Co-authored by Ted Lamm and Katie Segal and cross-posted on Legal Planet.
How would you spend $25 million to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire through vegetation management? Sonoma County leaders found themselves facing this question and enlisted UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) for help. Today, CLEE is releasing a report with specific recommendations for Sonoma County, which we hope can serve as a model for other local and state governments and community groups as they work to address the increasing risk from wildfires.
Where did Sonoma County get this funding? In 2017, 2019, and 2020, wildfires ravaged the county, burning approximately one-third of the total land area, destroying thousands of structures, and taking dozens of lives. In the aftermath of the 2017 fires, several California governments (including Sonoma County agencies) sued Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)—the electric and gas utility—based on evidence that the company’s electrical equipment played a role in igniting the fires. In 2020, PG&E and Sonoma County reached a $149 million settlement, with the expectation that funds will be allocated towards a variety of wildfire recovery and prevention activities. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors ultimately directed at least $25 million of the total $149 million towards vegetation management efforts.
County leaders engaged CLEE to deliver recommendations on how to spend the dollars effectively. Through two expert convenings and stakeholder outreach, CLEE gathered input from leaders in wildfire science, public finance, planning, and vegetation management, among other areas of expertise. One of the convenings focused entirely on local experts, leveraging the wealth of knowledge within Sonoma County and learning from local organizations’ experiences. The other convening included state-level experts who could speak to broader experiences and priorities throughout California.
Both groups’ priorities and insights led to several key recommendations to guide vegetation management spending in Sonoma County. Driving most of these was the fact that a limited pool of near-term funds cannot adequately address the County’s long-term, recurring vegetation management needs; thus, leaders should invest in financing mechanisms, workforce development, and community outreach efforts that can generate new funds and incentivize private action. That said, a portion of funds – approximately one third – should be directed toward the highest-priority actions that can be taken in advance of coming fire seasons, to help reduce near-term risk and accelerate existing initiatives. And, to support effective and efficient long-term investments, the County should create a vegetation management governance capacity. Ultimately, $25 million is insufficient to cover the scale of the need. But it can help jumpstart demonstration projects, fund immediate needs, and leverage additional funds. The key recommendations and principles to guide vegetation management in Sonoma County include:
- Funding immediate vegetation management activities, especially in high-risk and high-priority areas and near key ecosystems. Initial activities should consider specific project zones (such as densely populated areas or areas that burned in recent fires), as well as project types (such as defensible space near buildings or understory thinning in forested areas).
- Centralizing stakeholder coordination and governance to improve efficiency and ensure that the right projects are funded as quickly as possible, especially early action projects before the upcoming fire season.
- Prioritizing equity, community outreach, and education so that all communities benefit from and understand their role in vegetation management actions. Understanding different stakeholders’ needs and keeping open lines of communication will be crucial components of successful vegetation management and are also cost-effective methods of scaling up projects.
- Maintaining relevant and up-to-date data sources for planning and evaluation, so that various analytical efforts and interactive tools draw from the most recent information. Monitoring and evaluation are also critical to tracking vegetation management projects’ impact and scope over time, allowing project managers to adjust implementation as needed.
- Leveraging long-term financial sustainability, so that funds are replenished and Sonoma County can transform the initial $25 million allocation into a much larger, continually renewing source for ongoing vegetation management activities. Options include a revolving fund, financing districts, resilience bonds, new local sales or parcel tax revenue, and leveraging federal and state dollars, among other options.
- Building the local workforce will help Sonoma County tackle both short- and long-term vegetation management needs while creating high-quality local jobs. Workforce development options include a multi-year training program, partnerships with local conservation corps and educational institutions, apprenticeship programs, and labor share programs, among several other options.
Participants also developed a set of principles to guide County vegetation management decisions, including:
- Prioritizing vulnerable communities (including lower-income residents, elders, renters, communities of color, and those most affected by air quality impacts), along with critical infrastructure and special assets
- Incorporating and supporting robust public outreach, engagement, and education at every step
- Accomplishing multiple forest and ecosystem health objectives by performing and monitoring high-quality, science-based treatments
- Recognizing effective vegetation management requires continuous, dedicated implementation in an adaptive management framework
- Leveraging by seeking other funding opportunities and creating sustainable funding mechanisms
While every California county—and indeed every wildfire-prone region in the world—has different circumstances and resources, these ideas could help inform vegetation management conversations beyond Sonoma County’s borders. Wildfires are part of natural systems, but development expanding into wildland areas and hotter, drier conditions caused by climate change increase the likelihood and severity of fire across the state. These worsening conditions, combined with decades of fire suppression, position California for a future of more catastrophic wildfires unless there is a dedicated, coordinated, and locally tailored vegetation management effort to address risks facing forests, ecosystems, and communities.
