Wyoming Infrastructure Authority

Greenwire

Colin Sullivan, E&E reporter

California’s largest utility is pressing for changes to a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard that lawmakers in Sacramento had hoped to pass by the end of August, when the state’s legislative session ends.

With the clock ticking on the session and the pressure mounting, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Democratic leaders over the weekend that outlines several points of opposition to S.B. 722, which would enact a 33 percent RPS.

The bill, which would codify a 33 percent standard by 2020 via an executive order issued by Schwarzenegger last year, would mandate that at least 75 percent of new renewable power come from within California with the rest imported from neighboring states. But PG&E wants that number lowered to 60 percent while increasing access to renewable energy credits to 20 percent.

Compared to a 33 percent RPS that Schwarzenegger vetoed last year, this year’s bill “actually places more restrictions on the ability to procure renewable resources across the West,” wrote Edward Bedwell, PG&E’s vice president of government relations, in the letter.

Schwarzenegger has also come out against the bill on the grounds that it does not do enough to expedite renewable energy projects facing an arduous permitting process. The governor has said he will oppose the measure unless it is changed and recently asked the state’s Air Resources Board to postpone a final vote on his executive order to wait for the legislative process to play out (Greenwire, June 21).

Sen. Joe Simitian, the Silicon Valley Democrat who authored the bill, has insisted that the 75 percent threshold is workable. A recent editorial in The Sacramento Bee urged lawmakers to get behind Simitian to get a deal this year to help create more jobs in California, where unemployment has passed 12 percent.

“There is no reason to bypass California entrepreneurs for energy producers from Montana and other states,” the editorial stated. “California has its own sources of renewable power.”

PG&E in the letter also asked lawmakers to adopt a “step-stair approach” in the new RPS, which would replace the current standard requiring investor-owned utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewables by the end of 2010. The step-stair method would set interim targets in 2013, 2016 and 2020.

Sullivan reported from San Francisco