California's largest utilities already are slated to generate enough renewable power to get close to meeting the state's current mandate of 50 percent from renewables by 2030.
Senate Bill 100, an ambitious clean energy plan put forward by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, drew praise from Palm Springs Mayor Rob Moon and Council member Geoff Kors Wednesday, who said the push for clean energy would create jobs and conserve resources.
Solar is going to play a much bigger role than most models predict. So far, official predictions have fallen woefully short of the rise of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy:
California has been marching toward higher levels of clean energy for years, and state officials said the transformation is happening even faster than expected. The state generated 29% of its power from solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources in 2016.
If lawmakers approve Senate Bill 100 before the end of their session in September, it would make California the biggest economy on earth committed to getting 100 percent of its power from wind, solar and other clean alternatives.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. /California Newswire/ — A coalition of Los Angeles community groups this week called on the area’s state legislators to support a package of bills designed to protect the region’s water and air from federal attempts to weaken environmental safeguards. The package is authored by area legislators Senate President pro Tem Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles), Senator Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park), Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), and Assemblymember Matt Dababneh (D-Woodland Hills).
To anyone who believes environmental regulation is poison for profits, California must be infuriating. The state’s pollution policies rarely wilt its perennially blooming economy. For the past nine years, a Golden State-centric think tank Next 10 has been releasing its California Green Innovation Index. The results this year show a continuing trend: For two and a half decades, California’s GDP and population have continued to rise, while per capita carbon dioxide emissions have stayed flat.
California has long been an environmental leader, adopting strong laws to protect the air, water and land that often, eventually, become national policy. Yet the task of setting and enforcing environmental standards is a huge one, and even Green California has relied on the federal government to handle much of that work.
What disturbs the old guard…is that cities are endorsing a future in which coal and natural gas are obsolete. The doomsaying from fossil fuel defenders will only get more shrill as that inevitable fate gets closer.
California’s clean energy sector keeps smashing records, as clean energy jobs in California alone outnumber coal jobs nationwide by an order of magnitude. In March, solar supplied more than half of the state’s power for a few hours.