California Governor Jerry Brown wants 12,000 megawatts of distributed generation (DG) to be part of the 20,000-plus megawatts of renewable capacity the state’s utilities have been ordered to put in place by 2020. That's a lot of rooftop and ground-mounted solar, small and community wind, small biomass/biogas production, combined heat and power and other such local renewables.
“There are many thousands of megawatts left to do,” explained Steven Weissman, co-author of the report California’s Transition to Local Renewable Energy: 12,000 Megawatts by 2020 from U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE).
The Governor’s office asked CLEE’s Weissman and Jeffrey Russell to expand on the UCLA conference stakeholder input with further research and analysis and build a comprehensive outline of how to overcome the many remaining planning, permitting, financing, construction and interconnection barriers slowing California’s DG.
In other words, DG should be easier to site and build than it is.
The CLEE report describes ways the state can expedite the building of local renewable energy by pushing changes in state, county and municipal governments, at the electric utilities, and in the private sector. It recommends reforms in financing, permitting and transmission and distribution system planning.
The Governor’s office, Weissman found, has already begun implementing interconnection reforms that will eliminate costs and delays for developers and designing permitting reforms that will make rules, fees and scheduling more uniform.
There will be a webinar covering the study’s key findings and the most current California DG capacity numbers on Thursday, June 14 at 2 p.m. Pacific, co-sponsored by the Governor’s office and CLEE.