We hope this report will help Sonoma County and leaders across California take immediate action to mitigate risks during the upcoming fire season and implement a long-term strategy to reduce the severity of wildfires in the years to come.
You can download the report here.
We will be presenting the report findings at the virtual Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting today (Tuesday), March 23, 2021, which starts at 8:30 am Pacific Time. You can access the agenda here, which includes Zoom login information, to listen in or offer your own comments.
President Biden campaigned on a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for the United States by 2050. But this goal will only be achievable by deploying technologies and practices that pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and securely store it underground.
California can pioneer one type of technology that could make this national goal feasible, as a new Capitol Weekly op-ed I co-authored with Berkeley Law’s climate fellow Katie Segal argues. Specifically, engineered carbon removal can capture carbon emissions from the air or smokestacks of industrial facilities that have few viable alternatives and inject the carbon underground or in long-lived products like concrete.
The op-ed offers key policy needs for decision-makers to consider, based on a UC Berkeley/UCLA Law report we issued on this subject in December. As with so many other climate-fighting technologies, California once again has the chance to lead on this next generation of sequestration tools — if we seize the opportunity to do so.
Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Data Access for a Decarbonized Grid, which highlights key policy solutions to expand access to the energy data needed to operate a fully decarbonized grid.
Join our webinar on Wednesday, April 7 at 10am PT to learn more.
As California approaches the state target of delivering 100 percent zero-carbon power by 2045, state leaders face the challenge of decarbonizing electricity by rapidly expanding the use of renewable energy sources. At the same time, they face increasingly severe heat waves and wildfires that threaten the reliability and resilience of the grid.
Individuals, businesses, and utilities are turning to a growing group of flexible grid technologies to meet this challenge—such as distributed renewables, small-scale battery storage, and smart appliances and building energy management. They are becoming increasingly mainstream and affordable. But these technologies, which facilitate the flexibility needed to deliver reliable power on a fully renewable grid, also rely on constant flows of energy data in order to operate effectively and efficiently.
The data include grid structure and operations data that depict system assets and capacity; customer-level data on consumption and rates; and real-time performance data for distributed generation and storage assets. Utilities, technology providers, and residents already exchange these data in abundant quantities. However, a set of regulatory, privacy, and incentive-based challenges limit the ability of regulators, utilities, and developers to generate and manage the data optimally.
These barriers include utility business and regulatory incentives that reward major physical capital investments over data management initiatives; potentially outdated rules restricting customer data-sharing; and concerns around cybersecurity and physical grid asset security.
To identify solutions to these challenges, CLEE and UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute convened a group of energy data experts in August 2020, and our new report details the solutions including:
- Adopting performance-based regulation of electric utilities to provide financial incentives for high-quality, efficient data generation and management.
- Re-examining the California Public Utilities Commission’s 15/15 rule for customer data aggregation (which sets numerical limits on customer cohorts) and considering use of differential privacy methods instead.
- Modernizing utility IT systems to adapt to rapidly evolving technological and customer needs.
Ultimately, a fully decarbonized electrical supply will require a large-scale restructuring of the grid across generation, distribution, and consumption activities. In the face of growing threats to grid resilience and reliability, California energy leaders will have to help energy producers and consumers throughout the state gain access to the flexible grid technologies needed to maximize efficiency and minimize service disruption. Ensuring the optimal flow of energy data is vital to that effort.
You can access the report and its full set of recommendations here.
You can also learn more about state priorities for increasing access to energy data by joining CLEE and the Emmett Institute for a free webinar on Wednesday, April 7 at 10am PT. Speakers include:
- California Energy Commissioner Andrew McAllister
- Clean energy expert Audrey Lee
- Sky Stanfield of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger
We will discuss policy opportunities and technology needs to accelerate the transformation of the grid. RSVP here. Hope you can join!
This post was co-authored with Ted Lamm and cross-posted on Legal Planet.
Electric vehicle critics have directed a lot of misinformation at EV batteries, in an effort to make the (dishonest) case that they’re just as bad as gas engines. But not only are EVs far less polluting than internal combustion engines, the United States has a strong economic and environmental interest in bolstering a domestic supply chain.
My new op-ed in The Hill has recommendations on steps that federal and state leaders should take to seize the opportunity. At stake are not only a lot of potential jobs, but also a more reliable and sustainable supply of the batteries that will soon be powering most of our transportation needs.
