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Host: So electrification on this day,
Wednesday, October 13th, 2021.
Commissioner, you may begin.
-: Josh, would you like to start us off, please?
-: Absolutely.
Thank you, Commissioner Rechtschaffen, and hello, everyone.
Thank you for your patience
as we get booted up here for our En Banc.
My name is Josh Huneycutt.
I am a senior analyst
on the Transportation Electrification team
in the CPUC's Energy Division,
and I will be emceeing today's event
and walking everyone through a few presentations here.
Before we get started with introductory remarks
from Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
I do want to provide a few notes for the audience.
So due to the coronavirus pandemic
and the shelter-in-place order,
we are conducting today's business meeting online
and by remote participation.
The meeting is livestream on CPU's website,
and you can view the meeting
at www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc.
Closed captioning is available in English and Spanish
through the webcast.
You can click the green button
to select your language of choice.
Today's workshop is also being recorded
and will be available at www.cpuc.ca.gov/zev,
Z-E-V, in the next few days.
You can also find the agenda and PowerPoint
from today's discussion at that same site.
Lastly, we will have public comment
at the end of today's meeting.
If you wish to make a public comment,
please dial into 800-857-1917
and enter passcode 5180519#
and press *1.
You'll be placed into a queue,
and the operator will take your name and information.
You'll be called upon to speak
when we get to the public comment period in today's agenda.
And if you could, if you do wish to make a public comment,
please, in advance of the public comments section,
email Nicole Cropper,
and that's nicole.cropper@cpuc.ca.gov
to get on the list for public speakers.
All right, with that, I will pass it off
to Commissioner Rechtschaffen for some introductory remarks.
Commissioner?
-: Thank you very much, Josh,
and thank you all for gathering here today.
And again, thank you very much for your patience.
We had unexpected technical glitches that fortunately
we haven't experienced very much during COVID,
but, of course, saying that, we had some today.
I especially wanna thank the other four Commissioners
who joined me on the deas today.
I wanna thank Josh and his colleagues,
a very, very hardworking Energy Division,
Transportation Electrification team,
who helped put this event together.
Our two judges who work
on transportation electrification decisions,
Judges Goldberg and Morrison.
And I'm also very, very grateful to the close collaboration
that we've had over the years
and more intensively and productively recently
with the California Energy Commission,
the California Air Resources Board
and the Governor's Office of Business
and Economic Development, GO-Biz.
They've been terrific partners.
I want to in particular thank Han Rasool from the CEC,
who will be presenting a little bit later on
and staying on the deas with us.
And I also want to thank Yuliya Shmidt and Sean Simon,
my excellent, wonderful advisors
who helped put this event together with the TE team.
This En Banc, it's it's a little bit different than others.
It was noticed to the relevant
transportation electrification service list
so that we're in compliance with Bagley-Keene laws.
We will not be making any decisions today,
not taking any votes, doing any formal action.
Rather, this is an informal meeting.
It's not part of the record of proceedings.
The goal here is to provide an opportunity, a forum,
for all of the Commissioners with staff
to discuss a key set of issues
in transportation electrification policy.
These issues center around the role of ratepayer investment
in transportation electrification infrastructure.
I just wanna note,
we will be taking a five minute break
after Hannon's presentation to stretch our legs.
That'll be approximately about an hour from now
'cause I don't wanna have to have us go
for 2 1/2 or 3 hours going forward, so that's 5 minutes.
Big picture here, it's a very exciting,
a very important time in the market.
You'll hear more from Josh and Hannon about that.
In California, we're approaching one million vehicles
in terms of ZEV sale.
The market is accelerating.
There are now dozens and dozens of EV models.
We have major manufacturers such as GM, VW, Volvo,
committing to going 100% electric.
There's a stronger consensus than ever
about the need to deal with climate change
and to electrify our transportation system,
and we have more ambitious goals than ever
with Governor Newsom's executive orders last year,
establishing goals of all light-duty vehicles
being ZEV by 2035
and all medium and heavy-duty vehicles being ZEV by 2045.
One of the critical is,
many people think it is the critical element
in making further progress,
is having sufficient infrastructure
to support the growing market.
You'll hear from Hannon about the gap
in the infrastructure we have now
and what we'll need to meet our state goals.
Basically, we need more than six times the number
of chargers to meet our established 2030 goals,
more if you go to the more ambitious goals
that may be necessary to meet
the Air Resources Board Clean Transportation goal.
So it's a very tall order.
At the CEC, we've authorized significant investments
in transportation electrification to date,
and the utilities have been
the biggest source of ratepayers.
Not utilities, the ratepayers have been
the biggest source of funding in this state so far.
Josh will give us more information about what they've done,
including our areas of focus,
but the landscape's changing, as we'll talk about.
The private sector, state agencies,
federal agencies, local governments
are now playing increasingly significant roles,
and we face important questions,
which we want to examine today.
What's the most effective role for ratepayer funding
in light of these efforts?
What should our priorities be?
What forms should ratepayer investments take?
Included in that, there's only one set of issues,
is to what extent should utilities own
the customer side infrastructure, including chargers?
So those are some of the things we'd like to explore.
Ultimately, of course, we don't want the public sector.
We don't want government to have to pay
for a lot of this infrastructure.
We want it to be done by the private sector,
but we're quite a ways from there.
And overarching all this,
a key issue for all of us is affordability,
a top priority for the Commission more broadly.
We had a very sobering white paper
in En Banc earlier this year in which we heard
about the rate pressures facing ratepayers going forward.
Transportation electrification programs contribute
to those increased rates, although far less
than wildfire mitigation costs or transition costs.
At the same time, those investments will lead
to increased electric sales,
which will potentially decrease rates.
We don't know exactly how to calculate that,
but there will be downward pressure on rates.
But this is a critical concern for us.
We just want one level setting point
before I conclude and turn it to Josh.
The focus for today is really on the customer side
of the meter investments,
and Josh will have a very good slide about that.
For utility side of the meters,
the legislature has revised the rules in AB-841
and directed that for those upgrades,
ratepayers would bear the cost,
and utilities should treat those expenses
without needing to file separate applications for approval,
the way they treat all other distribution level expenses.
We reviewed those costs during utility GRC.
So again, our focus will be
on the customer side of investments.
When we turn to the roundtable portion of the discussion,
we'll be focusing on several overarching questions
you'll see in Josh's slide,
and they'll be up for our discussion
about the role of the utility, timing,
and how to prioritize funds
and what mechanisms we should use.
The intent here is to have an interactive discussion.
I'll lead the discussion.
I'll be helped by Ed Randolph,
our Energy Division director.
Staff will be available to answer questions,
and I'll call them to explain some things,
including some new potential mechanisms
for funding infrastructure.
I'm hoping everyone will participate freely,
but if necessary, I may have to go
into my law professor mode and call on people,
so we really need
and want an interactive discussion with Commissioners.
I don't expect, or no opening remarks are necessary,
but before we turned to Josh
if anyone wants to say anything,
anyone else from the deas, please go ahead.
I know I can't see everybody. Any other Commissioners?
I don't see anyone jumping up.
I dunno if you see anyone, Josh.
If not, then I'll turn it to Josh for his presentation.
Josh: All right, thank you, Commissioner.
So I need to share my screen here,
so give me one second while we get the tech right.
Okay, are the slides up on the screen?
-: Yes, they are.
Josh: Okay, excellent.
All right, so thank you, Commissioner,
and good afternoon, Commissioners, President Batjer,
and members of the public.
Very excited to have this discussion today.
And that was a great introduction.
Much of what you discussed will certainly be featured
in the slides I'm going to go over today.
I'm planning to go through these slides
and then we'll have some time leftover
at the end of the presentation
for a discussion and question/answer session.
And I do have my colleagues
from the Transportation Electrification team here
and from the Energy Division that are willing and able
to dive deeper into some of what we'll be presenting here.
If there's an urgent question, feel free to break in,
but perhaps we can hold questions till the end.
Up to you all then, of course. All right.
So I think it'd be helpful to begin this overview
by reviewing our state climate and PE goals,
our progress towards those goals
and opportunities for bridging the gap
between where we are today and the end of this decade.
And I know that Hannon is also going to present
on the work that CEC has been doing,
and obviously the CEC
and the CPUC work very closely together,
consider them colleagues and our partners,
and some of the modeling and analysis.
And so inherently there's gonna be some overlap here,
but I think it's helpful to hear it multiple times
to drive home really how big of a challenge this is.
And on this slide, which was prepared by the CEC,
I think this really provides a helpful reminder
that anytime we think about transportation electrification,
we should really be placing it in the context
of our state's larger decarbonization
and GHG reduction goal, with the ultimate goal
of net zero GHG emissions by 2045.
To get us there, the transportation sector is going
to need to do an increasing share of the heavy lifting
given California's success to date
in decarbonizing the energy sector.
To put the importance of this task in context,
the transportation sector now makes up 50%
of California's GHG emissions,
mostly in the form of tailpipe emissions
from cars and trucks.
So that means if we hope to have any real chance
of a meaningful decarbonization of California's economy,
we need to rapidly accelerate
the electrification of transportation.
So what targets have been set
to achieve our broader decarbonization goals here?
As you see on the chart,
we have established a number of targets
that have set the course for various regulations,
funding programs, and initiatives
around transportation electrification.
For example, former Governor Brown issued
an executive order, which was later codified in AB-2127,
calling for five million zero-emissions vehicles
on the road by 2030,
which is followed by an executive order
from Governor Newsom requiring all sales
of new passenger vehicles to be zero emission by 2035
and that also all operations of medium
and heavy-duty vehicles are 100% zero emissions by 2045.
When the California Air Resources Board
incorporated this executive order
into its draft Mobile Source Strategy analysis,
it determined that eight million zero-emission vehicles
could be on the road by 2030.
So how far along are we
towards meeting these very ambitious targets?
Well, we're making some progress.
While the latest Q3 2021 data hasn't been released just yet,
we generally know that EV sales are robust,
and as of the end of Q2 2021,
there are nearly one million zero-emission vehicles
on the road in California, representing about half
of all the ZEVs in the United States
with many of those sales, 121,000,
that is occurring in the first half of this year.
So that coupled with the 75,000 public
and shared EV chargers, make up the biggest EV market
and charging network in the United States.
That said, we have a number of challenges,
including vehicle affordability
and charging infrastructure deployment,
which will be a major focus of today's discussion.
Before we get to that though,
I want to spend a moment addressing vehicle affordability.
I know this is a question and issue
that comes up quite a lot,
more thinking about mass adoption
and particularly equitable adoption
of transportation electrification,
so definitely want to acknowledge,
and most early vehicles have been bought
and driven by relatively affluent households.
Research from a few years ago indicated
that households earning less than $100,000 per year
represent 72% of gasoline vehicle purchases
but only 44% of EV purchases.
Black and Latino car buyers make 41%
of gasoline vehicle purchases,
but only 12% of EV purchases.
Among used vehicle buyers,
medium income of EV buyers in California is 150,000 compared
with 90,000 for gasoline vehicle buyers.
So that is concerning;
however, battery prices are falling fast
and many analysts believe
that new car cost parity is on the near horizon,
with an example here showing that by 2023,
the new car sticker price of a 350-mile range EV
will be on par with that of a Toyota Camry.
And I know this can seem surprising
for those of us who live in places dominated
by flashier, higher-priced EVs,
but many lower cost models are already on the market,
and we're seeing a robust
youth EV ecosystem develop as well.
In addition, we have many programs in California
that are offering purchase or trade incentives
for low-income EV buyers
such as the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's
Clean Cars 4 All programs, which offers up to $9,500
to spend on an EV for those two, trade-in or vehicle.
And then CARB's ever-popular Clean Vehicle Rebate program,
which oversubscribed, thankfully re-upped recently,
and it offers up to $7,000 for the purchase
or lease of a new EV.
Back to the primary issue at hand for this En Banc cover,
so how do we reassure the existing
and potential EV drivers that once they cash in their rebate
on their cheaper-than-a-Camry EV,
that, for example, they'll be able to take a weekend trip
without worrying about where they'll be able to charge.
Put it another way, the big challenge for us ahead
is how we collectively demonstrate
that California stands behind its commitment
to decarbonization by accelerating the development
of a robust charging network,
and that acceleration will need to be substantial.
I would say this might be the most important figure
to remember from this presentation, 1.2 million,
which is the amount of public and shared chargers
that the CEC anticipates we'll need by 2030
to support the state's light-duty ZEV policies.
This number is informed by a robust modeling effort
conducted primarily by the CEC pursuant to simply bill 2127,
which requires the CEC to issue a biennial assessment
at EV charging infrastructure.
The report, in concert with the CPUC
and CARB-examined state policy targets,
vehicle adoption and technology trends, driving behavior,
electric distribution, system planning,
and other factors to determine the need for public charging.
And as you can see here,
the current build-out of charging infrastructure
is really nowhere near where we need to be
to meet our state policy targets for 2030.
Even if we're assuming a more modest five million EVs
on the road by 2030,
we're still an order of magnitude off where we need to get.
And keep in mind,
this is just the need for the light-duty vehicle segment.
So for medium and heavy duty electrification,
which covers everything from on-road trucks and buses
to off-road mobile equipment
like cargo handling and farm vehicles,
CEC anticipates that we'll need over 150,000 EV chargers.
And these are a different category than light duty chargers.
These cases require high power chargers
capable of servicing large, heavy equipment,
so bigger tax on the distribution system
when these are installed as well.
Electrifying this sector is of critical importance,
not only from a decarbonization standpoint
but also from a pollution reduction
and environmental justice standpoint.
As the CEC described in their 2127 report,
these vehicles are responsible
for 68% of NOx emissions in the state
and 91% of diesel particulate matter emissions.
These pollutants contribute to toxic air
and disproportionately harm communities near ports,
rail yards, distribution centers,
and major freight quarters,
and contribute to making the air quality
in the South Coast region and San Joaquin Valley
some of the worst in the nation.
Beyond the medium and heavy duty sector,
looking at fleets, commercial vehicles more broadly,
the state is setting very aggressive targets
for fleet electrification as we speak,
including for companies like Uber and Lyft,
which will likely need to zero out GHG emissions by 2030,
a feat that would require a build-out
of additional fast charging infrastructure
in major California urban areas.
So how are we addressing these challenges?
Before we get to the progress,
we at the CPUC and the IOUs have made to date...
I think it's really important to highlight
that this is a tremendously complex issue
that requires effective coordination
and collaborative problem solving.
So as this slide,
drawn from the Governor's Office and Economic Development's
ZEV Market Development Strategy, a bit of a mouthful there,
highlights the CPUC is about one stakeholder
in a diverse ecosystem of public private actors,
and our success really is dependent on effective engagement
with everyone you see on the screen,
so that's the state agencies, local regional governments,
vehicle manufacturers, grid operators.
It's really an all-hands-on-deck effort.
