Many hoped California’s net-metering war was ending two years ago, when Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 327. The state’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was given to the end of this year to create a new tariff that will kick in once the state’s big three investor owned utilities (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E) reach 5% nameplate generation capacity under net metering. With the deadline approaching, the “big three” went on the offensive. One of the California Public Utilities Commission hearings was in San Diego, on Oct. 28, 2015. That was where County Supervisor Dianne Jacob Defends Rooftop Solar.
The joint study from Stanford University and UC Riverside reads like a report card. The authors recognized that, “solar energy has one of the greatest climate change mitigation potentials” of all renewable energy sources. It can play a leading role in helping the United States reach its’ goal of reducing emissions to 80% of 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This would require covering a great deal of land surface. Using current technology, close to 71,428 square kilometres (44,383 sq. miles), or an area roughly comparable to South Carolina, could be covered with panels. Rebecca R. Hernandez et al examined more than 160 sites in California to find out how utility scale solar impacts the land.
On any given day, half a million North Americans go through a blackout that lasts 2 to 4 hours. The US economy loses $150 billion a year through these incidents. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the average Western European loses minutes, rather than hours, through annual power loses. The average German hasn’t experienced 20 minutes of per customer annual power losses for years and, in 2014, Germany broke the 12 minute barrier.
It has been eight years since Cisco DeVries invented Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans. They were meant to spur the mass adoption of residential solar, but have also proven to be an effective means of financing other energy and water saving devices. If PACE weren’t classified as a tax, it would have been offered through-out America years ago. Instead, five years ago Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac urged local governments to put their PACE programs on hold and the vast majority of PACE projects have been in California. That is about to change. Cisco DeVries explains how PACE is changing.
The clean energy sector employs more people than the oil sands and the workforce grew another 14% last year. According to Clean Energy Canada’s latest Tracking the Energy Revolution, this sector attracted almost twice the investors than the fishing, forestry and agriculture sectors combined. They did not mention the sources of this money, but last year’s report showed 4 of the top 5 investment firms were German or Japanese. Foreign nations recognize the potential that the Harper administration has failed to perceive. Canada could be a clean energy superpower.
