The California Environmental Quality Act - Ethan Elkind

Ethan Elkind is the Director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law and leads the Climate Change and Business Research Initiative on behalf of the University of California at Berkeley and University of California at Los Angeles Schools of Law. He taught at the UCLA law school’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic and served as an environmental law research fellow. He has a background in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), climate change law, environmental justice, and other environmental law topics. In 2005, he co-founded The Nakwatsvewat Institute, Inc., a Native American nonprofit organization that provides alternative dispute resolution services and support for tribal governance, justice, and educational institutions. His book Railtown on the history of the modern Los Angeles Metro Rail system was published by University of California Press in January 2014. Ethan is also a regular host of the weekly call-in radio show “State of the Bay” on the San Francisco NPR affiliate KALW 91.7 FM, airing Monday nights at 6pm PT.

This episode is focused on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which was passed at roughly the same time the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). They were signed by Republican icons Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon respectively.  Mr. Elkind speaks on topics including:

• Successes and failures over CEQA's 40-year history
• CEQA's impact on the schedule of new transmission for renewable energy initiatives.
• The trade-offs between public engagement and the extent to which local, county and state permitting processes can slow projects that help and hurt the environment alike.
• How the US has a problem with doing large projects, especially in large transportation projects and how this is described in his recent report, Getting Back on Track: Policy Solutions to Improve California Rail Transit Projects

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Episode Transcript

Greg Williams (00:10):
Thanks for joining us for another episode
climate money watchdog where weinvestigate and report on how
federal dollars are being spenton mitigating climate change and
protecting the environment. Weare a private, nonpartisan,
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(00:31):
please visit us at climate moneywatchdog.org To learn more about
us and consider making adonation. My name is Greg
Williams and I learned toinvestigate and report on waste,
fraud and abuse in federalspending. While working at the
project on government oversight,or Pogo 30 years ago, I learned
to do independent research aswell as to work with
confidential informants orwhistleblowers to uncover things

(00:55):
like overpriced spare parts,like the infamous 300 $435
hammers, and weapon systems thatdidn't work as advertised. I was
taught by my co host Dean eraserwho founded Pogo in 1981, and
founded climate money watchdogwith me last year, Dina has
spent 40 years investigating andsometimes recovering millions of

(01:18):
dollars wasted by the DefenseDepartment and other branches of
government, both at Pogo. And asan independent journalist, as an
author, and as a professionalinvestigator. Our guest tonight,
Ethan Elkind is the director ofclimate of the climate program
at the Center for Law energy inthe environment at Berkeley Law

(01:38):
School, and leads the climatechange and Business Research
Initiative on behalf of theUniversity of California at
Berkeley, and University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles
schools of law. He taught at theUCLA law schools Frank G. Wells,
Environmental Law Clinic andserved as an environmental law
research fellow. He has abackground in the California

(02:00):
Environmental Quality Act,climate change law,
environmental justice, and otherenvironmental law topics. In
2005, he co founded and Iapologize in advance for
mispronouncing this name, theNatkwatsvewat Institute, which
is a Native American nonprofitorganization. And I'm going to

(02:22):
pause for a minute and let Ethanactually pronounce that name
correctly. Sure.

Ethan Elkind (02:28):
It's Nattkwatsvewat Institute it's a
Hopi word.

Greg Williams (02:31):
Okay, thank you.
So they provide alternativedispute resolution services, and
support for tribal governance,justice, and educational
institutions. His book rail townon the history of the modern Los
Angeles metro rail system waspublished by the University of
California Press in January of2014. And Ethan is a regular

(02:52):
host of the weekly call andradio show, state of the bay on
San Francisco NPR affiliate K Lw at 91.7. FM, airing Monday
nights at 6pm. Pacific time. Heholds a Bachelor of Arts from
Brown University, a Juris Doctorfrom UCLA, and has been on the

(03:14):
UCLA UCLA law faculty since2006. So welcome, Ethan. Thank
you. Thank you for having me.

Dina Rasor (03:25):
And I'm Dina Rasor, our executive director of
climate money project. And yes,I hired Greg right out of
college, gave him his first job.
And it's just been so marvelousto be able to work with somebody
that you've known for that long.
And today's guest I'm reallyexcited about because we've
we've done had a lot of peoplethat talk technology, a lot of

(03:48):
people who talk about, you know,government, federal and
government laws and a little bitin government policy and the
infighting and what's bad andwhat's not. And I was really
happy to finally get a lawyer onWell, we had a lawyer on we were
talking about sec enquetelawsuits, but then which I had

(04:09):
done before, and I'm reallyhappy to have a lawyer and then
more about the fact that we'regoing to talk about California
law and and the reason that I'm,like talking about California
besides the fact that Ethan Iboth live here. Greg's in New
York. But I really thinkCalifornia has been the one that

(04:36):
leads the country on this kindof thing about people don't
really realize that when I wasin college, which is a long time
ago, Jerry Brown was governorthe first time the young Jerry
Brown governorship not the oldDarren Brown, and he put in some
pretty amazing things that waslike the Energy Star appliances.

(04:56):
People don't realize that thatwas a very you know, Little
controversial and radical thing,but it was picked up nationwide
and has, you know, done anenormous amount of help of
trying to lower electricityneeds and whatever. And also he
he was the one that said if youput a solar panel on your roof,

(05:18):
and pg&e has to buy whatever youdon't use, and that was a, that
was also pg&e did not like thatat all. Pacific Gas and
Electric, but they had to do it.
And that started the whole solarindustry in California way back,
I should say, graduated 1978.

