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Over time, however, complying with CEQA became not only a torturous slog through very expensive red tape – one that elevated complex process over final product – but a tool for interest groups to engage in what can only be described as extortion. Do something for us, they could and sometimes would implicitly threaten, or we’ll tie up your project in court for years or even decades and it will die an expensive, lingering death. Many payoff demands have absolutely nothing to do with environmental protection.

If Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg wants to do an end run around the California Environmental Quality Act to expedite the proposed new arena in downtown Sacramento, why shouldn’t those changes apply statewide to similar urban projects?

SB 54 (Senator Loni Hancock) is just such a bill.  It purports to be about safety but in fact could increase risks, displace highly skilled workers with excellent safety records, and remove the flexibility of employers to hire the best available workers.  SB 54 would establish arbitrary training requirements that would force refinery and chemical facilities to choose a large percentage of their workers from the membership of a single union, and to pay those workers government mandated wages.

United Farm Workers and its government allies are working hard to destroy jobs.

Governor Jerry Brown’s administration has pulled the plug on efforts to amend Proposition 65, California’s toxics warning law, through legislation this year.

GO-Biz Director Kish Rajan Debuts New On-line Permitting Tools and Provides Overview of the Governor’s Economic Development Initiative

Substantially overhauling the 40-year-old California Environmental Quality Act may still happen, but with just two weeks remaining in the legislative session, it probably won’t happen this year.

As several new private ventures to take people on trips to space come closer to becoming reality, California lawmakers are racing other states to woo the new space companies with cushy incentives.

California’s largest greenhouse gas-emitting businesses paid $12.22 per metric tonne (1.1 tons) for the right to release carbon this year, lower than expected and down almost 13 percent from the previous sale in May, the state said on Wednesday.

Carbon prices in California have slumped to the lowest level this year as the state weighs increasing the number of free permits offered to polluters in an effort to kick-start the fledgling market.

With the legislative session drawing to a close–and with Steinberg continuing to juggle proposed amendments and work to keep the governor interested in CEQA–more and more voices outside Sacramento have begun to pose this very question: What exactly will Steinberg’s bill do to streamline CEQA for infill projects–and is the Senate leader’s approach good policy for the economy, for communities, and for the environment?

Electricity consumption per capita in California stopped increasing in the 1970s, around the same time policymakers had also enacted stricter energy-efficiency policies, such as mandates on buildings and appliances. As electricity consumption continued to rise in other states, regulation advocates hailed California as a role model for the rest of the nation. But according to an economist at Georgetown University, California’s savings are largely due to other long-run trends.

The rapid replacement of coal by cheaper and cleaner natural gas has helped drive emissions down in the United States more than any other country in the world in recent years. Cheap nautral gas is crushing domestic demand for coal and is the main reason for the rapid decline in US carbon emissions. The gas revolution offers a way for the United States and other nations to replace coal burning while accelerating the transition to zero-carbon energy.

California is reconsidering landmark consumer protections and energy conservation measures that were written into residential utility bills during the state’s 2000-2001 energy crisis.

A project that would have included a solar power station and a million-square-foot solar panel factory a few miles from the California state line won’t be built, its backers announced last month. The $5 billion, Chinese-backed ENN Mojave Energy project at the southernmost corner of Nevada couldn’t find utilities that wanted to buy its power, either in Nevada or across the line in California.