This year, Grover Norquist and ALEC famously declared war on renewable energy, sponsoring legislation to roll-back renewable portfolio standards (RPS) — a fundamental energy policy that 30 states have put in place to increase the amount of renewables powering their grids.
With passage of California’s 33% renewable energy law (RPS) in 2011, the state’s publicly owned utilities were obligated to meet the same renewable requirements at the major investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E) for the first time. That’s no small step forward for renewables in the state! Together the state’s 10 largest publicly owned utilities deliver
Ohio’s solar market is very similar to those of neighboring states in that it is premised upon a RPS solar carve-out. 0.5% of Ohio’s total electricity supply by 2024, that is; half of which must be derived from in-state solar resources.
As we reported on back in March, there has been
In April, California made another big leap ahead in the clean energy race. At a solar panel factory in Milpitas, with Dept of Energy Secretary Steven Chu joining him on stage, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation making the 33%-by-2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard(RPS) the law of the land. (Watch a video of the bill signing here.)
Good news from Sacramento on the push to make California’s the strongest renewable goal in the country. The much-anticipated bill to increase our renewable energy requirement (RPS) to 33% has passed the Senate. Now we need the Assembly to do the same.
Because this policy sets the renewable
California’s failure to pass 33% RPS legislation is creating real havoc in the renewable market.
A month ago, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to create a new 1,000 MW program for distributed generation renewables (Reverse Auction Mechanism (RAM)). It’s a great program, but earlier this
Just across the bay from Vote Solar HQ, the team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has been busy as ever cranking out detailed reports of valuable information on clean energy markets, policies, costs and benefits. We found two recent reports particularly illuminating:
State RPS Policies are Key to U.S. Solar Market Growth
I was keeping a tally sheet at last week’s Renewable Energy Finance Forum, so I could let readers know the issue that was brought up most often and granted the most overall prominence. The clear winner: China is eating our lunch in the migration to renewables. Inexplicably and tragically, the US is content to drop further and further behind in the development of energy
On Friday, Sept. 23, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) – in the absence of a California Legislature vote on the issue – approved a greenhouse gas reduction target of 33 percent for 2020 for the Los Angeles and greater San Francisco Bay areas – a target originally set by AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006.
FERC may have recently put the kibosh on states implementing European-style Feed-in Tariffs, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. is left high and dry without ways to drive wholesale solar markets. We’re seeing daily action from utility PV programs that play by FERC’s rules.
Just today, Southern California Edison announced 60 MW worth of contracts under
During President Obama’s speech this week at Carnegie Mellon University, he signaled emphatically that he would go after the votes to pass a clean energy bill this year, assuring that while “the votes may not be there right now… I intend to find them in the coming months… and we will get it done.”This is exactly the sort of presidential resolve that’s needed. The president went on to say,
[T]he only way the transition to clean energy will succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future – if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed. And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.
He got it exactly right – investors are waiting to see what Congress decides. And once we do set a price for carbon pollution, a huge amount of money will be back in play to invest in clean energy.
Heading into the new year, we are left wondering what impact Copenhagen’s legacy (a nonbinding Accord) will have on the US Senate’s cap-and-trade bill. With the House “ACES” bill passed, the attention is now squarely focused on the Senate as it reconvenes and takes another crack at legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Cap-and-trade legislation from Washington may include a federal renewable electricity standard (Washington’s version of a renewable portfolio standard). How this standard would be integrated into existing state standards or vice versa will remain a hot topic throughout 2010.
The New York Times’ Kate Galbraith had an interesting piece on the internecine warfare in the green movement that pits renewable advocates and environmental groups against hydro dams — right now the country’s predominate renewable technology. This piece follows on several in the past few weeks talking about a nuclear resurgence and what that may mean in the green power and environmental advocacy communities.
Long story short, in spite of the fact that it is cost competitive, non-GHG emitting, renewable and technologically deployable, there is A LOT of resentment against hydro dams.
With less than a year left before the international community reconvenes to tackle climate change in Copenhagen this December, many unanswered questions remain. Chief among them is whether the US can begin to patch together a flurry of legislation targeting reduced greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions in time to signal a renewed commitment to leading the international community on environmental issues. Doing so will focus the spotlight on China, which together with the US, accounts for 40% of the world’s GHG emissions.
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