King Hall Hosts California Energy Commission Symposium
On January 30, the UC Davis School of Law California Environmental Law & Policy Center (CELPC) hosted and co-sponsored with the California Energy Commission a symposium celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Warren-Alquist Act.
The event brought a standing-room only audience to King Hall that included policymakers, political leaders, and Energy Commissioner members and alumni, as well as legal scholars and practitioners. Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank, CELPC's director, published a summary and analysis in Legal Planet.
The 1974 Warren-Alquist Act created the California Energy Commission and ushered into state law a major and unprecedented set of energy policies that eventually had national and international ramifications. Beginning in 1975, the Commission enacted the nation's first-ever energy conservation standards for appliances and buildings; adopted new energy demand forecasting; and began an aggressive research and development program for alternative sources of energy that over the next four decades eventually ensured that one-third of California's electricity will be generated from renewable energy sources by the year 2020.
The King Hall symposium, along with a related January 28 reception in Sacramento, featured presentations by California Governor Jerry Brown; Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; California Public Utilities President Michael Picker; Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols; State Water Resources Control Board Vice-Chair Fran Spivey-Weber; all five current members of the Energy Commission; and numerous former Energy Commissioners from the past 40 years.