Two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an ambitious law
ordering California utility companies to get 50
percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
It looks like they may hit that goal a decade ahead of
schedule.
An annual
report issued Monday by California regulators found that the state’s
three big, investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Southern
California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. — are collectively on
track to reach the 50 percent milestone by 2020, although individual companies
could exceed the mark or fall just short of it.
In 2016, 32.9 percent of the electricity PG&E sold to
its customers came from renewable sources, according to the report. Edison
reached 28.2 percent renewable power in 2016, while SDG&E — the state’s
smallest investor-owned utility — hit 43.2 percent.
California first started requiring utilities to increase
their use of renewable power in 2002. Brown and his Republican predecessor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, ratcheted up the targets over time. Known as the
renewable portfolio standard, the requirement has become one of the state’s
most important tools for lowering greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate
change.
Brown has touted California’s ability to boost renewable
power and lower emissions while growing its economy. Even as President Trump
has moved to scale back federal efforts to combat global warming, Brown has
been pushing other states and foreign governments to join California.
“We don’t want to do nothing and just sit there and let the
climate get worse,” he said Monday by phone from Germany, where he is attending
climate talks. “California is all in.”
California’s emissions from electric power generation
have declined
almost every year since 2008.
The requirement triggered a boom in the construction of
solar power plants and wind farms. At the same time, renewable power prices
have plunged. The average utility contract price for buying electricity from a
large-scale photovoltaic solar facility dropped from $135.90 per megawatt-hour
in 2008 to $29.17 in 2016. Wind power prices fell from $97.11 per megawatt-hour
in 2007 to $50.99 in 2015, according to the report.
So much solar power now floods the California grid from late
morning through mid-afternoon that on many days, there isn’t a need for all of
it. But the state is still heavily reliant on conventional power plants burning
natural gas, which provide the large majority of California’s electricity
during late afternoons and evenings.
The report found that as the renewable power building boom
was getting under way, utilities signed contracts with more solar and wind
power developers than they needed, expecting many of the projects to fall
through.
They also bought more “renewable energy credits” — tradeable
certificates generated whenever a solar plant or wind facility produces
electricity — than necessary.
In addition, the growing popularity of community choice
aggregation projects — in which local governments buy electricity on behalf of
their citizens — has cut into the amount of electricity the utilities sell to
customers, a trend expected to accelerate. As result, reaching the 50 percent
renewable mandate will be easier than anticipated.
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