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IN THIS ISSUE – “If we don’t build, democracy is crushed. They say we can’t get things done anymore. We need to get moving!”

Gov. Newsom on his legislative package to speed-up infrastructure permitting

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 JUNE 2, 2023

 

Legislature Rejects Newsom’s Infrastructure Acceleration Package…and Final Budget Dance Begins…

Sacramento Bee Capital Newsletter

Dealing a blow to Gov. Gavin Newsom, legislators opened final State Budget negotiations by shooting down his ambitious attempt to reform state environmental law and make it easier to build big infrastructure projects in California.

In a 3-0 vote, a Senate budget committee found Newsom’s package was too complex for last-minute consideration under legislative deadlines. The cutoff for bills to pass out of their house of origin is June 2, just two weeks after the governor rolled out his proposal to adjust the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

The 10 bills include measures to streamline water, transportation and clean energy projects with an eye toward helping the state meet its climate goals. The proposals also took aim at an environmental law commonly referred to by the acronym CEQA that critics have long decried as a tool to bog down housing and other projects.

The committee members – two Democrats and one Republican – said no, for now, even as they expressed support for Newsom’s overarching goal.

“The overwhelming agreement is that we need to build clean faster and cut green tape,” said Committee Chair Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from San Mateo. “That’s been a legislative priority for me and will continue to be a legislative priority. Although today we are rejecting the governor’s trailer bill proposals based on process, as seven days is insufficient to vet the hundreds of pages of policy nuance in these proposals, we look forward to working with the administration on all of these critical issues.”

Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, and Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from Redding, also voted no.

That setback came last Thursday, just hours after the governor expressed confidence his package would prevail.

That vote doesn’t mean Newsom’s infrastructure proposal is dead. His bills could return to Senate or Assembly committees in budget negotiations over the next few weeks. Or Newsom could instead re-introduce them through the Legislature’s policy committees, where they would go through a lengthier process of public comments, discussion and votes.

“The governor is committed to getting this proposal passed so California can maximize its share of federal infrastructure dollars and fast-track clean energy, transportation and water projects that deliver results for all Californians,” Daniel Villaseñor, deputy press secretary for the governor’s office, said in an emailed statement.

Newsom spoke plenty about his infrastructure legislation during an event that quickly morphed into an exhortation about the urgency of passing his proposal.

“Enough. We need to build, we need to get things done,” Newsom said. “This is not an ideological exercise. We don’t have time. We gotta go.”

Newsom said that streamlining legal review of clean energy projects is imperative if the state expects to reach its ambitious climate goals. Newsom cited a solar project that has taken 13 years to work its way through agency bureaucracy, a timeframe he called “absurd.”

His legislation proposed a fixed 270-day permitting process for some projects and 270 days for judicial reviews.

“If we don’t build, democracy is crushed,” Newsom said. “They say we can’t get things done anymore. We need to get moving and get ourselves out of the way.”

His package of bills would shorten the amount of time certain projects – namely water, transportation, clean energy and semiconductor or microelectronic projects – could spend in court. It also would have limited the amount of records parties involved in CEQA litigation would have to produce. Typically, preparing the required records for such lawsuits takes between four and 17 months, according to a document published with the bill.

But Newsom’s ideas to water down the state’s landmark environmental law immediately drew criticism from some environmental groups, including Sierra Club California and Restore the Delta.

Several groups also called into today’s hearing to express their concerns.

“This is moving in the wrong direction for protections for the environment,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, director of California Water Research.

A little more than two weeks remain before the June 15 constitutional deadline for enacting a 2023-24 state budget.

 

California Fiscal Woes Deepen; Impacts May Last Several Years

CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters

This year’s budget dance kicks off a political tussle over spending and taxes that will likely continue for the remainder of Gavin Newsom’s governorship.

When he introduced his first version of the budget in January, he said the state had a $22.5 billion deficit, and then increased the shortfall by another $9 billion in the revised budget proposal mid-May.

The Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, a few days later told his bosses that it’s really $34.5 billion and, more ominously, declared that the state faces continuing deficits averaging $18 billion for several more years.

It is, in the parlance of fiscal mavens, a “structural deficit,” meaning it’s baked into the state’s finances regardless of underlying economic conditions. All of the competing versions of the state’s fiscal situation also assume that California does not experience a recession in the near future.

