VX2026 Panel: What's Taking So Damn Long?
Moderator Jim Kelly of S&C Electric begins the "What's Taking So Damn Long? Fixing Energy Project Permitting" VX2026 panel by naming the stakes plainly: California is trying to build electrical infrastructure fast enough to meet record demand growth while the state already carries the highest electricity rates in the continental U.S. The panel brought together CEC Commissioner Noemí Gallardo, CPUC Commissioner Christine Harada, Stantec Senior Principal Brianna Pilkinton, and LADWP Interim COO Jason Rondou. To check out the full panel click here.
*Remarks have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Noemí Gallardo, Commissioner, California Energy Commission
Good morning, everyone. My name's Noemí Gallardo. I'm one of the five commissioners at the California Energy Commission — the primary energy policy and planning entity for the state. Our mission is to get to a 100% clean energy future for all Californians, and that aligns with SB 100's goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045.
“We’re at nearly 70% clean energy, and we’ve done that while becoming one of the five top economies in the world. At the same time, that last 30% is going to be the toughest part of the journey.”
We're at nearly 70% clean energy, and we've done that while becoming one of the five top economies in the world. At the same time, that last 30% is going to be the toughest part of the journey. Under SB 100, build rates for solar and wind need to triple, and battery storage build rates need to increase eightfold. Since 2019, we've added over 32 gigawatts of new clean capacity to the grid. Battery storage capacity has increased over 2,000% since Governor Newsom's been in office — over 17 gigawatts online now. Still not enough, though, and SB 100 recognized that one of the constraints has been permitting.
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Historically, solar, wind, and energy storage have fallen entirely under local jurisdiction for permitting, and there have been times locals have been unwilling or unable to permit big clean energy projects — projects that should have taken months were taking years, or not getting built at all. So in 2022, Governor Newsom and the legislature created a new permitting program — a voluntary program run by the Energy Commission, called Opt-In, and I'm one of the commissioners who oversees it. Eligible facilities: solar photovoltaic, onshore wind, storage systems, geothermal, green hydrogen production, clean energy manufacturing, and associated transmission. And it's a streamlined review, a 270-day timeline. We actually do a thorough, comprehensive CEQA review within that window and we're stringent about it. The program also requires a legally binding community benefits agreement with at least one local organization, and prevailing wages or a project labor agreement.
To date, we've had 10 projects start our Opt-In process. Four have gone through to a vote — three approved, one denied — with two more teed up by year's end. All three approved projects hit their decisions within those 270 days. One, called Darden, out in Fresno County, has already started construction and will be the largest solar-plus-storage project in the world once built. Those three approved projects are 1.5 gigawatts of new clean generation and nine gigawatt-hours of battery storage. The next two, if approved, add another 10 gigawatt-hours, hundreds of jobs, and community benefits.
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On community opposition: the Moss Landing situation is still affecting us. People are scared, and I think that's legitimate for them to say: I'm scared, and I want more information. Our Opt-In program requires us to hold a public meeting 30 days after we've deemed an application complete, so we can share information. And on the developer side, when they engage early and meaningfully — really want to be a good neighbor — that makes a big difference. I've got one project where the community was extremely opposed at our first public meeting, but the developer is getting close to negotiating something in the millions of dollars for a community fund.
Christine Harada, Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission
I'm now the LA-based commissioner at the CPUC — the first one in the commission's history. So I have two goals: good Southern California representation, and increasing the number of Dodgers fans in the agency.
With respect to permitting, I come to this with some amount of experience, more at the federal level than here in California. I ran a similar program at the federal government called FAST-41, which stems from the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act, section 41. We coordinated across 13 cabinet-level departments, and at the time I had $100 billion worth of renewable energy and transmission line projects in my portfolio. We permitted the entirety of the offshore wind projects. We did many interstate transmission lines, like SunZia — prior to us coming on board, that had been a project 15 years in the making, and we finally brought it over the finish line…
On FAST-41 specifically: I frequently got pushback from career staff who worried that entering the program meant it had to end in a yes. My pushback was: if we get them a fast no, that's also a win. Let's just stop dragging it out. It costs everybody money, it costs us time.
“One of my other personal goals is helping educate…I’m gently trying to get them to adopt more of a “yes, if” mindset. Not a “no way, Jose,” but a “yes, if”
I'd also hope we invest in what I'd consider the boring stuff — the foundational things that actually make permitting happen. Boots on the ground: who's doing the counts for endangered species, who's working with tribes on cultural preservation, and actually funding that work. I've got a big personal gripe right now with the cuts across federal agencies, not least the land management and permitting agencies. The Department of Transportation here in California has been cut by 50%. Same with the Bureau of Land Management — a dramatic brain drain that's going to take a good while to recover from.
If I look at the original intent of both NEPA and CEQA, they're process statutes. They require us to be considerate of all the factors, but they ultimately say we need to make a decision.
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One of my other personal goals is helping educate — at least my neighbors — around how we overcome NIMBYism. There's a proposed housing project going up at a busy intersection in my neighborhood, and my neighbors are all up in arms about it. I'm gently trying to get them to adopt more of a "yes, if" mindset. Not a "no way, Jose," but a "yes, if" — if there's underground parking, if there's no disturbance of traffic, if they invest in our parks. Because the fact is, a lot of this infrastructure needs to get built. So what are the things we want, and how do we maximize the benefit to communities?
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Brianna Pilkinton, Senior Principal, Stantec
I'm Brianna Pilkinton, and I'll start with a confession: I've spent the vast majority of my career writing documents that many of you may think take too long, cost too much, and get sued way too often. I'm a CEQA practitioner by trade — a CEQA nerd, as we call ourselves — and I'm Stantec's operations leader for our Southern California and Hawaii environmental practice.