(05:38):
That's a long time ago. And soCalifornia has been leading the
nation on this. Okay, Ethan,thank you for being here. I
really appreciate it. And I knowthat you have expertise in
various areas, we're going totouch on some of them. So if you
could explain the si si QCEQAAct, which is the California

(06:04):
Environmental Quality Act, andwhat role what role it plays in
California Employmentmitigation, and both public
agencies in California? Sure,yeah. For some background on
that.

Ethan Elkind (06:17):
Sure. So it's often referred to by lawyers and
those who deal with it as Sequa,just CQA, the California
Environmental Quality Act, asyou said, and I guess, maybe
just to kind of put this incontext, why we why it might be
worthwhile to talk about Sequa.
When we're talking about howwe're spending climate dollars,
I don't think of the challengearound spending climate dollars

(06:37):
as one necessarily of corruptionor out outright waste. Although
there may be some of that it'smore that we have so many layers
of bureaucracy, and so manydifferent governmental entities
when it comes to deploying thisclimate cash that we now have
from the federal government fromtwo different laws that have

(06:57):
passed the infrastructure act,and then this recent inflation
Reduction Act, and all the moneythat California is spending on
climate change, it all gets sortof chewed up, and in some ways
kind of lit on fire, through allthese different bureaucratic
processes. And Sequa issometimes one of those big sort
of bureaucratic process where alot of projects go to die, and a

(07:22):
lot of time and money can getwasted. That said, I'm not
necessarily an opponent ofSequa, but I'll just sort of
describe what it does. And thenlisteners can make up their own
mind. It was actually a nationleading law in and of itself,
that California passed actuallywas signed by then Governor
Ronald Reagan, obviously noflaming liberal. And the idea
was really a good government,one, that before government

(07:45):
takes an action, it ought tostep back and look at what the
likely impacts of that decisionare going to be on the
environment. So that was reallythe sort of the principle behind
it. And it would force decisionmakers when they have discretion
to look at a number of differentalternatives and analyze those

(08:05):
impacts as well. And if therewere any impacts that were going
to be significant on theenvironment. And that's a legal
term, but it's also kind of anintuitive one, then the decision
makers in the public sectorentities would have to mitigate
that those impacts werefeasible. So not only was it
requiring lawmakers to analyzethe impacts, disclose those

(08:26):
impacts to the public, but alsocome up with mitigation measures
to avoid those impacts, again,where feasible, and it's a lot
of ways it's a public processtype statute, it allows the
public opportunities to look atwhat those foreseeable impacts
are going to be. And to thedelight of many lawyers, it
provides an opportunity to sueif the analysis is insufficient

(08:48):
or inadequate by the by decisionmakers. But that was the
original idea was just publicsector projects. We're going to
undergo this analysis, later oncourts have dramatically
expanded Sequa. So now itapplies to any private sector
project, because they need apermit, usually from a public
sector actor. And so it'sbasically gotten much bigger

(09:09):
than what Governor then GovernorReagan really envisioned. And so
nowadays, these environmentalimpact reports that come out of
major projects, they're as thickas a phone book, if not multiple
phone books, sometimes theenvironmental review process can
take years and get tied up inlitigation for years. And
developers basically hate it.

(09:30):
It's a mixed record, I thinkoverall stopped some bad
projects or improved badprojects. So they're not as bad.
But now that we're trying to geta lot of climate friendly
projects built, it's reallyraised the ire of a lot of
climate advocates, becausethey're trying to get
transmission lines built torenewable energy facilities or
trying to get, you know, windturbines or solar panels cited
or infill development, you know,apartments and your transit and

(09:51):
see what can be a stumblingblock. So that process can add
up and I'll just give you onekind of final anecdote here
about Sequa. I was talking to Tothe head of the California High
Speed Rail Authority, which isour kind of present day
boondoggle project inCalifornia, that's supposed to
be anywhere from a 60 to $90billion project couldn't have
been a lot more. But to date,they've already spent $1 billion

(10:15):
on environmental review. Andthat's not even counting all the
legal fees to defend theCalifornia High Speed Rail
authorities environmentalreview, and I'm not opposed
environmental review for highspeed rail. I just think that
could have been done for a lotcheaper than a billion dollars,
which is a really pretty sizablepercentage of the project. So
I'll just kind of close withthat anecdote. And happy to

(10:35):
answer questions you have aboutsecret. It's very complicated,
but that hopefully gave you thenuts and bolts of it.

Greg Williams (10:41):
Do you maybe want to take a moment to put it in
context by comparing it to theNational Environmental Policy
Act and the environmental impactstatements that that requires
that? Yeah, a federal law? Yeah,almost at the same time?

Ethan Elkind (10:56):
Yeah, I think that they really sort of went hand in
hand, there's a number of statesthat have their own, they're
called Baby knee buzz. So NEPAis the national version of this,
as you mentioned, and the bigdifference between Sequa and
NEPA is that Sequa requiresmitigation. So NEPA you may
find, and this is for federalprojects, federally permitted
projects, you may find there's asignificant impact, but all you

(11:18):
have to do underneath isdisclose it. That said, that is
fodder for a lot of litigation.
And NEPA was probably theprimary statute that advocates
use to stop the Trumpadministration from a lot of
their administrative actions. Imean, the Trump administration
had an absolutely abysmal recordin court trying to defend their
proposed regulatory changes. Imean, they were losing at a clip
at one point about 90% of thetime. And these were almost all

(11:39):
NEPA challenges that they werecutting corners, they were
putting forth regulations thatweren't justified, and didn't
have that proper environmentalanalysis. And so that procedural
hold up really prevented theTrump administration from doing
a lot more damage to theenvironment than they otherwise
could have. But there was therewas no mitigation required, like
in California. The otherdifference is just that

(12:01):
California has its own case lawon Sequa. And so its own set of
requirements that in some casesare more robust than what you
might see at NEPA, where theregulations come out of the
White House and the courtsystems take a look at it and
come up with different decisionssometimes and what what's come
up with in in California and theCalifornia Legislature has
modified so you've got multipletimes. So there's all sorts of

(12:21):
different requirements underSequa that are different than
NEPA, but the basic processes isvery similar.

