All right. Hello, everyone. Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm going to get everyone seated. Thank you so much. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I want to say you've all been waiting all week for this amazing event. And you are here. Congratulations.
Thank you so much. And yes, welcome to Climate Week, obviously, and all kidding aside. Welcome to New York for this incredible week of action. So that is our theme, not only for the week before this session. I'm Angela Barranco. I'm the Executive Director of North America for Climate Group. Really, I'm so pleased to welcome you all here today.
So today, we are doing our Energizing America session. What does that actually mean? You -- none of you in this room will be surprised something massive has happened over the last year to really accelerate and jumpstart U.S. action on climate. The IRA, the IIJA various bills, all of the work that has gone into by many of you in this room into jump-starting our green energy economy and frankly, transforming the green energy economy into the economy. We're all here now a year after IRA, I'm sure many of you celebrated in the last week thinking about how do we actually navigate this transition.
A lot of the programs don't open on day 1. There's a lot of infrastructure that has required to get those programs up and running. We're going to spend some time today talking with some pretty incredible folks from across the United States, private sector, public sector, states, federal government who are in the middle of the conversation right now today.
So we want to make sure that also this session is not just talk. Now I know we spend a lot of speeches, there's a lot of cocktail parties. There's a lot of lovely moments that we all spend, right? But the most important thing is for folks who take something out of this conversation, move the ball forward, understand what you need to do today, tomorrow, next week, the following month.
And then let's make sure that we all talk about it, stay accountable and work together to get that done. So we're not going to do that without the private sector. We're not going to do that without the public sector. It's going to require sustainable investment, innovation and a focus on communities most impacted by climate change, which also happened to also be historically disinvested.
We have an incredible lineup of speakers today, Brenda Mallory from White House CEQ. We have Christine Harada, Tommy Boudreaux, experts from Apple and Edison you are all here to see these incredible leaders, and we are just so happy and so excited to welcome them. There are many others, including John Podesta.
These leaders are not just talking. They are spearheading many of the various elements that is required for implementation of IRA. So with that, we are adding a little thing to the program, I know a little breaking news. There was just this last week, juggle my notes for a second. The signing of SB 253 in California. And for those who don't know, milestone bill for corporate transparency is the first emissions Disclosure Bill at the state level, tackling greenhouse gas emissions.
So we're going to roll up our sleeves, work together to get things done. And with that, I'm going to introduce Senator Weiner -- Senator Scott Weiner to join me on stage to have a conversation.
We have a little California cheering group here.
This session, which is very short was build as a fireside chat. And I'm offering a price here and now to anybody who will come up with an alternative to fireside chat because we don't burn anything anymore do well. All right. It's my honor and pleasure to be here today to introduce someone who is leading the charge at the federal level to do something very difficult, which is to implement 2 pieces of the policy of the Biden-Harris administration, which some people think are perhaps in contradiction with each other.
And so we're going to probe that question a little bit.
Thanks. Great conversation. I'm Bill Ritter, Chair of the Board for the Climate Group North America, and I'm going to introduce my panel now. Folks will come up, Christine Harada. She's at the Office of Budget and Management as a Senior Adviser on Federal Procurement, Pedro Pizarro, President and CEO of Edison International; Sarah Chandler, VP of Environment and Supply Chain Innovation at Apple. She says she did not her pick her own title. Senator Henry Stern from California represents Ventura County and L.A. County and Tommy Boudreaux, the Deputy Secretary of Interior. That's our panel. Come on up, folks.
You guys kind of roll deep. So it's okay. Senator Weiner I want to make sure those folks know who -- the breadth of the work that you work on. You've represented San Francisco and the California State Senate since 2016. You have focused laser-like on climate in housing, land use, transportation, clean energy deployment and permitting reform.
But I know have just a few minutes to really talk about this landmark bill and your leadership and many of others in California. So I will just kick it off with saying Inside Climate News called this policy, the most significant climate-related legislation to pass in the United States since the Inflation Reduction Act. Tell us why it's a big deal.
Great. Well, thank you so much. And I just want to emphasize this is an incredible team effort with 3 years of very intensive work against this tidal wave of corporate opposition, not all corporations, but the corporations that don't want to change.
I just want to really acknowledge California one of our sponsors Carbon Accountable and some of my colleagues who are here, Senator Henry Stern, Ben Allen, Josh Becker, Lena Gonzalez are an amazing team effort. And this is really going to unleash so much corporate innovation because the bill doesn't say, this is how you have to reduce your carbon emissions, it's you figure it out, but we're going to -- you're going to be transparent about what your carbon emissions are, including from your supply chain.
