BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 1455 (Kehoe) - Alternative Fuels.
Amended: April 25, 2012 Policy Vote: T&H 5-3, EQ 5-2
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: May 7, 2012 Consultant: Marie Liu
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: SB 1455 would require the California Energy
Commission (CEC) and the Air Resources Board (ARB) to coordinate
efforts in order to implement the state's alternative
transportation fuels goal. The bill would require several
activities aimed to encourage implementation of this goal,
including evaluating investment programs that may be used to
encourage alternative fuels use, evaluating federal fuel
polices, and updating economic analyses of petroleum fuel
prices. The CEC and ARB would be required to report their
progress on reaching the state alternative transportation fuels
goals biennially.
Fiscal Impact:
Ongoing costs of approximately $300,000 to the Air
Pollution Control Fund (special fund) beginning in 2013 for
the evaluation, analysis, review, and reporting aimed to
encourage implementation of the state alternative
transportation fuels goal.
Minor and absorbable costs to the CEC for the evaluation
and reporting aims to encourage implementation of the state
alternative transportation fuels goal.
Background: The Alternative Fuels Law required CEC and the ARB
to develop and adopt a state plan to increase the use of
alternative fuels by June 30, 2007. In response, the CEC and ARB
published the State Alternative Fuels Plan in 2007 and set
alternative fuel use goals of 9% in 2012, 11% in 2017, and 26%
by the year 2022.
Proposed Law: This bill would declare that it is the intent of
the Legislature that the CEC and ARB implement the state
alternative transportation fuels goal (alternative fuels goal)
in order to attain at least 26% alternative transportation fuel
SB 1455 (Kehoe)
Page 1
use by 2022. The bill would require the CEC and ARB to report
biennially, beginning in 2013, on the status and implementation
of the state's alternative fuels goal. CEC and ARB would be
required to evaluate of the use of applicable investment
programs, the impact of federal fuel policies, and the impact of
existing state policies on attaining the alternative fuels goal.
The ARB would further be required to update its economic
analysis on petroleum fuel prices and to include a finding on
all relevant new and amended regulations regarding the impact of
the proposed regulation on achieving the alternative fuels goal.
Staff Comments: This bill requires that ARB update its economic
analysis used to assess the future cost of petroleum-based fuels
for the 2007 plan. ARB estimates that the original analysis
required the workload equivalent of at least two PYs. Updating
the analysis will virtually require redoing the analysis as
there have been many changes to the petroleum market in the past
five years. Thus, the ARB estimates that this bill would again
cost the equivalent of at least two PYs at approximately
$300,000. Once this analysis is completed, the positions would
then be needed to cover the workload required by other elements
of this bill. Thus the $300,000 cost would be ongoing.
According to the CEC, the evaluations and analyses required by
this bill are currently being done by the CEC. Therefore the
costs to the CEC from this bill are minor and absorbable.
Recommended Amendments: The bill would require the CEC and ARB
to prepare a biennial report, however the bill does not specify
who the recipient of the report is. The bill also needs some
clarification amendments regarding the bill's deadlines.