Dina Rasor (12:31):
Okay, when so we're sort of in a balancing act here.
Of course, we're an oversightwatchdog oversight organization
and everything and we but we Itotally understand the
bureaucracy, I started with thePentagon, which is the enemy of
and weapons system switches, theepitome of of over researched
and staffed and channeled. Butthere's sort of a balancing act.

(12:55):
It's kind of interesting thatthe environmental movement now
is feeling on the other side.
What you know, they've beensuing for years on things that
they didn't think were good. Andnow they're like, Oh, this is
good. And oh, we have all this.
These regulations were usedagainst everybody else. And so I
think that one of the reasons wewanted to have a podcast with

(13:16):
you is, how do you do thisbalancing act between, you know,
looking at what's going on, andusing the various acts and the
courts and everything else, thisbalancing act between speed and
effectiveness? You know, a lotof times when you have speed,
you make mistakes, or you losemy track of money. The PPP

(13:40):
program, what was it they lost40 40 million, I don't know
something ridiculous, because itwas pushed in quickly. And it
had to be because people weredying, and businesses were
failing. And this is sort of gotthat same sort of gotta move,
gotta move. Gotta move. We'reall gonna get fried, we're all
gonna get, you know, flooded. Sohow do you how in your mind, do

(14:01):
you see a good way to balancethis so that we get it done as
quickly as possible before toomuch damage is done. But I know
when there's just too muchmoney, sharks, all kinds of
sharks, not the nice Kumbaya,environmentalists, like they
think is all gonna be sharks arecircling. I know that from from

(14:22):
Pentagon money. So maybe you cangive us an idea in your in your
your background, how what youthink it's a good balancing act?
Yeah.

Ethan Elkind (14:32):
Well, I mean, in the environmental context, the
trade off is less sort of speedversus waste and more about
speed versus public input andpublic process. But I mean,
waste is, of course, a potentialoutcome, although Honestly,
we're nowhere near the point ofbeing able to spend dollars on
climate type infrastructureprojects at such a rapid rate

(14:52):
that they're, that you know, wewould make mistakes, we will
make mistakes. But I mean, we'retalking about transmission lines
that take an average of 10 to 12years to build now, so if we
could just shave off a few yearsfrom that process like that
would be considered a big win.
But environmentalists are verysplit when it comes to, you
know, really trying tostreamline that the permitting
process, because as youmentioned, you know, they've

(15:14):
been on the other side of thattrying to fight industrial
facilities, you know, timberharvesting, clear cut freeways,
oil and gas facilities. Youknow, environmentalists have
used environmental laws andthese public processes to either
stop or minimize a lot of thesepolluting projects. And now all
of a sudden, with the climatecrisis, we're trying to get a
whole lot of new industrialfacilities built, they're just

(15:36):
the kind that are, you know,essentially zero emission when
it comes to greenhouse gases,we're trying to get large scale
solar installations built andwind turbines, onshore and
offshore. In California, we'retalking about floating offshore
wind turbines, we're trying toget, like I say, more apartment
buildings built so that peopledon't have to drive so far. And
they won't have as big a housesout in a, you know, former

(15:56):
agricultural area that cost alot of money and energy to heat
and cool. So all the stuff we'retrying to build now is getting
caught up in those sameenvironmental laws are
originally designed to stop badprojects, or at least to you
know, disclose the impacts andmitigate them. So it is a tough
balance. And I think what we'vetried to do in California on
this, even though there isn'treally alignment among

(16:17):
environmentalists, someenvironmental groups are more in
favor of streamlining othersAbsolutely not. What we've tried
to do is essentially define theclass of projects that we think
are environmentally quote,unquote, good, that meet a
certain performance standard,you know, reducing greenhouse
gas emissions, potentiallyreducing the amount of driving
miles that might be associatedwith that project. They might

(16:37):
include some other metrics aswell, cost effectiveness. But if
those projects can, or theymight be built in areas that we
know, we want to see more morebuilding, like more housing in
our in our cities, not out insprawl areas. And then once a
project meets those criteria,then they're eligible for all
sorts of streamlining, sometimesfull exemptions, and we've been
doing that for a number ofdecades. If you're having infill

(16:58):
project, a small infill project,you're exempt from Sequa, that's
been on the books for quarter ofa century now. But also if
you're a larger project, sowe've actually seen some of
these sports stadia and and theApple headquarters in Cupertino,
they met a bunch ofenvironmental criteria, and then
they got fast tracked, Sequareview, immediately got it any
appeals or any any litigationwent to the court of appeals.

(17:20):
When we we've done we've takensteps like that, basically, but
it's not perfect. And we have along way to go. And there are a
lot of question marks around howeffective those processes are.

Dina Rasor (17:33):
Okay, and the other thing that, you know, as part of
what you've been talking about,we've had several guests come
on, you're talking about the thewinzeler, we all renewable, we
don't need to do all the otherthings, but almost to person,
they've said the Achilles heelis the transmission, and the
grid is not going to be able tohandle it. And, you know, that

(17:57):
is something that that there,there's also every state has a
Public Utilities Commission.
And, you know, I when when onething I heard is when we're
going to try to do all the gridconnections, be smarter, smart
grids, and smarter. So there'ssomebody has a lack of

(18:17):
electricity here and somebodyhas an excess, we can get it
there and whatever. But thenthere's Texas is not hitched to
anybody. And I think they'reprobably going to change that.
But let's talk about the the thealso the not just the permitting
process, but trying to get allthese, you know, I guess there's
50 of them, public utilityCommission's and for each state,

(18:40):
how you get that in their bag.
They're very territorial, andhow do you get them to all
cooperate so that we have anational grid like we have a
national highway?

