California Governor Jerry Brown yesterday signed into law a mandate requiring utilities get a third of their electricity from renewable resources like solar panels and wind turbines.
The new bill promises to bring certainty to a fast-growing market for solar energy, in particular. With the transition to a new Governor this year, the future of California’s renewables portfolio standard was periodically brought into question (see here and here). Without formal legislative action, the standard would have remained stuck at 20 percent rather than the more aggressive 33 percent.
Brown was brief in his signing letter to the state legislature:
This bill will bring many important benefits to California, including stimulating investment in green technologies in the state, creating tens of thousands of new jobs, improving local air quality, promoting energy independence, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will ensure that California maintains its long-standing leadership in renewables and clean energy.
Notably, he also hinted at raising the standard higher still:
While reaching a 33% renewables portfolio standard will be an important milestone, it isreally just a starting point – a floor, not a ceiling. Our state has enormous renewable resource potential. I would like to see us pursue even more far-reaching targets. With the amount of renewable resources coming on-line, and prices dropping, I think 40%, at reasonable cost, is well within our grasp in the near future.
At that level, California could stand head-to-head with Hawaii, the only state with a higher renewable energy target on the books.
Given California’s relative size advantage however — it’s home to over a tenth of the country’s people and has an economy roughly the size of Italy’s — the decisions made in Sacramento have far larger impact on both the environment and the market for renewable energy technologies than those made in Honolulu. (Not to diminish the efforts of Hawaii, which is in the midst of rolling out a unique feed-in tariff incentive program).
For more on California’s recently signed renewable energy standard bill, see Tiffany Hsu’s blog post for the L.A. Times.
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