It's crunch time for California climate bills

Publish date: 2024-07-14

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In today’s edition, we’ll have an exclusive look at an Environmental Protection Agency report on how the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce emissions from the power sector. But first:

California lawmakers are weighing big bills on emissions disclosure, insurance

California lawmakers are racing to wrap up their legislative session this week, with several climate-related bills reaching a make-or-break moment.

One closely watched bill would require large companies doing business in the state to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. The measure passed the California State Assembly last night by a vote of 48-20 and now heads to the state Senate for a final vote.

Lawmakers also face a narrow window to strike a deal on boosting the state’s troubled insurance industry. Several large insurers have recently stopped offering new coverage to homeowners in California, citing years of costly wildfires fueled by rising global temperatures.

If passed, these proposals could reverberate around the country and the globe, since California is set to become the world’s fourth-largest economy. Already, the Golden State’s policies have helped accelerate America’s transition to electric cars and trucks.

Here’s what we’re tracking in Sacramento this week:

Emissions disclosure

Under Senate Bill 253, known as the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, companies that generate at least $1 billion in revenue and do business in California would have to annually report their emissions to the public.

The bill comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission prepares to finalize an emissions disclosure rule at the federal level. But the bill is more aggressive than the SEC rule in two key respects.

First, the bill would apply to both privately owned and publicly traded companies, whereas the SEC proposal would affect only the latter.
Second, the bill would require companies to disclose their scope 3 emissions, or those produced by customers and suppliers. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has hinted that the commission won’t mandate scope 3 disclosures to help the regulation survive expected legal challenges.

“This has far more implications than the SEC’s rule,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who introduced the bill, told The Climate 202 in May. “Scope 3 is very important, and for a lot of companies, it is 90 percent or more of the company’s carbon emissions.”

Last year, the bill passed the state Senate but failed in the state Assembly by just one vote. This year, Wiener has expressed cautious optimism that the measure will make it over the finish line.

Wiener last week amended the bill to delay penalties for misreporting emissions until 2030. He also announced that Apple, a major employer in Silicon Valley, had endorsed the legislation after staying neutral last year.

Huge new endorsement — @Apple — of our groundbreaking climate bill to require large corporations to disclose their carbon footprint (SB 253).

Thank you, Apple, for making clear that this is doable & a critically important piece of climate action. pic.twitter.com/mntbWzXFDV

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) September 7, 2023

Fellow tech giant Google also voiced support yesterday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter:

Corporate GHG emissions and climate-risk disclosures are a key element to combating climate change. We've been reporting our own emissions for over a decade, and we're pleased to support SB253 and SB261, which will help create a robust climate-disclosure framework in California.

— Google California (@GoogleInCA) September 11, 2023

But the California Chamber of Commerce remains opposed. Brady Van Engelen, a policy advocate for the chamber, said the bill would add costs to doing business in the state, which already has some of the highest housing and energy prices in the country.

“We effectively have a California premium,” Van Engelen said. “And this [bill] is just going to add to that across the board.”

Melissa Romero, senior legislative affairs manager at California Environmental Voters, which backs the bill, rejected this notion.

“California is about to be the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and we have some of the strongest environmental policies in place,” Romero said. “So it’s just really hard to believe that we’re in the year 2023 and we’re still hearing the argument that environmental policies are bad for business."

Even if the state Senate gives final approval to the bill, it’s unclear whether California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will sign it into law. Newsom, who rarely comments on bills before signing or vetoing them, has not taken a public position on the measure.

Newsom spokeswoman Erin Mellon declined to comment for this report.

Insurance rescue

Meanwhile, lawmakers face a ticking clock for reaching an agreement on a possible insurance rescue package. Three large insurers — Allstate, Farmers and State Farm — have scaled back coverage in California after suffering losses from catastrophic wildfires.

Proposals under discussion would allow insurers to charge higher rates in exchange for staying in fire-prone parts of the state. But whether the potential package is alive or dead depends on whom you ask.

State Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat on the Senate’s insurance committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle that talks fell apart Thursday and the proposal is all but buried.

