SFPUC affirms City's 'oppose unless amended' position on AB 1110, adds Clean Power SF reference

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission voted to affirm the City and County of San Francisco's "oppose unless amended" position on Assembly Bill 1110 after staff warned the bill's greenhouse-gas disclosure approach could conflict with renewable-portfolio standard accounting and harm Clean Power SF and the Hetch Hetchy hydro valuation.

Barbara Hale, Assistant General Manager for Power, explained that AB 1110 would prescribe a method for disclosing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity sources that is not aligned with current RPS treatment and would prohibit carrying forward renewable attributes from year to year. "Under current law, RPS allows you to take renewable attributes from one year that exceed what you need and apply them for subsequent years," Hale said. "Under Assemblymember Ting's proposed language we would be unable to retain the value of the renewable attributes... that could cost us about $10,000,000 a year to replace Hetch Hetchy attributes in some years."

Commissioners amended the resolution's recitals to explicitly reference investments in the Hetch Hetchy power system and the City's Community Choice Aggregation program (Clean Power SF) before voting to affirm the city's position. Public commenters from clean-energy and climate groups urged the PUC to press for stronger protections for community choice aggregation and to account for methane leaks and other upstream emissions in greenhouse-gas accounting.

The motion, as amended, carried on a voice vote. Staff said they will continue working with the Assemblymember's office and the City's legislative committee on amendments and supporting materials for commissioners.

The Commission recorded its vote to send the amended resolution as an affirmation of the City's legislative position.