Advanced Energy Perspectives

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.

Just before the California Legislature adjourned for Summer Recess, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a historic wildfire fund package seeking to balance the welfare of  wildfire victims, investor-owned utilities (starting with PG&E, which is in bankruptcy proceedings due to its wildfire liabilities), and utility employees with a commitment to uphold California’s advanced energy leadership. The package navigated the formal legislative process in a matter of days to meet the Newsom Administration’s declared deadline of July 12, and most importantly, just in time to avert the looming threat of credit rating downgrades for the state’s other two investor-owned utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

This is a guest post by Matt Golden, CEO of AEE member company OpenEE.

Energy efficiency in California is rapidly evolving. Moving toward the state’s 50% renewable portfolio standard (RPS), SB350 goals to double energy efficiency and renewable energy, and perhaps most importantly, new SB100 requirements to achieve zero carbon on the grid by 2045, it has become necessary to rethink our demand-side strategy. Achieving these lofty targets while maintaining a balanced, stable, and affordable grid will take all the distributed energy resources we can get, including a massive increase in demand flexibility from energy efficiency, electrification, and controls. 

New solicitations for energy efficiency services from California’s investor-owned utilities point the way toward a future of performance-based capture of energy savings when and where they matter, driven by innovation in the marketplace. Energy efficiency providers should see this as an opportunity – and there’s no time to waste. 

As California legislators raced to beat the proverbial “pumpkin” at midnight last Friday, the advanced energy community closed out a remarkable legislative session with a host of significant wins – but left one notable issue to be addressed in the next session. With bills spanning advanced transportation, energy efficiency, energy storage, resource adequacy, wildfire mitigation, direct access to renewable energy, and microgrids, the session seemed to have something for everyone. AEE was at the heart of action in Sacramento, with an active position on over 15 bills this year – and an impressive record of success.

CEC Commissioner Janea Scott, Sen. Nancy Skinner, and CPUC Commissioner Carla Peterman, on the Pathway to 2050 main stage. 

The wildfires raging to the north and west gave the air in Sacramento a pungent haze and added poignancy to the conversations at this year’s Pathway to 2050. AEE’s sixth annual conference on California policy focused as it usually does on the big ticket energy topics of the day: the push toward 100% clean electricity, regionalization of the western power grid, new utility business models, transportation electrification. But in the background – and on the tip of everyone’s tongues – was the now year-round threat presented by California’s parched landscape, a threat now extending to the solvency of one of the state’s investor-owned utilities. Also in the background was another challenge to California: the announced rollback of federal auto standards for emissions and fuel efficiency, and attempted withdrawal of California’s longstanding right to set higher standards, including requirements for zero-emission vehicle sales, for itself and more than a dozen states that follow along. But none of this threw Pathway off track. If anything, the challenges from a warmer, drier climate and from Washington, D.C., gave the conference’s core purpose of economic transformation through advanced energy even more urgency.