“How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution,” Brown said in Monday’s Inaugural Address for his fourth term as governor. “And we will need active collaboration at every stage with our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and officials at all levels.”

Yet, as state leaders take up Brown’s ambitious renewable energy agenda, two of California’s most opinionated energy experts will be missing from the debate.

For more than a decade the Capitol’s two most forceful energy voices have been State Sen. Rod Wright, D-Los Angeles, an influential member of key energy committees, and Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey, who spent 12 years as the state’s top energy regulator. Last fall, both were brought down by scandal.

Wright objected to current renewable energy mandate

Wright’s departure, in particular, eliminates a major legislative roadblock for Brown. A former chairman of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce and influential member of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications, Wright had been the Legislature’s biggest critic of renewable-energy mandates. That was until last September when he resigned his position after being convicted of multiple felonies for lying about his residence.

In 2011, California lawmakers approved Senate Bill 2X1, the state’s first major renewable energy mandate. The bill required that a third of the state’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020. This requirement, known as a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, was criticized for legislating by popular slogan — rather than setting out a clear plan for achieving its goal.

“Legislation to increase the RPS goals to 33 percent has been attempted in each of the last two sessions,” a Senate bill analysis of SB2X1 stated. “There has been little or no debate about the goal, but there has been great controversy over how to get there and from where the generation should be secured.”

When the bill reached the Senate Floor, Wright expressed concerns about the cost to consumers and taxpayers.

“Today we are about to vote on a bill that could result in a 15 percent to 20 percent rate increase,” Wright, the most passionate critic of the bill, said in his floor speech. “SB2X could very well result in a $1.5 billion hit to the general fund without any demonstrable benefits.”

“Thirty-three percent by 2020 is a great slogan,” Wright complained, “but what are we trying to achieve?”

Brown’s renewable energy adviser set to lead PUC

Brown defended the move as the first step in the state’s long-term renewable energy effort.

“While reaching a 33 percent renewables portfolio standard will be an important milestone,” Brown said in his signing message, “it is really just a starting point — a floor, not a ceiling.”

Brown had help in crafting the mandate from his then-renewable-energy adviser, Michael Picker, who was appointed last month to take over as president of the PUC. If confirmed by the state Senate, Picker can be expected to push Brown’s renewable energy agenda at the PUC. After all, according to Smart Voter, it was Picker’s job in the governor’s office, to coordinate “the statewide effort to help reduce California’s reliance on polluting coal and fossil fuels and bring us closer to our goal of providing at least 33 percent of electricity from renewable generation sources.”

For all his faults, and there are many well-documented by NBC Bay Area’s Tony Kovaleski, Peevey pushed back against elected officials. Throughout his controversial tenure, Peevey seemed impervious to public criticism. He also sought “more flexibility in implementing California’s RPS law,” according to an Restructuring Today, an energy industry newsletter.

Lawmakers unlikely to challenge Brown

It’s unlikely that state lawmaker will fill the energy vacuum left by Wright. In the Assembly, the Utilities and Commerce Committee will be chaired by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood. A well-liked lawmaker with two years’ experience on energy, Rendon isn’t expected to rock the boat. In December, Rendon said his top priority as chair of the utilities committee will be transparency.

“Transparency in deciding how California’s businesses and families invest in energy will play a critical role in assuring our state’s vibrant, smart and safe renewable energy future,” he said in a press release announcing his appointment.

Similarly, State Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, who took over as chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications, won’t thwart Brown’s renewable energy agenda. Last session, he introduced legislation to “force the state’s three investor-owned utilities — SDG&E, PG&E and Southern California Edison — to buy 500 megawatts of geothermal power annually from the Imperial Valley by 2024.” The bill died in the Assembly.

According to Hueso’s web site, his district “incorporates all of Imperial County,” which includes Imperial Valley.

Rate hikes: Wright’s prediction proving true

And what does this all mean for consumers?

Wright’s prediction that RPS would increase energy rates is proving true. School districts throughout the state have been hit with higher electricity bills, due in part to the state’s renewable energy mandate. According to the UT San Diego, the San Marcos Unified School District has seen its energy bill increase by $700,000 over a five-month span compared to the same period in 2013.

“We are stuck,” said Assistant Superintendent Gary Hamels. “It’s a big, big shock.”

A spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric Co. identified “higher costs for the electricity the utility provides customers — due mainly to the growing percentage of more expensive renewable power” as one of three reasons for the rate hike.

By KATY GRIMES

Ready for more electricity blackouts?

With California’s renewable energy mandates, cap and trade requirements, and implementation of AB 32, it is becoming increasingly clear that California is at a precarious energy crossroads, and one that lawmakers don’t yet appear willing to address.

They are still busy patting themselves on the back for passage of the Renewable Portfolio Standard. But lawmakers will soon be forced to address the upcoming lawmaker-made energy crisis because their renewable energy mandates won’t be able to power the state.

An new study released by the California Independent System Operator, CalISO, warns that as California tries to meet the stringent requirements of the Renewable Portfolio Standard of 33 percent renewable energy production, “so does the need for flexible capacity resources.”

“Integrating a 33 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard creates several new challenges for the ISO,” the study states. “Among these challenges is ensuring that the ISO has sufficient flexible capacity to address the added variability and unpredictability created by intermittent resources.”

