IN THIS ISSUE – “2018 Is A Harbinger of Problems to Come”
CLIMATE CHANGES
- Climate Change Perils – “This Year Is The Harbinger”
- Golden State Struggles with Turning Hot & Brown
- After Firestorms…Whether & Where to Rebuild
POWER PLAYS IN THE CAPITAL
- 100% Renewables by 2045?
- Governor Approves Elections Cybersecurity Office
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
Stay current daily! For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup
FOR THE WEEK ENDING AUG. 31, 2018
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Climate Change Perils – “This Year Is The Harbinger”
Heat waves will grow more severe and persistent, shortening the lives of thousands of Californians. Wildfires will burn more of the state’s forests. The ocean will rise higher and faster, exposing California to billions in damage along the coast.
These are some of the threats California will face from climate change in coming decades, according to a new statewide assessment released by the California Natural Resources Agency.
The projections come as Californians contend with destructive wildfires, brutal heat spells and record ocean temperatures that scientists say have the fingerprints of global warming.
“This year has been kind of a harbinger of potential problems to come,” said Daniel Cayan, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the scientists coordinating the report. “The number of extremes that we’ve seen is consistent with what model projections are pointing to, and they’re giving us an example of what we need to prepare for.”
State leaders vowed to act on the research, even as the Trump administration moves to unravel climate change regulations and allow more pollution from cars, trucks and coal-fired power plants.
“In California, facts and science still matter,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement. “These findings are profoundly serious and will continue to guide us as we confront the apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change.”
The state’s assessment draws on the latest science, including more than 40 new peer-reviewed studies, to project the effects of the continued rise in greenhouse gases on California’s weather, water, ecosystems and people and offer guidance on how officials across the state might adapt.
It’s the fourth such report since 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a climate change assessment as precursor to the Global Warming Solutions Act, the pioneering law California adopted that year to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.
This latest one for the first time scales down global climate models to project climate’s effect at the regional level or smaller. That approach is intended to provide local officials on the ground with more relevant, community-level information they can use to prepare.
“The difference between the San Joaquin Valley and the nearby coastal or Sierra Nevada mountains is enormous, so we have to have ways to unpack the large-scale global model calculations,” Cayan said.
California has already warmed 1 to 2 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases. That figure could rise to between 5.6 degrees and 8.8 degrees by 2100, depending on the amount and rate of pollution spewed into the atmosphere, according to the report.
Those climbing temperatures could cause 6,700 to 11,300 more heat-related deaths annually in California by midcentury, the assessment found. Such fatalities will dominate economic damage to the state from climate change, costing up to $50 billion a year by midcentury.
Scientists have long projected more intense and longer-lasting heat waves by midcentury but have observed those changes occurring faster than anticipated.
“Something that used to happen every 10 years is happening every year,” said Rupa Basu, chief of air and epidemiology for the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
Adding to the risks, scientists say, are trends toward higher humidity and warmer nights. Such conditions hinder people’s ability to recuperate and raise the likelihood of hospital and emergency room visits for a variety of illnesses, from heat stroke and dehydration to heart attacks, kidney disease, gastrointestinal illness and preterm births.
The report also highlights shortcomings in how authorities classify heat waves and alert the public.
In one study cited in the assessment, researchers identified 19 heat waves that landed more than 11,000 people in the hospital between 1999 and 2000. The National Weather Service issued heat advisories for just six of the events.
That led researchers to devise a new way of identifying heat spells that may fall below established temperature thresholds but pose similar health risks. Such episodes, called heat-health events, are defined not by temperature readings but on the public health effects they cause at the local level, particularly to the elderly, young children and other populations most prone to falling ill or dying from the heat.
Modeling by researchers found those health-threatening heat spells will become a persistent fixture in summer months within a few decades, lasting two weeks longer on average in the Central Valley by midcentury.
More air conditioning could attenuate some of the harm, at least for those who can afford it.
Somewhat counterintuitively, researchers expect the health damage from higher temperatures to be worse in coastal areas with historically milder climates, where people are less acclimated to extreme heat and fewer have air conditioning. Researchers have found heat-related deaths to be less common in hotter, inland regions where more people have air conditioning units in their homes.
As the ocean continues to warm, California’s coast will face more beach erosion, flooding and storm damage.
Until recently, scientists and state policymakers worked with a projection that sea level rise by the end of this century could amount to about 5.48 feet in California under the worst case scenario. But the latest reports and state policies are now accounting for the extreme possibility that sea level rise could exceed 9 feet.
