California Air Resources Board Approves Climate Change Scoping Plan: Renewable Portfolio Standard
This post was written by Steven Gasser.
The approved Scoping Plan revises California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard to achieve a 20 percent renewable energy mix statewide by 2010, and a 33 percent renewable energy mix by 2020. The plan defines renewable energy sources as wind, solar, geothermal, small hydroelectric, biomass, anaerobic digestion and landfill gas. The state currently is at a 12 percent renewable energy mix.
To achieve this goal, the Plan proposes the following:
- Making significant investment in the transmission infrastructure to renewable resource zones. The Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI), a broad collaborative of state agencies, utilities, the environmental community, and renewable generation developers, will work to identify and prioritize renewable generation zones and associated transmission projects.
- Implementing systems changes to allow integration of large quantities of intermittent wind and solar generation, e.g. grid improvements so that fluctuations in power availability can be accommodated; improved communications technology, automated demand response, electronic sub-station improvements to accommodate intermittent energy sources.
- Reducing complexity and cost faced by small renewable developers (20 megawatt or less) in contracting with utilities to supply renewable generation.
- Requiring investor owned utilities to increase the share of renewables in their portfolios to 20 percent by 2010.
- High Recycling / Zero Waste initiatives, which may also contribute to achieving the 33% goal through deployment of anaerobic digestion for production of fuel/energy.
Click here to return to Scoping Plan overview.