That said, we at the CPUC are doing our part
to accelerate the transition to electrified transportation
by deploying EV charging infrastructure
to meet customer demand,
planning and building the electric grid,
and putting in place interconnection processes
that can safely and efficiently accommodate EVs,
designing EV rates that allow for affordable charging
while facilitating vehicle-to-grid integration
and conducting program evaluation
and interagency coordination
to ensure that ratepayer investments
to support ZEV are strategically coordinated.
So getting a bit more into the details
on what that constitutes.
So as you can see, the CPU's funded a substantial amount
of TE activities in the state to date,
encompassing everything from efforts
to electrify state park and beaches with charging ports
to large-scale port electrification vehicle
to grid integration programs and much of what's in between.
And I won't spend too much time discussing the specifics
of this program at the moment
as you're likely familiar with many of them,
but we'd be happy to discuss these
in a question and answer session after the presentation
if there are any programs that you'd like information on
or want to discuss.
Instead, I'd like to highlight
a few macro trends in our funding
and give a sense of how much rates they're funding
that's going to certain segments.
So with regards to what's market segments
and sectors our program is focused on,
funding is currently committed about 50/50
to light duty and medium duty/heavy duty programs.
And of that funding,
most of the focus of the slide are currently active
and many are in the early stages or startup stages,
so funding still remains across the board
about 80% of funding at last count.
And in terms of what the existing funding has yielded
in terms of charging ports, well, last check of the data,
the IOUs have energized approximately 13,000 charging ports.
So again, it's important to keep
the bigger picture in mind here.
So while we've energized
about 13,000 ratepayer-funded ports,
and there are currently 75,000 total ports energized
across the state.
That means we have a pretty substantial gap in funding
to get to our 1.2 million targets.
So another critically important question
besides the volume of ports is,
where are the ports being deployed geographically?
Given the extreme wealth and environmental inequities
in our state, we, along with the legislature,
have placed a strong focus on ensuring
that ratepayer investments benefit residents
in communities of concern.
So as this slide shows, our three most recent fundings,
if you exclude the VGI pilot decision,
have at least 50% of funding
and ports committed to being deployed
to serve disadvantaged communities
and underserved communities.
And as part of this programs,
we're focusing efforts on making sure that transit
and other medium/heavy duty use cases are electrified
given the disproportionate impact
that heavy vehicle use places on disadvantaged communities.
And we're also placing a strong emphasis
on multiunit dwellings to ensure that renters
and apartment dwellers have access to affordable charging.
And speaking of affordable charging,
I did want to end my remarks with a brief note
on something else Commissioner Rechtschaffen touched on,
and one of the major roles that the CPUC plays
in accelerating transportation electrification,
which is ensuring that customers can charge their vehicles
for less than they pay at the gasoline pump.
So currently for customers that charge at home and off-peak,
charging your EV costs about 1/3 as much
as fueling a gas-powered vehicle.
And as you can see from the chart on the right,
this is a key contributor to the fact
that EVs are cheaper to operate and maintain
than internal combustion vehicles
and will play a key role in driving the affordability
of EVs in the long run.
More specifically, according to this analysis
that you see on the screen here,
for car owners in the lowest income quintile,
savings from switching to an EV amount to
about $1,000 per household annually
or 7% of that quintile's income by 2030.
So that's a lot of savings for for folks,
not only better than spectrum, but any EV drivers.
And to tie this back to the larger discussion
around charging infrastructure deployment,
it will be really important to ensure
that ratepayer investments in TE
do not have the impact of increasing rates
to the point where these savings are potentially offset,
and I think Commissioner Rechtschaffen also mentioned
that there is the chance
that the TE investments that we make,
and electrification transportation generally,
could actually have the inverse effect,
and that's something that we'll be tracking
as analysts here at the Commission
to examine whether EV charging
indeed may have a downward pressure on rates.
So that's an area of inquiry and concern for us as well.
All right, so with that, I will conclude my remarks,
and I will open it up to Commissioners
for questions and comments.
-: I have a couple of questions,
but I wanna see if other people have questions first.
Well, I can start, Josh.
Just a couple of things,
and some of these are by way of clarification.
You mentioned that about 50%
of our investments been in light-duty vehicles
and 50% in the medium and heavy duty sector.
I wanted to point out, and you can confirm this,
that most of the light duty sector
is not on single-family residence
where there's a pretty robust market,
but it's been more in the multi-family unit sector
or the workplace sector for light duty,
but not for individual residents.
Am I right about that?
-: Yeah, that's right.
So most of the program funding
is going towards public charging infrastructure.
So whether that's public you think of
as in public property, government property,
or public shared charging at a workplace
or at a multi-family unit
that might be on private land,
but it can be shared by either residents, employees,
or members of the public sometimes.
-: And then I have a question you may be able to answer
or some of your colleagues may be able to answer,
the CEC's authorized $1.8 billion in investment.
You noted that 13,000 ports have been energized,
and that's a reflection,
and others have commented on the fact
that a significant portion,
the great majority of the utility money
that's been authorized has not yet been spent.
I don't know if it's 20% or what the exact figure is.
Do you or any of your colleagues have any thoughts
or any insight into why it's taking relatively slowly
for the utility programs to get up and running
or for those investments to actually be made,
the money actually spent?
-: Yeah, definitely.
I can let my colleague Audrey speak to that.
She's a bit closer to the program implementation side.
So Audrey, do you have a comment?
Audrey: Sure, yeah.
So I think that a light duty program...
The initial program
that the Commission authorized back in 2016,
those are all complete for the most part,
and funding has been authorized,
has been spent for all of those.
There are two new light duty programs
that the Commission authorized more recently,
but Charge Ready 2 and Power Your Drive 2 for SCE and SDG&E,
the funds for that haven't been spent yet
just really because the utilities
are still standing up those programs.
So that's kind of on the light duty side.
On the medium and heavy duty side,
this is a more nascent market,
and so the utilities have got authorization
in either 2019 for STG&E
and 2018 for the other two utilities
to spend money in those sectors.
However, there's been some challenges both with COVID delays
and really just with the nascency of these markets
with spending these funds.
And so I do think it's fairly reasonable
that there have been some delays there.
We have also required that customers participating
in those programs provide a proof of purchase of a vehicle,
and, in some cases, those vehicles are on backorder
or the customer is waiting a bit to purchase those
until they really do need to transition their fleets over.
So I think there are some fairly logical reasons
for some of those delays.
-: Thank you. I have one other question.
I can't see the other Commissioners on the screen,
so I don't wanna hog the microphone,
but let me ask this question
and maybe Hannon can answer this
with his presentation as well.
You gave a figure for the scale of the investment
by the utilities that we've authorized.
Do we know the current level of investment
in the private market?
Do we know, in other words,
how much, compared to what we've authorized,
how much has been contributed by the private sector?
Any sense of that?
-: That's a great question. That's not data that we have.
If you look at the figure, 13,000 ports.
I think Hannon probably has a better figure
on the number of ports that the CEC has funded.
I think it's substantial and growing,
but we don't have accurate data on that at this point.
I think it's a great question though.
Unless somebody on my team has a better sense of that.
Audrey: I do not have a better sense of that.
I will note that at least
in the early days of this industry,
a lot of the chargers, not all, of course,
did receive some level of public support,
whether that was some federal funding,
some sort of, say, funding either from us or from the CAC.
But I don't know that we have any data on all of the ports
that the public sector or private sector have supported.
-: Okay, I'm done with questions,
except that I wanna say for my fellow Commissioners,
Josh developed a great slide for me
that I've used many times, that he's gonna update,
that compares the cost of charging
your electric vehicle at home
versus the cost of fueling it up at the gas station.
And the disparities are probably even greater right now
because gasoline prices are high.
It's a very striking number
as illustrated in one of the last slides,
and it's a very useful graphic that you can use.
-: Yeah, and on that note too,
I'm just reversing slides here.
I think there's one additional factor
that's often overlooked in EV affordability,
is the total cost of ownership.
EVs have significantly fewer moving parts,
you're not pumping hydrocarbons through them
that leak out and get gunked up,
so the maintenance costs are substantially lower,
and so that the benefits owners over the long term
even though now the upfront price
of vehicles is a bit higher.
-: I have a question, Commissioner. It's Genevieve.
Can I go ahead and ask my question?
Clifford: Of course, Commissioner Shiroma.
Josh has the mic. He's the emcee at this point.
-: Okay, so, Josh, I think you had a slide
of all the different agencies that play a role here,
all the different entities.
I think I, well, managed to miss that.
That one. There you go.
There you go, that's it. Uh huh, yeah.
So really
the focus is on infrastructures.
I'm in the back on line.
I am still grappling with,
how do low-income, middle-income individuals,
and families afford that initial investment?
It's one thing to buy a used car, like $5,000,
and there are used cars available at $5,000,
versus an electric vehicle 25,000 and up.
And so it's the build it and they will come.
We must have this aspirational and real goal
of five million electric vehicles
on the roads by date certain,
but has anyone done
any cost benefits, so using business case studies,
as far as what,
to frame it, will be needed for a low-income buyer
to be able to afford an electric vehicles?
And that presents a whole nother set of issues as far as,
well, how would that, trying to frame it, be funded?
But that's not the bridge we're trying to cross here.
One question really is, simply,
has anyone done that basic assessment?
-: Yeah, I think that's a great question
and a really important one that I know many of the agencies
across the state who are more directly responsible
for providing vehicle incentives are thinking about.
So I mentioned the Clean Cars 4 All program,
the BAAQMD program to provide rebates,
especially for lower-income customers.
So I think folks are very aware of this,
and I think UC Davis has done a lot of great work on this,
and there's certainly some efforts at the legislature to...
Happen to be thinking about that,
I mentioned AB-21, I'm sorry, AB-841,
requiring that a portion of our investments go
towards a disadvantaged community.
And then we also have SB-1000,
which requires an assessment of the equity dimensions
of the charging infrastructure build-out.
And I would say many of the organizations on here
probably have their own
take on that as well. -: Sure, okay.
Infrastructure, we had voted for this and we've done this.
Infrastructure in low-income communities
and disadvantaged communities, that if you don't have a car
to the avail of the infrastructure, then where are we?
So, I mean, it's the other half of the equation,
which I know is off the topic of today. (chuckles)
-: No, it's super important.
I know that Audrey on our team,
she might have some information
about the utilities' Low Carbon Fuel Standard program.
Audrey, did you have a note about that?
Audrey: Sure, yeah.
I mean, I think just one point
just on the vehicles part that Josh was mentioning,
obviously most of the work on incentives
for the vehicle itself comes from other agencies.
One area that the CPUC
does have oversight over is utilities' funding
of Low Carbon Fuel Standard credit revenue,
LCFS credit revenue,
and we are currently reviewing proposals from utilities
to establish use easy rebates
for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
So just one component of the EV costs
that we are considering right now under our jurisdiction,
but, yes, that is really more on the vehicle side.
-: Okay, thank you. Thanks for the update.
-: Absolutely.
-: Well, Commissioner Rechtschaffen, Josh,
I can't see anybody either,
so sorry if I'm interrupting here.
Usually we can see each other
to kinda try to not interrupt each other,
but I just was gonna,
not really have a question here
but just share the reflection
that I know we've been all talking about
and why, from my perspective,
we really need to be pretty cautious
in additional funding authorization from the utilities.
I'll just say the three reasons from my perspective.
One is what you mentioned already,
Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
which is the legislature has said they want the utilities
to be able to rate base behind the meter,
the meter-ready infrastructure.
And that's a big, big...
We always hear about complaints
about the interconnection process,
and even if we focus solely on that,
it would be a tremendous contribution
to the electrification of transportation in our state.
It is a large piece and it a large amount of money,
not to mention that it's gonna be part of the rate base.
So the second issue is that, as we've talked about,
the counterintuitive reason
to not put more of these electric infrastructure costs
on the electricity ratepayers.
One, as we've talked about in the affordability proceeding,
electricity bills are regressive.
They are a user tax,
and so doesn't matter how well we craft it within that.
They are a regressive form of financing.
Certainly we'd love to see more federal funding
and general funding come in that is more progressive,
so that's one obvious reason.
And then the reason that we've all stated,
which is in order to incentivize more electrification,
that fuel needs to be cheap and affordable
and clean, of course.
And so focusing in on ensuring
that the fuel, the cost of electricity,
is clean and affordable
is our piece to this puzzle.
And we're kind of,
we're continuously adding the obligations
of financing for the vehicles,
financing for the meters side of the end user.
It gets further away from what I think
our core role should be here,
which is to keep electricity as low as possible,
as clean as we can, we gotta meet those mandates,
and in doing so,
we would be making it less regressive in and of itself.
It's hard to have this dialogue
without having the full spectrum
of all of the programs before us
and with our colleagues not here either
to kind of push back on, certainly,
me saying that we shouldn't be funding some of these things.
And I certainly think we can leverage
and optimize this, as we've just talked about,
with Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
That's a great example.
We're using more money to get
to a great rebate for cars incentives,
and the utilities are playing a role.
That's great. It's not impacting the cost of electricity.
It's not having a regressive impact.
So it's not that utilities won't have
an integrated role here,
but getting the ready-made infrastructure,
particularly at the port
and all the heavy duty along the way,
should be the focus.
And it's not a small thing.
We just talked about how we're behind there.
So I appreciate this opportunity to dialogue about this.
-: Yeah, I think those comments, Commissioner,
I think that fits really nicely into some of the topics
for the roundtable a little later in the event certainly.
I'm not sure if anyone wanted to chime in,
and as I will note that we are,
just given the technical difficulties,
a bit behind on schedule.
So happy to answer anymore questions on the presentation,
but just wanted to let folks know
that we're running a little behind.
So, yeah, Commissioner Houck.
-: I have two questions.
One, I know you mentioned there are 76,000 chargers.
Is it correct that there's also another 200,000
that are planned or in process?
And if so, are we coordinating on how we're mapping those
and do we know how many of those may be located
in either disadvantaged communities or rural communities?
Then the second question was just on transparency issues.
I know the CEC has a dashboard
where they're publicly showing where the costs are
and how much the chargers are costing.
Are we looking to do something similar for the IOUs
or try and coordinate with the CEC
to possibly have their costs included on that dashboard
to make sure that there's transparency
and that we all know how much being is spent on what?
-: Yeah. Great questions.
So I would say that
in terms of knowledge of where the chargers are going,
I can't actually speak to that.
I know we do have a queue with the utilities,
and there was information that we could get to that,
but maybe I'll pass it off to Audrey.
I think she might have a bit more information
that speaks directly to your questions here.
Audrey: Yeah, so, I mean, I think first on,
I'll just secure the question on cost,
we are speaking regularly with our colleagues, the CEC,
about trying to better compare costs
'cause I think we do realize this is something
that is lacking right now.
I think one of the challenges with comparing costs
is really that it's not apples to apples at this moment.
The CEC tends to provide a rebate.
We are looking at both utility side and customer side costs.
At least that's what we have done to date.
And so sometimes I think within the CEC costs,
it's not necessarily inclusive
of some of those utility side costs
that would be covered by ratepayers anyway.