These broader projections incorporate the potential rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Even if the sea rose 6.56 feet rather than the higher possible extreme now adopted by the state, more than 250,000 residents, $38 billion in property and 1,400 miles of roads along the coast are at risk of flooding during a severe storm in Southern California, according to a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Among the most vulnerable communities:
- San Diego, Coronado, Imperial Beach and National City in San Diego County
- Huntington Beach, Seal Beach and Newport Beach in Orange County
- Long Beach, Los Angeles and Malibu in Los Angeles County
Almost all of those areas are at lower elevation and were built on former marshes, researchers said. San Diego County has the most wetlands prone to permanent flooding, and Ventura County is most prone to flooding of agricultural land.
Sea level projections are often presented at a global scale that’s too abstract, said the researchers, who hope their localized projections help the public better understand what’s really at stake when it comes to critical roadways and utilities, businesses and high-value properties.
“It highlights the urgency to act now and to manage the coast appropriately,” said Patrick Barnard, research director of the USGS Climate Impacts and Coastal Processes Team and a co-author of the study.
One such response is the creation of natural shoreline infrastructure, such as vegetated dunes, native oyster reefs or seagrass beds that help buffer wave action and hold back the encroaching sea, according to a report led by the Nature Conservancy.
At Surfers Point in Ventura County, officials turned an eroding parking lot and collapsing bike path into a cobble beach backed by vegetated dune. It has fended off erosion, widened the beach and become the most visited beach in Ventura County, the report said. During high wave conditions in the winter of 2015-16, no damage occurred at the project site: Wave run-up reached the bike path only where dunes were absent.
Other parts of the local shorelines were not so lucky: Ventura Pier was damaged in the storm and the Pierpoint neighborhood suffered inundation, the report said.
Northern California — the source of much of the state’s water supply — is likely to grow a bit wetter with climate change. But global warming will alter the timing and form of precipitation, making it tougher for the state to hold on to it.
Warmer temperatures mean mountains will get less snow and more rain and the state snowpack — nature’s reservoir — will melt earlier. That will shorten the season of high stream flows, giving water managers less time to capture the additional water.
Rising sea levels also will increase salinity levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s main transfer point for Northern California supplies headed south. As a result, more freshwater must move through the delta to maintain water quality. And higher temperatures will drive up agricultural water use north of the delta.
Taken together, those effects could reduce delta exports to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southland cities by 10% by 2060, researchers found. The amount of water stored in key Northern California reservoirs at the end of the summer season could decline by a quarter.
“The good news is that we may have the same amount of water. But it may come in a different form and a different time,” said John Andrew, assistant deputy director of the Department of Water Resources. “We’re going to have to be a much better manager of the resource.”
The water world has proposed various responses to expected shifts in California’s hydrology.
Those include modifying reservoir operating rules to allow dam managers to hold on to peak winter flows, which they must now sometimes release to create space for spring snowmelt. Floodwater could be used to recharge the San Joaquin Valley’s over-pumped groundwater basins. Existing reservoirs could be expanded and new ones built.
Southern California water agencies want to construct two massive tunnels under the delta to divert high flows from the Sacramento River and transport them to pumping operations that send supplies south. Water districts are also moving to develop more local resources, such as recycled water.
“Everybody has their favorite solution,” Andrew said. “[But] there is no favorite solution. It’s all of them in some amount.”
The study found that computer modeling showed a wetting trend in Northern California and part of Central California, while most of Central California and Southern California would experience a drying trend by 2060.
Another study released as part of the climate assessment found that, on average, annual precipitation was expected to increase in most parts of the state but that the projected changes were small compared to natural variability — California’s year-to-year precipitation levels swing up and down more than any other state in the lower 48.
As rising temperatures drive more wildfire in California, the greatest increase is expected in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade mountain ranges.
Forest area burned every year could more than double by the end of the century, according to research by UC Merced professor Anthony Westerling.
Climate change will have more of a wildfire effect in mountain forests in the northern two-thirds of the state than in other parts of fire-prone California because those regions are cooler and moister. When mountain regions grow hotter, soil and vegetation dries out more quickly in the summer, fostering conditions conducive to the spread of wildfire.
More air conditioning will place added strain on the electrical grid by increasing peak demand. To avoid blackouts, utilities will have to make costly upgrades, such as additional generating capacity, substations and energy storage facilities, to meet demand during hot months.
State energy officials said the assessment underscores the urgent need not only for swift global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions but also local actions to protect California from warming that’s already threatening people, natural resources and infrastructure.
“We’re seeing that in the fire situation, we’re seeing that in sea level rise, we’re seeing that in heat spells, in declining snowpack,” said California Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller. “The climate is changing now so we need to be adapting our communities.”