Were a recession to strike, the deficits could grow by tens of billions of dollars because California’s revenue system is dangerously dependent on taxing the incomes of the state’s wealthiest residents, as Newsom’s budget acknowledges.

“California’s progressive tax system, where nearly half of all personal income tax in the state is paid by the top 1% of earners, has contributed to extreme budget volatility over the years,” the May revision says. “Maintaining budget stability requires long-term planning in the face of these revenue fluctuations.”

In light of that statement and Petek’s rather gloomy long-term projections, will Newsom and the Legislature respond responsibly? Or will they take the easy way out, paper over the current deficit with creative bookkeeping and backdoor borrowing, and ignore the structural deficit until it becomes a crisis?

Newsom’s budget is essentially a short-term response, dipping the usual bag of fiscal tricks to produce a budget that would be balanced on paper – assuming his deficit estimate of $31.5 billion is accurate.

Both Senate and the Assembly leaderships have adopted budget frameworks that purport to protect vital services but differ in approach. The Assembly’s version would reshuffle appropriations while the Senate’s would cover the gap by raising corporate income taxes, arguing that a tax hike would merely recapture money large corporations gained from the Trump-era federal tax overhaul.

Although Newsom immediately rejected a corporate tax increase, if the deficit is as wide and chronic as Petek projects, budget stakeholders will intensify their demands for tax increases of some kind.

In recent elections, California voters have rejected proposed increases in property taxes and personal income taxes on the wealthy. Newsom opposed the income tax increase, is now opposing the Senate’s proposed corporate tax, and also has rejected periodic bills to impose a wealth tax.

“A wealth tax is not part of the conversation,” Newsom said of this year’s version. “Wealth taxes are going nowhere in California.”

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/05/california-ongoing-budget-deficits/

 

Governor’s State of the State Speaking Tour Was 5X Normal Cost

CalMatters

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of the State statewide tour to jump start his second term cost taxpayers at least five times more than the traditional prepared speech that launched his first, according to records obtained by CalMatters.

That’s the price of California’s governor seeking a new approach to push his agenda — a high-profile, highly choreographed four-day journey that spanned the state, each day focusing on one policy area.

“We’re just trying to do something to generate a little more energy so people understand what our priorities are,” he said on the fourth and final day of his March tour, which started in Sacramento, proceeded to the Bay Area and Los Angeles County and ended in San Diego.

Newsom’s February 2019 speech to a joint session of the Legislature in Sacramento cost taxpayers a little less than $7,000, mostly travel expenses for two consultants and teleprompter services.

The 2023 tour cost at least $38,000, according to receipts obtained through public records requests. The receipts include flights, hotel and transportation expenses for the governor and his staff.

Newsom’s office pushed back, saying the comparison between the traditional speech and the tour was “not apples to apples.” 

“Not a lot of people pay attention to what’s happening in Sacramento on a daily basis,” Anthony York, spokesperson for the governor, told CalMatters on Tuesday. “A 30-minute speech in Sacramento, it’s over. And I think it adds to the disconnect between people and their government.

“It’s important for any politician — whether that’s the Legislature, the governor or the president — to be out among their constituents to be talking about what their government is doing,” York added.

The governor’s office, which paid all the costs, did not provide an estimated budget for the high-profile tour.

But the total bill could be higher.

The receipts provided by the governor’s office don’t include security costs, which are paid for by the California Highway Patrol. CalMatters asked for those costs, but they were not available for this story.

The governor’s office said some of the travel costs in the receipts were not for the tour specifically because “other official business required some staff involved in the tour to extend their trip to join other events or meetings.” Large portions of some documents were redacted, to protect “personal privacy,” the governor’s office said.

Tracking the spending for the internal operations of the governor’s office can be difficult — because many expenses are offloaded to other departments, said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

It’s also complicated to parse out expenses necessary for the governor to do his job from the political events, Coupal said.

One example: “If he flies down to the Central Valley to look at the Tulare Lake flooding, that’s legitimate. But is he gonna make some campaign stops in the lake? Probably … It’s very, very difficult to break down.”

The association tracks, and has sued, over outright political advocacy paid through the state budget, Coupal said, critiquing Gov. Jerry Brown for campaigning for Proposition 30, a 2012 ballot measure to increase the statewide sales tax rate.