And so you can't just contract out your carbon emissions to suppliers. You have to disclose all of it. And there's an implementation phase that's about 2.5 years until Scope 3 goes into effect. So it gives them time to clean things up before they have to disclose. And I think this will be a game changer pushing and incentivizing corporate America to do what a number of corporations like Salesforce and Apple and others are already doing, and it's very exciting.
So I think I mean, just from the corporate action side, it just seems like a huge step forward. Do you think that other jurisdictions, other -- how do you lead in terms of others? And who's going to leverage this policy?
So what's great about it is the bill applies to both publicly traded and privately held because the SEC has to be limited to publicly traded. We're doing privately held corporations with gross annual revenue of $1 billion or more. We estimate that there's about 5,500 corporations who are doing business in California. They might be U.S.-based. They might be based in another country.
But if they're doing business in California, they have to disclose 5,500, that's a lot. And so we hope that other states will also do this. I know there have already been some efforts in other states and hopefully, there will be that momentum. And I hope the SEC can really get it together and pass a strong rule and all this together could just -- I mean this bill in and of itself will be a game changer with 5,500 large corporations. But if we can keep that momentum in other jurisdictions, it will become truly comprehensive.
Sort of digging a little bit into what's different about this rule than the federal rule right? So SEC has been pursuing some of the rule since 2021. Why did you go this route? What's different? And what's so special about California really spearheading this?
Well, in an ideal world, this -- there will just be one comprehensive strong federal standard. But we know that it is going to be hard. And so just like when Donald Trump killed off in federal net neutrality rules, we passed the net neutrality law in California.
And so here, the SEC rule, again, before any changes are made to it, is for publicly traded. So that unfortunately requires filling in that hole for privately held companies. The SEC's definition of Scope 3 or the Scope -- of Scope 3 is more limited than ours. We require full scope 3 under the GHG protocols.
Now the SEC, I believe, does have a lower threshold. We're at $1 billion in annual gross revenue. The SEC is a little bit lower than that. But I think what we're doing has a breadth to it, probably can also -- depending on what the courts do potentially we need state action because the red states have already made clear that if the SEC passes that they will file lawsuits challenging the SEC's authority to do it under that made up doctrine -- made up -- whatever it's called the delegation doctrine that they just made up out of whole cloth unless Congress explicitly says the agency you can do it, and it cannot.
Hopefully, that will get rid of that in the future. But for now, that's what the Supreme Court has been saying. And so there's some -- that legal uncertainty there shouldn't be, but with this court you never know. So it's good to cover all of our bases at the federal level in California and other states and just be on offense.
When it comes to climate action, when it comes to ESG, when it comes to corporate innovation, we need to constantly be on offense and not just playing defense against Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and Ken Paxton, all these other [indiscernible]. We need to be on offense, offense, offense and make them defend against what we're doing.
And I was going to ask you a little bit about the opposition. There was even some opposition within California and folks who weren't necessarily onboard, but tell us in the last minute that we have. How -- I love this idea of we're going to push, push, push, and that's what we have to do. So how would you answer maybe some of the major points against this?
So to be clear, one of our strengths we had a lot of corporate corporations that were supporting the bill in all sorts of different sectors. So we -- and so when the other side -- when the opposition would say, this is impossible to implement or this is going to cost $14 quadrillion, all of which was false. We could point to, well, if the amalgamated bank is doing it and if all of these apparel and footwear companies are doing it and if Apple is doing it and if Microsoft and Dignity Health are doing it, then obviously, it can be done and it's reasonable.
But we had the California Chamber of Commerce, the Western States Petroleum Association, the American Petroleum Association, the bankers. So every few days, there was a new piece of inaccurate information that they were spreading around the bill. And so especially about Scope 3 and just making things up and trying to confuse members, and I'm so grateful to my colleagues for seeing through that and being willing to take a hard bow on the bill.
And fundamentally, they were not actually concerned about implementation or cost because they knew that wasn't an issue. They were -- they don't want to lift up the hood and actually show the public which corporations are walking the walk and which are actually just talking the talk. And they know some corporations we embarrassed and that they didn't want to admit that, so they made up other things. I do just also want to thank publicly Mary Nichols, formerly running the California Air Resources Board, who was a wonderful, wonderful resource and cheerleader for the bill.
