they were likely to leave within the next three years and 65 percent saying that life in the city is worse than when they first moved there, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
California Ports Still Buried in Cargo
CalMatters
At last count at the Port of Los Angeles, 28,000 containers are now waiting for a train, 16,000 of which have been waiting for more than nine days, the Long Beach Post reported.
Port executive director Gene Seroka: “Under normal conditions, that number should be zero.”