In the AJP, the Administration explains that one of its goals is to "[e]stablish the United States as a leader in climate science, innovation, and R&D." As part of this effort, the Administration has vowed to invest in demonstration floating offshore wind projects. This is not the only recent federal action that has signaled Washington's newfound support for offshore wind. In December, Congress extended investment and project tax credits for offshore wind projects. The next month, the Administration summarized a collection of federal actions underscoring its commitment to create 30 gigawatts ("GW") of electricity via offshore wind by 2030.
Government actions already have delivered impressive early progress towards this goal.EPA最近https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-app-air-perti-dection-Educe-winde-wind-a hrefss/www.boem.gov/boem-annocations-Enview-report-ween-force-facility-offshore-Rhode-Island-and-Massachusts'项目Rhode-Island-and-MassachusettsIn 2019, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ("BOEM") released a statement explaining that it had "15 active commercial leases for offshore wind development that could support more than 21 gigawatts of generating capacity."
While states up and down the Atlantic Coast has seen a flurry of recent activity, states along the Pacific coast promise to play an important role in achieving the Administration's goals. California in particular appears well positioned to become a leader in offshore wind. A recent study estimates that California has over 200 GW of potential offshore wind capacity, 8.4 GW of which exist in current BOEM "call areas" off of California's central and northern coast.For reference, the California Energy Commission estimated that in 2018 California had approximately 80 GW of electric generation capacity installed across the state. These numbers make it clear that offshore wind in California could go a long way towards meeting the Biden Administration's generation target.
Offshore wind is now poised to play an important role meeting state emission reduction targets, including California's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. After all, it is a natural complement to California's robust solar generation: it picks up in the evening when the sun goes down, and remains a strong resource overnight. Offshore wind therefore provides a pathway to round-the-clock electricity from renewable resources.
Despite the fact that offshore wind has not yet been utilized in California, a recent joint energy agency study concluded that California will need to harness at least 10 GW of offshore wind to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. Some do not want to wait that long, and are considering aggressive intermediate targets for offshore wind generation. A previous version of California Assembly Bill 525, proposed formal offshore wind goals for the state, including 3 GW by 2030 and 10 GW by 2040.
Just this week, California and the federal government signaled how serious they are about harnessing this renewable resource to achieve their respective goals. On Tuesday, Governor Newsom and the Biden Administration announced plans to sell offshore wind leases in two of the three existing BOEM call areas: large parcels in Morro Bay and off the coast of Humboldt County. It is estimated that placing turbines on floating platforms 20 to 30 miles off the coast in these areas could generate a total of 4.6 GW of electricity—enough to power 1.6 million homes. Officials are optimistic that the lease sale will occur in 2022.
Despite the state and federal optimism, there are some obstacles that will need to be addressed. In addition to concerns from environmentalists and the fishing industry, some of these concerns include:
- Design Challenges The areas that have the greatest potential for offshore wind in California are much deeper than their Atlantic counterparts. As such, the turbines cannot be mounted on the seafloor, but instead will need to be on floating platforms. This technology is currently expensive, but the rapid technological advances in Europe's offshore wind industry could be a reason for optimism.
- Ocean Use Conflicts Historically, the U.S.Navy has voiced its concerns about offshore windfarms in California causing issues with the Navy's readiness drills along the coast. The Navy has recently changed course, however, and has explained that it is willing to coordinate regarding the siting of a windfarm in Morro Bay, California.
- Transmission Capacity Because offshore windfarms will be located in federal waters several miles off the coast, transmitting the generated electricity will require the construction of new transmission capacity, including seafloor transmission lines that span multiple miles. These lines will then need to connect to the existing onshore grid. Helpfully, two BOEM call areas in California—Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon—have existing transmission infrastructure that could provide potential grid connection points for electricity generated via offshore wind: a nuclear plant slated for retirement in Diablo Canyon, and a retired power plant in Morro Bay.
- Installation Bottleneck As some have pointed out, a century-old law, the Jones Act, poses logistical issues for the installation and maintenance of offshore wind turbines. The Jones Act limits the transportation of merchandise by water between U.S.ports to vessels that are: built in the United States, registered in the United States, and owned by a United States citizen. But the installation of turbines requires specialized ships that the United States does not have— For its part, the Administration sees this as an opportunity as much as an obstacle. It has noted that the construction of a new fleet will be a key source of union jobs. The Administration recently emphasized that offshore wind has already generated jobs in onshore supply chains, including in the steel industry and shipyards as the United States constructs its "first Jones Act compliant wind turbine installation vessel." One report describes construction of that vessel, the Charybdis, as generating 800 jobs in a Brownsville, Texas shipyard that has previously produced offshore oil rigs.
