Air pollution: imported electricity: mitigation fee.

Existing law designates air pollution control districts and air quality management districts as having the primary responsibility for the control of air pollution from all sources other than vehicular sources. Existing law also designates the State Air Resources Board as the state entity responsible for the coordination and review of all levels of government in their efforts to control air pollution. This bill would require any person that imports certain electricity into the state, or causes that electricity to be imported into the state, to pay up to a $0.001 per kilowatthour air contaminant emission electricity generation mitigation fee for that electricity, but not to exceed the cost of mitigation, as determined by the state board. The bill would impose the fee only if the electricity is produced by an electrical generating facility, as defined, that is located within an air basin shared by a district and Mexico and located in Mexico within 100 kilometers of the United States' border, if construction of the electrical generating facility was completed after January 1, 2010, the facility provides incremental generating capacity that was not in operation prior to January 1, 2010, and if the electrical generating facility was not constructed to meet all existing California air pollution regulations and standards, including, but not limited to, best available control technology (BACT) and any offsets that would be required under California law to mitigate any additional pollution. The bill would establish the Imported Electricity Air Pollution Mitigation Subaccount in the Air Pollution Control Fund, and would require the mitigation fees to be deposited in that subaccount. The bill would make the moneys deposited in the subaccount available to the state board, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for distribution to each district in the state that the state board determines is directly impacted by emissions of air contaminants from those electrical generating facilities. The bill would require each district receiving those revenues to fund projects within its jurisdiction to mitigate the environmental or health impacts of electricity generation facilities.