The need for less expensive housing in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley has been so plain for so long that many of those on the outside of California looking in wonder why local governments, developers and voters can’t get on the same page and get things done. A January story in the New York Times about the unexpected backlash to San Jose Unified’s attempts to prevent an exodus of teachers by offering subsidized housing reflected this sense of puzzlement.

But a story unfolding at the University of California’s Berkeley campus shows the complexity and difficulty of adding housing in urban areas of the Golden State. Housing development is seen by some communities and interest groups as a zero-sum game – if one side wins, then the other side or sides must have lost.

To address a lack of affordable housing that UC Berkeley says has made it difficult to attract and retain professors, Chancellor Carol Christ last year launched an aggressive push to replace a four-story campus parking building with 350 vehicle spaces with a $126 million complex that included 150 faculty apartments, 170 parking spots and a relatively small academic building.

But the plan to tear down the Upper Hearst parking building has faced steadily increasing criticism from faculty members. Their concern is that building the project would add to the heavy debt load borne by the university because of the $474 million cost of recent stadium renovations and the construction of a new student athletic center.

Yet coverage by the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month of the Berkeley faculty Senate’s 174-69 vote asking Christ to suspend the project noted that the most pitched criticisms of the proposal came from engineering faculty members who stood to lose their access to convenient parking. Their criticism of the project continued even after Christ presented documents that she said showed the developer and property manager bore the financial risks if the project had cost overruns or other problems – not the university.

City says campus minimized enrollment growth

Meanwhile, a new front in this fight emerged in late April when the Berkeley City Council voted to sue UC Berkeley and the UC system over the apartment complex – even though city leaders praised Christ for seeking to add on-campus housing.

Council members cited planning documents previously filed with the city under which the university forecast it would have a student enrollment of 33,450 by 2020. Instead, as of January, enrollment already stood at about 41,000 – more than 25 percent higher than what UC officials had predicted.

Since under state law, the UC campus doesn’t pay local property taxes, city leaders say Berkeley taxpayers are the ones who are saddled with the cost of this fast growth.

This enrollment spurt has led to “increasing burdens on our streets, police and fire services,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said in a news release.

But Christ has been conciliatory to city officials, suggesting the university sees a path to addressing City Hall’s concerns about campus enrollment growth.

Yet the Berkeley chancellor isn’t deferring to the faculty Senate. She’s moved ahead with plans to tear down the Upper Hearst parking structure. The building could be closed next month, and construction work could begin this September, according to stories in the Daily Californian student newspaper. UC Berkeley officials hope the new complex can be finished by summer 2021.

The belief that California has a profound housing crisis took hold in the state’s media and political establishments in recent years after Census Bureau statistics showed the Golden State had the highest effective rate of poverty once cost of living was included.

The view was amplified by stories about four-hour commutes forced by housing costs and about shocking numbers of poor college students who struggled to pay for food.

That’s why the decision last week by state Senate Appropriations Chairman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, to kill Senate Bill 50 – the latest attempt to spur housing construction by limiting local control of approvals
– came as a surprise to many. That included the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. His push to ease rules to allow four-to-five-story apartment buildings near public transit centers and to allow construction of such units in many zones previously reserved for single-family homes had won support from not just developers but construction labor unions, several large-city Democratic mayors and some activist groups. Many were skeptics of Wiener’s and Gov. Jerry Brown’s previous attempts to limit local control.

Stories about Portantino’s decision focused on the fact that leaders of cities in his district, starting with Pasadena, had been vociferous opponents of Senate Bill 50. Reports also focused on the formidable influence of environmental groups, which prefer strict zoning rules to give them more clout to block development.

These arguments are common. In August 2016, when Brown’s attempt to sharply streamline the approval process for housing projects died in the Legislature, Shamus Roller, executive director of Housing California, blasted “the political gamesmanship of powerful interests.”

Californians ‘must be convinced of benefits’ of adding housing

But another view is that then-state Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor knew what he was talking about in March 2017 when he issued a report on the failure of local governments to meet housing mandates that said major change was unlikely “unless Californians are convinced of the benefits of more home building.” Instead of seeing the failure of housing reforms as a result of special-interest machinations, Taylor argued that elected leaders who backed such measures hadn’t cultivated the public support necessary to enact major changes.

