Germany beats California in soalr

Renewable energy goals

California is a perfect example of RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) failure: Seven years after adopting a 20%-by-2010 RPS mandate, California's deployed renewable energy percentage has not changed!

California Legislators have realized that we need something new and so now, AB1106 is working its way through the Legislature. AB1106 is the bill that implements the REESA FIT and is currently the FIT Coalition's first priority.

Feed-in Tariffs

Feed-in tariffs have proved to be the most successful policy for accelerated deployment of renewable energy.

Several governments in Europe and Canada have implemented feed-in tariffs to meet their RPS goals. Last year, Germany alone added ten time more solar-generation capacity than the state of California, despite California having a solar resource 50% better than Germany's.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 9:59 PM
9:59PM

FIT Coalition - SB 32 support

DateTuesday, October 6, 2009 at 9:59PM

Thanks for your continued support of the FIT Coalition!  We especially appreciate everyone who responded to the last update with helpful suggestions.

Today we sent the attached formal letter of support for SB 32 to the Governor and we're encouraging all of you to fax in your own letters as soon as possible.  The signature deadline is this Sunday, October 11th and the Governor's Sacramento fax number is 916-558-3160.

Those of you who have been with us for a while know that the decision to support SB 32 was not taken lightly.  We all agree that AB 1106 is a far superior bill that will create the true renewable energy boom that California needs.  And there's no question that we'll be pushing AB 1106 with all our strength as early as possible.

But when AB 1106 was turned in to a 2-year bill, the question became: What can we get done *this year* to improve the policy environment for renewable energy deployment?

SB 32 does not fix the most important issue with the current FIT-like program in California: the price.  But the bill does make certain key improvements, and once those are in the law, there is less heavy lifting for AB 1106 to do later.

Here are the changes we consider important:

  • Increases the project size to 3MW
  • Applies to the publicly-owned utilities, not just the IOUs
  • Removes requirement that a power producer needs to be a customer
  • Establishes the concept of locational preferences and value based on circuit demand and system capacity


Finally, for those who were following earlier versions of SB 32, the "poison pill" provisions that had been included by FIT-opponents were removed before the Assembly vote.  This eliminated some of the bill's potentially damaging effects.

So, in the end, we decided that SB 32 is a positive step forward that we should support.  We encourage you to add your voice of support also in the next day or two to help make these changes happen.

Thanks again for your support and feel free to contact us anytime with questions or to find out how you can help in the coming months!

Ted Ko
Associate Executive Director
FIT Coalition

SB32 support letter to Governor.doc

AuthorJoshua LaForge | Comments Off |
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