By Charly SHELTON

Under a federal administration seeking to revive coal as a driving energy source, California state legislators have taken yet another step in the opposite direction.

Senate Bill 100 was voted upon, approved and signed into law last week requiring that all energy in California be clean energy by 2045 and, of that, 60% must be from renewable energy resources (Renewable Portfolio Standard) by 2030.

“Renewable is defined as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and small to medium hydro. Clean energy goes beyond that and includes sources such as large hydro and nuclear power,” said Steve Zurn, general manager of Glendale Water and Power. “We will need to continue in our efforts to seek, identify and secure supply assets that fit our needs and our system and meet the mandates of the law. Since 2002 when the Renewable Portfolio Standard was first established by the legislature (SB 1078) it has been accelerated three times – first in 2006 (SB 107) to 33% by 2020, then in 2015 to 50 % by 2030 (SB 350) and now SB 100 so we have been working at this for some time.”

This most recent bill was no surprise to GWP administrators who had already begun to work on switching over before the law was signed.

“This was the third straight legislative session that the proposed law had been under consideration. We actually had anticipated its passage prior to this year and we had been planning our power supply assets accordingly. Well over a year ago, when we began the process of updating our Integrated Resource Plan, which is the roadmap for developing our power supply strategy, we did so assuming the SB 100 mandate would be the law in one form or another,” Zurn added.

Glendale was no slouch to begin with in the way of renewable and clean energy. In 2017, 37% of the total energy consumed through GWP was eligible renewable, which was higher than the state total of 29% overall. The lion’s share of that 37% came from wind energy, and biomass/biowaste make up the majority remaining, with geothermal, solar and small-to-medium hydroelectric making up approximately 5% combined. The other sources of energy are primarily clean energy, with only 6% coal and 27% natural gas consumed. As time goes on and more sources of clean energy are found, those last numbers will fall.

“The importance [of bills like SB 100] is to move in a direction that results in improvements to the environment through a reduction in carbon emissions and improvements in air quality, to reduce global warming and to begin to reduce the overall consumption of fossil fuels,” Zurn said.