Just before the July 4 holiday, California’s legislature was in full operational mode, grinding out several key energy measures by Friday, including global warming emissions limits and jump-starting accelerated solar and energy efficiency initiatives. Most of the action remains in the state Senate.

An aggressive approach to energy efficiency (AB 2021) sponsored by the chair of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, Lloyd Levine, was voted out of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee late Thursday and next goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Levine touts the legislation as having the impact to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by lowering power demand statewide by 10% over the next 10 years.

Last Monday the Senate Environmental Quality Committee passed on a 4-2 vote the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), which would be the first-of-its-kind in the nation if it gains overall passage and a signature from California’s global warming-sensitive governor. It calls for mandatory reporting and an emissions inventory for electric generation plants and large factories beginning in 2008.

The solar initiative legislation (SB 1) to make possible the 11-year, $2.8 billion effort already approved by the California Public Utilities Commission and championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the lower house Assembly (46-20) Thursday, prompting Levine, one of its strongest backers in the Assembly, to issue statement saying the success is a “culmination of two years of hard work” that he and Sen. Kevin Murray, SB 1’s author, have put in.

“We’ve (Murray and Levine) also seen to it that the initiative will provide financial incentives to offset the costs of solar electricity in the early years of the program and then require that incentives decline each year so that the solar industry [as it has requested] is forced to lower its own prices to remain cost-effective,” Levine said in a written statement.

A Sacramento utility representative following the bill said SB 1 was sent to the Senate floor late Thursday, but it ran into “opposition that was raised, to it now will be heard in Senate energy committee in August.”

A second GHG emissions-limiting measure, SB 1368, authored by the leader of the Democratic-controlled Senate would prohibit new long-term contracts or extensions of existing contracts for baseload coal-fired power generation, or any other source that is not at least as clean as the cleanest combined-cycle natural gas-fired generation plant. Like AB 32, this proposed legislation by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata is headed for the Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 32 was voted out late last Monday strictly on partisan lines (four Democrats to two Republicans). If it gets through the Senate Appropriations Committee next, the measure will then go to the full Senate before heading back to its lower house of origin in the Assembly where it is sponsored by Speaker Fabian Nunez.

A Sacramento representative for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said late last Tuesday the San Francisco-based combination utility continues to oppose the measure unless it is amended, a position it articulated in a letter a week ago, reiterating its strong environmental record and support for reversing climate change.

A leading environmental lobby in Sacramento, Environment California, “applauded” the Senate environmental committee’s vote, calling AB 32 “historic,” allowing California “to lead the country by capping pollution and ultimately promoting clean energy solutions like solar power and energy efficiency,” the latter two being strongly promoted in other proposed state legislation by Environment California leader Bernadette Del Chiaro.

Karen Douglas, director of the California Climate Initiative of Environmental Defense, called AB 32 “the most urgent environmental legislation that [California’s] legislators and governor can vote on this year,” and she reminded in a prepared statement that “those who voted yes know that by acting now we can fight global warming and benefit the economy.”

Essentially, AB 32 mandates that California reduce production of greenhouse gases (GHG), believed to be warming the earth, by 25% by 2020 through mandatory regulations by the state’s biggest polluters. In opposition, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association says to reach such a large level of emission reductions will shut down many major businesses in the state, severely harming the state’s now robust economy.

Regulations eventually would be adopted by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) beginning in 2009, and they would begin to take effect in 2012.

On the other side, PG&E’s vice president for government relations, Nancy McFadden, wrote to Nunez and his colleague and co-author on AB 32, Fran Pavley, June 19 outlining the company’s concerns ahead of last Monday’s committee hearing.

“PG&E believes that climate change is the most critical environmental challenge of our age, with potentially severe impacts on California’s economy and its citizens’ health and well-being,” wrote McFadden, saying that “regrettably” the utility found it ‘”necessary to take an ‘oppose-unless-amended’ position on the bill.”

PG&E outlined how and why it was taking all reasonable steps already to help reduce GHG emissions, noting that for “several years” the utility has supported the need for federal action on regulating GHG emissions. But as it is currently written, AB 32 will not “create an appropriate GHG regulatory framework,” McFadden said in her letter.

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