Ethan Elkind (18:52):
Well, the transmission is definitely a big
issue. And it's less abouttrying to coordinate the grid.
Texas isn't an island, as youmentioned, its is its own its
own grid, but honestly, that'sTexas's problem. I don't think
that really hurts us a littlebit in the sense that extent, we
might want to access some oftheir extra wind energy that

(19:15):
they produce, you know, that'soff the table. But like, from a
California perspective, we'regonna get a lot of wind maybe
from Wyoming, or solar fromArizona and Nevada, maybe
geothermal from Nevada. So we'vegot a lot other states to choose
from. And it's really more of aproblem for Texas. That was one
of the issues with their bigblackouts that they're not
interconnected. But thisquestion about how we better

(19:36):
integrate our grid. I mean, it'sreally just a question of
getting those transmission linesbuilt to those prime renewable
areas. And that gets held up byall sorts of processes. So for
developers, basically thefarther they are from the
transmission line, I mean, it'san order of like 10s of millions
of dollars like every extra milethat they are from from a
transmission line with availablecapacity. So they're looking to

(19:58):
build around existing transmitMission lines. And if we want to
see renewable development inplaces that are what we would
call least conflict land, youknow, places where
environmentalists don't see alot of endangered species. And
Indian tribes don't have a lotof cultural resources, we got to
make sure transmission lines gothere. But they get held up in
part by Sequa. And NEPA. There'sa federal role for permitting.

(20:19):
But they also get held up bylocal governments and local
governments have to giveapproval for these transmission
lines, unlike, say, like anatural gas pipeline that, you
know, the federal government haspermitting authority there. So
these all get held up by localprocesses. I mean, just dozens
of agencies that have to signoff. And that's why, you know,
people celebrate that Nevada canget a transmission line built in

(20:43):
about seven years. That's likelightning fast on the
transmission world. So this is areal problem for our renewable
energy build out. And it's alittle bit distinct from the
grid, different grid operatorscoordinating, there is a push in
California to try to integrateour grid, California Independent
System Operator with otherstates in the West. But there's

(21:06):
a lot of political questionsaround that, mainly having to do
with governance that, you know,Utah joins up with our system,
they, they don't want Californiavotes on that grid operator
board to swamp them, they don'twant to lose sovereignty over
their grid unions object,because that might make it
easier to build non unionrenewable projects out of state.

(21:27):
So there's a lot of politicsthat are preventing that sort of
grid coordinator role beingbroader here in the West, like,
like it is in the Midwest, andin the Atlantic States

Dina Rasor (21:37):
is also, you know, sort of a it's sort of like a
chain, in the sense that it iswhen you think the grid you
think those giant towers thatcome over the hill, and they
have a station and it goes outbut and one thing that I'm sort
of shocked at in reading up onis that getting it from the big

(21:59):
towers down to the individualhomes, and the that part of the
grid, which you know, pg&e hasnot been good. I'm I'm sorry,
but I could take my camera outin front of my house, and look
and show you the various wiresthat are coming out and wires
leftover and everything else.
And it looks like a third worldcountry. I mean, you know, where
everybody just hitches in? AndI've been into a fancy part of

(22:22):
San Francisco where they haven'tburied the lines. And it's the
same way. And I'm like, Whydon't they bearing the lines,
even just for earthquakes. Butthat isn't it like a chain that
you could have really good gridand you have really good
substations and whatever. Butthe, the getting it out to the
people. I've had so many peopletalk about how just a little bit
of a windstorm and everythingand we've got, we've got

(22:46):
telephone poles that have metalcasings around them, because
they're probably from the 50s.
And they're leaning over anearthquake Gundry. So let's talk
about that, too. Because isn'tthat now you're talking about
getting down to individual,individual cities and counties
and everything else? And whetherand whether they'd be better to

(23:07):
bury the lines, which I think itwould be and that kind of thing.
But it isn't that another partof this that it's such, if you
break that link in the chain,the chain doesn't work.

Ethan Elkind (23:18):
Yeah, so what you're talking about is what we
call the distribution grid. Sothe transmission grid when you
have the transmission towers, abig steel towers, but then that
that's high voltage is kind ofstepped down to sort of
distribute among neighborhoods.
And then you get the wood poleutility poles. Those are what we
call the distribution grid. Andthat's what circulates the power
among neighborhoods. And we'reactually going to need huge

(23:38):
upgrades on the distributiongrid, in part because of what
we're doing to combat climatechange. So people are driving
electric vehicles now. And we'vegot about 16 17% of new vehicle
sales in California were zeroemission all electric vehicles.
So this is really starting totake hold, we know we're going
to be phasing out the sale ofnew internal combustion engine
vehicles by 2035. And that meansa lot of electric powered

(24:00):
vehicles, imagine all the energythat used to come from importing
out of state out of the country,petroleum fuel and refining it.
Now all that's going to all thedriving that you see around us
is gonna be powered by ourelectricity grid. And that means
we're gonna need a lot ofupgrades at the local
distribution level. And you'realso seeing more people having
solar panels on their roofs. Sothey're actually putting

(24:22):
electricity back into the wires,the distribution wires, which
was not really something thatwas contemplated when we
originally built thatdistribution grid. People now
I'm home batteries that they'redischarging, so we're putting a
lot of strain on thedistribution grid, we need to
upgrade it, but it's also aclimate resilience issue. You
know, just what you're gettingat in terms of burying the
poles. I mean, they're ugly, solet people want them buried just