MORE:

https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/05/gavin-newsom-tour-cost/

 

2026 Political Musical Chairs Continue – Lt. Gov. Candidates Queue

Sacramento Bee & Politico California Playbook

The musical chairs continue in California politics, as State Treasurer Fiona Ma announced Wednesday she is running to succeed Eleni Kounalakis as California’s next lieutenant governor.

“With more than two decades of experience in public office, I am uniquely qualified to be California’s second-highest ranking elected official — where I will continue to be a powerful advocate for improving our state’s housing supply, environment, education systems and economy,” Ma, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Ma, 57, would be the first Asian-American and only the second woman to hold the office if elected in 2026. Prior to becoming treasurer, she served in the Assembly from 2006 to 2012 and then on the State Board of Equalization from 2015 to 2019. Ma also sat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2002 to 2006.

Here’s how the musical chairs are unfolding, so far:

Kounalakis is running to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon has formed a campaign committee for state treasurer in 2026, when Ma’s term expires.

In addition to Ma, more than 20 other current or former state officials have open accounts for lieutenant governor. An open account shouldn’t be taken as a surefire sign that a candidate is running, but it does give a good indication of who is keeping their options open — and where they’re parking their money.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, for instance, reported more than $1.2 million in her 2026 lieutenant governor account at the end of last year. Atkins has been coy about her next steps after she terms out in 2024, telling Politico she’s mostly interested in being a backup singer for Dolly Parton.

In a statement Wednesday, the pro tem again demurred, saying she’s open to exploring opportunities that may arise in the future, but for now, is “laser-focused on leading the Senate.”

Embattled Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León has a robust $3 million in his 2026 lieutenant governor account, even as he considers running for reelection in his downtown district.

 

Newsom Wields “A Whole New California Effect” Against Red States & Corporations

NY Times interview

California has been so successful at bending national policy in its direction that academics have taken to calling the phenomenon the California effect. From labor and consumer protections to corporate governance, energy and animal-welfare measures, California’s laws are the most widely copied in the nation.

Most corporations can’t afford to ignore its mammoth market (its $3.6 trillion economy is the world’s fifth-largest, exceeding India’s); they often end up adopting California’s rules across the country because doing so is cheaper than trying to craft two separate sets of products and policies.

For decades, California has been able to fund a sprawling administration whose agencies have federal-size budgets and wide latitude to set and enforce rules. But as the nation has fractured along cultural and economic lines, Republican governors, like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, have sought to experiment with legislative activism of their own — a kind of anti-California effect.

Recently, a number of red states have tried to create conservative guidelines for textbooks, explored ways of preventing companies from paying for employees’ abortions, tried to stop (or at least slow) the move away from fossil fuels and sought to limit Medicaid patients’ access to gender-transition care.

Newsom wants California to aggressively meet this new challenge. Aides to the governor say he often shows up to morning meetings fuming about some new bill signed by a Republican governor, seeking ideas for how to counter.

When Texas passed a law allowing private citizens to sue abortion doctors, Newsom used it as a model for legislation that would allow Californians to sue manufacturers of illegal guns. When Walgreens announced that it would not sell mifepristone, an abortion medication, in certain states, Newsom responded on Twitter, writing that California would try to end a contract with the pharmacy.

What Newsom aspires to is a whole new kind of California effect, one that goes way beyond environmental and consumer regulations — regulations that, even though they had national impact, were first and foremost about improving life for California residents.

This fight is purely about changing behavior beyond the borders of his state. Newsom describes the gun law as his “first foray” into this area, promising that he is “barely winding up.”

If companies accede to Republican demands to deny abortion coverage or curb diversity and clean-energy efforts, he warns, they should expect to pay a financial price in California. “All these corporations, they’re silent, they’re complicit in all of this,” Newsom says. “In the spirit of Reagan, it’s a time for choosing.”

Legal scholars worry that this interstate rivalry threatens to return the country to the trade wars of two centuries ago, when states tried to disadvantage their neighbors and hamper cross-border industries.

In the 19th century, the Supreme Court largely ended these fights by establishing the dormant commerce clause — ruling that because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, states are prohibited from engaging in protectionism.

Now, experts warn, a new kind of trade war is brewing, only this time the impetus is politics instead of actual trade. With Congress in a chronic deadlock, governors of America’s most populous states are trying to resolve the country’s most divisive issues by crafting laws that target one another.