Time will tell whether 30 GW within ten years is achievable given the current obstacles. But the recent pivot of major oil producers to offshore wind bodes well.石油大公司有数十年经验,使复杂近海项目结业并接入大规模建设近海风能所需的资本和供应链行政当局支持近海风能开发的承诺因此可能为它提供独特的契机与化石燃料行业的从业者合作实现雄心勃勃的创造就业和减排目标。
The TFS framework ensures that reductions produced by a subnational jurisdiction's systemic efforts to conserve its tropical forests are real, quantifiable, permanent, additional and enforceable – the hallmark criteria to ensure the environmental integrity of offset credits within emissions trading schemes, such as California's Cap-and-Trade Program.需要严格独立的第三方验证司法计划避免的排放量和司法院坚持保护土著社区的社会和环境保障。
TFS下,想为总体森林保护努力发放抵补分的次国家司法院必须坚持Against such opposition, leading scientists and environmental groups strongly supported CARB's endorsement of the TFS as a critical near-term step to slow the loss of tropical forests and limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius.根據最近估计 ,热带森林砍伐现在相当于m>s/em>和中国避免热带森林持续森林砍伐和退化的措施不容排除。
CARB行动及时到来,因为气候变化影响和
The filing triggers a complex, multi-forum struggle among creditors, energy providers, and many other diverse stakeholders. The impact of the restructuring process will be far reaching, jeopardizing compensation to wildfire victims, the state's implementation of its ambitious climate and renewable energy policies, and the ultimate future of the utility as a partner in those efforts.
2017 and 2018 Northern California Wildfire Liabilities
Although California has always experienced wildfires, due to the trifecta of climate change-induced drought and excessive heat, poor forest health caused by bark beetle infestation, and increasing encroachment of development into the urban wildland interface, the past two fire seasons have been the most calamitous in California's history.
PG&E's significant liability exposure for wildfire damages is rooted in the California constitutional doctrine of inverse condemnation, which subjects privately-owned public utilities to strict liability when their equipment is a substantial cause of a plaintiff's damages.[1] Investigations by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) into the 2017 Northern California wildfires implicated PG&E equipment as the cause with respect to a majority of the fires, although Cal Fire recently concluded that PG&E equipment was not the cause of the most destructive of them, the Tubbs Fire.
And while Cal Fire has yet to determine the cause of the devastating 2018 Camp Fire, which wiped most of the town of Paradise off the map, according to PG&E's own Form 8-K filing, utility equipment in the vicinity of the ignition point experienced problems shortly before the fire began and damage was observed to a PG&E transmission line later that day.Thus, despite Cal Fire's report on the Tubbs Fire, PG&E continues to face tens of billions of dollars in potential wildfire liability (before accounting for punitive damages, fines, or penalties), while possessing insurance coverage of an order of magnitude less. Coupled with the prospect that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) will ultimately disallow recovery of those costs from the utility's ratepayers, as it has in another case, these risks pushed the utility to the brink.
Stopping short of altering the doctrine of inverse condemnation, the California Legislature enacted Senate Bill (SB) 901 in 2018 due to the then-unprecedented level of damages and costs stemming from the 2017 fires. SB 901 allows for securitization of 2017 liabilities in excess of what the utility can bear and changes the regulatory framework for consideration of whether post-2019 wildfire liabilities should be borne by the utilities' shareholders or ratepayers.SB901没有处理与2018灾难野火相关的责任问题,2018野火签署后短短数周开始。After the CPUC instituted a rulemaking to implement SB 901 that the utility believed would postpone its ability to securitize costs for the 2017 fires for several years, PG&E concluded that bankruptcy was the only viable option and in the best interests of all stakeholders.
PG&E's bankruptcy filing creates significant uncertainty for wildfire victims: PG&E announced just days before filing that it would stop paying negotiated settlement amounts to victims of the 2015 Butte Fires. Due to the effect of the automatic stay, victims of the 2017 and 2018 fires are now barred from prosecuting their claims against PG&E in state court.As a consequence, regardless of where they are liquidated, the claims of victims of the state's deadliest wildfires are subject to the rules and statutes applicable to creditor recoveries in bankruptcy.
The Risk to Renewable Energy Contracts
Other than the wildfire victims, perhaps no group of stakeholders has received more attention from the Governor's office and Legislature than the renewable energy generators who provide the power needed for PG&E to meet its obligations under the California's Renewables Portfolio Standards (RPS) Program and climate change mandates.
