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The state Senate energy committee has approved legislation to accelerate the undergrounding of overhead power lines to reduce fire and associated climate risks, expand solar roofs on low-income residences and increase the installations of vehicle charging and hydrogen refueling stations.

The bill getting the most attention at the Senate Energy Utilities & Communication Committee April 18 hearing was SB 884 by Sen. Mike McGuire (D-North Coast), which passed 10-0. It would require the California Public Utilities Commission to expedite the burying of utility distribution lines in the highest fire risk areas of the state.

“This bill will save lives,” McGuire told fellow lawmakers because putting overhead power lines underground reduces the risk that utility equipment will spark wildfires by 99%.

McGuire also said that reducing wildfires would lower carbon emissions, noting that emissions from California blazes in 2020 were the equivalent of those produced by 28 million vehicles.

The lawmaker came under fire because of the high costs of undergrounding. It is anywhere between 2.5 to 10 times more expensive than placing lines overhead. The cost to bury lines is between $1.85 million to $6.1 million per mile, depending on the terrain.

McGuire pointed out that SB 884 would seek to reduce costs because it would tie utility profits from undergrounding expenditures to a performance metric developed by the CPUC. That metric would require that rates of return only be collected if the lines are not subject to a public safety shutoff or the undergrounding work has not caused a fire over a five-year period. In addition, ratepayers’ cost to bury power lines would be offset by other funding from the federal government.

Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) opposed the bill on grounds that undergrounding raises the duration and cost of outages. “Unlike overhead outages, you have to dig and search for that bad outage,” he said.

McGuire pointed out that overhead line outages because of wildfires have lasted up to several weeks and that PG&E spends between $1.3-$1.7 million on line tree trimming every year, which would be eliminated with undergrounding.

PG&E plans to underground 10,000 miles of lines in areas with high fire threats over a decade. This year, it expects to bury 175 circuit miles lines, 400 miles in 2023, 800 miles in 2024, 1,000 miles in 2025, and 1,200 miles in 2026. It hopes economies of scale will lower the cost from $4 million per mile to $2.5 million by 2026.

Telecommunication companies, which hang their equipment on utility lines, opposed the bill on concerns they too will have to underground their broadband equipment.

Growing solar in struggling communities

Another bill much debated on Monday was SB 1385 by Sen. Dave Cortese (D-Silicon Valley). It would add 1,500 MW of solar rooftops on low-income residences, down from the bill’s initially proposed 3,000 MW. Investor-owned utilities would be in charge of the residential solar projects.

The installations would avoid shifting costs to other ratepayers because they would be funded by revenue generated from excess solar sold from the rooftop systems to the grid, according to Cortese.

The controversial net energy metering program, which pays solar rooftop owners, largely well to do, for sending power to the grid, is being revamped because of the costs added to non-solar residences. The cost paid for exported power is expected to be cut in the pending NEM proceeding because of fierce opposition from utilities and ratepayer advocates. The irony of a bill to now pay utilities for exporting power from low-income residential systems to the grid was not directly addressed.

But Cortese’s SB 1385 faced strong opposition from environmental justice, affordable housing and climate protection advocates, as well as from SunRun, on grounds it would dilute current funding for low-income solar installations.

Sen. Susan Eggman (D-Stockton), who authored a measure in 2015 to install 300 MW of solar on homes of those financially constrained, objected to the bill being “utility driven” and the funding “not going directly to low-income housing.” She said the program her bill created, Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing, took four years to get started, but “by all reports, it is doing very well and focused on the lowest income customers.”

According to the CPUC, 406 applications with 71.4 MW of capacity had been submitted to the program by the end of 2020.

Cortese said that Eggman’s program only supported 300 MW and was too restrictive.

Another bill that advanced early this week was SB 1399 by Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) that would require the California Energy Commission to fund three carbon capture and storage demonstration projects at industrial facilities. The carbon produced by the industrial facility, be it a cement manufacturer or natural gas facility, and captured and stored underground, could not be used to drive more oil or gas out of the earth.

The measure, passed 7-1, “takes advantage of the best places” and is “a very modest step,” Wieckowski said.

Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) raised concerns that the bill lacked “rigorous” pollution safeguards, particularly in overburdened communities.

Stanford Center for Carbon Studies Director Sarah Saltzer said that capturing carbon costs between $20 ton to $80 per ton.

There are five carbon sequestration projects in California and none have been a proven success.

Alternate vehicle fueling

Three other successful bills would fund the installation of charging stations at a major border crossing and for autonomous ride-sharing vehicles and support hydrogen refueling stations.

SB 1015 by Committee Chair Ben Hueso (D-San Diego) requires the Energy Commission to allocate federal monies from the Clean Transportation Program to fund electric vehicle stations at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan region.

This port is the nation’s third-busiest border crossing, with 3,700 trucks passing through daily, Hueso said. “We know the importance of adding EV infrastructure and it makes sense in areas” with high transportation pollution. It was approved on an 11—0 vote.

SB 1258 by Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) would extend the CEC’s Clean Transportation Program funding eligibility to zero emission, self-driving vehicle fleets. Ride-sharing cars are required by law to be zero-emission by 2030.

It passed on a 9-0 vote in spite of opposition by labor organizations.

“We are concerned about using funds for technology that can displace workers,” California Teamsters lobbyist Matt Broad told the committee.

SB 1329 by Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) would increase annual funding for the buildout of hydrogen fueling stations to $30 million, up from the current $20 million. The bill seeks to create more than 200 hydrogen refueling stations that are being funded with $250 million in state funds. These represent a fraction of the charging stations being supported.

Newman said charging stations alone aren’t enough to ensure a zero-emission transportation sector in California. He pointed to people lacking access to chargers, delivery drivers who don’t have time to charge their trucks, and those who travel long distances.

Fossil fuel industry exemption

Sen. Stern objected to the provision in the bill that would exempt the oil and gas industry from the state’s carbon emissions authority. “It is taking away a very important protection in the Clean Air Act and giving it away for free.”

SB 1329 was approved 9-0.

Legislation that sought to create a new state entity to finance and speed up the construction of new transmission lines to support the state’s goal for a clean grid was turned into a study. It then was approved on a 9-1 vote.

SB 1032 by Josh Becker (D-San Mateo) would have created the Clean Energy Infrastructure Authority to finance, including by revenue bonds, and construct and site new electric transmission to lower the cost to ratepayers. It was modeled after a similar organization in New Mexico.

The Clean Air Task Force, a national NGO, supported the bill because of ballooning transmission building and siting costs, said to have risen 150% over the last decade.