Women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprise procurement: electric service providers: energy storage system companies: community choice aggregators.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical, gas, water, and telephone corporations. Existing law authorizes the commission to establish rules for all public utilities, subject to control by the Legislature. Existing law defines an "electric service provider" as an entity that offers electrical service to customers within the service territory of an electrical corporation, excluding electrical corporations, local publicly owned electric utilities, and certain cogenerators. Existing law requires that electric service providers register with the commission and authorizes direct transactions between electric service providers and end-use customers. Existing law authorizes a community choice aggregator to aggregate the electrical load of electricity consumers within its boundaries and provides that the community choice aggregator is solely responsible for all generation procurement activities on behalf of the community choice aggregator's customers, except where other generation procurement arrangements are expressly authorized by statute. Existing law directs the commission to require every electrical corporation, gas corporation, water corporation, wireless telecommunications service provider, and telephone corporation with annual gross revenues exceeding $25,000,000, and their regulated subsidiaries and affiliates, to annually submit a detailed and verifiable plan for increasing procurement from women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprises in all categories, including renewable energy, wireless telecommunications, broadband, smart grid, and rail projects. Existing law requires the reporting of certain information about the implementation of the plans. This bill would change the $25,000,000 annual gross revenue threshold above which these requirements become applicable to $25,000,000 in gross annual California revenues, and would extend these requirements to electric service providers, as specified. The bill would include energy storage system and vegetation management projects within the enumerated categories of projects to which these requirements apply. The bill would direct the commission to require every electrical corporation, gas corporation, water corporation, wireless telecommunications service provider, electric service provider, and telephone corporation with gross annual California revenues exceeding $15,000,000, but not more than $25,000,000, to annually submit data in a simplified form to the commission on its procurement from women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprises in all categories. This bill would require each community choice aggregator with gross annual revenues exceeding $15,000,000 to annually submit a detailed and verifiable plan to the commission for increasing procurement from small, local, and diverse business enterprises in all categories, including, but not limited to, renewable energy, energy storage system, and smart grid projects. The bill would require each community choice aggregator with gross annual revenues exceeding $15,000,000 to annually submit a report to the commission regarding its procurement from women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprises in all categories, including, but not limited to, renewable energy, energy storage system, and smart grid projects. Existing law requires a community choice aggregator to develop, adopt, and file with the commission an implementation plan detailing the process and consequences of aggregation and containing specified information. This bill would additionally require a community choice aggregator to include, in its implementation plan, its methods for ensuring procurement from local, small, and diverse business enterprises in all categories, including, but not limited to, renewable energy, energy storage system, and smart grid projects. Existing law encourages cable television corporations and direct broadcast satellite providers to voluntarily adopt a plan for increasing women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprise procurement and to voluntarily report activity in this area. This bill would additionally encourage exempt wholesale generators selling electricity to retail sellers, distributed energy resource contractors, and energy storage system companies to voluntarily adopt a plan for increasing women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprise procurement and to voluntarily report activity in this area, and encourages exempt community choice aggregators to voluntarily adopt a similar procurement plan, as specified. Under existing law, a violation of any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime. Because a violation of an order or decision of the commission implementing the bill's expanded requirements would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program by creating a new crime. Because the bill would impose reporting requirements upon community choice aggregators, which are entities of local government, and require a community choice aggregator to expand the matters it includes in its electrical load aggregation implementation plan, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.