(24:44):
you know, get them out of sight.
But from a climate resiliencestandpoint, they're sparking
wildfires. They're easilyknocked down and extreme weather
events. So we do want to burythem, you know, for resilience
purposes. But what utilitiescharged Arie these lines is
really outlandish, and thereisn't a lot of good oversight

(25:05):
over what utilities are chargingto bury the lines. I mean, I've
seen some proposals for youknow, I don't have the numbers
offhand, but it was pretty eyepopping what they were asking
for. I mean, I've seen, youknow, moving a transmission
tower, bearing those lines,maybe about 10 years ago, I
think we saw an estimate in mycommunity have something over
well over a million dollars pertower to move it. Now, there

(25:25):
certainly are costs here. But Ibelieve utilities are patting
their their bottom lines andlooking to get cost recovered,
that they're really notincurring. And it's hard for the
regulator to really have theproper oversight. So that's
really the big hassle. It's veryexpensive to bury the lines, we
could do it cheaper, but we'renot really getting the oversight
to get that done.

Dina Rasor (25:44):
So do you think that once you know, I, you talk
about, if you do it in the box,and it works, and you know,
there's there's going to be adelay, and it's hard to get
people to understand that. But Iwould think that the wind and
solar people, once they got allthis federal money in their in
their, you know, buildingquickly, and they are it's wind

(26:06):
and solar is just exploding.
That's why a lot of people saywhy are we doing things like
carbon capture, this is going tothis, this is so much cheaper,
and it's going to, you know,over over thing, but what do you
maybe the what you happen has tohappen in very much in America,
that's very true, you got tohave, you have to have some kind
of calamity, or emergency. And Iwould think that eventually

(26:28):
you're going to start justgetting, you know, they're going
to try to transmit all thisstuff. And this, they're just
start going to start gettingfailing grid. And it's scary in
California, because you know,you know, the fires and, and,
you know, in Florida, I wastalking to a friend of mine who
was went through the hurricaneand she lost electricity for a
little while. But the lines wereburied, and they were able to go

(26:49):
then their new smart lines, andthey were able to go and fix
that right away. You know, andversus there's gonna be people
two, three months, put backpulls back and everything else.
So if you think that we're goingto have to have a calamity or
the fight, or do you think thatwind and solar people are going
to get hold on the right people?

(27:09):
And also what do you think ofthat that permitting bill that
Matt mentioned, tried to getthrough and everybody screamed
and yelled, because he's stillgoing to try to do it?

Ethan Elkind (27:17):
Well, lots of lots of stuff there to talk about.
Yeah, sorry. No, no, it's good.
Well, first of all, just mentionreal quick on the on the carbon
capture piece, even if we had afull build out of renewable
energy, we're still going toneed carbon capture and storage.
Just because we've got to get tocarbon neutrality, and there's
certain fossil fuels that aregonna be really hard to
eliminate certain industrialsectors, aviation, potentially

(27:39):
ocean going vessels is going tobe pretty difficult to
decarbonize all that and we putso much fossil fuel, or
greenhouse gases, I should say,into the atmosphere, that we've
got to unwind what we've done.
So even if we were to mitigateas much as possible, which, you
know, we need to do and we'rerequired to do legally in

(28:00):
California, we're still going toneed carbon capture. And there's
different ways to do it. Some ofit is controversial. Some of it
really isn't. It's justexpensive. But we do need that.
But on your point around gridresilience, and you know, our
extreme weather events going to,you know, kind of knock some
sense into us, it's really nottotally clear to me, I mean, you

(28:20):
may see in certain communitieslike that have been devastated
by Wildfire, maybe they sort ofrebuild, you know, smart from
the start and bury those lines,or, you know, Florida the
rebuild after the hurricanethere, which was definitely a
climate, you know, exacerbatedevent, the Gulf Gulf of Mexico,
temperatures were well abovenormal, which contributed to the
flooding there. Of course, wealready have had a flood of sea

(28:41):
level rise over the lastcentury. So we're already kind
of testing your hypothesis tosome extent, that if these
extreme weather events are goingto jolt us out of our current
state, but you know, theseprocesses that we have to
upgrade our, our grid and ourgrid resilience are very
ossified and gonna be hard tounwind overnight. But the
problem is that the climatestrategy is actually to

(29:03):
electrify everything that we canthat includes transportation,
you know, the natural gasburning furnaces and stoves in
our house, we're trying toelectrify all this stuff, and
then make sure that electricityis from clean, renewable
sources. But if the grid keepsfailing, it's gonna be really
hard to convince people to drivean electric vehicle or, you
know, go get an all electrichouse. So it's really critical

(29:24):
that we solve this problem andinvest in grid resilience. There
are some technologies out tomitigate that. So if you have a
home battery, and battery pricesare getting a lot cheaper, that
can build in grid resilience foryou. Or if you build in micro
grids, you know, of communitiesthat have access to batteries.
My community just paid a bunchof money for a community center
to get solar panels andbatteries. So we'll have at
least one place in the communitythat we're the lights are gonna

(29:45):
stay on. And you could imaginethat you know, in the future
that could expand a wholeneighborhoods. So I do think
technology can be our friendhere and solve some of this and
the progress that we're seeingin battery technology, I think
is really encouraging on thatfront.

Greg Williams (30:00):
I want to make sure that we, we take best
advantage of the expertise thatyou bring to the table. And so
I'm wondering if you can thinkback over the 40 year history of
Sequa. And pick out a couple ofexamples of where the law really
improved the outcome. And thenmaybe one or two examples of
where it got in the way of whatmight have been a better outcome

(30:22):
so that we can have a betterunderstanding of what is good
and effective regulation. Andwhere does regulation become a
problem?

