Bill Text: CA SB1350 | 2017-2018 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Climate change: research, development, and demonstration: financial assistance.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2018-03-08 - Referred to Com. on RLS. [SB1350 Detail]
Download: California-2017-SB1350-Introduced.html
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2017–2018 REGULAR SESSION
| Senate Bill | No. 1350 |
| Introduced by Senator Stern |
February 16, 2018 |
An act relating to energy.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
SB 1350, as introduced, Stern.
Climate change: research, development, and demonstration: financial assistance.
Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to develop and implement the Electric Program Investment Charge program for the purpose of awarding funds to projects that may lead to technological advancement and breakthroughs to overcome barriers that prevent the achievement of the state’s statutory energy goals and that may result in a portfolio of projects that are strategically focused and sufficiently narrow to make advancement on the most significant technological challenges.
Existing law requires the commission to develop, implement, and administer the Public Interest Research, Development, and Demonstration Program to provide support for a full range of research, development, and demonstration activities to advance energy science or technologies that, as determined by the
commission, are not adequately provided for by competitive and regulated energy markets.
The bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to establish a new model for providing agile financial assistance for research, development, and demonstration of climate change mitigation technologies with transformational potential.
Digest Key
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: NO Local Program: NOBill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) California is a global leader in the fight against climate change not only because of its transformational policy objectives, but also due to its ability to be an innovation catalyst and commercialize new clean energy and climate change mitigation technologies and practices.
(b) For every dollar California spends on petroleum annually, the state only invests about one cent ($0.01) on the clean energy technology research, development, and deployment needed to wean ourselves from overreliance on fossil fuels, despite being the nation’s cleantech patent leader and the recipient of one-half of all cleantech venture
capital investment since the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Division 25.5 (commencing with Section 38500) of the Health and Safety Code).
(c) At the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, 22 participating countries and the European Union, representing 80 percent of global clean energy research and development budgets, along with the largest private sector investors in the world, committed to Mission Innovation, an effort to double public investment in clean energy research and development over five years, to reach thirty billion dollars ($30,000,000,000) per year by 2021.
(d) Since the United States decided to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the federal government is poised to back away from Mission Innovation as well, with massive cuts in clean energy research and development proposed in the federal budget.
(e) According the Legislative Analyst’s Office, long-term sustained public investment in research and development has yielded a consistent and robust return on investment to California taxpayers over time.
(f) California can reach our statewide climate change goals, and accelerate progress beyond our borders, in a manner that is more equitable, affordable, and economically advantageous to the California economy if the state accelerates the production, deployment, and export of innovative climate change mitigation technology that is not yet commercially viable enough to be supported by a carbon price, regulatory signals, or private capital alone.
