SB 7 expands project eligibility, provides additional guidance regarding GHG emissions, and changes some procedural requirements.

By Nikki Buffa and Brian McCall

On May 20, 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law SB 7, the Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2021. SB 7 reinstates, with amendments, the Environmental Leadership Development Project (ELDP) provisions of the Public Resources Code — more commonly known as AB 900 — which expired on January 1, 2021. The basic premise of AB 900 and now SB 7 is to provide litigation streamlining under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for a certain class of projects that meet heightened environmental and labor standards. This blog post examines how SB 7 departs from AB 900 in a few key ways.