“One of the virtues of federalism is supposed to be that each state’s voters get to determine laws in the state they live in,” says Ruth Mason, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “But if there’s no limit on one state’s ability to export laws to another, then voters in smaller states will not get to determine local law because California or Texas will do that for them.”

The California effect began with smog. In 1972, Mary Nichols was a young environmental lawyer driving through the haze to a Los Angeles courthouse, where she hoped a legal victory would help improve the region’s air pollution.

Two years earlier, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, and Nichols’s firm was arguing that the law required the E.P.A. to compel California to create a plan to solve the smog problem — in other words, that it was the federal government’s responsibility to push the state to act.

The case was ultimately successful, and it was the start of Nichols’s career as one of the auto industry’s most powerful regulators. From her perch on the West Coast, she would spend the next five decades doing the reverse: Instead of using the federal government to change California, she would use California to change the nation.

Seven years after the Clean Air Act lawsuit, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Nichols to be chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a pollution agency created in 1967. Around that time, Congress, in response to the demands of the influential California delegation, gave the state a powerful regulatory tool: a waiver that allowed California, and only California, to set air-quality standards higher than the federal government’s.

The auto industry lobbied fiercely against the waiver, worried that California would use it to determine policy for the whole country, which of course it did: As CARB forced carmakers to reduce particulate matter and toxins like nitrogen oxides and ozone, the rules Nichols put in place became the national standard.

David Vogel, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, who coined the phrase California effect, argues that businesses ultimately came to appreciate California’s environmental rules.

“Having cleaner air benefited just about every sector of the Los Angeles economy,” he says. “Carmakers had to adjust, but they came to accept them, and particular firms saw them as a competitive advantage.”

California’s regulatory climate encouraged innovations like the low-emission engine Honda produced in the 1970s, the three-way catalytic converter Volvo pioneered later that decade and Tesla’s popularization of electric vehicles. Each of these developments prompted rivals to continue innovating to keep up.

As California became the de facto regulator of the auto industry, Nichols says, lawmakers recognized that their power could be used elsewhere. “People realized you could do the same thing in other areas,” she told me. “It showed that we could take on a problem and really expect things to change — that we didn’t have to just try to convince the federal government to act.”

In recent decades, California’s appliance and energy rules have set national standards for televisions, washing machines and a host of battery-operated contraptions as diverse as golf carts and electric toothbrushes.

Today the idea that California can — and should — create rules beyond its borders is so soaked into the way of doing things that when you ask a policymaker to comment on the topic, the reaction is, as a lobbyist named Jennifer Fearing puts it, “Well, duh.” Fearing works exclusively for nonprofits, from an office that sits off the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, amid stuffed animals and recycled goods that are souvenirs of various environmental and animal-protection campaigns. Last year, she helped shape Senate Bill No. 54, which aims to eliminate single-use plastics and force manufacturers to reduce the amount of plastic in their packaging. The hope, she says, is that companies will redesign their packages nationally.

On the day we met, Fearing was preparing to go into a hearing room and push for a separate bill that would require all washing machines sold in the state to be affixed with a new kind of filter to capture microplastics. The familiar pattern followed: An industry lobbyist objected that the manufacturers couldn’t meet the standard; the committee moved the bill anyway, confident that they would figure it out.

Governor Newsom puts a lot of stock in the idea that the nation still sees California as a cultural barometer. “It’s moral authority,” he says. “It’s only through the power of emulation that states follow California’s lead.”

In the 1970s, when the state was a beacon of postwar growth, that position needed little defending. With 39 million residents, California is still by far the nation’s most populous state. That’s nine million more than Texas (the nation’s second most populous), so it will remain in that position for a good deal longer.

But the boom years are long past over: Its population is now declining. Many residents are heading to more affordable Southern states, whose expanding subdivisions and elementary schools resemble the California of the 1950s and 1960s — and whose politicians are now experimenting with flexes of their own.

Ron DeSantis, who recently announced his candidacy for president, is clearly the archrival here, though Newsom tries not to mention him by name, referring to him as “this guy down in Florida.”

More than any other Republican, DeSantis has tried to position Florida as a kind of red-state alternative where everything from Covid shutdowns to education and energy policy communicates the opposite of California values. At times his agenda is so extreme that it seems performative.

