‘Nothing Will Be Protected’: Why California Environmentalists Oppose ‘Green’ Energy Bill | Lost Coast Outpost

Energy companies, racing to meet the state’s ambitious clean energy goals, have asked lawmakers to ease California’s most important environmental law so they can upgrade their transmission lines, including those in state parks.

The bill’s author, MP Eduardo Garcia, said that to tackle climate change, energy companies must be able to connect solar fields and wind turbines to an improved power grid more quickly and in a less bureaucratic way.

“Achieving these goals will require an unprecedented buildout of this infrastructure to provide reliable, renewable energy to electrify our homes, commercial buildings and transportation,” Garcia, a Coachella Democrat, told the Senate Energy, Public Utilities and Communications Committee last week. “And that will require bold moves in the policy space.”

Supporters of Garcia’s House Bill 3238, which is being considered today by the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, say streamlining the state’s permitting process for grid upgrades is urgently needed because California’s sweeping plan to end its dependence on fossil fuels by 2045 would increase electricity use by as much as 68 percent. That would put a huge strain on the state’s already outage-prone grid. They say large-scale grid upgrades now routinely take five or more years to plan and implement because of the lengthy environmental assessment process.

But major environmental groups are fighting the bill to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act. The debate is emblematic of a broader tension plaguing California officials and the country as they try to launch more clean energy projects in the face of the climate crisis.

The same policies that have helped environmental groups fight developers and polluters in the past are now often used to delay energy projects needed to transition the country — and California — away from dirty fossil fuels.

“Increasing efficiency should not mean weakening basic environmental safeguards.”
— Kim Delfino, lobbyist for Defenders of Wildlife and the California Native Plant Society

Environmentalists fear that expedited environmental reviews will result in utilities trampling delicate landscapes in their rush to expand the grid. They are particularly concerned about state parks that currently contain smaller poles and power lines that utilities would like to turn into massive, unsightly power towers.

“We know how important it is for our state and our planet to transition to clean energy as quickly as possible,” Kim Delfino, a lobbyist for Defenders of Wildlife and the California Native Plant Society, told the committee. “But efficiency should not come at the cost of weakening basic environmental protections.”

CEQA reform is not easy

The opposition to Garcia’s bill, which has 12 co-sponsors from both parties, also illustrates the fierce resistance to even minor reforms to California’s Environmental Quality Act — something that has embarrassed lawmakers and governors for years.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown once called reforming the law “the Lord’s work,” but he was unable to enact significant reforms. His successor, Gov. Gavin Newson, has made cutting green tape delays a priority and has also tried to address CEQA. Last year, his office sponsored a package of bills and created a “strike team” to advance CEQA.

CEQA reform advocates say that since former Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it into law, the law was meant to protect the environment from harmful pollution, but large-scale industrial development is now regularly used to kill or delay for years much-needed projects, from affordable housing to green energy infrastructure.

Currently, CEQA (pronounced “si-kwa”) requires developers to pay for an environmental impact report, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years to complete.

“If we really are facing a climate crisis, then we need to act as if we are in it.”
—Erica Martin, San Diego Gas & Electric

The analyses, sometimes thousands of pages of impenetrable legal and scientific jargon, must consider a range of potential harms to wildlife and people. These include pollution, construction, noise, urban degradation and the impact of the project on recreation. The reports must offer a range of alternatives that will mitigate any potential harm.

If the agency approves the report and moves forward with the project, the law allows environmental groups, local organizations and other opponents to review the document for flaws that can be used in lawsuits. Those lawsuits can take years to get to trial.

Garcia’s office said CEQA reviews have become a major obstacle to modernizing the state’s power grid. His office cited one 117-mile power line project in Southern California that took officials five years to review. It included an 11,000-page impact report that evaluated more than 100 “alternatives” for the project. That same project required 70 permits from more than two dozen different agencies.

Are state parks in danger?

Garcia’s bill is a response to a settlement reached last year between the state’s three largest investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric — and some environmentalists and clean energy groups.

The settlement called for changes to the way the California Public Utilities Commission issues permits for electric transmission lines. The bill would incorporate the settlement’s recommendation to make the commission the lead agency for issuing CEQA permits for electric grid infrastructure projects.

The commission would be required to complete the review within 270 days, which Garcia’s office said would shorten the entire process by up to two years.

Instead of having other state and local agencies conduct separate CEQA reviews of the entire length of a power line project, they would be required to conduct the review only for the section that crosses their jurisdiction. Garcia’s office said that would eliminate up to three years of delays.

Garcia told the commission last week the rules would eliminate duplication of red tape “while ensuring that an environmental impact assessment can be conducted.”

But a key point of contention for environmentalists is how the bill would exempt power grid upgrades from CEQA requirements on publicly owned lands, particularly California parks.

Garcia’s bill would eliminate CEQA reviews for infrastructure upgrades, which require a utility to take over public land immediately adjacent to an existing “right-of-way” already used for power lines and other energy infrastructure. His office said the actual construction of new transmission towers and other electrical equipment on public land would still require CEQA review.

Environmentalists like Brianna Fordem, executive director of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, fear the modernization will destroy huge swaths of state parks.

Ford told the commission last week that Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County alone has “hundreds of miles of existing road rights” that would be “the path of least resistance for hundreds of 200-foot towers that would permanently disfigure our campgrounds, hiking trails, our sacred cultural preserves, endangered wildlife habitat, dark night skies, and much more.”

“Nothing,” she said, “will be protected.”

The bill passes despite opposition

But major utilities in the state say the bill is critical to achieving the state’s clean energy goals.

“If we are truly in a climate crisis, then we need to act like we are in one,” Erica Martin of San Diego Gas & Electric told the commission last week. “The current approval process for building electric infrastructure is duplicative, lengthy and expensive.”

These arguments gave momentum to the bill, despite opposition from the community.

It passed the Assembly in the spring, with only one lawmaker, San Ramon Democratic Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, voting “no,” according to the Digital Democracy database. She declined to comment, according to her spokesman.

The Senate Public Utilities and Energy Committee also passed the bill last week without any opposition. The committee chairman, Sen. Steven Bradford of Inglewood, said his experience working for a utility company influenced his vote.

State Senator Steven Bradford speaks during a question-and-answer session during the State of Black California Tour at Crawford High School in San Diego, June 15, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters

He is a former public relations manager for Southern California Edison, and he said he has seen environmental groups support an energy project and then “absolutely oppose” building transmission lines to make it workable. He said he has seen the same thing happen with the San Diego Gas & Electric project.

“Both of these projects have been delayed by almost five years and have added billions of dollars to their costs,” Bradford told the committee. “At the same time, we’ve set all these arbitrary targets for when we’re going to have this renewable energy, but we’ve failed to build the infrastructure that’s necessary to get the energy to where it’s needed.”

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