State Assemblymember Jared Huffman
State Assemblymember Jared Huffman, whose 6th District covers Marin and southern Sonoma counties, was elected in November 2006. A former senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and past board president of the Marin Municipal Water District, Huffman ran on a strong environmental, climate-change platform. He met recently with TerraMarin writer Wade Stevenson to discuss his first year on the job.
Q. How would you describe your approach to the job?
I believe you can make a noise or you can make a difference. I prefer to do the latter. So when I take on an issue, I try not to go in with righteous indignation just to create adversarial relationships. I want to always explore creative partnerships. You'd be surprised how many times you can turn folks whom you might assume will be your adversary into your partner if you work at it.
Q. When you threw your hat into the ring for Assembly, you said that one of your priorities was to help combat climate change. How's that going?
I see signs of hope. We passed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) the year before I arrived in Sacramento, and my job is to make sure that we implement it well, that we do additional things that are complementary, and that we prevent any backsliding. We are off to a good start in that regard. I've got great confidence in Mary D. Nichols, who is the chair of the California Air Resources Board. That's the agency entrusted with all kinds of authority to get us to our greenhouse gas reduction goals. I think the governor picked a great person, and the Legislature has also passed some bills that are very complementary to meeting those goals.
One of those bills was the Lighting Efficiency and Toxics Reduction Act (AB 1109), which I was able to steer through the Assembly. When you realize that 20 percent of our electricity is used for overhead lighting, cutting that use in half -- which is what the standards in my bill will do -- will take a big dent out of our electrical use and help with our climate challenge.
We found that the CEO of the Philips Corporation, which is the largest lighting manufacturer in the world, is actually quite an environmentalist and really wants to leave a legacy for the planet, while raising the bar for his industry. The trick was raising that bar in a way that preserved a level playing field for the three largest manufacturers. So we also spent a lot of time with GE and Sylvania, and at the end of the day, they signed on, too. That's very unusual, this industry partnership. Juxtapose that with the auto industry: They have fought everything from seatbelts to airbags to fuel efficiency, and they're killing good bills in Sacramento to this day.
Another of my bills provides incentives for installing solar water heating systems (the Solar Water Heating and Efficiency Act of 2007, AB 1470). A large percentage of our natural gas is used to heat water, and the burning of natural gas is something we need to do less of. The problem is that natural gas has been cheap for a long time, which makes it hard to promote cost-effective alternatives.
What we're finding is that the few sources we use for natural gas are getting more and more environmentally destructive. They're ripping up the Rocky Mountains to get at the next veins of natural gas. Also, supply lines are more volatile when we're talking about liquid natural gas coming to us from the former Soviet Union. If we continue down that path, we are not addressing energy independence and we're not addressing our climate challenges.
Q. The other priority you talked about when you ran for office was saving our bays, rivers, and wetlands.
This remains a huge priority, and I wish that I could tell you we've solved our problems, but we haven't. I suspect that saving our bays, rivers, and wetlands will continue to be a priority for a long time to come.
There are signs of progress, however, and some of these moves didn't come from politicians. In the case of the San Francisco Bay Delta, it took environmental groups going to court to try to save the endangered delta smelt to get the court to agree that we're exporting too much water from the delta and that the delta can't handle these levels of exports -- as well as the habitat destruction that goes with it. That was something the Legislature just wasn't constituted to step in and do, politically or otherwise.
Q. Those seem like solid accomplishments, but as the saying goes, "What have you done for me lately?"What are your legislative goals for the coming year?
I am introducing a bill that allows payments to be made for surplus renewable power. It's referred to as a "net metering bill."
Under the current rules, if you want to participate in the California Solar Initiative (CSI) -- this was the Million Solar Roofs bill passed in August 2006 -- you are limited by the size of the panels allowed on your roof. In order to get the CSI rebate, someone will literally come out and look at your historical energy use. You won't be allowed to install a system that goes beyond what's needed to meet that established energy demand.
If you want a larger system, you can't get the rebate that we have in the program. That's something I think we need to change. But even if you did supersize it, the rules prevent you from making any money off of that surplus power. You can "net out"your own energy bills, but anything extra you produce goes back to the utility.
Number one, that system size limitation is a disincentive for people who want to get into the solar business, and number two, it creates a disincentive to be efficient, because if you lower your energy use, all you do is create a windfall for the utility. That's why I think this bill is so important, because it gets at both of those impediments to the broader distribution of solar. The bill covers more than solar. If you have a farm and put up a small-scale wind turbine, which we're seeing more of, you should be paid for creating surplus energy. Same thing if you've got a methane digester on your farm. So I'm very excited about it.
Another bill I'm introducing this session addresses our transportation needs by allowing a Bay Area vote for a fee on gasoline. Everything we want to do is going to cost money, and we are going to need money to support public transportation at the levels we ought to support it at, as well as money to create grants for the right kinds of projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled. I think one of the most appropriate places to find that money is putting a fee on gasoline, because the burning of fossil fuels is at the heart of all these challenges.
Q. You seem to be an optimist. Am I reading that correctly?
I heard an adage that the optimist says the glass is half-full and the pessimist says the glass is half-empty, but the realist says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. I try to stay on an even keel.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Jared Huffman > democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a06