Many of these power purchase agreements (PPAs) are now significantly above market rates, as the price of procuring renewable energy resources has declined precipitously in recent years. At the same time, PG&E has experienced a substantial decline in demand for renewable energy due largely to the departure of its customers to Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) within its service territory. CCAs are projected to serve a significant and increasing percentage of load within PG&E's service territory in the near future, resulting in a corresponding reduction in PG&E's obligation to procure renewable energy resources to meet the RPS. Although PG&E may still seek to reject many of its renewable energy PPAs or renegotiate them at lower rates under the threat of rejection, PG&E said in its filing with the court that it has not made "any decisions yet regarding whether to assume or reject any PPAs ...s/sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article22496960.htmlOnly a few days later, FERC granted the requested relief on January 25 and January 28, asserting that it has "concurrent jurisdiction" to review disposition of wholesale contracts and that its "approval is required" for PG&E to reject wholesale PPAs. As FERC acknowledged in its orders, however, the jurisdiction issue is unresolved and has been decided differently by a federal appeals court and two district courts, with one of the district court decisions currently on appeal.
Along with its Chapter 11 filing, PG&E also commenced an adversarial proceeding requesting a declaratory order that the bankruptcy court has exclusive jurisdiction over its rejection of contracts and that it is not required to seek or obtain FERC approval of any rejection of its contracts. PG&E also asked the bankruptcy court to enforce the automatic stay provisions of the bankruptcy law and enjoin FERC from enforcing its orders in the NextEra and Exelon cases. FERC will almost certainly oppose PG&E's filings, as it has done in the First Energy bankruptcy pending in the Sixth Circuit.FERC must file its answer by March 5 in the Adversary Proceeding before the bankruptcy court, and the court has scheduled a status conference on the automatic stay motions for March 26. The resolution of this jurisdictional dispute will have significant implications for renewable energy providers that are party to contracts with PG&E, with the potential for FERC to act as a significant check on PG&E's ability to reject and renegotiate its contracts.
Impacts May Ripple Broadly Across the Energy Sector
Beyond the impacts on renewable energy providers, PG&E's January 29 filing may result in potential financial exposure and disruption for a diverse group of stakeholders, including:
- CAISO market participants, which may be required to fulfill PG&E's share of grid management payments in the event PG&E defaults and its collateral is exhausted.
- CCAs, for which PG&E continues to manage customer billing and transfer of customer payments back to the CCAs, which may face interruptions in cash flow as payments are held up as a result of the bankruptcy filing.
- Electric vehicle charging infrastructure investments, which, while already authorized by the CPUC, may face delays or suspension as the bankruptcy process continues to unfold and other issues and expenditures are prioritized.
- Producers and consumers of energy, who may need to take up the slack and achieve even deeper reductions in their own emissions to keep the state on track towards its climate targets if PG&E should default on its expected share of reductions.
Indeed, the prospect of PG&E halting its heavy investments in energy efficiency, transportation electrification, electric system decarbonization and grid modernization could realistically put the state's attainment of its ambitious climate goals at risk. More broadly, due to California's outsized role in climate change mitigation, the outcome of the Chapter 11 case could realistically influence the progress that other states and subnational jurisdictions are making to address climate change and decarbonize their energy sectors.
[1] See Cal.康斯特艺术I,§19em>Barham v南卡尔市Edison公司 ,74CalApp.4th744,753 (1999) (控股私有电商为公有实体逆判)
On Monday, September 10, 2018, two days before kicking-off the Global Climate Action Summit he is co-hosting in San Francisco, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 100 (De León), The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018, which sets a state policy that eligible renewable energy and zero-carbon resources supply 100 percent (%) of all retail sales of electricity in California by 2045. (Our summary of SB 100 is here.)
Perhaps even more importantly, at the same signing ceremony, the Governor also issued a new executive order (EO), EO B-55-18 To Achieve Carbon Neutrality, establishing a new statewide goal "to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045, and achieve and maintain net negative emissions thereafter." EO B-55-18, § 1.The EO says that this new goal "is in addition to the existing statewide targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Id. Those include the targets previously established by Governor Brown and the Legislature of reducing emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 (by EO B-30-15 and SB 32 in 2015 and 2016, respectively) and a decade earlier by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of reducing emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (by EO S-3-05).
Governor Brown's new order requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to "work with relevant state agencies to ensure future Scoping Plans identify and recommend measures to achieve the carbon neutrality goal." EO B-55-18, § 3.The most recent Scoping Plan adopted by CARB sets forth the strategies the state will implement to achieve the 2030 emissions reduction target–40% below 1990 levels–and put the state on the trajectory towards achieving the 2050 target of reducing emissions to 80% below 1990 levels.
