BILL ANALYSIS
AB 435
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 27, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 435 (De La Torre) - As Amended: April 14, 2009
SUBJECT : Public utilities: transmission facilities:
environmental review.
SUMMARY : Requires the California Public Utilities Commission
(PUC) to study the efficacy of conducting concurrent
environmental review of proposed transmission facilities by
federal and state agencies.
EXISTING LAW requires the PUC to certify the public convenience
and necessity of a transmission line before an investor-owned
utility (IOU) may begin construction (Certificate of Public
Convenience and Necessity, or CPCN). The CPCN process includes
environmental review of the proposed project under the
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown.
COMMENTS : According to the author, the purpose of this bill is
to streamline the transmission line siting process.
It's about a 10-year process to site and construct a
transmission line, depending on the distance and complexity of
the geography. The California Independent System Operator
(CAISO) performs much of the transmission planning. The
responsibility for actually building the transmission lines lies
with the transmission-owning utilities. Most of these utilities
need to obtain approval from the PUC before they can construct
new transmission lines. The PUC conducts a public hearing
process and issues a CPCN if it deems the project is warranted.
The utilities must then initiate a filing at the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) to request cost-recovery for both
inter- and intra-state transmission lines.
The utilities are frequently delayed with construction because
the federal government owns much of the land that transmission
lines must cross. Of the federal government agencies required
to provide approval, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is
involved the most. The transmission-owning utilities are
concerned that the BLM process is too slow, there's not enough
AB 435
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staff, and the existing staff are spread too thin among the 50
states. The state imposes additional delays depending on
whether the transmission line traverses a state park, or whether
there's an endangered species in the proposed corridor.
AB 974 (Nunez) (2006) requires the PUC to streamline the
transmission permitting process by eliminating regulatory
overlap and duplication, reducing review time, and expediting
review of projects with designated transmission corridors. The
Governor vetoed AB 974 because the PUC could perform the
requirements in the bill administratively without legislation.
In addition, the veto message stated that the bill does nothing
to eliminate duplication between agencies, streamline the
process, provide consistency or increase certainty.
RELATED LEGISLATION :
AB 64 (Krekorian/Bass) increases California's Renewables
Portfolio Standard (RPS) from 20% to at least 33% of electricity
delivered to retail customers by 2020, and creates the
Renewables Infrastructure Authority (RIA) to site and finance
renewable generation and transmission.
AB 1016 (Villines) reorganizes and consolidates some of the
state's numerous energy-related agencies and creates a
Department of Energy (DOE) that would be responsible for siting
generation and transmission facilities.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Gina Adams / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083