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An alert written by Stoel Rives partner Seth Hilton:

Last night, the California legislature failed to pass Senate Bill 722—the 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) legislation—by the close of the legislative session. The bill would have increased California’s RPS to 33% for both investor-owned and publicly owned utilities. It would also have placed limits on the use of renewable resources located out-of-state to meet California’s RPS—utilities would have been required to meet a certain percentage of their RPS obligations through resources whose first point of interconnection was a California balancing authority, or whose power is transmitted to California through a dynamic transfer arrangement or scheduled hourly or inter-hourly into California. The proposed legislation also would have authorized the use of renewable energy credits (RECs)—the environmental attributes of renewable power separated from the power itself—for RPS compliance, but would have imposed limits on the amount of RECs that could be used to meet the utilities’ RPS obligation.Continue Reading California Legislature Fails to Pass 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard

On August 25, the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) issued a proposed decision (“PD”) that would end the CPUC’s moratorium on approval of tradable renewable energy credit (“TREC”) transactions and increase the cap on such transactions for large investor-owned utilities to 40%.

Previously at its March 11, 2010 meeting, the CPUC authorized the use of TRECs for compliance with California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), subject to certain limitations. CPUC Dec. 10-03-021 (Mar. 15, 2010)(“March Decision”). Among the limitations that the March Decision imposed was a cap limiting the use of TRECs for RPS compliance for the largest investor-owned utilities (Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) to 25% of their annual RPS compliance obligations. That cap was to remain in place until December 31, 2011, when the CPUC would consider modifying or removing that limitation. The March Decision also imposed a price cap of $50 per TREC. The price cap also expires on December 31, 2011.Continue Reading Energy Law Alert: CPUC Proposes to End Moratorium on TREC Transactions; Increase Cap to 40%

From our colleague Morten Lund:

On July 29, the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) issued a ruling lifting a prior temporary hold on certain applications under the California Solar Initiative (“CSI”). The CPUC had on July 9 placed a hold on new CSI applications for PBI projects and government/non-profit projects pending comments on certain…

Energy Electricty Storage (EES) is likely to become more and more important as intermittent solar and wind energy resources penetrate the grid.   EES may be a very useful and perhaps essential way to manage the variability of intermittent renewable energy resources to allow developers to continue building wind and solar projects at an accelerating pace.

On July…

On Thursday March 11, 2010, the California Public Utility Commission (the "CPUC") created a market for tradable renewable energy credits ("TRECs") in the state.  That’s big news.  In its 149-page decision, the CPUC stated that investor-owned utilities ("IOUs"), energy service providers, and community choice aggregators may now use TRECs to comply with California’s ambitious renewable portfolio standard ("RPS").  These entities are now permitted to purchase a portion of their RPS compliance from generation sources other than those they own (e.g., distributed solar generation facilities within the state and certain out-of-state facilities).

Continue Reading Tradable RECs Now Count Toward California’s RPS

The California Public Utilities Commission ("CPUC") issued a proposed decision on December 23, 2009 that would, if adopted, allow California investor-owned utilities, energy service providers, and community choice aggregators to purchase renewable energy credits alone, without the associated energy (sometimes referred to as "unbundled renewable energy credits ("RECs)" or "tradable RECs"), to satisfy their obligations…