So I think, yes, it's something that we're working on.
I hear you that it's something that's certainly important,
but I don't know that we have a great answer to that.
Now we do have some internal data
on per port costs in these EV programs.
I caution that they're not exactly apples to apples.
On the location question.
I know that the CEC has done some mapping
or is doing some mapping through SP-1000.
We do have some GIS maps
from the utilities' light duty deployments
that show where we have ratepayer-supported new chargers,
so we have a sense of where we're supporting them.
Then there are some other public databases, like PlugShare,
that give us a sense of where all of the chargers are
that are available to the public.
So I wouldn't say there's one central database,
but there's quite a few, and we can kind of get a sense
of where we're clustering these chargers.
And the SP-1000 effort that the CEC is undertaking
is really looking at the question of,
are we serving low-income and disadvantaged communities
with these investments?
So that's something we can certainly get back to you on
once talking to our colleagues about that
or perhaps some of the CEC can support on that.
-: Thank you. -: Also this is Sara Kamins.
I'm the supervisor of the TE team and Energy Division.
One of my highest priorities has been
to make our data public.
I have a couple options of how we can make that happen,
so just wanted to let you know we're on the same page.
That is a top priority.
We've been organizing our data to date.
For the past year, we've spent a lot of time organizing it
and making it ready to be made public
and that we just have to figure out the right funding
and other kind of opportunities like that.
-: Thank you, Beth.
And one more resource for stationed locations.
There's a national database
at the Alternative Fuels Data Center.
That's part of the U.S. Department of Energy that you can,
you know, that California reports on the data
to as long as you can see
where charging stations are located.
Okay.
-: Josh, I think we should probably,
I think we should probably move on to Hannon at this point
just to stay on schedule.
-: That's a great idea. Okay.
All right, well, thanks for your attention,
and I will pass it off to Hannon Rasool
who is the deputy director
of the Fuels and Transportation Division
at the California Energy Commission.
-: Yeah, great. Thank you.
And there's already been a lot of great conversation today.
I'm hoping to answer some of the questions we heard,
but I'll stick around for Q&A later as well.
So again, my name is Hannon Rasool.
I'm the deputy director
of the Fuels and Transportation Division at the CEC.
The CEC is committed to promoting a clean, affordable,
and reliable energy supply for all Californians,
so we make key investments in infrastructure
across a few different segments, electric and hydrogen
as well as light duty and medium duty/heavy duty.
I thought I would start my portion today
talking about the bigger picture,
but I think the head of all of this,
and this is kind of the cornerstone when I think about,
why are we doing this?
Really, transportation electrification is a means to an end,
and it is a very valuable end.
We're trying to decarbonize our state and planet
to improve public health.
We're trying to transform an industry
that is the worst greenhouse gas polluter in the state
and the leading cause of public health issues.
Frankly, we need all hands on deck
as we transition to a zero emission transportation system
and make the hand off to the private market.
I'm gonna reiterate that a few times in my presentation.
The key here is to hand it off to the private market,
but we're not there yet.
So I wanna repeat something
we've heard a few times already today:
transportation is 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions
in the state.
There is no way we're gonna meet our climate change goals
unless we tackle this very aggressively.
It's also a leading cause of local air pollution.
This leads to negative health outcomes,
especially for low-income families and people of color.
These are, in fact, equity investments if we do them right.
You've already heard a little bit today
about our state goals and policies
and the ZEV executive order from September of last year,
so I won't repeat too much of that,
but to say that these are the types
of policies that are being pursued
by California, the nation, and globally,
and the nice thing about that
is the policy direction is clear.
We have seen vehicle OEMs in the private market step up
to that very clear signal.
But, again, we just haven't done enough,
and I try to think through, why is it so hard?
And there's several reasons.
One, we're dealing with status quo.
It is hard to change the way people do things,
and so that's something we'll continue to work on.
We'll chip away at it.
But it's also because there are entities
that do not want to see the transition.
At a minimum, they wanna slow down the transition
away from oil and gas.
And so really this is status quo versus innovation,
it's incumbent industries versus science and data,
and it is profits versus environmental progress
and environmental justice.
And we see it all the time.
There's messaging that the state
is not ready for electrification,
gas stove tops are better,
and they never mention how bad that is,
indoor air quality and children.
We see advertising that is anti-EV commercials
and we astroturfing campaigns.
And so if we look at the investments,
a lot of these larger players,
the bulk of their investments
still go to carbon intense fuels.
We should appreciate the investments they're making.
And so those zero carbon transitions, it's happening,
but it's really happened because of CAKE signals,
utility investments, and public investment.
And so we need to recognize
that we need to keep pushing at this.
The question before us really is,
have we directed enough state investment
and utility investments
that we think we sufficiently tip the scale
to meet our carbon goals in the timeframe that is required?
Now I'm very proud of what California has done so far
to start the transition,
and we've seen it across all levels of government
and the public and private sector,
but I'll briefly talk about some of the actors in this
from the state agency side.
The California Energy Commission focuses quite a bit
on infrastructure and grid resiliency.
The Air Resources Board, related to some of the questions
we heard from the Commissioners,
they focus a lot on the vehicle incentive side of it
and the vehicle regulations.
And, as you know, the Public Utility Commission
has been a very strong steward of the ratepayer dollar
and made smart TE investments.
This includes also things beyond just those investments,
like rate design
and strengthening the distribution grid at large.
Also, the California State Transportation Agency
has made some good investments in public transportation,
such as bus and rail,
so we can start getting people out of vehicles, out of cars,
and the Department of General Services has put in place
some really progressive procurement policies.
Next I'll speak a little bit
about the Energy Commission investments.
We have a budget of about $100 million per year,
and that seems like a lot at first flush,
but that is spread out
between electric light duty infrastructure;
electric medium duty/heavy duty;
hydrogen light duty infrastructure;
hydrogen medium duty/heavy duty;
as well as manufacturing, fuel production,
and workforce development.
And so that $100 million per year is good,
but it's, frankly, not what we need to make the transition.
We also had this very impactful ZEV package
which happened over the summer.
It was $3.9 billion,
but I wanna dig into that a little bit.
That's over three fiscal years and goes to CARB,
the Air Commission, excuse me,
the California Energy Commission, CalSTA, and GO-Biz.
Only a portion of that goes to infrastructure.
Approximately 900 million over three fiscal years
will go towards ZEV infrastructure.
To break that down a little bit further,
415 million of that 900 million is fairly prescriptive
and focused on the right thing.
It focuses on heavy-duty vehicles.
So with the Energy Commission doing the infrastructure
and the Air Resources Board doing the vehicles,
we're gonna deploy 1,000 more zero-emission school buses,
1,000 more transit buses, and 1,000 more raised trucks.
And the other part of that approximately 900 million
is 500 million to be split between light duty and MDHD
for the rest of the state for both electric and hydrogen.
So with this ZEV package,
in addition to other public funding,
utility funding, and private investments,
we are on a good trajectory to 2025 now,
and we're setting a course for 2030.
So you've already heard this,
but we need 250,000 chargers
and 200 hydrogen stations by 2025.
We've looked at AB-2127 analysis,
which shows us we need a massive scale up beyond that
to get to the 2030 and 2035 goal.
And we hear consistently over and over again
that our number one barrier is a lack of infrastructure,
and that is especially true for low-income
and disadvantaged communities.
I'll speak a little bit about our specific programs.
CALeVIP is our flagship program focused
on light duty EV infrastructure.
We put forward about $4,500 in public funding per Level 2
and 60,000, six zero thousand, per DCFC.
We also have a similar block grant we're about to launch
for the medium duty/heavy duty side.
We recently launched a solicitation focused on TNCs
and other high-mileage vehicles.
And then later this year,
we'll deploy one focused on MUDs, apartments, and condos
and a separate one on rural communities.
Going forward beyond these,
we have an informed, through a stakeholder input process,
our CTP Investment Plan.
But we know we're gonna continue
to focus a large portion on low income and DAC.
We have a target of 50%, our investments,
to benefit low income and DAC.
And we wanna focus on broad deployment
'cause, frankly, we need infrastructure everywhere,
but we also are very much focused
on those tough to reach segments like rural, like MUD.
And I think what scares me the most about moving too slowly
is that people make decisions every day
about what car are they're gonna purchase
or what a fleet is gonna purchase for MDHD,
and if they don't have access to infrastructure,
they're gonna go to an ICE or diesel vehicle.
Next I'll speak a little bit about the federal investment,
something we've heard a lot about for several months,
and, frankly, it is still uncertain.
If and when it is approved,
this money will be split among all 50 states.
The numbers we're seeing is about five billion
for EV infrastructure
and an additional 2.5 billion for alternate fuels.
So that could be electric, could be something else.
Even if you took that total, 7.5 billion divided by 50,
that's only 150 million per state.
And we know California is bigger.
We're a little bit different.
Let's say we get more of that money.
Even if we get five times that 150,
that's 750 million in one-time funding.
So we should be very excited about that,
but I wouldn't bank on the federal investments getting us
to where we need to go.
Even the Energy Commission's long-term funding is uncertain.
That 100 million I spoke about earlier,
that is set to expire at the end of 2023.
We really only have a couple more years left of that
if that funding is not reauthorized.
So we absolutely need long-term and reliable funding
that stakeholders can plan around.
We need several funding streams and we need certainty,
and IOU investments can help create
that certainty and predictability
when other funding streams may be less certain.
Next I'll speak a little bit about our analysis and reports.
You've heard about our dashboard earlier.
So we have a dashboard that we're very proud of.
It has several tabs, show a lot of different information.
You can even zoom in on that
to see infrastructure deployments by county level.
We're showing with about 75,000 chargers now,
that's between public chargers and shared private,
and we needed to get to that 250,000 mark by 2025.
And again, we're on a good pace to get there
with the utility funds that have been approved,
with the ZEV package, and with our other funding,
but then our AB-2127 report, which is very data-driven,
it was the Energy Commission, other state agencies
like CARB and the PUC, national labs and academia,
we're projecting we need 1.2 million chargers by 2030,
and that will absolutely include private investments too.
We're not gonna do it just with ratepayers
and public dollars.
So that number's even closer
to two million chargers by 2035,
and that does not include the medium duty/heavy duty.
According to our Senate Bill 1000 report,
which looked at access in terms of income level,
geography, and population centers,
we found that we need to deploy more chargers
in low-income and rural communities,
and we also found that there is a lack of chargers
in city centers.
We speculate that is
because there's challenging real estate dynamics,
but there are very population-dense areas
that have a disproportionately low number of chargers.
I think that really brings us to the question for today:
what are the roles going forward?
How do we transition away from public and ratepayer dollars
and hand it off to the private market?
But I do wanna reiterate:
utilities have been the biggest source of funding
for charging infrastructure
and one that has provided reliability.
In fact, the Atlas Public Policy report shows that 95%
of all the U.S EVSE investments
in disadvantaged communities are in California.
That's in a large part due to the direction
from the PUC to make those investments.
So we're not gonna answer all these questions today,
but there's a lot of big questions about,
what's the role to the utilities today
and how does that evolve over time?
I'll just share a few thoughts.
Those questions rotate around,
should the utilities focus on all segments?
Because we do need infrastructure everywhere.
And they focus solely on low-income
and disadvantaged communities,
focus only on multi-unit dwellings.
And in that space, should they own chargers
on the customer side of the meter?
Now there is an option
to not have them own that infrastructure
but have them fund long-term maintenance contracts.
These can be earmarked from line items for maintenance
so that a site host, like an apartment setting,
doesn't take on all that risk.
Or should we just focus on trucks and buses?
We know that has all these diesel emissions.
As we look at this,
we should consider new approaches as well.
We don't have to do everything to the same,
the TE space that we do elsewhere,
so it may not be appropriate to rate base everything.
We should look at things like ownership versus rebates.
We should look at things
like performance-based regulation or incentives.
There has long been talk about a new model
that does not rely on rate-based utility investments.
PBR can be used for the TE investments as a test case,
and we'll look at incentives and penalties for that,
tied to transparent goals and metrics.
We could also look at declining incentive approaches
that are measured and predictable,
give the private market time to mature.
Another option is to flow some of these funds
through the Energy Commission as an administrator.
We do not own any infrastructure.
We offer rebates, and we don't own any of it.
Also, we don't design or build infrastructure,
so we don't have the same overhead costs
or loaders as other entities.
This will be similar to the EPIC program
where a portion of those ratepayer funds flow through
to the Energy Commission,
where we can leverage private sector funding.
Again, we pay about $4,500 per Level 2 charger
for public chargers.
That's only about 1/3 of the total cost.
For DC fast chargers, we pay about 60,000.
On this one, we cover about 2/3 of the cost,
1/3 of the leveraging private fund.
So as we transition further and further away
from ratepayer dollars and public dollars,
there may be some segments we choose
to stay in a little bit longer,
one for equity, MUDs, rural, and things of that nature,
and so I would just say
there's a few principles to consider.
Or being equity-based.
Is a program easy to administer and predictable?
Do we encourage and leverage private investments?
Are we being creative without overly complicating things?
Whatever is chosen,
I think we need utilities engaged as part of the solution.
Utilities have the ability
to be another touch point for consumers,
they have local relationships,
and they understand local opportunities and challenges,
and they're able to convene local stakeholders
and work with regional planning efforts.
Utilities can help us with deployment,
and they may even have some ownership role,
but they may not have to.
And they absolutely must be part of rate design,
interconnection and preparing the grid,
and ensuring we're ready for the EV load.
My last few statements here, I'll just say,
we also need to be cognizant
of the message we're sending to other states.
Other states look to California for leadership,
and we need scale.
That scale from OEMs and EVSPs can be attained
if we have strong leadership in California,
but other states as well.
And so we really wanna be a model for other states.
We're very much at an inflection point.
Battery prices are coming down.
They're down 90% in the last 10 years.
We have more and more EV models.
We just need to continue pushing here
to break through the status quo,
break through some misinformation out there,
and keep moving forward.
We cannot perpetuate
the pollution health consequences of inaction.
We must see the transition through
and look for opportunities
to hand this off to the private market.
And I'll just close by saying
the Energy Commission is very committed
to working with the Public Utility Commission
to accelerate the transition,
and we very much wanna be a partner in doing so.
Thank you, and I'm happy to take any questions
if folks have 'em.
-: Well, I'll start off thanking...
Okay, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Okay, thank you. Thank you.
So, Han, you were outlining all the dollars,
this much from the budget,
this much from this program, that program.
So do you have like a one pager outlining? (chuckling)
-: We do provide one. We can create one, yeah.
-: And where it sounded like half of it
was already earmarked
for some very specific things.
That left only the other half.
Anyway, just to know what are the resources out there.
Do you have any prospects for,
you have your crystal ball for next year or year after
for a replenishment of some of these funds?
-: Yeah, I will say that we did pursue reauthorization
of Assembly Bill 8 funding this last go around.
We were not successful in getting that,
so I don't wanna get too far ahead
of what we're authorized to do this year,
but, of course, we believe in long-term consistent funding
and our funding is up in the air today.