Westerling modeled increases in fires of more than 1,000 acres based on two scenarios of global greenhouse gas emissions. Under one scenario, emissions peak and then begin to decline in midcentury. In the second, they continue to climb until late in the century. Under the first scenario, annual average burned forest in much of the Sierra increased by 48% by midcentury and by 120% by century’s end. Under the higher emissions scenario, burned area could surge by as much as 400% by century’s end.
In recent years, bark-beetle infestations killed more than 100 million drought-stressed trees in California. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the study found that in the near term, those dead trees would not significantly increase wildfire.
Westerling cited two reasons for that. When dead needles fall from trees within a few years of a fire, the risk of them fueling an intense blaze drops. And while the dieback is extensive, it is patchy and intermixed with green trees.
Decades from now, when beetle-killed trees fall, the heavy fuel load of downed logs and limbs could increase the risk of mass fires. But Westerling said the effects can’t be quantified because there is no historical analogue on which to base the models.
Rising temperatures will increase demand for electricity across the state as more people install and use air conditioners — even in coastal areas where people have traditionally gone without them.
“If San Francisco with its pleasant coastal climate gets Fresno’s hot climate by end of century, even cool San Franciscans will install window units in existing apartments and new construction will be built with central air conditioning,” according to one study included in the state’s climate assessment.
UC Berkeley environmental economics professor Max Auffhammer, who authored the study that analyzed utility bills for households across the state, found a silver lining: increased electricity demand will be more than offset by reductions in natural gas use for heating as a result of milder winters.
“Electricity consumption is going to go up in the summer,” he said. “But it looks like climate change is going to save many California consumers a bunch of money on their heating bills in the winter.”
Report:
http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov
Golden State Struggles with Turning Hot & Brown
As California lawmakers struggled this week to address an apparent new normal of epic wildfires, there was an inescapable subtext: Climate change is going to be staggeringly expensive, and virtually every Californian is going to have to pay for it.
The day before a special wildfire committee agreed to spend $200 million on tree clearance and let utilities pass on to their customers the multi-billion-dollar costs of just one year’s fire damage, the state released a sobering reportdetailing the broader costs Californians face as the planet grows warmer.
As horrendous as the wildfire situation is, the report made clear, it’s just one line item on a colossal ledger: It could soon cost us $200 million a year in increased energy bills to keep homes air conditioned, $3 billion from the effects of a long drought and $18 billion to replace buildings inundated by rising seas, just to cite a few projections. Not to mention the loss of life from killer heat waves, which could add more than 11,000 heat-related deaths a year by 2050 in California, and carry an estimated $50 billion annual price tag.
“Without adaptation, the economic impacts of climate change will be very costly,” warned the Climate Change Assessment report from Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research, noting that the buildup of manmade greenhouse gases has already warmed California by up to 2 degrees since 1900. That bump, the assessment added, could rise to nearly 9 degrees by the century’s end.
And Californians are being hit with a double-whammy because fighting and preparing for climate change also costs money, and the Golden State has embraced an ambitious agenda to combat global warming. For example, Californians pay more for gas in part because of the state’s low-carbon fuel requirement and the cap-and-trade system that makes polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are right now disproportionately bearing the brunt of both some of the impacts (of climate change) and trying to mitigate it ourselves,” said Solomon Hsiang, a professor at University of California, Berkeley who has researched the cost of climate change.
As that has sunk in, the reaction has been a mix of pragmatism, panic and political action.
Earlier this month, as wildfires laid siege to the state and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Californians, Brown warned that “over a decade, there will be more fire, more destructive fire, more billions that will have to be spent on it, more adaptation and more prevention.”
At the time, California had blown through a quarter of the state’s $443 million emergency wildfire fund; in the devastating four and a half weeks since, the fund has been nearly wiped out.
“All that is the new normal we will have to face,” the governor said.
That realization swept through the Capitol again this week, as lawmakers debated a bill to require that all electricity in California come from renewable sources such as solar and wind by the end of 2045.
Senate Bill 100 was hailed as bold move away from climate-damaging fossil fuels—but legislative critics pointed out that California already has both the nation’s highest poverty rate and the highest per-kilowatt cost for electricity.
“I guarantee you: We pass this, and rates are going to go up,” Assembly Republican leader Brian Dahle said during a passionate floor debate.
“Californians cannot afford it.”
Sen. Kevin de León, the Los Angeles Democrat carrying the bill for 100 percent renewable electricity, dismissed cost concerns as nothing more than the rhetoric of naysayers “who try to undermine our clean-energy climate goals.” The cost of solar power has already dropped significantly and will likely continue to come down further, he said, in the years leading up to the 100 percent renewable requirement.
