California's Senate Bill 1097, proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener, would weaken environmental review for many polluting energy operations, such as landfill gas facilities, biomass power plants, biogas digesters, waste-to-energy incinerators and large-scale battery storage projects. The bill would eliminate the "fair argument" standard for environmental review, which is triggered when substantial evidence suggests a project may cause significant harm, allowing local residents to prove harm rather than requiring the government to investigate it. It also strips away critical habitat protections when projects are sited on habitat for endangered, threatened or rare species, but SB 1097 contains no such provisions. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has stood on a principle that projects cannot proceed without thorough review.