Melissa Semcer

Appointed by Governor Newsom to lead Energy Safety’s Electrical Infrastructure Directorate, I oversaw our Electric Safety Policy Division, Compliance Assurance Division, and Data Analytics Division. These teams are responsible for continually evolving and monitoring our seminal Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMPs) designed to measurably reduce the risk of utility-ignited catastrophic wildfire.

In 2021, Energy Safety split from CPUC to become an independent agency. I continued to manage the Wildfire Safety Policy Division, which is now the Electric Safety Policy Division.

CPUC’s Wildfire Safety Division was formed in 2019 to ensure that electrical utilities take effective actions to reduce wildfire risk. I was selected to create the framework for Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMPs) that effectively challenged utilities to prioritize risk mitigation. I also helped to define the division’s strategic direction and organizational structure. I selected and led a team of 15, plus an outside consulting agency, in implementing a first-of-its-kind, outcome-based maturity model to evaluate continuous improvement of utilities’ WMPs. We designed and facilitated a public stakeholder process to develop utility safety culture assessments and created foundational guidelines and processes for all aspects of utility wildfire safety certification. My team also instituted an executive compensation review process which ensures that safety is incentivized in utility executives’ compensation packages.

In this capacity, I resolved complex conflicts involving powerful leaders, skilled entities, and multibillion-dollar outcomes. Key policies/decisions: ▪ Developed framework around the use of Public Safety Power Shutoffs to ensure that electric utilities adhered to notification, communication, and education standards while integrating into existing emergency management frameworks. ▪ Developed the California Climate Credit, a highly charged $15B issue with 70+ stakeholder groups. This involved defining usage protocols for greenhouse-gas allowance proceeds by electric utilities in a decision now used as precedent research across the country. ▪ Managed an extraordinarily complex stakeholder engagement process related to the future of the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility following a catastrophic leak.

Spearheaded 1.5 years of negotiations with industry executives, high-level utility leaders, and attorneys, leading to a resolution of 90%+ of decade-long disputes over combined heat and power policy.

In a side coaching business for executives and solopreneurs committed to sustainability and service, I helped clients set and achieve their individual definitions of success.

At the Rocky Mountain Institute, I collaborated with a multi-state team to build a financial model to assess the economics of the biodiesel value chain for the State of Hawaii.

As a competitively selected research fellow, I worked on a multi-year industry-university collaboration to assess federal greenhouse gas policy.