BILL ANALYSIS 1
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SENATE ENERGY, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
DEBRA BOWEN, CHAIRWOMAN
SB 37X - Brulte Hearing
Date: May 1, 2001 S
As Proposed to be Amended FISCAL B
X
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DESCRIPTION
Current law requires the California Energy Commission (CEC)
to prescribe lighting, insulation, climate control system,
and other building design and construction standards which
increase the efficiency in the use of energy for new
residential and non-residential buildings.
This bill requires the CEC to monitor compliance with
building energy efficiency standards upon receipt of a
complaint by a local building official.
This bill requires the CEC to investigate options and
develop a plan to decrease wasteful energy consumption in
existing buildings. The plan shall be submitted to the
Legislature by January 1, 2002 and shall include
recommendations for changes to existing law.
This bill requires the California Public Utilities
Commission (CPUC), in consultation with the CEC, to develop
initiatives to support standards for new buildings and
appliances, and to develop infrastructure to implement
those standards.
BACKGROUND
The CEC recently revised its new building standards with
respect to energy efficiency. Those new standards, which
are significantly higher than other states, will take
effect in June.
Most of the work of the CEC with regard to buildings has
been focused on new construction. This bill focuses on
existing buildings, requiring the CEC to consider ways to
improve the energy performance of both residential and
non-residential buildings.
According to the sponsors of this bill, the California
Building Industry Association, 80% of existing homes and
apartments were built prior to 1983 when the first set of
statewide energy efficiency standards took effect. The
fact that so many homes and apartments were built more than
18 years ago represents a vast potential for energy
efficiency improvement. However, this bill imposes no
requirements other than an investigation and analysis of
options by the CEC.
COMMENTS
1.Author's Amendments . The author will propose amendments
in committee to delete Section 1, Paragraph (c) (Page 2,
Lines 17-24), which requires the CEC to certify energy
consultants, installers, field verifiers, and
non-residential building standards agents to ensure
compliance with building energy efficiency standards.
2.Calling The Energy Principal . The first provision in
this bill requires the CEC staff to field check
construction when it receives a complaint by a local
building official. According to the sponsors, these
requests are rare, but because the CEC isn't expressly
authorized to investigate complaints about compliance
with energy efficiency standards, there's some reluctance
to provide this service. The author and committee may
wish to consider revising the language in this provision
to make it clear that the CEC staff is providing
technical assistance to the building official. This
could be accomplished on Page 2, Line 6, by replacing the
language after the comma with "assist such official in
determining compliance with building energy efficiency
standards including, if necessary, site visits."
3.Involving The CPUC . With the exception of Page 4, Lines
15-18, Section 2 of this bill is existing law, which was
added last year by AB 970 (Ducheny), Chapter 329,
Statutes of 2000. The provision added by this bill
requires the CPUC to create an initiative to develop
infrastructure to support implementation of building
standards and is funded through rates of the
investor-owned utilities (e.g. Pacific Gas & Electric and
Southern California Edison).
The operative language in this provision is a little
unclear, because in this context, "infrastructure" is
intended to mean appropriate research, development, and
training - not physical construction of a building. The
author and committee may wish to consider making that
clarification.
Even with the clarification, a technical problem arises
because the section added by this bill is placed in a
section of existing law which required actions to have
been taken by March 2001. The author and committee may
wish to consider whether it would be clearer to establish
a separate section for this provision.
A policy issue arises because while the work is funded by
customers of investor-owned utilities, the beneficiaries
of such work are customers of all utilities, including
municipal utilities. The author and committee may wish
to consider whether there should be some contribution to
this effort from the customers of the municipal
utilities, perhaps through a portion of the $40 million
they received in SB 5X (Sher), Chapter 7, Statutes of
2001. Alternatively, the author and the committee may
wish to consider whether it would be cleaner to, since
building standards work is already the purview of the
CEC, amend the bill to require the CEC to do the work
mandated by this section of the bill.
4.Related Legislation . AB 64X (Strom-Martin) requires the
Department of General Services (DGS) to identify all
public buildings in the state's property inventory where
it is feasible to reduce energy consumption and achieve
energy efficiencies. This bill is pending in the
Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 29X (Kehoe), Chapter 8, Statutes of 2001, contains the
language from AB 64X.
SB 1085 (Bowen) requires state buildings to exceed the
existing energy efficiency standards and to be built on a
life-cycle cost basis instead of on one that only looks
at the up-front capital costs of the building. This bill
is pending in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
POSITIONS
Sponsor:
California Building Industry Association
Support:
California Association of Realtors
Oppose:
None on file
Randy Chinn
SB 37X Analysis
Hearing Date: May 1, 2001