Ethan Elkind (30:29):
Yeah, and there are some groups that have
catalog sequence impacts a lotof these kinds of good
anecdotes, interestinganecdotes, I mean, Sequa, has
been responsible for stopping alot of misguided freeway
expansion in California. And wewould have bulldozed a whole
bunch of neighborhoods indowntown San Francisco and part
of Los Angeles. And Sequa reallyhelped stop that it's put on

(30:51):
pause a lot of oil and gasproduction, near schools and
hospitals in Kern County,stopped some, you know, clear
cutting projects and this yearin Nevada. And there's a lot of
examples of that it also helpedspur a deal to Save the Redwoods
on the coast. And California hasbeen a lot of environmental good
that's come out of this process,a lot of deals that have been
cut, I think on the sort ofhorror story side, I'll give you

(31:14):
an example that now would nothappen. we reform the last
incident. So this is an out ofdate example, but shows you kind
of what we were dealing with.
There was a proposal to put abus rapid transit line and in
San Francisco and Van NessAvenue, which is a heavily
traveled corridor, votersapproved it, the money was
allocated. And in, you know,this is about 20 years ago, the
voters approved and then about10 years ago, as they're working

(31:35):
through the process, theydiscovered that the bus rapid
transit line was going to slowdown automobile traffic and a
couple intersections, which iskind of like seems like the
point, you know, you want todelay automobiles so that a bus
filled with people can passthrough more quickly. But that
actually triggered a fullenvironmental impact report
under Sequa. That delayed theproject by almost 10 years. This

(31:56):
is a bus rapid transit projectthat, you know, is an
environmental good, it's anequity project, you know, lower
income people are the onesdependent on transit. So that's
an example where Sequa reallywant to ride. There's a lot of
examples of some really goodhousing projects that have been
sued, and diminished as a resultof Sequa. So I throw those
examples out there. And thenjust real quick, Dina, you had

(32:18):
mentioned the mansion permittingbill that didn't pass. I
actually never got into thedetails on it. I think, you
know, my sense is that if it wassort of tilted towards fossil
fuels, there was enough goodstuff in there for for
renewables. I do think thispermitting reform issue, even if
Republicans take over theCongress, which seems somewhat
likely now that there's going tobe bipartisan appetite for

(32:40):
streamlining permitting, some ofthat's going to be bad, because
it's going to streamline forfossil fuels. But I think if we
can do some streamlining fortransmission lines to renewable
energy zones, that would be areal positive and, frankly,
really urgent that we get thisdone.

Greg Williams (32:55):
So I think he may be under estimating our appetite
for the nitty gritty details ofwhat does and does not work with
a regulation. So I'm curiouswhat about the law was changed
to avoid the kind of outcomethat you just described? And
maybe starting with, as Iunderstand it, Sequa requires
impact reports, in cases wherethere appears to be significant

(33:18):
significant environmentalimpact, I wouldn't have thought
that that slowing automotivetraffic down and a few
intersections would would meetthat requirement. And so it
would be interesting tounderstand how was triggered
that case and how the updatedlegislation avoids that
circumstance?

Ethan Elkind (33:35):
Well, I'm so glad to hear you want to nerd out on
this, because I think this isone of the more

Dina Rasor (33:40):
fascinating changes and the ultimate nerd doubts. We
want to know the details. Yeah.

Ethan Elkind (33:44):
So this was a really good change, I think
actually illustrative of a lotof what I've been trying to
explain about we're trying tostreamline Sequa for the good
projects, and why it was alittle bit outdated. So the
reason why this Van Ness busrapid transit project got held
up was because under thetransportation impacts analysis
of Sequa so you looking at a newproject, how's it gonna affect

(34:05):
transportation that used to bedefined as how much are you
going to delay automobiles inthe vicinity of the project is
called level of service, wherean A means automobiles are just
floating right through and D orF means or just stop and go
traffic in the vicinity of theproject. So that was how Sequa
required developers and publicsector decision makers to

(34:27):
analyze transportation impacts,but you get this
counterproductive resultbecause, you know, a lot of
infill projects, whether they'retransit, like a bus rapid
transit line, or you know, anapartment building in downtown
San Francisco, of course, it'sgoing to help create a little
bit of congestion in those cityblocks around there. But
overall, in terms of the impacton the transportation sector

(34:48):
writ large, it's a huge win,because the alternative to
building the apartment buildingfor residents in downtown San
Francisco is that thoseresidents would have to move
farther out of the city and thenthey would be driving in or they
might be sprawl area and pushingout more development into open
space and agricultural land. Sothis is a really a narrow way to
think about it. You know, if youimagine if if stopping traffic

(35:10):
was a reason to stopdevelopment, I mean, we never
would have built new york citylike New York City streets are
pretty congested. But that'skind of the point you're in a
city. And it's a lot better thatwe have in New York City from a
per capita greenhouse gasemission standpoint, then all
those 20 million people sprawledout LA style, you know, across
the landscape, that would be anenvironmental nightmare. So so
what happened was legislaturepassed a law that changed that

(35:34):
analysis from instead of theimmediate traffic congestion
audit delay in the area nowlooking at overall vehicle miles
traveled that is generated bythe project VMT vehicle miles
traveled. So by that measure, aproject like the bus rapid
transit line is reducing overalldriving miles within the region,
even if it's creating some delayfor a few drivers at some

(35:55):
intersections. And so now youget a free pass, you actually
don't have to mitigate at allfor transportation impacts. And
that's not an area that has tobe analyzed under Sequa. For
those projects that reduceoverall vehicle miles traveled.
And so that's a big win for forinfill type projects, and those
in good areas we want to build,where it's come up against a lot