And, his supporters argued, there is also a cost to not fighting climate change—even more fires and floods than would otherwise occur.
Noel Perry, a founder of Next 10, a group that researches environmental and economic policy, says the benefits of California’s climate policies outweigh the costs because California can demonstrate to the rest of the world what’s possible to fight global warming while expanding the economy with clean technology investments. California’s economy, the world’s fifth-largest, has grown by 16 percent in the last decade while emissions fell by 11 percent, according to a new report from his group.
“In certain instances it will involve increased costs for some consumers and businesses. But because of how huge the climate change challenge is, we need to address it,” Perry said.
In some cases, the increased costs for fuel and electricity are more directly offset by efficiency standards for cars and appliances meant to help Californians consume less energy. For example, a recent mandate requiring solar panels on new homes in 2020 will likely add $10,000 to the price of a house, but could save homeowners more than $16,000 in energy bills.
In any event, climate costs are no longer abstract. Lawmakers have spent much of this year deep in the political nitty-gritty of who should pay how much for which climate-fueled disaster. The total cost of last year’s catastrophic wildfires still isn’t fully tallied, for example, but some estimates put it over $10 billion, and lawmakers have spent much of the year debating how much of that should be borne by taxpayers, utility companies or their industrial and residential ratepayers.
Under California’s liability law, utilities are liable for the damages from any fires sparked by their power lines, even if they weren’t negligent. Cal Fire alleges that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. equipment was involved in 16 of last year’s fires, and that in 11 of those, the company violated state codes that require keeping trees and shrubs away from power lines. The company says it met the state’s standards. Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the Tubbs Fire, the deadliest of last year’s blazes.
The utilities lobbied unsuccessfully this year to change the liability law. But they scored a partial win with the plan the wildfire committee advanced Tuesday that allows utilities to issue bonds to cover damages from the 2017 fires and pass the cost onto their customers—even if the company is found negligent.
Senate Bill 901 would require a review of the companies’ finances before any surcharge is placed on ratepayers, and lawmakers supporting the plan said it would result in modest new charges—roughly $26 per year for residential ratepayers if the companies paid off $5 billion over 20 years. The alternative, they said, was the possibility that the company could go bankrupt, costing customers even more.
Consumer advocates blasted it as a “bailout” for PG&E; lobbyists for industries that use a lot of power said the plan would unfairly burden customers.
Meanwhile, the bill also calls for creation of a new Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery that would decide whether utilities can charge customers for fires in 2018 and beyond, and recommend potential changes to state law “that would ensure equitable distribution of costs among affected parties.”
Translation: Expect a lot more debate in the coming years over who will pay for damages from California disasters exacerbated by climate change.
After Firestorms…Whether & Where to Rebuild?
The Carr Fire blew into Redding, a city of 91,000 people, from the west late last month, leveling 1,079 homes. Four residents died. So did two firefighters. And the fire burned so hot that it created its own weather, generating a lethal tornado that spun up to 143 mph.
The next steps after a major California inferno are to recover and rebuild, to seek a great renewal from the ashes. But in this devastating season there’s a sense that the usual calculus could change — that places like Redding must not only decide how to rebuild, but whether to do so at all.
“The people who live in burnable landscapes have to understand that California can’t protect them,” said Tom Scott, a natural resources wildlife specialist with the UC Cooperative Extension in Riverside. “We do have a fire service, and they’ll do all they can and work really hard. But there’s going to come a day when a fire can’t be fought, and they’ll lose their home.
“We’re in that transition right now,” Scott said. “We need to start making better decisions about where we build.”
The Carr Fire, which as of Friday had scorched 230,000 acres and was 93 percent contained, had barely blitzed into Redding when supportive calls began coming in from Ventura and Santa Rosa. Officials in these cities experienced disastrous blazes last year and knew the difficult path ahead.
They knew Redding had joined the ranks of a rare but fast-growing club: cities that couldn’t have fathomed losing whole urban or suburban neighborhoods.
“It’s the new fire we are seeing across California,” said Redding City Manager Barry Tippin. “When you see a wildfire that does not exhibit any traditional characteristics, it’s not only a total surprise, but it also causes great strife and stress within a community. We, as a state, need to step back and realize that something is different here.”
October’s Tubbs Fire, which swept west from Calistoga into Santa Rosa, destroyed more than 5,600 homes. The Thomas Fire took 1,000 homes in December in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Overall, more than 10,000 buildings and more than 1 million acres burned last year, according to Cal Fire data.
In the aftermath, local officials expedited building permits and allowed housing to be rebuilt in the same footprint — albeit with some new fire-safety standards.