The new goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 could be even more ambitious, requiring not only that emissions be reduced to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, but that, by no later than 2045, the remaining emissions be offset by equivalent net removals of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, including through sequestration in forests, soils and other natural landscapes.
Upon adopting the current Scoping Plan last December, CARB's Board adopted a goal of sequestering and avoiding at least 15-20 million metric tons of CO2 in the natural and working lands sector by 2030.CARB Resolution 17-46, Dec.1420179董事会还命令CARB员工不迟于2018年9月30日重新评价这一目标,并建立一个自然和工作用地碳核算框架和执行计划Id http://resources.ca.gov/climate/自然工作-lands/efforts/a/如果不能实现新目标,则新目标可能要求国家向其他部门求取缓冲量。
换句话说,最迟2045实现净零排放目标可能要求排放部门比2050年现有目标更深入或更快地减少排放量,取决于CO2 国家账户方式这可能催化排放部门的利害相关方更专注开发计算法和科学,以证明自然和工作用地的排减量,以免排放者被迫负起缺水的重负最起码,它保证陆上排减量与SB100本周全球气候行动峰会100%零碳能目标分享焦点。
California's load-serving entities recently filed their first cycle of integrated resource plans with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), identifying the procurement of resources they will each undertake to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets established by the California Air Resources Board, in coordination with the CPUC and California Energy Commission (CEC), for the electricity sector and each load-serving entity.这些目标旨在反映电力部门实现SB32(Pavley)确定的全经济目标所需比例,即到2030年将温室气体排放量比1990年水平减少40%。
CARB通过的SB350目标范围要求电力部门到2030年实现比1990年水平减少51-72%,即使预计其他终端能源的大量电气化将实现全经济目标,结果对电的需求增加CARB目标范围中点已经反映了一种假设,即负载实体到2030年将从合格可再生能源资源中采购57%的零售量!sB100下增加60%不应代表比SB350现有目标已经考虑的重得多的重负 。 /Content/News_Rouse_News_and_Updates/Retail%20Paper%202020202020Paper%2008%2017.pdfiOs预测服务量少得多,分母计算是否实现RPS目标时继续下降分母下降后,他们需要购买较少可再生资源以保持目标多CE尚处于初级编译阶段,尚需大规模再生采购才能接通关口 。 anotherbills 正在立法会议审议中,
SB100现在将转接Brown州长办公台签名据报总督正向议会成员施压以通过
California continues to see growth in alternative and clean energy initiatives. Below is a sample of recent notable developments.
Solar Panels on Every Home Starting 2020
The California Energy Commission (CEC) voted on May 9, 2018 to impose additional energy efficiency building standards, including the requirement that starting in 2020, new homes (with some exceptions) have solar panels. The CEC hopes this will cut energy use in new homes by 50%, and claims that this additional building standard will reduce greenhouse gas emission by an amount equivalent to removing 115,000 fossil fuel cars off the road. While environmentalists and building associations have hailed this decision as ground-breaking, others called it "admirable but misguided" because of the potential to exacerbate power grid operation and efficiency issues.
California Invests in the Electrification of Transportation
In working toward the mandated clean air and greenhouse reduction goals for 2030, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on May 31, 2018 committed to invest $738 million in transportation electrification projects to be implemented by the state's electric utilities.CPUC授权州公用设施实施项目扩充住宅、工作场所和公共电动车辆收费站大部分资金(5.78亿美元)分配用于建设基础设施并提供回扣支持中型或重型商业车辆电气化。Jerry Brown目标到2030年实现
Bill on Control of California's Power Grid Survives Key Votes
On June 19, 2018 and June 27, 2018, California's Senate Energy and Communications and Senate Judiciary committees voted in favor of AB-813, a bill backed by Governor Jerry Brown which would transfer control of California's power grid from the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) to a regional operator. As a result, the regional operator would be governed by a multi-state board that answers to federal regulators (i.e., FERC) rather than the governor of California who currently appoints the governing board of Cal-ISO.Supporters argue that consumers will save money, as much as $1.5 billion a year, and that there will be wider distribution of electricity generated by renewable sources. In contrast, opponents believe that this law would undermine California's environmental policy by exposing California's environmentally-friendly laws to federal preemption legal challenges (which, have occurred and succeeded in other states that have regionalized their grids), and also force Californians to purchase energy from fewer clean sources, produced in neighboring states such as Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona. The bill now advances to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
* * * * *
Covington continues to stay abreast of these developments and others around the country and globe to best advise its clients.