And for more about the EV battery supply chain, check out a recent talk I gave on this subject for Berkeley Lab’s Lithium Resource Research and Innovation Center:
Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Building toward Decarbonization, which highlights the key barriers and policy solutions to accelerate building electrification retrofits and new construction in California’s high-priority communities.
Commercial and residential building consumption of natural gas—to power heating and cooling, water heating, and cooking equipment—is currently responsible for about 10 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, as well as harmful indoor air pollution. Transitioning the state’s buildings from natural gas to all-electric—such as electric heat pumps, electric water heaters, and induction cooktops—is thus one of the top priorities for statewide decarbonization and carbon neutrality by 2045. Over 40 cities have already taken municipal action to phase out building natural gas use, including all-electric new construction ordinances in Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose.
But the transition presents significant regulatory, economic, and infrastructure challenges.
Developing a statewide strategy and timeline for the transition will be essential to achieve state decarbonization goals, and as the new report describes, this strategy will be most effective if it is targeted first toward communities and building types that will benefit most from state support and incentives. These include:
- Lower-income and disadvantaged communities with the least financial resources and the most to gain from improved air quality;
- Communities currently investing in new building construction;
- Communities with aging gas infrastructure already in need of replacement;
- Communities with an expressed willingness to transition; and
- Communities rebuilding from recent wildfires.
In a state that chronically under-builds new housing and will still have millions of pre-1990 homes in place in 2050, the retrofit challenge is especially urgent. And retrofitting existing buildings in lower-income communities—which tend to have more renters, more multifamily buildings, older construction, and less available capital—is a particularly thorny challenge: replacing gas HVAC, water, and cooking systems with all-electric alternatives can save money in the long run, but upfront installation costs are high, and landlords may have limited incentives to upgrade appliances when they aren’t responsible for utility bills. In addition, existing utility business and regulatory frameworks can limit incentives to accelerate the transition (or in some cases may bar the removal of gas service), compounding the after-effects of a long history of service denial in some communities.
All of these challenges overlay the systemic risk of developing stranded assets in the natural gas distribution network if the transition is insufficiently structured, which could threaten the financial viability of utilities, physical safety of the system, and costs for customers who can’t afford to make the switch independently.
Fortunately, state leaders have an opportunity to address these challenges by developing a reasoned plan to manage the electrification transition in order to meet state climate goals and address the needs of stakeholders including high-priority communities and natural gas system workers. Building Toward Decarbonization recommends these priority solutions:
- Setting a clear timeline (via executive order or legislation) for the long-term phase-out of natural gas to provide certainty for utilities and investors and mitigate stranded asset impacts on customers.
- Clarifying electric and utilities’ legal “obligation to serve” to ensure that electrical service can be substituted for gas service so long as energy access is maintained.
- Crafting a structured plan for a just transition for gas system workers including funding, retraining support, and targeted early retirement opportunities.
- Communicating the air quality benefits and performance qualities of electric stoves, hot water heaters, and other equipment to build public support for the transition.
Ultimately, California’s achievement of carbon neutrality by 2045 will hinge on this transition, particularly as the state continues to advance its goal of system-wide resilience through load management and flexibility.
You can read the full report here.
To learn more about potential solutions to accelerate the building electrification transition, register for our free webinar on Tuesday, February 23 at 1pm. Speakers include:
- Michael Colvin of Environmental Defense Fund
- California Public Utilities Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen
- Abigail Solis of Self Help Enterprises
They will join us to discuss priorities and opportunities for the coming decade of the decarbonization effort. Register here.
This post is co-authored with Ted Lamm and cross-posted on Legal Planet.
One of the concerns often raised about electric vehicles is the risk of battery fires. Lithium ion batteries can certainly catch fire on occasion. But how much should consumers take into account this risk when buying electric vehicles, particularly given that internal combustion engine alternatives also catch fire?
Turns out, not too much.
According to the research, the fire risk in an EV is no greater than the fire risk in a gas-powered car. For example, a U.S. Department of Transportation-funded study found that EVs are “somewhat comparable or perhaps slightly less” prone to fires compared with gas-powered cars.
Industry data bear this out, in an encouraging fashion. Tesla, the leading EV manufacturer in the US, claims that internal combustion engines are roughly 11 times more likely to catch fire than one of their EVs. And the data seem to support their claim: Teslas have to date registered roughly five fires for every billion miles driven, compared to a rate of 55 fires per billion miles traveled for gasoline cars. And more generally, lithium-ion battery cells fail at a rate of only 1 in every 12 million.
