Legislative Advocacy
CLECA maintains a standing presence in Sacramento — testifying on energy affordability, industrial competitiveness, energy supply, and decarbonization policy, and sponsoring legislation that makes California workable for energy-intensive manufacturing.
Bills CLECA Sponsors
CLECA goes beyond tracking bills. It sponsors them — pairing its regulatory record with legislative advocacy so that problems documented in CPUC and CARB proceedings get structural fixes in statute.
Industrial Energy Efficiency Financing
California’s industrial customers pay energy-efficiency charges on every bill — but the existing program returns almost none of that money to industrial efficiency projects. AB 2182 restructures the program: large utilities must establish grant programs, funded from the efficiency charges industrial customers themselves pay, that provide matching grants for industrial decarbonization and efficiency projects — measured against real existing-equipment baselines instead of hypothetical ones, with no cross-subsidy from other ratepayers.
As CLECA’s witness told the Senate Energy Committee: the existing program is supposed to drive industrial energy efficiency — in practice, it does not. AB 2182 has drawn no registered opposition.
Industrial Process Heat Recovery
Industrial facilities generate enormous amounts of waste heat. Technology exists to turn that heat into zero-marginal-emission electricity consumed entirely on site — but California’s rate design charged nonbypassable and departing-load surcharges on every kilowatt-hour a manufacturer self-supplied, penalizing the cleanest generation a factory can build. AB 2109 (Chapter 700, Statutes of 2024) exempts qualifying industrial process heat recovery generation from those surcharges, subject to a Commission-set cap and strict qualifying criteria: no supplemental fuel, zero marginal emissions, fully self-consumed on site.
Both houses passed the bill without a single no vote — 73–0 in the Assembly, 38–0 in the Senate.
From the Docket to the Floor
CLECA’s legislative advocates — with decades of California government relations experience between them — testify in policy committees, negotiate amendments, and coordinate coalition letters on the energy bills that touch industrial ratepayers each session: efficiency and decarbonization funding, Cap-and-Invest design, wildfire cost recovery, grid investment, and western market development.
What makes CLECA’s legislative voice distinctive is the record behind it. Positions argued in committee are the same positions documented across hundreds of CPUC, CARB, CEC, and CAISO filings — so when CLECA tells a committee that a program isn’t working, the evidence is already on the public record.
Meet Our Legislative AdvocatesEach Session’s Bill Watch
Beyond its sponsored legislation, CLECA takes formal support, oppose, and oppose-unless-amended positions on energy bills every session — from wildfire securitization measures to interruptible-program statutes to western market governance legislation like AB 825, which CLECA supported on its way to enactment in 2025.
Policy Is Written by Those Who Show Up
CLECA members shape the legislation that determines their energy costs, their energy supply, and the economics of decarbonizing in California.
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