NOTICE OF CANCELLATION
Legislative & Regulatory Committee of the
Clean Power Alliance of Southern California
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
10:00 a.m.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Legislative & Regulatory Committee of the Clean Power Alliance of Southern California meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, February 26, 2025, at 10:00 a.m., has been canceled.
NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that the next Legislative & Regulatory Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. at 801 S. Grand Ave., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90017.
Posted: 02/20/2025
Memorandum
To: Clean Power Alliance (CPA) Legislative & Regulatory Committee From: Gina Goodhill, Senior Director, Government Affairs Subject: 2025 CPA/CalCCA State Lobby Day Recap and Next Steps Date: February 24, 2025
BACKGROUND
On January 29, 2025, CPA joined the California Community Choice Association (CalCCA) and other CCAs around the state for the annual CalCCA Lobby Day in Sacramento. CPA Board Directors Jenny Crosswhite and Chelsea Byers joined CPA CEO Ted Bardacke and Senior Director of Government Affairs Gina Goodhill to meet with CPA state representatives in the Senate and Assembly. This memo provides a summary of the Lobby Day takeaways and a lookahead on legislative issues for 2025.
DISCUSSION
For the past four years, CPA has met with members of its legislative delegation, the Governor’s Office, and legislative leaders in a virtual or in-person Lobby Day to educate its members about CPA’s current accomplishments or concerns, to preview CPA’s policy priorities, and to learn more about its members’ legislative priorities. CPA has the largest delegation of any CCA in California, with 25 Assemblymembers and 14 Senators. Of those, approximately 35% are new to the Legislature in 2025. Several of these new members came from local government leadership and are familiar with CPA from their role as local elected officials, a trend that several CCAs have also experienced in their legislative delegation. At the same time, many long-standing legislators who were skeptical of CCAs have been termed out. These two factors together may signal new opportunities for CCAs in state policymaking.
LEGISLATIVE & REGULATORY COMMITTEE
This year, CPA joined meetings with Senators Padilla, Perez, Valladares, Archuleta, and Limon; Assemblymembers McKinnor, Irwin, Gabriel, Calderon, Petrie-Norris, Caloza, Shultz, and Harabedian; and with staff from the office of Governor Newsom.
While in past years it has sometimes been difficult to identify clear legislative themes this early, wildfires and affordability have emerged as the two clear energy themes in 2025.
Wildfires: In response to the Los Angeles wildfires, there have been four different wildfire packages (from the Assemblymember Democrats, Assembly Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the Senate Republicans), several Governor sponsored executive actions and proposals, and a slew of standalone bills, all meant to address wildfire relief, preparedness, and resilience. The legislature has also scheduled multiple hearings on utilities’ wildfire preparedness, spending, and the ongoing power outages. Legislative proposals cover a wide range of themes, including supporting recovery efforts for victims (providing tax relief, mobilizing debris removal, expedited rebuilding) and increasing resiliency (new fire hardening requirements, undergrounding power lines). In addition, Governor Newsom signed a $2.5 billion bipartisan relief package to aid in these efforts.
CPA will be closely tracking these bills, especially those related to back-up power, resiliency centers, and rebuilding efforts.
Affordability: Affordability continues to be a major concern for the Legislature, and CPA is part of a working group within CalCCA to develop solutions on this issue. On Lobby Day, CCAs pitched three pathways through which the legislature could advance affordability. These pathways are:
1. Use more funds generated by California’s cap-and-trade program to increase the climate credits that appear on customers’ bills
2. Reduce ratepayer costs by reducing excess Resource Adequacy requirements
3. Increase accountability and transparency of IOU spending Regional energy markets (or “regionalization”), which CPA’s Board voted to support at the end of 2023 is another pathway that CCAs have promoted as an avenue to achieve
LEGISLATIVE & REGULATORY COMMITTEE
cost savings. SB 540 (Becker) was recently introduced to advance this policy, and CPA is currently reviewing the legislation to determine a position.
The urgency of the affordability crises has also led to an openness to new and innovative ways to finance energy infrastructure and transmission. This stems in part from a series of reports that were released late last year on alternative financing options, including a report from the Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment1, and another from a coalition made up of TURN, Net Zero, and the Clean Air Task Force2. One idea that appears to be gathering steam is using public financing or a public-private partnership model to finance transmission lines. CPA is actively engaged in this effort and will support a bill on creating pilot projects that could utilize this type of financing approach.
Whether the issues of affordability and wildfire relief and prevention are compatible goals will be something that the legislature has to grapple with. At the end of 2024, wildfire spending was identified as a major cost driver of rising electricity bills. Reducing wildfire spending and increasing oversight and transparency into wildfire funding were expected to be key elements of reigning in rising electricity costs. With the Los Angeles fires however, discussions of decreasing wildfire spending are likely to be non-starters, and as noted earlier, the Governor has proposed increasing wildfire spending. As currently proposed, much of this additional funding would come from the state budget rather than through ratepayer bills, and some of it is expected to be reimbursed by the federal government. However, it seems politically unrealistic to suggest any cuts to wildfire spending at this time, further limiting legislators’ options for increasing electricity bill affordability and perhaps exacerbating the problem.
1 CLEE, “Improving Transmission Financing in California: Alternative Models and Policy Strategies to Increase Affordability”, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Improving-Transmission-Financing-in-California-CLEE.pdf 2 Clean Air Task Force and Net-Zero California, “Wired for Savings: Evaluating the Impact of Alternative Transmission Financing and Development Models on California Ratepayers”, https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/31145139/wired-for-savings.pdf