Taylor’s thesis was supported by a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of Californians released in October that found little belief that the housing crisis was due to a lack of building. It was the sixth-most cited reason, falling far behind the top two: the lack of rent control in much of the state and inadequate “affordable housing” programs. Two-thirds of those surveyed supported local control of housing approvals even if cities or counties weren’t meeting state mandates for new housing construction.

Still, Wiener said he wasn’t daunted by Portantino’s decision. He said he would bring another housing reform measure to the state Senate in 2020. The former San Francisco supervisor, a Harvard law graduate, also said he thought Senate Bill 50 had a chance of being resurrected this summer, even though appropriation chairs of the Senate and Assembly have a long history of making their decisions stick.

“We’re either serious about solving this crisis, or we aren’t,” he told reporters in Sacramento last week. “At some point, we will need to make the hard political choices necessary for California to have a bright housing future.”

Over the past dozen years, the California environmental lobby has never seemed more powerful in the Legislature and in state government. Under Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the Golden State has passed

But a bracing report from the California Air Resources Board shows that environmentalists’ clout can’t shake the complete control that NIMBYs have over local planning in most of the state – to the detriment of the environment. It found that a 2008 state law – Senate Bill 375 – had been an abject failure. The law requires the state’s 18 regional intergovernmental agencies to push to put new housing near transit stations and to add new transportation options so as to decrease pollution from vehicle commuting.

Not only are three out of four workers still commuting alone to work, carpooling and transit ridership are down. As a result, vehicle greenhouse gas emissions have actually risen in recent years – and the decline from 2007-2011 seems likely to have been a function of the Great Recession, not the state push to reduce emissions associated with climate change.

The air board sees no chance that the SB375 goal of reducing statewide vehicle emissions 10 percent by 2020 will be met.

The report was met with dismay by environmental groups and journalists concerned with progress against climate change. The most common response to the air board’s finding was the call for the Legislature to take more steps to limit the ability of local governments to block projects that met certain criteria – starting with being near transit stations.

69% of Californians want local control of housing

But the appetite of state lawmakers to take on NIMBYs may be limited in the wake of new evidence that NIMBYism isn’t just espoused by activists who see every new housing project as detrimental to quality of life. Instead, it’s a core belief of state residents. A USC Dornsrife/Los Angeles Times survey released in October showed 69 percent of Californians preferred local control of housing decision-making.

And the fate of a bill to reduce local control over housing showed that even poor people – those who in theory would be most helped by adding housing stock, which likely would push down sky-high rents – are skeptical.

Senate Bill 827, by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, would have made it much easier to build four- or five-story apartment buildings within a half-mile of transit centers. The prospect of apartment buildings springing up in poor neighborhoods with single-family homes – such as in the Los Angeles County cities of Inglewood and Carson – led to an outraged reaction from 36 housing and transit “justice groups” led by the Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles (ACT-LA). Instead of seeing the bill as leading to cheaper housing, these groups saw it as likely to lead to home renters being ousted in favor of more lucrative apartment buildings, and to new waves of gentrification.

The opposition to Weiner’s bill from activists and from local governments – including every member of the Los Angeles City Council – was so intense that SB827 died at its first committee hearing in April.

Weiner has since met with ACT-LA leaders and other activists and plans to reintroduce SB827 next year with provisions that address concerns that poor neighborhoods would be upended by much laxer housing rules. But such provisions could end up leading to trading old rules giving local governments power to limit construction for new rules with similar effects.

The move was approved with a 5-0 vote by the California Energy Commission, in what supporters of solar energy are hailing as a monumental moment.

“This is an undeniably historic decision for the state and the U.S.,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the Solar Energy Industries Association’s CEO said in a statement. “California has long been our nation’s biggest solar champion … now, California is taking bold leadership again, recognizing that solar should be as commonplace as the front door that welcomes you home.”