Yet state Rep. Lisa Calderon (D), who chairs the Assembly’s insurance committee, and state Rep. Jim Wood (D), a committee member, said in a joint statement Friday that they aren’t giving up.

“Our goals are to protect homeowners and businesses to ensure all Californians can access and retain comprehensive insurance coverage — from first-time home buyers to hard-working Californians in and around wildfire-prone areas,” the lawmakers said.

Agency alert

Exclusive: Biden’s climate law will curb power-sector emissions, EPA projects

The Inflation Reduction Act will dramatically lower carbon emissions from the power sector and across the U.S. economy, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report shared first with The Climate 202.

The report projects that the climate law will:

Reduce carbon emissions from the power sector by 49 to 83 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
Lower economy-wide carbon emissions, including those from electricity generation and use, by 35 to 43 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Reduce emissions from sectors that use a lot of electricity, especially residential and commercial buildings.

In an important caveat, the EPA said the analysis only reflects the impact of the climate law, and does not account for the impact of proposed regulations. The EPA has recently proposed ambitious limits on planet-warming emissions from vehicles and power plants.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is transforming energy production and consumption in dramatic ways, paving the way towards a clean energy future,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “This report shows robust evidence that America’s clean energy transformation is driving significant reductions in CO2 emissions, putting us on a clear path to achieve President Biden’s bold climate goals.”

Extreme events

U.S. has seen record number of weather disasters this year

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday that Hurricane Idalia, which caused widespread flooding in parts of Florida and Georgia late last month, became the 23rd “billion dollar” disaster to strike the United States this year — with four more months remaining in the year as the hurricane and wildfire seasons rage on, The Washington Post’s Brady Dennis reports.

This year’s series of devastating disasters eclipses the previous record of 22 set in 2020, according to NOAA’s database, which tracks disasters back to 1980. It includes destructive hailstorms, devastating wildfires and unprecedented precipitation events.

By NOAA’s count, the events have already caused 253 direct and indirect fatalities and generated more than $57.6 billion in damage this year — a figure likely to rise as officials continue to document losses from Tropical Storm Hilary in Southern California and drought across parts of the Midwest and South.

Scientists say climate change has played an unmistakable role in fueling more frequent and intense weather disasters. But the fact that Americans have continued to build in disaster-prone areas has also put more and more infrastructure in harm’s way.

Pressure points

Scientist says he censored research in order to get his climate change paper published

Patrick T. Brown, who co-directs the climate and energy team at the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank, published a paper in late August showing that warming temperatures have increased the likelihood of wildfire growth in California. Then Brown penned an opinion article arguing that many editors and reviewers of such studies ignore factors beyond climate change, The Post’s Shannon Osaka reports.

The article, published in the Free Press, accused high-profile scientific journals of focusing too narrowly on climate-change-related variables and ignoring other factors. In the case of wildfires, he said prestigious journals tend to overlook factors such as fuel load.

“I don’t see a ton of Nature papers that are all about the fuel load buildup and how that contributes to wildfires in the West,” Brown said in an interview. “But they don’t exist, not because of its legitimacy but because of the emphasis on climate change.”

Several climate scientists swiftly criticized Brown’s conduct, saying he should have warned his co-authors that he would be writing an opinion piece about their shared research. Meanwhile, some conservatives praised Brown for revealing that “liberals are cherry-picking data to fit an agenda,” as state Rep. James Gallagher (R) of California wrote on X.

On the Hill

Biden nominates board member for Tennessee Valley Authority

President Biden yesterday nominated Patrice J. Robinson to sit on the board of directors for the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest federally owned utility, which provides electricity for nearly 10 million people across the Southeast.

Robinson has served on the Memphis City Council since 2016 and has chaired its Light, Gas and Water Committee. If confirmed by the Senate, she would serve a five-year term.

“My unwavering passion for the field of energy has been cultivated over the course of my extensive professional and political career, and I am profoundly eager to advocate for my community on this significant platform,” Robinson said in a statement.

In the atmosphere

Viral

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