Senate Bill 1158 – Retail Electricity Suppliers: Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Becker)

This bill would specify that “purchases of electricity from specified sources” means delivered electricity transactions, as defined, and would require an hourly disclosure based on retail load instead of annual sales. Today, load serving entities (LSEs) are required to report the GHG intensity of their retail sales and the Power Content Label (PCL) to the California Energy Commission annually, this would change to hourly reporting. The PCL is used to communicate GHG intensity of an LSEs portfolio on a consistent basis.

While the bill aims to drive clean energy, consistent with CCA goals, the bill would significantly and detrimentally affect CCAs by:

• Adding significant complexity to GHG emissions reporting.
• Subjecting CCAs to the authority of the CPUC to require changes in the CCAs procurement plans to meet GHG emissions reduction target that remains unidentified at an individual LSE level.
• Requires, for the first-time disclosure of resource types relied on for Resource Adequacy.

SB 1158 appears likely to interact with SB 881 in a negative way. If SB 1158 limits what can be counted as zero carbon, then complying with the “standard” set in SB 881 is likely to be more difficult.

Next Steps

CalChoice and CalCCA are looking at working with the author to reflect the concerns of CCAs throughout the State to articulate the challenges that the passage of these bills would cause to CCAs. We anticipate beneficial conversations with the author as both the author and the CCA communities’ intent is to reduce GHG emissions and address climate change.