-: Okay, all right. Thank you.
Mr. Rechtschaffen.
-: I wanted to follow up just a little bit
on the question Commissioner Houck asked
and the question we get asked very often, which is,
are the costs of charging stations that you fund
or that the local air district fund cheaper
than the utility-funded infrastructure cost?
And you heard Audrey say
that the apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult,
and we've been trying to do that,
and we're gonna continue to try doing that.
You said you fund Level 2 public charging
at $4,500 per port,
and they typically cost three times that much.
So I have a couple of questions.
One is, is it your sense
that the remaining funding is coming
from other public sources or from the private market?
And, do you have any sense of whether or not
the charging infrastructure you're funding is done
at a more reasonable or lower level
than the utility-funded infrastructure?
I will point out just
that we were on a joint workshop yesterday,
and Hannon was there talking
about barriers to infrastructure, and we heard someone,
a woman from the city of Sacramento,
say that it cost her $24,000 all in
to fund some stations in disadvantaged communities.
So we know that the numbers are higher
in certain market segments,
but if you could shed any light on those cost questions,
that would be great.
-: Yeah, and I would agree with Audrey.
It is tough to get a true apples-to-apples comparison here,
and there's several reasons.
Partly for us, when we issue rebates,
we ask for certain costs from the private market
and certain mass sharing,
and so up and beyond a certain point,
they're not obligated to report on some of their costs,
so we don't always have the full picture.
Also, we encourage stacking the funds
where it's appropriate.
We don't want people walking away with more money
than the charger costs,
but if they can leverage other funds, that's great,
and so there are probably times where there is leveraging
of other non-private funds as well.
We're always looking to refine that,
and we add into our contracts more and more data collection
as time goes on to start answering those questions,
but I think it is very difficult to say to an absolute,
what is a better avenue?
I'll say what's really important here
is that we have a lot of touch points, right?
So as the Energy Commission is drafting
our solicitation for MUDs and rural,
I actually expect our costs will be more
than 4,500 for Level 2.
It's just a tougher market to break into,
and so you have to be really nuanced when you're saying,
"Is this in the public sector, public-accessible chargers?
Is it MUD? Is it rural?
Is it low income? Is it DAC?"
And that's gonna have an influence on how much it costs.
I think inherently because we do not own the charger
and we don't have the same loaders and overheads,
there are oftentimes we can do it cheaper,
and we're always trying to ratchet that down,
but I would be hesitant to make a vast generalization
on Energy Commission versus utilities.
Marybel: I may just add to that, Cliff.
Three years ago, I hope it's come down a bit,
but DGS would charge 25,000 per portal,
so it was really tough.
We did get some cap and trade money
for the general-funded agencies
to put in some of their chargers, but, anyway,
I was always amazed at the difference in cost and pricing.
And I thought we were,
I think that was really based on some of the Caltran's cost,
but, at any rate, it was 25 grand.
-: When we think about- -: And it doesn't mean
that they did something terrible. (chuckling)
-: Yeah (chuckles), when we think about it,
we're always looking for, how do we get economies of scale,
but also, how do we get the public portion further
and further down?
And so, again, we know that number's gonna change depending
on the market segments, the vehicle segment,
the population we're trying to impact,
but our leverage is constantly,
how do we reduce that public dollar via rebate
and then rely more and more on the private sector?
Marybel: Just one little last comment.
It seems when I look at some of the,
when I know the goals in 2030, 2035,
both for EV adoption as well as the infrastructure,
gosh, it's just it's a little daunting.
It feels like we're almost frighteningly behind,
although you said that some of the infusion recently
is going to help between now and 2023, I think you said.
But to meet the 2030 target of 80 million ZEV,
which CARB estimates we'll need to meet our 2035 goal,
we will need to add actually 750,000 ZEVs per year
for the rest of this decade.
And it'd be good to have the lineup
in that same discussion prompt
what the infrastructure has to be
'cause we're not gonna get the ZEVs,
as the studies have all shown,
if we don't have the infrastructure
and the folks obviously interested in infrastructure,
and then, of course,
making sure that they have radius,
that they can go the miles they need to go.
-: Yeah, and I will note.
-: They are big numbers. They are big numbers. (chuckling)
-: Yeah, no, they are. They absolutely are.
But on the timepiece we have started
just recently working with the Public Utility Commission,
Air Resources Board, GO-Biz, and CalSTA
to start building out a Statewide infrastructure plan,
and we can certainly match those year-by-year things
to the extent we're able to look at those.
But I will say this.
I've been in this space for about five years.
When I first started, folks said,
"There is no way you're gonna have
a Class 8 electric truck."
And then a couple of years later, everyone's like,
"Well, okay, you can do it for a reasonable haul,
but you can't do it for long haul."
Couple of years later, so it's like,
"Well, okay, we got that wrong.
We can do zero-emission vehicles
for pretty much every vehicle."
And I also remember 10, 11 years ago
when I worked more on the renewable side,
there was this conversation about,
"If we went to 20% renewables, the grid's gonna fall apart.
How could you do this?"
Okay, we can do that. Well, that's 50%.
And I am constantly amazed
when we have clear policy direction
what we're able to achieve.
This is the same thing to me.
We have real challenges.
We also have a lot of state agencies taking this seriously
and making good investments,
and I think that's how we get there.
That's how we bridge that.
Marybel: So we have to continue the investments,
we have to continue the incentives,
but then the infrastructure as well as for the EV adoption.
And as you said, we've got several uncertainties
within the funding stream.
So that we've always been ahead of the game in California,
and let's just hope that, gosh, we continue to be.
-: Thank you as well for the presentation.
I just wanted to say maybe a couple of conflicting things.
One is that having more recently been spending a lot of time
on the broadband side, and every time I hear,
"We just have to incentivize this
so the private market can take over,"
I get a little bit of anxiety thinking
about the market does not take over places
that don't have a profitability or scale.
Marybel: I was in those same jitters, Martha.
I thought the same thing.
Then I was thinking about the oil companies
and the gas stations too, so. (laughing)
Thinking about both the telcos and like-
-: Right, it's like just thinking
that we need incentive-based mechanisms alone,
and I appreciate that you said we need
to be a little more innovative.
Just because maybe we stopped allowing full capitalization
in front of the meter infrastructure
doesn't mean we're now full force.
It means we're trying to be less regressive
and trying to keep the goal
of having cheap electricity as a fuel.
I know this isn't on the CEC,
but this is where we need a collective brainpower on things,
including within our own authority.
Of course we have...
I know Commissioner Shiroma has been working hard
on some of our recent mandates on TNCs
and their vehicle mile travel reduction,
and that seems like a clear opportunity
of putting the cost of that infrastructure
in the place where there isn't more profit
on those companies that have the ability
to finance large numbers of charging infrastructure.
That's a much more progressive way to do this,
and I'm sure Commissioner Shiroma was thinking about that.
Those are the types of innovation that we need.
And I know our sister agencies are looking constantly
at the ports and their pollution contribution,
both at the local level and the climate side,
and getting some of those large,
most notably companies like Amazon,
that have a tremendous ability
to finance charging infrastructure.
And where's the obligation there?
In particular, we as an agency cannot directly do that,
but we need that partnership.
We would have the obligation
to make sure the utilities are ready to go
for that infrastructure,
and that's not a small piece of the puzzle,
but that's the kind of more progressive financing
that I think we should be shooting for,
is getting those corporations
that we know made more money during COVID.
(chuckling) We know.
They're plush as we were fortunate
given our general fund mechanism
to be beneficiaries of that as a whole in the state.
And it's not to put it on you here,
that the CEC has to figure this out,
but I think we need to not fall into
that binary dynamic
that we either continue these incentives as they are
or continue to allow for rate basing as we are.
We certainly shouldn't stop...
We should have those alternatives in place
and not just kinda stop all funding
or anything drafted liked that,
but we really need to not lose focus
about the imperativeness of keeping electricity cheap
and cost competitive to gasoline,
and, of course, not regressive.
So I appreciate the outline here
and the call for innovation.
And while we're doing that,
what is that role for government as a whole?
Of course, the role for government
across the board is to make sure we're financing this
in a less regressive way,
but the other role made the actual operation.
And we see this with the munies and with utilities.
I think we should just also acknowledge
that there might be a continued role
for the government either indirectly
through requiring the IOUs or the munies directly.
So those are little too inconsistent thoughts there,
that we need more private financing
and some of the real upstream folks playing a role here,
but also retaining some protection
for those vulnerable communities.
-: Yeah. I'll briefly respond to that.
I 100% agree with you.
This is not a binary decision, right?
This is not everything goes through the utilities
when nothing goes through the utilities.
And so your comment about obligations
of these commercial fleets is absolutely right.
I think that's what the Air Resources Board has done
a very good job of, right?
They put in a rule on transit buses.
They put on a rule on manufacturing
for these medium-duty/heavy-duty vehicles.
They're moving and examining what the role is
of procurement from those things.
So I think the beauty of what California has done, frankly,
is have these really progressive and strong regulations,
and says we need to start moving to it,
and here's some clear goalposts and deadlines,
but then also helping fund it
because we do wanna make the transition real,
and so you need that carrot and the stick,
and so I agree with you completely.
I think we need both those.
We need all actors to stand up and be part of the solution.
I think when the Energy Commission looks at it,
we do look at broad deployment, but we also look at,
where can we hand it off to the private market
and how do we continue to focus on who needs it?
The rural communities, the MUDs, low income,
because part of this transition too
is that it's a global transition.
The vehicle manufacturers know what's happening,
they're making investments in it,
and these vehicles are just so much cheaper to operate.
I don't have a car now.
We downsized to one car, so I'm on my bike most days,
but I used to have a Chevy Volt,
and for three-plus years, I mean, no maintenance to it.
And I'm someone who does not buy new cars.
I've leased a Volt with a newer car,
but not someone who buys brand new cars,
and sometimes these older vehicles take up a good chunk
of money to keep running and making repairs to.
And so I think our objective is to get every Californian
into an electric vehicle or hydrogen vehicle
because they're cheaper to operate and they're better.
And the statements I've heard say are spot on.
How do we make it so those vehicles
are more affordable for folks?
And I think part of that is through the investment
the Air Resources Board is making on vehicle incentive,
there's things we can do on rates,
but I think you're absolutely right.
This can not be borne solely on ratepayer dollars
because then we're doing it wrong
or just on public dollars, because we're doing it wrong.
So I'm looking forward to that inflection point.
-: Okay, Commissioner Houck.
I was gonna suggest after Commissioner Houck,
we take a break.
We've already gotten into a excellent discussion,
which is fantastic, and Hannon's gonna stay with us.
You can rent room at the PUC, by the way, Hannon,
if you wanna spend more time with the PUC.
But why don't we take Commissioner Houck's question,
and then we'll take a five-minute break
and then come back for further discussion.
-: Yes, I'll save my comments for the roundtable.
I just wanted to note,
you've mentioned the Statewide infrastructure plan
and then a number of things that CARB is doing,
GO-Biz, and the CEC.
I think it would be really helpful
to possibly look at maybe a follow on En Banc
that includes all those agencies,
and possibly the IOUs present
just so that we as Commissioners,
both here and the other agencies and Chair Randolph,
could get sort of an idea in one place
of all the different things that are happening
so we could take a look at how to most efficiently make sure
that we're all moving in the same direction,
reducing public funds and being coordinated.
You also mentioned an EPIC-like program.
You have a rebate program that seems to be working
and it uses less public dollars because it's partial cost.
Do you have any additional thoughts or comments on how
you think something like that could work
for the non-hard-to-reach locations?
'Cause I do think there's a role for the IOUs
and looking at DACs and some of the rural investment.
But for some of the other areas
where you seem to be having success
on getting more private investment,
do you have any ideas about
how a program like that could work?
-: I don't have too many specifics,
I'm not intimately familiar with the mechanics of EPIC,
but I think more conceptually...
And I agree with you.
I wouldn't want to put all the eggs in that basket
'cause I do think that utilities have a role to play,
having those local touch points.
They have the ability to touch segments at the local level
that we may not be able to.
So my contention certainly wouldn't be
that all the money should flow that way,
but I think a targeted amount of that
to flow into the Energy Commission
and utilize programs that we already have that are set up
and still retain some oversight
to the Public Utility Commission.
As I understand it for EPIC, they submit, I think,
either once a year, maybe every other year,
their EPIC plan to the PUC,
and then there's a process for that too.
So I wouldn't wanna process this to death,
but I would still want to ensure that the PUC has oversight
to a reasonable degree, as you deemed so,
on those ratepayer dollars as well.
But I think there could be a bifurcation
where you still have strong utility engagement
on some portion, and then other portions can flow
through a different avenue.
-: Thank you, and, Commissioner Houck,
in terms of a follow-up on En Banc,
I had a brief conversation with Commissioner Monahan
and Chair Randolph about some similar ideas,
so I will take that as a voting endorsement
to follow up on that idea going forward.
So why don't we take a five minute break till 2:45
and then, Josh, if you could be ready.
I know you have a little bit more to present
in terms of setting the stage for the roundtable.
We'll do that and then take public comments.
We'll come back at 2:45.
(bright music)
Host: The feed for this streaming event,
brought to you by adminmonitor.com,
will begin momentarily.
-: Turn it over to Josh for a little bit more background
before we continue with our roundtable discussion.
Josh?
Josh: Thank you, Commissioner.
So I have a quick presentation that is intended
to frame the roundtable discussion among the Commissioners
on the role of ratepayer funding.
So I'll attempt to keep this fairly brief.
But before we get into that discussion,
I think it is important to consider
what we've been directed to do by the legislature
and to identify some of the areas of uncertainty.
And I think we've had a good discussion
about some of that uncertainty today,
but then just wanna run back through it real quick.
So SB-350, for example,
requires the CPUC to approve programs
that accelerate widespread transportation electrification
if they're consistent with particular requirements,
but it doesn't specify what constitutes market acceleration
nor the extent to which we must accelerate the market.
Another major contributor of our uncertainty in this space
is the fact that other state agencies and local agencies
are also setting policies and distributing funding
with the expressed purpose of transforming the sector.
And, again, we've talked about that today
but just wanted to reemphasize that uncertainty there.
And the role of the IOU
and TE market acceleration is definitely evolving,
and we've talked a little bit about this as well,
sort of where some of these questions have been resolved,
including recently with AB-841,
expanding some of the cost responsibility for upgrades
to serve charging infrastructure to the IOUs.
We still have this... So that's resolved much
of the distribution side investment question,
but what reigns is really a discussion
around how to fund that customer side
or behind-the-meter infrastructure.
And this is often referred to as the "make ready,"
which you can think of as the customer side equipment
that you need to make a site ready
to install and energize an EV charger.
So real quick, the Energy Division released
a draft transportational electrification framework in 2020
that proposed an overarching strategic approach
to TE planning and procurement
in contrast to the current status quo
of individual applications from the IOUs
that then go through the Commission authorization process.