Earlier this year, for example, DeSantis’s proposed budget included a tax break for gas stoves, which California is trying to phase out to help combat climate change. There is also the ongoing battle with Disney (a “California-based corporation,” as DeSantis calls it) over a special tax district where the company operates its theme parks. The conflict began after the company criticized a Florida law that limits classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.

In January, Florida announced it would block the A.P. African American studies course from its high schools, rejecting the curriculum as historically inaccurate. When the College Board, the nonprofit that sets national college-placement exams like the SATs and A.P. subject tests, released an updated curriculum in February, topics like mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter were reduced or removed.

Some textbook makers already produce alternate versions for high school American history classes that omit material portraying the nation’s legacy of racial discrimination as something that continues today.

Newsom told me that his tweet threatening to cancel a Walgreens contract was in part retaliation for Florida’s actions on education: “You want to know why I did that to Walgreens? That was my blood boiling on the A.P. on Black studies.”

He felt that the College Board had “completely capitulated” to conservatives, but he didn’t have the leverage to do much about it. That frustration prompted him to act even more quickly when Walgreens made its announcement about mifepristone several weeks later.

Unlike the situation with the College Board, Newsom had a clear idea of how to put pressure on Walgreens. “We are going to use our market power,” he told me. “Absolutely.”

Newsom isn’t moved by the plight of smaller states, but he does sympathize with companies — pharmacies, publishers, insurance companies and investment managers — trying to do business in a deeply divided country.

“This is not my natural state,” he says, referring to the combative stance he has taken. “But as I pray, I’ve got to move my feet. The rights regression and rollback is happening in real time. I’m not going to look back and regret that I did not meet this moment.”

The Supreme Court’s rightward shift would seem like a potential check on California’s ambitions, but conservatives tend to give states wide latitude in local matters. Last month, in a 5-4 ruling that blurred ideological lines, the court upheld a California initiative that bans the sale of pork unless farms — almost all of which operate out of state — create larger pens for sows.

Proposition 12, as it’s known, was widely seen as a test of just how far states could go in passing regulations whose impacts are mostly beyond their borders. Pork producers could just decide to stop selling ham and bacon in California, but many are unlikely to, given that according to the National Pork Producers Council, Californians consume about 13 percent of all U.S.-raised pork. Some large producers like Hormel Foods have already said they will comply.

Mason, who has written about the case, argues that the ruling charts a path for a new class of “rivalries and reprisals.” “States have long had wide latitude to ban products for safety reasons,” she says. “The question in this case was whether a state could ban a product purely for moral reasons. You may agree with California, but just wait until a state whose politics you disagree with tries to do it.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissenting in part from the majority opinion, raised exactly that point. How far is this going to go? What if a state banned goods produced by workers who make less than $20 an hour? Or goods made by employees whose companies don’t give them abortion care — or goods made by employers that do, or fruit picked by undocumented immigrants?

Kavanaugh was echoing the concerns of 26 states that submitted a brief in support of the pork industry. Joining the brief was a predictable collection of agricultural and Republican-leaning states like South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming that seemed like natural opponents to the law. But amid all the red states who signed on to argue that the law was a bad idea — that it gave California too much power to set national policy — there was a notable absence: Florida.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/magazine/california-effect.html?campaign_id=49&emc=edit_ca_20230602&instance_id=94054&nl=california-today&regi_id=80823166&segment_id=134517&te=1&user_id=ebedd9f525ae3910eeb31de6bb6c4da0

 

Newsom Stakes Political Future on Renewed Renewable Energy Plan

Associated Press

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to buy massive amounts of renewable energy to help keep the lights on. The idea is to use the state’s purchasing power to convince private companies to build largescale power plants that run off of heat from underground sites and strong winds blowing off the coast — the kinds of power that utility companies have not been buying because it’s too expensive and would take too long to build.

“We laid out the markers on solar and wind, but we recognize that’s not going to get us where we need to go,” Newsom said. “The issue of reliability has to be addressed.”

There’s a lot at stake, not just for the future of clean energy, but for Newsom himself. The Democratic governor, now in his second term and widely seen as a future presidential candidate, insists California will be carbon neutral by 2045. But this goal is often mocked in the summer when, to avoid rolling blackouts, state officials turn on massive diesel-powered generators to make up the state’s energy shortfall.

