Our take

• California has established extremely ambitious clean energy targets, including to quadruple its current solar and wind capacity as well as build 700 percent more battery storage annually compared to historic maximum rates.

• There are multiple obstacles to deliver these targets. The most significant is a lack of transmission infrastructure. Clean energy developers will not execute investment decisions on new projects without sufficient confidence that they will be able to connect to the grid. Additionally, newer generation (e.g., enhanced geothermal, offshore wind, natural gas with CCS) and long-duration storage technologies require targeted policy and investment support from state government to deliver at a meaningful scale in only two decades. Finally, data center-driven load growth must be managed to ensure it is beneficial to ratepayers and does not undermine energy affordability objectives.

• We are pursuing a suite of policies to overcome these obstacles. A primary focus is transmission, where following the passage of SB 254 (Becker, Petrie-Norris) we are supporting implementation of the state’s new Transmission Infrastructure Accelerator and Revolving Fund programs. On data centers, we are supporting efforts to ensure facilities are powered by clean energy, perform load reduction, and adopt sound environmental plans. Lastly, we are exploring a broader set of reforms that compensate utilities for performance as opposed to infrastructure investments.

• For more information, contact Sam Uden (sam@netzerocalifornia.org) or Dan Adler (dan@netzerocalifornia.org).