So the Commission has yet to rule
on a final approach to that framework,
but just a quick sampling of some of the issues
that are still outstanding
that I think are relevant to today's conversation,
and some of these, again, we've gone over,
but how do we align and time IOU TE targets
with state TE targets and modeling?
How do we coordinate ratepayer TE investments
with other state, regional,
and local government investments?
What is the extent of IOU ownership
of charging infrastructure on the customer's property?
Overall levels of ratepayer funding to authorize
and different mechanisms
for procuring charging infrastructure.
And I appreciate Hannon for going
into a couple of the options there.
There's rebate programs with declining incentives,
potential opportunities to hold reverse auctions
that are based on the charging need and given location.
Hannon also mentioned the concept
of funneling some of IOU ratepayer funding
to be administered through an existing program like CALeVIP,
which I think is quite interesting
and a good topic for discussion here.
Thanks for raising that, Hannon.
And then, of course,
there's the one-off IOU TE application model
that we've been using to date.
So resolving these issues really does require us
to do a bit of policy prioritization
and acknowledge potential trade-offs
as we moved towards officially adopting
a transportation electrification framework.
So many of the issues that you see here
will go into a decision-making process
that is necessary for us
to really establish a program
that gets at the policy priorities
that are most important to the folks,
the Commissioners here,
and that align with our mandates
from the legislature and the Governor.
So with that, I did want to hand it over
to Commissioner Rechtschaffen
to lead a roundtable discussion.
We have a number of topics here
that are up on the screen for consideration.
This conversation is not limited to these,
and I'll let Commissioner Rechtschaffen lead here.
And I believe also Ed Randolph,
Energy Division director and deputy director at the CPUC,
will also be joining in the conversation as a co-moderator.
And, yeah, with that, I'll had it over to those folks
and let the discussion begin.
-: Thanks very much, Josh.
So as you can see, we have five broad topics.
We don't have time to get into all of them,
even most of them in detail,
so that's a teaser for our next installment, so stay tuned.
But I do think we should try to hit on
at least two or three of the important ones
where Commissioners probably have some thoughts.
And I wanna start with the first one, which is,
how do we coordinate our investments
with everything else going on,
all other state, local, and regional investments?
We heard some of Commissioner Guzman Aceves' perspective,
a little bit from President Batjer.
I really wanna open it up to other Commissioners
for their thoughts.
You heard also from Hannon and the CEC.
One question that, just as thought question, is,
should there be a special role
or do the IOUs have a special role?
Not simply just because they're a source
of ratepayer funding
but because they manage the grid, they set rates,
they have relationships with electricity customers.
They've been doing a lot of things already
to promote transportation electrification.
Does that make it appropriate for them to have some kind
of special role or an important role?
But if we could just start off
with this high-level question:
how do we coordinate how much we should invest
with what everything else that's going on?
I welcome thoughts from others.
Commissioner Houck.
-: Just I agree with Commissioner Guzman Aceves
to the extent we can get more creative
with financing these opportunities
and get away from using rate-based funding.
I think that would be appropriate.
I also think, as we heard,
that we have other sister state agencies
that are doing a lot of work in this area,
and the more we can coordinate and not reinvent the wheel,
I think the more efficient we can be
by utilizing tools that are already in place
to further extend infrastructure.
I think we should look at rebates and private investments
where that's possible.
I do think the IOUs have a role,
especially as the grid operator,
and interconnection issues I think has come up
in a number of these programs,
and they obviously have a role there.
I also think disadvantaged communities,
multi-unit dwellings rule,
areas that may be hard to reach,
the IOUs have a particular role in those areas
where there may not be as much private investments,
and we should be looking to focus
to make sure that those communities have those resources,
keeping in mind Commissioner Shiroma's comments
about also needing to look
at the fact that folks in those communities need
to be able to afford these vehicles
to use the infrastructure.
I also think that transparency issues are important
on the cost and to the extent it was good here.
Sara came in talking about how staff is working
on how to collect data and utilize that to be transparent.
But I think knowing where the money's going
and getting as close to an apples-to-apples comparison
on what these costs are is gonna help us be creative
in looking at ways to keep those costs down
and still be able to get the infrastructure out there.
And I think mapping is gonna be very important
because if we're looking at high numbers of infrastructure,
but they're all going in the same places,
that's gonna be problematic.
So being coordinated with other agencies and their programs
and making sure that we're mapping
so that there's as much dispersal
of the infrastructure as possible
in the hardest to reach locations is gonna be important.
And I also think we need to be looking at ways
to address this chicken and egg problem
with the medium and heavy duty charging stations
and how can we possibly look at forecasting
what the need is gonna be
and looking at how we can get the infrastructure out there
so that those vehicles will have places to charge.
So I think that's sort of
my quick comments on item number one,
but I really do think the IOUs should be focusing
on the areas that are gonna be hardest to reach.
-: I mean, your comments touched on several issues,
which is great.
Do you have a thought about the chicken and the egg problem,
which is really one of,
I mean, that's sort of embedded
into question two, which is
a hard one to crack.
How much do you invest now
in order to make sure that the vehicles come?
How much do you wait?
If you wait, they may not come.
Did you have a thought on that or are you just recognizing
that it's a critical issue to address?
-: Well, I recognize it's a critical issue.
I also recognize I probably need more information on that,
but I think if we're fairly certain
that the vehicles will come,
if there's opportunities to possibly look at forecasting
and what would be the best way to phase in
some of those charging stations
so there's sufficient resources
to allow for investment in those vehicles,
I think if we can work with the other agencies and our staff
as to what would be a reasonable forecast
that we feel is gonna help incentivize
those vehicles to get on the road
and allow for some upfront investments
on getting that infrastructure
in more than what we have now, that could be one option.
But I do acknowledge that I need more information.
I think it would be helpful to hear from the other agencies
and get some more information from staff
on what they think would be realistic
over the next five to seven years.
Yuliya: This is Yuliya Shmidt
from Commissioner Rechtschaffen's office.
I just wanted to note that the Air Resources Board
actually is putting together maps of fleet as we speak
to share with utilities and others so that they know
where future electrification loads will come,
and that ought to help them plan
the distribution system accordingly.
-: Commissioner Rechtschaffen?
-: Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: I am really intrigued about this notion
of this afternoon about private investments
and what have you.
Now I just wanna remind everybody
that we've got the financing OIR
and scoping effort,
and that financing OIR goes beyond energy efficiency,
and we scoped in easy infrastructure.
And we have brought in folks
from the treasurer's office, from GO-Biz, IBank,
and others, banking intuitions,
to help us look at what kind
of financing opportunities there might be.
So I'll be keeping
a keen eye to maybe their blue sky ideas right now,
but there could be some viable
non-IOU.
Maybe it starts with an IOU and then it goes to
other kinds of financing,
but to really look at how can we maximize
that rulemaking in this effort.
And I do think that question
about build it now, build it later,
it's almost like you've got a product.
You've gotta look at, what is the market study which shows
where the price points become really good,
where you get a higher uptick?
And you've gotta be ready for that higher uptick
to have that infrastructure.
So between the canopy of agencies
that we're working with in the business sector,
we ought to be able to get at that analysis.
-: I think it's a very, from my own part,
I think it's a very hard question,
and I don't have an answer that relates
to how much of the funding should be ratepayers
versus other public entities.
I do think that there's a unique role for the public sector
in market transformation given the difficulty
of predicting when the right inflection points are,
as you've said, and Hannon talked about this.
I don't think these investments are gonna be stranded
because the market's gonna grow.
We know that just on its own
and because we have these regulatory mandates in California.
We may not have high utilization in the short term,
which may make it not profitable
for private investors to come in
'cause they're not gonna be able to recoup their costs,
but over the medium and long term,
it will be higher utilization,
and we'll get over the chicken and the egg problem.
So that's why I think public investment is so critical
to help deal with this timing question,
this chicken and the egg question.
Again, that doesn't answer
the hard question we're grappling with, which is,
does that come from the PUC?
How much comes from general taxpayers,
other sources, other public financing?
So just for whatever that's worth.
We do work closely with other agencies
in setting our infrastructure targets, very, very closely.
We don't have a formal decision-making process
the way we do in some other contexts
like setting a joint demand forecast.
I think the informal collaborations
has been strong and helpful,
but one question to think about is whether or not
that should be more formalized or changed in any way.
Are there other thoughts about this high-level question
of the role of
the ratepayer funding vis-a-vis other sources?
Any other insights from what the legislature's done?
We heard one perspective from Commissioner Martha Aceves.
Any other thoughts on this broad topic?
Commissioner Shiroma?
-: Yes, well, maybe not
necessarily a direct analogy,
but I have mentioned to staff
in the cautionary tale of, okay,
who's paying and who benefits?
We are keenly encountering this
in solar and NEM.
All I'll say is that we do keep that keen eye
to we've already required investment
of what was it, $1.6 billion?
And we had a host of that 10 different things,
and those are (clears throat)
in customers' rates and bills.
And meanwhile we have
a million electric vehicles,
approximately 75,000 charging stations,
and so there is this smaller universe of folks
who are still invested, they're saving money on their gas.
Let's just see. They're saving.
They don't have to buy gasoline.
At some point,
that's gonna help pay off the investment in the car.
In the meantime,
everyone else has helped pay for the infrastructure.
Now it could be as recorded by the statute
and from a policy perspective.
Just going forward, it's just a constant look at,
how do we do this and not do it in a vacuum?
And we are not in this En Banc.
I mean, can you really be aware of the customer still
and measure how has the affordability receding,
looking at what can be done
to keep monthly bills affordable?
So it's just unnecessary caution.
Everyone knows that they're on top of our minds,
the costs and who benefits.
So I think maybe the key thing is,
is to get back to just looking at,
how do we assure low-income and disadvantaged communities,
tribal communities, vulnerable populations,
have the rubrics to benefit
from this very important effort?
-: Yeah, I think I agree with you,
and this, of course, reportability is preeminent
and why we were having this En Banc
and why we're working so hard to wrestle
with some of these questions.
No question about it.
It is worth saying, although it hasn't been demonstrated yet
to the extent we think it will be,
or at least I think it will be,
that electrification should exert downward pressure on rates
that will benefit everyone in the system going forward.
And also to the extent that we target investments
in disadvantaged communities,
which suffer disproportionately poor air quality,
having electric vehicles,
especially medium and heavy duty electric vehicles,
has direct immediate health benefits
for lower-income and disadvantaged residents.
So that is one important benefit,
benefits from these investments.
Hannon: This is Hannon.
Would it be okay if I offer a thought?
-: Absolutely.
That's why we're paying you to be on this panel.
-: (chuckles) Great, I'll just say
for the approach the Energy Commission is taking
is that we do recognize, again,
we want this handoff to the private market,
and so we're looking at it very much in segments, right?
Are there certain segments that can operate on their own
without public investment?
And there's some that won't, right?
When we look at the equity question,
how can we direct more of our investments
at the Energy Commission to low-income and DAC?
How can we direct more of our investments,
MUDs, rural communities, medium duty/heavy duty?
Because that's where those diesel emissions are.
A lot of this is to right some
of those inequities that exist
because our existing transportation systems emits a lot
of diesel emissions near port districts and their highways.
And so, again, I think as we look at this,
it's very much not you do it or you don't do it.
It's where do you do it and how much do you put towards it?
How much of the private market do it?
So for the Energy Commission,
we're looking at all those things
to see where we can get the most advantage,
especially for low-income and disadvantaged communities.
-: Thanks, that's a good transition.
Let's jump to the third topic listed here,
which is optimizing programs for critical policy objectives.
There are lots of policy objectives we're trying to achieve,
and we can't necessarily do them all.
We can't do them all at once.
We've heard from a couple of Commissioners
or maybe three Commissioners
about some of their initial thoughts,
including hard-to-reach segments,
segments of the market that are not economic,
where incentives don't work,
multifamily units, other disadvantaged communities,
and that's tended to be
where we've been focusing utility applications.
Well, let's open it up more broadly.
What are the objectives
that we should be maximizing towards yet?
You could think about doing
as much as possible as soon as possible,
filling gaps by the market,
promoting resiliency, accelerating specific use cases,
tying what we do to state goals,
such as the Air Resources Board, a bus fleet rule,
heavy duty fleet rule, and so forth.
What other things should we tell staff and the utilities
to focus on in the expenditure of ratepayer funds?
-: Okay, well, I'm gonna sound obviously redundant here,
but the thing that needs to be top of mind
is keeping the fuel affordable.
And that's not an expenditure issue.
It's more of a non-expenditure issue perhaps.
-: Right, so what that does that mean in the,
what does that mean in this context?
If we're gonna spend some amount of money,
where should we spend it?
-: Well, I think we really need to step back
and ask ourselves, "Do we need to spend more?"
Honestly.
If we're already required to approve
of prudence expenditures of make ready infrastructure
as part of distribution costs,
that's a lot, and it's gonna get really hidden,
and we're going to have to really drive it out.
And the importance of transparency
is gonna be really important for this team in particular
to draw out and have that transparency.
So I think we start there and have that constant
control on ourselves
that we need to ensure that affordability of the fuel.
I think it's too binary.
The discussion's too binary.
-: Okay, you want us to be,
yeah, you want us to be at a higher,
you want us to be at the higher-level question of,
do we need to spend anything more than is mandated already
or that we've already spent?
That's the paramount question for you
to ensure affordability.
-: Yeah, and also but it's not this issue
that this chicken and the egg issue for me.
It's definitely we want
to get the charging infrastructure out.
It's, how do we finance it?
And we have very limited, I mean,
the closest piece of it is the TNCs,
where we could have a more progressive way of financing it
not through utility ratepayers.
And obviously our sister agencies,
particularly the Air Board and the districts,
have far more authority to actually find
a more progressive way of financing this infrastructure.
-: What would that look like,
telling the TNCs they have to build and install chargers?
They're under a mandate to reduce
their vehicle miles traveled,
and Uber and Lyft have said they're gonna go
to 100% ZEV by 2030.
So what would the model you have in mind look like?
-: I think that's a great question for the public.
How do they meet this obligation
so it's actually implementable and real?
The TNCs have the greatest amount of data of their routes,
where the best locations for charging would be,
and could easily optimize charging locations
and certainly finance them better than utility ratepayers.
-: Okay.
'Cause we don't directly control
that aspect of the TNCs, of course.
We have a piece of them, but, okay.
Other thoughts? Commissioner Houck?
-: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify.
When I had mentioned the chicken and the egg issue,
I was specifically referring
to the medium and heavy-duty vehicles
and the issue of
how we get those trucks on the road
and how much infrastructure has to come first
before the truck.
So that was specifically geared
at the medium and heavy duty.
I also agree transparency is gonna be really important,
especially if most of these costs
are gonna be addressed through the GRCs,
and I really do hope we can get to a point
where we have something similar to this dashboard
that looks at our costs and what we're doing
so it's very clear on how much is being spent on what areas.
And, for me, I think that the focus
on the amount that we are spending should be to fill gaps
and look at areas that are gonna be hard to reach
and hard to expand into.
