Environmental Law

California Utility Regulators Adopt Sweeping Energy Efficiency Blueprint

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

The California Public Utilities Commission Thursday adopted a sweeping blueprint for promoting energy efficiency across the state, including setting aggressive goals for reducing the amount of power drawn residential and commercial buildings draw from the grid.

In a statement following its unanimous formal decision to adopt the document, the rate-setting agency said it was the state's "first integrated framework of goals and strategies for saving energy, covering government, utility, and private sector actions, and holds energy efficiency to its role as the highest priority resource in meeting California’s energy needs." The commission is California's chief regulator of privately owned utilities.

During Thursday's meeting, Commissioner Dian M. Grueneich, who spearheaded the effort, said the plan, which primarily covers the years 2009-2020 and which has received backing from utilities, was undertaken "out of a firm belief that there has never been a more important time for energy efficiency in California." She cited the state's growing population, increasing energy prices and other factors, including the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which California has moved to control via its groundbreaking law, AB 32. She added:

"This plan is a statewide road map for a dramatic scaling up of energy efficiency efforts to meet today's urgent challenges."

The blueprint, called the California Long-Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan, incorporates a number of strategies, including encouraging all new residential construction in the state to be "zero net energy" by 2020, and for commercial buildings to meet that same standard by 2030. It also calls for a re-shaping of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry to be reshaped and for improving the energy efficiency of housing for low-income residents.

A Web site has also been established to make available information about the plan.  

Although the commission's duties generally involve regulating utilities rather than structures, the document gets its teeth from the fact that state utilities have applied for authorization to put $3.7 billion into energy efficiency programs in just two years, between 2009 and 2011. In its order Thursday the commission directed the utilities to make their programs consistent with the new plan.          

The utility agency also appeared to take some pains to explain that it was not overreaching. In its formal decision document Thursday, for instance, it said:

"The plan is, as the name suggests, a planning document. The plan is not intended as a means for the commission to reach inappropriately into the design or implementation of energy efficiency program activities."  

Elsewhere, the document said the utility commission would continue to work with its counterpart,  the California Energy Commission, in areas where the energy agency would "logically" take a lead role, such as in the area of energy efficient buildings and heating and ventilation. It said the utility commission would also work with local and regional governments to make sure that funds in utility energy efficiency programs forward the plan's goals.

But at the same time, according to the documents made public by the utility commission, the new plan establishes task forces in a number of areas, including finance, to pursue specific strategies. The finance group will include members from the financial industry, developers and government to work on issues related to low-energy and zero net energy buildings. The latter type of structure uses energy equal to the amount provided by renewable sources on site or nearby.

The move by the state utilities commission comes a couple of months after the California Building Standards Commission adopted what was called the nation's first statewide green building code, although it is not yet mandatory. Cities such as San Francisco and states such as Florida have also enacted their own standards and federal officials recently launched an effort to encourage the development of zero net energy commercial buildings.

The utilities commission also approved other steps Thursday to boost renewable energy and to give utility customers more control over their energy use and bills. Both actions affected Southern California Edison Co.

--Dennis Pfaff of Thelen LLP

Photo: Zero-energy home in California, courtesy U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Credit: Davis Energy Group 

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).