So the bottom line is that vehicles of all types are vulnerable to fires, and that risk is potentially much less in an electric vehicle, or at the very least just comparable. It’s good news, since we need electric vehicles to reduce transportation emissions and fight climate change. The main challenge going forward is preparing firefighters with the training they need to adapt to fighting battery fires, which burn differently than gasoline fires.
So if you’re considering buying an electric vehicle, don’t let the media smoke from a few battery fires obscure the truth. The climate is counting on it.
If you’re interested in the past, present and future of rail transit in Los Angeles, check out the video above from my talk this week with Streets For All. My moderated comments begin about 20 minutes in. We covered everything from the dismantling of the Los Angeles streetcar network to delays building current rail lines to whether anyone alive today will ever get to ride high speed rail.
And if you don’t know Streets For All, they’re a volunteer-based organization advocating for equitable redesign of streets and the transportation network to favor transit, walking and biking, as a climate change and quality-of-life necessity in Los Angeles.
Consider becoming a member if you’re interested in these issues. I thank them for hosting me for this talk!
The climate fight should ultimately benefit all communities, just as they are all part of the solution. Agricultural communities are no exception.
Farmers and ranchers can implement climate-friendly techniques that both sequester carbon and boost profits and long-term sustainability (sometimes referred to as “regenerative agriculture”). Examples of these practices include crop diversification and rotation, cover cropping, low-to-no tillage, rangeland and cropland composting, and reduced chemical inputs. Beyond carbon capture, these techniques and the principles that underlie them can lead to improved soil quality, higher long-term yields and greater yield stability, and resilience to drought, floods, disease, and pests.
Yet financial, logistical and resource barriers stand in the way of greater adoption. To address these challenges, UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) partnered with the Berkeley Food Institute to convene farmers, policy experts, advocates, investors, and other stakeholders in the farming community for a virtual roundtable on public-private solutions.
The group’s recommendations were captured in a new report released last month, Redefining Value and Risk in Agriculture: Policy and Investment Solutions to Scale the Transition to Regenerative Agriculture. Highlight solutions include:
- Develop a More Robust Research Base: Research institutions should advance the scientific case for regenerative agriculture and standardize measurement protocols
- Reform Crop Insurance: Congress and the US Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management: Agency should reform crop insurance to reflect the risk reduction benefits associated with regenerative practices
- Redefine Risk: Federal and state governments, banks and investors should account for the risk reduction benefits of regenerative practices and reflect those benefits in financing and direct payments
- Advance State-Level Policies: State governments should expand investments in effective existing policies like incentive programs and peer-to-peer support network initiatives
- Prioritize Equity in Agricultural Policies: Government at all levels should develop more integrated and equitable systems to serve farmers, such as streamlined technology platforms and more robust technical assistance
- Urge Landowners and Supply Chain Actors to Enable Regenerative Production: Landowners and supply chains should help promote regenerative farming among tenants and farmers by incorporating flexibility into contracts and removing barriers
Widespread implementation of these solutions could help in multiple ways, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution, improving economic conditions in farming communities, and addressing inequalities between rural and urban areas. To learn more, you can download the report here.
With the presidential election over, Joe Biden faces a U.S. Senate that still hangs in the balance. But even with a Democratic runoff sweep in Georgia next month, it will be very divided. So what will be possible for a President Biden and his administration to achieve on climate change?
Agency action, foreign policy changes, and spending can all make a difference on emissions, with any COVID stimulus and budget deals with Congress, if feasible, providing potential avenues for further climate action. Here are some ideas along those lines, broken out by key sectors of the economy.
Action on Transportation
As the EPA chart above of 2018 emissions shows, transportation contributes the largest share of nationwide greenhouse gas emissions at 28%. The best way to reduce those emissions is to decrease per capita driving miles through boosting transit and the construction of housing near it, as well as switch to zero-emission vehicles, primarily battery electrics.
Transit-oriented housing is largely governed by local governments, who generally resist construction. Absent state intervention or federal legislation from a divided Congress, the Biden administration will have to make surgical regulatory changes directing more grant funds to infill housing and potentially use litigation and other enforcement tools to prevent and compensate for racially discriminatory home lending and racially exclusive local zoning and permitting practices.
On transit, a Biden administration would be very pro-rail, especially given the President-elect’s daily commuting on Amtrak in his Senate days. If the Senate flips to the Democrats, high speed rail could be a big part of any bipartisan COVID stimulus package, if it happens, which would be a lifeline to the California project that is otherwise running out of money. Other urban rail transit systems could benefit as well, and the U.S. Department of Transportation could favor and streamline grants for transit over automobile infrastructure. Notably, LA Metro CEO Phil Washington, responsible for implementing the nation’s most ambitious rail transit investment program in Los Angeles County, is chairing Biden’s transition team on transportation.
