Once a leader, state's been eclipsed on renewables
! By Peter Asmus
Special to The Bee
Published: Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 3E
California has always been a pioneer, and nowhere is this myth more compelling than in the world of energy. But time has not been kind to the Golden State. With state legislators getting back to work Monday, their votes in the coming weeks may help determine whether California can regain some of its luster, or continue to fade away into the sunset as an iconoclastic and now largely irrelevant player on the national and international stage.
Despite the hype and California's clear legacy of innovation, the rest of the nation no longer looks to the state for models and solutions. Part of the reason is that we have Barack Obama as president, and Washington, D.C., is finally grappling with challenges such as global climate change and the need to shift to a more sustainable energy supply.
There is something larger going on here, however. We are still the breeding ground for creativity and entrepreneurial fervor. Yet when it comes to actually implementing cutting-edge solutions to energy, we seem to fall flat on our collective faces.
There are exceptions – with solar photovoltaics, tiny semiconductors that can transform sunlight directly into electricity, being the prime example. The California Solar Initiative has been wildly successful in adding these clean energy sources to the grid. Yet if Assembly Bill 560 by Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, is not passed this month, customers of Pacific Gas and Electric will bump up against an arbitrary limit on solar PV installations in its service territory, halting one of our few recent success stories for most of Northern California.
The story with other renewables such as wind power is not nearly as positive. First Texas, and now even Iowa, have surpassed California's wind power capacity totals. The United States now leads the world in terms of wind power production, with most of the activity occurring in the nation's heartland in the Midwest, hardly a place known for major energy advances. Meanwhile, California has been trying to figure out how to tap the last remaining prime wind resource site in the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County since the infamous energy crisis of 2000-01, and has still come up short.
Before I delve into some other key bills seeking an up or down vote in the dog days of summer, a short little history lesson may be in order.
Used to being first
After the Gold Rush faded in the Sierra Nevada in the 19th century, many of the 49ers turned to a new form of gold: the water gushing down mountain streams. Hard to believe, but PG&E traces its roots to a few entrepreneurs who figured out how to transmit hydroelectricity from places such as Nevada City first to Sacramento and then to Oakland.
After hydropower, it was oil that put California on the world's energy map, most of it in the Los Angeles area. It wasn't until an oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast in 1969 that Californians turned their backs on this industry, though petroleum still remains our primary source of energy due to our freeways, suburban sprawl and addiction to automobiles.
Then came nuclear power, which California initially embraced with gusto. Moorpark in Ventura County once bragged that it was the nation's first completely nuclear-powered city. But then dozens of nuclear power plants were canceled when a few environmentalists pointed out reducing consumption made more sense than building expensive power plants. Sacramento made history in 1989 when it became the only community in the United States to close an operating nuclear reactor by a public vote. And today, a de facto ban on any more nuclear power plants for the state is still in place.
State blazed path on renewables
In the '80s, California literally created the entire world's renewable energy industry, with California owning bragging rights to 90 percent of the world's renewable energy resources with a diverse portfolio featuring solar, wind, geothermal and biomass power. In the '90s, we figured out more ways to consume less and less energy before "deregulation" blew up in our faces and the lights went out.
The recent state budget crisis in Sacramento is not the only sign that the much-vaunted California dream may be nothing more than nostalgia. We are still captured by powerful special interests protecting the status quo rather than fostering radical innovation.
Case in point: A recent report by the California Public Utilities Commission complains that obtaining a third of our electricity from renewable energy under a Renewable Portfolio Standard will cost us dearly. Two bills under consideration – Senate Bill 14 by Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, and Assembly Bill 64 by Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank, and Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles – would place this broadly supported renewable target into statute.
The fact that the powers that be – such as PG&E – have not complied with a current state target of obtaining 20 percent of our power from renewable fuels by 2010 is no excuse to back down now. Meeting this 20 percent renewable target, which is next to impossible due to bureaucratic complexity, will likely cost only 3 percent more than business-as-usual. Bumping the long-term goal to 33 percent renewables may cost approximately 7 percent more than meeting the 20 percent 2010 target. In dollars and cents, the 33 percent target may cost us $3.6 billion more in 2020, but we as a state pay more than $30 billion annually on electric power today – and that number will surely grow over time. Furthermore, these investments over the next decade or so will modernize our power supply for the next 30 years, truly leading the way on the renewable energy front.
The cost of cleaning up our climate and the Central Valley's air will only increase over time. Passing either SB 14 or AB 64 is like buying insurance. No one likes the upfront costs, but we're certainly happy we made the investments when catastrophes – like climate change – really strike home.
What is at stake?
Where are we today? Despite the bold proclamations, California is becoming irrelevant. Eco-perfectionism has boxed us in. And incumbent utilities are still gumming up things at regulatory proceedings and under the Capitol rotunda.
As the Obama administration's grand plans for climate change bump up against the reality of beltway politics this September, one would hope that California could rise above and boldly plow forward as it has done so many times before in the past. California needs to send a signal to the world that we are serious about tackling climate change with the latest and greatest renewable energy technologies.
Today, California is the only state among 28 with an Renewable Portfolio Standard in place that tries to limit the cost of renewable energy based on the cost of natural gas, which zig-zags up and down, further complicating what could be a straightforward proposition.
There are other measures that could help propel California back into a leadership role, among them SB 32 by Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Chino, and AB 1106 by Assemblymembers Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar, and Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City. Both of these bills would establish new "feed-in tariffs" requiring utilities to purchase renewable power from smaller facilities at set prices. This was actually the model originally employed to develop renewable energy in California and was copied by countries such as Germany and Spain with great success as we became enamored with the wonders of free markets.
We in California like to fool ourselves, bathing in the media's portrayal of us living on the cutting edge, particularly when it comes to anything green. With Hollywood and Silicon Valley, everything seems possible here.
Without new leadership or some sort of citizen uprising, the Golden State may go down in history as the state that knows how to jump in with the latest energy fad – but doesn't have the staying power to transform all of these cool visions into concrete reality.
Who can save ourselves from ourselves? Older and wiser, former Gov. Jerry Brown might just be the guy. It was on his watch that California earned its world-renowned reputation as a global leader on energy.
Of course, that was then, and this is now.
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