If we've got other programs that are already oversubscribed
that are already investing private non-ratepayer dollars,
I think those should be maximized,
and we should be getting away
from rate-based as much as possible
and looking at rebates to the extent we can do that
and that a ratepayer dollars should really be focused
on, again, filling gaps in equity.
And again, just really re-emphasize the need
to have transparency so that we can see
where those costs are going
and come up with some kind of apples-to-apples comparison
across the utilities as well so that our auditing
and our accounting can really tell what costs more where
and be able to look at
how those expenditures are being made.
Marybel: And there have been any discussions in a larger,
with sister agencies, with GO-Biz,
about any other financing ideas,
private sector financing, investments, et cetera,
that haven't been mentioned yet today
or could we pursue any of that?
I have the same overall concerns here
as I do as welfare mitigation.
It's these costs are huge,
and they're just sort of unsustainable,
in the old-fashioned way.
And we keep going and going after the same well,
and I know you're not trying to do that here,
but I do equate it a little bit to our dilemma
with the cost of welfare mitigation.
And when you put all of these costs,
or even some of these costs,
a portion of these costs on ratepayers, it's just, anyway,
it's very, very difficult.
-: I think GO-Biz has had thought about some ideas.
I think Dan Adler had an idea for using the Catalyst Fund,
which is a version of the Green Bank,
and get an infusion of money to capitalize financing.
That hasn't happened yet, but there are people thinking
about those ideas, President Batjer.
I don't know the details and we haven't yet progressed
very far on them.
Hannon: I can comment on that.
-: Please, talk to me, Hannon.
Hannon: Yeah, so we've been speaking
to GO-Biz and the Catalyst Fund,
Dan Adler as well and some other folks,
to see, can we move away from grants to loans
for certain market segments?
Again, knowing we're not gonna to do the same thing
for every market segment at the same time,
but are there some market segments
where we can start shifting to loan programs?
We've also started an internal effort.
We're meeting with ports and different folks now
through an RFI process to get more information,
and we'll hold a workshop on this as well.
Happy to invite the Public Utility Commission
or anyone else.
But we are looking to see,
how can we shift some funding to loan?
We think there may be some potential there.
We wanna understand it better, but I agree with you.
We can't do grants,
and definitely there's not enough dollars in the world
for us to fund everything, but we do continue to,
you know, grants is a really powerful method
to send those people forward.
-: If I could just interrupt back again,
which is one of the concepts I've been pushing on
is it is a loan concept,
which is if we're gonna use the ratepayer funds,
we could structure them as loans for the utilities.
There's downward pressure that Cliff is talking about.
This is the better story with EVs
as compared to our endless no return
with our welfare mitigation dollars.
At least with the EV infrastructure,
we're gonna have more sales.
And so it is a happier story in that regard,
but we haven't really figured out the math
on when is that return happening
for that greater sell of electricity.
And I think we need to figure out the math now,
particularly in sectors where we can leverage other funds.
And we know that individual ports
are having port fee discussions to leverage more funding
for this type of infrastructure.
There are certainly a lot of, even those Hannon's described,
the federal situation is not a guarantee.
It's certainly, from my perspective, a very likely outcome.
And maybe to go back to your question more directly, Cliff,
is that we're clearly not succeeding
in the heavy duty sector and we're underspending right now.
Why don't we double down there and really focus in?
We've already authorized funding there.
Let's get in there and figure that out.
That's where, as you said,
that's where the local area impacts are,
and that's where there's opportunity
for more jobs, et cetera.
And, yeah, so those are two different thoughts,
is really focusing on heavy duty
and get our funding to a place
where we're actually spending it
and then figure out these alternative financing that's in...
Maybe I'll go to Genevieve's point
that she has this in her scope
of looking at how to do that so they pay for themselves.
-: So Mrs. Shiroma, do you have in your scope
something like on-bill financing or on-bill repayment
for electric vehicle infrastructure?
-: The simple answer is yes.
Yes.
I mean, there is still work ensuing,
and I'm trying to remember it, yes,
through the treasurer's office, the case to financing.
I think we voted to approve that
and to also provide
for partnering up with municipal utilities as well,
where they are providing financing options.
So we've got that framework, so last year's yes.
And by the way, while I'm answering this question,
I also want to remind all of us
that we've got the Green Mile Standard Commission,
the fact that it has pointed us to this.
And that the Air Resources Board
in adopting out the metrics for that has,
not that they can tell us, but they have told us
that we must advance the goals
by encouraging collaboration
between electric vehicle charging companies,
investor on utilities, transportation network companies,
and fleet owners, serve transportation network companies
on investments that would support the program.
So the regulation
adopted by the Air Resources Board
is they issued their 15-day notice.
Well, 'cause meanwhile, we have work underway,
and that's as much detail as I can give folks
because it is underway.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen and I
have a battery keen on this.
We don't have it with others.
But I think there's a lot of effort going on
with financing, greenhouse standards,
so whose to provide for some foundational work,
is hitting us for more options than just simply,
well, let's put it in the rates.
-: Okay, we don't have a great deal of time left
before we need to turn to public comment,
but I want to at least touch on quickly
two or three ideas that have come up already
and just get folks' reactions.
So whatever level of ratepayer investment
we're gonna agree to,
there's a question of how it should be best delivered.
We've had utility ownership of make readys
and chargers in the early phases of our programs.
The thought was that that was necessary
in order to get customers to adopt
and make it easier to have them maintain the chargers,
and so forth, and so on.
We've been moving away from that increasingly
in some of the applications that we've approved,
and that assumption seems less tenable now.
It seems like there's a lot of charging companies
who can provide the kinda turnkey services
that utilities can provide to the ownership.
So one question is,
should we consider just expensing
some of the equipment and could we have that model
where the utilities actually own the equipment,
it's just not in their capital base?
That's been done in AB-1054.
Hannon suggested a version of this where there's a line item
that utilities pay for maintenance.
So what about that concept?
Maybe I'll ask Ed Randolph
'cause I know you've thought about this.
What about this idea of just having utilities own it
and the items are expensed?
-: Thanks. Thanks, Cliff.
I think that's probably something, along with others,
that should be on the table.
I'll flag that I think you can only do that
so much without impacting
the utilities' own financial situation,
their whole business model,
and this isn't a California issue.
It's a national/international issue
of how utilities are financed.
They can only quote, unquote,
own so much and not earn a rate of return on that,
so that's something we'd have to explore.
I would think we would wanna consider
kind of the range of financial options out there
on how to fund it beyond just that one tool.
-: Fair enough.
One idea we've talked about
is declining incentives.
Josh, could you tell us in a minute how that would work,
what the inspiration for that is?
And then maybe we can get some feedback.
-: Yeah, sure.
So that concept, we haven't developed it too much.
It's somewhat inspired by programs that we've run
in the space prior, like the California Solar Initiative,
which is a declining block incentive program
that spurred the solar industry in California.
So TURN did in some comments
on the transportation electrification framework,
proposed some basics of what a program
like that might look like,
but again, going back to the CSI model,
you could imagine as we hit various levels
of charging deployment,
a per port rebate amount could decline over time,
commensurate with the level of installation,
just something simple like that.
There are pros and cons to an approach like that,
would require us to really understand
the market dynamics and pricing.
There are definitely some learning curves
that I think we're still onward.
Technology prices will decline,
similar to what we saw in solar with government support,
but there's also you kind of butt up against
some of the cost associated with installation,
such as trenching,
and some of the costs are a little bit hard
to drive out from that equation.
So just requires a bit of oversight to understand
how your cost curve is functioning,
but, yeah, that is an option on the table.
-: Thoughts about that idea
or other ideas that have come up today?
Just policy options for delivering the investments,
whatever level we have, different mechanisms to think about.
-: There wasn't one
other option that- -: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: No, go ahead. -: Go ahead.
-: Josh, go ahead.
-: I was just going
to elevate again the- -: I was actually gonna,
can I just jumped in on some of the other reasons
for doing something like a declining rebate,
just the problems? -: Please.
Sara: Some of the problems that it could solve,
so we've been doing ad hoc applications
for the past several years,
so at any given time, we're reviewing utility applications,
and every single party is involved
in every single one of these,
and we're deciding on the same issues every single time:
budgets, local utility ownership,
what the rebate level should be, things like that.
If you had a long-term program,
you could eliminate that churn.
You could have a long-term market signal.
And maybe it only makes sense for the light duty sector,
not sure about the medium and heavy,
but at least they could create more certainty in the market
and reducing the sentence over time
and solve some of the problems
of the burden that we put on parties
for participating in our proceedings time and again.
-: And Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
if I could just weigh in a little bit here.
And I know that the purpose of this is a roundtable
with the Commissioners
and get some long-term direction there as well,
which is important.
One thing we should think about
if we're gonna start doing different programs,
and especially the declining rebate program,
which Sara came in there and myself
are both very familiar with
from the California Solar Initiative
and other rebates like that, how that works.
But a lot of if we're talking about
behind-the-meter infrastructure and focused on that,
there are a lot of issues going on behind the meter
right now that are targets of California policy
in terms of installing batteries for home charging
and home electrification that share the infrastructure
that's needed behind the meter.
So I think if we're gonna consider
those types of approaches,
Sara's right that having a developed program
that has a long-term vision and payout structure
tends to be more effective than short-term programs,
but we should focus on kind of the totality of the house
or the totality of the business
and everything we wanna do in these programs
since a lot of this infrastructure is gonna be shared.
-: Thank you. Very important considerations.
Let me ask one last question.
What about Hannon's idea of having utilities fund a program
that the CEC administers are supposing?
That's similar to another option that was in, I think,
the material the Energy Division circulated,
which is having third-party solicitations
and third party administer the programs.
What about those (mic distortion garbles speech)?
Any comments?
-: And Commissioner, and are you aiming that
at other Commissioners or at staff?
-: Yeah, I mean, I wanna see
if any of the Commissioners had
any thoughts about that. -: Yeah, I was about to say,
and I wanted to understand Sara's statement
about not heavy duty because whether it's the CEC
or as a utilities directly administering a Senate program,
sounds like maybe the CEC would do it
in a more cost-effective manner perhaps.
But when I think about the CSI program,
I do think there was certainly a market development
and contributing to costs coming down,
that the reality is it was not equitable.
I think we had GSI maybe maximum of 5% participation
of low-income customers.
So we should not think that, especially if it's a...
I guess my question for Sara is,
isn't it better to have an incentive program
for the heavy duty, where at least it'll be that co-benefit
for the local communities?
Sara: I think you could design.
The problem we're trying to solve
is getting infrastructure out there
and helping customers, right?
And in underserved communities.
And one of the most important things
that the low-income solar programs did were
was actually installing infrastructure on customer sites.
So you can design a program
and be faster and focused on under therateutic use.
-: I don't think- -: That's right.
-: I was gonna say, as I'm thinking about that
and I think it has attractive elements,
I think you would wanna have higher incentive levels
for lower-income consumers
to deal with the problem you're identifying.
And you could do it for the medium
and heavy duty sectors just as well
so that they have a predictable source of funding.
And, by the way, as Hannon was saying,
look, you wanna get higher incentive level,
electrify it sooner, which is to suit our state goals.
I'm sorry, Josh. Please, go ahead.
(notification bell dinging)
-: No, I was gonna say, I was gonna make the same point.
I think that you would (indistinct) design a program.
And I think where as with CSI,
a lot of that funding went to benefit individual homeowners,
the solar was installed on their house.
Obviously most of those were wealthy or middle-income folks.
Here we're talking about public charging infrastructure
that has the ability to benefit whole communities,
and the specific (mic distortion garbles speech)
is split with a test, specific individual test.
But definitely when we've been thinking about this,
we have discussed the potential for actors,
for key targets and disadvantaged communities,
and making sure that those investments would be focused
in communities that we wanna focus on.
-: Question.
Anyway, when we talk about medium and heavy-duty vehicles,
I mean, diesel comes to mind.
And so really, Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
are you speaking to the air pollution burden
from these vehicles that tend to be upon
the low-income and disadvantaged communities?
And so if we prioritize medium and heavy-duty vehicles,
then we would be tackling
that diesel exhaust burden,
and the greenhouse gas footprint, of course.
Could be another issue.
So in terms of that,
then benefiting air quality in these areas.
-: Right, and given our underspending there,
it's clearly an area that's in need of more innovation.
-: I know that Hannon has the final word
since we don't have the benefit
of visiting with him all the time,
and I know he expressed some thoughts
about different funding mechanisms.
Any last thoughts
about what we were just discussing, Hannon?
-: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
I'll just note, for any funds you are inclined
to flow through the Energy Commission
or anything you choose to do through the utilities,
I think you can meet a lot of the objectives
that have been articulated today
'cause you can design that into it, right?
So if you say,
"We're really leaving low-income communities behind,"
whether it's flowed to the Energy Commission
and you put that string on it or you do it internally,
I think we can effectuate a lot of outcomes wanna see.
And I'll just say that the reason we are where we are today
is because we didn't do enough early on.
Folks knew about transportation emissions for decades,
and we find ourselves in a condition
where we've left low-income communities behind.
We're dealing with wildfires. We're dealing with drought.
We're dealing with some really great things
that are happening and we're dealing with headwinds.
And we're here because we did some things for ourselves
that we should have acted on earlier.
And so now we are in a very difficult point,
and I just hope we're committed to see this through
and target these investments on diesel emissions,
on local air quality, seek which create jobs through this,
and to help low-income communities.
And thanks for the opportunity today.
Really good conversation.
-: You are welcome any time.
So I think we're gonna turn to our public speakers.
I think we have time for two minutes per speaker.
So I'm gonna turn it over to the operator to open the lines
for our public commenters. -: Thank you.
Thank you, as a reminder,
if you wish to make a public comment,
please unmute your phone, press *1,
and slowly and clearly record your name
and the organization.
We will announce your name in that order that you indicated
that you want to make a public comment.
If you wish to withdraw your public comment,
please press *2.
One moment.
Our first public comment comes from Sam Houston,
Union of Concerned Scientists.
Sam, your line is open.
-: Sam?
Operator: Sam, your line is open.
Sam: Oh, thank you so much. Can you hear me now?
-: Yes, we can.
Sam: Wonderful. Thank you.
Hello, President, Commissioners.
I'm honored to be the first person speaking here.
I, first of all, really appreciate the discussion,
and these are the question, and they're thorny.
I think what I would like to lift up
is some of the direction of conversation
that was really sort of a yes-and approach.
Yes, we absolutely need to move as fast as we can,
and we need to protect ratepayers.
I think some of the different financing mechanisms
that have been raised here absolutely will help with that.
I think sensible guardrails on programs
will absolutely help with that,
sort of standardizing things,
like companies that are on the Fortune 1000 list
probably shouldn't be first in line to participate
in some sort of commercial EV infrastructure program,
things like that.
We need those protections for the ratepayers,
but we desperately need
transportation electrification programs,
not just to meet the climate goals
that were queued up so well by presentations earlier,
but really for the terrible air quality burdens
that many of our communities are facing.
