Community Energy Resilience Act of 2022.

Existing law establishes within the Natural Resources Agency the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission. Existing law assigns the commission various duties, including applying for and accepting grants, contributions, and appropriations, and awarding grants consistent with the goals and objectives of a program or activity the commission is authorized to implement or administer. This bill, the Community Energy Resilience Act of 2022, would require the commission to develop and implement a grant program to award grants through a noncompetitive process for local governments to develop community energy resilience plans that help achieve energy resilience objectives and state clean energy and air quality goals. The bill would require a plan to, among other things, identify critical facilities, facilities where the construction of microgrids or other distributed energy sources could meet local resilience needs, and potential funding sources for implementing projects in the plan, include a process for the expedited permit review of distributed energy resources by the local government, and demonstrate consistency with the city, county, or city and county general plan and other local government planning documents, as specified. As a condition of receiving grant funding, the bill would require a local government to submit its plan to the commission within 6 months of adopting the plan. The bill would require grant funds to be encumbered within 2 years, and liquidated within 4 years, of the date of an award. The bill would require the commission to maintain a publicly available and searchable database of all local governments receiving a grant, annually submit a program summary to the Legislature, and post the summary on its internet website. The bill also would require the commission to develop and maintain on its internet website a publicly available community energy resilience planning toolkit, a directory of prequalified consultants, and a resilience valuation index, as defined, to assist local governments in community energy resilience planning. The bill would require the commission to periodically update the index.