Developers, local lawmaker look to 50% clean energy goal

Long a leader in renewable energy, California is gearing up for the next big step in its clean power transformation.

In the weeks since Gov. Jerry Brown called for California to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, policymakers have been discussing a "clean energy standard" that would replace the state's current Renewables Portfolio Standard. And now Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, a Coachella Democrat, has introduced a bill that would make Brown's 50 percent target a state law.

Garcia is picking up where his Assembly predecessor, V. Manuel Pérez, left off. Pérez championed a bill in 2013 that would have raised the state's renewable energy mandate from 33 percent to 50 percent, but it failed to advance after facing stiff opposition from utilities and business groups.

Now, though, Brown has thrown his political weight behind a 50 percent mandate. Garcia probably won't be the only legislator to introduce a bill on the topic, but his legislation — Assembly Bill 197, known as the Clean Energy Act — could help set the tone for later debate.

The desert, Garcia emphasized, is home to enormous quantities of solar, wind and geothermal potential. Renewable energy is expected to create up to 163,000 jobs in California by 2020, his office noted, citing a report from California Clean Energy Future, a compendium of state agencies.

"Naturally when the governor talks about increasing the renewable energy percentage, I see a great opportunity not only for our district, but for the entire state," Garcia told The Desert Sun. "This is going to be an opportunity for us to plan."

California is on track to meet its current 33 percent renewable energy mandate, but development has slowed in recent years. If lawmakers pass Garcia's bill — or a similar proposal — it could unleash a flood of solar, wind and geothermal development across the desert.

Whatever happens in the Legislature, some experts are already treating a 50 percent mandate as a foregone conclusion. In renewable energy circles, the conversation has focused less on the politics of passing a bill and more on the mechanics of getting from 33 percent to 50 percent.

That conversation was front and center Jan. 23 near the High Desert town of Hinkley, where policymakers and renewable energy advocates gathered to celebrate the opening of the world's third-largest concentrated solar power plant. The 280-megawatt Mojave solar farm was built by Abengoa Solar, which is also developing the controversial Palen solar project near Joshua Tree National Park.

For Abengoa, the California renewable energy market represents a major opportunity. The company's chief executive, Armando Zuluaga Zilbermann, said at Mojave's commissioning event that the company is "here for the long term," citing Brown's call for a 50 percent renewable energy mandate.

"Almost every day seems to bring news of more threats to life on Earth, due to growing climate change-related impacts," Zuluaga Zilbermann said. California's "visionary" climate policies, he added, have put the state on course to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

But while Abengoa and other developers are confident that a 50 percent mandate is on the horizon, experts say the state's next wave of renewable energy development will look a lot different than the last one.

Solar panels and wind turbines have accounted for most of California's clean energy growth over the last few years, but neither is a reliable source of round-the-clock power. Traditional solar farms only generate power when the sun shines, and wind farms only generate power when the wind blows.

Regulators say they can only approve so many more intermittent solar and wind plants, at least without threatening the reliability of the electricity grid. The solution, policymakers have increasingly indicated, will involve supplementing those intermittent renewables with clean energy sources that can generate electricity throughout the day and night.

"Undoubtedly we're going to need a mix of resources to meet that renewable definition," Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, said after the Mojave solar plant's commissioning.

California's current renewable energy mandate, though, hasn't fostered much diversity. The so-called Renewables Portfolio Standard orders utilities to get to 33 percent by purchasing the cheapest renewable energy available, which generally means traditional solar and wind.

That's why policymakers have started discussing a "clean energy standard" that would replace the Renewables Portfolio Standard, Nichols told The Desert Sun. Such a standard would encourage utilities to buy more reliable — and more expensive — renewable resources, like geothermal, biomass and concentrated solar power with energy storage.

The new mechanism, Nichols added, should more closely tie renewable energy development to its ultimate purpose: cutting back on the greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate climate change. California has a long-term goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

"Clearly the overarching goal here is to meet our very strong commitment to reducing our carbon footprint," Nichols said. "So the greenhouse gas overlay is probably the thing that will drive how we actually define success."

