California Public Utilities Commission

Subscribe to California Public Utilities Commission via RSS

By Michael Feeley and Aron Potash

A lawsuit which delayed and once threatened to dismantle California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade scheme was largely resolved last week, removing one roadblock to California’s plan to be the first state to impose an economy-wide GHG trading program.  Under modified regulations adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on October 20, 2011, California will require certain emitters of GHGs to obtain allowances or offsets in amounts commensurate to their respective emissions…

By James L. Arnone, Damon P. Mamalakis, and Janice M. Schneider

On June 30, 2011, District Judge Roger T. Benitez of the Southern District of California issued a decision allowing San Diego Gas and Electronic Company (SDG&E) to proceed with its construction of the Sunrise Powerlink, a 117-mile electrical transmission line that will connect the San Diego area with the vast renewable energy resources of California’s Imperial Valley.  When completed, the Sunrise Powerlink is expected to enhance the reliability…

On January 14, 2011, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued Decision 11-01-025 lifting the stay on its earlier Decision 10-03-021 from March 2010 authorizing the use of unbundled renewable energy credits (RECs), known as Tradable Renewable Energy Credits (TRECs), as an additional compliance tool for the California Renewables Portfolio Standard Program (RPS program).

TRECs are RECs that can be traded separately from the generated energy underlying them, and do not have to be bundled in the same transaction with their underlying renewable energy.  As determined by the CPUC, procurement by California utilities of renewable resources that do not have their first point of interconnection with a California balancing authority will generally be deemed TRECs (not a bundled transaction of RECs and their underlying renewable energy).

On September 23, 2010, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) unanimously adopted the “Renewable Electricity Standard” (RES) to require most retail sellers of electricity to procure 33 percent of their electricity from eligible renewable resources by 2020. Established in Executive Order S-21-09, the RES is an independent requirement from California’s existing Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS), which imposes a 20 percent renewable energy procurement requirement by 2010.

Both the RPS and RES apply to large and small investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E), electric service providers and community choice aggregators. However, the RES applies to a broader range of regulated entities than the RPS, most notably, publicly-owned utilities, such as LADWP and SMUD.  

According to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the “magnitude of the infrastructure that California will have to plan, permit, procure, develop and integrate in the next ten years is immense and unprecedented,” potentially requiring $115 billion in new infrastructure investment and at least seven major new transmission lines. However, a CARB Staff Report explained that the RES’s enhanced flexibility compared to the RPS — including eliminating delivery requirements for out-of-state renewable resources and allowing an unlimited use of “unbundled” or “tradable” renewable energy credits (TRECs) — is expected to reduce costs and facilitate compliance.