Climate & Natural Resources

California Climate Change Legislation (Click titles to be directed to more information)

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SB 99 ( Dodd) Community Resilience Act of 2021

LWVNC hosted an Earth Day virtual event on April 20th featuring Senator Bill Dodd, who discussed three climate-related bills he is sponsoring in the 2021 session. SB 99 would establish the Community Resilience Act of 2021, creating “energy resilience mini-grids” that ensure continuous electrical service during power outages. The bill also prioritizes “clean energy resilience” to prevent the use of diesel-powered generators in lower-income communities that are most impacted by power outages and air pollution. 

SB 52 (Dodd) Wildfire Disaster Relief

Senator Dodd has also introduced a bill that would make wildfire disaster relief more readily available and create an agency to identify more effective ways to address wildfires. SB 52 would define a “de-energization event” as a “planned power outage,” which would make it one of those conditions constituting a local emergency.

 

SB 109 (Dodd) Office of Wildfire Technology Research and Development.

Also introduced by Senator Dodd, this new office would study and test new technology and tools to suppress wildfires and advise about the most effective means to prevent and control them.

 

AB 1086 (Aguiar-Curry) Organic Waste Management

In the Assembly, another bill that aims to lower greenhouse gases and air pollution is AB 1086 (Aguiar-Curry), which addresses the need to improve organic waste management. Each year, millions of tons of food, landscaping, and agricultural waste are tossed into California’s landfills or burned––unleashing methane (that traps 28 times the heat of CO2!) and black carbon––negatively impacting California’s climate change initiatives and air quality targets. AB 1086 would require the Natural Resources Agency to prepare a report summarizing science-based beneficial reuses of organic waste. It would also outline strategies to collect and convert organic waste into valuable compost, biochar, or renewable energy sources.  For more information on renewables, click here. 
 

SB 27 (Skinner and Caballero) CO2 Sequestration Targets

Supported by LWV California, sets CO2 sequestration targets for agricultural and natural lands and creates a registry to track funding and the efficacy of carbon removal projects. Regenerative farming and grazing practices and protecting or restoring forests, wetlands, and pastures are key strategies for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. SB 27 would integrate CO2 drawdown targets into long-term planning for land use, population growth and urban expansion, and open space preservation (drawdown.org).