Environment: expedited environmental review: climate change regulations.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of, an environmental impact report (EIR) on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment. CEQA requires specified state agencies to perform, at the time of adoption of a rule or regulation requiring the installation of pollution control equipment or a performance standard or treatment requirement, an environmental analysis of the reasonably foreseeable methods of compliance. CEQA authorizes the use of a focused environmental impact report for a project that consists solely of the installation of pollution control equipment required by the specified state agencies. This bill would additionally require that the above environmental analysis be performed for a rule or regulation that requires the installation of pollution control equipment or a performance standard or treatment requirement adopted pursuant to the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, including those for rules and regulations requiring the installation of pollution control equipment adopted by the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission. The bill would authorize the use of the focused environmental impact report for a project that consists solely of the installation of pollution control equipment or other components that are necessary to complete the installation of that equipment that reduces greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with a rule or regulation adopted pursuant to the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.