Advanced Energy Perspectives

For years, large companies in California have been calling for expansion of Direct Access (DA), California’s limited retail choice program for commercial and industrial customers. Retail choice allows customers to shop around, rather than relying on their local electric utility. It also allows large customers to meet sustainability commitments by procuring more renewable energy than the utility provides. Such corporate purchases have driven development of renewable energy in markets that allow retail competition, and for that reason AEE and the Advanced Energy Buyers Group have jointly supported the expansion of DA in California. That expansion could be coming, if recommendations contained in a California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) report on extending DA to all nonresidential customers are acted upon by the California Legislature. But the expansion is more likely to happen – and happen faster – if some misplaced worries in the CPUC report were put to rest.

California’s love affair with the automobile is a long and well documented tale stretching from the freeways of Los Angeles up to where the redwoods tower over both Route 101 and the Pacific Ocean. Over the years, the state has endeavored to make this relationship more sustainable in the truest sense of the word. California pioneered the push for new low emission vehicles (LEVs) in the early 1990s. Then came the push for zero emission vehicles (ZEVs). Following Gov. Newsom's September 23 Executive Order (E.O.), the Golden State has signaled that it is ready for the next step as it aims to become the first U.S. state to ensure that all vehicles on its roadways are zero emission.

In the early morning hours of September 1, California policymakers frantically concluded a legislative session much in keeping with the disquieting, disorienting mood of 2020 and all its unforeseen complications. California continues to grapple with colliding crises – an enduring pandemic, economic recession, and a catastrophic wildfire season. But at least there’s now a stack of bills on the Governor’s desk, including two that would support and indeed accelerate California’s nation-leading push toward electric transportation – and which were AEE’s top priorities for this session.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the states, California boasted over half a million advanced energy jobs. In just a few months time, the state lost more than 100,000 of those jobs. As policymakers now grapple with plugging a $54 billion budget deficit, keeping local communities afloat, and upholding the state’s marquee policies, the stakes could not be higher. Given uncertainty around any federal stimulus package, AEE is providing California decision makers with recommendations for actions they could take now to move the state to economic recovery, with advanced energy at its center. That’s because advanced energy is  a tried-and-true engine of economic growth, in California most of all.

With numerous strokes of a pen weekend before last, Gov. Newsom decided the fate of the final batch of bills before him and closed out this year’s legislative cycle in California. Among those the Governor signed into law were all but one of the bills AEE actively worked on and shepherded through the Legislature this year. In all, it was a big year for promoting electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes. But there is more to come in advanced transportation and other advanced energy issues when lawmakers reconvene in January for the second year of the legislative session.