(a) (1) On or before June 30, 2024, the commission, in coordination and consultation with the Department of Community Services and Development and other relevant state agencies that provide low-income electric or gas utility customer assistance programs, shall develop a process that, to the extent possible, enables customers to concurrently apply, or begin to apply, to multiple low-income customer assistance programs using data collected during the original application process, including, but not limited to, all of the following programs:
(A) The California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) program described in Section 739.1.
(B) The Family Electric Rate Assistance program described in Section 739.12.
(C) The Energy Savings Assistance program described in Section 2790.
(2) The process developed pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be known as the concurrent application process.
(b) The commission shall work with state agencies, electrical corporations, and gas corporations to notify, to the extent possible, eligible individuals that they have been successfully enrolled or are in the process of being enrolled into other programs.
(c) The concurrent application process shall complement, rather than replace, other application processes.
(d) Before sharing data, an electrical corporation or gas corporation shall receive consent from its low-income applicants to use already-obtained application information to begin the enrollment process for other low-income electric or gas utility customer assistance programs.
(Added by Stats. 2022, Ch. 840, Sec. 2. (SB 1208) Effective January 1, 2023.)