And so I wanted, to that point,
uplift the discussion around medium and heavy duty
and really continuing to break down barriers there.
Obviously, even though there are dollars available,
the money's not going out the door,
so continuing to push that forward, and keeping in mind,
I think it was Hannon who said, there are some segments
that we just may need utility investment in
longer than others.
Some segments can be handed over
to the private sector sooner,
and I appreciated the discussion on declining incentives.
That may be appropriate for some segments,
but there may be other segments
that really demand a fuller treatment
to keep things moving forward.
And in that spirit, I just wanna note and caution
against having too much of this discussion in the abstract
and really lift up the parts of the discussion
that were talking about specific segments.
I think to have a transportation electrification framework,
which will be wonderful when we have it,
I've been working on that proceeding for a while,
I think to the extent different segments
can be uplifted differently
and we can acknowledge where there may need to be
more utility role behind the meter,
I think that the more concrete we can be
when we're having those discussions in specific segments,
I think the more productive it will be.
Thank you so much.
-: Thanks very much. Next caller.
Operator, next caller.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Meredith Alexander, CALSTART.
Meredith, your line is open.
Meredith: Hi, good afternoon. Can you hear me?
-: Yes.
Meredith: Okay, great.
Hi, good afternoon, Commissioners,
and happy to follow Sam Houston
trying to condense today's really important discussions
and comments on a lot of different topics.
First, really appreciated the discussion
about the importance of medium
and heavy duty electrification
and how it's different from other things.
I do think this discussion today would have benefited
from hearing directly from ARB
about their proposed fleet rule and the timelines in there
and the volumes of vehicles
because I think what a lot of people are wondering
in that regulation is,
are the utilities staffed up appropriately
and ready to build out the infrastructure
that will be needed on the timeline
that is required under the rulemaking,
which is starting in 2025,
that fleets will be required to buy electric medium
and heavy-duty or zero-emission vehicles?
And so it's really an issue of forecasting
that magnitude, the timing, and the location,
so it's really helpful to hear
that there is data being shared
about the locations of fleets.
I am guessing that that cannot be made public,
but I think having a joint agency workshop that discusses
how this data is going to be shared
and how the CPUC can ensure
that the utilities can respond to fleets needs,
because it's no longer just about them installing a charger
for the handful of electric vehicles they're buying now.
It's going to be in the hundreds at different locations.
And I've heard from one fleet in Southern California
that they think they need 84 megawatts of capacity
to serve their fleet,
(chuckles) so just wanting to put that in this discussion.
And also on the financing piece,
I think that is a really important discussion.
I wanted to highlight something
that was actually filed by Edison,
which was a proposal that CALSTART
and NRDC has been working on, to allow fleets to borrow
to have a state-backed financing program run
through the treasurer's office that is in part based
on the fleet future revenue from LCFS credits.
We were really excited
to see Edison file that as a funded program,
send it through their LCFS hold back funds,
that would be aimed at medium and heavy duty fleets.
And I think the declining incentive
could also be a really good idea
for public light duty charging.
I just wanted to highlight for medium and heavy duty,
it wouldn't necessarily work as an incentive
for early action because not all vehicles
that are needed to be purchased are actually available today
or will be available on the same timeline.
Thanks so much for the great discussion today
and thanks for considering my comments.
-: Thanks, Meredith. Operator, next caller.
Reminder that we have,
because of the number of commenters,
please limit yourself to two minutes.
Operator: Thank you.
Our next public comment comes from Eric Borden.
Eric, your line is open.
Eric: Hi, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
-: Great, this Eric Borden representing TURN.
Thank you all for the excellent discussion.
I think you covered a lot of really important topics,
many of which I'm going to again reiterate now,
but I think they are really important.
So TURN is a strong supporter of state goals
when it comes to EV adoption
because these promise significant benefits to ratepayers
from a financial, GHG emission, and pollution perspective.
But, as was mentioned, we need to take a step back
and recognize that we are on an unsustainable path
when it comes to electric rates in the state,
particularly for the large IOUs.
So from an affordability perspective, this is problematic
because customers are being forced to devote a larger
and larger share of their limited and unpredictable incomes
to essential energy service.
But the path we are on is also not sustainable
from a climate change perspective
if we care about electrifying everything.
So, for example,
if PG&E gets the approximately 25% electric rate increase
it's requesting in the CRC on top of what is already one
of the highest electric rates in the nation,
what does that mean for EV adoption?
Care rates, low-income care rates,
will go up by the same percentage.
What does that mean for equitable EV adoption?
Could that be more, at least equally important,
than the amount of ratepayers subsidy provided
for behind-the-meter infrastructure?
In my work for TURN, I see time and again that the utilities
often present an implicit trade-off
to the Commission in their proposals, where they say,
"Well, we cannot have safety and affordability,"
or, "We cannot have climate change mitigation
and, once again, affordability."
We find time and again that this is really a false binary.
We urge decision makers not to fall for it.
As was mentioned, the recent passage of AB-41
really put a clear marker in the stand
for where to focus ratepayer subsidies
on the utility side of the meter,
all of which will come on top of the 1.8 billion
already authorized for EV infrastructure.
So if EVs come down in price and charging station companies
and automakers become more established
to guide the build out of infrastructure,
we urge the Commission to start now and to begin the process
of ramping down customer side subsidies first,
focusing on, and these are all high level,
but first focus on utility ownership of customer assets,
should be the exception and not the rule,
as the recent CPUC white paper on affordability states,
"As California continues transitioning
to a more robust distributed energy resources marketplace
with greater deployment of electric vehicles,
It will be essential to employ aggressive actions
to minimize growth and utility rate base."
Second, we must stop accepting
a cookie cutter make-ready approach where all vehicles
and location segments get a near 100% subsidy.
This was echoed in the comments that Hannon made.
On the benefits side of the equation,
I think we also need to recognize infrastructure targets
are secondary to the state's primary goals,
which are around emissions reduction.
Not all charging ports
and spending to get those ports are created equal.
And unfortunately I don't have time to get into this here,
but the AB-2127 report number was mentioned a lot.
I really appreciate the important work that the CEC does
and the really quality work that they do,
but the fact is that there is a massive range of chargers
that can reasonably support EV goals,
and we think that the 1.2 million metric is based
on very conservative assumptions,
and we outlined this in our comments to the CEC.
The other thing is that chargers built today
are expected to last for 10 years,
so I'm not really sure why that 2030 number
should weigh too heavily on ratepayers
when it comes to investments today.
So thank you very much for the opportunity to comment
and TURN looks forward to continue engaging
with stakeholders and the Commission
on these important issues.
-: Thank you very much, Eric. Operator, next caller, please.
Operator, can you call on the next caller, please?
Operator: Yes, our next comment comes
from Matthew Rutherford.
Your line is open.
Matthew: Good afternoon, Commissioners, staff.
My name is Matthew Rutherford.
I'm a senior regulatory analyst with Peninsula Clean Energy.
I'm submitting this comment today on behalf
of the plenty CCAs that are impatient
and travel where they are.
CCAs are currently the default,
most serving NVPs for more than 11 million customers
across the state,
and we're quickly expanding our customer programs,
including for transportation electrification.
As the draft test recognizes,
it's only appropriate that the roles CCAs played to date
and should play in the future be included
in TE policy discussions,
especially when we were discussing customer-facing,
behind-the-meter questions, and we must be recognized
as critical partners in these efforts.
The joint CCAs are offering to partner with the state
through the test process to help ensure the success
of our collective efforts.
And what we suggest is that the CCAs be permitted
to serve as administrators of TE programs of our own design,
subject to the same oversight by the CPUCs as the IOUs
and available to all customers in our service territories
regardless of their generation provider.
This would be paired with access
to ratepayer funding like the IOUs,
as our current TE programs are hindered in scope and scale
because they are dependent upon generation revenue.
Our programs today are expanding access to TE
while also controlling costs through emphasis
on local customer and community-based design.
We're rightsizing programs so that they're consistent
with the needs of the customers and communities
and targeting all customer classes,
including via equity-driven programs
so that none are left behind during its critical transition,
and we're applying these priorities to a range of areas
across light, medium, and heavy duty sectors.
We can encourage the CPUC to enable CCAs
and service full core administrators under the test
to allow us to bring our community relationships
and local understanding to bear
to help move all Californians
towards an electrified transportation future.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment,
and we look forward to engaging further.
-: Thank you very much. Operator, the next call, please.
Operator: Our next public comment
comes from Suncheth Bhat from PG&E.
Suncheth, your line is open.
-: Thank you, good afternoon.
This is Suncheth Bhat,
director of clean energy transportation at PG&E.
Thanks for the opportunity to make some comments,
and I really appreciate the discussion today.
As the fuel provider for zero-emission vehicles,
electric utilities across the state have and will continue
to play an important role in ensuring our customers
can electrify their transportation needs.
TE offers a rare win-win opportunity
to decrease greenhouse gas emissions
while lowering electric rates for utility customers
via the increased throughput of kWh on the grid.
In fact, PG&E's goal for TE is to both reduce GHG emissions
and drive downward pressure on rates.
As stated in CPUC's white paper,
IOU investments and TE may place downward pressure on rates,
which would make it even more affordable to operate an EV
and with lower rates for customers not utilizing EVs.
We've heard about vehicle and infrastructure goals today.
With 2030 in sight, as a state we're at
about 12 1/2% of the light duty vehicle goal
compared to the projections in CARB's Mobile Source Strategy
and only at about 6% of the goal
for the needed infrastructure per the CEC's AB-2127 report.
We have a long ways to go to meet the state goals,
especially on infrastructure in light of the complexity
and time it takes to do so.
As Hannon noted in his presentation,
it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort.
Utilities have experienced building
customer side infrastructure and can build at scale.
In PG&E's case, we have built nearly 5,000 ports
at about 200 locations across 66 cities.
PG&E can also continue to help reach customers
that are in hard-to-reach communities in this space.
PG&E has recently completed
our light duty multi-unit dwelling and workplace program,
installing almost 40% of the ports
in disadvantaged communities.
It's important to note
that this market is still nascent today,
and utility programs help provide a turnkey solution
to willing customers who are ready
but may not have the means.
PG&E is committed to support the state's goals
and welcomes and looks forward to continuing to collaborate
with the state to develop this market
and work through innovative solutions.
Thank you.
-: Thank you very much. Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Lillian Rafi, Clean Energy.
Lillian, your line is open.
Lillian: Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioners,
and for the opportunity to comment.
We very much support today's themes
and Commissioner Rechtschaffen's remarks
and the presenters on customer affordability
and how to think about ratepayer dollars,
how to reduce NOx and particulate matter
in places like the San Joaquin Air Basin
and meeting climate goals.
So my comments are also focused
on the medium and heavy duty sector,
primarily the heavy duty.
So for some background,
Clean Energy is a transportation company.
We're in the private sector, zero ratepayer dollars,
focused on renewable natural gas,
hydrogen, and the electric vehicle space.
But a big part of our focus is helping trucks
that are running on compressed natural gas switch
to 100% renewable natural gas, RNG.
So these are trucks like garbage trucks, refuge trucks,
the ones that run the most miles
and create the most pollution.
And there was reference to the San Joaquin Basin
in I think the CEC's presentation and the CPUC,
the Energy Division staff presentation.
And so these are areas that actually,
as a private company, we're focused on.
And so what happens now in the marketplace for these trucks
that are driving not 10 years from now
when the landscape looks to be very different,
but right now for those driving to ports and idling.
If you look around,
you don't see a good electric truck option,
but you still have diesel,
so that'll just be the default that you turn to.
And so those emissions are very harmful,
and that's a lot of what we're seeing.
And so our focus is just looking at other technologies
that exist for today that can be used
to help with air quality goals.
For example, the orangy-fueled heavy-duty truck,
looking at CARB pathways will result
in negative carbon intensity.
For example, a garbage truck that actually use fuel
from the garbage landfill,
they capture the natural gas, convert it,
same with trucks that use captured methane from dairy farms.
(electronic bell ringing) So in regards to comments,
okay, so I'll wrap up. -: Can you please
-: In regard to comments on- -: wrap it up, please?
Lillian: Oh, using the best ratepayer dollars,
one thing we want to emphasize
is electric vehicles are part of the solution,
but other technology is out there
and other companies are working
to address air quality goals.
And so in sum, in efforts to electrify,
what we want to emphasize is just not to lose sight
of technology that is available today and that results
in negative carbon intensity
and helping convert fleet from diesel
to other types of fuel source that reach our overall goals
in helping air quality and specifically in these air basins.
So, and then finally.
-: Lillian, thank you very much.
And we've gotta move on to the next caller.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Miles Muller.
Your line is open.
-: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Miles Muller with NRDC.
Thanks for the engaging discussion today
and the opportunity to comment.
I wanna start by making the observation
that I think everyone is on the same page here.
We all agree on the need to figure out ways
to ensure electricity remains affordable
for utility customers in general and as a fuel source,
but how we do that is important.
So Commissioner Guzman Aceves' point,
electricity bills are aggressive
and we do need to ensure affordability of electricity
as a transportation fuel long term,
but that's exactly why we shouldn't be pulling back
or discontinuing support for EV programs
that can put downward pressure on rates
and help address those affordability issues.
Existing data shows that EV charging
has already put downward pressure on rates
to the benefit of all utility customers,
to the tune of nearly $1 billion in 2012.
Further, the discussion today mentioned
the CPUCs white paper from earlier in the year
which found that transportation electrification programs
were not a significant source of upward pressure on rates
and are not expected to contribute
to significant rate growth in the near term
with the main sources of upward pressure
on rates being wildfires and them.
So downward pressure on rates
from increased EV adoption is a critical tool
for mitigating these rate increases in the future,
and we shouldn't be discounting or tossing this tool aside.
California is currently still far behind on a goal.
Now is not the time to discontinue support and go slower.
The CEC's 2127 report highlights this,
detailing just how far behind California is
on its infrastructure deployment goals
and how continued utility support
in addition to support from other state agencies
and the private sector is critical
for meeting California's 2025
and longterm climate, air quality, and equity goal.
So this is an all-hands-on-deck moment.
It's important to not view utility funding as competitive
or substitutive with state funding
rather than complimentary or additional.
So in summary, utility investments
and electrification are critical for enabling the state
to meet those goals as well as
an affordability tool, (electronic bell ringing)
one which has the ability to make rates more affordable
for California utility customers and help California realize
a more equitable electrified future.
Thank you.
-: Thank you very much, Miles.
We've got seven more people in the queue,
so hopefully folks can stay 10 minutes
after the four o'clock hour
so that we can hear from all the public speaker.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Claire Broome.
Your line is open.
Claire: Afternoon, Commissioners.
This is Claire Broome representing 350, Bay Area.
I wanna speak to light-duty vehicle planning,
and I would appreciate it if the speakers would clarify
and differentiate between behind the meter,
which I assume means charging at home
where overnight charging is possible
versus on the road investments,
where with fast chargers.
