BILL ANALYSIS
AB 531
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Date of Hearing: April 20, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 531 (Salda?a) - As Amended: April 13, 2009
SUBJECT : Energy consumption data: disclosure.
SUMMARY : Exempts utilities from prohibitions against
disclosing customer energy consumption data to comply with the
California law requiring benchmarking for certain
non-residential buildings.
EXISTING LAW
1) Requires the California Energy Commission (CEC) to prescribe
building design and construction standards as well as energy
conservation design standards that increase energy efficiency
for new residential and non-residential buildings.
2) Requires that upon the authorization of a nonresidential
building owner or operator, an electric or gas utility upload
may all of the energy consumption data for the account specified
for a building to the United States Environmental Protection
Agency's Energy Star Portfolio Manager (ESPM).
4) Requires that an owner or operator of a nonresidential
building disclose the United States ESPM benchmarking data and
ratings for the most recent 12-month period to a prospective
buyer, lessee of the entire building, or lender that would
finance the entire building on and after January 1, 2010.
5) States that utility customer information regarding
customer-specific billing, credit, or usage information shall be
confidential unless the customer consents in writing.
6) Allows for disclosure of generic utility customer information
regarding the usage, load shape, or other general
characteristics of a group or rate classification, unless the
release of that information would reveal customer specific
information because of the size of the group, rate
classification, or nature of the information.
THIS BILL:
AB 531
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1) Exempts utilities from the prohibition against the disclosure
of customer information of customer specific billing, credit, or
usage information for the purposes of reporting energy
consumption data to comply with the California law requiring
benchmarking for non-residential buildings upon request.
2) Requires that an owner or operator of a nonresidential
building disclose the United States ESPM benchmarking data and
ratings for the most recent 12-month period to a prospective
buyer, lessee of the entire building, or lender that would
finance the entire building based on a schedule of compliance
established by the CEC.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown.
COMMENTS : According to the author, this bill is needed in
order for utilities to disclose the necessary customer usage
data in order to comply with the state's benchmarking law
without violating existing utility consumer confidentiality
laws. This bill exempts utilities from those consumer
confidentiality laws for the purposes of complying with the
benchmarking law. This bill also removes the hard implementation
date of January 1, 2010 and instead allows the CEC to develop an
implementation schedule in order to ensure that the goals of AB
1003 are met without harming potential transactions for which we
do not yet have a viable process established for benchmarking.
1) Background: Benchmarking is a term applied to efforts to
track and compare the energy use of commercial buildings by
comparing the energy consumption per square foot of floor space.
It is a tool for understanding the relative energy efficiency of
buildings to better inform investment decisions made by building
operators, owners and prospective owners.
Executive Order S-20-04 required the CEC to select a
benchmarking methodology to increase energy efficiency in
government and private commercial buildings. The CEC selected
the benchmarking system developed by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, known as the ESPM. The ESPM is an online tool
for building owners and managers. The system is designed to
streamline energy and water data and track performance,
consumption, and cost information. The program includes a rating
system that provides owners and operators with a rating of 1-100
relative to similar buildings nationwide.
AB 531
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In a 2005 report, Options for Energy Efficiency in Existing
Buildings, the CEC recommended that utilities be required to
provide benchmarking data with billing information to
nonresidential building owners. The CEC also
recommended that the information be disclosed during financing
and refinancing transactions.
AB 1103 (Salda?a), Chapter 533, Statutes of 2007, combined
elements of the Governor's Executive Order and the CEC report.
AB 1103 required that utilities upload the necessary data to
create an ESPM account upon request and also required that ESPM
benchmarking data and ratings be provided to a prospective
buyer, lessee of the entire building, or lender that would
finance the building.
2) Is this the right fix?: While current law does require that
utilities keep all information regarding their customers'
billing and usage confidential, there is also a provision
allowing a customer to consent in writing to allow the utility
to disclose this information. The language in the benchmarking
law requires utilities to disclose this information under
slightly more flexible conditions; upon the written
authorization or secure electronic authorization of a
nonresidential building owner or operator. Therefore, utilities
may already have the ability to comply with both laws by using
the written authorization option. In fact, the state's
Benchmarking Working Group (WG) recently developed a simplified
agreement that would satisfy both the benchmarking and
confidentiality requirements. However current law is unclear,
at best, as to how a utility can best comply with both laws
simultaneously. If the intent of the author is to facilitate the
implementation of the benchmarking law, rather than create an
exemption from confidentiality laws for the utilities, the
author may wish to consider amending the bill to make the
language regarding authorization requirements in the
benchmarking law consistent with the confidentiality law.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Association of Realtors
California Business Properties Association
California Chamber of Commerce
AB 531
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Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Nina Kapoor / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083