But as global warming fuels extreme fire behavior, some urban planners and disaster-recovery experts are questioning whether rebuilding in the same fire-prone areas is safe. Maybe all of those developments shouldn’t return, they say. Perhaps the conversation needs entirely new parameters.
“Risk perception kicks in differently for different kinds of disasters,” said Laurie Johnson, a disaster-recovery consultant who has helped cities, including New Orleans and Kobe, Japan, after fires, floods, earthquakes and other catastrophes. “With wildfires, it’s really difficult to know. We are facing new intensities with these storms. We can’t look to the past and say it is a good prediction of the future anymore, and that’s very difficult for people to wrap their heads around.”
Once the flames have been vanquished and the fire trucks have rolled out, local governments must balance two critical interests, Johnson said. The first is relieving the suffering of victims who want to rebuild. The second is creating new policy around how those homes should be constructed.
But finding a balance is not easy. Especially when wildfire behavior no longer follows a known formula.
“Should some places not be allowed to rebuild at all?” she asked. “Is there now a new category with a higher fire risk than we thought possible? It’s hard to predict if and when a place might burn again. Those are the challenges of a thoughtful formula.”
Moreover, making good policy becomes harder in the emotionally charged weeks following a disaster. And there is little precedent for governments preventing residents from rebuilding on their own still-valuable land.
More than 25 years after the Oakland hills firestorm, the 3,000 ruined homes have been rebuilt. In Santa Rosa and just east of the city, the Mark West Springs and Fountaingrove communities are following a similar trajectory nearly a year after the Tubbs Fire.
Power Play – 100% Renewables by 2045?
California lawmakers gave final approval to a plan that would put the state on a path to phase out fossil fuels by 2045.
State senators voted overwhelmingly to support Senate Bill 100, which would require California to obtain 100% of its energy from clean sources within the next three decades. The bill, which has been touted by state and national political leaders as a key plank in California’s fight against climate change, now heads to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.
“It’s a historic day as an example for how the United States ought to be grappling with the existential threat to our nation and to our planet, our climate,” said Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), the bill’s author.
The decision follows a dramatic vote Tuesday in the state Assembly to approve SB 100, which had been on hold for nearly a year amid concerns over costs and feasibility, and larger political fights over energy policy.
Legislators opposed to the plan renewed cost concerns during debate on the Senate floor.
“I’m concerned that when we stand up and try to help those that are not in a financial position to help themselves, saddling them with higher utility rates is not the answer,” Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) said.
In addition to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045, SB 100 would also require electric utilities and other service providers to generate 60% of their power from renewable sources by 2030, up from the current 50% goal set for that date.
If Brown signs the bill, California would join Hawaii to become the only states with goals to phase out fossil fuel use by 2045.
The passage of SB 100 is almost two years in the making. Last year, lawmakers punted on the bill after it became caught up in a fight over a proposal from Brown to integrate California’s electricity grid with those of other states in the region, legislation that remains pending. In addition to discussion over that bill, lawmakers are debating how to respond to recent wildfires across the state.
In a report this week, state regulators identified a growing wildfire danger as one of the risks California faces as a result of climate change. SEE NEXT ITEM.
Governor Approves Elections Cybersecurity Office
Secretary of State Alex Padilla says there is no evidence the 2016 California state elections were compromised in any way by the Russians. But lawmakers aren’t taking any chances with the midterm elections fast approaching.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation this week that will help identify cyber threats and false information online.
Padilla says, “a big part of it has to do with the public being confident in the integrity of elections, so when we have instances like we had in the June primary, thousands of people showing up to vote, their names were not on the roster. Right away, ‘Is it the Russians, have we been hacked?'”
Padilla says the June primary incident was, in fact, a clerical error.
It affected 118,000 voters at more than 1,500 precincts.
Provisional ballots are always available for voters in such cases but the new legislation hopes to prevent future similar glitches. It allocates $134 million for voting equipment upgrades and $2 million for a new “Office of Elections Cybersecurity”.
Padilla explains, “we’ve done agency-wide audits. We’re filling vulnerabilities. We have 24-7 monitoring, upgrading servers, improving firewalls. All those things so that the public continue to have the confidence they deserve when they cast their ballot.”
The improvements include state election staff training to minimize the risk of clicking on malware or exposing passwords, but Padilla warns the state needs more federal support to maintain a foolproof election system.
He says, “the last time we significantly invested in elections was more than 15 years ago in response to butterfly ballots and hanging chads during the 2000 elections. We face cyber threats every single day and we need to invest in security on a regular basis, not just every 15 years.”