Within a couple of years, drivers in San Diego County can expect to see solar panels along the highway.
That’s the plan for Senate Bill 49, one of a number of energy-related legislation Sacramento lawmakers passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law. Solar Ground Light
Some 840 bills managed to wend their way through the statehouse gauntlet in the recently completed session. Newsom has until Saturday to sign or veto those bills but this past weekend, the governor made a flurry of legislative decisions.
Here’s a look at some of the energy bills that survived or got the ax:
Signed by Newsom, Senate Bill 49 gives Caltrans officials about two years to develop a plan to install solar panels along 15,000 miles of California highways. The panels can be leased to utility companies or private developers, providing a source of revenue.
A recent study predicted that San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties have nearly 1,000 megawatts of combined potential solar capacity along their busy roads, freeways and expressways — enough to power 270,000 homes.
The bill also looks to add battery storage facilities along highways.
SB 49’s sponsor, Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, said “implementing solar and building transmission lines along highways is just about as smart and common sense as it gets.”
A bill analysis bill the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee said the initiative will result in costs of “an unknown, but presumably significant amount, likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars” in one-time expenses to evaluate right-of-way issues and coordination with Caltrans and the California Energy Commission.
State policymakers are counting on a bonanza of wind energy in the coming years to meet California’s goal of deriving 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources.
Assembly Bill 1373, signed Saturday by Newsom, helps clear the way for the construction of sky-high wind turbines off the shores of Morro Bay and Humboldt County. The plan calls for floating wind farms generating some 25,000 megawatts to the electric grid in little more than two decades — enough to power 25 million homes.
The bill gives private developers more economic certainty by giving the California Department of Water Resources the authority to act as a central procurement agent to buy “clean, diverse” energy from expensive, hard-to-build projects and sell the power to utilities and electric customers.
The legislation will also help develop long-duration battery storage and new geothermal power plants in Imperial Valley.
A late provision to AB 1373 by outgoing Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, includes a pumped hydroelectric storage project at San Vicente Reservoir near Lakeside to the list of potential projects the bill helps facilitate.
If constructed, the San Vicente project will pump water from the existing reservoir to a smaller reservoir (still to be constructed) and then generate emissions-free electricity by sending the water back downhill.
Opponents fear construction will cause habitat and environmental damage to two nearby nature preserves and criticized Atkins for adding the provision but Atkins said, “Given the growing impacts of climate change, it’s critically important that our state invests in safety nets that will bolster our energy resiliency and help us meet our climate goals.”
There are about 5,540 “orphaned” oil wells across the state that don’t have a viable owner or operator, according to a study by the California Council on Science and Technology. That could lead to a potential liability of about $500 million to the state in cleanup costs.
Assembly Bill 1167 requires full bonding to properly plug and remediate idle or abandoned wells when oil companies transfer ownership. “California taxpayers shouldn’t be responsible for the oil and gas industry’s mess,” said Ryan Schleeter of The Climate Center, a Bay Area nonprofit.
The petroleum industry opposed the bill, saying California already has measures in place to help prevent the problem and that creating a new bonding system could make larger oil companies less likely to purchase wells from smaller outfits, leading to more abandoned wells instead of fewer.
Newsom signed AB 1167 into law but, interestingly, acknowledged the industry’s concerns in a note. “I look forward to working with the Legislature to enact legislation to make any necessary revisions to address this risk,” his signing statement said.
“We’ve said all along that this bill is likely to create more issues than it solves,” said Kevin Slagle, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. “So we’re looking forward to next legislative session working on these fixes.”
Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista, sponsored Senate Bill 619 to upgrade transmission infrastructure and streamline the often lengthy regulatory process overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission by providing an avenue for the California Energy Commission to OK potential projects.
But Newsom vetoed the bill, saying it could lead to “coordination challenges,” redundant staffing and that leaving responsibilities to one agency “can lead to better results.”
Padilla said the veto is “disappointing and only delays action on crucial reform while California is in a race against time to meet the energy demands of the future.”
Newsom also vetoed Senate Bill 842, passed late in the session, that would require the energy commission to consult with the Department of Industrial Relations and petroleum labor and management before issuing regulations on refinery maintenance shutdowns.
The bill’s opponents said SB 842 would create a loophole that would defang the recently passed Senate Bill X1-2, which created a Division of Petroleum Market Oversight and a first-in-the-nation process to penalize oil companies if it’s deemed they are gouging customers at the gas pump.
In his veto statement, Newsom said it “would be imprudent to sign (SB 842) so soon” after the passage of SB X1-2 and before the energy commission “has fully contemplated implementation of the refinery maintenance portions of that law.”
Newsom signed Assembly Bill 126 into law, which reauthorized the use of a portion of vehicle registration fees to fund incentives for zero-emission infrastructure. The bill included a $106 million carve-out to build fueling stations for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles through July 2030.
Not nearly as well-known or ubiquitous as electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles account for about 12,000 registrations in California. There are two hydrogen fueling stations in San Diego, with two more in the permitting process.
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