POLITICO California Playbook PM: To California and beyond!

Aug 08, 2023

READY FOR LAUNCH: California is getting ready to send its own damn satellites into space. Lots of them.

Famously heralded by Jerry Brown seven years ago, the first two spacecraft are expected to be in orbit by early next year monitoring greenhouse gases. Gov. Gavin Newsom — not to be outdone — secured $100 million for eight more. The fleet could grow to more than 20 under his administration’s plans.

Brown declared in 2016 that California would build its “own damn satellite” following threats from then-candidate Donald Trump to cut off access to federal climate data if elected president. But philanthropists paid for two: one equipped with a spectrometer built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and another with a copy made by San Francisco-based organization Planet.

The high-tech spacecraft will scan the state — and, later, the globe — for methane, which is found in the highest concentrations around dairies, landfills, and oil and gas wells and accounts for a quarter of global warming today. It’s a major target in California’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030.

Newsom has championed the satellites since his first year in office, but this year — facing a $31.5 billion deficit — lawmakers suggested cutting money for the eight spacecraft. In the end, the funding stayed in the Air Resources Board’s spending plan.

The first two satellites would be the first of their kind in the U.S., and only Canada has a more developed methane-monitoring fleet, said Riley Duren, CEO of Carbon Mapper, the nonprofit heading the initial project.

Brown, who earned the nickname “Governor Moonbeam” in the 1970s for proposing that California launch its own communications satellite, spurred a series of brainstorming sessions decades later, during his last term, on how satellites could help the state fight climate change, said Duren.

Air regulators plan to crack down more aggressively on leaks at oil and gas sites. Starting next year, well operators will be required to address leaks identified from above. The satellites will orbit the earth roughly every 90 minutes, sending detailed imaging to help California identify intermittent leaks more quickly and reliably than is possible from planes.

“They can find large super-emitters that would otherwise take months to find,” Duren said.

Eventually the satellites could be used to monitor methane in other parts of the world and to collect data on other impacts from climate change, like water quality, snowpack and animal populations. The state expects to expand its satellite fleet to 20 or more in the years ahead, although California wouldn’t pay for all of them.

Newsom has said he’d like to name the first one after Brown.

HAPPY TUESDAY AFTERNOON! Welcome to California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check of California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to wventeicher@politico.com or send a shout on Twitter. DMs are open!

HITTING YOUR INBOX AUGUST 14—CALIFORNIA CLIMATE: Climate change isn’t just about the weather. It's also about how we do business and create new policies, especially in California. So we have something cool for you: A brand-new California Climate newsletter. It's not just climate or science chat, it's your daily cheat sheet to understanding how the legislative landscape around climate change is shaking up industries across the Golden State. Cut through the jargon and get the latest developments in California as lawmakers and industry leaders adapt to the changing climate. Subscribe now to California Climate to keep up with the changes.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

FRESHMAN 3,000: The University of California admitted a record number of Californians this school year as Sacramento officials pressured the system to increase in-state enrollment. The 3,000-plus student uptick in resident freshman admissions announced this morning could lead to progress in the highly selective system’s ongoing struggle to enroll 8,000 more Californians by 2026.

Newsom and state legislators have pushed the UC to meet that goal and to take on more students across the board in exchange for annual state funding increases. Freshman admission offers bounced 3.2 percent from last year, after a trough in 2022. The share of first-year students given spots in the incoming class who were Latino grew, while the proportion of Asian and African American students fell. – Blake Jones

ON THE BEATS

HOOKED ON GAS: California is trying to move on from fossil fuels, but it just can’t quit natural gas.

Newsom’s administration is pushing for another extension of three old, polluting gas-fired plants in Southern California that were supposed to be shut down by 2020. The administration says they are needed to make sure the lights stay on through heat waves such as the one that pushed the power grid to its limits last September. The Huntington Beach, Long Beach and Ormond Beach facilities — which together can generate enough electricity to power roughly 2.5 million homes — would be activated only during shortages.

Advocates for people who live near the plants want them shut down, saying the state should spend the $1.2 billion it has set aside for the extensions on renewable energy generation and battery storage. They’re planning to tell state officials as much in two upcoming meetings: at the California Energy Commission on Wednesday morning and the State Water Resources Control Board meeting on Aug. 15. Both agencies would need to approve the plan to move it forward.

VITAL SHORTCOMINGS: More than 34 California cities and counties declared racism a public health crisis after the Covid-19 pandemic devastated communities of color and the murder of George Floyd prompted demands for racial equity. Though the state itself never followed suit, the Legislature and a number of agencies publicly committed to closing racial health equity gaps. A report released today from the California Pan Ethnic Health Network found that progress is spotty across state government and being held back by vague goals and limited transparency.

The report recommends seven areas of improvement, including collecting better and more uniform demographic data, engaging communities more effectively, and doing a better job of hiring and training staff.

It identified a few areas where the state is living up to those goals, like a Medi-Cal enrollee advisory panel and community partnerships to get out Covid vaccines. Overall, it recommended a more consistent approach to health disparities across government. — Rachel Bluth

BLACK REPRESENTATION: Eighty-nine percent of Black women in California emphasize the importance of having Black representatives in office — and 90 percent reported voting or planning to vote in the November 2022 election, according to a new poll from the California Black Women’s Think Tank and polling firm EVITARUS. But representation in the state’s top posts has been limited. California lost a high-ranking Black woman in Congress when Kamala Harris left the Senate to become vice president.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber bolstered Black representation in higher office when Newsom appointed her to the post in 2020. Newsom also promised that, if given the chance, his next appointment to the Senate would be a Black woman. But the path for a Black candidate to secure one of California’s coveted seats in the upper house by 2024 appears narrow. Retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein continues to serve out her final term despite questions about her health, and Rep. Barbara Lee trails in the race to succeed her. — Blake Jones

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AROUND CALIFORNIA

"‘Staggering solidarity’: How California’s summer strikes broke down wealth, class barriers," by CalMatters’ Alejandra Reyes-Velarde: Showing solidarity with other social classes is a prominent union strategy in the so-called “hot labor summer” sweeping California. It’s too soon to say if the inter-union activity will get employers to bargain.

"California has made voting easier, but regular voters still skew white and old, poll finds," by the Los Angeles Times’ Benjamin Oreskes: Despite all that, the people who vote most often remain older, whiter and wealthier than most Californians, according to a new survey from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

'‘Sense of mission.’ California’s new gas price watchdog known for taking on economic crimes," by The Sacramento Bee’s Stephen Hobbs: Powers expects Milder to bring a similar passion to his latest job — leading a new state agency that will watch over oil markets for possible illegal activity that drives up costs for Californians.

"Is San Diego redistricting fair? To boost diversity, this ballot measure would rethink who draws the lines," by The San Diego Union Tribune’s David Garrick: The proposed ballot measure seeks to reshape that commission by enlarging it to 13 members and changing who appoints its members.

MIXTAPE

"COVID-19 cases rise with new variant, Eris, as California school year begins," by CBS’ Tori Apodaca.

"Cal, Stanford fans lament demise of Pac-12, loss of generations of tradition," by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sam Whiting.

"Column: This ‘hot labor summer’ is unifying Los Angeles in a way few could have imagined," opines the Los Angeles Times’ Gustavo Arellano.

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