(36:15):
of opposition and the people whohate it, or the sprawl
developers can because you know,they're building these big
subdivisions way out on farmconverted farmland somewhere. In
the old days, they had notraffic impacts, right, because
they're not the middle ofnowhere. So there's no
congestion. So they would justskirt by under the old system.
But under the new system,they're now having to account
for the fact that they'reputting residents 4050,

(36:36):
sometimes 90 100 miles away fromtheir jobs. And those residents
are driving, you know, I mean,you can see these super
commuters in California, they'redriving sometimes three hours a
day round trip. And that's ahuge amount of traffic and
congestion and air pollution andgreenhouse gas emissions. And
all that gets captured byvehicle miles traveled, and all
of a sudden the sprawldevelopers have to account for
that and mitigate, which is veryexpensive. And they're really

(36:58):
upset about they fought theimplementation of this law for a
long time. They're still cryingabout it. But I think it's been
a really big change in howsequence down and it's really
helped a lot of very meritoriousinvalid projects, get their
sequence reviewed, done a lotfaster.

Greg Williams (37:14):
It does seem like it's still vulnerable to the
hopefully, increasingly, we'redecreasingly valid assumption
that vehicle miles traveled arecorrelated with with pollution.
I mean, if you Yeah, you know, amile driven by an electric
vehicle that served by wind andsolar is very different from a

(37:34):
vehicle mile, you know, of a,you know, an old 1970s, leaded
gas, classic car.

Ethan Elkind (37:43):
That's true. And that's actually one of the
arguments you hear from thesprawl developer as well, all
the vehicles are going to beelectric. So why do we even have
to do this, but first of all,air pollution is measured under
a separate area of Sequa. Sothere's air quality impacts and
greenhouse gas emissions. So Sothat's analyzed separately under
sequence still have to bemitigated. But the thing about

(38:04):
vehicle miles traveled is it'snot just the source of the fuel
for the vehicles, because if youhave a lot of traffic congestion
that creates other quality oflife impacts, so no one really
likes to have overall traffic inyour region increase. So that's
one aspect. Secondly, if peopleare driving long distances,
there is still an environmentalfootprint there. I mean, as
opposed to people not having toget a vehicle. And being able to

(38:25):
walk, I mean, a vehicle, even ifit's electric, there's a lot of
energy inputs to build thevehicle. And the electricity
right now is not 100% carbonfree. So you do have some impact
from those vehicles otherobviously much better to have an
electric vehicle than aninternal combustion engine
vehicle. But the other thing I'dsay is that if you're in a
community where people aredriving long distances, that
means their houses are way outfrom the city center, which

(38:47):
means you have a veryinefficient development pattern,
which means you're convertingopen space and farmland into
sprawl. And that open space infarmland otherwise serves as a
carbon sink. It's also so thatyou're getting rid of the
opportunities to sequestercarbon. And then the other thing
is that you're probably going tohave bigger homes that are in
these outlying areas. InCalifornia, the interior of the
state is much hotter in thesummer and colder in the winter.

(39:10):
So that means it's a lot moreenergy to heat and cool the
homes if they're bigger, andthey're in the interior. And
then on top of that you got abig water footprint, because
water takes a lot of energy totransport and treat. And if you
have a lot of outdoor irrigationfrom big homes and a sprawl
area, that's going to have awhole energy footprint
associated with the water whichalso is getting more scarce in a

(39:31):
UN Climate Change era Californiahere. Okay. Go ahead, Greg.

Greg Williams (39:38):
I was gonna ask you if we can have one more
example of of what you regard asan important positive technical
change in the last 10 or 20years in Sequa. It in here
again, you know, we often speakin terms of the the negative
aspects of of oversight, but atthe end of the day, Dina and I
are here because we believe ingood government and the Good

(40:00):
things that government can do.
And so part of what we'relooking for from, from your
visit are examples of how we cancontinuously government better.
Yeah,

Ethan Elkind (40:11):
actually, I think the one of the more exciting
reforms as CFO actually is notto SQL itself, it's to the
process that would triggerSequa. So seek was only
triggered if a decision makerhas discretion. If they don't
have discretion, it's it'sconsidered ministerial review,
you basically have a set ofstandards, and a project either
meets the standards or doesn't,if it meets the standards, then

(40:33):
it gets approved, there's nodiscretion, there's nothing for
a secret challenge to attach toin that situation. And so what
California has done is made moredecisions ministerial by law,
and basically told localgovernments, you no longer can
give yourselves discretion overall these projects. If a project
is in an infill area, and it'sgot a certain amount of

(40:56):
affordable housing attached toit, it's ministerial. And so
that takes Sequa out of thepicture completely doesn't solve
all the problems, you still haveother long protracted permitting
processes and maybe restrictivezoning, etc. But that's one
reform. Also, just recently,just this summer, actually, the
legislature passed a law thatgives the California Energy
Commission permitting authorityover large renewable energy

(41:18):
facilities, which used to beheld up at the county level in
many counties, you know, theywanted to extract all sorts of
community benefits. And, andthey were, you know, really kind
of tacking on a lot ofrequirements and costs in this
project. So the state hasactually just removed permitting
authority. Now, not exactly aSQL reform, but gets at some of
these some of these issues.

Dina Rasor (41:37):
Okay, and in the little time we have left, I'm
going to ask a more generalquestion. And that is, the US
government does have a problemdoing large projects, especially
large transportation projects.
You know, every time I go toEurope, I get fast trains. And
I, I My understanding is thepermitting process is much
simpler, and whatever. But youknow, China has high speed rail,

(41:58):
you know, Europe has high speedrail, I just, I'm sort of why is
it? What is it in that largetransportation kind of project?
Is it the permitting is it, youknow, I know California has been
a total fail, then the CentralValley, they're finally going to
make it from Bakersfield andFresno, or something like

(42:18):
nobody's going to use it. SoI've been dreaming about my two
and a half hour high speed trainto to LA in a long time. But why
is it that we can't seem to dothose high speed things in
general? I mean, at high speed,larger transportation and
complicated projects like that,in general, when we did the

(42:41):
federal highway system, youknow, of course, that was back
in the 50s.

