💾 Archived View for gemini.patatas.ca › posts › open-earth-foundation-ca-legislation-update.gmi captured on 2024-09-29 at 00:28:29. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2024-09-21
In Part 2 of A Deep Dive Into the World of the OpenEarth Foundation[1], posted on 2024-06-13, I noted an odd aspect of California Senate Bill 253, seeing as how the person credited as the bill's chief architect, Catherine Atkin, is pretty chummy with at least one potential beneficiary:
"Interestingly, SB-253 also requires the California Air Resources Board to contract out the work of building and operating a reporting platform, rather than the state board running something in-house. There are some specific stipulations, too: this 'reporting organization' must be a non-profit, must currently operate in the US, and must have experience doing this in California. Seems like that would narrow down the options quite a bit!"
So for the past few months, I've been sporadically checking in on CARB's meeting minutes, wondering when they'd end up announcing a contract.
Well, a funny thing happened. Someone in Governor Newsom's office (or maybe someone at CARB?) must also have thought there was something fishy going on with the contracting requirement. And on June 28th, when Newsom requested four changes to the bill, one of them was to let CARB decide whether or not to contract with a reporting organization.[2]
Initially, Scott Wiener rejected the changes. To be fair, one of Newsom's other requests was to delay the emissions reporting requirements start date by two years! At any rate, negotiations continued over the next couple of months, and a new bill, SB-219, was introduced as a way to amend SB-253.[3]
Good news: in SB-219, CARB has been given discretion around whether or not to contract out the reporting organization duties. There's a small downside: they now have until July 2025 to make that decision, rather than by the end of 2024, as the original bill mandated - so it looks like I'm gonna have to keep checking those meeting minutes after all! Thankfully the timeline for companies to start reporting emissions went unchanged, though.
SB-219 was passed by the Senate on August 31 (the final day of session), and as of September 16, it's sitting on Newsom's desk awaiting his signature.
For anyone curious, there's a pretty good overall rundown of California's recent climate-related legislative action - and inaction - here:
Far too many carbon accounting loopholes still. But it'll be harder to fool a public that knows what those loopholes are.
[1] A Deep Dive Into the World of the OpenEarth Foundation, Part 2: Mission