Schwarzenegger’s 1/3 from Renewables by 2020 is Still a Slow Start
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Related subjects: Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Energy Supply, Environment & Ecology, Legislation, Renewable Resources, U.S. Economy, U.S. Environment, U.S. Politics Comments Off
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) is reported to be planning to enact the most stringent renewable energy regulations in the nation, requiring public utilities to generate fully one-third of their electric output from renewable resources by the year 2020. California has been pushing for aggressive new standards requiring a transition to renewable energy, but was blocked by the Bush-era EPA from implementing more stringent state-wide emissions protocols and has recently seen a tough battle in Sacramento over the question of imposing on utilities a shift to clean, renewable resources.
In a strange legislative twist, Gov. Schwarzenegger has said he will veto the legislature’s plan to force a 33% mandate for sourcing new power from renewable resources, by the year 2020. The governor shares the legislation’s goals, but says specifics in the way the plan would be implemented might make California’s energy markets less dynamic and impede the state’s ability to source power from outside the state.
The bill passed by the state’s legislature would limit the state’s ability to import renewable energy from outside the state, a provision that could push up costs and make the 33% mark harder to reach. The legislature’s aim in putting such limits on importation was to spur investment in renewable resources in the state itself, not only helping to make the state more energy independent, but possibly also creating a valuable renewable-export market for neighboring states.
According to the New York Times, the bill “If signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would be the largest ‘renewable portfolio standard’ in the country.” But the governor is worried that with costs of land, labor, materials and production in California rising sharply, a strong in-state generation requirement would push prices for renewable resourced power up, putting an already fiscally strapped state in a position comparable to the energy price crisis of the late 1990s.
A spokesman for the governor’s office told the press:
The poorly drafted, overly complex bills passed by the legislature are protectionist schemes that will kill the solar industry in California and drive prices up like the failed energy deregulation of the late 1990s. The bills as drafted will be vetoed by the governor. The governor will sign an executive order implementing the 33 percent renewable mandate administratively.
There is another problem with the governor’s choice to veto the legislation and impose the standard by executive order: the executive order will have less fundamental permanence and could be reversed or altered more easily by a future executive. Legislators will want to craft a new proposal that gives the one-third standard the binding power of law.
California’s one-third mandate for renewable resources is one of the most aggressive in the world, but at this stage in the climate destabilization crisis and with American fuel dependency on foreign nations escalating, the one-third target is too slow a start. There is more than enough potential wind power resource capacity in the Great Plains alone to power the entire domestic electricity grid and allow for exportation of clean energy.
With the vast solar resource of the southwest, and the wind and solar resourcing capability of both the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains and the Alaskan plateau, there is no reason the entire nation could not transition to at least 50% renewable resourced power generation. Over the next 10 years, it is feasible to expand the renewable resource power generation capacity of the US by as much as 5% of overall capacity per year, which would eventually amount to well over 50% of the total estimated demand for 2020.
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