Calling 2020 an unproductive year is an understatement. This was by far the worst legislative year in a long time in addressing the state’s glaring problems related to energy, or in capitalizing on the state’s growing potential for clean energy and green jobs.
There was a last ditch effort to address wildfire risks, including providing up to $181 million in funding for back up solar and storage systems that failed to go anywhere. There was AB 341 – (Ting) to provide energy efficiency funding for schools as well as cost-recovery for electric vehicle charging infrastructure pushed by the building trades that passed. And there was the CALSSA supported SB 364 (Mitchell) that removed an inadvertent increase in taxes for non-residential properties that have solar in order to avoid opposition to the SEIU-backed Prop 15 this November. But given the magnitude of energy-related problems facing the state and given the huge potential for clean energy solutions, along with broad public support, 2020 was, plainly put, a dismal year.
It was not for a lack of effort on CALSSA’s part. In January, as the smoke cleared (the 2019 smoke, that is) revealing PG&E’s felonious wildfires and the public grew ever more wary of the reliability of the electric grid, CALSSA set out to work with new legislators on various ideas to spur a decade of growth for distributed energy solutions. The outlook was bright: the state had a $6 billion surplus and we had strong support among rank-n-file legislators for distributed solutions to wildfire risks, climate change, rising energy bills, and energy reliability.
Ambitiously, we sponsored an unprecedented number of bills to lower permitting costs, provide real cost-benefit analyses for distributed generation, equip 2000 schools with backup storage systems, launch a virtual power plant market, and prohibit discriminatory fees for solar consumers. We worked to provide a date extension for the CSI-Thermal program. And, we had early discussions about a state tax credit for solar and storage as well as worked with Assembly member Gabriel to get nearly half the state legislature on a letter to congress urging the extension and expansion of the Federal Investment Tax Credit. More details on these bills and others can be found in our 2020 legislative roundup.
Unfortunately, due to Covid-related disruptions along with a lack of prioritization of addressing energy issues in Sacramento, none of these measures were granted a single public hearing. They were deemed “inessential” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and were dropped quickly in the spring. Only Ting’s bill on storage at schools had potential into the summer but, given friction over hiring practices, even the chair of the all-important budget committee could not win support for the idea.
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom announced his Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery chaired by Tom Steyer. CALSSA pitched several ideas to this Task Force including streamlined permitting via NREL’s SolarApp and funding energy storage at schools – all ideas would spur immediate “shovel ready” projects, put people back to work, and have zero impact on the general budget. But the process for engaging with this group of 80 has been unclear and uneventful thus far. We will keep working at it.
CALSSA was able to engage with the California Energy Commission earlier this year to clarify that solar is an essential business under Covid-19 lockdown rules. This helped many of our businesses slowly come out of the economic blackout that plagued March and April. Our recent survey shows we are far from fully recovered.
Optimism, while hard to come by these days, can be found in the new legislators who are emerging as smart and advanced in their thinking about energy. See our roundup for a few of these new faces. We look forward to working with these legislators in 2021 when a new session begins anew in January. In the meantime, CALSSA will convene our membership in October to plan out our policy agenda for the coming year. Thank you for your support and please stay involved.