If Going 100% Renewable Is So Good For California, Why The Backroom Dealing?
Sammy Roth of The Desert Sun broke an interesting story last week about how Portland, Oregon-based PacifiCorp is working behind the scenes to effectively gut and amend a California State climate bill (SB 100) that would make California’s power generation carbon free by 2045.
And add new legislation (AB 726) that calls for the state grid operator to propose a new governance structure within a year, involving representatives of other states, and erasing California’s control of its own grid.
Furthermore, it requires renewable energy from Wyoming, the largest coal-producer in the Nation.
SB 100 could pave the way for California to import more wind energy from far-away places like Wyoming and export more California solar power to other western states. The hope is to remove the large amount of natural gas power presently needed to back-up the growing amount of wind and solar energy in the State, which are intermittent and not very reliable.
On the other hand, the last-minute legislation makes California give up sole control of the state’s power grid, giving conservative states like Utah and Wyoming significant influence over California’s energy mix.
This makes labor unions, political leaders and some environmental groups in the State a little nervous. As does the fact that it was pounded out in back-rooms and with many special interest groups, so no one is really sure what it would mean and how it would be accomplished.
It could completely change how the regional grid is managed and who would make the decisions, pitting red states against blue states, each having a totally different approach to energy and climate change.
What could go wrong?
The Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer watchdog based in San Francisco, has criticized such grid expansion, calling the 11th-hour deal-making ‘an example of Sacramento dysfunction at…