Energy storage has frequently been cited as the critical missing link in an electric infrastructure designed to maximize the benefits of cheap, renewable energy. Because energy from the sun and the wind is inherently intermittent, it has not been able to satisfy a round-the-clock need for electricity. And in many places we've built more renewable capacity than we can use, when the sun is shining, or when the wind is blowing. For example, in sun-soaked California and the West, electric grid operators have recently been confronted by the challenge of "over-generation" during peak solar hours of the day, which can result in the curtailment of solar generation to avoid overloading the grid with electrons. Similarly, in Texas, so much wind blows at night that the electricity off-takers can sometimes get paid through "negative" power prices to use the wind power.
For California, a state that has set its electric grid on a path toward 50% renewable by 2030 (SB 350 (De León)), and one that is considering a 100% RPS by 2045 (SB 100 (De León)), the question of energy storage has taken on a practical significance. And regulators at the federal and state level have been quite busy taking down barriers that have made the increased adoption of energy storage resources impracticable.
Today Bud Earley of Covington blogged about the recent approval at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) of its 2017 electric storage rulemaking. That rule set out broad market criteria for the participation of energy storage resources in regional electricity markets, and left the question of distributed energy resources (DERs), for a later date.
Given its innovative policy work on both fronts, California is a natural market to look to for policy models that may be relevant beyond the California ISO (CAISO). In California, state regulators have already begun seeking comment and setting rules for the participation of both DERs and energy storage in the market. The CAISO has begun, for example, reviewing applications from some companies, including investor-owned utility companies, to seek approval as distributed energy resource providers (DERPs)!and the CAISO has sought and received approval from FERC to seek tariff proposals that allow DERPs to aggregate and sell resources in the grid. And with respect to energy storage, the state regulator — the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) — recently issued a decision for new "multiple-use" applications for energy storage, which allow storage providers to "stack" various services.
This CPUC decision, in combination with FERC's rule, and adjacent statewide efforts on DERs, will continue to reduce friction in the market for energy storage. The concept of "stacking" is designed to allow the grid to more completely take advantage of the various services offered by energy storage technologies (as well as allowing storage providers to more completely market and sell the various incremental values storage provides to the wholesale market, the transmission and distribution grids, the customer, and to resource adequacy). For example, a storage facility that might ordinarily have been under contract for frequency regulation services could, in a stacking scenario, also sell services to provide when it would have otherwise been idling, such as additional capacity, resource adequacy, or peaking.
The CPUC's decision adopted eleven interim rules outlining how these multiple-use applications should be evaluated, and established a Working Group, to be convened by the CPUC Energy Division, and in coordination with the CAISO, to "develop actionable recommendations." For example, the CPUC specifically sought input from the Working Group on possible modifications to Rule 6, which deals with how storage resources may contract for reliability services. Notwithstanding the work that remains to fine tune the rules in this decision, it holds the promise of providing additional revenue streams to energy storage providers who in turn might develop innovative financing and service agreements to bring projects online. As California begins to turn toward preferred resources offerings in lieu of traditional "must-run" contracts or to replace traditional energy infrastructure (see, e.g., Aliso Canyon procurement), the prospect of valuing energy storage projects for their various benefits introduces a new degree of financial competitiveness for storage.
In addition to engaging through the forthcoming CPUC and CAISO Working Group, stakeholders have been encouraged to participate in the state's energy storage process through the CAISO's Energy Storage and Distributed Energy Resources (ESDER) initiative. And the state legislature has also been active on this topic in recent years, introducing numerous bills (some of which, such as AB 2868 (2016), have passed) with the intention of deploying additional storage resources into the California grid!本年度关于百分百RPS(SB100(de Leon))和区域化网格(AB813(Holden))的立法有可能以某种容量解决能源存储问题。
s.继续测试 When renewable sources are incorporated into the grid, variability in renewables—when the sun doesn't shine, or the wind fluctuates—can create a supply problem unless the grid is engineered to efficiently store renewable energy or adjust (for example, through demand side management or the use of natural gas-fired generation) for inconsistent output. California uses a "baseload" approach—it continually runs conventional power plants at a minimum baseline—to account for renewable energy variability. But, over-generation results when renewables are at peak output but the "baseline" is still maintained. Consequently, this has led to occasional negative pricing of power (when generators pay grid operators to avoid curtailment). Last spring, California experienced negative pricing due to substantial power generation from the continued expansion of solar farms combined with an increase in hydro reserves from the rainy winter.
Additional efforts outside of S.B.电池存储公司-从创业到多国巨头-以及太阳能和其他分布式能源提供商正在提供提高电网效率和可靠性的服务。