Like a global positioning navigation system in a shiny new hybrid car, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) should be a useful road map in carrying out the state's energy policies and new anti-global warming law. However, it may be no better than the tattered and outdated state map at the bottom of my glove box that leaves me lost when driving through today's changed landscape. The environmental analysis law's deficiencies have become critical just when California must travel with pinpoint precision on its ambitious and fast-paced drive to create a third of its electricity from renewable energy, reduce dependence on petroleum, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. A new CEQA is necessary. As the Legislature comes back to work in 2007, it must tackle the problems in California's environmental analysis law to ensure that state agencies and the energy industry can meet recently enacted policy goals. The law's first flaw is that as energy projects become increasingly global - as do their environmental effects - the typical CEQA analysis is too geographically constrained to capture far-flung impacts. These could be as diverse as impacts from gas drilling in Indonesia or Russia and corn growing in Iowa to fuel California. The second inadequacy is that the state is at the forefront of action on climate change, but the impacts of energy plants on global warming are hardly considered in state-mandated environmental analyses. Third, examination under the 37-year-old law does not capture cumulative impacts. Those include the effects on the environment and energy future created by the growth that new power plants, liquefied natural gas terminals, and ethanol production plants facilitate. Finally, energy efficiency, renewable power, and clean energy for transportation barely come up as alternative projects to fossil-fuel facilities in the typical analysis under the state environmental law. A good case in point was raised during the California Energy Commission's January 3 meeting. In one breath, the commission complained about how land use and growth are outpacing the state's energy supply and also criticized the state's slow progress on renewable power (see story on page 8). Ironically, however, commissioners voiced these concerns right after approving a natural gas power plant project by the Imperial Irrigation District. With little comment and no opposition, the commissioners certified a mitigated negative declaration for the El Centro repower project under the California Environmental Quality Act. The agency's analysis found that the repowering project - which will increase the capacity of an existing plant from 44 to 128 MW - "would result in no substantial adverse impact." Elsewhere, however, the analysis indicated that the very purpose of the project is "to serve the growing electrical load demands of the region." In other words, supplying an additional 84 MW of power in the fast-growing region - just like increasing water supply or any other crucial infrastructure - will pave the way for future growth. Build it and they will come. The commission reckons that each megawatt of new power can supply 1,000 new homes, so that's enough for 84,000 new residences in the low-desert area. Indeed, Southern California Association of Governments data show that the Riverside County area served by the IID includes some of the fastest-growing communities in the state of California. No wonder the district now sells more electricity in the desert Coachella Valley area of Riverside County - where the city of Coachella's population grew by 14 percent in 2005 - than in its original home of Imperial County. Irrigation district data show that its peak load has more than doubled since 1990, reaching 898 MW in 2005. Growth in the sprawling region - where everyone must drive everywhere because of the lack of public transportation and the land layout, and building interiors are as cool as the La Jolla seaside when it's 110 degrees in the shade - has helped fuel a major increase in the state's greenhouse gas emissions. It's precisely the type of situation that CEQA was intended to head off. However, none of the environmental analyses has provided much useful information on the trend or altered the cumulative course of decisions that have doubled energy use in the low-desert area over the past 20 years. A further look at the most recent environmental document for the irrigation district project shows no analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. To its credit, though, it calls for reports on emissions from the plant once it is built. There is only scant mention that SoCal Gas will supply fuel for the project, perhaps through the extension of the North Baja Pipeline. Will the plant run on liquefied natural gas, perhaps from Sakhalin Island, where Shell is embroiled in a dispute with Russia over alleged environmental damage in gas production areas? Shell has contracted for half of the landing capacity of Sempra Energy's Costa Azul LNG terminal in Baja California, from which gas will flow to the Imperial Valley through the pipeline extension. Yet the report does not mention the potential sources of the gas for the project, much less recount the environmental impacts where that gas will be produced. Finally, the analysis brushes off in a paragraph alternatives to the gas-fired plant in the sunny area that sits on top of one of the biggest geothermal resource zones in the state. It simply concludes that "only natural gas-burning technologies are feasible at this time." Despite the commission's professed goal of seeing that half of all new homes are equipped with solar roofs, the analysis seems to assume that photovoltaic systems just can't meet peak demand on the sunniest afternoons in the California desert. So while commissioners complain about sprawl-induced energy demand and the lack of progress in employing renewable technologies, they approve another fossil-fuel power plant that will enable the very growth and increasing dependence on foreign energy that they decry. They do so on the basis of a fatally flawed analysis that doesn't provide a road map in the desert to geothermal resources and the correct orientation to the sun. So to cite that old saw about how you'll get the same results if you keep doing what you're doing, clearly it's time for changes in the California Environmental Quality Act. Here's what they must include if the state is ever to reach its destination in the sun. First, in this legislative session, the law must be amended to require fuel-cycle analysis for new energy projects and government projects, such as regulations dealing with energy. It is ironic that the Legislature had to specify that such an analysis is needed under AB 1007, a bill that calls on the commission, the California Air Resources Board, and other agencies to develop a plan for increasing the use of alternative fuels. The environmental analysis law should require it as a matter of course. Reviewing the complete fuel cycle for energy projects - and the materials life cycle for other types of projects where applicable - also will require expanded geographic coverage in environmental documents. Sakhalin Island impacts could no longer be ignored, nor could the effects of distant carbon dioxide emissions. The California environmental law also should require analysis and mitigation of the growth-inducing impacts of projects. Mitigation measures could include solar rooftops on new homes, added energy efficiency in new buildings, and smart growth to reduce auto use. Finally, genuine and more detailed analyses of alternatives - such as energy efficiency and renewable energy - and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the fuel cycle should be de rigueur in a state that is striving to reach lofty environmental goals. Today's treatment of these aspects of huge projects that will operate for 50 years is but a mockery of the state's own stated policy goals. To make fully informed decisions and to serve as a rallying point for citizen activists and green entrepreneurs seeking to build a sustainable future, all of this information is necessary. Without it, California's quest to beat back climate change and lead the nation when it comes to renewable energy may become little more than a Sunday drive, burning gas all the way. That's why lawmakers must begin working to modernize the California Environmental Quality Act. Otherwise, they have no right to express surprise and outrage when regulators and the energy industry fail to reach today's new environmental and energy policy destinations. CEQA is a relic of "acting locally." The Legislature needs to rethink the venerable law to push the state into making its local actions consistent with its new "global thinking." - William J. Kelly
