Don’t worry, we’re not in blackout territory

Jul 02, 2024

A young girl plays on the sand by the river in Sacramento.

The state’s power grid operator is predicting California’s energy supply will remain well above demand this week despite the 100-plus degree temperatures. | Terry Chea/AP Photo

POWER DYNAMICS: A heat wave kicked off today, but California politicians don’t need to sweat about sweeping blackouts just yet.

The state’s power grid operator is predicting California’s energy supply will remain well above demand this week despite the 100-plus degree temperatures baking parts of the state. That’s good news for elected state leaders — most notably Gov. Gavin Newsom — who face a political roasting whenever the power goes out at best, or a political ousting at worst, as former Gov. Gray Davis knows well.

“It’s not good for anyone in public office,” Davis, who was recalled in 2003 and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger following blackouts rooted in the preceding energy crisis, told Playbook.

Newsom survived less-severe blackouts in 2020 and responded with politically and financially difficult decisions: He extended California’s last nuclear plant beyond its planned closure date next year and opted to keep online three aging gas-fired power plants in Southern California that were slated for retirement last year.

Thanks to those resources, plus a battery boom and a hydropower buffer from brimming reservoirs filled by last year’s heavy rains, state energy officials aren’t too worried about blackouts from power shortages this year — so long as wildfires don’t knock out transmission lines and cut off power imports.

But the stable outlook has renewed calls from environmental justice advocates to permanently close the three gas-fired plants in Ormond Beach, Long Beach and Huntington Beach that the state keeps at the ready for power emergencies.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance — which fought the state’s extension plan last year by crowding and protesting in agency hearing rooms — is again urging lawmakers to shut down the plants, known as once-through cooling plants because they circulate ocean water to moderate temperatures.

“The communities near those once-through cooling power plants are communities of color and environmental justice communities who are the most burdened by pollution,” said Mari Rose Taruc, CEJA’s energy justice director. “And we know pollution spikes are extreme when they turn them on.”

Davis said times have changed since the outages during his term — specifically, utilities now have authority to perform limited shutoffs, known as public safety power shutoffs, to reduce fire risks.

Pacific Gas and Electric announced it could shut off power in parts of a broad swath of its territory in Northern California today and tomorrow, and is mapping outages on its site. But that’s not the same as the rolling blackouts due to power shortages that contributed to Davis’ ouster.

Davis gave Newsom high marks for his energy decisions: “In a very mature and still progressive manner, he sort of managed the dynamics and has done a very good job given how difficult a job it is.”

Taruc isn’t as impressed.

“There’s perception, and from the governor, saying we don’t want the lights to go out, but the reality is it’s happening all the time in California already,” she said, referring to the safety shutoffs. “And the people who suffer most for that are vulnerable communities.”

IT’S TUESDAY AFTERNOON. This is California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check on California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to wventeicher@politico.com.

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

NERVE STRUCK — Legislation that would require public universities to allow homeless students to sleep in their cars overnight in some campus parking lots lost one Democrat’s vote today over a seemingly unrelated issue: Gaza protests.

University of California Student Association representatives were in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room to advocate for the bill, and one wore a shirt that read “from the river to the sea” — a controversial phrase that has been used by activists to advocate for Palestinian rights, but that critics argue implies Israel should not exist.

State Sen. Henry Stern, who is Jewish, cited the shirt among other issues when he abstained from voting on the legislation.

“I'm struggling, maybe not so much with the heart of the bill,” Stern said on the dais, but with “the context of the bill. I'm trying to look past one of your lead witnesses, the vice chair of UCSA, who just walked up here with a ‘river to the sea’ shirt telling me that my folks should be erased from the entire map.”

“That's a very hard thing to get past,” he said.

Then, Stern approached the recent UC Davis graduate who was wearing the tee, Valeria Cantor Méndez, outside the hearing room. He told her that he would have voted for the bill had it not been for the shirt, both people told Playbook.

“He came up to me and said, ‘I was going to vote “yes” on your bill, but because you’re wearing that shirt, now I’m not going to,’ and then just kept walking and left,” recalled Cantor Méndez. “It was very sudden and random.”

Stern told Playbook his abstention from voting was not just over the “offensive nature” of the shirt, but because money hasn’t been budgeted for the bill and because he harbors “a distrust for what UCSA is using their political capital on.”

“It's not a punishment, but hopefully a wake-up call that when you tell me that you want to erase Israel from the map, it's very hard to focus on what your priorities are,” Stern told Playbook.

Just last week, California Democrats killed a bill that would have granted unemployment insurance to striking workers — citing a recent strike by UC academic workers that was broadly seen as a pro-Palestinian protest. A vote on the student homelessness bill had not been finalized by this afternoon. — Rachel Bluth, Tyler Katzenberger and Blake Jones

ON THE BEATS

MOVING ON UP — State Sen. Scott Wiener’s sweeping artificial intelligence bill passed by a vote of 9-1 in the Assembly Judiciary Committee today in spite of industry groups ramping up their opposition in recent weeks.

During the hearing, Wiener pushed back against what he said were inflammatory and inaccurate statements about Senate Bill 1047, which would require developers to run safety tests on large-scale artificial intelligence models or those costing more than $100 million to train.

Silicon Valley giants including Y Combinator and the venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz have raised alarms about the legislation unduly burdening startups and potentially sending developers to prison for failure to anticipate catastrophic harm — two claims Wiener said are plainly false.

If the bill advances as expected, it will go to the Appropriations Committee. — Lara Korte

CALL TO ACTION — San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan today called on Newsom and legislative leaders to beef up drug possession charges in their recently introduced crime measure that rivals another similar initiative on the ballot.

Proposition 2, as the counter-measure would be named if it passes the Legislature, puts Mahan in an awkward position. He was one of the first progressive mayors to support the other crime measure backed by district attorneys and retailers, which Newsom and legislative leaders hope will stumble with their alternative plan on the ballot. Mahan has not yet indicated whether he’ll support or oppose Prop 2.

Although Mahan said in an Instagram livestream today that Prop 2 took “some steps forward,” he worried the measure took “a giant leap backward” by not strengthening possession charges for drugs like fentanyl or methamphetamines to include a forced treatment or jail time ultimatum after multiple offenses.

“It is neither compassionate nor progressive to leave people to die on our streets,” he said. — Tyler Katzenberger

What We're Reading

— Don’t look now, but: President Joe Biden has some post-debate polling woes. Three-quarters of U.S. voters think Democrats have a better chance of winning the 2024 presidential election without Biden at the top of the ticket, according to a CNN poll released today. (CNN)

Biden’s lackluster performance also threatens to put reliably blue states like Virginia, Maine, Minnesota and New Mexico into play, a leaked poll from Democratic data firm OpenLabs found. Politicians viewed as potential alternatives waiting in the wings ran ahead of Biden in every battleground state polled — including two Californians, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Newsom, as well as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. (Puck)

— Plus, a cold shoulder: California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is on blast for skipping oversight hearings on the state’s insurance market crisis. (San Francisco Chronicle)

AROUND THE STATE

— Los Angeles’ population is aging fast, and it’s transforming a city that for years has emulated an aura of youth. (Los Angeles Times)

— The last segment of California’s proposed high-speed rail line between the Bay Area and Los Angeles just received environmental clearance. (The Mercury News)

— The McCain fire near Boulevard has burned over 1,000 acres and forced evacuations for a resort near the California-Mexico border. (San Diego Union-Tribune)

— A massive deficit, a pending sale of the Oakland Coliseum site and last-minute spending changes are dragging out Oakland’s budget talks. (KQED)

— compiled by Tyler Katzenberger

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