One of the biggest achievements of the Legislative session was the passage of bills to require all electric utilities in California to generate a third of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The word is, however, that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto the bills - Senator Joe Simitian's SB 14 and Assembly Member Paul Krekorian's AB 64 (disclosure: I'm Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's Communications Director).
Environmentalists who have been told about the governor's still-evolving plans said Schwarzenegger also was considering directing the California Air Resources Board to look at broadening the state's definition of renewable energy sources to include large hydroelectric dams and nuclear energy plants.
Beyond the fact that the Governor may have limited legal authority to set such a standard on his own, it's expected that any executive order that the Governor signs will make it okay for utilities to get most, if not all, of their required renewables from out of state, leaving California at a strategic disadvantage against other western states in the race to tap into the next great wave of job creation - the green economy.
The bills passed by the Legislature represent the product of months of negotiation and coalition building. Senator Simitian's SB 14 is supported by two of California's three largest utilities, the state's largest municipal utility, workers, consumers and environmentalists. No bill to mandate a 33 percent renewable standard has ever had that kind of broad based support. The Governor will not see a better bill in this field for his remaining 14 months in office.