Senate Weiner, we have to close there, but thank you for your leadership. Thank you for joining us here today. And I know there will be a lot more conversation about this to come. So...
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next up [indiscernible] to join the conference.
First of all, I'll just ask you, since you are obviously playing a key role as a Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in implementing both the environmental robust standards that this administration has worked for and also the expediting of clean energy projects. How do you make these 2 things happen at once? How do you navigate the tensions?
First of all, thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about this issue, which I know is front and center on many people's minds. I think first of all, just stepping back a minute and recognizing that we have such a transformational opportunity at this point because of what the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have afforded us in terms of being able to really change the clean energy economy.
And so it's very important so the President to everyone in the administration that we are successful at actually doing projects, getting the projects built. And so this administration has been laser focused from the beginning on trying to ensure that we have expedited permitting procedures that we are organizing ourselves as the federal government in a way that allows us to coordinate and to deal with some of the hurdles that had existed in the past.
But also it's really important that we are making sure that we're making smart decisions, decisions that really reflect what the environmental information is telling us, decisions that actually take into consideration what communities want and that we are engaging with communities. So that's our anchor. And one of the things that the Inflation Reduction Act did that no other stature has done before, is it actually gave us money for permitting.
We got $1 billion in that law for permitting. And so we are deploying that all across the government, both in terms of hiring staff, but also in having the technology that's necessary to help advance our efforts. So to us that these things all come together to make it possible. And we are seeing on the ground that projects are actually moving more quickly that when agencies start off with engagement procedures that actually are implemented early and continue throughout the process that, in fact, you would have less issues, you also have less trouble from the community.
So you've identified a couple of major challenges in terms of technology adoption and policy hurdles that are embedded in many different laws and different levels of government. How do you see within these various complexities, really the most important opportunities as well as the biggest challenges that you're facing?
Yes. I mean, I guess, the point is that we are blessed to have an approach on our clean energy building that is very different than has happened before, right? We don't -- we're not getting money in one path through a traditional grant programs.
And so the system that IRA has created and then bolstered by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law really requires that we're working across the board, across sectors that we're engaging people in ways that I don't think that other laws have required. And in some ways, that itself is its power. It's -- it creates some obstacles for sure but it's also its power. And I will say one thing that I want to just announce as a way to help people understand how serious we are about moving forward, this summer, the Fiscal Responsibility Act was passed.
That was the first time that NEPA has actually been changed in statute. There was some [indiscernible] about that. But it did include a number of efficiency procedures and today, DOT and DOE are announcing how they're already adopting efficiency measures that are going to help us streamline the projects.
There's both -- DOT is actually adopting an efficiency measure, which is called the categorical exclusion that DOE has in its program. And similarly, an approach is being taken by [ commerce ] adopting DOE measure and so we're already making sure that these things are happening on the ground.
So we're back to the days of reinventing government in some way where we are getting out of our own way and we're trying to things happen. Well, speaking of other important initiatives, I couldn't have you here without asking you about the Justice40 Initiative because that's another key the policies of this administration.
And you are obviously, yourself, a role model here. But the goal was to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of federal Clean Energy as well as climate and other investments to directly to disadvantage communities. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that this is where California had a leadership role back a couple of years ago, but this is -- you're doing this in a whole different scale and with a whole lot more money.
So I'd love to hear what you can tell us at this point about any tangible differences that you're seeing already disadvantaged communities.
Yes, absolutely. And yes, state leadership matters. So I love hearing the discussion before because it does help to have those models out there. I guess, what I would say, number one, is it's very important to both the President and the Vice President that as we are moving into this new clean energy economy that it is an economy that benefits all people that we are looking for and focused on creating a Just Transition.
And that's what Justice40 is about. It's making sure that the clean air, the clean water and the healthy community infrastructure that we've created for decades actually benefits everyone. And so what Justice40 allows is commitment of 40% to disadvantaged communities is for us to make sure on the front end that we are prioritizing where dollars are going. So as an example, last week, I was in Iowa with Secretary Vilsack, and where he was announcing a $1 billion program that is focused on making sure that trees are replaced because trees are a really important part of climate.
They're an important part of reducing temperatures in neighborhoods, and we know that there is a disproportionate trees expense within communities. And so for that program, they use The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, which is a tool we created to help identify who the disadvantaged communities are to issue these grants. So 385 brands are being given all across the country, all 50 states and their all targeting communities that are under that grant. So that's one example.