The regulation will go into effect once it receives its expected approval by the Building Standards Commission later this month.

And while proponents of renewable energy may be pleased with the decision, there’s mounting concerns that the requirement will only aggravate the state’s home affordability crisis, as the mandate is expected to add at least $10,000 in additional construction costs.

However, supporters argue that utility savings will balance out that cost in the long term.

“Adoption of these standards represents a quantum leap in statewide building standards,” Robert Raymer, technical director for the California Building Industry Association, told the commission. “You can bet every other of the 49 states will be watching closely to see what happens.”

But Republican leaders are already coming out against the decision, framing it as just the latest example of government overreach in Sacramento.

“That’s just going to drive the cost up and make California, once again, not affordable to live,” Republican Assemblyman Brian Dahle reportedly said of the dangers of the rules.

The mandate will apply to all homes, condominiums and apartment buildings up to three stories high — with exceptions for structures that are covered by shade.

According to the commission’s own estimates, the panels will cost homeowners around $40 a month, but save them about $80 a month on heating, air conditioning and other costs.

“This is great for wealthier homeowners, but for everybody else it’s one more reason to not go to California or to leave ASAP,” American Enterprise Institute economist Jimmy Pethokoukis said on CNBC Wednesday.

More broadly, the move is part of California’s plan to have all residential buildings be “zero net energy,” which means that the the total amount of energy used by the building is the same as the amount of renewable energy it creates.

Three times in the past 18 months, prominent journalistic organizations have questioned whether Silicon Valley has peaked. Leading off the bad-mouthing was the hometown San Jose Mercury News, which

That was followed by the London Guardian reporting in May 2017 that start-ups were increasingly likely to fail as the tech venture-capital model struggled, and by Bloomberg News reporting in September 2017 that the high cost of housing was leaving thousands of jobs unfilled.

This month, the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project, which is headed by the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Leadership Group, released a report on the region that was at least as bleak as the media accounts. It said Silicon Valley was still thriving and a global leader – but that it was unlikely to maintain its status as the U.S. pace-setter in creating tech jobs unless housing construction sharply increased, to end the upward spiral in rent and mortgage payments. A modest tract house can fetch more than $1 million in San Jose and triple that in wealthier suburbs. Rental costs, even in less affluent neighborhoods, are among the nation’s highest.

“The gap between job and housing growth is large and widening,” stated the report, which defined Silicon Valley as including the city-county of San Francisco, Santa Clara County and San Mateo County.

Many of the key findings were based on comparisons of where Silicon Valley stood in 2010 versus 2016. The study noted there was a 29 percent increase in payroll jobs during that span, but only a 4 percent increase in total housing units. As more people were forced to commute to Silicon Valley, the average commute lengthened by 18.9 percent over the six years.

“An average Silicon Valley commuter now spends 72 minutes commuting per day, round trip. This figure has grown marginally since last year and remains second only to the commute time of New York City workers, who spend 74 minutes commuting,” the report noted.

Region’s population fell despite economic boom

Silicon Valley saw another negative landmark in 2016. Despite a booming economy, the report cited U.S. Census Bureau population estimates showing the region had a slight decline in population.

The downbeat report came as no surprise to one former Silicon Valley resident: Santa Cruz attorney Kate Downing, who resigned from the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission and moved from the city in 2016 because her family could no longer handle Palo Alto’s housing costs. She told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We’re just not building enough housing. More correctly, cities are not permitting developers to build enough housing. … I think more affordable housing would have kept us in Silicon Valley.”

Lawmakers from the region have had some success in trying to make it easier to build homes in California. State Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, was the lead author of a bill enacted in 2017 that limits cities with bad records on new housing from preventing new projects that meet basic zoning rules.

This year, Weiner and co-authors Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, have introduced Senate Bill 827. With exceptions, it would make it far easier to build small apartment-condo buildings up to 85 feet in height within a half-mile of a transit center.

