I have found myself confused about the energy mandates and initiatives for the State of California, specifically in Yolo County. My confusion became apparent when I attended a meeting attended by members of the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, members of the public and representatives of a company desiring to install hundreds of giant wind turbines (aero-generators) in our beautiful county. During this meeting the discussion turned to what regulations and mandates need to be followed. The BOS members thought they had to achieve a 20% mix of renewable electricity in the total electrical energy use by 2020, the wind farm advocates said it was a 33% mandate, and none of us seemed to really be sure about the details. Maybe I was the only one mixed up, and they just didn't have time to clearly express what they do know on the various topics - it is certainly confusing and time consuming to discuss it in any depth.
I am still not sure about the details, but have done some research and have a bit more information than I did at that meeting. It turns out that there are a number of programs and laws in California and the County (as well as in the Country) dealing with green house gas emissions and renewable energy.
The State has three main thrusts to reduce green house gases and increase the use of renewable energy resources. They are:
1) There are a set of regulations in the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 that mandate that the State must cut the release of green house gases to the 1990 level by the year 2020. There are more goals than this, but this is an important current goal. Most of this is going to be accomplished by pushing mandates to the Counties to do the actual hard work of reducing green house gas emission. This is the reason that the County has adapted the Climate Action Plan with the goal of reducing green house gas emissions from activities within the County to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The method for measuring implementation is done through rather lengthy and complex inventory procedures.
An important aspect of the State's Climate Scoping Plan is the imposition of a Cap and Trade scheme that went into law in January of 2012 whereby carbon credits can be traded (or sold) to other entities within the regional market (New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Montana, British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba).
2) The California Solar Initiative provides for incentives for roof top solar. There are also closely related programs to provide consumer related assistance for things that will reduce the use of non-renewable energy at the user site such as high efficiency hot water heaters and other appliances. The aspect of providing economic incentives isn't actually a mandate to do anything, but instead it is based upon the hope to achieve the goals by offering money for particular developments. Measurement of success for this is that the money set aside as incentives gets used up- which is very close to the current situation.
The initiative is a "success" because people took the money to make the desired improvements. These programs are aimed at reducing the demand for energy that creates green house gases. These incentive driven initiatives are intended to assist the State in meeting the required green house levels as described above. The energy incentives are just a portion of the overall activities required to bring green house gas emissions down within the required time frame. Almost all of these actions are "demand side" initiatives.
3) The State has passed a law through SB 2-1 passed in April of 2011 that requires Investor Owned Utilities (IOU) to procure 33% as much renewable energy as they sell. (Procuring includes making it from their own facilities or purchasing it from companies with California - with a few exceptions that allow purchase from neighboring areas). It is narrowly focused on purchased renewable energy fed into the electrical grid. It does not require that the power sold is from 33% renewable sources, or that the overall system has any reduction of green house gases. The measure of success is that the amount of procured renewable energy fed into the grid be at least equal to 33% of the energy sold by the grid. It turns out that the original target was 20%, but since that was achieved by 2010 the government upped the stakes to 33%. As of 2010, the IUOs already has contracts in place to achieve over 41% procurement from renewable sources - so the new laws didn't really do anything to achieve added renewable energy - but they did achieve creating a lot of financial incentives to do so. The "extra" renewable energy will create energy carbon credits (sometimes called "coal credits" that can be sold to other utilities in the regional market (as noted in 1 above) allowing those utilities to purchase carbon credits rather than reduce their emissions of GHG.
In Yolo County there is a Climate Action Plan as required by the General Plan. The Climate Action Plan is driven by a State requirement to reduce green house gases for the State which "flows down" to the Counties.
The local impacts of these regulations are interesting. For one thing, there is no mandate from the State for the Counties to do anything about the amount of renewable energy sources - that is all taken care of through agreements between the State and the IOUs. Not only that, but since the IOUs already have sufficient contracts for meeting their mandates, there is no reason for them to add additional sources such as new wind generation power plants to meet the goals. In addition, since it is well established that wind energy does not decrease the use of non-renewable energy sources on the grid, and does not reduce the amount of green house gases created by the grid, the 33% reduction in green house emissions claimed by the County by using IOU power is illusory at best. However, it appears that State law has defined the production of wind energy to be equivalent to the reduction in fossil fuel use and the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions regardless of the actual performance of the utility system in this regard. It is actually not possible to reduce the County's green house gas numbers by purchasing energy from "green" sources because there are no "green" sources on the market (when measured from the overall grid system point of view).
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