Ethan Elkind (42:47):
Yeah, this is such an important question. And I
think when I think of all theinfrastructure that we need to
get built, you know, I thinkthis is really the big question
mark, for the United States andfor California, specifically, is
are we actually able to buildanything big anymore, because
most of our big infrastructurewas built in the middle of the
last century, we haven't reallybuilt much recently. And this is

(43:07):
a major problem. And you don'tsee this in Europe, this is not
just a question of, oh, China'sone party rule. They don't
respect property rights andindividual rights, so they can
build stuff. And it does make itmuch easier for China. But
Europe is a democracy. Andthey're able to build things
much cheaper. I was just talkingto someone from the Netherlands
who works with cities to buildbike infrastructure to simple
bike lanes. He said all of hisclients in the United States, he

(43:30):
can't believe the cost figureshe's getting. But as a rule,
they're 10 times more expensivethan any project that he has
worked on in any European city.
And that, you know, just forsimple things like bike
infrastructure, they can't doprefabricated barriers,
everything's got to be custommade, and there's multiple
levels of review. So that's justone example. But high speed rail
is on the other end of thespectrum, you know, the original

(43:52):
estimates for high speed rails,we would have it by now supposed
to be done by 2020. This wasvoter approved in 2008. And
those estimates weren't random.
They were based on theexperience of building high
speed rail around the world. Buthere in California, we can't get
it done, that money has largelyevaporated. And we just did a
study on this about whyCalifornia cannot build rail

(44:12):
transit projects as cheaply asother advanced democratic
economies around the world. Andyou know, there's there's a
bunch of reasons, but I wouldsay the biggest factor was two
factors. But the biggest one isour decentralized system of
governance, which has gottenmuch worse since the middle of

(44:32):
the 20th century. Every county,every city, they get a veto
potentially over projects,they've got a permit these
projects, there's multipleagencies now that get a sign
off, the agencies are notcoordinated and talking to each
other. There's so many hoops togo through. And then you've got
the environmental review on it,which provides opportunities for
any homeowners group to sue orlabor union to sue anyone who

(44:54):
wants to leverage over theproject. So it's all of these
bureaucratic processes with adissent. socialized system that
has really thwarted the US inCalifornia specifically. And
then secondly is that we havejust an expertise problem in the
US, because our sort ofexpertise has been building auto
oriented infrastructure, youknow, when a city all of a

(45:15):
sudden decides they want tobuild a new modern rail transit
line, they don't have anyexperience in doing that.
Everyone's reinventing thewheel, you know, for the first
time. And so there's a lot ofstartup mistakes, the
contractors come in these bigconstruction contractors are
able to take advantage ofnewbies, you know, at these
transit agencies that don't knowwhat they're doing. So I would
say those are probably the twobiggest factor is we don't have

(45:37):
a sort of good expert governancesystem to get it done. And we
don't have an efficientgovernance system to get these
projects built. So it's adisaster.

Dina Rasor (45:46):
So it sounds like we should contract out to the
Europeans and make them. But youknow, when you think about it,
the EU is sort of the federalgovernment of Europe. And then
there's all these countries foryears that Ward and couldn't get
along and couldn't do stuff. Butthey all managed to learn how to
high speed trains going acrosstheir borders. So and you said

(46:06):
you did a study on it. Now myappetite is what unleaded I'd
like to take a look at it, maybewe can have you come back, and
we we go, we nerd out on thatI'm ready, I'm ready to nerd on
out on that. Because I don't, Ithink the high speed trains
could be a huge, you know,anybody who has to drive down
five, just go to LA holidayknows that. It sucks.

Ethan Elkind (46:29):
So well. And you know, we actually did try to
bring Europeans over to helpbuild high speed rail, but
they're not familiar with oursystem, they, you know, their
whole system is different. Thetransit agencies there have
master permitting authority, youknow, they're not hijacked and
held hostage by localgovernments along the route. So
they can do things like buildaround the clock, or, you know,
in the evenings and get theprojects done a lot faster. They

(46:52):
also don't have the sameenvironmental review system.
Because you know, the courtsthere have much more power to
adjudicate these decisions. Soyou don't get these protracted
citizen suits that go on and on.
But it's primarily about morecentralized, permitting
authority. And if you do want toread the report, it's called
getting back on track. Wereleased it, January this year
policy solutions to improveCalifornia rail transit

(47:15):
projects. And we and we actuallydid a bit of a numbers analysis,
a database, looking at just howmuch more expensive California
projects are than other projectsfrom from similarly situated
countries around the world.

Dina Rasor (47:28):
Well, I hope you come back. And we do a nerd out
on that, because I think thatthat's this is these are very
fundamental problems that peopledon't talk about. And you know,
you can have all the solar andwind you want. But if you can't
get it anywhere, it's the samething. I'm concerned about
carbon capture as the hugeamount of co2 pipelines they
want to build on the country andpipelines are not popular. So if

(47:52):
they get this stuff out, how arethey going to transport it? You
know, there's, there's just alot of big questions. And so I
really appreciate you being onand I think that we'll take a
look at that. And if you don'tmind, we'd like to have you bet
sometime in the future. Comeback, and we talk about that.

Ethan Elkind (48:08):
Absolutely.
Anytime.

Greg Williams (48:11):
All right. Well, thank you very much for joining
us. And thank you very much toour listeners for joining us for
another episode of Climate MoneyWatchdog.

Ethan Elkind (48:20):
Thank you