“I’ll start with what I think the problem is not. The problem is not CEQA. But hear me out, do I think CEQA is perfect? By no means. I think CEQA needs to take a hard look in the mirror and go to therapy and set some healthy boundaries.”
So I'll start with what I think the problem is not. The problem is not CEQA. But hear me out, do I think CEQA is perfect? By no means. I think CEQA needs to take a hard look in the mirror and go to therapy and set some healthy boundaries. We have created a monster. Our work is shaped by case law, and the unintended consequence is we've created 2,000-page legal documents instead of what the original intent was — for the public to digest this information. Nobody's reading a 2,000-page document except maybe ChatGPT now.
What I think the actual problem is, when I ask what we're here to fix — it's not a process problem, it's a structural change we need to make. In the last three to five years, we've seen tremendous CEQA reform out of Sacramento. I call it the rise of the exemption era. But we're not going to exempt our way out of dealing with the things we need to do, and I don't think we should.
Let me paint the picture. If you're trying to build a large-scale transmission line in California, say 100 miles, you're going to cross probably a dozen different state, federal, and local jurisdictions. All of those agencies have their own mission, their own process, their own litigation risk to manage. So it's not the single CEQA issue that's the problem. It's all of that mosaic of additional approvals layered on top of CEQA that's really what's slowing us down.
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If I could wave a magic wand for a near-term solution, it would be a single statewide portal with one set of eligibility criteria for the project categories we all agree we need — clean energy, transmission — one portal, one set of decisions, instead of a dozen with different timelines. Without naming the agency: trying to get underground transmission in Los Angeles County, we had to get an encroachment permit to get an encroachment permit.
So here's where I get excited: how are we using technology to compress the technical rigor and get things done better, smarter, faster? We're already pairing ourselves with AI for critical issues assessments, permitting matrices, and early siting and routing of transmission infrastructure. We have tools like eDNA, where instead of sending folks out to do presence-or-absence surveys of special status species, we take a sample from the environment and test for DNA. I started my career as a wildlife biologist, combing through trail camera images — you'd go through 12,000 images for maybe one deer. Now, using AI, we can do that in 30 minutes.
This is the direction the conversation needs to go. Not toward lowering environmental standards, but toward doing it more efficiently and safely. Environmental review and CEQA are not the enemy of faster delivery. Partner with us, look at us as your partners, not the other side of the fence.
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What I'm seeing now is litigation reform: the Sites Reservoir project, where new timelines on litigants compressed a fight that would normally take three to five years down to 148 days. Our case law is catching on to that kind of hostage-taking, and it's already shaping how we move forward.
Jason Rondou, Interim COO, LADWP
I’m Jason Rondou, interim chief operating officer at LADWP. I'm over the power system. LA is a municipally owned utility — we're vertically integrated, so we own or control our generation, transmission, and distribution system. We've got an aging distribution system, like many utilities, which lends itself to some unique challenges and opportunities.
This actually predates SB 100 — several years ago, we ran what was, and probably still is, one of the most comprehensive studies of what it would take to get to 100% renewable energy by 2045. No matter what our strategy was — maximizing local solar and demand response, or utility-scale desert projects — the common theme was we need a lot more transmission. LADWP has a massive amount for its size — about 10% of the state's load, but over 20% of the transmission capacity — a huge opportunity in the transition. But we still need to upgrade, reconductor, and build new corridors.
One of the things I liked most on this panel was Commissioner Harada's "yes, if." When you pass a bill like SB 100, there's broad support because everybody in concept wants that goal. What's harder is the enabling policies that go with it, like predictability of CEQA timelines. For a balancing authority like us, predictability matters enormously. In 2022, we started educating the LA delegation of senators and Assembly members about transmission-streamlining challenges. Every single one said, "I totally get it, makes sense to me, have you talked to so-and-so?" That told me there's a hesitance to pick up the more controversial enabling policies we need.
We've talked about that locally too — LADWP needs to look at rate reform. We're trying to fund $100 million of infrastructure over the next several decades with a rate structure that's very regressive. If that's what policymakers want, that's fine, but absent educating them that that's the de facto status quo, that's what it'll be.
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“We’ve committed $4 billion to clean energy projects in the last 24 months, despite federal headwinds and commodity price challenges.”
That brings up the question of why we're here. We've seen a 300% increase in demand on interconnections — not load, but the number of actual projects put in. A year ago, we underwent a soup-to-nuts review of our interconnection process. Somebody did that 10 years ago, and 10 years before that — what's the difference now? There's no magic way to institutionalize massive change at an organization with 12,000 people; it's the follow-through. The mayor's office recently issued Executive Directive 19. We'll be looking at AI technologies, improving coordination with the Bureau of Engineering and Planning. Because a lot of the folks who have a say in these projects are often abstracted from accountability for the goals we're trying to achieve as a state. That abstraction of accountability is a big risk for us.
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I'd add one word of caution on hoping engagement alone will solve these issues. We've committed $4 billion to clean energy projects in the last 24 months, despite federal headwinds and commodity price challenges. But there are always projects that are going to be controversial. One anecdote: when a controversial project was socialized, the point person for one of our leading environmental organizations on the advisory group said, "I don't like that project. I get why you have to do it. I don't like it, I'm not going to support it, but I get it." Representatives from that same organization, fast-forward to today, are focused on fighting that project. It works much of the time, but we can't hope it'll solve every stakeholder conflict.
Check out the full conversation that was held at the 19th annual VerdeXchange Conference, held May 31–June 3, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Tags: Energy Permitting, CEQA, California Energy Commission, Transmission, Clean Energy, Interconnection, VerdeXchange