On zero-emission vehicles, Biden may have relatively strong tools to improve deployment of this critical clean technology. First, perhaps through a budget agreement with Congress, he could reinstate and extend tax credits for zero-emission vehicle purchases, which have expired for major American automakers like General Motors and Tesla. Second, he could use the enormous purchasing power of the federal government to buy zero-emission vehicle fleets. And perhaps most importantly to California, his EPA can rescind its ill-conceived attempt at a fuel economy rollback for passenger vehicles and then grant the state a waiver under the Clean Air Act to institute even more stringent state-based standards, toward Governor Newsom’s new goal of phasing out sales of new internal combustion engines by 2035.
Reducing Electricity Emissions
The electricity sectors comes in a close second place, with 27% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The move toward renewable energy, particularly solar PV and wind turbines, is so strong that even Trump had difficulty slowing it down during his single term in office, in order to favor his fossil fuel supporters. But nonetheless, the Trump administration created some strong headwinds which can now be reversed.
First and foremost, President-elect Biden can drop the tariffs on foreign solar manufacturers, which drove up prices for installation here in the United States. Second, as with the zero-emission vehicle tax credits, a budget deal with Congress could bolster the federal investment tax credit for solar, which steps down from the initial 30% toward an eventual phaseout for residential properties and 10% for commercial properties. The credit could also be extended to standalone energy storage technologies, like batteries and flywheels, if Biden budget negotiators play their hands well (easy for me to say). A Biden administration could also improve energy efficiency by dropping weak regulations on light bulbs and appliances like dishwashers at the U.S. Department of Energy and introducing more stringent ones instead.
Legislatively, any COVID stimulus deal (again, if it happens) could potentially contain money for a big renewable energy buildout, including for new transmission lines, grid upgrades, and technology deployment. In terms of regulations, if Biden is able to get any appointments through the Senate to agencies like the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC), that agency could make climate progress by simply letting states deploy more renewables and clean tech, including demand response, as well as potentially supporting state-based carbon prices (a move supported by Trump’s FERC appointee Neil Chatterjee, which promptly resulted in his demotion last week).
Slowing Fossil Fuel Production
The two big moves for the Biden administration will be to stop new leases for oil and gas production on public lands (including immediately restoring the Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments) and bringing back the methane regulations on oil and gas producers that the Trump administration rolled back. As a bonus, his Interior Department could engage in smart planning to deploy more renewable energy on public lands, where appropriate, including offshore wind.
Other Climate Action
The list goes on for how the Biden administration can embed smart climate policy into all agencies and facets of government, with or without Congress. Of particular note, his appointees at financial agencies like the Federal Reserve and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could bolster and require climate risk disclosures for institutional and private investors. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget could ramp back up, based on the best science and economics, the social cost of carbon, which represents the cost in today’s dollars of the harm of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent gas into the atmosphere. This measure provides much of the economic justification for the federal government’s climate regulations. And of course, President-elect Biden can have the U.S. rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement immediately upon being sworn in (though the country will need to set a new national target).
Overall, Biden’s win means the U.S. will regain some climate leadership at the highest levels, with much that can be done through congressional negotiations, agency action, and spending. However, the stalemate in the US Senate likely means that any hopes for big new climate legislation will be dashed. As a result, continued aggressive action at the state and local level, as well as among the business community, will be critical to continue to help push the technologies and practices needed into widespread, cost-effective deployment to bring down the country’s greenhouse gas footprint.
One election certainly won’t solve climate change, and the costs continue to rise to address the impacts we’re already seeing from extreme weather. But given the current political climate, the actions described above could allow the U.S. to still make meaningful progress to reduce emissions over the next four years and beyond, even in an era of divided government.
Governor Newsom made a major announcement this week, issuing an executive order that California would ban the sale of new internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by 2035, and medium and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045. I’ll discuss the order and its implications this morning at 9am on KQED radio’s Forum.
We released a report at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) on this very subject in 2018, called 100% Zero. The bottom line: this is a major new announcement that is necessary to tackle climate change and should be economically and technically feasible, assuming the state takes additional implementation steps discussed in the report.
However, whether it’s legally feasible for California to implement this order will almost inevitably revolve around this or future presidential elections, as well as the composition of the United States Supreme Court.
Tune in today for more details!