The electric vehicle program that DO -- that EPA is doing, right, school buses also is a great program. I would have the chance to be in Connecticut just a few months ago, where there's a technical school there that actually helps students to both understand how to work in this new economy, to have jobs in this new economy that was getting like 28 electric school buses that would be taking kids to and from school and it would also be taking them to and from their jobs. And all across the country, those kinds of programs are also being implemented.
It's fun that you're able to be a part of that?
That is the best part. Actually, when you go into these communities and you hear the excitement and enthusiasm about the work. It is just wonderful.
So the federal government itself is also tasked by the President and Vice President was setting a gold standard for sustainability practices and no easy task given the breadth and in some cases, the age of buildings and other issues.
So talk a little bit about ways in which you think the federal government itself could set or be a model really of sustainability.
Yes. Yes. Again, another really important area portfolio where the President, again, is focused on having -- showing leadership. We're not only showing leadership internationally, we're showing leadership across the country and making sure that we ourselves are kind of walking the talk, right?
And so -- and the President created a Sustainability Executive Order early in the administration, which actually set the targets for the agencies for the federal government in terms of [ EVs ] , in terms of energy, in terms of our -- eventually having a net zero operations. That's a 2050 goal that we're all working towards.
And so all of these things are actually influencing the work that we're doing. There's a Buy Clean initiative that's very important in the administration, which allows us to focused on materials, having materials that are less carbon in them, steel and asphalt and glass.
And that is something that we're doing again, and we're doing in partnership with state and local governments, where they're also working towards this goal. Another place is buildings, right? So we issued a Federal Building Standard -- Performance Standard. And so again, all across the government, we are really focused on reducing the carbon in buildings, changing the energy practices installing heat pumps, changing our energy mix.
And just a couple of months ago, we had an announcement at Ronald Reagan, which is the largest federal building in D.C. and it is one of at least 100 buildings all across the country in which these actions are being taken. And so another exciting thing that's happening.
Okay. I am being told that I have to wrap up this conversation, which I would love to continue, but I have to ask you at a personal level, the dreaded legacy question. But as the first African American Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, you do get to be a role model and the set precedents just by virtue of being there, doing the job. So when you think about where you want to see things after you leave, what is the most important thing that would really like to leave behind.
Yes. So first of all, legacy really hard thing to even focus on, but I do think just presence matters, and I've seen that, especially when I'm in school, when I go across the country, I'm talking to students, their excitement to know that they could be me, that's real, and they talk about it, and they talk about it when they're 9 and they're 10, and so I actually take that quite seriously. I think for me, personally, we have a President, who's already shown his interest in conservation legacy. And so we are on track to have a very substantial president in terms of what we are able to accomplish on conservation.
I would love to be the person who establishes that permitting program that shows that can actually have fast, efficient projects and approaches at the same time that we're protecting the environment and we're protecting people. So those are 2 things that I would lift up.
That's terrific. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us today. Thank you.
Maybe you're supposed to double buckle there, boys.
Here you go. Does everybody have a microphone too?
Now you do. Okay. So it is an important conversation and really a follow-on to the conversation with Mary and Brenda about everything that the federal government has tackled. But -- whether it's a federal issue or a state or a local issue, here's what we know. In order to get to the kind of goals that have been set by utilities, by the power sector, we're going to have to triple the pace at which we're out renewables over the next 7 or 8 years.
And then we're going to have to quadruple the pace again by 2050 to really get to where we're going. It's a daunting task, if you think about all that's going to be required of that and one of the issues around that is how do you deploy that? How do you deploy renewables and storage at that scale? How do you build the transmission out? How do you do it on private land? How do you do on public land? And we've got this panel of experts that are going to help us think about that.
So the first question is really a question that I want everybody to answer. We got I think 44 minutes that says, yes, that's good. That's better than I thought. So we tot 45 minutes to talk about this, but just take a couple of minutes from your own perspective, Christine. I'm going to start with you and just ask you this question. I want to make sure I get it right for everybody. Can each of you briefly describe what you see as the most pressing action to accelerating the deployment of clean energy projects. What's the sort of the thing you would prioritize from your perspective in deploying clean energy projects around the United States?
Well, so thank you so much, firstly, for having me here, and it's an excellent question because depending on your role, there's so many different things that you can do. I've had the good fortune of having served as a Chief Sustainability Officer for the federal government. I was also recently head of -- organizing a lot of the permitting efforts. And currently, right now, as I sit in the office of Federal Procurement Policy, I am a buyer.
