California Utilities Must Buy Cleaner Power
Sacramento, California – Municipal utilities in California must make long-term investments in clean electricity generation under new regulations adopted Wednesday by the California Energy Commission, CEC.
The CEC approved regulations that limit the purchase of electricity from power plants that fail to meet strict greenhouse gas emissions standards. The new rules prohibit the state's publicly owned utilities from entering into long-term financial commitments with plants that exceed 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide, CO2, per megawatt hour.
The rules are required under the state's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Performance Standard Act passed last year and will help California achieve its goal of reducing these emissions by 25 percent by 2020.
'Working with the Legislature, the governor has demonstrated a clear vision with this first-in-the-nation legislation to reduce emissions,' said Energy Commission Chairman Jackalyne Pfannenstiel. 'His bold leadership is helping to reduce California's carbon footprint by ensuring a clean supply of electricity.'
The act directs the Energy Commission, in collaboration with the California Public Utilities Commission, CPUC, and the California Air Resources Board, to establish a greenhouse gas emission performance standard for power plants.
Pfannenstiel says this standard was reached by evaluating existing combined-cycle natural gas baseload power plants across the west and is the same CO2 measurement approved by the CPUC.
Dozens of new coal-fired power plants are in the planning and development stage throughout the West, with their eyes on the California market. Burning coal to produce power with conventional technology emits about twice the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as a typical combined cycle natural gas power plant.
According to the CEC, about 21 percent of all electricity consumed in California comes from coal.
The new regulations do not rule out electricity from coal, but they signal the industry to employ cleaner and more efficient technologies if they want California financing.
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