Sen. Robert Hertzberg Reflects on Decades of Engagement in California Water and Energy Policy
By Matt Williams, CMUA
State Sen. Robert Hertzberg has witnessed or participated in many moments that have shaped California’s energy and water policy. He was speaker of the state Assembly in 2000 and 2001 when California suffered a major electricity crisis, and this year played an integral role passing legislation that creates long-term water use efficiency standards for the state.
In one way or another, in the public arena or the private sector, Hertzberg has worked in the water and energy world for the past four decades. He wrote a major paper on water in 1976 and started his first solar company in 1984. Hertzberg left the Assembly in 2002 because of term limits, but returned to the Senate in 2014, representing constituents in the eastern San Fernando Valley. During the intervening years, he was an entrepreneur of clean energy technology.
Hertzberg’s latest accomplishment is water conservation legislation that establishes a comprehensive framework for both agricultural and urban water conservation and water use efficiency. He said it was challenging to balance the needs of hundreds of water districts in California in a way that’s acceptable for everyone, from the North Coast and Central Valley to Southern California.
“We saw the governor’s [drought] emergency order, which asked everybody to cut back, but you can’t run a government based upon emergency orders,” Hertzberg said. “It’s hard to pull people together. There’s a tension between state control and local control, and so it took a great deal of attention. We think this is a really important step in moving toward a process that balances local control with realistic systems and a glide path to get there.”
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2018 issue of CMUA’s magazine, California Water & Power. You can view the digital edition of the full magazine here.
Hertzberg says conservation is one part of a comprehensive approach to water policy he is trying to develop. Other elements include cost, stormwater capture and water recycling.
In 2017, Hertzberg introduced a state constitutional amendment that would help address drinking water affordability by enabling charges based on tiered rates. Last year, he also passed a bill signed by the governor enabling local governments to charge fees to finance projects capturing stormwater, similar to how they finance projects for sewer water, trash collection and water delivery.
“Legislation is not always about the mere incremental,” Hertzberg said. “Sometimes it’s a larger policy statement.”
Hertzberg has seen that firsthand as chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water and as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications. Before rejoining the Legislature, he traveled extensively abroad — particularly from 2006 to 2012 — in support of several renewable energy ventures, including his startup that offered thin and flexible solar panels.
It’s unsurprising, then, that he is more knowledgeable than most legislators about California’s energy marketplace.
Hertzberg continues to think about and work on big-picture issues that have been front and center for more than 15 years, such as proposals that would regionalize California’s electricity grid and how to properly integrate community choice aggregators so the system continues to operate reliably. He says the state’s renewable portfolio standard is fantastic at setting goals, but there’s still a lot of detail that needs to be sorted out so it all works.
“We have an ability today, through the integration of technologies, to fundamentally change the game, to dramatically reduce GHGs on the one hand, and on the other hand create jobs in California from all this new technology,” Hertzberg said. “It’s exciting. But it also requires extraordinary attention to detail to figure out the unexciting part of this policy.”
One of the lesser-known, behind the- scenes issues Hertzberg is engaged with is updating rules for resource adequacy. He introduced legislation this year that would require load-serving entities to account for their clean energy, air pollution and GHG reduction goals when meeting RA requirements. Hertzberg called resource adequacy a smart idea that has not been updated in the past 15 years because a significant number of policy changes have occurred.
“What’s the impact of [energy] storage, or what’s the impact of all these new devices and technologies on resource adequacy, and how do they get included in order to determine what is resource adequacy?” Hertzberg asked.
Given those types of complexities, Hertzberg agreed with some, such as California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker, who have recently said California needs a cohesive plan that accounts for the rise of distributed generation and renewables.
“Cal ISO is doing a stellar job, but they’ve got unbelievable challenges, so this is the homework time in the energy space,” Hertzberg said. “If we get it right, we’ll dramatically reduce imports, we’ll dramatically increase jobs and we’ll dramatically reduce GHGs. It will be brilliant. That’s one of the reasons I came back to government, to be able to participate as one small voice in creating that brilliance.”