So with my most recent hat on, there's a lot of work that we could be -- should be doing and are doing with respect to actually sending the signal out to the markets. We are putting in regulations and rules that signal that we are very serious about buying renewable energy, ensuring and holding corporations accountable for decarbonizing their own operations, et cetera, as well as entering into contracts, many agencies are entering into PPAs for procuring clean energy.
Of course, we are the power marketing authorities that are also working on this as well. And so in our current role, again, very much is around ensuring that we're sending that signal to the market. We are serious. We're here to buy or got dollars against various contracts, et cetera. With my previous hat from a permitting perspective, and I'm sure Tommy will talk to this a lot more in depth than I will, but as Brenda just mentioned as well, we are putting in place a lot of the effort and the infrastructure on our end to ensure that we're able to permit these projects and get them build steel in the ground, concrete and around boots on the ground as quickly as possible to ensure that we're actually being able to deliver on these key projects.
Thanks. And so I had the real benefit of working with a group of power sector CEOs and with environmental NGOs for a couple of years. Pedro was one of them, and you would really regard him as kind of one of the good kids in the class. When you talk about utility CEOs and the things that they're trying to do to really move the ball forward. So Pedro from your experience as a CEO of a major utility, do you have a priority that you have in mind as a way to move forward the deployment of clean energy projects?
Thanks, Bill, and it's great being here. I'll pick up where Christine left off permitting and siting. So when you think about the signal...
Permitting and siting?
Permitting and siting. When you think about the signals that the federal government has sent, they're terrific, right? We have the IRA, we have IIJA. We have the CHIPS and Science Act. So a lot of investment flowing into the economy. The challenge is getting that steel in the ground. Today, when you think about the grid, like, my peer companies across Edison Electric Institute, which I chair this year.
Last year, we invested $150 billion in the U.S. economy for the power sector, $30 billion of that was sort of transmission. So money is flowing, but it takes 10 to 12 years to build a transmission line, if you're lucky. Actually, it takes about 2 years to build a transmission line. It takes a lot of years to get permitting and siting. We've had some progress at the federal level and the Fiscal Responsibility Act included some reforms to the NEPA process, which are helpful. In my home state of California, credit to the state legislature because they now have a number of bills on the governor's desk that will significantly help with permitting and siting authority as well. But this is a critical one.
And this morning, my company released our latest white paper, it's go count down to 2045. It's looking at how California, the whole economy, not just us, can get to net zero by 2045. I'll give you one [ soundbite ] from that paper. But given the amount of grid that will be needed to connect renewables and storage with places to be electrified in the economy, the pace of transmission development will have to quadruple relative to historical levels. The pace of distribution wire development and the more local stuff will have to be tenfold what it's been historically. So permitting and siting, I think, is going to be the real bottleneck that we need to continue to work on. Some progress, but more help needed.
Thanks, Pedro. Sarah. So as a representative of Apple and Apple has been out front on this issue for a very long time. I know both on the project side and the transmission side, do you guys have like a priority in mind for what is the #1 thing to accelerate this deployment?
Yes, I think I'd say scale and quality. I come from a supply chain background. So that's always forefront in my mind. But you've probably seen the recent news that Apple announced our first carbon-neutral products last week. A big part of that was renewable energy.
So getting suppliers to run on renewable energy, getting them signed up for renewable energy, we're able to cover the entire manufacturing energy load through Apple and our suppliers with investments in sourcing and renewables.
Now we need to do all the product, so we need scale. We need this to move faster, and we needed to move globally. It's something that we've seen a lot of positive trends in. We've got a lot of traction there. We have a lot of suppliers signing up, but we need them to actually be able to run a renewable faster.
Thanks, Tommy. So the American West particularly has a lot of federal land. I think Idaho was 66%; Nevada is 85%, Colorado is 45%. And we also have a lot of renewable energy, permitting renewable energy on federal lands, particularly Department of Interior Lands can often take time and permitting transmission. Outside the window that we have for the kinds of goals we set and ambitions we set for emission reduction, how's the Department of Interior thinking about their role in accelerating this? And what would your priority be?
Agree completely with Pedro that when you ask what is the #1 thing from a deployment perspective is transmission -- or it is on the transmission side. And there are some statistics showing that without dramatically increasing or permitting and deployment of transmission a large percentage of the investments through IRA, bill, et cetera, could be left on the table. That's a huge challenge from a permitting perspective.