The issue of short-term vacation rentals continues to roil California cities large and small, but a major compromise in San Francisco agreed to by Airbnb and HomeAway has ended for now the fighting in the city that has the

As of Jan. 16, all such rentals in San Francisco had to be registered with the city, with permits paid for and transient occupancy taxes regularly paid. Online rental platforms that didn’t sign the settlement will face criminal penalties as well as fines up to $1,000 day if they rent out homes, condos or apartments which didn’t comply with the standards accepted by Airbnb and HomeAway.

Hotels, timeshares, bed-and-breakfasts and homes rented for 30 days or more are not affected.

At least temporarily, the compromise has put a dent in Airbnb business in San Francisco, city officials told the Chronicle. Given that the city is rejecting more than a quarter of applications for various reasons, Airbnb might never have as many listings as its peak number in the unregulated era. Homeowners who only rent infrequently may consider the $250 registration fee too high and the bureaucratic hassles too many.

The compromise was finalized last year after a long court battle that began when the home-share companies sued in U.S. District Court over a restrictive city law that was eventually upheld.

Giant apartment chain loses suit over Airbnb rentals

Airbnb – which was founded in San Francisco in 2008 and remains headquartered there – faces further battles across California.

Recently, it won another federal court case, this time in Los Angeles. It involved a lawsuit filed by Aimco, one of America’s biggest landlords, which owns apartment buildings in 24 California communities from the Bay Area to San Diego, as well as throughout the U.S.

Aimco wanted Airbnb to take responsibility for making sure its tenants didn’t use Airbnb, which is a violation of Aimco’s standard lease. On Dec. 29, the U.S. District Court ruled for Airbnb.

Aimco, a Denver-based corporation, denounced the ruling as a violation of its privacy rights. But it has not yet made clear whether it will appeal the ruling.

Stalemate over rental regulations continues in Los Angeles

While Airbnb has secured a deal in San Francisco, officials in the two largest markets  – Los Angeles and San Diego – have been trying to come up with a consensus for years. Both cities have laws on the books that essentially forbid short-term rentals in most neighborhoods but have only rarely been enforced.

The Los Angeles City Council in October held a public hearing on a proposal to impose relatively strict limits on its 23,000 short-term rentals – in particular a requirement that only the home’s primary owner could list a home, not investors who have proliferated in recent years because of Airbnb and similar companies. But a council committee decided to continue looking at the issue after complaints the rules were either too strong or too weak. There was also criticism of a provision to ban renters of rent-controlled apartments from using platforms like Airbnb.

The San Diego City Council in December couldn’t find a fifth vote on the nine-member board for either a tough ordinance that Airbnb homeowners depicted as potentially devastating or a measure that would have added some limits and used ramped-up city enforcement to target “party houses” that disrupt beach neighborhoods. The city has an estimated 9,000 short-term rentals.

The Trump administration has made clear that it will not look the other way when it comes to de facto state legalization of marijuana, as the Obama administration did. Instead, White House press secretary Sean Spicer last week said the states that have approved the use of recreational pot – California is one of eight – would face a reckoning because marijuana use remains a federal crime under the Controlled Substances Act.

State Democrats immediately denounced the possibility of a federal crackdown and took a defiant tone, starting with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a key sponsor of Proposition 64, the ballot measure approved with 56 percent support in November that sets up the framework for legal pot sales and use beginning Jan. 1, 2018. Newsom released a letter that called Spicer “grossly uninformed” for saying legal pot could make the opioid epidemic worse and warned that a federal intervention would help “drug cartels and criminals” by keeping the sale of marijuana a black-market, illegal practice.

Xavier Becerra, recently installed as state attorney general, also vowed in a statement that he would “protect the interests of California” from federal intrusion.

A Los Angeles Times report quoted attorneys as saying California could argue that it has a legal right to control drug rules within its borders.

Constitution gives federal government final say

But legal websites and U.S. history suggest that a federal government that is determined to enforce federal laws would be a very difficult obstacle for a state to overcome.

“The Supremacy Clause is a clause within Article VI of the U.S. Constitution which dictates that federal law is the ‘supreme law of the land,’” the FindLaw website notes. “This means that judges in every state must follow the Constitution, laws and treatises of the federal government in matters which are directly or indirectly within the government’s control. Under the doctrine of preemption, which is based on the Supremacy Clause, federal law preempts state law, even when the laws conflict.”