The 33 percent figure is no coincidence, as the Legislature pushed through and passed the environmentally restrictive Renewable Portfolio Standard, which mandates that California obtain 33 percent of all electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

CalISO is a quasi-governmental agency, which exists to regulate the reliability of the state electrical grid. It appears that CalISO doesn’t believe that meeting the RPS of 33 percent renewable energy is possible, even though “CalISO also is partnering with California’s energy and environmental agencies to implement a new vision for California’s Clean Energy Future….

“California is making plans to link the cap-and-trade system with that of Quebec in 2012, under the auspices of the Western Climate Initiative, but challenges remain as allowances trade at record lows.” So far, no other countries are interested in participating in trading carbon credits.

What’s In Store

Before anyone gets too excited about our relationship with Quebec, California is not trading apples-to-apples: Quebec gets 97 percent of its energy from hydroelectric sources. While California is trying to reduce traditional electricity production, including hydro, and instead replace it with as much “renewable” energy as possible from wind and solar, algae, and ethanol, energy experts have been saying for months that California’s energy demand is too much for the alternative energy.

“This will create the largest carbon market in North America and provide a model that can guide future efforts to establish a creative road map for future national approaches in Canada and the US to reduce greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions,” said WCI co-chairmen James Goldstene, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, and Jim Whitestone of Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment.

But Cal EPA and CARB officials all seem to have a “If you build it, they will come” attitude.

Hetch Hetchy or Klamath Dam

Under fire at this very moment is the Klamath Dam, which provides hydroelectric power and serves 70,000 mostly rural households, annually. In many cases, the dam removal is simply to save fish, and kayaking waters. “While the dam removal would result in the loss of hydroelectric power generation, which will have to be made up from other sources, and the loss of around 50 jobs from managing those facilities, it would also create a substantial number of jobs — varying in nature, duration, and location — estimated at approximately 1,400 during the short-term,” stated Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

But a May 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling sided with fish and kayakers over hydroelectric plants, stating, “state regulators may require a steady flow of water over power dams,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Contrast the Klamath Dam with the revered Hetch Hetchy dam, which provides water for San Francisco. In 1906, after the big San Francisco earthquake, San Francisco applied to the United States Department of the Interior to gain water rights to Hetch Hetchy. It’s been the darling dam of the state ever since, and the only one environmentalists will tolerate.

Salazar is going to make a decision on demolition of the Klamath Dam in March. But the reasons appear to be purely political and supportive of the environmentalist agenda. A recent story arguing for the demolition of the dam could be flipped on its head. “A draft report released Tuesday by the U.S. Interior Department says removing four hydroelectric dams in the Klamath Basin will restore salmon and sustain irrigation for farmers in Southern Oregon and Northern California,” the story stated.

Replace “Hetch Hetchy” with “Klamath” in this story — think of all the “jobs” we could create or save by tearing down Hetch Hetchy’s O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Ironically, the Renewable Portfolio Standard pushers have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that hydroelectric power substantially contributes to the 33 percent renewable goal, as it does in Quebec. Unlike solar and wind power, hydroelectric power is affordable, renewable and abundant.

In June, the Legislature killed part of a bill that would have added all hydroelectric power to the California Renewables Portfolio Standard. Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, authored SB 1247, a bill that would have added large hydroelectric power to the list of California’s eligible renewable energy resources, and broaden the definition of “eligible renewable energy resources.”

This proved that the RPS was just another mandate supporting the unreliable solar and wind agenda.

However, while California has rejected hydroelectric power as a renewable energy source, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency still considers hydropower “a renewable energy resource because it uses the Earth’s water cycle to generate electricity.”

High-Speed Energy Crash

As the 33 percent renewable portfolio gets underway, AB 32 implementation begins, the conveyance issues over water increase and state officials continue to steam ahead with High-Speed Rail,  it appears that California is headed for an energy crash.

High-Speed Rail plans show that the system will be a massive drain on the state’s electricity grid, and solar and wind are not going to be able to fulfill the draw.

A Berkeley study found, “under current conditions—with the model of HSR trains proposed and its energy source, as well as the types of automobiles and airplanes now in existence, that high-speed rail has the potential to be the lowest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter only if it consistently travels at high occupancy or uses a low-emission electricity source such as wind, both of which will require appropriate planning and continued investment.”

But High-Speed Rail ridership already looks bleak, according to another U.C. Berkeley study, which found ridership numbers “not reliable.”

Others say that the system is going to take massive amounts of electricity, raising questions about the power grid’s ability to meet the demand. The environmental-impact reports for the High-Speed Rail system could use more than 3 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year by the time it’s fully operational statewide.

The average California home uses about 6,960 kilowatt-hours in a year. At that rate, it would take more than 430,000 households to use what the train system would consume, the Fresno Bee reported.

California Conundrum

The Klamath Dam provides hydroelectric power to an entire region of the state, as well as 70,000 households.  The High-Speed Rail will drain enough electricity from an already tapped electricity grid, equal to 430,000 households. Where will the additional power come from? Solar rooftops? Wind farms? Where will the electric cars plug in?

Solar, wind, algae, ethanol and other renewable energy sources are intermittent, unreliable, and not always environmentally-friendly. Wind farm construction is on hold  because of an endangered tortoise. The environmentalists are now fighting each other.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that California cannot keep up with the renewable energy mandates.