Demand for electricity in California has increased as the state takes step to move away from fossil fuels, including banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. California will need to add about 40 gigawatts of new power over the next 10 years, according to the California Independent Systems Operator, which manages the state’s power grid. One gigawatt is enough to power about 750,000 homes.

If the state buys lots of power from offshore wind and geothermal sources, it could mean they don’t need those emergency diesel-powered generators anymore. Wind is typically strongest in the evenings, and geothermal energy is available all the time.

This would be a big change for California, where up to now utility companies have been responsible for buying their own power. Customers would have to pay for the new power the state buys through a new, still undetermined, charge on their electric bills.

Californians already pay some of the nation’s highest energy bills. But one consumer advocacy group said Newsom’s proposal could be better for customers in the long-run. State regulators would not decide what the charge will be until the power projects are up and running — potentially several years away.

“There’s nothing free here, it’s just a question of what’s the most efficient way to develop resources,” said Matthew Freedman, staff attorney with The Utility Reform Network, a group that advocates for affordable and reliable energy. “It’s our hope that this arrangement will result in lower total costs across the state.”

Newsom’s proposal has the support of some of the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric. PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo called Newsom’s proposal “likely the most efficient way to achieve a clean energy future,” saying that the state should make sure the power it buys is distributed fairly among utilities in the state.

Publicly owned utilities, like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, fear the state’s entrance into the energy market will create new competition, potentially increasing prices for everyone in a market already struggling with a lack of supply.

Patrick Welch, legislative director for the California Municipal Utilities Association, said if California starts buying power the state would be competing with utilities “and that could further drive up prices.”

“In the past two or three years, the market for new resources has gotten incredibly tight,” he said. “That tightness is really impacting the price of energy and particularly during the summer months.”

Democratic lawmakers have changed Newsom’s proposal to ease some of those concerns. While Newsom wanted the state to buy any type of power, lawmakers say it should be restricted to offshore wind and geothermal — two power sources that the utility companies currently aren’t buying. The proposal is pending in the legislature.

“When you leave stuff vague, then it creates uncertainty. And at this point in time, uncertainty is not good in the investment world,” said Assemblymember Steve Bennett, a Democrat and chair of the budget subcommittee that is vetting Newsom’s proposal.

Advocates say California is in a prime position to try something like this. Last year, five companies spent more than $750 million to lease areas off the California coast for offshore wind projects. These projects could collectively generate close to 5 gigawatts of energy, according to Alex Jackson, director of American Clean Power Association, which represents these companies. That’s enough to power more than 3.5 million homes.

If approved, the next step is getting the permits and building the turbines and the infrastructure necessary to transport the power to the grid. It would be easier for these companies to sell all of their power to the state instead of selling pieces of it to multiple utilities.

Another area ripe for new energy development is the Salton Sea, a large saltwater lake in Southern California that has been slowly drying up. Beneath the surface of the lakebed, heat from the Earth warms underground water. Geothermal power plants use steam from this water to spin turbines that generate electricity. The water also contains lots of lithium, which is used to make batteries that power cell phones and electric cars.

There are only a few companies capable of building these large, complex power plants that take many years to build.

“This isn’t the ‘Field of Dreams.’ You need to know that there is a customer for that power,” said Assemblymember Jim Wood, a Democrat who supports the proposal. “Otherwise, you’re not going to be able to appeal to investors to be able to pull down the resources to invest the billions of dollars it’s going to take.

https://gvwire.com/2023/05/31/facing-power-shortages-and-sweltering-heat-newsom-floats-massive-energy-buy/

 

Advanced Plastic Recycling: Virtuous Circle or Petroleum Perpetuation?

Yale e-360

Companies in the U.S. and around the world are moving ahead with plans for “advanced” recycling plants, which convert hard-to-recycle plastic waste into petroleum feedstock. Using an intense-heat process called pyrolysis, these plants turn plastic waste into oil that will be reused for making new plastic or, more often, refined as fuel. Proponents of the technology — including oil and gas companies — say it will cut pollution, but opponents contend it will only perpetuate the use of fossil fuels. “If you’re taking plastic and burning it as fuel, it’s not feeding back into plastic production,” one critic said. “And so to keep making [new] plastic, you have to keep extracting fossil fuel.”

https://e360.yale.edu/features/advanced-plastics-recycling-pyrolysis