A federal crackdown could come in several forms:

1. Drug Enforcement Administration agents could stage raids on pot farms and dispensaries, as they did memorably in 2012 at Oakland’s massive Oaksterdam medical pot outlet. U.S. marshals and IRS agents joined in the raid.
2. Federal authorities could warn property owners that their land and buildings would be seized unless they evict pot farmers or dispensaries.
3. The federal government can compel cooperation through a lawsuit. An Associated Press analysis noted that this is what happened in 2010, when a federal suit forced Arizona to scrap an immigration law that the Justice Department said trampled on federal authority.
4. The federal courts can also compel action, such as what happened last year in Kentucky, when a county clerk who objected to issuing licenses for same-sex marriage was overruled.
5. The Treasury, Justice and Homeland Security Departments can all use existing laws to hammer banks and credit unions that accept deposits that can be linked in any way to marijuana-generated funds or if they provide any services to dispensaries. “Financial institutions face significant risk for violating federal law if they offer banking services to marijuana-related businesses,” an American Bankers Association web page warns. “The federal statutory barriers include the Controlled Substance Act, USA Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and other federal statutes.” The RICO law in particular gives law enforcement wide latitude to classify activities that may seem in a gray area as illegal, which is why it’s long been a target of advocates of legal reform.

These five ways the Trump administration could crack down on a state attempting to legalize recreational drug use are only the short list. In an era in which sweeping executive orders have become the norm, Attorney General Jeff Sessions – an ardent foe of legal pot – could ask President Trump to withhold federal funds for law enforcement or health programs from defiant states.

While Spicer was emphatic about a new federal approach to state marijuana laws, he offered no timetables for action. Sessions has so far focused on other issues in his first weeks at the Justice Department.

Report: State building modernization plan lacks oversight, behind schedule

Good morning! TGIF. 

The $1.3 billion first phase of a project to build and modernize 11 state office buildings lacks adequate accountability and oversight and is behind schedule, according to a new report. 

The report, released by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office on Wednesday, identified three areas of concern. First, LAO writes the administration’s strategy “lacks basic information necessary to determine its merits, including its costs, benefits, and potential alternative approaches.” 

Second, the LAO noted the administration’s insistence on using a particular funding process that allows “the administration to establish and fund projects without legislative approval” greatly reduces legislative oversight. 

The LAO also called the construction and renovation plan “ambitious,” adding it was already behind schedule and that it is likely to become increasingly more expensive.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “The U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department on Thursday over allegations that prosecutors and deputies withhold evidence and use jailhouse informants to illegally obtain confessions,” reports The Orange County Register. 

• “California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 54 last month, commanding the Legislature to be less sneaky by requiring 72 hours of public exposure for measures before their final votes. … The rules’ potential loophole is that they don’t require a 72-hour wait before a bill’s first floor vote in its first house by defining a bill’s “final form” – the words of Proposition 54 – as the version presented for a floor vote in the second house.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

• “Poseidon Water hopes to help quench Orange County’s thirst, but first the company’s proposed desalination project must slake a thirst of its own. … But if Poseidon has its way, the $1-billion desalter it wants to build next door will simply take over use of the power station’s old intake pipe, which reaches roughly a quarter-mile into the ocean and is big enough for a tractor-trailer to drive through. Whether regulators allow Poseidon to do that will be the first major test of new state rules,” reports the Los Angeles Times.  

• “A bill that makes it easier for people to leave reviews on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor without fear of being sued by businesses for sharing their opinion has become law,” writes The San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Legislature:

• Gone till December.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @CelticsJunkies

The report, released by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office on Wednesday, identified three areas of concern. First, LAO writes the administration’s strategy “lacks basic information necessary to determine its merits, including its costs, benefits, and potential alternative approaches.” 

Second, the LAO noted the administration’s insistence on using a particular funding process that allows “the administration to establish and fund projects without legislative approval” greatly reduces legislative oversight. 

