California Adds 8,600 MW New Renewable Power: Meets RPS Goals
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The initial 2002 RPS legislation (SB1078, authored by Senator Byron Sher) had required utilities to get 20% by 2017 of renewable power – not counting nuclear or traditional hydroelectric as renewable.
Then in 2006, Palo Alto Senator Joe Simitian sped up the timetable to just four years to meet the 20% RPS: 2010. But it allowed a three year window; till 2013, to actually get the power onto the grid with SB107.
The lag time is because while contracts are easy enough to sign; actual approval and permitting and transmission issues can slow the process. Many contracts are signed but awaiting approval with the CPUC. There is no shortage of renewable energy companies wanting to do business with the state. Despite the speeded up schedule; California utilities are generally on track to meet the 2013 goal.
By comparison, Texas now produces about 8,000 megawatts just of wind power, and is now second in wind power only to Germany with its 22,000 megawatts of wind power.
(Because countries in Europe are more comparable in size to our states here, it is more useful to compare European nations to our states, rather than to the USA as a whole, as is commonly done.) Germany has 82 million people in 138 thousand square miles. More sparsely populated Texas has 24 million people in twice that size – 269 thousand square miles.
California has 37 million people in 164 thousand square miles, and we use 265,000 gigawatthours of electricity annually – so 20% would be about 51,000 gigawatthours annually of renewable power.
California is on target to meet that. As my high school motto put it: Aim High.
Related stories:
SMUD Adds Unusual Feed-in Tariff, But Not as Good as Gainesville’s
Which States Use the Most Renewable Energy and How They Made it Happen
Images: BrightSource and the CPUC
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