ACWA Energy Committee workshop - California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)
The ACWA Energy Committee hosted a workshop at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco on March 29th. Representatives of Pacific gas & Electric, Sempra, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric each gave presentations focusing on the incentives and programs related to energy efficiency and renewable energy that they currently offer.
The goal of the workshop was to demystify the utilities’ sometimes complicated incentive programs for promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. However, the conversation quickly turned to how current and future regulations could be tailored to encourage greater collaboration among the water and energy sectors. In this open forum, ACWA members were able to ask questions, elicit information, as well as express frustrations with the imperfections past and current incentives programs and regulatory policies. For their part, representatives from the CPUC were quick to clarify their policies regarding the State’s renewable portfolio standard and notably renewable energy credits (RECs). Some ACWA members expressed confusion as to why the utilities receive all of the RECs for projects they pay to install at their respective agencies. Another point of confusion was related to lack of incentives for reducing emissions of GHGs. Clearly, lower emissions of GHGs are a direct result of increasing use of renewable energy and energy efficiency, things many ACWA members have already done voluntarily. Therefore, some questioned if they should not get some sort of credit or compensation for the inevitable emissions reductions that occur as a result of their various renewable energy and energy efficiency projects as well as more general water efficiency and conservation efforts.
In the end, the meeting showed the ongoing need to foster greater collaboration and partnership among public water agencies, the major investor-owned utilities (IOUs), and regulators in meeting California’s ambitious goals of increasing the use of renewable energy and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
As Commissioner John Bohn expressed in his opening remarks, the workshop was only the first of an important series of conversations that need to take place among water and energy utilities and regulators
Web Links
- PG&E's solar website
- PG&E's Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP)
- The statewide Trigger Tracker
- The CPUC website on solar solar statistics
- The AB 1969 FIT
- The Climate Smart tariff
- Shell / environmental solutions