The LAO also called the construction and renovation plan “ambitious,” adding it was already behind schedule and that it is likely to become increasingly more expensive.

The LAO recommended the Legislature call for a “robust analysis” of the administration’s strategy, to closely monitor the $1.3 billion expenditure for 2016-17 and to push for further appropriations to be made through the budget process. 

“We believe these recommendations would help ensure that the state has the information it needs to move forward with the best available strategy for addressing its buildings in the Sacramento area and that any funds provided are spent with adequate legislative oversight and accountability,” wrote Helen Kerstein, an LAO analyst. 

The administration’s plan provided “badly needed” funding for the modernization effort, to maximize energy and water efficiency, to strengthen security and to make the buildings ADA compliant, said an administration spokesman. 

“We look forward to working closely with our colleagues at the LAO and within legislative leadership to make this effort a success and ensure the highest possible degree of transparency and accountability in how these projects are executed,” Brian Ferguson, a deputy director at the Department of General Services, told CalWatchdog on Thursday. 

California regulators have made preparations to close Diablo Canyon, the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, in a move quickly characterized as a turning point in the nation’s approach to energy production and use.

“Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Tuesday it will close California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025, ending atomic energy’s more than a half-century history in the state,” noted the San Francisco Chronicle. “The move will shutter a plant whose construction on a seaside cliff surrounded by earthquake faults helped create the antinuclear movement. And yet, some conservationists have fought to keep Diablo Canyon open, arguing California needed its output of greenhouse gas-free electricity to not exacerbate global warming.”

In fact, nuclear power has staked a claim to greater efficiencies than other forms of energy such as wind, driving critics of prevailing environmentalist policies to cast Diablo Canyon as a relatively smarter way to meet anti-carbon objectives hard to dislodge from Sacramento. “Nuclear energy is a huge source of clean power that doesn’t release the greenhouse gases that are changing the climate,” according to the U-T San Diego editorial board. “And unlike the San Onofre plant in San Diego County that closed in 2012 because of severe problems with steam generators and more, the Diablo Canyon plant appeared to be functioning well.”

Key players in the state’s environmentalist movement, however, determined that nuclear power represented more of an obstacle to their agenda than a source of potential allies. The proposal to shut down Diablo Canyon, “part of an agreement with environmental and labor groups, is intended to help meet California’s aggressive clean energy goals, which have already transformed the power mix with a large and growing renewable energy fleet at a time of slowing electric demand,” the New York Times reported. “It also comes after years of public pressure to close the plant, near San Luis Obispo, because of safety concerns over its location, near several fault lines, and its use of ocean water for cooling.”

Final approval for the change must come through the California Public Utilities Commission. “The agreement calls for PG&E to withdraw its pending application to extend the licenses for another 20 years, and to replace the plant’s 2,240-megawatt capacity with a combination of efficiency improvements and renewable sources,” as the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hitzlik noted. “Among the deal’s unique features are provisions for $350 million in retention, severance and retraining payments to existing workers and $49.5 million in payments to San Luis Obispo County as compensation for the loss of a major source of employment and taxes.”

As legacy players in the public and private sector have haggled over the costs and benefits of nuclear power production, innovators have pushed the conversation in a different direction. Although advances in the efficiency of solar power production and retention have become something of a political football in recent years, with Democrats at the state and federal level bent on subsidizing businesses geared toward solar and other nontraditional power sources, alternate-energy entrepreneur Elon Musk has forged ahead with what appear to be plans for a dramatic new play in the space. 

With his Tesla company’s bid to acquire SolarCity, as Fortune suggested, “a fully vertically integrated energy company—from energy generation to installation to storage to application—could create a massive Elon Musk Energy Empire. It would be a company that generates power from the sun, stores energy in batteries, and uses those batteries to power cars and buildings.”

“And it would all be provided by a brand that consumers increasingly know and are excited about. Tesla’s brand is starting to be so powerful that it’s as if Apple decided it wanted to be a full-fledged power company (oh wait, it’s kind of doing that). But never before has the energy industry had such a player that so was so attractive to consumers and also so willing to act disruptively.”