Nichols is one of the state's most influential regulators, and her comments are the strongest indication yet of how Brown will approach a 50 percent renewable energy mandate. The governor, she said, has directed four agencies — the Air Resources Board, the Energy Commission, the Independent System Operator, the Public Utilities Commission — to develop recommendations for tackling the energy-related goals he laid out in early January.

In addition to a 50 percent renewable energy mandate, Brown called for California to reduce petroleum use in cars and trucks by 50 percent, and to double the energy efficiency of existing buildings — all by 2030.

"This is going to be a big undertaking, and it will require extensive collaboration with all of our stakeholders," Nichols said.

Utilities pushed back against Pérez's efforts to raise the renewable energy mandate in 2013, but they seem to be coming around to the idea now. Speaking at the Mojave solar plant commissioning, Fong Wan — Pacific Gas & Electric's senior vice president for energy procurement — embraced calls for a larger and more diverse renewable energy portfolio.

"I'm a big believer that we need troughs, we need towers, we need photovoltaics," he said, referring to several kinds of solar technology. "We can't put all of our eggs in one basket."

Garcia's bill, the Clean Energy Act, would encourage that kind of diversity. It would require the California Public Utilities Commission to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy sources not just by their up-front costs, but by their ability to benefit the grid by supplementing intermittent solar and wind, or by providing 24/7 electricity generation.

"We don't want to just pigeonhole ourselves to one particular area, but instead have a broad conversation about how we meet the 50 percent goal that the governor has set forward," Garcia said.

For Garcia and others in the desert, that conversation needs to include geothermal power plants, which can generate power 24 hours a day. The southern shore of the Salton Sea is home to one of the world's most potent geothermal reservoirs, but building a new geothermal plant is extremely expensive, and only one such facility has opened since 2000.

Geothermal advocates, though, have long maintained that regulators are under-valuing the power source's benefits. The Clean Energy Act would almost certainly catalyze new geothermal development in the Imperial Valley.

A 50 percent "clean energy standard" would also be a boon for concentrated solar power. Like geothermal, concentrated solar power has much higher up-front costs than traditional solar and wind, but it has a major advantage over other technologies: the ability to easily store energy.

Take Abengoa's Solana power plant in Arizona, the only fully operational concentrated solar project with storage in the United States. Solana runs about 18 hours a day during the summer, during which time it can store up to six hours of energy. After the sun goes down, it can pump that stored energy onto the grid.

Abengoa's Mojave plant uses similar concentrated solar technology, although it doesn't have energy storage. The reason for that is money: The company spent $1.6 billion to build Mojave, and storage would have cost several hundred million dollars more, according to Abengoa Solar's chief technical officer, Hank Price.

Still, Abengoa expects concentrated solar with storage to play a key role in California's future energy mix. Storage costs continue to fall, and company executives are confident that the state will need large amounts of concentrated solar with storage to reach 50 percent renewable energy.

While some analysts have criticized concentrated solar for its high costs, Zuluaga Zilbermann said he sees the Mojave project as a sign of things to come.

"We hope that this facility, along with the other (concentrated solar) facilities already in operation throughout the country, will turn skeptics into believers," he said.

Even with a 50 percent clean energy mandate, though, California's solar industry faces an uncertain future.

Large-scale solar development has been held up by the planned expiration of a 30 percent federal investment tax credit, which is currently scheduled to drop to 10 percent at the end of 2016. Solar developers are also concerned that the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a massive state-federal planning effort, could impede development in California.

Asked about those obstacles and others, Nichols discussed the huge effort it took to get the Mojave project permitted and built, saying that "success breeds success."

"You can list the challenges, and they are many. There's no question about it," she said. "But the fact that we're here today, to celebrate the completion of this massive project, is one indicator that when everyone works together, we can get big things done."

Energy Reporter Sammy Roth can be reached at Sammy.Roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.