Energy Solutions: California’s Energy Transition
Assuring an Environmental Friendly, Reliable,
and Affordable Energy Future
The Issue/Challenge
California’s energy industry is undergoing a significant transition as it retools for our state’s low emissions future. This has put stress on the industry as it works to effectively implement a myriad of new environmentally-driven energy policies and technologies without negatively impacting energy affordability and reliability. This cannot be effectively done through a patchwork of independent programs, regulatory decisions, and uncoordinated policies. California urgently needs a comprehensive state energy plan to ensure that it is able to achieve its environmental and energy policy goals in a cost effective manner that does not threaten energy reliability.
The Southern California Leadership Council’s Position
The Southern California Leadership Council supports the environmental and economic goals behind California’s energy transition and its increased emphasis on renewables and other clean energy sources within the state’s energy portfolio. To reach these goals, the Council supports approaches that provide long term energy reliability and affordability for California and maintain our state’s economic competitiveness.
To do this, the Leadership Council supports the development and adoption of a comprehensive and integrated state energy strategy for implementing California’s various new energy initiatives – one that achieves policy coordination and provides clear authority for various roles and responsibilities among the many state agencies involved with implementation.
The Council also supports policies that will enable California to accomplish its renewable and low emission objectives in a way that maximizes economic growth and energy reliability while minimizing upward pressure on energy costs.
Those policies include:
- Promoting and rewarding energy investments in California that reach and sustain energy independence and resiliency.
- Supporting investment in solar panels and wind turbines that are manufactured in California.
- Promoting cost-effective renewable energy investments without unnecessary cross-subsidies.
- Ensuring adequate infrastructure to meet California’s distributed renewable generation and clean transportation policies.
- Promoting energy efficiency programs for customers and businesses.
- Ensuring an adequate future natural gas market to help California make the transition to a lower emission future and protect the investments of natural gas consumers.
- Promoting growth of oil and natural gas production by streamlining regulatory programs to increase economic activity and supplant energy imports, while realizing the environmental benefits from in-state production.
- Ensuring that the environmental benefits associated with “once through cooling” electric generation facility retirements can be achieved without excessive environmental compliance costs.
- Ensuring that California is realizing true economic benefits from its commitment to renewables and a green economy.
- Supporting innovation through measures that allow and incentivize the R&D and new technologies necessary to improve efficiency and reduce emissions from all fuel types so as to maximize the use of available energy resources, sustain California manufacturing businesses and jobs, and allow market forces to work and consumers to benefit.
- Supporting measures to allow all renewable and clean energy options to be on the table, including nuclear, hydro, and geothermal, given the need to offset the inconsistency of wind and solar power, since California will need a diverse and well thought out energy portfolio to achieve its environmental and economic goals in a cost-effective and equitable manner.
- Ensuring that California’s increased emphasis on renewable and other clean energy sources does not preclude opportunities to utilize and capture the economic benefits of other abundant and available energy resources within the state.
- Supporting efforts to reduce and conserve energy use in the management and conveyance of water along with increased efficiencies in the use of water to create energy.