Specifically consumer reports found that 92%
of owners of high-range vehicles charge at home.
And I realize the challenge in reaching renters
and multi-unit buildings,
but I think when you ask for greater transparency,
it's very important to clarify
what are Level 2 and what are fast chargers.
What permit overnight charging
versus which are sort of the equivalent
of an electric gas station.
And the data suggest that overnight charging
and Level 2 chargers are a better use of resources
and also less burden on the electric grid.
The second point I wanna make is I'm assuming
that all of these funds include incentives built in
to align charging with the time
of the grid's greatest need,
i.e, that people charge either at the day
or overnight after peak hours.
And I haven't really heard much
to either of those two points,
so I would put those forward
so that our dollars can be used best to accelerate
transportation electrification.
Thank you very much.
-: Thanks very much. Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Michael Colvin.
Your line is open.
Michael: Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Commissioners.
My name is Michael Colvin
on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund.
I'd like to thank you for the robust conversation today
and for the opportunity to make public comment.
I'd like to offer up just a couple of quick observations.
First, I appreciate the discussion
on what's the right role at the ratepayer dollar
versus public funds and grants and loans.
I think we need to take an all-of-the-above strategy here
and should recognize that we're gonna need a mixture
of all of them.
I really appreciate Commissioner Guzman Aceves' point
about using ratepayer funds to generate leverage.
EBS did ask for just that
in the clean energy financing rulemaking,
and we'd be happy to follow up with Commissioner Shiroma
as she prepares the next phase of that proceeding.
I also wanna acknowledge that the Governor just signed
Senate Bill 372 to create financing opportunities
for clean trucks and buses,
and that bill encourages coordination
with the treasurer's office with on-bill utility programs,
so I think there's an opportunity there.
Second, I think we need to take different approaches
for each customer segment.
The reasonableness of utility investments
to support passenger vehicles
is going to be different than public buses,
which is different than small truck fleets
and large long haul rucks.
Today's conversation was heavily focused
on passenger vehicles, which is only one part of the puzzle.
We cannot just hope that passenger infrastructure
is gonna be deployed in places
that will automatically translate for trucks and buses.
Normal public charger deployments make sense
for commercial needs for the trucks.
So having parallel conversations here
I think is going to be really critical,
and we're gonna need the right balance.
Last, if we're going to electrify the economy,
we need to recognize that our electricity usage will go up
and therefore electric bills will go up
because we're using more.
We should deploy infrastructure at the rate
at least so that the customer's overall energy burden
is gonna go down or remains the same of where it's at today.
We're shifting usage around.
There are ways, to Commissioner Guzman Aceves' point,
to correct cost allocation,
to prevent a regressive bill impact,
and to further achieve (electronic bell dinging)
our bill affordability goals.
And so just really briefly, I would like to say,
I think there are ways of mitigating
the bill impact here to do this,
and I think the height be our future rulemaking
is a place where we could do that,
and we look forward to participating there
as much as we can.
Thank you all so much for the opportunity to make comment.
-: Thank you, Michael. Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Sara Rappeltool.
Your line is open.
Sara: Good afternoon, Commissioners.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment
and to Energy Division for helping
to put together TE workshops two days in a row.
My name is Sara Rafalson and I lead public policy at EVgo.
We have 300 fast charging locations in California,
which we largely site in areas to enable access
for those who don't have charging at home,
such as renters and apartment dwellers,
and are also growing rapidly in fleet electrification.
So much of the focus today was on programs,
but I also just wanted to emphasize that it's helpful
for the Commission to continue the conversation on process,
which was a large focus
of yesterday's Energy Commission, CPUC giant workshop.
Construction of a fast charging station in California
should only really take four to eight weeks,
but sometimes can take up to 18 months,
and that's because of permitting,
which of course is more in GO-Biz as well,
and as they've been capably leading that up,
but as well as you told the easements
and other process-related issues.
Commissioner Houck briefly mentioned some timeline issues
as it related to others topics
that the Commission deals with,
and I know Meredith from CALSTARTS also mentioned
that process and utility staffing and resourcing
is important to ensure that the utilities are ready
for the surge that will happen
on the medium and heavy duty side,
and I'd echo the same on the light duty side.
And last, I wanna echo comments on rates affordability made
by the other commenters and the Commissioners,
and also that long-term rate design is an effective tool
to attract private sector investment
while also helping to make the decision
from ICE to EV easier, thank you.
-: Thank you very much, Sara.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes
from Robert Perry.
Your line is open.
Robert: Yes, hi. My name's Robert Perry.
I'm with Synergistic Solutions Energy Consulting.
I'd like to thank the panel
for this very important conversation,
and I'd like to generally endorse
Deputy Director Rasool's comments regarding the need
to fully engage the private sector
to both develop and finance this type of infrastructures.
I think it's important to see EVs
not only as a load source when charging,
but also as an important distributed energy resource asset
that will become even more important
with the advent of vehicle grid integration.
Regarding the use of ratepayer funds,
it's important that utilities focus on what they do best,
which is to incentivize efficient energy flow
to locations where it's needed most,
whether it's at the utility scale along transit corridors
or at the distributed level in remote and urban areas,
which will require extensive development
of distributed generation in those areas.
Transportation electrification policy
should also seek to promote use cases
that fit people's lives.
EV owners that are employees
should be able to go to their place of work
and charge during the day.
Independent contractors that use EVs
should be able to utilize that EV
to fit their work environment
if they're using motorized tools and stuff.
There should be programs that incentivize
that transition as well,
which is a very high source of emissions,
as CARB has indicated.
On the financing side, we should really take a hard look
at incorporating service models
where people pay for the service
of owning EVs, owning and operating EVs,
and such models need to allow
for a reasonable rate of return,
but also the option to purchase the asset
after that return has been achieved.
Finally, with regard (electronic bell ringing)
to disadvantaged communities,
it should be important to acknowledge that these communities
are usually adjacent to industrial zones
and that policies should seek to combine those zones
to where they can mutually benefit each other.
Thank you very much. Bye.
-: Thank you very much, Robert.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes from Zach Luken.
Zach, your line is open.
Zach: Hi, thank you, Zach Woogen
with the Vehicle Grid Integration Council, or VGIC.
I wanna thank Commissioners and staff
for holding this En Banc
and appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment.
We do appreciate the focus today on medium
and heavy-duty vehicles and disadvantaged communities
and are very much aligned in that focus.
In considering TE infrastructure deployment,
we believe it's critical to think
about the customer perspective first and foremost.
The goal is to make it easier for customers
and fleet managers to adopt EVs,
which means not having to worry about
some of these more complicated installation
and rate design considerations.
A lot of our member companies offer solutions
that simplify this customer experience,
and that's why we believe it's important
to provide customers with a menu of options to choose from,
and then their automaker
or EV service provider charging company can actually manage
that charging behind the scenes to keep things seamless
and simple from the customer perspective.
All that said, there's one promising solution
that we've been very eager to see implemented
called automated load management.
PG&E's experience in the EV Charge Network program
has shown that this solution can yield significant savings
on utility side infrastructure costs.
VGIC recently put forward a proposal to incorporate this
into the implementation of AB-41
and the EV infrastructure rules that passed last week.
Our proposal was not included in the resolution
that was adopted last week, but we do urge the Commission
to prioritize this in other ways.
For instance, it could be done through a renewed emphasis
on implementing the SB-676 VGI strategies decision
from last December.
In addition to automated load management,
we believe that other vehicle grid integration solutions
can be very cost-effective options
for a range of grid services.
Since the capital costs are largely embedded in the vehicle,
that cost for the battery was already bought down
by the customers.
So, for example, the Commission could prioritize VGI
as a way to resolve emergency reliability
at a much lower cost
than building new supply side infrastructure.
The recently staffed, (electronic bell ringing)
the recent staff concept proposal introduced
the EDBG aggregation pilot,
which would be a step toward this.
Another example would be the use of EVs for resiliency
and backup power during the public safety power shutoffs,
which could be cost competitive with traditional solutions
like installing a new backup generator.
Finally, it's worth noting that a recent study
on managed charging showed that-
-: Zachary, can you wrap up please.
Zach, your time is expired.
Zach: Absolutely, a critical factor
in reducing transmission that were cost.
That was in the preferred system plan
and the IRP proceeding.
And with that, I'll conclude my comments,
and we look forward to further collaboration
with Commissioners and staff, thank you.
-: Thank you, Zach. Next caller, please, operator.
Operator: Our next public comment comes from Shiba Bamit.
Shiba, your line is open.
Shiba: Oh, hi there. I hope you guys can hear me.
Thank you Commissioners for giving me this opportunity.
I represent SignWatch,
an innovative power electronics company
that is developing the next generation
of electric vehicle platform
that also integrates the entire infrastructure
of electric vehicles into the electric vehicle,
so that changes the...
Can you hear me? I'm sorry, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you.
You were indistinct for a little bit, but we can hear your.
Please go ahead.
Shiba: Okay, so what we are trying to do is,
so seems like, I mean,
I was on the workshop with you yesterday
and I'm going to repeat a couple of an anecdotal commentary
that came out of that workshop.
The gentleman from SMUD, he basically said,
"We have a conundrum here.
We have to do the decarbonization,
transportation electrification, yet the rates are going up.
There's just no two ways about it."
It's almost seems like an it's an unsustainable
and a non-scalable platform.
We also heard Ford Motor Company
with respect to the comments that came from VGIC just now,
with respect to the resiliency requirement for PSPS events.
Their vehicles are, by the way,
I mean, if you know about that, it's about $80,000,
and it's going to be almost an (indistinct)
to ask the ratepayers to compensate
for the additional hardware that would be required
for those vehicles to become grid integrated
or vehicle to home.
So what we are challenged with is essentially
the requirement to develop a new platform
for electric vehicles.
That's essentially what is going on.
We are not by any means trying to say
that we discard the old platform that is existing today,
but rather we are requesting California
to double down on innovation
and show to the market (electronic bell ringing)
that California is definitely interested
in moving the needle with respect to innovation
and driving the next generation of electric vehicles
based on the Senate Bill 676,
and we will be submitting more comments
into both CPUC and CEC,
and we hope to remain engaged with you.
Thank you very much for allowing us to make the comment.
-: Thank you for your comment. Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next public comment comes from Mehdi Ganji.
Mehdi, your line is open.
Mehdi: Thanks, Commissioners,
for providing me an opportunity to submit the comments here.
I'm representing Willdan Energy Solution.
We are energy efficiency program managers
for investors across California
and also providing local government cities
with engineering services.
All we know that in order
for the state of California to meet its 2035 goal
to have almost eight million EVs on the road,
we have to install about a million charging stations
across the state, while we way behind that.
And we strongly recommend the Commissioners and CPUC
to encourage the IOU's Transportation Electrification team
to work with energy efficiency teams
so they can collaboratively work together
with the energy efficiency program management
across the state to target
and define potential locations for charging stations
and engage the adopters.
Secondly, I wanna submit a comment,
a personal comments regarding the residential sectors.
We understand that most of their state funding goes
towards the multi-family units;
however, in the state of California,
we have about 12 million single-family homes
that half of those 12 million single-family homes
were built before 1978,
meaning half of those 12 million single-family homes,
they do not have proper infrastructure
or electric utility service
to adopt any Level 2 charging station.
So we tried to recommend the state of California.
You can see there's big spend
and some sort of incentives or grants
for the single-family homes units
in the state of California as well, thank you.
-: Thank you very much.
Operator, are there any additional callers
who wish to speak?
Operator: I have no additional public comments.
-: Okay then, thank you to all the folks who participated
and who called in.
Do any Commissioners have-
-: Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
just got a note from Nicole on a caller.
Daniel Drazen.
-: Okay, Operator, there is an additional caller.
Daniel Drazen.
Operator: Give me just a moment here.
I just got someone in my queue. One moment.
Daniel, your line is open.
-: Daniel, can you hear us?
Hello, Daniel? Your line.
Operator: It looks like the line is open.
If you need to, go ahead and press *1 again, Daniel,
and we'll put you back in the queue.
Jocelyn: Hello?
-: Hello, we can hear you. Is it Daniel?
Jocelyn: Oh no, this isn't Daniel. This is Jocelyn.
Might've been confused.
-: Do you wish to make
a public comment? -: I am on the queue. Yes. Yes.
-: Please go ahead if you wish to make a public comment.
Jocelyn: Okay, thank you.
Good afternoon, Commissioners.
My name is Jocelyn Meldal, and I'm an organizer
with (indistinct) Community to Environmental Justice.
I'm here on behalf of communities
that are heavily impacted
and live along the goods moving corridors,
industries, and rail yards.
And you're here to emphasize
and urge the transition to electrification,
which we appreciate these conversations at the moment,
because now is the time
that we should be going full throttle,
making sure that also other agencies
and stakeholders are following suit.
And because our lives are being cut short
due to health impacts that stem from diesel
and PM2.5 heavy duty emissions.
So these aren't just conversations
about electrification, infrastructure and costs,
but these are also conversations about the lives
of our neighbors and our families.
And we also wanna make sure that our communities
aren't being left behind in these transition
from heavy-duty, medium-duty passenger vehicles.
There should be efforts to uplift different things
that make this more accessible, like reliable,
a reliable easy market,
continuing to push for new emission trucks
and increase access to local energy resiliency efforts.
And overall, there's still a lot of work to be done
for accessibility to EV.
Taking a step back, right?
In frontline communities,
there's still a lot of work to be done,
and an example can be the incentive program that exists;
however, many community members on the ground, to this day,
still don't know that these programs exist.
And so it's a big barrier that we see on the ground,
and I am concerned about how the CPUC
is factoring in community education and engagement
in these condition plans,
and I hope that this can be considered.
And also the cost burden of electrification,
as we've mentioned, it should not fall on ratepayers,
and I'm relieved that this is acknowledged
and that there are other options being explored.
Too many families are counting on this.
And we are still very much in a pandemic,
and we have folks struggling with utility debt
in this process of recovery.
And so I truly appreciate the discussions
that are happening today,
and I look forward to further engaging
our community's needs in this process.
Thank you.
-: Thank you very much for your comments.
Operator, can you check one more time
to make sure there's no one in the queue waiting to speak?
Operator: Yes, I currently have no one.
We had Daniel for a moment, but he took himself out of it.
But I currently don't have any public comments.
-: Okay, okay, then I think we're done.
Do any Commissioners wanna say anything before we close?
Commissioner Houck?
-: I wanted to thank you, Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
for arranging for this En Banc and this discussion.
I think is a really good start
and I'm looking forward to further discussion
and hopefully having another En Banc
with our sister agencies on this topic.
So thank you for putting this together.
-: Commissioner Guzman Aceves or Commissioner Shiroma?
Okay, well, I wanna thank everyone again,
and especially a very large thank you
to Josh Huneycutt and the Energy Division staff
for putting this together
and for our colleague Hannon Rasool for speaking
and spending so much time with us
to enlighten us on the CEC's efforts.
With that, we're adjourned.